transcribed from the longmans green and company edition by david price, email ccx @coventry.ac.uk a monk of fife being the chronicle written by norman leslie of pitcullo, concerning marvellous deeds that befell in the realm of france, in the years of our redemption, mccccxxix-xxxi. now first done into english out of the french by andrew lang. to henrietta lang my dear aunt,--to you, who read to me stories from the history of france, before i could read them for myself, this chronicle is affectionately dedicated. yours ever, andrew lang. preface norman leslie of pitcullo, whose narrative the reader has in his hands, refers more than once to his unfinished latin chronicle. that work, usually known as "the book of pluscarden," has been edited by mr. felix skene, in the series of "historians of scotland" (vol. vii.). to mr. skene's introduction and notes the curious are referred. here it may suffice to say that the original ms. of the latin chronicle is lost; that of six known manuscript copies none is older than ; that two of these copies contain a prologue; and that the prologue tells us all that has hitherto been known about the author. the date of the lost latin original is , as the author himself avers. he also, in his prologue, states the purpose of his work. at the bidding of an unnamed abbot of dunfermline, who must have been richard bothwell, he is to abbreviate "the great chronicle," and "bring it up to date," as we now say. he is to recount the events of his own time, "with certain other miraculous deeds, which i who write have had cognisance of, seen, and heard, beyond the bounds of this realm. also, lastly, concerning a certain marvellous maiden, who recovered the kingdom of france out of the hands of the tyrant, henry, king of england. the aforesaid maiden i saw, was conversant with, and was in her company in her said recovery of france, and till her life's end i was ever present." after "i was ever present" the copies add "etc.," perhaps a sign of omission. the monkish author probably said more about the heroine of his youth, and this the copyists have chosen to leave out. the author never fulfilled this promise of telling, in latin, the history of the maid as her career was seen by a scottish ally and friend. nor did he ever explain how a scot, and a foe of england, succeeded in being present at the maiden's martyrdom in rouen. at least he never fulfilled his promise, as far as any of the six latin mss. of his chronicle are concerned. every one of these mss.--doubtless following their incomplete original--breaks off short in the middle of the second sentence of chapter xxxii. book xii. here is the brief fragment which that chapter contains:-- "in those days the lord stirred up the spirit of a certain marvellous maiden, born on the borders of france, in the duchy of lorraine, and the see of toul, towards the imperial territories. this maiden her father and mother employed in tending sheep; daily, too, did she handle the distaff; man's love she knew not; no sin, as it is said, was found in her, to her innocence the neighbours bore witness . . . " here the latin narrative of the one man who followed jeanne d'arc through good and evil to her life's end breaks off abruptly. the author does not give his name; even the name of the abbot at whose command he wrote "is left blank, as if it had been erased in the original" (mr. felix skene, "liber pluscardensis," in the "historians of scotland," vii. p. ). it might be guessed that the original fell into english hands between and , and that they blotted out the name of the author, and destroyed a most valuable record of their conqueror and their victim, jeanne d'arc. against this theory we have to set the explanation here offered by norman leslie, our author, in the ratisbon scots college's french ms., of which this work is a translation. leslie never finished his latin chronicle, but he wrote, in french, the narrative which follows, decorating it with the designs which mr. selwyn image has carefully copied in black and white. possessing this information, we need not examine mr. w. f. skene's learned but unconvincing theory that the author of the fragmentary latin work was one maurice drummond, out of the lennox. the hypothesis is that of mr. w. f. skene, and mr. felix skene points out the difficulties which beset the opinion of his distinguished kinsman. our monk is a man of fife. as to the veracity of the following narrative, the translator finds it minutely corroborated, wherever corroboration could be expected, in the large mass of documents which fill the five volumes of m. quicherat's "proces de jeanne d'arc," in contemporary chronicles, and in mss. more recently discovered in french local or national archives. thus charlotte boucher, barthelemy barrette, noiroufle, the scottish painter, and his daughter elliot, capdorat, ay, even thomas scott, the king's messenger, were all real living people, traces of whose existence, with some of their adventures, survive faintly in brown old manuscripts. louis de coutes, the pretty page of the maid, a boy of fourteen, may have been hardly judged by norman leslie, but he certainly abandoned jeanne d'arc at her first failure. so, after explaining the true position and character of our monkish author and artist, we leave his book to the judgment which it has tarried for so long. chapter i--how this book was written, and how norman leslie fled out of fife it is not of my own will, nor for my own glory, that i, norman leslie, sometime of pitcullo, and in religion called brother norman, of the order of benedictines, of dunfermline, indite this book. but on my coming out of france, in the year of our lord one thousand four hundred and fifty- nine, it was laid on me by my superior, richard, abbot in dunfermline, that i should abbreviate the great chronicle of scotland, and continue the same down to our own time. { } he bade me tell, moreover, all that i knew of the glorious maid of france, called jeanne la pucelle, in whose company i was, from her beginning even till her end. obedient, therefore, to my superior, i wrote, in this our cell of pluscarden, a latin book containing the histories of times past, but when i came to tell of matters wherein, as maro says, "pars magna fui," i grew weary of such rude, barbarous latin as alone i am skilled to indite, for of the manner ciceronian, as it is now practised by clerks of italy, i am not master: my book, therefore, i left unfinished, breaking off in the middle of a sentence. yet, considering the command laid on me, in the end i am come to this resolve, namely, to write the history of the wars in france, and the history of the blessed maid (so far at least as i was an eyewitness and partaker thereof), in the french language, being the most commonly understood of all men, and the most delectable. it is not my intent to tell all the story of the maid, and all her deeds and sayings, for the world would scarcely contain the books that should be written. but what i myself beheld, that i shall relate, especially concerning certain accidents not known to the general, by reason of which ignorance the whole truth can scarce be understood. for, if heaven visibly sided with france and the maid, no less did hell most manifestly take part with our old enemy of england. and often in this life, if we look not the more closely, and with the eyes of faith, sathanas shall seem to have the upper hand in the battle, with whose very imp and minion i myself was conversant, to my sorrow, as shall be shown. first, concerning myself i must say some few words, to the end that what follows may be the more readily understood. i was born in the kingdom of fife, being, by some five years, the younger of two sons of archibald leslie, of pitcullo, near st. andrews, a cadet of the great house of rothes. my mother was an englishwoman of the debatable land, a storey of netherby, and of me, in our country speech, it used to be said that i was "a mother's bairn." for i had ever my greatest joy in her, whom i lost ere i was sixteen years of age, and she in me: not that she favoured me unduly, for she was very just, but that, within ourselves, we each knew who was nearest to her heart. she was, indeed, a saintly woman, yet of a merry wit, and she had great pleasure in reading of books, and in romances. being always, when i might, in her company, i became a clerk insensibly, and without labour i could early read and write, wherefore my father was minded to bring me up for a churchman. for this cause, i was some deal despised by others of my age, and, yet more, because from my mother i had caught the southron trick of the tongue. they called me "english norman," and many a battle i have fought on that quarrel, for i am as true a scot as any, and i hated the english (my own mother's people though they were) for taking and holding captive our king, james i. of worthy memory. my fancy, like that of most boys, was all for the wars, and full of dreams concerning knights and ladies, dragons and enchanters, about which the other lads were fain enough to hear me tell what i had read in romances, though they mocked at me for reading. yet they oft came ill speed with their jests, for my brother had taught me to use my hands: and to hold a sword i was instructed by our smith, who had been prentice to harry gow, the burn-the- wind of perth, and the best man at his weapon in broad scotland. from him i got many a trick of fence that served my turn later. but now the evil time came when my dear mother sickened and died, leaving to me her memory and her great chain of gold. a bitter sorrow is her death to me still; but anon my father took to him another wife of the bethunes of blebo. i blame myself, rather than this lady, that we dwelt not happily in the same house. my father therefore, still minded to make me a churchman, sent me to robert of montrose's new college that stands in the south street of st. andrews, a city not far from our house of pitcullo. but there, like a wayward boy, i took more pleasure in the battles of the "nations"--as of fife against galloway and the lennox; or in games of catch-pull, football, wrestling, hurling the bar, archery, and golf--than in divine learning--as of logic, and aristotle his analytics. yet i loved to be in the scriptorium of the abbey, and to see the good father peter limning the blessed saints in blue, and red, and gold, of which art he taught me a little. often i would help him to grind his colours, and he instructed me in the laying of them on paper or vellum, with white of egg, and in fixing and burnishing the gold, and in drawing flowers, and figures, and strange beasts and devils, such as we see grinning from the walls of the cathedral. in the french language, too, he learned me, for he had been taught at the great university of paris; and in avignon had seen the pope himself, benedict xiii., of uncertain memory. much i loved to be with father peter, whose lessons did not irk me, but jumped with my own desire to read romances in the french tongue, whereof there are many. but never could i have dreamed that, in days to come, this art of painting would win me my bread for a while, and that a leslie of pitcullo should be driven by hunger to so base and contemned a handiwork, unworthy, when practised for gain, of my blood. yet it would have been well for me to follow even this craft more, and my sports and pastimes less: dickon melville had then escaped a broken head, and i, perchance, a broken heart. but youth is given over to vanities that war against the soul, and, among others, to that wicked game of the golf, now justly cried down by our laws, { } as the mother of cursing and idleness, mischief and wastery, of which game, as i verily believe, the devil himself is the father. it chanced, on an october day of the year of grace fourteen hundred and twenty-eight, that i was playing myself at this accursed sport with one richard melville, a student of like age with myself. we were evenly matched, though dickon was tall and weighty, being great of growth for his age, whereas i was of but scant inches, slim, and, as men said, of a girlish countenance. yet i was well skilled in the game of the golf, and have driven a holland ball the length of an arrow-flight, there or thereby. but wherefore should my sinful soul be now in mind of these old vanities, repented of, i trust, long ago? as we twain, dickon and i, were known for fell champions at this unholy sport, many of the other scholars followed us, laying wagers on our heads. they were but a wild set of lads, for, as then, there was not, as now there is, a house appointed for scholars to dwell in together under authority. we wore coloured clothes, and our hair long; gold chains, and whingers { } in our belts, all of which things are now most righteously forbidden. but i carried no whinger on the links, as considering that it hampered a man in his play. so the game went on, now dickon leading "by a hole," as they say, and now myself, and great wagers were laid on us. now, at the hole that is set high above the eden, whence you see far over the country, and the river-mouth, and the shipping, it chanced that my ball lay between dickon's and the hole, so that he could in no manner win past it. "you laid me that stimy of set purpose," cried dickon, throwing down his club in a rage; "and this is the third time you have done it in this game." "it is clean against common luck," quoth one of his party, "and the game and the money laid on it should be ours." "by the blessed bones of the apostle," i said, "no luck is more common. to-day to me, to-morrow to thee! lay it of purpose, i could not if i would." "you lie!" he shouted in a rage, and gripped to his whinger. it was ever my father's counsel that i must take the lie from none. therefore, as his steel was out, and i carried none, i made no more ado, and the word of shame had scarce left his lips when i felled him with the iron club that we use in sand. "he is dead!" cried they of his party, while the lads of my own looked askance on me, and had manifestly no mind to be partakers in my deed. now, melville came of a great house, and, partly in fear of their feud, partly like one amazed and without any counsel, i ran and leaped into a boat that chanced to lie convenient on the sand, and pulled out into the eden. thence i saw them raise up melville, and bear him towards the town, his friends lifting their hands against me, with threats and malisons. his legs trailed and his head wagged like the legs and the head of a dead man, and i was without hope in the world. at first it was my thought to row up the river-mouth, land, and make across the marshes and fields to our house at pitcullo. but i bethought me that my father was an austere man, whom i had vexed beyond bearing with my late wicked follies, into which, since the death of my mother, i had fallen. and now i was bringing him no college prize, but a blood- feud, which he was like to find an ill heritage enough, even without an evil and thankless son. my stepmother, too, who loved me little, would inflame his anger against me. many daughters he had, and of gear and goods no more than enough. robin, my elder brother, he had let pass to france, where he served among the men of john kirkmichael, bishop of orleans--he that smote the duke of clarence in fair fight at bauge. thinking of my father, and of my stepmother's ill welcome, and of robin, abroad in the wars against our old enemy of england, it may be that i fell into a kind of half dream, the boat lulling me by its movement on the waters. suddenly i felt a crashing blow on my head. it was as if the powder used for artillery had exploded in my mouth, with flash of light and fiery taste, and i knew nothing. then, how long after i could not tell, there was water on my face, the blue sky and the blue tide were spinning round--they spun swiftly, then slowly, then stood still. there was a fierce pain stounding in my head, and a voice said-- "that good oar-stroke will learn you to steal boats!" i knew the voice; it was that of a merchant sailor-man with whom, on the day before, i had quarrelled in the market-place. now i was lying at the bottom of a boat which four seamen, who had rowed up to me and had broken my head as i meditated, were pulling towards a merchant-vessel, or carrick, in the eden-mouth. her sails were being set; the boat wherein i lay was towing that into which i had leaped after striking down melville. for two of the ship's men, being on shore, had hailed their fellows in the carrick, and they had taken vengeance upon me. "you scholar lads must be taught better than your masters learn you," said my enemy. and therewith they carried me on board the vessel, the "st. margaret," of berwick, laden with a cargo of dried salmon from eden-mouth. they meant me no kindness, for there was an old feud between the scholars and the sailors; but it seemed to me, in my foolishness, that now i was in luck's way. i need not go back, with blood on my hands, to pitcullo and my father. i had money in my pouch, my mother's gold chain about my neck, a ship's deck under my foot, and the seas before me. it was not hard for me to bargain with the shipmaster for a passage to berwick, whence i might put myself aboard a vessel that traded to bordeaux for wine from that country. the sailors i made my friends at no great cost, for indeed they were the conquerors, and could afford to show clemency, and hold me to slight ransom as a prisoner of war. so we lifted anchor, and sailed out of eden-mouth, none of those on shore knowing how i was aboard the carrick that slipped by the bishop's castle, and so under the great towers of the minster and st. rule's, forth to the northern sea. despite my broken head--which put it comfortably into my mind that maybe dickon's was no worse--i could have laughed to think how clean i had vanished away from st. andrews, as if the fairies had taken me. now having time to reason of it quietly, i picked up hope for dickon's life, remembering his head to be of the thickest. then came into my mind the many romances of chivalry which i had read, wherein the young squire has to flee his country for a chance blow, as did messire patroclus, in the romance of troy, who slew a man in anger over the game of the chess, and many another knight, in the tales of charlemagne and his paladins. for ever it is thus the story opens, and my story, methought, was beginning to-day like the rest. now, not to prove more wearisome than need be, and so vex those who read this chronicle with much talk about myself, and such accidents of travel as beset all voyagers, and chiefly in time of war, i found a trading ship at berwick, and reached bordeaux safe, after much sickness on the sea. and in bordeaux, with a very sore heart, i changed the links of my mother's chain that were left to me--all but four, that still i keep--for money of that country; and so, with a lighter pack than spirit, i set forth towards orleans and to my brother robin. on this journey i had good cause to bless father peter of the abbey for his teaching me the french tongue, that was of more service to me than all my latin. yet my latin, too, the little i knew, stood me in good stead at the monasteries, where often i found bed and board, and no small kindness; i little deeming that, in time to come, i also should be in religion, an old man and weary, glad to speak with travellers concerning the news of the world, from which i am now these ten years retired. yet i love even better to call back memories of these days, when i took my part in the fray. if this be a sin, may god and the saints forgive me, for if i have fought, it was in a rightful cause, which heaven at last has prospered, and in no private quarrel. and methinks i have one among the saints to pray for me, as a friend for a friend not unfaithful. but on this matter i submit me to the judgment of the church, as in all questions of the faith. chapter ii--how norman leslie met noiroufle the cordelier, called brother thomas in religion: and of miracles wrought by brother thomas the ways were rude and long from bordeaux town to orleans, whither i had set my face, not knowing, when i left my own country, that the city was beleaguered by the english. for who could guess that lords and knights of the christian faith, holding captive the gentle duke of orleans, would besiege his own city?--a thing unheard of among the very saracens, and a deed that god punished. yet the news of this great villainy, namely, the leaguer of orleans, then newly begun, reached my ears on my landing at bordeaux, and made me greatly fear that i might never meet my brother robin alive. and this my doubt proved but too true, for he soon after this time fell, with many other scottish gentlemen and archers, deserted shamefully by the french and by charles de bourbon, comte de clermont, at the battle of the herrings. but of this i knew nothing--as, indeed, the battle was not yet fought--and only pushed on for france, thinking to take service with the dauphin against the english. my journey was through a country ruinous enough, for, though the english were on the further bank of the loire, the partisans of the dauphin had made a ruin round themselves and their holds, and, not being paid, they lived upon the country. the further north i held, by ways broken and ruined with rains and suns, the more bare and rugged grew the whole land. once, stopping hard by a hamlet, i had sat down to munch such food as i carried, and was sharing my meal with a little brown herd-boy, who told me that he was dinnerless. a few sheep and lean kine plucked at such scant grasses as grew among rocks, and herbs useless but sweet-scented, when suddenly a horn was blown from the tower of the little church. the first note of that blast had not died away, when every cow and sheep was scampering towards the hamlet and a kind of "barmkyn" { } they had builded there for protection, and the boy after them, running with his bare legs for dear life. for me, i was too amazed to run in time, so lay skulking in the thick sweet- smelling herbs, whence i saw certain men-at-arms gallop to the crest of a cliff hard by, and ride on with curses, for they were not of strength to take the barmkyn. such was the face of france in many counties. the fields lay weedy and untilled; the starving peasant-folk took to the highway, every man preying on his neighbour. woods had grown up, and broken in upon the roads. howbeit, though robbers harboured therein, none of them held to ransom a wandering poor scots scholar. slowly i trudged, being often delayed, and i was now nearing poictiers, and thought myself well on my road to chinon, where, as i heard, the dauphin lay, when i came to a place where the road should have crossed a stream--not wide, but strong, smooth, and very deep. the stream ran through a glen; and above the road i had long noted the towers of a castle. but as i drew closer, i saw first that the walls were black with fire and roofless, and that carrion birds were hovering over them, some enemy having fallen upon the place: and next, behold, the bridge was broken, and there was neither ford nor ferry! all the ruin was fresh, the castle still smouldering, the kites flocking and yelling above the trees, the planks of the bridge showing that the destruction was but of yesterday. this matter of the broken bridge cost me little thought, for i could swim like an otter. but there was another traveller down by the stream who seemed more nearly concerned. when i came close to him, i found him standing up to his waist in the water, taking soundings with a long and heavy staff. his cordelier's frock was tucked up into his belt, his long brown legs, with black hairs thick on them, were naked. he was a huge, dark man, and when he turned and stared at me, i thought that, among all men of the church and in religion whom i had ever beheld, he was the foulest and most fierce to look upon. he had an ugly, murderous visage, fell eyes and keen, and a right long nose, hooked like a falcon's. the eyes in his head shone like swords, and of all eyes of man i ever saw, his were the most piercing and most terrible. on his back he carried, as i noticed at the first, what i never saw on a cordelier's back before, or on any but his since--an arbalest, and he had bolts enough in his bag, the feathers showing above. "pax vobiscum," he cried, in a loud, grating voice, as he saw me, and scrambled out to shore. "et cum anima tua," i answered. "nom de dieu!" he said, "you have bottomed my latin already, that is scarce so deep as the river here. my malison on them that broke the bridge!" then he looked me over fiercely. "burgundy or armagnac?" he asked. i thought the question strange, as a traveller would scarce care to pronounce for burgundy in that country. but this was a man who would dare anything, so i deemed it better to answer that i was a scot, and, so far, of neither party. "tug-mutton, wine-sack!" he said, these being two of many ill names which the french gave our countrymen; for, of all men, the french are least grateful to us, who, under heaven and the maid, have set their king on his throne again. the english knew this, if the french did not; and their great king, harry the fifth, when he fell ill of st. fiacre's sickness, after plundering that scots saint's shrine of certain horse-shoes, silver-gilt, said well that, "go where he would, he was bearded by scots, dead or alive." but the french are not a thankful people. i had no answer very ready to my tongue, so stepped down silent to the water-edge, and was about taking off my doublet and hose, meaning to carry them on my head and swim across. but he barred the way with his staff, and, for me, i gripped to my whinger, and watched my chance to run in under his guard. for this cordelier was not to be respected, i deemed, like others of the order of st. francis, and all men of holy church. "answer a civil question," he said, "before it comes to worse: armagnac or burgundy?" "armagnac," i answered, "or anything else that is not english. clear the causeway, mad friar!" at that he threw down his staff. "i go north also," he said, "to orleans, if i may, for the foul 'manants' and peasant dogs of this country have burned the castle of alfonse rodigo, a good knight that held them in right good order this year past. he was worthy, indeed, to ride with that excellent captain, don rodrigo de villandradas. king's captain or village labourer, all was fish that came to his net, and but two days ago i was his honourable chaplain. but he made the people mad, and a great carouse that we kept gave them their opportunity. they have roasted the good knight alfonse, and would have done as much for me, his almoner, frock and all, if wine had any mastery over me. but i gave them the slip. heaven helps its own! natheless, i would that this river were between me and their vengeance, and, for once, i dread the smell of roast meat that is still in my nostrils--pah!" and here he spat on the ground. "but one door closes," he went on, "and another opens, and to orleans am i now bound, in the service of my holy calling." "there is, indeed, cause enough for the shriving of souls of sinners, father, in that country, as i hear, and a holy man like you will be right welcome to many." "they need little shriving that are opposite my culverin," said this strange priest. "though now i carry but an arbalest, the gun is my mistress, and my patron is the gunner's saint, st. barbara. and even with this toy, methinks i have the lives of a score of goddams in my bolt- pouch." i knew that in these wild days many clerics were careless as to that which the church enjoins concerning the effusion of blood--nay, i have named john kirkmichael, bishop of orleans, as having himself broken a spear on the body of the duke of clarence. the abbe of cerquenceaux, also, was a valiant man in religion, and a good captain, and, all over france, clerics were gripping to sword and spear. but such a priest as this i did not expect to see. "your name?" he asked suddenly, the words coming out with a sound like the first grating of a saw on stone. "they call me norman leslie de pitcullo," i answered. "and yours?" "my name," he said, "is noiroufle"--and i thought that never had i seen a man so well fitted with a name;--"in religion, brother thomas, a poor brother of the order of the mad st. francis of assisi." "then, brother thomas, how do you mean to cross this water which lies between you and the exercise of your holy calling? do you swim?" "like a stone cannon-ball, and, for all that i can find, the cursed water has no bottom. cross!" he snarled. "let me see you swim." i was glad enough to be quit of him so soon, but i noticed that, as i stripped and packed my clothes to carry in a bundle on my head, the holy man set his foot in the stirrup of his weapon, and was winding up his arbalest with a windlass, a bolt in his mouth, watching at the same time a heron that rose from a marsh on the further side of the stream. on this bird, i deemed, he meant to try his skill with the arbalest. "adieu, brother thomas," i said, as i took the water; and in a few strokes i was across and running up and down on the bank to get myself dry. "back!" came his grating voice--"back! and without your clothes, you wine-sack of scotland, or i shoot!" and his arbalest was levelled on me. i have often asked myself since what i should have done, and what was the part of a brave man. perchance i might have dived, and swum down-stream under water, but then i had bestowed my bundle of clothes some little way off, and brother thomas commanded it from his side of the stream. he would have waited there in ambush till i came shivering back for hose and doublet, and i should be in no better case than i was now. meanwhile his weapon was levelled at me, and i could see the bolt-point set straight for my breast, and glittering in a pale blink of the sun. the bravest course is ever the best. i should have thrown myself on the earth, no doubt, and so crawled to cover, taking my chance of death rather than the shame of obeying under threat and force. but i was young, and had never looked death in the face, so, being afraid and astonished, i made what seemed the best of an ill business, and, though my face reddens yet at the thought of it, i leaped in and swam back like a dog to heel. "behold me," i said, making as brave a countenance as i might in face of necessity. "well done, norman leslie de pitcullo," he snarled, baring his yellow teeth. "this is the obedience which the young owe to the church. now, ferry me over; you are my boat." "you will drown, man," i said. "not while you swim." then, unbuckling his frock, he packed it as he had seen me do, bade me put it on my head, and so stepped out into the water, holding forth his arm to put about my neck. i was for teaching him how to lay it on my shoulder, and was bidding him keep still as a plank of wood, but he snarled-- "i have sailed on a boat of flesh before to-day." to do him justice, he kept still as a log of wood, and so, yielding partly to the stream, i landed him somewhat further down than the place where my own clothes were lying. to them he walked, and very quietly picking up my whinger and my raiment that he gathered under his arm, he concealed himself in a thick bush, albeit it was leafless, where no man could have been aware of him. this amazed me not a little, for modesty did not seem any part of his nature. "now," says he, "fetch over my arbalest. lying where i am you have no advantage to shoot me, as, nom de dieu! i would have shot you had you not obeyed. and hark ye, by the way, unwind the arbalest before you cross; it is ever well to be on the safe side. and be sure you wet not the string." he pushed his face through the bush, and held in his mouth my naked whinger, that shone between his shining eyes. now again i say it, i have thought over this matter many a time, and have even laughed aloud and bitterly, when i was alone, at the figure of me shivering there, on a cold february day, and at my helpless estate. for a naked man is no match for a man with a whinger, and he was sitting on my clothes. so this friar, unworthy as he was of his holy calling, had me at an avail on every side, nor do i yet see what i could do but obey him, as i did. and when i landed from this fifth voyage, he laughed and gave me his blessing, and, what i needed more, some fiery spirits from a water-gourd, in which father thomas carried no water. "well done, my son," he said, "and now we are comrades. my life was not over safe on yonder side, seeing that the 'manants' hate me, and respect not my hood, and two are better company than one, where we are going." this encounter was the beginning of many evils, and often now the picture shines upon my eyes, and i see the grey water, and hear the cold wind whistle in the dry reeds of the river-bank whereon we sat. the man was my master, heaven help me! as surely as sathanas was his. and though, at last, i slipped his clutches, as you shall hear (more readily than, i trow, he will scape his lord in the end, for he still lives), yet it was an ill day that we met--an ill day for me and for france. howbeit we jogged on, he merrily enough singing a sculdudery song, i something surly, under a grey february sky, with a keen wind searching out the threadbare places in our raiment. my comrade, as he called himself, told me what passages he chose in the history of his life: how he came to be frocked (but 'cucullus non facit monachum'), and how, in the troubles of these times, he had discovered in himself a great aptitude for the gunner's trade, of which he boasted not a little. he had been in one and another of these armed companies that took service with either side, for hire, being better warriors and more skilled than the noblesse, but a curse to france: for, in peace or war, friend or foe, they plundered all, and held all to ransom. with rodrigo de villandradas, that blood-hound of spain, he had been high in favour, but when rodrigo went to harry south and east, he had tarried at ruffec, with another thief of that nation, alfonse rodigo. all his talk, as we went, was of slaying men in fight; whom he slew he cared not much, but chiefly he hated the english and them of burgundy. to him, war was what hunting and shooting game is to others; a cruel and bloody pastime, when christians are the quarry! "john the lorrainer, and i, there are no others to be named with us at the culverin," he would brag. "we two against an army, give us good cover, and powder and leaden balls enough. hey! master john and i must shoot a match yet, against english targets, and of them there are plenty under orleans. but if i make not the better speed, the town will have fallen, or yielded, rescue or no rescue, and of rescue there is no hope at all. the devil fights for the english, who will soon be swarming over the loire, and that king of bourges of ours will have to flee, and gnaw horse's fodder, oats and barley, with your friends in scotland." this was one of the many ungenerous taunts which the french made often against us scots, that have been their ancient and leal brethren in arms since the days of king achaius and charlemagne. "the dauphin," he went on, "for king he is none, and crowned he will never be, should be in orleans, leading his men; and lo! he is tied to the belt of fat la tremouille, and is dancing of ballets at chinon--a murrain on him, and on them that make his music!" then he fell to cursing his king, a thing terrible to hear, and so to asking me questions about myself. i told him that i had fled my own country for a man-slaying, hoping, may heaven forgive me! to make him think the higher of me for the deed. "so we all begin," said he; "a shrewd blow, or a fair wench; a death, or a birth unlawful, 'tis all one forth we are driven to the world and the wars. yet you have started well,--well enough, and better than i gave your girl's face credit for. bar steel and rope, you may carry some french gold back to stinking scotland yet." he gave me so much credit as this for a deed that deserved none, but rather called for rebuke from him, who, however unworthy, was in religion, and wore the garb of the blessed francis. but very far from fortifying me in virtuous courses, as was his bounden duty, there was no wickedness that he did not try to teach me, till partly i hated him, and partly, i fear, i admired one so skilled in evil. the truth is, as i said, that this man, for that time, was my master. he was learned in all the arts by which poor and wandering folk can keep their bellies full wandering by the way. with women, ugly and terrible of aspect as he was, he had a great power: a pious saying for the old; a way with the young which has ever been a mystery to me, unless, as some of the learned think, all women are naturally lovers of wickedness, if strength and courage go with it. what by wheedling, what by bullying, what by tales of pilgrimages to holy shrines (he was coming from jerusalem by way of rome, so he told all we met), he ever won a welcome. other more devilish cantrips he played, one of them at the peasant's house where we rested on the first night of our common travel. the lenten supper which they gave us, with no little kindness, was ended, and we were sitting in the firelight, brother thomas discoursing largely of his pilgrimages, and of his favour among the high clergy. thus, at i know not what convent of the clarisses, { } in italy, the holy sisters had pressed on him a relic of monsieur st. aignan, the patron of the good town of orleans. to see this relic, the farmer, his wife, and his sons and daughters crowded eagerly; it was but a little blackened finger bone, yet they were fain to touch it, as is the custom. but this he would not yet allow. "perchance some of you," he said, "are already corrupt, not knowing it, with the poisonous breath of that damnable hussite heresy, which is blowing from the east like wind of the pestilence, and ye may have doubts concerning the verity of this most holy and miraculous relic?" they all crossed themselves, protesting that no such wicked whisper of sathanas had ever come into their minds, nor had they so much as heard of huss and his blasphemies. "nay," said brother thomas, "i could scarcely blame you if it were partly as i said. for in this latter time of the world, when i have myself met jews flocking to babylon expecting the birth of antichrist, there be many false brethren, who carry about feigned relics, to deceive the simple. we should believe no man, if he be, as i am, a stranger, unless he shows us a sign, such as now i will show you. give me, of your grace, a kerchief, or a napkin." the goodwife gave him a clean white napkin from her aumbry, and he tore it up before their eyes, she not daring to stay his hand. "now note this holy relic and its wonderful power," he said, holding the blackened bone high in his left hand, and all our eyes were fixed on it. "now mark," he said again, passing it over the napkin; and lo! there was a clean white napkin in his hands, and of the torn shreds not a trace! we were still gaping, and crossing ourselves with blessings on this happy day and our unworthy eyes that beheld a miracle, when he did a thing yet more marvellous, if that might be, which i scarce expect any man will believe. going to the table, and catching up a glass vessel on which the goodwife set great store, he threw it against the wall, and we all plainly heard it shiver into tinkling pieces. then, crossing the room into the corner, that was dusky enough, he faced us, again holding the blessed relic, whereon we stared, in holy fear. then he rose, and in his hand was the goodwife's glass vessel, without crack or flaw! { } "such," he said, "are the properties of this miraculous relic; there is nothing broken but it will mend, ay, a broken limb, as i can prove on my own sinful body,"--thrusting out his great brown leg, whereon, assuredly, were signs of a fracture; "ay, a broken leg, or, my dear daughters, a broken heart." at this, of course, they were all eager to touch the blessed relic with their poor rings of base metal, such as they wear who are not rich. nay, but first, he said, they must give their mites for a convent of the clarisses, that was building at castres, by the care of the holy colette, whom he might call his patroness, unworthy as he was. then he showed us a safe-conduct, signed with that blessed woman's own hand, such as she was wont to give to the religious of the order of st. francis. by virtue of this, he said (and, by miracle, for once he said truly, as i had but too good cause to learn), he could go freely in and out among the camps of french, english, and burgundians. you may conceive how joyous they were in that poor cottage, on a night so blessed, and how brother thomas told us of the holy colette, that famous nun and mother in christ, as he that had often been in her company. he had seen her body lifted in the air while she remained in a pious ecstasy, her mind soaring aloft and her fleshly body following it some way. he had often watched that snow-white beast which followed her, such a creature as is known in no country of the sinful world, but is a thing of paradise. and he had tried to caress this wondrous creature of god, but vainly, for none but the holy sister colette may handle it. concerning her miracles of healing, too, he told us, all of which we already knew for very truth, and still know on better warranty than his. ye may believe that, late and at last, brother thomas had his choice of the warmest place to sleep in--by the "four," as is the wont of pilgrims, for in his humility this holy man would not suffer the farmer's wife and the farmer to give him their bed, as they desired. i, too, was very kindly entreated by the young lads, but i could scarcely sleep for marvelling at these miracles done by one so unworthy; and great, indeed, i deemed, must be the virtue of that relic which wrought such signs in the hands of an evil man. but i have since held that he feigned all by art magic and very sorcery, for, as we wended next morning on our road, he plainly told me, truly or falsely, that he had picked up the blackened finger-bone out of the loathly ashes of the dead in the burned castle near ruffec. wherefore i consider that when brother thomas sold the grace of his relic, by the touching of rings, he dealt in a devilish black simony, vending to simple christians no grace but that of his master, sathanas. thus he was not only evil (if i guess aright, which i submit to the judgment of my ecclesiastical superiors, and of the church), but he had even found out a new kind of wickedness, such as i never read of in any books of theology wherein is much to be learned. i have spoken with some, however, knights and men of this world, who deemed that he did but beguile our eyes by craft and sleight-of-hand. this other hellish art he had, by direct inspiration, as i hold, of his master behemoth, that he could throw his voice whither he would, so that, in all seeming, it came from above, or from below, or from a corner of a room, fashioning it to resemble the voice of whom he would, yet none might see his lips move. with this craft he would affray the peasants about the fire in the little inns where we sometimes rested, when he would be telling tales of bogles and eldritch fantasies, and of fiends that rout and rap, and make the tables and firkins dance. such art of speech, i am advised, is spoken of by st. jerome, in his comment on the holy prophet the saint isaiah, and they that use it he calls "ventriloqui," in the latin, or "belly-speakers," and he takes an unfavourable sense of them and their doings. so much i have from the learned william de boyis, prior of pluscarden, where now i write; with whom i have conversed of these matters privately, and he thinks this art a thing that men may learn by practice, without dealing in nigromancy and the black magic. this question i am content to leave, as is fitting, to the judgment of my superiors. and indeed, as at that time, brother thomas spake not in his belly except to make sport and affray the simple people, soon turning their fears to mirth. certainly the country folk never misdoubted him, the women for a holy man, the men for a good fellow; though all they of his own cloth shrank from him, and i have seen them cross themselves in his presence, but to no avail. he would say a word or two in their ears, and they straightway left the place where he might be. none the less, with his tales and arts, brother thomas commonly so wrought that we seldom slept "a la belle etoile" in that bitter spring weather, but we ordinarily had leave to lie by the hearth, and got a supper and a breakfast. the good peasants would find their hen- roosts the poorer often, for all that he could snap up was to him fortune of war. i loved these manners little, but leave him i could not. his eye was ever on me; if i stirred in the night he was awake and watching me, and by day he never let me out of a bolt's flight. to cut the string of his wicked weapon was a thought often in my mind, but he was too vigilant. my face was his passport, he said; my face, indeed, being innocent enough, as was no shame to me, but an endless cause of mirth and mockery to him. yet, by reason of the serviceableness of the man in that perilous country, and my constant surprise and wonder at what he did and said, and might do next (which no man could guess beforehand), and a kind of foolish pride in his very wickedness, so much beyond what i had ever dreamed of, and for pure fear of him also, i found myself following with him day by day, ever thinking to escape, and never escaping. i have since deemed that, just as his wickedness was to a boy (for i was little more), a kind of charm, made up of a sort of admiring hate and fear, so my guilelessness (as it seemed to him) also wrought on him strangely. for in part it made sport for him to see my open mouth and staring eyes at the spectacle of his devilries, and in part he really hated me, and hated my very virtue of simplicity, which it was his desire and delight to surprise and corrupt. on these strange terms, then, now drawn each to other, and now forced apart, we wended by poictiers towards chinon, where the dauphin and his court then lay. so we fared northwards, through poitou, where we found evil news enough. for, walking into a village, we saw men, women, and children, all gathered, gaping about one that stood beside a horse nearly foundered, its legs thrust wide, its nostrils all foam and blood. the man, who seemed as weary as his horse, held a paper in his hands, which the priest of that parish took from him and read aloud to us. the rider was a royal messenger, one thomas scott of easter buccleuch, in rankel burn, whom i knew later, and his tidings were evil. the dauphin bade his good towns know that, on the th of february, sir john stewart, constable of the scottish forces in france, had fallen in battle at rouvray, with very many of his company, and some frenchmen. they had beset a convoy under sir john fastolf, that was bringing meat to the english leaguered about orleans. but fastolf had wholly routed them (by treachery, as we later learned of the comte de clermont), and sir john stewart, with his brother sir william, were slain. wherefore the dauphin bade the good towns send him money and men, or all was lost. such were the evil tidings, which put me in sore fear for my brother robin, one that, in such an onfall, would go far, as beseemed his blood. but as touching his fortunes, thomas scott could tell me neither good nor bad, though he knew robin, and gave him a good name for a stout man-at- arms. it was of some comfort to me to hear a scots tongue; but, for the rest, i travelled on with a heavier heart, deeming that orleans must indeed fall ere i could seek my brother in that town. chapter iii--what befell outside of chinon town my old nurse, when i was a child, used to tell me a long story of a prince who, wandering through the world, made friends with many strange companions. one she called lynx-eye, that could see through a mountain; one was swift-foot, that could outrun the wind; one was fine-ear, that could hear the grass growing; and there was greedy-gut, that could swallow a river. all these were very serviceable to this gracious prince, of i know not what country, in his adventures; and they were often brought into my mind by the companions whom we picked up on the grass-grown roads. these wanderers were as strange as the friends of the prince, and were as variously, but scarce as honourably, gifted. there was the one-armed soldier, who showed his stump very piteously when it was a question of begging from a burgess, but was as well furnished with limbs as other men when no burgess was in sight. there was a wretched woman violer, with her jackanapes, and with her husband, a hang-dog ruffian, she bearing the mark of his fist on her eye, and commonly trailing far behind him with her brat on her back. there was a blind man, with his staff, who might well enough answer to keen-eye, that is, when no strangers were in sight. there was a layman, wearing cope and stole and selling indulgences, but our captain, brother thomas, soon banished him from our company, for that he divided the trade. others there were, each one of them a greedy-gut, a crew of broken men, who marched with us on the roads; but we never entered a town or a house with these discreditable attendants. now, it may seem strange, but the nearer we drew to chinon and the court, the poorer grew the country, for the court and the men-at-arms had stripped it bare, like a flight of locusts. for this reason the dauphin could seldom abide long at one place, for he was so much better known than trusted that the very cordwainer would not let him march off in a new pair of boots without seeing his money, and, as the song said, he even greased his old clouted shoon, and made them last as long as he might. for head-gear he was as ill provided, seeing that he had pawned the fleurons of his crown. there were days when his treasurer at tours (as i myself have heard him say) did not reckon three ducats in his coffers, and the heir of france borrowed money from his very cook. so the people told us, and i have often marvelled how, despite this poverty, kings and nobles, when i have seen them, go always in cloth of gold, with rich jewels. but, as you may guess, near the court of a beggar dauphin the country-folk too were sour and beggarly. we had to tighten our belts before we came to the wood wherein cross-roads meet, from north, south, and east, within five miles of the town of chinon. there was not a white coin among us; night was falling, and it seemed as if we must lie out under the stars, and be fed, like the wolves we heard howling, on wind. by the roadside, at the crossways, but not in view of the road, a council of our ragged regiment was held in a deep ditch. it would be late ere we reached the town, gates would scarce open for us, we could not fee the warders, houses would be shut and dark; the king's archers were apt to bear them unfriendly to wandering men with the devil dancing in their pouches. resource we saw none; if there was a cottage, dogs, like wolves for hunger and fierceness, were baying round it. as for brother thomas, an evil bruit had gone before us concerning a cordelier that the fowls and geese were fain to follow, as wilder things, they say, follow the blessed st. francis. so there sat brother thomas at the cross-roads, footsore, hungry, and sullen, in the midst of us, who dared not speak, he twanging at the string of his arbalest. he called himself our moses, in his blasphemous way, and the blind man having girded at him for not leading us into the land of plenty, he had struck the man till he bled, and now stood stanching his wound. suddenly brother thomas ceased from his twanging, and holding up his hand for silence, leaned his ear to the ground. the night was still, though a cold wind came very stealthily from the east. "horses!" he said. "it is but the noise of the brook by the way," said the blind man, sullenly. brother thomas listened again. "no, it is horses," he whispered. "my men, they that ride horses can spare somewhat out of their abundance to feed the poor." and with that he began winding up his arbalest hastily. "aymeric," he said to one of our afflicted company, "you draw a good bow for a blind man; hide yourself in the opposite ditch, and be ready when i give the word 'pax vobiscum.' you, giles," he spoke to the one-armed soldier, "go with him, and, do you hear, aim low, at the third man's horse. from the sound there are not more than five or six of them. we can but fail, at worst, and the wood is thick behind us, where none may pursue. you, norman de pitcullo, have your whinger ready, and fasten this rope tightly to yonder birch-tree stem, and then cross and give it a turn or two about that oak sapling on the other side of the way. that trap will bring down a horse or twain. be quick, you scotch wine-bag!" i had seen many ill things done, and, to my shame, had held my peace. but a leslie of pitcullo does not take purses on the high-road. therefore my heart rose in sudden anger, i having all day hated him more and more for his bitter tongue, and i was opening my mouth to cry "a secours!"--a warning to them who were approaching, when, quick as lightning, brother thomas caught me behind the knee-joints, and i was on the ground with his weight above me. one cry i had uttered, when his hand was on my mouth. "give him the steel in his guts!" whispered the blind man. "slit his weasand, the scotch pig!" said the one-armed soldier. they were all on me now. "no, i keep him for better sport," snarled brother thomas. "he shall learn the scots for 'ecorcheurs' (flayers of men) "when we have filled our pouches." with that he crammed a great napkin in my mouth, so that i could not cry, made it fast with a piece of cord, trussed me with the rope which he had bidden me tie across the path to trip the horses, and with a kick sent me flying to the bottom of the ditch, my face being turned from the road. i could hear giles and aymeric steal across the way, and the rustling of boughs as they settled on the opposite side. i could hear the trampling hoofs of horses coming slowly and wearily from the east. at this moment chanced a thing that has ever seemed strange to me: i felt the hand of the violer woman laid lightly and kindly on my hair. i had ever pitied her, and, as i might, had been kind to her and her bairn; and now, as it appears, she pitied me. but there could be no help in her, nor did she dare to raise her voice and give an alarm. so i could but gnaw at my gag, trying to find scope for my tongue to cry, for now it was not only the travellers that i would save, but my own life, and my escape from a death of torment lay on my success. but my mouth was as dry as a kiln, my tongue was doubled back till i thought that i should have choked. the night was now deadly still, and the ring of the weary hoofs drew nearer and nearer. i heard a stumble, and the scramble of a tired horse as he recovered himself; for the rest, all was silent, though the beating of my own heart sounded heavy and husky in my ears. closer and closer the travellers drew, and soon it was plain that they rode not carelessly, nor as men who deemed themselves secure, for the tramp of one horse singled itself out in front of the others, and this, doubtless, was ridden by an "eclaireur," sent forward to see that the way ahead was safe. now i heard a low growl of a curse from brother thomas, and my heart took some comfort. they might be warned, if the brother shot at the foremost man; or, at worst, if he was permitted to pass, the man would bear swift tidings to chinon, and we might be avenged, the travellers and i, for i now felt that they and i were in the same peril. the single rider drew near, and passed, and there came no cry of "pax vobiscum" from the friar. but the foremost rider had, perchance, the best horse, and the least wearied, for there was even too great a gap between him and the rest of his company. and now their voices might be heard, as they talked by the way, yet not so loud that, straining my ears as i did, i could hear any words. but the sounds waxed louder, with words spoken, ring of hoofs, and rattle of scabbard on stirrup, and so i knew, at least, that they who rode so late were men armed. brother thomas, too, knew it, and cursed again very low. nearer, nearer they came, then almost opposite, and now, as i listened to hear the traitorous signal of murder--"pax vobiscum"--and the twang of bow-strings, on the night there rang a voice, a woman's voice, soft but wondrous clear, such as never i knew from any lips but hers who then spoke; that voice i heard in its last word, "jesus!" and still it is sounding in my ears. that voice said-- "nous voila presqu'arrives, grace a mes freres de paradis." instantly, i knew not how, at the sound of that blessed voice, and the courage in it, i felt my fear slip from me, as when we awaken from a dreadful dream, and in its place came happiness and peace. scarce otherwise might he feel who dies in fear and wakes in paradise. on the forest boughs above me, my face being turned from the road, somewhat passed, or seemed to pass, like a soft golden light, such as in the scots tongue we call a "boyn," that ofttimes, men say, travels with the blessed saints. yet some may deem it but a glancing in my own eyes, from the blood flying to my head; howsoever it be, i had never seen the like before, nor have i seen it since, and, assuredly, the black branches and wild weeds were lit up bare and clear. the tramp of the horses passed, there was no cry of "pax vobiscum," no twang of bows, and slowly the ring of hoofs died away on the road to chinon. then came a rustling of the boughs on the further side of the way, and a noise of footsteps stealthily crossing the road, and now i heard a low sound of weeping from the violer woman, that was crouching hard by where i lay. her man struck her across the mouth, and she was still. "you saw it? saints be with us! you saw them?" he whispered to brother thomas. "fool, had i not seen, would i not have given the word? get you gone, all the sort of you, there is a fey man in this company, be he who he will. wander your own ways, and if ever one of you dogs speak to me again, in field, or street, or market, or ever mention this night . . . ye shall have my news of it. begone! off!" "nay, but, brother thomas, saw'st thou what we saw? what sight saw'st thou?" "what saw i? fools, what should i have seen, but an outrider, and he a king's messenger, sent forward to warn the rest by his fall, if he fell, or to raise the country on us, if he passed, and if afterward they passed us not. they were men wary in war, and travelling on the dauphin's business. verily there was no profit in them." "and that was all? we saw other things." "what i saw was enough for me, or for any good clerk of st. nicholas, and of questions there has been more than enough. begone! scatter to the winds, and be silent." "and may we not put the steel in that scotch dog who delayed us? saints or sorcerers, their horses must have come down but for him." brother thomas caught me up, as if i had been a child, in his arms, and tossed me over the ditch-bank into the wood, where i crashed on my face through the boughs. "only one horse would have fallen, and that had brought the others on us. the scot is safe enough, his mouth is well shut. i will have no blood to- night; leave him to the wolves. and now, begone with you: to fierbois, if you will; i go my own road--alone." they wandered each his own way, sullen and murmuring, starved and weary. what they had seen or fancied, and whether, if the rest saw aught strange, brother thomas saw nought, i knew not then, and know not till this hour. but the tale of this ambush, and of how they that lay in hiding held their hands, and fled--having come, none might say whence, and gone, whither none might tell--is true, and was soon widely spoken of in the realm of france. the woods fell still again, save for the babble of the brook, and there i lay, bound, and heard only the stream in the silence of the night. there i lay, quaking, when all the caitiffs had departed, and the black, chill night received me into itself. at first my mind was benumbed, like my body; but the pain of my face, smarting with switch and scratch of the boughs through which i had fallen, awoke me to thought and fear. i turned over to lie on my back, and look up for any light of hope in the sky, but nothing fell on me from heaven save a cold rain, that the leafless boughs did little to ward off. scant hope or comfort had i; my whole body ached and shuddered, only i did not thirst, for the rain soaked through the accursed napkin on my mouth, while the dank earth, with its graveyard smell, seemed to draw me down into itself, as it drags a rotting leaf. i was buried before death, as it were, even if the wolves found me not and gave me other sepulture; and now and again i heard their long hunting cry, and at every patter of a beast's foot, or shivering of the branches, i thought my hour was come--and i unconfessed! the road was still as death, no man passing by it. this night to me was like the night of a man laid living in the tomb. by no twisting and turning could i loosen the rope that brother thomas had bound me in, with a hand well taught by cruel practice. at last the rain in my face grew like a water-torture, always dropping, and i half turned my face and pressed it to the ground. whether i slept by whiles, or waked all night, i know not, but certainly i dreamed, seeing with shut eyes faces that came and went, shifting from beauty such as i had never yet beheld, to visages more and more hideous and sinful, ending at last in the worst--the fell countenance of noiroufle. then i woke wholly to myself, in terror, to find that he was not there, and now came to me some of that ease which had been born of the strange, sweet voice, and the strange words, "mes freres de paradis." "my brethren of paradise"; who could she be that rode so late in company of armed men, and yet spoke of such great kinsfolk? that it might be the holy colette, then, as now, so famous in france for her miracles, and good deeds, and her austerities, was a thought that arose in me. but the holy sister, as i had heard, never mounted a horse in her many wanderings, she being a villein's daughter, but was carried in a litter, or fared in a chariot; nor did she go in company with armed men, for who would dare to lay hands on her? moreover, the voice that i had heard was that of a very young girl, and the holy sister colette was now entered into the vale of years. so my questioning found no answer. and now i heard light feet, as of some beast stirring and scratching in the trees overhead, and there with a light jingling noise. was it a squirrel? whatever it was, it raced about the tree, coming nearer and going further away, till it fell with a weight on my breast, and, shivering with cold, all strained like a harp-string as i was, i could have screamed, but for the gag in my mouth. the thing crawled up my body, and i saw two red eyes fixed on mine, and deemed it had been a wild cat, such as lives in our corries of the north--a fell beast if brought to bay, but otherwise not hurtful to man. there the red eyes looked on me, and i on them, till i grew giddy with gazing, and half turned my head with a stifled sob. then there came a sharp cry which i knew well enough, and the beast leaped up and nestled under my breast, for this so dreadful thing was no worse than the violer woman's jackanapes, that had slipped its chain, or, rather, had drawn it out of her hand, for now i plainly heard the light chain jingle. this put me on wondering whether they had really departed; the man, verily, thirsted for my life, but he would have slain me ere this hour, i thought, if that had been his purpose. the poor beast a little helped to warm me with the heat of his body, and he was a friendly creature, making me feel less alone in the night. yet, in my own misery, i could not help but sorrow for the poor woman when she found her jackanapes gone, that was great part of her living: and i knew what she would have to bear for its loss from the man that was her master. as this was in my mind, the first grey stole into the sky so that i could see the black branches overhead; and now there awoke the cries of birds, and soon the wood was full of their sweet jargoning. this put some hope into my heart; but the morning hours were long, and colder than the night, to one wet to the bone with the rains. now, too, i comforted myself with believing that, arrive what might, i was wholly quit of brother thomas, whereat i rejoiced, like the man in the tale who had sold his soul to the enemy, and yet, in the end, escaped his clutches by the aid of holy church. death was better to me than life with brother thomas, who must assuredly have dragged me with him to the death that cannot die. morning must bring travellers, and my groaning might lead them to my aid. and, indeed, foot-farers did come, and i did groan as well as i could, but, like the levite in scripture, they passed by on the other side of the way, fearing to meddle with one wounded perchance to the death, lest they might be charged with his slaying, if he died, or might anger his enemies, if he lived. the light was now fully come, and some rays of the blessed sun fell upon me, whereon i said orisons within myself, commanding my case to the saints. devoutly i prayed, that, if i escaped with life, i might be delivered from the fear of man, and namely of brother thomas. it were better for me to have died by his weapon at first, beside the broken bridge, than to have lived his slave, going in dread of him, with a slave's hatred in my heart. so now i prayed for spirit enough to defend my honour and that of my country, which i had borne to hear reviled without striking a blow for it. never again might i dree this extreme shame and dishonour. on this head i addressed myself, as was fitting, to the holy apostle st. andrew, our patron, to whom is especially dear the honour of scotland. then, as if he and the other saints had listened to me, i heard sounds of horses' hoofs, coming up the road from chinon way, and also voices. these, like the others of the night before, came nearer, and i heard a woman's voice gaily singing. and then awoke such joy in my heart as never was there before, and this was far the gladdest voice that ever yet i heard, for, behold, it was the speech of my own country, and the tune i knew and the words. "o, we maun part this love, willie, that has been lang between; there's a french lord coming over sea to wed me wi' a ring; there's a french lord coming o'er the sea to wed and take me hame!" "and who shall the french lord be, elliot?" came another voice, a man's this time, "though he need not cross the sea for you, the worse the luck. is it young pothon de xaintrailles? faith, he comes often enough to see how his new penoncel fares in my hands, and seems right curious in painting." it may be deemed strange that, even in this hour, i conceived in my heart a great mislike of this young french lord, how unjustly i soon well understood. "o, nae french lord for me, father, o, nae french lord for me, but i'll ware my heart on a true-born scot, and wi' him i'll cross the sea." "oh, father, lo you, i can make as well as sing, for that is no word of the old ballant, but just came on to my tongue!" they were now right close to me, and, half in fear, half in hope, i began to stir and rustle in the grass, for of my stifled groaning had hitherto come no profit. then i heard the horses stop. "what stirring is that in the wood, father? i am afraid," came the girl's voice. "belike a fox shifting his lair. push on, maid elliot." the horses advanced, when, by the blessing of the saints, the jackanapes woke in my breast. the creature was used to run questing with a little wooden bowl he carried for largesse, to beg of horsemen for his mistress. this trick of his he did now, hearing the horses' tramp. he leaped the ditch, and i suppose he ran in front of the steeds, shaking his little bowl, as was his wont. "oh, father," sounded the girl's voice, "see the little jackanapes! some travelling body has lost him. let me jump down and catch him. look, he has a little coat on, made like a herald's tabard, and wears the colours of france. here, hold my reins." "no, lass. who can tell where, or who, his owner is? take you my reins, and i will bring you the beast." i heard him heavily dismount. "it will not let itself be caught by a lame man," he said; and he scrambled up the ditch bank, while the jackanapes fled to me, and then ran forward again, back and forth. "nom dieu, whom have we here?" cried the man, in french. i turned, and made such a sound with my mouth as i might, while the jackanapes nestled to my breast. "why do ye not speak, man?" he said again; and i turned my eyes on him, looking as pitifully as might be out of my blood-bedabbled face. he was a burly man, great of growth, with fresh red cheeks, blue eyes, reddish hair, and a red beard, such as are many in the border marches of my own country, the saints bless them for true men! withal he dragged his leg in walking, which he did with difficulty and much carefulness. he "hirpled," as we say, towards me very warily; then, seeing the rope bound about me, and the cloth in my mouth, he drew his dagger, but not to cut my bonds. he was over canny for that, but he slit the string that kept the cursed gag in my mouth, and picked it out with his dagger point; and, oh the blessed taste of that first long draught of air, i cannot set it down in words! "what, in the name of all the saints, make you here, in this guise?" he asked in french, but with a rude border accent. "i am a kindly scot," i said in our own tongue, "of your own country. give me water." and then a dwawm, as we call it, or fainting-fit, came over me. when i knew myself again, i was lying with my head in a maiden's lap, and well i could have believed that the fairies had carried me to their own land, as has befallen many, whereof some have returned to earth with the tale, and some go yet in that unearthly company. "gentle demoiselle, are you the gracious queen of faerie?" i asked, as one half-wakened, not knowing what i said. indeed this lady was clad all in the fairy green, and her eyes were as blue as the sky above her head, and the long yellow locks on her shoulders were shining like the sun. "father, he is not dead," she said, laughing as sweet as all the singing- birds in march--"he is not dead, but sorely wandering in his mind when he takes elliot hume for the fairy queen." "faith, he might have made a worse guess," cried the man. "but now, sir, now that your bonds are cut, i see nothing better for you than a well- washed face, for, indeed, you are by ordinary 'kenspeckle,' and no company for maids." with that he brought some water from the burn by the road, and therewith he wiped my face, first giving me to drink. when i had drunk, the maid whom he called elliot got up, her face very rosy, and they set my back against a tree, which i was right sorry for, as indeed i was now clean out of fairyland and back in this troublesome world. the horses stood by us, tethered to trees, and browsed on the budding branches. "and now, maybe," he said, speaking in the kindly scots, that was like music in my ear--"now, maybe, you will tell us who you are, and how you came into this jeopardy." i told him, shortly, that i was a scot of fife; whereto he answered that my speech was strangely english. on this matter i satisfied him with the truth, namely, that my mother was of england. i gave my name but not that of our lands, and showed him how i had been wandering north, to take service with the dauphin, when i was set upon, and robbed and bound by thieves, for i had no clearness as to telling him all my tale, and no desire to claim acquaintance with brother thomas. "and the jackanapes?" he asked, whereto i had no better answer than that i had seen the beast with a wandering violer on the day before, and that she having lost it, as i supposed, it had come to me in the night. the girl was standing with the creature in her arms, feeding it with pieces of comfits from a pouch fastened at her girdle. "the little beast is not mine to give," i went on, seeing how she had an affection to the ape, "but till the owner claims it, it is all the ransom i have to pay for my life, and i would fain see it wear the colours of this gentle maid who saved me. it has many pretty tricks, but though to- day i be a beggar, i trow she will not let it practise that ill trick of begging." "sooner would i beg myself, fair sir," she said, with such a courtly reverence as surprised me; for though they seemed folks well to see in the world, they were not, methought, of noble blood, nor had they with them any company of palfreniers or archers. "elliot, you feed the jackanapes and let our countryman hunger," said the man; and, blushing again, she made haste to give me some of the provision she had made for her journey. so i ate and drank, she waiting on me very gently; but now, being weary of painful writing, and hearing the call to the refectory, and the brethren trampling thither, i must break off, for, if i be late, they will sconce me of my ale. alas! it is to these little cares of creature comforts that i am come, who have seen the face of so many a war, and lived and fought on rat's flesh at compiegne. chapter iv--in what company norman leslie entered chinon; and how he demeaned himself to take service not seemly, was it, that i should expect these kind people, even though they were of my own country, to do more for me than they had already done. so, when i had eaten and drunk, i made my obeisance as if i would be trudging towards chinon, adding many thanks, as well i might. "nay, countryman," said the man, "for all that i can see, you may as well bide a while with us; for, indeed, with leave of my graceless maid, i think we may even end our wild-goose chase here and get us back to the town." seeing me marvel, perhaps, that any should have ridden some four miles or five, and yet speak of returning, he looked at the girl, who was playing with the jackanapes, and who smiled at him as he spoke. "you must know," said he, "that though i am the father of your fairy queen, i am also one of the gracious princess's obedient subjects. no mother has she, poor wench," he added, in a lower voice; "and faith, we men must always obey some woman--as it seems now that the king himself must soon do and all his captains." "you speak," i said, "of the gracious queen of sicily and jerusalem?"--a lady who was thought to be of much avail, as was but right, in the counsels of her son-in-law, the dauphin, he having married her gentle daughter. "ay; queen yolande is far ben { } with the king--would he had no worse counsellors!" said he, smiling; "but i speak of a far more potent sovereign, if all that she tells of herself be true. you have heard, or belike you have not heard, of the famed pucelle--so she calls herself, i hope not without a warranty--the lorrainer peasant lass, who is to drive the english into the sea, so she gives us all fair warning?" "never a word have i heard, or never marked so senseless a bruit if i heard it; she must be some moon-struck wench, and in her wits wandering." "moon-struck, or sun-struck, or saint-struck, she will strike down our ancient enemy of england, and show you men how it is not wine and wickedness that make good soldiers!" cried the girl whom he called elliot, her face rose-red with anger; and from her eyes two blue rays of light shot straight to mine, so that i believe my face waxed wan, the blood flying to my heart. "listen to her! look at her!" said her father, jestingly. "elliot, if your renowned maid can fright the english as you have affrayed a good scot, the battle is won and orleans is delivered." but she had turned her back on us pettishly, and was talking in a low voice to her jackanapes. as for me, if my face had been pale before, it now grew red enough for shame that i had angered her, who was so fair, though how i had sinned i knew not. but often i have seen that women, and these the best, will be all afire at a light word, wherein the touchiest man-at-arms who ever fought on the turn of a straw could pick no honourable quarrel. "how have i been so unhappy as to offend mademoiselle?" i asked, in a whisper, of her father, giving her a high title, in very confusion. "oh, she will hear no bourde nor jest on this pucelle that all the countryside is clashing of, and that is bewitching my maid, methinks, even from afar. my maid elliot (so i call her from my mother's kin, but her true name is marion, and the french dub her heliote) hath set all her heart and her hope on one that is a young lass like herself, and she is full of old soothsayings about a virgin that is to come out of an oak- wood and deliver france--no less! for me, i misdoubt that merlin, the welsh prophet on whom they set store, and the rest of the soothsayers, are all in one tale with old thomas rhymer, of ercildoune, whose prophecies our own folk crack about by the ingle on winter nights at home. but be it as it may, this wench of lorraine has, these three-quarters of a year, been about the sieur robert de baudricourt, now commanding for the king at vaucouleurs, away in the east, praying him to send her to the court. she has visions, and hears voices--so she says; and she gives baudricourt no peace till he carries her to the king. the story goes that, on the ill day of the battle of the herrings, she, being at vaucouleurs--a hundred leagues away and more,--saw that fight plainly, and our countrymen fallen, manlike, around the constable, and the french flying like hares before a little pack of english talbots. when the evil news came, and was approved true, baudricourt could hold her in no longer, and now she is on the way with half a dozen esquires and archers of his command. the second-sight she may have--it is common enough, if you believe the red-shanked highlanders; but if maiden she set forth from vaucouleurs, great miracle it is if maiden she comes to chinon." he whispered this in a manner that we call "pauky," being a free man with his tongue. "this is a strange tale enough," i said; "the saints grant that the maid speaks truly!" "but yesterday came a letter of her sending to the king," he went on, "but never of her writing, for they say that she knows not 'a' from 'b,' if she meets them in her voyaging. now, nothing would serve my wilful daughter elliot (she being possessed, as i said, with love for this female mystery), but that we must ride forth and be the first to meet the maid on her way, and offer her shelter at my poor house, if she does but seem honest, though methinks a hostelry is good enough for one that has ridden so far, with men for all her company. and i, being but a subject of my daughter's, as i said, and this a saint's day, when a man may rest from his paints and brushes, i even let saddle the steeds, and came forth to see what ferlies heaven would send us." "oh, a lucky day for me, fair sir," i answered him, marvelling to hear him speak of paint and brushes, and even as i spoke a thought came into my mind. "if you will listen to me, sir," i said, "and if the gentle maid, your daughter, will pardon me for staying you so long from the road, i will tell you that, to my thinking, you have come over late, for that yesterday the maiden you speak of rode, after nightfall, into chinon." now the girl turned round on me, and, in faith, i asked no more than to see her face, kind or angry. "you tell us, sir, that you never heard speak of the maid till this hour, and now you say that you know of her comings and goings. unriddle your riddle, sir, if it pleases you, and say how you saw and knew one that you never heard speech of." she was still very wroth, and i knew not whether i might not anger her yet more, so i louted lowly, cap in hand, and said-- "it is but a guess that comes into my mind, and i pray you be not angry with me, who am ready and willing to believe in this maid, or in any that will help france, for, if i be not wrong, last night her coming saved my life, and that of her own company." "how may that be, if thieves robbed and bound you?" "i told you not all my tale," i said, "for, indeed, few would have believed the thing that had not seen it. but, upon my faith as a gentleman, and by the arm-bone of the holy apostle andrew, which these sinful eyes have seen, in the church of the apostle in his own town, somewhat holy passed this way last night; and if this maid be indeed sent from heaven, that holy thing was she, and none other." "nom dieu! saints are not common wayfarers on our roads at night. there is no 'wale' of saints in this country," said the father of elliot; "and as this pucelle of lorraine must needs pass by us here, if she is still on the way, even tell us all your tale." with that i told them how the "brigands" (for so they now began to call such reivers as brother thomas) were, to my shame, and maugre my head, for a time of my own company. and i told them of the bushment that they laid to trap travellers, and how i had striven to give a warning, and how they bound me and gagged me, and of the strange girl's voice that spoke through the night of "mes freres de paradis," and of that golden "boyn" faring in the dark, that i thought i saw, and of the words spoken by the blind man and the soldier, concerning some vision which affrayed them, i know not what. at this tale the girl elliot, crossing herself very devoutly, cried aloud-- "o father, did i not tell you so? this holy thing can have been no other but that blessed maiden, guarded by the dear saints in form visible, whom this gentleman, for the sin of keeping evil company, was not given the grace to see. oh, come, let us mount and ride to chinon, for already she is within the walls; had we not ridden forth so early, we must have heard tell of it." it seemed something hard to me that i was to have no grace to behold what others, and they assuredly much more sinful men than myself, had been permitted to look upon, if this damsel was right in that she said. and how could any man, were he himself a saint, see what was passing by, when his head was turned the other way? howbeit, she called me a gentleman, as indeed i had professed myself to be, and this i saw, that her passion of anger against me was spent, as then, and gone by, like a shower of april. "gentleman you call yourself, sir," said her father; "may i ask of what house?" "we are cadets of the house of rothes," i answered. "my father, leslie of pitcullo, is the fourth son of the third son of the last laird of rothes but one; and, for me, i was of late a clerk studying in st. andrews." "i will not ask why you left your lore," he said; "i have been young myself, and, faith, the story of one lad varies not much from the story of another. if we have any spirit, it drives us out to fight the foreign loons in their own country, if we have no feud at home. but you are a clerk, i hear you say, and have skill enough to read and write?" "yea, and, if need were, can paint, in my degree, and do fair lettering on holy books, for this art was my pleasure, and i learned it from a worthy monk in the abbey." "o day of miracles!" he cried. "listen, elliot, and mark how finely i have fallen in luck's way! lo you, sir, i also am a gentleman in my degree, simple as you see me, being one of the humes of polwarth; but by reason of my maimed leg, that came to me with scars many, from certain shrewd blows got at verneuil fight, i am disabled from war. a murrain on the english bill that dealt the stroke! to make up my ransom (for i was taken prisoner there, where so few got quarter) cost me every crown i could gather, so i even fell back on the skill i learned, like you, when i was a lad, from a priest in the abbey of melrose. ashamed of my craft i am none, for it is better to paint banners and missals than to beg; and now, for these five years, i am advanced to be court painter to the king himself, thanks to john kirkmichael, bishop of orleans, who is of my far- away kin. a sore fall it is, for a hume of polwarth; and strangely enough do the french scribes write my name--'hauves poulvoir,' and otherwise, so please you; but that is ever their wont with the best names in all broad scotland. lo you, even now there is much ado with banner- painting for the companies that march to help orleans, ever and again." "when the maiden marches, father, you shall have banner-painting," said the girl. "ay, lass, when the maid marches, and when the lift falls and smoors the laverocks we shall catch them in plenty. { } but, maid or no maid, saving your presence, sir, i need what we craftsmen (i pray you again to pardon me) call an apprentice, and i offer you, if you are skilled as you say, this honourable post, till you find a better." my face grew red again with anger at the word "apprentice," and i know not how i should have answered an offer so unworthy of my blood, when the girl broke in-- "till this gentleman marches with the flower of france against our old enemy of england, you should say, father, and helps to show them another bannockburn on loire-side." "ay, well, till then, if it likes you," he said, smiling. "till then there is bed, and meat, and the penny fee for him, till that great day." "that is coming soon!" she cried, her eyes raised to heaven, and so fair she looked, that, being a young man and of my complexion amorous, i could not bear to be out of her company when i might be in it, so stooped my pride to agree with him. "sir," i said, "i thank you heartily for your offer. you come of as good a house as mine, and yours is the brag of the border, as mine is of the kingdom of fife. if you can put your pride in your pouch, faith, so can i; the rather that there is nothing else therein, and so room enough and to spare. but, as touching what this gentle demoiselle has said, i may march also, may i not, when the maid rides to orleans?" "ay, verify, with my goodwill, then you may," he cried, laughing, while the lass frowned. then we clapped hands on it, for a bargain, and he did not insult me by the offer of any arles, or luck penny. the girl was helped to horse, setting her foot on my hand, that dirled as her little shoe sole touched it; and the jackanapes rode on her saddle- bow very proudly. for me, i ran as well as i might, but stiffly enough, being cold to the marrow, holding by the father's stirrup-leather and watching the lass's yellow hair that danced on her shoulders as she rode foremost. in this company, then, so much better than that i had left, we entered chinon town, and came to their booth, and their house on the water-side. then, of their kindness, i must to bed, which comfort i sorely needed, and there i slept, in fragrant linen sheets, till compline rang. chapter v--of the fray on the drawbridge at chinon castle during supper, to which they called me, my master showed me the best countenance that might be, and it was great joy to me to eat off clean platters once again, on white linen strewn with spring flowers. as the time was lent, we had fare that they called meagre: fish from the vienne water, below the town, and eggs cooked in divers fashions, all to the point of excellence, for the wine and fare of chinon are famous in france. as my duty was, i waited on my master and on the maid elliot, who was never silent, but babbled of all that she had heard since she came into the town; as to where the pucelle had lighted off her horse (on the edge-stone of a well, so it seemed), and where and with what goodwife she lodged, and how as yet no message had come to her from the castle and the king; and great joy it was to watch and to hear her. but her father mocked, though in a loving manner; and once she wept at his bourdes, and shone out again, when he fell on his knees, offering her a knife and baring his breast to the stroke, for i have never seen more love between father and child, my own experience being contrary. yet to my sisters my father was ever debonnair; for, as i have often marked, the mothers love the sons best and the sons the mothers, and between father and daughters it is the same. but of my mother i have spoken in the beginning of this history. when supper was ended, and all things made orderly, i had no great mind for my bed, having slept my fill for that time. but the maid elliot left us early, which was as if the light had been taken out of the room. beside the fire, my master fell to devising about the state of the country, as burgesses love to do. and i said that, if i were the dauphin, chinon castle should not hold me long, for my "spur would be in my horse's side, and the bridle on his mane," { } as the old song of the battle of harlaw runs, and i on the way to orleans. thereto he answered, that he well wished it were so, and, mocking, wished that i were the dauphin. "not that our dauphin is a coward, the blood of saint louis has not fallen so low, but he is wholly under the sieur de la tremouille, who was thrust on him while he was young, and still is his master, or, as we say, his governor. now, this lord is one that would fain run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and this side of him is burgundian and that is armagnac, and on which of the sides his heart is, none knows. at azincour, as i have heard, he played the man reasonably well. but he waxes very fat for a man-at-arms, and is fond of women, and wine, and of his ease. now, if once the king ranges up with the bastard of orleans, and xaintrailles, and the other captains, who hate la tremouille, then his power, and the power of the chancellor, the archbishop of rheims, is gone and ended. so these two work ever to patch up a peace with burgundy, but, seeing that the duke has his father's death to avenge on our king, they may patch and better patch, but no peace will come of it. and the captains cry 'forward!' and the archbishop and la tremouille cry 'back!' and in the meantime orleans will fall, and the dauphin may fly whither he will, for france is lost. but, for myself, i would to the saints that i and my lass were home again, beneath the old thorn-tree at polwarth on the green, where i have been merry lang syne." with that word he fell silent, thinking, i doubt not, of his home, as i did of mine, and of the house of pitcullo and the ash-tree at the door, and the sea beyond the ploughed land of the plain. so, after some space of silence, he went to his bed, and i to mine, where for long i lay wakeful, painting on the dark the face of elliot, and her blue eyes, and remembering her merry, changeful ways. betimes in the morning i was awakened by the sound of her moving about through the house, and having dressed and gone forth from my little chamber, i found her in the house-place, she having come from early mass. she took little heed of me, giving me some bread and wine, the same as she and her father took; and she was altogether less gay and wilful than she had been, and there seemed to be something that lay heavy on her mind. when her father asked her if the gossips at the church door had given her any more tidings of the maid, she did but frown, and soon left the chamber, whence my master led me forth into his booth, and bade me show him my hand in writing. this pleased him not ill, and next i must grind colours to his liking; and again he went about his business, while i must mind the booth, and be cap in hand to every saucy page that came from the castle with an order from his lord. full many a time my hand was on my whinger, and yet more often i wished myself on the free road again, so that i were out of ill company, and assuredly the lorrainer maid, whatever she might be, was scarcely longing more than i for the day when she should unfurl her banner and march, with me at her back, to orleans. for so irksome was my servitude, and the laying of colours on the ground of banners for my master to paint, and the copying of books of hours and missals, and the insolence of customers worse born than myself, that i could have drowned myself in the vienne water but for the sight of elliot. yet she was become staid enough, and betimes sad; as it seemed that there was no good news of her dear maid, for the king would not see her, and all men (it appeared), save those who had ridden with her, mocked the pucelle for a bold ramp, with a bee in her bonnet. but the two gentlemen that had been her escort were staunch. their names were jean de metz and bertrand de poulengy, good esquires. of me elliot made ofttimes not much more account than of her jackanapes, which was now in very high favour, and waxing fat, so that, when none but her father could hear her, she would jest and call him la tremouille. yet i, as young men will, was forward in all ways to serve her, and to win her grace and favour. she was fain to hear of scotland, her own country, which she had never seen, and i was as fain to tell her. and betimes i would say how fair were the maidens of our own country, and how any man that saw her would know her to be a scot, though from her tongue, in french, none might guess it. and, knowing that she loved wildflowers, i would search for them and bring them to her, and would lead her to speak of romances which she loved, no less than i, and of pages who had loved queens, and all such matters as young men and maids are wont to devise of; and now she would listen, and at other seasons would seem proud, and as if her mind were otherwhere. young knights many came to our booth, and looked ill-pleased when i served them, and their eyes were ever on the inner door, watching for elliot, whom they seldom had sight of. so here was i, in a double service, who, before i met brother thomas, had been free of heart and hand. but, if my master's service irked me, in that other i found comfort, when i could devise with elliot, as concerning our country and her hopes for the maid. but my own hopes were not high, nor could i mark any sign that she favoured me more than another, though i had the joy to be often in her company. and, indeed, what hope could i have, being so young, and poor, and in visible station no more than any 'prentice lad? my heart was much tormented in these fears, and mainly because we heard no tidings that the maid was accepted by the dauphin, and that the day of her marching, and of my deliverance from my base craft of painting, was at hand. it so fell out, how i knew not, whether i had shown me too presumptuous for an apprentice, or because of any other reason, that elliot had much forborne my company, and was more often in church at her prayers than in the house, or, when in the house, was busy in divers ways, and i scarce ever could get word of her. finding her in this mood, i also withdrew within myself, and was both proud and sorely unhappy, longing more than ever to take my own part in the world as a man-at-arms. now, one day right early, i being alone in the chamber, copying a psalter, elliot came in, looking for her father. i rose at her coming, doffing my cap, and told her, in few words, that my master had gone forth. thereon she flitted about the chamber, looking at this and that, while i stood silent, deeming that she used me in a sort scarce becoming my blood and lineage. suddenly she said, without turning round, for she was standing by a table gazing at the pictures in a book of hours-- "i have seen her!" "the pucelle?--do you speak of her, gentle maid?" "i saw her and spoke to her, and heard her voice"; and here her own broke, and i guessed that she was near to weeping. "i went up within the castle precinct, to the tower coudraye," she said, "for i knew that she lodged hard by, with a good woman who dwells there. i passed into the chapel of st. martin on the cliff, and there heard the voice of one praying before the image of our lady. the voice was even as you said that day--the sweetest of voices. i knelt beside her, and prayed aloud for her and for france. she rested her hand on my hair--her hair is black, and cut 'en ronde' like a man's. it is true that they say, she dresses in man's garb. we came forth together, and i put my hand into hers, and said, 'i believe in you; if none other believes, yet do i believe.' then she wept, and she kissed me; she is to visit me here to- morrow, la fille de dieu--" she drew a long sob, and struck her hand hard on the table; then, keeping her back ever towards me, she fled swiftly from the room. i was amazed--so light of heart as she commonly seemed, and of late disdainful--to find her in this passion. yet it was to me that she had spoken--to me that she had opened her heart. now i guessed that, if i was ever to win her, it must be through this pucelle, on whom her mind was so strangely bent. so i prayed that, if it might be god's will, he would prosper the maid, and let me be her loyal servitor, and at last bring me to my desire. something also i dreamed, as young men will who have read many romances, of myself made a knight for great feats of arms, and wearing in my salade my lady's favour, and breaking a spear on talbot, or fastolf, or glasdale, in some last great victory for france. then shone on my eyesight, as it were, the picture of these two children, for they were little more, elliot and the maid, kneeling together in the chapel of st. martin, the gold hair and the black blended; and what were they two alone against this world and the prince of this world? alas, how much, and again how little, doth prayer avail us! these thoughts were in my mind all day, while serving and answering customers, and carrying my master's wares about the town, and up to the castle on the cliff, where the soldiers and sentries now knew me well enough, and the scots archers treated me kindly. but as for elliot, she was like her first self again, and merrier than common with her father, to whom, as far as my knowledge went, she said not a word about the meeting in the crypt of st. martin's chapel, though to me she had spoken so freely. this gave me some hope; but when i would have tried to ask her a question, she only gazed at me in a manner that abashed me, and turned off to toy with her jackanapes. whereby i went to my bed perplexed, and with a heavy heart, as one that was not yet conversant with the ways of women--nay, nor ever, in my secular life, have i understood what they would be at. happier had it been for my temporal life if i had been wiser in woman's ways. but commonly, when we have learned a lesson, the lore comes too late. next day my master had business at the castle with a certain lord, and took me thither to help in carrying his wares. this castle was a place that i loved well, it is so old, having first been builded when the romans were lords of the land; and is so great and strong that our bishop's castle of st. andrews seems but a cottage compared to it. from the hill-top there is a wide prospect over the tower and the valley of the vienne, which i liked to gaze upon. my master, then, went in by the drawbridge, high above the moat, which is so deep that, i trow, no foeman could fill it up and cross it to assail the walls. my master, in limping up the hill, had wearied himself, but soon passed into the castle through the gateway of the bell-tower, as they call it, while i waited for him on the further end of the bridge, idly dropping morsels of bread to the swans that swam in the moat below. on the drawbridge, standing sentinel, was a french man-at-arms, a young man of my own age, armed with a long fauchard, which we call a bill or halberd, a weapon not unlike the lochaber axes of the highlandmen. other soldiers, french, scottish, spaniards, germans, a mixed company, were idling and dicing just within the gate. i was throwing my last piece of crust to a swan, my mind empty of thought, when i started out of my dream, hearing that rare woman's voice which once i had heard before. then turning quickly, i saw, walking between two gentlemen, even those who had ridden with her from vaucouleurs, one whom no man could deem to be other than that much-talked- of maid of lorraine. she was clad very simply, like the varlet of some lord of no great estate, in a black cap with a little silver brooch, a grey doublet, and black and grey hose, trussed up with many points; a sword of small price hung by her side. { } in stature she was something above the common height of women, her face brown with sun and wind, her eyes great, grey, and beautiful, beneath black brows, her lips red and smiling. in figure she seemed strong and shapely, but so slim--she being but seventeen years of age--that, were it not for her sweet girl's voice, and for the beauty of her grey eyes, she might well have passed for a page, her black hair being cut "en ronde," as was and is the fashion among men-at-arms. thus much have i written concerning her bodily aspect, because many have asked me what manner of woman was the blessed maid, and whether she was beautiful. i gazed at her like one moon-struck, then, remembering my courtesy, i doffed my cap, and louted low; and she bowed, smiling graciously like a great lady, but with such an air as if her mind was far away. she passed, with her two gentlemen, but the french sentinel barred the way, holding his fauchard thwartwise. "on what business come you, and by what right?" he cried, in a rude voice. "by the dauphin's gracious command, to see the dauphin," said one of the gentlemen right courteously. "here is his own letter, and you may know the seal, bidding la pucelle to come before him at this hour." the fellow looked at the seal, and could not but acknowledge the arms of france thereon. he dropped his fauchard over his shoulder, and stood aside, staring impudently at the maiden, and muttering foul words. "so this is the renowned pucelle," he cried; "by god's name" . . . and here he spoke words such as i may not set down in writing, blaspheming god and the maid. she turned and looked at him, but as if she saw him not; and then, a light of joy and love transfiguring her face, she knelt down on the drawbridge, folding her hands, her face bowed, and so abode while one might count twenty, we that beheld her being amazed. then she rose and bent as if in salutation to one we saw not; next, addressing herself to the sentinel, she said, very gently-- "sir, how canst thou take in vain the name of god, thou that art in this very hour to die?" so speaking, she with her gentlemen went within the gate, while the soldier stood gazing after her like a man turned to stone. the maid passed from our sight, and then the sentinel, coming to himself, turned in great wrath on me, who stood hard by. "what make you gaping here, you lousy wine-sack of scotland?" he cried; and at the word, my prayer which i had made to st. andrew in my bonds came into my mind, namely, that i should not endure to hear my country defamed. i stopped not to think of words, wherein i never had a ready wit, but his were still in his mouth when i had leaped within his guard, so that he might not swing out his long halberd. "blasphemer and liar!" i cried, gripping his neck with my left hand, while with two up-cuts of my right i sent his lies down his throat in company, as i deem, with certain of his teeth. he dropped his halberd against the wooden fence of the bridge, and felt for his dagger. i caught at his right hand with mine; cries were in my ears--st. denis for france! st. andrew for scotland!--as the other men on guard came running forth to see the sport. we gripped and swayed for a moment, then the staff of his fauchard coming between his legs, he tripped and fell, i above him; our weight soused against the low pales of the bridge side, that were crazy and old; there was a crash, and i felt myself in mid-air, failing to the moat far below us. down and down i whirled, and then the deep water closed over me. chapter vi--how norman leslie escaped out of chinon castle down and down i sank, the water surging up into my nostrils and sounding in my ears; but, being in water, i was safe if it were but deep enough. presently i struck out, and, with a stroke or two, came to the surface. but no sooner did my head show above, and i draw a deep breath or twain, looking for my enemy, than an arbalest bolt cleft the water with a clipping sound, missing me but narrowly. i had but time to see that there was a tumult on the bridge, and swords out (the scots, as i afterwards heard, knocking up the arbalests that the french soldiers levelled at me). then i dived again, and swam under water, making towards the right and the castle rock, which ran sheer down to the moat. this course i chose because i had often noted, from the drawbridge, a jutting buttress of rock, behind which, at least, i should be out of arrow-shot. my craft was to give myself all the semblance of a drowning man, throwing up my arms, when i rose to see whereabout i was and to take breath, as men toss their limbs who cannot swim. on the second time of rising thus, i saw myself close to the jut of rock. my next dive took me behind it, and i let down my feet, close under the side of this natural buttress, to look around, being myself now concealed from the sight of those who were on the bridge. to my surprise i touched bottom, for i had deemed that the water was very deep thereby. next i found that i was standing on a step of hewn stone, and that a concealed staircase, cut in the rock, goes down, in that place, to the very bottom of the moat; for what purpose i know not, but so it is. { } i climbed up the steps, shook myself, and wrung the water out of my hair, looking about the while for any sign of my enemy, who had blasphemed against my country and the maiden. but there was nothing to see on the water save my own cloth cap floating. on the other side of the fosse, howbeit, men were launching a pleasure-boat, which lay by a stair at the foot of the further wall of the fosse. the sight of them made me glad to creep further up the steps that rounded a sharp corner, till i came as far as an iron wicket-gate, which seemed to cut off my retreat. there i stopped, deeming that the wicket must be locked. the men were now rowing the boat into the middle of the water, so, without expecting to find the gate open, i tried the handle. it turned, to my no little amazement; the gate swang lightly aside, as if its hinges had been newly oiled, and i followed the staircase, creeping up the slimy steps in the half-dark. up and round i went, till i was wellnigh giddy, and then i tripped and reeled so that my body struck against a heavy ironed door. under my weight it yielded gently, and i stumbled across the threshold of a room that smelled strangely sweet and was very warm, being full of the sun, and the heat of a great fire. "is that you, robin of my heart?" said a girl's voice in french; and, before i could move, a pair of arms were round my neck. back she leaped, finding me all wet, and not the man she looked for; and there we both stood, in a surprise that prevented either of us from speaking. she was a pretty lass, with brown hair and bright red cheeks, and was dressed all in white, being, indeed, one of the laundresses of the castle; and this warm room, fragrant with lavender, whereinto i had stumbled, was part of the castle laundry. a mighty fire was burning, and all the tables were covered with piles and flat baskets of white linen, sweet with scented herbs. back the maid stepped towards the door, keeping her eyes on mine; and, as she did not scream, i deemed that none were within hearing: wherein i was wrong, and she had another reason for holding her peace. "save me, gentle maid, if you may," i cried at last, falling on my knees, just where i stood: "i am a luckless man, and stand in much peril of my life." "in sooth you do," she said, "if robert lindsay of the scottish archers finds you here. he loves not that another should take his place at a tryst." "maiden," i said, beginning to understand why the gate was unlocked, and wherefore it went so smooth on its hinges, "i fear i have slain a man, one of the king's archers. we wrestled together on the drawbridge, and the palisade breaking, we fell into the moat, whence i clomb by the hidden stairs." "one of the archers!" cried she, as pale as a lily, and catching at her side with her hand. "was he a scot?" "no, maid, but i am; and i pray you hide me, or show me how to escape from this castle with my life, and that speedily." "come hither!" she said, drawing me through a door into a small, square, empty room that jutted out above the moat. "the other maids are at their dinner," she went on, "and i all alone--the season being lent, and i under penance, and thinking of no danger." for which reason, i doubt not, namely that the others had gone forth, she had made her tryst at this hour with robin lindsay. but he, if he was, as she said, one of the scottish archers that guarded the gate, was busy enough belike with the tumult on the bridge, or in seeking for the body of mine enemy. "how to get you forth i know not," she said, "seeing that from yonder room you pass into the kitchen and thence into the guard-room, and thence again by a passage in the wall behind the great hall, and so forth to the court, and through the gate, and thereby there is no escape: for see you the soldiers must, and will avenge their comrade." hearing this speech, i seemed to behold myself swinging by a tow from a tree branch, a death not beseeming one of gentle blood. up and down i looked, in vain, and then i turned to the window, thinking that, as better was not to be, i might dive thence into the moat, and take my chance of escape by the stairs on the further side. but the window was heavily barred. yet again, if i went forth by the door, and lurked on the postern stair, there was robin lindsay's dirk to reckon with, when he came, a laggard, to his love-tryst. "stop! i have it," said the girl; and flying into the laundry, she returned with a great bundle of white women's gear and a gown of linen, and a woman's white coif, such as she herself wore. in less time than a man would deem possible, she had my wet hair, that i wore about my shoulders, as our student's manner was, tucked up under the cap, and the clean white smock over my wet clothes, and belted neatly about my middle. "a pretty wench you make, i swear by st. valentine," cried she, falling back to look at me, and then coming forward to pin up something about my coif, with her white fingers. i reckoned it no harm to offer her a sisterly kiss. "'tis lucky robin lindsay is late," cried she, laughing, "though even were he here, he could scarce find fault that one maid should kiss another. now," she said, snatching up a flat crate full of linen, "carry these, the king's shirts, and sorely patched they are, on your head; march straight through the kitchen, then through the guard-room, and then by the door on the left into the long passage, and so into the court, and begone; they will but take you for a newly come blanchisseuse. only speak as little as may be, for your speech may betray you." she kissed me very kindly on both cheeks, for she was as frank a lass as ever i met, and a merry. then, leading me to the door of the inner room, she pushed it open, the savoury reek of the kitchen pouring in. "make good speed, margot!" she cried aloud after me, so that all could hear; and i walked straight up the king's kitchen, full as it was of men and boys, breaking salads, spitting fowls, basting meat (though it was lent, but doubtless the king had a dispensation for his health's sake), watching pots, tasting dishes, and all in a great bustle and clamour. the basket of linen shading my face, i felt the more emboldened, though my legs, verily, trembled under me as i walked. through the room i went, none regarding me, and so into the guard-room, but truly this was another matter. some soldiers were dicing at a table, some drinking, some brawling over the matter of the late tumult, but all stopped and looked at me. "a new face, and, by st. andrew, a fair one!" said a voice in the accent of my own country. "but she has mighty big feet; belike she is a countrywoman of thine," quoth a french archer; and my heart sank within me as the other cast a tankard at his head. "come, my lass," cried another, a scot, with a dice-box in his hand, catching at my robe as i passed, "kiss me and give me luck," and, striking up my basket of linen, so that the wares were all scattered on the floor, he drew me on to his knee, and gave me a smack that reeked sorely of garlic. never came man nearer getting a sore buffet, yet i held my hand. then, making his cast with the dice, he swore roundly, when he saw that he had thrown deuces. "lucky in love, unlucky in gaming. lug out your losings," said his adversary with a laugh; and the man left hold of my waist and began fumbling in his pouch. straightway, being free, i cast myself on the floor to pick up the linen, and hide my face, which so burned that it must have seemed as red as the most modest maid might have deemed seemly. "leave the wench alone; she is new come, i warrant, and has no liking for your wantonness," said a kind voice; and, glancing up, i saw that he who spoke was one of the gentlemen who had ridden with the maiden from vaucouleurs. bertrand de poulengy was his name; belike he was waiting while the king and the nobles devised with the maiden privately in the great hall. he stooped and helped me to pick up my linen, as courteously as if i had been a princess of the blood; and, because he was a gentleman, i suppose, and a stranger, the archers did not meddle with him, save to break certain soldiers' jests, making me glad that i was other than i appeared. "come," he said, "my lass, i will be your escort; it seems that fortune has chosen me for a champion of dames." with these words he led the way forth, and through a long passage lit from above, which came out into the court at the stairs of the great hall. down these stairs the maiden herself was going, her face held high and a glad look in her eyes, her conference with the king being ended. poulengy joined her; they said some words which i did not hear, for i deemed that it became me to walk forward after thanking him by a look, and bending my head, for i dared not trust my foreign tongue. before i reached the gateway they had joined me, which i was glad of, fearing more insolence from the soldiers. but these men held their peace, looking grave, and even affrighted, being of them who had heard the prophecy of the maiden and seen its fulfilment. "have ye found the body of that man?" said poulengy to a sergeant-at-arms. "nay, sir, we deem that his armour weighed him down, for he never rose once, though that scot's head was seen thrice and no more. belike they are good, peaceful friends at the bottom of the fosse together." "of what man speak you?" asked the maiden of poulengy. "of him that blasphemed as we went by an hour ago. wrestling with a scot on some quarrel, they broke the palisade, and--lo! there are joiners already mending it. 'tis old and frail. the gentle dauphin is over poor to keep the furnishings of his castle as a king should do." the maiden grew wan as sun-dried grass in summer when she heard this story told. crossing herself, she said-- "alas! i warned him, but he died unconfessed. i will do what i may to have masses said for the repose of his soul, poor man: and he so young!" with that she wept, for she wept readily, even for a less thing than such a death as was that archer's. we had now crossed the drawbridge, whereat my heart beat more lightly, and the maiden told poulengy that she would go to the house where she lodged, near the castle. "and thence," she said, "i must fare into the town, for i have promised to visit a damsel of my friends, one heliote poulvoir, if i may find my way thither. know you, gentle damsel," she said to me, "where she abides? or perchance you can lead me thither, if it lies on your way." "i was even going thither, pucelle," i said, mincing in my speech; whereat she laughed, for of her nature she was merry. "scots are heliote and her father, and a scot are not you also, damsel? your speech betrays you," she said; "you all cling close together, you scots, as beseems you well, being strangers in this sweet land of france"; and her face lighted up as she spoke the name she loved, and my heart worshipped her with reverence. "farewell," she cried to poulengy, smiling graciously, and bowing with such a courtesy as a queen might show, for i noted it myself, as did all men, that this peasant girl had the manners of the court, being schooled, as i deem, by the greatest of ladies, her friends st. margaret and st. catherine. then, with an archer, who had ridden beside her from vaucouleurs, following after her as he ever did, the maiden and i began to go down the steep way that led to the town. little she spoke, and all my thought was to enter the house before elliot could spy me in my strange disguise. chapter vii--concerning the wrath of elliot, and the jeopardy of norman leslie the while we went down into the city of chinon, a man attired as a maid, a maiden clad as a man--strange companions!--we held but little converse. her mind, belike, was on fire with a great light of hope, of which afterwards i learned, and the end of the days of trouble and of men's disbelief seemed to her to be drawing near. we may not know what visions of victory and of auxiliary angels, of her king crowned, and fair france redeemed and at peace, were passing through her fancy. therefore she was not fain to talk, being at all times a woman of few words; and in this, as in so many other matters, unlike most of her sex. on my side i had more than enough to think of, for my case and present jeopardy were enough to amaze older and wiser heads than mine. for, imprimis, i had slain one of the king's guards; and, moreover, had struck the first blow, though my adversary, indeed, had given me uttermost provocation. but even if my enemies allowed me to speak in my own defence, which might scarcely be save by miracle, it was scantly possible for me to prove that the other had insulted me and my country. some little hope i had that sir patrick ogilvie, now constable of the scottish men-at-arms in france, or sir hugh kennedy, or some other of our knights, might take up my quarrel, for the sake of our common blood and country, we scots always backing each the other when abroad. yet, on the other hand, it was more probable that i might be swinging, with a flock of crows pecking at my face, before any of my countrymen could speak a word for me with the king. it is true that they who would most eagerly have sought my life deemed me already dead, drowned in the fosse, and so would make no search for me. yet, as soon as i went about my master's affairs, as needs i must, i would be known and taken; and, as we say in our country proverb, "my craig would ken the weight of my hurdies." { } none the less, seeing that the soldiers deemed me dead, i might readily escape at once from chinon, and take to the roads again, if but i could reach my master's house unseen, and get rid of this foolish feminine gear of cap and petticoat which now i wore to my great shame and discomfort. but on this hand lay little hope; for, once on the road, i should be in a worse jeopardy than ever before, as an apprentice fled from my master, and, moreover, with blood on my hands. moreover, i could ill brook the thought of leaving elliot, to whom my heart went forth in love, and of missing my chance to strike a blow in the wars for the maiden, and against the english; of which reward i had the promise from my master. fortune, and fame, and love, if i were to gain what every young man most desires, were only to be won by remaining at chinon; but there, too, the face of death was close to mine--as, indeed, death, or at least shame and poverty, lay ambushed for me on all sides. here i sadly remembered how, with a light heart, i had left st. andrews, deeming that the story of my life was now about to begin, as it did for many young esquires of greece and other lands, concerning whom i had read in romances. verily in the tale of my adventures hitherto there had been more cuffs than crowns, more shame than honour; and, as to winning my spurs, i was more in point to win a hempen rope, and in my end disgrace my blood. now, as if these perils were not enough to put a man beside himself, there was another risk which, even more than these, took up my thoughts. among all my dangers and manifold distresses, this raised its head highest in my fancy, namely, the fear that my love should see me in my outlandish guise, clad in woman's weeds, and carrying on my head a woman's burden. it was not so much that she must needs laugh and hold me in little account. elliot laughed often, so that now it was not her mirth, to which she was ever ready, but her wrath (whereto she was ready also) that i held in awful regard. for her heart and faith, in a marvellous manner passing the love of women, were wholly set on this maid, in whose company i now fared. and, if the maid went in men's attire (as needs she must, for modesty's sake, who was about men's business, in men's company), here was i attending her in woman's gear, as if to make a mock of her, though in my mind i deemed her no less than a sister of the saints. and elliot was sure to believe that i carried myself thus in mockery and to make laughter; for, at that time, there were many in france who mocked, as did that soldier whose death i had seen and caused. thus i stood in no more danger of death, great as was that risk, than in jeopardy of my mistress's favour, which, indeed, of late i had been in some scant hope at last to win. thus, on all hands, i seemed to myself as sore bestead as ever man was, and on no side saw any hope of succour. i mused so long and deep on these things, that the thought which might have helped me came to me too late, namely, to tell all my tale to the maiden herself, and throw me on her mercy. nay, even when at last and late this light shone on my mind, i had shame to speak to her, considering the marvellous thing which i had just beheld of her, in the fulfilment of her prophecy. but now my master's house was in sight, at the turning from the steep stairs and the wynd, and there stood elliot on the doorstep, watching and waiting for the maid, as a girl may wait for her lover coming from the wars. there was no time given me to slink back and skulk in the shadow of the corner of the wynd; for, like a greyhound in speed, elliot had flown to us and was kneeling to the maid, who, with a deep blush and some anger in her face--for she loved no such obeisances--bade her rise, and so kissed and embraced her, as young girls use among themselves when they are friends and fain of each other. i had turned myself to go apart into the shadow of the corner, as secretly as i might, when i ran straight into the arms of the archer that followed close behind us. on this encounter he gave a great laugh, and, i believe, would have kissed me; but, the maiden looking round, he stood erect and grave as a soldier on guard, for the maiden would suffer no light loves and daffing. "whither make you, damsel, in such haste?" she cried to me. "come, let me present you to this damsel, my friend--and one of your own country- women. elliot, ma mie," she said to my mistress, "here is this kind lass, a scot like yourself, who has guided me all the way from the castle hither, and, faith, the way is hard to find. do you thank her for me, and let her sit down in your house: she must be weary with the weight of her basket and her linen"--for these, when she spoke to me, i had laid on the ground. with this she led me up to elliot by the hand, who began to show me very gracious countenance, and to thank me, my face burning all the while with confusion and fear of her anger. suddenly a new look, such as i had never seen before on her face in her light angers, came into her eyes, which grew hard and cold, her mouth also showing stiff; and so she stood, pale, gazing sternly, and as one unable to speak. then-- "go out of my sight," she said, very low, "and from my father's house! forth with you for a mocker and a gangrel loon!"--speaking in our common scots,--"and herd with the base thieves from whom you came, coward and mocking malapert!" the storm had fallen on my head, even as i feared it must, and i stood as one bereft of speech and reason. the maid knew no word of our speech, and this passion of elliot's, and so sudden a change from kindness to wrath, were what she might not understand. "elliot, ma mie," she said, very sweetly, "what mean you by this anger? the damsel has treated me with no little favour. tell me, i pray, in what she has offended." but elliot, not looking at her, said to me again, and this time tears leaped up in her eyes--"forth with you! begone, ere i call that archer to drag you before the judges of the good town." i was now desperate, for, clad as i was, the archer had me at an avail, and, if i were taken before the men of the law, all would be known, and my shrift would be short. "gracious pucelle," i said, in french, turning to the maiden, "my life, and the fortune of one who would gladly fight to the death by your side, are in your hands. for the love of the blessed saints, your sisters, and of him who sends you on your holy mission, pray this demoiselle to let me enter the house with you, and tell my tale to you and her. if i satisfy you not of my honour and good intent, i am ready, in this hour, to go before the men of law, and deliver myself up to their justice. for though my life is in jeopardy, i dread death less than the anger of this honourable demoiselle. and verily this is a matter of instant life or death." so saying, i clasped my hands in the manner of one in prayer, setting all my soul into my speech, as a man desperate. the maiden had listened very gravely, and sweetly she smiled when my prayer was ended. "verily," she said to me, "here is deeper water than i can fathom. elliot, ma mie, you hear how gently, and in what distress, this fair lass beseeches us." "fair lass!" cried elliot: and then broke off between a sob and a laugh, her hand catching at her side. "if you love me," said the maid, looking on her astonished, and not without anger--"if you love me, as you have said, you that are the first of my comforters, and, till this day, my only friend in your strange town, let the lass come in and tell us her tale. for, even if she be distraught, and beside herself, as i well deem, i am sent to be a friend of all them that suffer. moreover, ma mie, i have glad tidings for you, which i am longing to speak, but speak it i will never, while the lass goes thus in terror and fear of death or shame." in saying these last words, the fashion of her countenance was changed to a sweet entreaty and command, such as few could have beheld and denied her what she craved, and she laid her hand lightly on elliot's shoulder. "come," said elliot, "be it as you will; come in with me; and you"--turning to myself--"do you follow us." they passed into the house, i coming after, and the archer waiting at the door. "let none enter," said the maiden to her archer, "unless any come to me from the king, or unless it be the master of the house." we passed into the chamber where my master was wont to paint his missals and psalters when he would be alone. then elliot very graciously bade the maiden be seated, but herself stood up, facing me. "gracious maiden, and messenger of the holy saints," she said, "this lass, as you deem her, is no woman, but a man, my father's apprentice, who has clad himself thus to make of you a mockery and a laughing-stock, because that you, being a maid, go attired as a man, by the will of them who sent you to save france. have i said enough, and do i well to be angry?" and her eyes shone as she spoke. the maiden's brows met in wrath; she gazed upon me steadfastly, and i looked--sinful man that i am!--to see her hand go to the hilt of the sword that she wore. but, making no motion, she only said-- "and thou, wherefore hast thou mocked at one who did thee no evil, and at this damsel, thy master's daughter?" "gentle maiden," i said, "listen to me for but a little moment. it may be, when thou hast heard all, that thou wilt still be wroth with me, though not for mockery, which was never in my mind. but the gentle damsel, thy friend, will assuredly pardon me, who have already put my life in peril for thy sake, and for the sake of our dear country of scotland and her good name." "thy life in peril for me! how mean you? i stood in no danger, and i never saw your face before." "yet hast thou saved my life," i said; "but of that we may devise hereafter. i am, indeed, though a gentleman by blood and birth, the apprentice of the father of this damsel, thy friend, who is himself a gentleman and of a good house, but poverty drives men to strange shifts. this day i went with my master to the castle, and i was on the drawbridge when thou, with the gentlemen thy esquires, passed over it to see the king. on that bridge a man-at-arms spoke to thee shameful words, blaspheming the holy name of god. no sooner hadst thou gone by than he turned on me, reviling my native country of scotland. then i, not deeming that to endure such taunts became my birth and breeding, struck him on his lying mouth. then, as we wrestled on the bridge, we both struck against the barrier, which was low, frail, and old, so that it gave way under our weight, and we both fell into the moat. when i rose he was not in sight, otherwise i would have saved him by swimming, for i desire to have the life of no man on my hands in private quarrel. but the archers shot at me from the drawbridge, so that i had to take thought for myself. by swimming under the water i escaped, behind a jutting rock, to a secret stair, whence i pushed my way into a chamber of the castle. therein was a damsel, busy with the linen, who, of her goodwill, clad me in this wretched apparel above my own garb, and so, for that time, saved my life, and i passed forth unknown; but yet hath caused me to lose what i prize more highly than life--that is, the gracious countenance of this gentle lady, thy friend and my master's daughter, whom it is my honour and duty in all things to please and serve. tell me, then, do i merit your wrath as a jester and a mock-maker, or does this gentle lady well to be angry with her servitor?" the maiden crossed herself, and murmured a prayer for the soul of him who had died in the moat. but elliot instantly flew to me, and, dragging off my woman's cap, tore with her fair hands at the white linen smock about my neck and waist, so that it was rent asunder and fell on the floor, leaving me clad in my wet doublet and hose. at this sight, without word spoken, she broke out into the merriest laughter that ever i heard, and the most welcome; and the maid too, catching the malady of her mirth, laughed low and graciously, so that to see and hear her was marvel. "begone!" cried elliot--"begone, and shift thy dripping gear"; and, as i fled swiftly to my chamber, i heard her laughter yet, though there came a sob into it; but for the maid, she had already stinted in her mirth ere i left the room. in this strange and unseemly fashion did i first come into the knowledge of this admirable maid--whom, alas! i was to see more often sad than merry, and weeping rather than laughing, though, even in her utmost need, her heart could be light and her mirth free: a manner that is uncommon even among brave men, but, in women, never known by me save in her. for it is the way of women to be very busy and seriously concerned about the smallest things, whereat a man only smiles. but she, with her life at stake, could pluck gaiety forth of danger, if the peril threatened none but herself. these manners of hers i learned to know and marvel at in the later days that came too soon; but now in my chamber, i shifted my wet raiment for dry with a heart wondrous light. my craig { } was in peril, as we say, neither less nor more than half an hour agone, but i had escaped the anger of elliot; and even, as i deemed, had won more of her good countenance, seeing that i had struck a blow for scotland and for her friend. this thought made me great cheer in my heart; as i heard, from the room below, the voices of the two girls devising together very seriously for nigh the space of an hour. but, knowing that they might have matters secret between themselves to tell of, for the maiden had said that she brought good tidings, i kept coy and to myself in my little upper chamber. to leave the house, indeed, was more than my life was worth. now to fly and hide was what i could not bring myself to venture; here i would stay where my heart was, and take what fortune the saints might send. so i endured to wait, and not gladden myself with the sight of elliot, and the knowledge of how i now stood with her. to me this was great penance, but at last the voices ceased, and, looking secretly from the window, i saw the maiden depart, her archer following her. now i could no longer bridle in my desire to be with elliot, and learn whether i was indeed forgiven, and how i stood in her favour. so, passing down the stair that led from my cubicle, i stood at the door of the room wherein she was and knocked twice. but none answered, and, venturing to enter, i heard the sound of a stifled sob. she had thrown herself on a settle, her face turned to the wall, and the afternoon sun was shining on her yellow hair, which lay loose upon her shoulders. i dared to say no word, and she only made a motion of her hand towards me, that i should begone, without showing me the light of her countenance. on this i went forth stealthily, my heart again very heavy, for the maiden had spoken of learning good tidings; and wherefore should my mistress weep, who, an hour agone, had been so merry? difficult are the ways of women, a language hard to be understood, wherefore "love," as the roman says, "is full of anxious fears." much misdoubting how i fared in elliot's heart, and devising within myself what this new sorrow of elliot's might signify, i half forgot my own danger, yet not so much as to fare forth of the doors, or even into the booth, where customers might come, and i be known. therefore i passed into a room behind the booth, where my master was wont to instruct me in my painting; and there, since better might not be, i set about grinding and mixing such colours as i knew that he required. i had not been long about this task, when i heard him enter the booth from without, whence he walked straight into my workroom. i looked up from my colours, whereat his face, which was ruddy, grew wan, he staggered back, and, being lame, reeled against the wall. there he brought up, crossing himself, and making the sign of the cross at me. "avaunt!" he said, "in the name of this holy sign, whether thou art a wandering spirit, or a devil in a dead man's semblance." "master," i said, "i am neither spirit nor devil. was it ever yet heard that brownie or bogle mixed colours for a painter? nay, touch me, and see whether i am not of sinful scots flesh and blood"; and thereon i laughed aloud, knowing what caused his fear, and merry at the sight of it, for he had ever held tales of "diablerie," and of wraiths and freits and fetches, in high scorn. he sat him down on a chair and gaped upon me, while i could not contain myself from laughing. "for god's sake," said he, "bring me a cup of red wine, for my wits are wandering. deil's buckie," he said in the scots, "will water not drown you? faith, then, it is to hemp that you were born, as shall shortly be seen." i drew him some wine from a cask that stood in the corner, on draught. he drank it at one venture, and held out the cup for more, the colour coming back into his face. "did the archers tell me false, then, when they said that you had fired up at a chance word, and flung yourself and the sentinel into the moat? and where have you been wasting your time, and why went you from the bridge ere i came back, if the archers took another prentice lad for norman leslie?" "they told you truth," i said. "then, in the name of antichrist--that i should say so!--how scaped you drowning, and how came you here?" i told him the story, as briefly as might be. "ill luck go with yon second-sighted wench that has bewitched elliot, and you too, for all that i can see. never did i think to be frayed with a bogle, { } and, as might have been deemed, the bogle but a prentice loon, when all was done. to my thinking all this fairy work is no more true than that you are a dead man's wraith. but they are all wild about it, at the castle, where i was kept long, doing no trade, and listening to their mad clatter." he took out of his pouch a parcel heedfully wrapped in soft folds of silk. "here is this book of hours," he said, "that i have spent my eyesight, and gold, purple, and carmine, and cobalt upon, these three years past; a jewel it is, though i say so. and i had good hope to sell it to hugh kennedy, for he has of late had luck in taking two english knights prisoners at orleans--the only profitable trade that men now can drive,--and the good knight dearly loves a painted book of devotion; especially if, like this of mine, it be adorned with the loves of jupiter, and the swan, and danae, and other heathen pliskies. we were chaffering over the price, and getting near a bargain, when in comes patrick ogilvie with a tale of this second-sighted maid, and how she had been called to see the king, and of what befell. first, it seems, she boded the death of that luckless limb of a sentinel, and then you took it upon you to fulfil her saying, and so you and he were drowned, and i left prenticeless. little comfort to me it was to hear kennedy and ogilvie praise you for a good scot and true, and say that it was great pity of your death." at this hearing my heart leaped for joy, first, at my own praise from such good knights, and next, because i saw a blink of hope, having friends at court. my master went on-- "next, ogilvie told how he had been in hall, with the dauphin, the chancellor tremouille, and some scores of knights and nobles, a great throng. they were all waiting on this lorrainer wench, for the dauphin had been told, at last, that she brought a letter from baudricourt, but before he would not see her. this letter had been kept from him, i guess by whom, and there was other clash of marvels wrought by her, i know not what. so their wisdom was set on putting her to a kind of trial, foolish enough! a young knight was dressed in jewels and a coronet of the king's, and the king was clad right soberly, and held himself far back in the throng, while the other stood in front, looking big. so the wench comes in, and, walking straight through the press of knights, with her head high, kneels to the king, where he stood retired, and calls him 'gentle dauphin'! "'nay, ma mie,' says he, ''tis not i who am the dauphin, but his highness yonder,'--pointing to the young knight, who showed all his plumage like a muircock in spring. "nay, gentle dauphin," she answers, so ogilvie said, "it is to thee that i am sent, and no other, and i am come to save the good town of orleans, and to lead thee to thy sacring at rheims." "here they were all struck amazed, and the king not least, who then had some words apart with the girl. and he has given her rooms in the tour coudraye within the castle; and the clergy and the doctors are to examine her straitly, whether she be from a good airt, { } or an ill, and all because she knew the king, she who had never seen him before. why should she never have seen him--who warrants me of it?--she dwelling these last days nigh the castle! freits are folly, to my thinking, and fools they that follow them. lad, you gave me a gliff; pass me another stoup of wine! freits, forsooth!" i served him, and he sat and chuckled in his chair, being pleasured by the thought of his own wisdom. "not a word of this to elliot, though," he said suddenly; "when there is a woman in a house--blessings on her!--it is anything for a quiet life! but, 'nom dieu!' what with the fright you gave me, sitting there, whereas i deemed you were meat for eels and carp, and what with thy tale--ha, ha!--and my tale, and the wine, maybe, i forgot your own peril, my lad. faith, your neck is like to be longer, if we be not better advised." hearing him talk of that marvellous thing, wrought through inspiration by the maid--whereat, as his manner was, he mocked, i had clean forgotten my own jeopardy. now this was instant, for who knew how much the archer might have guessed, that followed with the maid and me, and men-at-arms might anon be at our door. "it may be," said i, "that sir patrick ogilvie and sir hugh kennedy would say a word for me in the king's ear." "faith, that is our one chance, and, luckily for you, the lad you drowned, though in the king's service, came hither in the following of a poor knight, who might take blood-ransom for his man. had he been la tremouille's man, you must assuredly have fled the country." he took up his book of hours, with a sigh, and wrapped it again in its silken parcel. "this must be your price with kennedy," he said, "if better may not be. it is like parting with the apple of my eye, but, i know not well how, i love you, my lad, and blood is thicker than water. give me my staff; i must hirple up that weary hill again, and you, come hither." he led me to his own chamber, where i had never been before, and showed me how, in the chimney-neuk, was a way into a certain black hole of little ease, wherein, if any came in search for me, i might lie hidden. and, fetching me a cold fish (lenten cheer), a loaf, and a stoup of wine, whereof i was glad enough, he left me, groaning the while at his ill-fortune, but laden with such thanks as i might give for all his great kindness. there then, i sat, when i had eaten, my ears pricked to listen for the tramp of armed men below and the thunder of their summons at the door. but they came not, and presently my thought stole back to elliot, who, indeed, was never out of my mind then--nay, nor now is. but whether that memory be sinful in a man of religion or not, i leave to the saints and to good confession. much i perplexed myself with marvelling why she did so weep; above all, since i knew what hopeful tidings she had gotten of her friend and her enterprise. but no light came to me in my meditations. i did not know then that whereas young men, and many lasses too, are like the roman lad who went with his bosom bare, crying "aura veni," and sighing for the breeze of love to come, other maidens are wroth with love when he creeps into their hearts, and would fain cast him out--being in a manner mad with anger against love, and against him whom they desire, and against themselves. this mood, as was later seen, was elliot's, for her heart was like a wild bird trapped, that turns with bill and claw on him who comes to set it free. moreover, i have since deemed that her passion of faith in the maid made war on her love for me; one breast being scantly great enough to contain these two affections, and her pride taking, against the natural love, the part of the love which was divine. but all these were later thoughts, that came to me in musing on the sorrows of my days; and, like most wisdom, this knowledge arrived too late, and i, as then, was holden in perplexity. chapter viii--of certain quarrels that came on the hands of norman leslie belike i had dropped asleep, outwearied with what had befallen me, mind and body, but i started up suddenly at the sound of a dagger-hilt smitten against the main door of the house, and a voice crying, "open, in the name of the dauphin." they had come in quest of me, and when i heard them, it was as if a hand had given my heart a squeeze, and for a moment my breath seemed to be stopped. this past, i heard the old serving-woman fumbling with the bolts, and peering from behind the curtain of my casement, i saw that the ways were dark, and the narrow street was lit up with flaring torches, the lights wavering in the wind. i stepped to the wide ingle, thinking to creep into the secret hiding-hole. but to what avail? it might have served my turn if my escape alive from the moat had only been guessed, but now my master must have told all the story, and the men-at-arms must be assured that i was within. thinking thus, i stood at pause, when a whisper came, as if from within the ingle-- "unbar the door, and hide not." it must be elliot's voice, speaking through some tube contrived in the ingle of the dwelling-room below or otherwise. glad at heart to think that she took thought of me, i unbarred the door, and threw myself into a chair before the fire, trying to look like one unconcerned. the bolts were now drawn below; i heard voices, rather scots than french, to my sense. then the step of one man climbed up the stair, heavily, and with the tap of a staff keeping tune to it. it was my master. his face was pale, and falling into a chair, he wiped the sweat from his brow. "unhappy man that i am!" he said, "i have lost my apprentice." i gulped something down in my throat ere i could say, "then it is death?" "nay," he said, and smiled. "but gliff for gliff, { } you put a fear on me this day, and now we are even." "yet i scarce need a cup of wine for my recovery, master," i said, filling him a beaker from the flagon on the table, which he drained gladly, being sore wearied, so steep was the way to the castle, and hard for a lame man. my heart was as light as a leaf on a tree, and the bitterness of shameful death seemed gone by. "i have lost my prentice another way," he said, setting down the cup on the table. "i had much a do to see kennedy, for he was at the dice with other lords. at length, deeming there was no time to waste, i sent in the bonny book of hours, praying him to hear me for a moment on a weighty matter. that brought him to my side; he leaped at the book like a trout at a fly, and took me to his own chamber. there i told him your story. when it came to the wench in the king's laundry, and robin lindsay, and you clad in girl's gear, and kissed in the guard-room, he struck hand on thigh and laughed aloud. "then i deemed your cause as good as three parts won, and he could not hold in, but led me to a chamber where were many lords, dicing and drinking: tremouille, ogilvie, the bishop of orleans--that holy man, who has come to ask for aid from the king,--la hire, xaintrailles, and i know not whom. there i must tell all the chronicle again; and some said this, and some that, and tremouille mocks, that the maid uttered her prophecy to no other end but to make you fulfil it, and slay her enemy for the sake of her 'beaux yeux.' the others would hear nothing of this, and, indeed, though i am no gull, i wot that tremouille is wrong here, and over cunning; he trusts neither man nor woman. howsoever it be, he went with the story to the king, who is keen to hear any new thing. and, to be short, the end of it is this: that you have your free pardon, on these terms, namely, that you have two score of masses said for the dead man, and yourself take service under sir hugh kennedy, that the king may not lose a man-at-arms." never, sure, came gladder tidings to any man than these to me. an hour ago the rope seemed tight about my neck; one day past, and i was but a prentice to the mean craft of painting and limning, arts good for a monk, or a manant, but, save for pleasure, not to be melled or meddled with by a man of gentle blood. and now i was to wear arms, and that in the best of causes, under the best of captains, one of my own country--a lord in ayrshire. "ay, even so," my master said, marking the joy in my face, "you are right glad to leave us--a lass and a lameter. { } well, well, such is youth, and eld is soon forgotten." i fell on my knees at his feet, and kissed his hands, and i believe that i wept. "sir," i said, "you have been to me as a father, and more than it has been my fortune to find my own father. never would i leave you with my will, and for the gentle demoiselle, your daughter--" but here i stinted, since in sooth i knew not well what words to say. "ay, we shall both miss you betimes; but courage, man! after all, this new life beseems you best, and, mark me, a lass thinks none the worse of a lad because he wears not the prentice's hodden grey, but a scots archer's green, white, and red, and charles for badge on breast and sleeve, and a sword by his side. and as for the bonny book of hours--'master,' i said with shame, 'was that my ransom?' "kennedy would have come near my price, and strove to make me take the gold. but what is bred in the bone will out; i am a gentleman born, not a huckster, and the book i gave him freely. may it profit the good knight in his devotions! but now, come, they are weary waiting for us; the hour waxes late, and elliot, i trow, is long abed. you must begone to the castle." in the stairs, and about the door, some ten of sir hugh's men were waiting, all countrymen of my own, and the noise they made and their speech were pleasant to me. they gave me welcome with shouts and laughter, and clasped my hands: "for him that called us wine-sacks, you have given him water to his wine, and the frog for his butler," they said, making a jest of life and death. but my own heart for the nonce was heavy enough again, i longing to take farewell of elliot, which might not be, nor might she face that wild company. howbeit, thinking it good to have a friend at court, i made occasion to put in the hand of the old serving-woman all of such small coins as i had won in my life servile, deeming myself well quit of such ill-gotten gear. and thereafter, with great mirth and noise, they set forth to climb the hill towards the castle, where i was led, through many a windy passage, to the chamber of sir hugh kennedy. there were torches lit, and the knight, a broad-shouldered, fair-haired man, with a stern, flushed face, was turning over and gazing at his new book of hours, like a child busy with a fresh toy. he laid the book down when we entered, and the senior of the two archers who accompanied me told him that i was he who had been summoned. "your name?" he asked; and i gave it. "you are of gentle blood?" and i answering "yes," he replied, "then see that you are ready to shed it for the king. your life that was justly forfeit, is now, by his royal mercy, returned to you, to be spent in his service. rutherford and douglas, go take him to quarters, and see that to-morrow he is clad as beseems a man of my command. now good night to you--but stay! you, norman leslie, you will have quarrels on your hand. wait not for them, but go to meet them, if they are with the french men- at-arms, and in quarrel see that you be swift and deadly. for the townsfolk, no brawling, marauding, or haling about of honest wenches. here we are strangers, and my men must be respected." he bowed his head: his words had been curt, no grace or kindness had he shown me of countenance. i felt in my heart that to him i was but a pawn in the game of battle. now i seemed as far off as ever i was from my foolish dream of winning my spurs; nay, perchance never had i sunk lower in my own conceit. till this hour i had been, as it were, the hinge on which my share of the world turned, and now i was no more than a wheel in the carriage of a couleuvrine, an unconsidered cog in the machine of war. i was to be lost in a multitude, every one as good as myself, or better; and when i had thought of taking service, i had not foreseen the manner of it and the nature of the soldier's trade. my head, that i had carried high, somewhat drooped, as i saluted, imitating my companions, and we wheeled forth of the room. "hugh has taken the pride out of you, lad, or my name is not randal rutherford," said the border man who had guided me. "faith, he has a keen tongue and a short way with him, but there are worse commanders. and now you must to your quarters, for the hour is late and the guard-room shut." he led me to our common sleeping-place, where, among many snoring men-at- arms in a great bare hall, a pallet was laid for me, and my flesh crept as i remembered how this was the couch of him whom i had slain. howbeit, being well weary, despite the strangeness of the place, after brief orisons i slept sound till a trumpet called us in the morning. concerning the strangeness of this waking, to me who had been gently nurtured, and the rough life, and profane words which i must hear (not, indeed, that they had been wholly banished from our wild days at st. andrews), it is needless that i should tell. seeing that i was come among rude neighbours, i even made shift to fall back, in semblance, on such manners as i had used among the students before i left scotland, though many perils, and the fear wherein i stood of brother thomas, and the company of the maid elliot, had caused me half to forget my swaggering ways. so, may god forgive me! i swore roundly; i made as if i deemed lightly of that frenchman's death, and, in brief, i so bore me that, ere noon (when i behoved to go into chinon with randal rutherford, and there provide me with the rich apparel of our company), i had three good quarrels on my hand. first, there was the man-at-arms who had kissed me in the guard-room. he, in a "bourde" and mockery, making pretence that he would repeat his insult, got that which was owing him, and with interest, for indeed he could see out of neither of his squint eyes when i had dealt with him. and for this cause perforce, if he needed more proof of my manhood than the weight of my fist, he must tarry for the demonstration which he desired. then there was robin lindsay, and at his wrath i make no marvel, for the tale of how he came late to tryst, and at second-hand (with many such rude and wanton additions as soldiers use to make), was noised abroad all over the castle. his quarrel was no matter for fisticuffs; so, being attired in helmet, vambrace rere-brace, gauntlets, and greaves out of the armoury, where many such suits were stored, i met him in a certain quiet court behind the castle, where quarrels were usually voided. and now my practice of the sword at home and the lessons of our smith came handily to my need. after much clashing of steel and smiting out of sparks, i chanced, by an art known to me, to strike his sword out of his hand. then, having him at an avail, i threw down my own blade, and so plainly told him the plain truth, and how to his mistress i owed my life, which i would rather lose now at his hand than hear her honour blamed, that he forgave me, and we embraced as friends. neither was this jest anew cast up against either of us, men fearing to laugh, as we say, with the wrong side of their mouths. after this friendly bout at point and edge, robin and randal rutherford, being off duty, must needs carry me to the tennis court, where tremouille and the king were playing two young lords, and that for such a stake as would have helped to arm a hundred men for the aid of orleans. it was pretty to see the ball fly about basted from the walls, and the players bounding and striking; and, little as i understood the game, so eager was i over the sport, that a gentleman within the "dedans" touched me twice on the shoulder before i was aware of him. "i would have a word with you, sir, if your grace can spare me the leisure." "may it not be spoken here?" i asked, for i was sorry to lose the spectacle of the tennis, which was new to me, and is a pastime wherein france beats the world. pity it is that many players should so curse and blaspheme god and his saints! "my business," replied the stranger, "is of a kind that will hardly endure waiting." with that i rose and followed him out into the open courtyard, much marvelling what might be toward. "you are that young gentleman," said my man, "for a gentleman i take you to be, from your aspect and common report, who yesterday were the death of gilles de puiseux?" "sir, to my sorrow, and not by my will, i am he, and but now i was going forth to have certain masses said for his soul's welfare": which was true, randal rutherford having filled my purse against pay-day. "i thank you, sir, for your courtesy, and perchance may have occasion to do the like gentle service for you. gilles de puiseux was of my blood and kin; he has none other to take up his feud for him in this place, and now your quickness of comprehension will tell you that the business wherewith i permit myself to break your leisure will brook no tarrying. let me say that i take it not upon me to defend the words of my cousin, who insulted a woman, and, as i believe, a messenger from the blessed saints that love france." i looked at him in some amazement. he was a young man of about my own years, delicately and richly clad in furs, silks, and velvets, a great gold chain hanging in loops about his neck, a gold brooch with an ancient roman medal in his cap. but the most notable thing in him was his thick golden hair, whence la hire had named him "capdorat," because he was so blond, and right keen in war, and hardy beyond others. and here he was challenging me, who stood before him in a prentice's hodden grey! "sir," i said, "i could wish you a better quarrel, but not more courtesy. many a gentleman seeing me such as i am, would bid me send, ere he crossed swords with me, to my own country for my bor-brief, { } which i came away in too great haste to carry with me. nay, i was but now to set forth and buy me a sword and other accoutrements; natheless, from the armoury here they may equip me with sword and body armour." "of body-armour take no thought," he answered, "for this quarrel is of a kind that must needs be voided in our smocks"; he meaning that it was "a outrance," till one of us fell. verily, now i saw that this was not to be a matter of striking sparks from steel, as robin and i had done, but of life and death. "i shall be the more speedily at your service," i made answer; and as i spoke randal and robin came forth from the "dedans," the sport being over. they joined me, and i told them in few words my new business, my adversary tarrying, cap in hand, till i had spoken, and then proclaiming himself aymar de puiseux, a gentleman of dauphine, as indeed my friends knew. "i shall wait on you, with your leave, at the isle in the river, where it is of custom, opposite the booths of the gold-workers," quoth he, "about the hour of noon"; and so, saluting us, he went, as he said, to provide himself with friends. "blood of judas!" quoth robin, who swore terribly in his speech, "you have your hands full, young norman. he is but now crept out of the rank of pages, but when the french and english pages fought a valliance of late, under orleans, none won more praise than he, who was captain of the french party." "he played a good sword?" i asked. "he threw a good stone! man, it was a stone bicker, and they had lids of baskets for targes." "and he challenges me to the field," i said hotly, "by st. andrew! i will cuff his ears and send him back to the other boys." "norman, my lad, when were you in a stone bicker last?" quoth randal; and i hung my head, for it was not yet six months gone since the sailors and we students were stoning each other in north street. "yet he does play a very good sword, and is cunning of fence, for your comfort," said randal. so i hummed the old lilt of the leslies, whence, they say, comes our name-- between the less lea and the mair, he slew the knight and left him there;-- for i deemed it well to show a good face. moreover, i had some conceit of myself as a swordsman, and randal was laughing like a foolbody at my countenance. "faith, you will make a spoon or spoil a horn, and--let me have my laugh out--you bid well for an archer," said randal; and robin counselling me to play the same prank on the french lad's sword as late i had done on his own, they took each of them an arm of mine, and so we swaggered down the steep ways into chinon. first i would go to the tailor and the cordwainer, and be fitted for my new splendours as an archer of the guard. they both laughed at me again, for, said they very cheerfully, "you may never live to wear these fine feathers." but randal making the reflection that, if i fell, there would be none to pay the shopmaster, they both shouted with delight in the street, so that passers-by turned and marvelled at them. clearly i saw that to go to fight a duel is one thing, and to go and look on is another, and much more gay, for my heart had no desire of all this merriment. rather would i have recommended my case to the saints, and chiefly to st. andrew, for whose cause and honour i was about to put my life in jeopardy. but shame, and the fear of seeming fearful, drove me to jest with the others--such risks of dying unconfessed are run by sinful men! howbeit, they helped me to choose cloth of the best colour and fashion, laughing the more because i, being short of stature and slim, the tailor, if i fell, might well find none among the archers to purchase that for which, belike, i should have no need. "we must even enlist the pucelle in our guard, for she might wear this apparel," quoth randal. thus boisterously they bore themselves, but more gravely at the swordsmith's, where we picked out a good cut-and-thrust blade, well balanced, that came readily to my hand. then, i with sword at side, like a gentleman, we made to the river, passing my master's booth, where i looked wistfully at the windows for a blink of elliot, but saw none that i knew, only, from an open casement, the little jackanapes mopped and mowed at me in friendly fashion. hard by the booth was a little pier, and we took boat, and so landed on the island, where were waiting for us my adversary and two other gentlemen. having saluted each other, we passed to a smooth grassy spot, surrounded on all sides by tall poplar trees. here in places daffodils were dancing in the wind; but otherwhere the sward was much trampled down, and in two or three spots were black patches that wellnigh turned my courage, for i was not yet used to the sight of men's blood, here often shed for little cause. the friends of us twain adversaries, for enemies we could scarce be called, chose out a smooth spot with a fair light, the sun being veiled, and when we had stripped to our smocks, we drew and fell to work. he was very quick and light in his movements, bounding nimbly to this side or that, but i, using a hanging guard, in our common scots manner, did somewhat perplex him, to whom the fashion was new. one or two scratches we dealt each other, but, for all that, i could see we were well matched, and neither closed, as men rarely do in such a combat, till they are wroth with hurts and their blood warm. now i gashed his thigh, but not deeply, and with that, as i deemed, his temper fired, for he made a full sweep at my leg above the knee. this i have always reckoned a fool's stroke, as leaving the upper part of the body unguarded, and avoiding with my right leg, i drove down with all my force at his head. but, even as i struck, came a flash and the sudden deadness of a deep wound, for he had but feinted, and then, avoiding me so that i touched him not, he drove his point into my breast. between the force of my own blow and this stab i fell forward on my face, and thence rolled over on my back, catching at my breast with my hands, as though to stop the blood, but, in sooth, not well knowing what i did. he had thrown down his sword, and now was kneeling by my side. "i take you to witness," he said, "that this has befallen to my great sorrow, and had i been where this gentleman was yesterday, and heard my cousin blaspheme, i would myself have drawn on him, but--" and here, as i later heard, he fainted from loss of blood, my sword having cut a great vein; and i likewise lost sense and knowledge. nor did i know more till they lifted me and laid me on a litter of poplar boughs, having stanched my wound as best they might. in the boat, as they ferried us across the river, i believe that i fainted again; and so, "between home and hell," as the saying is, i lay on my litter and was carried along the street beside the water. folk gathered around us as we went. i heard their voices as in a dream, when lo! there sounded a voice that i knew right well, for elliot was asking of the people "who was hurt?" at this hearing i hove myself up on my elbow, beckoning with my other hand; and i opened my mouth to speak, but, in place of words, came only a wave of blood that sickened me, and i seemed to be dreaming, in my bed, of elliot and her jackanapes; and then feet were trampling, and at length i was laid down, and so seemed to fall most blessedly asleep, with a little hand in mine, and rarely peaceful and happy in my heart, though wherefore i knew not. after many days of tossing on the waves of the world, it was as if i had been brought into the haven where i would be. of what was passing i knew or i remember nothing. later i heard that a good priest had been brought to my bedside, and perchance there was made some such confession as the church, in her mercy, accepts from sinful men in such case as mine. but i had no thought of life or death, purgatory or paradise; only, if paradise be rest among those we love, such rest for an unknown while, and such sense of blissful companionship, were mine. but whether it was well to pass through and beyond this scarce sensible joy, or whether that peace will ever again be mine and unending, i leave with humility to them in whose hands are christian souls. chapter ix--of the winning of elliot the days of fever and of dreams went by and passed, leaving me very weak, but not ignorant of where i was, and of what had come and gone. my master had often been by my bedside, and elliot now and again; the old housewife also watched me by night, and gave me drink when i thirsted. most of the while i deemed i was at home, in the house of pitcullo; yet i felt there was something strange, and that there was pain somewhere in the room. but at length, as was said, i came to knowledge of things, and could see elliot and remember her, when she knelt praying by my bed, as oft she did, whiles i lay between life and death. i have heard speak of men who, being inflamed with love, as i had been, fell into a fever of the body, and when that passed, lo! their passion had passed with it, and their longing. and so it seemed to be with me. for some days i was not permitted to utter a word, and later, i was as glad in elliot's company as you may have seen a little lad and lass, not near come to full age, who go playing together with flowers and such toys. so we were merry together, the jackanapes keeping us company, and making much game and sport. perchance these were my most blessed days, as of one who had returned to the sinless years, when we are happier than we know, and not yet acquainted with desire. now and again rutherford and lindsay would come to visit me, seeming strangely still and gentle, speaking little, but looking at me with kind eyes, and vowing that my tailor should yet be paid for his labour. capdorat also came, for he had but suffered a flesh wound with much loss of blood, and we showed each other the best countenance. so time went by, while i grew stronger daily; and now it was ordained by the leech, a skilful man, that i might leave my bed, and be clothed, and go about through the house, and eat stronger food, whereof i had the greatest desire, and would ever be eating like a howlet. { } now, when i was to rise, i looked that they should bring me my old prentice's gabardine and hose, but on the morning of that day elliot came, bearing in her arms a parcel of raiment very gay and costly. "here is your fine clothing new come from the tailor's booth," she cried merrily. "see, you shall be as bright as spring, in green, and white, and red!" there was the bonnet, with its three coloured plumes, and the doublet, with charles wrought in silver on the arm and breast, and all other things seemly--a joy to mine eyes. she held them up before me, her face shining like the return of life, with a happy welcome; and my heart beat to see and hear her as of old it was wont to do. "and wherefore should not i go to the wars," she cried, "and fight beside the maid? i am as tall as she, if scantly so strong, and brave--oh, i am very brave glacidas, i bid you beware!" she said, putting the archer's bonnet gallantly cocked on her beautiful head, and drawing forth the sword from his scabbard, as one in act to fight, but in innocent unwarlike wise. there she stood before me in the sunlight, like the angel of victory, all glad and fair, and two blue rays from her eyes shot into my heart, and lo! i was no more a child, but a man again and a lover. "o elliot," i said, ere ever i wist what i was saying, and i caught her left hand into mine--"o elliot, i love you! give me but your love, and i shall come back from the wars a knight, and claim my love to be my lady." she snatched her hand suddenly, as if angered, out of mine, and therewith, being very weak, i gave a cry, my wound fiercely paining me. then her face changed from rose-red to lily-white, she dropped on her knees by my bed, and her arms were about my neck, and all over my face her soft, sweet-scented hair and her tears. "oh, i have slain you, i have slain you, my love!" she sobbed, making a low, sweet moan, as a cushat in the wild wood, for i lay deadly still, being overcome with pain and joy. and there i was, my love comforting me as a mother comforts her child. i moved my hand, to take hers in mine--her little hand; and so, for a space, there was silence between us, save for her kind moaning, and in my heart was such gladness as comes but once to men, and may not be spoken in words of this world. there was silence between us; then she rose very gently and tossed back her hair, showing her face wet with tears, but rosy-red with happiness and sweet shame. had it not been for that chance hurt, how long might i have wooed ere i won her? but her heart was molten by my anguish. "hath the pain passed?" she whispered. "sweet was the pain, my love, and sweetly hast thou healed it with thy magic." then she kissed me, and so fled from the room, as one abashed, and came not back that day, when, indeed, i did not rise, nor for two days more, being weaker than we had deemed. but happiness is the greatest leech on earth, and does the rarest miracles of healing; so in three days' space i won strength to leave my bed and my room, and could sit by the door, at noon, in the sun of spring, that is warmer in france than in our own country. now it could not be but that elliot and i must meet, when her father was in town about his affairs, or busy in the painting-room, and much work he had then on his hands. but elliot was right coy, hiding herself from me, who watched warily, till one day, when my master was abroad, i had the fortune to find her alone in the chamber, putting spring flowers in a very fair vessel of glass. i made no more ado, but coming in stealthily, i caught her boldly about the body, saying-- "yield you, rescue or no rescue, and strive not against me, lest you slay a wounded man-at-arms." for very fear, as i believe, lest she might stir my wound again, she was still as a bird that lies in your hands when once you have caught it. and all that passes of kiss and kind word between happy lovers passed between us, till i prayed of her grace, that i might tell her father how things stood, for well i had seen by his words and deeds that he cherished me as a son. so she granted this, and we fell to devising as to what was to be in days to come. lackland was i, and penniless, save for my pay, if i got it; but we looked to the common fortune of young men-at-arms, namely, spoil of war and the ransom of prisoners of england or burgundy. for i had set up my resolve either to die gloriously, or to win great wealth and honour, which, to a young man and a lover, seem things easily come by. nor could my master look for a great fortune in marriage, seeing that, despite his gentle birth, he lived but as a burgess, and by the work of his hands. as we thus devised, she told me how matters now were in the country, of which, indeed, i still knew but little, for, to a man sick and nigh upon death, nothing imports greatly that betides beyond the walls of his chamber. what i heard was this: namely, that, about orleans, the english ever pressed the good town more closely, building new bastilles and other great works, so as to close the way from blois against any that came thence of our party with victual and men-at-arms. and daily there was fighting without the walls, wherein now one side had the better, now the other; but food was scant in orleans, and many were slain by cannon-shots. yet much was spoken of a new cannonier, lately come to aid the men of orleans, and how he and john of lorraine slew many of the hardiest of the english with their couleuvrines. at this telling i bethought me of brother thomas, but spoke no word concerning him, for my mistress began very gladly to devise of her dear maid, concerning whom, indeed, she could never long be silent. "faithless heart and fickle," i said in a jest, "i believe you love that maid more than you love me, and as she wears sword at side, like a man, i must even challenge her to fight in the island." here she stayed my speech in the best manner and the most gracious, laughing low, so that, verily, i was clean besotted with love, and marvelled that any could be so fair as she, and how i could have won such a lady. "beware how you challenge my maid," said she at last, "for she fights but on horseback, with lance and sperthe, { } and the duc d'alencon has seen her tilt at the ring, and has given her the best steed in his stables, whereon she shall soon lead her army to orleans." "then i must lay by my quarrel, for who am i to challenge my captain? but, tell me, hath she heard any word of thee and me?" elliot waxed rosy, and whispered-- "we had spoken together about thee, ere she went to poictiers to be examined and questioned by the doctors of law and learning, after thou wert wounded." concerning this journey to poictiers i knew nothing, but i was more concerned to hear what the maid had said about elliot and me. for seeing that the maid herself was vowed (as men deemed) to virginity, it passed into my mind that she might think holy matrimony but a low estate, and might try to set my mistress's heart on following her own example. and then, i thought, but foolishly, elliot's love for me might be weaker than her love for the maid. "yes," my lady went on, "i could not but open my heart about thee and me, to one who is of my own age, and so wise, unlike other girls. moreover, i scarce knew well whether your heart was like disposed with my heart. therefore i devised with her more than once or twice." hiding her face on my breast, she spoke very low; and as my fancy had once seen the children, the dark head and the golden, bowed together in prayer for france and the dauphin, so now i saw them again, held close together in converse, and that strange maid and prophetess listening, like any girl, to a girl's tale of the secrets of her heart. "and what counsel gave the maid?" i said; "or had she any prophecy of our fortune?" "nay, on such matters she knows no more than you or i, or knows but seldom, nor seeks to learn from her counsel. only she is bidden that she must rescue orleans, and lead the dauphin to his sacring at rheims. but she wished me well, and comforted me that your heart was even as my own, as she saw on that day when you wore woman's gear and slew him that blasphemed her. and of you she spoke the best words, for that you, who knew her not, took her part against her enemy. and for your wound she sorrowed much, not knowing, more than i who am simple, whether it would turn to life or death. and if to life, then, if she could but persuade the doctor and clergy and the king's counsellors to let her go, she said that you should follow with her to the wars, and she, if so the saints pleased, would be the making of your fortune, you and i being her first friends." "the saints fight for her!" i said, "for we have done our part thus far, and i would that i may be well ere she raises her standard." but here elliot turned right pale, at the thought of my going to the wars, she holding my face off and gazing steadily upon me with wistful eyes. "o god, send that the maid go speedily!" she cried, "for as now you are not fit to bear arms." "thou wouldst not have me lag behind, when the maid's banner is on the wind?" "nay," she said, but slowly, "thee and all that i have would i give for her and for her cause, and for the saints. but now thou must not go,"--and her eyes yearned upon me--"now that i could overthrow thee if we came to war." so here she laughed again, being like the weather without--a changeful thing of shower and shine. thus we continued devising, and she told me that, some days after my wounding, the maid had held converse apart with the king, and then gave him to wit of certain marvellous matters, that none might know save by heavenly inspiration. but what these matters might be none could tell, save the king and the maiden only. that this was sooth i can affirm, having myself been present in later years, when one that affected to be the very pucelle, never slain, or re- arisen by miracle, came before the king, and truly she had beguiled many. then the king said, "welcome pucelle, ma mie, thou art welcome if thou hast memory of that secret thing which is between thee and me." whereon this false woman, as one confounded, fell on her knees and confessed her treason. this that elliot told me, therefore, while the sun shone into the chamber through the bare vine-tendrils, was sooth, and by this miracle, it seems, the maid had at last won the ear of the king. so he bade carry her to poictiers, where the doctors and the learned were but now examining into her holy life, and her knowledge of religion, being amazed by the wisdom of her answers. the noble ladies about her, too, and these mendicant friars that were sent to hold inquisition concerning her at domremy, had found in her nothing but simplicity and holy maidenhood, pity and piety. but, as for a sign of her sending, and a marvel to convince all men's hearts, that, she said, she would only work at orleans. so now she was being accepted, and was to raise her standard, as we had cause to believe. "but," said elliot, "the weeks go by, and much is said, and men and victual are to be gathered, and still they tarry, doing no great deed. oh, would that to-day her standard were on the wind! for to-day, and for these many days, i must have you here, and tend you till you be fit to bear arms." therewith she made me much good cheer; then, very tenderly taking her arms from about me, lest i should be hurt again, she cried-- "but we speak idly, and thou hast not seen the standard, and the banner, and the pennon of the maid that my father is painting." then i must lean on her shoulder, as, indeed, i still had cause to do, and so, right heedfully, she brought me into the painting-chamber. there, upon great easels, were stretched three sheets of "bougran," { } very white and glistering--a mighty long sheet for the standard, a smaller one, square, for the banner, and the pennon smaller yet, in form of a triangle, as is customary. the great standard, in the maiden's wars, was to be used for the rallying of all her host; the pennon was a signal to those who fought around her, as guards of her body; and about the banner afterwards gathered, for prayer and praise, those men, confessed and clean of conscience, whom she had called and chosen. these cloths were now but half painted, the figures being drawn, by my master's hands, and the ground-colours laid; but some portions were quite finished, very bright and beautiful. on the standard was figured god the father, having the globe in his hand; two angels knelt by him, one holding for his blessing the lily of france. the field was to be sown with fleurs-de-lys, and to bear the holy names: jhesu--maria. on the banner was our lord crucified between the holy virgin and st. john. and on the pennon was wrought the annunciation, the angel with a lily kneeling to the blessed virgin. on the standard, my master, later, fashioned the chosen blazon of the maid--a dove argent, on a field azure. but the blazon of the sword supporting the crown, between two lilies, that was later given to her and her house, she did not use, as her enemies said she did, out of pride and vainglory, mixing her arms with holy things, even at rheims at the sacring. for when she was at rheims, no armorial bearings had yet been given to her. herein, then, as always, they lied in their cruel throats; for, as the psalmist says, "quare fremuerunt gentes?" all these evil tongues, and all thought of evil days, were far from us as we stood looking at the work, and praising it, as well we might, for never had my master wrought so well. now, as i studied on the paintings, i well saw that my master had drawn the angel of the pennon in the likeness of his own daughter elliot. wonderful it was to see her fair face and blue eyes, holy and humble, with the gold halo round her head. "ah, love," i said, "that banner i could follow far, pursuing fame and the face of my lady!" with that we fell into such dalliance and kind speech as lovers use, wholly rapt from the world in our happiness. even then, before we so much as heard his step at the door, my master entered, and there stood we, my arm about her neck and hers about my body, embracing me. he stood with eyes wide open, and gave one long whistle. "faith!" he cried, "our surgery hath wrought miracles! you are whole beyond what i looked for; but surely you are deaf, for my step is heavy enough, yet, me thinks, you heard me not." elliot spoke no word, but drawing me very heedfully to a settle that was by the side of the room, she fled without looking behind her. "sir," i said, as soon as she was gone, "i need make no long story--" "faith, no!" he answered, standing back from the banner and holding his hands at each side of his eyes, regarding his work as limners do. "you twain, i doubt not, were smitten senseless by these great masterpieces, and the thought of the holy use to which they were made." "that might well have been, sir, but what we had covenanted to tell you this day we have told unwittingly, methinks, already. i could not be in your daughter's company, and have the grace of her gentle ministerings--" "but you must stand senseless before her father's paintings? faith, you are a very grateful lad! but so it is, and i am not one of those blind folk who see not what is under their eyes. and now, what now? well, i can tell you. you are to be healed, and follow these flags to war, and win your spurs, and much wealth by ransoms, and so make my lass your lady. is it not so?" i was abashed by his "bourdes," and could say nought, for, being still very weak, the tears came into my eyes. then he drew near me, limping, and put his hand on my shoulder, but very gently, saying-- "even so be it, my son, as better may not be. 'tis no great match, but i looked, in this country, for nothing nobler or more wealthy. that my lass should be happy, and have one to fend for her, there is my affair, and i am not one of those fathers who think to make their daughters glad by taking from them their heart's desire. so cheer up! what, a man-at- arms weeping! strange times, when maids lead men-at-arms and men-at-arms weep at home!" with these words he comforted me, and made me welcome, for indeed he was a kind man and a wise; so many there are that cause shrewd sorrow when there should be joy in their houses! this was never his way, and wise do i call him, for all that has come and gone. in a little time, when i had thanked him, and shown him, i trow, how he stood in my love, he bade me go to my chamber and be at rest, saying that he must take thought as to how matters stood. "for you are not yet fit to bear arms, nor will be for these many days. nor is it seemly, nor our country's custom, that my maid should dwell here in the house with you, as things are between you, and i must consider of how i may bestow her till you march with your troop, if marching there is to be." this i dared not gainsay, and so i went to my chamber with a heart full of grief and joy, for these hours that are all of gladness come rarely to lovers, and to me were scantly measured. perchance it was for my soul's welfare, to win me from the ways of the world. but to elliot and me that night bore no joy, but sorrow, albeit passing. at supper we met, indeed, but she stayed with us not long after supper, when my master, with a serious countenance, told me how he had taken counsel with a very holy woman, of his own kin, widow of an archer, and how she was going on pilgrimage to our lady of puy en velay, by reason of the jubilee, for this year good friday and the annunciation fell on the same day. "to-morrow she sets forth, and whatsoever prayer can do for france and the king shall be done. always, after this day of jubilee, they say that strange and great matters come to pass. that there will be strange matters i make no doubt, for when before, save under holy deborah in scripture, did men follow a woman to war? may good come of it! however it fall out, elliot is willing to go on pilgrimage, for she is very devout. moreover, she tells me that it had been in her mind before, for the mother of that maid is to be at puy, praying for her daughter, as, certes, she hath great need, if ever woman had. and elliot is fain to meet her and devise with her about the maid. and for you, you still need our nursing, and the sooner you win strength, the nearer you are to that which you would win. still, i am sorry, lad, for i remember my courting days and the lass's mother, blessings on her!" to all this i could make no answer but that his will was mine; and so the day ended in a mingling of gladness and sorrow. chapter x--how norman leslie was out of all comfort my brethren the good benedictine fathers here in pluscarden priory, are wont betimes to be merry over my penitents, for all the young lads and lasses in the glen say they are fain to be shriven by old father norman and by no other. this that my brethren report may well be true, and yet i take no shame in the bruit or "fama." for as in my hot youth i suffered sorrows many from love, so now i may say, like that carthaginian queen in maro, "miseris succurrere disco." the years of the youth of most women and men are like a tourney, or jousts courteous, and many fall in the lists of love, and many carry sorer wounds away from love's spears, than they wot of who do but look on from the safe seats and secure pavilions of age. though all may seem but a gentle and joyous passage of arms, and the weapons that they use but arms of courtesy, yet are shrewd blows dealt and wounds taken which bleed inwardly, perchance through a whole life long. to medicine these wounds with kind words is, it may be, part of my poor skill as a healer of souls in my degree, and therefore do the young resort to father norman. some confessors there be who laugh within their hearts at these sorrows of lovers, as if they were mere "nugae" and featherweights: others there are who wax impatient, holding all love for sin in some degree, and forgetting that monseigneur st. peter himself was a married man, and doubtless had his own share of trouble and amorous annoy when he was winning the lady his wife, even as other men. but if i be of any avail (as they deem) in the healing of hearts, i owe my skill of that surgery to remembrance of the days of my youth, when i found none to give me comfort, save what i won from a book that my master had in hand to copy and adorn, namely, "the book of one hundred ballades, containing counsel to a knight, that he should love loyally"; this counsel offered by messire lyonnet de coismes, messire jehan de mailly, the sieur d'yvry, and many other good knights that were true lovers. verily, in sermons of preachers and lives of holy men i found no such comfort. almost the sorest time of my sorrowing was for very grief of heart when elliot set forth on pilgrimage to puy en velay, for we were but newly come together; "twain we were with one heart," as a maker sang whom once i met in france ere i came back to scotland; sweetly could he make, but was a young clerk of no godly counsel, and had to name maitre francoys villon. our heart was one, the heart of elliot and mine own, and lo! here, in a day, it was torn asunder and we were set apart by the wisdom of men. i remember me how i lay wakeful on the night before the day when elliot should depart. tossing and turning, i lay till the small fowls brake forth with their songs, and my own thought seemed to come and go, and come again in my head, like the "ritournelle" of the birds. at last i might not endure, but rose and attired myself very early, and so went down into the chamber. thither presently came elliot, feigning wonder to find me arisen, and making pretence that she was about her housewiferies, but well i wot that she might sleep no more than i. the old housewife coming and going through the room, there we devised, comforting each other with hopes and prayers; indeed we sorely wanted comfort, because never till we were wed, if ever that should be, might we have such solace of each other's presence as we desired. then i brought from the workshop a sheet of vellum and colours, and the painting tools, and so fashioned a little picture of her, to wear within the breast of my doublet. a rude thing it was and is, for what gold, however finely handled, could match with her golden hair, whereof, at my desire, she gave me a lock; and of all worldly gear from my secular life, these and the four links of my mother's chain alone are still mine, and where my heart is there is my treasure. and she, too, must clip a long curl of my hair, for as yet it was not cut "en ronde," as archers use to wear it, but when she came again, she said she would find me shrewdly shaven, and then would love me no longer. then she laughed and kissed me, and fell to comforting me for that she would not be long away. "and in three months or four," she said, "the king will be sacred at rheims, and the maid will give you red wine to drink in paris town, and the english will be swept into the sea, and then we shall have peace and abundance." "and then shall we be wedded, and never part," i cried; whereat she blushed, bidding me not be over bold, for her heart might yet change, and so laughed again; and thus we fleeted the time, till her father came and sent her about disposing such things as she must take with her. among these she was set on carrying her jackanapes, to make her merry on the road, though here i was of another counsel. for in so great a gathering there must be many gangrel folk, and among them, peradventure, the violer woman, who would desire to have the creature given back to her. but, if it were so, elliot said she would purchase the jackanapes, "for i am no lifter of other men's cattle, as all you scots are, and i am fain to own my jackanapes honestly." so she carried him with her, the light chain about her wrist, and he riding on her saddle-bow, for presently, with many banners waving and with singing of hymns, came the troop who wended together on pilgrimage. many townsfolk well armed were there to guard their women; the flags of all the crafts were on the wind; the priests carried blessed banners; so with this goodly company, and her confessor, and her father's old kinswoman, elliot rode away. the jackanapes was screeching on her saddle- bow, her yellow hair was lifted on her shoulder with the light breeze; her father rode the first two stages with them. merry enough they seemed that went, and the bells were chiming, but i was left alone, my heart empty, or only full of useless longings. i betook myself, therefore, to a chapel hard by, and there made my orisons for their safety and for good speed to the maid and her holy enterprise. thereafter there was no similitude for me and my unhappy estate, save that of a dog who has lost his master in a strange place, and goes questing everywhere, and comfortless. then randal rutherford, coming to visit me, found me such a lackmirth, he said, and my wits so distraught, that a love-sick wench were better company for a man-at-arms. "cheer up, man," he said. "look at me, did i not leave my heart at branxholme mains with mally grieve, and so in every town where i have been in garrison, and do you see me cast down? off with this green sickness, or never will you have strength to march with the maid, where there is wealth to be won, and golden coronets, and gaudy stones, such as saunders macausland took off the duke of clarence at bauge. faith, between the wound capdorat gave you and this arrow of dan cupid's in your heart, i believe you will not be of strength to carry arms till there is not a pockpudding left in broad france. come forth, and drain a pot or two of wine, or, if the leech forbids it, come, i will play you for all that is owing between you and me." with that he lugged out his dice and fetched a tablier, but presently vowed that it was plain robbery, for i could keep no count of the game. therewith he left me, laughing and mocking, and saying that i had been bolder with robin lindsay's lass. being alone and out of all comfort, i fell to wandering in the workroom, and there lit, to my solace, on that blessed book of the hundred ballades, which my master was adorning with pictures, and with scarlet, blue, and gold. it set forth how a young knight, in sorrow of love, was riding between pont de ce and angiers, and how other knights met him and gave him counsel. these lines i read, and getting them by rote, took them for my device, for they bid the lover thrust himself foremost in the press, and in breach, mine, and escalade. s'en assault viens, devant te lance, en mine, en eschielle, en tous lieux ou proesce les bons avance, ta dame t'en aimera mieux. but reading soon grew a weariness to me, as my life was, and my master coming home, bade me be of better cheer. "by st. andrew," quoth he, "this is no new malady of thine, but well known to leeches from of old, and never yet was it mortal! remede there is none, save to make ballades and rondels, and forget sorrow in hunting rhymes, if thou art a maker. thou art none? nay, nor ever was i, lad; but i have had this disease, and yet you see me whole and well. come, lend me a hand at painting in these lilies; it passes not thy skill." so i wrought some work whereof i have reason to be proud, for these lilies were carried wheresoever blows and honour were to be won, ay, and where few might follow them. meanwhile, my master devised with me about such sights as he had seen on the way, and how great a concourse was on pilgrimage to puy, and how, if prayers availed, the cause of france was won; "and yet, in england too, wives are praying for their lords, and lasses for their lads in france. but ours is the better quarrel." so that weary day went by, one of the longest that i have known, and other days, till now the leech said that i might go back to the castle, though that i might march to the wars he much misdoubted. among the archers i had the best of greetings, and all quarrels were laid by, for, as was said, we were to set forth to orleans, where would be blows enough to stay the greediest stomach. for now the maid had won all hearts, taking some with her piety, and others with her wit and knowledge, that confounded the doctors, how she, a simple wench, was so subtle in doctrine, which might not be but by inspiration. others, again, were moved by her mirth and good-fellowship, for she would strike a man-at- arms on the shoulder like a comrade, and her horsemanship and deftness with sword and lance bewitched others, she seeming as valiant and fair as these lady crusaders of whom old romances tell. and others, again, she gained by bourdes and jests; others by her manners, the fairest and most courtly that might be, for she, a manant's daughter, bore herself as an equal before the blood of france, and was right dear to the young bride of the fair duc d'alencon. yet was there about her such a grace of purity, as of one descended from the skies, that no man of them all was so hardy as to speak to her of love, or even so much as to think thereof in the secret of his heart. so all reported of her, and she had let write a letter to the english at orleans, bidding them yield to god and the maid, and begone to their own country, lest a worse thing befall them. at this letter they mocked, swearing that they would burn her heralds who carried the message. but the king had named her chief of war, and given her a household, with a good esquire, jean d'aulon, to govern it, and all that beseems noble or royal blood. new armour had been made for her, all of steel and silver, and there was talk of a sword that she had come by in no common way, but through revelation of the saints. for she being in tours had it revealed to her that a certain ancient sword, with five crosses on the blade, lay buried behind the altar of st. catherine of fierbois. an armourer of tours was therefore sent thither, and after much labour and search they of st. catherine's church found that sword, very ancient, and much bestained with rust. howbeit, they cleaned it and made for it a sheath of cloth of gold. nevertheless, the maid wore it in a leathern scabbard. chapter xi--how madame catherine of fierbois wrought a miracle for a scot, and how norman rode to the wars now, in this place i cannot withhold me from telling of an adventure which at this very time befell, though it scarce belongs to my present chronicle. but it may be that, in time to come, faith will wax cold, and the very saints be misdoubted of men. it therefore behoves me not to hold back the truth which i know, and which this tale makes plain and undeniable even by hussites, lollards, and other miscreants. for he who reads must be constrained to own that there is no strait so terrible but the saints can bring safely forth therefrom such men as call upon them. there came at this season to chinon from fierbois (where the maid's sword was found by miracle) a scottish archer, not aforetime of our company, though now he took service with us. he was named michael hamilton, and was a tall man and strong, grim of face, sudden in anger, heavy of hand, walked a little lame, and lacked one ear. that which follows he himself told to us and to our chaplain, father urquhart, and i myself have read it in the book of the miracles of madame st. catherine of fierbois. { } you must know that brittany, as at this time, held for the english, and michael hamilton had gone thither reiving and pillaging the country with a company of scots men-at-arms. hard by a place called clisson they had seized a deserted tower and held it for some days. it so fell out that they took a burgess of the country, who was playing the spy on their quarters; him they put to the torture, and so learned that the english were coming against them with a great company of men-at-arms and of the country folk, on that very night. they therefore delayed no longer than to hang the spy from a sufficient bough of a tree, this michael doing what was needful, and so were hurrying to horse, when, lo! the english were upon them. not having opportunity to reach the stables and mount, michael hamilton fled on foot, with what speed he might, but sorely impeded by the weight of his armour. the country folk, therefore, being light of foot, easily overtook him, and after slaying one and wounding more, he was caught in a noose of rope thrown over him from behind. now, even as he felt the noose tighten about his arms, he (though not commonly pious beyond the wont of men-at-arms) vowed in his heart to make a pilgrimage to fierbois, and to the shrine of madame st. catherine, if she would but aid him. and, indeed, he was ever a worshipper of st. catherine, she being the patroness of his own parish kirk, near bothwell. none the less, he was overcome and bound, whereon he that had thrown the noose, and was son of the spy whom michael had hanged, vowed that he would, with his own hands, hang michael. no ransom would this manant take, nor would he suffer michael, as a gentleman of blood and birth, to die by the sword. so hanged michael was; doubt not but it was done in the best manner, and there he was left hanging. now, that night of maundy thursday the cure of clisson was in his chamber and was about to go to bed. but as he made ready for bed he heard, from a corner of the chamber, a clear voice saying, "go forth and cut down the scots man-at-arms who was hanged, for he yet lives." the cure, thinking that he must be half asleep and dreaming, paid no manner of regard to these commands. thereon the voice, twice and thrice, spoke aloud, none save the cure being present, and said, "go forth and cut down the scots man-at-arms who was hanged, for he yet lives." it often so chances that men in religion are more hard of heart to believe than laymen and the simple. the cure, therefore, having made all due search, and found none living who could have uttered that voice, went not forth himself, but at noon of good friday, his service being done, he sent his sexton, as one used not to fear the sight and company of dead men. the sexton set out, whistling for joy of the slaying of the scot, but when he came back he was running as fast as he might, and scarce could speak for very fear. at the last they won from him that he had gone to the tree where the dead scot was hanging, and first had heard a faint rustle of the boughs. not affrighted, the sexton drew out a knife and slit one of michael's bare toes, for they had stripped him before they hanged him. at the touch of the knife the blood came, and the foot gave a kick, whereon the sexton hastened back with these tidings to the cure. the holy man, therefore, sending for such clergy as he could muster, went at their head, in all his robes canonical, to the wild wood, where they cut michael down and rubbed his body and poured wine into his throat, so that, at the end of half an hour, he sat up and said, "pay waiter hay the two testers that i owe him." thereon most ran and hid themselves, as if from a spirit of the dead, but the manant, he whose father michael had hanged, made at him with a sword, and dealt him a great blow, cutting off his ear. but others who had not fled, and chiefly the cure, held the manant till his hands were bound, that he might not slay one so favoured of madame st. catherine. not that they knew of michael's vow, but it was plain to the cure that the man was under the protection of heaven. michael then, being kindly nursed in a house of a certain abbess, was wellnigh recovered, and his vow wholly forgotten, when lo! he being alone, one invisible smote his cheek, so that the room rang with the buffet, and a voice said to him, "wilt thou never remember thy pilgrimage?" moved, therefore, to repentance, he stole the cure's horse, and so, journeying by night till he reached france, he accomplished his vows, and was now returned to chinon. this michael hamilton was hanged, not very long afterwards, by command of the duc d'alencon, for plundering a church at jargeau. the story i have thought it behoved me to tell in this place, because it shows how good and mild is madame st. catherine of fierbois, also lest memory of it be lost in scotland, where it cannot but be of great comfort to all gentlemen of michael's kin and of the name and house of hamilton. again, i tell it because i heard it at this very season of my waiting to be recovered of my wound. moreover, it is a tale of much edification to men-at-arms, as proving how ready are the saints to befriend us, even by speaking as it were with human voices to sinful men. of this i myself, later, had good proof, as shall be told, wherefore i praise and thank the glorious virgin, madame st. catherine of fierbois. this tale was the common talk in chinon, which i heard very gladly, taking pleasure in the strangeness of it. and in the good fortune of the maid i was yet more joyful, both for her own sake and for elliot's, to whom she was so dear. but, for my own part, the leeches gave me little comfort, saying that i might in no manner set forth with the rest, for that i could not endure to march on foot, but must die by the way. poor comfort was this for me, who must linger in garrison while the fortune of france was on the cast of the dice, and my own fortune was to be made now or never. so it chanced that one day i was loitering in the gateway, watching the soldiers, who were burnishing armour, sharpening swords, and all as merry and busy as bees in spring. then to me comes my master, with a glad countenance, and glad was i, for these eight days or nine i had no tidings of him, and knew not if elliot had returned from pilgrimage. i rose to greet him, and he took my hand, bidding me be of good cheer, for that he had good tidings. but what his news might be he would not tell me; i must come with him, he said, to his house. all about his door there was much concourse of people, and among them two archers led a great black charger, fairly caparisoned, and covered with a rich silk hucque of colour cramoisie, adorned with lilies of silver. as i marvelled who the rider might be, conceiving that he was some great lord, the door of my master's house opened, and there, within, and plain to view, was elliot embracing a young knight; and over his silver armour fell her yellow hair, covering gorget and rere-brace. then my heart stood still, my lips opened but gave no cry, when, lo! the knight kissed her and came forth, all in shining armour, but unhelmeted. then i saw that this was no knight, but the maid herself, boden in effeir of war, { } and so changed from what she had been that she seemed a thing divine. if st. michael had stepped down from a church window, leaving the dragon slain, he would have looked no otherwise than she, all gleaming with steel, and with grey eyes full of promise of victory: the holy sword girdled about her, and a little battle-axe hanging from her saddle-girth. she sprang on her steed, from the mounting-stone beside the door, and so, waving her hand, she cried farewell to elliot, that stood gazing after her with shining eyes. the people went after the maid some way, shouting noel! and striving to kiss her stirrup, the archers laughing, meanwhile, and bidding them yield way. and so we came, humbly enough, into the house, where, her father being present and laughing and the door shut, elliot threw her arms about me and wept and smiled on my breast. "ah, now i must lose you again," she said; whereat i was half glad that she prized me so; half sorry, for that i knew i might not go forth with the host. this ill news i gave them both, we now sitting quietly in the great chamber. "nay, thou shalt go," said elliot. "is it not so, father? for the maid gave her promise ere she went to poictiers, and now she is fulfilling it. for the gentle king has given her a household--pages, and a maitre d'hotel, a good esquire, and these two gentlemen who rode with her from vaucouleurs, and an almoner, brother jean pasquerel, an augustine, that the maid's mother sent with us from puy, for we found her there. and the maid has appointed you to go with her, for that you took her part when men reviled her. and money she has craved from the king; and messire aymar de puiseux, that was your adversary, is to give you a good horse, for that you may not walk. and, above all, the maid has declared to me that she will bring you back to us unscathed of sword, but, for herself, she shall be wounded by an arrow under orleans, yet shall she not die, but be healed of that wound, and shall lead the king to his sacring at rheims. so now, verily, for you i have no fear, but my heart is sore for the maid's sake, and her wound." none the less, she made as if she would dance for joy, and i could have done as much, not, indeed, that as then i put my faith in prophecies, but for gladness that i was to take my fortune in the wars. so the hours passed in great mirth and good cheer. many things we spoke of, as concerning the mother of the maid--how wise she was, yet in a kind of amazement, and not free from fear, wherefore she prayed constantly for her child. moreover elliot told me that the jackanapes was now hers of right, for that the woman, its owner, had been at puy, but without her man, and had sold it to her, as to a good mistress, yet with tears at parting. this news was none of the gladdest to me, for still i feared that tidings of us might come to brother thomas. howbeit, at last, with a light heart, though i was leaving elliot, i went back to the castle. there aymar de puiseux, meeting me, made me the best countenance, and gave me a right good horse, that i named capdorat after him, by his good will. and for my armour, which must needs be light, they gave me a maillet--a coat of slender mail, which did not gall my old wound. so accoutred, i departed next day, in good company, to blois, whence the maid was to set forth to orleans. marvel it was to find the road so full of bestial--oxen, cows, sheep, and swine--all gathered, as if to some great market, for the victualling of orleans. but how they were to be got through the english lines into the city men knew not. for the english, by this time, had girdled the city all about with great bastilles, each joined to other by sunken ways dug in the earth, wherein were streets, and marts, and chambers with fires and chimneys, as i have written in my latin chronicle. { } there false frenchmen came, as to a fair, selling and buying, with store of food, wine, arms, and things of price, buying and selling in safety, for the cannon and couleuvrines in the town could not touch them. but a word ran through the host how the maid knew, by inspiration of the saints, that no man should sally forth from among the english, but that we should all pass unharmed. meantime the town of blois was in great turmoil--the cattle lowing in the streets, the churches full to the doors of men-at-arms, waiting their turn to be shrived, for the maid had ordained that all who followed her must go clean of sin. and there was great wailing of light o' loves, and leaguer lasses that had followed the army, as is custom, for this custom the maid did away, and drove these women forth, and whither they wandered i know not. moreover, she made proclamation that all dice, and tabliers, and instruments of gambling must be burned, and myself saw the great pile yet smoking in the public place, for this was to be a holy war. so we lodged at blois, where the maid showed me the best countenance, speaking favourable words of elliot and me, and bidding me keep near her banner in battle, which i needed no telling to make me resolve to do. so there, for that night, we rested. chapter xii--how the maid came to orleans, and of the dolorous stroke that first she struck in war concerning the ways of the saints, and their holy counsel, it is not for sinful men to debate, but verify their ways are not as our ways, as shall presently be shown, in the matter of the maid's march to orleans. for the town of blois, where now we lay, is, as all men know, on the right bank of the water of loire, a great river, wider and deeper and stronger by far than our tay or tweed, and the town of orleans, whither we were bound, is also on the same side, namely, the right side of the river. now, orleans was beleaguered in this manner: the great stone bridge had been guarded, on the left, or further side of the stream, first by a boulevard, or strong keep on the land, whence by a drawbridge men crossed to a yet stronger keep, called "les tourelles," builded on the last arches of the bridge. but early in the siege the english had taken from them of orleans the boulevard and les tourelles, and an arch of the bridge had been broken, so that in nowise might men-at-arms of the party of france enter into orleans by way of that bridge from the left bank through the country called sologne. yet that keep, les tourelles, had not been a lucky prize to our enemies of england. for their great captain, the lord salisbury, had a custom to watch them of orleans and their artillery from a window in that tower, and, to guard him from arrow-shots, he had a golden shield pierced with little holes to look through, that he held before his face. one day he came into this turret when they who worked the guns in orleans were all at their meat. but it so chanced that two boys, playing truant from school, went into a niche of the wall, where was a cannon loaded and aimed at les tourelles. they, seeing the gleam of the golden shield at the window of the turret, set match to the touch-hole of the cannon, and, as heaven would have it, the ball struck a splinter of stone from the side of the window, which, breaking through the golden shield, slew my lord of salisbury, a good knight. thus plainly that tower was to be of little comfort to the english. none the less, as they held les tourelles and the outer landward boulevard thereof, the english built but few works on the left side of the river, namely, champ st. prive, that guarded the road by the left bank from blois; les augustins, that was a little inland from the boulevard of les tourelles, so that no enemy might pass between these two holds; and st. jean le blanc, that was higher up the river, and a hold of no great strength. on the orleans side, to guard the road from burgundy, the english had but one fort, st. loup, for burgundy and the north were of their part, and by this way they expected no enemy. but all about orleans, on the right bank of the river, to keep the path from blois on that hand, the english had builded many great bastilles, and had joined them by hollow ways, wherein, as i said, they lived at ease, as men in a secure city underground. and the skill of it was to stop convoys of food, and starve them of orleans, for to take the town by open force the english might in nowise avail, they being but some four thousand men-at- arms. thus matters stood, and it was the maid's mind to march her men and all the cattle clean through and past the english bastilles on the right side of the river, and by inspiration she well knew that no man would come forth against us. moreover, she saw not how, by the other way, and the left bank, the cattle might be ferried across, and the great company of men-at-arms, into orleans town, under the artillery of the english. for the english held the pass of the broken bridge, as i said, and therefore all crossing of the water must be by boat. now, herein it was shown, as often again, that the ways of the saints are not as our ways. for the captains, namely, the sieur de rais (who afterwards came to the worst end a man might), and la hire, and ambroise de lore, and de gaucourt, in concert with the bastard of orleans, then commanding for the king in that town, gave the simple maid to understand that orleans was on the left bank of the river. this they did, because they were faithless and slow of belief, and feared that so great a company as ours might in nowise pass meun and beaugency, towns of the english, and convey so many cattle through the bastilles on the right bank. therefore, with many priests going before, singing the veni creator, with holy banners as on a pilgrimage; with men-at-arms, archers, pages, and trains of carts; and with bullocks rowting beneath the goad, and swine that are very hard to drive, and slow-footed sheep, we all crossed the bridge of blois on the morning of april th. now, had the holy saints deemed it wise and for our good to act as men do, verily they would have spoken to the maid, telling her that we were all going clean contrary to her counsel. nevertheless, the saints held their peace, and let us march on. belike they designed that this should turn to the greater glory of the maid and to the confusion of them that disbelieved, which presently befell, as i shall relate. all one day of spring we rode, and slept beneath the stars, the maid lying in her armour, so that as one later told me who knew, namely, elliot, her body was sorely bruised with her harness. early in the morning we mounted again, and so rode north, fetching a compass inland; after noontide we came to a height, and lo! beneath us lay the english bastilles and holds on the left bank, and, beyond the glittering river and the broken bridge, the towers and walls of orleans. then i saw the maid in anger, for well she knew that she had been deceived by them who should have guided her. between us and the town of orleans lay the wide river, the broken bridge, and the camps of the english. on the further shore we beheld the people swarming on the walls and quays, labouring to launch boats with sails, and so purposing to ascend the river against the stream and meet us two leagues beyond the english lines. but this they might not do, for a strong wind was blowing down stream, and all their vessels were in disarray. the maid spurred to the front, where were de rais, lore, kennedy, and la hire. we could see her pointing with her staff, and hear speech high and angry, but the words we could not hear. the captains looked downcast, as children caught in a fault, and well they might, for we were now as far off victualling orleans as ever we had been. the maid pointed to the english keep at st. jean le blanc, on our side of the water, and, as it seems, was fain to attack it; but the english had drawn off their men to the stronger places on the bridge, and to hold st. jean le blanc against them, if we took it, we had no strength. so we even wended, from the height of olivet, for six long miles, till we reached the stream opposite checy, where was an island. a rowing-boat, with a knight in glittering arms, was pulled across the stream, and the maid, in her eagerness, spurred her steed deep into the water to meet him. he was a young man, brown of visage, hardy and fierce, and on his shield bore the lilies of orleans, crossed with a baton sinister. he bowed low to the maid, who cried-- "are you the bastard of orleans?" "i am," he said, "and right glad of your coming." "was it you who gave counsel that i should come by this bank, and not by the other side, and so straight against talbot and the english?" she spoke as a master to a faulty groom, fierce and high, and to hear her was marvel. "i, and wiser men than i, gave that counsel," said he, "deeming this course the surer." "nom dieu!" she cried. "the council of messire is safer and wiser than yours." she pointed to the rude stream, running rough and strong, a great gale following with it, so that no sailing-boats might come from the town. "you thought to beguile me, and are yourselves beguiled, for i bring you better succour than ever came to knight or town--the help of the king of heaven." then, even as she spoke, and as by miracle, that fierce wind went right about, and blew straight up the stream, and the sails of the vessels filled. "this is the work of our lord," said the bastard of orleans, crossing himself: and the anger passed from the eyes of the maid. then he and nicole de giresme prayed her to pass the stream with them, and to let her host march back to blois and so come to orleans, crossing by the bridge of blois. to this she said nay, that she could not leave her men out of her sight, lest they fell to sin again, and all her pains were lost. but, with many prayers, her confessor pasquerel joining in them, she was brought to consent. so the host, with priests and banners, must set forth again to blois, while the maid, and we that were of her company, crossed the river in boats, and so rode towards the town. on this way (the same is a road of the old romans) the english held a strong fort, called st. loup, and well might they have sallied forth against us. but the people of orleans, who ever bore themselves more hardily than any townsfolk whom i have known, made an onfall against st. loup, that the english within might not sally out against us, where was fierce fighting, and they took a standard from the english. so, at nightfall, the maid, with the bastard and other captains at her side, rode into the town, all the people welcoming her with torches in hand, shouting noel! as to a king, throwing flowers before her horse's feet, and pressing to touch her, or even the harness of her horse, which leaped and plunged, for the fire of a torch caught the fringe of her banner. lightly she spurred and turned him, and lightly she caught at the flame with her hand and quenched it, while all men marvelled at her grace and goodly bearing. never saw i more joy of heart, for whereas all had feared to fall into the hands of the english, now there was such courage in them, as if monseigneur st. michael himself, or monseigneur st aignan, had come down from heaven to help his good town. if they were hardy before, as indeed they were, now plainly they were full of such might and fury that man might not stand against them. and soon it was plain that no less fear had fallen on the english. but the maid, with us who followed her, was led right through the great street of orleans, from the burgundy gate to the gate regnart, whereby the fighting was ever most fell, and there we lodged in the house of the treasurer of the duke of orleans, jacquet boucher. never was sleep sweeter to me, after the two weary marches, and the sounds of music and revelry in the street did not hum a moment in my ears, before i had passed into that blessed world of slumber without a dream. but my waking next day brought instantly the thought of my brother robin, concerning whom i had ever feared that he fell with the flower of scotland, when the comte de clermont deserted us so shamefully on the day of the battle of the herrings. no sooner did this doubt come into my mind, than i leaped from my bed, attired myself, and went forth to the quarters of the scots under sir christian chambers. little need i had to tell my errand, for they that met me guessed who i was, because, indeed, robin and i favoured each other greatly in face and bodily presence. it was even as i had deemed: my dear brother and friend and tutor of old days had died, charging back upon the english who pursued us, and fighting by the side of pothon de xaintrailles. all that day, and in the week which followed, my thought was ever upon him; a look in a stranger's face, a word on another's lips, by some magic of the mind would bring my brother almost visibly before me, ay, among the noise of swords on mail, and the screaming of arrows, and of great cannon-balls. if i heard ill news, it was no more than i looked for; but better news, as it seemed, i also heard, though, in my sorrow, i marked it little. for the soldiers were lamenting the loss of their famed gunner, not john the lorrainer, but one who had come to them, they said, now some weeks agone, in the guise of a cordelier, though he did not fight in that garb, but in common attire, and ever wore his vizor down, which men deemed strange. whither he had gone, or how disappeared, they knew not, for he had not been with those who yesterday attacked st. loup. "he could never thole the thought of the blessed maid," said allan rutherford, "but would tell all that listened how she was a brain-sick wench, or a witch, and under her standard he would never fight. he even avowed to us that she had been a chamber-wench of an inn in neufchateau, and there had learned to back a horse, and many a worse trick," which was a lie devised by the english and them of burgundy. but, go where he would, or how he would, i deemed it well that brother thomas and i (for of a surety it was brother thomas) were not to meet in orleans. concerning the english in this wonderful adventure of the siege, i have never comprehended, nor do i now know, wherefore they bore them as they did. that they sallied not out on the trains which the maid led and brought into the town, a man might set down to mere cowardice and faint heart--they fearing to fight against a witch, as they deemed her. in later battles, when she had won so many a victory, they may well have feared her. but, as now, they showed no dread where honour was to be won, but rather pride and disdain. on this very saturday, the morrow of our arrival, la hire, with florent d'illiers and many other knights, pushed forth a matter of two bowshots from the city walls, and took a keep that they thought to have burned. they were very hardy men, and being comforted by the maid's coming, were full of courage and goodwill; yet the english rallied and drove them back, with much firing of guns, and now first i heard the din of war and saw the great stone balls fly, scattering, as they fell, into splinters that screamed in the air, with a very terrible sound. truly the english had the better of that fray, and were no whit adread, for at sunset the maid sent them two heralds, bidding them begone; yet they answered only that they would burn her for a witch, and called her a ribaulde, or loose wench, and bade her go back and keep her kine. i was with her when this message came, and her brows met and her eyes flashed with anger. telling us of her company to follow, she went to the fair cross on the bridge, where now her image stands, fashioned in bronze, kneeling before the cross, with the king kneeling opposite. there she stood and cried aloud to the english, who were in the fort on the other side of the bridge that is called les tourelles, and her voice rang across the water like a trumpet, so that it was marvel. then came out on to the bridge a great knight and a tall, sir william glasdale; no bigger man have i seen, and i bethought me of goliath in holy scripture. he spoke in a loud, north-country voice, and, whereas she addressed him courteously, as she did all men, he called her by the worst of names, mocking at her for a ribaulde. she made answer that he lied, and that he should die in four days' time or five, without stroke of sword; and so, waving her hand haughtily, turned and went back. but i, who walked close by her, noted that she wept like any girl at his evil and lying accusations. next day was sunday, and no stroke was struck, but the bastard of orleans set forth to bring back the army from blois. and on monday the maid rode out and under the very walls of the english keeps, the townsfolk running by her rein, as if secure in her company; yet no man came forth against them, which was marvel. and on the wednesday, the maid, with many knights, rode forth two leagues, and met the bastard of orleans and all the array from blois, and all the flocks and herds that were sent to orleans by the good towns. right beneath the forts of the english they rode and marched, with chanting of hymns, priests leading the way, but none dared meddle with them. yet a child might have seen that now or never was the chance: howbeit talbot and glasdale and scales, men well learned in war, let fire not even a single cannon. it may be that they feared an attack of the orleans folk on their bastilles, if they drew out their men. for, to tell the plain truth, the english had not men-at-arms enough for the task they took in hand; but they oft achieve much with but little force, and so presume the more, sometimes to their undoing. and, till the maid came, ten of them could chase a hundred of the french. so the maid returned, leading the army, and then, being very weary, she went into her chamber, and lay down on a couch to sleep, her esquire, d'aulon, also resting in the room, where were the lady and a daughter of the house, one charlotte boucher. there was i, devising idly with her page, louis de coutes, a boy half scots by birth, and good-brother to messire florent d'illiers, who had married his sister. but alas! he was more french than scots, and later he left the maid. but then we were playing ourselves at the door of the house, and all was still, the men-at- arms reposing, as we deemed, after their march. then suddenly the maid ran forth to us, her face white and her eyes shining, and cried to louis de coutes, in great anger-- "wretched boy, the blood of france is being shed, and you told me no word of it!" "demoiselle," said he, trembling, "i wotted not of it. what mean you?" and i also stood in amaze, for we had heard no sound of arms. "go, fetch my horse," she said, and was gone. i went with him, and we saddled and bridled a fresh courser speedily; but when we reached the door, she stood there already armed, and sprang on the horse, crying for her banner, that de coutes gave her out of the upper window. then her spurs were in her horse's side, and the sparks flying from beneath his hoofs, as she galloped towards st. loup, the english fort on the burgundy road. thither we followed her, with what speed we might, yet over tardily; and when we came through crowds of people, many bearing the wounded on litters, there was she, under the wall of that fort, in a rain of arrows, holding up her banner, and crying on the french and scots to the charge. they answered with a cry, and went on, de coutes and i pressing forward to be with them; but ere ever we could gain the fosse, the english had been overwhelmed, and, for the more part, slain. for, as we found, the french captains had commanded an attack on st. loup, and had told the maid no word of it, whether as desiring to win honour without her, or to spare her from the peril of the onslaught, i know not. but their men were giving ground, when by the monition of the saints, as i have shown, she came to them and turned the fray. of the english, as i said, most were slain, natheless certain men in priests' raiment came forth from the church of st. loup, and very humbly begged their lives of the maid, who, turning to d'aulon, her esquire, bade him, with de coutes and me, and such men as we could gather, to have charge of them and be answerable for them. so, while the french were plundering, we mustered these priests orderly together, they trembling and telling their beads, and we stood before them for their guard. false priests, i doubt, many of them were, englishmen who had hastily done on such holy robes as they found in the church of st loup. now louis de coutes, being but a boy, and of a mad humour, cried-- "'cucullus non facit monachum!' good sirs, let us see your reverend tonsures." with that he twitched the hood from the head of a tall cordelier, who, without more ado, felled him to the earth with his fist. the hood was off but for a flash of time, yet i saw well the shining wolf's eyes and the long dark face of brother thomas. so, in the pictures of the romance of renard fox, have i seen isengrim the wolf in the friar's hood. "felon and traitor!" i cried, and drawing my sword, was about to run him through the body, when my hand was stunned by a stroke, and the sword dropped from it. i turned, in great anger, and saw the maid, her sword in her hand, wherewith she had smitten me flatlings, and not with the edge. "knave of a scot," she cried, "wouldst thou strike a holy man and my prisoner? verily they say well that the scots are all savages. begone home, till i speak with the captains about thy case! and for these holy men," she said to d'aulon, in a soft voice, "see that they are safely housed and ministered to in the church of monseigneur st. aignan." with that i shrank back like a beaten hound, and saw the maid no more that night, as fearing her wrath. so was i adread and out of all comfort. but, when first i might, i sought d'aulon and told him all the tale of brother thomas, and all the evil i knew of him, as well as i could, and i showed him wherefore i had sought to slay the man, as forsworn and a traitor, who had manifestly fled to the english, being by his doggish nature the enemy of the maid. i so wrought with him, though he was weary, and would scarce listen to my tale, that he promised to speak for me to the maid, without whom i was a man lost. moreover, he swore that, as early as might be, he would visit the church of st. aignan, and there examine into the matter of this cordelier, whom some knew, and could testify against, if he was my man. no more could i do that night, but next morning d'aulon awoke me a little after dawn. "it is a true tale," he said, "and worse than i deemed, for your bird has flown! last night he so spoke with me in the church when i lodged him there, that i reckoned him a simple man and a pious. but he has vanished from among his brethren, none knows how or whither." "the devil, his master, knows," i said. "faith, he has a shrewd care of his own. but this, i misdoubt me, is the beginning of evil to us and to the maid." "a knave more or less is of little count in the world," said he; "but now i must make your peace with the maid, for she speaks of no less than sending you forth from her household." his promise he kept so well--for he was a very honourable man, as any in france--that the maid sent for me and showed me the best countenance, even begging my pardon with all sweetness, and in so fair a manner that i could have wept. "it was my first blow in war," she said, smiling kindly, as was her manner, "and i hope to strike no more as with my own hand, wherefore i carry my banner to avoid the slaying of men. but verily i deemed that you were about stabbing my prisoner, and him a priest. belike we shall hear no more of him, and i misdoubt that he is no true son of holy church. to-day let me see you bear yourself as boldly against armed men, that i may report well of you to your lady and my friend." therewith she held out her hands and took mine, as frankly as does one brother in arms with another. and i kissed her hand, and kept my tears in my own heart. but no deadlier blow for france and for herself was ever dealt than when the maid struck down my sword, that was thirsting for the blood of brother thomas, and was within an inch of his throat. often have i marvelled how the saints, who, as then, guarded her, gave her no warning, as they did of the onslaught on st. loup; but it might not be, or it was not their will, to which we must humbly submit ourselves. and now i think i see that wolf's face, under the hood, with anger and fear in the ominous eyes. in the church of st. loup we found him, and he was a wolf of the holy places. none the less, the words of the maid brought more keenly to my mind the thought of elliot, whom in these crowded hours, between my sorrow and anger, and fear of the maid's wrath, i had to some degree forgotten. they were now ordering an onslaught on a post of the english beyond the river, and there came into my heart that verse of the "book of a hundred ballades": how a lover must press into breach, and mine, and escalade to win advancement and his lady's favour; and i swore within myself that to-day i would be among the foremost. chapter xiii--of the fighting at les augustins and the prophecy of the maid just above the broken bridge of orleans there is a broad island, lying very near the opposite shore, with a narrow, swift passage of water between bank and island. some two furlongs higher up the river, and on the further bank, the english had built a small fort, named st. jean le blanc, to guard the road, and thither they sent men from les augustins. the plan of our captains was to cross by boats on to the island, and thence by a bridge of planks laid on boats to win over the narrow channel, and so make an onslaught on st. jean le blanc. for this onslaught the maid had now been armed by her women, and with all her company, and many knights, was making ready to cross. but before she, or we with her, could attain the shore, horses being ill beasts in a boat ferry, the light-armed townsfolk had crossed over against st. jean le blanc to spy on it, and had found the keep empty, for the english had drawn back their men to the bastille of les augustins. thus there was no more to do, for the captains deemed not that we were of any avail to attack les augustins. they were retreating then to the bridge of boats, and messires de gaucourt, de villars, and other good knights were guarding the retreat, all orderly, lest the english might sally out from les augustins, and, taking us in the rear, might slay many in the confusion of crossing the boat-bridge, when the maid and la hire, by great dint of toil, passed their horses in a ferry-boat on to the further bank. at this moment the english sallied forth, with loud cries, from les augustins, and were falling on our men, who, fearing to be cut off, began to flee disorderly, while the english called out ill words, as "cowards" and "ribaulds," and were blaspheming god that he should damn all frenchmen. hereon the maid, with her banner, and la hire, with lance in rest, they two alone, spurred into the press, and now her banner was tossing like the flag of a ship in the breakers, and methought there was great jeopardy lest they should be taken. but the other french and scots, perceiving the banner in such a peril, turned again from their flight, and men who once turn back to blows again are ill to deal with. striking, then, and crying, montjoie! st. denis! and st. andrew for scotland! they made the english give ground, till they were within the palisade of les augustins, where they deemed them safe enough. now i had struggled through the throng on the island, some flying, some advancing, as each man's heart bade him, till i leaped into the water up to my waist and won the land. there i was running to the front of the fight when d'aulon would have stopped me, for he had a command to hold a certain narrow way, lest the english should drive us to the water again. all this was rightly done, but i, hearing the cry of st. andrew, was as one possessed, and paying no heed to d'aulon, was for thrusting me forward, when a certain spaniard, alphonse de partada, caught me by the arm, and told me, with an oath, that i might well bide where better men than i were content to be. at this i made answer that my place was with the maid, and, as for better men, bigger he might well be, but i, for one, was not content to look on idly where blows were being dealt. he answered in such terms that i bade him follow me, and see which of us would fare furthest into the press. "and for that you may be swifter of foot than i, as you have longer legs," i cried, "clasp hands on this bargain, and let us reach the palisades with the same step." to this he agreed, and d'aulon not refusing permission (for he loved to look on a vaillance), we, clasping hands, ran together swiftly, and struck our swords in the same moment against the wooden fence. a little opening there was, not yet closed, or he that kept it deemed he might win more honour by holding it with his body. he was a great knight and tall, well armed, the red cross of st. george on his breast, and he fought with a mighty sword. together, then, we made at him, two to one, as needs must be, for this was no gentle passage of arms, but open battle. one sweep of his sword i made shift to avoid, but the next lighting on my salade, drove me staggering back for more yards than two or three, and i reeled and fell on my hands. when i rose, alphonse de partada was falling beneath a sword-stroke, and i was for running forward again; but lo! the great english knight leaped in the air, and so, turning, fell on his face, his hands grasping at the ground and his feet kicking. later i heard from d'aulon that he had bidden john the lorrainer mark the man with his couleuvrine, for that he did overmuch mischief. but, thinking of nought save to be foremost in the breach, i ran in, stumbling over the dead man's body, and shouldered at the same time by alphonse, who warded off a stab of a pike that was dealt at me. then it was a fair mellay, our men pressing after us through the gap, and driving us forward by mere weight of onset, they coming with all speed against our enemies that ran together from all parts of the keep, and so left bare the further wall. it was body to body, weight against weight, short strokes at close quarters, and, over our heads, bills striking and foining at the english. each man smote where he could; we wavered and swayed, now off our feet in the press, now making some yard of ground, and evil was the smell and thick the dust that arose. meanwhile came the sound of the riving of planks from the other side of the palisade; above the steel points and the dust i saw the maid's pennon advancing with the face of my lady painted thereon, and i pressed towards it, crying "st. andrew" with such breath as was in me. then rang out the maid's voice, like a clarion, "st. denis!" and so, stroke echoing stroke, and daggers going at close quarters, beaten on and blinded, deaf and breathless, now up, now down, we staggered forward, till i and the maid stood side by side, and the english broke, some falling, some flying to the out-gate. and, when all was done, there was i, knowing little enough of what had come and gone, dazed, with my sword bloody and bent, my head humming, and my foot on the breast of an english knight, one robert heron. him i took to prisoner, rescue or no rescue, and so sat we down, very weary, in the midst of blood and broken arms, for many had been slain and a few taken, though the more part had fled into the boulevard of les tourelles. and here, with a joyous face, and the vizor of her helm raised, stood the maid, her sword sheathed, waving her banner in the sight of the english that were on the bridge fort. natheless, her joy was but for a moment, and soon was she seated lowly on the ground, holding in her arms the head of an english knight, sore wounded, for whom her confessor, father pasquerel, was doing the offices of religion. tears were running down her cheeks, even as if he had been one of her own people; and so, comforting and helping the wounded as she might, she abode till the darkness came, and the captains had made shift to repair the fortress and had set guards all orderly. and all the river was dark with boats coming and going, their lanterns glittering on the stream, and they were laden with food and munitions of war. in one of these boats did the maid cross the river, taking with her us of her company, and speaking to me, above others, in the most gracious manner, for that i had been the first, with that spanish gentleman, to pass within the english palisade. and now my heart was light, though my flesh was very weary, for that i had done my devoir, and taken the firstfruits of elliot's wedding portion. no heavy ransom i put on that knight, sir robert heron, and it was honourably paid in no long time, though he ill liked yielding him to one that had not gained his spurs. but it was fortune of war. so, half in a dream, we reached our house, and there was the greatest concourse of townsfolk clamouring in the praise of the maid, who showed herself to them from the window, and promised that to-morrow they should take les tourelles. that night was friday, yet, so worn were we all that the maid bade us sup, and herself took some meat and a little wine in her water, though commonly she fasted on friday. and now we were about to boun us for bed, and the maid had risen, and was standing with her arms passed about the neck of the daughter of the house, a fair lass and merry, called charlotte boucher, who always lay with her (for she had great joy to be with girls of her own age), when there came the sound of a dagger-hilt beating at the door. we opened, and there stood a tall knight, who louted low to the maid, cap in hand, and she bade him drink to the taking of les tourelles that should be to-morrow. but he, with the flagon full in his hands, and withal a thirsty look upon his face, shook his head. "to another pledge, maiden, i will gladly drink, namely, to the bravest damsel under the sky." and therewith he drank deep. "but now i am sent from gaucourt, and the bastard, for all the captains are in counsel again. and they bid me tell you that enough hath been done, and they are right well content. but we are few against so great a host, in a place so strong that men may not avail to master it by main force. the city is now well seen in all manner of victual; moreover, we can now come and go by sologne and the left bank. the skill is therefore to hold the city till the english wax weary and depart, or till we have succour anew from the king. therefore to-morrow the men-at-arms shall take rest, having great need thereof; and therefore, gentle maid, pardon me that i drank not to the pledge which a lady called." then he drained the flagon. the maid, holding the girl charlotte yet closer to her, smote her right hand on the table, so that it dirled, and the cups and dishes leaped. "you have been with your counsel," she cried, "and i have been with mine! the counsel of messire will stand fast and prevail, and yours shall perish, for it is of men. go back, and bear my words to the captains," quoth she; and then, turning to us, who looked on her in amazement, she said-- "do ye all rise right early, and more than ye have done to-day shall ye do. keep ever close by me in the mellay, for to-morrow i shall have much to do, and more than ever yet i did. and to-morrow shall my blood leap from my body, above my breast, for an arrow shall smite here!" and she struck the place with her hand. thereon the knight, seeing that she was not to be moved, made his obeisance, and went back to them that sent him, and all we lay down to sleep while we might. these words of the maid i, norman leslie, heard, and bear record that they are true. chapter xiv--of the fighting at the bridge, and of the prize won by norman leslie from the river on that night i slept soft, and woke oft, being utterly foredone. in the grey dawn i awoke, and gave a little cough, when, lo! there came a hot sweet gush into my mouth, and going to the window, i saw that i was spitting of blood, belike from my old wound. it is a strange thing that, therewith, a sickness came over me, and a cold fit as of fear, though fear i had felt none where men met in heat of arms. none the less, seeing that to-day, or never, i was to be made or marred, i spoke of the matter neither to man nor woman, but drinking a long draught of very cold water, i spat some deal more, and then it stanched, and i armed me and sat down on my bed. my thoughts, as i waited for the first stir in the house, were not glad. birds were singing in the garden trees; all else was quiet, as if men were not waking to slay each other and pass unconfessed to their account. there came on me a great sickness of war. yesterday the boulevard of les augustins, when the fight was over, had been a shambles; white bodies that had been stripped of their armour lay here and there like sheep on a hillside, and were now smirched with dust, a thing unseemly. i put it to myself that i was engaged, if ever man was, in a righteous quarrel, fighting against cruel oppression; and i was under the protection of one sent, as i verily believed, by heaven. but blood runs tardy in the cold dawn; my thoughts were chilled, and i deemed, to speak sooth, that i carried my death within me, from my old wound, and, even if unhurt, could scarce escape out of that day's labour and live. i said farewell to life and the sun, in my own mind, and to elliot, thinking of whom, with what tenderness she had nursed me, and of her mirth and pitiful heart, i could scarce forbear from weeping. of my brother also i thought, and in death it seemed to me that we could scarcely be divided. then my thought went back to old days of childhood at pitcullo, old wanderings by eden banks, old kindness and old quarrels, and i seemed to see a vision of a great tree, growing alone out of a little mound, by my father's door, where robin and i would play "willie wastle in his castle," for that was our first manner of holding a siege. a man-at-arms has little to make with such fancies, and well i wot that randal rutherford troubled himself therewith in no manner. but now there came an iron footstep on the stairs, and the maid's voice rang clear, and presently there arose the sound of hammers on rivets, and all the din of men saddling horses and sharpening swords, so i went forth to join my company. stiff and sore was i, and felt as if i could scarce raise my sword-arm; but the sight of the maid, all gleaming in her harness, and clear of voice, and swift of deed, like st. michael when he marshalled his angels against the enemies of heaven, drove my brooding thoughts clean out of mind. the sun shone yellow and slanting down the streets; out of the shadow of the minster came the bells, ringing for war. the armed townsfolk thronged the ways, and one man, old and ill-clad, brought to the maid a great fish which he had caught overnight in the loire. our host prayed her to wait till it should be cooked, that she might breakfast well, for she had much to do. yet she, who scarce seemed to live by earthly meat, but by the will of god, took only a sop of bread dipped in wine, and gaily leaping to her selle and gathering the reins, as a lady bound for a hunting where no fear was, she cried, "keep the fish for supper, when i will bring back a goddon { } prisoner to eat his part. and to-night, gentle sir, my host, i will return by the bridge!"--which, as we deemed, might in no manner be, for an arch of the bridge was broken. thereon we all mounted, and rode down to the burgundy gate, the women watching us, and casting flowers before the maiden. but when we won the gate, behold, it was locked, and two ranks of men-at-arms, with lances levelled, wearing the colours of the sieur de gaucourt, were drawn up before it. that lord himself, in harness, but bareheaded, stood before his men, and cried, "hereby is no passage. to- day the captains give command that no force stir from the town." "to-day," quoth the maid, "shall we take les tourelles, and to-morrow not a goddon, save prisoners and slain men, shall be within three leagues of orleans. gentle sir, bid open the gate, for to-day have i work to do." thereat gaucourt shook his head, and from the multitude of townsfolk rose one great angry shout. they would burn the gate, they cried; they would fire the town, but they would follow the maid and the guidance of the saints. thereon stones began to fly, and arbalests were bended, till the maid turned, and, facing the throng, her banner lifted as in anger-- "back, my good friends and people of orleans," she said, "back and open the postern door in the great tower on the river wall. by one way or another shall i meet the english this day, nor shall might of man prevent me." then many ran back, and soon came the cry that the postern was opened, and thither streamed the throng. therefore gaucourt saw well that an onslaught would verily be made; moreover, as a man wise in war, he knew that the townsfolk, that day, would be hard to hold, and would go far. so he even yielded, not ungraciously, and sending a messenger to the bastard and the captains, he rode forth from the burgundy gate by the side of the maid. he was, indeed, little minded to miss his part of the honour; nor were the other captains more backward, for scarce had we taken boat and reached the farther bank, when we saw the banners of the bastard and la hire, florent d'illiers and xaintrailles, chambers and kennedy, above the heads of the armed men who streamed forth by the gate of burgundy. less orderly was no fight ever begun, but the saints were of our party. it was the wise manner of the maid to strike swift, blow upon blow, each stroke finding less resistance among the enemy, that had been used to a laggard war, for then it was the manner of captains to dally for weeks or months round a town, castle, or other keep, and the skill was to starve the enemy. but the manner of the maid was ever to send cloud upon cloud of men to make escalade by ladders, their comrades aiding them from under cover with fire of couleuvrines and bows. even so fought that famed knight of brittany, sir bertrand du guesclin. but he was long dead, and whether the maid (who honoured his memory greatly) fought as she did through his example, or by direct teaching of the saints, i know not. if disorderly we began, the fault was soon amended; they who had beleaguered the boulevard all night were set in the rear, to rest out of shot; the fresh men were arrayed under their banners, in vineyards and under the walls of fields, so that if one company was driven back another was ready to come on, that the english might have no repose from battle. now, the manner of the boulevard was this: first, there was a strong palisade, and many men mustered within it; then came a wide, deep, dry fosse; then a strong wall of earth, bound in with withes and palisaded, and within it the gate of the boulevard. when that was won, and the boulevard taken, men defending it might flee across a drawbridge, over a stream, narrow and deep and swift, into les tourelles itself. here they were safe from them on the side of orleans, by reason of the broken arch of the bridge. so strong was this tower, that monseigneur the duc d'alencon, visiting it later, said he could have staked his duchy on his skill to hold it for a week at least, with but few men, against all the forces in france. the captain of the english was that glasdale who had reviled the maid, and concerning whom she had prophesied that he should die without stroke of sword. there was no fiercer squire in england, and his men were like himself, being picked and chosen for that post; moreover their backs were at the wall, for the french and scots once within the boulevard, it was in nowise easy for talbot to bring the english a rescue, as was seen. the battle began with shooting of couleuvrines at the palisade, to weaken it, and it was marvel to see how the maid herself laid the guns, as cunningly as her own countryman, the famed lorrainer. now, when there was a breach in the palisade, xaintrailles led on his company, splendid in armour, for he was a very brave young knight. we saw the pales fall with a crash, and the men go in, and heard the cry of battle; but slowly, one by one, they staggered back, some falling, some reeling wounded, and rolling their bodies out of arrow-shot. and there, in the breach, shone the back-plate of xaintrailles, his axe falling and rising, and not one foot he budged, till the men of la hire, with a cry, broke in to back him, and after a little space, swords fell and rose no more, but we saw the banners waving of xaintrailles and la hire. soon the side of the palisade towards us was all down, as if one had swept it flat with his hand, but there stood the earthen wall of the boulevard, beyond the fosse. then, all orderly, marched forth a band of men in the colours of florent d'illiers, bearing scaling-ladders, and so began the escalade, their friends backing them by shooting of arbalests from behind the remnant of the palisade. a ladder would be set against the wall, and we could see men with shields, or doors, or squares of wood on their heads to fend off stones, swarm up it, and axes flashing on the crest of the wall, and arrows flying, and smoke of guns: but the smoke cleared, and lo! the ladder was gone, and the three libbards grinned on the flag of england. so went the war, company after company staggering thinned from the fosse, and re-forming behind the cover of the vineyards; company after company marching forth, fresh and glorious, to fare as their friends had fared. and ever, with each company, went the maid at their head, and d'aulon, she crying that the place was theirs and now was the hour! but the day went by, till the sun turned in heaven towards evening, and no more was done. the english, in sooth, showed no fear nor faint heart; with axe, and sword, and mace, and with their very hands they smote and grappled with the climbers, and i saw a tall man, his sword being broken, strike down a french knight with his mailed fist, and drag another from a ladder and take him captive. boldly they showed themselves on the crest, running all risk of our arrows, as our men did of theirs. now came the scots, under kennedy. a gallant sight it was to see them advance, shoulder to shoulder--scots of the marches and the lennox, fife, argyll, and the isles, all gentlemen born. "come on!" cried randal rutherford. "come on, men of the marches, scots of the forest, elliots, rutherfords, armstrongs, and deem that, wheresoever a southron slinks behind a stone, there is carlisle wall!" the rough clan roared "bellenden!" the buchanans cried "clare innis," a rag of a hairy highlander from the lennox blew a wild skirl on the war- pipes, and hearing the border slogan shouted in a strange country, nom dieu! my blood burned, as that of any scotsman would. contrary to the maid's desire, for she had noted that i was wan and weary, and had commanded me to bide in cover, i cried "a leslie! a leslie!" and went forward with my own folk, sword in hand and buckler lifted. beside good randal rutherford i ran, and we both leaped together into the ditch. there was a forest of ladders set against the wall, and i had my foot on a rung, when the maid ran up and cried, "nom dieu! what make you here? let me lead my scots"; and so, pennon and axe in her left hand, she lightly leaped on the ladder, and arrows ringing on her mail, and a great stone glancing harmless from her salade, she so climbed that my lady's face on the pennon above her looked down into the english keep. but, even then, i saw a face at an archere, an ill face and fell, the wolf's eyes of brother thomas glancing along the stock of an arbalest. "gardez-vous, pucelle, gardez-vous!" i cried in her ear, for i was next her on the ladder; but a bolt whistled and smote her full, and reeling, she fell into my arms. i turned my back to guard her, and felt a bolt strike my back-piece; then we were in the fosse, and all the scots that might be were between her and harm. swiftly they bore her out of the fray, into a little green vineyard, where was a soft grassy ditch. but the english so cried their hurrah, that it was marvel, and our men gave back in fear; and had not the bastard come up with a fresh company, verify we might well have been swept into the loire. some while i remained with rutherford, kennedy, and many others, for what could we avail to help the maid? and to run has an ill look, and gives great heart to an enemy. moreover, that saying of the maid came into my mind, that she should be smitten of a bolt, but not unto death. so i even abode by the fosse, and having found an arbalest, my desire was to win a chance of slaying brother thomas, wherefore i kept my eyes on that archere whence he had shot. but no arbalest was pointed thence, and the fight flagged. on both sides men were weary, and they took some meat as they might, no ladders being now set on the wall. then i deemed it no harm to slip back to the vineyard where the maid lay, and there i met the good father pasquerel, that was her confessor. he told me that now she was quiet, either praying or asleep, for he had left her as still as a babe in its cradle, her page watching her. the bolt had sped by a rivet of her breast-piece, clean through her breast hard below the shoulder, and it stood a hand-breadth out beyond. then she had wept and trembled, seeing her own blood; but presently, with such might and courage as was marvel, she had dragged out the bolt with her own hands. then they had laid on the wound cotton steeped with olive oil, for she would not abide that they should steep the bolt with weapon salve and charm the hurt with a song, as the soldiers desired. then she had confessed herself to pasquerel, and so had lain down among the grass and the flowers. but it was pasquerel's desire to let ferry her across secretly to orleans. this was an ill hearing for me, yet it was put about in the army that the maid had but taken a slight scratch, and again would lead us on, a thing which i well deemed to be impossible. so the day waxed late, and few onslaughts were made, and these with no great heart, the english standing on the walls and openly mocking us. they asked how it went with the maid, and whether she would not fain be at home among her kine, or in the greasy kitchen? we would cry back, and for my own part i bade them seek the kitchen as pock-puddings and belly- gods, and that i cried in their own tongue, while they, to my great amaze, called me "prentice boy" and "jackanapes." herein i saw the craft and devilish enmity of brother thomas, and well i guessed that he had gotten sight of me; but his face i saw not. ill names break no bones, and arrows from under cover wrought slight scathe; so one last charge the bastard commanded, and led himself, and a sore tussle there was that time on the wall-crest, one or two of our men leaping into the fort, whence they came back no more. now it was eight hours of the evening, the sky grey, the men out-worn and out of all heart, and the captains were gathered in council. of this i conceived the worst hope, for after a counsel men seldom fight. so i watched the fort right sullenly, and the town of orleans looking black against a red, lowering sky in the west. some concourse of townsfolk i saw on the bridge, beside the broken arch, and by the boulevard belle croix; but i deemed that they had only come to see the fray as near as might be. others were busy under the river wall with a great black boat, belike to ferry over the horses from our side. all seemed ended, and i misdoubted that we would scarce charge again so briskly in the morning, nay, we might well have to guard our own gates. as i sat thus, pondering by the vineyard ditch, the maid stood by me suddenly. her helmet was off, her face deadly white, her eyes like two stars. "bring me my horse," she said, so sternly that i crushed the answer on my lips, and the prayer that she would risk herself no more. her horse, that had been cropping the grass near him happily enough, i found, and brought to her, and so, with some ado, she mounted and rode at a foot's pace to the little crowd of captains. "maiden, ma mie," said the bastard. "glad i am to see you able to mount. we have taken counsel to withdraw for this night. martin," he said to his trumpeter, "sound the recall." "i pray you, sir," she said very humbly, "grant me but a little while"; and so saying, she withdrew alone from the throng of men into the vineyard. what passed therein i know not and no man knows; but in a quarter of an hour's space she came forth, like another woman, her face bright and smiling, her cheeks like the dawn, and so beautiful that we marvelled on her with reverence, as if we had seen an angel. "the place is ours!" she cried again, and spurred towards the fosse. thence her banner had never gone back, for d'aulon held it there, to be a terror to the english. even at that moment he had given it to a certain basque, a very brave man, for he himself was out-worn with its weight. and he had challenged the basque to do a vaillance, or boastful deed of arms, as yesterday i and the spaniard had done. so d'aulon leaped into the fosse, his shield up, defying the english; but the basque did not follow, for the maid, seeing her banner in the hands of a man whom she knew not, laid hold of it, crying, "ha, mon estandart! mon estandart!" there, as they struggled for it, the basque being minded to follow d'aulon to the wall foot, the banner wildly waved, and all men saw it, and rallied, and flocked amain to the rescue. "charge!" cried the maid. "forward, french and scots; the place is yours, when once my banner fringe touches the wall!" with that word the wind blew out the banner fringe, and so suddenly that, though i saw the matter, i scarce knew how it was done, the whole host swarmed up and on, ladders, lifted, and so furiously went they, that they won the wall crest and leaped within the fort. then the more part of the english, adread, as i think, at the sight of the maid whom they had deemed slain, fled madly over the drawbridge into les tourelles. then standing on the wall crest, whither i had climbed, i beheld strange sights. first, through the dimness of the dusk, i saw a man armed, walking as does a rope-dancer, balancing himself with his spear, across the empty air, for so it seemed, above the broken arch of the bridge. this appeared, in very sooth, to be a miracle; but, gazing longer, i saw that a great beam had been laid by them of orleans to span the gap, and now other beams were being set, and many men, bearing torches, were following that good knight, nicole giresme, who first showed the way over such a bridge of dread. so now were the english in les tourelles between two fires. another strange sight i saw, for in that swift and narrow stream which the drawbridge spanned whereby the english fled was moored a great black barge, its stem and stern showing on either side of the bridge. boats were being swiftly pulled forth from it into the stream, and as i gazed, there leaped up through the dark one long tongue of fire. then i saw the skill of it, namely, to burn down the drawbridge, and so cut the english off from all succour. fed with pitch and pine the flame soared lustily, and now it shone between the planks of the drawbridge. on the stone platform of the boulevard, wherein the drawbridge was laid, stood a few english, and above them shone the axe of a tall squire, glasdale, as it fell on shield and helm of the french. others held us at bay with long lances, and never saw i any knight do his devoir more fiercely than he who had reviled the maid. for on his head lay all the blame of the taking of the boulevard. to rear of him rang the shouts of them of orleans, who had crossed the broken arch by the beam; but he never turned about, and our men reeled back before him. then there shone behind him the flames from the blazing barge; and so, black against that blaze, he smote and slew, not knowing that the drawbridge began to burn. on this the maid ran forth, and cried to him-- "rends-toi, rends-toi! yield thee, glacidas; yield thee, for i stand in much sorrow for thy soul's sake." then, falling on her knees, her face shining transfigured in that fierce light, she prayed him thus-- "ah! glacidas, thou didst call me ribaulde, but i have sorrow for thy soul. ah! yield thee, yield thee to ransom"; and the tears ran down her cheeks, as if a saint were praying for a soul in peril. not one word spoke glasdale: he neither saw nor heard. but the levelled spears at his side flew up, a flame caught his crest, making a plume of fire, and with a curse he cast his axe among the throng, and the man who stood in front of it got his death. glasdale turned about as he threw; he leaped upon the burning drawbridge, where the last of his men were huddled in flight, and lo! beneath his feet it crashed; down he plunged through smoke and flame, and the stream below surged up as bridge and flying men went under in one ruin. the maid gave a cry that rang above the roar of fire and water. "saints! will no man save him?" she shrieked, looking all around her on the faces of the french. a mad thought leaped up in my mind. "unharness me!" i cried; and one who stood by me undid the clasps of my light jaseran. i saw a head unhelmeted, i saw a hand that clutched at a floating beam. i thought of the maid's desire, and of the ransom of so great a squire as glasdale, and then i threw my hands up to dive, and leaped head foremost into the water. deep down i plunged, and swam far under water, to avoid a stroke from floating timber, and then i rose and glanced up-stream. all the air was fiercely lit with the blaze of the burning barge; a hand and arm would rise, and fall ere i could seize it. a hand was thrown up before me, the glinting fingers gripping at empty air. i caught the hand, swimming strongly with the current, for so the man could not clutch at me, and if a drowning man can be held apart, it is no great skill to save him. in this art i was not unlearned, and once had even saved two men from a wrecked barque in the long surf of st. andrews bay. save for a blow from some great floating timber, i deemed that i had little to fear; nay, now i felt sure of the maid's praise and of a rich ransom. a horn of bank with alder bushes ran out into the stream, a smooth eddy or backwater curling within. i caught a bough of alder, and, though nigh carried down by the drowning man's weight, i found bottom, yet hardly, and drew my man within the backwater. he lay like a log, his face in the stream. pushing him before me, i rounded the horn, and, with much ado, dragged him up to a sloping gravelly beach, where i got his head on dry land, his legs being still in the water. i turned him over and looked eagerly. lo! it was no glasdale, but the drowned face of brother thomas! then something seemed to break in my breast; blood gushed from my mouth, and i fell on the sand and gravel. footsteps i heard of men running to us. i lifted my hand faintly and waved it, and then i felt a hand on my face. chapter xv--how norman leslie was absolved by brother thomas certain scots that found me, weak and bleeding, by the riverside, were sent by the maid, in hopes that i had saved glasdale, whereas it was the accursed cordelier i had won from the water. what they did with him i knew not then, but me they laid on a litter, and so bore me to a boat, wherein they were ferrying our wounded men across to orleans. the maid herself, as she had foretold, returned by way of the bridge, that was all bright with moving torches, as our groaning company were rowed across the black water to a quay. thence i was carried in a litter to our lodgings, and so got to bed, a physician doing what he might for me. a noisy night we passed, for i verily believe that no man slept, but all, after service held in the church of st. aignan, went revelling and drinking from house to house, and singing through the streets, as folk saved from utter destruction. with daybreak fell a short silence; short or long, it seemed brief to me, who was now asleep at last, and i was rueful enough when a sound aroused me, and i found the maid herself standing by my bedside, with one in the shadow behind her. the chamber was all darkling, lit only by a thread of light that came through the closed shutters of wood, and fell on her pale face. she was clad in a light jaseran of mail, because of her wound, and was plainly eager to be gone and about her business, that is, to meet the english in open field. "leslie, my friend," she said, in her sweet voice, "there were many brave men in the fight yesterday, but, in god's name, none did a braver deed than thou! nay, speak not," she said, as i opened my lips to thank her, "for the leech that tended thee last night forbids it, on peril of thy very life. so i have brought thee here a sheet of fair paper, and a pen and horn of ink, that thou, being a clerk, mayst write what thou hast to say. alas! such converse is not for me, who know not a from his brother b. but the saints who helped thee have rewarded thee beyond all expectation. thou didst not save that unhappy glacidas, whom god in his mercy forgive! but thou hast taken a goodlier prize--this holy man, that had been prisoner in the hands of the english." here she stood a little aside, and the thread of light shone on the fell face of brother thomas, lowering beneath his hood. then i would have spoken, leech or no leech, to denounce him, for the maid had no memory of his face, and knew him not for the false friar taken at st. loup. but she laid her mailed finger gently on my lips. "silence! thou art my man-at-arms and must obey thy captain. this worthy friar hath been long in the holy company of the blessed colette, and hath promised to bring me acquainted with that daughter of god. ay, and he hath given to me, unworthy as i am, a kerchief which has touched her wonder-working hands. almost i believe that it will heal thee by miracle, if the saints are pleased to grant it." herewith she drew a kerchief across my lips, and i began, being most eager to instruct her innocence as to this accursed man-- "lady--" but alas! no miracle was wrought for a sinner like me. howbeit i am inclined to believe that the kerchief was no saintly thing, and had never come near the body of the blessed colette, but rather was a gift from one of the cordelier's light-o'-loves. assuredly it was stained red with blood from my lungs ere i could utter two words. the maid stanched the blood, saying-- "did i not bid thee to be silent? the saints forgive my lack of faith, whereby this blessed thing has failed to heal thee! and now i must be gone, to face the english in the field, if they dare to meet us, which, methinks, they will not do, but rather withdraw as speedily as they may. so now i leave thee with this holy man to be thy nurse-tender, and thou canst write to him concerning thy needs, for doubtless he is a clerk. farewell!" with that she was gone, and this was the last i saw of her for many a day. never have i known such a horror of fear as fell on me now, helpless and dumb, a sheep given over to the slaughter, in that dark chamber, which was wondrous lown, { } alone with my deadly foe. never had any man more cause for dread, for i was weak, and to resist him was death. i was speechless, and could utter no voice that the people in the house might hear. as for mine enemy, he had always loathed and scorned me; he had a long account of vengeance to settle with me; and if--which was not to be thought of--he was minded to spare one that had saved his life, yet, for his own safety, he dared not. he had beguiled the maid with his false tongue, and his face, not seen by her in the taking of st. loup, she knew not. but he knew that i would disclose all the truth so soon as the maid returned, wherefore he was bound to destroy me, which he would assuredly do with every mockery, cruelty, and torture of body and mind. merely to think of him when he was absent was wont to make my flesh creep, so entirely evil beyond the nature of sinful mankind was this monster, and so set on working all kinds of mischief with greediness. whether he had suffered some grievous wrong in his youth, which he spent his life in avenging on all folk, or whether, as i deem likely, he was the actual emissary of satan, as the maid was of the saints, i know not, and, as i lay there, had no wits left to consider of it. only i knew that no more unavailing victim than i was ever so utterly in the power of a foe so deadly and terrible. the maid had gone, and all hope had gone with her. for a time that seemed unending mine enemy neither spoke nor moved, standing still in the chink of light, a devil where an angel had been. there was silence, and i heard the maid's iron tread pass down the creaking wooden stairs, and soon i heard the sound of singing birds, for my window looked out on the garden. the steps ceased, and then there was a low grating laughter in the dark room, as if the devil laughed. brother thomas moved stealthily to the door, and thrust in the wooden bolt. then he sat him heavily down on my bed, and put his fiend's face close to mine, his eyes stabbing into my eyes. but i bit my lip, and stared right back into his yellow wolf's eyes, that shone like flames of the pit with evil and cruel thoughts. so i lay, with that yellow light on me; and strength came strangely to me, and i prayed that, since die i must, i might at least gladden him with no sign of fear. when he found that he could not daunton me, he laughed again. "our chick of pitcullo has picked up a spirit in the wars," he said; and turning his back on me, he leaned his face on his hand, and so sat thinking. the birds of may sang in the garden; there was a faint shining of silver and green, from the apple-boughs and buds without, in the little chamber; and the hooded back of the cordelier was before me on my bed, like the shape of death beside the sick man, in a picture. now i did not even pray, i waited. doubtless he knew that no cruel thing which the devil could devise was more cruel than this suspense. then he turned about and faced me, grinning like a dog. "these are good words," said he, "in that foolish old book they read to the faithful in the churches, 'vengeance is mine, saith the lord.' ay, it is even too sweet a morsel for us poor christian men, such as the lowly brother thomas of the order of st. francis. nevertheless, i am minded to put my teeth in it"; and he bared his yellow dog's fangs at me, smiling like a hungry hound. "my sick brother," he went on, "both as one that has some science of leech-craft and as thy ghostly counsellor, it is my duty to warn thee that thou art now very near thine end. nay, let me feel thy pulse"; and seizing my left wrist, he grasped it lightly in his iron fingers. "now, ere i administer to thee thy due, as a christian man, let me hear thy parting confession. but, alas! as the blessed maid too truly warned thee, thou must not open thy poor lips in speech. there is death in a word! write, then, write the story of thy sinful life, that i may give thee absolution." so saying, he opened the shutter, and carefully set the paper and inkhorn before me, putting the pen in my fingers. "now, write what i shall tell thee"; and here he so pressed and wrung my wrist that his fingers entered into my living flesh with a fiery pang. i writhed, but i did not cry. "write--" "i, norman leslie of pitcullo--" and, to escape that agony, i wrote as he bade me. "--being now in the article of death--" and i wrote. "--do attest on my hope of salvation--" and i wrote. "--and do especially desire madame jeanne, la pucelle, and all frenchmen and scots loyal to our sovereign lord the dauphin, to accept my witness, that brother thomas, of the order of st. francis, called noiroufle while of the world, has been most falsely and treacherously accused by me--" i wrote, but i wrote not his false words, putting my own in their place--"has been most truly and righteously accused by me--" "--of divers deeds of black treason, and dealing with our enemies of england, against our lord the dauphin, and the maid, the sister of the saints, and of this i heartily repent me,--" but i wrote, "all which i maintain--" "--as may god pardon my sins, on the faith of a sinful and dying man." "now sign thy name, and that of thy worshipful cabbage-garden and dunghill in filthy scotland." so i signed, "norman leslie, the younger, of pitcullo," and added the place, orleans, with the date of day and year of our lord, namely, may the eighth, fourteen hundred and twenty-nine. "a very laudable confession," quoth brother thomas; "would that all the sinners whom i have absolved, as i am about to absolve thee, had cleansed and purged their sinful souls as freely. and now, my brother, read aloud to me this scroll; nay, methinks it is ill for thy health to speak or read. a sad matter is this, for, in faith, i have forgotten my clergy myself, and thou mayst have beguiled me by inditing other matter than i have put into thy lying mouth. still, where the safety of a soul is concerned, a few hours more or less of this vain, perishable life weigh but as dust in the balance." here he took from about his hairy neck a heavy italian crucifix of black wood, whereon was a figure of our lord, wrought in white enamel, with golden nails, and a golden crown of thorns. "now read," he whispered, heaving up the crucifix above me. and as he lifted it, a bright blade, strong, narrow, and sharp, leaped out from beneath the feet of our lord, and glittered within an inch of my throat. an emblem of this false friar it was, the outside of whom was as that of a holy man, while within he was a murdering sword. "read!" he whispered again, pricking my throat with the dagger's point. then i read aloud, and as i read i was half choked with my blood, and now and then was stopped; but still he cried-- "read, and if one word is wrong, thine absolution shall come all the swifter." so i read, and, may i be forgiven if i sinned in deceiving one so vile! i uttered not what i had written, but what he had bidden me to write. "i, norman leslie of pitcullo, being now in the article of death, do attest on my hope of salvation, and do especially desire madame jeanne, la pucelle, and all frenchmen and scots loyal to our sovereign lord the dauphin, to accept my witness that brother thomas, of the order of st. francis, called noiroufle while of the world, has been most falsely and treacherously accused by me of divers deeds of black treason, and dealing with our enemies of england, against our lord the dauphin, and the maid, the sister of the saints, and of this i heartily repent me, as may god pardon my sins, on the faith of a sinful and dying man. signed, at orleans, norman leslie, the younger, of pitcullo, this eighth of may, in the year of our lord fourteen hundred and twenty-nine." when i had ended, he took away his blasphemous dagger-point from my throat. "very clerkly read," he spake, "and all runs smooth; methinks myself had been no poor scribe, were i but a clerk. hadst thou written other matter, to betray my innocence, thou couldst not remember what i said, even word for word," he added gleefully. "now i might strangle thee slowly"; and he set his fingers about my throat, i being too weak to do more than clutch at his hand, with a grasp like a babe's. "but that leaves black finger-marks, another kind of witness than thine in my favour. or i might give thee the blade of this blessed crucifix; yet dagger wounds are like lips and have a voice, and blood cries from the ground, says holy writ. pardon my tardiness, my poor brother, but this demands deep thought, and holy offices must not be hurried unseemly." he sat now with his back to me, his hand still on my throat, so deep in thought that he heard not, as did my sharpened ears, a door shut softly, and foot-falls echoing in the house below. if i could only cry aloud! but he would stifle me ere the cry reached my throat! "this will serve," he said. "thou wilt have died of thy malady, and i will go softly forth, and with hushed voice will tell how the brave young scot passed quietly to the saints. yet, after all, i know not. thou hast been sent by heaven to my aid; clearly thou art an instrument of god to succour the unworthy brother thomas. once and twice thou hast been a boat to carry me on my way, and to save my useful life. a third time thou mightst well be serviceable, not by thy will, alas! but by god's, my poor brother"; and he mockingly caressed my face with his abhorred hand. "still, this must even serve, though i would fain find for thee a more bitter way to death"; and he gently and carefully drew the pillow from beneath my head. "this leaves no marks and tells no tales, and permits no dying cry." he was looking at me, the pillow in his hands, his gesture that of a tender nurse, when a light tap sounded on the door. he paused, then came a louder knock, one pushed, and knocked again. "open, in the name of the dauphin!" came a voice i knew well, the voice of d'aulon. "the rope of judas strangle thee!" said brother thomas, dropping the pillow and turning to the casement. but it was heavily barred with stanchions of iron, as the manner is, and thereby he might not flee. then came fiercer knocking with a dagger hilt, and the cry, "open, in the name of the dauphin, or we burst the door!" brother thomas hastily closed the wooden shutter, to darken the chamber as much as might be. "gently, gently," he said. "disturb not my penitent, who is newly shrived, and about to pass"; and so speaking, he withdrew the bolt. d'aulon strode in, dagger in hand, followed by the physician. "what make you here with doors barred, false priest?" he said, laying his hand on the frock of noiroufle. "and what make you here, fair squire, with arms in a sick man's chamber, and loud words to disturb the dying? and wherefore callest thou me 'false priest'? but an hour agone, the blessed maid herself brought me hither, to comfort and absolve her follower, to tend him, if he lived and, if he must die, to give him his dues as a christian man. and the door was bolted that the penitent might be private with his confessor, for he has a heavy weight to unburden his sinful soul withal." "ay, the maid sent thee, not knowing who thou wert, the traitor friar taken at st. loup, and thou hast a tongue that beguiled her simplicity. but one that knew thee saw thy wolfs face in her company, and told me, and i told the maid, who sent me straightway back from the gate, that justice might be done on thee. thou art he whom this scot charged with treason, and would have slain for a spy, some nights agone." brother thomas cast up his eyes to heaven. "forgive us our trespasses," said he, "as we forgive them that trespass against us. verily and indeed i am that poor friar who tends the wounded, and verify i am he against whom this young scot, as, i fear, is the manner of all his benighted people, brought a slanderous accusation falsely. all the more reason was there that i should hear his last confession, and forgive him freely, as may i also be forgiven." "thou liest in thy throat," said d'aulon. "this is a brave man-at-arms, and a loyal." "would that thou wert not beguiled, fair sir, for i have no pleasure in the sin of any man. but, if thou wilt believe him rather than me, even keep thy belief, and read this written confession of his falsehood. of free will, with his own hand, my penitent hereby absolves me from all his slanders. as holy church enjoins, in the grace of repentance he also makes restitution of what he had stolen, namely, all my wealth in this world, the good name of a poor and lowly follower of the blessed francis. here is the scroll." with these words, uttered in a voice of sorrowing and humble honesty, the friar stretched out the written sheet of paper to d'aulon. "had i been a false traitor," he said, "would not her brethren of heaven have warned the blessed maid against me? and i have also a written safe- conduct from the holy sister colette." then i knew that he had fallen into my trap, and, weak as i was, i could have laughed to think of his face, when the words i had written came out in place of the words he had bidden me write. for a clerk hath great power beyond the simple and unlettered of the world, be they as cunning even as brother thomas. "nom dieu! this is another story," said d'aulon, turning the paper about in his hands and looking doubtfully at me. but i smiled upon him, whereby he was the more perplexed. "the ink is hardly dry, and in some places has run and puddled, so that, poor clerk as i am, i can make little of it"; and he pored on it in a perplexed sort. "tush, it is beyond my clerkhood," he said at last. "you, messire saint-mesmin,"--turning to the physician--"must interpret this." "willingly, fair sir," said the physician, moving round to the shutter, which he opened, while the cordelier's eyes glittered, for now there was one man less between him and the half-open door. i nodded to d'aulon that he should shut it, but he marked me not, being wholly in amaze at the written scroll of my confession. the physician himself was no great clerk, and he read the paper slowly, stumbling over the words, as it were, while brother thomas, clasping his crucifix to his breast, listened in triumph as he heard what he himself had bidden me write. "i, norman leslie, of--of peet--what name is this? peet--i cannot utter it." "passez outre," quoth d'aulon. "i, norman leslie, being now in the article of death"--here the leech glanced at me, shaking his head mournfully--"do attest on my hope of salvation, and do especially desire madame jeanne la pucelle, and all frenchmen and scots loyal to our sovereign lord the dauphin, to accept my witness that brother thomas, of the order of st. francis, called noiroufle while of the world, has been most truly and righteously accused by me of divers deeds of black treason." at these words the cordelier's hand leaped up from his breast, his crucifix dagger glittered bright, he tore his frock from d'aulon's grip, leaving a rag of it in his hand, and smote, aiming at the squire where the gorget joins the vambrace. though he missed by an inch, yet so terrible was the blow that d'aulon reeled against the wall, while the broken blade jingled on the stone floor. then the frock of the friar whisked through the open door of the chamber; we heard the stairs cleared in two leaps, and d'aulon, recovering his feet, rushed after the false priest. but he was in heavy armour, the cordelier's bare legs were doubtless the nimbler, and the physician, crossing himself, could only gape and stare on the paper in his hand. as he gazed with his mouth open his eyes fell on me, white as my sheets, that were dabbled with the blood from my mouth. "nom dieu!" he stammered, "nom dieu! here is business more to my mind and my trade than chasing after mad cordeliers that stab with crucifixes!" then, coming to my side, he brought water, bathed my face, and did what his art might do for a man in such deadly extremity as was mine. in which care he was still busy when d'aulon returned, panting, having sent a dozen of townsfolk to hunt the friar, who had made good his flight over garden walls, and was now skulking none knew where. d'aulon would fain have asked me concerning the mystery of the confession in which brother thomas had placed his hope so unhappily, but the physician forbade him to inquire, or me to answer, saying that it was more than my life was worth. but on d'aulon's battered armour there was no deeper dint than that dealt by the murderous crucifix. thus this second time did brother thomas make his way out of our hands, the devil aiding him, as always; for it seemed that ropes could not bind or water drown him. but, for my part, i lay long in another bout of sore fever, sick here at orleans, where i was very kindly entreated by the people of the house, and notably by the daughter thereof, a fair maid and gentle. to her care the maid had commanded me when she left orleans, the english refusing battle, as later i heard, and withdrawing to jargeau and paris. but of the rejoicings in orleans i knew little or nothing, and had no great desire for news, or meat, or drink, but only for sleep and peace, as is the wont of sick men. now as touches sickness and fever, i have written more than sufficient, as heaven knows i have had cause enow. a luckless life was mine, save for the love of elliot; danger and wounds, and malady and escape, where hope seemed lost, were and were yet to be my portion, since i sailed forth out of eden-mouth. and so hard pressed of sickness was i, that not even my outwitting of brother thomas was a cause of comfort to me, though to this day i cannot think of it without some mirthful triumph. chapter xvi--how sorrow came on norman leslie, and joy thereafter it little concerns any man to know how i slowly recovered my health after certain failings back into the shadow of death. therefore i need not tell how i was physicked, and bled, and how i drew on from a diet of milk to one of fish, and so to a meal of chicken's flesh, till at last i could sit, wrapped up in many cloaks, on a seat in the garden, below a great mulberry tree. in all this weary time i knew little, and for long cared less, as to what went on in the world and the wars. but so soon as i could speak it was of elliot that i devised, with my kind nurse, charlotte boucher, the young daughter of jacques boucher, the duke's treasurer, in whose house i lay. she was a fair lass, and merry of mood, and greatly hove up my heart to fight with my disease. it chanced that, as she tended me, when i was at my worst, she marked, hanging on a silken string about my neck, a little case of silver artfully wrought, wherein was that portrait of my mistress, painted by me before i left chinon. being curious, like all girls, and deeming that the case held some relic, she opened it, i knowing nothing then of what she did. but when i was well enough to lie abed and devise with her, it chanced that i was playing idly with my fingers about the silver case. "belike," said charlotte, "that is some holy relic, to which, maybe, you owe your present recovery. surely, when you are whole again, you have vowed a pilgrimage to the shrine of the saint, your friend?" here she smiled at me gaily, for she was a right merry damsel, and a goodly. "nay," she said, "i have done more for you than your physician, seeing that i, or the saint you serve, have now brought the red colour into these wan cheeks of yours. is she a scottish saint, then? perchance st. margaret, of whom i have read? will you not let me look at the sacred thing?" "nay," said i. "methinks, from your smiling, that you have taken opportunity to see my treasure before to-day, being a daughter of our mother eve." "she is very beautiful," said charlotte; "nay, show her to me again!" with that i pressed the spring and opened the case, for there is no lover but longs to hear his lady commended, and to converse about her. yet i had spoken no word, for my part, about her beauty, having heard say that he who would be well with one woman does ill to praise another in her presence. "beautiful, indeed, she is," said charlotte. "never have i seen such eyes, and hair like gold, and a look so gracious! and for thy pilgrimage to the shrine of this fair saint, where does she dwell?" i told her at chinon, or at tours, or commonly wheresoever the court might be, for that her father was the king's painter. "and you love her very dearly?" "more than my life," i said. "and may the saints send you, demoiselle, as faithful a lover, to as fair a lady." "nay," she said, reddening. "this is high treason, and well you wot that you hold no lady half so fair as your own. are you scots so smooth-spoken? you have not that repute. now, what would you give to see that lady?" "all that i have, which is little but my service and goodwill. but she knows not where i am, nor know i how she fares, which irks me more than all my misfortunes. would that i could send a letter to her father, and tell him how i do, and ask of their tidings." "the dauphin is at tours," she said, "and there is much coming and going between tours and this town. for the maid is instant with the dauphin to ride forthwith to reims, and there be sacred and crowned; but now he listens and believes, and anon his counsellors tell him that this is foolhardy, and a thing impossible." "o they of little faith!" i said, sighing. "none the less, word has come that the maid has been in her oratory at prayers, and a voice from heaven has called to her, saying, 'fille de dieu, va, va, va! je serai en ton aide. va!' { } the dauphin is much confirmed in his faith by this sign, and has vowed that he will indeed march with the maid to reims, though his enemies hold all that country which lies between. but first she must take the towns which the english hold on loire side, such as jargeau. now on jargeau, while you lay knowing nothing, the bastard of orleans, and xaintrailles, and other good knights, made an onslaught, and won nothing but loss for their pains, though they slew messire henry bisset, the captain of the town. but if the maid takes jargeau, the dauphin will indeed believe in her and follow her." "he is hard of heart to believe, and would that i were where he should be--under her holy pennon, for thereon, at least, i should see the face painted of my lady. but how does all this bring me nearer the hope of hearing about her, and how she fares?" "there are many messengers coming and going to tours, for the dauphin is gathering force under the maid, and has set the fair duc d'alencon to be her lieutenant, with the bastard, and la hire, and messire florent d'illiers. and all are to be here in orleans within few days; wherefore now write to the father of thy lady, and i will myself write to her." with that she gave me paper and pen, and i indited a letter to my master, telling him how i had lain near to death of my old wound, in orleans, and that i prayed him of his goodness to let me know how he did, and to lay me at the feet of my lady. then charlotte showed me her letter, wherein she bade elliot know that i had hardly recovered, after winning much fame (for so she said) and a ransom of gold from an english prisoner, which now lay in the hands of her father, the duke's treasurer. then she said that a word from elliot, not to say the sight of her face, the fairest in the world (a thing beyond hope), would be of more avail for my healing than all the pharaoh powders of the apothecaries. these, in truth, i had never taken, but put them away secretly, as doubting whether such medicaments, the very dust of the persecuting egyptian and idolatrous race, were fit for a christian to swallow, with any hope of a blessing. thus my kind nurse ended, calling herself my lady's sister in the love of france and of the maid, and bidding my lady be mindful of so true a lover, who lay sick for a token at her hands. these letters she sealed, and intrusted to colet de vienne, the royal messenger, the same who rode from vaucouleurs to chinon, in the beginning of the maid's mission, and who, as then, was faring to tours with letters from orleans. meanwhile all the town was full of joy, in early june, because the maid was to visit the city, with d'alencon and the bastard, on her way to besiege jargeau. it was june the ninth, in the year of our lord fourteen hundred and twenty-nine, the sun shining warm in a clear blue sky, and all the bells of orleans a-ringing, to welcome back the maiden. i myself sat in the window, over the doorway, alone with charlotte sitting by my side, for her father had gone to the hotel de ville, with her mother, to welcome the captains. below us were hangings of rich carpets, to make the house look gay, for every house was adorned in the best manner, and flags floated in the long street, and flowers strewed the road, to do honour to our deliverer. thus we waited, and presently the sound of music filled the air, with fragrance of incense, for the priests were walking in front, swinging censers and chanting the te deum laudamus. and then came a company of girls strewing flowers, and fair boys blowing on trumpets, and next, on a black horse, in white armour, with a hucque of scarlet broidered with gold, the blessed maid herself, unhelmeted, glancing every way with her happy eyes, while the women ran to touch her armour with their rings, as to a saint, and the men kissed her mailed feet. to be alive, and to feel my life returning in a flood of strength and joy in that sweet air, with the gladness of the multitude pulsing through it as a man's heart beats in his body, seemed to me like paradise. but out of paradise our first parents were driven long ago, as anon i was to be from mine. for, as the maid passed, i doffed my cap and waved it, since to shout "noel" with the rest, i dared not, because of my infirmity. now, it so fell that, glancing around, she saw and knew me, and bowed to me, with a gesture of her hand, as queenly as if she, a manant's child, had been a daughter of france. at that moment, noting the maid's courtesy towards me, charlotte stood up from beside me, with a handful of red roses, which she threw towards her. as it chanced, belike because she was proud to be with one whom the maid honoured, or to steady herself as she threw, she laid her left hand about my neck, and so standing, cast her flowers, and then looked laughing back into my eyes, with a happy face. the roses missed the maid, whose horse caracoled at that moment as she went by, but they lit in the lap of a damsel that rode at her rein, on a lyart { } palfrey, and she looking up, i saw the face of elliot, and elliot saw me, and saw charlotte leaning on me and laughing. then elliot's face grew deadly pale, her lower lip stiff, as when she was angered with me at chinon, and so, wrying her neck suddenly to the left, she rode on her way, nor ever looked towards us again. "who may that proud damsel be, and what ails her at my roses?" quoth charlotte, sitting herself down again and still following them with her eyes. "methinks i have seen her face before; and what ails you?" she asked, looking earnestly on me, "for you are as white as the last snow ere it melts in spring." i had good reason to be pale, for i very well guessed that elliot, having ridden in the maiden's company to see me, and to surprise me with the unlooked-for gladness of her coming, had marked charlotte as she so innocently leaned on me and laughed to me, and had conceived anger against us both, for of a truth charlotte was very fair and of a joyous aspect. yet, taken so suddenly as i was, between the extreme of delight in looking on my lady beyond hope, and the very deep of sorrow that she had so bitterly slighted me, i was yet wary of betraying myself. for the girl beside me had, in all honest and maidenly service that woman may do for man, been kinder to me than a sister, and no thought or word of earthly love had ever passed between us. that she should wot of elliot's anger, and of its cause, and so hold my lady lightly, ay, and triumph over her in her heart (as is the nature of a woman, her ministry being thus churlishly repaid), was more than i could endure. so, may the saints forgive me! i lied, and it is a strange thing, but true, that howsoever a gentleman may hate the very thought of a lie, yet often he finds it hard to tell the truth to a woman. "do i look white?" i said. "then it is because i have a sudden pang of sorrow. for one moment i deemed that proud damsel was the lady of my love, whom, in verity, she most strangely favours, so that you might think them sisters. but alas! she is but the daughter of a good scots knight at chinon, whom i have seen there before to-day, and marvelled how much she and my lady favour each other. therefore am i pale, because that hope of mine is broken. and you know her face, belike, from my poor picture of my lady." charlotte looked at me steadily, and flushed red; but even then, one who rode by among the men-at-arms noted me, and, waving his arm towards me, cried in a loud voice-- "hail, fair son, soon will i be with thee!" and so, turning in his saddle to watch me, he laughed a loud laugh and rode onwards. he was my master, and as my eyes followed him, charlotte spoke. "and who is that great scot, with his scots twang of the tongue, who called you 'son'? by the mass, she was your lady, and yonder wight is her father, of whom you have spoken to me more than once"; for, indeed, i had told her all the story of my loves. then i was confused, for i could no longer deny the truth, and not having one word to say, i sighed from my heart. "o faint-spirited man-at-arms!" cried charlotte, blushing, and laughing as if some exquisite jest were abroad. "do you so terribly dread your mistress's anger? nay, be of good cheer! me she will never forgive while the world stands; for have i not been your nurse, and won you back to life and to her service? and has she not seen us twain together in one place, and happy, because of the coming of the maid? she will pardon me never, because, also for my sake, she has been wroth with you, and shown you her wrath, and all without a cause. therefore she will be ashamed, and all the more cruel. nay, nor would i forgive her, in the same case, if it befell me, for we women are all alike, hearts of wolves when we love! hast thou never marked a cat that had kittens, or a brachet that had whelps, how they will fly at man or horse that draws near their brood, even unwittingly. and so, when we love, are we all, and the best of us are then the worst. verily the friendship of you and me is over and done; but for your part be glad, not sorry, for with all her heart and soul she loves you. else she had not been angered." "you must not speak, nor i hear, such words of my lady," i said; "it is not seemly." "such words of your lady, and of aymeric's lady, and of giles's lady, and of myself were i any man's lady, as i am no man's lady, i will think and speak," said charlotte, "for my words are true, and we maids are, at best, pretty fools, and god willed us to be so for a while, and then to be wiser than the rest of you. for, were we not pretty, would you wed us? and were we not fools, would we wed you? and where would god's world be then? but now you have heard enough of my wisdom: for i love no man, being very wise; or you have heard enough of my folly that my mirth bids me speak, as you shall deem it. and now, we must consider how this great feud may be closed, and the foes set at one again." "shall i find out her lodgings, and be carried thither straightway in a litter? her heart may be softened when she sees that i cannot walk or mount a horse?" "now, let me think what i should deem, if i had ridden by, unlooked for, and spied my lover with a maid, not unfriendly, or perchance uncomely, sitting smiling in a gallant balcony. would i be appeased when he came straight to seek me, borne in a litter? would i--?" and she mused, her finger at her mouth, and her brow puckered, but with a smile on her lips and in her eyes. then i, seeing her so fair, yet by me so undesired; and beholding her so merry, while my heart was amazed with the worst sorrow, and considering, too, that but for her all this would never have been, but i sitting happy by my lady's side,--thinking on all this, i say, i turned from her angrily, as if i would leave the balcony. "nay, wait," she cried, "for i must see all the show out, and here come the scots guard, thy friends, and i need time to take counsel with my wisdom on this weighty matter. see, they know you"; and, indeed, many a man in that gallant array waved his hand to me merrily, as they filed past under their banners--the douglas's bloody heart, the crescent moon of harden, the napier's sheaf of spears, the blazons of lindsays and leslies, homes, and hepburns, and stuarts. it was a sight to put life into the dying breast of a scot in a strange country, and all were strong men and young, ruddy and brown of cheek, high of heart and heavy of hand. and most beckoned to me, and pointed onwards to that way whither they were bound, in chase of fame and fortune. all this might have made a sick man whole, but my spirit was dead within me, so that i could scarce beckon back to them, or even remember their faces. "would i forgive you," said charlotte, after she had thrown the remnant of her roses to her friends among the scots, "if you hurried to me, pale, and borne in a litter? nay, methinks not, or not for long; and then i should lay it on you never to see her face again;--she is i, you know, for the nonce. but if you waited and did not come, then my pride might yield at length, and i send for you. but then, if so, methinks i would hate her (that is, me) more than ever. oh, it is a hard case when maids are angry!" "you speak of yourself, how you would do this or that; but my lady is other than you, and pitiful. did she not come all these leagues at a word from me, hearing that i was sick?" "at a word from you, good youth! nay, at a word from me! did you speak of me in your letter to her father?" "nay!" said i. "you did well. and therefore it was that i wrote, for i knew she would move heaven and earth and the maid or she would come when she heard of another lass being in your company. nay, trust me, we women understand each other, and she would ask the maid, who lodged here with us, what manner of lass i was to look upon, and the maid's answer would bring her." "you have been kind," i said. "and to you and the saints i owe it that i yet live to carry a sore heart and be tormented with your ill tongue." "and had you heard that a fair young knight, and renowned in arms, lay sick at your lady's house, she nursing him, would you not have cast about for ways of coming to her?" to this i answered nothing, but, with a very sour countenance, was rising to go, when my name was called in the street. looking down, i saw my master, who doffed his cap to the daughter of the house, and begging leave to come up, fastened his horse's bridle to the ring in the wall, by the door. up he came, whom charlotte welcomed very demurely, and so left us, saying that she must go about her household business; but as she departed she cast a look back at me, making a "moue," as the french say, with her red lips. "well, my son," cried my master, taking my hand, "why so pale? sure thou hast had a sore bout, but thou art mending." i could but stammer my lady's name-- "elliot--shall i see her soon?" he scratched his rough head and pulled his russet beard, and so laughed shamefacedly. "why, lad, to that very end she came, and now--st. anthony's fire take me if i well know why--she will none of it. the maid brought us in her company, for, as you know, she will ever have young lasses with her when she may, and as far as orleans the roads are safe. and who so glad as elliot when the maid put this command on her, after we got thy letter? i myself was most eager to ride, not only for your sake, but to see how orleans stood after the long pounding. but when we had come to our lodging, and i was now starting off to greet you, elliot made no motion of rising. nay, when i bade her make haste, she said that haste there was none; and when i, marvelling, asked, 'wherefore?' answered that she was loth to spoil good company, and had seen you, as i did myself, happy enough with the lass who nursed you, and who had written to her." "and wherefore, in heaven's name, should we not be happy on such a day as this was an hour agone? but now the sun is out of the sky." "i see him plainer than ever i did in the merse," said my master, looking up where the sun was bright in the west. "but what would you? women have been thus since eve had a daughter, for our father adam, i trow, had no trouble with other ladies than his wife--and that was trouble enough." "but how am i to make my peace, and win my pardon, being innocent as i am?" "faith, i know not!" said he, and laughed again, which angered me some deal, for what was there to laugh at? "may i let bring a litter, for i cannot yet walk, and so go back with you to her?" "indeed, i doubt if it were wise," said he; and so we stood gazing at each other, while i could have wept for very helpless anger. "i have it, i think," said he at last. "the maid is right busy, as needs must be, gathering guns and food for her siege of jargeau. but it is not fitting that she should visit orleans without seeing you, nor would she wish to be so negligent. yet if she were, i would put it in her mind, and then, when you are with her, which elliot shall not know, i will see that elliot comes into the chamber, and so leave all to you, and to her, and to the maid. for she hath great power with that silly wench of mine, who has no other desire, i trow, than a good excuse to be rid of her sudden anger. if she loved you less, she would be never so fiery." i myself could see no better hope or comfort. then he began to devise with me on other matters, and got from me the story of my great peril at the hands of brother thomas. he laughed at the manner of my outwitting that miscreant, who had never been taken, but was fled none knew whither, and my master promised to tell the tale to the maid, and warn her against this enemy. and so bidding me be of good cheer, he departed; but for my part, i went into my chamber, drew the bolt, and cast myself on the bed, refusing meat or drink, or to see the face of man or woman. i was devoured by a bitter anger, considering how my lady had used me, and what was most sore of all, reflecting that i could no longer hold her for a thing all perfect, and almost without touch of mortal infirmity. nay, she was a woman like another, and unjust, and to deem thus of her was to me the most cruel torment. we could never forgive each the other, so it seemed to me, nor be again as we had been. and all the next day no message came for me, and i kept myself quiet, apart in my chamber. lest they who read mock at me in their hearts, and at my lady, let them remember how young we both were, and how innocent of other experience in love. for the roman says that "the angers of lovers are love's renewal," as the brief tempests of april bring in the gladness of may. but in my heart it was all white sleet, and wind, and snow unseasonable, and so i lay, out of all comfort, tossing on my bed. i heard the watchmen call the hours through the night, and very early, having at length fallen on sleep, i was wakened by a messenger from the maid. it was her page, louis de coutes, most richly attired, but still half asleep, grumbling, and rubbing his eyes. "my mistress bids you come with me instantly," he said, when we had saluted each other, "and i have brought a litter and men to carry it. faith, if i lay in it, i should be asleep ere ever they had borne me ten paces. what a life it is that i lead! late to bed and up by prime, so busy is my mistress; and she lives as it were without sleep, and feeds on air." here he threw himself down in a great chair, and verily, by the time i had washed and attired myself, i had to shake him by the shoulder to arouse him. thus i was carried to the maid's lodging, my heart beating like a hammer with hopes and fears. we found her already armed, for that day she was to ride to jargeau, and none was with her but her confessor. she gave me the best of greetings, and bade me eat bread and drink wine. "and soon," she said, "if you recover the quicker, i trust to give you wine to drink in paris." she herself dipped a crust in wine and water, and presently, bidding her confessor, pasquerel, wait for her in the little oratory, she asked me how i did, and told me what fear she had been in for me, as touching brother thomas, when she learned who he was, yet herself could not return from the field to help me. "but now," said she, smiling with a ravishing sweetness, "i hear you are in far greater peril from a foe much harder and more cruel--ma mie elliot. ah! how you lovers put yourselves in jeopardy, and take me from my trade of war to play the peacemaker! surely i have chosen the safer path in open breach and battle, though would that my war was ended, and i sitting spinning again beside my dear mother." hereon her face grew more tender and sad than ever i had seen it, and there came over me forgetfulness of my private grief, as of a little thing, and longing to ride at the maiden's rein, where glory was to be won. "would that even now i could march with you," i said; and she, smiling, made answer-- "that shall yet be; yea, verily," and here the fashion of her countenance altered wondrously, "i know, and know not how i know, that thou shalt be with me when all have forsaken me and fled." then she fell silent, and i also, marvelling on her face and on the words which she spoke. there came a light tap at the door, and she awoke as it were from a trance which possessed her. she drew her hands over her face, with a long sigh; she knelt down swiftly, and crossed herself, making an obeisance, for i deem that her saints had been with her, wherefore i also crossed myself and prayed. then she rose and cried "enter!" and ere i could speak she had passed into the oratory, and i was alone with elliot. elliot gave one low cry, and cast her arms about my neck, hiding her face on my breast, and sobbing as if her heart would break. "i have been mad, i have been bad!" she moaned. "oh! say hard words to me, and punish me, my love." but i had no word to say, only i fell back into a great chair for very weakness, holding my lady in my arms. and thus, with words few enough, but great delight, the minutes went past, till she lifted her wet face and her fragrant hair; and between laughing and crying, studied on my face and caressed me, touching my thin cheek, and wept and laughed again. "i was mad," she whispered; "it seemed as if a devil entered into me. but she spoke to me and cast him out, and she bade me repent." "and do penance," i said, kissing her till she laughed again, saying that i was a hard confessor, and that the maid had spoken no word of penances. "yet one i must do and suffer," she said, "and it is more difficult to me than these austerities of thine." here her face grew very red, and she hid it with her hands. "what mean you?" i asked, wondering. "i must see her, and thank her for all her kindness to thee." "the maid?" i asked. "nay, that other, thy--fair nurse. nay, forbid me not, i have sworn it to myself, and i must go. and the maiden told me, when i spoke of it, that it was no more than right." then she threw her arms about me again, in the closest embrace, and hid her head. now, this resolve of hers gave me no little cause of apprehension, as not knowing well how things might pass in such an encounter of two ladies. but even then one touched me on the shoulder from behind, and the maid herself stood beside us. "o joy!" she said, "my peacemaking has been blessed! go, you foolish folk, and sin no more, and peace and happiness be with you, long years, and glad children at your knees. yet hereof i know nothing from my counsel. and now i must go forth about the dauphin's business, and to do that for which i was sent. they that brought thee in the litter will carry thee back again; so farewell." thus saying, she stooped and kissed elliot, who leaped up and caught the maid in her arms, and they embraced, and parted for that time, elliot weeping to lose her, and at the thought of the dangers of war. chapter xvii--how elliot lost her jackanapes the maid's confessor, pasquerel, stood in the chamber where we had met, with his eyes bent on the ground, so that elliot and i had no more free speech at that time. therefore i said farewell, not daring to ask of her when her mind was to visit my hosts, and, indeed, my trust was that she might leave this undone, lest new cause of sorrow should arise. thus we parted, with very courtly leave-taking, the priest regarding us in his manner, and i was carried in the litter through the streets, that had been so quiet when i came forth in the morning, but now they were full of men and of noise. herds of cattle were being driven for the food of the army marching against jargeau; there were trains of carts full of victual, and the citizens having lent the maid their great pieces of ordnance, the bombard called "the shepherdess," and the gun "montargis," these were being dragged along by clamorous companies of apprentices, and there were waggons charged with powder, and stone balls, and boxes of arrows, spades and picks for trenching, and all manner of munition of war. by reason of the troops of horses and of marching men, they that bore me were often compelled to stop. therefore, lest any who knew me should speak with me, i drew the curtains of the litter, for i had much matter to think on, and was fain to be private. but this was to be of no avail, for i heard loud voices in my own tongue. "what fair lady is this who travels so secretly?" and, with this, one drew the curtains, and there was the face of randal rutherford, with others behind him. then he uttered a great cry-- "faith, it is our lady of the linen-basket, and no other"; and leaning within, he gave me a rough embrace and a kiss of his bearded lips. "why so early astir, our sick man?" he cried. "get yourself healed anon, and be with us when we take paris town, norman, for there is booty enough to furnish all scotland. shalt thou be with us yet?" "if my strength backs my will, randal; and truly your face is a sight for sair eyne, and does me more good than all the powers of the apothecary." "then here is to our next merry meeting," he cried, "under paris walls!" with that the scots gave a shout, and, some of them crowding round to press my hand, they bade me be of good cheer, and all went onward, singing in the tune of "hey, tuttie tattie," which the pipers played when we broke the english at bannockburn. so i was borne back to the house of jacques boucher, and, in the sunny courtyard, there stood charlotte, looking gay and fair, yet warlike, as i deemed. she was clad in a long garment of red over a white robe, and had sleeves of green, so that she wore the spring's own colours, and she was singing a french ditty concerning a lady who has a lover, and vows that she will never be a nun. seray-je nonnette, oui ou non, serray-je nonnette, je croy que non! seeing me, she stinted in her singing, and in feeding a falcon that was perched on her wrist. "you are early astir for a sick man," she said. "have you been on pilgrimage, or whither have you been faring?" "the maid sent for me right early, for to-day she rides to jargeau, and to you she sends a message of her love,"--as indeed she had done, "but, for the great press of affairs she might not visit you." "and mistress elliot hume, has she forgiven her lover yet? nay, i see by your face that you are forgiven! and you go south, this very day, is it not so?" "indeed," i said, "if it is your will that we part, part we must, though i sorrow for it; but none has given me the word to march, save you, my fair nurse and hostess." "nay, it is not i who shall speed you; nevertheless the maid is not the only prophetess in this realm of france, and something tells me that we part this day. but you are weary; will you get you to your chamber, or sit in the garden under the mulberry-tree, and i shall bring you out a cup of white wine." weary i was indeed, and the seat in the garden among the flowers seemed a haven most desirable. so thither i went, leaning on her shoulder, and she returned to bring the wine, but was some while absent, and i sat deep in thought. i was marvelling, not only as to what my mistress would next do, and when i should see her again (though that was uppermost in my mind), but also concerning the strange words of the maid, that i alone should be with her when all forsook her and fled. how might this be, and was she not to be ever victorious, and drive the english forth of france? to my thinking the maid dwelt ever in two worlds, with her brethren of paradise, and again with sinful men. and i have often considered that she did not always remember, in this common life, what had befallen her, and what she knew when, as the apostle says, she "was out of the body." for i have heard her say, more than once, that she "would last but one year, or little more," and, again, she would make plans for three years to come, or four, which is a mystery. so i was pondering, when i looked up, and saw charlotte standing in the entrance between the court and garden, looking at me and smiling, as she shaded her eyes with her hand from the sun, and then she ran to me lightly as a lapwing. "they are coming down the street, looking every way for our house, your lady and her father," she said, putting the wine-cup into my hand. "now is it war or peace?" and she fled back again within the house. my heart stood still, for now everything was on the fall of the dice. would this mad girl be mocking or meek? would she anger my lady to my ruin with her sharp tongue? for charlotte was of a high temper, and wont to rule all the house by reason of her beauty and kind wild ways. nor was elliot the meekest of women, as well i knew, and a word, nay a smile, or a glance of mockery, might lightly turn her heart from me again for ever. oh! the lot of a lover is hard, at least if he has set all his heart on the cast, as i had done, and verily, as our scots saw runs, "women are kittle cattle." it is a strange thing that one who has learned not to blench from a bare blade, or in bursting of cannon-balls and flight of arrows, should so easily be daunted where a weak girl is concerned; yet so it was in my case. i know not if i feared more than now when brother thomas had me in the still chamber, alone at his mercy. so the minutes went by, the sun and shade flickering through the boughs of the mulberry-tree, and the time seemed long. perchance, i thought, there had been war, as charlotte had said, and my lady had departed in anger with her father, and i was all undone. yet i dared not go to seek them in the house, not knowing how matters were passing, and whether i should do good or harm. so i waited, and at length charlotte came forth alone. now she walked slowly, her eyes bent on the ground, and, as she drew near, i saw that they were red, and i guessed that she had been weeping. so i gave up all for lost, and my heart turned to water within me. "i am sent to bid you come in," she said gravely. "what has passed?" i cried. "for the saints' sake, tell me all!" "this has passed, that i have seen such a lady as i never dreamed i should see, and she has made me weep--foolish that i am!" "why, what did she? did she speak unkindly then, to my kind nurse?" for this i could in no manner have endured, nor have abased myself to love one that was unjust, how dear soever; and none could be dearer than elliot. yet unjust she might have been; and this thought to me was the greatest torment. "speak unkind words? oh, i remember my foolish talk, how i said that she would never forgive me while the world stands. nay, while her father was with mine and with my mother, thanking them for what they did for you, she led me apart to devise with me, and i took her to my chamber, and there, with tears in her eyes, and in the sweetest manner, she prayed me to pardon her for that she had been mad for a moment; and so, looking meek as an angel, she awaited my word. and i could not but weep, though to weep is never my way, and we embraced each the other, and i told her how all your converse had ever been of her, even when you were beside yourself, in your fever, and how never was so faithful a lover. nay, i bid you be glad, for i never deemed that any woman living on earth would so repent and so confess herself to another, where she herself had first been wroth, but would blame all the world rather, and herself--never. so we women are not all alike, as i thought; for i would hardly have forgiven, if i know myself; and yet i am no worse than another. truly, she has been much with the maid, and has caught from her this, to be like her, who is alone among women, and of the greatest heart." here she ceased to speak very gravely, as she had till now done, and breaking out into a sweet laughter, she cried-- "nevertheless i am not wholly a false prophetess, for to-day you go with them southward, to tours, to change the air, as the physician counsels, and so now we part. o false scot!" she said, laughing again, "how have you the ill courtesy to look so joyous? nay, i shall change your cheer"; and with that she stooped and kissed my cheek, saying, "go, and joy go with you, as joy abides with me, to see my sick man look so strong again. come, they are waiting for us, and you know we must not tarry." then, giving me her arm, she led me in, and if one of us twain had a shamefaced guise, verify it was not charlotte boucher. "i yield you back your esquire, fair lady," she said merrily, making obeisance to elliot, who stood up, very pale, to receive us. "he has got no ill in the bower of the enchantress," said my master; whereat, elliot seeming some deal confused, and blushing, charlotte bustled about, bringing wine and meat, and waiting upon all of us, and on her father and mother at table. a merry dinner it was among the elder folk, but elliot and i were somewhat silent, and a great joy it was to me, and a heavy weight off my heart, i do confess, when, dinner being ended, and all courtesies done and said, my raiment was encased in wallets, and we all went through the garden, to loire side; and so, with many farewells, took boat and sailed down the river, under the bridge of orleans, towards blois. but charlotte i never saw again, nor did i ever speak of her to elliot, nor elliot of her to me, from that day forth. but within short space came tidings, how that charlotte was wedding a young burgess of orleans, with whom, as i hear, she dwelt happily, and still, for all i know, dwells in peace. as i deem, she kept her lord in a merry life, yet in great order and obedience. so now there is no more to tell of her, save that her picture comes back before me--a tall, brown girl, with black hair and eyes like the hue of hazel boughs glassed in running water, clad in white and green and red, standing smiling beneath the red-and-white blossoms of an apple-tree, in the green garden of jacques boucher. elliot was silent enough, and sat telling her beads, in the beginning of our journey down the water-way, that is the smoothest and the easiest voyaging for a sick man. she was in the stern of the boat, her fingers, when her beads were told, trailing in the smooth water, that was green with the shade of leaves. but her father stood by me, asking many questions concerning the siege, and gaping at the half-mended arch of the bridge, where through we sailed, and at the blackened walls of les tourelles, and all the ruin that war had wrought. but now masons and carpenters were very busy rebuilding all, and the air was full of the tinkling of trowels and hammers. presently we passed the place where i had drawn brother thomas from the water; but thereof i said no word, for indeed my dreams were haunted by his hooded face, like that of the snake which, as travellers tell, wears a hood in prester john's country, and is the most venomous of beasts serpentine. so concerning brother thomas i held my peace, and the barque, swinging round a corner of the bank, soon brought us into a country with no sign of war on it, and here the poplar- trees had not been felled for planks to make bulwarks, but whispered by the riverside. the wide stream carried many a boat, and shone with sails, white, and crimson, and brown; the boat-men sang, or hailed each other from afar. there was much traffic, stores being carried from blois to the army. some mile or twain above beaugency we were forced to land, and, i being borne in a litter, we took a cross-path away from the stream, joining it again two miles below beaugency, because the english held that town, though not for long. the sun had set, yet left all his gold shining on the water when we entered blois, and there rested at a hostel for the night. next day--one of the goodliest of my life, so soft and clear and warm it was, yet with a cool wind on the water--we voyaged to tours; and now elliot was glad enough, making all manner of mirth. her desire, she said, was to meet a friend that she had left at their house in tours, one that she had known as long as she knew me, my friend he was too, yet i had never spoken of him, or asked how he did. now i, being wrapped up wholly in her, and in my joy to see her kind again, and so beautiful, had no memory of any such friend, wherefore she mocked me, and rebuked me for a hard heart and ungrateful. "this friend of mine," she said, "was the first that made us known each to other. yea, but for him, the birds might have pecked out your eyne, and the ants eaten your bones bare, yet"--with a sudden anger, and tears in her eyes at the words she spoke--"you have clean forgotten him!" "ah, you mean the jackanapes. and how is the little champion?" "like the lads of wamfray, aye for ill, and never for good," said my master; but she frowned on him, and said-- "now you ask, because i forced you on it; but, sir, i take it very ill that you have so short a memory for a friend. now, tell me, in all the time since you left us at chinon, how often have you thought of him?" "nigh as often as i thought of you," i answered. "for when you came into my mind (and that was every minute), as in a picture, thither too came your playfellow, climbing and chattering, and holding out his little bowl for a comfit." "nay, then you thought of me seldom, or you would have asked how he does." here she turned her face from me, half in mock anger. but, just as it is with children, so it was with elliot, for indeed my dear was ever much of a child, wherefore her memory is now to me so tender. and as children make pretence to be in this humour or that for sport, and will affect to be frighted till they really fear and weep, so elliot scarce knew how deep her own humour went, and whether she was acting like a player in a mystery, or was in good earnest. and if she knew not rightly what her humour was, far less could i know, so that she was ever a puzzle to me, and kept me in a hundred pretty doubts and dreads every day. alas! how sorely, through all these years, have i longed to hear her rebuke me in mirth, and put me adread, and laugh at me again i for she was, as it were, wife and child to me, at once, and i a child with her, and as happy as a child. thus, nothing would now jump with her humour but to be speaking of her jackanapes, and how he would come louting and leaping to welcome her, and forsake her old kinswoman, who had followed with them to tours. and she had much to report concerning his new tricks: how he would leap over a rod for the dauphin or the maid, but not if adjured in the name of the english king, or the duke of burgundy. also, if you held him, he would make pretence to bite any that you called englishman or false frenchman. moreover, he had now been taught to fetch and carry, and would climb into elliot's window, from the garden, and bring her little basket of silks, or whatsoever she desired, or carry it thither, as he was commanded. "and he wrung the cat's neck," quoth my master; but elliot bade him hold his peace. in such sport the hours passed, till we were safely come to tours, and so to their house in a street running off the great place, where the cathedral stands. it was a goodly dwelling, with fair carved-work on the beams, and in the doorway stood the old scots kinswoman, smiling wide and toothless, to welcome us. elliot kissed her quickly, and she fondled elliot, and held a hand out over her shoulder to greet me. "but where is my jackanapes, that should have been here to salute his mistress?" elliot cried. "out and alas!" said the old wife in our country tongue--"out and alas! for i have ill news. the poor beast is missing these three days past, and we fear he is stolen away by some gangrel bodies, for the town is full of them. there came two to our door, three days agone, and one was a blind man, and the other a one-armed soldier, maimed in the wars, and i gave them bite and sup, as a christian should do. now, they had not been gone but a few minutes, and i was in the spence, putting away the dishes, when i heard a whistle in the street, and anon another. i thought little of it, and so was about my business for an hour, when i missed the jackanapes. and then there was a hue and cry, and all the house was searched, and the neighbours were called on, but since that day there has been no word of the jackanapes. but, for the blind man and the armless soldier, the town guard saw them leaving by the north gate, with a violer woman and her husband, an ill-looking loon, in their company." elliot sat her down and wept sore. "they have stolen my little friend," she cried, "and now he that was so fat i called him tremouille will go hungry and lean, and be whipped to make him do his tricks, and i shall never see him more." then she ran out of the chamber, to weep alone, as i guessed, for she was pitiful and of very tender affection, and dumb things came near about her heart, as is the manner of many women. but i made no doubt in my mind that the husband of the ape's old mistress had stolen him, and i, too, sorrowed for the poor beast that my mistress loved, and that, in very deed, had been the saving of my own life. then i spoke to my master, and said that we must strive to buy her a new ape, or a little messan dog, to be her playfellow. but he shook his head. "say nothing more of the beast," he muttered, "unless she speaks of him first, and that, methinks, will be never. for it is not her wont to speak of what lies very deep in her heart, and if you talk of the beast it will please her little." and, indeed, i heard no word more of the jackanapes from elliot, save that, coming back from the minster next day, she whispered, "i have prayed for him," and so fled to her own chamber. as then i deemed it a strange thing, and scarcely to be approved by holy church, that my lady should pray for a dumb beast who had no soul to be saved. but a faithful, loving prayer is not unavailing or unheard of him who made the beasts, as well as he made us; for whose sin, or the sin of our father adam, they now suffer, silently. and the answer to this prayer was to be known in the end. as the week went on, tidings came that made elliot glad again, if before she had been sad enough. for this was that great week of wonders which shall never be forgotten while france is france, and the lilies bloom. on june the thirteenth the maid took jargeau, whence the famed bastard of orleans had been driven some weeks agone; and the earl of suffolk yielded him her prisoner, saying that she was "the most valiant woman in the world." scarce had tidings of this great victory come, when messengers followed, declaring that the maid had seized the bridge of meun and driven the english into the castle. next she marched against beaugency, and, at midnight of june the seventeenth, the english made terms, that they might go forth with their lives, but without baggage or arms, and with but one mark of silver apiece. next morning came talbot, the best knight then on ground, and fastolf, the wariest of captains, with a great army of english. first they made for jargeau, but they came too late, and then they rode to meun, and would have assailed the french in the bridge-fort, but, even then, they heard how beaugency had yielded to la pucelle, and how the garrison was departed into normandy, like pilgrims, without swords, and staff in hand. thus all the loire and the water-way was in the power of france, wherefore the english marched off through the country called la beauce, which then lay desert and overgrown with wild wood, by reason of the war. and there, in a place named coynce, near patay, the maid overtook the english, having with her la hire and xaintrailles, and she charged them so rudely, that ere the english could array them in order of battle, they were already flying for their lives. there were talbot and warwick taken and held to ransom, but fastolf fled as fast as his horse could carry him. thus in one week, between june the eleventh and june the eighteenth, the maid had delivered three strong towns from the english, and had utterly routed them in fair field. then, at orleans, on june the nineteenth, the army went to the churches, thanking god, and the blessed virgin, and all the saints, for such great signs and marvels wrought through the maid only. sorrow it is to me to write of such things by report, and not to have seen them done. but, as talbot said to the duc d'alencon, when they took him at patay, "it is fortune of war." but, as day by day messengers came, their horses red with spurring, to the cross in the market-place of tours, and as we that gathered round heard of some fresh victory, you may consider whether we rejoiced, feasted, filled the churches with our thanksgivings, and deemed that, in a few weeks, there would be no living englishman on french soil. and of all that were glad my lady was the happiest, for she had believed in the maid from the very beginning, when her father mocked. and a hard life she now led him with her sallies, day by day, as more and ever more glad tidings were brought, and we could hear elliot singing through the house. yea, i found her once dancing in the garden all alone, a beautiful sight to look upon, as the sun fell on her and the shadow, she footing it as if to music, but the music was made by her own heart. leaning against an apple-tree, i watched her, who waved her hand to me, and still danced on; this was after we had heard the news of beaugency. as she so swayed and moved, dancing daintily, came a blast of a trumpet and a gay peal from the minster bells. then forth rushed elliot, and through the house, and down the street into the market-place, nor did i know where i was, till i found myself beside her, and heard the maire read a letter to all the folk, telling how the english were routed at pathay in open field. thereon the whole multitude fell a-dancing, and i, for all my malady, was fain to dance with them; but elliot led me home, her head high, and blue rays darting from her eyes. from that day my life seemed to come back to me, and i was no longer the sick man. so the weeks went by, in all delight, my master working hard, and i helping him in my degree, for new banners would be wanted when the dauphin went for his sacring to his good town of reims. as we all deemed, this could no longer be delayed; and thereafter our armies would fall on paris, and so strong grew i, that i was in hopes to be with them, where, at last, fortune was to be won. but of this my hope i said little to elliot, waiting till i could wear armour, and exercising myself thereat privately in the garden, before folk had risen in the mornings. chapter xviii--how elliot's jackanapes was seen at the king's crowning "the hearts of kings are in his hand," says holy scripture, and it is of necessity to be believed that the hearts of kings, in an especial sense, are wisely governed. yet, the blindness of our sinful souls, we often may not see, nor by deep consideration find out, the causes wherefore kings often act otherwise, and, as we might deem, less worthily than common men. for it is a truth and must be told, that neither before he was anointed with the blessed oil from the holy vessel, or ampulla, which the angel brought to st. remigius, nor even after that anointing (which is more strange), did charles vii., king of france, bear him kingly as regards the maiden. nay, i have many a time thought with sorrow that if xaintrailles, or la hire, ay, or any the meanest esquire in all our army, had been born dauphin, in three months after the maid's victories in june paris would have been ours, and not an englishman left to breathe the air of france. for it needed but that the king should obey the maid, ride straight to reims, and thence on paris town, and every city would have opened its gates to him, as the walls of jericho fell at the mere sound of the trumpets of israel. this is no foolish fancy of an old man dreaming in a cloister about what might have been. for the regent of the english, brother of their king harry the fifth, and himself a wise man, and brave, if cruel, was of this same mind. first, he left paris and shut himself up in the strong castle of vincennes, dreading an uproar among the people; and next, he wholly withdrew himself to rouen, for he had now no force of men to guard the walls of paris. our dauphin had but to mount and ride, and all would have been his at one blow, ay, or without a blow. the maid, as we daily heard, kept praying him, even with tears, to do no more than this; and from every side came in men free and noble, ready to serve at their own charges. the poorest gentlemen who had lost all in the troubles, and might not even keep a horse to ride, were of goodwill to march as common foot-soldiers. but, while all france called on her king, he was dwelling at sully, in the castle of la tremouille, a man who had a foot in either camp, so that neither english nor burgundians had ever raided on his rich lands, when these lay in their power. so, what with the self-seeking, and sloth, and jealousy of la tremouille; what with the worldly policy of the archbishop of reims, crying peace, where there was no peace, the maid and the captains were not listened to, or, if they were heard, their plans were wrought out with a faint heart, so that, at last, if it is lawful to say so, the will of men prevailed over the will of heaven. never, i pray, may any prince of my own country be so bestead, and so ill- served, that, when he has won battles and gained cities two or three, and needs but to ride forward and win all his kingdom, he shall be turned back by the little faith of his counsellors! never may such a thing befall a prince of scotland! concerning these matters of state, as may be believed, we devised much at tours, while messengers were coming and going, and long, weary councils were being held at sully and at gien. d'alencon, we got news, was all for striking a blow yet more bold than the march to reims, and would have attacked the english where they were strongest, and nearest their own shores, namely, at rouen. the counsellors of the peaceful sort were inclined to waste time in besieging la charite, and other little towns on loire-side. but her voices had bidden the maid, from the first, to carry the dauphin to reims, that there he might be anointed, and known to france for the very king. so at last, finding that time was sorely wasted, whereas all hope lay in a swift stroke, ere the english could muster men, and bring over the army lately raised by the cardinal of winchester to go crusading against the miscreants of bohemia--the maid rode out of gien, with her own company, on june the twenty-seventh, and lodged in the fields, some four leagues away, on the road to auxerre. and next day the king and the court followed her perforce, with a great army of twelve thousand men. thenceforth there came news to us every day in tours, and all the news was good. town after town opened its gates at the summons of the maid, and notably troyes and chalons, in despite of the english garrisons. we were all right glad, and could scarce sleep for joy, above all when a messenger rode in, one thomas scott, whom i had encountered before, as i have written, bidding my master come straightway to reims, to join the king, and exercise his craft in designing a great picture of the coronation. so with much ado he bestowed his canvases, brushes, paints, and all other gear of his trade in wallets, and, commending his daughter to his old kinswoman, to obey her in all things, he set off on horseback with thomas scott. but for myself, i was to lodge, while he was at reims, with a worthy woman of tours, for the avoiding of evil tongues, and very tardily the time passed with me, for that i might not be, as before, always in the company of elliot. as for my lady, she was, during most of these days, on her knees at the altar in the great minster, praying to the saints for the dauphin, and the maid, and for her father, that he might come and go safely on his journey. nor did she pray in vain, for, no more than two days after the first tidings had arrived that the sacring was done, and that all had gone well, my master rode to his own door, weary, but glad at heart, and hobbled into his house. one was sent running to bring me this good news, and i myself ran, for now i was able, and found him seated at his meat, as well as he could eat it for elliot, that often stopped his mouth with kisses. he held forth his hand to me, saying, "all is as well as heart could desire, and the maid bids you follow her, if you may, to the taking of paris, for there she says will be your one chance to win your spurs. and now let me eat and drink, for the heat is great, the ways dusty, and i half famished. thereafter ask me what you will, and you, elliot, come not between a hungry man and his meat." so he spoke, sitting at his table with his tankard in his hand, and his wallets lying about him on the floor. elliot was therefore fain not to be embracing him, but rather to carve for him, and serve in the best manner, that he might sup the quicker and tell us all his tale. this he did at last, elliot sitting on his knee, with her arm about his neck. but, as touches the sacring, how it was done, though many of the peers of france were not there to see, and how noble were the manners of the king and the maid, who stood there with her banner, and of the only reward which she would take, namely, that her townsfolk should live free of tax and corvee, all this is known and written of in chronicles. nor did i see it myself, so i pass by. but, next to actual beholding of that glorious rite, the best thing was to hear my master tell of it, taking out his books, wherein he had drawn the king, and the maid in her harness, and many of the great lords. from these pictures a tapestry was afterwards wrought, and hung in reims cathedral, where it is to this day: the maid on horseback beckoning the king onward, the scots archers beside him in the most honourable place, as was their lawful due, and, behind all, the father of the maid entering reims by another road. by great good fortune, and by virtue of being a fellow-traveller with thomas scott, the rider of the king's stable, my master found lodgings easily enough. so crowded was the town that, the weather being warm, in mid july, many lay in tabernacles of boughs, in the great place of reims, and there was more singing that night than sleeping. but my master had lain at the hostelry called l'asne roye, in the parvise, opposite to the cathedral, where also lay jean d'arc, the father of the maid. thither she herself came to visit him, and she gave gifts to such of the people of her own countryside as were gathered at reims. "and, jeannot, do you fear nothing?" one of them asked her, who had known her from a child. "i fear nothing but treason," my master heard her reply, a word that we had afterwards too good cause to remember. "and is she proud now that she is so great?" asked elliot. "she proud! no pride has she, but sat at meat, and spoke friendly with all these manants, and it was 'tu' and 'toy,' and 'how is this one? and that one?' till verily, i think, she had asked for every man, woman, child, and dog in domremy. and that puts me in mind--" "in mind of what?" "of nought. faith, i remember not what i was going to say, for i am well weary." "but paris?" i asked. "when march we on paris?" my master's face clouded. "they should have set forth for paris the very day after the sacring, which was the seventeenth of july. but envoys had come in from the duke of burgundy, and there were parleys with them as touching peace. now, peace will never be won save at the point of the lance. but a truce of a fortnight has been made with burgundy, and then he is to give up paris to the king. yet, ere a fortnight has passed, the new troops from england will have come over to fight us, and not against the heretics of bohemia, though they have taken the cross and the vow. and the king has gone to saint marcoul, forsooth, seeing that, unless he goes there to do his devotions, he may not touch the sick and heal the crewels. { } faith, they that have the crewels might even wait till the king has come to his own again; they have waited long enough to learn patience while he was dauphin. it should be paris first, and saint marcoul and the crewels afterwards, but anything to waste time and keep out of the brunt of the battle." here he struck his hand on the table so that the vessels leaped. "i fear what may come of it," he said. "for every day that passes is great loss to us and much gain to our enemies of england, who will anon garrison paris." "faint-heart," cried elliot, plucking his beard. "you will never believe in the maid, who has never yet failed to help us, by the aid of the saints." "the saints help them that help themselves," he answered. "and paris town has walls so strong, that once the fresh english are entered in, even the saints may find it a hard bargain. but you, elliot, run up and see if my chamber be ready, for i am well weary." she ran forth, and my master, turning to me, said in a low voice, "i have something for your own ear, but i feared to grieve her. in a booth at reims i saw her jackanapes doing his tricks, and when he came round questing with his bowl the little beast knew me and jumped up into my arms, and wailed as if he had been a christian. then i was for keeping him, but i was set on by three or four stout knaves, and, i being alone, and the crowd taking their part, i thought it not well to draw sword, and so break the king's peace that had just then begun to be king. but my heart was sore for the poor creature, and, in very truth, i bring back no light heart, save to see you twain again, for i fear me that the worst of the darg { } is still to do. but here comes elliot, so no word of the jackanapes." therewith he went off to his chamber, and i to mine, with less pleasure than i had looked for. still, the thought came into my heart that, the longer the delay of the onslaught on paris, the better chance i had to take part therein; and the harder the work, the greater the glory. the boding words of my master proved over true. the king was sacred on july the sixteenth, and paris then stood empty of english soldiers, being garrisoned by burgundians only. but, so soon as he was anointed, the king began to parley with burgundy, and thus they spun out the time, till, on july the twenty-fifth, a strong army of englishmen had entered paris. whether their hearts were high may not be known, but on their banner they had hung a distaff, and had painted the flag with the words-- "ores viegne la belle," meaning, "let the fair maid come, and we shall give her wool to spin." next we heard, and were loth to believe it, that a new truce of fifteen days more had been made with burgundy. the maid, indeed, said openly that she loved not the truce, and that she kept it only for the honour of the king, which was dearer to her than her life, as she proved in the end. then came marchings, this way and that, all about the isle of france, bedford leaving paris to fight the king, and then refusing battle, though the maid rode up to the english palisades, and smote them with her sword, defying the english to come out, if they were men. so the english betook them back to paris, after certain light skirmishes only. meanwhile some of his good towns that had been in the hands of the english yielded to the king, or rather to the maid. among these the most notable was compiegne, a city as great as orleans. many a time it had been taken and retaken in the wars, but now the burgesses swore that they would rather all die, with their wives and children, than open their gates again to the english. and this oath they kept well, as shall be seen in the end. chapter xix--how norman leslie rode again to the wars tidings of these parleys, and marches, and surrenders of cities came to us at tours, the king sending letters to his good towns by messengers. one of these, the very thomas scott of whom i have before spoken, a man out of rankelburn, in ettrick forest, brought a letter for me, which was from randal rutherford. "mess-john urquhart writes for me, that am no clerk," said randal, "and, to spare his pains, as he writes for the most of us, i say no more than this: come now, or come never, for the maid will ride to see paris in three days, or four, let the king follow or not as he will." there was no more but a cross marked opposite the name of randal rutherford, and the date of place and day, august the nineteenth, at compiegne. my face fired, for i felt it, when i had read this, and i made no more ado, but, covenanting with thomas scott to be with him when he rode forth at dawn, i went home, put my harness in order, and hired a horse from him that kept the hostelry of the "hanging sword," whither also i sent my harness, for that i would sleep there. this was all done in the late evening, secretly, and, after supper, i broke the matter to my master and elliot. her face changed to a dead white, and she sat silent, while my master took the word, saying, in our country speech, that "he who will to cupar, maun to cupar," and therewith he turned, and walked out and about in the garden. we were alone, and now was the hardest of my work to do, to comfort elliot, when, in faith, i sorely needed comfort myself. but honour at once and necessity called me to ride, being now fit to bear harness, and foreseeing no other chance to gain booty, or even, perchance, my spurs. nor could i endure to be a malingerer. she sat there, very white, her lip quivering, but her eyes brave and steadfast. i kneeled beside her, and in my hands i took her little hand, that was cold as ice. "it is for the maid, and for you, elliot," i whispered; and she only bent her head on my shoulder, but her cold hand gripped mine firmly. "she did say that you should come back unharmed of sword," whispered elliot, looking for what comfort she might. "but, o my dear! you may be taken, and when shall i see you again? oh! this life is the hardest thing for women, who must sit and tremble and pray at home. sure no danger of war is so terrible! ah, must you really go?" then she clung so closely about me, that it seemed as if i could never escape out of her arms, and i felt as if my heart must break in twain. "how could i look men in the face, and how could i ever see the maid again, if i go not?" i said; and, loosening her grasp, she laid her hands on my shoulders, and so gazed on me steadfastly, as if my picture could be fixed on the tablets of her brain. "on your chin is coming a little down, at last," she said, smiling faintly, and then gave a sob, and her lips met mine, and our very souls met; but, even then, we heard my master's steps hobbling to the door, and she gave a cry, and fled to her chamber. and this was our leave-taking--brief, but i would not have had it long. "it is ill work parting, heaven help us," said my master. "faith, i remember, as if it were to-day, how i set forth for verneuil; a long time i was gone, and came back a maimed man. but it is fortune of war! the saints have you in their keeping, my son, and chiefly st. andrew. come back soon, and whole, and rich, for, meseems, if i lose one of you, i am to lose both." therewith he embraced me, and i set forth to the hostel where i was to lie that night. now, see how far lighter is life to men than to women, for, though i left the house with the heaviest heart of any man in tours, often looking back at the candleshine in my lady's casement, yet, when i reached the "hanging sword," i found thomas scott sitting at his wine, and my heart and courage revived within me. he lacked nothing but one to listen, and soon was telling tales of the war, and of the road, and of how this one had taken a rich prisoner, and that one had got an arrow in his thigh, and of what chances there were to win paris by an onslaught. "for in no other can we take it," said he, "save, indeed, by miracle. for they are richly provisioned, and our hope is that, if we can make a breach, there may be a stir of the common folk, who are well weary of the english and the burgundians." now, with his talk of adventures, and with high hopes, i was so heartened up, that, to my shame, my grief fell from me, and i went to my bed to dream of trenches and escalades, glory and gain. but elliot, i fear me, passed a weary night, and a sorry, whereas i had scarce laid my head on my pillow, as it seemed, when i heard thomas shouting to the grooms, and clatter of our horses' hoofs in the courtyard. so i leaped up, though it was scarce daylight, and we rode northwards before the full coming of the dawn. here i must needs write of a shameful thing, which i knew not then, or i would have ridden with a heavier heart, but i was told concerning the matter many years after, by messire enguerrand de monstrelet, a very learned knight, and deep in the counsels of the duke of burgundy. "you were all sold," he said to me, at dijon, in the year of our lord fourteen hundred and forty-seven--"you were all sold when you marched against paris town. for the maid, with d'alencon, rode from compiegne towards paris, on the twenty-third of august, if i remember well"; and here he turned about certain written parchments that lay by him. "yea, on the twenty-third she left compiegne, but on the twenty-eighth of that month the archbishop of reims entered the town, and there he met the ambassadors of the good duke of burgundy. there he and they made a compact between them, binding your king and the duke, that their truce should last till noel, but that the duke might use his men in the defence of paris against all that might make onfall. now, the archbishop and the king knew well that the maid was, in that hour, marching on paris. to what purpose make a truce, and leave out of the peace the very point where war should be? manifestly the french king never meant to put forth the strength of his army in helping the maid. there was to be truce between france and burgundy, but none between england and the maid." so messire enguerrand told me, a learned knight and a grave, and thus was the counsel of the saints defeated by the very king whom they sought to aid. but of this shameful treaty we men-at-arms knew nothing, and so hazarded our lives against loaded dice. chapter xx--concerning the maid and the birds we rode northwards, first through lands that i had travelled in before to orleans, and so into a country then strange to me, passing by way of lagny, with intent to go to senlis, where we deemed the king lay. the whole region being near paris, and close under the english power, was rich and peaceful of aspect, the corn being already reaped, and standing in sheaves about the fields, whether to feed englishmen or frenchmen, none could tell. for the land was in a kind of hush, in expectancy and fear, no man knowing how things should fall out at paris. natheless the prior of lagny, within that very week wherein we came, had gone to st. denis, and yielded his good town into the hands of the duc d'alencon for the king. and the fair duke had sent thither messire ambrose de lore, a very good knight, with messire jehan foucault, and many men-at-arms. to messire ambrose we were brought, that we might give and take his news. i remember well that i dropped out of the saddle at the door of his lodgings, and could scarce stand on my legs, so weary was i with the long and swift riding. never had i ridden so far, and so fast, fresh horses standing saddled and bridled for thomas scott and me at every stage, but the beast which i had hired i sent back from the first stage to mine host of the "hanging sword." not without labour i climbed the stairs to the chamber of messire ambrose, who bade us sit down, and called for wine to be given us, whereof thomas scott drank well, but i dared take none, lest my legs should wholly refuse their office. when thomas had told how all the country lay at the king's peace, and how our purpose was to ride to the king at senlis, the knight bade us rather make what haste we might to st. denis. "for there, by to-morrow or next day, the king is like to be, and the assault will be delivered on paris, come of it what will." with this he bade us good speed, but, to guess from his countenance, was in no high hopes. and, at supper, whereto we had the company of certain of his men-at-arms, i could well perceive that they were not in the best heart. for now we heard how the maid, being sorrowful for the long delays, had bidden the duc d'alencon ride forth with her from compiegne "to see paris closer than yet she had seen it." the duc d'alencon, who in late days has so strangely forgotten the loyalty of his youth, was then fain to march with her, for they two were the closest friends that might be. therefore they had passed by way of senlis, where they were joined by some force of men-at-arms, and so, on the third day's march, they came to st. denis, where they were now lying. here it is that the kings of france have been buried for these eight hundred years, in the great abbey. "nom dieu!" said one of those who spoke with us. "you might deem that our king is nowise pressed to see the place where his forefathers lie. for d'alencon is riding, now and again, to senlis, to rouse the king, and make him march to st. denis, with the army, that the assault may be given. but if they were bidding him to his own funeral, instead of to a gentle passage of arms, he could not make more excuses. there are skirmishes under paris walls, and at the gates, day by day, and the maid rides here and there, considering of the best place for the onslaught. but the king tarries, and without him and the army they can venture on no great valiance. nevertheless, come he must, if they bring him bound in a cart. wherefore, if you want your part in what is toward, you do well to make no long tarrying here." i was of the same mind, and as the king was shortly to be looked for at st. denis, we rode thither early next morning, with what speed we might. on our left, like a cloud, was the smoke of paris, making me understand what a great city it was, much greater than orleans. before us, far away, were the tall towers of the chapel of st. denis, to be our guide! we heard, also, the noise of ordnance being fired, and therefore made the greater haste, and we so rode that, about six hours after noon, on the eve of the nativity of our blessed lady, we reached the gates of the town. here we found great press of folk, men coming and going, some carrying the wounded, for there had been a skirmish that day, at one of the paris gates, whence came the sound of cannon and culverins, and we had won little advantage. at the gates of st. denis we asked where the quarters of the scots men-at- arms might be, and were told in the chapel, whither we needed no guide. but, as we went up the street, we saw women leaning forth from the windows, laughing with the men-at-arms, and beckoning to them, and by the tavern doors many were sitting drinking, with girls beside them, and others were playing dice, and many an oath we heard, and foul words, as is customary in a camp. verily i saw well that this was not the army of men clean confessed and of holy life who had followed the maid from blois to orleans. in place of priests, here were harlots, and, for hymns, ribald songs, for men had flocked in from every quarter; soldiers of the robber companies, bretons, germans, italians, spaniards, all talking in their own speech, rude, foul, and disorderly. so we took our way, as best we knight, through the press, hearing oaths enough if our horses trod over near any man, and seeing daggers drawn. it was a pleasure to come out on the great parvise, where the red, white, and green of our scots were the commonest colours, and where the air was less foul and noisome than in the narrow wynds. high above us the great towers of the abbey shone red and golden in the light of the sinking sun, while beneath all was brown, dusk, and dim with smoke. on these towers i could gladly have looked long, and not wearied. for they are all carven with the holy company of the martyrs and saints, like the angels whom jacob saw ascending by the ladder into heaven; even so that blessed company seemed to scale upwards from the filth of the street, and the darkness, and the din, right on towards the golden heights of the city of god. and beneath them lie the sacred bones of all the kings of france, from the days of st. dagobert even to our own time, all laid there to rest where no man shall disturb them, till the angels' trumpet calls, and the day of judgment is at hand. verily it is a solemn place for a christian man to think on, and i was gazing thereupon, as in a dream, when one plucked my sleeve, and turning, i saw randal rutherford, all his teeth showing in a grin. "welcome," he cried. "you have made good speed, and the beginning of a fray is better than the end of a feast. and, by st. boswell, to-morrow we shall have it, lad! the king came in to-day--late is better than never--and to-morrow we go with the maid, to give these pock-puddings a taste of scottish steel." "and the maid, where is she, randal?" "she lodges beyond the paris gate, at the windmill, wherefrom she drove the english some days agone." "wherefore not in the town?" i asked. "mayhap because she likes to be near her work, and would that all were of her mind. and mayhap she loves not the sight of the wenches whom she was wont to drive from the camp, above all now that she has broken the holy sword of fierbois, smiting a lass with the flat of the blade." "i like not the omen," said i. "freits follow them that freits fear," said randal, in our country speech. "and the maid is none of these. 'well it was,' said she, 'that i trusted not my life to a blade that breaks so easily,' and, in the next skirmish, she took a burgundian with her own hands, and now wears his sword, which is a good cut and thrust piece. but come," he cried, "if needs you must see the maid, you have but to walk to the paris gate, and so to the windmill hard by. and your horse i will stable with our own, and for quarters, we living scots men-at-arms fare as well as the dead kings of france, for to-night we lie in the chapel." i dismounted, and he gave me an embrace, and, holding me at arms'-length, laughed-- "you never were a tall man, norman, but you look sound, and whole, and tough for your inches, like a highlandman's dirk. now be off on your errand, and when it is done, look for me yonder at the sign of 'the crane,'" pointing across the parvise to a tavern, "for i keep a word to tell in your lug that few wot of, and that it will joy you to hear. to- morrow, lad, we go in foremost." and so, smiling, he took my horse and went his way, whistling, "hey, tuttie, tattie!" verily his was the gladdest face i had seen, and his words put some heart into me, whereas, of the rest save our own scots, i liked neither what i saw, nor what i heard. i had but to walk down the street, through elbowing throngs of grooms, pages, men-at-arms, and archers, till i found the paris gate, whence the windmill was plain to behold. it was such an old place as we see in northern france, plain, strong, with red walls which the yellow mosses stain, and with high grey roofs. the maid's banner, with the holy dove, and the sacred name, drooped above the gateway, and beside the door, on the mounting-stone, sat the boy, louis des coutes, her page. he was a lad of fifteen years, merry enough of his nature, and always went gaily clad, and wearing his yellow hair long. but now he sat thoughtful on the mounting-stone, cutting at a bit of wood with his dagger. "so you have come to take your part," he said, when we had saluted each the other. "faith, i hope you bring good luck with you, and more joy to my mistress, for we need all that you can bring." "why, what ails all of you?" i asked. "i have seen never a hopeful face, save that of one of my own countrymen. you are not afraid of a crack on your curly pate, are you?" "curly or not, my head knows better than to knock itself against paris walls. they are thick, and high, and the windows of every house on the wall are piled with stones, to drop upon us. and i know not well why, but things go ill with us. i never saw her," and he nodded towards the open gateway, "so out of comfort. when there is fighting toward, she is like herself, and she is the first to rise and the last to lie down. but, in all our waiting here, she has passed many an hour praying in the chapel, where the dead kings lie, yet her face is not glad when she comes forth. it was wont to shine strangely, when she had been praying, at the chapel in couldray, while we were at chinon. but now it is otherwise. moreover, we saw paris very close to-day, and there were over many red crosses of st. george upon the walls. and to-morrow is the feast of the blessed virgin, no day for bloodshed." "faint heart!" said i (and, indeed, after the assault on paris, louis des coutes went back, and rode no more with the maid). "the better the day, the better the deed! may i go within?" "i will go with you," he said, "for she said that you would come, and bade me bring you to her." we entered the gateway together, and before us lay the square of the farm, strewn with litter, and from within the byre we heard the milk ring in the pails, for the women were milking the cows. and there we both stood astonished, for we saw the maid as never yet i had seen her. she was bareheaded, but wore the rest of her harness, holding in her hand a measure of corn. all the fowls of the air seemed to be about her, expecting their meat. but she was not throwing the grain among them, for she stood as still as a graven image, and, wonderful to tell, a dove was perched on her shoulder, and a mavis was nestling in her breast, while many birds flew round her, chiefly doves with burnished plumage, flitting as it were lovingly, and softly brushing her now and again with their wings. many a time had i heard it said that, while she was yet a child, the wild birds would come and nestle in the bosom of the maid, but i had never believed the tale. yet now i saw this thing with mine own eyes, a fair sight and a marvellous, so beautiful she looked, with head unhelmeted, and the wild fowl and tame flitting about her and above her, the doves crooning sweetly in their soft voices. then her lips moved, and she spoke-- "tres doulx dieu, en l'onneur de vostre saincte passion, je vous requier, se vous me aimes, que vous me revelez ce que je doy faire demain pour vostre gloire!" so she fell silent again, and to me it seemed that i must not any longer look upon that holy mystery, so, crossing myself, i laid my hand on the shoulder of the page, and we went silently from the place. "have you ever seen it in this manner?" i whispered, when we were again without the farmyard. "never," said he, trembling, "though once i saw a stranger thing." "and what may that have been?" "nay, i spoke of it to her, and she made me swear that i never would reveal it to living soul, save in confession. but she is not as other women." what he had in his mind i know not, but i bade him good even, and went back into the town, where lights were beginning to show in the casements. in the space within the gates were many carts gathered, full of faggots wherewith to choke up the fosse under paris, and tables to throw above the faggots, and so cross over to the assault. chapter xxi--how a hundred scots set forth to take paris town entering the tavern of "the crane," i found the doorways crowded with archers of our guard, among whom was randal rutherford. when i had come, they walked into a chamber on the ground floor, calling for wine, and bidding certain french burgesses go forth, who needed no second telling. the door was shut, two sentinels of ours were posted outside, and then randal very carefully sounded all the panels of the room, looking heedfully lest there should be any hole whereby what passed among us might be heard in another part of the house, but he found nothing of the kind. the room being full, some sitting and some standing, as we could, randal bade father urquhart, our chaplain, tell us to what end we had been called together. the good father thereupon stood up, and spoke in a low voice, but so that all could hear, for we were all hushed to listen. "there is," he said, "within paris, a certain carmelite, a frenchman, and a friend of brother richard, the preacher, whom, as you know, the english drove from the town." "i saw him at troyes," said one, "where he kneeled before the maid, and they seemed very loving." "that is the man, that is brother richard. now, as i was busy tending the wounded, in the skirmish three days agone, this carmelite was about the same duty for those of his party. he put into my hand a slip of paper, wherein brother richard commended him to any scot or frenchman of the king's party, as an honest man, and a friend of the king's. when i had read this, the carmelite spoke with me in latin, and in a low voice. his matter was this: in paris, he said, there is a strong party of armagnacs, who have, as we all know, a long score to settle with them of burgundy. they are of the common folk and labourers, but among them are many rich burgesses. they have banded themselves together by an oath to take our part, within the town, if once we win a gate. here is a cedule signed by them with their names or marks, and this he gave me as a proof of good faith." here he handed a long slip of parchment, all covered with writing, to randal, and it went round among us, but few there were clerks, save myself. i looked on it, and the names, many of them attested by seals with coat armour, were plain to be read. "their counsel is to muster in arms secretly, and to convey themselves, one by one, into certain houses hard by the port st. denis, where certain of their party dwell. now, very early to-morrow morning, before dawn, the purpose of the english is to send forth a company of a hundred men-at- arms, who will make a sudden onset on the windmill, where the maid lies to-night, and so will take her, if they may." "by st. bride of douglas," said one of us, "they will get their kail through the reek, for our guard is to lie in arms about the windmill, and be first in the field to-morrow." "the craft is, then," father urquhart went on, "that we shall destroy this english company with sword or arrow, but with no alarm of culverins or cannon. meanwhile, some five score of you will put on to-night the red cross of st. george, with plain armour, so that the english shall mistake you for their own men returning from the sally, and some few men in our own colours and coats you will hale with you as prisoners. and, if one of you can but attire himself in some gear of the maid's, with a hucque of hers, scarlet, and dight with the lilies of france, the english gate-wards will open to you all the more eagerly." "by the bones of st. boswell!" cried randal in his loud voice, but the good father put a hand on his mouth. "quiet, man!" he said. "by the blessed bones of st. boswell," randal said again, as near a whisper as he could attain to, "the lady of the linen-basket shall come as the maid. we have no man so maidenly." they all shouted, laughing, and beating the tables with hands and tankards. "silence!" cried robin lindsay. "nay, the louder we laugh, the less will any suspect what is forward," said randal rutherford. "norman, will you play this part in the mumming?" i was ashamed to say no, though i liked it not over well, and i nodded with my head. "how maidenly he blushes!" cried one, and there was another clamour, till the walls rang. "so be it then," says father urquhart, "and now you know all. the honest armagnacs will rise so soon as you are well within the gate. they command both sides of the street that leads to the port st. denis, and faith, if the english want to take it, when a hundred scots are within, they will have to sally forth by another gate, and come from the outside. and you are to run up the banner of scotland over the port, when once you hold it, so the french attack will be thereby." "we played the same game before verneuil fight, and won it," said one; "will the english have forgotten the trick?" "by st. bride, when once they see us haling the maid along, they will forget old stratagems of war. this is a new device! oh to see their faces when we cry 'st. andrew,' and set on!" "i am not so old as you all in the wars," i began. "no, mademoiselle la lavandiere, but you are of the right spirit, with your wench's face." "but," i said, "how if the english that are to attack the windmill in the first grey of the morning come not to hand-strokes, or take to their heels when they find us awake, and win back to paris before us? our craft, methinks, is to hold them in an ambush, but what if we catch them not? let but one runaway be swift of foot, and we are undone." "there is this to be said," quoth father urquhart, "that the english company is to sally forth by the port st. denis, and it is the port st. denis that our armagnacs will be guarding. now i speak as a man of peace, for that is my calling. but how would it be if your hundred men and norman set forth in the dark, and lay hid not very far from the st. denis gate? then some while after the lighting of the bale-fires from the windmill, to be lit when the english set on, make straight for the gate, and cry, 'st. george for england!' if you see not the bale-fires ere daylight, you will come back with what speed you may; but if you do see them, then--" "father, you have not lived long on the highland line for nothing," quoth robin lindsay. "a very proper stratagem indeed," i said, "but now, gentlemen, there is one little matter; how will sir hugh kennedy take this device of ours? if we try it and fail, without his privity, we had better never return, but die under paris wall. and, even if we hold the gate, and paris town is taken, faith i would rather affront the fire of john the lorrainer than the face of sir hugh." no man spoke, there were not two minds on this matter, so, after some chaffer of words, it was agreed to send father urquhart with randal to show the whole scheme to sir hugh, while the rest of us should await their coming back with an answer. in no long time they were with us, the father very red and shamefaced. "he gave the good father the rough side of his tongue," quoth randal, "for speaking first to me, and not to him. happily we were over cunning to say aught of our gathering here. but when he had let his bile flow, he swore, and said that he could spare a hundred dyvour loons of his command, on the cast of the dice, and, now silence all! not a word or a cry," here he held up his hand, "we are to take 'fortune of war'!" every man grinned gladly on his neighbour, in dead stillness. "now," said randal, "slip out by threes and fours, quietly, and to quarters; but you, norman, wait with me." chapter xxii--how norman leslie fared in paris town "norman, my lad, all our fortunes are made," said randal to me when we were left alone. "there will be gilt spurs and gold for every one of us, and the pick of the plunder." "i like it not," i answered; whereon he caught me rudely by both shoulders, looking close into my face, so that the fume of the wine he had been drinking reached my nostrils. "is a leslie turning recreant?" he asked in a low voice. "a pretty tale to tell in the kingdom of fife!" i stood still, my heart very hot with anger, and said no word, while his grip closed on me. "leave hold," i cried at last, and i swore an oath, may the saints forgive me,--"i will not go!" he loosed his grasp on me, and struck one hand hard into the other. "that i should see this, and have to tell it!" he said, and stepping to the table, he drank like one thirsty, and then fell to pacing the chamber. he seemed to be thinking slowly, as he wiped and plucked at his beard. "what is it that ails you?" he asked. "look you, this onfall and stratagem of war may not miscarry. perdition take the fool, it is safe!" "have i been seeking safety since you knew me?" i asked. "verily no, and therefore i wonder at you the more; but you have been long sick, and men's minds are changeful. consider the thing, nom dieu! if there be no two lights shown from the mill, we step back silently, and all is as it was; the english have thought worse of their night onfall, or the carmelite's message was ruse de guerre. but if we see the two lights, then the hundred english are attempting the taking of the mill; the st. denis gate is open for their return, and we are looked for by our armagnacs within paris. we risk but a short tussle with some drowsy pock- puddings, and then the town is ours. the gate is as strong to hold against an enemy from within as from without. why, man, run to louis de coutes, and beg a cast suit of the maid's; she has plenty, for she is a woman in this, that dearly she loves rich attire." "randal," i said, "i will go with you, and the gladdest lad in france to be going, but i will go in my own proper guise as a man-at-arms. to wear the raiment of the blessed maid, a man and a sinner like me, i will in nowise consent; it is neither seemly nor honourable. take your own way, put me under arrest if you will, and spoil my fortunes, and make me a man disgraced, but i will not wear her holy raiment. it is not the deed of a gentleman, or of a christian." he plucked at his beard. "i am partly with you," he said. "and yet it were a great bourde to play off on the english, and most like to take them and to be told of in ballad and chronicle, like one of wallace's onfalls. for, seeing the pucelle, as they will deem, in our hands, they will think all safe, and welcome us open armed. o norman, can we do nothing? stop, will you wear another woman's short kirtle over your cuisses and taslet? she shall be no saint, i warrant you, but, for a sinner, a bonny lass and a merry. as a gentleman i deem this fair stratagem of war. if i were your own brother,--the saints have his soul in their keeping,--i would still be of this counsel. will you, my lad?" he looked so sad, and yet withal so comical, that i held out my hand to him, laughing. "disguise me as you will," i said, "i have gone mumming as maid marion before now, in the robin hood play, at st. andrews"; and as i spoke, i saw the tall thatched roofs of south street, and the priory gates open, the budding elms above the garden wall of st. leonard's, and all the may- day revel of a year agone pouring out into the good town. "you speak like yourself now, bless your beardless face! come forth," he said, taking a long pull at a tankard,--"that nothing might be wasted,"--and so we went to quarters, and randal trudged off, soon coming back, laughing, with the red kirtle. our men had been very busy furbishing up the red cross of st. george on their breasts, and stripping themselves of any sign of our own colours. as for my busking, never had maid such rough tire-women; but by one way or another, the apparel was accommodated, and they all said that, at a little distance of ground, the english would be finely fooled, and must deem that the maid herself was being led to them captive. it was now in the small hours of morning, dark, save for the glimmer of stars, here and there in a cloudy sky. father urquhart himself went up to the roof of the mill, to say his orisons, having with him certain faggots of pitch-wood, for lighting the beacon-fires if need were; and, as it chanced, braziers to this end stood ready on the roof, as is custom on our own border keeps. we scots, a hundred in all, in english colours, with three or four as prisoners, in our own badges, fared cautiously, and with no word spoken, through dewy woods, or lurking along in dry ditches where best we might, towards the st. denis gate of paris. i had never been on a night surprise or bushment before, and i marvelled how orderly the others kept, as men used to such work, whereas i went stumbling and blindlings. at length, within sight of the twinkling lights of paris, and a hundred yards or thereby off the common way, we were halted in a little wood, and bidden to lie down; no man was so much as to whisper. some slept, i know, for i heard their snoring, but for my part, i never was less in love with sleep. when the sky first grew grey, so that we could dimly see shapes of things, we heard a light noise of marching men on the road. "the english!" whispered he that lay next me. "hush!" breathed randal, and so the footsteps went by, none of us daring to stir, for fear of the rustle in the leaves. the sound soon ceased; belike they had struck off into these very fields wherethrough we had just marched. "now, robin lindsay, climb into yonder ash-tree, and keep your eyes on the mill and the beacon-fires," said randal. robin scrambled up, not easily, because of his armour, and we waited, as it seemed, for an endless time. "what is that sound," whispered one, "so heavy and so hoarse?" it was my own heart beating, as if it would burst my side, but i said nought, and even then robin slid from the tree, as lightly as he might. he held up two fingers, without a word, for a sign that the beacons were lighted, and nodded. "down all," whispered randal. "give them time, give them time." so there we lay, as we must, but that was the hardest part of the waiting, and no sound but of the fowls and wild things arousing, and the cry of sentinels from paris walls, came to our ears. at length randal said, "up all, and onwards!" we arose, loosened our swords in their sheaths, and so crossed to the road. we could now see paris plainly, and were close by the farm of the mathurins, while beyond was the level land they call "les porcherons," with slopes above it, and many trees. "now, norman," said randal, "when we come within clear sight of the gate, two of us shall seize you by the arms as prisoner; then we all cry 'st. george!' and set off running towards paris. the quicker, the less time for discovery." so, having marched orderly and speedily, while the banks of the roadway hid us, we set off to run, randal and robin gripping me when we were full in sight of the moat, of the drawbridge (which was down), and the gate. then our men all cried, "st. george for england! the witch is taken!" and so running disorderly and fast we made for the port, while english men-at-arms might be plainly seen and heard, gazing, waving their hands, and shouting from the battlements of the two gate-towers. down the road we ran, past certain small houses of peasants, and past a gibbet with a marauder hanging from it, just over the dry ditch. our feet, we three leading, with some twenty in a clump hard behind us, rang loud on the drawbridge over the dry fosse. the bridge planks quivered strangely; we were now within the gateway, when down fell the portcullis behind us, the drawbridge, creaking, flew up, a crowd of angry faces and red crosses were pressing on us, and a blow fell on my salade, making me reel. i was held in strong arms, swords shone out above me, i stumbled on a body--it was robin lindsay's--i heard randal give a curse as his blade broke on a helmet, and cry, "i yield me, rescue or no rescue." then burst forth a blast of shouts, and words of command and yells, and english curses. cannon-shot roared overhead, and my mouth was full of sulphur smoke and dust. they were firing on those of our men who had not set foot on the drawbridge when it flew up. soon the portcullis rose again, and the bridge fell, to let in a band of english archers, through whom our scots were cutting their way back towards st. denis. of all this i got glimpses, rather than clear sight, as the throng within the gateway reeled and shifted, crushing me sorely. presently the english from without trooped in, laughing and cursing, welcomed by their fellows, and every man of them prying into my face, and gibing. it had been a settled plan: we were betrayed, it was over clear, and now a harsh voice behind making me turn, i saw the wolf's face of father thomas under his hood, and his yellow fangs. "ha! fair clerk, they that be no clerks themselves may yet hire clerks to work for them. how like you my brother, the carmelite?" then i knew too well how this stratagem had all been laid by that devil, and my heart turned to water within me. randal was led away, but round me the crowd gathered in the open space, for i was haled into the greater gate tower beyond the wet fosse, and from all quarters ran soldiers, and men, women, and children of the town to mock me. "behold her," cried father thomas, climbing on a mounting-stone, as one who would preach to the people, while the soldiers that held me laughed. "behold this wonderful wonder of all wonders, the miraculous maid of the armagnacs! she boasted that, by help of the saints, she would be the first within the city, and lo! she is the first, but she has come without her army. she is every way a miracle, mark you, for she hath a down on her chin, such as no common maidens wear; and if she would but speak a few words of counsel, methinks her tongue would sound strangely scottish for a lorrainer." "speak, speak!" shouted the throng. "dogs," i cried, in french, "dogs and cowards! you shall see the maid closer before nightfall, and fly from her as you have fled before." "said i not so?" asked brother thomas. "a miracle, a miracle, the maid hath a scots tongue in her head." therewith stones began to fall, but the father, holding up his hand, bade the multitude refrain. "harm her not, good brethren, for to-morrow this maid shall be tried by the ordeal of fire if that be the will of our governors. then shall we see if she can work miracles or not," and so he went on gibing, while they grinned horribly upon me. never saw i so many vile faces of the basest people come together, from their filthy dens in paris. but as my eyes ran over them with loathing, i beheld a face i knew; the face of that violer woman who had been in our company before we came to chinon, and lo! perched on her shoulder, chained with a chain fastened round her wrist, was elliot's jackanapes! to see the poor beast that my lady loved in such ill company, seemed as if it would break my heart, and my head fell on my breast. "ye mark, brethren and sisters, she likes not the name of the ordeal by fire," cried brother thomas, whereon i lifted my face again to defy him, and i saw the violer woman bend her brows, and place her finger, as it were by peradventure, on her lips; wherefore i was silent, only gazing on that devil, but then rang out a trumpet-note, blowing the call to arms, and from afar came an answering call, from the quarter of st. denis. "carry him, or her, or whatever the spy is, into the outer gate tower," said a captain; "put him in fetters and manacles; lock the door and leave him; and then to quarters. and you, friar, hold your gibing tongue; lad or lass, he has borne him bravely." six men-at-arms he chose out to do his bidding; and while the gates were cleared of the throng, and trumpets were sounding, and church bells were rung backwards, for an alarm, i was dragged, with many a kick and blow, over the drawbridge, up the stairs of the tower, and so was thrown into a strong room beneath the battlements. there they put me in bonds, gave me of their courtesy a jug of water and a loaf of black bread by me, and then, taking my dagger, my sword, and all that was in my pouch, they left me with curses. "you shall hear how the onfall goes, belike," they said, "and to-morrow shall be your judgment." with that the door grated and rang, the key was turned in the lock, and their iron tread sounded on the stone stairs, going upwards. the room was high, narrow, and lit by a barred and stanchioned window, far above my reach, even if i had been unbound. i shame to say it, but i rolled over on my face and wept. this was the end of my hopes and proud heart. that they would burn me, despite their threats i scarce believed, for i had in nowise offended holy church, or in matters of the faith, and only for such heretics, or wicked dealers in art-magic, is lawfully ordained the death by fire. but here was i prisoner, all that i had won at orleans would do little more than pay my own ransom; from the end of my risk and travail i was now further away than ever. so i mused, weeping for very rage, but then came a heavy rolling sound overhead, as of moving wheeled pieces of ordnance. thereon (so near is hope to us in our despair) i plucked up some heart. ere nightfall, paris might be in the hands of the king, and all might be well. the roar and rebound of cannon overhead told me that the fighting had begun, and now i prayed with all my heart, that the maid, as ever, might again be victorious. so i lay there, listening, and heard the great artillery bellow, and the roar of guns in answer, the shouting of men, and clang of church bells. now and again the walls of the tower rang with the shock of a cannon-ball, once an arrow flew through the casement and shattered itself on the wall above my head. i scarce know why, but i dragged me to the place where it fell, and, put the arrow-point in my bosom. smoke of wood and pitch darkened the light; they had come, then, to close quarters. but once more rang the rattle of guns; the whizzing rush of stones, the smiting with axe or sword on wooden barrier and steel harness, the cries of war, "mont joye st. denis!" "st. george for england!" and slogans too, i heard, as "bellenden," "a home! a home!" and then i knew the scots were there, fighting in the front. but alas, how different was the day when first i heard our own battle-cries under orleans walls! then i had my life and my sword in my hands, to spend and to strike; but now i lay a lonely prisoner, helpless and all but hopeless; yet even so i clashed my chains and shouted, when i heard the slogan. thus with noise and smoke, and trumpets blowing the charge or the recall, and our pipes shrieking the pibroch high above the din, with dust floating and plaster dropping from the walls of my cell till i was wellnigh stifled, the day wore on, nor could i tell, in anywise, how the battle went. the main onslaught, i knew, was not on the gate behind the tower in which i lay, though that tower also was smitten of cannon-balls. at length, well past mid-day, as i deemed by the light, came a hush, and then a thicker smoke, and taste of burning pitch-wood, and a roar as if all paris had been blown into mid-air, so that my tower shook, while heavy beams fell crashing to earth. again came a hush, and then one voice, clear as a clarion call, even the voice of the maid, "tirez en avant, en avant!" how my blood thrilled at the sound of it! it must be now, i thought, or never, but the guns only roared the louder, the din grew fierce and fiercer, till i heard a mighty roar, the english shouting aloud as one man for joy, for so their manner is. thrice they shouted, and my heart sank within me. had they slain the maid? i knew not, but for torment of soul there is scarce any greater than so to lie, bound and alone, seeing nought, but guessing at what is befalling. after these shouts it was easy to know that the fighting waned, and was less fierce. the day, moreover, turned to thunder, and waxed lowering and of a stifling heat. yet my worst fears were ended, for i heard, now and again, the clear voice of the maid, bidding her men "fight on, for all was theirs." but the voice was weaker now, and other than it had been. so the day darkened, only once and again a shot was fired, and in the dusk the shouts of the english told me over clearly that for to-day our chance and hope were lost. then the darkness grew deeper, and a star shone through my casement, and feet went up and down upon the stairs, but no man came near me. below there was some faint cackle of mirth and laughter, and at last the silence fell. once more came a swift step on the stairs, as of one stumbling up in haste. the key rattled in the wards, a yellow light shone in, a man-at- arms entered; he held a torch to my face, looked to my bonds, and then gave me a kick, while one cried from below, "come on, dickon, your meat is cooling!" so he turned and went out, the door clanging behind him, and the key rattling in the wards. in pain and fierce wrath i gnawed my black bread, drank some of the water, and at last i bethought me of that which should have been first in the thoughts of a christian man, and i prayed. remembering the story of michael hamilton, which i have already told, and other noble and virtuous miracles of madame st. catherine of fierbois, i commanded me to her, that, by god's grace, she would be pleased to release me from bonds and prison. and i promised that, if she would so favour me, i would go on pilgrimage to her chapel of fierbois. i looked that my chains should now fall from my limbs, but, finding no such matter, and being very weary (for all the last night i had slept none), i fell on slumber and forgot my sorrow. belike i had not lain long in that blessed land where trouble seldom comes when i was wakened, as it were, by a tugging at my clothes. i sat up, but the room was dark, save for a faint light in the casement, high overhead, and i thought i had dreamed. howbeit, as i lay down again, heavy at heart, my clothes were again twitched, and now i remembered what i had heard, but never believed, concerning "lutins" or "brownies," as we call them, which, being spirits invisible, and reckoned to have no part in our salvation, are wont in certain houses to sport with men. curious rather than affrighted, i sat up once more, and looked around, when i saw two bright spots of light in the dark. then deeming that, for some reason unknown to me, the prison door had been opened while i slept, and a cat let in, i stretched out my hands towards the lights, thence came a sharp, faint cry, and something soft and furry leaped on to my breast, stroking me with little hands. it was elliot's jackanapes, very meagre, as i could feel, and all his ribs standing out, but he made much of me, fondling me after his manner; and indeed, for my lady's sake, i kissed him, wondering much how he came there. then he put something into my hands, almost as if he had been a christian, for it was a wise beast and a kind. even then there shone into my memory the thought of how my lady had prayed for her little friend when he was stolen (which i had thought strange, and scarcely warranted by our faith), and with that, hope wakened within me. my eyes being now more accustomed to the darkness, i saw that the thing which the jackanapes gave me was a little wallet, for he had been taught to fetch and carry, and never was such a marvel at climbing. but as i was caressing him, i found a string about his neck, to which there seemed to be no end. now, at length, i comprehended what was toward, and pulling gently at the string, i found, after some time, that it was attached to something heavy, on the outside of the casement. therefore i set about drawing in string from above, and more string, and more, and then appeared a knot and a splice, and the end of a thick rope. so i drew and drew, till it stopped, and i could see a stout bar across the stanchions of the casement. thereon i ceased drawing, and opening the little wallet, i found two files, one very fine, the other of sturdier fashion. verily then i blessed the violer woman, who at great peril of her own life, and by such witty device as doubtless madame st. catherine put into her heart, had sent the jackanapes up from below, and put me in the way of safety. i wasted no time, but began filing, not at the thick circlet on my wrist, but at a link of the chain whereto it was made fast. and such was the temper of the file, that soon i got the stouter weapon into the cut, and snapped the link; and so with the others, working long hours, and often looking fearfully for the first glimmer of dawn. this had not come in, when i was now free of bonds, but there was yet the casement to be scaled. with all my strength i dragged and jerked at the rope, whereby i meant to climb, lest the stanchions should be rusted through, and unable to bear my weight, but they stood the strain bravely. then i cast off my woman's kirtle, and took from my pouch the arrow-point, and therewith scratched hastily on the plastered wall, in great letters: "norman leslie of pitcullo leaves his malison on the english." next i bound the jackanapes within the bosom of my doublet, with a piece of the cord whereto the rope had been knotted, for i could not leave the little beast to die the death of a traitor, and bring suspicion, moreover, on the poor violer woman. then, commanding myself to the saints, and especially thanking madame st. catherine, i began to climb, hauling myself up by the rope, whereon i had made knots to this end; nor was the climbing more difficult than to scale a branchless beech trunk for a bird's nest, which, like other boys, i had often done. so behold me, at last, with my legs hanging in free air, seated on the sill of the casement. happily, of the three iron stanchions, though together they bore my weight, one was loose in the lower socket, for lack of lead, and this one i displaced easily enough, and so passed through. then i put the wooden bar at the rope's end, within the room, behind the two other stanchions, considering that they, by themselves, would bear my weight, but if not, rather choosing to trust my soul to the saints than my body to the english. the deep below me was very terrible to look upon, and the casement being above the dry ditch, i had no water to break my fall, if fall i must. howbeit, i hardened my heart, and turning my face to the wall, holding first the wooden bar, and then shifting my grasp to the rope, i let myself down, clinging to the rope with my legs, and at first not a little helped by the knots i had made to climb to the casement. when i had passed these, methought my hands were on fire; nevertheless, i slid down slowly and with caution, till my feet touched ground. i was now in the dry ditch, above my head creaked and swung the dead body of the hanged marauder, but he did no whit affray me. i ran, stooping, along the bed of the dry ditch, for many yards, stumbling over the bodies of men slain in yesterday's fight, and then, creeping out, i found a hollow way between two slopes, and thence crawled into a wood, where i lay some little space hidden by the boughs. the smell of trees and grass and the keen air were like wine to me; i cooled my bleeding hands in the deep dew; and presently, in the dawn, i was stealing towards st. denis, taking such cover of ditches and hedges as we had sought in our unhappy march of yesterday. and i so sped, by favour of the saints, that i fell in with no marauders; but reaching the windmill right early, at first trumpet-call, i was hailed by our sentinels for the only man that had won in and out of paris, and had carried off, moreover, a prisoner, the jackanapes. to see me, scarred, with manacles on my wrists and gyves on my ankles, weaponless, with an ape on my shoulder, was such a sight as the scots guard had never beheld before, and carrying me to the smith's, they first knocked off my irons, and gave me wine, ere they either asked me for my tale, or told me their own, which was a heartbreak to bear. for no man could unfold the manner of that which had come to pass, if, at least, there were not strong treason at the root of all. for our part of the onfall, the english had made but a feigned attack on the mill, wherefore the bale-fires were lit, to our undoing. this was the ruse de guerre of the accursed cordelier, brother thomas. for the rest, the maid had led on a band to attack the gate st. honore, with gaucourt in her company, a knight that had no great love either of her or of a desperate onslaught. but d'alencon, whom she loved as a brother, was commanded to take another band, and wait behind a butte or knowe, out of danger of arrow-shot. the maid had stormed all day at her gate, had taken the boulevard without, and burst open and burned the outer port, and crossed the dry ditch. but when she had led up her men, now few, over the slope and to the edge of the wet fosse, behold no faggots and bundles of wood were brought up, whereby, as is manner of war, to fill up the fosse, and so cross over. as she then stood under the wall, shouting for faggots and scaling-ladders, her standard-bearer was shot to death, and she was sorely wounded by an arbalest bolt. natheless she lay by the wall, still crying on her men, but nought was ready that should have been, many were slain by shafts and cannon-shot, and in the dusk, she weeping and crying still that the place was theirs to take, d'alencon carried her off by main force, set her on her horse, and so brought her back to st. denis. now, my mind was, and is to this day, that there was treason here, and a black stain on the chivalry of france, to let a girl go so far, and not to follow her. but of us scots many were slain, and more wounded, while robin lindsay died in paris gate, and randal rutherford lay a prisoner in english hands. chapter xxiii--how elliot's jackanapes came home of our blessed lord himself it is said in the gospel of st. matthew, "et non fecit ibi virtutes multas propter incredulitatem illorum." these words i willingly leave in the roman tongue; for by the wisdom of holy church it is deemed that many mysteries should not be published abroad in the vulgar speech, lest the unlearned hear to their own confusion. but if even he, doubtless by the wisdom of his own will, did not many great works "propter incredulitatem," it is the less to be marvelled at that his saints, through the person of the blessed maid, were of no avail where men utterly disbelieved. and that, where infidelity was, even she must labour in vain was shown anon, even on this very day of my escape out of paris town. for i had scarce taken some food, and washed and armed myself, when the maid's trumpets sounded, and she herself, armed and on horseback, despite her wound, rode into st. denis, to devise with the gentle duc d'alencon. together they came forth from the gate, and i, being in their company, heard her cry-- "by my baton, i will never go back till i take that city." { } these words percival de cagny also heard, a good knight, and maitre d'hotel of the house of alencon. thereon arose some dispute, d'alencon being eager, as indeed he always was, to follow where the maiden led, and some others holding back. now, as they were devising together, some for, some against, for men-at- arms not a few had fallen in the onfall, there came the sound of horses' hoofs, and lo! messire de montmorency, who had been of the party of the english, and with them in paris, rode up, leading a company of fifty or sixty gentlemen of his house, to join the maid. thereat was great joy and new courage in all men of goodwill, seeing that, within paris itself, so many gentlemen deemed ours the better cause and the more hopeful. thus there was an end of all dispute, our companies were fairly arrayed, and we were marching to revenge ourselves for the losses of yesterday, when two knights came spurring after us from st. denis. they were the duc de bar, and that unhappy charles de bourbon, comte de clermont, by whose folly, or ill-will, or cowardice, the scots were betrayed and deserted at the battle of the herrings, where my own brother fell, as i have already told. this second time charles de bourbon brought evil fortune, for he came on the king's part, straitly forbidding d'alencon and the maid to march forward another lance's length. whereat d'alencon swore profane, and the maiden, weeping, rebuked him. so, with heavy hearts, we turned, all the host of us, and went back to quarters, the maid to pray in the chapel, and the men-at-arms to drink and speak ill of the king. all this was on the ninth of september, a weary day to all of us, though in the evening word came that we were to march early next morning and attack paris in another quarter, crossing the river by a bridge of boats which the duc d'alencon had let build to that end. after two wakeful nights i was well weary, and early laid me down to sleep, rising at dawn with high hopes. and so through the grey light we marched silently to the place appointed, but bridge there was none; for the king, having heard of the maid's intent, had caused men to work all night long, destroying that which the gentle duke had builded. had the king but heard the shouts and curses of our company when they found nought but the bare piles standing, the grey water flowing, and the boats and planks vanished, he might have taken shame to himself of his lack of faith. therefore i say it boldly, it was because of men's unbelief that the maid at paris wrought no great works, save that she put her body in such hazard of war as never did woman, nay, nor man, since the making of the world. i have no heart to speak more of this shameful matter, nor of these days of anger and blasphemy. it was said and believed that her voices bade the maid abide at st. denis till she should take paris town, but the king, and charles de bourbon, and the archbishop of reims refused to hearken to her. on the thirteenth day of september, after dinner, the king, with all his counsellors, rode away from st. denis, towards gien on the loire. the maiden, for her part, hung up all her harness that she had worn, save the sword of st. catherine of fierbois, in front of the altar of our lady, and the blessed relics of st. denis in the chapel. thereafter she rode, as needs she must, and we of her company with her, to join the king, for so he commanded. and now was the will of the maid and of the duc d'alencon broken, and broken was all that great army, whereof some were free lances out of many lands, but more were nobles of france with their men, who had served without price or pay, for love of france and of the maid. never again were they mustered; nay when, after some weeks passed, the gentle duc d'alencon prayed that he might have the maiden with him, and burst into normandy, where the english were strongest, by the marches of maine, even this grace was refused to him, by the malengin and ill-will of la tremouille and the archbishop of reims. and these two fair friends met never more again, neither at fray nor feast. may she, among the saints, so work by her prayers that the late sin and treason of the gentle duke may be washed out and made clean, for while she lived there was no man more dear to her, nor any that followed her more stoutly in every onfall. now concerning the times that came after this shameful treason at paris, i have no joy to write. the king's counsellors, as their manner was, ever hankered after a peace with burgundy, and they stretched the false truce that was to have ended at christmas to easter day, "pacem clamantes quo non fuit pax." for there was no truce with the english, who took st. denis again, and made booty of the arms which the maid had dedicated to our lady. on our part la hire and xaintrailles plundered, for their own hand, the lands of the duke of burgundy, and indeed on every side there was no fair fighting, such as the maid loved, but a war of wastry, the peasants pillaged, and the poor held to ransom. for her part, she spent her days in prayer for the poor and the oppressed, whom she had come to deliver, and who now were in worse case than before, the english harrying certain of the good towns that had yielded to king charles. now her voices ever bade the maid go back to the isle of france, and assail paris, where lay no english garrison, and the armagnacs were stirring as much as they might. but paris, being at this time under the government of the duke of burgundy, was forsooth within the truce. the king's counsellors, therefore, setting their wisdom against that of the saints, bade the maid go against the towns of st. pierre le moustier and la charite, then held by the english on the loire. this was in november, when days were short, and the weather bitter cold. the council was held at mehun sur yevre, and forthwith the maid, glad to be doing, rode to bourges, where she mustered her men, and so marched to st. pierre le moustier, a small town, but a strong, with fosses, towers, and high walls. there we lay some two days or three, plying the town with our artillery, and freezing in the winter nights. at length, having made somewhat of a breach, the maid gave the word for the assault, and herself leading, with her banner in hand, we went at it with what force we might. but twice and thrice we were driven back from the fosse, and to be plain, our men were fled under cover, and only the maid stood within arrow-shot of the wall, with a few of her household, of whom i was one, for i could not go back while she held her ground. the arrows and bolts from the town rained and whistled about us, and in faith i wished myself other where. yet she stood, waving her banner, and crying, "tirez en avant, ils sont a nous," as was her way in every onfall. seeing her thus in jeopardy, her maitre d'hotel, d'aulon, though himself wounded in the heel so that he might not set foot to ground, mounted a horse, and riding up, asked her "why she abode there alone, and did not give ground like the others?" at this the maid lifted her helmet from her head, and so, uncovered, her face like marble for whiteness, and her eyes shining like steel, made answer-- "i am not alone; with me there are of mine fifty thousand! hence i will not give back one step till i have taken the town." then i wotted well that, sinful man as i am, i was in the company of the hosts of heaven, though i saw them not. great heart this knowledge gave me and others, and the maid crying, in a loud voice, "aux fagots, tout le monde!" the very runaways heard her and came back with planks and faggots, and so, filling up the fosse and passing over, we ran into the breach, smiting and slaying, and the town was taken. for my own part, i was so favoured that two knights yielded them my prisoners (i being the only man of gentle birth among those who beset them in a narrow wynd), and with their ransoms i deemed myself wealthy enough, as well i might. so now i could look to win my heart's desire, if no ill fortune befell. but little good fortune came in our way. from la charite, which was beset in the last days of november, we had perforce to give back, for the king sent us no munitions of war, and for lack of more powder and ball we might not make any breach in the walls of that town. and so, by reason of the hard winter, and the slackness of the king, and the false truce, we fought no more, at that season, but went, trailing after the court, from castle to castle. many feasts were held, and much honour was done to the maid, as by gifts of coat armour, and the ennobling of all her kith and kin, but these things she regarded not, nor did she ever bear on her shield the sword supporting the crown, between the lilies of france. if these were ill days for the maid, i shame to confess that they were merry days with me. there are worse places than a king's court, when a man is young, and light of heart, full of hope, and with money in his purse. i looked that we should take the field again in the spring; and having gained some gold, and even some good words, as one not backward where sword-strokes were going, i know not what dreams i had of high renown, ay, and the constable's staff to end withal. for many a poor scot has come to great place in france and germany, who began with no better fortune than a mind to put his body in peril. moreover, the winning of elliot herself for my wife seemed now a thing almost within my reach. therefore, as i say, i kept a merry yule at jargeau, going bravely clad, and dancing all night long with the merriest. only the wan face of the maid (that in time of war had been so gallant and glad) came between me and my pleasures. not that she was wilfully and wantonly sad, yet now and again we could mark in her face the great and loving pity that possessed her for france. now i would be half angered with her, but again far more wroth with myself, who could thus lightly think of that passion of hers. but when she might she was ever at her prayers, or in company of children, or seeking out such as were poor and needy, to whom she was abundantly lavish of her gifts, so that, wheresoever the court went, the people blessed her. in these months i had tidings of elliot now and again; and as occasion served i wrote to her, with messages of my love, and with a gift, as of a ring or a jewel. but concerning the manner of my escape from paris i had told elliot nothing for this cause. my desire was, when soonest i had an occasion, to surprise her with the gift of her jackanapes anew, knowing well that nothing could make her greater joy, save my own coming, or a victory of the maid. the little creature had been my comrade wheresoever we went, as at sully, gien, and bourges, only i took him not to the leaguers of st. pierre le moustier and la charite, but left him with a fair lady of the court. he had waxed fat again, for as meagre as he was when he came to me in prison, and he was full of new tricks, warming himself at the great fire in hall, like a man. now in the middle of the month of january, in the year of grace fourteen hundred and thirty, the maid told us of her household that she would journey to orleans, to abide for some space with certain ladies of her friends, namely, madame de st. mesmin and madame de mouchy, who loved her dearly. to the most of us she gave holiday, to see our own friends. the maid knew surely that in france my friends were few, and well she guessed whither i was bound. therefore she sent for me, and bidding me carry her love to elliot, she put into my hands a gift to her friend. it was a ring of silver-gilt, fashioned like that which her own father and mother had given her. at this ring she had a custom of looking often, so that the english conceived it to be an unholy talisman, though it bore the name that is above all names. that ring i now wear in my bosom. so, saying farewell, with many kind words on her part, i rode towards tours, where elliot and her father as then dwelt, in that same house where i had been with them to be healed of my malady, after the leaguer of orleans. to tours i rode, telling them not of my coming, and carrying the jackanapes well wrapped up in furs of the best. the weather was frosty, and folk were sliding on the ice of the flooded fields near tours when i came within sight of the great minster. the roads rang hard; on the smooth ice the low sun was making paths of gold, and i sang as i rode. putting up my horse at the sign of the "hanging sword," i took the ape under my great furred surcoat, and stole like a thief through the alleys, towards my master's house. the night was falling, and all the casement of the great chamber was glowing with the colour and light of a leaping fire within. there came a sound of music too, as one touched the virginals to a tune of my own country. my heart was beating for joy, as it had beaten in the bushment outside paris town. i opened the outer door secretly, for i knew the trick of it, and i saw from the thin thread of light on the wall of the passage that the chamber door was a little ajar. the jackanapes was now fretting and struggling within my surcoat, so, opening the coat, i put him down by the chamber door. he gave a little scratch, as was his custom, for he was a very mannerly little beast, and the sound of the virginals ceased. then, pushing the door with his little hands, he ran in, with a kind of cry of joy. "in our lady's name, what is this?" came the voice of elliot. "my dear, dear little friend, what make you here?" then i could withhold myself no longer, but entered, and my lady ran to me, the jackanapes clinging about her neck with his arms. but mine were round her too, and what words we said, and what cheer we made each the other, i may not write, commending me to all true lovers, whose hearts shall tell them that whereof i am silent. much was i rebuked for that i did not write to warn them of my coming, which was yet the more joyful that they were not warned. and then the good woman, elliot's kinswoman, must be called (though in sooth not at the very first), and then a great fire must be lit in my old chamber; and next my master came in, from a tavern where he had been devising with some scots of his friends; and all the while the jackanapes kept such a merry coil, and played so many of his tricks, and got so many kisses from his mistress, that it was marvel. but of all that had befallen me in the wars, and of how the maiden did (concerning which elliot had questioned me first of all), i would tell them little till supper was brought. and then, indeed, out came all my tale, and they heard of what had been my fortune in paris, and how the jackanapes had delivered me from durance, whereon never, surely, was any beast of his kind so caressed since our father adam gave all the creatures their names. but as touching the maid, i told how she had borne herself at st. pierre le moustier, and of all the honours that had been granted to her, and i bade them be of good heart and hope, for that her banner would be on the wind in spring, after easter day. all the good news that might be truly told i did tell, as how la hire had taken louviers town, and harried the english up to the very gates of rouen. and i gave to elliot the ring which the maid had sent to her, fashioned like that she herself wore, but of silver gilt, whereas the maid's was of base metal, and it bore the holy names mari. ihs. thereon elliot kissed it humbly, and avowed herself to be, that night, the gladdest damsel in all france. "for i have gotten you, mon ami, and my little friend that i had lost, beyond all hope, and i have a kind word and a token from her, la fille de dieu," whereat her speech faltered, and her eyes swam in tears. but some trick of her jackanapes brought back her mirth, and so the hours passed, as happy as any in my life. truly the memory of these things tells me how glad this world might be, wherein god has placed us, were it not troubled by the inordinate desires of men. in my master's house of tours, then, my days of holiday went merrily by, save for one matter, and that of the utmost moment. for my master would in no manner permit me to wed his daughter while this war endured; and elliot herself, blushing like any rose, told me that, while the maid had need of me, with the maid i must abide at my duty, and that she herself had no mind for happiness while her friend was yet labouring in the cause of france. howbeit, i delivered me of my vow, by pilgrimage to the chapel in fierbois. { } chapter xxiv--how the maid heard ill tidings from her voices, and of the silence of the birds eastertide came at last, and that early, easter day falling on march the twenty-seventh. our king kept his paques at sully with great festival, but his deadly foe, the duke of burgundy, lay at the town of peronne. so soon as eastertide was over, the duke drew all the force he had to montdidier, a town which lies some eight leagues to the north and west of compiegne. hence he so wrought that he made a pact with the captain of the french in gournay, a town some four leagues north and west of compiegne, whereby the garrison there promised to lie idle, and make no onslaught against them of burgundy, unless the king brought them a rescue. therefore the duke went back to noyon on the oise, some eight leagues north and east of compiegne, while his captain, jean de luxembourg, led half his army west, towards beauvais. there he took the castle of provenlieu, an old castle, and ruinous, that the english had repaired and held. and there he hanged certain english, who were used to pillage all the country about montdidier. thence jean de luxembourg came back to the duke, at noyon, and took and razed choisy, which was held for france. now all these marchings, and takings of towns, were designed to one end, namely, that the duke might have free passage over the river oise, so that his men and his victual might safely come and go from the east. for, manifestly, it was his purpose to besiege and take the good town of compiegne, which lies on the river oise some fifteen leagues north and east of paris. this town had come in, and yielded to the maid, some weeks before the onfall of paris, and it was especially dear to her, for the people had sworn that they would all die, and see their wives and children dead, rather than yield to england or burgundy. moreover, whosoever held compiegne was like, in no long time, to be master of paris. but as now guillaume de flavy commanded in compiegne for the king, a very good knight and skilled captain, but a man who robbed and ravished wheresoever he had power. his brother, louis de flavy, also joined him after choisy fell, as i have told. all this i have written that men may clearly know how the maid came by her end. for, so soon as eastertide was over, and the truce ended, she made no tarrying, nor even said farewell to the king, who might have held her back, but drew out all her company, and rode northward, whither she knew that battle was to be. her mind was to take some strong place on the oise, as pont l'eveque, near noyon, that she might cut off them of burgundy from all the country eastward of oise, and so put them out of the power to besiege compiegne, and might destroy all their host at montdidier and in the beauvais country. for the maid was not only the first of captains in leading a desperate onslaught, but also (by miracle, for otherwise it might not be) she best knew how to devise deep schemes and subtle stratagem of war. setting forth, therefore, early in april, on the fifteenth day of the month she came to melun, a town some seven leagues south of paris, that had lately yielded to the king. bidding me walk with her, she went afoot about the walls, considering what they lacked of strength, and how they might best be repaired, and bidding me write down all in a little book. now we two, and no other, were walking by the dry fosse of melun, the day being very fair and warm for that season, the flowers blossoming, and the birds singing so sweet and loud as never i heard them before or since that day. the maid stood still to listen, holding up her hand to me for silence, when, lo! in one moment, in the midst of merry music, the birds hushed suddenly. as i marvelled, for there was not a cloud in the sky, nor a breath of cold wind, i beheld the maid standing as i had seen her stand in the farmyard of the mill by st. denis. her head was bare, and her face was white as snow. so she stood while one might count a hundred, and if ever any could say that he had seen the maid under fear, it was now. as i watched and wondered, she fell on her knees, like one in prayer, and with her eyes set and straining, and with clasped hands, she said these words--"tell me of that day, and that hour, or grant me, of your grace, that in the same hour i may die." then she was silent for short space, and then, having drawn herself upon her knees for three paces or four, she very reverently bowed down, and kissed the ground. thereafter she arose, and beholding me wan, i doubt not, she gently laid her hand upon my shoulder, and, smiling most sweetly, she said-- "i know not what thou hast seen or heard, but promise, on thine honour, that thou wilt speak no word to any man, save in confession only, while i bear arms for france." then humbly, and with tears, i vowed as she had bidden me, whereto she only said-- "come, we loiter, and i have much to do, for the day is short." but whether the birds sang again, or stinted, i know not, for i marked it not. but she set herself, as before, to consider the walls and the fosses, bidding me write down in my little book what things were needful. nor was her countenance altered in any fashion, nor was her wit less clear; but when we had seen all that was to be looked to, she bade me call the chief men of the town to her house, after vespers, and herself went into the church of st. michael to pray. though i pondered much on this strange matter, which i laid up in my heart, i never knew what, belike, the import was, till nigh a year thereafter, at rouen. but there one told me how the maid, before her judges, had said that, at melun, by the fosse, her saints had told her how she should be made prisoner before the feast of st. john. and she had prayed them to warn her of that hour, or in that hour might she die, but they bade her endure all things patiently, and with a willing mind. at that coming, then, of the saints, i was present, though, being a sinful man, i knew not that the holy ones were there. but the birds knew, and stinted in their singing. now that the maid, knowing by inspiration her hour to be even at the doors, and wotting well what the end of her captivity was like to be, yet had the heart to put herself in jeopardy day by day, this i deem the most valiant deed ever done by man or woman since the making of the world. for scarce even wallace wight would have stood to his standard had he known, by teaching of them who cannot lie, what end awaited him beyond all hope. nay, he would have betaken him to france, as once he did in time of less danger. now, i pray you, consider who she was that showed this courage and high heart. she was but the daughter of a manant, a girl of eighteen years of age. remember, then, what manner of creature such a girl is of her nature; how weak and fearful; how she is discomfited and abashed by the company of even one gentleman or lady of noble birth; how ignorant she is of war; how fond to sport and play with wenches of her own degree; how easily set on fire of love; and how eager to be in the society of young men amorous. pondering all these things in your hearts, judge ye whether this maid, the bravest leader in breach, the wisest captain, having foreknowledge of things hidden and of things to come, the most courteous lady who ever with knights sat in hall, not knowing carnal love, nor bodily fear, was aught but a thing miraculous, and a sister of the saints. chapter xxv--of the onfall at pont l'eveque, and how norman leslie was hurt i have now shown wherefore the fighting, in this spring, was to be up and down the water of oise, whence the villagers had withdrawn themselves, of necessity, into the good towns. for the desire of the duke of burgundy was to hold the oise, and so take compiegne, the better to hold paris. and on our side the skill was to cut his army in two, so that from east of the water of oise neither men nor victual might come to him. having this subtle device of war in her mind, the maid rode north from melun, by the king's good towns, till she came to compiegne, that was not yet beleaguered. there they did her all the honour that might be, and thither came to her standard messire jacques de chabennes, messire rigault de fontaines, messire poton de xaintrailles, the best knight then on ground, and many other gentlemen, some four hundred lances in all. { } with these lances the maid consorted to attack pont l'eveque by a night onfall. this is a small but very strong hold, on the oise, some six leagues from compiegne, as you go up the river, and it lies near the town of noyon, which was held by the english. in pont l'eveque there was a garrison of a hundred lances of the english, and our skill was to break on them in the grey of dawn, when men least fear a surprise, and are most easily taken. by this very device la hire had seized compiegne but six years agone, wherefore our hope was the higher. about five of the clock on an april day we rode out of compiegne, a great company,--too great, perchance, for that we had to do. for our army was nigh a league in length as it went on the way, nor could we move swiftly, for there were waggons with us and carts, drawing guns and couleuvrines and powder, fascines wherewith to fill the fosses, and ladders and double ladders for scaling the walls. so the captains ordered it to be, for ever since that day by melun fosse, when the saints foretold her captivity, the maid submitted herself in all things to the captains, which was never her manner before. as we rode slowly, she was now at the head of the line, now in the midst, now at the rear, wherever was need; and as i rode at her rein, i took heart to say-- "madame, it is not thus that we have taken great keeps and holds, in my country, from our enemies of england." "nay," said she, checking her horse to a walk, and smiling on me in the dusk with her kind eyes. "then tell me how you order it in your country." "madame," i said, "it was with a little force, and lightly moving, that messire thomas randolph scaled the castle rock and took edinburgh castle out of the hands of the english, a keep so strong, and set on a cliff so perilous, that no man might deem to win it by sudden onfall. and in like manner the good messire james douglas took his own castle, more than once or twice, by crafty stratagem of war, so that the english named it castle perilous. but in every such onfall few men fought for us, of such as could move secretly and swiftly, not with long trains of waggons that cover a league of road, and by their noise and number give warning to an enemy." "my mind is yours," she said, with a sigh, "and so i would have made this onslaught. but i submitted me to the will of the captains." through the night we pushed our way slowly, for in such a march none may go swifter than the slowest, namely, the carts and the waggons. thus it befell that the maid and the captains were in more thoughts than one to draw back to compiegne, for the night was clear, and the dawn would be bright. and, indeed, after stumbling and wandering long, and doubting of the way, we did, at last, see the church towers and walls of pont l'eveque stand out against the clear sky of morning, a light mist girdling the basement of the walls. had we been a smaller and swifter company, we should have arrived an hour before the first greyness shows the shapes of things. but now, alas! we no sooner saw the town than we heard the bells and trumpets calling the townsfolk and men-at-arms to be on their ward. the great guns of the keep roared at us so soon as we were in reach of shot; nevertheless, pothon and the maid set companies to carry the double ladders, for the walls were high, and others were told off to bring up the fascines, and so, leaving our main battle to wait out of shot, and come on as they were needed, the maid and pothon ran up the first rampart, she waving her standard and crying that all was ours. as we ran, for i must needs be by her side, the din of bells and guns was worse than i had heard at orleans, and on the top of the church towers were men-at-arms waving flags, as if for a signal. howbeit, we sprang into the fosse, under shield, wary of stones cast from above, and presently three ladders were set against the wall, and we went up, the maid leading the way. now of what befell i know but little, save that i had so climbed that i looked down over the wall, when the ladder whereon i stood was wholly overthrown by two great english knights, and one of them, by his coat armour, was messire de montgomery himself, who commanded in pont l'eveque. of all that came after i remember no more than a flight through air, and the dead stroke of a fall on earth with a stone above me. for such is the fortune of war, whereof a man knows but his own share for the most part, and even that dimly. the eyes are often blinded with swift running to be at the wall, and, what with a helm that rings to sword-blows, and what with smoke, and dust, and crying, and clamour, and roar of guns, it is but little that many a man-at-arms can tell concerning the frays wherein, may be, he has borne himself not unmanly. this was my lot at pont l'eveque, and i knew but little of what passed till i found myself in very great anguish. for i had been laid in one of the carts, and so was borne along the way we had come, and at every turn of the wheels a new pang ran through me. for my life i could not choose but groan, as others groaned that were in the same cart with me. for my right leg was broken, also my right arm, and my head was stounding as if it would burst. it was late and nigh sunset or ever we won the gates of compiegne, having lost, indeed, but thirty men slain, but having wholly failed in our onfall. for i heard in the monastery whither i was borne that, when the maid and xaintrailles and their men had won their way within the walls, and had slain certain of the english, and were pushing the others hard, behold our main battle was fallen upon in the rear by the english from noyon, some two miles distant from pont l'eveque. therefore there was no help for it but retreat we must, driving back the english to noyon, while our wounded and all our munitions of war were carried orderly away. as to the pains i bore in that monastery of the jacobins, when my broken bones were set by a very good surgeon, there is no need that i should write. my fortune in war was like that of most men-at-arms, or better than that of many who are slain outright in their first skirmish. some good fortune i had, as at st. pierre, and again, bad fortune, of which this was the worst, that i could not be with the maid: nay, never again did i ride under her banner. she, for her part, was not idle, but, after tarrying certain days in compiegne with guillaume de flavy, she rode to lagny, "for there," she said, "were men that warred well against the english," namely, a company of our scots. and among them, as later i heard in my bed, was randal rutherford, who had ransomed himself out of the hands of the french in paris, whereat i was right glad. at lagny, with her own men and the scots, the maid fought and took one franquet d'arras, a burgundian "routier," or knight of the road, who plundered that country without mercy. him the maid would have exchanged for an armagnac of paris, the host of the bear inn, then held in duresse by the english, for his share in a plot to yield paris to the king. but this burgess died in the hands of the english, and the echevins { } of lagny, claiming franquet d'arras as a common thief, traitor, and murderer, tried him, and, on his confession, put him to death. this was counted a crime in the maid by the english and burgundian robbers, nay, even by french and scots. "for," said they, "if a gentleman is to be judged like a manant, or a fat burgess by burgesses, there is no more profit or glory in war." nay, i have heard gentlemen of france cry out that, as the maid gave up franquet to such judges as would surely condemn him, so she was rightly punished when jean de luxembourg sold her into the hands of unjust judges. but i answer that the maid did not sell franquet d'arras, as i say de luxembourg sold her: not a livre did she take from the folk of lagny. and as for the slaying of robbers, this very jean de luxembourg had but just slain many english of his own party, for that they burned and pillaged in the beauvais country. yet men murmured against the maid not only in their hearts, but openly, and many men-at-arms ceased to love her cause, both for the slaying of franquet d'arras, and because she was for putting away the leaguer-lasses, and, when she might, would suffer no plundering. whether she was right or wrong, it behoves me not to judge, but this i know, that the king's men fought best when she was best obeyed. and, like him who sent her, she was ever of the part of the poor and the oppressed, against strong knights who rob and ravish and burn and torture, and hold to ransom. therefore the archbishop of reims, who was never a friend of the maid, said openly in a letter to the reims folk that "she did her own will, rather than obeyed the commandments of god." but that god commands knights and gentlemen to rob the poor and needy (though indeed he has set a great gulf between a manant and a gentleman born) i can in nowise believe. for my part, when i have been where gentlemen and captains lamented the slaying of franquet d'arras, and justified the dealings of the english with the maid, i have seemed to hear the clamour of the cruel jews: "tolle hunc, et dimitte nobis barabbam." { } for barabbas was a robber. howbeit on this matter, as on all, i humbly submit me to the judgment of my superiors and to holy church. meantime the maid rode from lagny, now to soissons, now to senlis, now to crepy-en-valois, and in crepy she was when that befell which i am about to relate. chapter xxvi--how, and by whose device, the maid was taken at compiegne "verily and indeed the maid is of wonderful excellence," quoth father francois to me, in my chamber at the jacobins, where i was healing of my hurts. "any man may know that, who is in your company," the father went on speaking. "and how, good father?" i asked him; "sure i have caught none of her saintliness." "a saint i do not call you, but i scarce call you a scot. for you are a clerk." "the maid taught me none of my clergy, father, nor have i taught her any of mine." "she needs it not. but you are peaceful and gentle; you brawl not, nor drink, nor curse . . . " "nay, father, with whom am i to brawl, or how should i curse in your good company? find you scots so froward?" "but now, pretending to be our friends, a band of them is harrying the sologne country . . . " "they will be johnstons and jardines, and wild wood folk of galloway," i said. "these we scarce reckon scots, but rather picts, and half heathen. and the johnstons and jardines are here belike, because they have made scotland over hot to hold them. we are a poor folk, but honest, let by the clans of the land debatable and of ettrick forest, and the border freebooters, and the galloway picts, and maxwells, and glendinnings, and the red-shanked, jabbering highlanders and islesmen, and some certain of the angus folk, and, maybe, a wild crew in strathclyde." "yours, then, is a very large country?" "about the bigness of france, or, may be, not so big. and the main part of it, and the most lawful and learned, is by itself, in a sort, a separate kingdom, namely fife, whence i come myself. the lothians, too, and the shire of ayr, if you except carrick, are well known for the lands of peaceful and sober men." "whence comes your great captain, sir hugh kennedy?" "there you name an honourable man-at-arms," i said, "the glory of scotland; and to show you i was right, he is none of your marchmen, or highlanders, but has lands in ayrshire, and comes of a very honourable house." "it is sir hugh that hath just held to ransom the king's good town of tours, where is that gracious lady the mother of the king's wife, the queen of sicily." hereat i waxed red as fire. "he will be in arrears of his pay, no doubt," i made answer. "it is very like," said father francois: "but considering all that you tell me, i crave your pardon if i still think that the blessed maid has won you from the common ways of your countrymen." to which, in faith, i had no answer to make, but that my fortune was like to be the happier in this world and the next. "much need have all men of her goodness, and we of her valour," said the father, and he sighed. "this is now the fourth siege of compiegne i have seen, and twice have the leads from our roofs and the metal of our bells been made into munition of war. absit omen domine! and now they say the duke of burgundy has sworn to slay all, and spare neither woman nor child." "a vaunt of war, father. call they not him the good duke? when we lay before paris, the english put about a like lying tale concerning us, as if we should sack and slay all." "i pray that you speak sooth," said father francois. on the next day, being may the twentieth, he came to me again, with a wan face. "burgundians are in claroix," said he, "across the river, and yet others, with jean de luxembourg, at margny, scarce a mile away, at the end of the causeway through the water meadows, beyond the bridge. and the duke is at coudun, a league off to the right of claroix, and i have clomb the tower-top, and thence seen the english at venette, on the left hand of the causeway. all is undone." "nay, father, be of better cheer. our fort at the bridge end is stronger than les tourelles were at orleans. the english shot can scarce cross the river. bridge the enemy has none, and northward and eastward all is open. be of better heart, heaven helps france." "we have sent to summon the maid," said he, "from crepy-en-valois. in her is all my hope; but you speak lightly, for you are young, and war is your trade." "and praying is yours, father, wherefore you should be bolder than i." but he shook his head. so two days passed, and nothing great befell, but in the grey dawn of may the twenty-third i was held awake by clatter of horsemen riding down the street under the window of my chamber. and after matins came father francois, his face very joyful, with the tidings that the maid, and a company of some three hundred lances of hers, had ridden in from crepy-en- valois, she making her profit of the darkness to avoid the burgundians. then i deemed that the enemy would soon have news of her, and all that day i heard the bells ring merry peals, and the trumpets sounding. about three hours after noonday father francois came again, and told me that the maid would make a sally, and cut the burgundians in twain; and now nothing would serve me but i must be borne in a litter to the walls, and see her banner once more on the wind. so, by the goodwill of father francois, some lay brethren bore me forth from the convent, which is but a stone's-throw from the bridge. they carried me across the oise to a mill hard by the boulevard of the bridge fort, whence, from a window, i beheld all that chanced. no man sitting in the gallery of a knight's hall to see jongleurs play and sing could have had a better stance, or have seen more clearly all the mischief that befell. the town of compiegne lies on the river oise, as orleans on the loire, but on the left, not the right hand of the water. the bridge is strongly guarded, as is custom, by a tower at the further end, and, in front of that tower, a boulevard. all the water was gay to look on, being covered with boats, as if for a holiday, but these were manned by archers, whom guillaume de flavy had set to shoot at the enemy, if they drove us back, and to rescue such of our men as might give ground, if they could not win into the boulevard at the bridge end. beyond the boulevard, forth to the open country, lay a wide plain, and behind it, closing it in, a long, low wall of steep hills. on the left, a mile and a half away, father francois showed me the church tower of venette, where the english camped; to the right, a league off, was the tower of clairoix; and at the end of a long raised causeway that ran from the bridge across the plain, because of the winter floods, i saw the tower and the village of margny. all these towns and spires looked peaceful, but all were held by the burgundians. men-at-arms were thick on the crest of our boulevard, and on the gate-keep, all looking across the river towards the town, whence the maid should sally by way of the bridge. so there i lay on a couch in the window and waited, having no fear, but great joy. nay, never have i felt my spirit lighter within me, so that i laughed and chattered like a fey man. the fresh air, after my long lying in a chamber, stirred me like wine. the may sun shone warm, yet cooled with a sweet wind of the west. the room was full of women and maids, all waiting to throw flowers before the maid, whom they dearly loved. everything had a look of holiday, and all was to end in joy and great victory. so i laughed with the girls, and listened to a strange tale, how the maid had but of late brought back to life a dead child at lagny, so that he got his rights of baptism, and anon died again. so we fleeted the time, till about the fifth hour after noon, when we heard the clatter of horses on the bridge; and some women waxed pale. my own heart leaped up. the noise drew nearer, and presently she rode across and forth, carrying her banner in the noblest manner, mounted on a grey horse, and clad in a rich hucque of cramoisie; she smiled and bowed like a queen to the people, who cried, "noel! noel!" beside her rode pothon le bourgignon (not pothon de xaintrailles, as some have falsely said), her confessor pasquerel on a palfrey; her brother, pierre du lys, with his new arms bravely blazoned; and her maitre d'hotel, d'aulon. but of the captains in compiegne no one rode with her. she had but her own company, and a great rude throng of footmen of the town that would not be said nay. they carried clubs, and they looked, as i heard, for no less than to take prisoner the duke of burgundy himself. certain of these men also bore spades and picks and other tools; for the maid, as i deem, intended no more than to take and hold margny, that so she might cut the burgundians in twain, and sunder from them the english at venette. now as the night was not far off, then at nightfall would the english be in sore straits, as not knowing the country and the country roads, and not having the power to join them of burgundy at clairoix. this, one told me afterwards, was the device of the maid. be this as it may, and a captain of hers, barthelemy barrette, told me the tale, the maid rode gallantly forth, flowers raining on her, while my heart longed to be riding at her rein. she waved her hand to guillaume de flavy, who sat on his horse by the gate of the boulevard, and so, having arrayed her men, she cried, "tirez avant!" and made towards margny, the foot-soldiers following with what speed they might, while i and father francois, and others in the chamber, strained our eyes after them. all the windows and roofs of the houses and water-mills on the bridge were crowded with men and women, gazing, and it came into my mind that flavy had done ill to leave these mills and houses standing. they wrought otherwise at orleans. this was but a passing thought, for my heart was in my eyes, straining towards margny. thence now arose a great din, and clamour of trumpets and cries of men-at-arms, and we could see tumult, blown dust, and stir of men, and so it went for it may be half of an hour. then that dusty cloud of men and horses drove, forward ever, out of our sight. the sun was now red and sinking above the low wall of the western hills, and the air was thicker than it had been, and confused with a yellow light. despite the great multitude of men and women on the city walls, there came scarcely a sound of a voice to us across the wide river, so still they kept, and the archers in the boats beneath us were silent: nay, though the chamber wherein i lay was thronged with the people of the house pressing to see through the open casement, yet there was silence here, save when the father prayed. a stronger wind rising out of the west now blew towards us with a sweet burden of scent from flowers and grass, fragrant upon our faces. so we waited, our hearts beating with hope and fear. then i, whose eyes were keen, saw, blown usward from margny, a cloud of flying dust, that in scotland we call stour. the dust rolled white along the causeway towards compiegne, and then, alas! forth from it broke little knots of our men, foot-soldiers, all running for their lives. behind them came more of our men, and more, all running, and then mounted men-at-arms, spurring hard, and still more and more of these; and ever the footmen ran, till many riders and some runners had crossed the drawbridge, and were within the boulevard of the bridge. there they stayed, sobbing and panting, and a few were bleeding. but though the foremost runaways thus won their lives, we saw others roll over and fall as they ran, tumbling down the sides of the causeway, and why they fell i knew not. but now, in the midst of the causeway, between us and margny, our flying horsemen rallied under the maiden's banner, and for the last time of all, i heard that clear girl's voice crying, "tirez en avant! en avant!" anon her horsemen charged back furiously, and drove the picards and burgundians, who pursued, over a third part of the raised roadway. but now, forth from margny, trooped burgundian men-at-arms without end or number, the banner of the maid waved wildly, now up, now down, in the mad mellay, and ever they of burgundy pressed on, and still our men, being few and outnumbered, gave back. yet still some of the many clubmen of the townsfolk tumbled over as they ran, and the drawbridge was choked with men flying, thrusting and thronging, wild and blind with the fear of death. then rose on our left one great cry, such as the english give when they rejoice, or when they charge, and lo! forth from a little wood that had hidden them, came galloping and running across the heavy wet meadowland between us and venette, the men-at-arms and the archers of england. then we nigh gave up all for lost, and fain i would have turned my eyes away, but i might not. now and again the english archers paused, and loosed a flight of clothyard shafts against the stream of our runaways on the bridge. therefore it was that some fell as they ran. but the little company of our horsemen were now driven back so near us that i could plainly see the maid, coming last of all, her body swung round in the saddle as she looked back at the foremost foemen, who were within a lance's length of her. and d'aulon and pierre du lys, gripping each at her reins, were spurring forward. but through the press of our clubmen and flying horsemen they might not win, and now i saw, what never man saw before, the sword of the maid bare in battle! she smote on a knight's shield, her sword shivered in that stroke, she caught her steel sperthe into her hand, and struck and hewed amain, and there were empty saddles round her. and now the english in the meadow were within four lances' lengths of the causeway between her and safety. say it i must, nor cannon-ball nor arrow-flight availed to turn these english. still the drawbridge and the inlet of the boulevard were choked with the press, and men were leaping from bank and bridge into the boats, or into the water, while so mixed were friends and foes that flavy, in a great voice, bade archers and artillerymen hold their hands. townsfolk, too, were mingled in the throng, men who had come but to gape as curious fools, and among them i saw the hood of a cordelier, as i glanced from the fight to mark how the maid might force her way within. still she smote, and d'aulon and pierre du lys smote manfully, and anon they gained a little way, backing their horses, while our archers dared not shoot, so mixed were french, english, and burgundians. flavy, who worked like a man possessed, had turned about to give an order to the archers above him; his back, i swear, was to the press of flying men, to the inlet of the boulevard, and to the drawbridge, when his own voice, as all deemed who heard it, cried aloud, "up drawbridge, close gates, down portcullis!" the men whose duty it was were standing ready at the cranks and pulleys, their tools in hand, and instantly, groaning, the drawbridge flew up, casting into the water them that were flying across, down came the portcullis, and slew two men, while the gates of the inlet of the boulevard were swung to and barred, all, as it might he said, in the twinkling of an eye. flavy turned in wrath and great amaze: "in god's name, who cried?" he shouted. "down drawbridge, up portcullis, open gates! to the front, men- at-arms, lances forward!" for most of the mounted men who had fled were now safe, and on foot, within the boulevard. all this i heard and saw, in a glance, while my eyes were fixed on the maid and the few with her. they were lost from our sight, now and again, in a throng of picards, englishmen, burgundians, for all have their part in this glory. swords and axes fell and rose, steeds countered and reeled, and then, they say, for this thing i myself did not see, a picard archer, slipping under the weapons and among the horses' hoofs, tore the maid from saddle by the long skirts of her hucque, and they were all upon her. this befell within half a stone's-throw of the drawbridge. while flavy himself toiled with his hands, and tore at the cranks and chains, the maid was taken under the eyes of us, who could not stir to help her. now was the day and the hour whereof the saints told her not, though she implored them with tears. now in the throng below i heard a laugh like the sound of a saw on stone, and one struck him that laughed on the mouth. it was the laugh of that accursed brother thomas! i had laid my face on my hands, being so weak, and was weeping for very rage at that which my unhappy eyes had seen, when i heard the laugh, and lifting my head and looking forth, i beheld the hood of the cordelier. "seize him!" i cried to father francois, pointing down at the cordelier. "seize that franciscan, he has betrayed her! run, man, it was he who cried in flavy's voice, bidding them raise drawbridge and let fall portcullis. the devil gave him that craft to counterfeit men's voices. i know the man. run, father francois, run!" "you are distraught with very grief," said the good father, the tears running down his own cheeks; "that is brother thomas, the best artilleryman in france, and flavy's chief trust with the couleuvrine. he came in but four days agone, and there was great joy of his coming." thus was the maid taken, by art and device of the devil and brother thomas, and in no otherwise. they who tell that flavy sold her, closing the gates in her face, do him wrong; he was an ill man, but loyal to france, as was seen by the very defence he made at compiegne, for there was none like it in this war. but of what avail was that to us who loved the maid? rather, many times, would i have died in that hour than have seen what i saw. for our enemies made no more tarrying, nor any onslaught on the boulevard, but rode swiftly back with the prize they had taken, with her whom they feared more than any knight or captain of france. this page whereon i work, in a hand feeble and old, and weary with much writing, is blotted with tears that will not be held in. but we must bow humbly to the will of god and of his saints. "dominus dedit, et dominus abstulit; benedictum sit nomen domini." wherefore should i say more? they carried me back in litter over the bridge, through the growing darkness. every church was full of women weeping and praying for her that was the friend of them, and the playmate of their children, for all children she dearly loved. concerning flavy, it was said, by them who loved him not, that he showed no sign of sorrow. but when his own brother louis fell, later in the siege, a brother whom he dearly loved, none saw him weep, or alter the fashion of his countenance; nay, he bade musicians play music before him. i besought the prior, when i was borne home, that i might be carried to flavy, and tell him that i knew. but he forbade me, saying that, in very truth, i knew nought, or nothing that could be brought against a churchman, and one in a place of trust. for i had not seen the lips of the cordelier move when that command was given--nay, at the moment i saw him not at all. nor could i even prove to others that he had this devilish art, there being but my oath against his, and assuredly he would deny the thing. and though i might be assured and certain within myself, yet other witness i had none at all, nor were any of my friends there who could speak with me. for d'aulon, and pasquerel, and pierre du lys had all been taken with the maid. it was long indeed before pierre du lys was free, for he had no money to ransom himself withal. therefore flavy, knowing me only for a wounded scot of the maid's, would think me a brain- sick man, and as like as not give me more of oise river to drink than i craved. with these reasonings it behoved me to content myself. the night i passed in prayers for the maid, and for myself, that i might yet do justice on that devil, or, at least, might see justice done. but how these orisons were answered shall be seen in the end, whereto i now hasten. chapter xxvii--how norman leslie fared in compiegne, with the end ofthat leaguer about all that befell in the besieged city of compiegne, after that wicked day of destiny when the maid was taken, i heard for long only from the jacobin brothers, and from one barthelemy barrette. he was a picardy man, more loyal than most of his country, who had joined the maid after the fray at paris. now he commanded a hundred of her company, who did not scatter after she was taken, and he was the best friend i then had. "the burgesses are no whit dismayed," said he, coming into my chamber after the day of the ascension, which was the second after the capture of the maid. "they have sent a messenger to the king, and expect succour." "they sue for grace at a graceless face," said i, in the country proverb; for my heart was hot against king charles. "that is to be seen," said be. "but assuredly the duke of burgundy is more keen about his own business." "how fare the burgundians?" i asked, "for, indeed, i have heard the guns speak since dawn, but none of the good fathers cares to go even on to the roof of the church tower and bring me tidings, for fear of a stray cannon- ball." "for holy men they are wondrous chary of their lives," said barthelemy, laughing. "were i a monk, i would welcome death that should unfrock me, and let me go a-wandering in paradise among these fair lady saints we see in the pictures." "it is written, barthelemy, that there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage." "faith, the more i am fain of it," said barthelemy, "and may be i might take the wrong track, and get into the paradise of mahound, which, i have heard, is no ill place for a man-at-arms." this man had no more faith than a paynim, but, none the less, was a stout carl in war. "but that minds me," quoth he, "of the very thing i came hither to tell you. one priest there is in compiegne who takes no keep of his life, a cordelier. what ails you, man? does your leg give a twinge?" "ay, a shrewd twinge enough." "truly, you look pale enough." "it is gone," i said. "tell me of that cordelier." "do you see this little rod?" he asked, putting in my hand a wand of dark wood, carven with the head of a strange beast in a cowl. "i see it." "how many notches are cut in it?" "five," i said. "but why spoil you your rod?" "five men of england or burgundy that cordelier shot this day, from the creneaux of the boulevard where the maid," crossing himself, "was taken. a fell man he is, strong and tall, with a long hooked nose, and as black as sathanas." "how comes he in arms?" i asked. "flavy called him in from valenciennes, where he was about some business of his own, for there is no greater master of the culverin. and, faith, as he says, he 'has had rare sport, and will have for long.'" "was there an onfall of the enemy?" "nay, they are over wary. he shot them as they dug behind pavises. { } for the duke has moved his quarters to venette, where the english lay, hard by the town. and, right in the middle of the causeway to margny, two arrow-shots from our bridge end, he is letting build a great bastille, and digging a trench wherein men may go to and fro. the cordelier was as glad of that as a man who has stalked a covey of partridges. 'keep my tally for me,' he said to myself; 'cut a notch for every man i slay'; and here," said barthelemy, waving his staff, "is his first day's reckoning." now i well saw what chance i had of bringing that devil to justice, for who would believe so strange a tale as mine against one so serviceable in the war? nor was d'aulon here to speak for me, the enemy having taken him when they took the maid. thinking thus, i groaned, and barthelemy, fearing that he had wearied me, said farewell, and went out. every evening, after sunset, he would come in, and partly cheer me, by telling how hardily our people bore them, partly break my heart with fresh tidings of that devil, brother thomas. "things go not ill, had we but hope of succour," he said. "the duke's bastille is rising, indeed, and the duke is building taudis { } of oaken beams and earth, between the bastille and our boulevard. the skill is to draw nearer us, and nearer, till he can mine beneath our feet. heard you any new noise of war this day?" "i heard such a roar and clatter as never was in my ears, whether at orleans or paris." "and well you might! this convent is in the very line of the fire. they have four great bombards placed, every one of them with a devilish netherland name of its own. there is houpembiere,--that means the beer- barrel, i take it,--and la rouge bombarde, and remeswalle and quincequin, every one shooting stone balls thirty inches in girth. the houses on the bridge are a heap of stones, the mills are battered down, and we must grind our meal in the city, in a cellar, for what i can tell. nom dieu! when they take the boulevard we lose the river, and if once they bar our gates to the east, whence shall viands come?" "is there no good tidings from the messenger?" "the king answers ever like a drawer in a tavern, 'anon, anon, sir!' he will come himself presently, always presently, with all his host." "he will never come," i said. "he is a . . . " "he is my king," said barthelemy. "curse your own king of scots, if you will. scots, by the blood of iscariot, traitors are they; well, i crave your pardon, i spake in haste and anger. know you nichole cammet?" "i have heard of the man," i said. "a town's messenger, is he not?" "the same. but a week agone, cammet was sent on a swift horse to chateau thierry. the good town craved of pothon de xaintrailles, who commands there, to send them what saltpetre he could spare for making gunpowder. the saltpetre came in this day by the pierrefonds gate, and cammet with it, but on another horse, a jade." "well, and what have the scots to do with that?" "no more than this. a parcel of them, routiers and brigands, have crept into an old castle on the road, and hold it for their own hands. thence they sallied forth after cammet, and so chased him that his horse fell down dead under him in the gateway of chateau thierry." "they would be men of the land debatable," i cried: "elliots and armstrongs, they never do a better deed, being corrupted by dwelling nigh our enemies of england. fain would i pay for that horse; see here," and i took forth my purse from under my pillow, "take that to the attournes, and say a scot atones for what scots have done." "norman, i take back my word; i crave your pardon, and i am shamed to have spoken so to a sick man of his own country-folk. but for your purse, i am ill at carrying purses; i have no skill in that art, and the dice draw me when i hear the rattle of them. but look at the cordelier's tally: four men to-day, three yesterday; faith, he thins them!" indeed, to shorten a long story, by the end of barthelemy's count there were two hundred and thirty-nine notches on the rod. that he kept a true score (till he stinted and reckoned no more), i know, having proof from the other side. for twelve years thereafter, i falling into discourse with messire georges chastellain, an esquire of the duke of burgundy, and a maker both of verse and prose, he told me the same tale to a man, three hundred men. and i make no doubt but that he has written it in his book of the praise of his prince, and of these wars, to witness if i lie. consider, then, what hope i had of being listened to by flavy, or by the attournes (or, as we say, bailies), of the good town, if, being recovered from my broken limbs, i brought my witness to their ears. none the less, the enemy battered at us every day with their engines, destroying, as barthelemy had said, the houses on the bridge, and the mills, so that they could no longer grind the corn. and now came the earls of huntingdon and arundel, with two thousand englishmen, while to us appeared no succour. so at length, being smitten by balls from above, and ruined by mines dug under earth from below, our company that held the boulevard at the bridge end were surprised in the night, and some were taken, some drowned in the river oise. wherefore was great sorrow and fear, the more for that the duke of burgundy let build a bridge of wood from venette, to come and go across oise, whereby we were now assailed on both hands, for hitherto we had been free to come and go on the landward side, and through all the forest of pierrefonds. we had but one gate unbeleaguered, the chapel gate, leading to choisy and the north-east. now were we straitened for provender, notably for fresh meat, and men were driven, as in a city beleaguered, to eat the flesh of dead horses, and even of rats and dogs, whereof i have partaken, and it is ill food. none the less we endured, despite the murmuring of the commons, so strong are men's hearts; moreover, all france lay staked on this one cast of the dice, no less than at orleans in the year before. somewhat we were kept in heart by tidings otherwise bitter. for word came that the maid, being in ward at beaurevoir, a strong place of jean de luxembourg, had leaped in the night from the top of the tower, and had, next morning, been taken up all unhurt, as by, miracle, but astounded and bereft of her senses. for this there was much sorrow, but would to god that he had taken her to himself in that hour! nevertheless, when she was come to herself again, she declared, by inspiration of the saints, that compiegne should be delivered before the season of martinmas. whence i, for one, drew great comfort, nor ever again despaired, and many were filled with courage when this tidings came to our ears, hoping for some miracle, as at orleans. now, too, god began to take pity upon us; for, on august the fifteenth, the eighty-fifth day of the siege, came news to the duke of burgundy that philip, duke of brabant, was dead, and he must go to make sure of that great heritage. the duke having departed, the english earls had far less heart for the leaguer; i know not well wherefore, but now, at least, was seen the truth of that proverb concerning the "eye of the master." the bastille, too, which our enemies had made to prevent us from going out by our pierrefonds gate on the landward side, was negligently built, and of no great strength. all this gave us some heart, so much that my hosts, the good jacobins, and the holy sisters of the convent of st. john, stripped the lead from their roofs, and bestowed it on the town, for munition of war. and when i was in case to walk upon the walls, and above the river, i might see men and boys diving in the water and searching for english cannon-balls, which we shot back at the english. it chanced, one day, that i was sitting and sunning myself in the warm september weather, on a settle in a secure place hard by the chapel gate. with me was barthelemy barrette, for it was the day of our lady's feast, that very day whereon we had failed before paris last year, and there was truce for the sacred season. we fell to devising of what had befallen that day year, and without thought i told barthelemy of my escape from prison, and so, little by little, i opened my heart to him concerning brother thomas and all his treasons. never was man more astounded than barthelemy; and he bade me swear by the blessed trinity that all this tale was true. "mayhap you were fevered," he said, "when you lay in the casement seat, and saw the maid taken by device of the cordelier." "i was no more fevered than i am now, and i swear, by what oath you will, and by the bones of st. andrew, which these sinful hands have handled, that flavy's face was set the other way when that cry came, 'down portcullis, up drawbridge, close gates!' and now that i have told you the very truth, what should i do?" "brother thomas should burn for this," quoth barthelemy; "but not while the siege endures. he carries too many english lives in his munition- box. nor can you slay him in single combat, or at unawares, for the man is a priest. nor would flavy, who knows you not, listen to such a story." so there he sat, frowning, and plucking at his beard. "i have it," he said; "d'aulon is no further off than beaulieu, where jean de luxembourg holds him till he pays his ransom. when the siege is raised, if ever we are to have succour, then purchase safe-conduct to d'aulon, take his testimony, and bring it to flavy." as he spoke, some stir in the still air made me look up, and suddenly throw my body aside; and it was well, for a sword swept down from the low parapet above our heads, and smote into the back of that settle whereon we were sitting. ere i well knew what had chanced, barthelemy was on his feet, his whinger flew from his hand, and he, leaping up on to the parapet, was following after him who smote at me. in the same moment a loud grating voice cried-- "the maid shall burn, and not the man," and a flash of light went past me, the whinger flying over my head and clipping into the water of the moat below. rising as i best might, but heedfully, i spied over the parapet, and there was barthelemy coming back, his naked sword in his hand. "the devil turned a sharp corner and vanished," he said. "and now where are we? we have a worse foe within than all the men of burgundy without. there goes the devil's tally!" he cried, and threw the little carven rod far from him into the moat, where it fell and floated. "no man saw this that could bear witness; most are in church, where you and i should have been," i said. then we looked on each other with blank faces. "my post is far from his, and my harness is good," said barthelemy; "but for you, beware!" thenceforth, if i saw any cowl of a cordelier as i walked, i even turned and went the other way. i was of no avail against this wolf, whom all men praised, so serviceable was he to the town. once an arbalest bolt struck my staff from my hand as i walked, and i was fain to take shelter of a corner, yet saw not whence the shot came. once a great stone fell from a turret, and broke into dust at my feet, and it is not my mind that a cannon-ball had loosened it. thus my life went by in dread and watchfulness. no more bitter penance may man dree than was mine, to be near this devil, and have no power to avenge my deadly quarrel. there were many heavy hearts in the town; for, once it was taken, what man could deem his life safe, or what woman her honour? but though they lay down and rose up in fear, and were devoured by desire of revenge, theirs was no such thirst as mine. so the days went on, and darkened towards the promised season of martinmas, but there dawned no light of hope. now, on the wednesday before all saints, i had clambered up into the tower of the church of the jacobins, on the north-east of the city, whence there was a prospect far and wide. with me were only two of the youngest of the fathers. i looked down into the great forest of pierrefonds, and up and down oise, and beheld the army of our enemies moving in divers ways. the banners of the english and their long array were crossing the duke of burgundy's new bridge of wood, that he had builded from venette, and with them the men of jean de luxembourg trooped towards royaulieu. on the crest of their bastille, over against our pierrefonds gate, matches were lighted and men were watching in double guard, and the same on the other side of the water, at the gate margny. plainly our foes expected a rescue sent to us of compiegne by our party. but the forest, five hundred yards from our wall, lay silent and peaceable, a sea of brown and yellow leaves. then, while the english and burgundian men-at-arms, that had marched south and east, were drawn up in order of battle away to the right between wood and water, behold, trumpets sounded, faint enough, being far off. then there was a glitter of the pale sun on long lines of lance- points, under the banners of french captains, issuing out from the forest, over against the enemy. we who stood on the tower gazed long at these two armies, which were marshalled orderly, with no more than a bowshot and a half between them, and every moment we looked to see them charge upon each other with the lance. much we prayed to the saints, for now all our hope was on this one cast. they of burgundy and of england dismounted from their horses, for the english ever fight best on foot, and they deemed that the knights of france would ride in upon them, and fall beneath the english bows, as at azincour and crecy. we, too, looked for nought else; but the french array never stirred, though here and there a knight would gallop forth to do a valiance. seldom has man seen a stranger sight in war, for the english and burgundians could not charge, being heavy-armed men on foot, and the french would not move against them, we knew not wherefore. all this spectacle lay far off, to the south, and we could not be satisfied with wondering at it nor turn away our eyes, when, on the left, a trumpet rang out joyously. then, all of us wheeling round as one man, we saw the most blessed sight, whereto our backs had been turned; for, into the chapel gate--that is, far to the left of the pierrefonds gate on the north-east--were streaming cattle, sheep and kine, pricked on and hastened by a company of a hundred men-at-arms. they had come by forest paths from choisy way, and anon all our guns on the boulevard of the pierrefonds gate burst forth at once against the english bastille over against it. now this bastille, as i have said, had never been strongly builded, and, in some sort, was not wholly finished. after one great volley of guns against the bastille, we, looking down into our boulevard of the pierrefonds gate, saw the portcullis raised, the drawbridge lowered, and a great array of men-at-arms carrying ladders rush out, and charge upon the bastille. then, through the smoke and fire, they strove to scale the works, and for the space of half an hour all was roar of guns; but at length our men came back, leaving many slain, and the running libbards grinned on the flag of england. i might endure no longer, but, clambering down the tower stairs as best i might, for i was still lame, i limped to my lodgings at the jacobins, did on my harness, and, taking a horse from the stable, i mounted and rode to the pierrefonds gate. for brother thomas and his murderous ways i had now no care at all. never, sure, saw any man such a sight. our boulevard was full, not only of men-at-arms, but of all who could carry clubs, burgesses armed, old men, boys, yea, women and children, some with rusty swords, some with carpenters' axes, some bearing cudgels, some with hammers, spits, and knives, all clamouring for the portcullis to rise and let them forth. their faces were lean and fierce, their eyes were like eyes of wolves, for now, they cried, was the hour, and the prophecy of the maid should be fulfilled! verily, though she lay in bonds, her spirit was with us on that day! but still our portcullis was down, and the long tail of angry people stretched inwards, from the inner mouth of the boulevard, along the street, surging like a swollen loch against its barrier. on the crest of the boulevard was flavy, baton in hand, looking forth across field and forest, watching for i knew not what, while still the people clamoured to be let go. but he stood like the statue of a man-at- arms, and from the bastille of the burgundians the arrows rained around him, who always watched, and was still. now the guards of the gate had hard work to keep the angry people back, who leaped and tore at the men- at-arms arrayed in front of them, and yelled for eagerness to issue forth and fight. suddenly, on the crest of the boulevard, flavy threw up his arm and gave one cry-- "xaintrailles!" then he roared to draw up portcullis and open gates; the men-at-arms charged forth, the multitude trampled over each other to be first in field, i was swept on and along with them through the gate, and over the drawbridge, like a straw on a wave, and, lo! a little on our left was the banner of pothon de xaintrailles, his foremost men dismounting, the rearguard just riding out from the forest. the two bands joined, we from compiegne, the four hundred of xaintrailles from the wood, and, like two swollen streams that meet, we raced towards the bastille, under a rain of arrows and balls. nothing could stay us: a boy fell by my side with an arrow thrilling in his breast, but his brother never once looked round. i knew not that i could run, but run i did, though not so fast as many, and before i reached the bastille our ladders were up, and the throng was clambering, falling, rising again, and flowing furiously into the fort. the townsfolk had no thought but to slay and slay; five or six would be at the throat of one burgundian man-at-arms; hammers and axes were breaking up armour, knives were scratching and searching for a crevice; women, lifting great stone balls, would stagger up to dash them on the heads of the fallen. of the whole garrison, one-half, a hundred and sixty men-at-arms, were put to the sword. only pothon de xaintrailles, and the gentlemen with him, as knowing the manner of war, saved and held to ransom certain knights, as messire jacques de brimeu, the seigneur de crepy, and others; while, for my own part, seeing a knight assailed by a knot of clubmen, i struck in on his part, for gentle blood must ever aid gentle blood, and so, not without shrewd blows on my salade, i took to ransom messire collart de bertancourt. thereafter, very late, and in the twilight of october the twenty-fifth, we turned back to compiegne, leaving the enemies' bastille in a flame behind us, while in front were blazing the bonfires of the people of the good town. and, in compiegne, we heard how the english and the main army of burgundians had turned, late in the day, and crossed by the duke of burgundy's bridge, leaving men to keep guard there. so our victory was great, and wise had been the prudence of the french captains, subtlety being the mother of victory; for, without a blow struck, they had kept jean de luxembourg, and the earls of huntingdon and arundel, waiting idle all day, while their great bastille was taken by xaintrailles and the townsfolk, and food was brought into compiegne. thus for the second time i passed a night of joy in a beleaguered town, for there was music in every street, the churches full of people praising god for this great deliverance, men and maids dancing around bonfires, yet good watch was kept at the gates and on the towers. next day we expected battle, but our spies brought in tidings that burgundians and english had decamped in the dawn, their men deserting. that day was not less joyful than the night had been; for at royaulieu, in the abbey where jean de luxembourg had lain, the townsfolk found all manner of meat, and of wine great plenty, so right good cheer we made, for it cost us nothing. chapter xxviii--how the burgundians hunted hares, with the end of that hunting "tell me, what tidings of him?" barthelemy barrette asked me, on the day after that unbought feast at royaulieu. he was sitting in the noonday sun on the bridge of compiegne, and strange it was to see the place so battered yet so peaceful after five months of war. the oise sliding by and rippling on the piers was not more quiet than this bridge of many battles, yet black in places with dried-up blood of men slain. "tidings can i find none," i answered. "he who saw the cordelier last was on guard in the boulevard during the great charge. he marked brother thomas level his couleuvrine now and again, as we ran for the bastille, and cried out to him to aim higher, for that the ball would go amongst us." "you were his target, i make no doubt," said barthelemy, "but by reason of the throng he had no certain aim." "after we broke into the bastille, i can find no man who has set eyes on him," and i cursed the cordelier for very rage. "he is well away, if he stays away: you and i need scarce any longer pray for eyes in the backs of our heads. but what make we next?" "i have but one thought," i said: "to pluck the maid out of the hands of the english, for now men say that she is sold to them by jean of luxembourg. they mean to take her to arras, and so by crotoy at the mouth of seine, and across normandy to rouen. save her france must, for the honour of france." "my mind is the same," he said, and fell into a muse. "hence the straight road, and the shortest," he said at last, "is by beauvais on to rouen, where she will lie in chains," and drawing his dagger he scratched lines on the bridge parapet with its point. "here is compiegne; there, far to the west, is the sea, and here is rouen. that straight line," which he scratched, "goes to rouen from compiegne. here, midway, is beauvais, whereof we spoke, which town we hold. but there, between us and beauvais, is clermont, held by crevecoeur for the burgundians, and here, midway between beauvais and rouen, is gournay, where kyriel and the lord huntingdon lie with a great force of english. do you comprehend? we must first take clermont ere we can ride to rescue the maid at rouen!" "the king should help us," i said. "for what is the army that has delivered compiegne but a set of private bands, under this gentleman's flag or that, some with boussac, some with xaintrailles, some with a dozen others, and victuals are hard to come by." "ay, many a peaceful man sits by the fire and tells how great captains should have done this, and marched there, never thinking that men fight on their bellies. and the king should help us, and march with d'alencon through normandy from the south, while our companies take clermont if we may, and drive back the english and burgundians. but you know the king, and men say that the archbishop of reims openly declares that the maid is rightly punished for her pride. he has set up a mad shepherd-boy to take her place, heaven help him! who can fight as well as that stone can swim," and he dropped a loose stone over the bridge into the water. "whoever stays at home, we take the field," i said; "let us seek counsel of xaintrailles." we rose and went to the jacobins, where xaintrailles was lodged, and there found him at his dejeuner. he was a tall young knight, straight as a lance, lean as a greyhound; for all his days his sword had won his meat; and he was hardy, keen, and bright, with eyes of steel in a scarred face, and his brow was already worn bald with the helmet. when he walked his legs somewhat straggled apart, by reason of his much riding. xaintrailles received us in the best manner, we telling him that we had ridden with the maid, that i was of her own household, and that to save her we were willing to go far, and well knew that under no banner could we be so forward as under his. "i would all my company were as honest as i take you twain to be," he said, "and i gladly receive you under my colours with any men you can bring." "messire, i have a handful of horse of the maid's company," said barthelemy, hardily; "but when do we march, for to-day is better than to- morrow." "as soon as may be," said the knight; "the marechal de boussac leads us against clermont. that town we cannot leave behind us when we set forth from beauvais. but, with these great bombards, which we have won from the burgundians, we may have reason of clermont, and then," clapping his hands together, and looking up, "then for rouen! we shall burst the cage and free the bird, god willing!" he stood like one in prayer, crossing himself, and our hearts turned to him in loyalty. "if but the king will send a force to join hands with la hire in louviers, the english shall have news of you, messire!" i made bold to say. "ay, if!" quoth xaintrailles, and his face grew darker, "but we must make good speedy for the midwinter draws nigh." therewith we left him, and, in few days, were marching on clermont, dragging with long trains of horses the great bombards of the burgundians. to our summons messire de crevecoeur answered knightly, that clermont he would hold till death or rescue, so we set to battering his house about his ears. but, alas! after four days a sentinel of ours saw, too late, an english knight with nine men slip through the vines, under cover of darkness, and win a postern gate in the town wall. soon we heard a joy- fire of guns within clermont town, and foreboded the worst. at midnight came a peasant to xaintrailles, with tidings that a rescue was riding to clermont, and next morning it was boots and saddles and away, so hastily that we left behind us the great bombards of the burgundians. on this they made much mirth; but they laugh best who laugh last, as shall he seen. and the cause of our going was that the earl of huntingdon had ridden out of gournay, in normandy, with a great force of english, to deliver clermont. against foes within the town and foes without the town the captains judged that we were of no avail. so we departed, heavy at heart. now the companies scattered, and barthelemy and i, sorry enough, rode behind xaintrailles, due north to guermigny, whence we threatened amiens. at guermigny, then, for a short season, lay xaintrailles, gathering all the force he might along the picardy marches, for the duke of burgundy was in peronne, full of wrath and sorrow, so many evils had befallen him. for ourselves, we were in no gentler temper, having lost our hope of pushing on to rouen. i was glad, therefore, when xaintrailles himself rode one day to the door of our lodging in guermigny, strode clanging into our chamber, and asked if we were alone? we telling him that none was within ear-shot, he sat him down on the table, playing with his dagger hilt, and, with his hawk's eye on barthelemy, asked, "you know this land well?" "i have ridden over it, in war or peace, since i was a boy." "how far to lihons?" "a matter of two leagues." "what manner of country lies between?" "chiefly plain, rude and untilled, because of the distresses of these times. there is much heath and long grasses, a great country for hares." "know you any covert nigh the road?" "there runs a brook that the road crosses by a bridge, midway between guermigny and lihons. the banks are steep, and well wooded with such trees and undergrowth as love water." "you can guide me thither?" "there is no missing the road." "god could not have made this land better for me, if he had asked my counsel," said xaintrailles. "you can keep your own?" "nom dieu, yea!" said barthelemy. "and your scots friend i can trust. a good-day to you, and thanks many." thereupon he went forth. "what has he in his mind?" i asked barthelemy. "belike an ambush. the duke of burgundy lies at peronne, and has mustered a great force. lihons is midway between us and peronne, and is in the hands of burgundy. i deem xaintrailles has tidings that they intend to ride from peronne to lihons to-night, and thence make early onfall on us to-morrow. being heavy-pated men of war, and bemused with their strong wine, they know not, belike, that we have more with us than the small garrison of guermigny. and we are to await them on the road, i doubt not. you shall see men that wear your cross of st. andrew, but not of your colour." i shame not to say that of bushments in the cold dawn i had seen as much as i had stomach for, under paris. but if any captain was wary in war, and knew how to discover whatsoever his enemy designed, that captain was xaintrailles. none the less i hoped in my heart that his secret tidings of the burgundian onfall had not come through a priest, and namely a cordelier. dawn found us mounted, and riding at a foot's-pace through the great plain which lies rough and untilled between guermigny and lihons. all grey and still it was, save for a cock crowing from a farmstead here and there on the wide wold, broken only by a line of trees that ran across the way. under these trees, which were mainly poplars and thick undergrowth of alders about the steep banks of a little brook, we were halted, and here took cover, our men lying down. "let no man stir, or speak, save when i speak to him, whatever befalls, on peril of his life," said xaintrailles, when we were all disposed in hiding. then touching me on the shoulder that i should rise, he said-- "you are young enough to climb a tree; are your eyes good?" "i commonly was the first that saw the hare in her form, when we went coursing at home, sir." "then up this tree with you! keep outlook along the road, and hide yourself as best you may in the boughs. throw this russet cloak over your harness." it was shrewdly chill in the grey november morning, a hoarfrost lying white on the fields. i took the cloak gladly and bestowed myself in the tree, so that i had a wide view down lihons way, whence we expected our enemies, the road running plain to see for leagues, like a ribbon, when once the low sun had scattered the mists. it was a long watch, and a weary, my hands being half frozen in my steel gauntlets. many of our men slept; if ever a wayfarer crossed the bridge hard by he was stopped, gagged, and trussed in a rope's end. but wayfarers were few, and all were wandering afoot. i was sorry for two lasses, who crossed on some business of their farm, but there was no remedy. these diversions passed the time till nigh noon, when i whispered to xaintrailles that i saw clouds of dust (the roads being very dry) a league away. he sent barthelemy and another to waken any that slept, and bade all be ready at a word. now there came shouts on the wind, cries of venerie, loud laughter, and snatches of songs. and now, up in my perch, i myself broke into a laugh at that i saw. "silence, fool!" whispered xaintrailles. "why laugh you, in the name of behemoth?" "the burgundians are hunting hares," i whispered; "they are riding all disorderly, some on the road, some here and there about the plain. one man has no lance, another is unhelmeted, many have left their harness behind with the baggage!" even as i spoke rose up a great hunting cry, and a point of the chase was blown on a trumpet. the foremost burgundians were spurring like madmen after some beast, throwing at it with their lances, and soon i saw a fox making our way for its very life. "to horse," cried xaintrailles, and, leaving thirty men to hold the bridge, the whole of our company, with spears in rest, drove down on these hare-hunters of burgundy. two hundred picked men in all, fully armed, were we, and we scattered the foremost riders as they had scattered the hares. saddles were emptied, archers were cut down or speared ere they could draw bows, the burgundians were spurring for their lives, many cried mercy, and were taken to ransom, of whom i had my share, as i shall tell. but a few men made a right good end. thomas kyriel, a knight of england, stood to his banner, his archers rallied about it, with three or four knights of burgundy. there, unhelmeted for the most part, they chose the way of honour, but they were of no avail where so many lances were levelled and so many swords were hewing at so few. there was a great slaughter, but geoffrey de thoisy, nephew to the bishop of tournay, plucked from danger fortune, for he so bore him that he being fully armed we took him for messire antoine de vienne, a very good knight. for his courage we spared him, but antoine, being unhelmeted and unknown, was smitten on the head by barthelemy barrette, with a blow of a casse-tete. for this barthelemy made much sorrow, not only that so good a knight was slain, but that he had lost a great ransom, whereby he should have been a rich man. yet such is the fortune of war! which that day was strangely seen; for a knight having yielded to me because his horse threw him, and he lost for a moment all sense with the fall and found my boot on his neck when he came to himself, who should he be but messire robert heron, the same whom i took at orleans! who, when he knew me, took off his salade for greater ease, and, sitting down on a rock by the way, swore as never i heard man swear, french, english, spaniard, or scot; and at length laughed, and said it was fortune of war, and so was content. this skirmish being thus ended, we returned, blithe and rich men every one of us, what with prisoners, horses, arms, and all manner of treasure taken with the baggage. that night we slept little in guermigny, but feasted and drank deep. for my own part, i know not well where i did sleep, or how i won to what bed, which shames me some deal after all these years. on the morrow we left guermigny to the garrison of the place for their ill-fortune, and rode back towards compiegne. and this was the sport that the burgundians had in hare-hunting. this battle of the hares was the merriest passage of arms for our party, and bourdes were made on it, and songs sung, as by the english on that other battle of the herrings. now, moreover, i might be called rich, what with ransoms, what with my share of the plunder in horses, rings, chains of gold, jewels, silver dishes, and rich cloths, out of the baggage of the enemy. verily lack of wealth could no more sunder elliot and me! for pothon was as open of hand as he was high of heart, and was no greedy captain, wherefore men followed him the more gladly. chapter xxix--showeth how very noble was the duke of burgundy all this was well, but we were no nearer rouen, and the freeing of the maid, on this twentieth of november, than we had been when the siege of compiegne broke up, on the twenty-sixth of october. the duke of burgundy, we learned, was like a man mad when he heard of the battle of the hares. nothing would serve him that day but to lead all his host to guermigny from peronne, whence he would have got little comfort of vengeance, for we were in a place of safety. but jean de luxembourg told him that he must not venture his nobility among routiers like us, wherein he pleased the duke, but spoke foolishly. for no man, be he duke or prince, can be of better blood than we of the house of rothes, not to speak of xaintrailles and many other gentlemen of our company. the duke, then, put not his noble person in any jeopardy, but, more wisely, he sent messengers after my lord of huntingdon that he should bring up the english to aid the burgundian hare-hunters. but huntingdon had departed to rouen, where then lay henry, king of england, a boy on whom and on whose house god has avenged the maid with terrible judgments, and will yet the more avenge her, blessed be his name! the duke of burgundy comforted himself after his kind, for when he did pluck up heart to go against guermigny, he, finding us departed, sacked the place, and razed it to the very ground, and so withdrew to roye, and there waited for what help england would send him. now roye is some sixteen leagues due north of compiegne. so the days went by, for messire lefebvre saint-remy, the pursuivant, was hunting for my lord of huntingdon, all up and down normandy, and at last came to rouen, and to the presence of the duke of bedford, the uncle of the english king. all this i myself heard from messire saint-remy, who is still a pursuivant, and a learned man, and a maker of books. bedford then, who was busy hounding that devil, cauchon, sometime bishop of beauvais, against the maid, sent the comte de perche and messire loys robsart, to bid the duke of burgundy be of what courage he might, for succour of england he should have. wherein bedford was no true prophet. of all this we, in compiegne, knew so much as that it was wiser to strike the duke at roye, before he could add english talbots to his burgundian harriers. therefore all the captains of companies, as boussac, xaintrailles, alain giron, amadee de vignolles, and loys de naucourt, mustered their several companies, to the number of some five thousand men- at-arms. we had news of six hundred english marching to join the duke, and on them we fell at couty, hard by amiens, and there slew loys robsart, a good knight, of the order of the garter, and drove the english that fled into the castle of couty, and we took all their horses, leaving them shamed, for they kept no guard. thence we rode to within a league of roye, and thence sent a herald, in all due form, to challenge the duke to open battle for his honour's sake. this we did, because we had no store of victual, and must fight or ride home. the duke received the herald, and made as if he would hear him as beseems a gentleman under challenge. but his wise counsellors forbade him, because he was so noble. we were but "routiers," they said, and had no prince in all our company; so we must even tarry till the morrow, and then the duke would fight. in truth he expected the english, who were footing it to castle couty. i stood by xaintrailles when the pursuivant bore back this message. pothon spat on the ground. "shall we be more noble to-morrow than to-day, or to-morrow can this huxter of maids, the duke, be less noble than he is, every day that he soils knighthood?" thereon he sent the herald back, to say that the duke should have battle at his gates if he gave no better answer, for that wait for his pleasure we could not, for want of victuals. and so we drew half a league nearer to roye. the duke sent back our herald with word that of victuals he would give us half his own store; for he had read, as i deem, the romance of richard lion-heart, another manner of man than himself. we said nought to this, not choosing to dine in such high company, but rode up under the walls of roye, defying the duke with open ribaldry, such as no manant could bear but he would take cudgel in hand to defend his honour. our intent was, if the duke accepted battle, to fight with none but him, if perchance we might take him, and hold him as hostage for the maid's life. howbeit, so very noble was the duke this day, that he did not put lance in rest (as belike he would have done on the morrow), but, drawing up his men on foot, behind certain mosses and marshes, all in firm array, he kept himself coy behind them, and not too far from the gate of roye. to cross these mosses and marshes was beyond our cunning, nor could we fast all that night, and see if the duke would feel himself less noble, and more warlike, on the morrow. so, with curses and cries of shame, we turned bridle, and, for that we could not hold together, being in lack of meat, the companies broke up, and went each to his own hold. i have heard messire georges chastellain tell, in times that were still to come, how fiercely the duke of burgundy bore him in council that night, after that we had all gone, and how he blamed his people who would not let him fight. but, after he had well supped, he even let this adventure slip by, as being ordained by the will of god, who, doubtless, holds in very high honour men of birth princely, and such, above all, as let sell young virgins to the tormentors. and thus ended our hope to save the maid by taking captive the duke of burgundy. chapter xxx--how norman leslie took service with the english "what make we now?" i asked of barthelemy barrette, one day, after the companies had scattered, as i have said, and we had gone back into compiegne. "what stroke may france now strike for the maid?" he hung his head and plucked at his beard, ere he spoke. "to be as plain with you as my heart is with myself, norman," he answered at last, "deliverance, or hope of deliverance, see i none. the english have the bird in the cage, and rouen is not a strength that can be taken by sudden onslaught. and, were it so, where is our force, in midwinter? i rather put my faith, that can scarce move mountains, in some subtle means, if any man might devise them." "we cannot sit idle here," i said. "and for three long months there will be no moving of armies in open field." "and in three months these dogs of false french doctors of paris will have tried and condemned the maid. for my part, i ride with my handful of spears to the loire. perchance there is yet some hope in the king." "then i ride with you, granted your goodwill, for i must needs to tours, and i have overmuch treasure in my wallet to ride alone." indeed, i was now a rich man, more by luck than by valour; and though i said nought of it, i hoped that my long wooing might now come to a happy end. barthelemy clasped hands gladly on that offer; and not to make a long tale, he and his men were my escort to tours, and thence he rode to sully to see the king. i had no heart for glad surprises this time, but having sent on a letter to my master, by a king's messenger who rode from compiegne ere we did, i was expected and welcomed by elliot and my master, with all the joy that might be, after our long severance. and in my master's hands i laid my newly gotten gear, and heard privily from him that, with his goodwill, i and his daughter might wed so soon as she would. "for she is pining with grief, and prayer, and fasting, and marriage is the best remede for such maladies." of this grace i was right glad; yet christmas went by and i dared not speak, for elliot seemed set on far other things than mirth, and was ever and early in the churches, above all when service and prayer were offered up for the maid. she was very willing to hear all the tale of the long siege, and her face, that was thin and wan, unlike her bright countenance of old, flushed scarlet when she heard how we had bearded and shamed the noble duke of burgundy, and what words xaintrailles had spoken concerning his nobleness. "there is one true knight left in france!" she said, and fell silent again. then, we being alone in the chamber, i tried to take her hand, but she drew it away. "my dear love," she said, "i know all that is in your heart, and all my love that is in mine you know well. but in mine there is no care for happiness and joy, and to speak as plain as a maiden may, i have now no will to marry. while the sister of the saints lies in duresse, or if she be unjustly slain, i have set up my rest to abide unwed, for ever, as the bride of heaven. and, if the last evil befall her, as well i deem it must, i shall withdraw me from the world into the sisterhood of the clarisses." had the great mid-beam of the roof fallen and smitten me, i could not have been stricken more dumb and dead. my face showed what was in my mind belike, for, looking fearfully and tenderly on me, she took my hand between hers and cherished it. "my love," i said at last, "you see in what case i am, that can scarce speak for sorrow, after all i have ventured, and laboured, and won, for you and for the maid." "and i," she answered, "being but a girl, can venture and give nothing but my poor prayers; and if she now perish, then i must pray the more continually for the good rest of her soul, and the forgiveness of her enemies and false friends." "sure, she hath already the certain promise of paradise, and even in this world her life is with the saints. and if men slay her body, we need her prayers more than she needs ours." but elliot said no word, being very wilful. "consider what manner of friend the maid is," i said, "who desires nothing but joy and happy life to all whom she loves, as she loves you. verily, i am right well assured that, could she see us in this hour, she would bid you be happy with me, and not choose penance for love of her." "if she herself bids me do as you desire," said elliot at last, "then i would not be disobedient to that daughter of god." here i took some comfort, for now a thought came into my mind. "but," said elliot, "as we read of the rich man and lazarus, between her and us is a great gulf fixed, and none may come from her to us, or from us to her." "elliot!" i said, "if either the maid be delivered, or if she sends you sure and certain tidings under her own hand that she wills you to put off this humour, will you then be persuaded, and make no more delay!" "indeed, if either of these miracles befall, or both, right gladly will i obey both you and her. but now her saints, methinks, have left her, wearied by the wickedness of france." "i ask no more," i answered, "for, elliot, either the maid shall be free, or she shall send you this command, or you shall see my face no more." my purpose was now clear before me, even as i executed it, as shall be seen. "indeed, if my vow must be kept, never may i again behold you; for oh! my love, my heart would surely break in twain, being already weak with grief and fasting, and weary with prayer." whereon she laid her kind arms about my neck, and, despite my manhood, i wept no less than she. for holy writ says well, that hope deferred maketh the heart sick; and mine was sick unto death. of my resolve i spoke no word more to elliot, lest her counsel should change when she knew the jeopardy whereinto i was firmly minded to go. and to my master i said no more than that i was minded to ride to the court, and for that end i turned into money a part of my treasure, for money i should need more than arms. one matter in especial, which i deemed should stand me in the greatest stead, i purchased for gold of the pottinger at tours, the same who had nursed me after my wound. this draught i bestowed in a silver phial, graven with strange signs, and i kept it ever close and secret, for it was my chief mainstay. secretly as i wrought, yet i deem that my master had some understanding of what was in my mind, though i told him nothing of the words between me and elliot. for i was in no way without hope that, when the bitterness of her grief was overpast, elliot might change her counsel. and again, i would not have him devise and dispute with her, as now, whereby i very well knew that she would be but the more unhappy, and the more set on taking her own wilful way. i therefore said no more than that it behoved me to see such captains as were about the king. thereafter i bade them farewell, nor am i disposed to write concerning what passed at the parting of elliot and me. for thrice ere now i had left her to pass into the mouth of war, but now i went into other peril, and with fainter hope. i did indeed ride to the court, which was at sully, and there i met, as i desired, barthelemy barrette. he greeted me well, and was richly clad, and prosperous to behold. but it gave me greater joy that he spoke of some secret enterprise which should shortly be put in hand, when the spring came. "for i have good intelligence," he said, "that the bastard of orleans will ride privily to louviers with men-at-arms. now louviers, where la hire lies in garrison, is but seven leagues from rouen town, and what secret enterprise can he purpose there, save to break the cage and set free the bird?" in this hope i tarried long, intending to ride with the spears of barthelemy, and placing my trust on two knights so good and skilled in war as la hire and the bastard, the maid's old companions in fight. but the days waxed long, and it was march the thirteenth ere we rode north, and already the doctors had begun to entrap the maid with their questions, whereof there could be but one end. without adventure very notable, riding much at night, through forests and byways, we came to louviers, where they received us joyfully. for it was very well known that the english were minded to besiege this town, that braved them so near their gates at rouen, and that they only held back till they had slain the maid. while she lived they dared not stir against us, knowing well that their men feared to follow their flag. now, indeed, i was in good hope, but alas! there were long counsels of the captains, there was much harrying of normandy, and some outlying bands of english were trapped, and prisoners were taken. but of an assault on rouen we heard no word, and, indeed, the adventure was desperate, though, for the honour of france, i marvel yet that it was not put to the touch. "there is nought to be done," barthelemy said to me; "i cannot take rouen with a handful of spears, and the captains will not stir." "then," said i, "farewell, for under the lilies i fight never again. one chance remains, and i go to prove it." "man, you are mad," he answered me. "what desperate peril are you minded to run?" "i am minded to end this matter," i said. "my honour and my very life stand upon it. ask me not why, and swear that you will keep this secret from all men, if you would do the last service to me, and to her, whom we both love. i tell you that, help me or hinder me, i have no choice but this; yet so much i will say to you, that i put myself in this jeopardy for my honour and the honour of scotland, and for my lady." "the days are past for the old chivalry," he said; "but no more words. i swear by st. ouen to keep your counsel, and if more i can do, without mere madness and risk out of all hope, i will do it." "this you can do without risk. let me have the accoutrements of one of the englishmen who lie in ward, and let me ride with your band at daybreak to-morrow. it is easy to tell some feigned tale, when you ride back without me." "you will not ride into rouen in english guise? they will straightway hang you for a spy, and therein is little honour." "my purpose is some deal subtler," i said, with a laugh, "but let me keep my own counsel." "so be it," said he, "a wilful man must have his way. and now i drink to your better wisdom, and may you escape that rope on which your heart seems to be set!" i grasped his hand on it, and by point of day we were riding out seawards. we made an onslaught on a village, burned a house or twain, and seized certain wains of hay, so, in the confusion, i slipped forward, and rode alone into a little wood. there i clad myself in english guise, having carried the gear in a wallet on my saddle-bow, and so pushed on, till at nightfall i came to a certain little fishing-village. there, under cover of the dark, i covenanted with a fisherman to set me across the channel, i feigning to be a deserter who was fleeing from the english army, for fear of the maid. "i would well that i had to carry all the sort of you," said the boat- master, for i had offered him my horse, and a great reward in money, part down, and the other part to be paid when i set foot in england. nor did he make any tarrying, but, taking his nets on board, as if he would be about his lawful business, set sail, with his two sons for a crew. the east wind served us to a miracle, and, after as fair a passage as might be, they landed me under cloud of night not far from the great port of winchelsea. that night i slept none, but walking fast and warily, under cover of a fog, i fetched a compass about, and ended by walking into the town of rye by the road from the north. here i went straight to the best inn of the place, and calling aloud for breakfast, i bade the drawer bring mine host to me instantly. for, at louviers, we were so well served by spies, the country siding with us rather than with the english, that i knew how a company of the earl of warwick's men was looked for in winchelsea to sail when they had a fair wind for rouen. mine host came to me in a servile english fashion, and asked me what i would? "first, a horse," said i, "for mine dropped dead last night, ten miles hence on the north road, in your marshes, god damn them, and you may see by my rusty spur and miry boot that i have walked far. here," i cried, pulling off my boots, and flinging them down on the rushes of the floor, "bid one of your varlets clean them! next, breakfast, and a pot of your ale; and then i shall see what manner of horses you keep, for i must needs ride to winchelsea." "you would join the men under the banner of sir thomas grey of falloden, i make no doubt?" he answered. "your speech smacks of the northern parts, and the good knight comes from no long way south of the border. his men rode through our town but few days agone." "and me they left behind on the way," i answered, "so evil is my luck in horse-flesh. but for this blessed wind out of the east that hinders them, my honour were undone." my tale was not too hard of belief, and before noon i was on my way to winchelsea, a stout nag enough between my legs. the first man-at-arms whom i met i hailed, bidding him lead me straight to sir thomas grey of falloden. "what, you would take service?" he asked, in a cumberland burr that i knew well, for indeed it came ready enough on my own tongue. "yea, by st. cuthbert," i answered, "for on the marches nothing stirs; moreover, i have slain a man, and fled my own country." with that he bade god damn his soul if i were not a good fellow, and so led me straight to the lodgings of the knight under whose colours he served. to him i told the same tale, adding that i had heard late of his levying of his men, otherwise i had ridden to join him at his setting forth. "you have seen war?" he asked. "only a warden's raid or twain, on the moss-trooping scots of liddesdale. branxholme i have seen in a blaze, and have faced fire at the castle of the hermitage." "you speak the tongue of the northern parts," he said; "are you noble?" "a poor cousin of the storeys of netherby," i answered, which was true enough; and when he questioned me about my kin, i showed him that i knew every name and scutcheon of the line, my mother having instructed me in all such lore of her family. { } "and wherefore come you here alone, and in such plight?" "by reason of a sword-stroke at stainishawbank fair," i answered boldly. "faith, then, i see no cause why, as your will is so good, you should not soon have your bellyful of sword-strokes. for, when once we have burned that limb of the devil, the puzel" (for so the english call the maid), "we shall shortly drive these forsworn dogs, the french, back beyond the loire." i felt my face reddening at these ill words, so i stooped, as if to clear my spur of mire. "shortly shall she taste the tar-barrel," i answered, whereat he swore and laughed; then, calling a clerk, bade him write my indenture, as is the english manner. thus, thanks to my northern english tongue, for which i was sore beaten by the other boys when i was a boy myself, behold me a man-at-arms of king henry, and so much of my enterprise was achieved. i make no boast of valour, and indeed i greatly feared for my neck, both now and later. for my risk was that some one of the men-at-arms in rouen, whither we were bound, should have seen my face either at orleans, at paris (where i was unhelmeted), or in the taking of the bastille at compiegne. yet my visor was down, both at orleans and compiegne, and of those few who marked me in girl's gear in paris none might chance to meet me at rouen, or to remember me in changed garments. so i put a bold brow on it, for better might not be. none cursed the puzel more loudly than i, and, without feigning, none longed so sorely as i for a fair wind to france, wherefore i was ever going about winchelsea with my head in the air, gazing at the weather-cocks. and, as fortune would have it, the wind went about, and we on board, and with no long delay were at rouen town. chapter xxxi--how norman leslie saw the maid in her prison on arriving in the town of rouen, three things were my chief care, whereof the second helped me in the third. the first was to be lodged as near as i might to the castle, wherein the maid lay, being chained (so fell was the cruelty of the english) to her bed. the next matter was to purvey me three horses of the fleetest. here my fortune served me well, for the young esquires and pages would ever be riding races outside of the gates, they being in no fear of war, and the time till the maid was burned hung heavy on their hands. i therefore, following the manner of the english marchmen, thrust myself forward in these sports, and would change horses, giving money to boot, for any that outran my own. my money i spent with a very free hand, both in wagers and in feasting men- at-arms, so that i was taken to be a good fellow, and i willingly let many make their profit of me. in the end, i had three horses that, with a light rider in the saddle, could be caught by none in the whole garrison of rouen. thirdly, i was most sedulous in all duty, and so won the favour of sir thomas grey, the rather that he counted cousins with me, and reckoned that we were of some far-off kindred, wherein he spoke the truth. thus, partly for our common blood, partly for that i was ever ready at call, and forward to do his will, and partly because none could carry a message swifter, or adventure further to spy out any bands of the french, he kept me close to him, and trusted me as his galloper. nay, he gave me, on occasion, his signet, to open the town gates whensoever he would send me on any errand. moreover, the man (noble by birth, but base by breeding) who had the chief charge and custody of the maid, was the brother's son of sir thomas. he had to name john grey, and was an esquire of the body of the english king, henry, then a boy. this miscreant it was often my fortune to meet, at his uncle's table, and to hear his pitiless and cruel speech. yet, making friends, as scripture commands us, of the mammon of unrighteousness, i set myself to win the affection of john grey by laughing at his jests and doing him what service i might. once or twice i dropped to him a word of my great desire to see the famed puzel, for the trials that had been held in open hall were now done in the dungeon, where only the bishop, the doctors of law, and the notaries might hear them. her noble bearing, indeed, and wise answers (which were plainly put into her mouth by the saints, for she was simple and ignorant) had gained men's hearts. one day, they told me, an english lord had cried--"the brave lass, pity she is not english." for to the english all the rest of god's earth is as nazareth, out of which can come no good thing. thus none might see the maid, and, once and again, i let fall a word in john grey's ear concerning my desire to look on her in prison. i dared make no show of eagerness, though now the month of may had come, which was both her good and ill month. for in may she first went to vaucouleurs and prophesied, in may she delivered orleans, and in may she was taken at compiegne. wherefore i deemed, as men will, that in may she should escape her prison, or in may should die. moreover, on the first day of march they had asked her, mocking her-- "shalt thou be delivered?" and she had answered-- "ask me on this day three months, and i shall declare it to you." the english, knowing this, made all haste to end her ere may ended, wherefore i had the more occasion for speed. now, on a certain day, being may the eighth, the heart of john grey was merry within him. he had well drunk, and i had let him win of me, at the dice, that one of my three horses which most he coveted. he then struck me in friendly fashion on the back, and cried-- "an unlucky day for thee, and for england. this very day, two years agone, that limb of the devil drove us by her sorceries from before orleans. but to-morrow--" and he laughed grossly in his beard. "storey, you are a good fellow, though a fool at the dice." "faith, i have met my master," i said. "but the lesson you gave me was worth bay salkeld," for so i had named my horse, after a great english house on the border who dwell at the castle of corby. "i will do thee a good turn," he said. "you crave to see this puzel, ere they put on her the high witch's cap for her hellward journey." "i should like it not ill," i said; "it were something to tell my grandchildren, when all france is english land." "then you shall see her, for this is your last chance to see her whole." "what mean you, fair sir?" i asked, while my heart gave a turn in my body, and i put out my hand to a great tankard of wine. "to-morrow the charity of the church hath resolved that she shall be had into the torture-chamber." i set my lips to the tankard, and drank long, to hide my face, and for that i was nigh swooning with a passion of fear and wrath. "thanks to st. george," i said, "the end is nigh!" "the end of the tankard," quoth he, looking into it, "hath already come. you drink like a man of the land debatable." yet i was in such case that, though by custom i drink little, the great draught touched not my brain, and did but give me heart. "you might challenge at skinking that great danish knight who was with us under orleans, sir andrew haggard was his name, and his bearings were . . . " { } so he was running on, for he himself had drunk more than his share, when i brought him back to my matter. "but as touching this puzel, how may i have my view of her, that you graciously offered me?" "my men change guard at curfew," he said; "five come out and five go in, and i shall bid them seek you here at your lodgings. so now, farewell, and your revenge with the dice you shall have when so you will." "nay, pardon me one moment: when relieve you the guard that enters at curfew?" "an hour after point of day. but, now i bethink me, you scarce will care to pass all the night in the puzel's company. hast thou paper or parchment?" i set paper and ink before him, who said-- "nay, write yourself; i am no great clerk, yet i can sign and seal." therewith, at his wording, i set down an order to the castle porter to let me forth as early in the night as i would. this pass he signed with his name, and sealed with his ring, bearing his arms. "so i wish you joy of this tryst and bonne fortune," he said, and departed. i had two hours before me ere curfew rang, and the time was more than i needed. therefore i went first to the church of st. ouen, which is very great and fair, and there clean confessed me, and made my orisons that, if it were god's will, this enterprise might turn to his honour, and to the salvation of the maid. and pitifully i besought madame st. catherine of fierbois, that as she had delivered me, a sinner, she would deliver the sister of the saints. next i went back to my lodgings, and there bade the hostler to have my two best steeds saddled and bridled in stall, by point of day, for a council was being held that night in the castle, and i and another of sir thomas's company might be sent early with a message to the bishop of avranches. this holy man, as then, was a cause of trouble and delay to the regent and pierre cauchon, bishop of beauvais, because he was just, and fell not in with their treasons. next i clad myself in double raiment, doublet above doublet, and hose over hose, my doublets bearing the red cross of st. george. over all i threw a great mantle, falling to the feet, as if i feared the night chills. thereafter i made a fair copy of my own writing in the pass given to me by john grey, and copied his signature also, and feigned his seal with a seal of clay, for it might chance that two passes proved better than one. then i put in a little wallet hanging to my girdle the signet of sir thomas grey, and the pass given to me by john grey, also an inkhorn with pen and paper, and in my hand, secretly, i held that phial which i had bought of the apothecary in tours. all my gold and jewels i hid about my body; i sharpened my sword and dagger, and then had no more to do but wait till curfew rang. this was the weariest part of all; for what, i thought, if john grey had forgotten his promise, the wine being about his wits. therefore i walked hither and thither in my chamber, in much misdoubt; but at the chime of curfew i heard rude voices below, and a heavy step on the stairs. it was a man-at-arms of the basest sort, who, lurching with his shoulder against my door, came in, and said that he and his fellows waited my pleasure. thereon i showed him the best countenance, and bade my host fill a pannier with meat and cakes and wine, to pass the hours in the prison merrily. i myself ran down into the host's cellar, and was very busy in tasting wine, for i would have the best. and in making my choice, while the host stooped over a cask to draw a fresh tankard, i poured all the drugs of my phial into a large pewter vessel with a lid, filled it with wine, and, tasting it, swore it would serve my turn. this flagon, such as we call a 'tappit hen' in my country, but far greater, i bore with me up the cellar stairs, and gave it to one of the guard, bidding him spill not a drop, or he should go thirsty. the lourdaud, that was their captain, carried the pannier, and, laughing, we crossed the street and the moat, giving the word "bedford." to the porter i showed my pass, telling him that, though i was loath to disturb him, i counted not to watch all night in the cell, wherefore i gave him a gold piece for the trouble he might have in letting me go forth at an hour untimely. herewith he was well content, and so, passing the word to the sentinel at each post, we entered. and now, indeed, my heart beat so that my body seemed to shake with hope and fear as i walked. at the door of the chamber wherein the maid lay we met her guards coming forth, who cried roughly, bidding her good even, and to think well of what waited her, meaning the torments. they tumbled down the stairs laughing, while we went in, and i last. it was a dark vaulted chamber with one window near the roof, narrow and heavily barred. in the recess by the window was a brazier burning, and casting as much shadow as light by reason of the smoke. here also was a rude table, stained with foul circles of pot-rims, and there were five or six stools. on a weighty oaken bed lay one in man's raiment, black in hue, her face downwards, and her arms spread over her neck. it could scarce be that she slept, but she lay like one dead, only shuddering when the lourdaud, the captain of the guard, smote her on the shoulder, asking, in english, how she did? "here she is, sir, surly as ever, and poor company for christian men. see you how cunningly all her limbs are gyved, and chained to the iron bolts of the bed? what would my lady jeanne give me for this little master- key?" here he showed a slender key, hung on a steel chain about his neck. "never a saint of the three, michael, margaret, and catherine, can take this from me; nay, nor the devils who wear their forms." "have you seen this fair company of hers?" i whispered in english, crossing myself. "no more than she saw the white lady that goes with that other witch, catherine of la rochelle. but, sir, she is sullen; it is her manner. with your good leave, shall we sup?" this was my own desire, so putting the pannier on the table, i carved the meat with my dagger, and poured out the wine in cups, and they fell to, being hungry, as englishmen are at all times. they roared over their meat, eating like wolves and drinking like fishes, and one would sing a lewd song, and the others strike in with the over-word, but drinking was their main avail. "this is better stuff," says the lourdaud, "than our english ale. faith, 'tis strong, my lads! wake up, jenkin; wake up, hal," and then he roared a snatch, but stopped, looking drowsily about him. o brothers in christ, who hear this tale, remember ye that, for now four months and more, the cleanest soul in christenty, and the chastest lady, and of manners the noblest, had endured this company by night and by day! "nay, wake up," i cried; "ye are dull revellers; what say ye to the dice?" therewith i set out my tablier and the dice. then i filled up the cup afresh, pretending to drink, and laid on the foul table a great shining heap of gold. their dull eyes shone like the metal when i said-- "myself will be judge and umpire; play ye, honest fellows, for i crave no gains from you. only, a cup for luck!" they camped at the table, all the five of them, and some while their greed kept them wakeful, and they called the mains, but their drought kept them drinking. and, one by one, their heads fell heavy on the table, or they sprawled on their stools, and so sank on to the floor, so potent were the poppy and mandragora of the leech in tours. at last they were all sound on sleep, one man's hand yet clutching a pile of my gold that now and again would slip forth and jingle on the stone floor. now all this time she had never stirred, but lay as she had lain, her face downwards, her arms above her neck. stealthily i took the chain and the key from about the neck of the sleeping lourdaud, and then drew near her on tiptoe. i listened, and, from her breathing, i believe that she slept, as extreme labour and weariness and sorrow do sometimes bring their own remede. then a thought came into my mind, how i should best awake her, and stooping, i said in her ear-- "fille de!" instantly she turned about, and, sitting up, folded her hands as one in prayer, deeming, belike, that she was aroused by the voices of her saints. i kneeled down beside the bed, and whispered--"madame, jeanne, look on my face!" she gazed on me, and now i saw her brave face, weary and thin and white, and, greater than of old, the great grey eyes. "i said once," came her sweet voice, "that thou alone shouldst stand by me when all had forsaken me. fair saints, do i dream but a dream?" "nay, madame," i said, "thou wakest and dost not dream. one has sent me who loves thee, even my lady elliot; and now listen, for the time is short. see, here i have the master-key, and when i have unlocked thy bonds . . . " "thou hast not slain these men?" she asked. "that were deadly sin." "nay, they do but sleep, and will waken belike ere the fresh guard comes, wherefore we must make haste." "when i have freed thee, do on thy body, above thy raiment, this doublet of mine, for it carries the cross of england, and, i being of little stature, you may well pass for me. moreover, this cloak and its hood, which i wore when i came in, will cover thee. then, when thou goest forth give the word 'bedford' to the sentinels; and, to the porter in the gate, show this written pass of john grey's. he knows it already, having seen it this night. next, when thou art without the castle, fare to the hostelry called 'the rose and apple,' which is nearest the castle gate, and so straight into the stable, where stand two steeds, saddled and bridled. choose the black, he is the swifter. if the hostler be awake, he expects me, and will take thee for me; mount, with no word, and ride to the eastern port. there show to the gate ward this signet of sir thomas grey, and he will up with portcullis and down with drawbridge, for he has often done no less for me and that signet. "then, madame, ride for louviers, and you shall break your fast with the bastard and la hire." her white face changed to red, like the morning light, as on that day at orleans, before she took les tourelles. then the flush faded, and she grew ashen pale, while she said-- "but thou, how shalt thou get forth?" "madame," i said, "fear not for me. i will follow after thee, and shame the sleepy porter to believe that he has dreamed a dream. and i have written this other pass, on seeing which he will needs credit me, being adrowse, and, moreover, i will pay him well. and i shall be at the stable as soon almost as thou, and i have told the hostler that belike i shall ride with a friend, carrying a message to the bishop of avranches. for i have beguiled the english to believe me of their party, as madame judith wrought to the tyrant holofernes." "nay," she answered simply, "this may not be. even if the porter were to be bought or beguiled, thou couldst not pass the sentinels. it may not be." "the sentinels, belike, are sleeping, or wellnigh sleeping, and i have a dagger. o madame! for the sake of the fortune of france, and the honour of the king"--for this, i knew, was my surest hope--"delay not, nor reck at all of me. i have but one life, and it is thine freely." "they will burn thee, or slay thee with other torments." "not so," i said; "i shall not be taken alive." "that were deadly sin," she answered. "i shall not go and leave thee to die for me. then were my honour lost, and i could not endure to live. entreat me not, for i will not go forth, as now. nay more, i tell thee as i have told my judges, that which the saints have spoken to me. 'bear this thy martyrdom gently,' they say, 'tu t'en viendras en royaume du paradis.' moreover, this i know, that i am to be delivered with great victory!" here she clasped her hands, looking upwards, and her face was as the face of an angel. "fair victory it were to leave thee in my place, and so make liars of my brethren of paradise." then, alas! i knew that i was of no more avail to move her; yet one last art i tried. "madame," i said, "i have prayed you in the name of the fortune of france, and the honour of the king, which is tarnished for ever if you escape not." "i shall be delivered," she answered. "i pray you in the dear name of your lady mother, madame du lys." "i shall be delivered," she said, "and with great victory!" "now i pray thee in my own name, and in that of thy first friend, my lady. she has made a vow to give her virginity to heaven unless either thou art set free, or she have tidings from thee that thou willest her to wed me, without whom i have no desire to live, but far rather this very night to perish. for i am clean confessed, within these six hours, knowing that i was like to be in some jeopardy." "then," she said, smiling sweetly, and signing that i should take her hand--"then live, norman leslie, for this is to me an easy thing and a joyous. thou art a clerk, hast thou wherewithal to write?" "yes, madame, here in my wallet." "then write as i tell thee:-- "jhesu maria" "'i, jehanne la pucelle, send from prison here in rouen my tidings of love to elliot hume, my first friend among women, and bid her, for my sake, wed him who loves her, norman leslie of pitcullo, my faithful servant, praying that all happiness may go with them. in witness whereto, my hand being guided to write, i set my name, jehanne la pucelle, this ninth day of may, in the year fourteen hundred and thirty-one.' "so guide my hand," she said, taking the pen from my fingers; and thus guided, while my tears fell on her hand, she wrote jehanne la pucelle. "now," quoth she, smiling as of old, "we must seal this missive. cut off one lock of my hair with your dagger, for my last gift to my first friend, and make the seal all orderly." i did as she bade, and, bringing a lighted stick from the brazier, i melted wax. then, when it was smooth, she laid on it two hairs from the little sundered lock (as was sometimes her custom), and bade me seal with my own signet, and put the brief in my wallet. "now, all is done," she said. "nay, nay," i said, "to die for thee is more to me than to live in love. ah, nay, go forth, i beseech thee!" "with victory shall i go forth, and now i lay my last commands on the last of all my servants. if in aught i have ever offended thee, in word or deed, forgive me!" i could but bow my head, for i was weeping, though her eyes were dry. "and so, farewell," she said-- "as thou art leal and true, begone; it is my order, and make no tarrying. to-morrow i have much to do, and needs must i sleep while these men are quiet. say to thy lady that i love her dearly, and bid her hope, as i also hope. farewell!" she moved her thin hand, which i kissed, kneeling. again she said "farewell," and turned her back on me as if she would sleep. then i hung the chain and key again on the neck of the lourdaud; i put some of the fallen coins in the men's pouches, but bestowed the dice and tablier in my wallet. i opened the door, and went forth, not looking back; and so from the castle, showing my pass, and giving the porter another coin. then i went home, in the sweet dawn of may, and casting myself on my bed, i wept bitterly, for to-day she should be tormented. * * * * * of the rest i have no mind to tell (though they had not the heart to torture the maid), for it puts me out of charity with a people who have a name to be christians, and it is my desire, if i may, to forgive all men before i die. at rouen i endured to abide, even until the day of unjust doom, and my reason was that i ever hoped for some miracle, even as her saints had promised. but it was their will that she should be made perfect through suffering, and being set free through the gate of fire, should win her victory over unfaith and mortal fear. wherefore i stood afar off at the end, seeing nothing of what befell; yet i clearly heard, as did all men there, the last word of her sweet voice, and the cry of jhesus! then i passed through the streets where men and women, and the very english, were weeping, and, saddling my swiftest horse, i rode to the east port. when the gate had closed behind me, i turned, and, lifting my hand, i tore the cross of st. george from my doublet. "dogs!" i cried, "ye have burned a saint! a curse on cruel english and coward french! st andrew for scotland!" the shafts and bolts hailed past me as i wheeled about; there was mounting of steeds, and a clatter of hoofs behind me, but the sound died away ere i rode into louviers. there i told them the tale which was their shame, and so betook me to tours, and to my lady. chapter xxxii--the end of this chronicle it serves not to speak of my later fortunes, being those of a private man, nor have i the heart to recall old sorrows. we were wedded when elliot's grief had in some sort abated, and for one year we were happier than god has willed that sinful men should long be in this world. then that befell which has befallen many. i may not write of it: suffice it that god took from me both her and her child. then, after certain weeks and days of which i am blessed enough to keep little memory, i forswore arms, and served in the household of the lady margaret of scotland, who married the dauphin on an unhappy day. i have known much of courts and of the learned, i have seen the wicked man exalted, and brother thomas noiroufle in great honour with charles vii. king of france, and offering before him, with his murderous hands, the blessed sacrifice of the mass. the death of the lady margaret, slain by lying tongues, and the sudden sight of that evil man, brother thomas, raised to power and place, drove me from france, and i was certain years with the king's ambassadors at the courts of italy. there i heard how the holy inquisition had reversed that false judgment of the english and false french at rouen, which made me some joy. and then, finding old age come upon me, i withdrew to my own country, where i have lived in religion, somewhile in the abbey of dunfermline, and this year gone in our cell of pluscardine, where i now write, and where i hope to die and be buried. here ends my tale, in my latin chronicle left untold, of how a scots monk was with the maid both in her victories and recoveries of towns, and even till her death. for myself, i now grow old, and the earthly time to come is short, and there remaineth a rest for all souls christian. miscreants i have heard of, men misbelieving and heretics, who deny that the spirit abides after the death of the body, for in the long years, say they, the spirit with the flesh wanes, and at last dies with the bodily death. wherein they not only make holy church a liar, but are visibly confounded by this truth which i know and feel, namely, that while my flesh wastes hourly towards old age, and of many things my memory is weakened, yet of that day in chinon i mind me as clearly, and see my love as well, and hear her sweet voice as plain, as if she had but now left the room. herein my memory does not fail, nor does love faint, growing stronger with the years, like the stream as it races to the fall. wherefore, being more strong than time, love shall be more strong than death. the river of my life speeds yearly swifter, the years like months go by, the months like weeks, the weeks like days. even so fleet on, o time, till i rest beside her feet! nay, never, being young, did i more desire my love's presence when we were apart than to-day i desire it, the memory of her filling all my heart as fragrance of flowers fills a room, till it seems as if she were not far away, but near me, as i write of her. and, foolish that i am! i look up as if i might see her by my side. i know not if this be so with all men, for, indeed, i have asked none, nor spoken to any of the matter save in confession. for i have loved this once, and no more; wherefore i deem me happier than most, and more certain of a good end to my love, where the blessed dwell in the rose of paradise, beholding the beatific vision. to this end i implore the prayers of all christian souls who read this book, and of all the saints, and of that sister of the saints whom, while i might, i served in my degree. venerabilis johanna ora pro nobis appendix a--norman's miracle (see "livre des miracles de madame sainte katherine de fierboys". mss. bib. nat. , fol. lxxxiv.) le xvi jour du moys de janvier, l'an mil cccc. xxx., vint en la chapelle de ceans norman leslie de pytquhoulle, escoth, escuyer de la compagnie de hugues cande, capitaine. { } lequel dist et afferma par serment estre vray le miracle cy apres declaire. c'est assavoir que le dit leslie fut prins des anglois a paris le jour de la nativite de nostre dame de l'an dernier passe. lequel norman leslie avoit entre dans la ville de paris avec c. escossoys en guise d'angloys, lesqueuls escossoys furent prins des angloys, et ledit norman fut mis en fers et en ceps. et estoit l'intention de ceux qui l'avoient pris de le faire lendemain ardre, parce qu'il portoit robe de femme par maniere de ruse de guerre. si s'avint que ledit norman se voua a madame sainte katherine, qu'il luy pleust prier dieu qu'il le voulsist delivrer de la prison ou il estoit; et incontinent qu'il pourroit estre dehors, il yroit mercier madame sainte katherine en sa chapelle de fierboys. et incontinent son veu fait si s'en dormit, et au reveiller trouva en la tour avecques luy un singe, qui lui apporta deux files, et un petit cousteau. ainsi il trouva maniere de se deferrer, et adoncques s'en sortit de la prison emportant avecques luy le singe. si se laissoit cheoir a val en priant madame sainte katherine et chut a bas, et oncques ne se fist mal, et se rendit a saint denys ou il trouvoit des compagnons escossoys. et ainsy ledit norman leslie s'en est venu audit lieu de fierboys, tout sain et sauf, emportant avecques luy ledit singe, qui est beste estrange et fol de son corps. et a jure ledit norman ce estre vray par la foy et serment de son corps. presens messire richart kyrthrizian, frere giles lacourt, prestres gouverneurs de la dite chapelle, et messire hauves polnoire, peintre du roy, et plusieurs aultres. appendix b--elliot's ring the ring of the maid, inscribed with the holy names, is often referred to in her trial ("proces," i. , , , , ), and is mentioned by bower, the contemporary scottish chronicler ("proces," iv. ), whose work was continued in the "liber pluscardensis." we have also, in the text, norman's statement that a copy of this ring was presented by the maid to elliot hume. while correcting the proof-sheets of this chronicle, the translator received from mr. george black, assistant keeper of the national museum of antiquities in edinburgh, a copy of his essay on "scottish charms and amulets" ("proceedings of the society of antiquaries of scotland," may , , p. ). there, to his astonishment, the translator read: "the formula mari. ihs. occurs on two finger-rings of silver-gilt, one of which was found at pluscarden, elginshire, and the other in an old graveyard near fintray house, aberdeenshire." have we in the pluscarden ring a relic of the monk of pluscarden, the companion of jeanne d'arc, the author of "liber pluscardensis"? footnotes { } several copies of this book, the liber pluscardensis, are extant, but the author's original ms. is lost. { } this was written after the act of the scots parliament of . { } daggers. { } rude wall surrounding a keep. { } sisters in the rule of st. francis. { } these tricks of sleight-of-hand are attributed by jean nider, in his "formicarium," to the false jeanne d'arc.--a. l. { } very intimate. { } when the sky falls and smothers the larks, { } this quotation makes it certain that scott's ballad of harlaw, in "the antiquary," is, at least in part, derived from tradition. { } this description confirms that of the contemporary town-clerk of la rochelle. { } the staircase still exists. { } "my neck would learn the weight of my more solid proportions." { } neck. { } "frightened by a ghost." { } "airt," i.e. "quarter." { } "fright for fright." { } lameter, a lame. { } bor-brief, certificate of gentle birth. { } howlet, a young owl; a proverb for voracity. { } battle-axe. { } bougran, lustrous white linen. { } there are some slight variations, as is natural, in the fierbois record. { } equipped for battle. { } that is, in the "liber pluscardensis." { } englishman. { } heavy and still. { } daughter of god, go on, and i will be thine aid. go on! { } lyrat, grey. { } the king's evil: "ecrouelles," scrofula. { } darg, day's work. { } "par mon martin," the oath which she permitted to la hire. { } see appendix a, 'norman's miracle,' appendix b, 'elliot's ring.' { } that in to say, some two thousand combatants. { } echevins--magistrates. { } "away with this man, and release unto us barabbas." { } pavises--large portable shelters. { } block-houses. { } the grahames had not yet possessed themselves of netherby.--a. l. { } substituting 'or' for 'argent,' his bearings were those of the distinguished modern novelist of the same name.--a. l. { } cande = kennedy. the life of joan of arc by anatole france a translation by winifred stephens in two vols., vol. i [illustration] london: john lane, the bodley head new york: john lane company: mcmix _copyright in u.s.a., , by_ manzi, joyant et cie _copyright in u.s.a., , by_ john lane company the university press, cambridge, u.s.a. [illustration: joan of arc] preface to the english edition scholars have been good enough to notice this book; and the majority have treated it very kindly, doubtless because they have perceived that the author has observed all the established rules of historical research and accuracy. their kindness has touched me. i am especially grateful to mm. gabriel monod, solomon reinach and germain lefèvre-pontalis, who have discovered in this work certain errors, which will not be found in the present edition. my english critics have a special claim to my gratitude. to the memory of joan of arc they consecrate a pious zeal which is almost an expiatory worship. mr. andrew lang's praiseworthy scruples with regard to my references have caused me to correct some and to add several. the hagiographers alone are openly hostile. they reproach me, not with my manner of explaining the facts, but with having explained them at all. and the more my explanations are clear, natural, rational and derived from the most authoritative sources, the more these explanations displease them. they would wish the history of joan of arc to remain mysterious and entirely supernatural. i have restored the maid to life and to humanity. that is my crime. and these zealous inquisitors, so intent on condemning my work, have failed to discover therein any grave fault, any flagrant inexactness. their severity has had to content itself with a few inadvertences and with a few printer's errors. what flatterers could better have gratified "the proud weakness of my heart?"[ ] paris, _january, _. [footnote : "_de mon coeur l'orgueilleuse faiblesse_," racine, _iphigénie en aulide_, act i, sc. i.--(w.s.)] introduction my first duty should be to make known the authorities for this history. but l'averdy, buchon, j. quicherat, vallet de viriville, siméon luce, boucher de molandon, mm. robillard de beaurepaire, lanéry d'arc, henri jadart, alexandre sorel, germain lefèvre-pontalis, l. jarry, and many other scholars have published and expounded various documents for the life of joan of arc. i refer my readers to their works which in themselves constitute a voluminous literature,[ ] and without entering on any new examination of these documents, i will merely indicate rapidly and generally the reasons for the use i have chosen to make of them. they are: first, the trial which resulted in her condemnation; second, the chronicles; third, the trial for her rehabilitation; fourth, letters, deeds, and other papers. [footnote : le p. lelong, _bibliothèque historique de la france_, paris, ( vols. folio), ii, n. - . potthast, _bibliotheca medii ævi_, berlin, , vo, vol. i, pp. _seq._ u. chevalier, _répertoire des sources historiques du moyen Âge_, paris, vo, , pp. - ; _jeanne d'arc, bibliographie_, montbéliard, [selections]; _supplément au répertoire_, paris, , pp. - , vo. lanéry d'arc, _le livre d'or de jeanne d'arc, bibliographie raisonnée et analytique des ouvrages relatifs à jeanne d'arc_, paris, , large vo, and supplement. a. molinier, _les sources de l'histoire de france des origines aux guerres d'italie, iv: les valois, - _, paris, , pp. - .] first, in the trial[ ] which resulted in her condemnation the historian has a mine of rich treasure. her cross-examination cannot be too minutely studied. it is based on information, not preserved elsewhere, gathered from domremy and the various parts of france through which she passed. it is hardly necessary to say that all the judges of sought to discover in jeanne was idolatry, heresy, sorcery and other crimes against the church. inclined as they were, however, to discern evil in every one of the acts and in each of the words of one whom they desired to ruin, so that they might dishonour her king, they examined all available information concerning her life. the high value to be set upon the maid's replies is well known; they are heroically sincere, and for the most part perfectly lucid. nevertheless they must not all be interpreted literally. jeanne, who never regarded either the bishop or the promoter as her judge, was not so simple as to tell them the whole truth. it was very frank of her to warn them that they would not know all.[ ] that her memory was curiously defective must also be admitted. i am aware that the clerk of the court was astonished that after a fortnight she should remember exactly the answers she had given in her cross-examination.[ ] that may be possible, although she did not always say the same thing. it is none the less certain that after the lapse of a year she retained but an indistinct recollection of some of the important acts of her life. finally, her constant hallucinations generally rendered her incapable of distinguishing between the true and the false. [footnote : jules quicherat, _procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de jeanne d'arc_, paris, vo, , vol. i. (called hereafter _trial_.--w.s.)] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. , _passim_.] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, pp. , , , , , .] the record of the trial is followed by an examination of jeanne's sayings in _articulo mortis_.[ ] this examination is not signed by the clerks of the court. hence from a legal point of view the record is out of order; nevertheless, regarded as a historical document, its authenticity cannot be doubted. in my opinion the actual occurrences cannot have widely differed from what is related in this unofficial report. it tells of jeanne's second recantation, and of this recantation there can be no question, for jeanne received the communion before her death. the veracity of this document was never assailed,[ ] even by those who during the rehabilitation trial pointed out its irregularity.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _cf._ j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux sur l'histoire de jeanne d'arc_, paris, , pp. - .] [footnote : evidence of g. manchon, _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] secondly, the chroniclers of the period, both french and burgundian, were paid chroniclers, one of whom was attached to every great baron. tringant says that his master did not expend any money in order to obtain mention in the chronicles,[ ] and that therefore he is omitted from them. the earliest chronicle in which the maid occurs is that of perceval de cagny, who was in the service of the house of alençon and duke john's master of the house.[ ] it was drawn up in the year , that is, only six years after jeanne's death. but it was not written by him. according to his own confession he had "not half the sense, memory, or ability necessary for putting this, or even a matter of less than half its importance, down in writing."[ ] this chronicle is the work of a painstaking clerk. one is not surprised to find a chronicler in the pay of the house of alençon representing the differences concerning the maid, which arose between the sire de la trémouille and the duke of alençon, in a light most unfavourable to the king. but from a scribe, supposed to be writing at the dictation of a retainer of duke john, one would have expected a less inaccurate and a less vague account of the feats of arms accomplished by the maid in company with him whom she called her fair duke. although this chronicle was written at a time when no one dreamed that the sentence of would ever be revoked, the maid is regarded as employing supernatural means, and her acts are stripped of all verisimilitude by being recorded in the manner of a hagiography. further, that portion of the chronicle attributed to perceval de cagny, which deals with the maid, is brief, consisting of twenty-seven chapters of a few lines each. quicherat is of opinion that it is the best chronicle of jeanne d'arc[ ] existing, and the others may indeed be even more worthless. [footnote : _ne donnoit point d'argent pour soy faire mettre ès croniques._--jean de bueil, _le jouvencel_, ed. c. fabre and l. lecestre, paris, , vo, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : perceval de cagny, _chroniques_, published by h. moranvillé, paris, , vo.] [footnote : _le sens, mémoire, ne l'abillité de savoir faire metre par escript ce, ne autre chose mendre de plus de la moitié_, perceval de cagny, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] gilles le bouvier,[ ] king at arms of the province of berry, who was forty-three in , is somewhat more judicious than perceval de cagny; and, in spite of some confusion of dates, he is better informed of military proceedings. but his story is of too summary a nature to tell us much. [footnote : _ibid._, pp. - . d. godefroy, _histoire de charles vii_, paris, , fol. pp. - .] jean chartier,[ ] precentor of saint-denys, held the office of chronicler of france in . two hundred years later he would have been described as historiographer royal. his office may be divined from the manner in which he relates jeanne's death. after having said that she had been long imprisoned by the order of john of luxembourg, he adds: "the said luxembourg sold her to the english, who took her to rouen, where she was harshly treated; in so much that after long delay, they had her publicly burnt in that town of rouen, without a trial, of their own tyrannical will, which was cruelly done, seeing the life and the rule she lived, for every week she confessed and received the body of our lord, as beseemeth a good catholic."[ ] when jean chartier says that the english burned her without trial, he means apparently that the bailie of rouen did not pronounce sentence. concerning the ecclesiastical trial and the two accusations of lapse and relapse he says not a word; and it is the english whom he accuses of having burnt a good catholic without a trial. this example proves how seriously the condemnation of embarrassed the government of king charles. but what can be thought of a historian who suppresses jeanne's trial because he finds it inconvenient? jean chartier was extremely weak-minded and trivial; he seems to believe in the magic of catherine's sword and in jeanne's loss of power when she broke it;[ ] he records the most puerile of fables. nevertheless it is interesting to note that the official chronicler of the kings of france, writing about , ascribes to the maid an important share in the delivery of orléans, in the conquest of fortresses on the loire and in the victory of patay, that he relates how the king formed the army at gien "by the counsel of the said maid,"[ ] and that he expressly states that jeanne caused[ ] the coronation and consecration. such was certainly the opinion which prevailed at the court of charles vii. all that we have to discover is whether that opinion was sincere and reasonable or whether the king of france may not have deemed it to his advantage to owe his kingdom to the maid. she was held a heretic by the heads of the church universal, but in france her memory was honoured, rather, however, by the lower orders than by the princes of the blood and the leaders of the army. the services of the latter the king was not desirous to extol after the revolt of . during this _praguerie_,[ ] the duke of bourbon, the count of vendôme, the duke of alençon, whom the maid called her fair duke, and even the cautious count dunois had been seen joining hands with the plunderers and making war on the sovereign with an ardour they had never shown in fighting against the english. [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique de charles vii, roi de france_, ed. vallet de viriville, paris, , vols., mo. (_bibliothèque elzévirienne_).] [footnote : _lequel luxembourg la vendit aux angloix, qui la menèrent à rouen, où elle fut durement traictée; et tellement que, après grant dillacion de temps, sans procez, maiz de leur voulenté indeue, la firent ardoir en icelle ville de rouen publiquement ... qui fut bien inhumainement fait, veu la vie et gouvernement dont elle vivoit, car elle se confessoit et recepvoit par chacune sepmaine le corps de nostre seigneur, comme bonne catholique._--jean chartier, _chronique de charles vii, roi de france_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique de charles vii, roi de france_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _par l'admonestement de ladite pucelle_, jean chartier, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _fut cause_, _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : this revolt of the french nobles was so named because various risings of a similar nature had taken place in the city of prague.--w.s.] "le journal du siège"[ ] was doubtless kept in and ; but the edition that has come down to us dates from .[ ] what relates to jeanne before her coming to orléans is interpolated; and the interpolator was so unskilful as to date jeanne's arrival at chinon in the month of february, while it took place on march , and to assign thursday, march , as the date of the departure from blois, which did not occur until the end of april. the diary from april to may is less inaccurate in its chronology, and the errors in dates which do occur may be attributed to the copyist. but the facts to which these dates are assigned, occasionally in disagreement with financial records and often tinged with the miraculous, testify to an advanced stage of jeanne's legend. for example, one cannot possibly attribute to a witness of the siege the error made by the scribe concerning the fall of the bridge of les tourelles.[ ] what is said on page of p. charpentier's and c. cuissart's edition concerning the relations of the inhabitants and the men-at-arms seems out of place, and may very likely have been inserted there to efface the memory of the grave dissensions which had occurred during the last week. from the th of may the diary ceases to be a diary; it becomes a series of extracts borrowed from chartier, from berry, and from the rehabilitation trial. the episode of the big fat englishman slain by messire jean de montesclère at the siege of jargeau is obviously taken from the evidence of jean d'aulon in ; and even this plagiarism is inaccurate, since jean d'aulon expressly says he was slain at the battle of les augustins.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège d'orléans_ ( - ), ed. p. charpentier and c. cuissart, orléans, , vo.] [footnote : the oldest copy extant is dated (ms. fr. ).] [footnote : _journal du siège d'orléans_ ( - ), p. . _trial_, vol. iv, p. , note.] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] the chronicle entitled _la chronique de la pucelle_,[ ] as if it were the chief chronicle of the heroine, is taken from a history entitled _geste des nobles françois_, going back as far as priam of troy. but the extract was not made until the original had been changed and added to. this was done after . even if it were proved that _la chronique de la pucelle_ is the work of cousinot, shut up in orléans during the siege, or even of two cousinots, uncle and nephew according to some, father and son according to others, it would remain none the less true that this chronicle is largely copied from jean chartier, the _journal du siège_ and the rehabilitation trial. whoever the author may have been, this work reflects no great credit upon him: no very high praise can be given to a fabricator of tales, who, without appearing in the slightest degree aware of the fact, tells the same stories twice over, introducing each time different and contradictory circumstances. _la chronique de la pucelle_ ends abruptly with the king's return to berry after his defeat before paris. [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, or _chronique de cousinot_, ed. vallet de viriville, paris, , mo. (_bibliothèque gauloise_).] _le mystère du siège_[ ] must be classed with the chronicles. it is in fact a rhymed chronicle in dialogue, and it would be extremely interesting for its antiquity alone were it possible to do what some have attempted and to assign to it the date . the editors, and following them several scholars, have believed it possible to identify this poem of , lines with a _certain mistaire_[ ] played on the sixth anniversary of the delivery of the city. they have drawn their conclusions from the following circumstances: the maréchal de rais, who delighted to organise magnificent farces and mysteries, was in duke charles's city expending vast sums[ ] there from september, , till august, ; in the city purchased out of its municipal funds "a standard and a banner, which had belonged to monseigneur de reys and had been used by him to represent the manner of the storming of les tourelles and their capture from the english."[ ] from such a statement it is impossible to prove that in or in , on may , there was acted a play having the siege for its subject and the maid for its heroine. if, however, we take "the manner of the storming of les tourelles" to mean a mystery rather than a pageant or some other form of entertainment, and if we consider the _certain mistaire_ of as indicating a representation of that siege which had been laid and raised by the english, we shall thus arrive at a mystery of the siege. but even then we must examine whether it be that mystery the text of which has come down to us. [footnote : _mystère du siège d'orléans_, first published by mm. f. guessard and e. de certain, paris, , to, according to the only manuscript, which is preserved in the vatican library.--_cf._ _Étude sur le mystère du siège d'orléans_, by h. tivier, paris, , vo.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : the abbé e. bossard and de maulde, _gilles de rais, maréchal de france, dit barbe-bleue_ ( - ), nd edition, paris, , vo, pp. - .] [footnote : _un estandart et bannière qui furent à monseigneur de reys pour faire la manière de l'assault comment les tourelles furent prinses sur les anglois mistère du siège_, p. viii.] among the one hundred and forty speaking personages in this work is the maréchal de rais. hence it has been concluded that the mystery was written and acted before the lawsuit ended by that sentence to which effect was given above the nantes bridge, on october , . how, indeed, it has been asked, after so ignominious a death could the vampire of machecoul have been represented to the people of orléans as fighting for their deliverance? how could the maid and blue beard be associated in a heroic action? it is hard to answer such a question, because we cannot possibly tell how much of that kind of thing could be tolerated by the barbarism of those rude old times. perhaps our text itself, if properly examined, will be found to contain internal evidence as to whether it is of an earlier or later date than . the bastard of orléans was created count of dunois on july , .[ ] the lines of the mystery, in which he is called by this title, cannot therefore be anterior to that date. they are numerous, and, by a singularity which has never been explained, are all in the first third of the book. when dunois reappears later he is the bastard again. from this fact the editors of concluded that five thousand lines were prefixed to the primitive text subsequently, although they in no way differ from the rest, either in language, style, or prosody. but may the rest of the poem be assigned to or ? [footnote : _mistère du siège_, preface, p. x.] that is not my opinion. in the lines and the maid tells talbot he will die by the hand of the king's men. this prophecy must have been made after the event: it is an obvious allusion to the noble captain's end, and these lines must have been written after . six years after the siege no clerk of orléans would have thought of travestying jeanne as a lady of noble birth. in line and the following of the "_mistère du siège_" the maid replies to the first president of the parlement of poitiers when he questions her concerning her family: "as for my father's mansion, it is in the bar country; and he is of gentle birth and rank right noble, a good frenchman and a loyal."[ ] [footnote : quant est de l'ostel de mon père, il est en pays de barois; gentilhomme et de noble afaire honneste et loyal françois. _mistère du siège_, pp. - .] before a clerk would write thus, jeanne's family must have been long ennobled and the first generation must have died out, which happened in ; there must have come into existence that numerous family of the du lys, whose ridiculous pretensions had to be humoured. not content with deriving their descent from their aunt, the du lys insisted on connecting the good peasant jacquot d'arc with the old nobility of bar. notwithstanding that jeanne's reference to "her father's mansion" conflicts with other scenes in the same mystery, this lengthy work would appear to be all of a piece. it was apparently compiled during the reign of louis xi, by a citizen of orléans who was a fair master of his subject. it would be interesting to make a more detailed study of his authorities than has been done hitherto. this poet seems to have known a _journal du siège_ very different from the one we possess. was his mystery acted during the last thirty years of the century at the festival instituted to commemorate the taking of les tourelles? the subject, the style, and the spirit are all in harmony with such an occasion. but it is curious that a poem composed to celebrate the deliverance of orléans on may should assign that deliverance to may . and yet this is what the author of the mystery does when he puts the following lines into the mouth of the maid: "remember how orléans was delivered in the year one thousand four hundred and twenty-nine, and forget not also that of may it was the ninth day."[ ] [footnote : ... ayez en souvenance.... comment orléans eult délivrance.... l'an mil iiijc xxix; faites en mémoire tous dis; des jours de may ce fut le neuf. _mistère du siège_, lines - , p. .] such are the chief chroniclers on the french side who have written of the maid. others who came later or who have only dealt with certain episodes in her life, need not be quoted here; their testimony will be best examined when we come to that of the facts in detail. placing on one side any information to be obtained from _la chronique de l'établissement de la fête_,[ ] from _la relation_[ ] of the clerk of la rochelle and other contemporary documents, we are now in a position to realise that if we depended on the french chroniclers for our knowledge of jeanne d'arc we should know just as much about her as we know of sakya muni. [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _relation inédite sur jeanne d'arc, extraite du livre noir de l'hôtel de ville de la rochelle_, ed. j. quicherat, orléans, , vo, and _la revue historique_, vol. iv, , pp. - .] we shall certainly not find her explained by the burgundian chroniclers. they, however, furnish certain useful information. the earliest of these burgundian chroniclers is a clerk of picardy, the author of an anonymous chronicle, called _la chronique des cordeliers_,[ ] because the only copy of it comes from a house of the cordeliers at paris. it is a history of the world from the creation to the year . m. pierre champion[ ] has proved that monstrelet made use of it. this clerk of picardy knew divers matters, and was acquainted with sundry state documents. but facts and dates he curiously confuses. his knowledge of the maid's military career is derived from a french and a popular source. a certain credence has been attached to his story of the leap from beaurevoir; but his account if accurate destroys the idea that jeanne threw herself from the top of the keep in a fit of frenzy or despair.[ ] and it does not agree with what jeanne said herself. [footnote : bibl. nat. fr. : j. quicherat, _supplément aux témoignages contemporains sur jeanne d'arc_, in _revue historique_, vol. xix, may-june, , pp. - .] [footnote : pierre champion, _guillaume de flavy_, paris, , in vo, pp. xi, xii.] [footnote : _chronique d'antonio morosini_, introduction and commentary by germain lefèvre-pontalis, text established by léon dorez, vol. iii, , p. , and vol. iv, supplement xxi.] monstrelet,[ ] "more drivelling at the mouth than a mustard-pot,"[ ] is a fountain of wisdom in comparison with jean chartier. when he makes use of _la chronique des cordeliers_ he rearranges it and presents its facts in order. what he knew of jeanne amounts to very little. he believed that she was an inn servant. he has but a word to say of her indecision at montépilloy, but that word, to be found nowhere else, is extremely significant. he saw her in the camp at compiègne; but unfortunately he either did not realise or did not wish to say what impression she made upon him. [footnote : enguerrand de monstrelet, _chronique_, ed. doüet-d'arcq, paris, - , vols. in vo.] [footnote : rabelais, urquhart's trans., ii- , in bohn's edition, (w.s.). _plus baveux que ung pot de moutarde._--rabelais, _pantagruel_, bk. iii, chap. xxiv.] wavrin du forestel,[ ] who edited additions to froissart, monstrelet, and mathieu d'escouchy, was at patay; he never saw jeanne there. he knows her only by hearsay and that but vaguely. we do not therefore attach great importance to what he relates concerning robert de baudricourt, who, according to him, indoctrinated the maid and taught her how to appear "inspired by divine providence."[ ] on the other hand, he gives valuable information concerning the war immediately after the deliverance of orléans. [footnote : jehan de wavrin, _anchiennes croniques d'engleterre_, ed. mademoiselle dupont, paris, - , vols., vo.] [footnote : wavrin's additions to monstrelet in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] le fèvre de saint-rémy, counsellor to the duke of burgundy and king-at-arms of the golden fleece,[ ] was possibly at compiègne when jeanne was taken; and he speaks of her as a brave girl. [footnote : _chronique de jean le fèvre, seigneur de saint-rémy_, ed. françois morand, paris, - , vols. in vo.] georges chastellain copies le fèvre de saint remy.[ ] [footnote : _chroniques des ducs de bourgogne_, paris, , vols. in vo; vols. xlii and xliii of the _collection des chroniques françaises_, by buchon. _oeuvres de georges chastellain_, ed. kervyn de lettenhove, brussels, , vols. in vo.] the author of _le journal_ ascribed to _un bourgeois de paris_,[ ] whom we identify as a cabochien clerk, had only heard jeanne spoken of by the doctors and masters of the university of paris. moreover he was very ill-informed, which is regrettable. for the man stands alone in his day for energy of feeling and language, for passion of wrath and of pity, and for intense sympathy with the people. [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_ ( - ), ed. a. tuetey, paris, , in vo.] i must mention a document which is neither french nor burgundian, but italian. i refer to the _chronique d'antonio morosini_, published and annotated with admirable erudition by m. germain lefèvre-pontalis. this chronicle, or to be more precise, the letters it contains, are very valuable to the historian, but not on account of the veracity of the deeds here attributed to the maid, which on the contrary are all imaginary and fabulous. in the _chronique de morosini_,[ ] every single fact concerning jeanne is presented in a wrong character and in a false light. and yet morosini's correspondents are men of business, thoughtful, subtle venetians. these letters reveal how there were being circulated throughout christendom a whole multitude of fictitious stories, imitated some from the romances of chivalry, others from the golden legend, concerning that _demoiselle_ as she is called, at once famous and unknown. [footnote : _chronique d'antonio morosini_, ed. léon dorez and germain lefèvre-pontalis, paris, - , vols. in vo.] another document, the diary of a german merchant, one eberhard de windecke,[ ] a conscientious and clever edition of which has also been published by m. germain lefèvre-pontalis, presents the same phenomenon. nothing here related of the maid is even probable. as soon as she appears a whole cycle of popular stories grow up round her name. eberhard obviously delights to relate them. thus we learn from these good foreign merchants that at no period of her existence was jeanne known otherwise than by fables, and that if she moved multitudes it was by the spreading abroad of countless legends which sprang up wherever she passed and made way before her. and indeed, there is much food for thought in that dazzling obscurity, which from the very first enwrapped the maid, in those radiant clouds of myth, which, while concealing her, rendered her all the more imposing. [footnote : g. lefèvre-pontalis, _les sources allemandes de l'histoire de jeanne d'arc_, eberhard windecke, paris, , in vo.] thirdly, with its memoranda, its consultations, and its one hundred and forty depositions, furnished by one hundred and twenty-three deponents, the rehabilitation trial forms a very valuable collection of documents.[ ] m. lanéry d'arc has done well to publish in their entirety the memoranda of the doctors as well as the treatise of the archbishop of embrun, the propositions of master heinrich von gorcum and the _sibylla francica_.[ ] from the trial of we learn what theologians on the english side thought of the maid. but were it not for the consultations of théodore de leliis and of paul pontanus and the opinions included in the later trial we should not know how she was regarded by the doctors of italy and france. it is important to ascertain what were the views held by the whole church concerning a damsel condemned during her lifetime, when the english were in power, and rehabilitated after her death when the french were victorious. [footnote : _trial_, vols. ii to iii, - (vols. v and vi, - , contain the evidence).] [footnote : lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations en faveur de jeanne d'arc_, , in vo. _trial_, vol. iii, pp. - .] doubtless many matters were elucidated by the one hundred and twenty-three witnesses heard at domremy, at vaucouleurs, at toul, at orléans, at paris, at rouen, at lyon, witnesses drawn from all ranks of life--churchmen, princes, captains, burghers, peasants, artisans. but we are bound to admit that they come far short of satisfying our curiosity, and for several reasons. first, because they replied to a list of questions drawn up with the object of establishing a certain number of facts within the scope of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. the holy inquisitor who conducted the trial was curious, but his curiosity was not ours. this is the first reason for the insufficiency of the evidence from our point of view.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. - .] but there are other reasons. most of the witnesses appear excessively simple and lacking in discernment. in so large a number of men of all ages and of all ranks it is sad to find how few were equipped with lucid and judicial minds. it would seem as if the human intellect of those days was enwrapped in twilight and incapable of seeing anything distinctly. thought as well as speech was curiously puerile. only a slight acquaintance with this dark age is enough to make one feel as if among children. want and ignorance and wars interminable had impoverished the mind of man and starved his moral nature. the scanty, slashed, ridiculous garments of the nobles and the wealthy betray an absurd poverty of taste and weakness of intellect.[ ] one of the most striking characteristics of these small minds is their triviality; they are incapable of attention; they retain nothing. no one who reads the writings of the period can fail to be struck by this almost universal weakness. [footnote : j. quicherat, _histoire du costume_, paris, , large vo, _passim_. g. demay, _le costume au moyen âge d'après les sceaux_, paris, , p. , figs. and .] by no means all the evidence given in these one hundred and forty depositions can be treated seriously. the daughter of jacques boucher, steward to the duke of orléans, depones in the following terms: "at night i slept alone with jeanne. neither in her words or her acts did i ever observe anything wrong. she was perfectly simple, humble, and chaste."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] this young lady was nine years old when she perceived with a discernment somewhat precocious that her sleeping companion was simple, humble, and chaste. that is unimportant. but to show how one may sometimes be deceived by the witnesses whom one would expect to be the most reliable, i will quote brother pasquerel.[ ] brother pasquerel is jeanne's chaplain. he may be expected to speak as one who has seen and as one who knows. brother pasquerel places the examination at poitiers before the audience granted by the king to the maid in the château of chinon.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : we must notice, however, that brother pasquerel, who was not present either at chinon or at poitiers, is careful to say that he knows nothing of jeanne's sojourn in these two towns save what she herself has told him. now we are surprised to find that she herself placed the examination at poitiers before the audience at chinon, since she says in her trial that at chinon, when she gave her king a sign, the clerks ceased to contend with her.--_trial_, vol. i, p. .] forgetting that the whole relieving army had been in orléans since may , he supposes that, on the evening of friday the th, it was still expected.[ ] from such blunders we may judge of the muddled condition of this poor priest's brain. his most serious shortcoming, however, is the invention of miracles. he tries to make out that when the convoy of victuals reached orléans, there occurred, by the maid's special intervention, and in order to carry the barges up the river, a sudden flood of the loire which no one but himself saw.[ ] [footnote : _expectando succursum regis_, _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] the evidence of dunois[ ] is also somewhat deceptive. we know that dunois was one of the most intelligent and prudent men of his day, and that he was considered a good speaker. in the defence of orléans and in the coronation campaign he had displayed considerable ability. either his evidence must have seriously suffered at the hands of the translator and the scribes, or he must have caused it to be given by his chaplain. he speaks of the "great number of the enemy" in terms more appropriate to a canon of a cathedral or a woollen draper than to a captain entrusted with the defence of a city and expected to know the actual force of the besiegers. all his evidence dealing with the transport of victuals on april is well-nigh unintelligible. and dunois is unable to state that troyes was the first stage in the army's march from gien.[ ] relating a conversation he held with the maid after the coronation, he makes her speak as if her brothers were awaiting her at domremy, whereas they were with her in france.[ ] curiously blundering, he attempts to prove that jeanne had visions by relating a story much more calculated to give the impression that the young peasant girl was an apt feigner and that at the request of the nobles she reproduced one of her ecstasies, like the esther of the lamented doctor luys.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] in that portion of this work which deals with the rehabilitation trial i have given my opinion of the evidence of the clerks of the court, of the usher massieu, of the brothers isambard de la pierre and martin ladvenu.[ ] all these burners of witches and avengers of god worked as heartily at jeanne's rehabilitation as they had at her condemnation. [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , , ; vol. iii, pp. and _passim_.] in many cases and often on events of importance, the evidence of witnesses is in direct conflict with the truth. a woollen draper of orléans, one jean luillier, comes before the commissioners and as bold as brass maintains that the garrison could not hold out against so great a besieging force.[ ] now this statement is proved to be false by the most authentic documents, which show that the english round orléans were very weak and that their resources were greatly reduced.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : l. jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise au siège d'orléans_ ( - ), orléans, , in vo.] when the evidence given at the second trial has obviously been dressed up to suit the occasion, or even when it is absolutely contrary to the truth, we must blame not only those who gave it, but those who received it. in its elicitation the latter were too artful. this evidence has about as much value as the evidence in a trial by the inquisition. in certain matters it may represent the ideas of the judges as much as those of the witnesses. what the judges in this instance were most desirous to establish was that jeanne had not understood when she was spoken to of the church and the pope, that she had refused to obey the church militant because she believed the church militant to be messire cauchon and his assessors. in short, it was necessary to represent her as almost an imbecile. in ecclesiastical procedure this expedient was frequently adopted. and there was yet another reason, a very strong one, for passing her off as an innocent, a damsel devoid of intelligence. this second trial, like the first, had been instituted with a political motive; its object was to make known that jeanne had come to the aid of the king of france not by devilish incitement, but by celestial inspiration. consequently in order that divine wisdom might be made manifest in her she must be shown to have had no wisdom of her own. on this string the examiners were constantly harping. on every occasion they drew from the witnesses the statement that she was simple, very simple. _una simplex bergereta_,[ ] says one. _erat multum simplex et ignorans_,[ ] says another. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] but since, despite her ignorance, this innocent damsel had been sent of god to deliver or to capture towns and to lead men at arms, there must needs be innate in her a knowledge of the art of war, and in battle she must needs manifest the strength and the counsel she had received from above. wherefore it was necessary to obtain evidence to establish that she was more skilled in warfare than any man. damoiselle marguerite la touroulde makes this affirmation.[ ] the duke of alençon declares that the maid was apt alike at wielding the lance, ranging an army, ordering a battle, preparing artillery, and that old captains marvelled at her skill in placing cannon.[ ] the duke quite understands that all these gifts were miraculous and that to god alone was the glory. for if the merit of the victories had been jeanne's he would not have said so much about them. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . on the other hand see the evidence of dunois (vol. iii, p. ), "licet dicta johanna aliquotiens _jocose_ loqueretur de facto armorum, pro animando armatos ... tamen quando loquebatur seriose de guerra ... nunquam affirmative asserebat nisi quod erat missa ad levandum obsidionem aurelianensem."] and if god had chosen the maid to perform so great a task, it must have been because in her he beheld the virtue which he preferred above all others in his virgins. henceforth it sufficed not for her to have been chaste; her chastity must become miraculous, her chastity and her moderation in eating and drinking must be exalted into sanctity. wherefore the witnesses are never tired of stating: _erat casta, erat castissima. ille loquens non credit aliquam mulierem plus esse castam quam ista puella erat. erat sobria in potu et cibo. erat sobria in cibo et potu._[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , ; vol. iii, pp. , .] the heavenly source of such purity must needs have been made manifest by jeanne's possessing singular immunities. and on this point there is a mass of evidence. rough men at arms, jean de novelompont, bertrand de poulengy, jean d'aulon; great nobles, the count of dunois and the duke of alençon, come forward and affirm on oath that in them jeanne never provoked any carnal desires. such a circumstance fills these old captains with astonishment; they boast of their past vigour and wonder that for once their youthful ardour should have been damped by a maid. it seems to them most unnatural and humanly impossible. their description of the effect jeanne produced upon them recalls saint martha's binding of the tarascon beast. dunois in his evidence is very much occupied with miracles. he points to this one as, to human reason, the most incomprehensible of all. if he neither desired nor solicited this damsel, of this unique fact he can find but one explanation, it is that jeanne was holy, _res divina_. when jean de novelompont and bertrand de poulengy describe their sudden continence, they employ identical forms of speech, affected and involved. and then there comes a king's equerry, gobert thibaut, who declares that in the army there was much talk of this divine grace, vouchsafed to the armagnacs[ ] and denied to english and burgundians, at least, so the behaviour of a certain knight of picardy, and of one jeannotin, a tailor of rouen, would lead us to believe.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. ; vol. iii, pp. , , , , and .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. and .] such evidence obviously answers to the ideas of the judges, and turns, so to speak, on theological rather than on natural facts. in inquisitorial inquiries there abound such depositions as those of jean de novelompont and of bertrand de poulengy, containing passages drawn up in identical terms. but i must admit that in the rehabilitation trial they are rare, partly because the witnesses were heard at long intervals of time and in different countries, and partly because in the maid's case no elaborate proceedings were necessary owing to her adversaries not being represented. it is to be regretted that all the evidence given at this trial, with the exception of that of jean d'aulon, should have been translated into latin. this process has obscured fine shades of thought and deprived the evidence of its original flavour. sometimes the clerk contents himself with saying that the depositions of a witness were like those of his predecessor. thus on the raising of the siege of orléans all the burgesses depone like the woollen draper, who himself was not thoroughly conversant with the circumstances in which his town had been delivered. thus the sire de gaucourt, after a brief declaration, gives the same evidence as dunois, although the count had related matters so strikingly individual that it seems strange they should have been common to two witnesses.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. and .] certain evidence would appear to have been cut short. brother pasquerel's abruptly comes to an end at paris. this circumstance, if we did not possess his signature at the conclusion of the latin letter to the hussites, would lead us to believe that the good brother left the maid immediately after the attack on la porte saint-honoré. it surely cannot have chanced that in so long a series of questions and answers not one word was said of the departure from sully or of the campaign which began at lagny and ended at compiègne.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] we conclude, therefore, that in the study of this voluminous evidence we must exercise great judgment and that we must not expect it to enlighten us on all the circumstances of jeanne's life. fourthly. on certain points of the maid's history the only exact information is to be obtained from account-books, letters, deeds, and other authentic documents of the period. the records published by siméon luce and the lease of the château de l'Île inform us of the circumstances among which jeanne grew up.[ ] neither the two trials nor the chronicles had revealed the terrible conditions prevailing in the village of domremy from to . [footnote : siméon luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy, recherches critiques sur les origines de la mission de la pucelle_, paris, , in vo; _la france pendant la guerre de cent ans: épisodes historiques et vie privée aux xiv'e et xv'e siècles_, paris, , in mo.] the fortress accounts kept at orléans[ ] and the documents of the english administration[ ] enable us to estimate approximately the respective forces of defenders and besiegers of the city. on this point also they enable us to correct the statements of chroniclers and witnesses in the rehabilitation trial. [footnote : d. lottin, _recherches sur la ville d'orléans_, orléans, vols. in vo; boucher de molandon, _les comptes de ville d'orléans des xiv'e et xv'e siècles_, , in vo; jules loiseleur, _compte des dépenses faites par charles vii pour secourir orléans pendant le siège de _, orléans, , in vo; louis jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise au siège d'orléans_, orléans, , in vo; couret, _un fragment inédit des anciens registres de la prévôté d'orléans, relatif au règlement des frais du siège de - _, orléans, , in vo (extract from the _mémoires de l'académie de sainte croix_).] [footnote : rymer, _foedera, conventiones...._, ed. tercia, hagae comitis, - , vols. in folio; delpit, _collection de documents français qui se trouvent en angleterre_, paris, , in to; j. stevenson, _letters and papers illustrative of the wars of the english in france during the reign of henry vi_, - , parts, in vols. in vo; charles gross, _the sources and literature of english history_, , in vo.] from the letters in the archives at reims, copied by rogier in the seventeenth century, we learn how troyes, châlons, and reims surrendered to the king. from these letters also we see how very far from accurate is jean chartier's account of the capitulation of the city and how insufficient, especially considering the character of the witness, is the evidence of dunois on this subject.[ ] [footnote : varin, _archives législatives de la ville de reims_, nd part; _statuts_, vol. i, p. ; _trial_, vol. iv, pp. _et seq._] four or five records throw a faint light here and there on the obscurity which shrouds the unfortunate campaign on the aisne and the oise. the registers of the chapter of rouen, the wills of canons and sundry other documents, discovered by m. robillard de beaurepaire in the archives of seine-inférieure, serve to correct certain errors in the two trials.[ ] [footnote : e. robillard de beaurepaire, _recherches sur le procès de condamnation de jeanne d'arc_, rouen, , in vo [_précis des travaux de l'académie de rouen, - _, pp. - ]; _notes sur les juges et les assesseurs du procès de condamnation de jeanne d'arc_, rouen, , in vo [_précis des travaux de l'académie de rouen, - _, pp. - ].] how many other detached papers, all valuable to the historian, might i not enumerate! surely this is another reason for mistrusting records false or falsified, as, for example, the patent of nobility of guy de cailly.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. _et seq._] rapid as this examination of authorities has been, i think nothing essential has been omitted. to sum up, even in her lifetime the maid was scarce known save by fables. her oldest chroniclers were devoid of any critical sense, for the early legends concerning her they relate as facts. the rouen trial, certain accounts, a few letters, sundry deeds, public and private, are the most trustworthy documents. the rehabilitation trial is also useful to the historian, provided always that we remember how and why that trial was conducted. by means of such records we may attain to a pretty accurate knowledge of jeanne d'arc's life and character. the salient fact which results from a study of all these authorities is that she was a saint. she was a saint with all the attributes of fifteenth-century sanctity. she had visions, and these visions were neither feigned nor counterfeited. she really believed that she heard the voices which spoke to her and came from no human lips. these voices generally addressed her clearly and in words she could understand. she heard them best in the woods and when the bells were ringing. she saw forms, she said, like myriads of tiny shapes, like sparks on a dazzling background. there is no doubt she had visions of another nature, since she tells us how she beheld saint michael in the guise of a _prud'homme_, that is as a good knight, and saint catherine and saint margaret, wearing crowns. she saw them saluting her; she kissed their feet and inhaled their sweet perfume. what does this mean if not that she was subject to hallucinations of hearing, sight, touch, and smell? but the most strongly affected of her senses was her hearing. she says that her voices appear to her; she sometimes calls them her council. she hears them very plainly unless there is a noise around her. generally she obeys them; but sometimes she resists. we may doubt whether her visions were really so distinct as she makes out. because she either could not, or would not, she never gave her judges at rouen any very clear or precise description of them. the angel she described most in detail was the one which brought the crown, and which she afterwards confessed to have seen only in imagination. at what age did she become subject to these trances? we cannot say exactly. but it was probably towards the end of her childhood, notwithstanding that according to jean d'aulon, childhood was a state out of which she never completely developed.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] although it is always hazardous to found a medical diagnosis on documents purely historical, several men of science have attempted to define the pathological conditions which rendered the young girl subject to false perceptions of sight and hearing.[ ] owing to the rapid strides made by psychiatry during recent years, i have consulted an eminent man of science, who is thoroughly conversant with the present stage attained by this branch of pathology, to which he has himself rendered important service. i asked doctor georges dumas, professor at the sorbonne, whether sufficient material exists for science to make a retrospective diagnosis of jeanne's case. he replied to my inquiry in a letter which appears as the first appendix to this work.[ ] [footnote : brière de boismont, _de l'hallucination historique, ou étude médico-psychique sur les voix et les révélations de jeanne d'arc_, , in vo. le vicomte de mouchy, _jeanne d'arc, étude historique et psychologique_, montpellier, , in vo, pp.] [footnote : vol. ii, appendix i.] with such a subject i am not qualified to deal. but it does lie within my province to make an observation concerning the hallucinations of jeanne d'arc, which has been suggested to me by a study of the documents. this observation is of infinite significance. i shall be careful to restrict it to the limits prescribed by the object and the nature of this work. those visionaries, who believe they are entrusted with a divine mission, are distinguished by certain characteristics from other inspired persons. when mystics of this class are studied and compared with one another, resemblances are found to exist which may extend to very slight details: certain of their words and acts are identical. indeed as we come to recognise how vigorous is the determinism controlling the actions of these visionaries, we are astonished to find the human machine, when impelled by the same mysterious agent, performing its functions with inevitable uniformity. to this group of the religious jeanne belongs. in this connection it is interesting to compare her with saint catherine of sienna,[ ] saint colette of corbie,[ ] yves nicolazic, the peasant of kernanna,[ ] suzette labrousse, the inspired woman of the revolution church,[ ] and with many other seers and seeresses of this order, who all bear a family likeness to one another. [footnote : _acta sanctorum_, , april, iii, .] [footnote : _ibid._, march , .] [footnote : le père hugues de saint-françois, _les grandeurs de sainte anne_, rennes, , in vo; l'abbé max nicol, _sainte-anne-d'auray_, paris, brussels, s.d., in vo, pp. _et seq._ m. le docteur g. de closmadeuc has kindly lent me his valuable work, as yet unpublished, on yves nicolazic, which is characterised by the same exactness of information and of criticism as are to be found in his studies of local history.] [footnote : _recueil des ouvrages de la célèbre mademoiselle labrousse, du bourg de vauxains, en périgord, canton de ribeirac de la dordogne, actuellement prisonnière au château saint-ange, à rome_, bordeaux, , in vo; e. lairtullier, _les femmes célèbres de à _, paris, , in vo, vol. i, pp. _et seq._; abbé chr. moreau, _une mystique révolutionnaire suzette labrousse_, paris, , in vo; a. france, _susette labrousse_, paris, , in mo.] three visionaries especially are closely related to jeanne. the earliest in date is a vavasour of champagne, who had a mission to speak to king john; of this holy man i have written sufficiently in the present work. the second is a farrier of salon, who had a mission to speak to louis xiv; the third, a peasant of gallardon, named martin, who had a mission to speak to louis xviii. articles on the farrier and the farmer, who both saw apparitions and showed signs to their respective kings, will be found in the appendices at the end of this work.[ ] in spite of difference in sex, the points of similarity between jeanne d'arc and these three men are very close and very significant; they are inherent in the very nature of jeanne and her fellow visionaries; and the variations, which at a first glance might seem to separate widely the latter from jeanne, are æsthetic, social, historical, and consequently external and contingent. between them and her there are of course striking contrasts in appearance and in fortune. they were entirely wanting in that charm which she never failed to exercise; and it is a fact that while they failed miserably she grew in strength and flowered in legend. but it is the duty of the scientific mind to recognise common characteristics, proving identity of origin alike in the noblest individual and in the most wretched abortion of the same species. [footnote : vol. ii, appendices ii and iii.] the free-thinkers of our day, imbued as they are, for the most part, with transcendentalism, refuse to recognise in jeanne not merely that automatism which determines the acts of such a seeress, not only the influence of constant hallucination, but even the suggestions of the religious spirit. what she achieved through saintliness and devoutness, they make her out to have accomplished by intelligent enthusiasm. such a disposition is manifest in the excellent and erudite quicherat, who all unconsciously introduces into the piety of the maid a great deal of eclectic philosophy. this point was not without its drawbacks. it led free-thinking historians to a ridiculous exaggeration of jeanne's intellectual faculties, to the absurdity of attributing military talent to her and to the substitution of a kind of polytechnic phenomenon for the fifteenth century's artless marvel. the catholic historians of the present day when they make a saint of the maid are much nearer to nature and to truth. unfortunately the church's idea of saintliness has grown insipid since the council of trent, and orthodox historians are disinclined to study the variations of the catholic church down the ages. in their hands therefore she becomes sanctimonious and bigoted. so much so that in a search for the most curiously travestied of all the jeannes d'arc we should have been driven to choose between their miraculous protectress of christian france, the patroness of officers, the inimitable model of the pupils of saint-cyr, and the romantic druidess, the inspired woman-soldier of the national guard, the patriot gunneress of the republicans, had there not arisen a jesuit father to create an ultramontane jeanne d'arc.[ ] [footnote : le p. ayroles, _la vraie jeanne d'arc_, vols. in large vo, paris, - . writing of this book in a study of _l'abjuration de jeanne d'arc_ (paris, , pp. and , note), canon ulysse chevalier, author of a valuable _répertoire des sources du moyen âge_, displays boldness and sound sense. "from the dimensions of these five volumes," he says, "one might expect this work to be the fullest history of jeanne d'arc; it is nothing of the sort. it is a chaos of memoranda translated or rendered into modern french, reflections and arguments against free-thought as represented by michelet, h. martin, quicherat, vallet de viriville, siméon luce, and joseph fabre. two headings will suffice to give an idea of the book's tone: _the pseudo-theologians, executioners of jeanne d'arc, executioners of the papacy_ (vol. i, p. ); _the university of paris and the brigandage of rouen_ (p. ). the author too often judges the fifteenth century by the standards of the nineteenth. is he quite sure that if he had been a member of the university of paris in he would have thought and pronounced in favour of jeanne, and in opposition to his colleagues?"] on the subject of jeanne's sincerity i have raised no doubts. it is impossible to suspect her of lying; she firmly believed that she received her mission from her voices. but whether she were not unconsciously directed is more difficult to ascertain. what we know of her before her arrival at chinon comes to very little. one is inclined to believe that she had been subject to certain influences; it is so with all visionaries: some unseen director leads them. thus it must have been with jeanne. at vaucouleurs she was heard to say that the dauphin held the kingdom in fief (_en commende_).[ ] such a term she had not learnt from the folk of her village. she uttered a prophecy which she had not invented and which had obviously been fabricated for her. [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] she must have associated with priests who were faithful to the cause of the dauphin charles, and who desired above all things the end of the war. abbeys were being burned, churches pillaged, divine service discontinued.[ ] those pious persons who sighed for peace, now that they saw the treaty of troyes failing to establish it, looked for the realisation of their hopes to the expulsion of the english. and the wonderful, the unique point about this young peasant girl--a point suggesting the ecclesiastic and the monk--is not that she felt herself called to ride forth and fight, but that in "her great pity" she announced the approaching end of the war, by the victory and coronation of the king, at a time when the nobles of the two countries, and the men-at-arms of the two parties, neither expected nor desired the war ever to come to an end. [footnote : le p. denifle, _la désolation des églises, monastères hôpitaux en france vers le milieu du xv'ieme siècle_, mâcon, , in vo.] the mission, with which she believed the angel had entrusted her and to which she consecrated her life, was doubtless extraordinary, marvellous; and yet it was not unprecedented: it was no more than saints, both men and women, had already endeavoured to accomplish in human affairs. jeanne d'arc arose in the decline of the great catholic age, when sainthood, usually accompanied by all manner of oddities, manias, and illusions, still wielded sovereign power over the minds of men. and of what miracles was she not capable when acting according to the impulses of her own heart, and the grace of her own mind? from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries god's servants perform wondrous works. saint dominic, possessed by holy wrath, exterminates heresy with fire and sword; saint francis of assisi for the nonce founds poverty as an institution of society; saint antony of padua defends merchants and artisans against the avarice and cruelty of nobles and bishops; saint catherine brings the pope back to rome. was it impossible, therefore, for a saintly damsel, with god's aid, to re-establish within the hapless realm of france that royal power instituted by our lord himself and to bring to his coronation a new joash snatched from death for the salvation of the holy people? thus did pious french folk, in the year , regard the mission of the maid. she represented herself as a devout damsel inspired by god. there was nothing incredible in that. when she announced that she had received revelations touching the war from my lord saint michael, she inspired the men-at-arms of the armagnac party and the burghers of the city of orléans with a confidence as great as could have been communicated to the troops, marching along the loire in the winter of , by a republican engineer who had invented a smokeless powder or an improved form of cannon. what was expected from science in was expected from religion in , so that the bastard of orléans would as naturally employ jeanne as gambetta would resort to the technical knowledge of m. de freycinet. what has not been sufficiently remarked upon is that the french party made a very adroit use of her. the clerks at poitiers, while inquiring at great length into her religion and her morals, brought her into evidence. these poitiers clerks were no monks ignorant of the world; they constituted the parliament of the lawful king; they were the banished members of the university, men deeply involved in political affairs, compromised by revolutions, despoiled and ruined, and very impatient to regain possession of their property. they were directed by the cleverest man in the king's council, the duke archbishop of reims, the chancellor of the kingdom. by the ceremoniousness and the deliberation of their inquiries, they drew upon jeanne the curiosity, the interest, and the hopes of minds lost in amazement.[ ] [footnote : o. raguenet, _les juges de jeanne d'arc à poitiers, membres du parlement ou gens d'Église?_ in _lettres et mémoires de l'académie de sainte-croix d'orléans vii_, , pp. - ; d. lacombe, _l'hôte de jeanne d'arc à poitiers, maître jean rabateau, président au parlement de poitiers in revue du bas-poitou_, , pp. - .] the defences of the city of orléans consisted in its walls, its trenches, its cannon, its men-at-arms, and its money. the english had failed both to surround it and to take it by assault. convoys and companies passed between their bastions. jeanne was introduced into the town with a strong relieving army. she brought flocks of oxen, sheep, and pigs. the townsfolk believed her to be an angel of the lord. meanwhile the men and the money of the besiegers were waxing scant. they had lost all their horses. far from being in a position to attempt a new attack, they were not likely to be able to hold out long in their bastions. at the end of april there were four thousand english before orléans and perhaps less, for, as it was said, soldiers were deserting every day; and companies of these deserters went plundering through the villages. at the same time the city was defended by six thousand men-at-arms and archers, and by more than three thousand men of the town bands. at saint loup, there were fifteen hundred french against four hundred english; at les tourelles, there were five thousand french against four or five hundred english. by their retreat from orléans the _godons_ abandoned to their fate the small garrisons of jargeau, meung, and beaugency.[ ] the battle of patay gives us some idea of the condition of the english army. it was no battle but a massacre, and one which jeanne only reached in time to mourn over the cruelty of the conquerors. and yet the king, in his letters to his good towns, attributed to her a share in the victory. evidently the royal council made a point of glorifying its holy maid. [footnote : mr. andrew lang (_la jeanne d'arc de m. anatole france_, p. ) misreads this passage when he takes it to mean that the english withdrew their garrisons from these places. that their ultimate surrender became inevitable after the english retreat from orléans is what the writer intends to convey.--w.s.] but at heart what did they really think, those who employed her, those regnaults de chartres, those roberts le maçon, those gérards machet? they were certainly in no position to discuss the origin of the illusions which enveloped her. and, albeit there were atheists even among churchmen, to the majority there would be nothing to cause astonishment in the appearance of saint michael, the archangel. in those days nothing appeared more natural than a miracle. but a miracle vanishes when closely observed. and they had the damsel before their very eyes. they perceived that good and saintly as she was, she wielded no supernatural power. while the men-at-arms and all the common folk welcomed her as the maid of god and an angel sent from heaven for the salvation of the realm, these good lords thought only of profiting from the sentiments of confidence which she inspired and in which they had little share. finding her as ignorant as possible, and doubtless deeming her less intelligent than she really was, they intended to do as they liked with her. they must soon have discovered that it was not always easy. she was a saint, saints are intractable. what were the true relations between the royal council and the maid? we do not know; and it is a mystery which will never be solved. the judges at rouen thought they knew that she received letters from saint michael.[ ] it is possible that her simplicity was sometimes taken advantage of. we have reason for believing that the march to reims was not suggested to her in france; but there is no doubt that the chancellor of the kingdom, messire regnault de chartres, archbishop of reims, eagerly desired his restoration to the see of the blessed saint remi and the enjoyment of his benefices. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] the coronation campaign was really nothing but a series of negotiations, backed by an army. its object was to show the good towns a king saintly and pacific. had there been any idea of fighting, the campaign would have been directed against paris or against normandy. at the inquiry of , five or six witnesses, captains, magistrates, ecclesiastics, and an honest widow, gave evidence that jeanne was well versed in the art of war. they agreed in saying that she rode a horse and wielded a lance better than any one. a master of requests stated that she amazed the army by the length of time she could remain in the saddle. such qualities we are not entitled to deny her, neither can we dispute the diligence and the ardour which dunois praised in her, on the occasion of a demonstration by night before troyes.[ ] as to the opinion that this damsel was clever in arraying and leading an army and especially skilled in the management of artillery, that is more difficult to credit and would require to be vouched for by some one more trustworthy than the poor duke of alençon, who was never considered a very rational person.[ ] what we have said about the rehabilitation trial sufficiently explains this curious glorification of the maid. it was understood that jeanne's military inspiration came from god. henceforth there was no danger of its being too much admired and it came to be praised somewhat at random. [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . see _ante_, p. xxvi (note ).] after all the duke of alençon was quite moderate when he represented her as a distinguished artillery-woman. as early as , a humanist on the side of charles vii asserted in ciceronian language that in military glory she equalled and surpassed hector, alexander, hannibal and cæsar: "non hectore reminiscat et gaudeat troja, exultet græcia alexandro, annibale africa, italia cæsare et romanis ducibus omnibus glorietur, gallia etsi ex pristinis multos habeat, hac tamen una puella contenta, audebit se gloriari et laude bellica caeteris nationibus se comparare, verum quoque, si expediet, se anteponere."[ ] [footnote : letter from alain chartier in the _trial_, vol. v, pp. , ; capitaine p. marin, _jeanne d'arc tacticien et stratégiste_, paris, , vols. in mo; le général canonge, _jeanne d'arc guerrière_, paris, , in vo.] for ever praying and for ever wrapped in ecstasy, jeanne never observed the enemy; she did not know the roads; she paid no heed to the number of troops engaged; she did not take into account either the height of walls or the breadth of trenches. even to-day officers are to be heard discussing the maid's military tactics.[ ] those tactics were simple; they consisted in preventing men from blaspheming against god and consorting with light women. she believed that for their sins they would be destroyed, but that if they fought in a state of grace they would win the victory. therein lay all her military science, save that she never feared danger.[ ] she displayed a courage which was at once proud and gentle; she was more valiant, more constant, more noble than the men and in that worthy to lead them. and is it not admirable and rare to find such heroism united to such innocence? [footnote : _rossel et la légende de jeanne d'arc_ in _la petite république_ of july , ; _jeanne d'arc soldat_ by art roë, in _le temps_ of may , . see also the works of captain marin, always so praiseworthy for their carefulness and good faith.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] certain of the leaders indeed, and notably the princes of the blood royal, knew no more than she. the art of war in those days resolved itself into the art of riding. any idea of marching along converging lines, of concentrated movements, of a campaign methodically planned, of a prolonged effort with a view to some great result was unknown. military tactics were nothing more than a collection of peasants' stratagems and a few rules of chivalry. the freebooters, captains, and soldiers of fortune were all acquainted with the tricks of the trade, but they recognised neither friend nor foe; and their one desire was pillage. the nobles affected great concern for honour and praise; in reality they thought of nothing but gain. alain chartier said of them: "they cry 'to arms,' but they fight for money."[ ] [footnote : alain chartier, _oeuvres_, ed. andré du chesne, p. .] seeing that war was to last as long as life, it was waged with deliberation. men-at-arms, horse-soldiers and foot, archers, cross-bowmen, armagnacs as well as english and burgundians, fought with no great ardour. of course they were brave: but they were cautious too and were not ashamed to confess it. jean chartier, precentor of saint-denys, chronicler of the kings of france, relating how on a day the french met the english near lagny, adds: "and there the battle was hard and fierce, for the french were barely more than the english."[ ] these simple folk, seeing that one man is as good as another, admitted the risk of fighting one to one. their minds had not fed on plutarch as had those of the revolution and the empire. and for their encouragement they had neither the _carmagnoles_ of barrère, nor the songs of marie-joseph chénier, nor the bulletins of _la grande armée_. why did these captains, these men-at-arms go and fight in one place rather than in another seems to be a natural question.... because they wanted goods. [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique de charles vii_, vol. i, p. .] this perpetual warfare was not sanguinary. during what was described as jeanne d'arc's mission, that is from orléans to compiègne, the french lost barely a few hundred men. the english suffered much more heavily, because they were the fugitives, and in a rout it was the custom for the conquerors to kill all those who were not worth holding to ransom. but battles were rare, and so consequently were defeats, and the number of the combatants was small. there were but a handful of english in france. and they may be said to have fought only for plunder. those who suffered from the war were those who did not fight, burghers, priests, and peasants. the peasants endured terrible hardships, and it is quite conceivable that a peasant girl should have displayed a firmness in war, a persistence and an ardour unknown throughout the whole of chivalry. it was not jeanne who drove the english from france. if she contributed to the deliverance of orléans, she retarded the ultimate salvation of france by causing the opportunity of conquering normandy to be lost through the coronation campaign. the misfortunes of the english after are easily explained. while in peaceful guyenne they engaged in agriculture, in commerce, in navigation, and set the finances in good order, the country which they had rendered prosperous was strongly attached to them. on the banks of the seine and the loire it was very different; there they had never taken root; in numbers they were always too few, and they had never obtained any hold on the country. shut up in fortresses and châteaux, they did not cultivate the country enough to conquer it, for one must work on the land if one would take possession of it. they left it waste and abandoned it to the soldiers of fortune by whom it was ravaged and exhausted. their garrisons, absurdly small, were prisoners in the country they had conquered. the english had long teeth, but a pike cannot swallow an ox. that they were too few and that france was too big had been plainly seen after crécy and after poitiers. then, after verneuil, during the troubled reign of a child, weakened by civil discord, lacking men and money, and bound to keep in subjection the countries of wales, ireland, and scotland, were they likely to succeed better? in , they were but a handful in france, and to maintain themselves there they depended on the help of the duke of burgundy, who henceforth deserted them and wished them every possible harm. they lacked means alike for the capture of new provinces and the pacification of those they had already conquered. the very character of the sovereignty their princes claimed, the nature of the rights they asserted, which were founded on institutions common to the two countries, rendered the organisation of their conquest difficult without the consent and even, one may say, without the loyal concurrence and friendship of the conquered. the treaty of troyes did not subject france to england, it united one country to the other. such a union occasioned much anxiety in london. the commons did not conceal their fear that old england might become a mere isolated province of the new kingdom.[ ] france for her part did not concur in the union. it was too late. during all the time that they had been making war on these _coués_[ ] they had grown to hate them. and possibly there already existed an english character and a french character which were irreconcilable. even in paris, where the armagnacs were as much feared as the saracens, the _godons_[ ] met with very unwilling support. what surprises us is not that the english should have been driven from france, but that it should have happened so slowly. does this amount to saying that the young saint had no part whatever in the work of deliverance? by no means. hers was the nobler, the better part; the part of sacrifice; she set the example of the highest courage and displayed heroism in a form unexpected and charming. the king's cause, which was indeed the national cause, she served in two ways: by giving confidence to the men-at-arms of her party, who believed her to be a bringer of good fortune, and by striking fear into the english, who imagined her to be the devil. [footnote : see the deliberations of the commons on december , , in bréquigny, _lettres de rois, reines et autres personnages des cours de france et d'angleterre_, paris, ( vols. in to), vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : for the origin of this term see _post_, vol. i, p. and note .--w.s.] [footnote : for the origin of this term see _ibid._ and note .--w.s.] our best historians cannot forgive the ministers and captains of for not having blindly obeyed the maid. but that was not at all the advice given at the time by the archbishop of embrun to king charles; he, on the contrary, recommended him not to abandon the means inspired by human reason.[ ] [footnote : the reverend father m. fornier, _histoire des alpes-maritimes_, paris, , in vo, vol. ii, p. ; lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations_, pp. _et seq._] it has frequently been repeated that the lords and captains were jealous of her, especially old gaucourt.[ ] but such a statement shows an absolute ignorance of human nature. they were envious one of another; this and no other sentiment was the jealousy that made them tolerate the maid's assuming the title of commander in war.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. ; _perceval de cagny_, p. ; marquis de gaucourt, _le sire de gaucourt_, orléans, , in vo.] [footnote : _perceval de cagny_, pp. , , ; _cronicques de normendie_, ed. hellot, pp. , .] those secret intrigues on the part of the king and his captains, who are said to have plotted together the destruction of the saint, i admit having found it impossible to discover. to certain historians they appear very obvious: for my part, do what i may, i cannot discern them. the chamberlain, the sire de la trémouille, had no pretensions to nobility of character; and the chancellor regnault de chartres was hard-hearted, but what strikes me is that the sire de la trémouille refused to give up this valuable damsel to the duke of alençon when he asked for her, and that the chancellor retained her in order to make use of her.[ ] i am not of the opinion that jeanne was a prisoner at sully. i believe that when she went to join the chancellor, who employed her until her capture by the burgundians, she quitted the castle in estate, with trumpeters, and banners flying. after the girl saint he employed a boy saint, a shepherd who had stigmata; which proves that he did not regret having made use of a devout person to fight against the king's enemies and to recover his own archbishopric. [footnote : _perceval de cagny_, pp. , ; _chronique de la pucelle_, p. ; héraut berry, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] the excellent quicherat and the magnanimous henri martin are very hard on the government of . according to them it was a treacherous government. yet the only reproach they bring against charles vii and his councillors is that they did not understand the maid as they themselves understood her. but such an understanding has required the lapse of four hundred years. to arrive at the illuminated ideas of a quicherat and a henri martin concerning jeanne d'arc, three centuries of absolute monarchy, the reformation, the revolution, the wars of the republic and of the empire, and the sentimental neo-catholicism of ' , have all been necessary. through all these brilliant prisms, through all these succeeding lights do romantic historians and broad-minded paleographers view the figure of jeanne d'arc; and we ask too much from the poor dauphin charles, from la trémouille, from regnault de chartres, from the lord of trèves, from old gaucourt, when we require them to have seen jeanne as centuries have made and moulded her.[ ] [footnote : h. martin, _jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in mo; j. quicherat, _nouvelles preuves des trahisons essuyées par la pucelle_ in _revue de normandie_, vol. vi ( ), pp. - .] this, however, remains: after having made so much use of her, the royal council did nothing to save her. must the disgrace of such neglect fall upon the whole council and upon the council alone? who ought really to have interfered? and how? what ought king charles to have done? should he have offered to ransom the maid? she would not have been surrendered to him at any price. as for capturing her by force, that is a mere child's dream. had they entered rouen, the french would not have found her there; warwick would always have had time to put her in a place of safety, or to drown her in the river. neither money nor arms would have availed to recapture her. but this was no reason for standing with folded arms. influence could have been brought to bear on those who were conducting the trial. doubtless they were all on the side of the _godons_; that old _cabochien_ of a pierre cauchon was very much committed to them; he detested the french; the clerks, who owed allegiance to henry vi, were naturally inclined to please the great council of england which disposed of patronage; the doctors and masters of the university of france greatly hated and feared the armagnacs. and yet the judges of the trial were not all infamous prevaricators; the chapter of rouen lacked neither courage nor independence.[ ] among those members of the university who were so bitter against jeanne, there were men highly esteemed for doctrine and character. they for the most part believed this trial to be a purely religious one. by dint of seeking for witches, they had come to find them everywhere. these females, as they called them, they were sending to the stake every day, and receiving nothing but thanks for it. they believed as firmly as jeanne in the possibility of the apparitions which she said had been vouchsafed to her, only they were persuaded either that she lied or that she saw devils. the bishop, the vice-inquisitor and the assessors, to the number of forty and upwards, were unanimous in declaring her heretical and devilish. there were doubtless many who imagined that by passing sentence against her they were maintaining catholic orthodoxy and unity of obedience against the abettors of schism and heresy; they wished to judge wisely. and even the boldest and the most unscrupulous, the bishop and the promoter, would not have dared too openly to infringe the rules of ecclesiastical justice in order to please the english. they were priests, and they preserved priestly pride and respect for formality. here was their weak point; in this respect for formality they might have been struck. had the other side instituted vigorous legal proceedings, theirs might possibly have been thwarted, arrested, and the fatal sentence prevented. if the metropolitan of the bishop of beauvais, the archbishop of reims, had intervened in the trial, if he had suspended his suffragan for abuse of authority, or some other reason, pierre cauchon would have been greatly embarrassed; if, as he decided to do later, king charles vii had brought about the intervention of the mother and brothers of the maid; if jacques d'arc and la romée had protested in due form against an action so manifestly one-sided; if the register of poitiers[ ] had been sent for inclusion among the documents of the trial; if the high prelates subject to king charles vii had asked for a safe conduct in order to come and give evidence in jeanne's favour at rouen; finally, if the king, his council, and the whole church of france had demanded an appeal to the pope, as they were legally entitled to do, then the trial might have had a different issue. [footnote : even when the canons who took part in the trial are severally considered. _cf._ ch. de beaurepaire, _recherches sur le procès de condamnation de jeanne d'arc_, rouen, , in vo.] [footnote : or at least the conclusions of the doctors which have been preserved. as for the register itself it could not have contained anything of great importance. from their evidence at the rehabilitation trial we see that the poitiers clerks were not desirous for much to be said of their inquiry.] but they were afraid of the university of paris. they feared lest jeanne might be after all what so many learned doctors maintained her to be, a heretic, a miscreant seduced by the prince of darkness. satan transforms himself into an angel of light, and it is difficult to distinguish the true prophets from the false. the hapless maid was deserted by the very clergy whose croziers had so recently been carried before her; of all the poitiers masters not one was found to testify in the château of rouen to that innocence which they had officially recognised eighteen months before. it would be very interesting to trace the reputation of the maid down the ages. but to do so would require a whole book. i shall merely indicate the most striking revolutions of public opinion concerning her. the humanists of the renaissance display no great interest in her: she was too gothic for them. the reformers, for whom she was tainted with idolatry, could not tolerate her picture.[ ] it seems strange to us to-day, but it is none the less certain, and in conformity with all we know of french feeling for royalty, that whilst the monarchy endured it was the memory of charles vii that kept alive the memory of jeanne d'arc and saved her from oblivion.[ ] respect due to the prince generally hindered his faithful subjects from too closely inquiring into the legends of jeanne as well as into those of the holy ampulla, the cures for king's evil, the _oriflamme_ and all other popular traditions relating to the antiquity and celebrity of the royal throne of france. in , when in a college of paris, the maid was the subject of sundry literary themes in which she was unfavourably treated,[ ] a certain lawyer, jean hordal, who boasted that he came of the same race as the heroine, complained of these academic disputes as being derogatory to royal majesty--"i am greatly astonished," he said, "that ... public declamations against the honour of france, of king charles vii and his council,[ ] should be suffered in france." had jeanne not been so closely associated with royalty, her memory would have been very much neglected by the wits of the seventeenth century. in the minds of scholars, catholics and protestants alike, who considered the life of st. margaret as mere superstition,[ ] her apparitions did her harm. in those days even the _sorbonagres_ themselves were expurgating the martyrology and the legends of saints. one of them, edmond richer, like jeanne a native of champagne, the censor of the university in , and a zealous gallican, wrote an apology for the maid who had defended the crown of charles vii[ ] with her sword. albeit a firm upholder of the liberties of the french church, edmond richer was a good catholic. he was pious and of sound doctrine; he firmly believed in angels, but he did not believe either in saint catherine or saint margaret, and their appearing to the maid greatly embarrassed him. he solved the difficulty by supposing that the angels had represented themselves to the maid as the two saints, whom in her ignorance she devoutly worshipped. the hypothesis seemed to him satisfactory, "all the more so," he said, "because the spirit of god, which governs the church, accommodates himself to our infirmity." thirty or forty years later, another doctor of the sorbonne, jean de launoy, who was always ferreting after saints, completed the discrediting of saint catherine's legend.[ ] the voices of domremy were falling into disrepute. [footnote : aug. vallet, _observation sur l'ancien monument érigé à orléans_, paris, , in vo.] [footnote : see a curious project for the decoration of the platform of the pont-neuf addressed to louis xiv (b.n.v., p. zz' , in fol.). a sieur dupuis, aide des cérémonies, proposes that thereon shall be erected statues to "those great and illustrious captains who from reign to reign have valiantly maintained the dignity of the crown.... artus of bretagne, constable, jean, count of dunois, jeanne dark, maid of orléans, roger de gramont, count of guiche, guillaume, count of chaumont, amaury de severac, vignoles, called la hire...." (communications of m. paul lacombe, _bulletin de la société de l'histoire de paris_, , p. , june , . _ibid._)] [footnote : _puellæ aureliensis causa adversariis orationibus disceptata auctore jacobo jolio_, parisiis apud julianum bertant, .] [footnote : jean hordal, _heroinae nobilissimae ioannæ darc lotharingæ vulgo aurelianensis puellæ historia_, ponti-mussi, , in vo.] [footnote : rabelais, _gargantua_, chap. vi; abbé thiers, _traité des superstitions selon l'Écriture sainte_, paris, , vol. i, p. .] [footnote : edmond richer, _histoire de la pucelle d'orléans en livres_, ms. biblioth. nat. f. fr. , fol. mo.] [footnote : "the life of saint catherine, virgin and martyr, is fabulous throughout from beginning to end," _valesiana_, p. . "m. de launoy, doctor of theology, had cut saint catherine, virgin and martyr, out of his calendar. he said that her life was a myth, and to show that he placed no faith in it, every year when the feast of the saint came round, he said a requiem mass. this curious circumstance i learn from his own telling," _ibid._, p. .] take chapelain, for example, whose poem was first published in . chapelain is unconsciously burlesque; he is a scarron without knowing it. it is none the less interesting to learn from him that he merely treated his subject as an occasion for glorifying the bastard of orléans. he expressly says in his preface: "i did not so much regard her (the maid) as the chief character of the poem, who, strictly speaking, is the comte de dunois." chapelain was in the pay of the duc de longueville, a descendant of dunois.[ ] it is of dunois that he sings; "the illustrious shepherdess" contributes the marvellous element to his poem, and, according to the good man's own expression, furnishes _les machines nécessaires_ for an epic. saint catherine and saint margaret are too commonplace to be included among _ces machines_. chapelain tells us that he took particular care so to arrange his poem that "everything which happens in it by divine favour might be believed to have taken place through human agency carried to the highest degree to which nature is capable of ascending." herein we discern the dawn of the modern spirit. [footnote : jean chapelain, _la pucelle ou la france délivrée_, paris, , in fol.] bossuet also is careful not to mention saint catherine and saint margaret. the four or five quarto pages which he devotes to jeanne d'arc in his "abrégé de l'histoire de france pour l'instruction du dauphin"[ ] are very interesting, not for his statement of facts, which is confused and inexact,[ ] but for the care the author takes to represent the miraculous deeds attributed to jeanne in an incidental and dubious manner. in bossuet's opinion, as in gerson's, these things are matters of edification, not of faith. writing for the instruction of a prince, bossuet was bound to abridge; but his abridgment goes too far when, representing jeanne's condemnation to be the work of the bishop of beauvais, he omits to say that the bishop of beauvais pronounced this sentence with the unanimous concurrence of the university of paris, and in conjunction with the vice-inquisitor.[ ] [footnote : _oeuvres de messire jacques-bénigne bossuet_, paris, in to, vol. xi, , numbered pages; vol. xii, pp. _et seq._ cf. what he says of inspired persons in _l'instruction sur les états d'oraison_, paris, , in vo.] [footnote : "this girl called jeanne d'arq ... had been a servant in an inn," _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : we must not be too severe on a tutor's note-books. but bossuet, who places the rehabilitation under the date , does not tell us that it was only pronounced twenty-five years later. on the contrary, as far as he is concerned, we might conclude that it occurred before the deliverance of compiègne. the following are his words: "in execution of this sentence, she was burned alive at rouen in . the english spread the rumour that at the last she had admitted the revelations which she had so loudly boasted to be false. but some time afterwards the pope appointed commissioners. her trial was solemnly revised and her conduct approved of by a final sentence which the pope himself confirmed. the burgundians were forced to raise the siege of compiègne," _loc. cit._ p. . mézeray is more credulous than bossuet; he mentions "the saints catherine and margaret, who purified her soul with heavenly conversations, wherefore she venerated them with a particular devotion." in relating the trial, he like bossuet, ignores the vice-inquisitor (_histoire de france_, vol. ii, , in folio, pp. _et seq._)] the eighteenth-century philosophers did not descend on france like a cloud of locusts; they were the result of two centuries of the critical spirit. if the story of jeanne d'arc contained too much monkish superstition for their taste, it was because they had learned their ecclesiastical history from the baillets and the tillemonts, who were pious indeed, but very critical of legends. voltaire, writing of jeanne, jeered at the rascally monks and their dupes. but if we quote the lines of _la pucelle_, why not also the article[ ] in the _dictionnaire philosophique_, which contains three pages of profounder truth and nobler thought than certain voluminous modern works in which voltaire is insulted in clerical jargon? [footnote : voltaire ed. beuchot, vol. xxvi. _cf._ also _essai sur les moeurs_, chap. lxxx. "finally, being accused of having once resumed man's dress, which had been left near her on purpose to tempt her, her judges ... declared her a relapsed heretic and caused to be burnt at the stake one who in heroic ages, when men erected altars to their liberators, would have had an altar raised to her for having served her king. afterwards charles vii rehabilitated her memory, which her death itself had sufficiently honoured."] it was precisely at the end of the eighteenth century that jeanne began to be better known and more justly appreciated, first through a little book, which the abbé lenglet du fresnoy derived almost wholly from the unpublished history of old richer,[ ] then by l'averdy's erudite researches into the two trials.[ ] [footnote : l'abbé lenglet du fresnoy, _histoire de jeanne d'arc, vierge, héroïne et martyre d'État suscitée par la providence pour rétablir la monarchie française, tirée des procès et pièces originales du temps_, paris, - , vols. in mo.] [footnote : f. de l'averdy, _mémorial lu au comité des manuscrits concernant la recherche à faire des minutes originales des différentes affaires qui ont eu lieu par rapport à jeanne d'arc, appelée communément la pucelle d'orléans_, paris, imprimerie royale, , in to; _notices et extraits des manuscrits de la bibliothèque du roi, lus au comité établi par sa majesté dans l'académie royale des inscriptions et belles lettres_, paris, imp. royale, , vol. iii.] nevertheless humanism, and after humanism the reformation, and after the reformation cartesianism, and after cartesianism experimental philosophy had banished the old credulity from thoughtful minds. when the revolution came, the bloom had already long faded from the flower of gothic legend. it seemed as if the glory of jeanne d'arc, so intimately related to the traditions of the royal house of france, could not survive the monarchy, and as if the tempest which scattered the royal ashes of saint denys and the treasure of reims, would also bear away the frail relics and the venerated images of the saint of the valois. the new _régime_ did indeed refuse to honour a memory so inseparable from royalty and from religion. the festival of jeanne d'arc at orléans, shorn of ecclesiastical pomp in , was discontinued in . later the maid's history appeared somewhat too gothic even to the _emigrés_; chateaubriand did not dare to introduce her into his "génie du christianisme."[ ] [footnote : "modern times present but two fine subjects for an epic poem, the crusades and the discovery of the new world" (ed. , paris, vol. ii, p. ).] but in the year xi the first consul, who had just concluded the concordat and was meditating the restoration of all the pageantry of the coronation, reinstituted the festival of the maid with its incense and its crosses. glorified of old in charles vii's letters to his good towns, jeanne was now exalted in _le moniteur_ by bonaparte.[ ] [footnote : "the illustrious jeanne d'arc has proved that there is no miracle which the french genius is incapable of working when national independence is at stake" (_moniteur_ of pluviose, year xi, january , ). for the approval of the first consul: facsimile in a. sarrazin, _jeanne d'arc et la normandie_, p. . [original taken from the reiset collection.]] only by constant transformation do the figures of poetry and history live in the minds of nations. humanity cannot be interested in a personage of old time unless it clothe it in its own sentiments and in its own passions. after having been associated with the monarchy of divine right, the memory of jeanne d'arc came to be connected with the national unity which that monarchy had rendered possible; in imperial and republican france she became the symbol of _la patrie_. certainly the daughter of isabelle romée had no more idea of _la patrie_ as it is conceived to-day than she had of the idea of landed property which lies at its base. she never imagined anything like what we call the nation. that is something quite modern; but she did conceive of the heritage of kings and of the domain of the house of france. and it was there, in that domain and in that heritage, that the french gathered together before forming themselves into _la patrie_. under influences which it is impossible for us exactly to discover, the idea came to her of re-establishing the dauphin in his inheritance; and this idea appeared to her so grand and so beautiful that in the fulness of her very ingenuous pride, she believed it to have been suggested to her by angels and saints from paradise. for this idea she gave her life. that is why she has survived the cause for which she suffered. the very highest enterprises perish in their defeat and even more surely in their victory. the devotion, which inspired them, remains as an immortal example. and if the illusion, under which her senses laboured, helped her to this act of self-consecration, was not that illusion the unconscious outcome of her own heart? her foolishness was wiser than wisdom, for it was that foolishness of martyrdom, without which men have never yet founded anything great or useful. cities, empires, republics rest on sacrifice. it is not without reason therefore, not without justice that, transformed by enthusiastic imagination, she became the symbol of _la patrie_ in arms. in , le brun de charmettes,[ ] a royalist jealous of imperial glory, wrote the first patriotic history of jeanne d'arc. the history is an able work. it has been followed by many others, conceived in the same spirit, composed on the same plan, written in the same style. from to , jules quicherat, by his publication of the two trials and the evidence, worthily opened an incomparable period of research and discovery. at the same time, michelet in the fifth volume of his "histoire de france," wrote pages of high colour and rapid movement, which will doubtless remain the highest expression of the romantic art as applied to the maid.[ ] [footnote : le brun de charmettes, _histoire de jeanne d'arc surnommée la pucelle d'orléans_, paris, , vols. in vo.] [footnote : michelet, _histoire de france_, vol. v.] but of all the histories written between and , or at least of all those with which i have made acquaintance, for i have not attempted to read them all, the most discerning in my opinion is the fourth book of vallet de viriville's "histoire de charles vii" in which his chief preoccupation is to place the maid in that group of visionaries to which she really belongs.[ ] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, paris, , in vo.] wallon's book has been widely circulated if not widely read. a monotonous, conscientious work moderately enthusiastic, it owes its success to its unimpeachable exactitude.[ ] if there must be an orthodox jeanne d'arc to suit fashionable persons, then for such a purpose, m. marius sepet's representation of the maid would be equally exact and more graceful.[ ] [footnote : h. wallon, _jeanne d'arc_, paris, , vols. in vo.] [footnote : m. sepet, _jeanne d'arc_, with an introduction by léon gautier, tours, , in vo.] after the war of , the twofold influence of the patriotic spirit, exalted by defeat, and the revival of catholicism among the middle class gave a new impetus to admiration of the maid. arts and letters completed the transfiguration of jeanne. catholics, like the learned canon dunand,[ ] vie in zeal and enthusiasm with free-thinking idealists like m. joseph fabre.[ ] by reproducing the two trials in a very artistic manner, in modern french and in a direct form of speech, m. fabre has popularised the most ancient and the most touching impression of the maid.[ ] [footnote : chanoine dunand, _histoire de jeanne d'arc_, toulouse, - , vols. in vo.] [footnote : joseph fabre, _jeanne d'arc libératrice de la france_, new edition, paris, , in mo.] [footnote : _procès de condamnation de jeanne d'arc...._, translated with commentary by j. fabre, new edition, paris, , in mo.] from this period date almost innumerable works of erudition, among which must be noted those of siméon luce, which henceforth no one who would treat of jeanne's early years can afford to neglect.[ ] [footnote : _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, _op. cit._; _la france pendant la guerre de cent ans_, _op. cit._] we are equally indebted to m. germain lefèvre-pontalis for his fine editions and his discerning studies so eruditely graceful and exact. throughout this period of romantic and neo-catholic enthusiasm the arts of painting and sculpture produced numerous representations of jeanne, which had hitherto been very rare. now everywhere were to be found jeanne in armour and on horseback, jeanne in prayer, jeanne in captivity, jeanne suffering martyrdom. of all these images expressing in different manners and with varying merit the taste and the sentiment of the period, one work only appears great and true, and of striking beauty: rude's jeanne d'arc beholding a vision.[ ] [footnote : lanéry d'arc, _le livre d'or de jeanne d'arc_, nos. to .] the word _patrie_ did not exist in the days of the maid. people spoke of the kingdom of france.[ ] no one, not even jurists, knew exactly what were its limits, which were constantly changing. the diversity of laws and customs was infinite, and quarrels between nobles were constantly arising. nevertheless, men felt in their hearts that they loved their native land and hated the foreigner. if the hundred years' war did not create the sentiment of nationality in france, it fostered it. in his "quadrilogue invectif" alain chartier represents france, indicated by her robe sumptuously adorned with the emblems of the nobility, of the clergy and of the _tiers état_, but lamentably soiled and torn, adjuring the three orders not to permit her to perish. "after the bond of the catholic faith," she says to them, "nature has called you before all things to unite for the salvation of your native land, and for the defence of that lordship under which god has caused you to be born and to live."[ ] and these are not the mere maxims of a humourist versed in the virtues of antiquity. on the hearts of humble frenchmen it was laid to serve the country of their birth. "must the king be driven from his kingdom, and must we become english?" cried a man-at-arms of lorraine in .[ ] the subjects of the lilies, as well as those of the leopard, felt it incumbent upon them to be loyal to their liege lord. but if any change for the worse occurred in the lordships to which they belonged, they were quite ready to make the best of it, because a lordship must increase or decrease, according to power and fortune, according to the good right or the good pleasure of the holder; it may be dismembered by marriages, or gifts, or inheritance, or alienated by various contracts. on the occasion of the treaty of bretigny, which seriously narrowed the dominions of king john, the folk of paris strewed the streets with grass and flowers as a sign of rejoicing.[ ] as a matter of fact, nobles changed their allegiance as often as it was necessary. juvénal des ursins relates in his journal[ ] how at the time of the english conquest of normandy, a young widow was known to quit her domain with her three children in order to escape doing homage to the king from beyond the seas. but how many norman nobles were like her in refusing to swear fealty to the former enemies of the kingdom? the example of fidelity to the king was not always set by those of his own family. the duke of bourbon, in the name of all the princes of the blood royal, prisoners with him in the hands of the english, proposed to henry v that they should go and negotiate in france for the cession of harfleur, promising that if the royal council met them with refusal they would acknowledge henry v to be king of france.[ ] [footnote : a. thomas, _le mot "patrie" et jeanne d'arc_ in _revue des idées_, july , .] [footnote : _les oeuvres de maistre alain chartier_, published by andré duchesne, paris, , in to, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. . see _post_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : froissart, _chroniques_, book i, chap. .] [footnote : jean juvénal des ursins in buchon, _choix des chroniques_, iv.] [footnote : rymer, _foedera_, vol. ix, p. .] every one thought first of himself. whoever possessed land owed himself to his land; his neighbour was his enemy. the burgher thought only of his town. the peasant changed his master without knowing it. the three orders were not yet united closely enough to form, in the modern sense of the word, a state. little by little the royal power united the french. this union became stronger in proportion as royalty grew more powerful. in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that desire to think and act in common, which creates great nations, became very strong among us--at least in those families which furnished officers to the crown--and it even spread among the lower orders of society. rabelais introduces françois villon and the king of england into a tale so inflamed with military bravado that it might have been told over the camp fire in an almost identical manner by one of napoleon's grenadiers.[ ] in his preface to the poem we have just quoted, chapelain writes of the occasions when "_la patrie_ who is our common mother, has need of all her children." already the old poet expresses himself like the author of the _marseillaise_.[ ] [footnote : _pantagruel_, book iv, chap. lxvii.] [footnote : _la pucelle_, preface.] it cannot be denied that the feeling for _la patrie_ did exist under the old _régime_. the impulse imparted to this sentiment by the revolution was none the less immense. it added to it the idea of national unity and national territorial integrity. it extended to all the right of property hitherto reserved to a small number, and thus, so to speak, divided _la patrie_ among the citizens. while rendering the peasant capable of possessing, the new _régime_ imposed upon him the obligations of defending his actual or potential possessions. recourse to arms is a necessity alike for whomsoever acquires or wishes to acquire territory. hardly had the frenchman come to enjoy the rights of a man and of a citizen, hardly had he entered into possession or thought he might enter into possession of a home and lands of his own, when the armies of the coalition arrived "to drive him back to ancient slavery." then the patriot became a soldier. twenty-three years of warfare, with the inevitable alternations of victories and defeats, built up our fathers in their love of _la patrie_ and their hatred of the foreigner. since then, as the result of industrial progress, there have arisen in one country and another, rivalries which are every day growing more bitter. the present methods of production by multiplying antagonism among nations, have given rise to imperialism, to colonial expansion and to armed peace. but how many contrary forces are at work in this formidable creation of a new order of things! in all countries the great development of trade and manufactures has given birth to a new class. this class, possessing nothing, having no hope of ever possessing anything, enjoying none of the good things of life, not even the light of day, does not share the fear which haunted the peasant and burgher of the revolution, of being despoiled by an enemy coming from abroad; the members of this new class, having no wealth to defend, regard foreign nations with neither terror nor hatred. at the same time over all the markets of the world there have arisen financial powers, which, although they often affect respect for old traditions, are by their very functions essentially destructive of the national and patriotic spirit. the universal capitalist system has created in france, as everywhere else, the internationalism of the workers and the cosmopolitanism of the financiers. to-day, just as two thousand years ago, in order to discern the future, we must regard not the enterprises of the great but the confused movements of the working classes. the nations will not indefinitely endure this armed peace which weighs so heavily upon them. every day we behold the organising of an universal community of workers. i believe in the future union of nations, and i long for it with that ardent charity for the human race, which, formed in the latin conscience in the days of epictetus and seneca, and through so many centuries extinguished by european barbarism, has been revived in the noblest breasts of modern times. and in vain will it be argued against me that these are the mere dream-illusions of desire: it is desire that creates life and the future is careful to realise the dreams of philosophers. nevertheless, that we to-day are assured of a peace that nothing will disturb, none but a madman would maintain. on the contrary, the terrible industrial and commercial rivalries growing up around us indicate future conflicts, and there is nothing to assure us that france will not one day find herself involved in a great european or world conflagration. her obligation to provide for her defence increases not a little those difficulties which arise from a social order profoundly agitated by competition in production and antagonism between classes. an absolute empire obtains its defenders by inspiring fear; democracy only by bestowing benefits. fear or interest lies at the root of all devotion. if the french proletariat is to defend the republic heroically in the hour of peril, then it must either be happy or have the hope of becoming so. and what use is it to deceive ourselves? the lot of the workman to-day is no better in france than in germany, and not so good as in england or america. on these important subjects i have not been able to forbear expressing the truth as it appears to me; there is a great satisfaction in saying what one believes useful and just. it now only remains for me to submit to my readers a few reflections on the difficult art of writing history, and to explain certain peculiarities of form and language which will be found in this work. to enter into the spirit of a period that has passed away, to make oneself the contemporary of men of former days, deliberate study and loving care are necessary. the difficulty lies not so much in what one must know as in what one must not know. if we would really live in the fifteenth century, how many things we must forget: knowledge, methods, all those acquisitions which make moderns of us. we must forget that the earth is round, and that the stars are suns, and not lamps suspended from a crystal vault; we must forget the cosmogony of laplace, and believe in the science of saint thomas, of dante, and of those cosmographers of the middle age who teach the creation in seven days and the foundation of kingdoms by the sons of priam, after the destruction of great troy. such and such a historian or paleographer is powerless to make us understand the contemporaries of the maid. it is not knowledge he lacks, but ignorance--ignorance of modern warfare, of modern politics, of modern religion. but when we have forgotten, as far as possible, all that has happened since the youth of charles vii, in order to think like a clerk in exile at poitiers, or a burgher at orléans serving on the ramparts of his city, we must recover all our intellectual resources in order to embrace the entirety of events, and discover that sequence between cause and effect which escape the clerk or the burgher. "i have contracted my horizon," says the chatterton of alfred de vigny, when he explains how he is conscious of nothing that has happened since the days of the old saxons. but chatterton wrote poems, pseudo chronicles, and not history. the historian must alternately contract his horizon and widen it. if he undertake to tell an old story, he must needs successively--or sometimes at one and the same moment--assume the credulity of the folk he restores to life, and the discernment of the most accomplished critic. by a strange process, he must divide his personality. he must be at once the ancient man and the modern man; he must live on two different planes, like that curious character in a story by mr. h.g. wells, who lives and moves in a little english town, and all the time sees herself at the bottom of the ocean. i have carefully visited cities and countries in which the events i propose to relate took place. i have seen the valley of the meuse amidst the flowers and perfumes of spring, and i have seen it again beneath a mass of mist and cloud. i have travelled along the smiling banks of the loire, so full of renown; through la beauce, with its vast horizons bordered with snow-topped mountains; through l'Île-de-france, where the sky is serene; through la champagne, with its stony hills covered with those low vines which, trampled upon by the coronation army, bloomed again into leaves and fruit, says the legend, and by st. martin's day yielded a late but rich vintage.[ ] i have lingered in barren picardy, along the bay of the somme so sad and bare beneath the flight of its birds of passage. i have wandered through the fat meadows of normandy to rouen with its steeples and towers, its ancient charnel houses, its damp streets, its last remaining timbered houses with high gables. i have imagined these rivers, these lands, these châteaux and these towns as they were five hundred years ago. [footnote : germain lefèvre-pontalis, _les sources allemandes de l'histoire de jeanne d'arc_, p. .] i have accustomed my gaze to the forms assumed by the beings and the objects of those days. i have examined all that remains of stone, of iron, or of wood worked by the hands of those old artisans, who were freer and consequently more ingenious than ours, and whose handicraft reveals a desire to animate and adorn everything. to the best of my ability i have studied figures carved and painted, not exactly in france--for there, in those days of misery and death, art was little practised--but in flanders, in burgundy, in provence, where the workmanship is often in a style at once affected and _naif_, and frequently beautiful. as i gazed at the old miniatures, they seemed to live before me, and i saw the nobles in the absurd magnificence of their _étoffes à tripes_,[ ] the dames and the damoiselles somewhat devilish with their horned caps and their pointed shoes; clerks seated at the desk, men-at-arms riding their chargers and merchants their mules, husbandmen performing from april till march all the tasks of the rural calendar; peasant women, whose broad coifs are still worn by nuns. i drew near to these folk, who were our fellows, and who yet differed from us by a thousand shades of sentiment and of thought; i lived their lives; i read their hearts. [footnote : imitation velvet.] it is hardly necessary to say that there exists no authentic representation of jeanne. in the art of the fifteenth century all that relates to her amounts to very little: hardly anything remains--a small piece of _bestion_ tapestry, a slight pen-and-ink figure on a register, a few illuminations in manuscripts of the reigns of charles vii, louis xi, and charles viii, that is all. i have found it necessary to contribute to this very meagre iconography of jeanne d'arc, not because i had anything to add to it, but in order to expunge the contributions of the forgers of that period. in appendix iv, at the end of this work, will be found the short article in which i point out the forgeries which, for the most part, are already old, but had not been previously denounced. i have limited my researches to the fifteenth century, leaving to others the task of studying those pictures of the renaissance in which the maid appears decked out in the german fashion, with the plumed hat and slashed doubtlet of a saxon ritter or a swiss mercenary.[ ] i cannot say who served as a prototype for these portraits, but they closely resemble the woman accompanying the mercenaries in _la danse des morts_, which nicholas manuel painted at berne, on the wall of the dominican monastery, between and .[ ] in _le grand siècle_ jeanne d'arc becomes clorinda, minerva, bellona in ballet costume.[ ] [footnote : see the picture of , preserved in the orléans museum and reproduced in wallon's _jeanne d'arc_, p. .] [footnote : _la danse des morts_, painted at berne between and by nicolas manuel, lithographed by guillaume stettler, s.d. in folio oblong, engraving xx. m. salomon reinach believes this prototype may be found in the judiths of cranach.] [footnote : lanéry d'arc, _le livre d'or de jeanne d'arc_, iconography, nos. - .] to my mind a continuous story is more likely than any controversy or discussion to make my subject live, and bring home its verities to my readers. it is true that the documents relating to the maid do not lend themselves very easily to this kind of treatment. as i have just shown, they may nearly all be regarded as doubtful from several points of view, and objections to them arise at every moment. nevertheless, i think that by making a cautious and judicious use of these documents one may obtain material sufficient for a truthful history of considerable extent. besides, i have always indicated the sources of my facts, so that every one may judge for himself of the trustworthiness of my authorities. in the course of my story i have related many incidents which, without having a direct relation to jeanne, reveal the spirit, the morals, and the beliefs of her time. these incidents are usually of a religious order. they must necessarily be so, for jeanne's story--and i cannot repeat it too often--is the story of a saint, just like that of colette of corbie, or of catherine of sienna. i have yielded frequently, perhaps too frequently, to the desire to make the reader live among the men and things of the fifteenth century. and in order not to distract him suddenly from them, i have avoided suggesting any comparison with other periods, although many such occurred to me. my history is founded on the form and substance of ancient documents; but i have hardly ever introduced into it literal quotations; i believe that unless it possesses a certain unity of language a book is unreadable, and i want to be read. it is neither affectation of style nor artistic taste that has led me to adhere as far as possible to the tone of the period and to prefer archaic forms of language whenever i thought they would be intelligible, it is because ideas are changed when words are changed and because one cannot substitute modern for ancient expressions without altering sentiments and characters. i have endeavoured to make my style simple and familiar. history is too often written in a high-flown manner that renders it wearisome and false. why should we imagine historical facts to be out of the ordinary run of things and on a scale different from every-day humanity? the writer of a history such as this is terribly tempted to throw himself into the battle. there is hardly a modern account of these old contests, in which the author, be he ecclesiastic or professor, does not with pen behind ear, rush into the _mêlée_ by the side of the maid. even at the risk of missing the revelation of some of the beauties of her nature, i deem it better to keep one's own personality out of the action. i have written this history with a zeal ardent and tranquil; i have sought truth strenuously, i have met her fearlessly. even when she assumed an unexpected aspect, i have not turned from her. i shall be reproached for audacity, until i am reproached for timidity. i have pleasure in expressing my gratitude to my illustrious _confrères_, mm. paul meyer and ernest lavisse, who have given me valuable advice. i owe much to m. petit dutaillis for certain kindly observations which i have taken into consideration. i am also greatly indebted to m. henri jadart, secretary of the reims academy; m. e. langlois, professor at the faculté des lettres of lille; m. camille bloch, some time archivist of loiret, m. noël charavay, autographic expert, and m. raoul bonnet. m. pierre champion, who albeit still young is already known as the author of valuable historical works, has placed the result of his researches at my disposal with a disinterestedness i shall never be able adequately to acknowledge. he has also carefully read the whole of my work. m. jean brousson has given me the advantage of his perspicacity which far surpasses what one is entitled to expect from one's secretary. in the century which i have endeavoured to represent in this work, there was a fiend, by name titivillus. every evening this fiend put into a sack all the letters omitted or altered by the copyists during the day. he carried them to hell, in order that, when saint michael weighed the souls of these negligent scribes, the share of each one might be put in the scale of his iniquities. should he have survived the invention of printing, surely this most properly meticulous fiend must to-day be assuming the heavy task of collecting the misprints scattered throughout the books which aspire to exactitude; it would be very foolish of him to trouble about others. as occasion requires he will place those misprints to the account of reader or author. i am infinitely indebted to my publishers and friends mm. calmann, lévy and to their excellent collaborators for the care and experience they have employed in lightening the burden, which titivillus will place on my back on the day of judgment. paris, february, . contents vol. i chap. page preface v introduction vii i. childhood ii. voices iii. first visit to vaucouleurs. flight to neufchÂteau. journey to toul. second visit to vaucouleurs iv. journey to nancy. itinerary from vaucouleurs to sainte-catherine-de-fierbois v. the siege of orlÉans from the th of october, , to the th of march, vi. the maid at chinon--prophecies vii. the maid at poitiers viii. the maid at poitiers (_continued_) ix. the maid at tours x. the siege of orlÉans from the th of march to the th of april, xi. the maid at blois. letter to the english. departure for orlÉans xii. the maid at orlÉans xiii. the taking of les tourelles and the deliverance of orlÉans xiv. the maid at tours and selles-en-berry. treatises of jacques gÉlu and jean gerson xv. taking of jargeau. the meung bridge. beaugency xvi. the battle of patay. opinions of italian and german clerks. the gien army xvii. the auxerre convention. friar richard. the surrender of troyes xviii. the surrender of chÂlons and of reims. the coronation xix. rise of the legend list of illustrations vol. i joan of arc _frontispiece_ from a painting by deruet. _to face page_ house of joan of arc at domremy in view of orlÉans, - plan of orlÉans charles vii from an old engraving. joan of arc chapter i childhood from neufchâteau to vaucouleurs the clear waters of the meuse flow freely between banks covered with rows of poplar trees and low bushes of alder and willow. now they wind in sudden bends, now in gradual curves, for ever breaking up into narrow streams, and then the threads of greenish waters gather together again, or here and there are suddenly lost to sight underground. in the summer the river is a lazy stream, barely bending in its course the reeds which grow upon its shallow bed; and from the bank one may watch its lapping waters kept back by clumps of rushes scarcely covering a little sand and moss. but in the season of heavy rains, swollen by sudden torrents, deeper and more rapid, as it rushes along, it leaves behind it on the banks a kind of dew, which rises in pools of clear water on a level with the grass of the valley. this valley, two or three miles broad, stretches unbroken between low hills, softly undulating, crowned with oaks, maples, and birches. although strewn with wild-flowers in the spring, it looks severe, grave, and sometimes even sad. the green grass imparts to it a monotony like that of stagnant water. even on fine days one is conscious of a hard, cold climate. the sky seems more genial than the earth. it beams upon it with a tearful smile; it constitutes all the movement, the grace, the exquisite charm of this delicate tranquil landscape. then when winter comes the sky merges with the earth in a kind of chaos. fogs come down thick and clinging. the white light mists, which in summer veil the bottom of the valley, give place to thick clouds and dark moving mountains, but slowly scattered by a red, cold sun. wanderers ranging the uplands in the early morning might dream with the mystics in their ecstasy that they are walking on clouds. thus, after having passed on the left the wooded plateau, from the height of which the château of bourlémont dominates the valley of the saonelle, and on the right coussey with its old church, the winding river flows between le bois chesnu on the west and the hill of julien on the east. then on it goes, passing the adjacent villages of domremy and greux on the west bank and separating greux from maxey-sur-meuse. among other hamlets nestling in the hollows of the hills or rising on the high ground, it passes burey-la-côte, maxey-sur-vaise, and burey-en-vaux, and flows on to water the beautiful meadows of vaucouleurs.[ ] [footnote : j. ch. chappellier, _Étude historique et géographique sur domremy, pays de jeanne d'arc_, saint-dié, , in vo. É. hinzelin, _chez jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in mo.] in this little village of domremy, situated at least seven and a half miles further down the river than neufchâteau and twelve and a half above vaucouleurs, there was born, about the year or ,[ ] a girl who was destined to live a remarkable life. she was born poor. her father,[ ] jacques or jacquot d'arc, a native of the village of ceffonds in champagne,[ ] was a small farmer and himself drove his horses at the plough.[ ] his neighbours, men and women alike, held him to be a good christian and an industrious workman.[ ] his wife came from vouthon, a village nearly four miles northwest of domremy, beyond the woods of greux. her name being isabelle or zabillet, she received at some time, exactly when is uncertain, the surname of romée.[ ] that name was given to those who had been to rome or on some other important pilgrimage;[ ] and it is possible that isabelle may have acquired her name of romée by assuming the pilgrim's shell and staff.[ ] one of her brothers was a parish priest, another a tiler; she had a nephew who was a carpenter.[ ] she had already borne her husband three children: jacques or jacquemin, catherine, and jean.[ ] [footnote : this may be inferred from vol. i, p. , of the _trial_. but jeanne did not know how old she was when she left her father's house (_trial_, vol. i, p. ). i have ignored the letter of perceval de boulainvilliers, p. , vol. v, of the _trial_. it is quite unauthentic and is too much in the manner of a hagiologist. see post, p. , note .] [footnote : darc (_trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, p. ). dars (siméon luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. ). day (_trial_, vol. v, p. ). daiz (furnished by m. pierre champion). this document appears to justify the pronunciation _jeanne d'arc_. concerning the orthography of the name d'arc, cf. lanéry d'arc, _livre d'or de jeanne d'arc_, notes - .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _la famille de jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in vo, p. ; _nouvelles recherches sur la famille de jeanne d'arc_, paris, orléans, , in mo, p. x, _passim_. boucher de molandon, _jacques d'arc, père de la pucelle_, orléans, , in vo.] [footnote : see post, pp. , , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , ; vol. ii, p. , note . armand boucher de crèvecoeur, _les romée et les de perthes, famille maternelle de jeanne d'arc_, abbeville, , in vo. lanéry d'arc, _livre d'or_, notes - .] [footnote : du cange, _glossaire_, under the word _romeus_. g. de braux, _jeanne d'arc à saint-nicolas_, nancy, , p. . _revue catholique des institutions et du droit_, august, . e. de bouteiller, _nouvelles recherches_, p. xii. vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : probably before jeanne's birth. "my surname is d'arc or romée," said jeanne (_trial_, vol. i, p. ). thus she indiscriminately assumes either her father's or her mother's surname, although she says (_trial_, vol. i, p. ) that in her country girls are called by their mother's surname.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches sur la famille de jeanne d'arc_, paris, , pp. - . ch. du lys, _traité sommaire tant du nom et des armes que de la naissance et parenté de la pucelle d'orléans et de ses frères_, ed. vallet de viriville, paris, , p. . e. georges, _jeanne d'arc considérée au point de vue franco-champenois_, troyes, , in vo, p. .] [footnote : the order of the births of jacques d'arc's children is extremely doubtful (_trial_, index, under the word _arc_).] jacques d'arc's house was on the verge of the precincts of the parish church, dedicated to saint remi, the apostle of gaul.[ ] there was only the graveyard to cross when the child was carried to the font. it is said that in those days and in that country the form of exorcism pronounced by the priest during the baptismal ceremony was much longer for girls than for boys.[ ] we do not know whether messire jean minet,[ ] the parish priest, pronounced it over the child in all its literal fulness, but we notice the custom as one of the numerous signs of the church's invincible mistrust of woman. [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. , _passim_. s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, vol. xvi, p. .] [footnote : a. monteil, _histoire des français_, , in mo, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . jean minet was a native of neufchâteau.] according to the custom then prevailing the child had several godfathers and godmothers.[ ] the men-gossips were jean morel, of greux,[ ] husbandman; jean barrey, of neufchâteau; jean le langart or lingui, and jean rainguesson; the women, jeannette, wife of thévenin le royer, called roze, of domremy; béatrix, wife of estellin,[ ] husbandman in the same village; edite, wife of jean barrey; jeanne, wife of aubrit, called jannet and described as maire aubrit when he was appointed secretary to the lords of bourlémont; jeannette, wife of thiesselin de vittel, a scholar of neufchâteau. she was the most learned of all, for she had heard stories read out of books. among the godmothers there are mentioned also the wife of nicolas d'arc, jacques' brother, and two obscure christians, one called agnes, the other sibylle.[ ] here, as in every group of good catholics, we have a number of jeans, jeannes, and jeannettes. st. john the baptist was a saint of high repute; his festival, kept on the th of june, was a red-letter day in the calendar, both civil and religious; it marked the customary date for leases, hirings, and contracts of all kinds. in the opinion of certain ecclesiastics, especially of the mendicant orders, st. john the evangelist, whose head had rested on the saviour's breast and who was to return to earth when the ages should have run their course, was the greatest saint in paradise.[ ] wherefore, in honour of the precursor of the saviour or of his best beloved disciple, when babes were baptised the name jean or jeanne was frequently preferred to all others. to render these holy names more in keeping with the helplessness of childhood and the humble destiny awaiting most of us, they were given the diminutive forms of jeannot and jeannette. on the banks of the meuse the peasants had a particular liking for these diminutives at once unpretentious and affectionate: jacquot, pierrollot, zabillet, mengette, guillemette.[ ] after the wife of the scholar, thiesselin, the child was named jeannette. that was the name by which she was known in the village. later, in france, she was called jeanne.[ ] [footnote : j. corblet, _parrains et marraines_, in _revue de l'art chrétien_, , vol. xiv, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : siméon luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, proofs and illustrations, li, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. clxxix, note.] [footnote : cf. _trial_, index, under _parrains_ and _marraines_. it is not always possible to assign to these personages the names they bore and the position they occupied at the exact date when they are introduced.] [footnote : _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, in the _revue historique_, vol. iv, p. . cf. eustache deschamps, ballad , vol. iii, p. , ed. queux de saint hilaire.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. - ; vol. v, pp. , , _passim_.] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. . henri lepage, _jeanne d'arc est-elle lorraine?_ nancy, , pp. - .] she was brought up in her father's house, in jacques' poor dwelling.[ ] in the front there were two windows admitting but a scanty light. the stone roof forming one side of a gable on the garden side sloped almost to the ground. close by the door, as was usual in that country, were the dung-heap, a pile of firewood, and the farm tools covered with rust and mud. but the humble enclosure, which served as orchard and kitchen-garden, in the spring bloomed in a wealth of pink and white flowers.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. _et seq._ jacques d'arc's house doubtless looked on to the road; the du lys, or rather the thiesselins, pulled it down and erected in its place a house no longer existing. the shields which ornamented its façade have been placed upon the door of the building now shown as jeanne's house. what is represented as jeanne's room is the bakehouse (É. hinzelin, _chez jeanne d'arc_, p. ). see an article by henri arsac in _l'écho de l'est_, july, . a whole literature has been written on this subject (lanéry d'arc, _livre d'or_, pp. _et seq._).] [footnote : Émile hinzelin, _chez jeanne d'arc_, _passim_.] these good christians had one more child, the youngest, pierre, who was called pierrelot.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] fed on light wine and brown bread, hardened by a hard life, jeanne grew up in an unfruitful land, among people who were rough and sober. she lived in perfect liberty. among hard-working peasants the children are left to themselves. isabelle's daughter seems to have got on well with the village children. a little neighbour, hauviette, three or four years younger than she, was her daily companion. they liked to sleep together in the same bed.[ ] mengette, whose parents lived close by, used to come and spin at jacques d'arc's house. she helped jeanne with her household duties.[ ] taking her distaff with her, jeanne used often to go and pass the evening at saint-amance, at the house of a husbandman jacquier, who had a young daughter.[ ] boys and girls grew up as a matter of course side by side. being neighbours, jeanne and simonin musnier's son were brought up together. when musnier's son was still a child he fell ill, and jeanne nursed him.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. : "_jacuit amorose in domo patris sui._"] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] in those days it was not unprecedented for village maidens to know their letters. a few years earlier maître jean gerson had counselled his sisters, peasants of champagne, to learn to read, and had promised, if they succeeded, to give them edifying books.[ ] albeit the niece of a parish priest, jeanne did not learn her horn-book, thus resembling most of the village children, but not all, for at maxey there was a school attended by boys from domremy.[ ] [footnote : e. georges, _jeanne d'arc considérée au point de vue franco-champenois_, p. . de la fons-mélicocq, _documents inédits pour servir à l'histoire de l'instruction publique en france et à l'histoire des moeurs au xv'ieme siècle_, in the _bulletin de la société des antiquaires de la morinie_, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - . (_item: je donne à oudinot, à richard et à gérard, clercz enfantz du maistre de l'escole de marcey dessoubz brixey, doubz escus pour priier pour mi et pour dire les sept psaulmes._) (item: i give to the boys, oudinot, richard, and gérard, scholars of the school-master at marcey below brixey, twelve crowns to pray for me and to repeat the seven psalms.) the will of jean de bourlémont, october, , in s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, document in facsimile xiii.] from her mother she learnt the paternoster, ave maria, and the credo.[ ] she heard a few beautiful stories of the saints. that was her whole education. on holy days, in the nave of the church, beneath the pulpit, while the men stood round the wall, she, in the manner of the peasant women, squatted on her toes, listening to the priest's sermon.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. . see in montfaucon's _monuments de la monarchie française_, vol. iii, the second miniature, the "douze périls d'enfer" (the twelve perils of hell).] as soon as she was old enough she laboured in the fields, weeding, digging, and, like the lorraine maidens of to-day, doing the work of a man.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , , .] the river meadows were the chief source of wealth to the dwellers on the banks of the meuse. when the hay harvest was over, according to his share of the arable land, each villager in domremy had the right to turn so many head of cattle into the meadows of the village. each family took its turn at watching the flocks and herds in the meadows. jacques d'arc, who had a little grazing land of his own, turned out his oxen and his horses with the others. when his turn came to watch them, he delegated the task to his daughter jeanne, who went off into the meadow, distaff in hand.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , ; vol. ii, p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. lij.] but she would rather do housework or sew or spin. she was pious. she swore neither by god nor his saints; and to assert the truth of anything she was content to say: "there's no mistake."[ ] when the bells rang for the _angelus_, she crossed herself and knelt.[ ] on saturday, the holy virgin's day, she climbed the hill overgrown with grass, vines, and fruit-trees, with the village of greux nestling at its foot, and gained the wooded plateau, whence she could see on the east the green valley and the blue hills. on the brow of the hill, barely two and a half miles from the village, in a shaded dale full of murmuring sounds, from beneath beeches, ash-trees, and oaks gush forth the clear waters of the saint-thiébault spring, which cure fevers and heal wounds. above the spring rises the chapel of notre-dame de bermont. in fine weather it is pervaded by the scent of fields and woods, and winter wraps this high ground in a mantle of sadness and silence. in those days, clothed in a royal cloak and wearing a crown, with her divine child in her arms, notre-dame de bermont received the prayers and the offerings of young men and maidens. she worked miracles. jeanne used to visit her with her sister catherine and the boys and girls of the neighbourhood, or quite alone. and as often as she could she lit a candle in honour of the heavenly lady.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, index, at the word _bermont_. du haldat, _notice sur la chapelle de belmont_, in the _mémoires de l'académie stanislas de nancy_, - , p. . É. hinzelin, _chez jeanne d'arc_, p. . lanéry d'arc, _livre d'or_, p. .] a mile and a quarter west of domremy was a hill covered with a dense wood, which few dared enter for fear of boars and wolves. wolves were the terror of the countryside. the village mayors gave rewards for every head of a wolf or wolf-cub brought them.[ ] this wood, which jeanne could see from her threshold, was the bois chesnu, the wood of oaks, or possibly the hoary [_chenu_] wood, the old forest.[ ] we shall see later how this bois chesnu was the subject of a prophecy of merlin the magician. [footnote : alexis monteil, _histoire des françois_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, index, under the words _bois chesnu_.] at the foot of the hill, towards the village, was a spring[ ] on the margin of which gooseberry bushes intertwined their branches of greyish green. it was called the gooseberry spring or the blackthorn spring.[ ] if, as was thought by a graduate of the university of paris,[ ] jeanne described it as _la fontaine-aux-bonnes-fées-notre-seigneur_, it must have been because the village people called it by that name. by making use of such a term it would seem as if those rustic souls were trying to christianise the nymphs of the woods and waters, in whom certain teachers discerned the demons which the heathen once worshipped as goddesses.[ ] it was quite true. goddesses as much feared and venerated as the parcæ had come to be called fates,[ ] and to them had been attributed power over the destinies of men. but, fallen long since from their powerful and high estate, these village fairies had grown as simple as the people among whom they lived. they were invited to baptisms, and a place at table was laid for them in the room next the mother's. at these festivals they ate alone and came and went without any one's knowing; people avoided spying upon their movements for fear of displeasing them. it is the custom of divine personages to go and come in secret. they gave gifts to new-born infants. some were very kind, but most of them, without being malicious, appeared irritable, capricious, jealous; and if they were offended even unintentionally, they cast evil spells. sometimes they betrayed their feminine nature by unaccountable likes and dislikes. more than one found a lover in a knight or a churl; but generally such loves came to a bad end. and, when all is said, gentle or terrible, they remained the fates, they were always the destinies.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, index, under the words _fontaine des groseilliers_.] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. - ; vol. ii. pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, ed. tuetey, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , ; vol. ii, pp. , , .] [footnote : wolf, _mythologie des fées et des elfes_, , in vo. a. maury, _les fées au moyen âge_, , in mo, and _croyances et légendes du moyen âge_, paris, , in vo.] near by, on the border of the wood, was an ancient beech, overhanging the highroad to neufchâteau and casting a grateful shade.[ ] the beech was venerated almost as piously as had been those trees which were held sacred in the days before apostolic missionaries evangelised gaul.[ ] no hand dared touch its branches, which swept the ground. "even the lilies are not more beautiful,"[ ] said a rustic. like the spring the tree had many names. it was called _l'arbre-des-dames_, _l'arbre-aux-loges-les-dames_, _l'arbre-des-fées_, _l'arbre-charmine-fée-de-bourlémont_, _le beau-mai_.[ ] [footnote : richer, _histoire manuscrite de jeanne d'arc_, ms. fr. , , fols. , .] [footnote : for tree worship, see an article by m. henry carnoy in _la tradition_, march, .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, index, under the words _arbre des fées_.] every one at domremy knew that fairies existed and that they had been seen under _l'arbre-aux-loges-les-dames_. in the old days, when berthe was spinning, a lord of bourlémont, called pierre granier,[ ] became a fairy's knight, and kept his tryst with her at eve under the beech-tree. a romance told of their loves. one of jeanne's godmothers, who was a scholar at neufchâteau, had heard this story, which closely resembled that tale of melusina so well known in lorraine.[ ] but a doubt remained as to whether fairies still frequented the beech-tree. some believed they did, others thought they did not. béatrix, another of jeanne's godmothers, used to say: "i have heard tell that fairies came to the tree in the old days. but for their sins they come there no longer."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. , _passim_. _simple crayon de la noblesse des ducs de lorraine et de bar_, in le brun des charmettes' _histoire de jeanne d'arc_, vol. i, p. . jules baudot, _les princesses yolande et les ducs de bar de la famille des valois_, first part. _mélusine_, paris, , in vo, p. .] [footnote : _propter eorum peccata_, in the _trial_, vol. ii, p. . there is no doubt as to the meaning of these words.] this simple-minded woman meant that the fairies were the enemies of god and that the priest had driven them away. jean morel, jeanne's godfather, believed the same.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [illustration: the house of joan of arc at domremy in ] indeed on ascension eve, on rogation days and ember days, crosses were carried through the fields and the priest went to _l'arbre-des-fées_ and chanted the gospel of st. john. he chanted it also at the gooseberry spring and at the other springs in the parish.[ ] for the exorcising of evil spirits there was nothing like the gospel of st. john.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . bergier, _dictionnaire de théologie_, under the word _conjuration_.] my lord aubert d'ourches held that there had been no fairies at domremy for twenty or thirty years.[ ] on the other hand there were those in the village who believed that christians still held converse with them and that thursday was the trysting day. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] yet another of jeanne's godmothers, the wife of the mayor aubrit, had with her own eyes seen fairies under the tree. she had told her goddaughter. and aubrit's wife was known to be no witch or soothsayer but a good woman and a circumspect.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] in all this jeanne suspected witchcraft. for her own part she had never met the fairies under the tree. but she would not have said that she had not seen fairies elsewhere.[ ] fairies are not like angels; they do not always appear what they really are.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , _et seq._] [footnote : for the traditions of fairies at domremy and for jeanne's opinion of them, see _trial_, index, under the word _fées_.] every year, on the fourth sunday in lent,--called by the church "_lætare_ sunday," because during the mass of the day was chanted the passage beginning _lætare jerusalem_,--the peasants of bar held a rustic festival. this was their well-dressing when they went together to drink from some spring and to dance on the grass. the peasants of greux kept their festival at the chapel of notre-dame de bermont; those of domremy at the gooseberry spring and at _l'arbre-des-fées_.[ ] they used to recall the days when the lord and lady of bourlémont themselves led the young people of the village. but jeanne was still a babe in arms when pierre de bourlémont, lord of domremy and greux, died childless, leaving his lands to his niece jeanne de joinville, who lived at nancy, having married the chamberlain of the duke of lorraine.[ ] [footnote : concerning the sunday and the festival of the well-dressing at domremy, see _trial_, index, under the word _fontaine_.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , _et seq._ s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. xx-xxii.] at the well-dressing the young men and maidens of domremy went to the old beech-tree together. after they had hung it with garlands of flowers, they spread a cloth on the grass and supped off nuts, hard-boiled eggs, and little rolls of a curious form, which the housewives had kneaded on purpose.[ ] then they drank from the gooseberry spring, danced in a ring, and returned to their own homes at nightfall. [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , , , .] jeanne, like all the other damsels of the countryside, took her part in the well-dressing. although she came from the quarter of domremy nearest greux, she kept her feast, not at notre-dame de bermont, but at the gooseberry spring and _l'arbre-des-fées_.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. - .] in her early childhood she danced round the tree with her companions. she wove garlands for the image of notre-dame de domremy, whose chapel crowned a neighbouring hill. the maidens were wont to hang garlands on the branches of _l'arbre-des-fées_. jeanne, like the others, bewreathed the tree's branches; and, like the others, sometimes she left her wreaths behind and sometimes she carried them away. no one knew what became of them; and it seems their disappearance was such as to cause wise and learned persons to wonder. one thing, however, is sure: that the sick who drank from the spring were healed and straightway walked beneath the tree.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , .] to hail the coming of spring they made a figure of may, a mannikin of flowers and foliage.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] close by _l'arbre-des-dames_, beneath a hazel-tree, there was a mandrake. he promised wealth to whomsoever should dare by night, and according to the prescribed rites, to tear him from the ground,[ ] not fearing to hear him cry or to see blood flow from his little human body and his forked feet. [footnote : _atropa mandragor_, female mandragora, _main de gloire_, _herbe aux magiciens_. _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] the tree, the spring, and the mandrake caused the inhabitants of domremy to be suspected of holding converse with evil spirits. a learned doctor said plainly that the country was famous for the number of persons who practised witchcraft.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] when quite a little girl, jeanne journeyed several times to sermaize in champagne, where dwelt certain of her kinsfolk. the village priest, messire henri de vouthon, was her uncle on her mother's side. she had a cousin there, perrinet de vouthon, by calling a tiler, and his son henri.[ ] [footnote : this is probable but not certain. _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , ; vol. v, p. . e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches sur la famille de jeanne d'arc_, pp. xviii _et seq._; , , , _passim_. c. gilardoni, _sermaize et son église_, published at vitry-le-françois, , vo.] full thirty-seven and a half miles of forest and heath lie between domremy and sermaize. jeanne, we may believe, travelled on horseback, riding behind her brother on the little mare which worked on the farm.[ ] [footnote : capitaine champion, _jeanne d'arc écuyère_, paris, , mo, p. .] at each visit the child spent several days at her cousin perrinet's house.[ ] [footnote : boucher de molandon, _la famille de jeanne d'arc_, p. . e. de bouteiller et g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches_, pp. and . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. xlv _et seq._] with regard to feudal overlordship the village of domremy was divided into two distinct parts. the southern part, with the château on the meuse and some thirty homesteads, belonged to the lords of bourlémont and was in the domain of the castellany of grondrecourt, held in fief from the crown of france. it was a part of lorraine and of bar. the northern half of the village, in which the monastery was situated, was subject to the provost of montéclaire and andelot and was in the bailiwick of chaumont in champagne.[ ] it was sometimes called domremy de greux because it seemed to form a part of the village of greux adjoining it on the highroad in the direction of vaucouleurs.[ ] the serfs of bourlémont were separated from the king's men by a brook, close by towards the west, flowing from a threefold source and hence called, so it is said, the brook of the three springs. modestly the stream flowed beneath a flat stone in front of the church, and then rushed down a rapid incline into the meuse, opposite jacques d'arc's house, which it passed on the left, leaving it in the land of champagne and of france.[ ] so far we may be fairly certain; but we must beware of knowing more than was known in that day. in king charles' council was uncertain as to whether jacques d'arc was a freeman or a serf.[ ] and jacques d'arc himself doubtless was no better informed. on both banks of the brook, the men of lorraine and champagne were alike peasants leading a life of toil and hardship. although they were subject to different masters they formed none the less one community closely united, one single rural family. they shared interests, necessities, feelings--everything. threatened by the same dangers, they had the same anxieties. [footnote : e. misset, _jeanne d'arc champenoise_, paris, s.d. ( ), vo. concerning the nationality of joan of arc there is a whole literature extremely rich, the bibliography of which it is impossible to give here. cf. lanéry d'arc, _livre d'or_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : p. jollois, _histoire abrégée de la vie et des exploits de jeanne d'arc_, paris, , engraving i, p. . a. renard, _la patrie de jeanne d'arc_, langres, , in mo, p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, supplement with proofs and illustrations, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. .] lying at the extreme south of the castellany of vaucouleurs, the village of domremy was between bar and champagne on the east, and lorraine on the west.[ ] they were terrible neighbours, always warring against each other, those dukes of lorraine and bar, that count of vaudémont, that damoiseau of commercy, those lord bishops of metz, toul, and verdun. but theirs were the quarrels of princes. the villagers observed them just as the frog in the old fable looked on at the bulls fighting in the meadow. pale and trembling, poor jacques saw himself trodden underfoot by these fierce warriors. at a time when the whole of christendom was given up to pillage, the men-at-arms of the lorraine marches were renowned as the greatest plunderers in the world. unfortunately for the labourers of the castellany of vaucouleurs, close to this domain, towards the north, there lived robert de saarbruck, damoiseau of commercy, who, subsisting on plunder, was especially given to the lorraine custom of marauding. he was of the same way of thinking as that english king who said that warfare without burnings was no good, any more than chitterlings without mustard.[ ] one day, when he was besieging a little stronghold in which the peasants had taken refuge, the damoiseau set fire to the crops of the neighbourhood and let them burn all night long, so that he might see more clearly how to place his men.[ ] [footnote : colonel de boureulle, _le pays de jeanne d'arc_, saint-dié, , in vo, small engravings. j. ch. chappellier, _Étude historique sur domremy, pays de jeanne d'arc_, plans; c. niobé, _le pays de jeanne d'arc_, in _mémoires de la société académique de l'aube_, , d series, vol. xxxi, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : juvénal des ursins, in the _collection michaud et poujoulat_, col. .] [footnote : a. tuetey, _les écorcheurs sous charles vii_, montbéliard, , vol. i, p. .] in this baron was making war on the brothers didier and durand of saint-dié. it matters not for what reason. for this war as for every war the villagers had to pay. as the men-at-arms were fighting throughout the whole castellany of vaucouleurs, the inhabitants of domremy began to devise means of safety, and in this wise. at domremy there was a castle built in the meadow at the angle of an island formed by two arms of the river, one of which, the eastern arm, has long since been filled up.[ ] belonging to this castle was a chapel of our lady, a courtyard provided with means of defence, and a large garden surrounded by a moat wide and deep. this castle, once the dwelling of the lords of bourlémont, was commonly called the fortress of the island. the last of the lords having died without children, his property had been inherited by his niece jeanne de joinville. but soon after jeanne d'arc's birth she married a lorraine baron, henri d'ogiviller, with whom she went to reside at the castle of ogiviller and at the ducal court of nancy. since her departure the fortress of the island had remained uninhabited. the village folk decided to rent it and to put their tools and their cattle therein out of reach of the plunderers. the renting was put up to auction. a certain jean biget of domremy and jacques d'arc, jeanne's father, being the highest bidders, and having furnished sufficient security, a lease was drawn up between them and the representatives of dame d'ogiviller. the fortress, the garden, the courtyard, as well as the meadows belonging to the domain, were let to jean biget and jacques d'arc for a term of nine years beginning on st. john the baptist's day, , and in consideration of a yearly rent of fourteen _livres tournois_[ ] and three _imaux_ of wheat.[ ] besides the two tenants in chief there were five sub-tenants, of whom the first mentioned was jacquemin, the eldest of jacques d'arc's sons.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : in one _livre tournois_ was worth £ _s_ of present money; in , £ . cf. avenel, _histoire économique_, (w.s.).] [footnote : "_imal_," says le trévoux, "is a measure of corn used at nancy." there are two _imaux_ in a quarter, and four quarters in a _réal_, which contains fifteen bushels, according to the paris measure.] [footnote : the archives of the department of meurthe-et-moselle, collection ruppes ii, no. . the farm lease, dated nd of april, , was first published by m. j. ch. chappellier in _le journal de la société d'archéologie lorraine_, jan.-feb., ; and _deux actes inédits du xv siècle sur domremy_, nancy, , vo, pages. s. luce, _la france pendant la guerre de cent ans_, , mo, pp. _et seq._ lefèvre-pontalis, _Étude historique et géographique sur domremy, pays de jeanne d'arc_, in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, vol. lvi, pp. - .] the precaution proved to be useful. in that very year, , robert de saarbruck and his company met the men of the brothers didier and durand at the village of maxey, the thatched roofs of which were to be seen opposite greux, on the other bank of the meuse, along the foot of wooded hills. the two sides here engaged in a battle, in which the victorious damoiseau took thirty-five prisoners, whom he afterwards liberated after having exacted a high ransom, as was his wont. among these prisoners was the squire thiesselin de vittel, whose wife had held jacques d'arc's second daughter over the baptismal font. from one of the hills of her village, jeanne, who was then seven or a little older, could see the battle in which her godmother's husband was taken prisoner.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. - . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. lxiv.] meanwhile matters grew worse and worse in the kingdom of france. this was well known at domremy, situated as it was on the highroad, and hearing the news brought by wayfarers.[ ] thus it was that the villagers heard of the murder of duke john of burgundy on the bridge at montereau, when the dauphin's councillors made him pay the price of the blood he had shed in the rue barbette. these councillors, however, struck a bad bargain; for the murder on the bridge brought their young prince very low. there followed the war between the armagnacs and the burgundians. from this war the english, the obstinate enemies of the kingdom, who for two hundred years had held guyenne and carried on a prosperous trade there,[ ] sucked no small advantage. but guyenne was far away, and perhaps no one at domremy knew that it had once been a part of the domain of the kings of france. on the other hand every one was aware that during the recent trouble the english had recrossed the sea and had been welcomed by my lord philip, son of the late duke john. they occupied normandy, maine, picardy, l'Île-de-france, and paris the great city.[ ] now in france the english were bitterly hated and greatly feared on account of their reputation for cruelty. not that they were really more wicked than other nations.[ ] in normandy, their king, henry, had caused women and property to be respected in all places under his dominion. but war is in itself cruel, and whosoever wages war in a country is rightly hated by the people of that country. the english were accused of treachery, and not always wrongly accused, for good faith is rare among men. they were ridiculed in various ways. playing upon their name in latin and in french, they were called angels. now if they were angels they were assuredly bad angels. they denied god, and their favorite oath _goddam_[ ] was so often on their lips that they were called _godons_. they were devils. they were said to be _coués_, that is, to have tails behind.[ ] there was mourning in many a french household when queen ysabeau delivered the kingdom of france to the _coués_,[ ] making of the noble french lilies a litter for the leopard. since then, only a few days apart, king henry v of lancaster and king charles vi of valois, the victorious king and the mad king, had departed to present themselves before god, the judge of the good and the evil, the just and the unjust, the weak and the powerful. the castellany of vaucouleurs was french.[ ] dwelling there were clerks and nobles who pitied that later joash, torn from his enemies in childhood, an orphan spoiled of his heritage, in whom centred the hope of the kingdom. but how can we imagine that poor husbandmen had leisure to ponder on these things? how can we really believe that the peasants of domremy were loyal to the dauphin charles, their lawful lord, while the lorrainers of maxey, following their duke, were on the side of the burgundians? [footnote : liénard, _dictionnaire topographique de la meuse_, introduction, p. x.] [footnote : dom devienne, _histoire de bordeaux_, pp. , . l. bachelier, _histoire du commerce de bordeaux_, bordeaux, , in vo, p. . d. brissaud, _les anglais en guyenne_, paris, , in vo.] [footnote : ch. de beaurepaire, _de l'administration de la normandie sous la domination anglaise_, caen, , in to; and _États de normandie sous la domination anglaise_, Évreux, , in vo. de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. v, pp. - , - .] [footnote : thomas basin, _histoire de charles vii et de louis xi_, ed. quicherat, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : la curne, under the words _anglois_ and _goddons_.] [footnote : voragine, _la légende de saint-grégoire_. du cange, _glossaire_, under the word _caudatus_. le roux de lincy, _recueil de chants historiques français_, paris, , vol. i, pp. , . this oath is to be found current as early as eustache deschamps; it was still in use in the seventeenth century (_sommaire tant du nom et des armes que de la naissance et parenté de la pucelle_, ed. vallet de viriville).] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, ch. iii. carlier, _histoire du valois_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : dom calmet, _histoire de lorraine_, vol. ii, col. . bonnabelle, _notice sur la ville de vaucouleurs_, bar-le-duc, , in vo, pages.] only the river divided maxey on the right bank from domremy. the domremy and greux children went there to school. there were quarrels between them; the little burgundians of maxey fought pitched battles with the little armagnacs of domremy. more than once joan, at the bridge end in the evening, saw the lads of her village returning covered with blood.[ ] it is quite possible that, passionate as she was, she may have gravely espoused these quarrels and conceived therefrom a bitter hatred of the burgundians. nevertheless, we must beware of finding an indication of public opinion in these boyish games played by the sons of villeins. for centuries the brats of these two parishes were to fight and to insult each other.[ ] insults and stones fly whenever and wherever children gather in bands, and those of one village meet those of another. the peasants of domremy, greux, and maxey, we may be sure, vexed themselves little about the affairs of dukes and kings. they had learnt to be as much afraid of the captains of their own side as of the captains of the opposite party, and not to draw any distinction between the men-at-arms who were their friends and those who were their enemies. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : n. villiaumé, _histoire de jeanne d'arc_, , in vo, p. , note .] in the english occupied the bailiwick of chaumont and garrisoned several fortresses in bassigny. messire robert, lord of baudricourt and blaise, son of the late messire liébault de baudricourt, was then captain of vaucouleurs and bailie of chaumont for the dauphin charles. he might be reckoned a great plunderer, even in lorraine. in the spring of this year, , the duke of burgundy having sent an embassy to the lord bishop of verdun, as the ambassadors were returning they were taken prisoners by sire robert in league with the damoiseau of commercy. to avenge this offence the duke of burgundy declared war on the captain of vaucouleurs, and the castellany was ravaged by bands of english and burgundians.[ ] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, ch. iii.] in the duke of lorraine was waging war with a terrible man, one Étienne de vignolles, a gascon soldier of fortune already famous under the dreaded name of la hire,[ ] which he was to leave after his death to the knave of hearts in those packs of cards marked by the greasy fingers of many a mercenary. la hire was nominally on the side of the dauphin charles, but in reality he only made war on his own account. at this time he was ravaging bar west and south, burning churches and laying waste villages. [footnote : pierre d'alheim, _le jargon jobelin_, paris, , in mo: glossary, under the word _hirenalle_, p. , and the verbal communication of m. marcel schwob. _cronique martiniane_, ed. p. champion, p. , note ; _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. ; de montlezun, _histoire de gascogne_, , in vo, p. ; a. castaing, _la patrie du valet de coeur_, in _revue de gascogne_, , vol. x, pp. - .] while he was occupying sermaize, the church of which was fortified, jean, count of salm, who was governing the duchy of bar for the duke of lorraine, laid siege to it with two hundred horse. collot turlaut, who two years before had married mengette, daughter of jean de vouthon and jeanne's cousin-german,[ ] was killed there by a bomb fired from a lorraine mortar. [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. lxxiii, , note . e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches_, pp. - .] jacques d'arc was then the elder (_doyen_) of the community. many duties fell to the lot of the village elder, especially in troubled times. it was for him to summon the mayor and the aldermen to the council meetings, to cry the decrees, to command the watch day and night, to guard the prisoners. it was for him also to collect taxes, rents, and feudal dues, an ungrateful office in a ruined country.[ ] [footnote : bonvalot, _le tiers état d'après la charte de beaumont et ses filiales_, paris, , p. .] under pretence of safeguarding and protecting them, robert de saarbruck, damoiseau of commercy, who for the moment was armagnac, was plundering and ransoming the villages belonging to bar, on the left bank of the meuse.[ ] on the th of october, , jacques d'arc, as elder, signed below the mayor and sheriff the act by which the squire extorted from these poor people the annual payment of two _gros_ from each complete household and one from each widow's household, a tax which amounted to no less than two hundred and twenty golden crowns, which the elder was charged to collect before the winter feast of saint-martin.[ ] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. lxxi _et seq._] [footnote : _ibid._, proofs and illustrations, li, p. .] the following year was bad for the dauphin charles, for the french and scottish horsemen of his party met with the worst possible treatment at verneuil. this year the damoiseau of commercy turned burgundian and was none the better or the worse for it.[ ] captain la hire was still fighting in bar, but now it was against the young son of madame yolande, the dauphin charles's brother-in-law, rené d'anjou, who had lately come of age and was now invested with the duchy of bar. at the point of the lance captain la hire was demanding certain sums of money that the cardinal duke of bar owed him.[ ] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. , .] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, appendix, lxii.] at the same time robert, sire de baudricourt, was fighting with jean de vergy, lord of saint-dizier, seneschal of burgundy.[ ] it was a fine war. on both sides the combatants laid hands on bread, wine, money, silver-plate, clothes, cattle big and little, and what could not be carried off was burnt. men, women, and children were put to ransom. in most of the villages of bassigny agriculture was suspended, nearly all the mills were destroyed.[ ] [footnote : du chesne, _génealogie de la maison de vergy_, paris, , folio. _nouvelle biographie générale_, vol. xlv, p. .] [footnote : s. luce, domremy and vaucouleurs, from to , in _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, ch. iii.] ten, twenty, thirty bands of burgundians were ravaging the castellany of vaucouleurs, laying it waste with fire and sword. the peasants hid their horses by day, and by night got up to take them to graze. at domremy life was one perpetual alarm.[ ] all day and all night there was a watchman stationed on the square tower of the monastery. every villager, and, if the prevailing custom were observed, even the priest, took his turn as watchman, peering for the glint of lances through the dust and sunlight down the white ribbon of the road, searching the horrid depths of the wood, and by night trembling to see the villages on the horizon bursting into flame. at the approach of men-at-arms the watchman would ring a noisy peal of those bells, which in turn celebrated births, mourned for the dead, summoned the people to prayer, dispelled storms of thunder and lightning, and warned of danger. half clothed the awakened villagers would rush to stable, to cattle-shed, and pell-mell drive their flocks and herds to the castle between the two arms of the river meuse.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. lxxxvi, and appendix, xiv, p. .] one day in the summer of , there fell upon the villages of greux and domremy a certain chief of these marauding bands, who was murdering and plundering throughout the land, by name henri d'orly, known as henri de savoie. this time the island fortress was of no use to the villagers. lord henri took all the cattle from the two villages and drove them fifteen or twenty leagues[ ] away to his _château_ of doulevant. he had also captured much furniture and other property; and the quantity of it was so great that he could not store it all in one place; wherefore he had part of it carried to dommartin-le-franc, a neighbouring village, where there was a _château_ with so large a court in front that the place was called dommartin-la-cour. the peasants cruelly despoiled were dying of hunger. happily for them, at the news of this pillage, dame d'ogiviller sent to the count of vaudémont in his _château_ of joinville, complaining to him, as her kinsman, of the wrong done her, since she was lady of greux and domremy. the _château_ of doulevant was under the immediate suzerainty of the count of vaudémont. as soon as he received his kinswoman's message he sent a man-at-arms with seven or eight soldiers to recapture the cattle. this man-at-arms, by name barthélemy de clefmont, barely twenty years of age, was well skilled in deeds of war. he found the stolen beasts in the _château_ of dommartin-le-franc, took them and drove them to joinville. on the way he was pursued and attacked by lord d'orly's men and stood in great danger of death. but so valiantly did he defend himself that he arrived safe and sound at joinville, bringing the cattle, which the count of vaudémont caused to be driven back to the pastures of greux and domremy.[ ] [footnote : a league is two and a half english miles (w.s.).] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. _et seq._] unexpected good fortune! with tears the husbandman welcomed his restored flocks and herds. but was he not likely to lose them for ever on the morrow? at that time jeanne was thirteen or fourteen. war everywhere around her, even in the children's play; the husband of one of her godmothers taken and ransomed by men-at-arms; the husband of her cousin-german mengette killed by a mortar;[ ] her native land overrun by marauders, burnt, pillaged, laid waste, all the cattle carried off; nights of terror, dreams of horror,--such were the surroundings of her childhood. [footnote : e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches_, pp. - .] chapter ii jeanne's voices now, when she was about thirteen, it befell one summer day, at noon, that while she was in her father's garden she heard a voice that filled her with a great fear. it came from the right, from towards the church, and at the same time in the same direction there appeared a light. the voice said: "i come from god to help thee to live a good and holy life.[ ] be good, jeannette, and god will aid thee." [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , , , .] it is well known that fasting conduces to the seeing of visions. jeanne was accustomed to fast. had she abstained from food that morning and if so when had she last partaken of it? we cannot say.[ ] [footnote : the manuscript runs: _non jejunaverat die præcedenti_. quicherat omits _non_. _trial_, vol. i, p. . cf. _revue critique_, march, , p. .] on another day the voice spoke again and repeated, "jeannette, be good." the child did not know whence the voice came. but the third time, as she listened, she knew it was an angel's voice and she even recognised the angel to be st. michael. she could not be mistaken, for she knew him well. he was the patron saint of the duchy of bar.[ ] she sometimes saw him on the pillar of church or chapel, in the guise of a handsome knight, with a crown on his helmet, wearing a coat of mail, bearing a shield, and transfixing the devil with his lance.[ ] sometimes he was represented holding the scales in which he weighed souls, for he was provost of heaven and warden of paradise;[ ] at once the leader of the heavenly hosts and the angel of judgment.[ ] he loved high lands.[ ] that is why in lorraine a chapel had been dedicated to him on mount sombar, north of the town of toul. in very remote times he had appeared to the bishop of avranches and commanded him to build a church on mount tombe, in such a place as he should find a bull hidden by thieves; and the site of the building was to include the whole area overtrodden by the bull. the abbey of mont-saint-michel-au-péril-de-la-mer was erected in obedience to this command.[ ] [footnote : v. servais, _annales historiques du barrois_, bar-le-duc, , vol. i, engraving .] [footnote : p. ch. cahier, _caractéristique des saints dans l'art populaire_, vol. i, p. . quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. xcv, xcvi, and proofs and illustrations, xxiv, p. .] [footnote : _mystère de saint remi_, the arsenal library, ms. . , folios and .] [footnote : "_sed signifer sanctus michael representet eas (animas) in lucem sanctam._" prayer from the mass for the dead.] [footnote : a. maury, _croyances et légendes du moyen âge_, pp. _et seq._ barbier de montault, _traité d'iconographie chrétienne_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : aa. ss., , vol. iii, i, pp. _et seq._ dom. j. huynes, _histoire générale de l'abbaye du mont-saint-michel_, ed. r. de beaurepaire, rouen, , pp. _et seq._ a. forgeais, _collection de plombs_ (seals) _historiés trouvés dans la seine_, paris, , vol. iii, p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, ch. iv. _chronique du mont-saint-michel_ ( - ), ed. s. luce, paris, - ( vols. in vo), vol. i, pp. , , _et seq._] about the time when the child was having these visions, the defenders of mont-saint-michel discomfited the english who were attacking the fortress by land and sea. the french attributed this victory to the all-powerful intercession of the archangel.[ ] and why should he not have favoured the french who worshipped him with peculiar devoutness? since my lord st. denys had permitted his abbey to be taken by the english, my lord st. michael, who carefully guarded his, was in a fair way to become the true patron saint of the kingdom.[ ] in the year the dauphin charles had had escutcheons painted, representing st. michael fully armed, holding a naked sword and in the act of slaying a serpent.[ ] the maid of domremy, however, knew but little of the miracles worked by my lord st. michael in normandy. she recognised the angel by his weapons, his courtesy, and the noble words that fell from his lips.[ ] [footnote : lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations en faveur de jeanne d'arc_, p. (opinion of jean bochard, called de vaucelle, bishop of avranches). dom. j. huynes, _loc. cit._, ch. viii, p. .] [footnote : dom félibien, _histoire de l'abbaye royale de saint-denis...._ paris, , in folio, p. .] [footnote : richer, _histoire manuscrite de la pucelle_, ms. fr. , , fol. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, proofs and illustrations, xxiv.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , .] one day he said to her: "saint catherine and saint margaret will come to thee. act according to their advice; for they are appointed to guide thee and counsel thee in all thou hast to do, and thou mayest believe what they shall say unto thee." and these things came to pass as the lord had ordained.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] this promise filled her with great joy, for she loved them both. madame sainte marguerite was highly honoured in the kingdom of france, where she was a great benefactress. she helped women in labour,[ ] and protected the peasant at work in the fields. she was the patron saint of flax-spinners, of procurers of wet-nurses, of vellum-dressers, and of bleachers of wool. her precious relics in a reliquary, carried on a mule's back, were paraded by ecclesiastics through towns and villages. plenteous alms[ ] were showered upon the exhibitors in return for permission to touch the relics. many times had jeanne seen madame sainte marguerite at church, painted life-size, a holy-water sprinkler in her hand, her foot on a dragon's head.[ ] she was acquainted with her history as it was related in those days, somewhat on the lines of the following narrative. [footnote : _la vierge marguerite substituée à la lucine antique_, analysis of an unpublished poem of the fifteenth century, paris, , in vo, p. . rabelais, _gargantua_, vol. i, ch. vi. l'abbé j.b. thiers, _traité des superstitions qui regarde les sacrements selon l'Écriture sainte_, paris, ( vols. in mo), vol. i, p. .] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, proofs and illustrations, ccxxxiv, p. .] [footnote : abbé bourgaut, _guide du pélerin à domremy_, nancy, , in mo, p. . É. hinzelin, _chez jeanne d'arc_, pp. - .] the blessed margaret was born at antioch. her father, theodosius, was a priest of the gentiles. she was put out to nurse and secretly baptised. one day when she was in her fifteenth year, as she was watching the flock belonging to her nurse, the governor olibrius saw her, and, struck by her great beauty, conceived a great passion for her. wherefore he said to his servants: "go, bring me that girl, in order that if she be free i may marry her, or if she be a slave i may take her into my service." and when she was brought he inquired of her her country, her name, and her religion. she replied that she was called margaret and that she was a christian. and olibrius said unto her: "how comes it that so noble and beautiful a girl as you can worship jesus the crucified?" and because she replied that jesus christ was alive for ever, the governor in wrath had her thrown into prison. the next day he summoned her to appear before him and said: "unhappy girl, have pity on your own beauty and for your own sake worship our gods. if you persist in your blindness i will have your body rent in pieces." and margaret made answer: "jesus suffered death for me, and i would fain die for him." then the governor commanded her to be hung from the wooden horse, to be beaten with rods, and her flesh to be torn with iron claws. and the blood flowed from the virgin's body as from a pure spring of fresh water. those who stood by wept, and the governor covered his face with his cloak that he might not see the blood. and he commanded to unloose her and take her back to prison. there she was tempted by the spirit, and she prayed the lord to reveal to her the enemy whom she had to withstand. thereupon a huge dragon, appearing before her, rushed forward to devour her, but she made the sign of the cross and he disappeared. then, in order to seduce her, the devil assumed the form of a man. he came to her gently, took her hands in his and said: "margaret, what you have done sufficeth." but she seized him by the hair, threw him to the ground, placed her right foot upon his head and cried: "tremble, proud enemy, thou liest beneath a woman's foot." the next day, in the presence of the assembled people, she was brought before the judge, who commanded her to sacrifice to idols. and when she refused he had her body burned with flaming pine-wood, but she seemed to suffer no pain. and fearing lest, amazed at this miracle, all the people should be converted, olibrius commanded that the blessed margaret should be beheaded. she spoke unto the executioner and said: "brother, take your axe and strike me." with one blow he struck off her head. her soul took flight to heaven in the form of a dove.[ ] [footnote : voragine, _la légende dorée_ (légende de sainte marguerite). douhet, _dictionnaire des légendes_, pp. - .] this story had been told in songs and mysteries.[ ] it was so well known that the name of the governor, jestingly vilified and fallen into ridicule, was in common parlance bestowed on braggarts and blusterers. a fool who posed as a wicked person was called _an olibrius_.[ ] [footnote : gaston paris, _la littérature française au moyen âge_, , in mo, p. .] [footnote : la curne, _dictionnaire de l'ancien langage français_, under the word _olibrius_. olibrius figures also in the legend of saint reine, where he is governor of the gallic provinces. the legend of saint reine is only a somewhat ancient variant of the legend of saint margaret.] madame sainte catherine, whose coming the angel had announced to jeanne at the same time as that of madame sainte marguerite, was the protectress of young girls and especially of servants and spinsters. orators and philosophers too had chosen as their patron saint the virgin who had confounded the fifty doctors and triumphed over the magi of the east. in the meuse valley rhymed prayers like the following were addressed to her: ave, très sainte catherine, vierge pucelle nette et fine.[ ] [footnote : hail, thou holy catherine, virgin maid so pure and fine. _bibliothèque mazarine, manuscrit_, . _recueil de prières_, folio . this manuscript comes from the banks of the meuse.] this fine lady was no stranger to jeanne; she had her church at maxey, on the opposite bank of the river; and her name was borne by isabelle romée's eldest daughter.[ ] [footnote : s. luce, _loc. cit._, proofs and illustrations, xiii, p. , note . e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches sur la famille de jeanne d'arc_, pp. xvi and . _guide et souvenir du pélerin à domremy_, nancy, , in mo, p. .] jeanne certainly did not know the story of saint catherine as it was known to illustrious clerks; as, for example, about this time it was committed to writing by messire jean miélot, the secretary of the duke of burgundy. jean miélot told how the virgin of alexandria controverted the subtle arguments of homer, the syllogisms of aristotle, the very learned reasonings of the famous physicians Æsculapius and galen, practised the seven liberal arts, and disputed according to the rules of dialectics.[ ] jacques d'arc's daughter had heard nothing of all that; she knew saint catherine from stories out of some history written in the vulgar tongue, in verse or in prose, so many of which were in circulation at that time.[ ] [footnote : j. miélot, _vie de sainte cathérine_, text revised by marius sepet, , in large vo.] [footnote : gaston paris, _la littérature française au moyen âge_, pp. , .] catherine, daughter of king costus and queen sabinella, as she grew in years, became proficient in the arts, and a skilful embroiderer in silk. while her body was resplendent with beauty, her soul was clouded by the darkness of idolatry. many barons of the empire sought her in marriage; she scorned them and said: "find me a husband wise, handsome, noble, and rich." now in her sleep she had a vision. holding the child jesus in her arms, the virgin mary appeared unto her and said: "catherine, will you take him for your husband? and you, my sweet son, will you have this virgin for your bride?" the child jesus made answer: "mother, i will not have her; bid her depart from you, for she is a worshipper of idols. but if she will be baptised i will consent to put the nuptial ring on her finger." desiring to marry the king of heaven, catherine went to ask for baptism at the hands of the hermit ananias, who lived in armenia on mount negra. a few days afterwards, when she was praying in her room, she saw jesus christ appear in the midst of a numerous choir of angels and of saints. he drew near unto her and placed his ring upon her finger. then only did catherine know that her bridal was a spiritual bridal. in those days maxentius was emperor of the romans. he commanded the people of alexandria to offer great sacrifices to the idols. catherine, as she was at prayer in her oratory, heard the chanting of the priests and the bellowing of the victims. straightway she went to the public square, and beholding maxentius at the gate of the temple, she said unto him: "how comes it that thou art so foolish as to command this people to offer incense to idols? thou admirest this temple built by the hands of thy workmen. thou admirest these ornaments which are but dust blown away by the wind. thou shouldest rather admire the sky, and the earth, and the sea, and all that is therein. thou shouldest rather admire the ornaments of the heavens: the sun, the moon, and the stars, and those circling planets, which from the beginning of the world move from the west and return to the east and never grow weary. and when thou hast observed all these things, ask and learn who is their creator. it is our god, the lord of hosts, and the god of gods." "woman," replied the emperor, "leave us to finish our sacrifice; afterwards we will make answer unto thee." and he commanded catherine to be taken into the palace and strictly guarded, because he marvelled at the great wisdom and the wonderful beauty of this virgin. he summoned fifty doctors well versed in the knowledge of the egyptians and the liberal arts; and, when they were gathered together, he said unto them: "a maiden of subtle mind maintains that our gods are but demons. i could have forced her to sacrifice or have made her pay the penalty of her disobedience; i judged it better that she should be confounded by the power of your reasoning. if you triumph over her, you will return to your homes laden with honours." and the wise men made answer: "let her be brought, that her rashness may be made manifest, that she may confess that never until now has she met men of wisdom." and when she learned that she was to dispute with wise men, catherine feared lest she should not worthily defend the gospel of jesus christ. but an angel appeared to her and said: "i am the archangel saint michael, sent by god to make known unto thee that from this strife thou shalt come forth victorious and worthy of our lord jesus christ, the hope and crown of those who strive for him." and the virgin disputed with the doctors. when they maintained that it was impossible for god to become man, and be acquainted with grief, catherine showed how the birth and passion of jesus christ had been announced by the gentiles themselves, and prophesied by plato and the sibyl. the doctors had nothing to oppose to arguments so convincing. therefore the chief among them said to the emperor: "thou knowest that up till now no one has disputed with us without being straightway confounded. but this maid, through whom the spirit of god speaks, fills us with wonder, and we know nothing nor dare we say anything against christ. and we boldly confess that if thou hast no stronger arguments to bring forth in favour of the gods, whom hitherto we have worshipped, we will all of us embrace the christian religion." on hearing these words, the tyrant was so transported with wrath that he had the fifty doctors burned in the middle of the town. but as a sign that they suffered for the truth, neither their garments nor the hairs of their heads were touched by the fire. afterwards maxentius said unto catherine: "o virgin, issue of a noble line, and worthy of the imperial purple, take counsel with thy youth, and sacrifice to our gods. if thou dost consent, thou shalt take rank in my palace after the empress, and thy image, placed in the middle of the town, shall be worshipped by all the people like that of a goddess." but catherine answered: "speak not of such things. the very thought of them is sin. jesus christ hath chosen me for his bride. he is my love, my glory, and all my delight." finding it impossible to flatter her with soft words, the tyrant hoped to reduce her to obedience through fear; therefore he threatened her with death. catherine's courage did not waver. "jesus christ," she said, "offered himself to his father as a sacrifice for me; it is my great joy to offer myself as an agreeable sacrifice to the glory of his name." straightway maxentius commanded that she should be scourged with rods, and then cast into a dark dungeon and left there without food. thereupon, at the call of urgent affairs, maxentius set out for a distant province. now the empress, who was a heathen, had a vision, in which saint catherine appeared to her surrounded by a marvellous light. angels clad in white were with her, and their faces could not be looked upon by reason of the brightness that proceeded from them. and catherine told the empress to draw near. taking a crown from the hand of one of the angels who attended her, she placed it upon the head of the empress, saying: "behold a crown sent down to thee from heaven, in the name of jesus christ, my god, and my lord." the heart of the empress was troubled by this wonderful dream. wherefore, attended by porphyrius, a knight who was commander-in-chief of the army, in the early hours of night she repaired to the prison in which catherine was confined. here in her cell a dove brought her heavenly food, and angels dressed the virgin's wounds. the empress and porphyrius found the dungeon bathed in a light so bright that it filled them with a great fear, and they fell prostrate on the ground. but there straightway filled the dungeon an odour marvellously sweet, which comforted them and gave them courage. "arise," said catherine, "and be not afraid, for jesus christ calleth you." they arose, and beheld catherine in the midst of a choir of angels. the saint took from the hands of one among them a crown, very beautiful and shining like gold, and she put it upon the empress's head. this crown was the sign of martyrdom. for indeed the names of this queen and of the knight porphyrius were already written in the book of eternal rewards. on his return maxentius commanded catherine to be brought before him, and said unto her: "choose between two things: to sacrifice and live, or to die in torment." catherine made answer: "it is my desire to offer to jesus christ my flesh and my blood. he is my lover, my shepherd, and my husband." then the provost of the city of alexandria, whose name was chursates, commanded to be made four wheels furnished with very sharp iron spikes, in order that upon these wheels the blessed catherine should die a miserable and a cruel death. but an angel broke the machine, and with such violence that the parts of it flying asunder killed a great number of the gentiles. and the empress, who beheld these things from the top of her tower, came down and reproached the emperor for his cruelty. full of wrath, maxentius commanded the empress to sacrifice; and when she refused, he commanded her breasts to be torn out and her head to be cut off. and while she was being taken to the torturer, catherine exhorted her, saying: "go, rejoice, queen beloved of god, for to-day thou shalt exchange for a perishable kingdom an everlasting empire, and a mortal husband for an immortal lover." and the empress was taken to suffer death outside the walls. porphyrius carried away the body and had it buried reverently as that of a servant of jesus christ. wherefore maxentius had porphyrius put to death, and his body cast to the dogs. then, summoning catherine before him, he said unto her: "since, by thy magic arts thou hast caused the empress to perish, now if thou repent thou shalt be first in my palace. to-day, therefore, sacrifice to the gods, or thy head shall be struck off." she made answer: "do as thou hast resolved that i may take my place in the band of maidens who are around the lamb of god." the emperor sentenced her to be beheaded. and when they had led her outside the city of alexandria, to the place of death, she raised her eyes to heaven and said: "jesus, hope and salvation of the faithful, glory and beauty of virgins, i pray thee to listen and to answer the prayer of whomsoever, in memory of my martyrdom, shall invoke me in death or in peril whatsoever." and a voice from heaven made answer: "come, my beloved bride; the gate of heaven is open to thee. and to those who shall invoke me through thy intercession, i promise help from on high." from the riven neck of the virgin flowed forth milk instead of blood. thus madame sainte catherine passed from this world to celestial happiness, on the twenty-fifth day of the month of november, which was a friday.[ ] [footnote : voragine, _la légende dorée_, , pp. - . douhet, _dictionnaire des légendes_, , pp. - .] my lord saint michael, the archangel, did not forget his promise. the ladies saint catherine and saint margaret came as he had said. on their very first visit the young peasant maid vowed to them to preserve her virginity as long as it should please god.[ ] if there were any meaning in such a promise, jeanne, however old she may then have been, could not have been quite a child. and it seems probable that the angel and the saints appeared to her first when she was on the threshold of womanhood, that is, if she ever became a woman.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . hinzelin, _chez jeanne d'arc_, p. . when we come to the trial, we shall consider whether it be possible to reconcile jeanne's assertions with regard to this vow.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. iii, p. .] the saints soon entered into familiar relations with her.[ ] they came to the village every day, and often several times a day. when she saw them appear in a ray of light coming down from heaven, shining and clad like queens, with golden crowns on their heads, wearing rich and precious jewels, the village maiden crossed herself devoutly and curtsied low.[ ] and because they were ladies of good breeding, they returned her salutation. each one had her own particular manner of greeting, and it was by this manner that jeanne distinguished one from the other, for the dazzling light of their countenances rendered it impossible for her to look them in the face. they graciously permitted their earth-born friend to touch their feet, to kiss the hems of their garments, and to inhale rapturously the sweet perfume they emitted.[ ] they addressed her courteously,[ ] as it seemed to jeanne. they called the lowly damsel daughter of god. they taught her to live well and go to church. without always having anything very new to say to her, since they came so constantly, they spoke to her of things which filled her with joy, and, after they had disappeared, jeanne ardently pressed her lips to the ground their feet had trodden.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, index, under the words, _voices_, _catherine_, and _marguerite_.] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. - , _seq._, _seq._] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : in the french, _humblement_. in old french _humblement_ means courteously. in froissart there is a passage quoted by la curne: "_li contes de hainaut rechut ces seigneurs d'engleterre, l'un après l'autre, moult humblement._"] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] oftentimes she received the heavenly ladies in her little garden, close to the precincts of the church. she used to meet them near the spring; often they even appeared to their little friend surrounded by heavenly companies. "for," isabelle's daughter used to say, "angels are wont to come down to christians without being seen, but i see them."[ ] it was in the woods, amid the light rustling of the leaves, and especially when the bells rang for matins or compline, that she heard the sweet words most distinctly. and so she loved the sound of the bells, with which her voices mingled. so, when at nine o'clock in the evening, perrin le drapier, sexton of the parish, forgot to ring for compline, she reproached him with his negligence, and scolded him for not doing his duty. she promised him cakes if in the future he would not forget to ring the bells.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. , note .] she told none of these things to her priest; for this, according to some good doctors, she must be censured, but, according to others equally excellent, she must be commended. for if on the one hand we are to consult our ecclesiastical superiors in matters of faith, on the other, where the gift of the holy ghost is poured out, there reigns perfect liberty.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. , marginal comment of the d'urfé ms.: _celavit visiones curato, patri et matri et cuicumque_, in the _trial_, vol. i, p. , note. lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations en faveur de jeanne d'arc_, p. .] since the two saints had been visiting jeanne, my lord saint michael had come less often; but he had not forsaken her. there came a time when he talked to her of love for the kingdom of france, of that love which she felt in her heart.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. : "_et luy racontet l'angle la pitié qui estoit ou royaume de france._" _pitié_ means here occasion for tenderness and love. the angel is thinking especially of the dauphin. for the meaning and use of this word, cf. monstrelet, vol. iii, p. : "_... et le peuple plorant de pitié et de joie qu'ils avoient à regarder leur seigneur_." gérard de nevers in la curne: "_pitié estoit de voir festoyer leur seigneur; on ne pourroit retenir ses larmes en voyant la joie qu'ils marquoient de recevoir leur seigneur._"] and the holy visitants, whose voices grew stronger and more ardent as the maiden's soul grew holier and more heroic, revealed to her her mission. "daughter of god," they said, "thou must leave thy village, and go to france."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] had this idea of a holy militant mission, conceived by jeanne through the intermediary of her voices, come into her mind spontaneously without the intervention of any outside will, or had it been suggested to her by some one who was influencing her? it would be impossible to solve this problem were there not a slight indication to direct us. jeanne at domremy was acquainted with a prophecy foretelling that france would be ruined by a woman and saved by a maiden.[ ] it made an extraordinary impression upon her; and later she came to speak in a manner which proved that she not only believed it, but was persuaded that she herself was the maiden designated by the prophecy.[ ] who taught her this? some peasant? we have reason to believe that the peasants did not know it, and that it was current among ecclesiastics.[ ] besides, it is important to notice in this connection that jeanne was acquainted with a particular form of this prophecy, obviously arranged for her benefit, since it specified that the maiden redemptress should come from the borders of lorraine. this local addition is not the work of a cowherd; it suggests rather a mind apt to direct souls and to inspire deeds. it is no longer possible to doubt that the prophecy thus revised is the work of an ecclesiastic whose intentions may be easily divined. henceforth one is conscious of an idea agitating and possessing the young seer of visions. [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : "_nonne alias dictum fuit quod francia per mulierem desolaretur, et postea per virginem restaurari debebat?_" evidence given by durand lassois in _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. . nevertheless the woman le royer of domremy remembered it and was astonished by it. _et hunc ipsa testis hæc audisse recordata est et stupefacta fuit._] on the banks of the meuse, among the humble folk of the countryside, some churchman, preoccupied with the lot of the poor people of france, directed jeanne's visions to the welfare of the kingdom and to the conclusion of peace. he carried the ardour of his pious zeal so far as to collect prophecies concerning the salvation of the french crown, and to add to them with an eye to the accomplishment of his design. for such an ecclesiastic we must seek among the priests of lorraine or champagne upon whom the national misfortunes imposed cruel sufferings.[ ] merchants and artizans, crushed under the burden of taxes and subsidies, and ruined by changes in the coinage,[ ] peasants, whose houses, barns, and mills had been destroyed, and whose fields had been laid waste, no longer contributed to the expenses of public worship.[ ] canons and ecclesiastics, deprived both of their feudal dues and of the contributions of the faithful, quitted the religious houses and set out to beg their bread from door to door, leaving behind in the monasteries only two or three old monks, and a few children. the fortified abbeys attracted captains and soldiers of both sides. they entrenched themselves within the walls; they plundered and burnt. when one of those holy houses succeeded in remaining standing, the wandering village folk made it their place of refuge, and it was impossible to prevent the refectories and dormitories from being invaded by women.[ ] in the midst of this obscure throng of souls afflicted by the sufferings and the scandals of the church may be divined the prophet and the director of the maid. [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iii, p. . jean chartier, _chronique latine_, ed. vallet de viriville, vol. i, p. . th. basin, _histoire de charles vii et de louis xi_, vol. i, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : alain chartier, _quadriloge invectif_, ed. andré duchesne, paris, , pp. _et seq._ _ordonnances_, vol. xi, pp. _et seq._ viutry, _les monnaies sous les trois premiers valois_, paris, , in vo, _passim_. de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, ch. xi.] [footnote : juvénal des ursins and _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, _passim_. letter from nicholas de clemangis to gerson, in _clemangis opera omnia_, , in to, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : le p. denifle, _la désolation des églises, monastères_, mâcon, , in vo, introduction.] we shall not be tempted to recognise him in messire guillaume frontey, priest of domremy. the successor of messire jean minet, if we may judge from his conversation which has been preserved, was as simple as his flock.[ ] jeanne saw many priests and monks. she was in the habit of visiting her uncle, the priest of sermaize, and of seeing in the abbey of cheminon,[ ] her cousin, a young ecclesiastic in minor orders, who was soon to follow her into france. she was in touch with a number of priests who would be very quick to recognise her exceptional piety, and her gift of beholding things invisible to the majority of christians. they engaged her in conversations, which, had they been preserved, would doubtless present to us one of the sources whence she derived inspiration for her marvellous vocation. one among them, whose name will never be known, raised up an angelic deliverer for the king and the kingdom of france. [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , .] [footnote : these two persons, however, are only known to us through somewhat doubtful genealogical documents. _trial_, vol. v, p. . boucher de molandon, _la famille de jeanne d'arc_, p. . g. de braux and e. de bouteiller, _nouvelles recherches_, pp. _et seq._] meanwhile jeanne was living a life of illusion. knowing nothing of the influences she was under, incapable of recognising in her voices the echo of a human voice or the promptings of her own heart, she responded timidly to the saints when they bade her fare forth into france: "i am a poor girl, and know not how to ride a horse or how to make war."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] as soon as she began to receive these revelations she gave up her games and her excursions. henceforth she seldom danced round the fairies' tree, and then only in play with the children.[ ] it would seem that she also took a dislike to working in the fields, and especially to herding the flocks. from early childhood she had shown signs of piety. now she gave herself up to extreme devoutness; she confessed frequently, and communicated with ecstatic fervour; she heard mass in her parish church every day. at all hours she was to be found in church, sometimes prostrate on the ground, sometimes with her hands clasped, and her face turned towards the image of our lord or of our lady. she did not always wait for saturday to visit the chapel at bermont. sometimes, when her parents thought she was tending the herds, she was kneeling at the feet of the miracle-working virgin. the village priest, messire guillaume frontey, could do nothing but praise the most guileless of his parishioners.[ ] one day he happened to say with a sigh: "if jeannette had money she would give it to me for the saying of masses."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , , , , , , _passim_.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . concerning jeanne's religious observances, see _ibid._, index, under the words _messe_, _vierge_, _cloche_.] as for the good man, jacques d'arc, it is possible that he may have occasionally complained of those pilgrimages, those meditations, and those other practices which ill accorded with the ordinary tenor of country life. every one thought jeanne odd and erratic. mengette and her friends, when they found her so devout, said she was too pious.[ ] they scolded her for not dancing with them. among others, isabellette, the young wife of gérardin d'epinal, the mother of little nicholas, jeanne's godson, roundly condemned a girl who cared so little for dancing.[ ] colin, son of jean colin, and all the village lads made fun of her piety. her fits of religious ecstasy raised a smile. she was regarded as a little mad. she suffered from this persistent raillery.[ ] but with her own eyes she beheld the dwellers in paradise. and when they left her she would cry and wish that they had taken her with them. [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] "daughter of god, thou must leave thy village and go forth into france."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , .] and the ladies saint catherine and saint margaret spoke again and said: "take the standard sent down to thee by the king of heaven, take it boldly and god will help thee." as she listened to these words of the ladies with the beautiful crowns, jeanne was consumed with a desire for long expeditions on horseback, and for those battles in which angels hover over the heads of the warriors. but how was she to go to france? how was she to associate with men-at-arms? ignorant and generously impulsive like herself, the voices she heard merely revealed to her her own heart, and left her in sad agitation of mind: "i am a poor girl, knowing neither how to bestride a horse nor how to make war."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] jeanne's native village was named after the blessed remi;[ ] the parish church bore the name of the great apostle of the gauls, who, in baptising king clovis, had anointed with holy oil the first christian prince of the noble house of france, descended from the noble king priam of troy. [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , , _passim_.] thus runs the legend of saint remi as it was told by churchmen. in those days the pious hermit montan, who lived in the country of laon, beheld a choir of angels and an assembly of saints; and he heard a voice full and sweet saying: "the lord hath looked down upon the earth. that he might hear the groans of them that are in fetters: that he might release the children of the slain: that they may declare the name of the lord in sion: and his praise in jerusalem. when the people assemble together, and kings to serve the lord.[ ] and cilinia shall bring forth a son for the saving of the people." [footnote : psalm ci, - . _vulgate_, douai version (w.s.).] now cilinia was old, and her husband emilius was blind. yet cilinia, having conceived, brought forth a son; and with the milk with which she nourished her babe she rubbed the eyes of the father, and straightway his eyes were opened, and he saw. this child, whose birth had been foretold by angels, was called remi, which, being interpreted, means oar; for by his teaching, as with a well-cut oar, he was to guide the church of god, and especially the church of reims, over the stormy sea of life, and by his merits and his prayers bring it into the heaven of eternal salvation. in retirement and in the practice of holy and christian observances, cilinia's son passed his pious youth at laon. hardly had he entered his twenty-second year, when the episcopal seat of reims fell vacant on the death of the blessed bishop bennade. an immense concourse of people nominated remi the shepherd of the flock. he refused a burden which he said was too heavy for the weakness of his youth. but suddenly there fell upon his forehead a ray of celestial light, and a divine liquid was shed upon his hair, and scented it with a strange perfume. wherefore, without further delay, the bishops of the province of reims, with one consent, consecrated him their bishop. established in the seat of saint sixtus, the blessed remi revealed himself liberal in almsgiving, assiduous in vigilance, fervent in prayer, perfect in charity, marvellous in doctrine, and holy in all his conversation. like a city built on the top of a mountain, he was admired of all men. in those days, clovis, king of france, was a heathen, with all his knights. but he had won a great victory over the germans by invoking the name of christ. wherefore, at the entreaty of the saintly queen clotilde, his wife, he resolved to ask baptism at the hands of the blessed bishop of reims. when this pious desire had been made known to him, saint remi taught the king and his subjects that, renouncing satan and his pomps and his works, they must believe in god and in jesus christ his son. and as the solemn festival of easter was approaching, he commanded them to fast according to the custom of the faithful. on the day of the passion of our lord, the eve of the day on which clovis was to be baptised, early in the morning the bishop went to the king and queen and led them to an oratory dedicated to the blessed peter, prince of the apostles. suddenly the chapel was filled with a light so brilliant that the sunshine became as shadow, and from the midst of this light there came a voice saying: "peace be with you, it is i, fear not and abide in my love." after these words the light faded, but there remained in the chapel an odour of ineffable sweetness. then, with his face shining like the countenance of moses, and illuminated within by a divine brightness, the holy bishop prophesied and said: "clovis and clotilde, your descendants shall set back the boundaries of the kingdom. they shall raise the church of jesus christ and triumph over foreign nations provided they fall not from virtue and depart not from the way of salvation, neither enter upon the sinful road leading to destruction and to those snares of deadly vices which overthrow empires and cause dominion to pass from one nation to another." meanwhile the way is being prepared from the king's palace to the baptistry; curtains and costly draperies are hung up: the houses on each side of the street are covered with hangings; the church is decorated, and the baptistry is strewn with balsam and all manner of sweet-smelling herbs. overwhelmed with the lord's favour the people seem already to taste the delights of paradise. the procession sets out from the palace; the clergy lead with crosses and banners, singing hymns and sacred canticles; then comes the bishop leading the king by the hand; and lastly the queen follows with the people. by the way the king asked the bishop if yonder was the kingdom of god he had promised him. "no," answered the blessed remi, "but it is the beginning of the road that leads to it." when they had reached the baptistry, the priest who bore the holy chrism was hindered by the crowd from reaching the sacred font; so that, as god had ordained, there was no holy oil for the benediction at the font. then the pontiff raises his eyes to heaven, and prays in silence and in tears. straightway there descends a dove white as snow, bearing in its beak an ampulla full of chrism sent from heaven. the heavenly oil emits a delicious perfume, which intoxicates the multitude with a delight such as they had never experienced before that hour. the holy bishop takes the ampulla, sprinkles the baptismal water with chrism, and straightway the dove vanishes. at the sight of so great a miracle of grace, the king, transported with joy, renounces satan and his pomps and his works. he demands instant baptism, and bends over the fountain of life.[ ] [footnote : grégoire de tours, _le livre des miracles_, ed. bordier, , in vo, vol. ii, pp. , . hincmar, _vita sancti remigii_ in the _patrologie de migne_, vol. cxxv, pp. _et seq._ h. jadart, _bibliographie des ouvrages concernant la vie et le culte de saint remi, évêque de reims_, , in vo.] ever since then the kings of france have been anointed with the divine oil which the dove brought down from heaven. the holy ampulla containing it is kept in the church of saint remi at reims. and by god's grace on the day of the king's anointing this ampulla is always found full.[ ] [footnote : froissart, bk. ii, ch. lxxiv. le doyen de saint-thibaud, p. . vertot, _dissertation au sujet de la sainte ampoule conservée à reims_, in _mémoires de l'académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres_, , vol. ii, pp. - ; vol. iv, pp. - . leber, _des cérémonies du sacre ou recherches historiques et critiques sur les moeurs, les coutumes dans l'ancienne monarchie_, paris, reims, , in vo, pp. _et seq._] such was the clerks' story; and doubtless the peasants of domremy on a humbler note might have said as much or even more. we may believe that they used to sing the complaint of saint remi. every year, when on the st of october the festival of the patron saint came round, the priest was wont to pronounce an eulogium on the saint.[ ] [footnote : a. monteil, _histoire des français_, , vol. ii, p. .] about this time a mystery was performed at reims in which the miracles of the apostle of gaul were fully represented.[ ] [footnote : _mystère de saint remi_, arsenal library, ms. no. . . this mystery dates from the fifteenth century, from the time of the wars in champagne. the following lines relate to the misfortunes of the kingdom: saint-estienne o jhesucrist, qui les sains cieulx as de lumiere environnez, soleil et lune enluminés, et ordonnez à ta plaisance; pour le tres doulz païs de france les martirs, non pas un mais tous, a jointes mains et à genoux te requierent que tu effaces la grant doleur de france; et faces par ta sainte digne vertu qu'ilz aient paix; adfin que tu, ta doulce mere et tous les sains, et ceulx qui sont de pechiez sains, devotement servis y soient!... saint stephen o jesus christ who hast surrounded the heavens with light and kindled the sun and the moon, command, if it be thy will, the martyrs, not one only but all, to clasp their hands and on bended knee to implore thee to remove the great sorrow from france; and by thy holy and august merit ordain that they may have peace, that thou, thy sweet mother and all the saints and those who are cleansed from sin may be served devoutly!... saint-nicolas dieu tout puissant fay tant qu'il ysse hors du doulz païs sans amer que toutes gens doivent amer c'est france, où sont les bons chrestiens s'on les confort; si les soustiens car l'engin de leur adversaire et son faulx art les tire à faire contre ta sainte voulenté. ayez pitié de crestienté beau sire dieux tant en france qu'en autres lieux! ce seroit pitié à oultrance que si noble roiaume, comme france, fust par male temptacion mis du tout à perdicion.... fol. , verso. saint nicholas god all powerful grant that he may issue forth from that sweet land which all must love, all france, where are good christians, and may they be comforted, and may they be sustained; for the power of their adversary and his false art tempt them to withstand thy holy will. have pity on christendom, good lord god, on other lands as well as on france! it would be the worst of pities if so noble a kingdom as france were through much temptation to fall into perdition....] and among them were some which would appeal strongly to rustic souls. in his mortal life my lord saint remi had healed a blind man possessed of devils. a man bestowed his goods on the chapter of reims for the salvation of his soul and died; ten years after his death saint remi restored him to life, and made him declare his gift. being entertained by persons who had nothing to drink, the saint filled their cask with miraculous wine. he received from king clovis the gift of a mill; but when the miller refused to yield it up to him, my lord saint remi, by the power of god, threw down the mill, and cast it into the centre of the earth. one night when the saint was alone in his chapel, while all his clerks were asleep, the glorious apostles peter and paul came down from paradise to sing matins with him. who better than the folk of domremy should know of the baptism of king clovis of france, and of the descent of the holy ghost, at the singing of veni creator spiritus, bearing in its beak the holy ampulla, full of chrism blessed by our lord?[ ] [footnote : _mystère de saint remi_, arsenal library, ms. no. . , fol. , verso.] who better than they should understand the words addressed to the very christian king, by my lord saint remi, not doubtless in the church's latin, but in the good tongue of the people and very much like the following: "now, sire, take knowledge and serve god faithfully and judge justly, that thy kingdom may prosper. for if justice depart from it then shall this kingdom be in danger of perdition."[ ] [footnote : _mystère de saint remi_, fol. , verso.] in short, in one way or another, whether through the clerks who directed her or through the peasants among whom she dwelt, jeanne had knowledge of the good archbishop remi, who so dearly cherished the royal blood in the holy ampulla at reims, and of the anointing of the very christian kings.[ ] [footnote : _le bon archevesque remy, qui tant aime le sang royal, qui tant a son conseil loyal, qui tant aime dieu et l'Église._ _mystère de saint remi_, fol. . the good archbishop remi, who so dearly cherishes the _royal_ blood, so faithful in counsel, so devout a lover of god and the church.] and the angel appeared unto her and said: "daughter of god, thou shalt lead the dauphin to reims that he may there receive worthily his anointing."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] the maid understood. the scales fell from her eyes; a bright light was shed abroad in her mind. behold wherefore god had chosen her. through her the dauphin charles was to be anointed at reims. the white dove, which of old was sent to the blessed remi, was to come down again at the virgin's call. god, who loves the french, marks their king with a sign, and when there is no sign the royal power has departed. the anointing alone makes the king, and messire charles de valois had not been anointed. notwithstanding the father lies becrowned and besceptred in the basilica of saint-denys in france, the son is but the dauphin and will not enter into his inheritance till the day when the oil of the inexhaustible ampulla shall flow over his forehead. and god has chosen her, a young, ignorant peasant maid, to lead him, through the ranks of his enemies, to reims, where he shall receive the unction poured upon saint louis. unfathomable ways of god! the humble maid, knowing not how to ride a horse, unskilled in the arts of war, is chosen to bring to our lord his temporal vicar of christian france. henceforth jeanne knew what great deeds she was to bring to pass. but as yet she discerned not the means by which she was to accomplish them. "thou must fare forth into france," saint catherine and saint margaret said to her. "daughter of god, thou shalt lead the dauphin to reims[ ] that he may there receive worthily his anointing," the archangel michael said to her. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, p. ; vol. iii, p. , _passim_.] she must obey them--but how? if at that time there were not just at hand some devout adviser to direct her, one incident quite personal and unimportant, which then occurred in her father's house, may have sufficed to point out the way to the young saint. tenant-in-chief of the castle on the island in , and in elder of the community, jacques d'arc was one of the notables of domremy. the village folk held him in high esteem and readily entrusted him with difficult tasks. towards the end of march, , they sent him to vaucouleurs as their authorised proxy in a lawsuit they were conducting before robert de baudricourt. it was a question of the payment of damages required at once from the lord and the inhabitants of greux and domremy by a certain guyot poignant, of montigny-le-roi. these damages went back four years to when, as a return for his protection, the damoiseau of commercy had extorted from greux and domremy a sum amounting to two hundred and twenty golden crowns. guyot poignant had become security for this sum which had not been paid by the time fixed. the damoiseau seized poignant's wood, hay, and horses to the value of one hundred and twenty golden crowns, which amount the said poignant reclaimed from the nobles and villeins of greux and domremy. the suit was still pending in , when the community nominated jacques d'arc its authorised proxy, and sent him to vaucouleurs. the result of the dispute is not known; but it is sufficient to note that jeanne's father saw sire robert and had speech with him.[ ] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. cliv, clv, clvi, , _et seq._; _la france pendant la guerre de cent ans_, p. .] on his return home he must have more than once related these interviews, and told of the manners and words of so great a personage. and doubtless jeanne heard many of these things. assuredly she must have pricked up her ears at the name of baudricourt. then it was that her dazzling friend, the archangel knight, came once more to awaken the obscure thought slumbering within her: "daughter of god," he said, "go thou to the captain robert de baudricourt, in the town of vaucouleurs, that he may grant unto thee men who shall take thee to the gentle dauphin."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] resolved to obey faithfully the behest of the archangel which accorded with her own desire, jeanne foresaw that her mother, albeit pious, would grant her no aid in her design and that her father would strongly oppose it. therefore she refrained from confiding it to them.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] she thought that durand lassois would be the man to give her the succour of which she had need. in consideration of his age she called him uncle,--he was her elder by sixteen years. their kinship was by marriage: lassois had married one jeanne, daughter of one le vauseul, husbandman, and of aveline, sister of isabelle de vouthon, and consequently cousin-german of isabelle's daughter.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. . boucher de molandon, _la famille de jeanne d'arc_, p. . e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches sur la famille de jeanne d'arc_, introduction, pp. xxi, xxii.] with his wife, his father-in-law, and his mother-in-law, lassois dwelt at burey-en-vaulx, a hamlet of a few homesteads, lying on the left bank of the meuse, in the green valley, five miles from domremy, and less than two and a half miles from vaucouleurs.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , , . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. clxi. hinzelin, _chez jeanne d'arc_, p. .] jeanne went to see him, told him of her design, and showed him that she must needs see sire robert de baudricourt. that her kind kinsman might the more readily believe in her, she repeated to him the strange prophecy, of which we have already made mention: "was it not known of old," she said, "that a woman should ruin the kingdom of france and that a woman should re-establish it?"[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , .] this prognostication, it appears, caused durand lassois to reflect. of the two facts foretold therein, the first, the evil one, had come to pass in the town of troyes, when madame ysabeau had given the kingdom of the lilies and madame catherine of france to the king of england. it only remained to hope that the second, the good, would likewise come to pass. if in the heart of durand lassois there were any love for the dauphin charles, such must have been his desire; but on this point history is silent. during this visit to her cousin, jeanne met with others besides her kinsfolk, the vouthons and their children. she visited a young nobleman, by name geoffroy de foug, who dwelt in the parish of maxey-sur-vayse, of which the hamlet of burey formed part. she confided to him that she wanted to go to france. my lord geoffroy did not know much of jeanne's parents; he was ignorant even of their names. but the damsel seemed to him good, simple, pious, and he encouraged her in her marvellous undertaking.[ ] a week after her arrival at burey she attained her object: durand lassois consented to take her to vaucouleurs.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , ; vol. ii, p. .] before starting she asked a favour from her aunt aveline who was with child; she said to her: "if the babe you bear is a daughter, call her catherine in memory of my dead sister." catherine, who had married colin de greux, had just died.[ ] [footnote : genealogical inquiry made by the bailie of chaumont concerning jehan royer ( october, ) in e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches sur la famille de jeanne d'arc_, p. . [document of doubtful authenticity.]] chapter iii first visit to vaucouleurs--flight to neufchÂteau--journey to toul--second visit to vaucouleurs robert de baudricourt, who in those days commanded the town of vaucouleurs for the dauphin charles, was the son of liébault de baudricourt deceased, once chamberlain of robert, duke of bar, governor of pont-à-mousson, and of marguerite d'aunoy, lady of blaise in bassigny. fourteen or fifteen years earlier he had succeeded his two uncles, guillaume, the bastard of poitiers, and jean d'aunoy as bailie of chaumont and commander of vaucouleurs. his first wife had been a rich widow; after her death he had married, in , another widow, as rich as the first, madame alarde de chambley. and it is a fact that the peasants of uruffe and of gibeaumex stole the cart carrying the cakes ordered for the wedding feast. sire robert was like all the warriors of his time and country; he was greedy and cunning; he had many friends among his enemies and many enemies among his friends; he fought now for his own side, now against it, but always for his own advantage. for the rest he was no worse than his fellows, and one of the least stupid.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . le r.p. benoît, _histoire ecclésiastique et politique de la ville et du diocèse de toul_, toul, , p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. clxii, clxiii. léon mougenot, _jeanne d'arc, le duc de lorraine et le sire de baudricourt_, , in vo. e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches_, p. xviii. g. nioré, _le pays de jeanne d'arc_, in _mémoires de la société académique de l'aube_, , vol. xxxi, pp. - . de pange, _le pays de jeanne d'arc; le fief et l'arrière-fief. les baudricourt_, paris, , in vo.] clad in a poor red gown,[ ] but her heart bright with mystic love, jeanne climbed the hill dominating the town and the valley. without any difficulty she entered the castle, for its gates were opened as freely as if it had been a fair; and she was led into the hall where was sire robert among his men-at-arms. she heard the voice saying to her: "that is he!"[ ] and immediately she went straight to him, and spoke to him fearlessly, beginning, doubtless, by saying what she deemed to be most urgent: "i am come to you, sent by messire," she said, "that you may send to the dauphin and tell him to hold himself in readiness, but not to give battle to his enemies."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] assuredly she must thus have spoken, prompted by a new revelation from her voices. and it is important to notice that she repeated word for word what had been said seventy-five years earlier, not far from vaucouleurs, by a peasant of champagne who was a vavasour, that is, a freeman. this peasant's career had begun like jeanne's, but had come to a much more abrupt conclusion. jacques d'arc's daughter had not been the first to say that revelations had been made to her concerning the war. periods of great distress are the times when inspired persons most commonly appear. thus it came to pass that in the days of the plague and of the black prince the vavasour of champagne heard a voice coming forth from a beam of light. while he was at work in the fields the voice had said to him: "go thou, and warn john, king of france, that he fight not against any of his enemies." it was a few days before the battle of poitiers.[ ] [footnote : _chronique des quatre premiers valois_, ed. s. luce, paris, , in vo, pp. - .] then the counsel was wise; but in the month of may, , it seemed less wise, and appeared to have little bearing on the state of affairs at that time. since the disaster of verneuil, the french had not felt equal to giving battle to their enemies; and they were not thinking of it. towns were taken and lost, skirmishes were fought, sallies were attempted, but the enemy was not engaged in pitched battles. there was no need to restrain the dauphin charles, whom in those days nature and fortune rendered unadventurous.[ ] about the time that jeanne was uttering these words before sire robert, the english in france were preparing an expedition, and were hesitating, unable to decide whether to march on angers or on orléans.[ ] [footnote : p. de fénin, _mémoires_, ed. mademoiselle dupont, paris, , pp. , , .] [footnote : l. jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise au siège d'orléans_, orléans, , in vo, pp. , .] jeanne gave utterance according to the promptings of her archangel and her saints, and touching warfare and the condition of the kingdom they knew neither more nor less than she. but it is not surprising that those who believe themselves sent by god should ask to be waited for. and again in the damsel's fear lest the french knights should once more give battle after their own guise there was much of the sound common sense of the people. they were only too well acquainted with knightly warfare. perfectly calm and self-possessed, jeanne went on and uttered a prophecy concerning the dauphin: "before mid lent my lord will grant him aid." then straightway she added: "but in very deed the realm belongs not to the dauphin. nathless it is messire's will that the dauphin should be king and receive the kingdom in trust--_en commande_.[ ] notwithstanding his enemies, the dauphin shall be king; and it is i who shall lead him to his anointing." [footnote : _et quod aberet in commendam: illud regnum_, _trial_, vol. ii, p. (evidence of bertrand de poulengy).] doubtless the title messire, in the sense in which she employed it, sounded strange and obscure, since sire robert, failing to understand it, asked: "who is messire?" "the king of heaven," the damsel answered. she had made use of another term, concerning which, as far as we know, sire robert made no remark; and yet it is suggestive.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] that word _commande_ employed in matters connected with inheritance signified something given in trust.[ ] if the king received the kingdom _en commande_ he would merely hold it in trust. thus the maid's utterance agreed with the views of the most pious concerning our lord's government of kingdoms. by herself she could not have happened on the word or the idea; she had obviously been instructed by one of those churchmen whose influence we have discerned already[ ] in the lorraine prophecy, but the trace of whom has completely vanished. [footnote : see la curne and godefroy for the word _commande_. durand de maillane, _dictionnaire de droit canonique_, , vol. i, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : see _ante_, p. , _post_, pp. , .] touching things spiritual jeanne held converse with several priests; among others with messire arnolin, of gondrecourt-le-château, and messire dominique jacob, priest of moutier-sur-saulx, who was her confessor.[ ] it is a pity we do not know what these ecclesiastics thought of the insatiable cruelty of the english, of the pride of my lord duke of burgundy, of the misfortunes of the dauphin, and whether they did not hope that one day our lord jesus christ at the prayer of the common folk would condescend to grant the kingdom _en commande_ to charles, son of charles. it was possibly from one of these that jeanne derived her theocratic ideas.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , , , .] [footnote : as for nicolas de vouthon, priest of the abbey of cheminon, what is stated concerning him in the evidence of the nd and rd november, , seems improbable. _trial_, vol. v, p. . e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches sur la famille de jeanne d'arc_, pp. xviii _et seq._, .] while she was speaking to sire robert there was present, and not by chance merely, a certain knight of lorraine, bertrand de poulengy, who possessed lands near gondrecourt and held an office in the provostship of vaucouleurs.[ ] he was then about thirty-six years of age. he was a man who associated with churchmen; at least he was familiar with the manner of speech of devout persons.[ ] perhaps he now saw jeanne for the first time; but he must certainly have heard of her; and he knew her to be good and pious. twelve years before he had frequently visited domremy; he knew the country well; he had sat beneath _l'arbre des dames_, and had been several times to the house of jacques d'arc and romée, whom he held to be good honest farmer folk.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. . servais, in _mémoires de la société des lettres, sciences et arts de bar-le-duc_, vol. vi, p. . e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches_, p. xxviii. s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, proofs and illustrations xcv, p. and note . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : this appears from the manner in which he reports jeanne's words.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , .] it may be that bertrand de poulengy was struck by the damsel's speech and bearing; it is more likely that the knight was in touch with certain ecclesiastics unknown to us, who were instructing the peasant seeress with an eye to rendering her better able to serve the realm of france and the church. however that may be, in bertrand she had a friend who was to be her strong support in the future. for the nonce, however, if our information be correct, he did nothing and spoke not a word. perhaps he judged it best to wait until the commander of the town should be ready to grant a more favourable hearing to the saint's request. sire robert understood nothing of all this; one point only appeared plain to him, that jeanne would make a fine camp-follower and that she would be a great favourite with the men-at-arms.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. .] in dismissing the villein who had brought her, he gave him a piece of advice quite in keeping with the wisdom of the time concerning the chastising of daughters: "take her back to her father and box her ears well." sire robert held such discipline to be excellent, for more than once he urged uncle lassois to take jeanne home well whipped.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. . l. mougenot, _jeanne d'arc, le duc de lorraine et le sire de baudricourt_, nancy, , in vo.] after a week's absence she returned to the village. neither the captain's contumely nor the garrison's insults had humiliated or discouraged her. imagining that her voices had foretold them,[ ] she held them to be proofs of the truth of her mission. like those who walk in their sleep she was calm in the face of obstacles and yet quietly persistent. in the house, in the garden, in the meadow, she continued to sleep that marvellous slumber, in which she dreamed of the dauphin, of his knights, and of battles with angels hovering above. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] she found it impossible to be silent; on all occasions her secret escaped from her. she was always prophesying, but she was never believed. on st. john the baptist's eve, about a month after her return, she said sententiously to michel lebuin, a husbandman of burey, who was quite a boy: "between coussey and vaucouleurs is a girl who in less than a year from now will cause the dauphin to be anointed king of france."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] one day meeting gérardin d'epinal, the only man at domremy not of the dauphin's party, whose head according to her own confession she would willingly have cut off, although she was godmother to his son, she could not refrain from announcing even to him in veiled words her mystic dealing with god: "gossip, if you were not a burgundian there is something i would tell you."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] the good man thought it must be a question of an approaching betrothal and that jacques d'arc's daughter was about to marry one of the lads with whom she had broken bread under _l'arbre des fées_ and drunk water from the gooseberry spring. alas! how greatly would jacques d'arc have desired the secret to be of that nature. this upright man was very strict; he was careful concerning his children's conduct; and jeanne's behaviour caused him anxiety. he knew not that she heard voices. he had no idea that all day paradise came down into his garden, that from heaven to his house a ladder was let down, on which there came and went without ceasing more angels than had ever trodden the ladder of the patriarch jacob; neither did he imagine that for jeannette alone, without any one else perceiving it, a mystery was being played, a thousand times richer and finer than those which on feast days were acted on platforms, in towns like toul and nancy. he was miles away from suspecting such incredible marvels. but what he did see was that his daughter was losing her senses, that her mind was wandering, and that she was giving utterance to wild words. he perceived that she could think of nothing but cavalcades and battles. he must have known something of the escapade at vaucouleurs. he was terribly afraid that one day the unhappy child would go off for good on her wanderings. this agonising anxiety haunted him even in his sleep. one night he dreamed that he saw her fleeing with men-at-arms; and this dream was so vivid that he remembered it when he awoke. for several days he said over and over again to his sons, jean and pierre: "if i really believed that what i dreamed of my daughter would ever come true, i would rather see her drowned by you; and if you would not do it i would drown her myself."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , .] isabelle repeated these words to her daughter hoping that they might alarm her and cause her to correct her ways. devout as she was, jeanne's mother shared her father's fears. the idea that their daughter was in danger of becoming a worthless creature was a cruel thought to these good people. in those troubled times there was a whole multitude of these wild women whom the men-at-arms carried with them on horseback. each soldier had his own. it is not uncommon for saints in their youth by the strangeness of their behaviour to give rise to such suspicions. and jeanne displayed those signs of sainthood. she was the talk of the village. folk pointed at her mockingly, saying: "there goes she who is to restore france and the royal house."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. , cf. p. , "_et alii juvenes de ea deridebant_," said colin's son, referring to her piety.] the neighbours had no difficulty in finding a cause for the strangeness which possessed the damsel. they attributed it to some magic spell. she had been seen beneath the _beau mai_ bewreathing it with garlands. the old beech was known to be haunted as well as the spring near by. it was well known, too, that the fairies cast spells. there were those who discovered that jeanne had met a wicked fairy there. "jeannette has met her fate beneath _l'arbre des fées_,"[ ] they said. would that none but peasants had believed that story! [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] on the nd of june, from the duke of bedford, regent of france for henry vi, antoine de vergy, governor of champagne, received a commission to furnish forth a thousand men-at-arms for the purpose of bringing the castellany of vaucouleurs into subjection to the english. three weeks later, commanded by the two vergy, antoine and jean, the little company set forth. it consisted of four knights-banneret, fourteen knights-bachelor, and three hundred and sixty-three men-at-arms. pierre de trie, commander of beauvais, jean, count of neufchâtel and fribourg, were ordered to join the main body.[ ] [footnote : report of andré d'epernon in s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. clxvii and proofs and illustrations, pp. , , .] on the march, as was his custom, antoine de vergy laid waste all the villages of the castellany with fire and sword. threatened once again with a disaster with which they were only too well acquainted, the folk of domremy and greux already beheld their cattle captured, their barns set on fire, their wives and daughters ravished. having experienced before that the castle on the island was not secure enough, they determined to flee and seek refuge in their market town of neufchâteau, only five miles away from domremy. thus they set out towards the middle of july. abandoning their houses and fields and driving their cattle before them, they followed the road, through the fields of wheat and rye and up the vine-clad hills to the town, wherein they lodged as best they could.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , ; vol. ii, pp. - . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. clxxvi.] the d'arc family was taken in by the wife of jean waldaires, who was called la rousse. she kept an inn, where lodged soldiers, monks, merchants, and pilgrims. there were some who suspected her of harbouring bad women.[ ] and there is reason to believe that certain of her women customers were of doubtful reputation. albeit she herself was of good standing, that is to say, she was rich. she had money enough to lend sometimes to her fellow-citizens.[ ] although neufchâteau belonged to the duke of lorraine, who was of the burgundian party, it has been thought that the hostess of this inn inclined towards the armagnacs; but it is vain to attempt to discover the sentiments of la rousse concerning the troubles of the kingdom of france.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. clxxvii.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , ; vol. ii, p. .] at neufchâteau as at domremy jeanne drove her father's beasts to the field and kept his flocks.[ ] handy and robust she used also to help la rousse in her household duties.[ ] this circumstance gave rise to the malicious report set on foot by the burgundians that she had been serving maid in an inn frequented by drunkards and bad women.[ ] the truth is that jeanne, when she was not tending the cattle, and helping her hostess, passed all her time in church.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , , , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] there were two fine religious houses in the town, one belonging to the grey friars, the other to the sisters of st. claire, the sons and daughters of good st. francis.[ ] the monastery of the grey friars had been built two hundred years earlier by mathieu ii of lorraine. the reigning duke had recently added richly to its endowments. noble ladies, great lords, and among others a bourlémont lord of domremy and greux lay there beneath brasses.[ ] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. clxxvii.] [footnote : expilly, _dictionnaire géographique de la france_, under the word _neufchâteau_.] in the flower of their history these mendicant monks of old had welcomed to their third order crowds of citizens and peasants as well as multitudes of princes and kings.[ ] now they languished corrupt and decadent among the french friars. quarrels and schisms were frequent. notwithstanding colette of corbie's attempted restoration of the rule, the old discipline was nowhere observed.[ ] these mendicants distributed leaden medals, taught short prayers to serve as charms, and vowed special devotion to the holy name of jesus.[ ] [footnote : s.m. de vernon, _histoire générale et particulière du tiers-ordre de saint-françois_, paris, , vols. in vo. hilarion de nolay, _histoire du tiers-ordre_, lyon, , in to.] [footnote : acta sanctorum, march, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : wadding, _annales minorum_, vol. v, p. .] during the fortnight jeanne spent in the town of neufchâteau,[ ] she frequented the church of the grey friars monastery, and two or three times confessed to brethren of the order.[ ] it has been stated that she belonged to the third order of st. francis, and the inference has been drawn that her affiliation dated from her stay at neufchâteau.[ ] [footnote : jean morel declares that she was at neufchâteau four days, and he adds: "what i tell you i know, for i was with the others at neufchâteau" (_trial_, vol. ii, p. ); gérard guillemette speaks of four or five days (_ibid._, p. ); nicolas bailly of three or four (_ibid._, p. ). but jeanne told her judges at rouen that she stayed a fortnight at neufchâteau (_ibid._, vol. i, p. ). when she gave her evidence, the event was less remote, and doubtless her recollection of it was more accurate.] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, chs. ix, x, xi. abbé v. mourot, _jeanne d'arc et le tiers-ordre de saint-françois_, saint-dié, , in vo. l. de kerval, _jeanne d'arc et les franciscains_, vanves, , in mo. _e iera begina_, says a correspondent of morosini, edited by lefèvre-pontalis, vol. iii, p. and note .] such an inference is very doubtful; and in any case the affiliation cannot have been very ceremonious. it is difficult to see how in so short a time the friars could have instructed her in the practices of franciscan piety. she was far too imbued with ecclesiastical notions concerning the spiritual and the temporal power, she was too full of mysteries and revelations to imbibe their spirit. besides, her sojourn at neufchâteau was troubled by anxiety and broken by absences. in this town she received a summons to appear before the official of toul, in whose jurisdiction she was, as a native of domremy-de-greux. a young bachelor of domremy alleged that a promise of marriage had been given him by jacques d'arc's daughter. jeanne denied it. he persisted in his statement, and summoned her to appear before the official.[ ] to this ecclesiastical tribunal such cases belonged; it pronounced judgment on questions of nullity of marriage or validity of betrothal. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . e. misset, _jeanne d'arc champenoise_, , in vo, p. .] the curious part of jeanne's case is that her parents were against her, and on the side of the young man. it was in defiance of their wishes that she defended the suit and appeared before the official. later she declared that in this matter she had disobeyed them, and that it was the only time she had failed in the submission she owed her parents.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. : _quibus obediebat in omnibus, nisi in processu tullensi_.] the journey from neufchâteau to toul and back involved travelling more than twenty leagues on foot, over roads infested with bands of armed men, through a country desolated by fire and sword, from which the peasants of domremy had recently fled in a panic. to such a journey, however, she made up her mind against the will of her parents. possibly she may have appeared before the judge at toul, not once but two or three times. and there was a great chance of her having to journey day and night with her so-called betrothed, for he was passing over the same road at the same time. her voices bade her fear nothing. before the judge she swore to speak the truth, and denied having made any promise of marriage. she had done nothing wrong. but an evil interpretation was set upon conduct which proceeded alone from an innocence both singular and heroic. at neufchâteau it was said that on those journeys she had consumed all her substance. but what was her substance? alas! she had set out with nothing. she may have been driven to beg her bread from door to door. saints receive alms as they give them: for the love of god. there was a story that her betrothed seeing her living during the trial in company with bad women, had abandoned his demand for justice, renouncing a bride of such bad repute.[ ] such calumnies were only too readily believed. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . article of the deed of accusation is drawn up as the result of an inquiry made at neufchâteau.] after a fortnight's sojourn at neufchâteau, jacques d'arc and his family returned to domremy. the orchard, the house, the monastery, the village, the fields,--in what a state of desolation did they behold them! the soldiers had plundered, ravaged, burnt everything. unable to exact ransom from the villeins who had taken flight, the men-at-arms had destroyed all their goods. the monastery once as proud as a fortress, with its watchman's tower, was now nothing but a heap of blackened ruins. and now on holy days the folk of domremy must needs go to hear mass in the church of greux.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. , _passim_.] so full of danger were the times that the villagers were ordered to keep in fortified houses and castles.[ ] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. clxxx, .] meanwhile the english were laying siege to the town of orléans, which belonged to their prisoner duke charles. by so doing they acted badly, for, having possession of his body, they ought to have respected his property.[ ] they built fortified towers round the city of orléans, the very heart of france; and it was said that they had entrenched themselves there in great strength.[ ] now saint catherine and saint margaret loved the land of the lilies; they were the sworn friends and gentle cousins of the dauphin charles. they talked to the shepherd maid of the misfortunes of the kingdom and continued to say: "leave thy village and go into france."[ ] [footnote : _mistère du siège_, v, .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, chs. xxxiv, xxxv. jean chartier, _chronique_, chs. xxxii, xxxv; _journal du siège_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] jeanne was all the more impatient to set forth because she had herself announced the time of her arrival in france, and that time was drawing near. she had told the commander of vaucouleurs that succour should come to the dauphin before mid lent. she did not want to make her voices lie.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] towards the middle of january occurred the opportunity she was looking for of returning to burey. at this time durand lassois' wife, jeanne le vauseul, was brought to bed.[ ] it was the custom in the country for the young kinswomen and friends of the mother to attend and wait upon her and her babe. a good and kindly custom, followed all the more readily because of the opportunity it gave of pleasant meetings and cheerful gossip.[ ] jeanne urged her uncle to ask her father that she might be sent to tend the sick woman, and lassois consented: he was always ready to do what his niece asked him, and perhaps his complaisance was encouraged by pious persons of some importance.[ ] but how this father, who shortly before had said that he would throw his daughter into the meuse rather than that she should go off with men-at-arms, should have allowed her to go to the gates of the town, protected by a kinsman of whose weakness he was well aware, is hard to understand. however so he did.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. clxxx. e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches_, p. xxiii.] [footnote : _les caquets de l'accouchée_, new edition by e. fournier and le roux de lincy, paris, , in mo, introduction.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , , .] leaving the home of her childhood, which she was never to see again, jeanne, in company with durand lassois, passed down her native valley in its winter bareness. as she went by the house of the husbandman gérard guillemette of greux, whose children and jacques d'arc's were great friends, she cried: "good-bye! i am going to vaucouleurs."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] a few paces further she saw her friend mengette: "good-bye, mengette," she said. "god bless thee."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] and by the way, on the doorsteps of the houses, whenever she saw faces she knew, she bade them farewell.[ ] but she avoided hauviette with whom she had played and slept in childhood and whom she dearly loved. if she were to bid her good-bye she feared that her heart would fail her. it was not till later that hauviette heard of her friend's departure and then she wept bitterly.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. : _dixit quod nescivit recessum dictæ johannæ; quæ testis propter hoc multum flebat, quia eam multum propter suam bonitatem diligebat et quod sua socia erat_.] on her second arrival at vaucouleurs, jeanne imagined that she was setting foot in a town belonging to the dauphin, and, in the language of the day, entering the royal antechamber.[ ] she was mistaken. since the beginning of august, , the commander of vaucouleurs had yielded the fortress to antoine de vergy, but had not yet surrendered it to him. [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] it was one of those promises to capitulate at the end of a given time. they were not uncommon in those days, and they ceased to be valid if the fortress were relieved before the day fixed for its surrender.[ ] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. clxviii, , .] jeanne went to sire robert in his castle just as she had done nine months before; and this was the revelation she made to him: "my lord captain," she said, "know that god has again given me to wit, and commanded me many times to go to the gentle dauphin, who must be and who is the true king of france, and that he shall grant me men-at-arms with whom i shall raise the siege of orléans and take him to his anointing at reims."[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. ; _la chronique de lorraine_ in dom calmet, _histoire de lorraine_, vol. iii, col. vj, gives an amplified version of these words, the authenticity of which is doubtful.] this time she announces that it is her mission to deliver orléans. and the anointing is not to come to pass until this the first part of her task shall have been accomplished. we cannot fail to recognise the readiness and the tact with which the voices altered their commands previously given, according to the necessities of the moment. robert's manner towards jeanne had completely changed. he said nothing about boxing her ears and sending her back to her parents. he no longer treated her roughly; and if he did not believe her announcement at least he listened to it readily. in one of her conversations with him she spoke of strange matters: "once i have accomplished the behest messire has given me, i shall marry and i shall bear three sons, the eldest of whom shall be pope, the second emperor, and the third king." sire robert answered gayly: "since thy sons are to be such great personages, i should like to give thee one. thereby should i myself have honour." jeanne replied: "nay, gentle robert, nay. it is not yet time. the holy ghost shall appoint the time."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . the source is doubtful. nevertheless the accusation here lays stress on these facts produced by the inquiry. if jeanne denied having spoken these words, it was because she had forgotten them, or because they had been so changed that she could disavow the form in which they were presented to her.] to judge from the few of her words handed down to us, in the early days of her mission the young prophetess spoke alternately two different languages. her speech seemed to flow from two distinct sources. the one ingenuous, candid, naïve, concise, rustically simple, unconsciously arch, sometimes rough, alike chivalrous and holy, generally bearing on the inheritance and the anointing of the dauphin and the confounding of the english. this was the language of her voices, her own, her soul's language. the other, more subtle, flavoured with allegory and flowers of speech, critical with scholastic grace, bearing on the church, suggesting the clerk and betraying some outside influence. the words she uttered to sire robert touching the children she should bear are of the second sort. they are an allegory. her triple birth signifies that the peace of christendom shall be born of her work, that after she shall have fulfilled her divine mission, the pope, the emperor, and the king--all three sons of god--shall cause concord and love to reign in the church of jesus christ. the apologue is quite clear; and yet a certain amount of intelligence is necessary for its comprehension. the captain failed to understand it; he interpreted it literally and answered accordingly, for he was a simple fellow and a merry.[ ] [footnote : see _ante_, page .] jeanne lodged in the town with humble folk, henri leroyer and his wife catherine, friends of her cousin lassois. she used to occupy her time in spinning, being a good spinster; and the little she had she gave to the poor. with catherine she went to the parish church.[ ] in the morning, in her most devout moods, she would climb the hill, round the foot of which cluster the roofs of the town, and enter the chapel of sainte marie-de-vaucouleurs. this collegiate church, built in the reign of philippe vi, adjoined the _château_ wherein dwelt the commander of vaucouleurs. the venerable stone nave rose up boldly towards the east, overlooking the vast extent of hills and meadows, and dominating the valley where jeanne had been born and bred. she used to hear mass and remain long in prayer.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] under the chapel, in the crypt, there was an image of the virgin, ancient and deeply venerated, called notre-dame-de-la-voûte.[ ] it worked miracles, but especially on behalf of the poor and needy. jeanne delighted to remain in this dark and lonely crypt, where the saints preferred to visit her. [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. cxcxiv.] one day a young clerk, barely more than a child, who waited in the chapel, saw the damsel motionless, with hands clasped, head thrown back, eyes full of tears raised to heaven; and as long as he lived the vision of that rapture remained imprinted on his mind.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , (evidence of jean le fumeux in the rehabilitation trial).] she confessed often, usually to jean fournier, priest of vaucouleurs.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] her hostess was touched by the goodness and gentleness of her manner of life; but she was profoundly agitated when one day the damsel said to her: "dost thou not know it hath been prophesied that france ruined by a woman shall be saved by a maiden from the lorraine marches?" leroyer's wife knew as well as durand lassois that madame ysabeau, as full of wickedness as herodias, had delivered up madame catherine of france and the kingdom of the lilies to the king of england. and henceforth she was almost persuaded to believe that jeanne was the maid announced by the prophecy.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] this pious damsel held converse with devout persons and also with men of noble rank. to all alike she said: "i must to the gentle dauphin. it is the will of messire, the king of heaven, that i wend to the gentle dauphin. i am sent by the king of heaven. i must go even if i go on my knees."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] revelations of this nature she made to messire aubert, lord of ourches. he was a good frenchman and of the armagnac party, since four years earlier he had made war against the english and burgundians. she told him that she must go to the dauphin, that she demanded to be taken to him, and that to him should redound profit and honour incomparable. at length through her illuminations and her prophecies, her fame was spread abroad in the town; and her words were found to be good.[ ] [footnote : _quæ puella multum bene loquebatur._ _trial_, vol. ii, p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. .] in the garrison there was a man-at-arms of about twenty-eight years of age, jean de novelompont or nouillompont, who was commonly called jean de metz. by rank a freeman, albeit not of noble estate, he had acquired or inherited the lordship of nouillompont and hovecourt, situate in that part of barrois which was outside the duke's domain; and he bore its name.[ ] formerly in the pay of jean de wals, captain and provost of stenay, he was now, in , in the service of the commander of vaucouleurs. [footnote : _ibid._, vol. v, p. ; _journal du siège_, p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. xcv, cxi, cxxvj. de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. , note. e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches_, pp. xxv _et seq._] of his morals and manner of life we know nothing, except that three years before he had sworn a vile oath and been condemned to pay a fine of two _sols_.[ ] apparently when he took the oath he was in great wrath.[ ] he was more or less intimate with bertrand de poulengy, who had certainly spoken to him of jeanne. [footnote : _a sol tournois_ is the twentieth part of a _livre tournois_ (w.s.).] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. cxc, , .] one day he met the damsel and said to her: "well, _ma mie_, what are you doing here? must the king be driven from his kingdom and we all turn english?"[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. - . e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches_, pp. xxvi, xxvii.] such words from a young lorraine warrior are worthy of notice. the treaty of troyes did not subject france to england; it united the two kingdoms. if war continued after as before, it was merely to decide between the two claimants, charles de valois and henry of lancaster. whoever gained the victory, nothing would be changed in the laws and customs of france. yet this poor freebooter of the german marches imagined none the less that under an english king he would be an englishman. many french of all ranks believed the same and could not suffer the thought of being anglicised; in their minds their own fates depended on the fate of the kingdom and of the dauphin charles. jeanne answered jean de metz: "i came hither to the king's territory to speak with sire robert, that he may take me or command me to be taken to the dauphin; but he heeds neither me nor my words." then, with the fixed idea welling up in her heart that her mission must be begun before the middle of lent: "notwithstanding, ere mid lent, i must be before the dauphin, were i in going to wear my legs to the knees."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] a report ran through the towns and villages. it was said that the son of the king of france, the dauphin louis, who had just entered his fifth year, had been recently betrothed to the daughter of the king of scotland, the three-year-old madame margaret, and the common people celebrated this royal union with such rejoicings as were possible in a desolated country.[ ] jeanne, when she heard these tidings, said to the man-at-arms: "i must go to the dauphin, for no one in the world, no king or duke or daughter of the king of scotland, can restore the realm of france." [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. cxci.] then straightway she added: "in me alone is help, albeit for my part, i would far rather be spinning by my poor mother's side, for this life is not to my liking. but i must go; and so i will, for it is messire's command that i should go." she said what she thought. but she did not know herself; she did not know that her voices were the cries of her own heart, and that she longed to quit the distaff for the sword. jean de metz asked, as sire robert had done: "who is messire?" "he is god," she replied. then straightway, as if he believed in her, he said with a sudden impulse: "i promise you, and i give you my word of honour, that god helping me i will take you to the king." he gave her his hand as a sign that he pledged his word and asked: "when will you set forth?" "this hour," she answered, "is better than to-morrow; to-morrow is better than after to-morrow." jean de metz himself, twenty-seven years later, reported this conversation.[ ] if we are to believe him, he asked the damsel in conclusion whether she would travel in her woman's garb. it is easy to imagine what difficulties he would foresee in journeying with a peasant girl clad in a red frock over french roads infested with lecherous fellows, and that he would deem it wiser for her to disguise herself as a boy. she promptly divined his thought and replied: "i will willingly dress as a man."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. , .] there is no reason why these things should not have occurred. only if they did, then a lorraine freebooter suggested to the saint that idea concerning her dress which later she will think to have received from god.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , , . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] of his own accord, or rather, acting by the advice of some wise person, sire robert desired to know whether jeanne was not being inspired by an evil spirit. for the devil is cunning and sometimes assumes the mark of innocence. and as sire robert was not learned in such matters, he determined to take counsel with his priest. now one day when catherine and jeanne were at home spinning, they beheld the commander coming accompanied by the priest, messire jean fournier. they asked the mistress of the house to withdraw; and when they were left alone with the damsel, messire jean fournier put on his stole and pronounced some latin words which amounted to saying: "if thou be evil, away with thee; if thou be good, draw nigh."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] it was the ordinary formula of exorcism or, to be more exact, of conjuration. in the opinion of messire jean fournier these words, accompanied by a few drops of holy water, would drive away devils, if there should unhappily be any in the body of this village maiden. messire jean fournier was convinced that devils were possessed by an uncontrollable desire to enter the bodies of men, and especially of maidens, who sometimes swallowed them with their bread. they dwelt in the mouth under the tongue, in the nostrils, or penetrated down the throat into the stomach. in these various abodes their action was violent; and their presence was discerned by the contortions and howlings of the miserable victims who were possessed. pope st. gregory, in his dialogues, gives a striking example of the facility with which devils insinuate themselves into women. he tells how a nun, being in the garden, saw a lettuce which she thought looked tender. she plucked it, and, neglecting to bless it by making the sign of the cross, she ate of it and straightway fell possessed. a man of god having drawn near unto her, the demon began to cry out: "it is i! it is i who have done it! i was seated upon that lettuce. this woman came and she swallowed me." but the prayers of the man of god drove him out.[ ] [footnote : voragine, _la légende dorée_, in the festival of the exaltation of the holy cross.] the caution required in such a matter was therefore not exaggerated by messire jean fournier. possessed by the idea that the devil is subtle and woman corrupt, carefully and according to prescribed rules he proceeded to solve a difficult problem. it was generally no easy matter to recognise one possessed by the devil and to distinguish between a demoniac and a good christian. very great saints had not been spared the trial to which jeanne was to be subjected. having recited the formula and sprinkled the holy water, messire jean fournier expected, if the damsel were possessed, to see her struggle, writhe, and endeavour to take flight. in such a case he must needs have made use of more powerful formulæ, have sprinkled more holy water, and made more signs of the cross, and by such means have driven out the devils until they were seen to depart with a terrible noise and a noxious odour, in the shape of dragons, camels, or fish.[ ] [footnote : migne, _dictionnaire des sciences occultes_, paris, vols. in large vo, under the word _exorcisme_.] there was nothing suspicious in jeanne's attitude. no wild agitation, no frenzy. merely anxious and intreating, she dragged herself on her knees towards the priest. she did not flee before god's holy name. messire jean fournier concluded that no devil was within her. left alone in the house with catherine, jeanne, who now understood the meaning of the ceremony, showed strong resentment towards messire jean fournier. she reproached him with having suspected her: "it was wrong of him," she said to her hostess, "for, having heard my confession, he ought to have known me."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] she would have thanked the priest of vaucouleurs had she known how he was furthering the fulfilment of her mission by subjecting her to this ordeal. convinced that this maiden was not inspired by the devil, sire robert must have been driven to conclude that she might be inspired by god; for apparently he was a man of simple reasoning. he wrote to the dauphin charles concerning the young saint; and doubtless he bore witness to the innocence and goodness he beheld in her.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _mirouer des femmes vertueuses_ in the _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] although it looked as if the captain would have to resign his command to my lord de vergy, sire robert did not intend to quit his country where he had dealings with all parties. indeed he cared little enough about the dauphin charles, and it is difficult to see what personal interest he can have had in recommending him a prophetess. without pretending to discover what was passing in his mind, one may believe that he wrote to the dauphin on jeanne's behalf at the request of some of those persons who thought well of her, probably of bertrand de poulengy and of jean de metz. these two men-at-arms, seeing that the dauphin's cause was lost in the lorraine marches, had every reason for proceeding to the banks of the loire, where they might still fight with the hope of advantage. on the eve of setting out, they appeared disposed to take the seeress with them, and even to defray all her expenses, reckoning on repaying themselves from the royal coffers at chinon, and deriving honour and advantage from so rare a marvel. but they waited to be assured of the dauphin's consent.[ ] [footnote : extract from the eighth report of guillaume charrier, in the _trial_, vol. v, pp. _et seq._] meanwhile jeanne could not rest. she came and went from vaucouleurs to burey and from burey to vaucouleurs. she counted the days; time dragged for her as for a woman with child.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] at the end of january, feeling she could wait no longer, she resolved to go to the dauphin charles alone. she clad herself in garments belonging to durand lassois, and with this kind cousin set forth on the road to france.[ ] a man of vaucouleurs, one jacques alain, accompanied them.[ ] probably these two men expected that the damsel would herself realise the impossibility of such a journey and that they would not go very far. that is what happened. the three travellers had barely journeyed a league from vaucouleurs, when, near the chapel of saint nicholas, which rises in the valley of septfonds, in the middle of the great wood of saulcy, jeanne changed her mind and said to her comrades that it was not right of her to set out thus. then they all three returned to the town.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. - .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. - .] at length a royal messenger brought king charles's reply to the commander of vaucouleurs. the messenger was called colet de vienne.[ ] his name indicates that he came from the province which the dauphin had governed before the death of the late king, and which had remained unswervingly faithful to the unfortunate prince. the reply was that sire robert should send the young saint to chinon.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. , note .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , . anonymous poem on the arrival of the maid, in the _trial_, vol. v, p. .] that which jeanne had demanded and which it had seemed impossible to obtain was granted. she was to be taken to the king as she had desired and within the time fixed by herself. but this departure, for which she had so ardently longed, was delayed several days by a remarkable incident. the incident shows that the fame of the young prophetess had gone out through lorraine; and it proves that in those days the great of the land had recourse to saints in their hour of need. jeanne was summoned to nancy by my lord the duke of lorraine. furnished with a safe-conduct that the duke had sent her, she set forth in rustic jerkin and hose on a nag given her by durand lassois and jacques alain. it had cost them twelve francs which sire robert repaid them later out of the royal revenue.[ ] from vaucouleurs to nancy is twenty-four leagues. jean de metz accompanied her as far as toul; durand lassois went with her the whole way.[ ] [footnote : durand lassois says it cost twelve francs, jean de metz, sixteen. "_ce serait aujourd'hui un cheval de cent écus._" it would be a horse worth one hundred crowns to-day (l. champion, _jeanne d'arc écuyère_, , p. ). according to the reckoning of p. clément, from to francs (_jacques coeur et charles vii_, , p. lxvi).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , ; vol. ii, pp. , , , , - , , ; vol. iii, pp. , . extract from the eighth account of guillaume charrier and from the thirteenth account of hémon raguier, in the _trial_, vol. v, pp. _et seq._] before going to the duke of lorraine's palace, jeanne ascended the valley of the meurthe and went to worship at the shrine of the great saint nicholas, whose relics were preserved in the benedictine chapel of saint-nicholas-du-port. she did well; for saint nicholas was the patron saint of travellers.[ ] [footnote : _et postquam ipsa johanna fuit in peregrinacio in sancto nicolas et exstitit versus dominum ducem lotharingiae_, says bertrand de poulengy, _trial_, vol. ii, p. . cf. the evidence of j. robert, in e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches sur la famille de jeanne d'arc_, pp. , . it is impossible to find in the text of the _trial_ a redundancy such as the evidence of d. lannois and the woman le royer would lead us to expect. a. renard, _jeanne d'arc. examen d'une question de lieu_, orléans, , in vo, pages. g. de braux, _jeanne d'arc à saint-nicolas_, nancy, , in vo. de pimodan, _la première étape de jeanne d'arc_, , in vo, with maps.] chapter iv the journey to nancy--the itinerary of vaucouleurs--to sainte-catherine-de-fierbois by giving his eldest daughter, isabelle, the heiress of lorraine, in marriage to rené, the second son of madame yolande, queen of sicily and of jerusalem, and duchess of anjou,[ ] duke charles ii of lorraine, who was in alliance with the english, had recently done his cousin and friend, the duke of burgundy, a bad turn. rené of anjou, now in his twentieth year, was a man of culture as much in love with sound learning as with chivalry, and withal kind, affable, and gracious. when not engaged in some military expedition and in wielding the lance he delighted to illuminate manuscripts. he had a taste for flower-decked gardens and stories in tapestry; and like his fair cousin the duke of orléans he wrote poems in french.[ ] invested with the duchy of bar by the cardinal duke of bar, his great-uncle, he would inherit the duchy of lorraine after the death of duke charles which could not be far off. this marriage was rightly regarded as a clever stroke on the part of madame yolande. but he who reigns must fight. the duke of burgundy, ill content to see a prince of the house of anjou, the brother-in-law of charles of valois, established between burgundy and flanders, stirred up against rené the count of vaudémont, who was a claimant of the inheritance of lorraine. the angevin policy rendered a reconciliation between the duke of burgundy and the king of france difficult. thus was rené of anjou involved in the quarrels of his father-in-law of lorraine. it befell that in this year, , he was waging war against the citizens of metz, the war of the basketful of apples.[ ] it was so called because the cause of war was a basketful of apples which had been brought into the town of metz without paying duty to the officers of the duke of lorraine.[ ] [footnote : le père anselme, _histoire généalogique de la maison de france_, vol. ii, p. . ludovic drapeyron, _jeanne d'arc et philippe le bon_, in _revue de géographie_, november, , p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. lxvi, cxcix.] [footnote : _oeuvres du roi rené_, by le comte de quatrebarbes, angers, , vol. i, preface, pp. lxxvi _et seq._ lecoy de la marche, _le roi rené, sa vie, son administration, ses travaux artistiques et littéraires_, paris, , vols. in vo, and giry, review in the _revue critique_.] [footnote : _la guerre de la hottée de pommes._] [footnote : dom calmet, _histoire de lorraine_, vol. ii, col. , .] meanwhile rené's mother was sending convoys of victuals from blois to the citizens of orléans, besieged by the english.[ ] although she was not then on good terms with the counsellors of her son-in-law, king charles, she was vigilant in opposing the enemies of the kingdom when they threatened her own duchy of anjou. rené, duke of bar, had therefore ties of kindred, friendship, and interest binding him at the same time to the english and burgundian party as well as to the party of france. such was the situation of most of the french nobles. rené's communications with the commander of vaucouleurs were friendly and constant.[ ] it is possible that sire robert may have told him that he had a damsel at vaucouleurs who was prophesying concerning the realm of france. it is possible that the duke of bar, curious to see her, may have had her sent to nancy, where he was to be towards the th of february. but it is much more likely that rené of anjou thought less about the maid of vaucouleurs, whom he had never seen, than about the little moor and the jester who enlivened the ducal palace.[ ] in this month of february, , he was neither desirous nor able to concern himself greatly with the affairs of france; and although brother-in-law to king charles, he was preparing not to succour the town of orléans, but to besiege the town of metz.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. cxcvii, clxxxvii, clxxxviii, and . the register of the archives of la meuse, b. , bears trace of a regular correspondence between the duke of bar and baudricourt.] [footnote : _chronique du doyen de saint-thibaud_, in dom calmet, _histoire de lorraine_, proofs and illustrations, vol. ii, col. cxcix. s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. cxcvii _et seq._] [footnote : letter from jean desch, secretary of the town of metz, in the _trial_, vol. v, p. . dom calmet, _histoire de lorraine_, vol. ii, proofs and illustrations, col. cxcix.] old and ill, duke charles dwelt in his palace with his paramour alison du mai, a bastard and a priest's daughter, who had driven out the lawful wife, dame marguerite of bavaria. dame marguerite was pious and high-born, but old and ugly, while madame alison was pretty. she had borne duke charles several children.[ ] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. cc, note.] the following story appears the most authentic. there were certain worthy persons at nancy who wanted duke charles to take back his good wife. to persuade him to do so they had recourse to the exhortations of a saint, who had revelations from heaven, and who called herself the daughter of god. by these persons the damsel of domremy was represented to the enfeebled old duke as being a saint who worked miracles of healing. by their advice he had her summoned in the hope that she possessed secrets which should alleviate his sufferings and keep him alive. as soon as he saw her he asked whether she could not restore him to his former health and strength. she replied that "of such things" she knew nothing. but she warned him that his ways were evil, and that he would not be cured until he had amended them. she enjoined upon him to send away alison, his concubine, and to take back his good wife.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . dom calmet, _histoire de lorraine_, vol. iii, proofs and illustrations, col. vj.] no doubt she had been told to say something of this kind; but it also came from her own heart, for she loathed bad women. jeanne had come to the duke because it was his due, because a little saint must not refuse when a great lord wishes to consult her, and because in short she had been brought to nancy. but her mind was elsewhere; of nought could she think but of saving the realm of france. reflecting that madame yolande's son with a goodly company of men-at-arms would be of great aid to the dauphin, she asked the duke of lorraine, as she took her leave, to send this young knight with her into france. "give me your son," she said, "with men-at-arms as my escort. in return i will pray to god for your restoration to health." the duke did not give her men-at-arms; neither did he give her the duke of bar, the heir of lorraine, the ally of the english, who was nevertheless to join her soon beneath the standard of king charles. but he gave her four francs and a black horse.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , .] perhaps it was on her return from nancy that she wrote to her parents asking their pardon for having left them. the fact that they received a letter and forgave is all that is known.[ ] one cannot forbear surprise that jacques d'arc, all through the month that his daughter was at vaucouleurs, should have remained quietly at home, when previously, after having merely dreamed of her being with men-at-arms, he had threatened that if his sons did not drown her he would with his own hands. for he must have been aware that at vaucouleurs she was living with men-at-arms. knowing her temperament, he had displayed great simplicity in letting her go. one cannot help supposing that those pious persons who believed in jeanne's goodness, and desired her to be taken into france for the saving of the kingdom, must have undertaken to reassure her father and mother concerning their daughter's manner of life; perhaps they even gave the simple folk to understand that if jeanne did go to the king her family would derive therefrom honour and advantage. [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] before or after her journey to nancy (which is not known), certain of the townsfolk of vaucouleurs who believed in the young prophetess either had made, or purchased for her ready made, a suit of masculine clothing, a jerkin, cloth doublet, hose laced on to the coat, gaiters, spurs, a whole equipment of war. sire robert gave her a sword.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, pp. , , , . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, in the _revue historique_, vol. iv, p. .] she had her hair cut round like a boy.[ ] jean de metz and bertrand de poulengy, with their servants jean de honecourt and julien, were to accompany her as well as the king's messenger, colet de vienne, and the bowman richard.[ ] there was still some delay and councils were held, for the soldiers of antoine de lorraine, lord of joinville, infested the country. throughout the land there was nothing but pillage, robbery, murder, cruel tyranny, the ravishing of women, the burning of churches and abbeys, and the perpetration of horrible crimes. those were the hardest times ever known to man.[ ] but the damsel was not afraid, and said: "in god's name! take me to the gentle dauphin, and fear not any trouble or hindrance we may meet."[ ] [footnote : _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, in the _revue historique_, _ibid._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , , , ; vol. iii, p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. xcv, note . g. de braux and e. de bouteiller, _nouvelles recherches_, pp. xxix _et seq._] [footnote : _les routiers en lorraine_, in the _journal de la société archéologique de lorraine_, , p. . dr. a. lapierre, _la guerre de cent ans dans l'argonne et le rethélois_, sedan, , in vo.] [footnote : _journal du siège_ (interpolation); _chronique de la pucelle_, p. (a document of doubtful authority owing to its hagiographical character).] at length, on a day in february, so it is said, the little company issued forth from vaucouleurs by la porte de france.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, p. . _chronique du mont-saint-michel_, vol. i, p. . de boismarmin, _mémoire sur la date de l'arrivée de jeanne d'arc à chinon_, in the _bulletin du comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques_, , pp. - . ulysse chevalier, _l'abjuration de jeanne d'arc_, p. , note . jeanne had returned to vaucouleurs about the first sunday in lent, the th of february, (_trial_, vol. iii, p. ). bertrand de poulengy says that the journey to chinon ( th march) lasted eleven days, and that sometimes they travelled by night only (_ibid._). it is difficult to admit that they started from vaucouleurs on the rd of february, and that about kilometres were traversed in eleven days.] a few friends who had followed her so far watched her go. among them were her hosts, henri leroyer and catherine, and messire jean colin, canon of saint-nicolas, near vaucouleurs, to whom jeanne had confessed several times.[ ] they trembled for their saint as they thought of the perils of the way and the length of the journey. [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , .] "how can you," they asked her, "set forth on such a journey when there are men-at-arms on every hand?" but out of the serene peace of her heart she answered them: "i do not fear men-at-arms; my way has been made plain before me. if there be men-at-arms my lord god will make a way for me to go to my lord dauphin. for that am i come."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] sire robert was present at her departure. according to the customary formula he took an oath from each of the men-at-arms that they would surely and safely conduct her whom he confided to them. then, being a man of little faith, he said to jeanne in lieu of farewell: "go! and come what may."[ ] and the little company went off into the mist, which at that season envelops the meadows of the meuse. [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] they were obliged to avoid frequented roads and to beware especially of passing by joinville, montiers-en-saulx and sailly, where there were soldiers of the hostile party. sire bertrand and jean de metz were accustomed to such stealthy expeditions; they knew the byways and were acquainted with useful precautions, such as binding up the horses' feet in linen so as to deaden the sound of hoofs on the ground.[ ] [footnote : de pimodan, _la première étape de jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in vo, with maps.] at nightfall, having escaped all danger, the company approached the right bank of the marne and reached the abbey of saint-urbain.[ ] from time immemorial it had been a place of refuge, and in those days its abbot was arnoult of aulnoy, a kinsman of robert of baudricourt.[ ] the gate of the plain edifice opened for the travellers who passed beneath the groined vaulting of its roof.[ ] the abbey included a building set apart for strangers. there they found the resting-place of the first stage of their journey. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : jolibois, _dictionnaire historique de la haute-marne_, p. .] [footnote : de pimodan, _la première étape de jeanne d'arc_, _loc. cit._] on the right of the outer door was the abbey church wherein were preserved the relics of pope saint urbain. on the th of february, in the morning, jeanne attended conventual mass there.[ ] then she and her companions took horse again. crossing the marne by the bridge opposite saint-urbain, they pressed on towards france. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] they had still one hundred and twenty-five leagues to cover and three rivers to cross, in a country infested with brigands. through fear of the enemy they journeyed by night.[ ] when they lay down on the straw the damsel, keeping her hose laced to her coat, slept in her clothes, under a covering, between jean de metz and bertrand de poulengy in whom she felt confidence. they said afterwards that they never desired the damsel because of the holiness they beheld in her;[ ] that may or may not be believed. [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. . according to the somewhat improbable testimony of bertrand de poulengy. _see ante_, p. , note .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] jean de metz was filled with no such ardent faith in the prophetess, since he inquired of her: "will you really do what you say?" to which she replied: "have no fear. i do what i am commanded to do. my brethren in paradise tell me what i have to do. it is now four or five years since my brethren in paradise and messire told me that i must go forth to war to deliver the realm of france."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] these rude comrades did not all preserve an attitude of religious respect in her presence. certain mocked her and diverted themselves by talking before her as if they belonged to the english party. sometimes, as a joke, they got up a false alarm and pretended to turn back. their jests were wasted. she believed them, but she was not afraid, and would say gravely to those who thought to frighten her with the english: "be sure not to flee. i tell you in god's name, they will not harm you."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] ever at the approach of danger whether real or feigned, there came to her lips the words of encouragement: "do not be afraid. you will see how graciously the fair dauphin will look upon us when we come to chinon."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] her greatest grief was that she could not pray in church as often as she would like. every day she repeated: "if we could, we should do well to hear mass."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] as they avoided high roads they were not often in the way of bridges; and they were frequently forced to ford rivers in flood. they crossed the aube, near bar-sur-aube, the seine near bar-sur-seine, the yonne opposite auxerre, where jeanne heard mass in the church of saint-etienne; then they reached the town of gien, on the right bank of the loire.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, p. .] at length these lorrainers beheld a french town loyal to the king of france. they had travelled seventy-five leagues through the enemy's country without being attacked or molested. afterwards this was considered miraculous. but was it impossible for seven or eight armagnac horsemen to traverse english and burgundian lands without misadventure? the commander of vaucouleurs frequently sent letters to the dauphin which reached him, and the dauphin was in the habit of despatching messengers to the commander; colet de vienne had just borne his message.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , , , , .] in point of fact the followers of the dauphin ran risks well nigh as great in the provinces under his sway as in lands subject to other masters.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. v, p. . th. basin, vol. i, p. . bueil, _le jouvencel_, introduction. royal pardons, in e. boutaric, _institutions militaires de la france avant les armées permanentes...._ , in vo, p. . _récit du prieur de droillet_, ed. quicherat, in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, fourth series, vol. iii, p. . mantellier, _histoire de la communauté des marchands fréquentant la rivière de loire_, vol. i, p. . le p. h. denifle, _la désolation des églises, monastères, hôpitaux en france, vers le milieu du xv'e siècle_, mâcon, in vo.] freebooters in the pay of king charles, when they pillaged travellers and held them to ransom, did not stay to ask whether they were armagnacs or burgundians. indeed, it was after their passage of the loire that bertrand de poulengy and his companions found themselves exposed to the greatest danger. informed of their approach, certain men-at-arms of the french party went before and lay in ambush, waiting to surprise them. they intended to capture the damsel, cast her into a pit, and keep her there beneath a great stone, in the hope that the king who had sent for her would give a large sum for her rescue.[ ] it was the custom for freebooters and mercenaries thus to cast travellers into pits delivering them on payment of ransom. eighteen years before, at corbeil, five men had been kept in a pit on bread and water by burgundians. three of them died, being unable to pay the ransom.[ ] such a fate very nearly befell jeanne. but the wretches who were lying in wait for her, at the moment when they should have struck did nothing, wherefore is unknown, perhaps because they were afraid of not being the stronger.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : abbé j.-j. bourassé, _les miracles de madame sainte katerine de fierboys en touraine, d'après un manuscrit de la bibliothèque impériale_, paris, in mo, , p. .] [footnote : i have here interwoven the account given by seguin, _trial_, vol. iii, p. , with that of touroulde, _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . it seems to me the same incident reported summarily by the former, inexactly by the latter.] from gien, the little company followed the northern boundary of the duchy of berry, crossed into blésois, possibly passed through selles-sur-cher and saint-aignan, then, having entered touraine, reached the green slopes of fierbois.[ ] there one of the two heavenly ladies, who daily discoursed familiarly with the peasant girl, had her most famous sanctuary; there it was that saint catherine received multitudes of pilgrims and worked great miracles. according to popular belief the origin of her worship in this place was warlike and national and dated back to the beginning of french history. it was known that after his victory over the saracens at poitiers charles martel had placed his sword in the oratory of the blessed catherine.[ ] but it must be admitted that since then the sanctuary had long suffered from desertion and neglect. rather more than forty years before the coming of the damsel from domremy, its walls in the depths of a wood were overrun by briers and brambles. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , ; vol. iii, pp. , ; vol. v, p. .] [footnote : that saint catherine was known in the west shortly before the crusades is possible, but not that her worship should date back to charles martel; at any rate it flourished in the days of jeanne d'arc. _cf._ h. moranvillé, _un pèlerinage en terre sainte et au sinai au xv'e siècle_, in the _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, vol. lxvi ( ), pp. _et seq._] in those days it was not uncommon for saints of both sexes, if they had suffered from some unjust neglect, to come and complain to some pious person of the wrong being done them on earth. they appeared possibly to a monk, to a peasant or a citizen, denounced the impiety of the faithful in terms urgent and sometimes violent, and commanded him to reinstate their worship and restore their sanctuary. and this is what madame saint catherine did. in the year she entrusted a knight of the neighbourhood of fierbois, one jean godefroy, who was blind and paralysed, with the restoration of her oratory to its old brilliance and fame, promising to cure him if he would pray for nine days in the place where charles martel had put his sword. jean godefroy had himself carried to the deserted chapel, but beforehand his servants must perforce hew a way through the thicket with their axes. madame saint catherine restored to jean godefroy the use of his eyes and his limbs, and it was by this benefit that she recalled to the people of touraine the glory they had slighted. the oratory was repaired; the faithful again wended their way thither, and miracles abounded. at first the saint healed the sick; then, when the land was ravaged by war, it was her office more especially to deliver from the hands of the english such prisoners as had recourse to her. sometimes she rendered captives invisible to their guards; sometimes she broke bonds, chains, and locks; to wit, those of a nobleman by name cazin du boys, who in was taken with the garrison of beaumont-sur-oise. locked in an iron cage, bound with a strong rope on which slept a burgundian, he thought on madame saint catherine, and dedicated himself to this glorious virgin. immediately the cage was opened. sometimes she even constrained the english to unchain their prisoners themselves and set them free without ransom. that was a great miracle. one no less great was worked by her on perrot chapon, of saint-sauveur, near luzarches. for a month perrot had been in bonds in an english prison, when he dedicated himself to saint catherine and fell asleep. he awoke, still bound, in his own house. generally she helped those who helped themselves. such was the case of jean ducoudray, citizen of saumur, a prisoner in the castle of bellême in . he commended his soul devoutly to saint catherine, then leapt forth, throttled the guard, climbed the ramparts, dropped the height of two lances, and went out a free man into the country.[ ] [footnote : _les miracles de madame sainte katerine_, _passim_. g. launay, article in _bull. soc. archéol. du vendômois_, , vol. xix, pp. - .] perhaps these miracles would have been less frequent had the english been in greater force in france; but their men were few: in normandy they intrenched themselves in towns, abandoning the open country to soldiers of fortune who ranged the district and captured convoys, thus greatly promoting the intervention of madame saint catherine.[ ] [footnote : g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la guerre des partisans dans la haute normandie_ ( - ), in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_ ( - ).] the prisoners, who had become her votaries and whom she had delivered, discharged their vows by making the pilgrimage to fierbois. in her chapel there, they hung the cords and chains with which they had been bound, their armour, and sometimes, in special cases, the armour of the enemy. this had been done nine months before jeanne's coming to fierbois by a certain knight, jean du chastel. he had escaped from the hands of a captain, who accused him of having committed treason thereby, alleging that du chastel had given him his word of honour. du chastel on the other hand maintained that he had not sworn, and he challenged the captain to meet him in single combat. the issue of the combat proved right to be on the side of the french knight; for with the aid of madame saint catherine he was victorious. in return he came to fierbois to offer to his holy protectress the armour of the vanquished englishman, in the presence of my lord, the bastard of orléans, of captain la hire and several other nobles.[ ] [footnote : _les miracles de madame sainte katerine_, _passim_.] jeanne must have delighted to hear tell of such miracles, or others like them, and to see so many weapons hanging from the chapel walls. she must have been well pleased that the saint who visited her at all hours and gave her counsel should so manifestly appear the friend of poor soldiers and peasants cast into bonds, cages and pits, or hanged on trees by the _godons_. she prayed in the chapel and heard two masses.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] chapter v the siege of orlÉans from the th of october, , till the th of march, since the victory of verneuil and the conquest of maine, the english had advanced but little in france and their actual possessions there were becoming less and less secure.[ ] if they spared the lands of the duke of orléans it was not on account of any scruple. albeit on the banks of the loire it was held dishonourable to seize the domains of a noble when he was a prisoner,[ ] everything is fair in war. the regent had not scrupled to seize the duchy of alençon when its duke was a prisoner.[ ] the truth is that by bribes and entreaties the good duke charles dissuaded the english from attacking his duchy. from until the citizens of orléans purchased peace by money payments.[ ] the _godons_, not being in a position to take the field, were all the more ready to enter into such agreements. during the minority of their half english and half french king, the duke of gloucester, the brother and deputy of the regent, and his uncle, the bishop of winchester, chancellor of the kingdom, were tearing out each other's hair, and their disputes were the occasion of bloodshed in the london streets.[ ] towards the end of the year the regent returned to england, where he spent seventeen months reconciling uncle and nephew and restoring public peace. by dint of craft and vigour he succeeded so far as to render his fellow countrymen desirous and hopeful of completing the conquest of france. with that object, in , the english parliament voted subsidies.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . alain chartier, _l'espérance ou consolation des trois vertus_, in _oeuvres_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _mistère du siège_, line .] [footnote : perceval de cagny, pp. , .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _chronique de l'établissement de la fête_ in the _trial_, vol. v, p. . le maire, _histoire et antiquités de la ville et duché d'orléans_, orléans, , in to, pp. _et seq._ lottin, _recherches historiques sur la ville d'orléans_, orléans, - ( vols. in vo), vol. i, p. .] [footnote : joseph stevenson, _letters and papers_, introduction, vol. i, p. xlvii. de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : rymer, _foedera_, vol. iv, part iv, p. . mademoiselle a. de villaret, _campagne des anglais dans l'orléanais, la beauce chartraine et le gâtinais_ ( - ), orléans, , in vo, original documents, p. . stevenson, _letters and papers_, vol. i, pp. _et seq._] [illustration: view of orlÉans, - ] now the most cunning, the most expert, the most fortunate in arms of all the english captains and princes was thomas montacute, earl of salisbury and of perche.[ ] he had long waged war in normandy, in champagne, and in maine. at present he was gathering an army in england, intended for the banks of the loire. he got as many bowmen as he wanted; but of horse and men-at-arms he was disappointed. only those of low estate were willing to go and fight in a land ravaged by famine.[ ] at length the noble earl, the fair cousin of king henry, crossed the sea with four hundred and forty-nine men-at-arms and two thousand two hundred and fifty archers.[ ] in france he found troops recruited by the regent, four hundred horse of whom two hundred were norman, with three bowmen to each horseman, according to the english custom.[ ] he led his men to paris where irrevocable resolutions were taken.[ ] hitherto the plan had been to attack angers; at the last moment it was decided to lay siege to orléans.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : l. jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise au siège d'orléans, - _, orléans, , in vo, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . rymer, _foedera_, vol. iv, part iv, pp. , , .] [footnote : l. jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise_, pp. , .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . stevenson, _letters and papers_, p. lxii.] [footnote : boucher de molandon and a. de beaucorps, _l'armée anglaise vaincue par jeanne d'arc sous les murs d'orléans_, orléans, , in vo, p. . l. jarry, _loc. cit._] between la beauce and la sologne, at the entrance to the loyal provinces touraine, blésois, and berry, the ducal city confronted the enemy, lying on a bend of the loire, just as the arrow's point is lodged on the taut bow.[ ] bishopric, university, market of the country far and wide, on its belfries, towers, and steeples it raised proudly towards heaven the cross of our lord, the three _coeurs de lis_ of the city and the three _fleurs de lis_ of the dukes. beneath the high slate roofs of its houses of stone or wood, built along winding streets or dark alleys, orléans sheltered fifteen thousand souls. there were to be found officers of justice and of the treasury, goldsmiths, druggists, grocers, tanners, butchers, fishmongers, rich citizens as delicate as amber, who loved fine clothes, fine houses, music and dancing; priests, canons, wardens, and fellows of the university; booksellers, scriveners, illuminators, painters, scholars who were not all founts of learning, but who played prettily on the flute; monks of every habit, black-friars, grey-friars, mathurins, carmelites, augustinians, and artisans and labourers to boot, smiths, coopers, carpenters, boatmen, fishermen.[ ] [footnote : le maire, _antiquités_, p. .] [footnote : astesan in _paris et ses historiens_, by le roux de lincy and tisserand, pp. _et seq._ le maire, _antiquités_, ch. xix, pp. _et seq._ p. mantellier, _histoire du siège d'orléans_, in mo, pp. , . e. fournier, _le conteur orléanais_, p. . c. cuissard, _Étude sur la musique dans l'orléanais_, orléans, , p. . jodocius sincere, _itirerarium galliae_, amstelodami, , pp. , . paul charpentier et cuissard, _histoire du siège d'orléans, mémoire inédite de m. l'abbé dubois_, orléans, , in vo, p. . de buzonnière, _histoire architecturale de la ville d'orléans_, ( vols. in vo), vol. i, p. .] of roman origin, the form of the town was still the same as in the days of the emperor aurelian. the southern side along the loire and the northern side extended to some three thousand feet. the eastern and western boundaries were only one hundred and fifty feet long. the city was surrounded by walls six feet thick and from eighteen to thirty-three feet high above the moat. these walls were flanked by thirty-four towers, pierced with five gates and two posterns.[ ] the following is the description of the situation of these gates, posterns, and towers, with the names of those which became famous during the siege. [footnote : jollois, _histoire du siège d'orléans_, paris, , in to, with plans. lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, pp. _et seq._] passing from the south east to the south west angle of the wall, were: la tour neuve, round and huge, washed by the loire; three other towers on the river bank; the postern chesneau, the only one opening on to the water and defended by a portcullis; the tower of la croiche-meuffroy, so called from the crook or spur which protruded from the foot of the tower into the river; two other towers washed by the loire; la port du pont, with drawbridge and flanked by two towers; la tour de l'abreuvoir; la tour de notre-dame, deriving its name from a chapel built against the city walls; la tour de la barre-flambert, the last on this side, at the south west angle of the ramparts and commanding the river. all along the loire the walls had a stone parapet with machicolated battlements, whence pavingstones could be thrown, and whence, when attempts were made to scale the walls, the enemy's ladders could be hurled down. the distance between the towers was about a bow-shot. on the western side were first three towers, then two gate towers called regnard or renard from the name of citizens to whom had once belonged the adjoining palace, where in dwelt jacques boucher, treasurer of the duke of orléans. then came another tower and lastly la porte bernier or bannier, at the north west angle of the ramparts. on this side the walls had been constructed in the days of the cross-bow, which shot a greater distance than the bow. the towers here, therefore, were farther apart at the distance of a cross-bow shot one from the other, and the walls were lower than elsewhere. on the northern side, looking towards the forest, were ten towers at a bow-shot's interval. the second, that of saint-samson, was used as an arsenal. the sixth and seventh flanked the paris gate. on the eastern side were likewise ten towers at the same distance one from the other as those on the north. the fifth and sixth were those of the burgundian gate, also called the gate of saint-aignan, because it was close to the church of saint-aignan without the walls; the last was the great corner tower, called la tour neuve, which thus comes to have been twice counted. the stone bridge lined with houses which led from the town to the left bank of the loire was famous all over the world. it had nineteen arches of varying breadth. the first, on leaving the town by la porte du pont, was called l'allouée or pont jacquemin-rousselet; here was a drawbridge. the fifth arch abutted on an island which was long, narrow, and in the form of a boat, like all river islands. above the bridge it was called motte-saint-antoine, from a chapel built upon it dedicated to that saint; and below, motte-des-poissonniers, because in order to keep captured fish alive boats with holes in them were moored to it. in , to provide against the occupation of this island by the enemy, the people of orléans had constructed a tower, the tower or fortress of saint-antoine, beyond the sixth arch and occupying the whole breadth of the bridge. on the buttress between the eleventh and twelfth arch was a cross of gilded bronze, supported by a pedestal of stone. it was indeed what it was called, the cross beautiful,--la belle-croix. the buttresses of the eighteenth arch were extended, and on the abutment there rose a little castle formed of two towers joined by a vaulted porch. this little castle was called les tourelles. between the nineteenth and the twentieth arch as in the first was a drawbridge. outside it was le portereau; and thence ran the road to toulouse, which beyond the loiret on the heights of olivet joined the road to blois.[ ] [footnote : jollois, _lettre à messieurs les membres de la société des antiquaires de france, sur l'emplacement du fort des tourelles de l'ancien pont d'orléans_, paris, , in folio with illustrations. abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, dissertation, v. lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, pp. - . vergniaud romagnési, _des différentes enceintes de la ville d'orléans_, pp. - . a. collin, _le pont des tourelles à orléans_, orléans, , in vo. morosini, vol. iii, p. , note .] in those days the lazy waters of the loire flowed midst osier-beds and birchen thickets, since removed for purposes of navigation. two and a half miles east of orléans, on the height of chécy, l'Île aux bourdons was separated from the sologne bank by a thin arm of the river and by a narrow channel from l'Île charlemagne and l'Île-aux-boeufs, with their green grass and underwood facing combleux on the la beauce bank. a boat dropping down the river would next come to the two islands saint-loup, and, doubling la tour neuve, would glide between the two martinet islets on the right and l'Île-aux-toiles on the left. thence it would pass under the bridge which overspanned, as we have seen, an island called above bridge motte-saint-antoine and below, motte-des-poissonniers. at length, below the ramparts, opposite saint-laurent-des-orgerils, it would come to two islets biche-d'orge and another, the name of which is unknown, possibly it was nameless.[ ] [footnote : for some unknown reason modern historians have named the little island to the right of saint-laurent l'Île charlemagne, which causes it to be confused with the Île charlemagne lying to the east of l'Île-aux-boeufs. on the accompanying plan we indicate the little island just below biche-d'orge by the name of petite Île charlemagne. jollois, _histoire du siège_, engraving . abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, pp. , . boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, p. . manuscript of m. a. cagnieul, librarian at orléans.] the suburbs of orléans were the finest in the kingdom. on the south the fishermen's suburb of le portereau, with its augustinian church and monastery, extended along the river at the foot of the vineyards of saint-jean-le-blanc, which produced the best wine in the country.[ ] above, on the gentle slopes ascending to the bleak plateau of sologne, the loiret, with its torrential springs, its limpid waters, its shady banks, the gardens and the brooks of olivet, smiled beneath a mild and showery sky. [footnote : symphorien guyon, _histoire de l'église et diocèse d'orléans_, orléans, , vol. i, preface. le maire, _antiquités_, p. .] the _faubourg_ of the burgundian gate stretching eastwards was the best built and the most populous. there were the wonderful churches of saint-michel and of saint-aignan. the cloister of the latter was held to be marvellous.[ ] leaving this suburb and passing by the vineyards along the sandy branch of the loire extending between the bank of the river and l'Île-aux-boeufs about a quarter of a league further on, one comes to the steep slope of saint-loup; and, advancing still further towards the east, the belfries of saint-jean-de-bray, combleux and chécy may be seen rising one beyond the other between the river and the roman road from autun to paris. on the north of the city were fine monasteries and beautiful churches, the chapel of saint-ladre, in the cemetery; the jacobins, the cordeliers, the church of saint-pierre-ensentelée. directly north, the _faubourg_ of la porte bernier lay along the paris road, and close by there stretched the sombre city of the wolves, the deep forest of oaks, horn-beams, beeches, and willows, wherein were hidden, like wood-cutters and charcoal-burners, the villages of fleury and samoy.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . hubert, _antiquités historiques de l'église royale d'orléans_, orléans, , in vo. le maire, _antiquités_, p. . abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, pp. , , , _passim_. jollois, _histoire du siège_, p. . h. baraude, _le siège d'orléans et jeanne d'arc_, paris, , pp. _et seq._] [footnote : le maire, _antiquités_, p. .] towards the west the _faubourg_ of la porte renard stretched out into the fields along the road to châteaudun, and the hamlet of saint-laurent along the road to blois.[ ] [footnote : abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, p. . boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc, le ravitaillement d'orléans, nouveaux documents_, orléans, , in large vo, with topographical plan: _orléans, la loire et ses îles en _.] these _faubourgs_ were so populous and so extensive that when, on the approach of the english, the people from the suburbs took refuge within the city the number of its inhabitants was doubled.[ ] [footnote : abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, pp. , . jollois, _histoire du siège_, pp. , . p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, orléans, , in vo, p. . lottin, _recherches sur orléans_, vol. i, p. .] the inhabitants of orléans were resolved to fight, not for their honour indeed; in those days no honour redounded to a citizen from the defence of his own city; his only reward was the risk of terrible danger. when the town was captured the great and wealthy had but to pay ransom and the conqueror entertained them well; the lesser and poorer nobility ran greater risks. in this year, , the knights, who defended melun and surrendered after having eaten their horses and their dogs, were drowned in the seine. "nobility was worth nothing," ran a burgundian song.[ ] [footnote : le roux de lincy, _chants historiques et populaires du temps de charles vii_, paris, , in mo, p. .] but generally being of noble birth saved one's life. as for those burghers brave enough to defend themselves, they were likely to perish. there were no fixed rules with regard to them; sometimes several were hanged; sometimes only one, sometimes all. it was also lawful to cut off their heads or to throw them into the water, sewn in a sack. in that same year, , captains la hire and poton had failed in their assault on le mans and decamped just in time. the citizens who had aided them were beheaded in the square du cloître-saint-julien, on the olet stone, by order of william pole, earl of suffolk, who had already arrived at olivet, and of john talbot, the most courteous of english knights, who was shortly to come there too.[ ] such an example was sufficient to warn the people of orléans. [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , . _geste des nobles_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise_, pp. , .] notwithstanding that it was under the control of the governor, the town administered its own affairs by means of twelve magistrates elected for two years by the citizens, subject to the governor's approbation.[ ] these magistrates risked more than the other citizens. one of them, as he passed the monastery of saint-sulpice, where was the place of execution, might well reflect that before the year was out he might have justice executed on him there for having defended his lord's inheritance. yet the twelve were resolved to defend this inheritance; and they acted for the common weal with promptness and with wisdom. [footnote : lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, pp. , . p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, p. .] the people of orléans were not taken by surprise. their fathers had watched the english closely, and put their city in a state of defence. they themselves, in the year , had so firmly expected a siege that they had collected arms in the tower of saint-samson, while all, rich and poor alike, had been required to dig dykes and build ramparts.[ ] war has always been costly. they devoted three quarters of the yearly revenue of the town to keeping up the ramparts and other preparations for war. hearing of the approach of the earl of salisbury, with marvellous energy they prepared to receive him. [footnote : _the monk of dunfermline_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . le maire, _antiquités_, pp. _et seq._ lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, pp. , .] the walls, except those along the river, were devoid of breastwork; but in the shops were stakes and cross-beams intended for the manufacture of balustrades. these were put up on the fortifications to form parapets, with barbicans of a pent-house shape so as to provide with cover the defenders firing from the walls.[ ] at the entrance to each suburb wooden barriers were erected, with a lodge for the porter whose duty it was to open and shut them. on the tops of the ramparts and in the towers were seventy-one pieces of artillery, including cannons and mortars, without counting culverins. the quarry of montmaillard, three leagues from the town, produced stones which were made into cannon balls. at great expense there were brought into the city lead, powder, and sulphur which the women prepared for use in the cannons and culverins. every day there were manufactured in thousands, arrows, darts, stacks of bolts,[ ] armed with iron points and feathered with parchment, numbers of _pavas_, great shields made of pieces of wood mortised one into the other and covered with leather. corn, wine, and cattle were purchased in great quantities both for the inhabitants and the men-at-arms, the king's men, and adventurers who were expected.[ ] [footnote : jollois, _histoire du siège_, p. . lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, pp. - .] [footnote : an arrow shot from the long-bow, the feathers of the arrow were spirally arranged to produce a spinning movement in its flight (w.s.).] [footnote : the accounts of the fortresses, in _journal du siège_, pp. _et seq._ jollois, _histoire du siège_, p. . p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, pp. - . loiseleur, _comptes des dépenses faites par charles vii pour secourir orléans pendant le siège de _, orléans, , in vo, p. . boucher de molandon et de beaucorps, _l'armée anglaise vaincue par jeanne d'arc_, p. .] by a jealously guarded privilege the inhabitants had the right of defending the ramparts. according to their trades they were divided into as many companies as there were towers. thus defending themselves they had the right to refuse to admit any garrison within the walls. they held to this right because it delivered them from the pillage, the rapine, the burnings and constant molestations inflicted by the king's men. but now they were eager to renounce it; for they realised that alone with only the town bands and those from the neighbouring villages, mere peasants, they could not sustain the siege; to resist the enemy they must have horsemen, skilled in wielding the lance, and foot, skilled in the use of the cross-bow. while their governor the sire de gaucourt and my lord, the bastard of orléans, the king's lieutenant general, went to chinon and poitiers to obtain supplies of men and money[ ] from the king, the citizens in commissions of two and two went forth asking help of the towns, travelling as far as bourbonnais and languedoc.[ ] the magistrates appealed to those soldiers of fortune who held the neighbouring country for the king of france. by the mouths of the two heralds of the city, orléans and coeur-de-lis, they proclaimed that within the city walls were gold and silver in abundance and such good provision of victuals and arms as would nourish and accoutre two thousand combatants for two years, and that every gentle, honest knight who would might share in the defence of the city and wage battle to the death.[ ] [footnote : accounts of hémon raguier, bibl. nat. fr. , fol. . loiseleur, _comptes des dépenses_, p. . pallet, _nouvelle histoire du berry_, vol. iii, pp. - . vallet de viriville, in _bulletin de la société d'histoire de france. cabinet historique_, vol. v, part ii, p. . p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, p. .] [footnote : a. thomas, _le siège d'orléans, jeanne d'arc et les capitouls de toulouse_, in _annales du midi_, april, , p. . m. boudet, _villandrando et les écorcheurs à saint-flour_, pp. , . a. de villaret, _campagne des anglais_, p. .] [footnote : the monk of dunfermline in the _trial_, vol. v, p. .] the inhabitants of orléans feared god. in those days god was greatly to be feared; he was almost as terrible as in the days of the philistines. the poor fisher folk were afraid of being repulsed if they addressed him in their affliction; they thought it better to take a roundabout road and to seek the intercession of our lady and the saints. god respected his mother and sought to please her on every occasion. likewise he deferred to the wishes of the blessed, seated on his right hand and on his left in paradise, and he inclined his ear to listen to the petitions they presented to him. thus in cases of dire necessity it was customary to solicit the favour of the saints by presenting prayers and offerings. then also did the citizens of orléans remember saint euverte and saint-aignan, the patrons of their town. in very ancient days saint euverte had sat upon that episcopal seat, now, in , occupied by a scot. messire jean de saint michel, and saint euverte had shone with all the glory of apostolic virtue.[ ] his successor, saint-aignan had prayed to god. he had regarded the city in a peril like unto that of which it was now in danger. [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la fête_ in the _trial_, vol. v, p. . lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, pp. - .] the following is his story as it was known to the people of orléans. when still young, saint-aignan had withdrawn to a solitary place near orléans. there saint euverte, at that time bishop of the city, discovered him. he ordained him priest, appointed him abbot of saint-laurent-des-orgerils, and elected him to succeed him in the government of the faithful. and when saint euverte had passed from this life to the other, the blessed aignan, with the consent of the people of orléans, was proclaimed bishop by the voice of a little child. for god, who is praised out of the mouths of babes, permitted one of them, borne in his swaddling clothes to the altar, to speak and say: "aignan, aignan is chosen of god to be bishop of this town." now in the sixtieth year of his pontificate, the huns invaded gaul, led by their king attila, who boasted that wherever he went the stars fell and the earth trembled beneath him, that he was the hammer of the world, _stellas pre se cadere, terram tremere, se malleum esse universi orbis_. every town on his march had been destroyed by him, and now he was advancing against orléans. then the blessed aignan went forth into the city of arles, to the patrician aëtius, who commanded the roman army, and implored his aid in so great a peril. having obtained of the patrician promise of succour, aignan returned to his episcopal see, which he found surrounded by barbarian warriors. the huns, having made breaches in the walls, were preparing an assault. the blessed saint went up on to the ramparts, knelt and prayed, and then, having prayed, spat upon the enemy. by god's will that drop of his saliva was followed by all the raindrops in the sky. a tempest arose: the rain fell in such torrents on the barbarians that their camp was flooded; their tents were overturned by the power of the winds, and many among them perished by lightning. the rain lasted for three days, after which time attila assailed the ramparts with powerful engines of war. when they saw the walls fall down the inhabitants were terrified. all hope of resistance being at an end, the holy bishop, clad in his episcopal robes, went to the king of the huns and adjured him to take pity on the people of orléans, threatening him with the wrath of god if he dealt hardly with the conquered. these prayers and these threats did not soften attila's heart. on his return to the faithful, the bishop warned them that henceforth nothing remained to them but trust in god; divine succour, however, would not fail them. and soon, according to the promise he had given them, god delivered the town by means of the romans and the franks, who defied the huns in a great battle. not long after the miraculous deliverance of his beloved city, saint aignan fell asleep in the lord.[ ] [footnote : hubert, _antiquitez historiques de l'église royale de saint-aignan d'orléans_, , in vo, pp. - .] wherefore, in this great peril of the english, the citizens of orléans resorted to saint euverte and saint-aignan for succour and relief. according to the marvels accomplished by saint-aignan in this mortal life they measured his power of working miracles now that he was in paradise. these two confessors had each his church in the faubourg de bourgogne, wherein their bodies were jealously guarded.[ ] in those days the bones of martyrs and confessors were devoutly worshipped. it was said that sometimes they shed abroad a healing odour which represented the virtues proceeding from them. they were enclosed in gilded reliquaries adorned with precious stones, and no miracle was thought too great to be accomplished by these holy relics. on the th of august, , the clergy of the city went to the church wherein was the reliquary of saint euverte and bore it round the walls, that they might be strengthened. and the holy reliquary made the round of the whole city, followed by all the people. on the th of september a _tortis_ weighing one hundred and ten livres[ ] was offered to saint-aignan. in time of need the favour of the saints was solicited by all kinds of gifts, garments, jewels, coins, houses, lands, woods, ponds; but natural wax was thought to be especially grateful to them. a _tortis_ was a wheel of wax on which candles were placed and two escutcheons bearing the arms of the city.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . hubert, _loc. cit._, chs. iii, iv. lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : a livre varied in weight from province to province; generally it was about seventeen ounces (w.s.).] [footnote : le maire, _antiquités_, p. . p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, p. .] thus did the people of orléans strive to provision and protect their town. adventurers from all parts responded to the magistrates' appeal. the first to hasten to the city were: messire archambaud de villars, governor of montargis; guillaume de chaumont, lord of guitry; messire pierre de la chapelle, a baron of la beauce; raimond arnaud de corraze, knight of béarn; don matthias of aragon; jean de saintrailles and poton de saintrailles. the abbot of cerquenceaux, sometime student at the university of orléans, arrived at the head of a band of followers.[ ] thus the number of friends who entered the city was well-nigh as great as that of the expected foe. the defenders were paid; they were furnished with bread, meat, fish, forage in plenty, and casks of wine were broached for them. in the beginning the inhabitants treated them like their own children. the citizens all contributed to the entertainment of the strangers, and gave them what they had. but this concord did not long endure. whatever tradition alleges as to the friendly relations subsisting between the citizens and their military guests,[ ] affairs in orléans were in truth not different from what they were in other besieged towns; before long the inhabitants began to complain of the garrison. [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . _journal du siège_, pp. , . lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, p. . j. devaux, _le gâtinais au temps de jeanne d'arc_, in _ann. soc. hist. et arch. du gâtinais_, vol. v, , p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] on the th of september the earl of salisbury reached janville, having taken with ease towns, fortified churches or castles to the number of forty. but that was not his greatest achievement; for, although he had left but few men in each place, he had by that means rid himself on the march of that portion of his army which had already shown itself ready to drop away.[ ] [footnote : _geste des nobles_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . letter from salisbury to the commons of london, in delpit, _collection de documents français qui se trouvent en angleterre_, pp. , . jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise_, pp. - .] from janville he sent two heralds to orléans to summon the inhabitants to surrender. the magistrates lodged these heralds honourably in the faubourg bannier, at the hôtel de la pomme and confided to them a present of wine for the earl of salisbury; they knew their duty to so great a prince. but they refused to open their gates to the english garrison, alleging, doubtless, as was the custom of citizens in those days, that they were not able to open them, having those within who were stronger than they.[ ] [footnote : abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, p. . jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise_, p. . boucher de molandon, _les comptes de ville d'orléans des quatorzième et quinzième siècles_, orléans, , in vo, pp. _et seq._] now that the danger was drawing near, on the th of october, priests, burgesses, notables, merchants, mechanics, women and children walked in solemn procession with crosses and banners, singing psalms and invoking the heavenly guardians of the city.[ ] [footnote : lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, p. . p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, p. .] on tuesday, the th of this month, at the news that the enemy was coming through sologne, the magistrates sent soldiers to pull down the houses of le portereau, the suburb on the left bank, also the augustinian church and monastery of that suburb, as well as all other buildings in which the enemy might lodge or entrench himself. but the soldiers were taken by surprise. that very day the english occupied olivet and appeared in le portereau.[ ] with them were the victors of verneuil, the flower of english knighthood: thomas, lord of scales and of nucelles, governor of pontorson, whom the king of england called cousin; william neville; baron falconbridge; william gethyn, a welsh knight, bailie of Évreux; lord richard gray, nephew of the earl of salisbury; gilbert halsall, richard panyngel, thomas guérard, knights, and many others of great renown. [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] over the two hundred lances from normandy there floated the standards of william pole, earl of suffolk, and of john pole, two brothers descended from a comrade-in-arms of duke william; of thomas rampston, knight banneret, the regent's chamberlain; of richard walter, squire, governor of conches, bailie and captain of Évreux; of william mollins, knight; of william glasdale, whom the french called glacidas, squire, bailie of alençon, a man of humble birth.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. - . boucher de molandon et de beaucorps, _l'armée anglaise vaincue par jeanne d'arc_, p. .] the archers were all on horseback. there were practically no foot-soldiers. in carts drawn by oxen were barrels of powder, cross-bows, arrows, cannon-balls, and guns of all kinds, muskets, fowling-pieces, and large cannon. the two english master-gunners, philibert de moslant and william appleby, accompanied the troops. there were also two masters of mining with thirty-eight workmen. of women there were not a few, some of them acting as spies.[ ] [footnote : l. jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise_, pp. , , . boucher de molandon and de beaucorps, _l'armée anglaise vaincue par jeanne d'arc_, pp. _et seq._ mademoiselle a. de villaret, _campagne des anglais_, ch. iv, pp. , ; accounts of the siege, nos. , , p. . lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, p. .] when the army arrived it was greatly diminished by desertions, having shed runaways at each victory. some returned to england, others roamed through the realm of france robbing and plundering. that very th of october orders had been despatched from rouen to the bailies and governors of normandy to arrest those english who had departed from the company of my lord, the earl of salisbury.[ ] [footnote : l. jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise_, p. .] the fort of les tourelles and its outworks barred the entrance to the bridge. the english established themselves in le portereau, placed their cannon and their mortars on the rising ground of saint-jean-le-blanc,[ ] and, on the following sunday, they hurled down upon the city a shower of stone cannon-balls, which did great damage to the houses, but killed no one save a woman of orléans, named belles, who dwelt near the chesneau postern on the river bank. thus the siege, which was to be ended by a woman's victory, began with a woman's death. [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, p. . jean raoulet in chartier, _chronique_, vol. iii, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , . abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, p. . p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, p. . h. baraude, _le siège d'orléans et jeanne d'arc_, p. .] that same week the english cannon destroyed twelve water mills near la tour neuve. whereupon the people of orléans constructed within the city eleven mills worked by horses,[ ] in order that there might be no lack of flour. there were a few skirmishes at the bridge. then on thursday, the st of october, the english attempted to storm the outworks of les tourelles. the little band of adventurers in the service of the town and the city troops made a gallant defence. the women helped; throughout the four hours that the assault lasted long lines of gossips might be seen hurrying to the bridge, bearing their pots and pans filled with burning coals and boiling oil and fat, frantic with joy at the idea of scalding the _godons_.[ ] the attack was repulsed; but two days later the french perceived that the outworks were undermined; the english had dug subterranean passages, to the props of which they had afterwards set fire. the outworks having become untenable in the opinion of the soldiers, they were destroyed and abandoned. it was deemed impossible to defend les tourelles thus dismantled. those towers which would once have arrested an army's progress for a whole month were now useless against cannon. in front of la belle croix the townsfolk erected a rampart of earth and wood. beyond this outwork two arches of the bridge were cut and replaced by a movable platform. and when this was done, the fort of les tourelles was abandoned to the english with no great regret. the latter set up a rampart of earth and faggots on the bridge, breaking two of its arches, one in front, the other behind their earthwork.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. - . lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. - .] on the sunday, towards evening, a few hours after the flag of st. george had been planted on the fort, the earl of salisbury, with william glasdale and several captains, went up one of the towers to observe the lie of the city. looking from a window he beheld the walls armed with cannon; the towers vanishing into pinnacles or with terraces on their flat roofs; the battlements dry and grey; the suburbs adorned for a few days longer with the fine stone-work of their churches and monasteries; the vineyards and the woods yellow with autumn tints; the loire and its oval-shaped islands,--all slumbering in the evening calm. he was looking for the weak point in the ramparts, the place where he might make a breach and put up his scaling ladders. for his plan was to take orléans by assault. william glasdale said to him, "my lord, look well at your city. you have a good bird's-eye view of it from here." at this moment a cannon-ball breaks off a corner of the window recess, a stone from the wall strikes salisbury, carrying away one eye and one side of his face. the shot had been fired from la tour notre-dame. that at least was generally believed. it was never known who had fired it. a townsman, alarmed by the noise, hastened to the spot, saw a child coming out of the tower and the cannon deserted. it was thought that the hand of an innocent child had fired the bullet by the permission of the mother of god, who had been irritated by the earl of salisbury's despoiling monks and pillaging the church of notre dame de cléry. it was said also that he was punished for having broken his oath, for he had promised the duke of orléans to respect his lands and his towns. borne secretly to meung-sur-loire, he died there on wednesday the th of october; and the english were very sorrowful.[ ] most of them felt that loss to be irreparable which had deprived them of a chief who was conducting the siege vigorously, and who in less than twelve days had captured les tourelles, the very corner-stone of the city's defence. but there were others who reflected that he must have been very simple to imagine that thick ramparts could be overthrown by stone balls, the force of which had already been spent in crossing the wide stretches of the river, and that he must have been mad to attempt to storm a city which could only be reduced by famine. then they thought: "he is dead. god receive his soul! but he has brought us into a sorry plight." [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _mistère d'orléans_, line _et seq._ _chronique de la fête_ in _trial_, vol. v, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. . lorenzo buonincontro in muratori, _rerum italicarum scriptores_, vol. xxi, col. . jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise_, pp. , .] men told how maître jean de builhons, a famous astrologer, had prophesied this death,[ ] and how in the night before the fatal day, the earl of salisbury himself had dreamed that he was being clawed by a wolf. a norman clerk composed two songs on this sad death, one against the english, the other for them. the first, which is the better, closes with a couplet, worthy in its profound wisdom of king solomon himself:[ ] certes le duc de bedefort se sage est, il se tendra avec sa femme en ung fort, chaudement le mieulx[ ] que il porra, de bon ypocras finera, garde son corps, lesse la guerre: povre et riche porrist en terre.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : l. jarry, _deux chansons normandes, orléans_, , in vo, p. .] [footnote : the text published by m. jarry has _mielux_.] [footnote : certes that wise man the duke of bedford, will keep himself in a fortress with his wife as snug as may be. he will drink good hypocras (a kind of wine). he looks after himself, leaves warfare and the poor and rich to rot in the ground.] the day after the taking of les tourelles and when its loss had been remedied as best might be, the king's lieutenant-general entered the town. he was le seigneur jean, count of porcien and of montaing, grand chamberlain of france, son of duke louis of orléans, who had been assassinated in by order of jean-sans-peur, and whose death had armed the armagnacs against the burgundians. dame de cany was his mother, but he ought to have been the son of the duchess of orléans since the duke was his father. not only was it no drawback to children to be born outside wedlock and of an adulterous union, but it was a great honor to be called the bastard of a prince. there have never been so many bastards as during these wars, and the saying ran: "children are like corn: sow stolen wheat and it will sprout as well as any other."[ ] the bastard of orléans was then twenty-six at the most. the year before, with a small company, he had hastened to revictual the inhabitants of montargis, who were besieged by the earl of warwick. he had not only revictualled the town; but with the help of captain la hire had driven away the besiegers. this augured well for orléans.[ ] the bastard was the cleverest baron of his day. he knew grammar and astrology, and spoke more correctly than any one.[ ] in his affability and intelligence he resembled his father, but he was more cautious and more temperate. his amiability, his courtesy and his discretion caused it to be said that he was in favour with all the ladies, even with the queen.[ ] in everything he was apt, in war as well as in diplomacy, marvellously adroit, and a consummate dissembler. [footnote : vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . _cronique martiniane_, p. .] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : mathieu d'escouchy, _chronique_, ed. beaucourt, paris, , vol. i, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] my lord the bastard brought in his train several knights, captains, and squires of renown, that is to say, of high birth or of great valour: the marshal de boussac, messire jacques de chabannes, seneschal of bourbonnais, the lord of chaumont, messire théaulde of valpergue, a lombard knight, captain la hire, wondrous in war and in pillage, who had lately done so well in the relief of montargis, and jean, sire de bueil, one of those youths who had come to the king on a lame horse and who had taken lessons from two wise women, suffering and poverty. these knights came with a company of eight hundred men, archers, arbalesters, and italian foot, bearing broad shields like those of st. george in the churches of venice and florence. they represented all the nobles and free-lances who for the moment could be gathered together.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , . _cronique martiniane_, p. . _le jouvencel_, p. . loiseleur, _comptes des dépenses_, pp. , .] after the death of its chief, salisbury's army was paralysed by disunion and diminished by desertions. winter was coming: the captains, seeing there was nothing to be done for the present, broke up their camp, and, with such men as remained to them, went off to shelter behind the walls of meung and jargeau.[ ] on the evening of the th of november all that remained before the city was the garrison of les tourelles, consisting of five hundred norman horse, commanded by william molyns and william glasdale. the french might besiege and take them: they would not budge. the governor, the old sire de gaucourt, had just fallen on the pavement in la rue des hôtelleries and broken his arm; he couldn't move.[ ] but what about the rest of the defenders? [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , . abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, p. . boucher de molandon et de beaucorps, _l'armée anglaise vaincue par jeanne d'arc_, pp. , . jean de bueil, _le jouvencel_, _passim_.] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] the truth is, no one knew what to do. these warriors were doubtless acquainted with many measures for the succour of a besieged town, but they were all measures of surprise.[ ] their only devices were sallies, ambuscades, skirmishes, and other such valiant feats of arms. should they fail in raising a siege by surprise, then they remained inactive,--at the end of their ideas and of their resources. their most experienced captains were incapable of any common effort,--of any concerted action, of any enterprise in short, requiring a continuous mental effort and the subordination of all to one. each was for his own hand and thought of nothing but booty. the defence of orléans was altogether beyond their intelligence. [footnote : _le jouvencel_, vol. i, p. .] for twenty-one days captain glasdale remained entrenched, with his five hundred norman horse, under the battered walls of les tourelles, between his earthworks on le portereau side, which couldn't have become very formidable as yet, and his barrier on the bridge, which being but wood, a spark could easily have set on fire. meanwhile the citizens were at work. after the departure of the english they performed a huge and arduous task. concluding, and rightly, that the enemy would return not through la sologne this time, but through la beauce, they destroyed all their suburbs on the west, north, and east, as they had already destroyed or begun to destroy le portereau. they burned and pulled down twenty-two churches and monasteries, among others the church of saint-aignan and its monastery, so beautiful that it was a pity to see it spoiled, the church of saint euverte, the church of saint-laurent-des-orgerils, not without promising the blessed patrons of the town that when they should have delivered the city from the english, the citizens would build them new and more beautiful churches.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . le p. denifle, _la désolation des églises de france_, petition c.] on the th of november captain glasdale beheld sir john talbot approaching les tourelles. he brought three hundred men furnished with cannon, mortars, and other engines of war. thenceforward the bombardment was resumed more violently than before: roofs were broken through, walls were battered, but there was more noise than work. in la rue aux-petits-souliers a cannon-ball fell on to a table, round which five persons were dining, and no one was hurt. it was thought to have been a miracle of our lord worked at the intercession of saint aignan, the patron saint of the city.[ ] the people of orléans had wherewith to answer the besiegers. for the seventy cannon and mortars, of which the city artillery consisted, there were twelve professional gunners with servants to wait on them. a very clever founder named guillaume duisy had cast a mortar which from its position at the crook or spur by the chesneau postern, hurled stone bullets of one hundred and twenty _livres_ on to les tourelles. near this mortar were two cannon, one called montargis because the town of montargis had lent it, the other named _rifflart_[ ] after a very popular demon. a culverin firer, a lorrainer living at angers, had been sent by the king to orléans, where he was paid twelve _livres_[ ] a month. his name was jean de montesclère. he was held to be the best master of his trade. he had in his charge a huge culverin which inflicted great damage on the english.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . j.l. micqueau, _histoire du siège d'orléans par les anglais_, translated by du breton, paris, , p. . abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, p. . lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : _livre_, if it were of paris, was equivalent to one shilling, if of tours, to ten pence (w.s.).] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. clxxxv. loiseleur, _compte des dépenses faites par charles vii pour secourir orléans_, in _mém. soc. arch. de l'orléanais_, vol. xi, pp. , .] a jovial fellow was maître jean. when a cannon-ball happened to fall near him he would tumble to the ground and be carried into the town to the great joy of the english who believed him dead. but their joy was short-lived, for maître jean soon returned to his post and bombarded them as before.[ ] these culverins were loaded with leaden bullets by means of an iron ramrod. they were tiny cannon or rather large guns on gun-carriages. they could be moved easily.[ ] and so maître jean's culverin was brought wherever it was needed. [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : loiseleur, _comptes_, p. . p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, p. .] on the th of december a truce was proclaimed for the celebration of the nativity of our lord. of one faith and one religion, on feast days the hostility of the combatants ceased, and courtesy reconciled the knights of the two camps whenever the calendar reminded them that they were christians. noël is a gay feast. captain glasdale wanted to celebrate it with carol singing according to the english custom. he asked my lord jean, the bastard of orléans, and marshal de boussac to send him a band of musicians, which they graciously did. the orléans players went forth to les tourelles with their clarions and their trumpets; and they played the english such carols as rejoiced their hearts. to the folk of orléans, who came on to the bridge to listen to the music, it sounded very melodious; but no sooner had the truce expired than every man looked to himself. for from one bank to the other the cannon burst from their slumber, hurling balls of stone and copper with renewed vigour.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , .] that which the people of orléans had foreseen happened on the th of december. on that day the english came in great force through la beauce to saint-laurent-des-orgerils.[ ] all the french knights went out to meet them and performed great feats of arms; but the english occupied saint-laurent, and then the siege really began. they erected a bastion on the left bank of the loire, west of le portereau, in a place called the field of saint-privé. another they erected in the little island to the right of saint-laurent-des-orgerils.[ ] on the right bank, at saint-laurent, they constructed an entrenched camp. at a bow-shot's distance on the road to blois, in a place called la croix-boissée, they built another bastion. two bow-shots away, towards the north on the road to mans, at a spot called les douze-pierres, they raised a fort which they called london.[ ] [footnote : to the number of . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, p. . jollois, _histoire du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : cf. _ante_, p. , note . on the plan this island is called petite Île charlemagne.] [footnote : g. girault's report in the _trial_, vol. iv, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. , note ; vol. iv, supplement xiii.] by these works half of orléans was invested, which was as good as saying that it was not invested at all. people went in and out as they pleased. small relieving companies despatched by the king arrived without let or hindrance. on the th of january, , admiral de culant with five hundred men-at-arms crosses the loire opposite saint-loup and enters the city by the burgundian gate. on the th of february there enters william stuart, brother of the constable of scotland, at the head of a thousand combatants well accoutred, and accompanied by several knights and squires. on the morrow they are followed by three hundred and twenty soldiers. victuals and ammunition are constantly arriving; on the rd of january, nine hundred and fifty-four pigs and four hundred sheep; on the th, powder and victuals; on the th, six hundred pigs; on the th, six hundred head of fat cattle and two hundred pigs; on the st, eight horses loaded with oil and fat.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , , , , , .] it became evident to lord scales, william pole, and sir john talbot, who since salisbury's[ ] death had been conducting the siege, that months and months must elapse ere the investment could be completed and the city surrounded by a ring of forts connected by a moat. meanwhile the miserable _godons_, up to the ears in mud and snow, were freezing in their wretched hovels,--mere shelters of wood and earth. if things went on thus they were in danger of being worse off and more starved than the besieged. therefore, following the example of the late earl, from time to time they tried to bring matters to a crisis; without great hope of success they endeavoured to take the town by assault.[ ] [footnote : boucher de molandon and a. de beaucorps, _l'armée anglaise vaincue par jeanne d'arc_, pp. _et seq._ jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise_, proofs and illustrations v, p. .] [footnote : jan. , . _journal du siège_, pp. , , .] on the side of the renard gate the wall was lower than elsewhere; and, as their strongest force lay in this direction, they preferred to attack this part of the ramparts. they stormed the renard gate, rushing against the barriers with loud cries of saint george; but the king's men and the city bands drove them back to their bastions.[ ] each of these ill planned and useless assaults cost them many men. and they already lacked both soldiers and horses. [footnote : - jan. _journal du siège_, pp. , , .] neither had they succeeded in alarming the people of orléans by their double bombardment on the south and on the west. there was a joke in the town that a great cannon-ball had fallen near la porte bannière into the midst of a crowd of a hundred people without touching one, except a fellow who had his shoe taken off by it, but suffered no further hurt than having to put it on again.[ ] [footnote : jan. _ibid._, p. .] meanwhile the french, english, and burgundian knights took delight in performing valiant deeds of prowess. whenever the whim took them, and under the slightest protest, they sallied forth into the country, but always with the object of capturing some booty, for they thought of little else. one day, for instance, towards the end of january, when it was bitterly cold, a little band of english marauders entered the vineyards of saint-ladre and saint-jean-de-la-ruelle to gather sticks for firewood. the watchman no sooner announces them than behold all the banners flying to the wind. marshal de boussac, messire jacques de chabannes, seneschal of bourbonnais, messire denis de chaîlly, and many another baron, and with them captains and free-lances, make forth into the fields. not one of them can have commanded as many as twenty men.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] the king's council was making every effort to succour orléans. the king summoned the nobles of auvergne. they had been true to the lilies ever since the day when the dauphin, canon of notre-dame-d'ancis, and barely more than a child, had travelled over wild peaks to subdue two or three rebellious barons.[ ] at the royal call the nobles of auvergne came forth from their mountains. beneath the standard of the count of clermont, in the early days of february, they reached blois, where they joined the scottish force of john stuart of darnley, the constable of scotland, and a company from bourbonnais, under the command of the barons la tour-d'auvergne and de thouars.[ ] [footnote : _gallia christiana_, vol. ii, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, p. , note . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. ccxcv.] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , - . the accounts of hémon raguier, bibl. nat. fr. , fol. . loiseleur, _comptes des dépenses de charles vii pour secourir orléans_, _loc. cit._] just at this time tidings were received of a convoy of victuals and ammunition which sir john fastolf was bringing from paris to the english at orléans. with two hundred men-at-arms the bastard started from orléans to concert measures with the count of clermont. it was decided to attack the convoy. commanded by the count of clermont and the bastard the whole army from blois marched towards Étampes with the object of encountering sir john fastolf.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] on the th of february there sallied forth from orléans fifteen hundred fighting men commanded by messire guillaume d'albret, sir william stuart, brother of the constable of scotland, the marshal de boussac, the lord of gravelle, the two captains saintrailles, captain la hire, the lord of verduzan, and sundry other knights and squires. they were summoned by the bastard and ordered to join the count of clermont's army on the road to Étampes, at the village of rouvray-saint-denis, near angerville.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . _journal du siège_, pp. , .] the next day, saturday, the eve of the first sunday in lent, when the count of clermont's army was still some distance away, they reached rouvray. there, early in the morning, the gascons of poton and la hire perceived the head of the convoy advancing into the plain, along the Étampes road. there they were, a line of three hundred carts and wagons full of arms and victuals conducted by english soldiers and merchants and peasants from normandy, picardy, and paris, fifteen hundred men at the most, all tranquil and unsuspecting. there naturally occurred to the gascons the idea of falling upon these people and making short work with them at the moment when they least expected it.[ ] in great haste they sent to the count of clermont for permission to attack. as handsome as absalom and paris of troy, full of words and eaten up of vanity, the count of clermont, who was but a lad and none of the wisest, had that very day received his spurs and was at his first engagement.[ ] he foolishly sent word to the gascons not to attack before his arrival. the gascons obeyed greatly disappointed; they saw what was being lost by waiting. and at length, perceiving that they have walked into the lion's mouth, the english leaders, sir john fastolf, sir richard gethyn, bailie of Évreux, sir simon morhier, provost of paris, place themselves in good battle array. with their wagons they make a long narrow enclosure in the plain. there they entrench their horsemen, posting the archers in front, behind stakes planted in the ground with their points inclined towards the enemy.[ ] seeing these preparations, the constable of scotland loses patience and leads his four hundred horsemen in a rush upon the stakes, where the horses' legs are broken.[ ] the english, discovering that it is only a small company they have to deal with, bring out their cavalry and charge with such force that they overthrow the french and slay three hundred. meanwhile the men of auvergne had reached rouvray and were scouring the village, draining the cellars. the bastard left them and came to the help of the scots with four hundred fighting men. but he was wounded in the foot, and in great danger of being taken.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . _mistère du siège_, line . dom plancher, _histoire de bourgogne_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . chastellain, ed. kervyn de lettenhove, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . perceval de cagny, pp. , .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] there fell in this combat lord william stuart and his brother, the lords of verduzan, of châteaubrun, of rochechouart, jean chabot with many others of high nobility and great valour.[ ] the english, not yet satiated with slaughter, scattered in pursuit of the fugitives. la hire and poton, beholding the enemy's standards dispersed over the plain, gathered together as many men as they could, between sixty and eighty, and threw themselves on a small part of the english force, which they overcame. if at this juncture the rest of the french had rallied they might have saved the honour and advantage of the day.[ ] but the count of clermont, who had not attempted to come to the aid of the bastard and the constable of scotland, displayed his unfailing cowardice to the end. having seen them all slain, he returned with his army to orléans, where he arrived well on into the night of the th of february.[ ] there followed him with their troops in disorder, the baron la tour-d'auvergne, the viscount of thouars, the marshal de boussac, the lord of gravelle and the bastard, who with the greatest difficulty kept in the saddle. jamet du tillay, la hire, and poton came last, watching to see that the english did not complete their discomfiture by falling upon them from the forts.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] because the lenten fast was beginning, the victuals which sir john fastolf was bringing from paris to the english round orléans, consisted largely of red herrings, which had suffered during the battle from the casks containing them having been broken in. to honour the french for having discomfited so many natives of dieppe the delighted english merrily named the combat the battle of the herrings.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. - . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. ii, p. . symphorien guyon, _histoire de la ville d'orléans_, vol. ii, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] albeit the count of clermont was the king's cousin, the people of orléans received him but coldly. he was held to have acted shamefully and treacherously; and there were those who let him know what they thought. on the morrow he made off with his men of auvergne and bourbonnais amidst the rejoicings of the townsfolk who did not want to support those who would not fight.[ ] at the same time there left the city sire louis de culant, high admiral of france and captain la hire, with two thousand men-at-arms. at their departure there arose from the citizens such howls of displeasure, that to appease them it was necessary to explain that the captains were going to fetch fresh supplies of men and victuals, which was the actual truth. my lord regnault de chartres, the date of whose arrival at orléans is uncertain, departed with them; but he could not be reproached for going, since as chancellor of france his place was in the king's council. but what must indeed have appeared strange was that my lord saint-michel, the successor of saint-euverte and saint-aignan, should quit his episcopal see and desert his afflicted spouse.[ ] when the rats go the vessel is on the point of sinking. only the lord bastard and the marshal de boussac were left in the city. and even the marshal was not to stay long. a month later he went, saying that the king had need of him and that he must go and take possession of broad lands fallen to him through his wife, by the death of his brother-in-law, the lord of châteaubrun, at the battle of the herrings.[ ] the townsfolk deemed the reason a good one. he promised to return before long, and they were content. now the marshal de boussac was one of the barons who had the welfare of the kingdom most at heart.[ ] but he who has lands must needs do his duty by them. [footnote : feb. _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : march. _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : thaumas de la thaumassière, _histoire du berry_, bourges, , in fol., pp. - .] believing that they were betrayed and abandoned, the citizens bethought them of securing their own safety. since the king was not able to protect them, they resolved that in order to escape from the english, they would give themselves to one more powerful than he. therefore, to lord philip, duke of burgundy, they despatched captain poton of saintrailles, who was known to him because he had been his prisoner, and two magistrates of the city, jean de saint-avy and guion du fossé. their mission was to pray and entreat the duke to look favourably on the town, and for the sake of his good kinsman, their lord, charles, duke of orléans, a prisoner in england, and thus prevented from defending his own domain, to induce the english to raise the siege until such time as the troubles of the realm should be set at rest.[ ] thus they were offering to place their town as a pledge in the hands of the duke of burgundy. such an offer was in accordance with the secret desire of the duke, who, having sent a few hundred burgundian horse to the walls of orléans, was helping the english, and did not intend to do it for nothing.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . morosini, pp. , , vol. iv, supplement xiv. du tillet, _recueil des traités_, p. .] pending the uncertain and distant day when they might be thus protected, the people of orléans continued to protect themselves as best they could. but they were anxious and not without reason. for although they might prevent the enemy from entering within the city, they could devise no means for speedily driving him away. in the early days of march they observed with concern that the english were digging a ditch to serve them as cover in passing from one bastion to another, from la croix-boissée to saint-ladre. this work they attempted to destroy. they vigorously attacked the _godons_ and took a few prisoners. with two shots from his culverin maître jean killed five persons, including lord gray, the nephew of the late earl of salisbury.[ ] but they could not hinder the english from completing their work. the siege continued with terrible vigour. agitated by doubts and fears, consumed with anxiety, without sleep, without rest, and succeeding in nothing, they began to despair. suddenly a strange rumour arises, spreads, and gains credence. [footnote : march. _journal du siège_, p. .] it is told that there had lately passed through the town of gien a maid (_une pucelle_), who proclaimed that she was on her way to chinon to the gentle dauphin, and said that she had been sent by god to raise the siege of orléans and take the king to his anointing at reims.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . _journal du siège_, pp. _et seq._ _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] in colloquial language, a maid (_une pucelle_) was a girl of humble birth, who earned her livelihood by manual work and was generally a servant. thus the leaden pumps used in kitchens were usually called _pucelles_. the term was doubtless vulgar, but it had no evil meaning. in spite of clopinel's naughty saying: "_je légue ma pucelle à mon curé_," it was used to describe a respectable girl of good morals.[ ] [footnote : la curne, under the word _pucelle_; du cange, ad. v. _pucella_. _je laisse cent sols de deniers a ceulx qui boivent voluntiers et s'ay laissié a mon curé ma pucelle quand je mourrai,_ says eustache deschamps (quoted by la curne); du cange cites a will of : "afterwards i leave to laurence _ma pucelle_ and twelve _livres_ of paris."] the tidings that a little saint of lowly origin, one of our lord's poor, was bringing divine help to orléans made a great impression on minds excited by the fevers of the siege and rendered religious through fear. the maid inspired them with a burning curiosity, which the lord bastard, like a wise man, deemed it prudent to encourage. he despatched to chinon two knights charged to inquire concerning the damsel. one was sire archambaud of villars, governor of montargis, whom the bastard had already sent to the king during the siege; he was an aged knight, once the intimate friend of duke louis of orléans, and one of the seven frenchmen who fought against the seven englishmen at montendre,[ ] in : an orléans citizen of the early days, notwithstanding his great age he had vigourously defended les tourelles on the st of october. the other, messire jamet du tillay, a breton squire, had recently won great honour by covering the retreat of rouvray with his men. they set forth and the whole town anxiously awaited their return.[ ] [footnote : _relation contemporaine du combat de montendre_, in _bulletin de la société de l'histoire de france_, , pp. - .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , . _journal du siège_, pp. , , , . _nouvelle biographie générale_, articles by vallet de viriville.] chapter vi the maid at chinon--prophecies from the village of sainte-catherine-de-fierbois, jeanne dictated a letter to the king, for she did not know how to write. in this letter she asked permission to come to him, and told him that to bring him aid she had travelled over one hundred and fifty leagues, and that she knew of many things for his good. she was said to have added that were he hidden amidst many others she would recognise him;[ ] but later, when she was questioned on this matter, she replied that she had no recollection of it. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] towards noon, when the letter had been sealed, jeanne and her escort set out for chinon.[ ] she went to the king, just as in those days there went to him the sons of poor widows of azincourt and verneuil riding lame horses found in some meadow,--fifteen-year-old lads coming forth from their ruined towers to mend their own fortunes and those of france; just as loyalty, desire, and famine went to him.[ ] charles vii was france, the image and symbol of france. yet he was but a poor creature withal, the eleventh of the miserable children born to the mad charles vi and his prolific bavarian queen.[ ] he had grown up among disasters, and had survived his four elder brethren. but he himself was badly bred, knock-kneed, and bandy-legged;[ ] a veritable king's son, if his looks only were considered, and yet it was impossible to swear to his descent.[ ] through his presence on the bridge at montereau on that day, when, according to a wise man, it were better to have died than to have been there,[ ] he had grown pale and trembling, looking dully at everything going to wrack and ruin around him. after their victory of verneuil and their partial conquest of maine, the english had left him four years' respite. but his friends, his defenders, his deliverers had alike been terrible. pious and humble, well content with his plain wife, he led a sad, anxious life in his châteaux on the loire. he was timid. and well might he be so, for no sooner did he show friendship towards or confidence in one of the nobility than that noble was killed. the constable de richemont and the sire de la trémouille had drowned the lord de giac after a mock trial.[ ] the marshal de boussac, by order of the constable, had slain lecamus de beaulieu with even less ceremony. lecamus was riding his mule in a meadow on the bank of the clain, when he was set upon, thrown down, his head split open, and his hand cut off. the favourite's mule was taken back to the king.[ ] the constable de richemont had given charles in his stead la trémouille, a very barrel of a man, a toper, a kind of gargantua who devoured the country. la trémouille having driven away richemont, the king kept la trémouille until the constable, of whom he was greatly in dread, should return. and indeed so meek and fearful a prince had reason to dread this breton, always defeated, always furious, bitter, ferocious, whose awkwardness and violence created an impression of rude frankness.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : bueil, _le jouvencel_, vol. i, p. , and tringant, xv; jean chartier, _chronique_, ch. cxxxviii.] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _isabeau de bavière_, , in vo, and _notes sur l'état civil des princes et princesses nés d'isabeau de bavière_ in the _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, vol. xix, pp. - .] [footnote : th. basin, _histoire de charles vii et de louis xi_, vol. i, p. . chastellain, ed. kervyn de lettenhove, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _chronique du religieux de saint-denis_, vol. i, pp. , . docteur a. chevreau, _de la maladie de charles vi, roi de france, et des médecins qui ont soigné ce prince_, in _l'union médicale_, february, march, . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. , note.] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : gruel, ed. le vavasseur, pp. _et seq._ _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . berry, p. . pierre de fénin, _mémoires_, ed. mademoiselle dupont, pp. , . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : gruel, pp. , . _geste des nobles_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , , . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. . e. cosneau, _le connétable de richemont_, paris, , in vo, p. .] [footnote : gruel, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. ; vol. iii, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. . e. cosneau, _le connétable de richemont_, p. .] in richemont wanted to resume his influence over the king. the counts of clermont and of pardiac united to aid him. the king's mother-in-law, yolande of aragon, the kingdomless queen of sicily and jerusalem, and the duchess of anjou, took the part of the discontented barons.[ ] the count of clermont took prisoner the chancellor of france, the first minister of the crown, and held him to ransom. the king had to pay for the restoration of his chancellor.[ ] in poitou the constable was warring against the king's men, while the provinces which remained loyal were being wasted by free lances in the king's pay, while the english were advancing towards the loire. [footnote : de beaucourt, _op. cit._, vol. ii, pp. , _et seq._ e. cosneau, _op. cit._, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : dom morice, _preuves de l'histoire de bretagne_, vol. ii, col. . de beaucourt, _op. cit._, vol. ii, p. . e. cosneau, _op. cit._, p. .] in the midst of such miseries, king charles, thin, dwarfed in mind and body, cowering, timorous, suspicious, cut a sorry figure. yet he was as good as another; and perhaps at that time he was just the king that was needed. a philippe of valois or a jean le bon would have amused himself by losing his provinces at the point of the sword. poor king charles had neither their means nor their desire to perform deeds of prowess, or to press to the front of the battle by riding down the common herd. he had one good point: he did not love feats of prowess and it was impossible for him to be one of those chivalrous knights who make war for the love of it. his grandfather before him, who had been equally lacking in chivalrous graces, had greatly damaged the english. the grandson had not charles v's wisdom, but he also was not free from guile and was inclined to believe that more may be gained by the signing of a treaty than at the point of the lance.[ ] [footnote : p. de fénin, _mémoires_, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, introduction. e. charles, _le caractère de charles vii_, in _revue contemporaine_, vol. xxii, pp. - .] concerning his poverty ridiculous stories were in circulation. it was said that a shoemaker, to whom he could not pay ready money, had torn from his leg the new gaiter he had just put on, and gone off, leaving the king with his old ones.[ ] it was related how one day la hire and saintrailles, coming to see him, had found him dining with the queen, with two chickens and a sheep's tail as their only entertainment.[ ] but these were merely good stories. the king still possessed domains wide and rich; auvergne, lyonnais, dauphiné, touraine, anjou, all the provinces south of the loire, except guyenne and gascony.[ ] [footnote : le doyen de saint-thibaud, _tableau des rois de france_, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : martial d'auvergne, _les vigiles de charles vii_, ed. coustelier, ( vols. in mo), vol. i, p. .] [footnote : l. drapeyron, _jeanne d'arc et philippe le bon_, in _revue de géographie_, november, , p. .] his great resource was to convoke the states general. the nobility gave nothing, alleging that it was beneath their dignity to pay money. when, notwithstanding their poverty, the clergy did contribute something, it was still, always the third estate that bore more than its share of the financial burden. that extraordinary tax, the _taille_,[ ] became annual. the king summoned the estates every year, sometimes twice a year. they met not without difficulty.[ ] the roads were dangerous. at every corner travellers might be robbed or murdered. the officers, who journeyed from town to town collecting the taxes, had an armed escort for fear of the scots and other men-at-arms in the king's service.[ ] [footnote : _taille_, so called from a notched stick (eng. tally), used by the tax-collector, the number of notches indicating the amount of the tax due. there were two _tailles_: _la taille seigneuriale_, a contribution paid by serfs to their lord; and _la taille royale_, paid by the third estate to the king. the latter was first levied by philippe le bel ( - ), but was only an occasional tax until the reign of charles vii, who converted it into a regular impost. but although collected at stated intervals its amount varied from reign to reign, becoming intolerably burdensome under the spendthrift kings, while wise rulers, like henri iv, considerably reduced it. it was not abolished until the revolution (w.s.).] [footnote : _recueil des ordonnances_, vol. xiii, p. xcix, and the index of this volume under the word _impôts_. loiseleur, _compte des dépenses_, pp. _et seq._ a. thomas, _les états généraux sous charles vii_ in the _cabinet historique_, vol. xxiv, . _les états provinciaux de la france centrale sous charles vii_, paris, , vols. in vo, _passim_.] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. iii, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] in a free lance, sabbat by name, in garrison at langeais, was the terror of touraine and anjou. thus the representatives of the towns were in no hurry to present themselves at the meeting of the estates. it might have been different had they believed that their money would be employed for the good of the realm. but they knew that the king would first use it to make gifts to his barons. the deputies were invited to come and devise means for the repression of the pillage and plunder from which they were suffering;[ ] and, when at the risk of their lives they did come to the royal presence, they were forced to consent to the _taille_ in silence. the king's officers threatened to have them drowned if they opened their mouths. at the meeting of the estates held at mehun-sur-yèvre in the men from the good towns said they would be glad to help the king, but first they desired that an end be put to pillage, and my lord bishop of poitiers, hugues de comberel, said likewise. on hearing his words the sire de giac said to the king: "if my advice were taken, comberel would be thrown into the river with the others of his opinion." whereupon the men from the good towns voted two hundred and sixty thousand livres.[ ] in september, , assembled at chinon, they granted five hundred thousand livres for the war.[ ] by writs issued on the th of january, , the king summoned the states general to meet six months hence, on the following th of july, at tours.[ ] on the th of july no one attended. on the nd of july came a new summons from the king, commanding the estates to meet at tours on the th of september.[ ] but the meeting did not take place until october, at chinon, just when the earl of salisbury was marching on the loire. the states granted five hundred thousand livres.[ ] [footnote : _le jouvencel_, vol. i, introduction, pp. xix, xx.] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . loiseleur, _compte des dépenses_, p. . vallet de viriville, _mémoire sur les institutions de charles vii_, in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, vol. xxxiii, p. .] [footnote : dom vaissette, _histoire du languedoc_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : dom vaissette, _histoire du languedoc_, vol. iv, p. . a. thomas, _les états généraux sous charles vii_, pp. , .] [footnote : dom vaissette, _histoire du languedoc_, vol. iv, p. . raynal, _histoire du berry_, vol. iii, p. . loiseleur, _comptes des dépenses_, pp. _et seq._ de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] but the time could not be far off when the good people would be unable to pay any longer. in those days of war and pillage many a field was lying fallow, many a shop was closed, and few were the merchants ambling on their nags from town to town.[ ] [footnote : th. basin, _histoire de charles vii_, bk. ii, ch. vi. antoine loysel, _mémoires des pays, villes, comtés et comtes de beauvais et beauvoisis_, paris, , p. . p. mantellier, _histoire de la communauté des marchands fréquentant la rivière de loire_, vol. i, p. .] the tax came in badly, and the king was actually suffering from want of money. to extricate himself from this embarrassment he employed three devices, of which the best was useless. first, as he owed every one money,--the queen of sicily,[ ] la trémouille,[ ] his chancellor,[ ] his butcher,[ ] the chapter of bourges, which provided him with fresh fish,[ ] his cooks,[ ] his footmen,[ ]--he made over the proceeds of the tax to his creditors.[ ] secondly, he alienated the royal domain: his towns and his lands belonged to every one save himself.[ ] thirdly, he coined false money. it was not with evil intent, but through necessity, and the practice was quite usual.[ ] [footnote : dom morice, _preuves de l'histoire de bretagne_, vol. ii, cols. , . _ordonnances_, vol. xv, p. .] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. . duc de la trémoïlle, _chartier de thouars, documents historiques et généalogiques_, p. . _les la trémoïlle pendant cinq siècles_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. iii. accounts, p. . _cabinet historique_, june, , p. .] [footnote : _cabinet historique_, september and october, , p. .] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : loiseleur, _compte des dépenses_, p. .] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : vuitry, _les monnaies sous les trois premiers valois_, paris, , in vo, pp. _et seq._ loiseleur, _compte des dépenses_, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] the only title borne by la trémouille was that of conseiller-chambellan, but he was also the grand usurer of the kingdom. his debtors were the king and a multitude of nobles high and low.[ ] he was therefore a powerful personage. in those difficult days he rendered the crown services self-interested, but none the less valuable. from january to august, , he advanced sums amounting to about twenty-seven thousand livres for which he received lands and castles as security.[ ] fortunately the royal council included a number of jurists and churchmen who were good business men. one of them, an angevin, robert le maçon, lord of trèves, of plebeian birth, had entered the council during the regency. he was the first among those of lowly origin who served charles vii so ably that he came to be called the well served (_le bien servi_).[ ] another, the sire de gaucourt, had aided his king in war.[ ] [footnote : clairambault, _titres, scellés_, vol. , pp. , , , _passim_. de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : archives nationales, j. , no. . duc de la trémoïlle, _les la trémoïlle pendant cinq siècles_, vol. i, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : le p. anselme, _histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison de france_, vol. vi, p. . vallet de viriville, in _nouvelle biographie générale_. de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : marquis de gaucourt, _le sire de gaucourt_, orléans, , in vo.] there is yet a third whom we must learn to know as well as possible. for he will play an important part in this story; and his part would appear greater still if it were laid bare in its entirety. this is regnault de chartres, whom we have already seen promoted to be minister of finance.[ ] son of hector de chartres, master of woods and waters in normandy, he took orders, became archdeacon of beauvais, then chamberlain of pope john xxiii, and in , at about thirty-four, was raised to the archiepiscopal see of reims.[ ] the following year three of his brothers fell on the gory field of azincourt. in hector de chartres perished at paris, assassinated by the butchers.[ ] regnault himself, cast into prison by the cabochiens, expected to be put to death. he vowed that if he escaped he would fast every wednesday, and drink water for breakfast every friday and saturday, for the rest of his life.[ ] one must not judge a man by an act prompted by fear. nevertheless we may well hesitate to rank the author of this vow with those epicureans who did not believe in god, of whom there were said to be many among the clerks. we may conclude rather that his intelligence submitted to the common beliefs. [footnote : le p. anselme, _histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison de france_, vol. vi, p. . _gallia christiana_, vol. ix, col. . hermant, _histoire ecclésiastique de beauvais_ (bibl. nat. fr. ), fol. _et seq._ article by vallet de viriville, in _nouvelle biographie générale_ and _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : le p. denifle, _cartularium universitatis parisiensis_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . in the butchers of paris, led by jean-simonnet caboche, rose in favour of the duke of burgundy (w.s.).] [footnote : le p. denifle, _la désolation des églises_, vol. i, pp. , . garnier, _documents relatifs à la surprise de paris par les bourguignons en mai_, , in _bulletin de la société de l'histoire de paris_, , p. .] a tragic fidelity, an inherited loyalty to the armagnacs recommended my lord regnault to the dauphin, who entrusted him with important missions to various parts of christendom, languedoc, scotland, brittany, and burgundy.[ ] the archbishop of reims acquitted himself with rare skill and indefatigable zeal. in december he prayed the holy father to dispense him from the fulfilment of the vow taken in the butchers' prison,[ ] on the grounds of his feeble health and his services rendered to the dauphin, who required him to undertake frequent journeys and arduous embassies. [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, pp. , , . p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_, p. , and proofs and illustrations, lxxj.] [footnote : le p. denifle, _la désolation des églises_, _loc. cit._ according to a "legitimist" fiction he pleads the service he had rendered to king charles vi, and his son the dauphin "_... tam propter sue persone debililitatem, quam etiam propter assidua viagia et ambassiatas, que ipse serviendo carolo francorum regi et carolo, ejusdem regis unigenito filio, dalphino viennensi...._"] in , when the king and the kingdom were governed by president louvet,[ ] a learned lawyer, who may well have been a rogue, my lord regnault was appointed chancellor of france in the place of my lord martin gouges of charpaigne, bishop of clermont.[ ] but shortly afterwards, when the constable of france, arthur of brittany, had dismissed louvet, regnault sold his appointment to martin gouges for a pension of two thousand five hundred _livres tournois_.[ ] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _nouvelle biographie générale_. de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : f. duchesne, _histoire des chanceliers et gardes des sceaux de france_, , in fol., p. .] [footnote : the _livre_ of tours was worth ten pence, while that of paris was worth one shilling (w.s.). national archives, p. .] the reverend father in god, my lord the archbishop of reims, was not as rich, far from it, as my lord de la trémouille; but he made the best of what he had. like the sire de la trémouille he lent money to the king.[ ] but in those days who did not lend the king money? charles vii gave him the town and castle of vierzon in payment of a debt of sixteen thousand _livres tournois_.[ ] when la trémouille had treated the constable as the constable had treated louvet, regnault de chartres became chancellor again. he entered into his office on the th of november, . by this time the council had sent men-at-arms and cannon to orléans. no sooner was my lord of reims appointed than he threw himself into the city and spared no trouble.[ ] he was keenly attached to the goods of this world and might pass for a miser.[ ] but there can be no doubt of his devotion to the royal cause, nor of his hatred of those who fought under the leopard and the red cross.[ ] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : le p. anselme, _histoire généalogique de la maison de france_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : le p. denifle, _la désolation des églises_, introduction. _cf._ the collection of official receipts in the national library, fr. , , original documents , clairambault, _deeds_, _seals_, vol. .] [footnote : f. duchesne, _histoire des chanceliers et garde des sceaux de france_, p. .] after eleven days' journey, jeanne reached chinon on the th of march.[ ] it was the fourth sunday in lent, that very sunday on which the lads and lasses of domremy went forth in bands, into the country still grey and leafless, to eat their nuts and hard-boiled eggs, with the rolls their mothers had kneaded. that was what they called their well-dressing. but jeanne was not to recollect past well-dressings nor the home she had left without a word of farewell.[ ] ignoring those rustic, well-nigh pagan festivals which poor christians introduced into the penance of the holy forty days, the church had named this sunday _lætare_ sunday, from the first word in the introit for the day: _lætare, jerusalem_. on that sunday the priest, ascending the altar steps, says low mass; and at high mass the choir sings the following words from scripture: "_lætare, jerusalem; et conventum facite, omnes qui diligitis eam ..._: rejoice ye with jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her all ye that mourn for her: that ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; ..."[ ] that day priests, monks, and clerks versed in holy scripture, as in the churches with the people assembled they sang _lætare, jerusalem_, had present before their minds the virgin announced by prophecy, raised up for the deliverance of the kingdom, marked with a sign, who was then making her humble entrance into the town. perhaps more than one applied what that passage of scripture says of the holy nation to the realm of france, and in the coincidence of that liturgical text and the happy coming of the maid found occasion for hope. _lætare, jerusalem!_ rejoice ye, o people, in your true king and your rightful sovereign. _et conventum facite_: and come together. unite all your strength against the enemy. _gaudete cum laetitia, qui in tristitia fuistis_: after your long mourning, rejoice. the lord sends you succour and consolation. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , .] [footnote : isaiah, ch. , verse (w.s.).] by the intercession of saint julien, and probably with the aid of collet de vienne, the king's messenger, jeanne found a lodging in the town, near the castle, in an inn kept by a woman of good repute.[ ] the spits were idle. and the guests, deep in the chimney-corner, were watching the grilling of saint herring, who was suffering worse torments than saint lawrence.[ ] in those times no one in christendom neglected the church's injunctions concerning the fasts and abstinences of holy lent. following the example of our lord jesus christ who fasted forty days in the desert, the faithful observed the fast from quadragesima sunday until easter sunday, making forty days after abstracting the sundays when the fast was broken but not the abstinence. thus fasting and with her soul comforted, jeanne listened to the soft whisper of her voices.[ ] the two days she spent in the inn were passed in retirement, on her knees.[ ] the banks of the vienne and the broad meadows, still in their black wintry garb, the hill-slopes over which light mists floated, did not tempt her. but when, on her way to church, climbing up a steep street, or merely grooming her horse in the inn yard, she raised her eyes to the north, there on a mountain close at hand, just about the distance that would be traversed by one of those stone cannon-balls which had been in use for the last fifty or sixty years, she saw the towers of the finest castle of the realm. behind its proud walls there breathed that king to whom she had journeyed, impelled by a miraculous love. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _la vie de saint harenc glorieux martir et comment il fut pesché en la mer et porté à dieppe_, in _recueil des poésies françaises des xv'e et xvi'e siècles_, by a. de montaiglon, vol. ii, pp. - .] [footnote : still if jeanne were the age she is said to have been, about eighteen, she was under no obligation to fast, but only to be abstinent. nevertheless, when imprisoned at rouen, she fasted during lent; but we do not know how old her judges considered her to be.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] there were three castles merging before her into one long mass of embattled walls, of keeps, towers, turrets, curtains, barbicans, ramparts, and watch-towers; three castles separated one from the other by dykes, barriers, posterns, and portcullis. on her left, towards sunset, crowded, one behind the other, the eight towers of coudray, one of which had been built for a king of england, while the newest were more than two hundred years old. on the right could be plainly seen the middle castle, with its ancient walls and its towers crowned with machicolated battlements. there was the chamber of saint louis, the king's chamber, the apartment of him whom jeanne called the gentle dauphin. and there also, close to the rush-strewn room, was the great hall in which she was to be received. towards the town the site of the hall was indicated by an adjoining tower, square and very old. on the right extended a vast bailey or stronghold, intended as a lodging for the garrison, and a defence of the middle part of the castle. near by a large chapel raised its roof, in the form of an inverted keel, above the ramparts. this chapel, built by henry ii of england, was under the patronage of saint george, and from it the bailey received its name of fort saint george.[ ] in those days every one knew the story of saint george the valiant knight, who with his lance transfixed a dragon and delivered a king's daughter, and then suffered martyrdom confessing his faith. like saint catherine he had been bound to a wheel with sharp spikes, and the wheel had been miraculously broken like that on which the executioners had bound the virgin of alexandria. and like her saint george had suffered death by means of an axe, thus proving that he was a great saint.[ ] in one thing, however, he was wrong; he was of the party of the _godons_, who for more than three hundred years had kept his feast as that of all the english. they held him to be their patron saint and invoked him before all other saints. thus his name was pronounced as constantly by the vilest welsh archer as by a knight of the garter. in truth no one knew what he thought and whether he did not condemn all these marauders who were fighting for a bad cause; but there was reason to fear that such great honours would affect him. the saints of paradise are generally ready to take the side of those who invoke them most devoutly. and saint george, after all, was just as english as saint michael was french. that glorious archangel had appeared as the most vigilant protector of the lilies ever since my lord saint denys, the patron saint of the kingdom, had permitted his abbey to be taken. and jeanne knew it. [footnote : g. de cougny, _notice archéologique et historique sur le château de chinon_, chinon, , in vo.] [footnote : _la légende dorée_, translated by gustave brunet, , pp. , . douhet, _dictionnaire des légendes_, pp. , .] meanwhile the despatches brought from the commander of vaucouleurs by colet de vienne were presented to the king.[ ] these despatches instructed him concerning the deeds and sayings of the damsel. this was one of those countless matters to be examined by the council, one which, it appears, the king must himself investigate, as pertaining to his royal office and as interesting him especially, since it might be a question of a damsel of remarkable piety, and he was himself the highest ecclesiastical personage in france.[ ] his grandfather, wise prince that he was, would have been far from scorning the counsel of devout women in whom was the voice of god. about the year he had summoned to paris guillemette de la rochelle, who led a solitary and contemplative life, and acquired such great power therefrom, so it was said, that during her transports she raised herself more than two feet from the ground. in many a church king charles v had beautiful oratories built, where she might pray for him.[ ] the grandson should do no less, for his need was still greater. there were still more recent examples in his family of dealings between kings and saints. his father, the poor king charles vi, when he was passing through tours, had caused louis, duke of orléans, to present to him dame marie de maillé. she had taken a vow of virginity and had transformed the spouse, who approached her like a devouring lion, into a timorous lamb. she revealed secrets to the king, and he was pleased with her, for three years later he wanted to see her again at paris. this time they talked long together in private, and she revealed more secrets to the king, so that he sent her away with gifts.[ ] this same prince had granted an audience to a poor knight of caux, one robert le mennot, to whom, when he was in danger of shipwreck near the coast of syria, had been vouchsafed a vision. he proclaimed that god had sent him to restore peace.[ ] still more favourably had the king received a woman, marie robine, who was commonly called la gasque of avignon.[ ] in , there were those at court who remembered the prophetess sent to charles vi to confirm him in his subjection to pope benedict xiii. this pope was held to be an antipope; nevertheless, la gasque was regarded as a prophetess. like jeanne she had had many visions concerning the desolation of the realm of france; and she had seen weapons in the sky.[ ] the kings of england were no less ready than the kings of france to heed the words of those saintly men and women, multitudes of whom were at that time uttering prophecies. henry v consulted the hermit of sainte-claude, jean de gand, who foretold the king's approaching death; and on his death-bed he again had the stern prophet summoned.[ ] it was the custom of saints to speak to kings and of kings to listen to them. how could a pious prince disdain so miraculous a source of counsel? had he done so he would have incurred the censure of the wisest. [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : _epître de jouvenel des ursins_, in de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_ vol. v, p. , note .] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. x.] [footnote : _acta sanctorum_, vol. iii, march, p. . abbé pétin, _dictionnaire hagiographique_, , vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : froissart, _chroniques_, bk. iv, ch. xliii _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. , note . vallet de viriville, _procès de condamnation de jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in vo, pp. xxxi _et seq._] [footnote : _le songe du vieil pélerin_, by philippe de maizières (bibl. nat. french collection, no. , ).] [footnote : chastellain, ed. buchon, pp. , . _acta sanctorum junii_, vol. , p. . le p. de buck, _le bienheureux jean de gand_, brussels, , in vo, pages. le p. chapotin, _la guerre de cent ans; jeanne d'arc et les dominicains_, Évreux, , in vo, p. .] king charles read the commander of vaucouleur's letters, and had the damsel's escort examined before him. of her mission and her miracles they could say nothing. but they spoke of the good they had seen in her during the journey, and affirmed that there was no evil in her.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. .] of a truth, god speaketh through the mouths of virgins. but in such matters it is necessary to act with extreme caution, to distinguish carefully between the true prophetesses and the false, not to take for messengers from heaven the heralds of the devil. the latter sometimes create illusions. following the example of simon the magician, who worked wonders vying with the miracles of st. peter, these creatures have recourse to diabolical arts for the seduction of men. twelve years before, there had prophesied a woman, likewise from the lorraine marches, catherine suave, a native of thons near neufchâteau, who lived as a recluse at port de lates, yet most certainly did the bishop of maguelonne know her to be a liar and a sorceress, wherefore she was burned alive at montpellier in .[ ] multitudes of women, or rather of females, _mulierculæ_,[ ] lived like this catherine and ended like her. [footnote : _parvus thalamus_, ed. archæological society of montpellier, p. . th. de bèze, _histoire ecclésiastique_, , vol. i, p. . a. germain, _catherine suave_, montpellier, , in to, pages. h.c. lea, _a history of the inquisition in the middle ages_ ( ), vol. ii, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. x.] [footnote : jean nider, _formicarium_, in the _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] certain ecclesiastics briefly interrogated jeanne and asked her wherefore she had come. at first she replied that she would say nothing save to the king. but when the clerks represented to her that they were questioning her in the king's name, she told them that the king of heaven had bidden her do two things: one was to raise the siege of orléans, the other to lead the king to reims for his anointing and his coronation.[ ] just as at vaucouleurs before sire robert, so before these churchmen she repeated very much what the vavasour of champagne had said formerly, when he had been sent to jean le bon, as she was now sent to the dauphin charles. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . these facts were known at lyons on the nd of april, . (clerk of the chambre des comptes of brabant, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .)] having journeyed as far as the plain of beauce, where king john, impatient for battle, was encamped with his army, the vavasour of champagne entered the camp and asked to see the wisest and best of the king's liegemen at court. the nobles, to whom this request was carried, began to laugh. but one among them, who had with his own eyes seen the vavasour, recognised at once that he was a good, simple man and without guile. he said to him: "if thou hast any advice to give, go to the king's chaplain." the vavasour therefore went to king john's chaplain and said to him: "obtain for me an audience of the king; i have something to tell that i will say to no one but to him." "what is it?" asked the chaplain. "tell me what is in your heart." but the good man would not reveal his secret. the chaplain went to king john and said to him: "sire, there is a worthy man here who seems to me wise in his way. he desires to say to you something that he will tell to you alone." king john refused to see the good man. he summoned his confessor, and, accompanied by the chaplain, sent him to learn the vavasour's secret. the two priests went to the man and told him that the king had appointed them to hear him. at this announcement, despairing of ever seeing king john, and trusting to the confessor and the chaplain not to reveal his secret to any but the king, he uttered these words: "while i was alone in the fields, a voice spake unto me three times, saying: 'go unto king john of france and warn him that he fight not with any of his enemies.' obedient to that voice am i come to bring the tidings to king john." having heard the vavasour's secret the confessor and the chaplain took him to the king, who laughed at him. with his comrades-in-arms he advanced to poitiers, where he met the black prince. he lost his whole army in battle, and, twice wounded in the face, was taken prisoner by the english.[ ] [footnote : s. luce, _chronique des quatre premiers valois_, paris, , in vo, pp. , .] the ecclesiastics, who had examined jeanne, held various opinions concerning her. some declared that her mission was a hoax, and that the king ought to beware of her.[ ] others on the contrary held that, since she said she was sent of god, and that she had something to tell the king, the king should at least hear her. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . thomassin, _registre delphinal_, in the _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. .] two priests who were then with the king, jean girard, president of the parlement of grenoble, and pierre l'hermite, later subdean of saint-martin-de-tours, judged the case difficult and interesting enough to be submitted to messire jacques gélu, that armagnac prelate who had long served the house of orléans and the dauphin of france both in council and in diplomacy. when he was nearly sixty, gélu had withdrawn from the council, and exchanged the archiepiscopal see of tours for the bishopric of embrun, which was less exalted and more retired. he was illustrious and venerable.[ ] jean girard and pierre l'hermite informed him of the coming of the damsel in a letter, wherein they told him also that, having been questioned in turn by three professors of theology, she had been found devout, sober, temperate, and in the habit of participating once a week in the sacraments of confession and communion. jean girard thought she might have been sent by the god who raised up judith and deborah, and who spoke through the mouths of the sibyls.[ ] [footnote : _gallia christiana_, vol. iii, col. .] [footnote : le r.p. marcellin fornier, _histoire générale des alpes maritimes ou cottiennes_, ed. by the abbé paul guillaume, paris, - ( vols. in vo), vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] charles was pious, and on his knees devoutly heard three masses a day. regularly at the canonical hours he repeated the customary prayers in addition to prayers for the dead and other orisons. daily he confessed, and communicated on every feast day.[ ] but he believed in foretelling events by means of the stars, in which he did not differ from other princes of his time. each one of them had an astrologer in his service.[ ] [footnote : the monk of dunfermline, in the _trial_, vol. v, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, pp. _et seq._ de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : simon de phares, _recueil des plus célèbres astrologues_, fr. ms. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, p. , note. de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. vi, p. .] the late duke of burgundy had been constantly accompanied by a jewish soothsayer, maître mousque. on that day, the end of which he was never to see, as he was going to the bridge of montereau, maître mousque counselled him not to advance any further, prophesying that he would not return. the duke continued on his way and was killed.[ ] the dauphin charles confided in jean des builhons, in germain de thibonville and in all others of the peaked cap.[ ] [footnote : chastellain, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. .] he always had two or three astrologers at court. these almanac makers drew up schemes of nativity, cast horoscopes and read in the sky the approach of wars and revolutions. one of them, maître rolland the scrivener, a fellow of the university of paris, was one night, at a certain hour, observing the heavens from his roof, when he saw the apex of virgo in the ascendant, venus, mercury, and the sun half way up the sky.[ ] this his colleague, guillaume barbin of geneva, interpreted to mean that the english would be driven from france and the king restored by the hand of a mere maid.[ ] if we may believe the inquisitor bréhal, some time before jeanne's coming into france, a clever astronomer of seville, jean de montalcin by name, had written to the king among other things the following words: "by a virgin's counsel thou shalt be victorious. continue in triumph to the gates of paris."[ ] [footnote : i here correct the text of simon de phares (_trial_, vol. iv, p. ) according to the written opinion of m. camille flammarion.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] at that very time the dauphin charles had with him at chinon an old norman astrologer, one pierre, who may have been pierre de saint-valerien, canon of paris. the latter had recently returned from scotland, whither, accompanied by certain nobles, he had gone to fetch the lady margaret, betrothed to the dauphin louis. not long afterwards this maître pierre was, rightly or wrongly, believed to have read in the sky that the shepherdess from the meuse valley was appointed to drive out the english.[ ] [footnote : recueil de simon de phares, in the _trial_, vol. v, p. , note.] jeanne had not long to wait in her inn. two days after her arrival, what she had so ardently desired came to pass: she was taken to the king.[ ] in the last century near the grand-carroy, opposite a wooden-fronted house, there was shown a well on the edge of which, according to tradition, jeanne set foot when she alighted from her horse, before climbing the steep ascent leading to the castle. through la vieille porte,[ ] she was already crossing the moat when the king was still hesitating as to whether he would receive her. many of his familiar advisers, and those not the least important, counselled him to beware of a strange woman whose designs might be evil. there were others who put it before him that this shepherdess was introduced by letters from robert de baudricourt carried through hostile provinces; that in journeying to the king she had forded many rivers in a manner almost miraculous. on these considerations the king consented to receive her.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : the kerb was removed during the second empire. moreover it is admitted that no faith should be put in such traditions. g. de cougny, _charles vii et jeanne d'arc à chinon_, tours, , in vo.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. iii, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , . th. basin, _histoire de charles vii et de louis xi_, vol. i, p. .] the great hall was crowded. as at every audience given by the king the room was close with the breath of the assembled multitude. the vast chamber presented that aspect of a market-house or of a rout which was so familiar to courtiers. it was evening; fifty torches flamed beneath the painted beams of the roof.[ ] men of middle age in robes and furs, young, smooth-faced nobles, thin and narrow shouldered, of slender build, their lean legs in tight hose, their feet in long, pointed shoes; barons fully armed to the number of three hundred, according to aulic custom, pushed, crowded and elbowed each other while the usher was here and there striking the courtiers on the head with his rod.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : le curial, in _les oeuvres de maistre alain chartier_, ed. du chesne, paris, , in to, p. .] besides the two ambassadors from orléans, messire jamet du tillay and the old baron archambaud de villars, governor of montargis, there were present simon charles, master of requests, as well as certain great nobles, the count of clermont, the sire de gaucourt, and probably the sire de la trémouille and my lord the archbishop of reims, chancellor of the kingdom.[ ] on hearing of jeanne's approach, king charles buried himself among his retainers, either because he was still mistrustful and hesitating, or because he had other persons to speak to, or for some other reason.[ ] jeanne was presented by the count of vendôme.[ ] robust, with a firm, short neck, her figure appeared full, although confined by her man's jerkin. she wore breeches like a man,[ ] but still more surprising than her hose was her head-gear and the cut of her hair. beneath a woollen hood, her dark hair hung cut round in soup-plate fashion like a page's.[ ] women of all ranks and all ages were careful to hide their hair so that not one lock of it should escape from beneath the coif, the veil, or the high head-dress which was then the mode. jeanne's flowing locks looked strange to the folk of those days.[ ] she went straight to the king, took off her cap, curtsied, and said: "god send you long life, gentle dauphin."[ ] [footnote : according to jeanne there were present la trémoïlle and the archbishop of reims, but she also mentions the duke of alençon, who was certainly not there.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. - .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . mathieu thomassin, _ibid._, p. . _chronique de lorraine_, _ibid._, p. . philippe de bergame, _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, in the _revue historique_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : st. paul, second epistle to the corinthians. labbe, _collection des conciles_, vol. vii, p. . saumaise, _epistola ad andream colvium super cap. xi, i ad corynth. de cæsarie virorum et mulierum coma_. lugd-batavor ex off. elz. , in mo. _quelques notes d'archéologie sur la chevelure féminine_, in _comptes rendus de l'académie des inscriptions et belles lettres_, , vol. xvi, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. iii, pp. , , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. .] afterwards there were those who marvelled that she should have recognised him in the midst of nobles more magnificently dressed than he. it is possible that on that day he may have been poorly attired. we know that it was his custom to have new sleeves put to his old doublets.[ ] and in any case he did not show off his clothes. very ugly, knock-kneed, with emaciated thighs, small, odd, blinking eyes, and a large bulbous nose, on his bony, bandy legs tottered and trembled this prince of twenty-six.[ ] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : th. basin, vol. i, p. . chastellain, vol. ii, p. . _portrait historique du roi charles vii_, by henri baude, published by vallet de viriville in _nouvelles recherches sur henri baude_, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, p. .] that jeanne should have seen his picture already and recognised him by it is hardly likely. portraits of princes were rare in those days. jeanne had never handled one of those precious books in which king charles may have been painted in miniature as one of the magi offering gifts to the child jesus.[ ] it was not likely that she had ever seen one of those figures painted on wood in the semblance of her king, with hands clasped, beneath the curtains of his oratory.[ ] and if by chance some one had shown her one of these portraits her untrained eyes could have discerned but little therein. neither need we inquire whether the people of chinon had described to her the costume the king usually wore and the shape of his hat: for like every one else he kept his hat on indoors even at dinner. what is most probable is that those who were kindly disposed towards her pointed out the king. at any rate he was not difficult to distinguish, since those who saw her go up to him were in no wise astonished. [footnote : as in the miniature painted by jean fouquet, more than ten years later. gruyer, _les quarante fouquet de chantilly_, paris, , in to.] [footnote : _note sur un ancien portrait de charles vii, conservé au louvre_, in the _bulletin de la société des antiquaires de france_, , pp. _et seq._] when she had made her rustic curtsey, the king asked her name and what she wanted. she replied: "fair dauphin, my name is jeanne the maid; and the king of heaven speaks unto you by me and says that you shall be anointed and crowned at reims, and be lieutenant of the king of heaven, who is king of france." she asked to be set about her work, promising to raise the siege of orléans.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , .] the king took her apart and questioned her for some time. by nature he was gentle, kind to the poor and lowly, but not devoid of mistrust and suspicion. it is said that during this private conversation, addressing him with the familiarity of an angel, she made him this strange announcement: "my lord bids me say unto thee that thou art indeed the heir of france and the son of a king; he has sent me to thee to lead thee to reims to be crowned there and anointed if thou wilt."[ ] afterwards the maid's chaplain reported these words, saying he had received them from the maid herself. all that is certain is that the armagnacs were not slow to turn them into a miracle in favour of the line of the lilies. it was asserted that these words spoken by god himself, by the mouth of an innocent girl, were a reply to the carking, secret anxiety of the king. madame ysabeau's son, it was said, distracted and saddened by the thought that perhaps the royal blood did not flow in his veins, was ready to renounce his kingdom and declare himself a usurper, unless by some heavenly light his doubts concerning his birth should be dispelled.[ ] men told how his face shone with joy[ ] when it was revealed to him that he was the true heir of france. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (evidence of brother pasquerel).] [footnote : the abridger of the _trial_, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , . basin, _histoire de charles vii et de louis xi_, vol. i, p. . _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (evidence of s. charles). s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. lxi.] doubtless the armagnac preachers were in the habit of speaking of queen ysabeau as "_une grande gorre_" and a herodias of licentiousness; but one would like to know whence her son derived his curious misgiving. he had not manifested it on entering into his inheritance; and, had occasion required, the jurists of his party would have proved to him by reasons derived from laws and customs that he was by birth the true heir and the lawful successor of the late king; for filiation must be proved not by what is hidden, but by what is manifest, otherwise it would be impossible to assign the legal heir to a kingdom or to an acre of land. nevertheless it must be borne in mind that the king was very unfortunate at this time. now misfortune agitates the conscience and raises scruples; and he might well doubt the justice of his cause since god was forsaking him. but if he were indeed assailed by painful doubts, how can he have been relieved from them by the words of a damsel who, as far as he then knew, might be mad or sent to him by his enemies? it is hard to reconcile such credulity with what we know of his suspicious nature. the first thought that occurred to him must have been that ecclesiastics had instructed the damsel. a few moments after he had dismissed her, he assembled the sire de gaucourt and certain other members of his council and repeated to them what he had just heard: "she told me that god had sent her to aid me to recover my kingdom."[ ] he did not add that she had revealed to him a secret known to himself alone.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . as early as april the promised deliverance of orléans and coronation at reims had been heard of at lyons (_trial_, vol. iv, p. ).] [footnote : pasquerel alone of the witnesses mentions this (_trial_, vol. iii, p. ). cf. the anecdote of the sire de boissy related by p. sala in his collection, _les hardiesses des grands rois et empereurs_ (_trial_, vol. iv, p. ).] the king's counsellors, knowing little of the damsel, decided that they must have her before them to examine her concerning her life and her belief.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] the sire de gaucourt took her from the inn and lodged her in a tower of that castle of coudray, which for the last three days she had seen dominating the town.[ ] one of the three castles, le coudray was only separated from the middle château in which the king dwelt by a moat and fortifications.[ ] the sire de gaucourt confided her to the care of the lieutenant of the town of chinon, guillaume bellier, the king's major domo.[ ] he gave her for her servant one of his own pages, a child of fifteen, immerguet, sometimes called minguet, and sometimes mugot. his real name was louis de coutes, and he came of an old warrior family which had been in the service of the house of orléans for a century. his father, jean, called minguet, lord of fresnay-le-gelmert, of la gadelière and of mitry, chamberlain to the duke of orléans, had died in great poverty the year before. he had left a widow and five children, three boys and two girls, one of whom, jeanne by name, had since been the wife of messire florentin d'illiers, governor of châteaudun. thus the little page, louis de coutes, and his mother, catherine le mercier, dame de noviant, who came of a noble scottish family, were both in a state of penury, albeit the duke of orléans in acknowledgment of his chamberlain's faithful services had from his purse granted aid to the lady of noviant.[ ] jeanne kept minguet with her all day, but at night she slept with the women. [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : g. de cougny, _charles vii et jeanne d'arc à chinon_, tours, , p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , . mademoiselle a. de villaret, _louis de coutes, page de jeanne d'arc_, orléans, , in vo.] the wife of guillaume bellier, who was good and pious, at least so it was said, watched over her.[ ] at coudray the page saw her many a time on her knees. she prayed and often wept many tears.[ ] for several days persons of high estate came to speak with her. they found her dressed as a boy.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. _et seq._ jean chartier, _chronique_, p. .] since she had been with the king, divers persons asked her whether there were not in her country a wood called "le bois-chenu."[ ] this question was put to her because a prophecy of merlin concerning a maid who should come from "le bois-chenu" was then in circulation. and folk were impressed by it; for in those days every one gave heed to prophecies and especially to those of merlin the magician.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, pp. , . thomassin, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . walter bower, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . christine de pisan, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . la borderie, _les véritables prophéties de merlin, examen des poèmes bretons attribués à ce barde_, in the _revue de bretagne_, , vol. liii.] begotten of a woman by the devil, it was from him that merlin derived his profound wisdom. to the science of numbers, which is the key to the future, he added a knowledge of physics, by means of which he worked his enchantments. thus it was easy for him to transform rocks into giants. and yet he was conquered by a woman; the fairy vivien enchanted the enchanter and kept him in a hawthorn bush under a spell. this is only one of many examples of the power of women. famous doctors and illustrious masters held that merlin had laid bare many future events and prophesied many things which had not yet happened. to such as were amazed that the son of the devil should have received the gift of prophecy they replied that the holy ghost is able to reveal his secrets to whomsoever he pleases, for had he not caused the sibyls to speak, and opened the mouth of balaam's ass? merlin had seen in a vision sire bertrand du guesclin in the guise of a warrior bearing an eagle on his shield. this was remembered after the constable had wrought his great deeds.[ ] [footnote : cuvelier, _le poème de du guesclin_, l. . francisque-michel and th. wright, _vie de merlin attribuée à geoffroy de monmouth, suivie des prophéties de ce barde tirées de l'histoire des bretons_, paris, , in vo, pp. _et seq._ la villemarqué, _myrdhin ou merlin l'enchanteur, son histoire, ses oeuvres, son influence_, n. ed., paris, , in mo. d'arbois de jubainville, _merlin est-il un personnage réel?_ in the _revue des questions historiques_, , pp. - . lefèvre-pontalis, _morosini_, vol. iv, supplement xvi. "[geoffrey of monmouth] represented merlin as having prophesied all the events of the history of britain until the year in which he wrote. the _historia regum_ was very popular in the ecclesiastical world. its legends were held to be facts. the exactness with which its prognostications had been fulfilled down to was marvelled at, and an attempt was made to interpret the prophecies relating to subsequent times." gaston paris, _la littérature française au moyen age_, , pp. - .] in the prophecies of this wise man the english believed no less firmly than the french. when arthur of brittany, count of richemont, was taken prisoner, held to ransom, and brought before king henry, the latter, when he perceived a boar on the arms of the duke, broke forth into rejoicing; for he called to mind the words of merlin who had said, "a prince of armorica, called arthur, with a boar for his crest, shall conquer england, and when he shall have made an end of the english folk he shall re-people the land with a breton race."[ ] [footnote : le baud, _histoire de bretagne_, paris, , in fol., p. .] now during the lent of there was circulated among the armagnacs this prophecy, taken from a book of the prophecies of merlin: "from the town of the bois-chenu there shall come forth a maid for the healing of the nation. when she hath stormed every citadel, with her breath she shall dry up all the springs. bitter tears shall she shed and fill the island with a terrible noise. then shall she be slain by the stag with ten antlers, of which six branches shall bear crowns of gold, and the other six shall be changed into the horns of oxen; and with a horrible sound they shall shake the isles of britain. the forest of denmark shall rise up and with a human voice say: 'come, cambria, and take cornwall unto thyself.'"[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. - .] in these mysterious words merlin dimly foretells that a virgin shall perform great and wonderful deeds before perishing by the hand of the enemy. on one point only is he clear, or so it seems; that is, when he says that this virgin shall come from the town of the bois-chenu. if this prophecy had been traced back to its original source and read in the fourth book of the _historia britonum_, where it is to be found under the title of _guyntonia vaticinium_, it would have been seen to refer to the english city of winchester, and it would have appeared that in the version then in circulation in france, the original meaning had been garbled, distorted, and completely metamorphosed. but no one thought of verifying the text. books were rare and minds uncritical. this deliberately falsified prophecy was accepted as the pure word of merlin and numerous copies of it were spread abroad. whence came these copies? their origin doubtless will remain a mystery for ever; but one point is certain: they referred to la romée's daughter, to the damsel who, from her father's house, could see the edge of "le bois-chenu." thus they came from close at hand and were of recent circulation.[ ] if this amended prophecy of merlin be not the one that reached jeanne in her village, forecasting that a maid should come from the lorraine marches for the saving of the kingdom, then it was closely related to it. the two prognostications have a family likeness.[ ] they were uttered in the same spirit and with the same intention; and they indicate that the ecclesiastics of the meuse valley and those of the loire had agreed to draw attention to the inspired damsel of domremy. [footnote : morosini, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : pierre migiet weaves the two prophecies into one, which he says he has read in a book, _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] as merlin had foretold the works of jeanne, so bede must also have predicted them, for bede and merlin were always together in matters of prophecy. the monk of wearmouth, the venerable bede, who had been dead six centuries, had been a veritable mine of knowledge in his lifetime. he had written on theology and chronology; he had discoursed of night and day, of weeks and months, of the signs of the zodiac, of epacts, of the lunar cycle, and of the movable feasts of the church. in his book _de temporum ratione_ he had treated of the seventh and eighth ages of the world, which were to follow the age in which he lived. he had prophesied. during the siege of orléans, churchmen were circulating these obscure lines attributed to him, and foretelling the coming of the maid: _bis sex cuculli, bis septem se sociabunt,[ ] gallorum pulli tauro nova bella parabunt ecce beant bella, tunc fert vexilla puella._ [footnote : adopting the emendation made by m. germain lefèvre-pontalis in his _chronique d'antonio morosini_, vol. iii, pp. , ; vol. iv, pp. _et seq._] the first of these lines is a chronogram, that is, it contains a date. to decipher it you take the numeral letters of the line and add them together; the total gives the date. bis sex cvcvlli, bis septem se sociabvnt. + + + + + + + + + + + + + = . had any one sought these lines in the works of the venerable bede they would not have found them, because they are not there; but no one thought of looking for them any more than they thought of looking for the forêt chenue in merlin.[ ] and it was understood that both bede and merlin had foretold the coming of the maid. in those days prophecies, chronograms, and charms flew like pigeons from the banks of the loire and spread abroad throughout the realm. not later than the may or june of this year the pseudo bede will reach burgundy. earlier still he will be heard of in paris. the aged christine de pisan, living in retirement in a french abbey, before the last day of july, , will write that bede and merlin had beheld the maid in a vision.[ ] [footnote : _the complete works of the venerable bede_, ed. giles, london, - , vols., in vo, in _patres ecclesiæ anglicanæ_.] [footnote : christine de pisan, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. . the dean of saint thibaud, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . herman korner, in le p. ayroles, _la vraie jeanne d'arc_, pp. _et seq._ walter bower, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] the clerks, who were busy forging prophecies for the maid's benefit, did not stop at a pseudo bede and a garbled merlin. they were truly indefatigable, and by a stroke of good luck we possess a piece of their workmanship which has escaped the ravages of time. it is a short latin poem written in the obscure prophetic style, of which the following is a translation through the old french. "a virgin clothed in man's attire, with the body of a maid, at god's behest goes forth to raise the downcast king, who bears the lilies, and to drive out his accursed enemies, even those who now beleaguer the city of orléans and strike terror into the hearts of its inhabitants. and if the people will take heart and go out to battle, the treacherous english shall be struck down by death, at the hand of the god of battles who fights for the maid, and the french shall cause them to fall, and then shall there be an end of the war; and the old covenants and the old friendship shall return. pity and righteousness shall be restored. there shall be a treaty of peace, and all men shall of their own accord return to the king, which king shall weigh justice and administer it unto all men and preserve his subjects in beautiful peace. henceforth no english foe with the sign of the leopard shall dare to call himself king of france [added by the translator] and adopt the arms of france, which arms are borne by the holy maid."[ ] [footnote : buchon, _math. d'escouchy_, etc., p. . g. lefèvre-pontalis, eberhard windecke, pp. - . a latin text of this prophecy is to be found on the fly-leaf of the cartulary of thérouanne.] these false prophecies give some idea of the means employed for the setting to work of the inspired damsel. such methods may be somewhat too crafty for our liking. these clerks had but one object,--the peace of the realm and of the church. the miraculous deliverance of the people had to be prepared. we must not be too hasty to condemn those pious frauds without which the maid could not have worked her miracles. much art and some guile are necessary to contrive for innocence a hearing. meanwhile, on a steep rock, on the bank of the durance, in the remote see of saint-marcellin, jacques gélu remained faithful to the king he had served and careful for the interests of the house of orléans and of france. to the two churchmen, jean girard and pierre l'hermite, he replied that, for the sake of the orphan and the oppressed, god would doubtless manifest himself, and would frustrate the evil designs of the english; yet one should not easily and lightly believe the words of a peasant girl bred in solitude, for the female sex was frail and easily deceived, and france must not be made ridiculous in the eyes of the foreigner. "the french," he added, "are already famous for the ease with which they are duped." he ended by advising pierre l'hermite that it would be well for the king to fast and do penance so that heaven might enlighten him and preserve him from error.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. - ; vol. v, p. . marcellin fornier, _histoire des alpes-maritimes ou cottiennes_, vol. ii, pp. , .] but the mind of the oracle and ex-councillor could not rest. he wrote direct to king charles and queen marie to warn them of the danger. to him it seemed that there could be no good in the damsel. he mistrusted her for three reasons: first, because she came from a country in the possession of the king's enemies, burgundians and lorrainers; secondly, she was a shepherdess and easily deceived; thirdly, she was a maid. he cited as an example alexander of macedon, whom a queen endeavoured to poison. she had been fed on venom by the king's enemies and then sent to him in the hope that he would fall a victim to the wench's[ ] wiles. but aristotle dismissed the seductress and thus delivered his prince from death. the archbishop of embrun, as wise as aristotle, warned the king against conversing with the damsel in private. he advised that she should be kept at a distance and examined, but not repulsed. [footnote : [in the original french _garce_.] the text has _grace_, which is not possible. i have conjectured that the word should be _garce_.] a prudent answer to those letters reassured gélu. in a new epistle he testified to the king his satisfaction at hearing that the damsel was regarded with suspicion and left in uncertainty as to whether she would or would not be believed. then, with a return to his former misgivings, he added: "it behoves not that she should have frequent access to the king until such time as certainty be established concerning her manner of life and her morals."[ ] [footnote : m. fornier, _histoire des alpes-maritimes ou cottiennes_, vol. ii, pp. , .] king charles did indeed keep jeanne in uncertainty as to what was believed of her. but he did not suspect her of craftiness and he received her willingly. she talked to him with the simplest familiarity. she called him gentle dauphin, and by that term she implied nobility and royal magnificence.[ ] she also called him her _oriflamme_, because he was her _oriflamme_, or, as in modern language she would have expressed it, her standard.[ ] the _oriflamme_ was the royal banner. no one at chinon had seen it, but marvellous things were told of it. the _oriflamme_ was in the form of a gonfanon with two wings, made of a costly silk, fine and light, called _sandal_,[ ] and it was edged with tassels of green silk. it had come down from heaven; it was the banner of clovis and of saint charlemagne. when the king went to war it was carried before him. so great was its virtue that the enemy at its approach became powerless and fled in terror. it was remembered how, when in philippe le bel defeated the flemings, the knight who bore it was slain. the next day he was found dead, but still clasping the standard in his arms.[ ] it had floated in front of king charles vi before his misfortunes, and since then it had never been unfurled. [footnote : clerk of the town hall of albi, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : thomassin, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _sandal_ or _cendal_, a silk bearing some resemblance to taffetas. cf. godefroy, _lexique de l'ancien français_ (w.s.).] [footnote : du cange, _glossaire_, under the word _auriflamma_. le roux de lincy and tisserand, _paris et ses historiens_, pp. , , , . [_histoire générale de paris._]] one day when the maid and the king were talking together, the duke of alençon entered the hall. when he was a child, the english had taken him prisoner at verneuil and kept him five years in the crotoy tower.[ ] only recently set at liberty, he had been shooting quails near saint-florent-lès-saumur, when a messenger had brought the tidings that god had sent a damsel to the king to turn the english out of france.[ ] this news interested him as much as any one because he had married the duke of orléans' daughter; and straightway he had come to chinon to see for himself. in the days of his graceful youth the duke of alençon appeared to advantage, but he was never renowned for his wisdom. he was weak-minded, violent, vain, jealous, and extremely credulous. he believed that ladies find favour by means of a certain herb, the mountain-heath; and later he thought himself bewitched. he had a disagreeable, harsh voice; he knew it, and the knowledge annoyed him.[ ] as soon as she saw him approaching, jeanne asked who this noble was. when the king replied that it was his cousin alençon, she curtsied to the duke and said: "be welcome. the more representatives of the blood royal are here the better."[ ] in this she was completely mistaken. the dauphin smiled bitterly at her words. not much of the royal blood of france ran in the duke's veins. [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. iii, pp. , . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. vi, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] on the next day jeanne went to the king's mass. when she approached her dauphin she bowed before him. the king took her into a room and sent every one away except the sire de la trémouille and the duke of alençon. then jeanne addressed to him several requests. more especially did she ask him to give his kingdom to the king of heaven. "and afterwards," she added, "the king of heaven will do for you what he has done for your predecessors and will restore you to the condition of your fathers."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , . eberhard windecke, pp. _et seq._] in discoursing thus of things spiritual, in giving utterance to those precepts of reformation and of a new life, she was repeating what the clerks had taught her. nevertheless she was by no means imbued with this doctrine. it was too subtle for her, and it was shortly to fade from her mind and give place to an ardour less monastic but more chivalrous. that same day she rode out with the king and threw a lance in the meadow with so fine a grace that the duke of alençon, marvelling, made her a present of a horse.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] a few days later this young noble took her to the abbey of saint-florent-lès-saumur,[ ] the church of which was so greatly admired that it was called la belle d'anjou. here in this abbey there dwelt at that time his mother and his wife. it is said that they were glad to see jeanne. but they had no great faith in the issue of the war. the young dame of alençon said to her: "jeannette, i am full of fear for my husband. he has just come out of prison, and we have had to give so much money for his ransom that gladly would i entreat him to stay at home." to which jeanne replied: "madame, have no fear. i will bring him back to you in safety, and either such as he is now or better."[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] she called the duke of alençon her fair duke,[ ] and loved him for the sake of the duke of orléans, whose daughter he had married. she loved him also because he believed in her when all others doubted or denied, and because the english had done him wrong. she loved him too because she saw he had a good will to fight. it was told how when he was a captive in the hands of the english at verneuil, and they proposed to give him back his liberty and his goods if he would join their party, he had rejected their offer.[ ] he was young like her; she thought that he like her must be sincere and noble. and perhaps in those days he was, for doubtless he was not then seeking to discover powders with which to dry up the king.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. , _passim_.] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : cf. kings xiii, (w.s.). p. dupuy, _procès de jean ii, duc d'alençon, - _, , in to. michelet, _histoire de france_, vol. v, p. . docteur chereau, _médecins du quinzième siècle_, in _l'union médicale_, vol. xiv, august, . joseph guibert, _jean ii duc d'alençon_, in _les positions de l'École des chartes_, .] it was decided that jeanne should be taken to poitiers to be examined by the doctors there.[ ] in this town the parlement met. here also were gathered together many famous clerks learned in theology, secular as well as regular,[ ] and grave doctors and masters were summoned to join them. jeanne set out under escort. at first she thought she was being taken to orléans. her faith was like that of the ignorant but believing folk, who, having taken the cross, went forth and thought every town they approached was jerusalem. half way she inquired of her guides where they were taking her. when she heard that it was to poitiers: "in god's name!" she said, "much ado will be there, i know. but my lord will help me. now let us go on in god's strength!"[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : bélisaire ledain, _jeanne d'arc à poitiers_, saint-maixent, , in vo, pages. neuville, _le parlement royal à poitiers_, in the _revue historique_, vol. vi, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] chapter vii the maid at poitiers for fourteen years the town of poitiers had been the capital of that part of france which belonged to the french. the dauphin charles had transferred his parlement there, or rather had assembled there those few members who had escaped from the parlement of paris. the parlement of poitiers consisted of two chambers only. it would have judged as wisely as king solomon had there been any questions on which to pronounce judgment, but no litigants presented themselves--they were afraid of being captured on the way by freebooters and captains in the king's pay; besides, in the disturbed state of the kingdom justice had little to do with the settlement of disputes. the councillors, who for the most part had lands near paris, were hard put to it for food and clothing. they were rarely paid and there were no perquisites. in vain they had inscribed their registers with the formula: _non deliberetur donec solvantur species_; no payments were forthcoming from the suitors.[ ] the attorney general, messire jean jouvenel des ursins, who owned rich lands and houses in Île-de-france, brie, and champagne, was filled with pity at the sight of that good and honourable lady his wife, his eleven children, and his three sons-in-law going barefoot and poorly clad through the streets of the town.[ ] as for the doctors and professors who had followed the king's fortunes, in vain were they wells of knowledge and springs of clerkly learning, since, for lack of a university to teach in, they reaped no advantage from their eloquence and their erudition. the town of poitiers, having become the first city in the realm, had a parlement but no university, like a lady highly born but one-eyed withal, for the parlement and the university are the two eyes of a great city. thus in their doleful leisure they were consumed with a desire, if it were god's will, to restore the king's fortunes as well as their own. meanwhile, shivering with cold and emaciated with hunger, they groaned and lamented. like israel in the desert they sighed for the day when the lord, inclining his ear to their supplications, should say: "at even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread: and ye shall know that i am the lord your god." _vespere comedetis carnes et mane saturabimini panibus: scietisque quod ego sum dominus deus vester._ (exodus xvi, .) it was from among these poor and faithful servants of a poverty-stricken king that were chosen for the most part the doctors and clerks charged with the examination of the maid. they were: the lord bishop of poitiers;[ ] the lord bishop of maguelonne;[ ] maître jean lombard, doctor in theology, sometime professor of theology at the university of paris;[ ] maître guillaume le maire, bachelor of theology, canon of poitiers;[ ] maître gérard machet, the king's confessor;[ ] maître jourdain morin;[ ] maître jean Érault, professor of theology;[ ] maître mathieu mesnage, bachelor of theology;[ ] maître jacques meledon;[ ] maître jean maçon, a very famous doctor of civil law and of canon law;[ ] brother pierre de versailles, a monk of saint-denys in france, of the order of saint benedict, professor of theology, prior of the priory of saint-pierre de chaumont, abbot of talmont in the diocese of laon, ambassador of his most christian majesty the king of france;[ ] brother pierre turelure, of the order of saint dominic, inquisitor at toulouse;[ ] maître simon bonnet;[ ] brother guillaume aimery, of the order of saint-dominic, doctor and professor of theology;[ ] brother seguin of seguin of the order of saint dominic, doctor and professor of theology;[ ] brother pierre seguin, carmelite;[ ] several of the king's councillors, licentiates of civil as well as of canon law. [footnote : neuville, _le parlement royal à poitiers_, in the _revue historique_, vol. vi, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : louis battifol, _jean jouvenel, prévot des marchands de la ville de paris_, paris, , in vo. juvénal des ursins, _histoire de charles vi_, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _gallia christiana_, vol. ii, col. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . le p. ayroles, _la pucelle devant l'Église de son temps_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , . launoy, _historia collegii navarrici_, lib. ii, _passim_.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , , .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , , , . _gallia christiana_, vol. iii, col. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _gallia christiana_, vol. iii, col. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , . le p. chapotin, _la guerre de cent ans; jeanne d'arc et les dominicains_, p. .] [footnote : canon dunand, _la légende anglaise de jeanne_, paris, , in vo, p. .] here was a large assembly of doctors for the cross-examination of one shepherdess. but we must remember that in those days theology subtle and inflexible dominated all human knowledge and forced the secular arm to give effect to its judgment. therefore, as soon as an ignorant girl caused it to be believed that she had seen god, the virgin, the saints, and the angels, she must either pass from miracle to miracle, through an edifying death to beatification, or from heresy to heresy through an ecclesiastical prison, to be burnt as a witch. and, as the holy inquisitors were fully persuaded that the devil easily entered into a woman, the unhappy creature was more likely to be burnt alive than to die in an odour of sanctity. but jeanne before the doctors at poitiers was an exception; she ran no risk of being suspected in matters of faith. even brother pierre turelure himself had no desire to find in her one of those heretics he zealously sought to discover at toulouse. in her presence the illustrious masters drew in their theological claws. they were churchmen, but they were armagnacs, for the most part business men, diplomatists, old councillors of the dauphin.[ ] as priests, doubtless they were possessed of a certain body of dogma and morality, and of a code of rules for judging matters of faith. but now it was a question not of curing the disease of heresy, but of driving out the english. jeanne was in favour with my lord the duke of alençon and with my lord the bastard; the inhabitants of orléans were looking to her for their deliverance. she promised to take the king to reims; and it happened that the cleverest and the most powerful man in france, the chancellor of the kingdom, my lord regnault de chartres, was archbishop and count of reims; and that had great weight.[ ] [footnote : o. raguenet de saint-albin, _les juges de jeanne d'arc à poitiers, membres du parlement ou gens d'Église_, orléans, , in vo, pages.] [footnote : see _ante_, pp. , .] if it should be as she said, if god had verily sent her to the aid of the lilies, to the mind of whomsoever possessed sense and learning it appeared marvellous but not incredible. no one denied that god could directly intervene in the affairs of kingdoms, for he himself had said: _per me reges regnant_. in this church holy and indivisible, there were the doctors of poitiers who deliberately pronounced god to be on the side of the dauphin, while the university of paris as deliberately pronounced god to be on the side of the burgundians and the english. his messenger need not necessarily be an angel. he might employ a creature human or not human, like the raven that fed elijah. and that a woman should engage in war accorded with what was written in books concerning camilla, the amazons, and queen penthesilea, and with what the bible says of the strong women, deborah, jahel, judith of bethulia, raised up by god for the salvation of israel. for it is written: "the mighty one did not fall by the young men, neither did the sons of titans smite him, nor high giants set upon him; but judith the daughter of merari weakened him with the beauty of her countenance."[ ] [footnote : judith, xvi, (w.s.).] jeanne was taken to the mansion where dwelt maître jean rabateau, not far from the law-courts, in the heart of the town.[ ] maître jean rabateau was lay attorney general; all criminal cases went to him, while civil cases went to the ecclesiastical attorney general, jean jouvenel. alike king's advocates, in the king's service, they both represented him in cases wherein he was concerned. the king was an unprofitable client. for representing him in criminal trials maître jean rabateau received four hundred livres a year. he was forbidden to appear in any but crown cases; and no one suspected him of receiving many bribes. if in addition he held the office of councillor to the duke of orléans he gained little by it. like most parlement officials he was for the moment very poor. a stranger in poitiers, he had no house there, but lodged in a mansion, which, because it belonged to a family named rosier, was called the hôtel de la rose. it was a large dwelling. witnesses whom it was necessary to keep securely and deal with honourably were entertained there. jeanne was taken there although the parlement had nothing to do with her cross-examination.[ ] once again she was placed in charge of a man who served both the duke of orléans and the king of france. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . b. ledain, _jeanne d'arc à poitiers_, saint-maixent, , in vo.] [footnote : nevertheless see _le mistère du siège_, pp. - .] jean rabateau's wife, in common with the wives of all lawyers, was a woman of good reputation.[ ] while she was at la rose, jeanne would stay long on her knees every day after dinner. at night she would rise from her bed to pray, and pass long hours in the little oratory of the mansion. it was in this house that the doctors conducted her examination. when their coming was announced she was seized with cruel anxiety. the blessed saint catherine was careful to reassure her.[ ] she likewise had disputed with doctors and confounded them. true, those doctors were heathen, but they were learned and their minds were subtle; for in the life of the saint it is written: "the emperor summoned fifty doctors versed in the lore of the egyptians and the liberal arts. and when she heard that she was to dispute with the wise men, catherine feared lest she should not worthily defend the gospel of jesus christ. but an angel appeared unto her and said: 'i am the archangel saint michael, and i am come to tell thee that thou shalt come forth from the strife victorious and worthy of our lord jesus christ, the hope and crown of those who strive for him.' and the virgin disputed with the doctors."[ ] [footnote : there can be no reason for suspecting this lady of not living up to her reputation, for nothing is known of her, not even whether she were maître jean rabateau's first or second wife, for he had two. the first was the daughter of benoît pidelet. cf. b. ledain, _la maison de jeanne d'arc à poitiers, maître jean rabateau_ (_revue du bas-poitou_, april, , pp. , ). a. barbier, _jeanne d'arc et l'hôtellerie de la rose_, poitiers, , in vo.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : voragine, _la légende dorée_ (vie de sainte catherine).] the grave doctors and masters and the principal clerks of the parlement of poitiers, in companies of two and three, repaired to the house of jean rabateau, and each one of them in turn questioned jeanne. the first to come were jean lombard, guillaume le maire, guillaume aimery, pierre turelure, and jacques meledon. brother jean lombard asked: "wherefore have you come? the king desires to know what led you to come to him." jeanne's reply greatly impressed these clerks: "as i kept my flocks a _voice appeared to me_. the voice said: 'god has great pity on the people of france. jeanne, thou must go into france.' on hearing these words i began to weep. then the voice said unto me: 'go to vaucouleurs. there shalt thou find a captain, who will take thee safely into france, to the king. fear not.' i did as i was bidden, and i came to the king without hindrance."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (evidence of brother seguin).] then the word fell to brother guillaume aimery: "according to what you have said, the voice told you that god will deliver the people of france from their distress; but if god will deliver them he has no need of men-at-arms." "in god's name," replied the maid, "the men-at-arms will fight, and god will give the victory." maître guillaume declared himself satisfied.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] on the nd of march, maître pierre de versailles and maître jean Érault went together to jean rabateau's lodging. the squire, gobert thibault, whom jeanne had already seen at chinon, came with them. he was a young man and very simple, one who believed without asking for a sign. as they came in jeanne went to meet them, and, striking the squire on the shoulder, in a friendly manner, she said: "i wish i had many men as willing as you."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] with men-at-arms she felt at her ease. but the doctors she could not tolerate, and she suffered torture when they came to argue with her. although these theologians showed her great consideration, their eternal questions wearied her; their slowness and heaviness exasperated her. she bore them a grudge for not believing in her straightway, without proof, and for asking her for a sign, which she could not give them, since neither saint michael nor saint catherine nor saint margaret appeared during the examination. in retirement, in the oratory, and in the lonely fields the heavenly visitants came to her in crowds; angels and saints, descending from heaven, flocked around her. but when the doctors came, immediately the jacob's ladder was drawn up. besides, the clerks were theologians, and she was a saint. relations are always strained between the heads of the church militant and those devout women who communicate directly with the church triumphant. she realised that the revelations granted to her so abundantly inspired her most favourable judges with doubts, suspicion, and even mistrust. she dared not confide to them much of the mystery of her voices, and when the churchmen were not present she told alençon, her fair duke, that she knew more and could do more than she had ever told all those clerks.[ ] it was not to them she had been sent; it was not for them that she had come. she felt awkward in their presence, and their manners were the occasion of that irritation which is discernible in more than one of her replies.[ ] sometimes when they questioned her she retreated to the end of her bench and sulked. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] "we come to you from the king," said maître pierre de versailles. she replied with a bad grace: "i am quite aware that you are come to question me again. i don't know a from b."[ ] but to the question: "wherefore do you come?" she made answer eagerly: "i come from the king of heaven to raise the siege of orléans, and take the king to be crowned and anointed at reims. maître jean Érault, have you ink and paper? write what i shall tell you." and she dictated a brief manifesto to the english captains: "you, suffort, clasdas, and la poule, in the name of the king of heaven i call upon you to return to england."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (evidence of gobert thibault).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . boucher de molandon and a. de beaucorps, _l'armée anglaise_, p. . la poule, as he is called here, is identical with suffort, and is none other than william pole, earl of suffolk, unless john pole, william's brother, be intended, but he was not one of the three organisers of the siege. as for clasdas or glasdale, as the french called him, he served under the orders of the commander of les tourelles. these errors may have been jeanne's, or possibly they were made by the witness. they do not recur in the letter to the english.] maître jean Érault, who wrote at her dictation, was, like most of the clerks, favourably disposed towards her. further, he had his own ideas. he recollected that marie of avignon, surnamed la gasque, had uttered true and memorable prophecies to king charles vi. now la gasque had told the king that the realm was to suffer many sorrows; and she had seen weapons in the sky. her story of her vision had concluded with these words: "while i was afeard, believing myself called upon to take these weapons, a voice comforted me, saying: 'they are not for thee, but for a virgin, who shall come and with these weapons deliver the realm of france.'" maître jean Érault meditated on these marvellous revelations and came to believe that jeanne was the virgin announced by marie of avignon.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] maître gérard machet, the king's confessor, had found it written that a maid should come to the help of the king of france. he remarked on it to gobert thibault, the squire, who was no very great personage;[ ] and he certainly spoke of it to several others. gérard machet, doctor of theology, sometime vice chancellor of the university, from which he was now excluded, was regarded as one of the lights of the church. he loved the court,[ ] although he would not admit it, and enjoyed the favour of the king, who had just rewarded his services by giving him money with which to purchase a mule.[ ] all doubts concerning the disposition of these doctors are removed by the discovery that the king's confessor himself put into circulation those prophecies which had been distorted in favour of the maid from the bois-chenu. [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _lettres de gérard machet_, bibl. nat. latin documents, no. . launoy, _regii navarræ gymnasii parisiensis historia_, paris, ( vols. in to), vol. ii, pp. , . du boulay, _hist. univ. parisiensis_, vol. v, p. . vallet de viriville, in _nouvelle biographie générale_.] [footnote : de beaucourt, _extrait du catalogue des actes de charles vii_, p. .] the damsel was interrogated concerning her voices, which she called her council, and her saints, whom she imagined in the semblance of those sculptured or painted figures peopling the churches.[ ] the doctors objected to her having cast off woman's clothing and had her hair cut round in the manner of a page. now it is written: "the woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the lord thy god" (deuteronomy xxii, ). the council of gangres, held in the reign of the emperor valens, had anathematised women who dressed as men and cut short their hair.[ ] many saintly women, impelled by a strange inspiration of the holy ghost, had concealed their sex by masculine garb. at saint-jean-des-bois, near compiègne, was preserved the reliquary of saint euphrosyne of alexandria, who lived for thirty-eight years in man's attire in the monastery of the abbot theodosius.[ ] for these reasons, and because of these precedents, the doctors argued: since jeanne had put on this clothing not to offend another's modesty but to preserve her own, we will put no evil interpretation on an act performed with good intent, and we will forbear to condemn a deed justified by purity of motive. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , , .] [footnote : labbe, _sacro-sancta consilia_ ( ), vol. ii, pp. , .] [footnote : surius, _vitæ s.s._ ( ), vol. i, pp. - . gabriel brosse, _histoire abrégée de la vie et de la translation de sainte euphrosine, vierge d'alexandrie, patronne de l'abbaye de beaulieu-lès-compiègne_, paris, , in vo.] certain of her questioners inquired why she called charles dauphin instead of giving him his title of king. this title had been his by right since the th of october, ; for on that day, the ninth since the death of the king his father, at mehun-sur-yèvre, in the chapel royal, he had put off his black gown and assumed the purple robe, while the heralds, raising aloft the banner of france, cried: "long live the king!" she answered: "i will not call him king until he shall have been anointed and crowned at reims. to that city i intend to take him."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] without this anointing there was no king of france for her. of the miracles which had followed that anointing she had heard every year from the mouth of her priest as he recited the glorious deeds of the blessed saint remi, the patron saint of her parish. this reply was such as to satisfy the interrogators because, both for things spiritual and temporal, it was important that the king should be anointed at reims.[ ] and messire regnault de chartres must have ardently desired it. [footnote : it may be noticed that during the consultation of the doctors, according to the report of it given by thomassin in _le registre delphinal_, charles of valois is designated alike by the title of king and by that of dauphin (_trial_, vol. iv, p. ).] contradicted by the clerks, she opposed the church's doctrine by the inspiration of her own heart, and said to them: "there is more in the book of our lord than in all yours."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] this was a bold and biting reply, which would have been dangerous had the theologians been less favourably inclined to her. otherwise they might have held it to be trespassing on the rights of the church, who, as the guardian of the holy books, is their jealous interpreter, and does not suffer the authority of scripture to be set up against the decisions of councils.[ ] what were those books, which without having read she judged to be contrary to those of our lord, wherein with mind and spirit she seemed to read plainly? they would seem to be the sacred canons and the sacred decretals. this child's utterance sapped the very foundations of the church. had the doctors of poitiers been less zealously armagnac they would henceforth have mistrusted jeanne and suspected her of heresy. but they were loyal servants of the houses of orléans and of france. their cassocks were ragged and their larders empty;[ ] their only hope was in god, and they feared lest in rejecting this damsel they might be denying the holy ghost. besides, everything went to prove that these words of jeanne were uttered without guile and in all ignorance and simplicity. no doubt that is why the doctors were not shocked by them. [footnote : le père didon, _vie de jésus_, vol. i, preface.] [footnote : juvénal des ursins, _histoire de charles vi_, p. .] brother seguin of seguin in his turn questioned the damsel. he was from limousin, and his speech betrayed his origin. he spoke with a drawl and used expressions unknown in lorraine and champagne. perhaps he had that dull, heavy air, which rendered the folk of his province somewhat ridiculous in the eyes of dwellers on the loire, the seine, and the meuse. to the question: "what language do your voices speak?" jeanne replied: "a better one than yours."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] even saints may lose patience. if brother seguin did not know it before, he learnt it that day. and what business had he to doubt that saint catherine and saint margaret, who were on the side of the french, spoke french? such a doubt jeanne could not bear, and she gave her questioner to understand that when one comes from limousin one does not inquire concerning the speech of heavenly ladies. notwithstanding he pursued his interrogation: "do you believe in god?" "yes, more than you do," said the maid, who, knowing nothing of the good brother, was somewhat hasty in esteeming herself better grounded in the faith than he. but she was vexed that there should be any question of her belief in god, who had sent her. her reply, if favourably interpreted, would testify to the ardour of her faith. did brother seguin so understand it? his contemporaries represented him as being of a somewhat bitter disposition. on the contrary, there is reason to believe that he was good-natured.[ ] [footnote : it seems to have been the fate of the inhabitants of limousin to be jeered at by the french of champagne and of l'Île de france. after brother seguin we have the student from limousin to whom pantagruel says: "thou art limousin to the bone and yet here thou wilt pass thyself off as a parisian." it is the lot of m. de pourceaugnac. la fontaine, in , writes from limoges to his wife that the people of limousin are by no means afflicted; neither do they labour under heaven's displeasure "as the folk of our provinces imagine." but he adds that he does not like their habits. it would seem that at first brother seguin was annoyed by jeanne's mocking vivacious repartees. but he cherished no ill-will against her. "the limousin's good nature does not permit the endurance of any unfriendly feeling," says abel hugo in _la france pittoresque: haute-vienne_. cf. a. précicou, _rabelais et les limousins_, limoges, , in vo.] "but after all," he said, "it cannot be god's will that you should be believed unless some sign appear to make us believe in you. on your word alone we cannot counsel the king to run the risk of granting you men-at-arms." "in god's name," she answered, "it was not to give a sign that i came to poitiers. but take me to orléans and i will show you the signs wherefore i am sent. let me be given men, it matters not how many, and i will go to orléans." and she repeated what she was continually saying: "the english shall all be driven out and destroyed. the siege of orléans shall be raised and the city delivered from its enemies, after i shall have summoned it to surrender in the name of the king of heaven. the dauphin shall be anointed at reims, the town of paris shall return to its allegiance to the king, and the duke of orléans shall come back from england."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] long did the doctors and masters, following the example of brother seguin of seguin, urge her to show a sign of her mission. they thought that if god had chosen her to deliver the french nation he would not fail to make his choice manifest by a sign, as he had done for gideon, the son of joash. when israel was sore pressed by the midianites, and when god's chosen people hid from their enemies in the caves of the mountains, the angel of the lord appeared to gideon under an oak, and said unto him: "surely i will be with thee and thou shalt smite the midianites as one man." to which gideon made answer: "if now i have found grace in thy sight, then shew me a sign that thou talkest with me." and gideon made ready a kid and kneaded unleavened cakes; the flesh he put in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot and brought the pot and the basket beneath the oak. then the angel of god said unto him: "take the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and lay them upon this rock, and pour out the broth." and he did so. then the angel of the lord put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the flesh and the unleavened cakes; and there rose up fire out of the rock, and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes. when gideon perceived that he had seen an angel of the lord, he cried out: "alas, o lord god! for because i have seen an angel of the lord face to face."[ ] with three hundred men gideon subdued the midianites. this example the doctors had before their minds.[ ] [footnote : judges, ch. vi. (w.s.).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] but for the maid the sign of victory was victory itself. she said without ceasing: "the sign that i will show you shall be orléans relieved and the siege raised."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. .] such persistency made an impression on most of her interrogators. they determined to make of it, not a stone of stumbling, but rather an example of zeal and a subject of edification. since she promised them a sign it behoved them in all humility to ask god to send it, and, filled with a like hope, joining with the king and all the people, to pray to the god, who delivered israel, to grant them the banner of victory. thus were overcome the arguments of brother seguin and of those who, led away by the precepts of human wisdom, desired a sign before they believed. after an examination which had lasted six weeks, the doctors declared themselves satisfied.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] there was one point it was necessary to ascertain; they must know whether jeanne was, as she said, a virgin. matrons had indeed already examined her on her arrival at chinon. then there was a doubt as to whether she were man or maid; and it was even feared that she might be an illusion in woman's semblance, produced by the art of demons, which scholars considered by no means impossible.[ ] it was not long since the death of that canon who held that now and again knights are changed into bears and spirits travel a hundred leagues in one night, then suddenly become sows or wisps of straw.[ ] suitable measures had therefore been taken. but they must be carried out exactly, wisely, and cautiously, for the matter was of great importance. [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. ; vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : mary darmesteter, _froissart_, paris, , in mo, p. .] chapter viii the maid at poitiers (_continued_) a belief, common to learned and ignorant alike, ascribed special virtues to the state of virginity. such ideas had been handed down from a remote antiquity; their origin was pre-christian; they were an immemorial inheritance, one part of which came from the gauls and germans, the other from the romans and greeks. in the land of gaul there still lingered a memory of the sacred beauty of the white priestesses of the forest; and sometimes in the island of sein, along the misty shores of the ocean, there wandered the shades of those nine sisters at whose bidding, in days of yore, the tempest raged and was stilled. according to these beliefs, which had dawned in the childhood of races, the gift of prophecy is bestowed on virgins alone. it is the heritage of a cassandra or a velleda. it was said that sibyls had prophesied the coming of jesus christ. in the church they were considered the first witnesses of christ among the gentiles, and they were venerated as the august sisters of the prophets of israel. the _dies iræ_ mentions one of them in the same breath with king david himself. by what pious frauds their fame for prophecy was established, we cannot tell any more than jean gerson or gérard machet. with the doctors of the fifteenth century we must look upon these virgins as speaking the word of truth to the nations, who venerated but did not understand them. such was the ancient tradition of the christian church. the most ancient fathers of the church, justin, origen, clement of alexandria, frequently made use of the sibylline oracles; and the heathen were at a loss for a reply when lactantius confronted them with these prophetesses of the nations. trusting in the word of varro, saint jerome firmly believed in their existence. into _the city of god_ saint augustine introduces the erythrean sibyl, who, he says, faithfully foretold the life of the saviour. as early as the thirteenth century, these virgins of old had their places in cathedrals by the side of patriarchs and prophets. but it was not until the fifteenth century that multitudes of them were represented; sculptured on church porches, carved on choir stalls, painted on chapel walls or glass windows. each one has her distinctive attribute. the persian holds the lantern and the libyan the torch, which illuminated the darkness of the gentiles. the agrippine, the european, and erythrean are armed with the sword; the phrygian bears the paschal cross; the hellespontine presents a rose tree in flower; the others display the visible signs of the mystery they foretell: the cumæan a manger; the delphian, the samian, the tiburtine, the cimmerian a crown of thorns, a sceptre of reeds, scourges, a cross.[ ] [footnote : jean philippe de lignan, rome, (not paginated), leaf and the following. for the comparison of jeanne d'arc to the ancient sibyl, see the clerk of spire, _sibylla francica_, in the _trial_, vol. iii, p. . christine de pisano in the _trial_, vol. v, p. . lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations en faveur de jeanne d'arc_, pp. - . barbier de montault, _iconographie des sibylles_, in the _revue de l'art chrétien_, xiii-xiv ( - ). barraud, _notice sur les attributs avec lesquelles on représente les sibylles aux xv'e et xvi'e siècles_, in the _bulletin archéologique de la commission historique des arts mon._, vol. iv ( ). cf. morosini, vol. iv, supplement xiv, p. .] the very economy of the christian religion--the ordering of its mysteries, wherein humanity is represented as ruined by a woman and saved by a virgin, and all flesh is involved in eve's curse--led to the triumph of virginity and the exaltation of a condition which, in the words of a father of the church, is in the flesh, yet not of the flesh. "it is because of virginity," says saint gregory of nyssa, "that god vouchsafes to dwell with men. it is virginity which gives men wings to soar towards heaven." celibacy raises the apostle john above the prince of the apostles himself. at the funeral of the virgin mary, peter gave john a palm branch, saying: "it becometh one who is celibate to bear the virgin's palm."[ ] [footnote : voragine, _la légende dorée_ (assomption de la vierge).] throughout western christendom the virgin mary--the virgin _par excellence_--had been the object of zealous devout worship[ ] ever since the twelfth century. the great cathedrals of northern france, dedicated to our lady, celebrated the feast of their patron saint on the day of the assumption. on the sculptured pillar of the central porch was the virgin, with her divine child and the virgin's lily. sometimes eve figured beneath, in order to represent at once sin and its redemption: the second eve redeeming the first, the virgin exalted the woman humbled. marvellous scenes are portrayed on the tympanums of porches. the virgin is kneeling; at her side is a flowering lily in a vase. the angel, book in hand, greets her with an ave, thus transposing the name eva, _mutans evæ nomen_. or again, with her feet resting on the crescent moon, she rises to the highest heaven: _exaltata est super choros angelorum_. further, from jesus christ she receives the precious crown: _posuit in capite ejus coronam de lapide pretioso_. in gems of painted glass, church windows portrayed the figures of mary's virginity; the stone which daniel saw dug from the mountain by no human hand, gideon's fleece, moses' burning bush, and aaron's budding rod. [footnote : le curé de saint-sulpice, _notre dame de france ou histoire du culte de la sainte vierge en france_, paris, , vols. in vo. abbé mignard, _la sainte vierge_, paris, , in vo, pp. _et seq._] in an inexhaustible flow of images, expressed in hymns, sequences, and litanies, she was the mystic rose, the ivory tower, the ark of the covenant, the gate of heaven, the morning star. she was the well of living water, the fountain of the garden, the walled orchard, the bright and shining stone, the flower of virtue, the palm of sweetness, the myrtle of temperance, the sweet ointment. in the golden legend, images rich and charming clothed the idea that grace and power resided in virginity. the hagiographers burst forth in loving praise of the brides of jesus christ; of those especially who put on the white robe of virginity and the red roses of martyrdom. it was during the passion of virgins that miracles of the most abounding grace were worked. angels bring down to dorothea celestial roses, which she scatters over her executioners. virgin martyrs exercise their power over beasts. the lions of the amphitheatre lick the feet of saint thecla. the wild beasts of the circus gather together, and with tails interlaced, prepare a throne for saint euphemia; in the pit, aspics form a pleasing necklace for saint christina. it is not the will of the divine spouse for whom they endure anguish that they should suffer in their modesty. when the executioner tears off saint agnes's garments, her hair grows thicker and clothes her in a miraculous garment. when saint barbara is to be taken naked through the streets, an angel brings her a white tunic. these agneses and these dorotheas, these catherines and these margarets, this legion of innocent conquerors prepared men's minds to believe in the miracle of a virgin stronger than armed men. had not saint geneviève turned away attila and his barbarian warriors from paris? the fable of the maid and the unicorn, so widely known in those days, is a lively expression of this belief in a special virtue residing in the state of virginity. the unicorn was half goat and half horse, of immaculate whiteness; it bore a marvellous sword upon its forehead. hunters, when they saw it pass in the thicket, had never been able to reach it, so rapid was its course. but if a virgin in the forest called the unicorn, the creature obeyed, came and laid its head on her lap, and allowed such feeble hands to take and bind it. if however a damsel corrupt and no longer a maid approached it, the unicorn slew her immediately.[ ] [footnote : _de l'unicorne qu'une jeune fille séduit_, in the _bestiaire_ of r. de fournival (paulin paris, _manuscrits français_, vol. iv, p. ). berger de xivrey, _traditions tératologiques_, p. . j. doublet, _histoire de l'abbaye de saint-denys_, vol. i, p. . vallet de viriville, _nouvelles recherches sur agnès sorel_, in _bulletin de la société des antiquaires de picardie_, vol. vi, p. . a. maury, _croyances et légendes du moyen âge_, pp. _et seq._] it was even said that a virgin had the power to cure king's evil, by reciting, fasting and naked, certain magic words; but they were not words from the gospel.[ ] [footnote : leber, _des cérémonies du sacre_, paris, , in vo, p. .] while mystics and visionaries were glorifying virginity, the church, bent on governing the body as well as the soul, condemned opinions denying the lawfulness of marriage, which she had constituted a sacrament. those who would anathematise all works of the flesh she held to be abominable and impious. a maid deserved praise for preserving her virginity, provided always that her motives were praiseworthy. two hundred years before the reign of charles vii, a young girl of reims realised that a grave sin may be committed against the church of god by refusing the solicitations of a clerk in a vineyard. here is the damsel's story as related by the canon gervais. "on a day, guillaume with the white hands, uncle of king philippe of france, for his pleasure rode forth from his town. a clerk of his following, gervais by name, who was in the heat of youth, saw a maiden walking alone in a vineyard. he went to her, greeted her and asked: 'what are you doing in such great haste?' and with fitting words he courteously solicited her. "without even looking at him, calmly and gravely she replied: 'god forbid, youth, that i should ever be yours or any man's, for if i were to lose my virginity and my body its purity, i should inevitably fall into eternal damnation.' "such words caused the clerk to suspect that the maiden belonged to the impious sect of the cathari, whom the church was in those days pursuing relentlessly and punishing severely. one of the errors of these heretics was indeed to condemn all carnal intercourse. impatient to resolve his doubts, gervais straightway provoked the damsel to a discussion on the church's teaching in this matter. meanwhile, the archbishop, guillaume with the white hands, turned his steed, and, followed by his monks, came to the vineyard where the clerk and the maiden were disputing together. when he learnt the cause of their disagreement he ordered the maiden to be seized and brought into the town. there he exhorted her, and, in charity, endeavoured to convert her to the catholic faith. "she would not submit, however. 'i am not well enough grounded in doctrine to defend myself,' she said to him. 'but in the town i have a mistress, who, with good reasons, will easily refute all your arguments. she it is who lodges in that house.' "the archbishop guillaume straightway sent to inquire after this woman; and, having questioned her, perceived that what the maiden had said concerning her was true. the very next day he convoked an assembly of clerks and nobles to judge the two women. both of them were condemned to be burnt. the mistress contrived to escape, but promises and persuasions having failed to turn the maiden from the pernicious error of her ways, she was delivered up to the executioner. she died without shedding a tear, without uttering a complaint."[ ] [footnote : l. tanon, _histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition en france_, paris, , in vo, p. .] in the year there was a certain woman, a native of the duchy of bar, catherine sauve by name. she was then a solitary, living at montpellier, on the road to lattes. having been publicly accused, she was examined by the inquisitor's vicar, maître raymond cabasse, and found to be infected with the heresy of the cathari. among other errors she maintained that all carnal intercourse is sinful, even in wedlock. wherefore she was delivered to the secular arm and burned at the stake on the nd of november in that year.[ ] [footnote : germain, _catherine sauve_, in _académie des sciences et lettres de montpellier, lettres_, vol. i, , in to, pp. - .] it was then commonly believed that such maidens as gave themselves to the devil were straightway stripped of their virginity; and that thus he obtained power over these unhappy creatures.[ ] such ways accorded with what was known of his libidinous disposition. these pleasures were tempered to his woeful state. and thereby he gained a further advantage,--that of unarming his victim,--for virginity is as a coat of mail against which the darts of hell are but blades of straw. hence it was all but certain that a soul vowed to the devil could not reside within a maid.[ ] wherefore, there was one infallible way of proving that the peasant girl from vaucouleurs was not given up to magic or to sorcery, and had made no pact with the evil one. recourse was had to it. [footnote : du cange, _glossaire_, under the word _matrimonium_.] [footnote : pierre le loyer, _livre des spectres_, , in to, pp. , .] jeanne was seen, visited, privately inspected, and thoroughly examined by wise women, _mulieres doctas_; by knowing virgins, _peritas virgines_; by widows and wives, _viduas et conjugates_. first among these matrons were: the queen of sicily and of jerusalem, duchess of anjou; dame jeanne de preuilly, wife of the sire de gaucourt, governor of orléans, who was about fifty-seven years of age; and dame jeanne de mortemer, wife of messire robert le maçon, lord of trèves, a man full of years.[ ] the last was only eighteen, and one would have expected her to be better acquainted with the _calendrier des vieillards_ than with the formulary of matrons. it is strange with what assurance the good wives of those days undertook the solution of a problem which had appeared difficult to king solomon in all his wisdom. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . vallet de viriville, article _le maçon_, in _nouvelle biographie générale_.] jeanne of domremy was found to be a maid pure and intact.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . eberhard windecke, p. . morosini, p. .] while she herself was being subjected to the interrogatories of doctors and the examination of matrons, certain clerics who had been despatched to her native province were there prosecuting an inquiry concerning her birth, her life, and her morals.[ ] the ecclesiastics had been chosen from those mendicant friars[ ] who could pass freely along the highways and byways of the enemy's country without exciting the suspicion of english and burgundians. and, indeed, they were in no way molested. from domremy and from vaucouleurs they brought back sure testimony to the humility, the devotion, the honesty, and the simplicity of jeanne. but, most important, they had found no difficulty in gleaning certain pious tales, such as commonly adorned the childhood of saints. to these monks we must attribute an important share in the development of those legends of jeanne's early years, which were so soon to become popular. from this time, apparently, dates the story that when jeanne was in her seventh year, wolves spared her sheep, and birds of the woods came at her call and ate crumbs from her lap.[ ] such saintly flowers suggest a franciscan origin; among them are the wolf of gubbio and the birds preached to by saint francis. these mendicants may also have furnished examples of the maid's prophetic gift. they may have spread abroad the story that, when she was at vaucouleurs, on the day of the battle of the herrings, she knew of the great hurt inflicted on the french at rouvray.[ ] the success of such little stories was immediate and complete. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : siméon luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. cxliii. _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : letter from perceval de boulainvilliers to the duke of milan, in the _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] after this examination and inquiry, the doctors came to the following conclusions: "the king, beholding his own need and that of his realm, and considering the constant prayers to god of his poor subjects and all others who love peace and justice, ought not to repulse or reject the maid who says that god has sent her to bring him succour, albeit these promises may be nothing[ ] but the works of man; neither ought he lightly or hastily to believe in her. but, according to holy scripture he must try her in two ways: to wit, with human wisdom, by inquiring of her life, her morals, and her motive, as saith saint paul the apostle: _probate spiritus, si ex deo sunt_; and by earnest prayer to ask for a sign of her work and her divine hope, by which to tell whether it is by god's will that she is come. thus god commanded ahaz that he should ask for a sign when god promised him victory, saying unto him: _pete signum a domino_; and gideon did likewise when he asked for a sign and many others, etc. since the coming of the said maid, the king hath observed her in the two manners aforesaid: to wit, by trial of human wisdom and by prayer, asking god for a sign. as for the first, which is trial by human wisdom, he has tested the said maid in her life, her origin, her morals, her intention; and has kept her near him for the space of six weeks to show her to all people, whether clerks, ecclesiastics, monks, men-at-arms, wives, widows or others. in public and in private she hath conversed with persons of all conditions. but there hath been found no evil in her, nothing but good, humility, virginity, devoutness, honesty, simplicity. of her birth, as well as of her life, many marvellous things are related." [footnote : the word _seules_ in the text is doubtful.] "as for the second ordeal, the king asked her for a sign, to which she replied that before orléans she would give it, but neither earlier nor elsewhere, for thus it is ordained of god. "now, seeing that the king hath made trial of the aforesaid maid as far as it was in his power to do, that he findeth no evil in her, and that her reply is that she will give a divine sign before orléans; seeing her persistency, and the consistency of her words, and her urgent request that she be sent to orléans to show there that the aid she brings is divine, the king should not hinder her from going to orléans with men-at-arms, but should send her there in due state trusting in god. for to fear her or reject her when there is no appearance of evil in her would be to rebel against the holy ghost, and to render oneself unworthy of divine succour, as gamaliel said of the apostles in the council of the jews."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] in short, the doctors' conclusion was that as yet nothing divine appeared in the maid's promises, but that she had been examined and been found humble, a virgin, devout, honest, simple, and wholly good; and that, since she had promised to give a sign from god before orléans, she must be taken there, for fear that in her the gift of the holy ghost should be rejected. of these conclusions a great number of copies were made and sent to the towns of the realm as well as to the princes of christendom. the emperor sigismond, for example, received a copy.[ ] [footnote : eberhard windecke, pp. , .] if the doctors of poitiers had intended this six weeks inquiry, culminating in a favourable and solemn conclusion, to bring about the glorification of the maid and the heartening of the french people by the preparation and announcement of the marvel they had before them, then they succeeded perfectly.[ ] [footnote : the conclusions of the poitiers commission were circulated everywhere. traces of them are to be found in brittany (buchon and _chronique de morosini_), in flanders (_chronique de tournai_ and _chronique de morosini_), in germany (eb. windecke), in dauphiné (buchon).] that prolonged investigation, that minute examination reassured those doubting minds among the french, who suspected a woman dressed as a man of being a devil; they flattered men's imaginations with the hope of a miracle; they appealed to all hearts to judge favourably of the damsel who came forth radiant from the fire of ordeal and appeared as if glorified with a celestial halo. her vanquishing the doctors in argument made her seem like another saint catherine.[ ] but that she should have met difficult questions with wise answers was not enough for a multitude eager for marvels. it was imagined that she had been subjected to a strange probation from which she had come forth by nothing short of a miracle. thus a few weeks after the inquiry, the following wonderful story was related in brittany and in flanders: when at poitiers she was preparing to receive the communion, the priest had one wafer that was consecrated and another that was not. he wanted to give her the unconsecrated wafer. she took it in her hand and told the priest that it was not the body of christ her redeemer, but that the body was in the wafer which the priest had covered with the corporal.[ ] after that there could be no doubt that jeanne was a great saint. [footnote : "_altra santa catarina_" (morosini, vol. iii, p. ). there is no doubt that here she is compared to saint catherine of alexandria and not to saint catherine of sienna.] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, p. .] at the termination of the inquiries, a favourable opportunity for introducing the maid into orléans arrived in the beginning of april. for her arming and her accoutring she was sent first to tours.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] sixty-six years later, an inhabitant of poitiers, almost a hundred years old, told a young fellow-citizen that he had seen the maid set out for orléans on horseback, in white armour.[ ] he pointed to the very stone from which she had mounted her horse in the corner of the rue saint-etienne. now, when jeanne was at poitiers, she was not in armour. but the people of poitou had named the stone "the maid's mounting stone." with what a glad eager step the saint must have leapt from that stone on to the horse which was to carry her away from those furred cats to the afflicted and oppressed whom she was longing to succour.[ ] [footnote : jean bouchet, _annales d'aquitaine_, in the _trial_, vol. iv, pp· , .] [footnote : guilbert, _histoire des villes de france_, vol. iv, poitiers. cf. b. ledain, _la maison de jeanne d'arc à poitiers_, saint-maixent, , in vo. according to m. ledain the hôtel de la rose was on the spot now occupied by a house, number in la rue notre-dame-la-petite.] chapter ix the maid at tours at tours the maid lodged in the house of a dame commonly called lapau.[ ] she was eléonore de paul, a woman of anjou, who had been lady-in-waiting to queen marie of anjou. married to jean du puy, lord of la roche-saint-quentin, councillor of the queen of sicily, she had remained in the service of the queen of france.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _notices et extraits de chartes et de manuscrits appartenant au british museum de londres_, in the _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, vol. viii, pp. , .] the town of tours belonged to the queen of sicily, who grew richer and richer as her son-in-law grew poorer and poorer. she aided him with money and with lands. in , the duchy of touraine with all its dependencies, except the castellany of chinon, had come into her possession.[ ] the burgesses and commonalty of tours earnestly desired peace. meanwhile they made every effort to escape from pillage at the hands of men-at-arms. neither king charles nor queen yolande was able to defend them, so they must needs defend themselves.[ ] when the town watchmen announced the approach of one of those marauding chiefs who were ravaging touraine and anjou, the citizens shut their gates and saw to it that the culverins were in their places. then there was a parley: the captain from the brink of the moat maintained that he was in the king's service and on his way to fight the english; he asked for a night's rest in the town for himself and his men. from the heights of the ramparts he was politely requested to pass on; and, in case he should be tempted to force an entry, a sum of money was offered him.[ ] thus the citizens fleeced themselves for fear of being robbed. in like manner, only a few days before jeanne's coming, they had given the scot, kennedy, who was ravaging the district, two hundred livres to go on. when they had got rid of their defenders, their next care was to fortify themselves against the english. on the th of february of this same year, , these citizens lent one hundred crowns to captain la hire, who was then doing his best for orléans. and even on the approach of the english they consented to receive forty archers belonging to the company of the sire de bueil, only on condition that bueil should lodge in the castle with twenty men, and that the others should be quartered in the inns, where they were to have nothing without paying for it. thus it was or was not; and the sire de bueil went off to defend orléans.[ ] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _analyse et fragments tirés des archives municipales de tours_ in _cabinet historique_, vol. v, pp. - .] [footnote : quicherat, _rodrigue de villandrando_, paris, , in vo, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _le jouvencel_, vol. i, introduction, p. xxii, note .] in jean du puy's house, jeanne was visited by an augustinian monk, one jean pasquerel. he was returning from the town of puy-en-velay where he had met isabelle romée and certain of those who had conducted jeanne to the king.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] in this town, in the sanctuary of anis, was preserved an image of the mother of god, brought from egypt by saint louis. it was of great antiquity and highly venerated, for the prophet jeremiah had with his own hands carved it out of sycamore wood in the semblance of the virgin yet to be born, whom he had seen in a vision.[ ] in holy week, pilgrims flocked from all parts of france and of europe,--nobles, clerks, men-at-arms, citizens and peasants; and many, for penance or through poverty, came on foot, staff in hand, begging their bread from door to door. merchants of all kinds betook themselves thither; and it was at once the most popular of pilgrimages and one of the richest fairs in the world. all round the town the stream of travellers overflowed from the road on to vineyards, meadows, and gardens. on the day of the festival, in the year , two hundred persons perished, crushed to death in the throng.[ ] [footnote : francisque mandet, _histoire du velay_, le puy, - ( vols. in mo), vol. i, pp. _et seq._ s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, ch. xii.] [footnote : jean juvénal des ursins, .] in certain years the feast of the conception of our lord fell on the same day as that of his death; and thus there coincided the promise and the fulfilment of the promise of the greatest of mysteries. then holy friday became still holier. it was called great friday, and on that day such as entered the sanctuary of anis received plenary indulgence. on that day the crowd of pilgrims was greater than usual. now, in the year , good friday fell on the th of march, the day of the annunciation.[ ] [footnote : nicole de savigni, _notes sur les exploits de jeanne d'arc et sur divers évènements de son temps_, in the _bulletin de la société de l'histoire de paris_, , , p. . chanoine lucot, _jeanne d'arc en champagne_, châlons, , pp. , .] there is, therefore, nothing extraordinary in brother pasquerel's meeting jeanne's relatives at puy during holy week. that a peasant woman should travel two hundred and fifty miles on foot, through a country infested with soldiers and other robbers, in a season of snows and mist, to obtain an indulgence, was an every-day matter if we remember the surname which had for long been hers.[ ] this was not la romée's first pilgrimage. as we do not know which members of the maid's escort the good brother met, we are at liberty to conjecture that bertrand de poulengy was among them. we know little about him, but his speech would suggest that he was a devout person.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, p. , note. la romée may have received her surname for an entirely different reason. most of our knowledge of jeanne's mother is derived from documents of very doubtful authenticity.] [footnote : francis c. lowell considers the idea of la romée's pilgrimage to puy as a "characteristic example of the madness" of siméon luce (_joan of arc_, boston, , in vo, p. , note). nevertheless, after considerable hesitation, i, like luce, have rejected the corrections proposed by lebrun de charmettes and quicherat, and adopted unamended the text of the _trial_.] jeanne's comrades, having made friends with pasquerel, said to him: "you must go with us to jeanne. we will not leave you until you have taken us to her." they travelled together. brother pasquerel went with them to chinon, which jeanne had left; then he went on to tours, where his convent was. the augustinians, who claimed to have received their rule from st. francis himself, wore the grey habit of the franciscans. it was from their order that in the previous year the king had chosen a chaplain for his young son, the dauphin louis. brother pasquerel held the office of reader (_lector_) in his monastery.[ ] he was in priest's orders. quite young doubtless and of a wandering disposition, like many mendicant monks of those days, he had a taste for the miraculous, and was excessively credulous. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . for the meaning of _lector_, professor of theology, cf. du cange.] jeanne's comrades said to her: "jeanne, we have brought you this good father. you will like him well when you know him." she replied: "the good father pleases me. i have already heard tell of him, and even to-morrow will i confess to him." the next day the good father heard her in confession, and chanted mass before her. he became her chaplain, and never left her.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] in the fifteenth century tours was one of the chief manufacturing towns of the kingdom. the inhabitants excelled in all kinds of trades. they wove tissues of silk, of gold, and of silver. they manufactured coats of mail; and, while not competing with the armourers of milan, of nuremberg, and of augsburg, they were skilled in the forging and hammering of steel.[ ] here it was that, by the king's command, the master armourer made jeanne a suit of mail.[ ] the suit he furnished was of wrought iron; and, according to the custom of that time, consisted of a helmet, a cuirass in four parts, with epaulets, armlets, elbow-pieces, fore-armlets, gauntlets, cuisses, knee-pieces, greaves and shoes.[ ] the maker had doubtless no thought of accentuating the feminine figure. but the armour of that period, full in the bust, slight in the waist, with broad skirts beneath the corselet, in its slender grace and curious slimness, always has the air of a woman's armour, and seems made for queen penthesilea or for the roman camilla. the maid's armour was white and unadorned, if one may judge from its modest price of one hundred _livres tournois_. the two suits of mail, made at the same time by the same armourer for jean de metz and his comrade, were together worth one hundred and twenty-five _livres tournois_.[ ] possibly one of the skilful and renowned drapers of tours took the maid's measure for a _houppelande_ or loose coat in silk or cloth of gold or silver, such as captains wore over the cuirass. to look well, the coat, which was open in front, must be cut in scallops that would float round the horseman as he rode. jeanne loved fine clothes but still more fine horses.[ ] [footnote : e. giraudet, _histoire de la ville de tours_, tours, , vols. in vo, _passim_.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , ; vol. iv, pp. , , .] [footnote : j. quicherat, _histoire du costume en france_, paris, , large vo, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, p. . "the white armour of fifteenth century soldiers, simple as it was, was expensive; it cost about ten thousand francs of our present money. but the complete horse's armour was included in this" (maurice maindron, _pour l'histoire de l'armure_, in _le monde moderne_, ). according to the calculation of p. clément (_jacques coeur et charles vii_, , p. lxvi), livres would be equal to francs of present money.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . letter from perceval de boulainvilliers, _ibid._, vol. v, p. . greffier de la chambre des comptes of brabant, _ibid._, vol. iv, p. . le fèvre de saint-rémy, _ibid._, p. .] the king invited her to choose a horse from his stables. if we may believe a certain latin poet, she selected an animal of illustrious origin, but very old. it was a war horse, which pierre de beauvau, governor of maine and anjou, had given to one of the king's two brothers; who had both been dead, the one thirteen years, the other twelve.[ ] this steed, or another, was brought to lapau's house and the duke of alençon went to see it. the horse must likewise be accoutred, it must be furnished with a chanfrin to protect its head and one of those wooden saddles with broad pommels which seemed to encase the rider.[ ] a shield was out of the question. since chain-armour, which was not proof against blows, had been succeeded by that plate-armour, on which nothing could make an impression, they had ceased to be used save in pageants. as for the sword,--the noblest part of her accoutrement and the bright symbol of strength joined to loyalty,--jeanne refused to take that from the royal armourer; she was resolved to receive it from the hand of saint catherine herself. [footnote : anonymous poem in the _trial_, vol. v, p. and note.] [footnote : capitaine champion, _jeanne d'arc écuyère_, pp. _et seq._] we know that on her coming into france she had stopped at fierbois and heard three masses in saint catherine's chapel.[ ] therein the virgin of alexandria had many swords, without counting the one charles martel was said to have given her, and which it would not have been easy to find again. a good touranian in touraine, saint catherine was an armagnac ever on the side of those who fought for the dauphin charles. when captains and soldiers of fortune stood in danger of death, or were prisoners in the hands of their enemies, she was the saint they most willingly invoked; for they knew she wished them well. she did not save them all, but she aided many. they came to render her thanks; and as a sign of gratitude they offered her their armour, so that her chapel looked like an armoury.[ ] the walls bristled with swords; and, as gifts had been flowing in for half a century, ever since the days of king charles v, the sacristans were probably in the habit of taking down the old weapons to make room for the new, hoarding the old steel in some store-house until an opportunity arrived for selling it.[ ] saint catherine could not refuse a sword to the damsel, whom she loved so dearly that every day and every hour she came down from paradise to see and talk with her on earth,--a maiden who in return had shown her devotion by travelling to fierbois to do the saint reverence. for we must not omit to state that saint catherine in company with saint margaret had never ceased to appear to jeanne both at chinon and at tours. she was present at all those secret assemblies, which the maid called sometimes her council but oftener her voices, doubtless because they appealed more to her ears and her mind than to her eyes, despite the burst of light which sometimes dazzled her, and notwithstanding the crowns she was able to discern on the heads of the saints. the voices indicated one sword among the multitude of those in the chapel at fierbois. messire richard kyrthrizian and brother gille lecourt, both of them priests, were then custodians of the chapel. such is the title they assumed when they signed the accounts of miracles worked by their saint. jeanne in a letter caused them to be asked for the sword, which had been revealed to her. in the letter she said that it would be found underground, not very deep down, and behind the altar. at least these were all the directions she was able to give afterwards, and then she could not quite remember whether it was behind the altar or in front. was she able to give the custodians of the chapel any signs by which to recognise the sword? she never explained this point, and her letter is lost.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , , .] [footnote : abbé bourassé, _les miracles de madame sainte katerine de fierboys en touraine_ ( - ), tours, , in vo, _passim_.] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . _les miracles de madame sainte katerine_, _passim_.] it is certain, however, that she believed the sword had been shown to her in a vision and in no other manner. an armourer of touraine, whom she did not know (afterwards she maintained that she had never seen him), was appointed to carry the letter to fierbois. the custodians of the chapel gave him a sword marked with five crosses, or with five little swords on the blade, not far from the hilt. in what part of the chapel had they found it? no one knows. a contemporary says it was in a coffer with some old iron. if it had been buried and hidden it was not very long before, because the rust could easily be removed by rubbing. the priests were careful to offer it to the maid with great ceremony[ ] before giving it to the armourer who had come for it. they enclosed it in a sheath of red velvet, embroidered with the royal flowers de luce. when jeanne received it she recognised it to be the one revealed to her in a celestial vision and promised her by her voices, and she failed not to let the little company of monks and soldiers who surrounded her know that it was so. this they took to be a good omen and a sign of victory.[ ] to protect saint catherine's sword the priests of the town gave her a second sheath; this one was of black cloth. jeanne had a third made of very tough leather.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . guerneri berni, in the _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, pp. , . _chronique messine_, edition bouteiller, , orléans, in vo, pages.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] the story of the sword spread far and wide and was elaborated by many a curious fable. it was said to be the sword of the great charles martel, long buried and forgotten. many believed it had belonged to alexander and the knights of those ancient days. every one thought well of it and esteemed it likely to bring good fortune. when the english and the burgundians heard tell of the matter, there soon occurred to them the idea that the maid had discovered what was hidden beneath the earth by taking counsel of demons; or they suspected her of having herself craftily hidden the sword in the place she had indicated in order to deceive princes, clergy, and people. they wondered anxiously whether those five crosses were not signs of the devil.[ ] thus there began to arise conflicting illusions, according to which jeanne appeared either saint or sorceress.[ ] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, pp. , . _chronique de lorraine_, in the _trial_, vol. iv, p. . eberhard windecke, p. . cf. _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : jean chartier, vol. i, p. .] the king had given her no command. acting according to the counsel of the doctors, he did not hinder her from going to orléans with men-at-arms. he even had her taken there in state in order that she might give the promised sign. he granted her men to conduct her, not for her to conduct. how could she have conducted them since she did not know the way? meanwhile she had a standard made according to the command of saint catherine and saint margaret, who had said: "take the standard in the name of the king of heaven!" it was of a coarse white cloth, or buckram, edged with silk fringe. at the bidding of her voices, jeanne caused a painter of the town to represent on it what she called "the world,"[ ] that is, our lord seated upon his throne, blessing with his right hand, and in his left holding the globe of the world. on his right and on his left were angels, both painted as they were in churches, and presenting our lord with flowers de luce. above or on one side were the names jhesus--maria, and the background was strewn with the royal lilies in gold.[ ] she also had a coat-of-arms painted: on an azure shield a silver dove, holding in its beak a scroll on which was written: "_de par le roi du ciel_."[ ] this coat-of-arms she had painted on the reverse of the standard bearing on the front the picture of our lord. a servant of the duke of alençon, perceval de cagny, says that she ordered to be made another and a smaller standard, a banner, on which was the picture of our lady receiving the angel's salutation. the tours painter jeanne employed came from scotland and was called hamish power. he provided the material and executed the paintings of the two escutcheons, of the small one as well as of the large. for this he received from the keeper of the war treasury twenty-five _livres tournois_.[ ] hamish power had a daughter, héliote by name, who was about to be married and to whom jeanne afterwards showed kindness.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , ; vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , , , . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. ; vol. iv, supplement, xv, pp. , .] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _relation du greffier d'albi_, in the _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, p. . _chronique du doyen de saint-thibaud de metz_, in the _trial_, vol. iv, p. . extract from the thirteenth account of hémon raguier, in the _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. ; _un épisode de la vie de jeanne d'arc_, in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, vol. iv, first series, p. .] the standard was the signal for rallying. for long only kings, emperors, and leaders in war had had the right of raising it. the feudal suzerain had it carried before him; vassals ranged themselves beneath their lord's banners. but in banners had ceased to be used save in corporations, guilds, and parishes, borne only before the armies of peace. in war they were no longer needed. the meanest captain, the poorest knight had his own standard. when fifty french men-at-arms went forth from orléans against a handful of english marauders, a crowd of banners like a swarm of butterflies waved over the fields. "to raise one's standard" came to be a figure of speech for "to be puffed up."[ ] so indeed it was permissible for a freebooter to raise his standard when he commanded scarce a score of men-at-arms and half-naked bowmen. even if jeanne, as she may have done, held her standard to be a sign of sovereign command, and if, having received it from the king of heaven, she thought to raise it above all others, was there a soul in the realm to say her nay? what had become of all those feudal banners which for eighty years had been in the vanguard of defeat; sown over the fields of crécy; collected beneath bushes and hedges by welsh and cornish swordsmen; lost in the vineyards of maupertuis, trampled underfoot by english archers on the soft earth into which sank the corpses of azincourt; gathered in handfuls under the walls of verneuil by bedford's marauders? it was because all these banners had miserably fallen, it was because at rouvray a prince of the blood royal had shamefully trailed his nobles' banners in flight, that the peasant now raised her banner. [footnote : in beaudouin de sebourg (xx, ) is the passage: _il est cousin au conte il en fait estandart_ quoted by godefroy. cf. la curne and littré.] chapter x the siege of orlÉans from the th of march to the th of april, since the terrible and ridiculous discomfiture of the king's men in the battle of the herrings, the citizens of orléans had lost all faith in their defenders.[ ] their minds agitated, suspicious and credulous were possessed by phantoms of fear and wrath. suddenly and without reason they believe themselves betrayed. one day it is announced that a hole big enough for a man to pass through has been made in the town wall just where it skirts the outbuildings of the aumône.[ ] a crowd of people hasten to the spot; they see the hole and a piece of the wall which had been restored, with two loop-holes; they fail to understand, and think themselves sold and betrayed into the enemy's hands; they rave and break forth into howls, and seek the priest in charge of the hospital to tear him to pieces.[ ] a few days after, on holy thursday, a similar rumour is spread abroad: traitors are about to deliver up the town into the hands of the english. the folk seize their weapons; soldiers, burgesses, villeins mount guard on the outworks, on the walls and in the streets. on the morrow, the day after that on which the panic had originated, fear still possesses them.[ ] [footnote : "_pourquoy la hire, poton et plusieurs autres vaillants hommes qui moult enviz s'en alloient ainsi honteusement_," _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : the hospital of orléans, close to the cathedral.] [footnote : march. _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] in the beginning of march the besiegers saw approaching the norman vassals, summoned by the regent. but they were only six hundred and twenty-nine lances all told, and they were only bound to serve for twenty-six days. under the leadership of scales, pole, and talbot, the english continued the investment works as best they could.[ ] on the th of march, two and a half miles east of the city, they occupied without opposition the steep slope of saint-loup and began to erect a bastion there, which should command the upper river and the two roads from gien and pithiviers, at the point where they meet near the burgundian gate.[ ] on the th of march they completed the bastion named london, on the road to mans. between the th and th of april two new bastions were erected towards the west, rouen nine hundred feet east of london, paris nine hundred feet from rouen. about the th they fortified saint-jean-le-blanc across the loire and established a watch to guard the crossing of the river.[ ] this was but little in comparison with what remained to be done, and they were short of men; for they had less than three thousand round the town. wherefore they fell upon the peasants. now that the season for tending the vines was drawing near, the country folk went forth into the fields thinking only of the land; but the english lay in wait for them, and when they had taken them prisoners, set them to work.[ ] [footnote : boucher de molandon, _l'armée anglaise vaincue par jeanne d'arc_, ch. ii. jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise_, pp. , , , .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , . abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, dissertation vi.] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . morosini, vol. iv, supplement xiii.] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] in the opinion of those most skilled in the arts of war, these bastions were worthless. they were furnished with no stabling for horses. they could not be built near enough to render assistance to each other; the besieger was in danger of being himself besieged in them. in short, from these vexatious methods of warfare the english reaped nothing but disappointment and disgrace. the sire de bueil, one of the defenders, perceived this when he was reconnoitring.[ ] in fact it was so easy to pass through the enemy's lines that merchants were willing to run the risk of taking cattle to the besieged. there entered into the town, on the th of march, six horses loaded with herrings; on the th, six horses with powder; on the th, cattle and victuals; on the nd of april, nine fat oxen and horses; on the th, one hundred and one pigs and six fat oxen; on the th, seventeen pigs, horses, sucking-pigs, and corn; on the th, coins with which to pay the garrison; on the th, cattle and victuals; on the rd, powder and victuals. and more than once the besieged had carried off, in the very faces of the english, victuals and ammunition destined for the besiegers and including casks of wine, game, horses, bows, forage, and even twenty-six head of large cattle.[ ] [footnote : _le jouvencel_, vol. i, p. xxii; vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , .] the siege was costing the english dear,--forty thousand _livres tournois_ a month.[ ] they were short of money; they were obliged to resort to the most irritating expedients. by a decree of the rd of march king henry had recently ordered all his officers in normandy to lend him one quarter of their pay.[ ] in their huts of wood and earth, the men-at-arms, who had endured much from the cold, now began to suffer hunger. [footnote : jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise_, pp. , .] [footnote : pierre sureau's account in jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise_, proofs and illustrations, no. vi, pp. , .] the wasted fields of la beauce, of l'Île-de-france, and of normandy could furnish them with no great store of sheep or oxen. their food was bad, their drink worse. the vintage of had been bad, that of the following year was poor and weak--more like sour grapes than wine.[ ] now an old english author has written of the soldiers of his country: "they want their porridge and their fat bull-beeves: either they must be dieted like mules and have their provender tied to their mouths or piteous they will look, like drowned mice."[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , _et seq._] [footnote : shakespeare, _henry vi_, part i, act i, scene ii. according to m. g. duval the first part of this play was adapted from one of shakespeare's predecessors.] a sudden humiliation still further weakened the english. captain poton de saintrailles and the two magistrates, guyon du fossé and jean de saint-avy, who had gone on an embassy to the duke of burgundy, returned to orléans on the th of april. the duke had granted their request and consented to take the town under his protection. but the regent, to whom the offer had been made, would not have it thus. he replied that he would be very sorry if after he had beaten the bush another should go off with the nestlings.[ ] therefore the offer was rejected. nevertheless the embassy had been by no means useless, and it was something to have raised a new cause of quarrel between the duke and the regent. the ambassadors returned accompanied by a burgundian herald who blew his trumpet in the english camp, and, in the name of his master, commanded all combatants who owed allegiance to the duke to raise the siege. some hundreds of archers and men-at-arms, burgundians, men of picardy and of champagne, departed forthwith.[ ] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. _et seq._ morosini, vol. iii, pp. , , ; vol. iv, supplement xiv, p. . jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise_, pp. _et seq._ boucher de molandon, _l'armée anglaise vaincue par jeanne d'arc_, p. .] on the next day, at four o'clock in the morning, the citizens emboldened and deeming the opportunity a good one, attacked the camp of saint-laurent-des-orgerils. they slew the watch and entered the camp, where they found piles of money, robes of martin, and a goodly store of weapons. absorbed in pillage, they paid no heed to defending themselves and were surprised by the enemy, who in great force had hastened to the place. they fled pursued by the english who slew many. on that day the town resounded with the lamentations of women weeping for a father, a husband, a brother, kinsmen.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] within those walls, in a space where there was room for not more than fifteen thousand inhabitants, forty thousand[ ] were huddled together, one vast multitude agonised by all manner of suffering; depressed by domestic sorrow; racked with anxiety; maddened by constant danger and perpetual panic. although the wars of those days were not so sanguinary as they became later, the sallies of the inhabitants of orléans were the occasion of constant and considerable loss of life. since the middle of march the english bullets had fallen more into the centre of the town; and they were not always harmless. on the eve of palm sunday one stone, fired from a mortar, killed or wounded five persons; another, seven.[ ] many of the inhabitants, like the provost, alain du bey, died of fatigue or of the infected air.[ ] [footnote : jollois, _histoire du siège_, part vi, ch. i. abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, dissertation ix. loiseleur, _compte des dépenses de charles vii_, ch. v. lottin, _recherches historiques sur la ville d'orléans_, vol. ii, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. , note .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] in the christendom of those days all men were taught to believe that earthquakes, wars, famine, pestilence are punishments for wrong-doing. charles, the fair duke of orléans, good christian that he was, held that great sorrows had come upon france as chastisement for her sins, to wit: swelling pride, gluttony, sloth, covetousness, lust, and neglect of justice, which were rife in the realm; and in a ballad he discoursed of the evil and its remedy.[ ] the people of orléans firmly believed that this war was sent to them of god to punish sinners, who had worn out his patience. they were aware both of the cause of their sorrows and of the means of remedying them. such was the teaching of the good friars preachers; and, as duke charles put it in his ballad, the remedy was to live well, to amend one's life, to have masses said and sung for the souls of those who had suffered death in the service of the realm, to renounce the sinful life, and to ask forgiveness of our lady and the saints.[ ] this remedy had been adopted by the people of orléans. they had had masses said in the church of sainte-croix for the souls of nobles, captains, and men-at-arms killed in their service, and especially for those who had died a piteous death in the battle of the herrings. they had offered candles to our lady and to the patron saints of the town, and had carried the shrine of saint-aignan round the walls.[ ] [footnote : charles d'orléans, _poésies_, edited by a. champollion-figeac, paris, , in vo, p. .] [footnote : miniature in the ms. of the poems of charles d'orléans, in the british museum, royal f. ii, fol. v'o.] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . symphorien guyon, _histoire de la ville d'orléans_, vol. ii, p. .] every time they felt themselves in great danger, they brought it forth from the church of sainte-croix, carried it in grand procession round the town and over the ramparts,[ ] then, having brought it back to the cathedral, they listened to a sermon preached in the porch by a good monk chosen by the magistrates.[ ] they said prayers in public and resolved to amend their lives. wherefore they believed that in paradise saint euverte and saint-aignan, touched by their piety, must be interceding for them with our lord; and they thought they could hear the voices of the two pontiffs. saint euverte was saying, "all-powerful father, i pray and entreat thee to save the city of orléans. it is mine. i was its bishop. i am its patron saint. deliver it not up to its enemies." [footnote : _chronique de la fête_, in the _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : accounts of the commune, _passim_, in _journal du siège_, pp. _et seq._] then afterwards spoke saint-aignan: "give peace to the people of orléans. father, thou who by the mouth of a child didst appoint me their shepherd, grant that they fall not into the hands of the enemy." the inhabitants of orléans expected that the lord would not at once answer the prayers of the two confessors. knowing the sternness of his judgments they feared lest he would reply: "for their sins are the french people justly chastised. they suffer because of their disobedience to holy church. from the least to the greatest in the realm each vies with the other in evil-doing. the husbandmen, citizens, lawyers and priests are hard and avaricious; the princes, dukes and noble lords are proud, vain, cursers, swearers, and traitors. the corruptness of their lives infects the air. it is just that they suffer chastisement." that the lord should speak thus must be expected, because he was angry and because the people of orléans had greatly sinned. but now, behold, our lady, she who loves the king of the lilies, prays for him and for the duke of orléans to the son, whose pleasure it is to do her will in all things: "my son, with all my heart i entreat thee to drive the english from the land of france; they have no right to it. if they take orléans, then they will take the rest at their pleasure. suffer it not, o my son, i beseech thee." and our lord, at the prayer of his holy mother, forgives the french and consents to save them.[ ] [footnote : _mistère du siège_, lines _et seq._] thus in those days, according to their ideas of the spiritual world, did men represent even the councils of paradise. there were folk not a few, and those not unlearned, who believed that as the result of these councils our lord had sent his archangel to the shepherdess. and it might even be possible that he would save the kingdom by the hand of a woman. is it not in the weak things of the world that he maketh his power manifest? did he not allow the child david to overthrow the giant goliath, and did he not deliver into the hands of judith the head of holophernes? in orléans itself was it not by the mouth of a babe that he had caused to be named that shepherd who was to deliver the besieged town from attila?[ ] [footnote : aug. theiner, _saint aignan ou le siège d'orléans par attila, notice historique suivie de la vie de ce saint, tirée des mss. de la bibliothèque du roi_, paris, , in vo.] the lord of villars and messire jamet du tillay, having returned from chinon, reported that they had with their own eyes seen the maid; and they told of the marvels of her coming. they related how she had travelled far, fording rivers, passing by many towns and villages held by the english, as well as through those french lands wherein were rife pillage and all manner of evils. then they went on to tell how, when she was taken to the king, she had spoken fair words to him as she curtsied, saying: "gentle dauphin, god sends me to help and succour you. give me soldiers, for by grace divine and by force of arms, i will raise the siege of orléans and then lead you to your anointing at reims, according as god hath commanded me, for it is his will that the english return to their country and leave in peace your kingdom which shall remain unto you. or, if they do not quit the land, then will god cause them to perish." further, they told how, interrogated by certain prelates, knights, squires, and doctors in law, her bearing had been found honest and her words wise. they extolled her piety, her candour, that simplicity which testified that god dwelt with her, and that skill in managing a horse and wielding weapons which caused all men to marvel.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, p. .] at the end of march, tidings came, that, taken to poitiers, she had there been examined by doctors and famous masters, and had replied to them with an assurance equal to that of saint catherine before the doctors at alexandria. because her words were good and her promises sure, it was said that the king, trusting in her, had caused her to be armed in order that she might go to orléans, where she would soon appear, riding on a white horse, wearing at her side the sword of saint catherine and holding in her hand the standard she had received from the king of heaven.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , . p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, pp. _et seq._] to the ecclesiastics what was told of jeanne seemed marvellous but not incredible, since parallel instances were to be found in sacred history, which was all the history they knew. to those who were lettered among them their erudition furnished fewer reasons for denial than for doubt or belief. those who were simple frankly wondered at these things. certain of the captains, and certain even of the people, treated them with derision. but by so doing they ran the risk of ill usage. the inhabitants of the city believed in the maid as firmly as in our lord. from her they expected help and deliverance. they summoned her in a kind of mystic ecstasy and religious frenzy. the fever of the siege had become the fever of the maid.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] nevertheless, the use made of her by the king's men proved that, following the counsel of the theologians, they were determined to adopt only such methods as were prompted by human prudence. she was to enter the town with a convoy of victuals, then being prepared at blois by order of the king assisted by the queen of sicily.[ ] in all the loyal provinces a new effort was being made for the relief and deliverance of the brave city. gien, bourges, blois, châteaudun, tours sent men and victuals; angers, poitiers, la rochelle, albi, moulins, montpellier, clermont sulphur, saltpetre, steel, and arms.[ ] and if the citizens of toulouse gave nothing it was because their city, as the notables consulted by the _capitouls_[ ] ingenuously declared, had nothing to give--_non habebat de quibus_.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _geste des nobles_, in _la chronique de la pucelle_, p. . the accounts of fortresses ( - ), in boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, pp. , . p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, p. .] [footnote : the name by which the town councillors of toulouse were called.] [footnote : _le siège d'orléans, jeanne d'arc et les capitouls de toulouse_, by a. thomas, in _annales du midi_, , p. . it would appear that saint-flour, although solicited, did not contribute: it had enough to do to defend itself from the freebooters who were constantly hovering round. cf. _villandrando et les écorcheurs à saint-flour_ by m. boudet, clermont-ferrand, , in vo, pp. _et seq._] the king's councillors, notably my lord regnault de chartres, chancellor of the realm, were forming a new army. what they had failed to accomplish, by means of the men of auvergne, they would now attempt with troops from anjou and le mans. the queen of sicily, duchess of touraine and anjou, willingly lent her aid. were orléans taken she would be in danger of losing lands by which she set great store. therefore she spared neither men, money, nor victuals. after the middle of april, a citizen of angers, one jean langlois, brought letters informing the magistrates of the imminent arrival of the corn she had contributed. the town gave jean langlois a present, and the magistrates entertained him at dinner at the Écu saint-georges. this corn was a part of that large convoy which the maid was to accompany.[ ] [footnote : receipts of the town of orléans in , in boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, p. .] towards the end of the month, by order of my lord the bastard, the captains of the french garrisons of la beauce and gâtinais, betook themselves to the town to reinforce the army of blois, the arrival of which was announced. on the th, there entered my lord florent d'illiers,[ ] governor of châteaudun, with four hundred fighting men.[ ] [footnote : florent d'illiers, descended from an old family of the chartres country, had married jeanne, daughter of jean de coutes and sister of the little page whom the sire de gaucourt had given the maid (a. de villaret).] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] what was to become of orléans? the siege, badly conducted, was causing the english the most grievous disappointments. further, their captains perceived they would never succeed in taking the town by means of those bastions, between which anything, either men, victuals, or ammunition, could pass, and with an army miserably quartered in mud hovels, ravaged by disease, and reduced by desertions to three thousand, or at the most to three thousand two hundred men. they had lost nearly all their horses. far from being able to continue the attack it was hard for them to maintain the defensive and to hold out in those miserable wooden towers, which, as le jouvencel said, were more profitable to the besieged than to the besiegers.[ ] [footnote : _le jouvencel_, vol. ii, p. .] their only hope, and that an uncertain and distant one, lay in the reinforcements, which the regent was gathering with great difficulty.[ ] meanwhile, time seemed to drag in the besieged town. the warriors who defended it were brave, but they had come to the end of their resources and knew not what more to do. the citizens were good at keeping guard, but they would not face fire. they did not suspect the miserable condition to which the besiegers had been reduced. hardship, anxiety, and an infected atmosphere depressed their spirits. already they seemed to see _les coués_ taking the town by storm, killing, pillaging, and ravaging. at every moment they believed themselves betrayed. they were not calm and self-possessed enough to recognise the enormous advantages of their situation. the town's means of communication, whereby it could be indefinitely reinforced and revictualled, were still open. besides, a relieving army, well in advance of that of the english, was on the point of arriving. it was bringing a goodly drove of cattle, as well as men and ammunition enough to capture the english fortresses in a few days. [footnote : jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise_, pp. _et seq._] with this army the king was sending the maid who had been promised. chapter xi the maid at blois--the letter to the english--the departure for orlÉans with an escort of soldiers of fortune the maid reached blois at the same time as my lord regnault de chartres, chancellor of france, and the sire de gaucourt, governor of orléans.[ ] she was in the domain of the prince, whom it was her great desire to deliver: the people of blois owed allegiance to duke charles, a prisoner in the hands of the english. merchants were bringing cows, rams, ewes, herds of swine, grain, powder and arms into the town.[ ] the admiral, de culant, and the lord ambroise de loré had come from orléans to superintend the preparations. the queen of sicily herself had gone to blois. notwithstanding that at this time the king consulted her but seldom, he now sent to her the duke of alençon, commissioned to concert with her measures for the relief of the city of orléans.[ ] there came also the sire de rais, of the house of laval and of the line of the dukes of brittany, a noble scarce twenty-four, generous and magnificent, bringing in his train, with a goodly company from maine and anjou, organs for his chapel, choristers, and little singing-boys from the choir school.[ ] the marshal de boussac, the captains la hire and poton came from orléans.[ ] an army of seven thousand men assembled beneath the walls of the town.[ ] all that was now waited for was the money necessary to pay the cost of the victuals and the hire of the soldiers. captains and men-at-arms did not give their services on credit. as for the merchants, if they risked the loss of their victuals and their life, it was only for ready money.[ ] no cash, no cattle--and the wagons stayed where they were. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, _passim_. _chronique de tournai_, ed. smedt (vol. iii, in the _recueil des chroniques de flandre_), p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : wavrin, in the _trial_, vol. iv, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, p. . _mistère du siège_, lines , _et seq._ abbé bossard, _gilles de rais, maréchal de france, dit barbe-bleue_ ( - ), paris, , vo, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : jeanne says (in her _trial_) from , to , men; monstrelet says, ; eberhard windecke, ; morosini, , .] [footnote : "_car vous ne trouverez nulz marchans qu'ils se mettent en ceste peine ne en ce danger, s'ilz n'ont l'argent contant._" ("for you will find no merchants who will take that trouble, and run that risk, unless they are paid ready money.") _le jouvencel_, vol. i, p. .] in the month of march, jeanne had dictated to one of the doctors at poitiers a brief manifesto intended for the english.[ ] she expanded it into a letter, which she showed to certain of her companions and afterwards sent by a herald from blois to the camp of saint-laurent-des-orgerils. this letter was addressed to king henry, to the regent and to the three chiefs, who, since salisbury's death, had been conducting the siege, scales, suffolk, and talbot. the following is the text of it:[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : there are eight ancient texts of this letter: ( ) the text used in the rouen trial (_trial_, i, p. ); ( ) a text probably written by a knight of the order of st. john of jerusalem; the original document has been lost, but there are two copies dating from the th century (_ibid._, v, p. ); ( ) the text contained in _le journal du siège_ (_ibid._, iv, p. ); ( ) the text in _la chronique de la pucelle_ (_ibid._, iv, p. ); ( ) the text in thomassin's _registre delphinal_ (_ibid._, iv, p. ); ( ) the text of the greffier de la rochelle (_revue historique_, vol. iv); ( ) the text of the tournai chronicle (_recueil des chroniques de flandre_, vol. iii, p. ); ( ) the text in _le mistère du siège_. there may be mentioned also a german contemporary translation by eberhard windecke. the text from the _trial_ is the one quoted here. it is a reproduction of the original. the others differ from it and from original too widely for it to be possible to indicate the differences except by giving the whole of each text. and after all these variations are of no great importance.] [cross symbol] jhesus maria [cross symbol] king of england, and you, duke of bedford, who call yourself regent of the realm of france,--you, guillaume de la poule, earl of sulford; jehan, sire de talebot, and you thomas, sire d'escales, who call yourselves lieutenants of the said duke of bedfort, do right in the sight of the king of heaven. surrender to the maid sent hither by god, the king of heaven, the keys of all the good[ ] towns in france that you have taken and ravaged.[ ] she is come here in god's name to claim the blood royal.[ ] she is ready to make peace if so be you will do her satisfaction by giving and paying back to france what you have taken from her.[ ] and you, archers, comrades-in-arms, gentle and otherwise,[ ] who are before the town of orléans, go ye hence into your own land, in god's name. and if you will not, then hear the wondrous works[ ] of the maid who will shortly come upon you to your very great hurt. and you, king of england, if you do not thus, i am a chieftain of war,--and in whatsoever place in france i meet with your men, i will force them to depart willy nilly; and if they will not, then i will have them all slain. i am sent hither by god, the king of heaven, body for body, to drive them all out of the whole of france. and if they obey, then will i show them mercy. and think not in your heart that you will hold the kingdom of france [from] god, the king of heaven, son of the blessed mary, for it is king charles, the true heir, who shall so hold it. god, the king of heaven, so wills it, and he hath revealed it unto king charles by the maid. with a goodly company the king shall enter paris. if ye will not believe these wondrous works wrought by god and the maid, then, in whatsoever place ye shall be, there shall we fight. and if ye do me not right, there shall be so great a noise as hath not been in france for a thousand years. and know ye that the king of heaven will send such great power to the maid, to her and to her good soldiers, that ye will not be able to overcome her in any battle; and in the end the god of heaven will reveal who has the better right. you, duke of bedfort, the maid prays and beseeches you that you bring not destruction upon yourself. if you do her right, you may come in her company where the french will do the fairest deed ever done for christendom. and if ye will have peace in the city of orléans, then make ye answer; and, if not, then remember it will be to your great hurt and that shortly. written this tuesday of holy week. [footnote : the king of france himself designated as _good_ such of his towns as he wished to honour.] [footnote : compare: "et ardirent la ville et _violèrent l'abbaye_." ("and burnt the town and _violated the abbey_.") froissart, quoted by littré. as early as _le chanson de roland_ we find: "_les castels pris, les cités violées._" ("the castles taken, the cities violated.")] [footnote : the deliverance of the duke of orléans. _réclamer_ in the french. m. s. reinach proposes to substitute _relever_, which is plausible (cf. _trial_, vol. ii, p. ).] [footnote : _le journal du siège_ omits the word _france_ and thus renders the phrase unintelligible. this omission proceeds from a text of great antiquity on which are based notably _la chronique de la pucelle_ and the account of the greffier de la rochelle whom this mangled phrase visibly embarrassed.] [footnote : _gentle_ is here in opposition to _villein_. _gentle and otherwise_: nobles and villeins. here we must interpret the terms _comrades_ and _gentle_ according to their true meaning and not consider them as used ironically, as in the following passage from froissart: "_il (le duc de lancastre) entendit comme il pourroit estre saisy de quatre gentils compaignons qui estranglé avoyent son oncle, le duc de glocestre, au chasteau de calais._" "he (the duke of lancaster) realised how he might be seized by the four gentle comrades who had strangled his uncle, the duke of gloucester, in the castle of calais." (froissart in la curne.)] [footnote : french. _attendez les nouvelles de la pucelle_ and further on: _si vous ne voulés croire lez nouvelles de par dieu de la pucelle...._ this word _nouvelles_ then as now meant _tidings_, but it also had a sense of _marvels_ as in the following phrase: "_en celle année apparurent maintes nouvelles à rosay en brie; le vin fut mué en sang et le pain en chair sensiblement ou (au) sacrement de l'autel._" ("in that year many _marvels_ were wrought at rosay in brie; the wine was turned to blood and the bread to flesh visibly at the sacrament of the altar.") (_chroniques de saint denys_, in la curne.)] such is the letter. it was written in a new spirit; for it proclaimed the kingship of jesus christ and declared a holy war. it is hard to tell whether it proceeded from jeanne's own inspiration or was dictated to her by the council of ecclesiastics. on first thoughts one might be inclined to attribute to the priests the idea of a summons, which is a literal application of the precepts of deuteronomy: "when thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. "and it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. "and if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: "and when the lord thy god hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: "but the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself." (deuteronomy xx, - .) but at least it is certain that on this occasion the maid is expressing her own sentiments. afterwards we shall find her saying: "i asked for peace, and when i was refused i was ready to fight."[ ] but, as she dictated the letter and was unable to read it, we may ask whether the clerks who held the pen did not add to it. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , .] two or three passages suggest the ecclesiastical touch. afterwards the maid did not remember having dictated "body for body," which is quite unimportant. but she declared that she had not said: "i am chief in war" and that she had dictated: "surrender to the king" and not "surrender to the maid."[ ] possibly her memory failed her; it was not always faithful. nevertheless she appeared very certain of what she said, and twice she repeated that "chief in war" and "surrender to the maid" were not in the letter. it may have been that the monks who were with her used these expressions. to these wandering priests a dispute over fiefs mattered little, and it was not their first concern to bring king charles into the possession of his inheritance. doubtless they desired the good of the kingdom of france; but certainly they desired much more the good of christendom; and we shall see that, if those mendicant monks, brother pasquerel and later friar richard, follow the maid, it will be in the hope of employing her to the church's advantage. thus it would be but natural that they should declare her at the outset commander in war, and even invest her with a spiritual power superior to the temporal power of the king, and implied in the phrase: "surrender to the maid ... the keys of the good towns." [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , , .] this very letter indicates one of those hopes which among others she inspired. they expected that after she had fulfilled her mission in france, she would take the cross and go forth to conquer jerusalem, bringing all the armies of christian europe in her train.[ ] at this very time a disciple of bernardino of siena, friar richard, a franciscan lately come from syria,[ ] and who was shortly to meet the maid, was preaching at paris, announcing the approach of the end of the world, and exhorting the faithful to fight against antichrist.[ ] it must be remembered that the turks, who had conquered the christian knights at nicopolis and at semendria, were threatening constantinople and spreading terror throughout europe. popes, emperors, kings felt the necessity of making one great effort against them. [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, pp. , _et seq._ christine de pisan, in the _trial_, vol. v, p. . concerning the subject of the crusade, cf. n. jorga, philippe de mezières, , in vo: _notes et extraits pour servir à l'histoire des croisades au xv'e siècle_, paris, - , vols. in vo (taken from _la revue de l'orient latin_).] [footnote : _pii secundi commentarii_, edition, p. . wadding, _annales minorum_, vol. v, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. xv, ccxxxvii. see the pictures in the numerous fifteenth century little popular books concerning antichrist. (brunet, _manuel du libraire_, vol. i, col. .)] in england it was said that between saint-denys and saint-george there had been born to king henry v and madame catherine of france a boy, half english and half french, who would go to egypt and pluck the grand turk's beard.[ ] on his death-bed the conqueror henry v was listening to the priests repeating the penitential psalms. when he heard the verse: _benigne fac domine in bona voluntate tua ut ædificentur muri jerusalem_, he murmured with his dying breath: "i have always intended to go to syria and deliver the holy city out of the hand of the infidel."[ ] these were his last words. wise men counselled christian princes to unite against the crescent. in france, the archbishop of embrun, who had sat in the dauphin's council, cursed the insatiable cruelty of the english nation and those wars among christians which were an occasion of rejoicing to the enemies of the cross of christ.[ ] [footnote : félix rabbe, _jeanne d'arc en angleterre_, paris, , p. .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : le p. marcellin fornier, _histoire des alpes, maritimes ou cottiennes_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] to summon the english and french to take the cross together, was to proclaim that after ninety-one years of violence and crime the cycle of secular warfare had come to an end. it was to bid christendom return to the days when philippe de valois and edward plantagenet promised the pope to join together against the infidel. but when the maid invited the english to unite with the french in a holy and warlike enterprise, it is not difficult to imagine with what kind of a reception the _godons_ would greet such an angelic summons. and at the time of the siege of orléans, the french on their side had good reasons for not taking the cross with the _coués_.[ ] [footnote : in all extant copies of the letter to the english, except that of the trial, at the passage "you may come" [_encore que pourrez venir_] the text is completely illegible.] the learned did not greatly appreciate the style of this letter. the bastard of orléans thought the words very simple; and a few years later a good french jurist pronounced it coarse, heavy, and badly arranged.[ ] we cannot aspire to judge better than the jurist and the bastard, both men of erudition. nevertheless, we wonder whether it were not that her manner of expression seemed bad to them, merely because it differed from the style of legal documents. true it is that the letter from blois indicates the poverty of the french prose of that time when not enriched by an alain chartier; but it contains neither term nor expression which is not to be met with in the good authors of the day. the words may not be correctly ordered, but the style is none the less vivacious. there is nothing to suggest that the writer came from the banks of the meuse; no trace is there of the speech of lorraine or champagne.[ ] it is clerkly french. [footnote : _per unam litteram suo materno idiomate confectam, verbis bene simplicibus_, _trial_, vol. iv, p. , evidence of the bastard of orléans. mathieu thomassin, _registre delphinal_, in the _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : on the contrary it contains forms which would never have been penned by a native of picardy, burgundy, lorraine, or champagne, such as the participle _envoyée_. both the grammar and the writing are those of a french clerk. (contributed by m. e. langlois.)] while isabelle de vouthon had gone on a pilgrimage to puy, her two youngest children, jean and pierre, had set out for france to join their sister, with the intention of making their fortunes through her or the king. likewise, brother nicolas of vouthon, jeanne's cousin german, a monk in priest's orders in the abbey of cheminon, joined the young saint.[ ] to have thus attracted her kinsfolk before giving any sign of her power, jeanne must have had witnesses on the banks of the meuse; and certain venerable ecclesiastical personages, as well as noble lords of lorraine, must have answered for her reputation in france. such guarantors of the truth of her mission were doubtless those who had instructed her in and accredited her by prophecy. perhaps brother nicolas of vouthon was himself of the number. [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches sur la famille de jeanne d'arc_, pp. xx, , . [document of very doubtful authenticity.]] in the army she was regarded as a holy maiden. her company consisted of a chaplain, brother jean pasquerel;[ ] two pages, louis de coutes and raymond;[ ] her two brethren, pierre and jean; two heralds, ambleville and guyenne;[ ] two squires, jean de metz and bertrand de poulengy. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . a. de villaret, _louis de coutes, page de jeanne d'arc_, orléans, , vo.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] jean de metz kept the purse which was filled by the crown.[ ] she had also certain valets in her service. a squire, one jean d'aulon, whom the king gave her for a steward, joined her at blois.[ ] he was the poorest squire of the realm. he was entirely dependent on the sire de la trémouille, who lent him money; but he was well known for his honour and his wisdom.[ ] jeanne attributed the defeats of the french to their riding forth accompanied by bad women and to their taking god's holy name in vain. and this opinion, far from being held by her alone, prevailed among persons of learning and religion; according to whom the disaster of nicopolis was occasioned by the presence of prostitutes in the army, and by the cruelty and dissoluteness of the knights.[ ] [footnote : extracts from the accounts of hémon raguier, _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . d'aulon had seen her at poitiers.] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. , note . the loans mentioned occurred later, but there is no reason to believe that they were the first. duc de la tremoïlle, _les la trémouille pendant cinq siècles, guy vi et georges_ ( - ), nantes, , pp. , .] [footnote : juvénal des ursins, year .] on several occasions, between and , the dauphin had forbidden cursing and denying and blaspheming the name of god, of the virgin mary and of the saints under penalty of a fine and of corporal punishment in certain cases. the decrees embodying this prohibition asserted that wars, pestilence, and famine were caused by blasphemy and that the blasphemers were in part responsible for the sufferings of the realm.[ ] wherefore the maid went among the men-at-arms, exhorting them to turn away the women who followed the army, and to cease taking the lord's name in vain. she besought them to confess their sins and receive divine grace into their souls, maintaining that their god would aid them and give them the victory if their souls were right.[ ] [footnote : _ordonnances des rois de france_, vol. xi, p. ; vol. xiii, p. . s. de bouillerie, _la répression du blasphème dans l'ancienne législation_, in the _revue historique et archéologique du maine_, , pp. _et seq._ de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, p. . a. longnon, _paris pendant la domination anglaise_, paris, , in vo, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . very early she was mentioned in connection with la hire, the most valiant of the french, and it was imagined that she taught him to confess and to cease swearing. these are pretty stories (_trial_, vol. iii, p. ; vol. iv, p. ).] jeanne took her standard to the church of saint-sauveur and gave it to the priests to bless.[ ] the little company formed at tours was joined at blois by ecclesiastics and monks, who, on the approach of the english, had fled in crowds from the neighbouring abbeys, and were now suffering from cold and hunger. it was generally thus. monks were for ever flocking to the armies. many churches and most abbeys had been reduced to ruin. those of the mendicants, built outside the towns, had all perished,--plundered and burnt by the english or pulled down by the townsfolk; for, when threatened with siege, the inhabitants always dealt thus with the outlying portions of their town. the homeless monks found no welcome in the cities, which were sparing of their goods; they must needs take the field with the soldiers and follow the army. from such a course their rule suffered and piety gained nothing. among mercenaries, sumpters and camp followers, these hungry nomad monks lived an edifying life. those who accompanied the maid were doubtless neither worse nor better than the rest, and as they were very hungry their first care was to eat.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, p. . l.a. bosseboeuf, _jeanne d'arc en touraine_, tours, , pp. _et seq._] [footnote : le p. denifle, _la désolation des églises, monastères, hôpitaux, en france, vers le milieu du xv'e siècle_, mâcon, , in vo, introduction.] the men-at-arms were much too accustomed to seeing monks and nuns mingling side by side in the army to feel any surprise at the sight of the holy damsel in the midst of a band so disreputable. it is true that the damsel was said to work wonders. many believed in them; others mocked and said aloud: "behold the brave champion and captain who comes to deliver the realm of france."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iv, p. . tringant, _le jouvencel_, vol. ii, p. , merely says that few soldiers went willingly to the relief of orléans, which is not strictly accurate.] the maid had a banner made for the monks to assemble beneath and summon the men-at-arms to prayer. this banner was white, and on it were represented jesus on the cross between our lady and saint john.[ ] the duke of alençon went back to the king to make known to him the needs of the company at blois. the king sent the necessary funds; and at length they were ready to set out.[ ] at the start there were two roads open, one leading to orléans along the right bank of the loire, the other along the left bank. at the end of twelve or fourteen miles the road along the right bank came out on the edge of the plain of la beauce, occupied by the english who had garrisons at marchenoir, beaugency, meung, montpipeau, saint-sigismond, and janville. in that direction lay the risk of meeting the army, which was coming to the aid of the english round orléans. after the experience of the battle of the herrings such a meeting was to be feared. if the road along the left bank were taken, the march would lie through the district of la sologne, which still belonged to king charles; and if the river were left well on one side, the army would be out of sight of the english garrisons of beaugency and of meung. true, it would involve crossing the loire, but by going up the river five miles east of the besieged city a crossing could conveniently be effected between orléans and jargeau. on due deliberation it was decided that they should go by the left bank through la sologne. it was decided to take in the victuals in two separate lots for fear the unloading near the enemy's bastions should take too long.[ ] on wednesday, the th of april, they started.[ ] the priests in procession, with a banner at their head, led the march, singing the _veni creator spiritus_.[ ] the maid rode with them in white armour, bearing her standard. the men-at-arms and the archers followed, escorting six hundred wagons of victuals and ammunition and four hundred head of cattle.[ ] the long line of lances, wagons, and herds defiled over the blois bridge into the vast plain beyond. the first day the army covered twenty miles of rutty road. then at curfew, when the setting sun, reflected in the loire, made the river look like a sheet of copper between lines of dark reeds, it halted,[ ] and the priests sang _gabriel angelus_. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (brother pasquerel's evidence). _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. , ; vol. iv, pp. - . g. martin, _l'étendard de jeanne d'arc_, in _notes d'art et d'arch._, , pp. - , - , illustrated.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _chronique du doyen de saint-thibaud_, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , , , . martial d'auvergne, _ibid._, vol. v, p. . _chronique de la fête_, _ibid._, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : the th of april, according to eberhard windecke, p. . the th, if, as pasquerel says, the army spent two nights on the march.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : eberhard windecke, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (brother pasquerel's evidence).] that night they encamped in the fields. jeanne, who had not been willing to take off her armour, awoke aching in every limb.[ ] she heard mass and received communion from her chaplain, and exhorted the men-at-arms always to confess their sins.[ ] then the army resumed its march towards orléans. [footnote : _ibid._, p. (evidence of louis de coutes).] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . pasquerel says (vol. iii, p. ) that the soldiers of fortune were permitted to join the congregation if they had confessed.] chapter xii the maid at orlÉans on the evening of thursday, the th of april, jeanne was able to discern from the heights of olivet the belfries of the town, the towers of saint-paul and saint-pierre-empont, whence the watchmen announced her approach. the army descended the slopes towards the loire and stopped at the bouchet wharf, while the carts and the cattle continued their way along the bank as far as l'Île-aux-bourdons, opposite chécy, two and a half miles further up the river.[ ] there the unloading was to take place. at a signal from the watchmen my lord the bastard, accompanied by thibaut de termes and certain other captains, left the town by the burgundian gate, took a boat at saint-jean-de-braye, and came down to hold counsel with the lords de rais and de loré, who commanded the convoy.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . boucher de molandon, _bulletin de la société archéologique de l'orléanais_, vol. iv, p. ; vol. ix, p. . the same author, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, pp. _et seq._ _mistère du siège_, lines , _et seq._ _chronique de l'établissement de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] [illustration: plan d'orlÉans siège de ] meanwhile the maid had only just perceived that she was on the sologne bank,[ ] and that she had been deceived concerning the line of march. sorrow and wrath possessed her. she had been misled, that was certain. but had it been done on purpose? had they really intended to deceive her? it is said that she had expressed a wish to go through la beauce and not through la sologne, and that she had received the answer: "jeanne, be reassured; we will take you through la beauce."[ ] is it possible? why should the barons have thus trifled with the holy damsel, whom the king had confided to their care, and who already inspired most of them with respect? certain of them, it is true, believing her not to be in earnest, would willingly have turned her to ridicule; but if one of them had played her the trick of representing la beauce as la sologne, how was it there was no one to undeceive her? how could brother pasquerel, her chaplain, her steward, and the honest squire d'aulon, have become the accomplices of so clumsy a jest? it is all very mysterious, and, when one comes to think of it, what is most mysterious is that jeanne should have expressly asked to go to orléans through la beauce. since she was so ignorant of the way that when crossing the blois bridge she never suspected that she was going into la sologne, there is not much likelihood of her realising so exactly the lie of orléans as to choose between entering it from the south or the west. a damsel knowing naught beyond the name of the gate through which she is to enter the city, and who is yet persuaded by malicious captains to take one road rather than another, sounds too much like a mother goose's tale. [footnote : "_et cuidoit bien qu'ils deussent passer par devers les bastides du siège devers la beausse._" _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. (the chronicle here amplifies the evidence of dunois, vol. iii, p. ).] jeanne knew no more of orléans than she did of babylon. we may therefore conjecture that there was a misunderstanding. she had spoken neither of sologne nor of beauce. her voices had told her that the english would not budge. they had not shown her a picture of the town, they had not given her either maps or plans: soldiers did not use them. doubtless jeanne had said to the captains and priests what she was soon to repeat to the bastard: "i must go to talbot and the english." and the priests and soldiers had replied quite frankly: "jeanne, we are going to talbot and the english."[ ] they had thought they were speaking the truth, since talbot, who was conducting the siege, would be before them, so to speak, from whatever side they approached the town. but apparently they had not thoroughly understood what the maid said, and the maid had not understood what they had replied. for now she was angry and sad at finding herself separated from the town by the sands and waters of the river. what was there to vex her in this? those who were with her then did not discover; and perhaps her reasons were misunderstood because they were spiritual and mystic. she certainly could not have judged that a military mistake had been made by the bringing of troops and victuals through la sologne. as she did not know the roads, it was impossible for her to tell which was the best. she was ignorant alike of the enemy's position, of the outworks of the besiegers, and of the defences of the besieged. she had just learnt on what bank of the river the town was situated, yet she must have thought she had good ground for complaint; for she approached the lord bastard and inquired sharply: "are you the bastard of orléans?" "i am he. i rejoice at your coming." "was it through your counsel that i came hither on this side of the river, and that i did not go straight to where talbot and the english are?" "it was i and those wiser than i who gave this counsel, believing we acted for the best and for the greatest safety." but jeanne retorted: "in god's name! messire's counsel is better and wiser than yours. you thought to deceive me, but you deceive yourselves. for i bring you surer aid than ever came yet to knight or city; it is the aid of the king of heaven and comes from god himself, who not merely for my sake but at the prayer of saint louis and saint charlemagne has had pity upon the town of orléans, and will not suffer the enemy to hold at once both the body and the city of the duke."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, p. .] one may conclude that what really vexed her was that she had not been taken straight to talbot and the english. she had just heard that talbot with his camp was on the right bank. and when she spoke of talbot and the english she meant only those english who were with talbot. for, as she came down into the loire valley, near the ford of saint-jean-le-blanc, she must have seen the bastion of les augustins and les tourelles at the end of the bridge; and she must have known that there were also english on the left bank. but still, it is not clear why she should have desired to appear first before talbot and his english, and why she was now so annoyed at being separated from him by the loire. did she think that the entrenched camp, saint-laurent-des-orgerils, commanded by scales, suffolk, and talbot would be attacked immediately? such an idea would never of itself have occurred to her, since she did not know the place, and no soldier would ever have put such madness into her head as an attack on an entrenched camp by a convoy of cattle and wagons. neither, as has so often been asserted, can she have thought of forcing a passage between the bastion saint-pouair and the outskirts of the wood, since of the bastions and of the forest she knew as little as of the rest. if such had been her intention she would have announced it plainly to the bastard; for she knew how to make her meaning clear, and even educated persons considered that she spoke well. then what was her idea? it is not impossible to discover it if one remembers what must have been in the saint's mind at that time, or if one merely recollects by what words and deeds jeanne had announced and prepared her mission. she had said to the doctors of poitiers: "the siege of orléans shall be raised and the town delivered from the enemy after i have summoned it to surrender in god's name."[ ] in the name of the king of heaven she had called upon scales, suffolk, and talbot to raise the siege. she had written that she was ready to make peace, and had bidden them return to england. now she asked talbot, suffolk, and scales for an answer. since the english had not sent back her herald she herself came to their leaders as the herald of messire. she came to require them to make peace, and if they would not make peace she was ready to fight. it was not until they had refused that she could be certain of conquering, not for any human reason, but because her council had so promised her. perhaps even she may have hoped that by appearing to the english captains, her standard in hand, accompanied by saint catherine and saint margaret and saint michael the archangel, she would persuade them to leave france. she may have believed that talbot, falling on his knees, would obey not her, but him who sent her; that thus she would accomplish that for which she came, without shedding one drop of that french blood which was so dear to her; neither would the english whom she pitied lose their bodies or their souls. in any case god must be obeyed and charity shown: it was only at such a price that victory could be gained. a victory so spiritual, a conquest so angelic, she had come to win; but now it was snatched from her by the false wisdom of the leaders of her party. they were hindering her from fulfilling her mission,--perhaps from giving the promised sign,--and they were involving her with themselves in enterprises less certain of success and less noble in spirit. hence her sorrow and her wrath. [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] even after the discomfiture of her arrival, in order that she might please god, she did not consider herself freed from the obligation of offering peace to her enemies.[ ] and since she could not go straight to talbot's camp she wanted to appear before the fort of saint-jean-le-blanc.[ ] [footnote : opinion of martin berruyer, in lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations_, ch. vii.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] there was no one left behind the palisades. but if she had gone and found any of the enemy there she would first have offered them peace. of this her subsequent behaviour within the city walls is positive proof. her mission was not to contribute to the defence of orléans plans of campaign or stratagems of war; her share in the work of deliverance was higher and nobler. to suffering men, weak, unhappy, and selfish, she brought the invincible forces of love and faith, the virtue of sacrifice. my lord the bastard who regarded jeanne's mission as purely religious, and who would have been greatly astonished had any one told him that he ought to consult this peasant on military matters,[ ] appeared as if he did not understand the reproaches she addressed to him. and he went away to see that operations were carried out according to the plans he had made. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] everything had been carefully concerted and prepared, but a slight obstacle occurred. the barges that the people of orléans were to send for the victuals were not yet unmoored.[ ] they were sailing vessels, and, as the wind was blowing from the east, they could not set out. no one knew how long they would be delayed, and time was precious. jeanne said confidently to those who were growing anxious: "wait a little, for in god's name everything shall enter the town."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , . _chronique de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _chronique du la pucelle_, p. .] she was right. the wind changed: the sails were unfurled, and the barges were borne up the river by a favourable wind, so strong that one boat was able to tow two or three others.[ ] without hindrance they passed the saint-loup bastion. my lord the bastard sailed in one of these boats with nicole de giresme, grand prior of france of the order of rhodes. and the flotilla came to the port of chécy, where it remained at anchor all night.[ ] it was decided that the relieving army should that night encamp at the port of bouchet and guard the convoy by watching down the river, while one detachment was stationed near the islands of chécy to watch up the river in the direction of jargeau. in company with certain captains, and with a body of men-at-arms and archers, the maid followed the bank as far as l'Île-aux-bourdons.[ ] [footnote : boucher de molandon, _la délivrance d'orléans et l'institution de la fête du mai, chronique anonyme du xv'e siècle_, orléans, , in vo, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la fête_, in the _trial_, vol. v, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. , note . boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, pp. - .] the lords who had brought the convoy decided that they would set out immediately after the unloading. having accomplished the first part of its task, the army would return to blois to fetch the remaining victuals and ammunition, for everything had not been brought at once. hearing that the soldiers, with whom she had come, were going away, jeanne wished to go with them; and, after having so urgently asked to be taken to orléans, now that she was before the gates of the city, her one idea was to go back.[ ] thus is the soul of the mystic blown hither and thither by the breath of the spirit. now as always jeanne was guided by impulses purely spiritual. she would not be parted from these soldiers because she believed they had made their peace with god, and she feared that she might not find others as contrite. for her, victory or defeat depended absolutely on whether the combatants were in a state of grace or of sin. to lead them to confession was her only art of war; no other science did she know, whether for fighting behind ramparts or in the open field.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . this document very untrustworthy as a whole is in certain passages a better authority than _le journal du siège_.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , (pasquerel's evidence).] "as for entering the town," she said, "it would hurt me to leave my men, and i ought not to do it. they have all confessed, and in their company i should not fear the uttermost power of the english."[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , .] in reality, as one may well imagine, whether or no they had confessed, whether they were near or far from her, these mercenaries committed all the sins compatible with the simplicity of their minds. but the innocent damsel did not see them. sensitive to things invisible, her eyes were closed to things material. she was confirmed in her resolution to return to blois by the captains who had brought her and who wanted to take her back, alleging the king's command. they wished to keep her because she brought good luck. my lord the bastard, however, saw serious obstacles and even dangers in the way of her return.[ ] in the state in which he had left the people of orléans, if their maid were not straightway brought before them they would rise in fury and despair, with cries, threats, rioting, and violence; everything was to be feared, even massacres. he entreated the captains, in the king's interest, to agree to jeanne's entering orléans; and without great difficulty, he induced them to return to blois without her. but jeanne did not give in so quickly. he besought her to decide to cross the loire. she refused and with such insistence that he must have realised how difficult it is to influence a saint. it was necessary for one of the lords who had brought her, the sire de rais or the sire de loré, to join his entreaties to those of the bastard, and to say to her: "assuredly you must go, for we promise to return to you shortly."[ ] [footnote : "_ex tunc dictus deponens habuit bonam spem de ea et plus quam ante_," _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _timens ne recedere vellent et quod opus remaneret imperfectum_, _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _chronique de la fête_, in the _trial_, vol. v, p. . boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, pp. , .] at last, when she heard that brother pasquerel would go with them to blois, accompanied by the priests and bearing her standard, believing that her men would have a good spiritual director, she consented to stay.[ ] she crossed the loire with her brothers, her little company, the bastard, the marshal de boussac, the captain la hire, and reached chécy, which was then quite a town, with two churches, an infirmary, and a lepers' hospital.[ ] she was received by a rich burgess, one guy de cailly, in whose manor of reuilly she passed the night.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _mistère du siège_, line , .] [footnote : boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, pp. , , note xiv, and in _bulletin de la société archéologique de l'orléanais_, vol. iv, p. ; vol. ix, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . ch. du lys, _traité sommaire tant du nom et des armes que de la naissance et parenté de la pucelle d'orléans et de ses frères_, paris, , in to, p. . abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, p. . p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, p. . boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, p. , proofs and illustrations, note xv.] on the morning of the th the barges, which had been anchored at chécy, crossed the loire, and those who were with the convoy loaded them with victuals, ammunition, and cattle.[ ] the river was high.[ ] the barges were able to drift down the navigable channel near the left bank. the birches and osiers of l'Île-aux-boeufs hid them from the english in the saint-loup bastion. besides, at that moment, the enemy was occupied elsewhere. the town garrison was skirmishing with them in order to distract their attention. the fighting was somewhat hard. there were slain and wounded; prisoners were taken on both sides; and the english lost a banner.[ ] beneath the deserted[ ] watch of saint-jean-le-blanc the barges passed unprotected. between l'Île-aux-boeufs and the islet of les martinets they turned starboard, to go down again, following the right bank, under l'Île-aux-toiles, as far as la tour neuve, the base of which was washed by the loire, at the south-eastern corner of the town. then they took shelter in the moat near the burgundian gate.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , .] [footnote : boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, pp. _et seq._] the whole day the manor of reuilly was besieged by a procession of citizens, who could not forbear coming at the risk of their lives to see the promised maid. it was six o'clock in the evening before she left chécy. the captains wanted her to enter the town at nightfall for fear of disorders and lest the crush around her should be too great.[ ] doubtless they passed along the broad valleys leading from semoy towards the south, on the borders of the parishes of saint-marc and saint-jean-de-braye. on the way she said to those who rode with her: "fear nothing. no harm shall happen to you."[ ] and indeed the only danger was for pedestrians. horsemen ran little risk of being pursued by the english, who were short of horses in their bastions. [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] on that friday, the th of april, in the darkness, she entered orléans, by the burgundian gate. she was in full armour and rode a white horse.[ ] a white horse was the steed of heralds and archangels.[ ] the bastard had placed her on his right. before her was borne her standard, on which figured two angels, each holding a flower de luce, and her pennon, painted with the picture of the annunciation. then came the marshal de boussac, guy de cailly, pierre and jean d'arc, jean de metz, and bertrand de poulengy, the sire d'aulon, and those lords, captains, men-of-war, and citizens who had come to meet her at chécy.[ ] bearing torches and rejoicing as heartily as if they had seen god himself descending among them, the townfolk of orléans pressed around her.[ ] they had suffered great privations, they had feared that help would never come; but now they were heartened and felt as if the siege had been raised already by the divine virtue, which they had been told resided in this maid. they looked at her with love and veneration; elbowing and pushing each other, men, women, and children rushed forward to touch her and her white horse, as folk touch the relics of saints. in the crush a torch set her pennon on fire. the maid, beholding it, spurred on her horse and galloped to the flame, which she extinguished with a skill apparently miraculous; for everything in her was marvellous.[ ] men-at-arms and citizens, enraptured, accompanied her in crowds to the church of sainte-croix, whither she went first to give thanks, then to the house of jacques boucher, where she was to lodge.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : and even now trumpeters ride white horses (_histoire de jeanne d'arc_, by lebrun de charmettes, , in vo, vol. ii, p. ).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : "_comme se ilz veissent dieu descendre entre eulx_," says _le journal du siège_, p. . luillier (_trial_, vol. iii, p. ) calls her "the angel of the lord" (_l'ange de dieu_).] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : _chronique de l'établissement de la fête_, p. .] jacques or jacquet boucher, as he was called, had been the duke of orléans' treasurer for several years. he was a very rich man and had married the daughter of one of the most influential burgesses of the city.[ ] having stayed in the town throughout the siege, he contributed to the defence by gifts of wheat, oats, and wine, and by advancing funds for the purchase of ammunition and weapons. as the care of the ramparts fell to the burgesses, it was jacques' duty to keep in repair and ready for defence the renard gate, where he dwelt, which was the most exposed to the english attack. his mansion, one of the finest and largest in the town, once inhabited by regnart or renard, the family which had given its name to the gate, was in the rue des talmeliers, quite near the fortifications. the captains held their councils of war there, when they did not meet at the house of chancellor guillaume cousinot in the rue de la rose.[ ] jacques boucher's dwelling was doubtless well furnished with silver plate and storied tapestry. it would appear that in one of the rooms there was a picture representing three women and bearing this inscription: _justice, peace, union_.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. iii, pp. , , _et seq._, . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . boucher de molandon, _jacques boucher, sieur de guilleville, trésorier général du district d'orléans...._ in _mémoires de la société archéologique de l'orléanais_, vol. xxii, , p. . boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, p. , note xvi; proofs and illustrations, p. .] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, ed. vallet de viriville, p. . [note on g. cousinot the chancellor.] cf. _nouvelle biographie générale_. vallet de viriville, _essais critiques sur les historiens originaux du règne de charles vii_, in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, , fourth series, vol. iii, pp. - , - .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. iii, pp. , _et seq._; vol. iv, pp. , , . _journal du siège_, pp. , . boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, pp. , , note xvi.] into this house the maid was received with her two brothers, the two comrades who had brought her to the king, and their valets. she had her armour taken off.[ ] jacques boucher's wife and daughter passed the night with her. jeanne shared the child's bed. she was nine years old and was called charlotte after duke charles, who was her father's lord.[ ] it was the custom in those days for the host to share his bed with his man guest and the hostess with her woman guest. this was the rule of courtesy; kings observed it as well as burgesses. children were taught how to behave towards a sleeping companion, to keep to their own part of the bed, not to fidget, and to sleep with their mouths shut.[ ] [footnote : g. lefèvre-pontalis (_chronique d'antonio morosini_, vol. iii, p. , note) discovers in _la chronique de la pucelle_ (xliv, p. ) a wrong use of an incident cited by dunois in his evidence, which must be allowed to have happened on the th of may, as dunois cited it (_trial_, vol. iii, p. ).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : franklin, _la vie privée d'autrefois_, vols. ii, xix, _passim_. h. havard, _dictionnaire de l'ameublement_, under the word _lit_.] thus the duke's treasurer took the maid into his house and entertained her at the town's expense. jeanne's horses were stabled by a burgess named jean pillas. as for the d'arc brothers, they did not stay with their sister, but lodged in the house of thévenin villedart. the town paid all their expenses; for example it furnished them with the shoes and gaiters they needed and gave them a few gold crowns. three of the maid's comrades, who were very destitute and came to see her at orléans, received food.[ ] [footnote : accounts of the fortress in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] on the next day, the th of april, the town bands of orléans were early afoot. from morn till eve everything in the town was topsy-turvy; the rebellion, which had been repressed so long, now broke forth. as early as february the citizens had begun to mistrust and hate the knights;[ ] now at last they shook off their yoke and broke it.[ ] henceforth they would recognise no king's lieutenant, no governor, no lords, no generals; there was but one power and one defence: the maid.[ ] the maid was the people's captain. this damsel, this shepherdess, this nun did the knights the greatest injury they ever experienced: she reduced them to nothing. on the morning of the th they must have been convinced that the popular revolution had taken place. the town bands were waiting for the maid to put herself at their head, and with her to march immediately against the _godons_. the captains endeavoured to make them understand that they must wait for the army from blois and the company of marshal de boussac, who that night had set out to meet the army. the citizens in arms would listen to nothing, and with loud cries clamoured for the maid. she did not appear. my lord the bastard, who was honey-tongued, had advised her to keep away.[ ] this was the last advantage the leaders gained over her. and now as before, when she appeared to give way to them, she was merely doing as she liked. as for the citizens, with the maid or without her, they were determined to fight. the bastard could not hinder them. they sallied forth,[ ] accompanied by the gascons of captain la hire and the men of messire florent d'illiers. they bravely attacked the bastion saint-pouair, which the english called paris, and which was about eight hundred yards from the walls. they overcame the outposts and approached so close to the bastion that they were already clamouring for faggots and straw to be brought from the town to set fire to the palisades. but at the cry "saint george!" the english gathered themselves together, and after a sore and sanguinary fight repulsed the attack of the citizens and free-lances.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : see the evidence of s. charles (vol. iii, pp. , ) and certain details in _la chronique de la pucelle_.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , ; vol. iv, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . _chronique de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . cf. letter written from germany, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] the maid had known nothing of it. sent from god, on her white horse, a messenger armed yet peaceful, she held it neither just nor pious to fight the english before they had refused her offers of peace. on that day as before her one wish was to go in true saintly wise straight to talbot. she asked for tidings of her letter and learnt that the english captains had paid no heed to it, and had detained her herald, guyenne.[ ] this is what had happened: [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . _journal du siège_, p. .] that letter, which the bastard deemed couched in vulgar phrase, produced a marvellous impression on the english. it filled them with fear and rage. they kept the herald who had brought it; and, although use and custom insisted on the person of such officers being respected, alleging that a sorceress's messenger must be a heretic, they put him in chains, and after some sort of a trial condemned him to be burnt as the accomplice of the seductress.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] they even put up the stake to which he was to be bound. and yet, before executing the sentence, they judged it well to consult the university of paris, as in like manner the bishop of beauvais was to consult it eighteen months later.[ ] their evil disposition arose from fear. these unfortunates, who were treated as devils, were afraid of devils. they suspected the subtle french of being necromancers and sorcerers. they said that by repeating magic lines the armagnacs had compassed the death of the great king, henry v. fearing lest their enemies should make use of sorcery and enchantment against them, in order to protect themselves from all evil influences, they wore bands of parchment inscribed with the formulæ of conjuration and called _periapts_.[ ] the most efficacious of these amulets was the first chapter of the gospel of st. john. at this time the stars were unfavourable to them, and astrologers were reading their approaching ruin in the sky. their late king, henry v, when he was studying at oxford, had learnt there the rules of divination by the stars. for his own special use he kept in his coffers two astrolabes, one of silver and one of gold. when his queen, catherine of france, was about to be confined, he himself cast the horoscope of the expected child. and further, as there was a prophecy in england[ ] which said that windsor would lose what monmouth had gained, he determined that the queen should not be confined at windsor. but destiny cannot be thwarted. the royal child was born at windsor. his father was in france when he heard the tidings. he held them to be of ill omen, and summoned jean halbourd of troyes, minister general of the trinitarians or mathurins, "excellent in astrology," who, having drawn up the scheme of nativity, could only confirm the king in his doleful presentiments.[ ] and now the time had come. windsor reigned; all would be lost. merlin had predicted that they would be driven out of france and by a virgin utterly undone. when the maid appeared they grew pale with fright, and fear fell upon captains and soldiers.[ ] those whom no man could make afraid, trembled before this girl whom they held to be a witch. they could not be expected to regard her as a saint sent of god. the best they could think of her was that she was a very learned sorceress.[ ] to those she came to help she appeared a daughter of god, to those she came to destroy she appeared a horrid monster in woman's form. in this double aspect lay all her strength: angelic for the french, devilish for the english, to one and the other she appeared invincible and supernatural. [footnote : martial de paris, called d'auvergne, _vigiles de charles vii_, ed. coustelier, , vol. i, p. .] [footnote : la curne, under the word _periapt_. shakespeare, _henry vi_, part i, act v, sc. iii.] [footnote : shakespeare, _henry vi_, part i, act iii, sc. i.] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. . carlier, _histoire du valois_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise_, p. .] [footnote : shakespeare, _henry vi_, part i, act i, sc. ii.] in the evening of the th she sent her herald, ambleville, to the camp of saint-laurent-des-orgerils to ask for guyenne, who had borne the letter from blois and had not returned. ambleville was also instructed to tell sir john talbot, the earl of suffolk, and the lord scales that in god's name the maid required them to depart from france and go to england; otherwise they would suffer hurt. the english sent back ambleville with an evil message. "the english," he said to the maid, "are keeping my comrade to burn him." she made answer: "in god's name they will do him no harm." and she commanded ambleville to return.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , .] she was indignant, and, no doubt, greatly disappointed. in truth, she had never anticipated that talbot and the leaders of the siege would give such a welcome to a letter inspired by saint catherine and saint margaret and saint michael; but so broad was her charity that she was still willing to offer peace to the english. in her innocence she may have believed that her proclamations in god's name were misunderstood after all. besides, whatever happened, she was determined to go through with her duty to the end. at night she sallied forth from the bridge gate and went as far as the outwork of la belle-croix. it was not unusual for the two sides to address each other. la belle-croix was within ear-shot of les tourelles. the maid mounted the rampart and cried to the english: "surrender in god's name. i will grant you your lives only." but the garrison and even the captain, william glasdale himself, hurled back at her coarse insults and horrible threats. "milk-maid! if ever we get you, you shall be burned alive."[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] she answered that it was a lie. but they were in earnest and sincere. they firmly believed that this damsel was arming legions of devils against them. on sunday, the st of may, my lord the bastard went to meet the army from blois.[ ] he knew the country; and, being both energetic and cautious, he was desirous to superintend the entrance of this convoy as he had done that of the other. he set out with a small escort. he did not dare to take with him the saint herself; but, in order, so to speak, to put himself under her protection and tactfully to flatter the piety and affections of the folk of orléans, he took a member of her suite, her steward, sire jean d'aulon.[ ] thus he grasped the first opportunity of showing his good will to the maid, feeling that henceforth nothing could be done except with her or under her patronage. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] the fervour of the citizens was not abated. that very day, in their passionate desire to see the saint, they crowded round jacques boucher's house as turbulently as the pilgrims from puy pressed into the sanctuary of la vierge noire. there was a danger of the doors being broken in. the cries of the townsfolk reached her. then she appeared: good, wise, equal to her mission, one born for the salvation of the people. in the absence of captains and men-at-arms, this wild multitude only awaited a sign from her to throw itself in tumult on the bastions and perish there. notwithstanding the visions of war that haunted her, that sign she did not give. child as she was, and as ignorant of war as of life, there was that within her which turned away disaster. she led this crowd of men, not to the english bastions, but to the holy places of the city. down the streets she rode, accompanied by many knights and squires; men and women pressed to see her and could not gaze upon her enough. they marvelled at the manner of her riding and of her behaviour, in every point like a man-at-arms; and they would have hailed her as a veritable saint george had they not suspected saint george of turning englishman.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, pp. , .] that sunday, for the second time, she went forth to offer peace to the enemies of the kingdom. she passed out by the renard gate and went along the blois road, through the suburbs that had been burnt down, towards the english bastion. surrounded by a double moat, it was planted on a slope at the crossroads called la croix boissée or buissée, because the townsfolk of orléans had erected a cross there, which every palm sunday they dressed with a branch of box blessed by the priest. doubtless she intended to reach this bastion, and perhaps to go on to the camp of saint-laurent-des-orgerils situated between la croix boissée and the loire, where, as she had said, were talbot and the english. for she had not yet given up hope of gaining a hearing from the leaders of the siege. but at the foot of the hill, at a place called la croix-morin, she met some _godons_ who were keeping watch. and there, in tones grave, pious, and noble, she summoned them to retreat before the hosts of the lord. "surrender, and your lives shall be spared. in god's name go back to england. if ye will not i will make you suffer for it."[ ] [footnote : may. _journal du siège_, p. .] these men-at-arms answered her with insults as those of les tourelles had done. one of them, the bastard of granville, cried out to her: "would you have us surrender to a woman?" the french, who were with her, they dubbed pimps and infidels, to shame them for being in the company of a bad woman and a witch.[ ] but whether because they thought her magic rendered her invulnerable, or because they held it dishonourable to strike a messenger, now, as on other occasions, they forbore to fire on her. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (evidence of louis de coutes).] that sunday, jacquet le prestre, the town varlet, offered the maid wine.[ ] the magistrates and citizens could not have more highly honoured her whom they regarded as their captain. thus they treated barons, kings and queens when they were entertained in the city. in those days wine was highly valued on account of its beneficent power. jeanne, when she emphasised a wish, would say: "if i were never to drink wine between now and easter!..."[ ] but in reality she never drank wine except mixed with water, and she ate little.[ ] [footnote : extracts from fortress accounts, in the _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, pp. , , , , ; vol. v, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . morosini, p. . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, p. .] throughout this time of waiting the maid never rested for a moment. on monday, may nd, she mounted her horse and rode out into the country to view the english bastions. the people followed her in crowds; they had no fear and were glad to be near her. and when she had seen all that she wanted, she returned to the city, to the cathedral church, where she heard vespers.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, p. .] on the morrow, the rd of may, the day of the invention of the holy cross, which was the cathedral festival, she followed in the procession, with the magistrates and the townsfolk. it was then that maître jean de mâcon, the precentor of the cathedral,[ ] greeted her with these words: "my daughter, are you come to raise the siege?" [footnote : charles cuissard, _notes chronologiques sur jean de mâcon_, in _mémoires de la société archéologique de l'orléanais_, vol. xi, , pp. , .] she replied: "yea, in god's name."[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, p. .] the people of orléans all believed that the english round the city were as innumerable as the stars in the sky; the notary, guillaume girault, expected nothing short of a miracle.[ ] jean luillier, woollen draper[ ] by trade, thought it impossible for the citizens to hold out longer against an enemy so enormously their superior.[ ] messire jean de mâcon was likewise alarmed at the power and the numbers of the _godons_. [footnote : note by guill. girault, notary in the _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. . cf. _ibid._, pp. , (the evidence of dunois amounts to much the same).] "my daughter," he said to the maid, "their force is great and they are strongly intrenched. it will be a difficult matter to turn them out."[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] if notary guillaume girault, if draper jean luillier, if messire jean de mâcon, instead of fostering these gloomy ideas, had counted the numbers of the besieged and the besieging, they would have found that the former were more numerous than the latter; and that the army of scales, of suffolk, of talbot appeared mean and feeble when compared with the great besieging armies of the reign of king henry v. had they looked a little more closely they would have perceived that the bastions, with the formidable names of london and of paris, were powerless to prevent either corn, cattle, pigs, or men-at-arms being brought into the city; and that these gigantic dolls were being mocked at by the dealers, who, with their beasts, passed by them daily. in short, they would have realised that the people of orléans were for the moment better off than the english. but they had examined nothing for themselves. they were content to abide by public opinion which is seldom either just or correct. the maid did not share messire jean de mâcon's illusions. she knew no more of the english than he did; yet because she was a saint, she replied tranquilly: "with god all things are possible."[ ] and maître jean de mâcon thought it well that such should be her opinion. [footnote : _chronique de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] what aggravated the trouble, the danger, and the panic of the situation, was that the citizens believed they were betrayed. they recollected the count of clermont at the battle of the herrings, and they suspected the king's men of deserting them once again. after having done so much and spent so much they saw themselves given up to the english. this idea made them mad.[ ] there was a rumour that the marshal de boussac, who had started with my lord the bastard to meet the second convoy of supplies, and who was to return on tuesday the rd, would not come back. it was said that the chancellor of france wanted to disband the army. it was absurd. on the contrary, great efforts for the deliverance of the city were being made by the king's council and that of the queen of sicily. but the people's brains had been turned by their long suffering and their terrible danger. a more reasonable fear was lest any mishap should occur on the road from blois like that which had overtaken the force at rouvray. the maid's comrades were infected with the anxieties of the townsfolk; one of them betrayed his fears to her, but she was not affected by them. with the radiant tranquillity of the illuminated, she said:[ ] "the marshal will come. i am confident that no harm will happen to him."[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : beaucroix, in his evidence, says it was jean d'aulon (_trial_, vol. iii, p. ); but, according to his own testimony, d'aulon was then following the bastard (_ibid._, vol. iii, p. ).] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, p. .] on that day there entered into the city the little garrisons of gien, of château-regnard, and of montargis.[ ] but the blois army did not come. on the morrow, at daybreak, it was descried in the plain of la beauce. and, indeed, the sire de rais and his company, escorted by the marshal de boussac and my lord the bastard, were skirting the forest of orléans.[ ] at these tidings the citizens must needs exclaim that the maid had been right in wishing to march straight against talbot since the captains now followed the very road she had indicated. but in reality it was not just as they thought. only one part of the blois army had risked forcing its way between the western bastions; the convoy, with its escort, like the first convoy, was coming through la sologne and was to enter the town by water. those arrangements for the entrance of supplies, which, in the first instance, had proved successful, were naturally now repeated.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, dissertation ix. lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, p. . loiseleur, _comptes des dépenses_, ch. vii.] [footnote : on the th of may, as on the th of april, the corn was brought down the loire. indeed there exists a bill which makes mention of "sailors who brought the corn which came from blois on the th day of may," "_nottoniers qui amenèrent les blés qui furent amenés de blois le iiij'e jour de may_" (boucher de molandon, _première expédition de jeanne d'arc_, pp. , ).] captain la hire and certain other commanders, who had remained in the city with five hundred fighting men, went out to meet the sire de rais, the marshal de boussac and the bastard. the maid mounted her horse and went with them. they passed through the english lines; and, a little further on, having met the army, they returned to the town together. the priests, and among them brother pasquerel bearing the banner, were the first to pass beneath the paris bastion, singing psalms.[ ] [footnote : the th of may, _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] jeanne dined at jacques boucher's house with her steward, jean d'aulon. when the table was cleared, the bastard, who had come to the treasurer's house, talked with her for a moment. he was gracious and polite, but spoke with restraint. "i have heard on good authority," he remarked, "that fastolf is soon to join the english who are conducting the siege. he brings them supplies and reinforcements and is already at janville." at these tidings jeanne appeared very glad and said, laughing: "bastard, bastard, in god's name, i command thee to let me know as soon as thou shalt hear of fastolf's arrival. for should he come without my knowledge, i warn thee thou shalt lose thy head."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (jean d'aulon's evidence).] far from betraying any annoyance at so rude a jest, he replied that she need have no fear, he would let her know.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] the approach of sir john fastolf had already been announced on the th of april. it was expressly in order to avoid him that the army had come through la sologne. it is possible that on the th of may the tidings of his coming had no surer foundation. but the bastard knew something else. the corn of the second convoy, like that of the first, was coming down the river. it had been resolved, in a council of war, that in the afternoon the captains should attack the saint-loup bastion, and divert the english as had been done on the th of april.[ ] the attack had already begun. but of this the bastard breathed not a word to the maid. he held her to be the one source of strength in the town. but he believed that in war her part was purely spiritual.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : i have followed the account of jean chartier, vol. i, p. (amplified in _la chronique de la pucelle_, p. ), which is more plausible than that of _le journal du siège_.] after he had withdrawn, jeanne, worn out by her morning's expedition, lay down on her bed with her hostess for a short sleep. sire jean d'aulon, who was very weary, stretched himself on a couch in the same room, thinking to take the rest he so greatly needed. but scarce had he fallen asleep when the maid leapt from her bed and roused him with a great noise. he asked her what she wanted. "in god's name," she answered in great agitation, "my council have told me to go against the english; but i know not whether i am to go against their bastions or against fastolf, who is bringing them supplies."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , (jean d'aulon's evidence).] in her dreams she had been present at her council, that is to say, she had beheld her saints. she had seen saint catherine and saint margaret. there had happened to her what always happens. the saints had told her no more than she herself knew. they had revealed to her nothing of what she needed to know. they had not informed her how, at that very moment, the french were attacking the saint-loup bastion and suffering great hurt. and the blessed ones had departed leaving her in error and in ignorance of what was going on, and in uncertainty as to what she was to do. the good sire d'aulon was not the one to relieve her from her embarrassment. he, too, was excluded from the councils of war. now he answered her nothing, and set to arming himself as quickly as possible. he had already begun when they heard a great noise and cries coming up from the street. from the passers-by, they gleaned that there was fighting near saint-loup and that the enemy was inflicting great hurt on the french. without staying to inquire further, jean d'aulon went straightway to his squire to have his armour put on. almost at the same time jeanne went down and asked: "where are my armourers? the blood of our folk is flowing."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] in the street she found brother pasquerel, her chaplain, with other priests, and mugot, her page, to whom she cried: "ha! cruel boy, you did not tell me that the blood of france was being shed!... in god's name, our people are hard put to it."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (evidence of louis de coutes).] she bade him bring her horse and leave the wife and daughter of her host to finish arming her. on his return the page found her fully accoutred. she sent him to fetch her standard from her room. he gave it her through the window. she took it and spurred on her horse into the high street, towards the burgundian gate, at such a pace that sparks flashed from the pavement. "hasten after her!" cried the treasurer's wife.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] sire d'aulon had not seen her start. he imagined, why, it is impossible to say, that she had gone out on foot, and, having met a page on horseback in the street, had made him dismount and give her his horse.[ ] the renard gate and the burgundian gate were on opposite sides of the town. jeanne, who for the last three days had been going up and down the streets of orléans, took the most direct way. jean d'aulon and the page, who were hastily pursuing her, did not come up with her until she had reached the gate. there they met a wounded man being brought into the town. the maid asked his bearers who the man was. he was a frenchman, they replied. then she said: "i have never seen the blood of a frenchman flow without feeling my heart stand still."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , (jean d'aulon's evidence).] the maid and sire d'aulon, with a few fighting men of their company, pressed on through the fields to saint-loup. on the way they saw certain of their party. the good squire, unaccustomed to great battles, never remembered having seen so many fighting men at once.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] for an hour the sire de rais' bretons and the men from le mans had been skirmishing before the bastion. as the custom was those who had arrived last were keeping watch.[ ] but if these combatants, who had reached the town only that very morning, had attacked without taking time to breathe, they must have been hard pressed. they were doing what had been done on the th of april, and for the same reason:[ ] namely, occupying the english while the barges corn-laden were coming down the river to the moat. on the top of their high hill, in their strong fortress, the english had easily held out albeit they were but few; and the french king's men can hardly have been able to make head against them, since the maid and sire d'aulon found them scattered through the fields. she gathered them together and led them back to the attack. they were her friends: they had journeyed together: they had sung psalms and hymns together: together they had heard mass in the fields. they knew that she brought good luck: they followed her. as she marched at their head her first idea was a religious one. the bastion was built upon the church and convent of the ladies of saint-loup. with the sound of a trumpet she had it proclaimed that nothing should be taken from the church.[ ] she remembered how salisbury had come to a bad end for having pillaged the church of notre dame de cléry; and she desired to keep her men from an evil death.[ ] this was the first time she had seen fighting; and no sooner had she entered into the battle than she became the leader because she was the best. she did better than others, not because she knew more; she knew less. but her heart was nobler. when every man thought of himself, she alone thought of others: when every man took heed to defend himself, she defended herself not at all, having previously offered up her life. and thus this child,--who feared suffering and death like every human being, who knew by her voices and her presentiments that she would be wounded,--went straight on and stood beneath showers of arrows and cannon-balls on the edge of the moat, her standard in hand, rallying her men.[ ] through her what had been merely a diversion became a serious attack. the bastion was stormed. [footnote : gruel, _chronique d'arthur de richemont_, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, dissertation vi. morosini, vol. iv, supplement xiii. _journal du siège_, pp. , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : robert blondel, _de reductione normanniæ_, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . clerk of the chambre des comptes de brabant, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . eberhard windecke, p. .] when he heard that the fort of saint-loup was being attacked, sir john talbot sallied forth from the camp of saint-laurent-des-orgerils. in order to reach the threatened bastion he had some distance to go down his lines and along the border of the forest. he set out, and on his way was reinforced by the garrisons of the western bastions. the town watchmen observed his movements and sounded the alarm. marshal boussac passing through the parisis gate, went out to meet talbot on the north, towards fleury. the english captain was preparing to break through the french force when he saw a thick cloud of smoke rising over the fort saint-loup. he understood that the french had captured and set fire to it; and sadly he returned to the camp of saint-laurent-des-orgerils.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny says: "soon after [the arrival of the maid on the edge of the entrenchments] those in the fort wished to surrender to her: she would not take them for ransom and said she would capture them in any event, and redoubled the attack. and straightway the fort was taken and almost all put to death." this is hard to believe. the english would sooner have surrendered to the humblest menial in the armagnac host than to the maid: and it is not likely that she would have refused to hold them as prisoners for ransom. besides, perceval de cagny has not the remotest idea of what happened on the th of may. for example, he believes that the maid opened the attack. perceval de cagny, pp. _et seq._ _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _chronique de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] the attack had lasted three hours. after the burning of the bastion the english climbed into the church belfry. the french had difficulty in dislodging them; but they ran no danger thereby. of prisoners, they took two score, and the rest they slew. the maid was very sorrowful when she saw so many of the enemy dead. she pitied these poor folk who had died unconfessed.[ ] certain _godons_, wearing the ecclesiastical habit and ornaments, came to meet her. she perceived that they were soldiers disguised in stoles and hoods taken from the sacristy of the abbaye aux dames. but she pretended to take them for what they represented themselves to be. she received them and had them conducted to her house without allowing any harm to come to them. with a charitable jest she said: "one should never question priests."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] before leaving the fort she confessed to brother pasquerel, her chaplain. and she charged him to make the following announcement to all the men-at-arms: "confess your sins and thank god for the victory. if you do not, the maid will never help you more and will not remain in your company."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] the saint-loup bastion, attacked by fifteen hundred french, had been defended by only three hundred english. that they made no vigorous defence is indicated by the fact that only two or three frenchmen were slain.[ ] it was not by any severe mental effort or profound calculation that the french king's men had gained this advantage. it had cost them little, and yet it was immense. it meant the cutting off of the besiegers' communications with jargeau: it meant the opening of the upper loire: it was the first step towards the raising of the siege. better still, it afforded positive proof that these devils who had inspired such fear were miserable creatures, who might be entrapped like mice and smoked out like wasps in their nest. such unhoped-for good fortune was due to the maid. she had done everything, for without her nothing would have been done. she it was, who, in ignorance wiser than the knowledge of captains and free-lances, had converted an idle skirmish into a serious attack and had won the victory by inspiring confidence. [footnote : at the capture of the saint-loup bastion: _number of _number of french engaged._ french slain._ journal du siège , without counting nobles. letter of charles vii morosini's correspondent , eberhard windecke _number of _number of english engaged._ english slain._ brother pasquerel picked men slain or taken jean d'aulon all killed or taken g. girault killed or taken charles vii's letter all killed or taken _journal du siège_ killed, taken _relation de la fête du mai_ from to all killed or taken perceval de cagny , all killed or taken _chronique de la pucelle_ killed monstrelet from to all killed or taken eberhard windecke killed, , taken _les vigiles de charles vii_ killed, taken] that very evening the magistrates sent workmen to saint-loup to demolish the captured fortifications.[ ] [footnote : the accounts of the fortress in _journal du siège_, p. .] when at night she returned to her lodging, jeanne told her chaplain that on the morrow, which was the day of the ascension of our lord, she would keep the festival by not wearing armour and by abstaining from fighting. she commanded that no one should think of quitting the town, of attacking or making an assault, until he had first confessed. she added that the men-at-arms must pay heed that no dissolute women followed in their train for fear lest god should cause them to be defeated on account of their sins.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , .] when need was the maid herself saw that her orders concerning bad women and blasphemers were scrupulously obeyed. more than once she drove away the camp-followers. she rebuked men-at-arms who swore and blasphemed. one day, in the open street, a knight began to swear and take god's name in vain. jeanne heard him. she seized him by the throat, exclaiming, "ah, sir! dare you take in vain the name of our lord and master? in god's name you shall take back those words before i move from this place." a citizen's wife, passing down the street at that moment, beheld this man, who seemed to her to be a great baron, humbly receiving the saint's reproaches and testifying his repentance.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , (evidence of the widow huré).] on the morrow, which was ascension day, the captains held a council-of-war in the house of chancellor cousinot in the rue de la rose.[ ] there were present, as well as the chancellor, my lord the bastard, the sire de gaucourt, the sire de rais, the sire de graville, captain la hire, my lord ambroise de loré and several others. it was decided that les tourelles, the chief stronghold of the besiegers, should be attacked on the morrow. meanwhile, it would be necessary to hold in check the english of the camp of saint-laurent-des-orgerils. on the previous day, when talbot set out from saint-laurent, he had not been able to reach saint-loup in time because he had been obliged to make a long circuit, going round the town from west to east. but, although, on that previous day, the enemy had lost command of the loire above the town, they still held the lower river. they could cross it between saint-laurent and saint-privé[ ] as rapidly as the french could cross it by the Île-aux-toiles; and thus the english might gather in force at le portereau. this, the french must prevent and, if possible, draw off the garrisons from les augustins and les tourelles to saint-laurent-des-orgerils. with this object it was decided that the people of orléans with the folk from the communes, that is, from the villages, should make a feigned attack on the saint-laurent camp, with mantelets, faggots, and ladders. meanwhile, the nobles would cross the loire by l'Île-aux-toiles, would land at le portereau under the watch of saint-jean-le-blanc which had been abandoned by the english, and attack the bastion of les augustins; and when that was taken, the fort of les tourelles.[ ] thus there would be one assault made by the citizens, another by the nobles; one real, the other feigned; both useful, but only one glorious and worthy of knights. when the plan was thus drawn up, certain captains were of opinion that it would be well to send for the maid and tell her what had been decided.[ ] and, indeed, on the previous day, she had done so well that there was no longer need to hold her aloof. others deemed that it would be imprudent to tell her what was contemplated concerning les tourelles. for it was important that the undertaking should be kept secret, and it was feared that the holy damsel might speak of it to her friends among the common people. finally, it was agreed that she should know those decisions which affected the train-bands of orléans, since, indeed, she was their captain, but that such matters as could not be safely communicated to the citizens should be concealed from her. [footnote : may th. quicherat is mistaken when he says (_trial_, vol. iv, p. , note) that this council was held at jacques boucher's. cf. _journal du siège_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, p. . boucher de molandon in _mémoires de la société archéologique de l'orléanais_, vol. xxii, p. .] [footnote : by the little island without a name which is marked on the plan as petite Île charlemagne. the english had fortified it. see plan.] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , . these statements are very doubtful.] jeanne was in another room of the house with the chancellor's wife. messire ambroise de loré went to fetch her; and, when she had come, the chancellor told her that the camp of saint-laurent-des-orgerils was to be attacked on the morrow. she divined that something was being kept back; for she possessed a certain acuteness. besides, since they had hitherto concealed everything, it was natural she should suspect that something was still being kept from her. this mistrust annoyed her. did they think her incapable of keeping a secret? she said bitterly: "tell me what you have concluded and ordained. i could keep a much greater secret than that."[ ] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . very doubtful.] and refusing to sit down she walked to and fro in the room. my lord the bastard deemed it well to avoid exasperating her by telling her the truth. he pacified her without incriminating anybody: "jeanne, do not rage. it is impossible to tell you everything at once. what the chancellor has said has been concluded and ordained. but if those on the other side [of the water, the english of la sologne] should depart to come and succour the great bastion of saint-laurent and the english who are encamped near this part of the city, we have determined that some of us shall cross the river to do what we can against those on the other side [those of les augustins and les tourelles]. and it seems to us that such a decision is good and profitable." the maid replied that she was content, that such a decision seemed to her good, and that it should be carried out in the manner determined.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , . cf. the evidence of s. charles (_trial_, vol. iii, pp. , ).] it will be seen that by this proceeding the secrecy of the deliberations had been violated, and that the nobles had not been able to do what they had determined or at least not in the way they had determined. on that ascension day the maid for the last time sent a message of peace to the english, which she dictated to brother pasquerel in the following terms: _ye men of england, who have no right in the realm of france, the king of heaven enjoins and commands you by me, jeanne the maid, to leave your forts and return to your country. if ye will not i will make so great a noise as shall remain for ever in the memory of man: this i write to you for the third and last time, and i will write to you no more._ signed thus: jhesus--maria. jeanne the maid. and below: _i should have sent to you with more ceremony. but you keep my heralds. you kept my herald guyenne. if you will send him back to me, i will send you some of your men taken at the bastion saint-loup; they are not all dead._[ ] [footnote : may th. _trial_, vol. iii, p. (pasquerel's evidence).] jeanne went to la belle croix, took an arrow, and tied her letter to it with a string, then told an archer to shoot it to the english, crying: "read! this is the message." the english received the arrow, untied the letter, and having read it they cried: "this a message from the armagnac strumpet." when she heard them, tears came into jeanne's eyes and she wept. but soon she beheld her saints, who spoke to her of our lord, and she was comforted. "i have had a message from my lord," she said joyfully.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] my lord the bastard himself demanded the maid's herald, threatening that if he were not sent back he would keep the heralds whom the english had sent to treat for the exchange of prisoners. it is asserted that he even threatened to put those prisoners to death. but ambleville did not return.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. , gives a different account of this episode.] chapter xiii the taking of les tourelles and the deliverance of orlÉans on the morrow, friday the th of may, the maid rose at daybreak. she confessed to her chaplain and heard mass sung before the priests and fighting men of her company.[ ] the zealous townsfolk were already up and armed. whether or no she had told them, the citizens, who were strongly determined to cross the loire and attack les tourelles themselves, were pressing in crowds to the burgundian gate. they found it shut. the sire de gaucourt was guarding it with men-at-arms. the nobles had taken this precaution in case the citizens should discover their enterprise and wish to take part in it. the gate was closed and well defended. bent on fighting and themselves recovering their precious jewel, les tourelles, the citizens had recourse to her before whom gates opened and walls fell; they sent for the saint. she came, frank and terrible. she went straight to the old sire de gaucourt, and, refusing to listen to him, said: "you are a wicked man to try to prevent these people from going out. but whether you will or no, they will go and will do as well as they did the other day."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (pasquerel's evidence).] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , . evidence of s. charles. p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, p. .] excited by jeanne's voice and encouraged by her presence, the citizens, crying slaughter, threw themselves on gaucourt and his men-at-arms. when the old baron perceived that he could do nothing with them, and that it was impossible to bring them to his way of thinking, he himself joined them. he had the gates opened wide and cried out to the townsfolk: "come, i will be your captain." and with the lord of villars and sire d'aulon he went out at the head of the soldiers, who had been keeping the gate, and all the train-bands of the town. at the foot of la tour-neuve, at the eastern corner of the ramparts, there were boats at anchor. in them l'Île-aux-toiles was reached, and thence on a bridge formed by two boats they crossed over the narrow arm of the river which separates l'Île-aux-toiles from the sologne bank.[ ] those who arrived first entered the abandoned fort of saint-jean-le-blanc, and, while waiting for the others, amused themselves by demolishing it.[ ] then, when all had passed over, the townsfolk gayly marched against les augustins. the bastion was situated in front of les tourelles, on the ruins of the monastery; and the bastion would have to be taken before the fortifications at the end of the bridge could be attacked. but the enemy came out of their entrenchments and advanced within two bow-shots of the french, upon whom from their bows and cross-bows they let fly so thick a shower of arrows that the men of orléans could not stand against them. they gave way and fled to the bridge of boats: then, afraid of being cast into the river, they crossed over to l'Île-aux-toiles.[ ] the fighting men of the sire de gaucourt were more accustomed to war. with the lord of villars, sire d'aulon, and a valiant spaniard, don alonzo de partada, they took their stand on the slope of saint-jean-le-blanc and resisted the enemy. although very few in number, they were still holding out when, about three o'clock in the afternoon, captain la hire and the maid crossed the river with the free-lances. seeing the french hard put to it, and the english in battle array, they mounted their horses, which they had brought over with them, and holding their lances in rest spurred on against the enemy. the townsfolk, taking heart, followed them and drove back the english. but at the foot of the bastion they were again repulsed.[ ] in great agitation the maid galloped from the bastion to the bank, and from the bank to the bastion, calling for the knights; but the knights did not come. their plans had been upset, their order of battle reversed, and they needed time to collect themselves. at last she saw floating over the island the banners of my lord the bastard, the marshal de boussac, and the lord de rais. the artillery came too, and master jean de montesclère with his culverin and his gunners, bringing all the engines needed for the assault. four thousand men assembled round les augustins. but much time had been lost; they were only just beginning, and the sun was going down.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , . abbé dubois, _histoire du siège_, p. . jollois, _histoire du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : "_et les rebouterent ils par maintes fois et tresbucherent de hault en bas._" _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , (jean d'aulon's evidence).] the sire de gaucourt's men were ranged behind, to cover the besiegers in case the english from the bridge end should come to the aid of their countrymen in les augustins. but a quarrel arose in de gaucourt's company. some, like sire d'aulon and don alonzo, judged it well to stay at their post. others were ashamed to stand idle. hence haughty words and bravado. finally don alonzo and a man-at-arms, having challenged each other to see who would do the best, ran towards the bastion hand in hand. at one single volley maître jean's culverin overthrew the palisade. straightway the two champions forced their way in.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (jean d'aulon's evidence).] "enter boldly!" cried the maid.[ ] and she planted her standard on the rampart. the sire de rais followed her closely. [footnote : _ibid._, p. (evidence of beaucroix). _journal du siège_, p. .] the numbers of the french were increasing. they made a strong attack on the bastion and soon took it by storm. then one by one they had to assault the buildings of the monastery in which the _godons_ were entrenched. in the end all the english were slain or taken, except a few, who took refuge in les tourelles. in the huts the french found many of their own men imprisoned. after bringing them out, they set fire to the fort, and thus made known to the english their new disaster.[ ] it is said to have been the maid who ordered the fire in order to put a stop to the pillage in which her men were mercilessly engaging.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , . of doubtful authenticity.] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] a great advantage had been won. but the french were slow to regain confidence. when, in the darkness by the light of the fire, they beheld for the first time close to them the bulwarks of les tourelles, the men-at-arms were afraid. certain said: "it would take us more than a month to capture it."[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] the lords, captains, and men-at-arms went back to the town to pass a quiet night. the archers and most of the townsfolk stayed at le portereau. the maid would have liked to stay too, so as to be sure of beginning again on the morrow.[ ] but, seeing that the captains were leaving their horses and their pages in the fields, she followed them to orléans.[ ] wounded in the foot by a caltrop,[ ] overcome with fatigue, she felt weak, and contrary to her custom she broke her fast, although the day was friday.[ ] according to brother pasquerel, who in this matter is not very trustworthy, while she was finishing her supper in her lodging, there came to her a noble whose name is not mentioned and who addressed her thus: "the captains have met in council.[ ] they recognise how few we were in comparison with the english, and that it was by god's great favour that we won the victory. now that the town is plentifully supplied we may well wait for help from the king. wherefore, the council deems it inexpedient for the men-at-arms to make a sally to-morrow." [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (evidence of beaucroix).] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . _chronique de la fête_, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : the council is mentioned in _la chronique de la pucelle_, p. ; but this document is a mere echo of brother pasquerel's evidence.] jeanne replied: "you have been at your council; i have been at mine. now believe me the counsel of messire shall be followed and shall hold good, whereas your counsel shall come to nought." and turning to brother pasquerel who was with her, she said: "to-morrow rise even earlier than to-day, and do the best you can. stay always at my side, for to-morrow i shall have much ado--more than i have ever had, and to-morrow blood shall flow from my body."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . brother pasquerel, whom i follow here, reports jeanne's saying in the following terms: _exibit crastina die sanguis a corpore meo supra mammam._ i suspect him of having added to the prophecy. he was too fond of miracles and prophecies. on the th of april the maid says that the wind will change, and it changed. brother pasquerel is not satisfied with so moderate a marvel. he relates that jeanne raised the waters of the loire. we know on other authority that the loire was high. it cannot be denied that long before this jeanne had foretold that she would be wounded. this fact, stated in a letter from lyon, dated the nd of april, , was recorded in a register of la cour des comptes of brabant. but she did not specify the day. _dixit ... quod ipsa ante aureliam in conflictu telo vulnerabitur_ (_trial_, vol. iv, p. ).] it was not true that the english outnumbered the french. on the contrary they were far less numerous. there were scarce more than three thousand men round orléans. the succour from the king having arrived, the captains could not have said that they were waiting for it. true it is that they were hesitating to proceed forthwith to attack les tourelles on the morrow; but that was because they feared lest the english under talbot should enter the deserted town during the assault, since the townsfolk, refusing to march against saint-laurent, had all gone to le portereau. the maid's council troubled about none of these difficulties. no fears beset saint catherine and saint margaret. to doubt is to fear; they never doubted. whatever may be said to the contrary, of military tactics and strategy they knew nothing. they had not read the treatise of vegetius, _de re militari_. had they read it the town would have been lost. jeanne's vegetius was saint catherine. during the night it was cried in the streets of the city that bread, wine, ammunition and all things necessary must be taken to those who had stayed behind at le portereau. there was a constant passing to and fro of boats across the river. men, women and children were carrying supplies to the outposts.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] on the morrow, saturday the th of may, jeanne heard brother pasquerel say mass and piously received the holy sacrament.[ ] jacques boucher's house was beset with magistrates and notable citizens. after a night of fatigue and anxiety, they had just heard tidings which exasperated them. they had heard tell that the captains wanted to defer the storming of les tourelles. with loud cries they appealed to the maid to help the townsfolk, sold, abandoned, and betrayed.[ ] the truth was that my lord the bastard and the captains, having observed during the night a great movement among the english on the upper loire, were confirmed in their fears that talbot would attack the walls near the renard gate while the french were occupied on the left bank. at sunrise they had perceived that during the night the english had demolished their outwork saint privé, south of l'Île-charlemagne.[ ] that also caused them to believe firmly that in the evening the english had concentrated in the saint-laurent camp and the bastion, london. the townsfolk had long been irritated by the delay of the king's men in raising the siege. and there is no doubt that the captains were not so eager to bring it to an end as they were.[ ] the captains lived by war, while the citizens died of it,--that made all the difference. the magistrates besought the maid to complete without delay the deliverance she had already begun. they said to her: "we have taken counsel and we entreat you to accomplish the mission you have received from god and likewise from the king." [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : _chronique de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : "_par l'accord et consentement des bourgeois d'orléans mais contre l'opinion et volonté de tous les chefs et capitaines_," _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] "in god's name, i will," she said. and straightway she mounted her horse, and uttering a very ancient phrase, she cried: "let who loves me follow me!"[ ] [footnote : _chronique de l'établissement de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . le roux de lincy, _proverbes_, vol. ii, p. .] as she was leaving the treasurer's house a shad was brought her. she said to her host, smiling, "in god's name! we will have it for supper. i will bring you back a _godon_ who shall eat his share." she added: "this evening we shall return by the bridge."[ ] for the last ninety-nine days it had been impossible. but happily her words proved true. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (evidence of the woman p. milet). _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] the townsfolk had been too quick to take alarm. notwithstanding their fear of talbot and the english of the saint-laurent camp, the nobles crossed the loire in the early morning, and at le portereau rejoined their horses and pages who had passed the night there with the archers and train-bands. they were all there, the bastard, the sire de gaucourt, and the lords of rais, graville, guitry, coarraze, villars, illiers, chailly, the admiral de culant, the captains la hire, and poton.[ ] the maid was with them. the magistrates sent them great store of engines of war: hurdles, all kinds of arrows, hammers, axes, lead, powder, culverins, cannon, and ladders.[ ] the attack began early. what rendered it difficult was not the number of english entrenched in the bulwark and lodged in the towers: there were barely more than five hundred of them;[ ] true, they were commanded by lord moleyns, and under him by lord poynings and captain glasdale, who in france was called glassidas, a man of humble birth, but the first among the english for courage.[ ] the assailants, citizens, men-at-arms and archers were ten times more numerous. that so many combatants had been assembled was greatly to the credit of the french nation; but so great an army of men could not be employed at once. knights were not much use against earthworks; and the townsfolk although very zealous, were not very tenacious.[ ] finally, the bastard, who was prudent and thoughtful, was afraid of talbot.[ ] indeed if talbot had known and if he had wanted he might have taken the town while the french were trying to take les tourelles. war is always a series of accidents, but on that day no attempt whatever was made to carry out any concerted movement. this vast army was not an irresistible force, since no one, not even the bastard, knew how to bring it into action. in those days the issue of a battle was in the hands of a very few combatants. on the previous day everything had been decided by two or three men. [footnote : berry, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. , _passim_.] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . letter from charles vii to the people of narbonne ( may, ), in _trial_, vol. v, pp. _et seq._ _chronique de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. , note .] [footnote : jarry, _le compte de l'armée anglaise_, pp. , , , . boucher de molandon, _l'armée anglaise_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : they were employed chiefly in carrying munitions of war. _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] the french assembled before the entrenchments had the air of an immense crowd of idlers looking on while a few men-at-arms attempted an escalade. notwithstanding the size of the army, for a long while the assault resolved itself into a series of single combats. twenty times did the most zealous approach the rampart and twenty times they were forced to retreat.[ ] there were some wounded and some slain, but not many. the nobles, who had been making war all their lives, were cautious, while the soldiers of fortune were careful of their men. the townsfolk were novices in war.[ ] the maid alone threw herself into it with heart and soul. she was continually saying: "be of good cheer. do not retreat. the fort will soon be yours."[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : accounts of fortresses in _journal du siège_, pp. , . vergniaud-romagnési, _notice historique sur le fort des tourelles_, paris, in vo, , p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] at noon everyone went away to dinner. then about one o'clock they set to work again.[ ] the maid carried the first ladder. as she was putting it up against the rampart, she was struck on the shoulder over the right breast, by an arrow shot so straight that half a foot of the shaft pierced her flesh.[ ] she knew that she was to be wounded; she had foretold it to her king, adding that he must employ her all the same. she had announced it to the people of orléans and spoken of it to her chaplain[ ] on the previous day; and certainly for the last five days she had been doing her best to make the prophecy come true.[ ] when the english saw that the arrow had pierced her flesh they were greatly encouraged: they believed that if blood were drawn from a witch all her power would vanish. it made the french very sad. they carried her apart. brother pasquerel and mugot, the page, were with her. being in pain, she was afraid and wept.[ ] as was usual when combatants were wounded in battle, a group of soldiers surrounded her; some wanted to charm her. it was a custom with men-at-arms to attempt to close wounds by muttering paternosters over them. spells were cast by means of incantations and conjurations. certain paternosters had the power of stopping hemorrhage. papers covered with magic characters were also used. but it meant having recourse to the power of devils and committing mortal sin. jeanne did not wish to be charmed. [footnote : "post prandium," says brother pasquerel (_trial_, vol. iii, p. ). cf. the evidence of dunois (_ibid._, p. ).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . eberhard windecke, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . clerk of _la chambre des comptes_ of brabant, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , .] "i would rather die," she said, "than do anything i knew to be sin or contrary to god's will." again she said: "i know that i am to die. but i do not know when or how, neither do i know the hour. if my wound may be healed without sin then am i willing to be made whole."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (pasquerel's evidence).] her armour was taken off. the wound was anointed with olive oil and fat, and, when it was dressed, she confessed to brother pasquerel, weeping and groaning. soon she beheld coming to her her heavenly counsellors, saint catherine and saint margaret. they wore crowns and emitted a sweet fragrance. she was comforted.[ ] she resumed her armour and returned to the attack.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. ; vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] the sun was going down; and since morning the french had been wearing themselves out in a vain attack upon the palisades of the bulwark. my lord the bastard, seeing his men tired and night coming on, and afraid doubtless of the english of the saint-laurent-des-orgerils camp, resolved to lead the army back to orléans. he had the retreat sounded. the trumpet was already summoning the combatants to le portereau.[ ] the maid came to him and asked him to wait a little. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (jean d'aulon's evidence), p. ; (evidence of j. luillier). _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] "in god's name!" she said, "you will enter very soon. be not afraid and the english shall have no more power over you." according to some, she added: "wherefore, rest a little; drink and eat."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , . eberhard windecke, p. .] while they were refreshing themselves, she asked for her horse and mounted it. then, leaving her standard with a man of her company, she went alone up the hill into the vineyards, which it had been impossible to till this april, but where the tiny spring leaves were beginning to open. there, in the calm of evening, among the vine props tied together in sheaves and the lines of low vines drinking in the early warmth of the earth, she began to pray and listened for her heavenly voices.[ ] too often tumult and noise prevented her from hearing what her angel and her saints had to say to her. she could only understand them well in solitude or when the bells were tinkling in the distance, and evening sounds soft and rhythmic were ascending from field and meadow.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (evidence of dunois). i emphatically reject the facts alleged by charles du lys, concerning guy de cailly, who is said to have accompanied jeanne into the vineyard and seen the angels coming down to her. guy de cailly's patent of nobility is apocryphal. charles du lys, _traité sommaire_, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , , ; vol. ii, pp. , .] during her absence sire d'aulon, who could not give up the idea of winning the day, devised one last expedient. he was the least of the nobles in the army; but in the battles of those days every man was a law unto himself. the maid's standard was still waving in front of the bulwark. the man who bore it was dropping with fatigue and had passed it on to a soldier, surnamed the basque, of the company of my lord of villars.[ ] it occurred to sire d'aulon, as he looked upon this standard blessed by priests and held to bring good luck, that if it were borne in front, the fighting men, who loved it dearly, would follow it and in order not to lose it would scale the bulwark. with this idea he went to the basque and said: "if i were to enter there and go on foot up to the bulwark would you follow me?" [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. . the count couret, _un fragment inédit des anciens registres de la prévoté d'orléans_, orléans, , pp. , , , _passim_.] the basque promised that he would. straightway sire d'aulon went down into the ditch and protecting himself with his shield, which sheltered him from the stones fired from the cannon, advanced towards the rampart.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] after a quarter of an hour, the maid, having offered a short prayer, returned to the men-at-arms and said to them: "the english are exhausted. bring up the ladders."[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] it was true. they had so little powder that their last volley fired in an insufficient charge carried no further than a stone thrown by hand.[ ] nothing but fragments of weapons remained to them. she went towards the fort. but when she reached the ditch she suddenly beheld the standard so dear to her, a thousand times dearer than her sword, in the hands of a stranger. thinking it was in danger, she hastened to rescue it and came up with the basque just as he was going down into the ditch. there she seized her standard by the part known as its tail, that is the end of the flag, and pulled at it with all her might, crying: "ha! my standard, my standard!" [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] the basque stood firm, not knowing who was pulling thus from above. and the maid would not let it go. the nobles and captains saw the standard shake, took it for a sign and rallied. meanwhile sire d'aulon had reached the rampart. he imagined that the basque was following close behind. but, when he turned round he perceived that he had stopped on the other side of the ditch, and he cried out to him: "eh! basque, what did you promise me?" at this cry the basque pulled so hard that the maid let go, and he bore the standard to the rampart.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] jeanne understood and was satisfied. to those near her she said: "look and see when the flag of my standard touches the bulwark." a knight replied: "jeanne, the flag touches." then she cried: "all is yours. enter."[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] straightway nobles and citizens, men-at-arms, archers, townsfolk threw themselves wildly into the ditch and climbed up the palisades so quickly and in such numbers that they looked like a flock of birds descending on a hedge.[ ] and the french, who had now entered within the fortifications, saw retreating before them, but with their faces turned proudly towards the enemy, the lords moleyns and poynings, sir thomas giffart, baillie of mantes, and captain glasdale, who were covering the flight of their men to les tourelles.[ ] in his hand glasdale was holding the standard of chandos, which, after having waved over eighty years of victories, was now retreating before the standard of a child.[ ] for the maid was there, standing upon the rampart. and the english, panic-stricken, wondered what kind of a witch this could be whose powers did not depart with the flowing of her blood, and who with charms healed her deep wounds. meanwhile she was looking at them kindly and sadly and crying out, her voice broken with sobs: "glassidas! glassidas! surrender, surrender to the king of heaven. thou hast called me strumpet; but i have great pity on thy soul and on the souls of thy men."[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la fête_, in the _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : letter from charles vii to the inhabitants of narbonne, may, , in _trial_, vol. v, p. . monstrelet, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (pasquerel's evidence).] at the same time, from the walls of the town and the bulwark of la belle croix cannon balls rained down upon les tourelles.[ ] montargis and rifflart cast forth stones. maître guillaume duisy's new cannon, from the chesneau postern, hurled forth balls weighing one hundred and twenty pounds.[ ] les tourelles were attacked from the bridge side. across the arch broken by the english a narrow footway was thrown, and messire nicole de giresme, a knight in holy orders, was the first to pass over.[ ] those who followed him set fire to the palisade which blocked the approach to the fort on that side. thus the six hundred english, their strength and their weapons alike exhausted, found themselves assailed both in front and in the rear. in a crafty and terrible manner they were also attacked from beneath. the people of orléans had loaded a great barge with pitch, tow, faggots, horse-bones, old shoes, resin, sulphur, ninety-eight pounds of olive oil and such other materials as might easily take fire and smoke. they had steered it under the wooden bridge, thrown by the enemy from les tourelles to the bulwark: they had anchored the barge there and set fire to its cargo. the fire from the barge had caught the bridge just when the english were retreating. through smoke and flames the six hundred passed over the burning platform. at length it came to the turn of william glasdale, lord poynings and lord moleyns, who with thirty or forty captains, were the last to leave the lost bulwark; but when they set foot on the bridge, its beams, reduced to charcoal, crumbled beneath them, and they all with the chandos standard were engulfed in the loire.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . morosini, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . jollois, _histoire du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _chronique de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , . _chronique de l'établissement de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . eberhard windecke, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] jeanne moved to pity wept over the soul of glassidas and over the souls of those drowned with him.[ ] the captains, who were with her, likewise grieved over the death of these valiant men, reflecting that they had done the french a great wrong by being drowned, for their ransom would have brought great riches.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (pasquerel's evidence).] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] having escaped from the french on the bulwark, across the burning planks the six hundred were set upon by the french on the bridge. four hundred were slain, the others taken. the day had cost the people of orléans a hundred men.[ ] [footnote : the number of the english who defended les tourelles is given in _le journal du siège_ as or ; in charles vii's letter as ; in _la relation de la fête du mai_ as ; in _la chronique de la pucelle_ as . it is impossible to fix exactly the number of the french, but they were more than ten times as many as the english. the english losses, by guillaume girault, are said to have been slain and taken; by berry, or slain and taken; by jean chartier, about slain, the rest taken; by _la chronique de la pucelle_, slain, taken; by _le journal du siège_, or slain besides a few taken. by monstrelet, in the mss., or slain or taken; in the printed editions, ; by bower, and more slain. the losses of the french are said by perceval de cagny to have been to slain; by eberhard windecke, slain and a few wounded; by monstrelet, about . the maid estimated that in the various engagements at orléans in which she took part "one hundred and even more" of the french were wounded.] when in the black darkness, along the fire-reddened banks of the loire, the last cries of the vanquished had died away, the french captains, amazed at their victory, looked anxiously towards saint-laurent-des orgerils, for they were still afraid lest sir john talbot should sally forth from his camp to avenge those whom he had failed to succour. throughout that long attack, which had lasted from sunrise to sunset, talbot, the earl of suffolk and the english of saint-laurent had not left their entrenchments. even when les tourelles were taken the conquerors remained on the watch, still expecting talbot.[ ] but this talbot, with whose name french mothers frightened their children, did not budge. he had been greatly feared that day, and he himself had feared lest,[ ] if he withdrew any of his troops to succour les tourelles, the french would capture his camp and his forts on the west. [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] the army prepared to return to the town. in three hours, the bridge, three arches of which had been broken, was rendered passable. some hours after darkness, the maid entered the city by the bridge as she had foretold.[ ] in like manner all her prophecies were fulfilled when their fulfilment depended on her own courage and determination. the captains accompanied her, followed by all the men-at-arms, the archers, the citizens and the prisoners who were brought in two by two. the bells of the city were ringing; the clergy and people sang the te deum.[ ] after god and his blessed mother, they gave thanks in all humility to saint aignan and saint euverte, who had been bishops in their mortal lives and were now the heavenly patrons of the city. the townsfolk believed that both before and during the siege they had given the saints so much wax and had paraded their relics in so many processions that they had deserved their powerful intercession, and that thereby they had won the victory and been delivered out of the enemy's hand. there was no doubt about the intervention of the saints because at the time of assault on les tourelles two bishops bright and shining had been seen in the sky, hovering over the fort.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de l'établissement de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] jeanne was brought back to jacques boucher's house, where a surgeon again dressed the wound she had received above the breast. she took four or five slices of bread soaked in wine and water, but neither ate nor drank anything else.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] on the morrow, sunday, the th of may, being the feast of the appearance of st. michael, it was announced in orléans, in the morning, that the english issuing forth from those western bastions which were all that remained to them, were ranging themselves before the town moat in battle array and with standards flying. the folk of orléans, both the men-at-arms and the train-bands, greatly desired to fall upon them. at daybreak marshal de boussac and a number of captains went out and took up their positions over against the enemy.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . _le jouvencel_, vol. i, p. . the passage beginning with the words, "the sire of rocquencourt said," must be taken as historical.] the maid went out into the country with the priests. being unable to put on her cuirass because of the wound on her shoulder, she merely wore one of those light coats-of-mail called _jaserans_.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (evidence of dunois).] the men-at-arms inquired of her: "to-day being the sabbath, is it wrong to fight?" she replied: "you must hear mass."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. (evidence of j. de champeaux).] she did not think the enemy should be attacked. "for the sake of the holy sabbath do not give battle. do not attack the english, but if the english attack you, defend yourselves stoutly and bravely, and be not afraid, for you will overcome them."[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] in the country, at the foot of a cross, where four roads met, one of those consecrated stones, square and flat, which priests carried with them on their journeys, was placed upon a table. very solemnly did the officiating ecclesiastics sing hymns, responses and prayers; and at this altar the maid with all the priests and all the men-at-arms heard mass.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] after the _deo gratias_ she recommended them to observe the movements of the english. "now look whether their faces or their backs be towards you." she was told that they had turned their backs and were going away. three times she had told them: "depart from orléans and your lives shall be saved." now she asked that they should be allowed to go without more being required of them. "it is not well pleasing to my lord that they should be engaged to-day," she said. "you will have them another time. come, let us give thanks to god."[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] the _godons_ were going. during the night they had held a council of war and resolved to depart.[ ] in order to put a bold front on their retreat and to prevent its being cut off, they had faced the folk of orléans for an hour, now they marched off in good order.[ ] captain la hire and sire de loré, curious as to which way they would take and desiring to see whether they would leave anything behind them, rode three or four miles in pursuit with a hundred or a hundred and twenty horse. the english were retreating towards meung.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de l'établissement de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. . walter bower, _scotichronicon_, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , . eberhard windecke, p. .] a crowd of citizens, villeins and villagers rushed into the abandoned forts. the _godons_ had left their sick and their prisoners there. the townsfolk discovered also ammunition and even victuals, which were doubtless not very abundant and not very excellent. "but," says a burgundian, "they made good cheer out of them, for they cost them little."[ ] weapons, cannons and mortars were carried into the town. the forts were demolished so that they might henceforth be useless to the enemy.[ ] [footnote : charles vii's letter to the people of narbonne, in the _trial_, vol. v, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. _et seq._] on that day there were grand and solemn processions and a good friar[ ] preached. clerks, nobles, captains, magistrates, men-at-arms and citizens devoutly went to church and the people cried: "noël!"[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . _chronique de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _journal du siège_, p. .] thus, on the th of may, in the morning, was the town of orléans delivered, two hundred and nine days after the siege had been laid and nine days after the coming of the maid. chapter xiv the maid at tours and at selles-en-berry--the treatises of jacques gÉlu and of jean gerson. on the morning of sunday the th of may, the english departed, retreating towards meung and beaugency. in the afternoon of the same day, messire florent d'illiers with his men-at-arms left the town and went straight to his captaincy of châteaudun to defend it against the _godons_ who had a garrison at marchenoir and were about to descend on le dunois. on the next day the other captains from la beauce and gâtinais returned to their towns and strongholds.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . g. met-gaubert, _notice sur florent d'illiers_, chartres, , in vo.] on the ninth of the same month, the combatants brought by the sire de rais, receiving neither pay nor entertainment, went off each man on his own account; and the maid did not stay longer.[ ] after having taken part in the procession by which the townsfolk rendered thanks to god, she took her leave of those to whom she had come in the hour of distress and affliction and whom she now quitted in the hour of deliverance and rejoicing. they wept with joy and with gratitude and offered themselves to her for her to do with them and their goods whatever she would. and she thanked them kindly.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] from chinon the king caused to be sent to the inhabitants of the towns in his dominion and notably to those of la rochelle and narbonne, a letter written at three sittings, between the evening of the th of may and the morning of the th, as the tidings from orléans were coming in. in this letter he announced the capture of the forts of saint-loup, les augustins and les tourelles and called upon the townsfolk to praise god and do honour to the great feats accomplished there, especially by the maid, who "had always been present when these deeds were done."[ ] thus did the royal power describe jeanne's share in the victory. it was in no wise a captain's share; she held no command of any kind. but, sent by god, at least so it might be believed, her presence was a help and a consolation. [footnote : _charles vii's letter to the inhabitants of narbonne_, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . arcère, _histoire de la rochelle_, vol. i, p. ( ). moynès, _inventaire des archives de l'aude_, supplement, p. . _procession d'actions de grâces à brignoles (var) en l'honneur de la délivrance d'orléans par jeanne d'arc_ ( ). communication made to the congress of learned societies at the sorbonne (april, ) by f. mireur, draguignan, , in vo, p. .] in company with a few nobles she went to blois, stayed there two days,[ ] then went on to tours, where the king was expected.[ ] when, on the friday before whitsunday, she entered the town, charles, who had set out from chinon, had not yet arrived. banner in hand, she rode out to meet him and when she came to him, she took off her cap and bowed her head as far as she could over her horse. the king lifted his hood, bade her look up and kissed her. it is said that he felt glad to see her, but in reality we know not what he felt.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, pp. , , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (evidence of s. charles). eberhard windecke, p. , and _chronique de tournai_, edition smedt, pp. _et seq._ (vol. iii of _les chroniques de flandre_).] in this month of may, , he received from messire jacques gélu a treatise concerning the maid, which he probably did not read, but which his confessor read for him. messire jacques gélu, sometime councillor to the dauphin and now my lord archbishop of embrun,[ ] had at first been afraid that the king's enemies had sent him this shepherdess to poison him, or that she was a witch possessed by demons. in the beginning he had advised her being carefully interrogated, not hastily repulsed, for appearances are deceptive and divine grace moves in a mysterious manner. now, after having read the conclusions of the doctors of poitiers, learnt the deliverance of orléans, and heard the cry of the common folk, messire jacques gélu no longer doubted the damsel's innocence and goodness. seeing that the doctors were divided in their opinion of her, he drew up a brief treatise, which he sent to the king, with a very ample, a very humble, and a very worthy dedicatory epistle. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , ; vol. v, p. . le p. marcellin fornier, _histoire des alpes-maritimes ou cottiennes_, vol. ii, p. . le p. ayroles, _la pucelle devant l'Église de son temps_, pp. , .] about that time, on the pavement of the cathedral of reims a labyrinth had been traced with compass and with square.[ ] pilgrims who were patient and painstaking followed all its winding ways. the archbishop of embrun's treatise is likewise a carefully planned scholastic labyrinth. herein one advances only to retreat and retreats only to advance, but without entirely losing one's way provided one walks with sufficient patience and attention. like all scholastics, gélu begins by giving the reasons against his own opinion and it is not until he has followed his opponent at some length that he returns to his own argument. into all the intricacies of his labyrinth it would take too long to follow him. but since those who were round the king consulted this theological treatise, since it was addressed to the king and since the king and his council may have based on it their opinion of jeanne and their conduct towards her, one is curious to know what, on so singular an occasion, they found taught and recommended therein. [footnote : l. paris, _notice sur le dédale ou labyrinthe de l'église de reims_, in _ann. des inst. provinc._, , vol. ix, p. .] treating first of the church's weal, jacques gélu holds that god raised up the maid to confound the heretics, the number of whom, according to him, is by no means small. "to turn to confusion those who believe in god as if they believed not," he writes, "the almighty, who hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, _king of kings and lord of lords_, was pleased to succour the king of france by the hand of a child of low estate." the archbishop of embrun discerns five reasons why the divine succour was granted to the king; to wit: the justice of his cause, the striking merits of his predecessors, the prayers of devout souls and the sighs of the oppressed, the injustice of the enemies of the kingdom and the insatiable cruelty of the english nation. that god should have chosen a maid to destroy armies in no way surprises him. "he created insects, such as flies and fleas, with which to humble man's pride." so persistently do these tiny creatures worry and weary us that they prevent our studying or acting. however strong his self-control, a man may not rest in a room infested with fleas. by the hand of a young peasant, born of poor and lowly parents, subject to menial labour, ignorant and simple beyond saying, it hath pleased him to strike down the proud, to humble them and make his majesty manifest unto them by the deliverance of the perishing. that to a virgin the most high should have revealed his designs concerning the kingdom of the lilies cannot astonish us; on virgins he readily bestows the gift of prophecy. to the sibyls it pleased him to reveal mysteries hidden from all the gentiles. on the authority of nicanor, of euripides, of chrysippus, of nennius, of apollodorus, of eratosthenes, of heraclides ponticus, of marcus varro and of lactantius, messire jacques gélu teaches that the sibyls were ten in number: the persian, the libyan, the delphian, the cimmerian, the erythrean, the samian, the cumæan, the hellespontine, the phrygian and the tiburtine. they prophesied to the gentiles the glorious incarnation of our lord, the resurrection of the dead and the consummation of the ages. this example appears to him worthy of consideration. as for jeanne, she is in herself unknowable. aristotle teaches: there is nothing in the intellect which hath not first been in the senses, and the senses cannot penetrate beyond experience. but what the mind cannot grasp directly it may come to comprehend by a roundabout way. when we consider her works, as far as in our human weakness we can know, we say the maid is of god. albeit she hath adopted the profession of arms, she never counsels cruelty; she is merciful to her enemies when they throw themselves upon her mercy and she offers peace. finally the archbishop of embrun believes that this maid is an angel sent by god, the lord of hosts, for the saving of the people; not that she has the nature, but that she does the work of an angel. concerning the conduct to be followed in circumstances so marvellous, the doctor is of opinion that in war the king should act according to human wisdom. it is written: "thou shalt not tempt the lord thy god." in vain would an active mind have been bestowed on man were he not to make use of it in his undertakings. long deliberation must precede prompt execution. it is not by a woman's desires or supplications that god's help is obtained. a prosperous issue is the fruit of action and of counsel. but the inspiration of god must not be rejected. wherefore the will of the maid must be accomplished, even should that will appear doubtful and mistaken. if the words of the maid are found to be stable, then the king must follow her and confide to her as to god the conduct of the enterprise to which she is committed. should any doubt occur to the king, let him incline rather towards divine than towards human wisdom, for as there is no comparing the finite with the infinite so there is no comparing the wisdom of man with the wisdom of god. wherefore we must believe that he who sent us this child is able to impart unto her a counsel superior to man's counsel. then from this aristotelian reasoning the archbishop of embrun draws the following two-headed conclusion: "on the one hand we give it to be understood that the wisdom of this world must be consulted in the ordering of battle, the use of engines, ladders and all other implements of war, the building of bridges, the sufficient despatch of supplies, the raising of funds, and in all matters without which no enterprise can succeed save by miracle. "but when on the other hand divine wisdom is seen to be acting in some peculiar way, then human reason must be humble and withdraw. then it is, we observe, that the counsel of the maid must be asked for, sought after and adopted before all else. he who gives life gives wherewithal to support life. on his workers he bestows the instruments for their work. wherefore let us hope in the lord. he makes the king's cause his own. those who support it he will inspire with the wisdom necessary to make it triumphant. god leaves no work imperfect." the archbishop concludes his treatise by commending the maid to the king because she inspires holy thoughts and makes manifest the works of piety. "this counsel do we give the king that every day he do such things as are well pleasing in the sight of the lord and that he confer with the maid concerning them. when he shall have received her advice let him practise it piously and devoutly; then shall not the lord withdraw his hand from him but continue his loving kindness unto him."[ ] [footnote : bibl. nat. latin collection, no. , folio . _trial_, vol. iii, pp. - . lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations_, pp. _et seq._ le p. ayroles, _la pucelle devant l'Église de son temps_, pp. - .] the great doctor gerson, former chancellor of the university, was then ending his days at lyon in the monastery of les célestins, of which his brother was prior. his life had been full of work and weariness.[ ] in he was priest of saint-jean-en-grève in paris. in that year he delivered in his parish church the funeral oration of the duke of orléans, assassinated by order of the duke of burgundy; and he roused the passions of the mob to such a fury that he ran great danger of losing his life. at the council of constance, possessed by a so-called "merciful cruelty"[ ] which goaded him to send a heretic to the stake, he urged the condemnation of john huss, regardless of the safe-conduct which the latter had received from the emperor; for in common with all the fathers there assembled he held that according to natural law both divine and human, no promise should be kept if it were prejudicial to the catholic faith. with a like ardour he prosecuted in the council the condemnation of the thesis of jean petit concerning the lawfulness of tyrannicide. in things temporal as well as spiritual he advocated uniform obedience and the respect of established authority. in one of his sermons he likens the kingdom of france to the statue of nebuchadnezzar, making the merchants and artisans the legs of the statue, "which are partly iron, partly clay, because of their labour and humility in serving and obeying...." iron signifies labour, and clay humility. all the evil has arisen from the king and the great citizens being held in subjection by those of low estate.[ ] [footnote : launoy, _historia navarrici gymasii_, book iv, ch. v. j.b. lecuy, _essai sur la vie de jean gerson, chancelier de l'église et de l'université de paris, sur sa doctrine, sur ses écrits...._ paris, , vols. in vo. vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. . a.l. masson, _jean gerson, sa vie, son temps, ses oeuvres_, lyon, , vo.] [footnote : _par une cruauté miséricordieuse._ du boulay, _historia universitatis parisiensis_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : gerson, _opera_, vol. iv, pp. - .] now, crushed by suffering and sorrow, he was teaching little children. "it is with them that reforms must begin," he said.[ ] [footnote : gerson, _adversus corruptionem juventutis_. a. lafontaine, _de johanne gersonio puerorum adulescentiumque institutore...._ la chapelle-montligeon, , in vo.] the deliverance of the city of orléans must have gladdened the heart of the old orleanist partisan. the dauphin's councillors, eager to set the maid to work, had told him of the deliberations at poitiers, and asked him, as a good servant of the house of france, for his opinion concerning them. in reply he wrote a compendious treatise on the maid. in this work he is careful from the first to distinguish between matters of faith and matters of devotion. in questions of faith doubt is forbidden. with regard to questions of devotion the unbeliever, to use a colloquial expression, is not necessarily damned. three conditions are necessary if a question is to be considered as one of devotion: first, it must be edifying; second, it must be probable and attested by popular report or the testimony of the faithful; third, it must touch on nothing contrary to faith. when these conditions are fulfilled, it is fitting neither persistently to condemn nor to approve, but rather to appeal to the church. for example, the conception of the very holy virgin, indulgences, relics, are matters of faith and not of devotion. a relic may be worshipped in one place or another, or in several places at once. recently the parlement of paris disputed concerning the head of saint denys, worshipped at saint-denys in france and likewise in the cathedral at paris. this is a matter of devotion.[ ] [footnote : gallia christiana, vol. vii, col. . jean juvénal des ursins, year .] whence it may be concluded that it is lawful to consider the question of the maid as a matter of devotion, especially when one reflects on her motives, which are the restitution of his kingdom to her king and the very righteous expulsion or destruction of her very stubborn enemies. and if there be those who make various statements concerning her idle talk, her frivolity, her guile, now is the time to quote the saying of cato: "common report is not our judge." according to the words of the apostle, it doth not become us to call in question the servant of god. much better is it to abstain from judgment, as is permitted, or to submit doubtful points to ecclesiastical superiors. this is the principle followed in the canonisation of saints. the catalogue of the saints is not, strictly speaking, necessarily a matter of faith, but of pious devotion. nevertheless, it is not to be highly censured by any manner of man. to come to the present case, the following circumstances are to be noted: first, the royal council and the men-at-arms were induced to believe and to obey; and they faced the risk of being put to shame by defeat under the leadership of a girl. second, the people rejoice, and their pious faith seems to tend to the glory of god and the confounding of his enemies. third, the enemy, even his princes, are in hiding and stricken with many terrors. they give way to weakness like a woman with child; they are overthrown like the egyptians in the song sung by miriam, sister of moses, to the sound of the timbrel in the midst of the women who went out with her with timbrels and with dances: "sing ye to the lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea."[ ] and let us likewise sing the song of miriam with the devotion which becometh our case. [footnote : exodus, xv, , (w.s.).] fourth, and in conclusion, this point is worthy of consideration: the maid and her men-at-arms despise not the wisdom of men; they tempt not god. wherefore it is plain that the maid goes no further than what she interprets to be the instruction or inspiration received from god. many of the incidents of her life from childhood up have been collected in abundance and might be set forth; but these we shall not relate. here may be cited the examples of deborah and of saint catherine who miraculously converted fifty doctors or rhetoricians, of judith and of judas maccabeus. as is usually the case, there were many circumstances in their lives which were purely natural. a first miracle is not always followed by the other miracles which men expect. even if the maid should be disappointed in her expectation and in ours (which god forbid) we ought not to conclude therefrom, that the first manifestation of her miraculous power proceeded from an evil spirit and not from heavenly grace; we should believe rather that our hopes have been disappointed because of our ingratitude and our blasphemy, or by some just and impenetrable judgment of god. we beseech him to turn away his anger from us and vouchsafe unto us his favour. herein we perceive lessons, first for the king and the blood royal, secondly for the king's forces and the kingdom; thirdly for the clergy and people; fourthly for the maid. of all these lessons the object is the same, to wit: a good life, consecrated to god, just towards others, sober, virtuous and temperate. with regard to the maid's peculiar lesson, it is that god's grace revealed in her be employed not in caring for trifles, not in worldly advantage, nor in party hatred, nor in violent sedition, nor in avenging deeds done, nor in foolish self-glorification, but in meekness, prayer, and thanksgiving. and let every one contribute a liberal supply of temporal goods so that peace be established and justice once more administered, and that delivered out of the hands of our enemies, god being favourable unto us, we may serve him in holiness and righteousness. at the conclusion of his treatise, gerson briefly examines one point of canon law which had been neglected by the doctors of poitiers. he establishes that the maid is not forbidden to dress as a man. firstly. the ancient law forbade a woman to dress as a man, and a man as a woman. this restriction, as far as strict legality is concerned, ceases to be enforced by the new law. secondly. in its moral bearing this law remains binding. but in such a case it is merely a matter of decency. thirdly. from a legal and moral standpoint this law does not refuse masculine and military attire to the maid, whom the king of heaven appoints his standard-bearer, in order that she may trample underfoot the enemies of justice. in the operations of divine power the end justifies the means. fourthly. examples may be quoted from history alike sacred and profane, notably camilla and the amazons. jean gerson completed this treatise on whit-sunday, a week after the deliverance of orléans. it was his last work. he died in the july of that year, , in the sixty-fifth year of his age.[ ] [footnote : _oeuvres de gerson_, ed. ellies dupin, paris, , in folio, vol. iv, p. . _trial_, vol. iii, p. ; vol. v, p. . le p. ayroles, _la pucelle devant l'Église de son temps_, p. .] the treatise is the political testament of the great university doctor in exile. the maid's victory gladdened the last days of his life. with his dying voice he sings the song of miriam. but with his rejoicings over this happy event are mingled the sad presentiments of keen-sighted old age. while in the maid he beholds a subject for the rejoicing and edification of the people, he is afraid that the hopes she inspires may soon be disappointed. and he warns those who now exalt her in the hour of triumph not to forsake her in the day of disaster. his dry close reasoning does not fundamentally differ from the ampler, more flowery argument of jacques gélu. one and the other contain the same reasons, the same proofs; and in their conclusions both doctors agree with the judges of poitiers. for the poitiers doctors, for the archbishop of embrun, for the ex-chancellor of the university, for all the theologians of the armagnac party the maid's case is not a matter of faith. how could it be so before the pope and the council had pronounced judgment concerning it? men are free to believe in her or not to believe in her. but it is a subject of edification; and it behoves men to meditate upon it, not in a spirit of prejudice, persisting in doubt, but with an open mind and according to the christian faith. following the counsel of gerson, kindly souls will believe that the maid comes from god, just as they believe that the head of saint denys may be venerated by the faithful either in the cathedral church of paris or in the abbey-church of saint denys in france. they will think less of literal than of spiritual truths and they will not sin by inquiring too closely. in short neither the treatise of jacques gélu nor that of jean gerson brought much light to the king and his council. both treatises abounded in exhortations, but they all amounted to saying: "be good, pious and strong, let your thoughts be humble and prudent," concerning the most important point, the use to be made of jeanne in the conduct of war, the archbishop of embrun wisely recommended: "do what the maid commands and prudence directs; for the rest give yourselves to works of piety and prayers of devotion." such counsel was somewhat embarrassing to a captain like the sire de gaucourt and even to a man of worth like my lord of trèves. it appears that the clerks left the king perfect liberty of judgment and of action, and that in the end they advised him not to believe in the maid, but to let the people and the men-at-arms believe in her. during the ten days he spent at tours the king kept jeanne with him. meanwhile the council were deliberating as to their line of action.[ ] the royal treasury was empty. charles could raise enough money to make gifts to the gentlemen of his household, but he had great difficulty in defraying the expenses of war.[ ] pay was owing to the people of orléans. they had received little and spent much. their resources were exhausted and they demanded payment. in may and in june the king distributed among the captains, who had defended the town, sums amounting to forty-one thousand six hundred and thirty-one livres.[ ] he had gained his victory cheaply. the total cost of the defence of orléans was one hundred and ten thousand livres. the townsfolk did the rest; they gave even their little silver spoons.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . letter written by the agents of a german town, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . _chronique de tournai_ (_recueil des chroniques de flandre_, vol. iii, p. ). eberhard windecke, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : loiseleur, _compte des dépenses_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. _et seq._, and taken from the commune and fortress accounts in _journal du siège_. a. de villaret, _loc. cit._ p. . couret, _un fragment inédit des anciens registres de la prévôté d'orléans_.] it would doubtless have been expedient to attempt to destroy that formidable army of sir john fastolf which had lately terrified the good folk of orléans. but no one knew where to find it. it had disappeared somewhere between orléans and paris. it would have been necessary to go forth to seek it; that was impossible, and no one thought of doing such a thing. so scientific a manoeuvre was never dreamed of in the warfare of those days. an expedition to normandy was suggested; and the idea was so natural that the king was already imagined to be at rouen.[ ] finally it was decided to attempt the capture of the châteaux the english held on the loire, both below and above orléans, jargeau, meung, beaugency.[ ] a useful undertaking and one which presented no very great difficulties, unless it involved an encounter with sir john fastolf's army, and whether it would or no it was impossible to tell. [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] without further delay my lord the bastard marched on jargeau with a few knights and some of poton's soldiers of fortune; but the loire was high and its waters filled the trenches. being unprovided with siege train, they retreated after having inflicted some hurt on the english and slain the commander of the town.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] by the reasons of the captains the maid set little store. she listened to her voices alone, and they spoke to her words which were infinitely simple. her one idea was to accomplish her mission. saint catherine, saint margaret and saint michael the archangel, had sent her into france not to calculate the resources of the royal treasury, not to decree aids and taxes, not to treat with men-at-arms, with merchants and the conductors of convoys, not to draw up plans of campaign and negotiate truces, but to lead the dauphin to his anointing. wherefore it was to reims that she wished to take him, not that she knew how to go there, but she believed that god would guide her. delay, tardiness, deliberation saddened and irritated her. when with the king she urged him gently. many times she said to him: "i shall live a year, barely longer. during that year let as much as possible be done."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] then she enumerated the four charges which she must accomplish during that time. after having delivered orléans she must drive the _godons_ out of france, lead the king to be crowned and anointed at reims and rescue the duke of orléans from the hands of the english.[ ] one day she grew impatient and went to the king when he was in one of those closets of carved wainscot constructed in the great castle halls for intimate or family gatherings. she knocked at the door and entered almost immediately. there she found the king conversing with maître gérard machet, his confessor, my lord the bastard, the sire de trèves and a favourite noble of his household, by name messire christophe d'harcourt. she knelt embracing the king's knees (for she was conversant with the rules of courtesy), and said to him: "fair dauphin, do not so long and so frequently deliberate in council, but come straightway to reims, there to receive your rightful anointing."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. (evidence of the duke of alençon).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] the king looked graciously upon her but answered nothing. the lord d'harcourt, having heard that the maid held converse with angels and saints, was curious to know whether the idea of taking the king to reims had really been suggested to her by her heavenly visitants. describing them by the word she herself used, he asked: "is it your council who speak to you of such things?" she replied: "yes, in this matter i am urged forward." straightway my lord d'harcourt responded: "will you not here in the king's presence tell us the manner of your council when they speak to you?" at this request jeanne blushed. willing to spare her constraint and embarrassment, the king said kindly: "jeanne, does it please you to answer this question before these persons here present?" but jeanne addressing my lord d'harcourt said: "i understand what you desire to know and i will tell you willingly." and straightway she gave the king to understand what agony she endured at not being understood and she told of her inward consolation: "whenever i am sad because what i say by command of messire is not readily believed, i go apart and to messire i make known my complaint, saying that those to whom i speak are not willing to believe me. and when i have finished my prayer, straightway i hear a voice saying unto me: 'daughter of god, go, i will be thy help.' and this voice fills me with so great a joy, that in this condition i would forever stay."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (evidence of dunois).] while she was repeating the words spoken by the voice, jeanne raised her eyes to heaven. the nobles present were struck by the divine expression on the maiden's face. but those eyes bathed in tears, that air of rapture, which filled my lord the bastard with amazement, was not an ecstasy, it was the imitation of an ecstasy.[ ] the scene was at once simple and artificial. it reveals the kindness of the king, who was incapable of wounding the child in any way, and the light-heartedness with which the nobles of the court believed or pretended to believe in the most wonderful marvels. it proves likewise that henceforth the little saint's dignifying the project of the coronation with the authority of a divine revelation was favourably regarded by the royal council. [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] the maid accompanied the king to loches and stayed with him until after the rd of may.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. , vol. iv, p. .] the people believed in her. as she passed through the streets of loches they threw themselves before her horse; they kissed the saint's hands and feet. maître pierre de versailles, a monk of saint-denys in france, one of her interrogators at poitiers, seeing her receive these marks of veneration, rebuked her on theological grounds: "you do wrong," he said, "to suffer such things to which you are not entitled. take heed: you are leading men into idolatry." then jeanne, reflecting on the pride which might creep into her heart, said: "in truth i could not keep from it, were not messire watching over me."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] she was displeased to see certain old wives coming to salute her; that was a kind of adoration which alarmed her. but poor folk who came to her she never repulsed. she would not hurt them, but aided them as far as she could.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] with marvellous rapidity the fame of her holiness had been spread abroad throughout the whole of france. many pious persons were wearing medals of lead or some other metal, stamped with her portrait, according to the customary mode of honouring the memory of saints.[ ] paintings or sculptured figures of her were placed in chapels. at mass the priest recited as a collect "the maid's prayer for the realm of france:" [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , . a. forgeais, _collection de plombs historiés trouvés dans la seine_, paris, ( vol. in vo), vol. ii, iv, and _passim_. vallet de viriville, _notes sur deux médailles de plomb relatives à jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in vo, p. [taken from _la revue archéologique_] n. valois, _un nouveau témoignage sur jeanne d'arc_, pp. , . cf. appendix iv.] "o god, author of peace, who without bow or arrow dost destroy those enemies who hope in themselves,[ ] we beseech thee o lord, to protect us in our adversity; and, as thou hast delivered thy people by the hand of a woman, to stretch out to charles our king, thy conquering arm, that our enemies, who make their boast in multitudes and glory in bows and arrows, may be overcome by him at this present, and vouchsafe that at the end of his days he with his people may appear gloriously before thee who art the way, the truth and the life. through our lord jesus christ, etc."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . i read _in se sperantes_.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . lanéry d'arc, _le culte de jeanne d'arc au xv'e siècle_, , in vo.] in those days the saintly, both men and women, were consulted in all the difficulties of life. the more they were deemed simple and innocent the more counsel was asked of them. for if of themselves they knew nothing then all the surer was it that the voice of god was to be heard in their words. the maid was believed to have no intelligence of her own, wherefore she was held capable of solving the most difficult questions with infallible wisdom. it was observed that knowing nought of the arts of war, she waged war better than captains, whence it was concluded that everything, which in her holy ignorance she undertook, she would worthily accomplish. thus at toulouse it occurred to a _capitoul_ to consult her on a financial question. in that city the indignation of the townsfolk had been aroused because the guardians of the mint had been ordered to issue coins greatly inferior to those which had been previously in circulation. from april till june the _capitouls_ had been endeavouring to get this order revoked. on the nd of june, the _capitoul_, pierre flamenc, proposed that the maid should be written to concerning the evils resulting from the corruption of the coinage and that she should be asked to suggest a remedy. pierre flamenc made this proposal at the capitole because he thought that a saint was a good counsellor in all matters, especially in anything which concerned the coinage, particularly when, like the maid, she was the friend of the king.[ ] [footnote : a. thomas, _le siège d'orléans, jeanne d'arc et les capitouls de toulouse_, in _annales du midi_, , pp. , .] from loches jeanne sent a little gold ring to the dame de laval, who had doubtless asked for some object she had touched.[ ] fifty-four years previously jeanne dame de laval had married sire bertrand du guesclin whose memory the french venerated and who in the house of orléans was known as the tenth of _les preux_. dame jeanne's renown, however, fell short of that of tiphaine raguenel, astrologer and fairy,[ ] who had been sire bertrand's first wife. jeanne was a choleric person and a miser. driven out of her domain of laval by the english, she lived in retirement at vitré with her daughter anne. thirteen years before, the latter had incurred her mother's displeasure by secretly marrying a landless younger son of a noble house. when dame jeanne discovered it she imprisoned her daughter in a dungeon and welcomed the younger son by shooting at him with a cross-bow. after which the two ladies dwelt together in peace.[ ] [footnote : letter from the lavals, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . bertrand de broussillon, _la maison de laval, les montfort-laval_, paris, , in vo, vol. iii, p. . quicherat is mistaken when (_trial_, vol. v, p. ) he gives the name of anne to du guesclin's widow and calls the mother of guy and of andré jeanne.] [footnote : cuvelier, _poème de duguesclin_, line _et seq._] [footnote : bertrand de broussillon, _la maison de laval_ in vo, , vol. iii, _loc. cit._] from loches the maid went to selles-en-berry, a considerable town on the cher. here, shortly before had met the three estates of the kingdom; and here the troops were now gathering.[ ] [footnote : letter from gui de laval, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . lucien jeny and p. lanéry d'arc, _jeanne d'arc en berry_, paris, s.d. in vo, p. .] on saturday, the th of june, she received a herald sent by the people of orléans to bring her tidings of the english.[ ] as commander in war they recognised none but her. [footnote : fortress accounts in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] meanwhile, surrounded by monks, and side by side with men-at-arms, like a nun she lived apart, a saintly life. she ate and drank little.[ ] she communicated once a week and confessed frequently.[ ] during mass at the moment of elevation, at confession and when she received the body of our lord she used to weep many tears. every evening, at the hour of vespers, she would retire into a church and have the bells rung for about half an hour to summon the mendicant friars who followed the army. then she would begin to pray while the brethren sang an anthem in honour of the virgin mary.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, pp. , , , , , , , _passim_.] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. v, under the words _confession_ and _communion_. the duke of alençon says twice a week (_ibid._, vol. iii, p. ).] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. ; vol. ii, pp. , .] while practising as far as she was able the austerities required by extreme piety, she appeared magnificently attired, like a lord, for indeed she held her lordship from god. she wore the dress of a knight, a small hat, doublet and hose to match, a fine cloak of silk and cloth of gold well lined and shoes laced on the outer side of the foot.[ ] such attire in no wise scandalised even the most austere members of the dauphin's party. they read in holy scripture that esther and judith, inspired by the lord, loaded themselves with ornaments; true it was for sexual reasons and in order for the salvation of israel to attract ahasuerus and holophernes. wherefore they held that when jeanne decked herself with masculine adornments, in order to appear before the men-at-arms as an angel giving victory to the christian king, far from yielding to the vanities of the world, she, like esther and judith, had nothing in her heart but the interest of the holy nation and the glory of god. the english and burgundian clerks on the other hand converted into scandal what was a subject of edification, and maintained that she was a woman dissolute in dress and in manners. [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , ; vol. ii, pp. , . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, p. . analysis of a letter from regnault de chartres in rogier (_trial_, vol. v, pp. - ). martin le franc, _le champion des dames_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] for seven years now saint michael the archangel and the saints catherine and margaret, wearing rich and precious crowns, had been visiting and conversing with her. it was when the bells were ringing, at the hour of compline and of matins, that she could best hear their words.[ ] in those days bells of all kinds, large and small, metropolitan, parochial or conventual, sounded in peals, or, chiming harmoniously, in voices grave or gay, spoke to all men and of all things. their song descended from the sky to mark the ecclesiastical and civic calendar. they called priests and people to church; they mourned for the dead and they praised god; they announced fairs and field work; they clashed portentous tidings through the sky, and in times of war they called to arms and sounded the alarm. friendly to the husbandman they scattered the tempest, they warded off hail-storms and drove away pestilence. they put to flight those demons that, flying ceaselessly through the air, haunt the children of men; and to their blessed sound was attributed the power of calming violence.[ ] saint catharine, she who visited jeanne every day, was the patron of bells and bell-ringers. thus many bells bore her name. in the ringing of bells as in the rustling of leaves, jeanne was wont to hear her voices. she seldom heard them without seeing a light in the direction whence they came.[ ] those voices called her: "jeanne, daughter of god!"[ ] often the archangel and the saints appeared to her. when they came she did them reverence, bending her knee and bowing her head; she kissed their feet, knowing it to be a greater mark of respect than kissing the countenance. she was conscious of the fragrance and grateful warmth of their glorified bodies.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , .] [footnote : p. blavignac, _la cloche_, geneva, , in vo. l. morillot, _Étude sur l'emploi des clochettes_, in _bulletin hist. archéolog. du diocèse de dijon_, , in vo.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , , _passim_.] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] saint michael the archangel did not come alone. there accompanied him angels so numerous and so tiny that they danced like sparks in the damsel's dazzled eyes. when the saints and the archangel went away, she wept with grief because they had not taken her with them.[ ] in like manner an angel visited judith in the camp of holofernes. [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] one day jeanne's equerry, jean d'aulon, asked her what her council was, just as my lord d'harcourt had done. she replied that she had three councillors, one of whom was always with her. another was constantly going and coming; the third was the one with whom the other two deliberated. sire d'aulon, more curious than the king, besought and requested her to let him see this council for once. she replied: "your virtues are not great enough and you are not worthy to behold it."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] the good squire never asked again. if he had read the bible he would have known that elisha's servant did not see the angels beheld by the prophet ( kings vi, , ). and yet jeanne imagined that her council had appeared to the king and his court. "my king," she said later, "my king and many besides saw and heard the voices that came to me. the count of clermont and two or three others were with him."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] she believed it was so. but in reality she never showed her voices to anyone. not even, despite what has been said to the contrary, to that guy de cailly who had been following her since chécy.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. v, p. . guy de cailly's patent of nobility cannot be regarded as authentic. vallet de viriville, _petit traité...._ p. .] with brother pasquerel jeanne engaged in pious conversation. to him she often expressed the desire that the church after her death should pray for her and for all the french slain in the war. "if i were to depart from this world," she used to say to him, "i should like the king to build chantries, where prayers should be offered to messire for the salvation of the souls of those who died in war or for the defence of the realm."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] such a wish was common to all devout souls. what christian in those days did not hold the practice of saying masses for the dead to be good and salutary? thus, in the matter of devotion, the maid was in accord with duke charles of orléans, who, in one of his complaints, recommends the saying and singing of masses for the souls of those who had suffered violent death in the service of the realm.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _poésies de charles d'orléans_, ed. a. champollion-figeac, p. .] she said one day to the good brother: "there is succour that i am appointed to bring." and pasquerel, albeit he had studied the bible, cried out in amazement: "such a history as yours there hath never been before in the world. nought like unto it can be read in any book." jeanne answered him even more boldly than the doctors at poitiers: "messire has a book in which no clerk, however perfect his learning, has ever read."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] she had received her mission from god alone, and she read in a book sealed against all the doctors of the church. on the reverse of her standard, sprinkled by mendicants with holy water, she had had a dove painted, holding in its beak a scroll, whereon were written the words "in the name of the king of heaven."[ ] these were the armorial bearings she had received from her council. the emblem and the device seemed appropriate to her, since she proclaimed that god had sent her, and since at orléans she had given the sign promised at poitiers. the king, notwithstanding, changed this shield for arms representing a crown supported upon a sword between two flowers-de-luce and indicating clearly what was the aid that the maid of god was bringing to the realm of france. it is said that she regretted having to abandon the arms communicated to her by divine revelation.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , ; vol. v, p. .] she prophesied, and, as happens to all prophets, she did not always foretell what was to come to pass. it was the fate of the prophet jonah himself. and doctors explain how the prophecies of true prophets cannot be all fulfilled. she had said: "before saint john the baptist's day, in , there shall not be one englishman, howsoever strong and valiant, to be seen throughout france, either in battle or in the open field."[ ] [footnote : letter written from germany, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. , , .] the nativity of saint john the baptist is celebrated on the th of june. chapter xv the taking of jargeau--the bridge of meung--beaugency on monday, the th of june, the king lodged at saint-aignan near selles-en-berry.[ ] among the gentlemen of his company were two sons of that dame de laval who, in her widowhood, had made the mistake of loving a landless cadet. andré, the younger, at the age of twenty, had just passed under the cloud of a disgrace common to nearly all nobles in those days; his grandmother's second husband, sire bertrand du guesclin, had experienced it several times. taken prisoner in the château of laval by sir john talbot, he had incurred a heavy debt in order to furnish the sixteen thousand golden crowns of his ransom.[ ] [footnote : letter from gui and andré de laval to the ladies de laval, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . l. jeny and lanéry d'arc, _jeanne d'arc en berry_, paris, , in vo, p. .] [footnote : bertrand de broussillon, _la maison de laval_, vol. iii, p. .] being in great need of money, the two young nobles offered their services to the king, who received them very well, gave them not a crown, but said he would show them the maid. and as he was going with them from saint-aignan to selles, he summoned the saint,[ ] who straightway, armed at all points save her head, and lance in hand, rode out to meet the king. she greeted the two young nobles heartily and returned with them to selles. the eldest, lord guy, she received in the house where she was lodging, opposite the church, and called for wine. such was the custom among princes. cups of wine were brought, into which the guests dipped slices of bread called sops.[ ] when offering him the wine cup, the maid said to lord guy: "i will shortly give you to drink at paris." [footnote : letter from gui and andré de laval, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : n. villiaumé, _histoire de jeanne d'arc_, p. .] she told him that, three days before, she had sent a gold ring to dame jeanne de laval. "it was a small matter," she added graciously. "i should like to have sent her something of greater value, considering her reputation."[ ] [footnote : _recommandation_ in french. the esteem in which she was held. compare froissart cited by la curne, glossary, _ad v. "six bourgeois de la ville de calais et de plus grande recommandation."_ ("six citizens of calais and of the highest reputation.")] that same day, at the hour of vespers, she set out from selles for romorantin with a numerous company of men-at-arms and train-bands, commanded by marshal de boussac. she was surrounded by mendicant friars and one of her brothers went with her. she wore white armour and a hood. her horse was brought to her at the door of her house. it was a great black charger which resolutely refused to let her mount him. she had him led to the cross by the roadside, opposite the church, and there she leapt into the saddle. whereupon lord guy marvelled; for he saw that the charger was as still as if he had been bound. she turned her horse's head towards the church porch, and in her clear woman's voice cried: "ye priests and churchmen, walk in processions and pray to god." then, gaining the highroad: "go forward, go forward," she said. in her hand she carried a little axe. her page bore her standard furled.[ ] [footnote : letter from gui and andré de laval, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] the meeting-place was orléans. on thursday, the th of june, in the evening, jeanne passed over the bridge she had crossed on the th of may. saturday, the th, the army set out for jargeau.[ ] it consisted of horse brought by the duke of alençon, the count of vendôme, the bastard, the marshal de boussac, captain la hire, messire florent d'illiers, messire jamet du tillay, messire thudal de kermoisan of brittany, as well as of contingents furnished by the communes, in all, perhaps eight thousand combatants, many of whom were armed with pikes, axes, cross-bows and leaden mallets.[ ] the young duke of alençon was placed in command. he was not remarkable for his intelligence.[ ] but he knew how to ride, and in those days that was the only knowledge indispensable to a general. again the people of orléans defrayed the cost of the expedition. for the payment of the fighting men they contributed three thousand livres, for their feeding, seven hogsheads of corn. at their own request, the king imposed on them a new _taille_ of three thousand livres.[ ] at their own expense they despatched workmen of all trades,--masons, carpenters, smiths. they lent their artillery. they sent culverins, cannons, la bergère, and the large mortar to which four horses were harnessed, with the gunners megret and jean boillève.[ ] they furnished ammunition, engines, arrows, ladders, pickaxes, spades, mattocks; and all were marked, for they were a methodical folk. everything for the siege was sent to the maid. for in this undertaking she was the one commander they recognised, not the duke of alençon, not even the bastard their own lord's noble brother. for the inhabitants of orléans, jeanne was the leader of the siege; and to jeanne, before the besieged town, they despatched two of their citizens,--jean leclerc and françois joachim.[ ] after the citizens of orléans, the sire de rais contributed most to the expenses of the siege of jargeau.[ ] this unfortunate noble spent thoughtlessly right and left, while rich burgesses made great profits by lending to him at a high rate of interest. the sorry state of his affairs was shortly to bring him to attempt their readjustment by vowing his soul to the devil. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. ; vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _mistère du siège_, line , . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . monstrelet, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : see _ante_, p. . a. duveau, _le jugement du duc d'alençon_, in _bull. soc. archéol. du vendômois_ ( ), vol. xiii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : loiseleur, _compte des dépenses faites par charles vii pour secourir orléans_, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : taken from the book of accounts, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . a. de villaret, _campagnes de jeanne d'arc sur la loire_, pp. - . loiseleur, _compte des dépenses_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. .] the town of jargeau, which was shortly to be taken after a severe siege, had surrendered to the english without resistance on the th of october in the previous year.[ ] the bridge leading to the town from the beauce bank was furnished with two castlets.[ ] the town itself, surrounded by walls and towers, was not strongly fortified; but its means of defence had been improved by the english. warned that the army of the french king was coming to besiege it, the earl of suffolk and his two brothers threw themselves into the town, with five hundred knights, squires, and other fighting men, as well as two hundred picked bowmen.[ ] the duke of alençon with six hundred horse was at the head of the force, and with him, the maid. the first night they slept in the woods.[ ] on the morrow, at daybreak, my lord the bastard, my lord florent d'illiers, and several other captains joined them. they were in a great hurry to reach jargeau. suddenly they hear that sir john fastolf is at hand, coming from paris with two thousand combatants, bringing supplies and artillery to jargeau.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] [footnote : berry, in the _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _chronique de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . berry, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . perceval de cagny, pp. , .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, _chronique de la pucelle_, berry, jean chartier, _loc. cit._ wavrin du forestel, _anciennes chroniques_, vol. i, p. . falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] this was the army which had been the cause of jeanne's anxiety on the th of may, because her saints had not told her where fastolf was. the captains held a council of war. many thought the siege ought to be abandoned and that the army should go to meet fastolf. some actually went off at once. jeanne exhorted the men-at-arms to continue their march on jargeau. where sir john fastolf's army was, she knew no more than the others; her reasons were not of this world. "be not afraid of any armed host whatsoever," she said, "and make no difficulty of attacking the english, for messire leads you." and again she said: "were i not assured that messire leads, i would rather be keeping sheep than running so great a danger." she gained a better hearing from the duke of alençon than from any of the orléans leaders.[ ] those who had gone were recalled and the march on jargeau was continued.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. , _passim_. _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] the suburbs of the town appeared undefended; but, when the french king's men approached, they found the english posted in front of the outbuildings, wherefore they were compelled to retreat. when the maid beheld this, she seized her standard and threw herself upon the enemy, calling on the fighting men to take courage. that night, the french king's men were able to encamp in the suburbs.[ ] they kept no watch, and yet from the duke of alençon's own avowal they would have been in great danger if the english had made a sally.[ ] the maid's judgment was even more fully justified than she expected. everything in her army depended upon the grace of god. [footnote : the night of friday, the th to th of june.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] the very next day, in the morning the besiegers brought their siege train and their mortars up to the walls. the orléans cannon fired upon the town and did great damage. three of la bergère's volleys wrecked the greatest tower on the fortifications.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._ _journal du siège_, p. .] the train-bands reached jargeau on saturday, the th. straightway, without staying to take counsel, they hastened to the trenches and began the assault. they were too zealous; consequently, they went badly to work, received no aid from the men-at-arms and were driven back in disorder.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] on saturday night, the maid, who was accustomed to summon the enemy before fighting, approached the entrenchments, and cried out to the english: "surrender the town to the king of heaven and to king charles, and depart, or it will be the worse for you."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._] to this summons the english paid no heed, albeit they had a great desire to come to some understanding. the earl of suffolk came to my lord the bastard, and told him that if he would refrain from the attack, the town should be surrendered to him. the english asked for a fortnight's respite, after which time, they would undertake to withdraw immediately, they and their horses, provided, doubtless, that by that time they had not been relieved.[ ] on both sides such conditional surrenders were common. the sire de baudricourt had signed one at vaucouleurs just before jeanne's arrival there.[ ] in this case it was mere trickery to ask the french to enter into such an agreement just when sir john fastolf was coming with artillery and supplies.[ ] it has been asserted that the bastard was taken in this snare; but such a thing is incredible; he was far too wily for that. nevertheless, on the morrow, which was sunday and the th of the month, the duke of alençon and the nobles, who were holding a council concerning the measures for the capture of the town, were told that captain la hire was conferring with the earl of suffolk. they were highly displeased.[ ] captain la hire, who was not a general, could not treat in his own name, and had doubtless received powers from my lord the bastard. the latter commanded for the duke, a prisoner in the hands of the english, while the duke of alençon commanded for the king; and hence the disagreement. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. clxviii.] [footnote : _journal du siège, chronique de la pucelle_, j. chartier, monstrelet, _loc. cit._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] the maid, who was always ready to show mercy to prisoners when they surrendered and at the same time always ready to fight, said: "if they will, let them in their jackets of mail depart from jargeau with their lives! if they will not, the town shall be stormed."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. - , .] the duke of alençon, without even inquiring the terms of the capitulation, had captain la hire recalled. he came, and straightway the ladders were brought. the heralds sounded the trumpets and cried: "to the assault." the maid unfurled her standard, and fully armed, wearing on her head one of those light helmets known as _chapelines_,[ ] she went down into the trenches with the king's men and the train-bands, well within reach of arrows and cannon-balls. she kept by the duke of alençon's side, saying: "forward! fair duke, to the assault." [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. . perceval de cagny, pp. - .] the duke, who was not so courageous as she, thought that she went rather hastily to work; and this he gave her to understand. then she encouraged him: "fear not. god's time is the right time. when he wills it you must open the attack. go forward, he will prepare the way." and seeing him lack confidence, she reminded him of the promise she had recently made concerning him in the abbey of saint-florent-lès-saumur. "oh! fair duke, can you be afraid? do you not remember that i promised your wife to bring you back safe and sound?"[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. - .] in the thick of the attack, she noticed on the wall one of those long thin mortars, which, from the manner of its charging, was called a breechloader. seeing it hurl stones on the very spot where the king's fair cousin was standing, she realised the danger, but not for herself. "move away," she said quickly. "that cannon will kill you." the duke had not moved more than a few yards, when a nobleman of anjou, the sire du lude, having taken the place he had quitted, was killed by a ball from that same cannon.[ ] the duke of alençon marvelled at her prophetic gift. doubtless the maid had been sent to save him, but she had not been sent to save the sire du lude. the angels of the lord are sent for the salvation of some, for the destruction of others. when the french king's men reached the wall, the earl of suffolk cried out for a parley with the duke of alençon. no heed was paid to him and the assault continued.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] the attack had lasted four hours,[ ] when jeanne, standard in hand, climbed up a ladder leaning against the rampart. a stone fired from a cannon struck her helmet and knocked it with its escutcheon, bearing her arms, off her head. they thought she was crushed, but she rose quickly and cried to the fighting men: "up, friends, up! messire has doomed the english. they are ours at this moment. be of good cheer."[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. - . perceval de cagny, pp. - .] the wall was scaled and the french king's men penetrated into the town. the english fled into la beauce and the french rushed in pursuit of them. guillaume regnault, a squire of auvergne, came up with the earl of suffolk on the bridge and took him prisoner. "are you a gentleman?" asked suffolk. "yes." "are you a knight?" "no." the earl of suffolk dubbed him a knight and surrendered to him.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . berry, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] very soon the rumour ran that the earl of suffolk had surrendered on his knees to the maid.[ ] it was even stated that he had asked to surrender to her as to the bravest lady in the world.[ ] but it is more likely that he would have surrendered to the lowest menial of the army rather than to a woman whom he held to be a witch possessed of the devil. [footnote : fragment of a letter concerning the wonders which happened in poitou, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. . _trial_, vol. v, pp. - .] john pole, suffolk's brother, was likewise taken on the bridge. the duke's third brother, alexander pole, was slain in the same place or drowned in the loire.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. , .] the garrison surrendered at discretion. now, as always, no great harm was done during the battle, but afterwards the conquerors made up for it. five hundred english were massacred; the nobles alone were held to ransom. and over them, the french fell to quarrelling. the french nobles kept them all for themselves; the train-bands claimed their share, and, not getting it, began to destroy everything. what the nobles could save was carried off during the night, by water, to orléans. the town was completely sacked; the old church, which had served the _godons_ as a magazine, was pillaged.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] including killed and wounded, the french had not lost twenty men.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . berry, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] without disarming, the maid and the knights returned to orléans. to celebrate the taking of jargeau, the magistrates organised a public procession. an eloquent sermon was preached by a jacobin monk, brother robert baignart.[ ] [footnote : accounts of the town of orléans at the end of _le journal du siège_, ed. charpentier and cuissard, p. . le r.p. chapotin, _la guerre de cent ans, jeanne d'arc et les dominicains_, paris, , vo, p. .] the inhabitants of orléans presented the duke of alençon with six casks of wine, the maid with four, the count of vendôme with two.[ ] [footnote : a. de villaret, _campagne des anglais_, proofs and illustrations, p. .] as an acknowledgment of the good and acceptable services rendered by the holy maiden, the councillors of the captive duke charles of orléans, gave her a green cloak and a robe of crimson flemish cloth or fine brussels purple. jean luillier, who furnished the stuff, asked eight crowns for two ells of fine brussels at four crowns the ell; two crowns for the lining of the robe; two crowns for an ell of yellowish green cloth, making in all twelve golden crowns.[ ] jean luillier was a young woollen draper who adored the maid and regarded her as an angel of god. he had a good heart; but fear of the english dazzled him, and where they were concerned caused him to see double.[ ] one of his kinsfolk was a member of the council elected in . he himself was to be appointed magistrate a little later.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. - .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. v, p. .] jean bourgeois, tailor, asked one golden crown for the making of the robe and the cloak, as well as for furnishing white satin, taffeta, and other stuffs.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] the town had previously given the maid half an ell of cloth of two shades of green worth thirty-five _sous_ of paris to make "nettles" for her gown.[ ] nettles were the duke of orléans' device, green or purple or crimson his colours.[ ] this green was no longer the bright colour of earlier days, it had gradually been growing darker as the fortunes of the house declined. it had first been a vivid green, then a brownish shade, and, finally, the tint of the faded leaf with a suggestion of black in it which signified sorrow and mourning. the maid's colour was _feuillemort_. she, like the officers of the duchy and the men of the train-bands, wore the orléans livery; and thus they made of her a kind of herald-at-arms or heraldic angel. [footnote : _accounts of the fortress_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . _catalogue des arch. de joursanvault_, vol. i, p. , nos. , , , , . dambreville, _abrégé de l'histoire des ordres de chevalerie_, p. . p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, p. .] the cloak of yellowish green and the robe embroidered with nettles, she must have been glad to wear for love of duke charles, whom the english had treated with such sore despite. having come to defend the heritage of the captive prince, she said that in jesus' name, the good duke of orléans was on her mind and she was confident that she would deliver him.[ ] her design was first to summon the english to give him up; then, if they refused, to cross the sea and with an army to seek him in england.[ ] in case such means failed her, she had thought of another course which she would adopt, with the permission of her saints. she would ask the king if he would let her take prisoners, believing that she could take enough to exchange for duke charles.[ ] saint catherine and saint margaret had promised her that thus his deliverance would take her less than three years and longer than one.[ ] such were the pious dreams of a child lulled to sleep by the sound of her village bells! deeming it just that she should labour and suffer to rescue her princes from trouble and weariness, she used to say, like a good servant: "i know that in matters of bodily ease god loves my king and the duke of orléans better than me; and i know it because it hath been revealed unto me."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] then, speaking of the captive duke she would say: "my voices have revealed much to me concerning him. duke charles hath oftener been the subject of my revelations than any man living except my king."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] in reality, all that saint catherine and saint margaret had done was to tell her of the well-known misfortunes of the prince. valentine of milan's son and isabelle romée's daughter were separated by a gulf broader and deeper than the ocean which stretched between them. they dwelt at the antipodes of the world of souls, and all the saints of paradise would have been unable to explain one to the other. all the same duke charles was a good prince and a debonair; he was kind and he was pitiful. more than any other he possessed the gift of pleasing. he charmed by his grace, albeit but ill-looking and of weak constitution.[ ] his temperament was so out of harmony with his position that he may be said to have endured his life rather than to have lived it. his father assassinated by night in the rue barbette in paris by order of duke john; his mother a perennial fount of tears, dying of anger and of grief in a franciscan nunnery; the two s's, standing for _soupirs_ (sighs) and _souci_ (care), the emblems and devices of her mourning, revealing her ingenious mind fancifully elegant even in despair; the armagnacs, the burgundians, the cabochiens, cutting each other's throats around him; these were the sights he had witnessed when little more than a child. then he had been wounded and taken prisoner at the battle of azincourt. [footnote : bibliothèque nationale, ms. fr. , fol. .] now, for fourteen years, dragged from castle to castle, from one end to the other of the island of fogs; imprisoned within thick walls, closely guarded, receiving two or three of his countrymen at long intervals, but never permitted to converse with one except before witnesses, he felt old before his time, blighted by misfortune. "fruit fallen in its greenness, i was put to ripen on prison straw. i am winter fruit,"[ ] he said of himself. in his captivity, he suffered without hope, knowing that on his death-bed henry v had recommended his brother not to give him up at any price.[ ] [footnote : _les poésies de charles d'orléans_, ed. guichard, , in mo, p. .] [footnote : a. champollion-figeac, _louis et charles, ducs d'orléans, leur influence sur les arts, la littérature et l'ésprit de leur siècle_, paris, , vol. in vo, with an atlas, pp. - .] kind to others, kind to himself, he took refuge in his own thoughts, which were as bright and clear as his life was dark and sad. in the gloom of the stern castles of windsor and of bolingbroke, in the tower of london, side by side with his gaolers, he lived and moved in the world of phantasy of the _romance of the rose_. venus, cupid, hope, fair-welcome, pleasure, pity, danger, sadness, care, melancholy, sweet-looks were around the desk, on which, in the deep embrasure of a window, beneath the sun's rays, he wrote his ballads, as delicate and fresh as an illumination on the page of a manuscript. for him it was the world of allegory that really existed. he wandered in the forest of long expectation; he embarked on the vessel good tidings. he was a poet; beauty was his lady; and courteously did he sing of her. from his verses one would say that he was but the captive of lord love.[ ] [footnote : _les poésies de charles d'orléans_, ed. a. champollion-figeac, paris, , vo. pierre champion, _le manuscrit autographe des poésies de charles d'orléans_, paris, , vo.] he was left in ignorance of the affairs of his duchy; and, if he ever concerned himself about it, it was when he collected the books of king charles v which had been bought by the duke of bedford and resold to london merchants;[ ] or when he commanded that on the approach of the english to blois, its fine tapestries and his father's library should be carried off to la rochelle. after beauty rich hangings and delicate miniatures were what he loved most in the world.[ ] the bright sunshine of france, the lovely month of may, dancing and ladies were what he longed for most. he was cured of prowess and of chivalry. [footnote : l. delisle, _recherches sur la librairie de charles v_ ( ), vol. i, p. .] [footnote : le roux de lincy, _la bibliothèque de charles d'orléans à son château de blois, en _, paris, , vo, pp. - . comte de laborde, _les ducs de bourgogne, études sur les lettres, les arts et l'industrie pendant le xv'e siècle_, paris, , vol. iii, pp. _et seq._--_inventaires et documents relatifs aux joyaux et tapisseries des princes d'orléans-valois_, paris, , vo.] some have wished to believe that from his duchy news reached him of the maid's coming. they have gone so far as to imagine that a faithful servant kept him informed of the happy incidents of may and june, ;[ ] but nothing is less certain. on the contrary, the probability is that the english refused to let him receive any message, and that he was totally ignorant of all that was going on in the two kingdoms.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, introduction by vallet de viriville, pp. , _et seq._] [footnote : with regard to the year , this is well established (_poésies complètes de charles d'orléans_, ed. charles d'héricault, paris, , vols. vo, introduction).] possibly he did not care for news of the war as much as one might expect. he hoped nothing from men-at-arms; and it was not to his fair cousins of france and to feats of prowess and battles that he looked for deliverance. he knew too much about them. it was in peace that he put his trust, both for himself and for his people. since the fathers were dead, he thought that the sons might forgive and forget. he placed his hope in his cousin of burgundy; and he was right, for the fortunes of the english were in the hands of duke philip. charles brought himself, or at any rate he was to bring himself later, to recognise the suzerainty of the king of england. it is less important to consider the weakness of men than the force of circumstances. and the prisoner could never do enough to obtain peace: "joy's greatest treasure."[ ] [footnote : _poésies de charles d'orléans_, ed. a. champollion-figeac, pp. - .] no, despite her revelations, the picture jeanne imagined of her fair duke was not the true one. they were never to meet; but if they had met there would have been serious misunderstandings between them, and they would have remained incomprehensible one to the other. jeanne's elemental, straight-forward way of thinking could never have accorded with the ideas of so great a noble and so courteous a poet. they could never have understood each other because she was simple, he subtle; because she was a prophetess while he was filled with courtly knowledge and lettered grace; because she believed, and he was as one not believing; because she was a daughter of the common folk and a saint ascribing all sovereignty to god, while for him law consisted in feudal uses and customs, alliances and treaties;[ ] because, in short, they held conflicting ideas concerning life and the world. the maid's mission, her being sent by messire to recover his duchy for him, would never have appealed to the good duke; and jeanne would never have understood his behaviour towards his english and burgundian cousins. it was better they should never meet. [footnote : for him every treaty of peace was a good treaty, even that of , the treaty of troyes (pierre champion, _le manuscrit autographe des poésies de charles d'orléans_, paris, , vo, p. ).] the capture of jargeau had given the french control of the upper loire. in order to free the city of orléans from all danger, it was necessary to make sure of the banks of the lower river. there the english still held meung and beaugency. on tuesday, the th of june, at the hour of vespers, the army took the field.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. : "_je veux demain, après dîner, aller voir ceux de meung_." ["to-morrow after dinner i will go to the people of meung."] the turn of expression which this chronicle attributes to jeanne is really that of the clerk who wrote it.] they passed through la sologne, and that same evening gained the bridge of meung, situated above the town and separated from its walls by a broad meadow. like most bridges, it was defended by a castlet at each end; and the english had provided it with an earthen outwork, as they had done for les tourelles at orléans.[ ] they defended it badly, however, and the french king's men forced their way in before nightfall. they left a garrison there, and went out to encamp in beauce, almost under the walls. the young duke of alençon lodged in a church with a few men-at-arms; and, as was his wont, did not keep watch. he was surprised and ran great danger.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . berry, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . walter bower, _scotichronicon_, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . eberhard windecke, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] the town garrison, which was a small one, was commanded by lord scales, and "the child of warwick." the next day, early in the morning, the king's men, passing within a cannon shot of the town of meung, marched straight on beaugency, which they reached in the morning.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] the ancient little town, built on the side of a hill and girt around with vineyards, gardens, and cornfields, sloped before them towards the green valley of the ru. straight in front of them rose its square tower of somewhat proud aspect, although it had oftentimes been taken. the suburbs were not fortified; but the french, when they entered them, were riddled by a shower of arrows of every kind, fired by archers concealed in dwellings and outhouses. on both sides there were killed and wounded. finally, the english retreated into the castle and the bridge bastions.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] the duke of alençon stationed sentinels in front of the castle to watch the english. just then, he saw coming towards him, two nobles of brittany, the lords of rostrenen and of kermoisan, who said to him: "the constable asks the besiegers for entertainment."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . gruel, _chronique de richemont_, p. .] arthur of brittany, sire de richemont, constable of france, had spent the winter in poitou waging war against the troops of the sire de la trémouille. now in defiance of the king's prohibition the constable came to join the king's men.[ ] he had crossed the loire at amboise and arrived before beaugency with six hundred men-at-arms and four hundred archers.[ ] his coming caused the captains great embarrassment. some esteemed him a man of strong will and great courage. but many were dependent upon the sire de la trémouille, as for example the poor squire, jean d'aulon. the duke of alençon wanted to retreat, alleging that the king had commanded him not to receive the constable. [footnote : e. cosneau, _le connétable de richemont_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , . perceval de cagny, p. .] "if the constable comes, i shall retire," he said to jeanne. to the breton nobles he replied, that if the constable came into the camp, the maid, and the besiegers would fight against him.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . e. cosneau, _le connétable de richemont_, p. .] so decided was he that he mounted his horse to ride straight up to the bretons. the maid, out of respect for him and for the king, was preparing to follow him. but many of the captains restrained the duke of alençon[ ] deeming that now was not the time to break a lance with the constable of france. [footnote : gruel, _chronique de richemont_, pp. _et seq._] on the morrow a loud alarm was sounded in the camp. the heralds were crying: "to arms!" the english were said to be approaching in great numbers. the young duke still wanted to retreat in order to avoid receiving the constable. this time jeanne dissuaded him: "we must stand together," she said.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] he listened to this counsel and went forth to meet the constable, followed by the maid, my lord the bastard, and the lords of laval. near the leper's hospital at beaugency they encountered a fine company. as they approached, a thick-lipped little man, dark and frowning, alighted from his horse.[ ] it was arthur of brittany. the maid embraced his knees as she was accustomed to do when holding converse with the great ones of heaven and earth. thus did every baron when he met one nobler than himself.[ ] [footnote : gruel, _chronique de richemont_, p. . cf. e. cosneau, _le connétable de richemont_, pp. , . see a drawing in the gaignières collection reproduced by j. lair, _essai sur la bataille de formigny_, , vo.] [footnote : _lors le saluèrent et le vinrent accoller par les jambes._ (then they saluted him and embraced his knees.) j. de bueil, _le jouvencel_, vol. i, p. .] the constable spoke to her as a good catholic, a devout servant of god and the church, saying: "jeanne, i have heard that you wanted to fight against me. whether you are sent by god i know not. if you are i do not fear you. for god knows that my heart is right. if you are sent by the devil i fear you still less."[ ] [footnote : gruel, _chronique de richemont_, pp. - . i have here followed gruel, who is not generally very trustworthy, but whose account in this particular seems probable, at least he is no mere hagiographer.] he was entitled to speak thus, for he made a point of never acknowledging the devil's power over him. his love of god he showed by seeking out wizards and witches with a greater zeal than was displayed by bishops and inquisitors. in france, in poitou, and in brittany he had sent more to the stake than any other man living.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] the duke of alençon dared not either dismiss him or grant him a lodging for the night. it was the custom for new comers to keep the watch. the constable with his company kept watch that night in front of the castle.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . e. cosneau, _le connétable de richemont_, p. .] without more ado the young duke of alençon proceeded to the attack. here, again, those who bore the brunt of the attack and provided for the siege were the citizens of orléans. the magistrates of the town had sent by water from meung to beaugency the necessary siege train, ladders, pickaxes, mattocks, and those great pent-houses beneath which the besiegers protected themselves like tortoises under their shells. they had sent also cannons and mortars. the gay gunner, master jean de montesclère, was there.[ ] all these supplies were addressed to the maid. the magistrate, jean boillève, brought bread and wine in a barge.[ ] throughout friday, the th, mortars and cannon hurled stones on the besieged. at the same time from the valley and from the river the attack was being made from barges. on the th of june, at midnight, sir richard gethyn, bailie of Évreux, who commanded the garrison, offered to capitulate. it was agreed that the english should surrender the castle and bridge, and depart on the morrow, taking with them horses and harness with each man his property to the value of not more than one silver mark. further, they were required to swear that they would not take up arms again before the expiration of ten days. on these terms, the next day, at sunrise, to the number of five hundred, they crossed the drawbridge and retreated on meung, where the castle, but not the bridge, remained in the hands of the english.[ ] the constable wisely sent a few men to reinforce the garrison on the meung bridge.[ ] sir richard gethyn and captain matthew gough were detained as hostages.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] [footnote : a. de villaret, _campagne des anglais_, pp. - , and proofs and illustrations, pp. , .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . wavrin du forestel, _anciennes chroniques_, vol. i, pp. , . monstrelet, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : gruel, _chronique de richemont_, p. .] [footnote : wavrin du forestel, _anciennes chroniques_, vol. i, p. .] the beaugency garrison had been in too great haste to surrender. scarce had it gone when a man-at-arms of captain la hire's company came to the duke of alençon saying: "the english are marching upon us. we shall have them in front of us directly. they are over there, full one thousand fighting men." jeanne heard him speak but did not seize his meaning. "what is that man-at-arms saying?" she asked. and when she knew, turning to arthur of brittany, who was close by, she said: "ah! fair constable, it was not my will that you should come, but since you are here, i bid you welcome."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] the force the french had to face was sir john talbot and sir john fastolf with the whole english army. chapter xvi the battle of patay--opinions of italian and german ecclesiastics--the gien army having left paris on the th of june, sir john fastolf was coming through la beauce with five thousand fighting men. to the english at jargeau he was bringing victuals and arrows in abundance. learning by the way that the town had surrendered, he left his stores at Étampes and marched on to janville, where sir john talbot joined him with forty lances and two hundred bowmen.[ ] [footnote : wavrin du forestel, _anciennes chroniques_, ed. dupont, vol. i, p. . berry, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . gruel, _chronique de richemont_, p. . falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. - .] there they heard that the french had taken the meung bridge and laid siege to beaugency. sir john talbot wished to march to the relief of the inhabitants of beaugency and deliver them with the aid of god and saint george. sir john fastolf counselled abandoning sir richard gethyn and his garrison to their fate; for the moment he deemed it wiser not to fight. finding his own men fearful and the french full of courage, he thought the best thing the english could do would be to establish themselves in the towns, castles, and strongholds remaining to them, there to await the reinforcements promised by the regent. "in comparison with the french we are but a handfull," he said. "if luck should turn against us, then we should be in a fair way to lose all those conquests won by our late king henry after strenuous effort and long delay."[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . wavrin du forestel, _anciennes chroniques_, vol. i, pp. _et seq._] his advice was disregarded and the army marched on beaugency. the force was not far from the town on friday, the th of june, just when the garrison was issuing forth with horses, armour, and baggage to the amount of one silver mark's worth for each man.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, j. chartier, gruel, morosini, berry, monstrelet, wavrin, _loc. cit_. _lettre de jacques de bourbon, comte de la marche à guill. de champeaux, évêque de laon_, according to a vienna ms. by bougenot, in _bull. du com. des travaux hist. et scientif. hist. et phil., _, pp. - . (french translation by s. luce, in _la revue bleue_, february , , pp. - .)] informed of the army's approach the french king's men went forth to meet it. the scouts had not far to ride before they descried the standards and pennons of england waving over the plain, about two and a half miles from patay. then the french ascended a hill whence they could observe the enemy. captain la hire and the young sire de termes said to the maid: "the english are coming. they are in battle array and ready to fight." as was her wont, she made answer: "strike boldly and they will flee." and she added that the battle would not be long.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . the clerk who wrote down thibault de termes' evidence, being ill-informed, described these words as having been uttered at the battle of patay. at patay, jeanne and la hire were not near each other.] believing that the french were offering them battle, the english took up their position. the archers planted their stakes in the ground, their points inclined towards the enemy. thus they generally prepared to fight; they had not done otherwise at the battle of the herrings. the sun was already declining on the horizon.[ ] [footnote : wavrin du forestel, _anciennes chroniques_, vol. i, p. .] the duke of alençon had by no means decided to descend into the plain. in presence of the constable, my lord the bastard and the captains, he consulted the holy maid, who gave him an enigmatical answer: "see to it that you have good spurs." taking her to mean the count of clermont's spurs, the spurs of rouvray, the duke of alençon exclaimed: "what do you say? shall we turn our backs on them?" "nay," she replied. on all occasions her voices counselled unwavering confidence. "nay. in god's name, go down against them; for they shall flee and shall not stay and shall be utterly discomfited; and you shall lose scarce any men; wherefore you will need your spurs to pursue them."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . it is clear that this passage from dunois' evidence and from _la chronique de la pucelle_ cannot refer to the battle of june th, as has been thought. "all the english divisions," says dunois, "united into one army. we thought they were going to offer us battle." he is evidently referring to what happened on the th of june. the duke of alençon's evidence confuses everything. how could the maid have said of the english: "god sends them against us," when they were fleeing?] according to the opinions of doctors and masters it was well to listen to the maid, but at the same time to follow the course marked out by human wisdom. the commanders of the army, either because they judged the occasion unfavourable or because, after so many defeats, they feared a pitched battle, did not come down from their hill. the two heralds sent by two english knights to offer single combat received the answer: "for to-day you may go to bed, because it grows late. but to-morrow, if it be god's will, we will come to closer quarters."[ ] [footnote : those who would attribute this saying to the maid have misunderstood wavrin. _anciennes chroniques_, vol. i, p. .] the english, assured that they would not be attacked, marched off to pass the night at meung.[ ] [footnote : wavrin du forestel, _anciennes chroniques_, vol. i, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. _et seq._] on the morrow, saturday, the th, saint hubert's day, the french went forth against them. they were not there. the _godons_ had decamped early in the morning and gone off, with cannon, ammunition, and victuals, towards janville,[ ] where they intended to entrench themselves. [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, _journal du siège_, gruel, j. chartier, berry, _loc. cit._] straightway king charles's army of twelve thousand men[ ] set out in pursuit of them. along the paris road they went, over the plain of beauce, wooded, full of game, covered with thickets and brushwood, wild, but finely to the taste of english and french riders, who praised it highly.[ ] [footnote : wavrin du forestel, _anciennes chroniques_, vol. i, p. . fauché-prunelle, _lettres tirées des archives de l'évêché de grenoble_, in _bull. acad. delph._, vol. ii, , pp. _et seq._ letter from charles vii to the town of tours, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] [footnote : wavrin du forestel, _anciennes chroniques_, vol. i, p. . the herald berry, _le livre de la description des pays_, ed. hamy.] gazing over the infinite plain, where the earth seems to recede before one's glance, the maid beheld the sky in front of her, that cloudy sky of plains, suggesting marvellous adventures on the mountains of the air, and she cried: "in god's name, if they were hanging from the clouds we should have them."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _chronique normande_, ch. xlviii, ed. vallet de viriville. monstrelet, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._ morosini, vol. iii, pp. - . wavrin du forestel, _anciennes chroniques_, vol. i, pp. - . these words are said to have been uttered when the english had been discovered, but then they would have been meaningless.] now, as on the previous evening, she prophesied: "to-day our fair king shall win a victory greater than has been his for a long time. my council has told me that they are all ours." she foretold that there would be few, or none of the french slain.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (the duke of alençon's evidence).] captain poton and sire arnault de gugem went forth to reconnoitre. the most skilled men-of-war, and among them my lord the bastard and the marshal de boussac, mounted on the finest of war-steeds, formed the vanguard. then under the leadership of captain la hire, who knew the country, came the horse of the duke of alençon, the count of vendôme, the constable of france, with archers and cross-bowmen. last of all came the rear-guard, commanded by the lords of graville, laval, rais, and saint-gilles.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. (evidence of louis de coutes). letter from jacques de bourbon in _la revue bleue_, february , , pp. - . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . wavrin du forestel, _anciennes chroniques_, p. .] the maid, ever zealous, desired to be in the vanguard; but she was kept back. she did not lead the men-at-arms, rather the men-at-arms led her. they regarded her, not as captain of war but as a bringer of good luck. greatly saddened, she must needs take her place in the rear, in the company, doubtless, of the sire de rais, where she had originally been placed.[ ] the whole army pressed forward for fear the enemy should escape them. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _deux documents sur jeanne d'arc_ in _la revue bleue_, february , .] after they had ridden twelve or thirteen miles in overpowering heat, and passed saint-sigismond on the left and got beyond saint-péravy, captain poton's sixty to eighty scouts reached a spot where the ground, which had been level hitherto, descends, and where the road leads down into a hollow called la retrève. they could not actually see the hollow, but beyond it the ground rose gently; and, dimly visible, scarcely two and a half miles away was the belfry of lignerolles on the wooded plain known as climat-du-camp. a league straight in front of them was the little town of patay.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. _et seq._ _journal du siège_, pp. _et seq._ jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . le comte de vassal, _la bataille de patay_, orléans, .] it is two o'clock in the afternoon. poton's and gugem's horse chance to raise a stag, which darts out of a thicket and plunges down into the hollow of la retrève. suddenly a clamour of voices ascends from the hollow. it proceeds from the english soldiers loudly disputing over the game which has fallen into their hands. thus informed of the enemy's presence, the french scouts halt and straightway despatch certain of their company to go and tell the army that they have surprised the _godons_ and that it is time to set to work.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] now this is what had been happening among the english. they were retreating in good order on janville, their vanguard commanded by a knight bearing a white standard.[ ] then came the artillery and the victuals in waggons driven by merchants; then the main body of the army, commanded by sir john talbot and sir john fastolf. the rear-guard, which was likely to bear the brunt of the attack, consisted only of englishmen from england.[ ] it followed at some distance from the rest. its scouts, having seen the french without being seen by them, informed sir john talbot, who was then between the hamlet of saint-péravy and the town of patay. on this information he called a halt and commanded the vanguard with waggons and cannon to take up its position on the edge of the lignerolles wood. the position was excellent: backed by the forest, the combatants were secure against being attacked in the rear,[ ] while in front they were able to entrench themselves behind their waggons. the main body did not advance so far. it halted some little distance from lignerolles, in the hollow of la retrève. on this spot the road was lined with quickset hedges. sir john talbot with five hundred picked bowmen stationed himself there to await the french who must perforce pass that way. his design was to defend the road until the rear-guard had had time to join the main body, and then, keeping close to the hedges, he would fall back upon the army. [footnote : wavrin du forestel, _anciennes chroniques_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. - .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] the archers, as was their wont, were making ready to plant in the ground those pointed stakes, the spikes of which they turned against the chests of the enemy's horses, when the french, led by poton's scouts, came down upon them like a whirlwind, overthrew them, and cut them to pieces.[ ] [footnote : wavrin du forestel, _anciennes chroniques_, vol. i, p. . monstrelet, vol. iii, pp. , .] at this moment, sir john fastolf, at the head of the main body, was preparing to join the vanguard. feeling the french cavalry at his heels, he gave spur and at full gallop led his men on to lignerolles. when those of the white standard saw him arriving thus in rout, they thought he had been defeated. they took fright, abandoned the edge of the wood, rushed into the thickets of climat-du-camp and in great disorder came out on the paris road. with the main body of the army, sir john fastolf pushed on in the same direction. there was no battle. marching over the bodies of talbot's archers, the french threw themselves on the english, who were as dazed as a flock of sheep and fell before the foe without resistance. thus the french slew two thousand of those common folk whom the _godons_ were accustomed to transport from their own land to be killed in france. when the main body of the french, commanded by la hire, reached lignerolles, they found only eight hundred foot whom they soon overthrew. of the twelve to thirteen thousand french on the march, scarce fifteen hundred took part in the battle or rather in the massacre. sir john talbot, who had leapt on to his horse without staying to put on his spurs, was taken prisoner by the captains la hire and poton.[ ] the lords scales, hungerford and falconbridge, sir thomas guérard, richard spencer and fitz walter were taken and held to ransom. in all, there were between twelve and fifteen hundred prisoners.[ ] [footnote : "in the neighbourhood of lignerolles there have been found horse-shoes, a javelin-point, the iron pieces of carts, and bullets." p. mantellier, _histoire du siège_, orléans, , mo, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . gruel, _chronique de richemont_, pp. - . perceval de cagny, pp. _et seq._ _chronique normande_, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . eberhard windecke, p. . lefèvre de saint-rémy, vol. ii, pp. , . falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _commentaires de pie_ ii, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. - . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. - . wavrin du forestel, _anciennes chroniques_, vol. i, p. . letter from j. de bourbon in _la revue bleue_, february , . letter from charles vii to tours and the people of dauphiné, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] not more than two hundred men-at-arms pursued the fugitives to the gates of janville. except for the vanguard, which had been the first to take flight, the english army was entirely destroyed. on the french side, the sire de termes, who was present, states that there was only one killed; a man of his own company. perceval de boulainvilliers, councillor and king's chamberlain, says there were three.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. ; vol. v, p. .] the maid arrived[ ] before the slaughter was ended.[ ] she saw a frenchman, who was leading some prisoners, strike one of them such a blow on the head that he fell down as if dead. she dismounted and procured the englishman a confessor. she held his head and comforted him as far as she could. such was the part she played in the battle of patay.[ ] it was the part of a saintly maid. [footnote : "et habuit _l'avant garde la hire_ de quo ipsa johanna fuit multum irata, quia ipsa multum affectabat habere onus de _l'avant garde_ la hire qui conducebat _l'avant garde_ percussit super anglicos," _trial_, vol. iii, p. (evidence of louis de coutes).] [footnote : "habebat magnam pietatem de tanta occisione," _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : after an examination of the documents i have concluded that louis de coutes' narrative refers to patay.] the french spent the night in the town. sir john talbot, having been brought before the duke of alençon and the constable, was thus addressed by the young duke: "this morning you little thought what would happen to you." talbot replied: "it is the chance of war."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] a few breathless _godons_ succeeded in reaching janville.[ ] but the townsfolk, with whom on their departure they had deposited their money and their goods, shut the gates in their faces and swore loyalty to king charles. [footnote : boucher de molandon, _janville, son donjon, son château, ses souvenirs du xv'e siècle_, orléans, , vo.] the english commanders of the two small strongholds in la beauce, montpipeau and saint sigismond, set fire to them and fled.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. ; _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , .] from patay the victorious army marched to orléans. the inhabitants were expecting the king. they had hung up tapestries ready for his entrance.[ ] but the king and his chamberlain, fearing and not without reason, some aggressive movement on the part of the constable, held themselves secure in the château of sully.[ ] thence they started for châteauneuf on the nd of june. that same day the maid joined the king at saint-benoit-sur-loire. he received her with his usual kindness and said: "i pity you because of the suffering you endure." and he urged her to rest. [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. - . _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. _et seq._; e. cosneau, _le connétable de richemont_, p. .] at these words she wept. it has been said that her tears flowed because of the indifference and incredulity towards her that the king's urbanity implied.[ ] but we must beware of attributing to the tears of the enraptured and the illuminated a cause intelligible to human reason. to her charles appeared clothed in an ineffable splendour like that of the holiest of kings. how, since she had shown him her angels, invisible to ordinary folk, could she for one moment have thought that he lacked faith in her? [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. (evidence of s. charles). "_et audivit ipse loquens ex ore regis multa bona de ea ... rex habuit pietatem de ea et de poena quam portabat._"] "have no doubt," she said to him, confidently, "you shall receive the whole of your kingdom and shortly shall be crowned."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] true, charles seemed in no great haste to employ his knights in the recovery of his kingdom. but his council just then had no idea of getting rid of the maid. on the contrary, they were determined to use her cleverly, so as to put heart into the french, to terrify the english, and to convince the world that god, saint michael, and saint catherine, were on the side of the armagnacs. in announcing the victory of patay to the good towns, the royal councillors said not one word of the constable, neither did they mention my lord the bastard.[ ] they described as leaders of the army, the maid, with the two princes of the blood royal, the duke of alençon, and the duke of vendôme. in such wise did they exalt her. and, indeed, she must have been worth as much and more than a great captain, since the constable attempted to seize her. with this enterprise, he charged one of his men, andrieu de beaumont, who had formerly been employed to carry off the sire de la trémouille. but, as andrieu de beaumont had failed with the chamberlain, so he failed with the maid.[ ] [footnote : letter from charles vii to the people of dauphiné, published by fauché-prunelle, in _bull. de l'acad. delphinale_, vol. ii, p. ; to the inhabitants of tours (archives de tours, _registre des comptes xxiv_), in _cabinet historique_, i, c. p. ; to those of poitiers, redet, in _les mémoires de la société des antiquaires de l'ouest_, vol. iii, p. ; _relation du greffier de la rochelle_ in _revue historique_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , ; jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. ; gruel, _chronique de richemont_, p. ; monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , ; e. cosneau, _le connétable de richemont_, pp. , .] probably she herself knew nothing of this plot. she besought the king to pardon the constable,--a request which proves how great was her naïveté. by royal command richemont received back his lordship of parthenay.[ ] [footnote : , th of may. a decree condemning andré de beaumont to suffer capital punishment as being guilty of high treason. (arch. nat. j. .) for a complete copy of this document i am indebted to monsieur pierre champion.] duke john of brittany, who had married a sister of charles of valois, was not always pleased with his brother-in-law's counsellors. in , considering him too burgundian, they had devised for him a bridge of montereau.[ ] in reality, he was neither armagnac nor burgundian nor french nor english, but breton. in he recognised the treaty of troyes; but two years later, when his brother, the duke of richemont, had gone over to the french king and received the constable's sword from him, duke john went to charles of valois, at saumur, and did homage for his duchy.[ ] in short, he extricated himself cleverly from the most embarrassing situations and succeeded in remaining outside the quarrel of the two kings who were both eager to involve him in it. while france and england were cutting each other's throats, he was raising brittany from its ruins.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. ; de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : dom morice, _histoire de bretagne_, vol. ii, col. - ; de beaucourt, _loc. cit._, vol. ii, chap. vii.] [footnote : bellier-dumaine, _l'administration du duché de bretagne sous le règne de jean v_ ( - ) in _les annales de bretagne_, vol. xiv-xvi ( - ) _passim_, and rd part, jean v and commerce, industry, agriculture, public education (vol. xvi, p. ), and th part, chap. iii, jean v and towns, rural parishes (vol. xvi, p. ).] the maid filled him with curiosity and admiration. shortly after the battle of patay, he sent to her, hermine, his herald-at-arms, and brother yves milbeau, his confessor, to congratulate her on her victory.[ ] the good brother was told to question jeanne. [footnote : eberhard windecke, p. .] he asked her whether it was god who had sent her to succour the king. jeanne replied that it was. "if it be so," replied brother yves milbeau, "my lord the duke of brittany, our liege lord, is disposed to proffer his service to the king. he cannot come in person for he is sorely infirm. but he is to send his son with a large army." the good brother was speaking lightly and making a promise for his duke which would never be kept. the only truth in it was that many breton nobles were coming in to take service with king charles. on hearing these words, the little saint made a curious mistake. she thought that brother yves had meant that the duke of brittany was her liege lord as well as his, which would have been altogether senseless. her loyalty revolted: "the duke of brittany is not my liege lord," she replied sharply. "the king is my liege lord." as far as we can tell, the duke of brittany's caution had produced no favourable impression in france. he was censured for having set the king's war ban at nought and made a treaty with the english. jeanne was of that opinion and to brother yves she said so plainly: "the duke should not have tarried so long in sending his men to aid the king."[ ] [footnote : eberhard windecke, pp. , .] a few days later, the sire de rostrenen, who had accompanied the constable to beaugency and to patay, came from duke john to treat of the prospective marriage between his eldest son, françois, and bonne de savoie, daughter of duke amédée. with him was comment-qu'il-soit, herald of richard of brittany, count of Étampes. the herald was commissioned to present the maid with a dagger and horses.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . eberhard windecke, pp. - , . morosini, vol. iii, p. . dom lobineau, _histoire de bretagne_, vol. i, p. . dom morice, _histoire de bretagne_, vol. i, pp. , .] at rome, in , there was a french clerk, a compiler of one of those histories of the world so common in those days and so much alike. his cosmography, like all of them, began with the creation and came down to the pontificate of martin v who was then pope. "under this pontificate," wrote the author, "the realm of france, the flower and the lily of the world, opulent among the most opulent, before whom the whole universe bowed, was cast down by its invader, the tyrant henry, who was not even the lawful lord of the realm of england." then this churchman vows the burgundians to eternal infamy and hurls upon them the most terrible maledictions. "may their eyes be torn out: may they perish by an evil death!" such language indicates a good armagnac and possibly a clerk despoiled of his goods and driven into exile by the enemies of his country. when he learns the coming of the maid and the deliverance of orléans, transported with joy and wonder, he re-opens his history and consigns to its pages arguments in favour of the marvellous maid, whose deeds appear to him more divine than human, but concerning whom he knows but little. he compares her to deborah, judith, esther, and penthesilea. "in the books of the gentiles it is written," he says, "that penthesilea, and a thousand virgins with her, came to the succour of king priam and fought so valiantly that they tore the myrmidons in pieces and slew more than two thousand greeks." according to him, both in courage and feats of prowess, the maid far surpasses penthesilea. her deeds promptly refute those who maintain that she is sent by the devil.[ ] [footnote : l. delisle, _un nouveau témoignage relatif à la mission de jeanne d'arc_ in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, vol. xlvi, pp. , . le p. ayroles, _la pucelle devant l'Église de son temps_, pp. , .] in a moment the fame of the french king's prophetess had been spread abroad throughout christendom. while in temporal affairs the people were rending each other, in spiritual matters obedience to one common head made europe one spiritual republic with one language and one doctrine, governed by councils. the spirit of the church was all-pervading. in italy, in germany, the talk was all of the sibyl of france and her prowess which was so intimately associated with the christian faith. in those days it was sometimes the custom of those who painted on the walls of monasteries to depict the liberal arts as three noble dames. between her two sisters, logic would be painted, seated on a lofty throne, wearing an antique turban, clothed in a sparkling robe, and bearing in one hand a scorpion, in the other a lizard, as a sign that her knowledge winds its way into the heart of the adversary's argument, and saves her from being herself entrapped. at her feet, looking up to her, would be aristotle, disputing and reckoning up his arguments on his fingers.[ ] this austere lady formed all her disciples in the same mould. in those days nothing was more despicable than singularity. originality of mind did not then exist. the clerks who treated of the maid all followed the same method, advanced the same arguments, and based them on the same texts, sacred and profane. conformity could go no further. their minds were identical, but not their hearts; it is the mind that argues, but the heart that decides. these scholastics, dryer than their parchment, were men, notwithstanding; they were swayed by sentiment, by passion, by interests spiritual or temporal. while the armagnac doctors were demonstrating that in the maid's case reasons for belief were stronger than reasons for disbelief, the german or italian masters, caring nought for the quarrel of the dauphin of viennois,[ ] remained in doubt, unmoved by either love or hatred. [footnote : cathédrale du puy. e.f. corpet, _portraits des arts libéraux d'après les écrivains du moyen âge_, in _annales archéologiques_, , vol. xvii, pp. , . em. male, _les arts libéraux dans la statuaire du moyen âge_, in _revue archéologique_, .] [footnote : another name for dauphiné (w.s.).] there was a doctor of theology, one heinrich von gorcum, a professor at cologne. as early as the month of june, , he drew up a memorial concerning the maid. in germany, minds were divided as to whether the nature of the damsel were human or whether she were not rather a celestial being clothed in woman's form; as to whether her deeds proceeded from a human origin or had a supernatural source; and, if the latter, whether that source were good or bad. meister heinrich von gorcum wrote his treatise to present arguments from holy scripture on both sides, and he abstained from drawing any conclusion.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. - . le p. ayroles, _la pucelle devant l'Église de son temps_, vol. i, pp. - .] in italy, the same doubts and the same uncertainty prevailed concerning the deeds of the maid. those there were who maintained that they were mere inventions. at milan, it was disputed whether any credence could be placed in tidings from france. to discover the truth about them, the notables of the city resolved to despatch a franciscan friar, brother antonio de rho, a good humanist and a zealous preacher of moral purity. and giovanni corsini, senator of the duchy of arezzo, impelled by a like curiosity, consulted a learned clerk of milan, one cosmo raimondi of cremona. the following is the gist of the learned ciceronian's reply: "most noble lord, they say that god's choice of a shepherdess for the restoration of a kingdom to a prince, is a new thing. and yet we know that the shepherd david was anointed king. it is told how the maid, at the head of a small company, defied a great army. the victory may be explained by an advantageous position and an unexpected attack. but supposing we refrain from saying that the enemy was surprised and that his courage forsook him, matters which are none the less possible, supposing we admit that there was a miracle: what is there astonishing in that? is it not still more wonderful that samson should have slain so many philistines with the jaw-bone of an ass? "the maid is said to possess the power of revealing the future. remember the sibyls, notably the erythræan and the cumæan. they were heathens. why should not a like power be granted to a christian? this woman is a shepherdess. jacob, when he kept laban's flocks, conversed familiarly with god. to such examples and to such reasons, which incline me to give credence to the rumour, i add another reason derived from physical science. in treatises on astrology i have often read that by the favourable influence of the stars, certain men of lowly birth have become the equals of the highest princes and been regarded as men divine charged with a celestial mission. guido da forli, a clever astronomer, quotes a great number of such instances. wherefore i should not deem myself to be incurring any reproach if i believed that through the influence of the stars, the maid has undertaken what is reported of her." at the conclusion of his arguments the clerk of cremona says that, while not absolutely rejecting the reports concerning her, he does not consider them to be sufficiently proved.[ ] [footnote : le p. ayroles, vol. iv, _la vierge guerrière_, pp. _et seq._] jeanne maintained her resolution to go to reims and take the king to his anointing.[ ] she did not stay to consider whether it would be better to wage war in champagne than in normandy. she did not know enough of the configuration of the country to decide such a question, and it is not likely that her saints and angels knew more of geography than she did. she was in haste to take the king to reims for his anointing, because she believed it impossible for him to be king until he had been anointed.[ ] the idea of leading him to be anointed with the holy oil had come to her in her native village, long before the siege of orléans.[ ] this inspiration was wholly of the spirit, and had nothing to do with the state of affairs created by the deliverance of orléans and the victory of patay. [footnote : "_sed dicta puella semper fuit opinionis quod opportebat ire remis._" _trial_, vol. iii, p. (evidence of dunois).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : see _ante_, pp. _et seq._] the best course would have been to march straight on paris after the th of june. the french were then only ninety miles from the great city, which at that juncture would not have thought of defending itself. considering it as good as lost, the regent shut himself up in the fort of vincennes.[ ] they had missed their opportunity. the french king's councillors, princes of the blood, were deliberating, surprised by victory, not knowing what to do with it. certain it is that not one of them thought of conquering, and that speedily, the whole inheritance of king charles. the forces at their disposal, and the very conditions of the society in which they lived, rendered it impossible for them to conceive of such an undertaking. the lords of the great council were not like the poverty stricken monks, dreaming in their ruined cloisters[ ] of an age of peace and concord. the king's councillors were no dreamers; they did not believe in the end of the war, neither did they desire it. but they intended to conduct it with the least possible risk and expenditure. there would always be folk enough to don the hauberk and go a-plundering they said to themselves; the taking and re-taking of towns must continue; sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof; to fight long one must fight gently; nine times out of ten more is gained by negotiations and treaties than by feats of prowess; truces must be concluded craftily and broken cautiously; some defeats must be expected, and some work must be left for the young. such were the opinions of the good servants of king charles.[ ] [footnote : falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . de barante, _histoire des ducs de bourgogne_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : le p. denifle, _la désolation des églises_, introduction.] [footnote : those of louis xi were of a like mind: "one should fear risking a great battle if one be not constrained to it." philippe de comynes, ed. mdlle. dupont, vol. i, p. .] certain among them wished the war to be carried on in normandy.[ ] the idea had occurred to them as early as the month of may, before the loire campaign, and indeed there was much to be said for it. in normandy they would cut the english tree at its root. it was quite possible that they might immediately recover a part of that province where the english had but few fighting men. in the norman garrisons consisted of not more than four hundred lances and twelve hundred bowmen.[ ] since then they had received but few reinforcements. the regent was recruiting men everywhere and displaying marvellous activity, but he lacked money, and his soldiers were always deserting.[ ] in the conquered province, as soon as the _coués_ came out of their strongholds they found themselves in the enemy's territory. from the borders of brittany, maine, perche as far as ponthieu and picardy, on the banks of the mayenne, orne, the dive, the touque, the eure, the seine, the partisans of the various factions held the country, watching the roads, robbing, ravaging, and murdering.[ ] everywhere the french would have found these brave fellows ready to espouse their cause; the peasants and the village priests would likewise have wished them well. but the campaign would involve long sieges of towns, strongly defended, albeit held by but small garrisons. now the men-at-arms dreaded the delays of sieges, and the royal treasury was not sufficient for such costly undertakings.[ ] normandy was ruined, stripped of its crops, and robbed of its cattle. were the captains and their men to go into this famine-stricken land? and why should the king reconquer so poor a province? [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. , note .] [footnote : wallon, _jeanne d'arc_, , vol. i, p. .] [footnote : rymer, _foedera_, june, . morosini, vol. iii, pp. - ; vol. iv, supplement, xvii. g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la panique anglaise en mai _, paris, , in vo.] [footnote : g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la guerre des partisans dans la haute normandie_ ( - ), in the _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_ since .] [footnote : "the king had no great sums of money with which to pay his army." perceval de cagny, pp. , .] and these freebooters, who were willing to stretch out a hand to the french, were not very attractive. it was well known that brigands they were, and brigands would remain, and that normandy once reconquered, they would have to be got rid of, to the last man, without honour and without profit. in which case would it not be better to leave them to be dealt with by the _godons_? other nobles clamoured for an expedition into champagne.[ ] and in spite of all that has been said to the contrary, the maid's visions had no influence whatever on this determination. the king's councillors led jeanne and were far from being led by her. once before they had diverted her from the road to reims by providing her with work on the loire. once again they might divert her into normandy, without her even perceiving it, so ignorant was she of the roads and of the lie of the land. if there were certain who recommended a campaign in champagne, it was not on the faith of saints and angels, but for purely human reasons. is it possible to discover these reasons? there were doubtless certain lords and captains who considered the interest of the king and the kingdom, but every one found it so difficult not to confound it with his own interest, that the best way to discover who was responsible for the march on reims is to find out who was to profit by it. it was certainly not the duke of alençon, who would have greatly preferred to take advantage of the maid's help for the conquest of his own duchy.[ ] neither was it my lord the bastard, nor the sire de gaucourt, nor the king himself, for they must have desired the securing of berry and the orléanais by the capture of la charité held by the terrible perrinet gressart.[ ] on the other hand we may conclude that the queen of sicily would not be unfavourable to the march of the king, her son-in-law, in a north easterly direction. this spanish lady was possessed by the angevin mania. reassured for the moment concerning the fate of her duchy of anjou, she was pursuing eagerly, and to the great hurt of the realm of france, the establishment of her son rené in the duchy of bar and in the inheritance of lorraine. she cannot have been displeased, therefore, when she saw the king keeping her an open road between gien and troyes and châlons. but since the constable's exile she had lost all influence over her son-in-law, and it is difficult to discover who could have watched her interests in the council of may, .[ ] besides, without seeking further, it is obvious that there was one person, who above all others must have desired the anointing of the king, and who more than any was in a position to make his opinion prevail. that person was the man on whom devolved the duty of holding in his consecrated hands the sacred ampulla, my lord regnault de chartres, archbishop duke of reims, chancellor of the kingdom.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] [footnote : e. cosneau, _le connétable de richemont_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : even after the coronation regnault de chartres would not "suffer the maid and the duke of alençon to be together nor that he should recover her." perceval de cagny, p. .] he was a man of rare intelligence, skilled in business, a very clever diplomatist, greedy of wealth, caring less for empty honours than for solid advantage, avaricious, unscrupulous, one who at the age of about fifty had lost nothing of his consuming energy; he had recently displayed it by spending himself nobly in the defence of orléans. thus gifted, how could he fail to exercise a powerful control over the government? fifteen years had passed since his elevation to the archiepiscopal see of reims; and of his enormous revenue he had not yet received one penny. albeit the possessor of great wealth from other sources, he pleaded poverty. to the pope he addressed heart-rending supplications.[ ] if the maid had found favour in the eyes of the poitiers doctors, monseigneur regnault had had something to do with it. had it not been for him, the doctors at court would never have proposed her examination. and we shall not be making too bold a hypothesis if we conclude, that when the march on reims was decided in the royal council, it was because the archbishop, on grounds suggested by human reason, approved of what the maid proposed by divine inspiration.[ ] [footnote : le p. denifle, _la désolation des églises_, introduction.] [footnote : see _ante_, pp. - .] while the coronation campaign was attended with grave drawbacks and met with serious obstacles, it nevertheless brought great gain and a certain subtle advantage to the royal cause. unfortunately it left free from attack the rest of france occupied by the english, and it gave the latter time to recover themselves and procure aid from over sea. we shall shortly see what good use they made of their opportunities.[ ] as to the advantages of the expedition, they were many and various. first, jeanne truly expressed the sentiments of the poor priests and the common folk when she said that the dauphin would reap great profit from his anointing.[ ] from the oil of the holy ampulla the king would derive a splendour, a majesty which would impress the whole of france, yea, even the whole of christendom. in those days royalty was alike spiritual and temporal; and multitudes of men believed with jeanne that kings only became kings by being anointed with the holy oil. thus it would not be wrong to say that charles of valois would receive greater power from one drop of oil than from ten thousand lances. on a consideration like this the king's councillors must needs set great store. they had also to take into account the time and the place. might not the ceremony be performed in some other town than reims? might not the so-called "mystery" take place in that city which had been delivered by the intercession of its blessed patrons, saint-aignan and saint euverte? two kings descended from hugh capet, robert the wise and louis the fat, had been crowned at orléans.[ ] but the memory of their royal coronation was lost in the mists of antiquity, while folk still retained the memory of a long procession of most christian kings anointed in the town where the holy oil had been brought down to clovis by the celestial dove.[ ] besides, the lord archbishop and duke of reims would never have suffered the king to receive his anointing save at his hand and in his cathedral. [footnote : morosini, vol. iv, supplement, xvii.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . _journal du siège_, pp. , . "and although the king had not money wherewith to pay his army, all knights, squires, men-at-arms, and the commonalty refused not to serve the king in this journey in company with the maid." perceval de cagny, p. .] [footnote : le maire, _antiquités d'orléans_, ch. xxv, p. .] [footnote : pius ii, _commentarii_, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. - . pierre des gros, _jardin des nobles_ in p. paris, _manuscrits français de la bibliothèque du roi_, vol. ii, p. , and _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , .] therefore it was necessary to go to reims. it was necessary also to anticipate the english who had resolved to conduct thither their infant king that he might receive consecration according to the ancient ceremonial.[ ] but if the french had invaded normandy they would have closed the young henry's road to paris and to reims, a road which was already insecure for him; and it would be childish to maintain that the coronation could not have been postponed for a few weeks. if the conquest of norman lands and norman towns was renounced therefore, it was not merely for the sake of capturing the holy ampulla. the lord archbishop of reims had other objects at heart. he believed, for example, that, by pressing in between the duke of burgundy and his english allies, an excellent impression would be produced on the mind of that prince and the edifying object-lesson presented to his consideration of charles, son of charles, king of france, riding at the head of a powerful army. [footnote : william of worcester [ - , or botoner, chronicler and traveller, secretary to sir john fastolf, disputed with john paston concerning some land near norwich, and frequently referred to in the paston letters. w.s.] in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . in it was the intention of the english to take their king to reims "for which cause all the subjects of the kingdom would be more inclined to him" (advice given by philippe le bon to henry vi, as cited by h. de lannoy, in p. champion, _g. de flavy_, p. ). there was an english project for carrying off the holy ampulla from reims. pius ii, _commentarii_ in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] to attain the city of the blessed saint remi two hundred and fifty miles of hostile country must be traversed. but for some time the army would be in no danger of meeting the enemy on the road. the english and burgundians were engaged in using every means both fair and foul for the raising of troops. for the moment the french need fear no foe. the rich country of champagne, sparsely wooded, well cultivated, teemed with corn and wine, and abounded in fat cattle.[ ] champagne had not been devastated like normandy. there was a likelihood of obtaining food for the men-at-arms, especially if, as was hoped, the good towns supplied victuals. they were very wealthy; their barns overflowed with corn. while owing allegiance to king henry, no bonds of affection united them to the english or to the burgundians. they governed themselves. they were rich merchants, who only longed for peace and who did their best to bring it about. just now they were beginning to suspect that the armagnacs were growing the stronger party. these folk of champagne had a clergy and a _bourgeoisie_ who might be appealed to. it was not a question of storming their towns with artillery, mines, and trenches, but of getting round them with amnesties, concessions to the merchants and elaborate engagements to respect the privileges of the clergy. in this country there was no risk of rotting in hovels or burning in bastions. the townsfolk were expected to throw open their gates and partly from love, partly from fear, to give money to their lord the king. [footnote : _voyages du héraut berry_, bibl. nat. ms. fr. , fol. .] the campaign was already arranged, and that very skilfully. communications had been opened with troyes and châlons. by letters and messages from a few notables of reims it was made known to king charles that if he came they would open to him the gates of their town. he even received three or four citizens, who said to him, "go forth in confidence to our city of reims. it shall not be our fault if you do not enter therein."[ ] [footnote : jean rogier in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. - .] such assurances emboldened the royal council; and the march into champagne was resolved upon. the army assembled at gien; it increased daily. the nobles of brittany and poitou came in in great numbers, most of them mounted on sorry steeds[ ] and commanding but small companies of men. the poorest equipped themselves as archers, and in default of better service were ready to act as bowmen. villeins and tradesmen came likewise.[ ] from the loire to the seine and from the seine to the somme the only cultivated land was round _châteaux_ and fortresses. most of the fields lay fallow. in many places fairs and markets had been suspended. labourers were everywhere out of work. war, after having ruined all trades, was now the only trade. says eustache deschamps, "all men will become squires. scarce any artisans are left."[ ] at the place of meeting there assembled thirty thousand men, of whom many were on foot and many came from the villages, giving their services in return for food. there were likewise monks, valets, women and other camp-followers. and all this multitude was an hungered. the king went to gien and summoned the queen who was at bourges.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, pp. - . _journal du siège_, p. . cagny, p. . morosini, pp. - . loiseleur, _compte des dépenses_, pp. , .] [footnote : "_gens de guerre et de commun_," says perceval de cagny, p. .] [footnote : eustache deschamps ed. queux de saint-hilaire and g. raynaud, vol. i, p. , _passim_. th. basin, _histoire de charles vii et de louis xi_, vol. i, p. . letter from nicholas de clamanges to gerson, liv.] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. .] his idea was to take her to reims and have her crowned with him, following the example of queen blanche of castille, of jeanne de valois, and of queen jeanne, wife of king john. but queens had not usually been crowned at reims; queen ysabeau, mother of the present king, had received the crown from the hands of the archbishop of rouen in the sainte-chapelle, in paris.[ ] before her time, the wives of the kings, following the example set by berthe, wife of pepin the short, generally came to saint-denys to receive the crown of gold, of sapphire and of pearls given by jeanne of Évreux to the monks of the abbey.[ ] sometimes the queens were crowned with their husbands, sometimes alone and in a different place; many had never been crowned at all. [footnote : s.j. morand, _histoire de la sainte-chapelle royale du palais_, paris, , in to, p. , and _passim_.] [footnote : le p. j. doublet, _histoire de l'abbaye de saint-denys en france_, paris, , in fol., ch. , pp. _et seq._ dom félibien, _histoire de l'abbaye royale de saint-denis_, , in fol., pp. , , .] that king charles should have thought of taking queen marie on this expedition proves that he did not anticipate great fatigue or great danger. nevertheless, at the last moment the plan was changed. the queen, who had come to gien, was sent back to bourges. the king set out without her.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] quand le roy s'en vint en france, il feit oindre ses houssiaulx, et la royne lui demande: ou veult aller cest damoiseaulx?[ ] [footnote : when the king set out in france, he had his gaiters greased; and the queen asked him: whither will wend these damoiseaux? quoted according to _la chronique messine_ by vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. , note .] in reality the queen asked nothing. she was ill-favoured and weak of will.[ ] but the song says that the king on his departure had his old gaiters greased because he had no new ones. those old jokes about the poverty of the king of bourges still held good.[ ] the king had not grown rich. it was customary to pay the men-at-arms a part of their wages in advance. at gien each fighting man received three francs. it did not seem much, but they hoped to gain more on the way.[ ] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : see _ante_, pp. - .] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] on friday, the th of june, the maid set out from orléans for gien. on the morrow she dictated from gien a letter to the inhabitants of tournai, telling them how the english had been driven from all their strongholds on the loire and discomfited in battle. in this letter she invited them to come to the anointing of king charles at reims and called upon them to continue loyal frenchmen. here is the letter: [cross symbol] jhesus [cross symbol] maria. fair frenchmen and loyal, of the town of tournay, from this place the maid maketh known unto you these tidings: that in eight days, by assault or otherwise, she hath driven the english from all the strongholds they held on the river loire. know ye that the earl of suffort, lapoulle his brother, the sire of tallebord, the sire of scallez and my lords jean falscof and many knights and captains have been taken, and the brother of the earl of suffort and glasdas slain. i beseech you to remain good and loyal frenchmen; and i beseech and entreat you that ye make yourselves ready to come to the anointing of the fair king charles at rains, where we shall shortly be, and come ye to meet us when ye know that we draw nigh. to god i commend you. god keep you and give you his grace that ye may worthily maintain the good cause of the realm of france. written at gien the xxvth day of june. addressed "to the loyal frenchmen of the town of tournay."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . _registre des consaux, extraits analytiques des anciens consaux de la ville de tournay_, ed. h. vandenbroeck, vol. ii, p. . f. hennebert, _une lettre de jeanne d'arc aux tournaisiens_ in _arch. hist. et littéraires du nord de la france_, , vol. i, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. iii, p. .] an epistle in the same tenor must have been sent by the maid's monkish scribes to all the towns which had remained true to king charles, and the priests themselves must have drawn up the list of them.[ ] they would certainly not have forgotten that town of the royal domain, which, situated in flanders,[ ] in the heart of burgundian territory, still remained loyal to its liege lord. the town of tournai, ceded to philip the good by the english government, in , had not recognised its new master. jean de thoisy, its bishop, resided at duke philip's court;[ ] but it remained the king's town,[ ] and the well-known attachment of its townsfolk to the dauphin's fortunes was exemplary and famous.[ ] the consuls of albi, in a short note concerning the marvels of , were careful to remark that this northern city, so remote that they did not exactly know where it was, still held out for france, though surrounded by france's enemies. "the truth is that the english occupy the whole land of normandy, and of picardy, except tournay,"[ ] they wrote. [footnote : letter from charles vii to the people of dauphiné, published by fauché-prunelle, in _bulletin de l'académie delphinale_, vol. ii, p. ; to the inhabitants of tours, in _le cabinet historique_, vol. i, c. p. ; to those of poitiers, by redet, in _les mémoires de la société des antiquaires de l'ouest_, vol. iii, p. . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_ in _revue historique_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : this is a mere form of speech. le tournésis has always been territory separate from the county of flanders, the bishops of which were the former lords of tournai. as early as the king of france nominally held sovereign sway there. in reality the town was divided into two factions: the rich and the merchants were for the burgundian party, the common folk for the french (de la grange, _troubles à tournai_, - ).] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _chambre du roi._] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, pp. - . _chronique de tournai_, ed. smedt (_recueil des chroniques de flandre_, vol. iii, _passim_); _troubles à tournai_ ( - ) in _mémoires de la société historique et littéraire de tournai_, vol. xvii ( ). _extraits des anciens registres des consaux_, ed. vandenbroeck, vol. ii, _passim_. monstrelet, ch. lxvii, lxix. a. longnon, _paris sous la domination anglaise_, pp. , .] [footnote : the town clerk of albi in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] indeed the inhabitants of the bailiwick of tournai, jealously guarding the liberties and privileges accorded to them by the king of france, would not have separated themselves from the crown on any consideration. they protested their loyalty, and in honour of the king and in the hope of his recovering his kingdom they had grand processions; but their devotion stopped there; and, when their liege lord, king charles, urgently demanded the arrears of their contribution, of which he said he stood in great need, their magistrates deliberated and decided to ask leave to postpone payment again, and for as long as possible.[ ] [footnote : h. vandenbroeck, _extraits analytiques des anciens registres des consaux de la ville de tournai_, vol. ii, pp. - .] there is no doubt that the maid herself dictated this letter. it will be noticed that therein she takes to herself the credit and the whole credit for the victory. her candour obliged her to do so. in her opinion god had done everything, but he had done everything through her. "the maid hath driven the english out of all their strongholds." she alone could reveal so naïve a faith in herself. brother pasquerel would not have written with such saintly simplicity. it is remarkable that in this letter sir john fastolf should be reckoned among the prisoners. this mistake is not peculiar to jeanne. the king announces to his good towns that three english captains have been taken, talbot, the lord of scales and fastolf. perceval de boulainvilliers, in his latin epistle to the duke of milan, includes fastolf, whom he calls _fastechat_, among the thousand prisoners taken by the folk of dauphiné. finally, a missive despatched about the th of june, from one of the towns of the diocese of luçon, shows great uncertainty concerning the fate of talbot, fastolf and scales, "who are said to be either prisoners or dead."[ ] possibly the french had laid hands on some noble who resembled fastolf in appearance or in name; or perhaps some man-at-arms in order to be held to ransom had given himself out to be fastolf. the maid's letter reached tournai on the th of july. on the morrow the town council resolved to send an embassy to king charles of france.[ ] [footnote : letter from perceval de boulainvilliers, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . fragment of a letter concerning the marvels which have occurred in poitou, _ibid._, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. - .] [footnote : hennebert, _archives historiques et littéraires du nord de la france_, , vol. i, p. . _extraits des anciens registres des consaux_, ed. vandenbroeck, vol. ii, _loc. cit._] on the th of june, or about then, the maid caused letters to be despatched to the duke of burgundy, inviting him to come to the king's coronation. she received no reply.[ ] duke philip was the last man in the world to correspond with the maid. and that she should have written to him courteously was a sign of her goodness of heart. as a child in her village she had been the enemy of the burgundians before being the enemy of the english, but none the less she desired the good of the kingdom and a reconciliation between burgundians and french. [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . these letters are now lost. jeanne alludes to them in her letter of the th of july, . "_et à trois sepmaines que je vous avoye escript et envoie bonnes lettres par un héraut...._"] the duke of burgundy could not lightly pardon the ambush of montereau; but at no time of his life had he vowed an irreconcilable hatred of the french. an understanding had become possible after the year , when his brother-in-law, the constable of france, had excluded duke john's murderers from the royal council. as for the dauphin charles, he maintained that he had had nothing to do with the crime; but among the burgundians he passed for an idiot.[ ] in the depths of his heart duke philip disliked the english. after king henry v's death he had refused to act as their regent in france. then there was the affair of the countess jacqueline which very nearly brought about an open rupture.[ ] for many years the house of burgundy had been endeavouring to gain control over the low countries. at last duke philip attained his object by marrying his second cousin, john, duke of brabant to jacqueline of bavaria, countess of hainault, holland and zealand, and lady of friesland. jacqueline, finding her husband intolerable, fled to england, and there, having had her marriage annulled by the antipope, benedict xiii, married the duke of gloucester, the regent's brother. [footnote : dom plancher, _histoire de bourgogne_, vol. iv, pp. lvi, lvii. e. cosneau, _le connétable de richemont_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : dom plancher, _histoire de bourgogne_, vol. iv, proofs and illustrations, p. lv.] bedford, as prudent as gloucester was headstrong, made every effort to retain the great duke in the english alliance; but the secret hatred he felt for the burgundians burst forth occasionally in sudden acts of rage. whether he planned the assassination of the duke and the duke knew it, is uncertain. but at any rate it is alleged that one day the courteous bedford forgot himself so far as to say that duke philip might well go to england and drink more beer than was good for him.[ ] the regent had just tactlessly offended him by refusing to let him take possession of the town of orléans.[ ] now bedford was biting his fingers with rage. regretting that he had refused the duke the key to the loire and the heart of france, he was at present eager to offer him the province of champagne which the french were preparing to conquer: this was indeed just the time to present some rich gift to his powerful ally.[ ] [footnote : de barante, _histoire des ducs de bourgogne_, vol. v, p. . desplanques, _projet d'assassinat de philippe le bon par les anglais_ ( - ), in _les mémoires couronnées par l'académie de bruxelles_, xxxiii ( ).] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. , note .] meanwhile the great duke could think of nothing but the low countries. pope martin had declared the marriage of the countess jacqueline and gloucester to be invalid; and gloucester was marrying another wife. now the gargantua of dijon could once more lay hands on the broad lands of the fair jacqueline. he remained the ally of the english, intending to make use of them but not to play into their hands, and prepared, should he find it to his advantage, to make war on the french before being reconciled to them; he saw no harm in that. after the low countries what he cared most about were ladies and beautiful paintings, like those of the brothers van eyck. he would not be likely therefore to pay much attention to a letter from the maid of the armagnacs.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. - . quenson, _notice sur philippe le bon, la flandre et ses fêtes_, douai, , in vo. de reiffenberg, _les enfants naturels du duc philippe le bon_, in _bulletin de l'académie de bruxelles_, vol. xiii ( ).] chapter xvii the convention of auxerre--friar richard--the surrender of troyes on the th of june,[ ] the vanguard, commanded by marshal de boussac, the sire de rais, the captains la hire and poton, set out from gien in the direction of montargis with the design of pressing on to sens, which, so they had been wrongly informed, was deemed likely to open its gates to the dauphin. but, at the news that the town had hoisted the flag of st. andrew, as a sign of fidelity to the english and burgundians, the army changed its route, so little did it desire to take towns by force. the march was now directed towards auxerre, where a more favourable reception was expected.[ ] the maid in her impatience had not waited for the king. she rode with the company which had started first. had she been its leader she would not have turned from a town when its cannon were directed against her. [footnote : according to perceval de cagny, p. ; the th of june, according to chartier, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] the king set forth two days later, with the princes of the blood, many knights, the main battle, as it was called, and the sire de la trémouille, who commanded the expedition.[ ] all these troops arrived before auxerre on the st of july.[ ] there on the hill-slope, encircled with vineyards and cornfields, rose the ramparts, towers, roofs, and belfries of the blessed bishop germain's city. that town towards which in the summer sunshine, in the company of gallant knighthood, she was now riding, fully armed like a handsome saint maurice, jeanne had seen only three months before, under a dark and cloudy sky; then, clad like a stable-boy, in the company of two or three poor soldiers of fortune, she was travelling over a bad road, on her way to the dauphin charles.[ ] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . perceval de cagny, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. , note .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] since the county of auxerre had belonged to the duke of burgundy, upon whom it had been bestowed by the regent. the duke governed it through a bailie and a captain.[ ] [footnote : abbé lebeuf, _histoire ecclésiastique et civile d'auxerre_, vol. ii, p. ; vol. iii, pp. , .] the lord bishop, messire jean de corbie, formerly bishop of mende, was thought to be on the dauphin's side.[ ] the chapter of the cathedral on the other hand held to burgundy.[ ] twelve jurors, elected by the burgesses and other townsfolk, administered the affairs of the city. one can easily imagine that fear must have been the dominant sentiment in their hearts when they saw the royal army approaching. men-at-arms, no matter whether they wore the white cross or the red, inspired all town dwellers with a well-grounded terror. and, in order to turn from their gates these violent and murderous thieves, the townsfolk were capable of resorting to the strongest measures, even to that of putting their hands in their purses. [footnote : chardon, _histoire de la ville d'auxerre_, auxerre, ( vols. in vo), vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : dom plancher, _histoire de bourgogne_, vol. iv, p. . chardon, _histoire de la ville d'auxerre_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._ vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. .] the royal heralds summoned the people of auxerre to receive the king as their natural and lawful lord. such a summons, backed by lances, placed them in a very embarrassing position. alike by refusing and by consenting these good folk ran great risk. to transfer their allegiance was no light matter; their lives and their goods were involved. foreseeing this danger, and conscious of their weakness, they had entered into a league with the cities of champagne. the object of the league was to relieve its members from the burden of receiving men-at-arms and the peril of having two hostile masters. certain of the townsfolk therefore presented themselves before king charles and promised him such submission as should be accorded by the towns of troyes, châlons, and reims.[ ] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . abbé lebeuf, _histoire ecclésiastique d'auxerre_, vol. ii, p. . chardon, _histoire de la ville d'auxerre_, vol. ii, p. .] this was not obedience, neither was it rebellion. negotiations were begun; ambassadors went from the town to the camp and from the camp to the town. finally the confederates, who were not lacking in intelligence, proposed an acceptable compromise,--one that princes were constantly concluding with each other, to wit, a truce. they said to the king: "we entreat and request you to pass on, and we ask you to agree to refrain from fighting." and, in order to secure their request being granted, they gave two thousand crowns to the sire de la trémouille, who, it is said, kept them without a blush. further, the townsfolk undertook to revictual the army in return for money down; and that was worth considering, for there was famine in the camp.[ ] this truce by no means pleased the men-at-arms, who thereby lost a fine opportunity for robbery and pillage. murmurs arose; many lords and captains said that it would not be difficult to take the town, and that its capture should have been attempted. the maid, who was always receiving promises of victory from her voices, never ceased calling the soldiers to arms.[ ] unaffected by any of these things, the king concluded the proposed truce; for he cared not by force of arms to obtain more than could be compassed by peaceful methods. had he attacked the town he might have taken it and held it in his mercy; but it would have meant certain pillage, murder, burning, and ravishing. on his heels would have come the burgundians, and there would have been plundering, burning, ravishing, massacring over again. how many examples had there not been already of unhappy towns captured and then lost almost immediately, devastated by the french, devastated by the english and the burgundians, when each citizen kept in his coffer a red cap and a white cap, which he wore in turns! was there to be no end to these massacres and abominations, resentment against which caused the armagnacs to be cursed throughout l'Île de france, and which made it so hard for the lawful king to recover his town of paris. the royal council thought the time had come to put an end to these things. it was of opinion that charles of valois would the more easily reconquer his inheritance if, while manifesting his power, he showed himself lenient and exercised royal clemency, as in arms and yet pursuing peace, he continued his march to reims.[ ] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . gilles de roye, in _collection des chroniques belges_, pp. , . chardon, _histoire de la ville d'auxerre_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : "_de laquelle chose furent bien mal coutans aucuns seigneurs et cappitaines d'icellui ost et en parloient bien fort._" jean chartier, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : in the following manner this march is described by a contemporary: "on the said day ( th of june, ), after much discussion, the king set out and took his way for to go straight to the city of troye in champaigne, and, as he passed, all the fortresses on the one hand and the other, rendered him allegiance." perceval de cagny, p. .] after having spent three days under the walls of the town, the army being refreshed, crossed the yonne and came to the town of saint-florentin, which straightway submitted to the king.[ ] on the th of july, they reached the village of saint-phal, four hours' journey from troyes.[ ] [footnote : jean chartier, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _trial_, vol. v, pp. - .] in this strong town there was a garrison of between five and six hundred men at the most.[ ] a bailie, messire jean de dinteville, two captains, the sires de rochefort and de plancy, commanded in the town for king henry and for the duke of burgundy.[ ] troyes was a manufacturing town; the source of its wealth was the cloth manufacture. true, this industry had long been declining through competition and the removal of markets; its ruin was being precipitated by the general poverty and the insecurity of the roads. nevertheless the cloth workers' guild maintained its importance and sent a number of magistrates to the council.[ ] [footnote : jean chartier, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : th. boutiot, _histoire de la ville de troyes et de la champagne méridionale_, paris, ( vols. in vo), vol. ii, p. . for the members of this council see the most ancient register of its deliberations by a. roserot, in _collection des documents inédits relatifs à la ville de troyes_ ( ).] [footnote : f. bourquelot, _les foires de champagne_, paris, , vol. i, p. . louis batiffol, _jean jouvenel, prévôt des marchands_, paris, , in vo.] in , these merchants had sworn to the treaty which promised the french crown to the house of lancaster; they were then at the mercy of english and burgundians. for the holding of those great fairs, to which they took their cloth, they must needs live at peace with their burgundian neighbours, and if the _godons_ had closed the ports of the seine against their bales, they would have died of hunger. wherefore the notables of the town had turned english, which did not mean that they would always remain english. within the last few weeks great changes had taken place in the kingdom; and the gilles laiguisés, the hennequins, the jouvenels did not pride themselves on remaining unchanged amidst vicissitudes of fortune which were transferring the power from one side to the other. the french victories gave them food for reflection. along the banks of the streams, which wound through the city, there were weavers, dyers, curriers who were burgundian at heart.[ ] as for the churchmen, if they were thrilled by no love for the armagnacs, they felt none the less that king charles was sent to them by a special dispensation of divine providence. [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] the bishop of troyes was my lord jean laiguisé, son of master huet laiguisé, one of the first to swear to the treaty of .[ ] the chapter had elected him without waiting for the permission of the regent, who declared against the election, not that he disliked the new pontiff; messire jean laiguisé had sucked hatred of the armagnacs and respect for the rose of lancaster from his _alma mater_ of paris. but my lord of bedford could not forgive any slighting of his sovereign rights. [footnote : _gallia christiana_, vol. xiii, cols. - . courtalon-delaistre, _topographie historique du diocèse de troyes_ (troyes, , vols. in vo), vol. i, p. . th. boutiot, _histoire de la ville de troyes_, vol. ii, pp. , . de pange, _le pays de jeanne d'arc, le fief et l'arrière-fief_, paris, , in vo, p. .] shortly afterwards he incurred the censure of the whole church of france and was judged by the bishops worse than the cruellest tyrants of scripture--pharaoh, nebuchadnezzar, artaxerxes[ ]--who, when they chastised israel had spared the levites. more wicked than they and more sacrilegious, my lord of bedford threatened the privileges of the gallican church, when, on behalf of the holy see, he robbed the bishops of their patronage, levied a double tithe on the french clergy, and commanded churchmen to surrender to him the contributions they had been receiving for forty years. that he was acting with the pope's consent made his conduct none the less execrable in the eyes of the french bishops. the episcopal lords resolved to appeal from a pope ill informed to one with wider knowledge; for they held the authority of the bishop of rome to be insignificant in comparison with the authority of the council. they groaned: the abomination of desolation was laying waste christian gaul. in order to pacify the church of france thus roused against him, my lord of bedford convoked at paris the bishops of the ecclesiastical province of sens, which included the dioceses of paris, troyes, auxerre, nevers, meaux, chartres, and orléans.[ ] [footnote : siméon luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. ccxxii, according to labbe and cossart, _sacro-sancta-consilia_, vol. xii, col. .] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. ccxx and proofs and illustrations, ccix, pp. - . robillard de beaurepaire, _les états de normandie sous la domination anglaise_, Évreux, , in vo.] messire jean laiguisé attended this convocation. the synod was held at paris, in the priory of saint-eloi, under the presidency of the archbishop, from the st of march till the rd of april, .[ ] the assembled bishops represented to my lord the regent the sorry plight of the ecclesiastical lords: the peasants, pillaged by soldiers, no longer paid their dues; the lands of the church were lying waste; divine service had ceased to be held because there was no money with which to support public worship. unanimously they refused to pay the pope and the regent the double tithe; and they threatened to appeal from the pope to the council. as for despoiling the clergy of all the contributions they had received during the last forty years, that, they declared, would be impious; and with great charity they reminded my lord of bedford of the fate reserved by god's judgment for the impious even in this world. "the prince," they said, "should beware of the miseries and sorrows already fallen upon a multitude of princes, who with such demands had oppressed the church which god redeemed with his own precious blood: some had perished by the sword, some had been driven into exile, others had been despoiled of their illustrious sovereignties. wherefore such as set themselves to enslave the church, the bride of god, may not hope to deserve the grace of his divine majesty."[ ] [footnote : labbe and cossart, _sacro-sancta-consilia_, vol. xii, col. .] [footnote : labbe and cossart, _sacro-sancta-consilia_, vol. xii, col. , .] jean laiguisé's sentiments towards the english regent were those of the synod. it would be wrong, however, to conclude that the bishop of troyes desired the death of the sinner, or even that he was hostile to the english.[ ] the church is usually capable of temporising with the powers of this world. wide is her mercy, and great her longsuffering. she threatens oft before striking and receives the repentance of the sinner at the first sign of contrition. but we may believe that if charles of valois were to win the power and show the will to protect the church of france, the lord bishop and the chapter of troyes would fear lest if they resisted him they might be resisting god himself, since all power comes from god who _deposuit potentes_. [footnote : de pange, _le pays de jeanne d'arc, le fief et l'arrière-fief_, p. .] king charles had not ventured to enter champagne without taking measures for his safety; he knew on what he could rely in the town of troyes. he had received information and promises; he maintained secret relations with several burgesses of the city, and those none of the least.[ ] during the first fortnight of may, a royal notary, ten clerks and leading merchants, on their way to the king, were arrested just outside the walls, on the paris road, by the sire de chateauvillain,[ ] a captain in the english service. this mission was probably fulfilled by others more fortunate. it is easy to divine what questions were discussed at these audiences. the merchants would ask whether charles, if he became their lord, would guarantee absolute freedom to their trade; the clerks would ask his promise to respect the goods of the church. and the king doubtless was not sparing of his pledges. [footnote : j. rogier in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : th. boutiot in _histoire de la ville de troyes_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] the maid, with one division of the army, halted before the stronghold of saint-phal, belonging to philibert de vaudrey, commander of the town of tonnerre, in the service of the duke of burgundy.[ ] in that place of saint-phal, jeanne beheld approaching her a franciscan friar, who was crossing himself and sprinkling holy water, for he feared lest she were the devil, and dared not draw near without having first exorcised the evil spirit. it was friar richard who was coming from troyes.[ ] it will be interesting to see who this monk was as far as we can tell. [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . th. boutiot, _histoire de la ville de troyes_, vol. ii, p. . a. assier, _une cité champenoise au xv'e siècle_, troyes, , in mo.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. - . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] the place of his birth is unknown.[ ] a disciple of brother vincent ferrier and of brother bernardino of sienna, like them, he taught the imminent coming of antichrist and the salvation of the faithful by the adoration of the holy name of jesus.[ ] after having been on a pilgrimage to jerusalem, he returned to france, and preached at troyes, during the advent of . advent, sometimes called saint martin's lent, begins on the sunday which falls between the th of november and the rd of december. it lasts four weeks, which christians spend in making themselves ready to celebrate the mystery of the nativity. [footnote : ed. richer says his name was roch richard and that he was licentiate in theology. _histoire manuscrite de la pucelle_ (bibl. nat. fr. ), book , folios _et seq._ siméon luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_ (chap. x, jeanne d'arc et frère richard).] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . th. basin, _histoire de charles vii et de louis xi_, vol. i, p. . vallet de viriville, _procès de condamnation de jeanne d'arc_, . introduction, _notes sur deux médailles de plomb relatives à jeanne d'arc_, paris, , p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. ccxxxix.] "sow, sow your seed, my good folk," he said. "sow beans ready for the harvest, for he who is to come will come quickly."[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] by beans he meant the good works to be performed before our lord should come in the clouds to judge the quick and the dead. now it was important to sow those good works quickly, for the harvest-tide was drawing nigh. the coming of antichrist was but shortly to precede the end of the world and the consummation of the ages. in the month of april, , friar richard went to paris; the synod of the province of sens was then holding its final session. it is possible that the good friar was summoned to the great city by the bishop of troyes who was present at the synod; but at any rate it would appear that it was not the rights of the gallican church the wandering monk went there to defend.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . labbe, boutiot.] on the th of april, he preached his first sermon at sainte-geneviève; on the next and the following days, until sunday, the th, he preached every morning, from five until ten or eleven o'clock, in the open air, on a platform, erected against the charnel-house of the innocents, on the spot whereon was celebrated the dance of death. around the platform, about nine feet high, there crowded five or six thousand persons, to whom he announced the speedy coming of antichrist and the end of the world.[ ] "in syria," he said, "i met bands of jews; i asked them whither they were going, and they replied: 'we are wending in a multitude towards babylon, for of a truth the messiah is born among men, and he will restore unto us our inheritance, and he will bring us again to the land of promise.' thus spake those syrian jews. now scripture teaches us that he, whom they call the messiah, is in truth that antichrist, of whom it is said he shall be born in babylon, capital of the kingdom of persia, he shall be brought up at bethsaida and in his youth he shall dwell at chorazin. wherefore our lord said: 'woe unto thee, chorazin! woe unto thee, bethsaida.' the year ," added friar richard, "shall witness greater marvels than have ever been seen before.[ ] the time draweth nigh. he is born, the man of sin, the child of perdition, the wicked one, the beast vomited forth from the abyss, the abomination of desolation; he came out of the tribe of dan, of whom it is written: 'dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path.' soon shall return to the earth the prophets elijah and enoch, moses, jeremiah and saint john the evangelist; and soon shall dawn that day of wrath which shall grind the age in a mill and beat it in a mortar, according to the testimony of david and the sibyl."[ ] then the good brother concluded by calling upon them to repent, to do penance and to renounce empty riches. in short, in the opinion of the clerks, he was a man of worship and an orator. his sermons produced more devoutness among the people, it was thought, than those of all the sermonizers who for the last century had been preaching in the town. and it was time that he came, for in those days the folk of paris were greatly addicted to games of chance; yea, even priests unblushingly indulged in them, and seven years before, a canon of saint-merry, a great lover of dice was known to have gamed in his own house.[ ] despite war and famine, the women of paris loaded themselves with ornaments. they troubled more about their beauty than about the salvation of their souls. [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : th. basin, _histoire des règnes de charles vii et de louis xi_, vol. iv, pp. , .] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] friar richard thundered most loudly against the draught boards of the men and the ornaments of the women. one day notably, when he was preaching at boulogne-la-petite, he cried down dice and _hennins_,[ ] and spoke with such power that the hearts of those who listened were changed. on returning to their homes, the citizens threw into the streets gaming-tables, draught-boards, cards, billiard cues and balls, dice and dice-boxes, and made great fires before their doors. more than one hundred of these fires continued burning in the streets for three or four hours. women followed the good example set by the men that day, and the next they burnt in public their head-dresses, pads, ornaments, and the pieces of leather or whalebone on which they mounted the fronts of their hoods. young misses threw off their horns[ ] and their tails,[ ] ashamed to clothe themselves in the devil's garb.[ ] [footnote : a very high head-dress, fashionable in the fifteenth century (w.s.).] [footnote : _cornes_, the high-horned head-dress (w.s.).] [footnote : _queues_, trains (w.s.).] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , .] the good brother likewise caused to be burnt the mandrake roots which many folk kept in their houses.[ ] those roots are sometimes in the form of an ugly little man, of a curious and devilish aspect. on that account possibly, singular virtues are attributed to them. these mannikins were dressed in fine linen and silk and were kept in the belief that they would bring good luck and procure wealth. witches made much of them; and those who believed that the maid was a witch accused her of carrying a mandrake on her person. friar richard hated these magic roots all the more strongly because he believed in their power of attracting wealth, the root of all evil. once again his word was obeyed; and many a parisian threw away his mandrake in horror, albeit he had bought it dear from some old wife who knew more than was good for her.[ ] friar richard caused the parisians to replace these evil treasures by objects of greater edification,--pewter medals, on which was stamped the name of jesus, to the worship of whom he was especially devoted.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , . vallet de viriville, _notes sur deux médailles de plomb relatives à jeanne d'arc_, in _revue archéologique_, , pp. , .] having preached ten times in the town and once in the village of boulogne, the good brother announced his return to burgundy and took his leave of the parisians. "i will pray for you," he said; "pray for me. amen." whereupon all the folk, high and lowly, wept bitterly and copiously, as if each one were bearing to the grave his dearest friend. he wept with them and consented to delay his departure for a little.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] on sunday, the st of may, he was to preach to the devout parisians for the last time. montmartre, the very spot where saint denis had suffered martyrdom, was the place chosen for the meeting of the faithful. in those unhappy days the hill was well-nigh uninhabited. but on the evening before that day more than six thousand people flocked to the mount to be certain of having good places; and there they passed the night, some in deserted hovels, but the majority in the open, under the stars. when the morning came no friar richard appeared, and in vain they waited for him. disappointed and sad, at length they learnt that the friar had been forbidden to preach.[ ] he had said nothing in his sermons to offend the english. the parisians who had heard him believed him to be a good friend to the regent and to the duke of burgundy. perhaps he had taken flight owing to a report that the theologians of the university intended to proceed against him. his views concerning the end of the world were indeed both singular and dangerous.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] [footnote : it is yet to be explained how the author of the diary called _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_ avoided being scandalised by them, orthodox university professor as he was; on the contrary he seems to have found the views of the good father edifying. th. basin, _histoire des règnes de charles vii et de louis xi_, vol. iv, p. .] friar richard had gone off to auxerre. thence he went preaching through burgundy and champagne. if he was on the king's side he did not let it appear. for in the month of june the folk of champagne, and the inhabitants of châlons especially, deemed him a worthy man and attached to the duke of burgundy.[ ] and we have seen that on the th of july he suspected the maid of being either the devil or possessed by a devil.[ ] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. , see _ante_, p. .] she understood. when she saw the good brother crossing himself and sprinkling holy water she knew that he took her for something evil,--for a phantom fashioned by the spirit of wickedness, or at least for a witch.[ ] however, she was by no means offended as she had been by the suspicions of messire jean fournier. the priest, to whom she had confessed, could not be forgiven for having doubted whether she were a good christian.[ ] but friar richard did not know her, had never seen her. besides, she was growing accustomed to such treatment. the constable, brother yves milbeau, and many others who came to her asked whether she were from god or the devil.[ ] it was without a trace of anger, although in a slightly ironical tone, that she said to the preacher: "approach boldly, i shall not fly away."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : gruel, _chronique de richemont_, p. . eberhard windecke, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] meanwhile friar richard, by the ordeal of holy water and by the sign of the cross, had proved that the damsel was not a devil and that there was no devil in her. and when she said she had come from god he believed her with all his heart and esteemed her an angel of the lord.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] he confided to her the reason for his coming.[ ] the inhabitants of troyes doubted whether she were of god; to resolve their doubts he had come to saint-phal. now he knew she was of god, and he was not amazed; for he knew that the year would witness greater marvels than had ever been seen before, and one day or other he was expecting to behold the prophet elias walking and conversing with men.[ ] from that moment he threw in his lot with the party of the maid and the dauphin. it was not the maid's prophecies concerning the realm of france that attracted him to her. the world was too near its end for him to take any interest in the re-establishment of the madman's son in his inheritance. but he expected that once the kingdom of jesus christ had been established in the land of the lilies, jeanne, the prophetess, and charles, the temporal vicar of jesus christ, would lead the people of christendom to deliver the holy sepulchre. that would be a meritorious work and one which must be accomplished before the consummation of the ages. [footnote : _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, p. .] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] to the burgesses and inhabitants of the town of troyes jeanne dictated a letter. herein, calling herself the servant of the king of heaven and speaking in the name of god himself, in terms gentle yet urgent, she called upon them to render obedience to king charles of france, and warned them that whether they would or no she with the king would enter into all the towns of the holy kingdom and bring them peace. here is the letter:[ ] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. - .] jhesus [cross symbol] maria good friends and beloved, an it please you, ye lords, burgesses and inhabitants of the town of troies, jehanne the maid doth call upon and make known unto you on behalf of the king of heaven, her sovereign and liege lord, in whose service royal she is every day, that ye render true obedience and fealty to the fair king of france. whosoever may come against him, he shall shortly be in reins [transcriber's note: so in original] and in paris, and in his good towns of his holy kingdom, with the aid of king jhesus. ye loyal frenchmen, come forth to king charles and fail him not. and if ye come have no fear for your bodies nor for your goods. an if ye come not, i promise you and on your lives i maintain it, that with god's help we shall enter into all the towns of the holy kingdom and shall there establish peace, whosoever may oppose us. to god i commend you. god keep you if it be his will. answer speedily. before the city of troyes, written at saint-fale, tuesday the fourth day of july.[ ] [footnote : it should be monday, th july.] on the back: "to the lords and burgesses of the city of troyes." the maid gave this letter to friar richard, who undertook to carry it to the townsfolk.[ ] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] from saint-phal the army advanced towards troyes along the roman road.[ ] when they heard of the army's approach, the council of the town assembled on tuesday, the th, early in the morning, and sent the people of reims a missive of which the following is the purport: [footnote : th. boutiot, _histoire de la ville de troyes_, vol. ii, p. .] "this day do we expect the enemies of king henry and the duke of burgundy who come to besiege us. in view of the design of these our foes and having considered the just cause we support and the aid of our princes promised unto us, we have resolved in council, no matter what may be the strength of our enemies, to continue in our obedience waxing ever greater to king henry and to the duke of burgundy, even until death. and this have we sworn on the precious body of our lord jesus christ. wherefore we pray the citizens of reims to take thought for us as brethren and loyal friends, and to send to my lord the regent and the duke of burgundy to beseech and entreat them to take pity on their poor subjects and come to their succour."[ ] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , .] on that same day, in the morning, from his lodging at brinion-l'archevêque, king charles despatched his heralds bearing closed letters, signed by his hand, sealed with his seal, addressed to the members of the council of the town of troyes. therein he made known unto them that by the advice of his council, he had undertaken to go to reims, there to receive his anointing, that his intention was to enter the city of troyes on the morrow, wherefore he summoned and commanded them to render the obedience they owed him and prepare to receive him. he wisely made a point of reassuring them as to his intentions, which were not to avenge the past. such was not his will, he said, but let them comport themselves towards their sovereign as they ought, and he would forget all and maintain them in his favour.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . th. boutiot, _histoire de la ville de troyes_, vol. ii, p. .] the council refused to admit king charles' heralds within the town; but they received his letters, read them, deliberated over them, and made known to the heralds the result of their deliberations which was the following: "the lords, knights and squires who are in the town, on behalf of king henry and the duke of burgundy, have sworn with us, inhabitants of the city, that we will not receive into the town any who are stronger than we, without the express command of the duke of burgundy. having regard to their oath, those who are in the town would not dare to admit king charles." and the councillors added for their excuse: "whatever we the citizens may wish we must consider the men of war in the city who are stronger than we."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] the councillors had king charles' letter posted up and below it their reply. in council they read the letter the maid had dictated at saint-phal and entrusted to friar richard. the monk had not prepared them to give it a favourable reception, for they laughed at it heartily. "there is no rhyme or reason in it," they said. "'tis but a jest."[ ] they threw it in the fire without sending a reply. jeanne was a braggart,[ ] they said. and they added: "we certify her to be mad and possessed of the devil."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : in the _mystery of the siege of orléans_, the englishman falconbridge likewise treats jeanne as a boaster, lines - : _'y nous fault prandre la coquarde, qui veult les françois gouverner._ "we must capture that braggart who desires to govern the french."] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] that same day, at nine o'clock in the morning, the army began to march by the walls and take up its position round the town.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._ th. boutiot, _histoire de la ville de troyes_, vol. ii, p. .] those who encamped to the south west could thence admire the long walls, the strong gates, the high towers and the belfry of the city rising in the midst of a vast plain. on their right they would see above the roofs the church of saint-pierre, the huge structure of which was devoid of tower and steeple.[ ] it was there that eight years before had been celebrated the betrothal of king henry v of england to the lady catherine of france. for in that town of troyes, queen ysabeau and duke jean had made king charles vi, bereft of sense and memory, sign away the kingdom of the lilies to the king of england and put his name to the ruin of charles of valois. at her daughter's betrothal, madame ysabeau was present wearing a robe of blue silk damask and a coat of black velvet lined with the skins of fifteen hundred minevers.[ ] after the ceremony she caused to be brought for her entertainment her singing birds, goldfinches, chaffinches, siskins and linnets.[ ] [footnote : l. pigeotte, _Étude sur les travaux d'achèvement de la cathédrale de troyes_, p. . a. babeau, _les vues d'ensemble de troyes_, troyes, , in vo, p. . a. assier, _une cité champenoise au xv'e siècle_, paris, , in vo.] [footnote : ermine (w.s.).] [footnote : _comptes de l'argenterie de la reine_, in jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. iii, pp. , . de barante, _histoire des ducs de bourgogne_, vol. iii, pp. , . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. . th. boutiot, _histoire de la ville de troyes_, vol. ii, pp. , .] when the french arrived, most of the townsfolk were on the ramparts looking more curious than hostile and apparently fearing nothing. they desired above all things to see the king.[ ] [footnote : it is impossible to take seriously those protestations of loyalty to the english, addressed to the people of reims by the townsfolk of troyes, when the latter were on the point of surrendering to the french king, and especially after the reply they had just sent to king charles's letters. see j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . "which reply having been made each of them had gone up on to the walls, and assumed his guard with the intent and in the firm resolution that if any attack were made on them, they would resist to the death."] the town was strongly defended. the duke of burgundy had long been keeping up the fortifications. in and the people of troyes, like those of orléans in , had pulled down their suburbs and destroyed all the houses outside the town for two or three hundred paces from the ramparts. the arsenal was well furnished; the stores overflowed with victuals; but the anglo-burgundian garrison amounted only to between five and six hundred men.[ ] [footnote : j. chartier, vol. i, p. . th. boutiot, _histoire de la ville de troyes_, vol. ii, pp. , , . a. assier, _une cité champenoise au xv'e siècle_, p. .] on that day also, at five o'clock in the afternoon, the councillors of the town of troyes sent to inform the people of reims of the arrival of the armagnacs, and despatched to them copies of the letter from charles of valois, of their reply to it and of the maid's letter, which they cannot therefore have burned immediately. they likewise communicated to them their resolution to resist to the death in case they should receive succour. in like manner they wrote to the people of châlons to tell them of the dauphin's coming; and to them they made known that the letter of jeanne the maid had been brought to troyes by friar richard the preacher.[ ] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , .] these writings amounted to saying: like all citizens in such circumstances, we are in danger of being hanged either by the burgundians or by the armagnacs, which would be very grievous. to avoid this calamity as far as in us lies, we give king charles of valois to understand that we do not open our gates to him because the garrison prevents us and that we are the weaker, which is true. and we make known to our lords, the regent and the duke of burgundy, that the garrison being too weak to defend us, which is true, we ask for succour, which is loyal; and we trust that the succour will not be sent, for if it were we should have to endure a siege, and risk being taken by assault which for us merchants would be grievous. but, having asked for succour and not receiving it, we may then surrender without reproach. the important point is to cause the garrison, fortunately a small one, to make off. five hundred men are too few for defence, but too many for surrender. as for enjoining the citizens of reims to demand succour for themselves and for us, that is merely to prove our good-will to the duke of burgundy; and we risk nothing by it, for we know that our trusty comrades of reims will take care that when they ask for succour they do not receive it, and that they will await a favourable opportunity for opening their gates to king charles, who comes with a strong army. and now to conclude, we will resist to the death if we are succoured, which god forbid! such were the crafty thoughts of those dwellers in champagne. the citizens fired a few stone bullets on to the french. the garrison skirmished awhile and returned into the town.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . th. boutiot, _histoire de la ville de troyes_, vol. ii, p. .] meanwhile king charles' army was stricken with famine.[ ] the archbishop of embrun's counsel to provide the army with victuals by means of human wisdom was easier to give than to follow. there were between six and seven thousand men in camp who had not broken bread for a week. the men-at-arms were reduced to feeding on pounded ears of corn still green and on the new beans they found in abundance. then they called to mind how during saint martin's lent friar richard had said to the folk of troyes: "sow beans broadcast: he who is to come shall come shortly." what the good brother had said of the spiritual seed-time was interpreted literally: by a curious misunderstanding, what had been uttered concerning the coming of the messiah was applied to the coming of king charles. friar richard was held to be the prophet of the armagnacs and the men-at-arms really believed that this evangelical preacher had caused the beans they gathered to grow; thus had he provided for their nourishment by his excellence, his wisdom and his penetration into the counsels of god, who gave manna unto the people of israel in the desert.[ ] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] the king, who had been lodging at brinion since the th of july, arrived before troyes in the afternoon of friday the th.[ ] that very day he held council of war with the commanders and princes of the blood to decide whether they should remain before the town until by dint of promises[ ] or threats they obtained its submission, or whether they should pass on, leaving it to itself, as they had done at auxerre.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . nevertheless see also morosini, vol. iii, p. , note.] [footnote : "and always desiring and discussing the submission of this city." jean chartier, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . evidence of dunois. jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . chartier and the _chronique de la pucelle_ put words into the mouths of regnault de chartres and robert le maçon which are very improbable.] the discussion had lasted long when the maid arrived and prophesied: "fair dauphin," said she, "command your men to attack the town of troyes and delay no further in councils too prolonged, for, in god's name, before three days, i will cause you to enter the town, which shall be yours by love or by force and courage. and false burgundy shall look right foolish."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . evidence of dunois. _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] wherefore had they contrary to their custom summoned her to the council? it was merely a question of firing a few cannon balls and pretending to scale the walls, in short, of making a false attack. such a feigned assault was due to the people of troyes, who could not decently surrender save to some display of force; and besides the lower orders must be frightened, for they remained at heart burgundian. probably my lord of trèves[ ] or another judged that the little saint by appearing beneath the ramparts of troyes would strike a religious terror into the weavers of the city. [footnote : jean chartier, vol. i, p. .] they had only to leave her to go her own way. the council over, she mounted her horse, and lance in hand hurried to the moat, followed by a crowd of knights, squires, and craftsmen.[ ] the point of attack was to be the north west wall, between the madeleine and the comporté gates.[ ] jeanne, who firmly believed that the town would be taken by her, spent the night inciting her people to bring faggots and put the artillery in position. "to the assault," she cried, and signed to them to throw hurdles into the trenches.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : th. boutiot, _histoire de la ville de troyes_, vol. ii, p. , note. a. assier, _une cité champenoise au xv'e siècle_, paris, , in vo, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . (de gaucourt's evidence.)] this threat had the desired effect. the lower orders, imagining the town already taken, and expecting the french to come to pillage, massacre and ravish, as was the custom, took refuge in the churches. as for the clerics and notables, this was just what they wanted.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] being assured by charles of valois that they might come to him in safety, the lord bishop jean laiguisé, my lord guillaume andouillette, master of the hospital, the dean of the chapter, the clergy and the notables went to the king.[ ] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _trial_, pp. , , . chartier, _journal du siège_, _chronique de la pucelle_. camusat, _mél. hist._, part ii, fol. .] jean laiguisé was the spokesman. he came to do homage to the king and to offer excuse for the townsfolk. it is not their fault, he said, if the king enter not according to his good pleasure. the bailie and those of the garrison, some three or four hundred, guard the gates, and forbid their being opened. let it please the king to have patience until i have spoken to those of the town. i trust that as soon as i have spoken to them, they will open the gates and render the king such obedience as he shall be pleased withal.[ ] [footnote : _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, in _revue historique_, vol. iv, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, _journal du siège_, chartier, _loc. cit._ gilles de roye in chartier, vol. iii, p. .] in replying to the bishop, the king set forth the reasons for the expedition and the rights he held over the town of troyes. without exception, he said, i will forgive all the deeds of past times, and, according to the example of saint louis,[ ] i will maintain the people of troyes in peace and liberty. [footnote : j. rogier in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] jean laiguisé demanded that such revenues and patronage as had been bestowed on churchmen by the late king, charles vi, should be retained by them, and that those who had received the same from king henry of england should be given charters by king charles authorizing them to keep their benefices, even in cases where the king had bestowed them on others. the king consented and the lord bishop beheld in him a new cyrus. this conference he reported to the council of the town. thereupon it deliberated and resolved to render allegiance to the king, in consideration of his legal right and provided he would grant an amnesty for all offences, would leave no garrison in the city and would abolish all aids, save the _gabelle_.[ ] whereupon the council sent letters to the citizens of reims making known to them this resolution and exhorting them to take a similar one: [footnote : _gabelle_, word of german origin (_gabe_), originally applied to all taxes, came to signify only the tax on salt. this tax was first rendered oppressive by philippe de valois ( - ) who created a monopoly of salt in favour of the crown. he obliged each family to pay a tax on a certain quantity whether they consumed it or not. the _gabelle_, which led to several rebellions, was not abolished until the revolution ( ). (w.s.) _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _ordonnances des rois de france_, vol. xiii, p. . th. boutiot, _histoire de la ville de troyes_, vol. ii, p. . a. roserot, _le plus ancien registre des délibérations du conseil de la ville de troyes_ in _coll. de doc. inédits sur la ville de troyes_, vol. iii, p. .] "thus," they said, "we shall have the same lord over us. you will keep your lives and your goods, as we have done. for otherwise we should all be lost. we do not regret our submission. our only grief is that we delayed so long. you will be right glad to follow our example; for king charles is a prince of greater discretion, understanding and valour than any who for many a long year have arisen in the noble house of france."[ ] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , .] friar richard went to find the maid. as soon as he saw her, and when he was still afar off, he knelt before her. when she saw him, she likewise knelt before him, and they bowed low to each other. when he returned to the town, the good friar preached to the folks at length and exhorted them to obey king charles. "god is preparing his way," he said. "to accompany him and to lead him to his anointing god hath sent him a holy maid, who, as i firmly believe, is as able to penetrate the mysteries of god as any saint in paradise, save saint john the evangelist."[ ] the good brother found himself obliged to recognise as superior to jeanne at least one saint,--one who was the first of saints, the apostle who had lain with his head on jesus' breast, the prophet who was ere long to return to earth, when the ages should have been consummated. [footnote : _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, in _revue historique_, vol. iv, p. .] "if she wished," continued friar richard, "she could bring in all the king's men-at-arms, over the walls or in any other manner that pleased her. and many other things can she do." the townsfolk had great faith and confidence in this good brother who spoke so eloquently. what he said of the maid appeared to them admirable, and won their obedience to a king so powerfully accompanied. with one voice they all cried aloud, "long live king charles of france!"[ ] [footnote : _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, in _revue historique_, vol. iv, p. .] but now it was necessary to treat with the bailie. he was not unapproachable, seeing that he had suffered this going and coming from the town to the camp and the camp to the town; and with him must be devised some honest means of getting rid of the garrison. with this object the commonalty, preceded by the lord bishop, went in great numbers to the bailie and the captains, and called upon them to provide for the safety of the town.[ ] this demand they were incapable of granting, for to safeguard a city against its will and to drive out thirty thousand french was beyond their power. [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , .] as the townsfolk had anticipated, the bailie was greatly embarrassed. beholding his perplexity, the councillors of the town said to him, "if you will not keep the treaty you have made for the public weal, then will we bring the king's men into the city, whether you will or no." the bailie and the captains refused to betray their english and burgundian masters, but they consented to go. that was all that was required of them.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , ; vol. iv, pp. , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. iii, p. . th. boutiot, _histoire de la ville de troyes_, vol. ii, pp. , . m. poinsignon, _histoire générale de la champagne et de la brie_, châlons, , vol. i, pp. _et seq._ a. assier, _une cité champenoise au xv'e siècle_, paris, , in mo, pp. , .] the town opened its gates to charles. on sunday, the th of july, very early in the morning, the maid entered first into troyes and with her the common folk whom she so dearly loved. friar richard accompanied her. she posted archers along the streets which the procession was to follow, so that the king of france should pass through the town between a double row of those foot soldiers of his army who had so nobly aided him.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] while charles of valois was entering by one gate, the burgundian garrison was going out by the other.[ ] as had been agreed, the men of king henry and duke philip bore away their arms and other possessions. now, in their possessions they included such french prisoners as they were holding to ransom. and, according to the use and custom of war, it would seem that they were not altogether wrong; but pitiful it was to see king charles's men led away captive just as their lord was arriving. the maid heard of it, and her kind heart was touched. she hurried to the gate of the town, where with arms and baggage the fighting men were assembled. she found there the lords of rochefort and philibert de moslant. she challenged them and called to them to leave the dauphin's men. but the captains thought otherwise. [footnote : chartier, _journal du siège_. _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] "thus to proceed against the treaty is fraudulent and wicked," they said to her. meanwhile the prisoners on their knees were entreating the saint to keep them. "in god's name," she cried, "they shall not go."[ ] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] during this altercation there was standing apart a certain burgundian squire, and through his mind were passing concerning the maid of the armagnacs certain reflections to which he was to give utterance later. "by my faith," he was thinking, "it is the simplest creature that ever i saw. there is neither rhyme nor reason in her, no more than in the greatest stupid. to so valiant a woman as madame d'or, i will not compare her, and the burgundians do but jest when they appear afraid of her."[ ] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , .] to taste the full flavour of this joke it must be explained that madame d'or, about as high as one's boot, held the office of fool to my lord philip.[ ] [footnote : lefèvre de saint-rémy, vol. ii, p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. clxxiii, clxxiv. p. champion, _notes sur jeanne d'arc_, i. _madame d'or et jeanne d'arc_ in _le moyen âge_, july to august, , pp. - .] the maid failed to come to an understanding with the lords de rochefort and de moslant concerning the prisoners. they had right on their side. she had only the promptings of her kind heart. this discussion afforded great entertainment to the men-at-arms of both parties. when king charles was informed of it, he smiled and said that to settle the dispute he would pay the prisoners' ransom, which was fixed at one silver mark per head. on receiving this sum the burgundians extolled the generosity of the king of france.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _un prince de façon_, martial d'auvergne, _vigiles_, vol. i, pp. , .] on that same sunday, about nine o'clock in the morning, king charles entered the city. he had put on his festive robes, gleaming with velvet, with gold, and with precious stones. the duke of alençon and the maid, holding her banner in her hand, rode at his side. he was followed by all the knighthood. the townsfolk lit bonfires and danced in rings. the little children cried, "noël!" friar richard preached.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . letter from three noblemen of anjou, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. . th. boutiot, _histoire de la ville de troyes_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] the maid prayed in the churches. in one church she held a babe over the baptismal font. like a princess or a holy woman, she was frequently asked to be godmother to children she did not know and was never to see again. she generally named the children charles in honour of the king, and to the girls she gave her own name of jeanne. sometimes she called the children by names chosen by their mothers.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] on the morrow, the th of july, the army, which had remained outside the walls, under the command of messire ambroise de loré, passed through the town. the entrance of men-at-arms was a scourge, of which the citizens were as much afraid as of the black death.[ ] king charles, being careful to spare the citizens, took measures to control this scourge. by his command the heralds cried that under pain of hanging no soldier must enter the houses or take anything against the will of the townsfolk.[ ] [footnote : t. babeau, _le guet et la milice bourgeoise à troyes_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . th. boutiot, _histoire de la ville de troyes_, vol. ii, p. . a. roserot, _le plus ancien registre des délibérations du conseil de troyes_ in _coll. des documents inédits de la ville de troyes_, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] chapter xviii the surrender of chÂlons and of reims--the coronation leaving troyes, the royal army entered into the poorer part of champagne, crossed the aube near arcis, and took up its quarters at lettrée, twelve and a half miles from châlons. from lettrée the king sent his herald montjoie to the people of châlons to ask them to receive him and render him obedience.[ ] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. . edition barthélémy of _l'histoire de la ville de châlons-sur-marne_, proofs and illustrations no. , pp. , .] the towns of champagne were as closely related as the fingers of one hand. when the dauphin was at brinion-l'archevêque, the people of châlons had heard of it from their friends of troyes. the latter had even told them that friar richard, the preacher, had brought them a letter from jeanne the maid. whereupon the folk of châlons wrote to those of reims: "we are amazed at friar richard. we esteemed him a man right worthy. but he has turned sorcerer. we announce unto you that the citizens of troyes are making war against the dauphin's men. we are resolved to resist the enemy with all our strength."[ ] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , . varin, _archives législatives de la ville de reims, statuts_, vol. , pp. _et seq._ (_coll. des documents inédits sur l'histoire de france_, ).] they thought not one word of what they wrote, and they knew that the citizens of reims would believe none of it. but it was important to display great loyalty to the duke of burgundy before receiving another master. the count bishop of châlons came out to lettrée to meet the king and gave up to him the keys of the town. he was jean de montbéliard-saarbrück, one of the sires of commercy.[ ] [footnote : _gallia christiana_, vol. v, col. - . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. - . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . l. barbat, _histoire de la ville de châlons_, ( vols. in to), vol. i, p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, proofs and illustrations no. . morosini, vol. iii, p. , note .] on the th of july the king and his army entered the town of châlons.[ ] there the maid found four or five peasants from her village come to see her, and with them jean morel, who was her kinsman. by calling a husbandman, and about forty-three years of age, he had fled with the d'arc family to neufchâteau on the passing of the men-at-arms. jeanne gave him a red gown which she had worn.[ ] at châlons also she met another husbandman, younger than morel by about ten years, gérardin from Épinal, whom she called her _compeer_,[ ] just as she called gérardin's wife isabellette her _commère_[ ] because she had held their son nicolas over the baptismal font and because a godmother is a mother in the spirit. at home in the village jeanne mistrusted gérardin because he was a burgundian. at châlons she showed more confidence in him and talked to him of the progress of the army, saying that she feared nothing except treason.[ ] already she had dark forebodings; doubtless she felt that henceforth the frankness of her soul and the simplicity of her mind would be hardly assailed by the wickedness of men and the confusing forces of circumstance. already the words of saint michael, saint catherine and saint margaret had lost some of their primitive clearness, for they had come to treat of those french and burgundian state secrets which were not heavenly matters. [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . letter from three noblemen of anjou in _trial_, vol. v, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . _chronique des cordeliers_, fol. , v. e. de barthélémy, _châlons pendant l'invasion anglaise_, châlons, , p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , (jean morel's evidence).] [footnote : french _compère_, gossip or fellow godfather, sometimes a close friend. cf. chaucer, prologue to canterbury tales: "with hym ther was a gentil pardoner of rouncivale, his freend and his compeer" (w.s.).] [footnote : _commère_, fellow godmother (w.s.).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. (evidence of gérardin of Épinal).] the people of châlons, following the example of their friends of troyes, wrote to the inhabitants of reims that they had received the king of france and that they counselled them to do likewise. in this letter they said they had found king charles kind, gracious, pitiful, and merciful; and of a truth the king was dealing leniently with the towns of champagne. the people of châlons added that he had a great mind and a fine bearing.[ ] that was saying much. [footnote : "in as much as he is the prince of the greatest discretion, understanding, and valour that has long been seen in the noble house of france." j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . varin, _archives de reims, statuts_, vol. i, p. . h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, pp. _et seq._] the citizens of reims acted with extreme caution. on the arrival of the king of france in the neighbourhood of the town, while they sent informing him that their gates should be opened to him, to their lord philip and likewise to the burgundians and english captains, they sent word of the progress of the royal army as far as they knew it, and called upon them to oppose the enemy's march.[ ] but they were in no hurry to obtain succour, reckoning that, should they receive none, they could surrender to king charles without incurring any censure from the burgundians, and that thus they would have nothing to fear from either party. for the moment they preserved their loyalty to the two sides, which was wise in circumstances so difficult and so dangerous. while observing the craft with which these towns of champagne practised the art of changing masters, it is well to remember that their lives and possessions depended on their knowledge of that art. [footnote : j. rogier, _loc. cit._ varin, p. .] as early as the st of july captain philibert de moslant wrote to them from nogent-sur-seine, where he was with his burgundian company, that if they needed him he would come to their help like a good christian.[ ] they feigned not to understand. after all, the lord philibert was not their captain. what he proposed to do was, as he said, only out of christian charity. the notables of reims, who did not wish for deliverance, had to beware, above all, of their natural deliverer, the sire de chastillon, grand steward of france, the commander of the town.[ ] and they must needs request help in such a manner as not to obtain their request, for fear of being like the israelites, of whom it is written: _et tribuit eis petitionem eorum_. [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. _et seq._ varin, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, p. . dom marlot, _hist. metrop. remensis_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] when the royal army was yet before the walls of troyes, a herald appeared at the gates of reims, bearing a letter given by the king, at brinion-l'archevêque, on monday, the th of july. this letter was delivered to the council. "you may have heard tidings," said the king to his good people of reims, "of the success and victory it hath pleased god to vouchsafe unto us over our ancient enemies, the english, before the town of orléans and since then at jargeau, beaugency, and meung-sur-loire, in each of which places our enemies have received grievous hurt; all their leaders and others to the number of four thousand have been slain or taken prisoners. such things having happened, more by divine grace than human skill, we, according to the advice of our princes of the blood and the members of our great council, are coming to the town of reims to receive our anointing and coronation. wherefore we summon you, on the loyalty and obedience you owe us, to dispose yourselves to receive us in the accustomed manner as you have done for our predecessors."[ ] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. - .] and king charles, adopting towards the citizens of reims that same wise benignity he had shown to the citizens of troyes, promised them full pardon and oblivion. "be not deterred," he said, "by matters that are past and the fear that we may remember them. be assured that if now ye act towards us as ye ought, ye shall be dealt with as becometh good and loyal subjects." he even asked them to send notables to treat with him. "if, in order to be better informed concerning our intentions, certain citizens of reims would come to us with the herald, whom we send, we should be well pleased. they may come in safety and in such numbers as shall seem good to them."[ ] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] on the delivery of this letter the council was convoked, but it so befell that there were not enough aldermen to deliberate; hence the council was relieved from a serious embarrassment. whereupon the common folk were assembled in the various quarters of the city, and from the citizens thus consulted was obtained the following crafty declaration: "it is our intention to live and die with the council and the notables. according to their advice we shall act in concord and in peace, without murmuring or making answer, unless it be by the counsel and decree of the commander of reims and his lieutenant."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, pp. _et seq._] the sire de chastillon, commander of the town, was then at château-thierry with his lieutenants, jean cauchon and thomas de bazoches, both of them knights. the citizens of reims deemed it wise that he should see king charles's letter. their bailie, guillaume hodierne, went to the lord captain and showed it to him. most faithfully did the bailie express the sentiments of the people of reims: he asked the sire de chastillon to come to their deliverance, but he asked in such a manner that he did not come. that was the all-important point; for by not appealing to him they laid themselves open to a charge of treason, while if he did come they risked having to endure a siege grievous and dangerous. with this object the bailie declared that the citizens of reims, desirous to communicate with their captains, were willing to receive him if he were accompanied by no more than fifty horse. herein they displayed their good will, being entitled to refuse to receive a garrison within their walls; this privilege notwithstanding, they consented to admit fifty horse, which meant about two hundred fighting men. as the citizens had foreseen, the sire de chastillon judged such a number insufficient for his safety. he demanded as the conditions of his coming, that the town should be victualled and put in a state of defence, that he should enter it with three or four hundred combatants, that the defence of the city as well as of the castle should be entrusted to him, and that there should be delivered up to him five or six notables as hostages. on these conditions he declared himself ready to live and die for them.[ ] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , . varin, _archives de reims_, pp. , . h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, p. .] he marched with his company to within a short distance of the town, and then made known to the townsfolk that he had come to succour them.[ ] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, pp. , .] the english were indeed recruiting troops wherever they could and pressing all manner of folk into their service. they were said to be arming even priests; and the regent was certainly pressing into his service the crusaders disembarked in france, whom the cardinal of winchester was intending to lead against the hussites.[ ] as we may imagine, king henry's council did not fail to inform the inhabitants of reims of the armaments which were being assembled. on the rd of july they were told that the troops were crossing the sea, and on the th colard de mailly, bailie of vermandois, announced that they had landed. but these tidings failed to inspire the folk of champagne with any great confidence in the power of the english. while the sire de chastillon was promising that in forty days they should have a fine large army from beyond the seas, king charles with thirty thousand combatants was but a few miles from their gates. the sire de chastillon perceived, what he had previously suspected, that he was tricked. the citizens of reims refused to admit him. nothing remained for him but to turn round and join the english.[ ] [footnote : falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . _journal du siège_, p. . rymer, _foedera_, vol. x, p. . s. bougenot, _notices et extraits des manuscrits intéressants l'histoire de france conservés à la bibliothèque impériale de vienne_, p. . raynaldi, _annales ecclesiastici_, vol. ix, pp. , . morosini, vol. iv, supplement, xvii.] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , .] on the th of july, from my lord regnault de chartres, archbishop and duke of reims, the townsfolk received a letter requesting them to make ready for the king's coming.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . l. paris, _cabinet historique_, , p. .] the council of the city having assembled on that day, the clerk proceeded to draw up an official report of its deliberations: "... after having represented to my lord of chastillon that he is the commander and that the lords and the mass of the people who...."[ ] [footnote : h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, p. .] he wrote no more. finding it difficult to protest their loyalty to the english while making ready king charles's coronation, and considering it imprudent to recognize a new prince without being forced to it, the citizens abruptly renounced the silver of speech and took refuge in the gold of silence. on saturday, the th, king charles took up his quarters in the castle of sept-saulx, ten miles from the city where he was to be crowned. this fortress had been erected two hundred years before by the warlike predecessors of my lord regnault. its proud keep commanded the crossing of the vesle.[ ] there the king received the citizens of reims, who came in great numbers to do him homage.[ ] then, with the maid and his whole army, he resumed his march. having traversed the last stage of the highroad which wound along the bank of the vesle, he entered the great city of champagne at nightfall. the southern gate, called dieulimire, lowered its drawbridge and raised its two portcullises to let him pass.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, p. ; _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _chronique des cordeliers_, fol. , v'o. _journal du siège_, p. . bergier, _poème sur la tapisserie de jeanne d'arc_, p. . h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, pp. , . f. pinon, _notice sur sept-saulx_, in _travaux de l'académie de reims_, vol. vi, p. .] [footnote : j. rogier, in _trial_, pp. _et seq._ dom marlot, _histoire de la ville de reims_, vol. iv, reims, ( vol. in to), vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, p. .] according to tradition the coronation should take place on a sunday. this rule was found mentioned in a ceremonial which was believed to have served for the coronation of louis viii and was considered authoritative.[ ] the citizens of reims worked all night in order that everything might be ready on the morrow.[ ] they were urged on by their sudden affection for the king of france and likewise by their fear lest he and his army[ ] should spend many days in their city. their horror of receiving and maintaining men-at-arms within their gates they shared with the citizens of all towns, who in their panic were incapable of distinguishing armagnac soldiers from english and burgundians. wherefore in all things were they diligent, but with the firm intention of paying as little as possible. seeing that to them the coronation brought neither profit nor honour, the aldermen were accustomed to throw the burden of it on the archbishop, who, they said, as peer of france,[ ] would receive the emoluments. [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , , note. "this ritual dates back certainly as far as the th century. it is preserved in the library at reims in a ms. which appears to have been written about ." communicated by m. h. jadart. varin, _archives de reims_, vol. i, p. . dom marlot, _histoire de la ville de reims_, vol. iii, p. , and vol. iv, proofs and illustrations no. . h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . letter from three noblemen of anjou, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _pro evitando onus armatorum_, _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : thirion, _les frais du sacre_ in _travaux de l'académie de reims_, . see varin, _archives de reims_, table of contents under the word, _sacre_. dom marlot, _histoire de la ville de reims_, vol. iii, pp. , , , , ; vol. iv, pp. , , .] [illustration: charles vii, king of france _from an old engraving_] the royal ornaments, which, after the coronation of the late king, had been deposited in the sacristy of saint-denys, were in the hands of the english. the crown of charlemagne, brilliant with rubies, sapphires and emeralds, adorned with four flowers-de-luce, which the kings of france received on their coronation, the english wished to place on the head of their king henry. this child king they were preparing to gird with the sword of charlemagne, the illustrious joyeuse, which in its sheath of violet velvet slept in the keeping of the burgundian abbot of saint-denys. in english hands likewise were the sceptre surmounted by a golden charlemagne in imperial robes, the rod of justice terminated by a hand in horn of unicorn, the golden clasp of saint louis' mantle, and the golden spurs and the pontifical, containing within its enamelled binding of silver-gilt the ceremonial of the coronation.[ ] the french must needs make shift with a crown kept in the sacristy of the cathedral.[ ] the other signs of royalty handed down from clovis, from saint charlemagne and saint louis must be represented as well as could be. after all, it was not unfitting that this coronation, won by a single expedition, should be expressive of the labour and suffering it had cost. it was well that the ceremony should suggest something of the heroic poverty of the men-at-arms and the common folk who had brought the dauphin thither. [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. , note . c. leber, _des cérémonies du sacre ou recherches historiques et antiques sur les moeurs, les coutumes, les institutions et le droit public des français dans l'ancienne monarchie_, paris-reims, , in vo. a. lenoble, _histoire du sacre et du couronnement des rois et des reines de france_, paris, , in vo.] [footnote : "et si ipse expectasset habuisset unam coronam millesies ditiorem," _trial_, vol. i, p. . varin, _archives de reims_, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] kings were anointed with oil, because oil signifies renown, glory, and wisdom. in the morning the sires de rais, de boussac, de graville and de culant were deputed by the king to go and fetch the holy ampulla.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . varin, _archives de reims_, vol. ii, p. ; vol. iii, p. .] it was a crystal flask which the grand prior of saint-remi kept in the tomb of the apostle, behind the high altar of the abbey church. this flask contained the sacred chrism with which the blessed remi had anointed king clovis. it was enclosed in a reliquary in the form of a dove, because the holy ghost in the semblance of a dove had been seen descending with the oil for the anointing of the first christian king.[ ] of a truth in ancient books it was written that an angel had come down from heaven with the miraculous ampulla,[ ] but men were not disturbed by such inconsistencies, and among christian folk no one doubted that the sacred chrism was possessed of miraculous power. for example, it was known that with use the oil became no less, that the flask remained always full, as a premonition and a pledge that the kingdom of france would endure for ever. according to the observation of witnesses, at the time of the coronation of the late king charles, the oil had not diminished after the anointing.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . in , when louis xi was dying, he had it brought from reims to plessis, "and it was upon his sideboard at the very time of his death, and his intent was to receive the same anointing he had received at his coronation, wherefore many believed that he wished to anoint his whole body, which would have been impossible, for the said ampulla is very small and contains little. i see it at this moment." commynes, bk. vi, ch. .] [footnote : flodoard, _hist. ecclesiae remensis_, in _coll. guizot_, vol. v, pp. _et seq._ eustache deschamps, ballade , vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, p. . dom marlot, _histoire de la ville de reims_, vol. ii, p. , note . vertot, in _académie des inscriptions_, vol. ii.] [footnote : froissart, book ii, ch. lxxiv.] at nine o'clock in the morning charles of valois entered the church with a numerous retinue. the king-at-arms of france called by name the twelve peers of the realm to come before the high altar. of the six lay peers not one replied. in their places came the duke of alençon, the counts of clermont and of vendôme, the sires de laval, de la trémouille, and de maillé. of the six ecclesiastical peers, three replied to the summons of the king-at-arms,--the archbishop duke of reims, the bishop count of châlons, the bishop duke of laon. for the missing bishops of langres and noyon were substituted those of seez and orléans. in the absence of arthur of brittany, constable of france, the sword was held by charles, sire d'albret.[ ] [footnote : letters from three noblemen of anjou, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . monstrelet, vol. iv, ch. lxiv. perceval de cagny, p. . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, p. . _chronique de tournai_ (vol. iii of the _recueil des chroniques de flandre_), p. . _gallia christiana_, vol. ix, col. ; vol. xi, col. .] in front of the altar was charles of valois, wearing robes open on the chest and shoulders. he swore, first, to maintain the peace and privileges of the church; second, to preserve his people from exactions and not to burden them too heavily; third, to govern with justice and mercy.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. , note .] from his cousin d'alençon he received the arms of a knight.[ ] then the archbishop anointed him with the holy oil, with which the holy ghost makes strong priests, kings, prophets and martyrs. so this new samuel consecrated the new saul, making manifest that all power is of god, and that, according to the example set by david, kings are pontiffs, the ministers and the witnesses of the lord. this pouring out of the oil, with which the kings of israel were anointed, had rendered the kings of most christian france burning and shining lights since the time of charlemagne, yea, even since the days of clovis; for though it was baptism and confirmation rather than anointing that clovis received at the hands of the blessed saint remi, yet he was anointed christian and king by the blessed bishop, and at the same time and with that same holy oil which god himself had sent to this prince and to his successors.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : chifletius, _de ampula remensi nova et acurata disquisitio_, antwerp, , in to.] and charles received the anointing, the sign of power and victory, for it is written in the book of samuel:[ ] "and samuel took a vial of oil and poured it upon his head and kissed him, and said, 'is it not because the lord hath anointed thee to be captain over his inheritance and to deliver his people from their enemies round about. _ecce unxit te dominus super hereditatem suam in principem, et liberabis populum suum de manibus inimicorum ejus, qui in circuitu ejus sunt._'" (reg. . x. . .) [footnote : the first book of kings according to the vulgate (w.s.).] during the mystery, as it was called in the old parlance,[ ] the maid stayed by the king's side. her white banner, before which the ancient standard of chandos had retreated, she held for a moment unfurled. then others in their turn held her standard, her page louis de coutes, who never left her, and friar richard the preacher, who had followed her to châlons and to reims.[ ] in one of her dreams she had lately given a crown to the king; she was looking for this crown to be brought into the church by heavenly messengers.[ ] did not saints commonly receive crowns from angels' hands? to saint cecilia an angel offered a crown with garlands of roses and lilies. to catherine, the virgin, an angel gave an imperishable crown, which she placed upon the head of the empress of rome. but the crown curiously rich and magnificent that jeanne looked for came not.[ ] [footnote : letter from three noblemen of anjou, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . f. boyer, _variante inédite d'un document sur le sacre de charles vii_, clermont and orléans, .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . letter from three noblemen of anjou, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . varin, d. marlot, h. jadart, _loc. cit._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : see _post_, vol. i, p. .] from the altar the archbishop took the crown of no great value provided by the chapter, and with both hands raised it over the king's head. the twelve peers, in a circle round the prince, stretched forth their arms to hold it. the trumpets blew and the folk cried: "noël."[ ] [footnote : letter from three noblemen of anjou, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] thus was anointed and crowned charles of france issue of the royal line of priam, great troy's noble king. two hours after noon the mystery came to an end.[ ] we are told that then the maid knelt low before the king, and, weeping said: [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, p. . letter from three noblemen, _loc. cit._] "fair king, now is god's pleasure accomplished. it was his will that i should raise the siege of orléans and bring you to this city of reims to receive your holy anointing, making manifest that you are the true king and he to whom the realm of france should belong."[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . _journal du siège_, p. .] the king made the customary gifts. to the chapter he presented hangings of green satin as well as ornaments of red velvet and white damask. moreover, he placed upon the altar a silver vase with thirteen golden crowns. regardless of the claims asserted by the canons, the lord archbishop took possession of it, but it profited him little, for he had to give it up.[ ] after the ceremony king charles put the crown on his head and over his shoulders the royal mantle, blue as the sky, flowered with lilies of gold; and on his charger he passed down the streets of reims city. the people in great joy cried, "noël!" as they had cried when my lord the duke of burgundy entered. on that day the sire de rais was made marshal of france and the sire de la trémouille count. the eldest of madame de laval's two sons, he to whom the maid had offered wine at selles-en-berry, was likewise made count. captain la hire received the county of longueville with such parts of normandy as he could conquer.[ ] [footnote : dom marlot, _histoire de la ville de reims_, vol. iv, p. . h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . letter of three noblemen of anjou, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. , note .] king charles dined in the archiepiscopal palace in the ancient hall of tau, and was served by the duke of alençon and the count of clermont.[ ] as was customary, the royal table extended into the street, and there was feasting throughout the town. it was a day of free drinking and fraternity. in the houses, at the doors, by the wayside, folk made good cheer, and the kitchens were busy; there were that day consumed oxen in dozens, sheep in hundreds, chicken and rabbits in thousands. folk stuffed themselves with spices, and (for it was a thirsty day) they quaffed full many a beaker of wine of burgundy, and especially of that wine of delicate flavour that comes from beaune. at every coronation the ancient stag, made of bronze and hollow, which stood in the courtyard of the archiepiscopal palace was carried into the rue du parvis; it was filled with wine and the people drank from it as from a fountain. finally the burgesses and all the inhabitants of blessed saint remi's city, rich and poor alike, stuffed and satiated with good wine, having howled "noël!" till they were hoarse, fell asleep over the wine-casks and the victuals, the remains of which were to be a cause of bitter dispute between the grim aldermen and the king's men on the morrow.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, p. .] [footnote : thirion, _les frais du sacre_, in _travaux de l'académie de reims_, . dom marlot, _histoire de la ville de reims_, vol. iv, p. , n. . varin, _arch. adm. de la ville de reims_, vol. iii, p. .] jacques d'arc had come to see the coronation for which his daughter had so zealously laboured. he lodged at the sign of _l'ane rayé_ in the rue du parvis in a hostelry kept by alix, widow of raulin morieau. as well as his daughter, he saw once more his son pierre.[ ] the cousin, whom jeanne called uncle and who had accompanied her to vaucouleurs to sire robert, had likewise come hither to the coronation. he spoke to the king and told him all he knew of his cousin.[ ] at reims also jeanne found her young fellow-countryman, husson le maistre, coppersmith of the village of varville, about seven miles from domremy. she did not know him; but he had heard tell of her, and he was very familiar with jacques and pierre d'arc.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. ; vol. v, pp. , . h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, pp. , . l'abbé cerf, _le vieux reims_, , pp. and .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] jacques d'arc was one of the notables and perhaps the best business man of his village.[ ] it was not merely to see his daughter riding through the streets in man's attire that he had come to reims. he had come doubtless for himself and on behalf of his village to ask the king for an exemption from taxation. this request, presented to the king by the maid, was granted. on the st of the month the king decreed that the inhabitants of greux and of domremy should be free from all _tailles_, aids, subsidies, and subventions.[ ] out of the public funds the magistrates of the town paid jacques d'arc's expenses, and when he was about to depart they gave him a horse to take him home.[ ] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. _et seq._; proofs and illustrations no. li, pp. , ; supplement, pp. , . boucher de molandon, _jacques d'arc, père de la pucelle, sa notabilité personnelle_, orléans, , in vo.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . in the royal records this privilege is described as having been granted at jeanne's request; in such a request we cannot fail to discern the influence of her father.] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , , .] during the five or six days she spent at reims the maid appeared frequently before the townsfolk. the poor and humble came to her; good wives took her by the hand and touched their rings with hers.[ ] on her finger she wore a little ring made of a kind of brass, sometimes called electrum.[ ] electrum was said to be the gold of the poor. in place of a stone the ring had a collet inscribed with the words "jhesus maria" with three crosses. oftentimes she reverently fixed her gaze upon it, for once she had had it touched by saint catherine.[ ] and that the saint should have actually touched it was not incredible, seeing that some years before, in , sister colette, who was vowed to virginal chastity, had received from the virgin apostle a rich golden ring, as a sign of her spiritual marriage with the king of kings. sister colette permitted the nuns and monks of her order to touch this ring, and she confided it to the messengers she sent to distant lands to preserve them from perils by the way.[ ] the maid ascribed great powers to her ring, albeit she never used it to heal the sick.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : du cange, _glossarium_, under the words _auriacum_, _electrum_, and _leto_. vallet de viriville, _les anneaux de jeanne d'arc_, in _mémoires de la société des antiquaires de france_, vol. xxx, january, .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . walter bower, _ibid._, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _sanctissimæ virginis coletæ vita_, paris, in vo, black letter, undated, leaf on the reverse side. bollandistes, _acta sanctorum_, march, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] she was expected to render those trifling services which it was usual to ask from holy folk and sometimes from magicians. before the coronation ceremony the nobles and knights had been given gloves, according to the custom. one of them lost his; he asked the maid to find them, or others asked her for him. she did not promise to do it; notwithstanding the matter became known, and various interpretations were placed upon it.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, p. .] after the king's coronation, jostled by the crowd in the rue du parvis, one can imagine some thoughtful clerk raising his eyes to the glorious façade of the cathedral, that bible in stone, already appearing ancient to men, who, knowing naught of the chronicles, measured time by the span of human existence. such a clerk would have certainly beheld on the left of the pointed arch above the rose window the colossal image of goliath rising proudly in his coat of mail, and that same figure repeated on the right of the arch in the attitude of a man tottering and ready to fall.[ ] then this clerk must have remembered what is written in the first book of kings:[ ] [footnote : "these figures (goliath and david) must have been sculptured at the end of the th century." (l. demaison, _notice historique sur la cathédrale de reims_, s.d. in to, p. .) the date of the rose window is (h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, p. ).] [footnote : according to the vulgate. first book of samuel according to the authorized version (w.s.).] "and there went out a man base-born from the camp of the philistines, named goliath, of geth, whose height was six cubits and a span. and he had a helmet of brass upon his head and he was clothed with a coat of mail with scales; and the weight of his coat of mail was five thousand sicles of brass. and standing he cried out to the bands of israel and said to them: i bring reproach unto the armies of israel. choose out a man of you, and let him come down and fight hand to hand. "now david had gone to feed his father's sheep at bethlehem. but he arose in the morning and gave the charge of the flock to the keeper. and he came to the place of magala and to the army which was going out to fight. and, seeing goliath, he asked: 'who is this uncircumcised philistine that he should defy the armies of the living god?' "and the words which david spoke, were rehearsed before saul; and he sent for him. david said to saul, 'let not any man's heart be dismayed in him; i, thy servant, will go and fight against this philistine.' and saul said to david 'thou art not able to withstand this philistine nor to fight against him; for thou art but a boy, but he is a warrior from his youth.' and david made answer, 'i will go against him and i will take away the reproach from israel.' then saul said to david, 'go and the lord be with thee.' "and david took his staff which he had always in his hands, and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook, and he took a sling in his hand; and went forth against the philistine. "and when the philistine looked and beheld david, he despised him. for he was a young man, and ruddy, and of a comely countenance. and the philistine said to david: 'am i a dog, that thou comest to me with a staff?' then said david to the philistine: 'thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear and with a shield: but i come to thee in the name of the lord of hosts, the god of the armies of israel, which thou hast defied. this day will the lord deliver thee into mine hand that all the earth may know that the lord saveth not with sword and spear: for it is his battle, and he will deliver you into our hands.' "and when the philistine arose and was coming and drew nigh to meet david, david made haste and ran to the fight to meet the philistine. and he put his hand into his scrip and took a stone, and cast it with the sling and fetching it about struck the philistine in the forehead, and the stone was fixed in his forehead and he fell on his face upon the earth."[ ] [footnote : samuel xvii. where the author quotes direct from the vulgate the translator has followed the douai version (w.s.).] then the clerk, meditating on these words of the book, would reflect how god, the unchanging, who saved israel and struck down goliath by the sling of a shepherd lad, had raised up the daughter of a husbandman for the deliverance of the most christian realm and the reproach of the leopard.[ ] [footnote : see the coronation of david and that of louis xii by an unknown painter, about , in the cluny museum. h. bouchot, _l'exposition des primitifs français. la peinture en france sous les valois_, book ii, figure c.] from gien, about june the th, the maid had had a letter written to the duke of burgundy, calling upon him to come to the king's anointing. having received no reply, on the day of the coronation she dictated a second letter to the duke. here it is: [cross symbol] jhesus maria "high and greatly to be feared prince, duke of burgundy, jehanne the maid, in the name of the king of heaven, her rightful and liege lord, requires you and the king of france to make a good peace which shall long endure. forgive one another heartily and entirely as becometh good christians; an if it please you to make war, go ye against the saracens. prince of burgundy, i pray you, i entreat you, i beseech you as humbly as lieth in my power, that ye make war no more against the holy realm of france, and that forthwith and speedily ye withdraw those your men who are in any strongholds and fortresses of the said holy kingdom; and in the name of the fair king of france, he is ready to make peace with you, saving his honour if that be necessary. and in the name of the king of heaven, my sovereign liege lord, for your good, your honour and your life, i make known unto you, that ye will never win in battle against the loyal french and that all they who wage war against the holy realm of france, will be warring against king jhesus, king of heaven and of the world, my lawful liege lord. and with clasped hands i beseech and entreat you that ye make no battle nor wage war against us, neither you, nor your people, nor your subjects; and be assured that whatever number of folk ye bring against us, they will gain nothing, and it will be sore pity for the great battle and the blood that shall be shed of those that come against us. and three weeks past, i did write and send you letters by a herald, that ye should come to the anointing of the king, which to-day, sunday, the th day of this present month, is made in the city of reims: to which letter i have had no answer, neither news of the said herald. to god i commend you; may he keep you, if it be his will; and i pray god to establish good peace. written from the said place of reims, on the said seventeenth of july." addressed: "to the duke of burgundy."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. - . hennebert, _une lettre de jeanne d'arc aux tournaisiens_ in _arch. hist. et litt. du nord de la france et du midi de la belgique_, nouv. série, vol. i, , p. . facsimile in _l'album des archives départementales_, no. .] had saint catherine of sienna been at reims she would not have written otherwise. albeit the maid liked not the burgundians, in her own way she realized forcibly how desirable was peace with the duke of burgundy. with clasped hands she entreats him to cease making war against france. "an it please you to make war then go ye against the saracens." already she had counselled the english to join the french and go on a crusade. the destruction of the infidel was then the dream of gentle peace-loving souls; and many pious folk believed that the son of the knight, who had been vanquished at nicopolis, would make the turks pay dearly for their former victory.[ ] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, pp. , . eberhard windecke, p. , note , p. . christine de pisan, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . jorga, _notes et extraits pour servir à l'histoire des croisades au xv'e siècle_, paris, - . vols. in vo.] in this letter, the maid, in the name of the king of heaven, tells duke philip that if he fight against the king, he will be conquered. her voices had foretold to her the victory of france over burgundy; they had not revealed to her that at the very moment when she was dictating her letter the ambassadors of duke philip were at reims; that was so, notwithstanding.[ ] [footnote : _mémoires du pape pie ii_, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , . morosini, vol. iii, p. .] esteeming king charles, master of champagne, to be a prince worthy of consideration, duke philip sent to reims, david de brimeu, bailie of artois, at the head of an embassy, to greet him and open negotiations for peace.[ ] the burgundians received a hearty welcome from the chancellor and the council. it was hoped that peace would be concluded before their departure. the angevin lords announced it to their queens, yolande and marie.[ ] by so doing they showed how little they knew the consummate old fox of dijon. the french were not strong enough yet, neither were the english weak enough. it was agreed that in august an embassy should be sent to the duke of burgundy in the town of arras. after four days negotiation, a truce for fifteen days was signed and the embassy left reims.[ ] at the same time, the duke at paris solemnly renewed his complaint against charles of valois, his father's assassin, and undertook to bring an army to the help of the english.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, p. . letter from three noblemen of anjou, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . third account of jean abonnel in de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. , no. .] [footnote : letter from three noblemen of anjou, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : the th or st. monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. _et seq._ de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , . stevenson, _letters and papers_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._ rymer, _foedera_, vol. iv, part iv, p. .] leaving antoine de hellande, nephew of the duke-archbishop[ ] to command reims, the king of france departed from the city on the th of july and went to saint-marcoul-de-corbeny, where on the day after their coronation, the kings were accustomed to touch for the evil.[ ] [footnote : archives de reims, municipal accounts, vol. i, years - . _trial_, vol. v, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . martial d'auvergne, _vigiles_, vol. i, p. .] saint marcoul cured the evil.[ ] he was of royal race, but his power, manifested long after his death, came to him especially from his name, and it was believed that saint marcoul was able to cure those afflicted with marks on the neck, as saint clare was to give sight to the blind, and saint fort to give strength to children. the king of france shared with him the power of healing scrofula; and as the power came to him from the holy oil brought down from heaven by a dove, it was thought that this virtue would be more effectual at the time of the anointing, all the more because by lewdness, disobedience to the christian church, and other irregularities, he stood in danger of losing it. that is what had happened to king philippe i.[ ] the kings of england touched for the evil; notably king edward iii worked wondrous cures on scrofulous folk who were covered with scars. for these reasons scrofula was called saint marcoul's evil or king's evil. virgins as well as kings could cure this royal malady. [footnote : _gallia christ_: ix, pp, , [transcriber's note: so in original; does not match other citations to this work]. le poulle, _notice sur corbeny, son prieuré, et le pèlerinage de saint-marcoul_, soissons, , vo. e. de barthélèmy, _notice historique sur le pèlerinage de saint-marcoul et corbeny_, in _ann. soc. acad. de saint-quentin_, .] [footnote : a. du laurent, _de mirabili strumas sanandi vi solis regibus galliarum christianissimis divinitus concessa liber_, paris, , vo. cerf, _du toucher des écrouelles par le roi de france_, in _trav. acad. de reims_, - . dom marlot, _histoire de la ville de reims_, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] king charles worshipped and presented offerings at the shrine of saint marcoul, and there touched for the evil. at corbeny he received the submission of the town of laon. then, on the morrow, the nd, he went off to a little stronghold in the valley of the aisne, called vailly, which belonged to the archbishop duke of reims. at vailly he received the submission of the town of soissons.[ ] in the words of an armagnac prophet of the time: "the keys of the war gates knew the hands that had forged them."[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique des cordeliers_, fol. r'o. morosini, iii, p. , note .] [footnote : bréhal, in _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] chapter xix rise of the legend it is always difficult to ascertain what happens in war. in those days it was quite impossible to form any clear idea of how things came about. at orléans, doubtless, there were certain who were keen enough to perceive that the numerous and ingenious engines of war, gathered together by the magistrates, had been of great service; but folk generally prefer to ascribe results to miraculous causes, and the merit of their deliverance the people of orléans attributed first to their blessed patrons, saint aignan and saint euverte, and after them to jeanne, the divine maid, believing that there was no easier, simpler, or more natural explanation of the deeds they had witnessed.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , . _chronique de l'établissement de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . lottin, _récits historiques sur orléans_, vol. i, p. .] guillaume girault, former magistrate of the town and notary at the châtelet, wrote and signed, with his own hand, a brief account of the deliverance of the city. herein he states that on wednesday, ascension eve, the bastion of saint-loup was stormed and taken as if by miracle, "there being present, and aiding in the fight, jeanne the maid, sent of god;" and that, on the following saturday, the siege laid by the english to les tourelles at the end of the bridge was raised by the most obvious miracle since the passion. and guillaume girault testifies that the maid led the enterprise.[ ] when eye-witnesses, participators in the deeds themselves, had no clear idea of events, what could those more remote from the scene of action think of them? [footnote : _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , .] the tidings of the french victories flew with astonishing rapidity.[ ] the brevity of authentic accounts was amply supplemented by the eloquence of loquacious clerks and the popular imagination. the loire campaign and the coronation expedition were scarcely known at first save by fabulous reports, and the people only thought of them as supernatural events. [footnote : tidings of the deliverance of orléans sent from bruges to venice the th of may (morosini, vol. iii, pp. , ).] in the letters sent by royal secretaries to the towns of the realm and the princes of christendom, the name of jeanne the maid was associated with all the deeds of prowess. jeanne herself, by her monastic scribe, made known to all the great deeds which, it was her firm belief, she had accomplished.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , , , , , , .] it was believed that everything had been done through her, that the king had consulted her in all things, when in truth the king's counsellors and the captains rarely asked her advice, listened to it but seldom, and brought her forth only at convenient seasons. everything was attributed to her alone. her personality, associated with deeds attested and seemingly marvellous, became buried in a vast cycle of astonishing fables and disappeared in a forest of heroic stories.[ ] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, pp. , .] contrite souls there were in those days, who, ascribing all the woes of the kingdom to the sins of the people, looked for salvation to humility, repentance, and penance.[ ] they expected the end of iniquity and the kingdom of god on earth. jeanne, at least in the beginning, was one of those pious folk. sometimes, speaking as a mystic reformer, she would say that jesus is king of the holy realm of france, that king charles is his lieutenant, and does but hold the kingdom "in fief."[ ] she uttered words which would create the impression that her mission was all charity, peace, and love,--these, for example, "i am sent to comfort the poor and needy."[ ] such gentle penitents as dreamed of a world pure, faithful, and good, made of jeanne their saint and their prophetess. they ascribed to her edifying words she had never uttered. [footnote : saint vincent ferrier; and saint bernardino of siena.] [footnote : see _ante_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] "when the maid came to the king," they said, "she caused him to make three promises: the first was to resign his kingdom, to renounce it and give it back to god, from whom he held it; the second, to pardon all such as had turned against him and afflicted him; the third, to humiliate himself so far as to receive into favour all such as should come to him, poor and rich, friend and foe."[ ] [footnote : eberhard windecke, pp. - . see _ante_, p. .] or again, in apologues, simple and charming, like the following, they represented her accomplishing her mission: "one day, the maid asked the king to bestow a present upon her; and when he consented, she claimed as a gift the realm of france. though astonished, the king did not withdraw his promise. having received her present, the maid required a deed of gift to be solemnly drawn up by four of the king's notaries and read aloud. while the king listened to the reading, she pointed him out to those that stood by, saying: 'behold the poorest knight in the kingdom.' then, after a short time, disposing of the realm of france, she gave it back to god. thereafter, acting in god's name, she invested king charles with it and commanded that this solemn act of transmission should be recorded in writing."[ ] [footnote : l. delisle, _un nouveau témoignage relatif à la mission de jeanne d'arc_, in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, vol. xlvi, p. . le p. ayroles, _la pucelle devant l'Église de son temps_, pp. , .] it was believed that jeanne had prophesied that on saint john the baptist's day, , not an englishman should be left in france.[ ] these simple folk expected their saint's promises to be fulfilled on the day she had fixed. they maintained that on the rd of june she had entered the city of rouen, and that on the morrow, saint john the baptist's day, the inhabitants of paris had of their own accord, opened their gates to the king of france. in the month of july these stories were being told in avignon.[ ] reformers, numerous it would seem in france and throughout christendom, believed that the maid would organise the english and french on monastic lines and make of them one nation of pious beggars, one brotherhood of penitents. according to them, the following were the intentions of the two parties and the clauses of the treaty: [footnote : letter written by the agents of a town or of a prince of germany, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, pp. , , .] "king charles of valois bestows universal pardon and is willing to forget all wrongs. the english and french, having turned to contrition and repentance, are endeavouring to conclude a good and binding peace. the maid herself has imposed conditions upon them. conforming to her will, the english and french for one year or for two will wear a grey habit, with a little cross sewn upon it; on every friday they will live on bread and water; they will dwell in unity with their wives and will seek no other women. they promise god not to make war except for the defense of their country."[ ] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, pp. , .] during the coronation campaign, nothing being known of the agreement between the king's men and the people of auxerre, towards the end of july, it was related that the town having been taken by storm, four thousand five hundred citizens had been killed and likewise fifteen hundred men-at-arms, knights as well as squires belonging to the parties of burgundy and savoy. among the nobles slain were mentioned humbert maréchal, lord of varambon, and a very famous warrior, le viau de bar. stories were told of treasons and massacres, horrible adventures in which the maid was associated with that knave of hearts who was already famous. she was said to have had twelve traitors beheaded.[ ] such tales were real romances of chivalry. here is one of them: [footnote : _ibid._, pp. _et seq._] about two thousand english surrounded the king's camp, watching to see if they could do him some hurt. then the maid called captain la hire and said to him: "thou hast in thy time done great prowess, but to-day god prepares for thee a deed greater than any thou hast yet performed. take thy men and go to such and such a wood two leagues herefrom, and there shalt thou find two thousand english, all lance in hand; them shalt thou take and slay." la hire went forth to the english and all were taken and slain as the maid had said.[ ] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, pp. , .] such were the fairy-stories told of jeanne to the joy of simple primitive folk, who delighted in the idea of a maid slayer of giants and remover of mountains. there was a rumour that after the sack of auxerre, the duke of burgundy had been defeated and taken in a great battle, that the regent was dead and that the armagnacs had entered paris.[ ] prodigies were said to have attended the capitulation of troyes. on the coming of the french, it was told how the townsfolk beheld from their ramparts a vast multitude of men-at-arms, some five or six thousand, each man holding a white pennon in his hand. on the departure of the french, they beheld them again, ranged but a bow-shot behind king charles. these knights with white pennons vanished when the king had gone; for they were as miraculous as those white-scarfed knights, whom the bretons had seen riding in the sky but shortly before.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : fragment of a letter on the marvels in poitou, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, _op. cit._, p. .] all that the people of orléans beheld when their siege was suddenly raised, all that armagnac mendicants and the dauphin's clerks related was greedily received, accredited, and amplified. three months after her coming to chinon, jeanne had her legend, which grew and increased and extended into italy, flanders, and germany.[ ] in the summer of , this legend was already formed. all the scattered parts of what may be described as the gospel of her childhood existed. [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, p. , note . eberhard windecke, _passim_. fauché-prunelle, _lettres tirées des archives de grenoble_ in _bull. acad. delph._, vol. ii, , , pp. , . letter written by deputies, agents of a german town, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . letter from jean desch, secretary of the town of metz, _ibid._, pp. , .] at the age of seven jeanne kept sheep; the wolves did not molest her flock; the birds of the field, when she called them, came and ate bread from her lap. the wicked had no power over her. no one beneath her roof need fear man's fraud or ill-will.[ ] [footnote : letters from perceval de boulainvilliers to the duke of milan, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] when it is a latin poet who is writing, the miracles attending jeanne's birth assume a roman majesty and are clothed with the august dignity of ancient myths. thus it is curious to find a humanist of summoning the italian muse to the cradle of zabillet romée's daughter. "the thunder rolled, the ocean shuddered, the earth shook, the heavens were on fire, the universe rejoiced visibly; a strange transport mingled with fear moved the enraptured nations. they sing sweet verses and dance in harmonious motion at the sign of the salvation prepared for the french people by this celestial birth."[ ] [footnote : anonymous poem on the coming of the maid and the deliverance of orléans, _trial_, vol. v, p. , line _et seq._] moreover an attempt was made to represent the wonders that had heralded the nativity of jesus as having been repeated on the birth of jeanne. it was imagined that she was born on the night of the epiphany. the shepherds of her village, moved by an indescribable joy, the cause of which was unknown to them, hastened through the darkness towards the marvellous mystery. the cocks, heralds of this new joy, sing at an unusual season and, flapping their wings, seem to prophesy for two hours. thus the child in her cradle had her adoration of the shepherds.[ ] [footnote : "_in nocte epiphaniarum_," says the letter from perceval de boulainvilliers (_trial_, vol. v, p. ), that is, jan. . for centuries, even after the fourth century, the birth of our lord was celebrated on that day. in france it was the feast of kings and then was sung the anthem: _magi videntes stellam_.] of her coming into france there was much to tell. it was related that in the château of chinon she had recognised the king, whom she had never seen before, and had gone straight to him, although he was but poorly clad and surrounded by his baronage.[ ] it was said that she had given the king a sign, that she had revealed a secret to him; and that on the revelation of the secret, known to him alone, he had been illuminated with a heavenly joy. concerning this interview at chinon, while those present had little to say, the stories of many who were not there were interminable.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, pp. , . martial d'auvergne, _vigiles_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , , _passim_. _journal du siège_, p. . th. basin, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. . _mirouer des femmes vertueuses_, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . pierre sala, _ibid._, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. . eberhard windecke, p. .] on the th of may, at four o'clock in the afternoon, a white dove alighted on the maid's standard; and on the same day, during the assault, two white birds were seen to be flying over her head.[ ] saints were commonly visited by doves. one day when saint catherine of sienna was kneeling in the fuller's house, a dove as white as snow perched on the child's head.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de l'établissement de la fête_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : aa. ss., april rd. didron, _iconographie chrétienne_, pp. , . alba mignati, _sainte catherine de sienne_, p. .] a tale then in circulation is interesting as showing the idea which prevailed concerning the relations of the king and the maid; it serves, likewise, as an example of the perversions to which the story of an actual fact is subject as it passes from mouth to mouth. here is the tale as it was gathered by a german merchant. on a day, in a certain town, the maid, hearing that the english were near, went into the field; and straightway all the men-at-arms, who were in the town, leapt to their steeds and followed her. meanwhile, the king, who was at dinner, learning that all were going forth in company with the maid, had the gates of the town closed. the maid was told, and she replied without concern: "before the hour of nones, the king will have so great need of me, that he will follow me immediately, spurless, and barely staying to throw on his cloak." and thus it came to pass. for the men-at-arms shut up in the town besought the king to open the gates forthwith or they would break them down. the gates were opened and all the fighting men hastened to the maid, heedless of the king, who threw on his cloak and followed them. on that day a great number of the english were slain.[ ] [footnote : eberhard windecke, p. .] such is the story which gives a very inaccurate representation of what happened at orléans on the th of may. the citizens hastened in crowds to the burgundian gate, resolved to cross the loire and attack les tourelles. finding the gate closed, they threw themselves furiously on the sire de gaucourt who was keeping it. the aged baron had the gate opened wide and said to them, "come, i will be your captain."[ ] in the story the citizens have become men-at-arms, and it is not the sire de gaucourt but the king who maliciously closes the gates. but the king gained nothing by it; and it is astonishing to find that so early there had grown up in the minds of the people the idea that, far from aiding the maid to drive out the english, the king had put obstacles in her way and was always the last to follow her. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] seen through this chaos of stories more indistinct than the clouds in a stormy sky, jeanne appeared a wondrous marvel. she prophesied and many of her prophecies had already been fulfilled. she had foretold the deliverance of orléans and orléans had been delivered. she had prophesied that she would be wounded, and an arrow had pierced her above the right breast. she had prophesied that she would take the king to reims, and the king had been crowned in that city. other prophecies had she uttered touching the realm of france, to wit, the deliverance of the duke of orléans, the entering into paris, the driving of the english from the holy kingdom, and their fulfilment was expected.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , _et seq._, , , , , , , ; vol. iii, pp. , , , , _passim_. _journal du siège_, pp. , , , . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . perceval de cagny, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . lefèvre de saint-rémy, vol. ii, p. . the clerk of the chamber of accounts of brabant, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _chronique de tournai_ (vol. iii, _du recueil des chroniques de flandre_), p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. .] every day she prophesied and notably concerning divers persons who had failed in respect towards her and had come to a bad end.[ ] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, p. .] at chinon, when she was being taken to the king, a man-at-arms who was riding near the château, thinking he recognised her, asked, "is not that the maid? by god, an i had my way she should not be a maid long." then jeanne prophesied and said "ha, thou takest god's name in vain, and thou art so near thy death!" less than an hour later the man fell into the water and was drowned.[ ] [footnote : brother pasquerel's evidence, in _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] straightway this miracle was related in latin verse. in the poem which records this miraculous history of jeanne up to the deliverance of orléans, the lewd blasphemer, who like all blasphemers, came to a bad end, is noble and by name furtivolus.[ ] [footnote : anonymous poem on the maid, in _trial_, vol. v, p. , lines _et seq._] _... generoso sanguine natus, nomine furtivolus, veneris moderator iniquus._ captain glasdale called jeanne strumpet and blasphemed his maker. jeanne prophesied that he would die without shedding blood; and glasdale was drowned in the loire.[ ] [footnote : evidence of j. luillier and brother pasquerel, in _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] many of these tales were obvious imitations of incidents in the lives of the saints, which were widely read in those days. a woman, who was a heretic, pulled the cassock of saint ambrose, whereupon the blessed bishop said to her, "take heed lest one day thou be chastised of god." on the morrow the woman died, and the blessed ambrose conducted her to the grave.[ ] [footnote : the _golden legend_. life of saint ambrose.] a nun, who was then alive and who was to die in an odour of sanctity, sister colette of corbie, had met her furtivolus and had punished him, but less severely. on a day when she was praying in a church of corbie, a stranger drew near and spoke to her libidinous words: "may it please god," she said, "to bring home to you the hideousness of the words you have just uttered." the stranger in shame went to the door. but an invisible hand arrested him on the threshold. then he realised the gravity of his sin; he asked pardon of the saint and was free to leave the church.[ ] [footnote : abbé j. th. bizouard, _histoire de sainte colette et des clarisses en franche-comté, d'après des documents inédits et des traditions locales_, paris, , in vo.] after the royal army had departed from gien, the maid was said to have prophesied that a great battle would be fought between auxerre and reims.[ ] when such predictions were not fulfilled they were forgotten. besides, it was admitted that true prophets might sometimes utter false prophecies. a subtle theologian distinguished between prophecies of predestination which are always fulfilled and those of condemnation, which being conditioned, may not be fulfilled and that without reflecting untruthfulness on the lips that uttered them.[ ] folk wondered that a peasant child should be able to forecast the future, and with the apostle they cried, "i praise thee, o father, because thou hast hidden those things from the wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes." [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, pp. , . eberhard windecke, pp. , , . noël valois, _un nouveau témoignage sur jeanne d'arc_, p. .] [footnote : lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations_, pp. , . théodore de leliis, in _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , . le p. ayroles, _la pucelle devant l'Église de son temps_, p. . abbé hyacinthe chassagnon, _les voix de jeanne d'arc_, lyon , in vo, pp. , .] the maid's prophecies were speedily spread abroad throughout the whole of christendom.[ ] a clerk of spiers wrote a treatise on her, entitled _sibylla francica_, divided into two parts. the first part was drawn up not later than july, . the second is dated the th of september, the same year. this clerk believes that the maid practised the art of divination by means of astrology. he had heard a french monk of the order of the premonstratensians[ ] say that jeanne delighted to study the heavens by night. he observes that all her prophecies concerned the kingdom of france; and he gives the following as having been uttered by the maid: "after having ruled for twenty years, the dauphin will sleep with his fathers. after him, his eldest son, now a child of six, will reign more gloriously, more honourably, more powerfully than any king of france since charlemagne."[ ] [footnote : eberhard windecke, pp. _et seq._ morosini, vol. iii, pp. - .] [footnote : the monastery of the premonstratensians, near laon, was founded in , by st. norbert (w.s.).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._, , , ; vol. v, pp. , .] the maid possessed the gift of beholding events which were taking place far away. at vaucouleurs, on the very day of the battle of the herrings, she knew the dauphin's army had suffered grievous hurt.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] on a day when she was dining, seated near the king, she began to laugh quietly. the king, perceiving, asked her: "my beloved, wherefore laugh ye so merrily?" she made answer that she would tell him when the repast was over. and, when the ewer was brought her, "sire," she said, "this day have been drowned in the sea five hundred english, who were crossing to your land to do you hurt. therefore did i laugh. in three days you will know that it is true." and so it was.[ ] [footnote : eberhard windecke, p. .] another time, when she was in a town some miles distant from the château where the king was, as she prayed before going to sleep, it was revealed to her that certain of the king's enemies wished to poison him at dinner. straightway she called her brothers and sent them to the king to advise him to take no food until she came. when she appeared before him, he was at table surrounded by eleven persons. "sire," she said, "have the dishes brought." she gave them to the dogs, who ate from them and died forthwith. then, pointing to a knight, who was near the king and to two other guests: "those persons," she said, "wished to poison you." the knight straightway confessed that it was true; and he was dealt with according to his deserts.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] it was borne in upon her that a certain priest kept a concubine;[ ] and one day, meeting in the camp a woman dressed as a man, it was revealed to her that the woman was pregnant and that having already had one child she had made away with it.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : eberhard windecke, p. .] she was likewise said to possess the power of discovering things hidden. she herself had claimed this power when she was at tours. it had been revealed to her that a sword was buried in the ground in the chapel of saint catherine of fierbois, and that was the sword she wore. some deemed it to be the sword with which charles martel had defeated the saracens. others suspected it of being the sword of alexander the great.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . _journal du siège_, pp. , . _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, pp. , . morosini, vol. iii, pp. , . abbé bourassé, _les miracles de madame sainte katerine_, introduction.] in like manner it was said that before the coronation jeanne had known of a precious crown, hidden from all eyes. and here is the story told concerning it: a bishop kept the crown of saint louis. no one knew which bishop it was, but it was known that the maid had sent him a messenger, bearing a letter in which she asked him to give up the crown. the bishop replied that the maid was dreaming. a second time she demanded the sacred treasure, and the bishop made the same reply. then she wrote to the citizens of the episcopal city, saying that if the crown were not given up to the king, the lord would punish the town, and straightway there fell so heavy a storm of hail that all men marvelled. wizards commonly caused hail storms. but this time the hail was a plague sent by the god who afflicted egypt with ten plagues. after which the maid despatched to the citizens a third letter in which she described the form and fashion of the crown the bishop was hiding, and warned them that if it were not given up even worse things would happen to them. the bishop, who believed that the wondrous circlet of gold was known to him alone, marvelled that the form and fashion thereof should be described in this letter. he repented of his wickedness, wept many tears, and commanded the crown to be sent to the king and the maid.[ ] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, pp. , .] it is not difficult to discern the origin of this story. the crown of charlemagne, which the kings of france wore at the coronation ceremony, was at saint-denys in france, in the hands of the english. jeanne boasted of having given the dauphin at chinon a precious crown, brought by angels. she said that this crown had been sent to reims for the coronation, but that it did not arrive in time.[ ] as for the hiding of the crown by the bishop, that idea arose probably from the well-known cupidity of my lord regnault de chartres, archbishop of reims, who had appropriated the silver vase intended for the chapter and placed by the king upon the high altar after the ceremony.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : dom marlot, _histoire de l'Église de reims_, vol. iv, p. . h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, appendix xvii.] there was likewise talk of gloves lost at reims and of a cup that jeanne had found.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] maiden, at once a warrior and a lover of peace, _béguine_, prophetess, sorceress, angel of the lord, ogress, every man beholds her according to his own fashion, creates her according to his own image. pious souls clothe her with an invincible charm and the divine gift of charity; simple souls make her simple too; men gross and violent figure her a giantess, burlesque and terrible. shall we ever discern the true features of her countenance? behold her, from the first and perhaps for ever enclosed in a flowering thicket of legends! end of vol. i. * * * * * the life of joan of arc by anatole france a translation by winifred stephens in two vols., vol. ii [illustration] london: john lane, the bodley head new york: john lane company: mcmix _copyright in u.s.a., , by_ manzi, joyant et cie _copyright in u.s.a., , by_ john lane company the university press, cambridge, u.s.a. [illustration: the duke of bedford from the bedford missal] contents vol. ii chap. page i. the royal army from soissons to compiÈgne. poem and prophecy ii. the maid's first visit to compiÈgne. the three popes. saint-denys. truces iii. the attack on paris iv. the taking of saint-pierre-le-moustier. friar richard's spiritual daughters. the siege of la charitÉ v. letter to the citizens of reims. letter to the hussites. departure from sully vi. the maid in the trenches of melun. le seigneur de l'ours. the child of lagny vii. soissons and compiÈgne. capture of the maid viii. the maid at beaulieu. the shepherd of gÉvaudan ix. the maid at beaurevoir. catherine de la rochelle at paris. execution of la pierronne x. beaurevoir. arras. rouen. the trial for lapse xi. the trial for lapse (_continued_) xii. the trial for lapse (_continued_) xiii. the abjuration. the first sentence xiv. the trial for relapse. second sentence. death of the maid xv. after the death of the maid. the end of the shepherd. la dame des armoises xvi. after the death of the maid (_continued_). the rouen judges at the council of bÂle and the pragmatic sanction. the rehabilitation trial. the maid of sarmaize. the maid of le mans appendices i. letter from doctor g. dumas ii. the farrier of salon iii. martin de gallardon iv. iconographical note list of illustrations vol. ii the duke of bedford _frontispiece_ from the bedford missal. _to face page_ philip, duke of burgundy henry vi from a portrait in the "election chamber" at eton, reproduced by permission of the provost. the bastard of orlÉans from an old engraving. joan of arc chapter i the royal army from soissons to compiÈgne--poem and prophecy on the nd of july, king charles, marching with his army down the valley of the aisne, in a place called vailly, received the keys of the town of soissons.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . perceval de cagny, pp. , . _journal du siège_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. .] this town constituted a part of the duchy of valois, held jointly by the houses of orléans and of bar.[ ] of its dukes, one was a prisoner in the hands of the english; the other was connected with the french party through his brother-in-law, king charles, and with the burgundian party through his father-in-law, the duke of lorraine. no wonder the fealty of the townsfolk was somewhat vacillating; downtrodden by men-at-arms, forever taken and retaken, red caps and white caps alternately ran the danger of being cast into the river. the burgundians set fire to the houses, pillaged the churches, chastised the most notable burgesses; then came the armagnacs, who sacked everything, made great slaughter of men, women, and children, ravished nuns, worthy wives, and honest maids. the saracens could not have done worse.[ ] city dames had been seen making sacks in which burgundians were to be sewn up and thrown into the aisne.[ ] [footnote : _ordonnances des rois de france_, vol. ix, p. . h. martin and lacroix, _histoire de la ville de soissons_, soissons, , in vo, ii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. , _passim_.] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] king charles made his entry into the city on saturday the rd, in the morning.[ ] the red caps went into hiding. the bells pealed, the folk cried "noël," and the burgesses proffered the king two barbels, six sheep and six gallons of "_bon suret_,"[ ] begging the king to forgive its being so little, but the war had ruined them.[ ] they, like the people of troyes, refused to open their gates to the men-at-arms, by virtue of their privileges, and because they had not food enough for their support. the army encamped in the plain of amblény.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . perceval de cagny, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _suret_ is sour wine (w.s.).] [footnote : c. dormay, _histoire de la ville de soissons_, soissons, , vol. ii, pp. _et seq._ h. martin and lacroix, _histoire de soissons_, vol. ii, p. . pécheur, _annales du diocèse de soissons_, vol. iv, p. . félix brun, _jeanne d'arc et le capitaine de soissons en _, soissons, , p. .] [footnote : berry, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , . le p. daniel, _histoire de la milice française_, vol. i, p. . félix brun, _jeanne d'arc et le capitaine de soissons_, pp. , .] it would seem that at that time the leaders of the royal army had the intention of marching on compiègne. indeed it was important to capture this town from duke philip, for it was the key to l'Île-de-france and ought to be taken before the duke had time to bring up an army. but throughout this campaign the king of france was resolved to recapture his towns rather by diplomacy and persuasion than by force. between the nd and the th of july he three times summoned the inhabitants of compiègne to surrender. being desirous to gain time and to have the air of being constrained, they entered into negotiations.[ ] [footnote : de l'epinois, _notes extraites des archives communales de compiègne_, in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, vol. xxix, p. . sorel, _prise de jeanne d'arc_, pp. , .] having quitted soissons, the royal army reached château-thierry on the th. all day it waited for the town to open its gates. in the evening the king entered.[ ] coulommiers, crécy-en-brie, and provins submitted.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . félix bourquelot, _histoire de provins_, provins, vol. iv, pp. _et seq._ th. robillard, _histoire pittoresque topographique et archéologique de crécy-en-brie_, , p. . l'abbé c. poquet, _histoire de château-thierry_, , vol. i, pp. _et seq._] on monday, the st of august, the king crossed the marne, over the château-thierry bridge, and that same day took up his quarters at montmirail. on the morrow he gained provins and came within a short distance of the passage of the seine and the high-roads of central france.[ ] the army was sore anhungered, finding nought to eat in these ravaged fields and pillaged cities. through lack of victuals preparations were being made for retreat into poitou. but this design was thwarted by the english. while ungarrisoned towns were being reduced, the english regent had been gathering an army. it was now advancing on corbeil and melun. on its approach the french gained la motte-nangis, some twelve miles from provins, where they took up their position on ground flat and level, such as was convenient for the fighting of a battle, as battles were fought in those days. for one whole day they remained in battle array. there was no sign of the english coming to attack them.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, pp. , .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . _journal du siège_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . perceval de cagny, p. . rymer, _foedera_, june to july, . _proceedings_, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._ morosini, vol. iv, appendix xvii.] meanwhile the people of reims received tidings that king charles was leaving château-thierry and was about to cross the seine. believing that they had been abandoned, they were afraid lest the english and burgundians should make them pay dearly for the coronation of the king of the armagnacs; and in truth they stood in great danger. on the rd of august, they resolved to send a message to king charles to entreat him not to forsake those cities which had submitted to him. the city's herald set out forthwith. on the morrow they sent word to their good friends of châlons and of laon, how they had heard that king charles was wending towards orléans and bourges, and how they had sent him a message.[ ] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . varin, _archives législatives de la ville de reims_, statuts, vol. i (annot. according to doc. no. xxi), p. . h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, original doc. no. , p. .] on the th of august, while the king is still at provins[ ] or in the neighbourhood, jeanne addresses to the townsfolk of reims a letter dated from the camp, on the road to paris. herein she promises not to desert her friends faithful and beloved. she appears to have no suspicion of the projected retreat on the loire. wherefore it is clear that the magistrates of reims have not written to her and that she is not admitted to the royal counsels. she has been instructed, however, that the king has concluded a fifteen days' truce with the duke of burgundy, and thereof she informs the citizens of reims. this truce is displeasing to her; and she doubts whether she will observe it. if she does observe it, it will be solely on account of the king's honour; and even then she must be persuaded that there is no trickery in it. she will therefore keep the royal army together and in readiness to march at the end of the fifteen days. she closes her letter with a recommendation to the townsfolk to keep good guard and to send her word if they have need of her. [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] here is the letter: "good friends and beloved, ye good and loyal french of the city of rains, jehanne the maid lets you wit of her tidings and prays and requires you not to doubt the good cause she maintains for the blood royal; and i promise and assure you that i will never forsake you as long as i shall live. it is true that the king has made truce with the duke of burgundy for the space of fifteen days, by which he is to surrender peaceably the city of paris at the end of fifteen days. notwithstanding, marvel ye not if i do not straightway enter into it, for truces thus made are not pleasing unto me, and i know not whether i shall keep them; but if i keep them it will be solely to maintain the king's honour; and further they shall not ensnare the royal blood, for i will keep and maintain together the king's army that it be ready at the end of fifteen days, if they make not peace. wherefore my beloved and perfect friends, i pray ye to be in no disquietude as long as i shall live; but i require you to keep good watch and to defend well the good city of the king; and to make known unto me if there be any traitors who would do you hurt, and, as speedily as i may, i will take them out from among you; and send me of your tidings. to god i commend you. may he have you in his keeping." written this friday, th day of august, near provins,[ ] a camp in the country or on the paris road. addressed to: the loyal french of the town of rains.[ ] [footnote : this place name is not to be found in rogier's copy.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , , and varin, _loc. cit._ _statuts_, vol. i, p. , according to rogier's copy. h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, proofs and illustrations, vol. xiv, pp. , , and facsimile of the original copy formerly in the reims municipal archives, now in the possession of m. le comte de maleissye.] it cannot be doubted that the monk who acted as scribe wrote down faithfully what was dictated to him, and reproduced the maid's very words, even her lorraine dialect. she had then attained to the very highest degree of heroic saintliness. here, in this letter, she takes to herself a supernatural power, to which the king, his councillors and his captains must submit. she ascribes to herself alone the right of recognising or denouncing treaties; she disposes entirely of the army. and, because she commands in the name of the king of heaven, her commands are absolute. there is happening to her what necessarily happens to all those who believe themselves entrusted with a divine mission; they constitute themselves a spiritual and temporal power superior to the established powers and inevitably hostile to them. a dangerous illusion and productive of shocks in which the illuminated are generally the worst sufferers! every day of her life living and holding converse with saints and angels, moving in the splendour of the church triumphant, this young peasant girl came to believe that in her resided all strength, all prudence, all wisdom and all counsel. this does not mean that she was lacking in intelligence; on the contrary she rightly perceived that the duke of burgundy, with his embassies, was but playing with the king and that charles was being tricked by a prince, who knew how to disguise his craft in magnificence. not that duke philip was an enemy of peace; on the contrary he desired it, but he was desirous not to come to an open quarrel with the english. jeanne knew little of the affairs of burgundy and of france, but her judgment was none the less sound. concerning the relative positions of the kings of france and england, between whom there could be no agreement, since the matter in dispute was the possession of the kingdom, her ideas were very simple but very correct. equally accurate were her views of the position of the king of france with regard to his great vassal, the duke of burgundy, with whom an understanding was not only possible and desirable, but necessary. she pronounced thereupon in a perfectly straightforward fashion: on the one hand there is peace with the burgundians and on the other peace with the english; concerning the peace with the duke of burgundy, by letters and by ambassadors have i required him to come to terms with the king; as for the english, the only way of making peace with them is for them to go back to their country, to england.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] this truce that so highly displeased her we know not when it was concluded, whether at soissons or château-thierry, on the th or st of july, or at provins between the nd and th of august.[ ] it would appear that it was to last fifteen days, at the end of which time the duke was to undertake to surrender paris to the king of france. the maid had good reason for her mistrust. [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, pp. , , note .] when the regent withdrew before him, king charles eagerly returned to his plan of retreating into poitou. from la motte-nangis he sent his quartermasters to bray-sur-seine, which had just submitted. situated above montereau and ten miles south of provins, this town had a bridge over the river, across which the royal army was to pass on the th of august or in the morning of the th; but the english came by night, overcame the quartermasters and took possession of the bridge; with its retreat cut off, the royal army had to retrace its march.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . _journal du siège_, pp. , . gilles de roye, p. .] within this army, which had not fought and which was being devoured by hunger, there existed a party of zealots, led by those whom jeanne fondly called the royal blood.[ ] they were the duke of alençon, the duke of bourbon, the count of vendôme, and likewise the duke of bar, who had just come from the war of the apple baskets.[ ] before he took to painting pictures and writing moralities in rhyme, this young son of the lady yolande had been a warrior. duke of bar and heir of lorraine, he had been forced to join the english and burgundians. brother-in-law of king charles, he must needs rejoice when the latter was victorious, because, but for that victory, he would never have been able to range himself on the side of the queen, his sister, for which he would have been very sorry.[ ] jeanne knew him; not long before, she had asked the duke of lorraine to send him with her into france.[ ] he was said to have been one of those who of their own free will followed her to paris. among the others were the two sons of the lady of laval, gui, the eldest to whom she had offered wine at selles-en-berry, promising soon to give him to drink at paris, and andré, who afterwards became marshal of lohéac.[ ] this was the army of the maid: a band of youths, scarcely more than children, who ranged their banners side by side with the banner of a girl younger than they, but more innocent and better. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _guerre de la hottée de pommes_, cf. vol. i, p. . (w.s.)] [footnote : _chronique du doyen de saint-thibaut de metz_ in d. calmet. _histoire de lorraine_, vol. v, orig. docs., cols, xli-xlvii. villeneuve-bargemont, _précis historique de la vie du roi rené_, aix, , in vo. lecoy de la marche, _le roi rené_, paris, , vols. in vo. vallet de viriville, in _nouvelle biographie générale_, , xli, pp. - .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. cxcix. morosini, vol. iii, p. , note .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. - .] on learning that the retreat had been cut off, it is said that these youthful princes were well content and glad.[ ] this was valour and zeal; but it was a curious position and a false when the knighthood wished for war while the royal council was desiring to treat, and when the knighthood actually rejoiced at the campaign being prolonged by the enemy and at the royal army being cornered by the _godons_. unhappily this war party could boast of no very able adherents; and the favourable opportunity had been lost, the regent had been allowed time to collect his forces and to cope with the most pressing dangers.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, jean chartier. _journal du siège_, _loc. cit._] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , .] its retreat cut off, the royal army fell back on brie. on the morning of sunday, the th, it was at coulommiers; it recrossed the marne at château-thierry.[ ] king charles received a message from the inhabitants of reims, entreating him to draw nearer to them.[ ] he was at la ferté on the th, on the th at crépy in valois.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] [footnote : varin, _archives législatives de la ville de reims_, statuts, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] at one stage of the march on la ferté and crépy, the maid was riding in company with the king, between the archbishop of reims and my lord the bastard. beholding the people hastening to come before the king and crying "noël!" she exclaimed: "good people! never have i seen folk so glad at the coming of the fair king...."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] these peasants of valois and of l'Île de france, who cried "noël!" on the coming of king charles, in like manner hailed the regent and the duke of burgundy when they passed. doubtless they were not so glad as they seemed to jeanne, and if the little saint had listened at the doors of their poor homes, this is about what she would have heard: "what shall we do? let us surrender our all to the devil. it matters not what shall become of us, for, through treason and bad government, we must needs forsake our wives and children and flee into the woods, like wild beasts. and it is not one year or two but fourteen or fifteen since we have been led this unhappy dance. and most of the great nobles of france have died by the sword, or unconfessed have fallen victims to poison or to treachery, or in short have perished by some manner of violent death. better for us would it have been to serve saracens than christians. whether one lives badly or well it comes to the same thing. let us do all the evil that lieth in our power. no worse can happen to us than to be slain or taken."[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] it was only in the neighbourhood of towns or close to fortresses and castles, within sight of the watchman's eye as he looked from the top of tower or belfry, that land was cultivated. on the approach of men-at-arms, the watchman rang his bell or sounded his horn to warn the vine-dressers or the ploughmen to flee to a place of safety. in many districts the alarm bell was so frequent that oxen, sheep, and pigs, of their own accord went into hiding, as soon as they heard it.[ ] [footnote : thomas basin, _histoire de charles vii_, chap. vi. a. tuetey, _les écorcheurs sous charles vii_, montbéliard, , vols. in vo, _passim_. h. lepage, _Épisodes de l'histoire des routiers en lorraine_ ( - ), in _journal d'archéologie lorraine_, vol. xv, pp. _et seq._ le p. denifle, _la désolation des églises_, _passim_. h. martin et lacroix, _histoire de soissons_, p. , _passim_. g. lefèvre-pontalis, _Épisodes de l'invasion anglaise. la guerre de partisans dans la haute normandie_ ( - ), in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, vol. liv, pp. - ; vol. lv, pp. - ; vol. lvi, pp. - .] in the plains especially, which were easy of access, the armagnacs and the english had destroyed everything. for some distance from beauvais, from senlis, from soissons, from laon, they had caused the fields to lie fallow, and here and there shrubs and underwood were springing up over land once cultivated.--"noël! noël!" throughout the duchy of valois, the peasants were abandoning the open country and hiding in woods, rocks, and quarries.[ ] [footnote : pardon issued by king henry vi to an inhabitant of noyant, in stevenson, _letters and papers_, vol. i, pp. , . f. brun, _jeanne d'arc et le capitaine de soissons_, note iii, p. .] many, in order to gain a livelihood, did like jean de bonval, the tailor of noyant near soissons, who, despite wife and children, joined a burgundian band, which went up and down the country thieving, pillaging, and, when occasion offered, smoking out the folk who had taken refuge in churches. on one day jean and his comrades took two hogsheads of corn, on another six or seven cows; on another a goat and a cow, on another a silver belt, a pair of gloves and a pair of shoes; on another a bale of eighteen ells of cloth to make cloaks withal. and jean de bonval said that within his knowledge many a man of worship did as much.[ ]--"noël! noël!" [footnote : stevenson, _letters and papers_, vol. i, pp. , .] the armagnacs and burgundians had torn the coats off the peasants' backs and seized even their pots and pans. it was not far from crépy to meaux. every one in that country had heard of the tree of vauru. at one of the gates of the town of meaux was a great elm, whereon the bastard of vauru, a gascon noble of the dauphin's party, used to hang the peasants he had taken, when they could not pay their ransom. when he had no executioner at hand he used to hang them himself. with him there lived a kinsman, my lord denis de vauru, who was called his cousin, not that he was so in fact, but just to show that one was no better than the other.[ ] in the month of march, in the year , my lord denis, on one of his expeditions, came across a peasant tilling the ground. he took him prisoner, held him to ransom, and, tying him to his horse's tail, dragged him back to meaux, where, by threats and torture, he exacted from him a promise to pay three times as much as he possessed. dragged half dead from his dungeon, the villein sent to the wife he had married that year to ask her to bring the sum demanded by the lord. she was with child, and near the time of her delivery; notwithstanding, she came because she loved her husband and hoped to soften the heart of the lord of vauru. she failed; and messire denis told her that if by a certain day he did not receive the ransom, he would hang the man from the elm-tree. the poor woman went away in tears, fondly commending her husband to god's keeping. and her husband wept for pity of her. by a great effort, she succeeded in obtaining the sum demanded, but not by the day appointed. when she returned, her husband had been hanged from the vauru tree without respite or mercy. with bitter sobs she asked for him, and then fell exhausted by the side of that road, which, on the point of her delivery, she had traversed on foot. having regained consciousness, a second time she asked for her husband. she was told that she would not see him till the ransom had been paid. [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . _livre des trahisons_, pp. , .] while she was before the gascon, there in sight of her were brought forth several craftsmen, held to ransom, who, unable to pay, were straightway despatched to be hanged or drowned. at this spectacle a great fear for her husband came over her; nevertheless, her love for him gave her heart of courage and she paid the ransom. as soon as the duke's men had counted the coins, they dismissed her saying that her husband had died like the other villeins. at those cruel words, wild with sorrow and despair, she broke forth into curses and railing. when she refused to be silent, the bastard of vauru had her beaten and taken to the elm-tree. there she was stripped to the waist and tied to the tree, whence hung forty to fifty men, some from the higher, some from the lower branches, so that, when the wind blew, their bodies touched her head. at nightfall she uttered shrieks so piercing that they were heard in the town. but whosoever had dared to go and unloose her would have been a dead man. fright, fatigue, and exertion brought on her delivery. the wolves, attracted by her cries, came and consumed the fruit of her womb, and then devoured alive the body of the wretched creature. in , the town of meaux was taken by the burgundians. then were the bastard of vauru and his cousin hanged from that tree on which they had caused so many innocent folk to die so shameful a death.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . according to monstrelet (vol. iv, p. ), denis de vauru, the bastard's cousin, was beheaded in the market of paris.] for the poor peasants of these unhappy lands, whether armagnac or burgundian, it was all of a piece; they had nothing to gain by changing masters. nevertheless, it is possible that, on beholding the king, the descendant of saint louis and charles the wise, they may have taken heart of courage and of hope, so great was the fame for justice and for mercy of the illustrious house of france. thus, riding by the side of the archbishop of reims, the maid looked with a friendly eye on the peasants crying "noël!" after saying that she had nowhere seen folk so joyful at the coming of the fair king, she sighed: "would to god i were so fortunate as, when i die, to find burial in this land."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. .] peradventure the lord archbishop was curious to know whether from her voices she had received any revelation concerning her approaching death. she often said that she would not last long. doubtless he was acquainted with a prophecy widely known at that time, that the maid would die in the holy land, after having reconquered with king charles the sepulchre of our lord. there were those who attributed this prophecy to the maid herself; for she had told her confessor that she would die in battle with the infidel, and that after her god would send a maid of rome who would take her place.[ ] and it is obvious that messire regnault knew what store to set on such things. at any rate, for that reason or for another, he asked: "jeanne, in what place look you for to die?" [footnote : eberhard windecke, pp. , , , .] to which she made answer: "where it shall please god. for i am sure neither of the time nor of the place, and i know no more thereof than you." no answer could have been more devout. my lord the bastard, who was present at this conversation, many years later thought he remembered that jeanne had added: "but i would it were now god's pleasure for me to retire, leaving my arms, and to go and serve my father and mother, keeping sheep with my brethren and sister."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . it is dunois who is giving evidence, and the text runs: _in custodiendo oves ipsorum, cum sorore et fratribus meis, qui multum gauderent videre me_. but there is reason to believe she had only one sister, whom she had lost before coming into france. as for her brothers, two of them were with her. dunois' evidence appears to have been written down by a clerk unacquainted with events. the hagiographical character of the passage is obvious.] if she really spoke thus, it was doubtless because she was haunted by dark forebodings. for some time she had believed herself betrayed.[ ] possibly she suspected the lord archbishop of reims of wishing her ill. but it is hard to believe that he can have thought of getting rid of her now when he had employed her with such signal success; rather his intention was to make further use of her. nevertheless he did not like her, and she felt it. he never consulted her and never told her what had been decided in council. and she suffered cruelly from the small account made of the revelations she was always receiving so abundantly. may we not interpret as a subtle and delicate reproach the utterance in his presence of this wish, this complaint? doubtless she longed for her absent mother. and yet she was mistaken when she thought that henceforth she could endure the tranquil life of a village maiden. in her childhood at domremy she seldom went to tend the flocks in the field; she preferred to occupy herself in household affairs;[ ] but if, after having waged war beside the king and the nobles, she had had to return to her country and keep sheep, she would not have stayed there six months. henceforth it was impossible for her to live save with that knighthood, to whose company she believed god had called her. all her heart was there, and she had finished with the distaff. [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , .] during the march on la ferté and crépy, king charles received a challenge from the regent, then at montereau with his baronage, calling upon him to fix a meeting at whatsoever place he should appoint.[ ] "we, who with all our hearts," said the duke of bedford, "desire the end of the war, summon and require you, if you have pity and compassion on the poor folk, who in your cause have so long time been cruelly treated, downtrodden, and oppressed, to appoint a place suitable either in this land of brie, where we both are, or in l'Île-de-france. there will we meet. and if you have any proposal of peace to make unto us, we will listen to it and as beseemeth a good catholic prince we will take counsel thereon."[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] this arrogant and insulting letter had not been penned by the regent in any desire or hope of peace, but rather, against all reason, to throw on king charles's shoulders the responsibility for the miseries and suffering the war was causing the commonalty. writing to the king crowned in reims cathedral, from the beginning he addresses him in this disdainful manner: "you who were accustomed to call yourself dauphin of viennois and who now without reason take unto yourself the title of king." he declares that he wants peace and then adds forthwith: "not a peace hollow, corrupt, feigned, violated, perjured, like that of montereau, on which, by your fault and your consent, there followed that terrible and detestable murder, committed contrary to all law and honour of knighthood, on the person of our late dear and greatly loved father, jean, duke of burgundy."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] my lord of bedford had married one of the daughters of that duke jean, who had been treacherously murdered in revenge for the assassination of the duke of orléans. but indeed it was not wisely to prepare the way of peace to cast the crime of montereau in the face of charles of valois, who had been dragged there as a child and with whom there had remained ever after a physical trembling and a haunting fear of crossing bridges.[ ] [footnote : georges chastellain, fragments published by j. quicherat in _la bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, st series, vol. iv, p. .] for the moment the duke of bedford's most serious grievance against charles was that he was accompanied by the maid and friar richard. "you cause the ignorant folk to be seduced and deceived," he said, "for you are supported by superstitious and reprobate persons, such as this woman of ill fame and disorderly life, wearing man's attire and dissolute in manners, and likewise by that apostate and seditious mendicant friar, they both alike being, according to holy scripture, abominable in the sight of god." to strike still greater shame into the heart of the enemy, the duke of bedford proceeds to a second attack on the maiden and the monk. and in the most eloquent passage of the letter, when he is citing charles of valois to appear before him, he says ironically that he expects to see him come led by this woman of ill fame and this apostate monk.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , .] thus wrote the regent of england; albeit he had a mind, subtle, moderate, and graceful, he was moreover a good catholic and a believer in all manner of devilry and witchcraft. his horror at the army of charles of valois being commanded by a witch and a heretic monk was certainly sincere, and he deemed it wise to publish the scandal. there were doubtless only too many, who, like him, were ready to believe that the maid of the armagnacs was a heretic, a worshipper of idols and given to the practice of magic. in the opinion of many worthy and wise burgundians a prince must forfeit his honour by keeping such company. and if jeanne were in very deed a witch, what a disgrace! what an abomination! the flowers de luce reinstated by the devil! the dauphin's whole camp was tainted by it. and yet when my lord of bedford spread abroad those ideas he was not so adroit as he thought. jeanne, as we know, was good-hearted and in energy untiring. by inspiring the men of her party with the idea that she brought them good luck, she gave them courage.[ ] nevertheless king charles's counsellors knew what she could do for them and avoided consulting her. she herself felt that she would not last long.[ ] then who represented her as a great war leader? who exalted her as a supernatural power? the enemy. [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. ; vol. iii, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] this letter shows how the english had transformed an innocent child into a being unnatural, terrible, redoubtable, into a spectre of hell causing the bravest to grow pale. in a voice of lamentation the regent cries: the devil! the witch! and then he marvels that his fighting men tremble before the maid, and desert rather than face her.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iv, pp. , , , , . rymer, _foedera_, vol. iv, p. . g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la panique anglaise_.] from montereau, the english army had fallen back on paris. now it once again came forth to meet the french. on saturday, the th of august, king charles held the country between crépy and paris. now the maid from the heights of dammartin could espy the summit of montmartre with its windmills, and the light mists from the seine veiling that great city of paris, promised to her by those voices which alas! she had heeded too well.[ ] on the morrow, sunday, the king and his army encamped in a village, by name barron, on the river nonnette on which, five miles lower down, stands senlis.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . letter from alain chartier in _trial_, vol. v, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , . perceval de cagny, pp. , .] senlis was subject to the english.[ ] it was said that the regent was approaching with a great company of men-at-arms, commanded by the earl of suffolk, the lord talbot and the bastard saint pol. with him were the crusaders of the cardinal of winchester, the late king's uncle, between three thousand five hundred and four thousand men, paid with the pope's money to go and fight against the hussites in bohemia. the cardinal judged it well to use them against the king of france, a very christian king forsooth, but one whose hosts were commanded by a witch and an apostate.[ ] it was reported that, in the english camp, was a captain with fifteen hundred men-at-arms, clothed in white, bearing a white standard, on which was embroidered a distaff whence was suspended a spindle; and on the streamer of the banner was worked in fine letters of gold: "_ores, vienne la belle!_"[ ] by these words the men-at-arms wished to proclaim that if they were to meet the maid of the armagnacs she would find her work cut out. [footnote : flammermont, _histoire de senlis pendant la seconds partie de la guerre de cent ans_ ( - ), in _mémoires de la société de l'histoire de paris_.] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. , ; vol. iv, appendix xvii. rymer, _foedera_, july, . raynaldi, _annales ecclesiastici_, pp. , . s. bougenot, _notices et extraits de manuscrits intéressant l'histoire de france conservés a la bibliothèque impérial de vienne_, p. .] [footnote : now, come forth beauty (w.s.). _le livre des trahisons de france_, ed. kervyn de lettenhove, in _la collection des chroniques belges_, , p. .] captain jean de saintrailles, the brother of poton, observed the english first when, marching towards senlis, they were crossing la nonnette by a ford so narrow that two horses could barely pass abreast. but king charles's army, which was coming down the nonnette valley, did not arrive in time to surprise them.[ ] it passed the night opposite them, near montepilloy. [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , .] on the morrow, monday, the th of august, at daybreak, the men-at-arms heard mass in camp and, as far as might be, cleared their consciences; for great plunderers and whoremongers as they were, they had not given up hope of winning paradise when this life should be over. that day was a solemn feast, when the church, on the authority of st. grégoire de tours, commemorates the physical and spiritual exaltation to heaven of the virgin mary. churchmen taught that it behoves men to keep the feasts of our lord and the holy virgin, and that to wage battle on days consecrated to them is to sin grievously against the glorious mother of god. no one in king charles's camp could maintain a contrary opinion, since all were christians as they were in the camp of the regent. and yet, immediately after the _deo gratias_, every man took up his post ready for battle.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] according to the established rule, the army was in several divisions: the van-guard, the archers, the main body, the rear-guard and the three wings.[ ] further, and according to the same rule, there had been formed a skirmishing company, destined if need were to succour and reinforce the other divisions. it was commanded by captain la hire, my lord the bastard, and the sire d'albret, la trémouille's half-brother. with this company was the maid. at the battle of patay, despite her entreaties, she had been forced to keep with the rear-guard; now she rode with the bravest and ablest, with those skirmishers or scouts, whose duty it was, says jean de bueil,[ ] to repulse the scouts of the opposite party and to observe the number and the ordering of the enemy.[ ] at length justice was done her; at length she was assigned the place which her skill in horsemanship and her courage in battle merited; and yet she hesitated to follow her comrades. according to the report of a burgundian knight chronicler, there she was, "swayed to and fro, at one moment wishing to fight, at another not."[ ] [footnote : _le jouvencel_, _passim_.] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : _le jouvencel_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] her perplexity is easily comprehensible. the little saint could not bring herself to decide whether to ride forth to battle on the day of our lady's feast or to fold her arms while fighting was going on around her. her voices intensified her indecision. they never instructed her what to do save when she knew herself. in the end she went with the men-at-arms, not one of whom appears to have shared her scruples. the two armies were but the space of a culverin shot apart.[ ] she, with certain of her company, went right up to the dykes and to the carts, behind which the english were entrenched. sundry _godons_ and men of picardy came forth from their camp and fought, some on foot, others on horseback against an equal number of french. on both sides there were wounded, and prisoners were taken. this hand to hand fighting continued the whole day; at sunset the most serious skirmish happened, and so much dust was raised that it was impossible to see anything.[ ] on that day there befell what had happened on the th of june, between beaugency and meung. with the armaments and the customs of warfare of those days, it was very difficult to force an army to come out of its entrenched camp. generally, if a battle was to be fought, it was necessary for the two sides to be in accord, and, after the pledge of battle had been sent and accepted, for each to level his own half of the field where the engagement was to take place. [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique de la pucelle_. _journal du siège._ monstrelet, _loc. cit._] at nightfall the skirmishing ceased, and the two armies slept at a crossbow-shot from each other. then king charles went off to crépy, leaving the english free to go and relieve the town of Évreux, which had agreed to surrender on the th of august. with this town the regent made sure of normandy.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . cochon, p. . g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la panique anglaise_, paris, , in vo, pp. , . morosini, vol. iii, p. , note . ch. de beaurepaire, _de l'administration de la normandie sous la domination anglaise aux années , , _, p. (_mémoires de la société des antiquaires de normandie_, vol. xxiv).] their loss of the opportunity of conquering normandy was the price the french had to pay for the royal coronation procession, for that march to reims, which was at once military, civil and religious. if, after the victory of patay, they had hastened at once to rouen, normandy would have been reconquered and the english cast into the sea; if, from patay they had pushed on to paris they would have entered the city without resistance. yet we must not too hastily condemn that ceremonious promenading of the lilies through champagne. by the march to reims the french party, those armagnacs reviled for their cruelty and felony, that little king of bourges compromised in an infamous ambuscade, may have won advantages greater and more solid than the conquest of the county of maine and the duchy of normandy and than a victorious assault on the first city of the realm. by retaking his towns of champagne and of france without bloodshed, king charles appeared to advantage as a good and pacific lord, as a prince wise and debonair, as the friend of the townsfolk, as the true king of cities. in short, by concluding that campaign of honest and successful negotiations and by the august ceremonial of the coronation, he came forth at once as the lawful and very holy king of france. an illustrious lady, a descendant of bolognese nobles and the widow of a knight of picardy, well versed in the liberal arts, was the author of a number of lays, virelays,[ ] and ballads. christine de pisan, noble and high-minded, wrote with distinction in prose and verse. loyal to france and a champion of her sex, there was nothing she more fervently desired than to see the french prosperous and their ladies honoured. in her old age she was cloistered in the abbey of poissy, where her daughter was a nun. there, on the st of july, , she completed a poem of sixty-one stanzas, each containing eight lines of eight syllables, in praise of the maid. in halting measures and affected language, these verses expressed the thoughts of the finest, the most cultured and the most pious souls touching the angel of war sent of god to the dauphin charles.[ ] [footnote : a virelay was a later variation of the lay, differing from it chiefly in the arrangement of the rhymes (w.s.).] [footnote : le roux de lincy and tisserand, _paris et ses historiens_, pp. _et seq._] in this work she begins by saying that for eleven years she has spent her cloistered life in weeping. and in very truth, this noble-hearted woman wept over the misfortunes of the realm, into which she had been born, wherein she had grown up, where kings and princes had received her and learned poets had done her honour, and the language of which she spoke with the precision of a purist. after eleven years of mourning, the victories of the dauphin were her first joy. "at length," she says, "the sun begins to shine once more and the fine days to bloom again. that royal child so long despised and offended, behold him coming, wearing on his head a crown and accoutred with spurs of gold. let us cry: 'noël! charles, the seventh of that great name, king of the french, thou hast recovered thy kingdom, with the help of a maid.'" christine recalls a prophecy concerning a king, charles, son of charles, surnamed the flying hart,[ ] who was to be emperor. of this prophecy we know nothing save that the escutcheon of king charles vii was borne by two winged stags and that a letter to an italian merchant, written in , contains an obscure announcement of the coronation of the dauphin at rome.[ ] [footnote : a winged stag (_le cerf-volant_) is the symbol of a king. froissart thus explains its origin. before setting out for flanders, in , charles vi dreamed that his falcon had flown away. "th[=e] [transcriber's note: e with macron] apered sodenly before hym a great hart with wynges whereof he had great joye." and the hart bore him to his lost bird. froissart, bk. ii, ch. clxiv. [the chronycle of syr john froissart translated by lord berners, vol. iii, p. , tudor translation, .] (w.s.) according to juvénal des ursins, charles vi, in , met in the forest of senlis a stag with a golden collar bearing this inscription: _hoc me cæsar donavit_ (paillot, _parfaite science des armoiries_, paris, , in fo., p. ). in the works of eustache deschamps this same allegory is frequently employed to designate the king. (eustache deschamps, _oeuvres_, ed. g. raynaud, vol. ii, p. .)] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, pp. , .] "i pray god," continued christine, "that thou mayest be that one, that god will grant thee life to see thy children grow up, that through thee and through them, france may have joy, that serving god, thou wage not war to the utterance. my hope is that thou shalt be good, upright, a friend of justice, greater than any other, that pride sully not thy prowess, that thou be gentle, favourable to thy people and fearing god who hath chosen thee to serve him. "and thou, maid most happy, most honoured of god, thou hast loosened the cord with which france was bound. canst thou be praised enough, thou who hast brought peace to this land laid low by war? "jeanne, born in a propitious hour, blessed be thy creator! maid, sent of god, in whom the holy ghost shed abroad a ray of his grace, who hast from him received and dost keep gifts in abundance; never did he refuse thy request. who can ever be thankful enough unto thee?" the maid, saviour of the realm, dame christine compares to moses who delivered israel out of the land of egypt. "that a maid should proffer her breast, whence france may suck the sweet milk of peace, behold a matter which is above nature! "joshua was a mighty conqueror. what is there strange in that, since he was a strong man? but now behold, a woman, a shepherdess doth appear, of greater worship than any man. but with god all things are easy. "by esther, judith and deborah, women of high esteem, he delivered his oppressed people. and well i know there have been women of great worship. but jeanne is above all. through her god hath worked many miracles. "by a miracle was she sent; the angel of the lord led her to the king." "before she could be believed, to clerks and to scholars was she taken and thoroughly examined. she said she was come from god, and history proved her saying to be true, for merlin, the sibyl and bede had seen her in the spirit. in their books they point to her as the saviour of france, and in their prophecies they let wit of her, saying: 'in the french wars she shall bear the banner.' and indeed they relate all the manner of her history." we are not astonished that dame christine should have been acquainted with the sibylline poems; for it is known that she was well versed in the writings of the ancients. but we perceive that the obviously mutilated prophecy of merlin the magician and the apocryphal chronogram of the venerable bede had come under her notice. the predictions and verses of the armagnac ecclesiastics were spread abroad everywhere with amazing rapidity.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , _et seq._; vol. iv, pp. , ; vol. v, p. .] dame christine's views concerning the maid accord with those of the doctors of the french party; and the poem she wrote in her convent in many passages bears resemblance to the treatise of the archbishop of embrun. there it is said: "the goodness of her life proves that jeanne possesses the grace of god. "it was made manifest, when at the siege of orléans her might revealed itself. never was miracle plainer. god did so succour his own people, that the strength of the enemy was but as that of a dead dog. they were taken or slain. "honour to the feminine sex, god loves it. a damsel of sixteen, who is not weighed down by armour and weapons, even though she be bred to endure hardness, is not that a matter beyond nature? the enemy flees before her. many eyes behold it. "she goeth forth capturing towns and castles. she is the first captain of our host. such power had not hector or achilles. but god, who leads her, does all. "and you, ye men-at-arms, who suffer durance vile and risk your lives for the right, be ye faithful: in heaven shall ye have reward and glory, for whosoever fighteth for the just cause, winneth paradise. "know ye that by her the english shall be cast down, for it is the will of god, who inclineth his ear to the voice of the good folk, whom they desired to overthrow. the blood of the slain crieth against them." in the shadow of her convent dame christine shares the hope common to every noble soul; from the maid she expects all the good things she longs for. she believes that jeanne will restore concord to the christian church. the gentlest spirits of those days looked to fire and sword for the bringing in of unity and obedience; they never dreamed that christian charity could mean charity towards the whole human race. wherefore, on the strength of prophecy, the poetess expects the maid to destroy the infidel and the heretic, or in other words the turk and the hussite. "in her conquest of the holy land, she will tear up the saracens like weeds. thither will she lead king charles, whom god defend! before he dies he shall make that journey. he it is who shall conquer the land. there shall she end her life. there shall the thing come to pass." the good christine would appear to have brought her poem to this conclusion when she received tidings of the king's coronation. she then added thirteen stanzas to celebrate the mystery of reims and to foretell the taking of paris.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. _et seq._ r. thomassy, _essai sur les écrits politiques de christine de pisan, suivi d'une notice littéraire et de pièces inédites_, paris, , in vo.] thus in the gloom and silence of one of those convents where even the hushed noises of the world penetrated but seldom, this virtuous lady collected and expressed in rhyme all those dreams of church and state which centred round a child. in a fairly good ballad written at the time of the coronation, in love and honour "of the beautiful garden of the noble flowers de luce,"[ ] and for the elevation of the white cross, king charles vii is described by that mysterious name "the noble stag," which we have first discovered in christine's poem. the unknown author of the ballad says that the sibyl, daughter of king priam, prophesied the misfortunes of this royal stag; but such a prediction need not surprise us, when we remember that charles of valois was of priam's royal line, wherefore cassandra, when she revealed the destiny of the flying hart, did but prolong down the centuries the vicissitudes of her own family.[ ] [footnote : _du beau jardin des nobles fleurs de lis._] [footnote : m. pierre champion has kindly communicated to me the text of this unpublished ballad, which he discovered in a french ms. at stockholm, liii, fol. . this is the title which the copyist affixed to it about : _ballade faicte quant le roy charles vii'eme fut couronne a rains du temps de jehanne daiz dicte la pucelle_.] rhymers on the french side celebrated the unexpected victories of charles and the maid as best they knew how, in a commonplace fashion, by some stiff poem but scantily clothing a thin and meagre muse. nevertheless there is a ballad,[ ] by a dauphinois poet, beginning with this line; "back, english _coués_, back!"[ ] which is powerful through the genuine religious spirit which prevails throughout. the author, some poor ecclesiastic, points piously to the english banner cast down, "by the will of king jesus and of jeanne the sweet maid."[ ] [footnote : p. meyer, _ballade contre les anglais_ ( ), in _romania_, xxi ( ), pp. , .] [footnote : _arrière, englois coués, arrière!_ for coués see vol. i, p. , note .] [footnote : _par le vouloir dou roy jésus et jeanne la douce pucelle._] the maid had derived her influence over the common folk from the prophecies of merlin the magician and the venerable bede.[ ] as jeanne's deeds became known, predictions foretelling them came to be discovered. for example it was found that engélide, daughter of an old king of hungary,[ ] had known long before of the coronation at reims. indeed to this royal virgin was attributed a prophecy recorded in latin, of which the following is a literal translation: [footnote : for the legend cf. _merlin, roman en prose du xiii'e siècle_, ed. g. paris and j. ulrich, , vols. in vo, introduction. _premier volume de merlin_, paris, vérard, , in fol. hersart de la villemarqué, _myrdhin ou l'enchanteur merlin, son histoire, ses oeuvres, son influence_, paris, , in mo. la borderie, _les véritables prophéties de merlin; examen des poèmes bretons attribués à ce barde_, in _revue de bretagne_, vol. liii ( ). d'arbois de jubainville, _merlin est il un personnage réel ou les origines de la légende de merlin_, in _revue des questions historiques_, vol. v ( ), pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations_, p. .] "o lily illustrious, watered by princes, by the sower planted in the open, in an orchard delectable, by flowers and sweet-smelling roses surrounded. but, alas! dismay of the lily, terror of the orchard! sundry beasts, some coming from without, others nourished within the orchard, hurtling horns against horns, have well nigh crushed the lily, which fades for lack of water. long do they trample upon it, destroying nearly all its roots and assaying to wither it with their poisoned breath. "but the beasts shall be driven forth in shame from the orchard, by a virgin coming from the land whence flows the cruel venom. behind her right ear the virgin bears a little scarlet sign; she speaks softly, and her neck is short. to the lily shall she give fountains of living water, and shall drive out the serpent, to all men revealing its venom. with a laurel wreath woven by no mortal hand shall she at reims engarland happily the gardener of the lily, named charles, son of charles. all around the turbulent neighbours shall submit, the waters shall surge, the folk shall cry: 'long live the lily! away with the beast! let the orchard flower!' he shall approach the fields of the island, adding fleet to fleet, and there a multitude of beasts shall perish in the rout. peace for many shall be established. the keys of a great number shall recognise the hand that had forged them. the citizens of a noble city shall be punished for perjury by defeat, groaning with many groans, and at the entrance [of charles?] high walls shall fall low. then the orchard of the lily shall be ... (?) and long shall it flower."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] this prophecy attributed to the unknown daughter of a distant king would seem to us to proceed from a french ecclesiastic and an armagnac. french royalty is portrayed in the figure of the delectable orchard, around which contend beasts nourished in the orchard as well as foreign beasts, that is burgundians and english. king charles of valois is mentioned by his own name and that of his father, and the name of the coronation town occurs in full. the reduction of certain towns by their liege lord is stated most clearly. doubtless the prediction was made at the very time of the coronation. it explicitly mentions deeds already accomplished and dimly hints at events looked for, fulfilment of which was delayed, or happened in a manner other than what was expected, or never happened at all, such as the taking of paris after a terrible assault, the invasion of england by the french, the conclusion of peace. it is highly probable that when announcing that the deliverer of the orchard might be recognised by her short neck, her sweet voice and a little scarlet mark, the pseudo engélide was carefully depicting characteristics noticeable in jeanne herself. moreover we know that isabelle romée's daughter had a sweet woman's voice.[ ] that her neck was broad and firmly set on her shoulders accords with what is known concerning her robust appearance.[ ] and doubtless the so-called daughter of the king of hungary did not imagine the birth-mark behind her right ear.[ ] [footnote : philippe de bergame, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. ; vol. v, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . philippe de bergame, _de claris mulieribus_, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . perceval de boulainvilliers, _lettre au duc de milan_, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] [footnote : j. bréhal, in _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] chapter ii the maid's first visit to compiÈgne--the three popes--saint denys--truces after the english army had departed for normandy, king charles sent from crépy to senlis the count of vendôme, the maréchal de rais and the maréchal de boussac with their men-at-arms. the inhabitants gave them to wit that they inclined to favour the flowers de luce.[ ] henceforth the submission of compiègne was sure. the king summoned the citizens to receive him; on wednesday the th, the keys of the town were brought to him; on the next day he entered.[ ] the attorneys[ ] (for by that name the aldermen of the town were called) presented to him messire guillaume de flavy, whom they had elected governor of their town, as being their most experienced and most faithful citizen. on his being presented they asked the king, according to their privilege, to confirm and ratify his appointment. but the sire de la trémouille took for himself the governorship of compiègne and appointed as his lieutenant messire guillaume de flavy, whom, notwithstanding, the inhabitants regarded as their captain.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . perceval de cagny, pp. , . morosini, pp. , . flammermont, _senlis pendant la seconde période de la guerre cent ans_, in _mémoires de la société de l'histoire de paris_, vol. v, , p. .] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . monstrelet, p. . de l'epinois, _notes extraites des archives communales de compiègne_, pp. , . a. sorel, _séjours de jeanne d'arc à compiègne, maisons ou elle a logé en et _, paris, , in vo, pages.] [footnote : french _attournés_, cf. la curne, _attournés_, godefroi, _atornés_, magistrates at compiègne, elected on st. john the baptist's day for three years (w.s.). _procès_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . a. sorel, _la prise de jeanne d'arc devant compiègne_, paris, , in vo, pp. , . duc de la trémoïlle, _les la trémoïlle pendant cinq siècles_, nantes, , in to, vol. i, pp. , . p. champion, _guillaume de flavy, capitaine de compiègne_, paris, , in vo, proofs and illustrations, vol. xiii, p. .] one by one, the king was recovering his good towns. he charged the folk of beauvais to acknowledge him as their lord. when they saw the flowers-de-luce borne by the heralds, the citizens cried: "long live charles of france!" the clergy chanted a _te deum_ and there was great rejoicing. those who refused fealty to king charles were put out of the town with permission to take away their possessions.[ ] the bishop and vidame of beauvais, messire pierre cauchon, who was grand almoner of france to king henry, and a negotiator of important ecclesiastical business, grieved to see his city returning to the french;[ ] it was to the city's hurt, but he could not help it. he failed not to realise that part of this disgrace he owed to the maid of the armagnacs, who was influential with her party and had the reputation of being all powerful. as he was a good theologian he must have suspected that the devil was leading her and he wished her all possible harm. [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , . morosini, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : a. sarrazin, _pierre cauchon, juge de jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in vo, pp. _et seq._] at this time artois, picardy, all the burgundian territory in the north, was slipping away from burgundy. had king charles gone there the majority of the dwellers in the strong towers and castles of picardy would have received him as their sovereign.[ ] but meanwhile his enemies would have recaptured what he had just won in valois and the Île de france. [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] having entered compiègne with the king, jeanne lodged at the hôtel du boeuf, the house of the king's proctor. she slept with the proctor's wife, marie le boucher, who was a kinswoman of jacques boucher, treasurer of orléans.[ ] [footnote : a. sorel, _séjours de jeanne d'arc à compiègne_, p. .] she longed to march on paris, which she was sure of taking since her voices had promised it to her. it is related that at the end of two or three days she grew impatient, and, calling the duke of alençon, said to him: "my fair duke, command your men and likewise those of the other captains to equip themselves," then she is said to have cried: "by my staff! i must to paris."[ ] but this could not have happened: the maid never gave orders to the men-at-arms. the truth of the matter is that the duke of alençon, with a goodly company of fighting men, took his leave of the king and that jeanne was to accompany him. she was ready to mount her horse when on monday the nd of august, a messenger from the count of armagnac brought her a letter which she caused to be read to her.[ ] the following are the contents of the missive: [footnote : perceval de cagny, pp. , . _chronique de tournai_, vol. iii, in the _recueil des chroniques de flandre_, ed. smedt, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] "my very dear lady, i commend myself humbly to you, and i entreat you, for god's sake, that seeing the divisions which are at present in the holy church universal, concerning the question of the popes (for there are three contending for the papacy: one dwells at rome and calls himself martin v, whom all christian kings obey: the other dwells at peñiscola, in the kingdom of valentia, and calls himself clement viii; the third dwells no man knows where, unless it be the cardinal de saint-estienne and a few folk with him, and calls himself pope benedict xiv; the first, who is called pope martin, was elected at constance by consent of all christian nations; he who is called clement was elected at peñiscola, after the death of pope benedict xiii, by three of his cardinals; the third who is called pope benedict xiv was elected secretly at peñiscola, by that same cardinal saint-estienne himself): i pray you beseech our lord jesus christ that in his infinite mercy, he declare unto us through you, which of the three aforesaid is the true pope and whom it shall be his pleasure that henceforth we obey, him who is called martin, or him who is called clement or him who is called benedict; and in whom we should believe, either in secret or under reservation or by public pronouncement: for we shall all be ready to work the will and the pleasure of our lord jesus christ. yours in all things, count d'armagnac."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] he who wrote thus, calling jeanne his very dear lady, recommending himself humbly to her, not in self-abasement, but merely, as we should say to-day, out of courtesy, was one of the greater vassals of the crown. she had never seen this baron, and doubtless she had never heard of him. jean iv, son of that constable of france who had been killed in , was the cruellest man in the kingdom. at that time he was between thirty-three and thirty-four years of age. he held both armagnacs, the black and the white, the country of the four valleys, the counties of pardiac, of fesenzac, astarac, la lomagne, and l'Île-jourdain. after the count of foix he was the most powerful noble of gascony.[ ] [footnote : a. longnon, _les limites de la france et l'étendue de la domination anglaise à l'époque de la mission de jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in vo. vallet de viriville, in _nouvelle biographie générale_, iii, col. , .] while his name was among those of the adherents of the king and while it was used to designate those who were hostile to the english and burgundians, jean iv himself was neither french nor english, but simply gascon. he called himself count by the grace of god, but he was ever ready to acknowledge himself the king's vassal when it was a question of receiving gifts from that suzerain, who might not always be able to afford himself new gaiters, but who must perforce spend large sums on his great vassals. meanwhile jean iv showed consideration to the english, protected an adventurer in the regent's pay, and gave appointments in his household to men wearing the red cross. he was as violent and treacherous as any of his retainers. having unlawfully seized the marshal de séverac, he exacted from him the cession of all his goods and then had him strangled.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de mathieu d'escouchy_, vol. i, p. , and proofs and illustrations, pp. , , , . dom vaissette, _histoire générale du languedoc_, vol. iv, pp. , . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. . vallet de viriville, in _nouvelle biographie générale_, , vol. iii, pp. - . le p. ayroles, _la vierge guerrière_, p. .] this murder was quite recent. and now we have the docile son of holy church appearing eager to discover who is his true spiritual father. it would seem, however, that his mind was already made up on the subject and that he already knew the answer to his question. in verity the long schism, which had rent christendom asunder, had terminated twelve years earlier. it had ended when the conclave, which had assembled at constance in the house of the merchants on the th of november, , on the th of that month, saint martin's day, proclaimed pope, the cardinal deacon otto colonna, who assumed the title of martin v. in the eternal city martin v wore that tiara which lorenzo ghiberti had adorned with eight figures in gold;[ ] and the wily roman had contrived to obtain his recognition by england and even by france, who thenceforward renounced all hope of a french pontiff. while charles vii's advisers may not have agreed with martin v on the question of a general council, all the rights of the pope of rome in the kingdom of france had been restored to him by an edict, in . martin v was the one and only pope. nevertheless, alphonso of aragon, highly incensed because martin v supported against him the rights of louis d'anjou to the kingdom of naples, determined to oppose to the pope of rome a pontiff of his own making. and just ready to hand he had a canon who called himself pope, and on the following grounds: the anti-pope, benedict xiii, having fled to peñiscola, had on his death-bed nominated four cardinals, three of whom appointed to succeed him a canon of barcelona, one gil muñoz, who assumed the title of clement viii. imprisoned in the château of peñiscola on a barren neck of land on three sides washed by the sea, this was the clement whom the king of aragon had chosen to be the rival of martin v.[ ] [footnote : _annales juris pontificis_ ( - ), vii, . e. muntz, _la tiare pontificale du viii'e au xvi'e siècle_ in _mem. acad. inscript. et belles lettres_, vol. xxvi, i, pp. - , fig. _les arts à la cour des papes pendant les xv'e et xvi'e siècles_, in _bibl. des Écoles françaises d'athènes et rome_, vol. iv.] [footnote : baluze, _vitæ paparum avenionensium_, , i, pp. _et seq._ fabricius, _bibliotheca medii ævi_, , i, p. .] the pope excommunicated the king of aragon and then opened negotiations with him. the count of armagnac joined the king's party. for the baptism of his children the count had holy water blessed by benedict xiii brought from peñiscola. he likewise was excommunicated. the blow had fallen upon him in this very year, . thus for some months he had been deprived of the sacraments and excluded from public worship. hence arose all manner of secular difficulties, in addition to which he was probably afraid of the devil. moreover his position was becoming impossible. his powerful ally, king alfonso, gave in, and himself called upon clement viii to resign. when he addressed his inquiry to the maid of france, the armagnac was evidently meditating the withdrawal of his allegiance from an unfortunate anti-pope, who was himself renouncing or about to renounce the tiara; for clement viii abdicated at peñiscola on the th of july. the dictation of the count's letter cannot have occurred long before that date and may have been after. at any rate whenever he dictated it he must have been aware of the position of the sovereign pontiff clement viii. as for the third pope mentioned in his missive, benedict xiv, he had no tidings of him, and indeed he was keeping very quiet. his election to the holy see had been singular in that it had been made by one cardinal alone. benedict xiv's right to the papacy had been communicated to him by a cardinal created by the anti-pope, benedict xiii, at the time of his promotion in . that cardinal was jean barrère, a frenchman, bachelor of laws, priest and cardinal of saint-Étienne _in coelio monte_. it was not to benedict xiv that the armagnac was thinking of giving his allegiance; obviously he was eager to submit to martin v. it is not easy therefore to discover why he should have asked jeanne to indicate the true pope. doubtless it was customary in those days to consult on all manner of questions those holy maids to whom god vouchsafed illumination. such an one the maid appeared, and her fame as a prophetess had been spread abroad in a very short time. she revealed hidden things, she drew the curtain from the future. we are reminded of that _capitoul_[ ] of toulouse, who about three weeks after the deliverance of orléans, advised her being consulted as to a remedy for the corruption of the coinage. bona of milan, married to a poor gentleman in the train of her cousin, queen ysabeau, besought the maid's help in her endeavour to regain the duchy which she claimed through her descent from the visconti.[ ] it was just as appropriate to question the maid concerning the pope and the anti-pope. but the most difficult point in this question is to discover what were the count of armagnac's reasons for consulting the holy maid on a matter concerning which he appears to have been sufficiently informed. the following seems the most probable. [footnote : cf. vol. i, p. (w.s.).] [footnote : according to le maire, _histoire et antiquités de la ville et duché d'orléans_, p. , this request is addressed to "jeanne the maid, greatly to be honoured and most devout, sent by the king of heaven for the restoration, and for the extirpation of the english who tyrannize over france." _trial_, vol. v, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] jean iv was prepared to recognise martin v as pope; but he desired his submission to appear honourable and reasonable. wherefore he conceived the idea of ascribing his conduct to the command of jesus christ, speaking through the holy maid. but it was necessary for the command to be in accordance with his wishes. the letter provides for that. he is careful to indicate to jeanne, and consequently to god, what reply would be suitable. he lays stress on the fact that martin v, who had recently excommunicated him, was elected at constance by the consent of all christian nations, that he dwells at rome and that he is obeyed by all christian kings. he points out on the other hand the circumstances which invalidate the election of clement viii by only three cardinals, and the still more ridiculous election of that benedict, who was chosen by a conclave consisting of only one cardinal.[ ] [footnote : noël valois, _la france et le grand schisme d'occident_, vol. iv ( ), in vo, _passim_.] after such a setting forth could there possibly remain a single doubt as to whether pope martin was the true pope? but such guile was lost on jeanne; it escaped her entirely. the count of armagnac's letter, which she had read to her as she was mounting her horse, must have struck her as very obscure.[ ] the names of benedict, of clement and of martin she had never heard. the saints, catherine and margaret, with whom she was constantly holding converse, revealed to her nothing concerning the pope. they spoke to her of nought save of the realm of france; and jeanne's prudence generally led her to confine her prophecies to the subject of the war. this circumstance was pointed out by a german clerk as a matter extraordinary and worthy of note.[ ] but for this once she consented to reply to jean iv, in order to maintain her reputation as a prophet and because the title of armagnac strongly appealed to her. she told him that at that moment she was unable to instruct him concerning the true pope, but that later she would inform him in which of the three he must believe, according as god should reveal it unto her. in short, she in a measure followed the example of such soothsayers as postpone the announcement of the oracle to a future day. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] jhesus [cross symbol] maria count of armagnac, my good friend and beloved, jehanne the maid lets you to wit that your message hath come before me, the which hath told me that you have sent from where you are to know from me in which of the three popes, whom you mention in your memorial, you ought to believe. this thing in sooth i cannot tell you truly for the present, until i be in paris or at rest elsewhere, because for the present i am too much hindered by affairs of war; but when you hear that i am in paris send a message to me, and i will give you to understand what you shall rightfully believe, and what i shall know by the counsel of my righteous and sovereign lord, the king of all the world, and what you should do, as far as i may. to god i commend you; god keep you. written at compiengne, the nd day of august.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , .] jeanne before she made this reply can have consulted neither the good brother pasquerel nor the good friar richard nor indeed any of the churchmen of her company. they would have told her that the true pope was the pope of rome, martin v. they might also have represented to her that she was belittling the authority of the church by appealing to a revelation from god concerning popes and anti-popes. sometimes, they would have told her, god confides the secrets of his church to holy persons. but it would be rash to count upon so rare a privilege. jeanne exchanged a few words with the messenger who had brought her the missive; but the interview was brief. the messenger was not safe in the town, not that the soldiers would have made him pay for his master's crimes and treasons; but the sire de la trémouille was at compiègne; and he knew that count jean, who for the nonce was in alliance with the constable de richemont, was meditating something against him. la trémouille was not so malevolent as the count of armagnac: and yet the poor messenger only narrowly escaped being thrown into the oise.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] on the morrow, tuesday the rd of august, the maid and the duke of alençon took leave of the king and set out from compiègne with a goodly company of fighting men. before marching on saint-denys in france, they went to senlis to collect a company of men-at-arms whom the king had sent there.[ ] as was her custom, the maid rode surrounded by monks. friar richard, who predicted the approaching end of the world, had joined the procession. it would seem that he had superseded the others, even brother pasquerel, the chaplain. it was to him that the maid confessed beneath the walls of senlis. in that same spot, with the dukes of clermont and alençon,[ ] she took the communion on two consecutive days. she must have been in the hands of monks who were in the habit of making a very frequent use of the eucharist. [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. , . the accounts of hémon raguier, in the _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] the lord bishop of senlis was jean fouquerel. hitherto, he had been on the side of the english and entirely devoted to the lord bishop of beauvais. on the approach of the royal army, jean fouquerel, who was a cautious person, had gone off to paris to hide a large sum of money. he was careful of his possessions. some one in the army took his nag and gave it to the maid. by means of a draft on the receiver of taxes and the _gabelle_ officer of the town, two hundred golden _saluts_[ ] were paid for it. the lord bishop did not approve of this transaction and demanded his hackney. hearing of his displeasure, the maid caused a letter to be written to him, saying that he might have back his nag if he liked; she did not want it for she found it not sufficiently hardy for men-at-arms. the horse was sent to the sire de la trémouille with a request that he would deliver it to the lord bishop, who never received it.[ ] [footnote : so called because stamped with the picture of the annunciation and bearing the inscription: _salus populi suprema lex est_; the coin was worth about £ of our money (w.s.).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . extracts from the th account of hémon raguier, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . e. dupuis, _jean fouquerel, évêque de senlis_, in _mémoires du comité archéologique de senlis_, , vol. i, p. . vatin, _combat sous senlis entre charles vii et les anglais_, in _comité archéologique de senlis, comptes rendus et mémoires_, , pp. , .] as for the bill on the tax receiver and _gabelle_ officer, it may have been worthless; and probably the reverend father in god, jean fouquerel, never had either horse or money. jeanne was not at fault, and yet the lord bishop of beauvais and the clerks of the university were shortly to bring home to her the gravity of the sacrilege of laying hands on an ecclesiastical hackney.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] to the north of paris, about five miles distant from the great city, there rose the towers of saint-denys. on the th of august, the army of the duke of alençon arrived there, and entered without resistance, albeit the town was strongly fortified.[ ] the place was famous for its illustrious abbey very rich and very ancient. the following is the story of its foundation. [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . the th according to _le journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] dagobert, king of the french, had from childhood been a devout worshipper of saint denys. and whenever he trembled before the ire of king clotaire his father, he would take refuge in the church of the holy martyr. when he died, a pious man dreamed that he saw dagobert summoned before the tribunal of god; a great number of saints accused him of having despoiled their churches; and the demons were about to drag him into hell when saint denys appeared; and by his intercession, the soul of the king was delivered and escaped punishment. the story was held to be true, and it was thought that the king's soul returned to animate his body and that he did penance.[ ] [footnote : j. doublet, _histoire de l'abbaye de saint-denys en france, contenant les antiquités d'icelle, les fondations, prérogatives et privileges_, paris, , vol. in to, vol. i, ch. xx and xxiv. des rues, _les antiquités, fondations et singularités des plus célèbres villes_, pp. , .] when the maid with the army occupied saint-denys, the three porches, the embattled parapets, the tower of the abbey church, erected by the abbot suger, were already three centuries old. there were buried the kings of france; and thither they came to take the _oriflamme_. fourteen years earlier the late king charles had fetched it forth, but since then none had borne it.[ ] [footnote : j. doublet, _histoire de l'abbaye de saint-denys_, vol. i, ch. xxxi, xxxiv.] many were the wonders told touching this royal standard. and with some of those marvels the maid must needs have been acquainted, since on her coming into france, she was said to have given the dauphin charles the surname of _oriflamme_,[ ] as a pledge and promise of victory.[ ] at saint-denys was preserved the heart of the constable du guesclin.[ ] jeanne had heard of his high renown; she had proffered wine to madame de laval's eldest son; and to his grandmother, who had been sire bertrand's second wife, she had sent a little ring of gold, out of respect for the widow of so valiant a man,[ ] asking her to forgive the poverty of the gift. [footnote : cf. vol. i, p. (w.s.).] [footnote : thomassin, _registre delphinal_, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . see du cange, _glossaire_ under the word _auriflamme_.] [footnote : j. doublet, _histoire de l'abbaye de saint-denys_, vol. i, ch. xxii. d. michel félibien, _histoire de l'abbaye royale de saint-denys en france_, paris, in folio, , pp. , . vallet de viriville, _notice du manuscrit de p. cochon_, at the end of _la chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _chronique de du guesclin_, ed. francisque-michel, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] the monks of saint-denys preserved precious relics, notably a piece of the wood of the true cross, the linen in which the child jesus had been wrapped, a fragment of the pitcher wherein the water had been changed to wine at the cana marriage feast, a bar of saint lawrence's gridiron, the chin of saint mary magdalen, a cup of tamarisk wood used by saint louis as a charm against the spleen. there likewise was to be seen the head of saint denys. true, at the same time one was being shown in the cathedral church of paris. the chancellor, jean gerson, treating of jeanne the maid, a few days before his death, wrote that of her it might be said as of the head of saint denys, that belief in her was a matter of edification and not of faith, albeit in both places alike the head ought to be worshipped in order that edification should not be turned into scandal.[ ] [footnote : d. m. félibien, _op. cit._, ch. ii, pp. _et seq._ illustrations. j. doublet, _op. cit._, vol. i, ch. xliii, xlvi. _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _gallia christiana_, vol. vii, col. .] in this abbey everything proclaimed the dignity, the prerogatives and the high worship of the house of france. jeanne must joyously have wondered at the insignia, the symbols and signs of the royalty of the lilies gathered together in this spot,[ ] if indeed those eyes, occupied with celestial visions, had leisure to perceive the things of earth, and if her voices, endlessly whispering in her ear, left her one moment's respite. [footnote : _religieux de saint-denis_, pp. , , .] saint denys was a great saint, since there was no doubt of his being in very deed the areopagite himself.[ ] but since he had permitted his abbey to be taken he was no longer invoked as the patron saint of the kings of france. the dauphin's followers had replaced him by the blessed archangel michael, whose abbey, near the city of avranches, had victoriously held out against the english. it was saint michael not saint denys who had appeared to jeanne in the garden at domremy; but she knew that saint denys was the war cry of france.[ ] [footnote : estienne binet, _la vie apostolique de saint denys l'aréopagite, patron et apostre de la france_, paris, , in mo. j. doublet, _histoire chronologique pour la vérité de saint denys l'aréopagite, apôtre de france et premier évêque de paris_, paris, , in to, and _histoire de l'abbaye de saint-denys en france_, p. . j. havet, _les origines de saint-denis_, in _les questions mérovingiennes_.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] the monks of that rich abbey wasted by war lived there in poverty and in disorder.[ ] armagnacs and burgundians in turn descended upon the neighbouring fields and villages, plundering and ravaging, leaving nought that it was possible to carry off. at saint-denys was held the fair of le lendit, one of the greatest in christendom. but now merchants had ceased to attend it. at the lendit of , there were but three booths, and those for the selling of shoes from brabant, in the high street of saint-denys, near the convent of les filles-dieu. since , there had been no fair at all.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. , note .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , , note .] at the tidings that the armagnacs were approaching troyes, the peasants had cut their corn before it was ripe and brought it into paris. on entering saint-denys, the duke of alençon's men-at-arms found the town deserted. the chief burgesses had taken refuge in paris.[ ] only a few of the poorer families were left. the maid held two newly born infants over the baptismal font.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] hearing of these saint-denys baptisms, her enemies accused her of having lit candles and held them inclined over the infant's heads, in order that she might read their destinies in the melted wax. it was not the first time, it appeared, that she indulged in such practices. when she entered a town, little children were said to offer her candles kneeling, and she received them as an agreeable sacrifice. then upon the heads of these innocents she would let fall three drops of burning wax, proclaiming that by virtue of this ceremony they could not fail to be good. in such acts burgundian ecclesiastics discerned idolatry and witchcraft, in which was likewise involved heresy.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . noël valois, _un nouveau témoignage sur jeanne d'arc_, in _annuaire-bulletin de la société de l'histoire de france_, paris, , in vo, separate issue, pp. , .] here again, at saint-denys, she distributed banners to the men-at-arms. churchmen on the english side strongly suspected her of charming those banners. and as everyone in those days believed in magic, such a suspicion was not without its danger.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] the maid and the duke of alençon lost no time. immediately after their arrival at saint-denys they went forth to skirmish before the gates of paris. two or three times a day they engaged in this desultory warfare, notably by the wind-mill at the saint-denys gate and in the village of la chapelle. "every day there was booty taken," says messire jean de bueil.[ ] it seems hardly credible that in a country which had been plundered and ravaged over and over again, there should have been anything left to be taken; and yet the statement is made and attested by one of the nobles in the army. [footnote : _le jouvencel_, vol. ii, p. .] out of respect for the seventh commandment, the maid forbade the men of her company to commit any theft whatsoever. and she always refused victuals offered her when she knew they had been stolen. in reality she, like the others, lived on pillage, but she did not know it. one day when a scotsman gave her to wit that she had just partaken of some stolen veal, she flew into a fury and would have beaten him: saintly women are subject to such fits of passion.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] jeanne is said to have observed the walls of paris carefully, seeking the spot most favourable for attack.[ ] the truth is that in this matter as in all others she depended on her voices. for the rest she was far superior to all the men-at-arms in courage and in good will. from saint-denys she sent the king message after message, urging him to come and take paris.[ ] but at compiègne the king and his council were negotiating with the ambassadors of the duke of burgundy, to wit: jean de luxembourg, lord of beaurevoir, hugues de cayeux, bishop of arras, david de brimeu and my lord of charny.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. , . morosini, vol. iii, p. ; vol. iv, appendix xviii.] the fifteen days' truce had expired. our only information concerning it is contained in jeanne's letter to the citizens of reims. according to jeanne, the duke of burgundy had undertaken to surrender the city to the king of france on the fifteenth day.[ ] if he had so agreed it was on conditions of which we know nothing; we are not therefore in a position to say whether or no those conditions had been carried out. the maid placed no trust in this promise, and she was quite right; but she did not know everything; and on the very day when she was complaining of the truce to the citizens of reims, duke philip was receiving the command of paris at the hands of the regent, and was henceforth in a position to dispose of the city as he liked.[ ] duke philip could not bear the sight of charles of valois, who had been present at the murder on the bridge of montereau, but he detested the english and wished they would go to the devil or return to their island. the vineyards and the cloth looms of his dominions were too numerous and too important for him not to wish for peace. he had no desire to be king of france; therefore he could be treated with, despite his avarice and dissimulation. nevertheless the fifteenth day had gone by and the city of paris remained in the hands of the english and the burgundians, who were not friends but allies. [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . p. cochon, p. . perceval de cagny, p. .] on the th of august a truce was concluded. it was to last till christmas and was to extend over the whole country north of the seine, from nogent to harfleur, with the exception of such towns as were situated where there was a passage over the river. concerning the city of paris it was expressly stated that "our cousin of burgundy, he and his men, may engage in the defence of the town and in resisting such as shall make war upon it or do it hurt."[ ] the chancellor regnault de chartres, the sire de la trémouille, christophe d'harcourt, the bastard of orléans, the bishop of séez, and likewise certain young nobles very eager for war, such as the counts of clermont and of vendôme and the duke of bar, in short all the counsellors of the king and the princes of the blood who signed this article, were apparently giving the enemy a weapon against them and renouncing any attempt upon paris. but they were not all fools; the bastard of orléans was keen witted and the lord archbishop of reims was anything but an olibrius.[ ] they doubtless knew what they were about when they recognised the duke of burgundy's rights over paris. duke philip, as we know, had been governor of the great town since the th of august. the regent had ceded it with the idea that burgundy would keep the parisians in order better than england, for the english were few in number and were disliked as foreigners. what did it profit king charles to recognise his cousin's rights over paris? we fail to see precisely; but after all this truce was no better and no worse than others. in sooth it did not give paris to the king, but neither did it prevent the king from taking it. did truces ever hinder armagnacs and burgundians from fighting when they had a mind to fight? was one of those frequent truces ever kept?[ ] after having signed this one, the king advanced to senlis. the duke of alençon came to him there twice. charles reached saint-denys on wednesday the th of september.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , . d. félibien, _histoire de paris_, vol. ii, p. , and proofs and illustrations, vol. iv, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. , , , note ; vol. iv, appendix xviii, pp. , .] [footnote : cf. vol. i, p. , note (w.s.).] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, ch. vii. _la diplomatie de charles vii jusqu'au traité d'arras_.] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] chapter iii the attack on paris in the days when king john was a prisoner in the hands of the english, the townsfolk of paris, beholding the enemy in the heart of the land, feared lest their city should be besieged. in all haste therefore they proceeded to put it in a state of defence; they surrounded it with trenches and counter trenches. on the side of the university the suburbs were left defenceless; small and remote, they were burned down. but on the right bank the more extensive suburbs well nigh touched the city. one part of them was enclosed by the trenches. when peace was concluded, charles, regent of the realm, undertook to surround the town on the north with an embattled wall, flanked with square towers, with terraces and parapets, with a road round and steps leading up to the ramparts. in certain places the trench was single, in others double. the work was superintended by hugues aubriot, provost of paris, to whom was entrusted also the building of the saint-antoine bastion, completed under king charles vi.[ ] this new fortification began on the east, near the river, on the rising ground of les célestins. within its circle it enclosed the district of saint paul, the culture sainte-catherine, the temple, saint-martin, les filles-dieu, saint sauveur, saint honoré, les quinze vingts, which hitherto had been in the suburbs and undefended; and it reached the river below the louvre, which was thus united to the town. there were six gates in the circumvallation, to wit: beginning on the east, the baudet gate or saint-antoine gate, the saint-avoye or temple gate, the gate of the painters or of saint-denis, the saint-martin or montmartre gate, the saint-honoré gate and the gate of the seine.[ ] [footnote : le roux de lincy, _hugues aubriot, prévôt de paris sous charles v_, paris, , in vo, _passim_. _paris et ses historiens au xiv'e et xv'e siècle_ by le roux de lincy and tisserand, paris, in fol. [_histoire générale de paris._]] [footnote : delamare, _traité de la police_, paris, , in folio, vol. i, p. . a. bonnardot, _dissertation archéologique sur les enceintes de paris, suivie de recherches sur les portes fortifiées qui dépendaient des enceintes de paris_, , in to, with plan. _Études archéologiques sur les anciens plans de paris_, , in to. _appendice aux études archéologiques sur les anciens plans de paris et aux dissertations sur les enceintes de paris_, paris, , in to. _Étude sur gilles corrozet, suivie d'une notice sur un manuscrit de la bibliothèque des ducs de bourgogne, contenant une description de paris, en _, par guillebert de metz, paris, , in vo, pages. kausler, _atlas des plus mémorables batailles_, carlsruhe, , pl. . h. legrand, _paris en _, with plan conjecturally reconstructed, paris in fol. , p. . a. guilaumot, _les portes de l'enceinte de paris sous charles v_, paris, . rigaud, _chronique de la pucelle, campagne de paris, cartes et plans_, bergerac, , in vo.] the parisians did not like the english and were sorely grieved by their occupation of the city. the folk murmured when, after the funeral of the late king, charles vi, the duke of bedford had the sword of the king of france borne before him.[ ] but what cannot be helped must be endured. the parisians may have disliked the english; they admired duke philip, a prince of comely countenance and the richest potentate of christendom. as for the little king of bourges, mean-looking and sad-faced, strongly suspected of treason at montereau, there was nothing pleasing in him; he was despised and his followers were regarded with fear and horror. for ten years they had been ranging round the town, pillaging, taking prisoners and holding them to ransom. the english and burgundians indeed did likewise. when, in the august of , duke philip came to paris, his men ravaged all the neighbouring fields, albeit they belonged to friends and allies. but they were only passing through,[ ] while the armagnacs were for ever raiding, eternally stealing all they could lay hands on, setting fire to barns and churches, killing women and children, ravishing maids and nuns, hanging men by the thumbs. in , like devils let loose, they descended upon the village of champigny and burned at once oats, wheat, sheep, cows, oxen, women and children. likewise did they and worse still at croissy.[ ] one ecclesiastic said they had caused more christians to suffer martyrdom than maximian and diocletian.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . _document inédit relatif à l'état de paris en _, in _revue des sociétés savantes_, , p. .] and yet, in the year , there might have been discovered in the city of paris not a few followers of the dauphin. christine de pisan, who was very loyal to the house of valois, said: "in paris there are many wicked. good are there also and faithful to their king. but they dare not lift up their voices."[ ] [footnote : christine de pisan, in _trial_, vol. v, stanza , p. . le roux de lincy and tisserand, _paris et ses historiens_, p. .] it was common knowledge that in the parlement and even in the chapter of notre-dame were to be found those who had dealings with the armagnacs.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . a. longnon, _paris pendant la domination anglaise ( - ), documents extraits des registres de la chancellerie de france_, paris, , in vo, introduction, p. xiij. vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. , note .] on the morrow of their victory at patay, those terrible armagnacs had only to march straight on the town to take it. they were expected to enter it one day or the other. in the mind of the regent it was as if they had already taken it. he went off and shut himself in the castle of vincennes with the few men who remained to him.[ ] three days after the discomfiture of the english there was a panic in the town. "the armagnacs are coming to-night," they said. meanwhile the armagnacs were at orléans awaiting orders to assemble at gien and to march on auxerre. at these tidings the duke of bedford must have sighed a deep sigh of relief; and straightway he set to work to provide for the defence of paris and the safety of normandy.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. , note.] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. .] when the panic was past, the heart of the great town returned to its allegiance, not to the english cause--it had never been english--but to the burgundian. its provost, messire simon morhier, who had made great slaughter of the french at the battle of the herrings, remained loyal to the leopard.[ ] the aldermen on the contrary were suspected of inclining a favourable ear to king charles's proposals. on the th of july, the parisians elected a new town council composed of the most zealous burgundians they could find in commerce and on change. to be provost of the merchants they appointed the treasurer, guillaume sanguin, to whom the duke of burgundy owed more then seven thousand _livres tournois_[ ] and who had the regent's jewels in his keeping.[ ] such an alteration was greatly to the detriment of king charles, who preferred to win back his good towns by peaceful means rather than by force, and who relied more on negotiations with the citizens than on cannon balls and stones. [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : see vol. i, p. , note (w.s.).] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. , note . le roux de lincy and tisserand, _paris et ses historiens_, pp. _et seq._] just in the nick of time the regent surrendered the town to duke philip, not, we may be sure, without many regrets for having recently refused him orléans. he realised that thus, by returning to its french allegiance, the chief city of the realm would make a more energetic defense against the dauphin's men. the parisians' old liking for the magnificent duke would revive, and so would their old hatred of the disinherited son of madame ysabeau. in the palais de justice the duke read the story of his father's death, punctuated with complaints of armagnac treason and violated treaties; he caused the blood of montereau[ ] to cry to heaven; those who were present swore to be right loyal to him and to the regent. on the following days the same oath was taken by the regular and secular clergy.[ ] [footnote : th july, , _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , . falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] but the citizens were strengthened in their resistance more by their remembrance of armagnac cruelty than by their affection for the fair duke. a rumour ran and was believed by them that messire charles of valois had abandoned to his mercenaries the city and the citizens of all ranks, high and low, men and women, and that he intended to plough up the very ground on which paris stood. such a rumour represented him very falsely; on all occasions he was pitiful and debonair; his council had prudently converted the coronation campaign into an armed and peaceful procession. but the parisians were incapable of judging sanely when the intentions of the king of france were concerned; and they knew only too well that once their town was taken there would be nothing to prevent the armagnacs from laying it waste with fire and sword.[ ] [footnote : falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] one other circumstance intensified their fear and their dislike. when they heard that friar richard, to whose sermons they had once listened so devoutly, was riding with the dauphin's men and with his nimble tongue winning such good towns as troyes in champagne, they called down upon him the malediction of god and his saints. they tore from their caps the pewter medals engraved with the holy name of jesus, which the good brother had given them, and in their bitter hatred towards him they returned straightway to the dice, bowls and draughts which they had renounced at his exhortation. with no less horror did the maid inspire them. it was said that she was acting the prophetess and uttering such words as: "in very deed this or that shall come to pass." "with the armagnacs is a creature in woman's form. what it is god only knows," they cried. they spoke of her as a woman of ill fame.[ ] among these enemies, there were those who filled them with even greater horror than pagans and saracens--to wit: a monk and a maid. they all took the cross of saint andrew.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] while the dauphin had been away at his coronation an army had come from england into france. the regent intended it to overrun normandy. in its march on rouen he commanded it in person. the defence and ward of paris he left to louis of luxembourg, bishop of thérouanne, chancellor of france for the english, to the sire de l'isle-adam, marshal of france, captain of paris, to two thousand men-at-arms and to the parisian train-bands. to the last were entrusted the defence of the ramparts and the management of the artillery. they were commanded by twenty-four burgesses, called _quarteniers_ because they represented the twenty-four quarters of the city. from the end of july all danger of a surprise had been guarded against.[ ] [footnote : rymer, _foedera_, may. _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . wallon, _jeanne d'arc_, vol. i, p. , note . g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la panique anglaise_, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. , note ; vol. iv, appendix xviii.] on the th of august, on saint-laurence's eve, while the armagnacs were encamped at la ferté-milon, the saint-martin gate, flanked by four towers and a double drawbridge, was closed; and all men were forbidden to go to saint-laurent, either to the procession or to the fair, as in previous years.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] on the th of the same month, the royal army occupied saint-denys. henceforth no one dared leave the city, neither for the vintage nor for the gathering of anything in the kitchen gardens, which covered the plain north of the town. prices immediately went up.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . _chronique des cordeliers_, folio, verso.] in the early days of september, the _quarteniers_, each one in his own district, had the trenches set in order and the cannons mounted on walls, gates, and towers. at the command of the aldermen, the hewers of stone for the cannon made thousands of balls.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] from my lord, the duke of alençon, the magistrates received letters beginning thus: "to you, provost of paris and provost of the merchants and aldermen...." he named them by name and greeted them in eloquent language. these letters were regarded as an artifice intended to render the townsfolk suspicious of the aldermen and to incite one class of the populace against the other. the only answer sent to the duke was a request that he would not spoil any more paper with such malicious endeavours.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] the chapter of notre-dame ordered masses to be said for the salvation of the people. on the th of september, three canons were authorised to make arrangements for the defence of the monastery. those in charge of the sacristy took measures to hide the relics and the treasure of the cathedral from the armagnac soldiers. for two hundred golden _saluts_[ ] they sold the body of saint denys; but they kept the foot, which was of silver, the head and the crown.[ ] [footnote : cf. _ante_, p. , note (w.s.).] [footnote : register of the deliberations of the chapter of notre dame (arch. nat., ll, , pp. , ), in _le journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, _loc. cit._ le p. ayroles, _la vraie jeanne d'arc_, vol. iii, pp. , , proofs and illustrations, j, p. . le p. denifle and chatelain, _le procès de jeanne d'arc et l'université de paris_, nogent-le-rotrou, , in vo.] on wednesday, the th of september, the eve of the virgin's nativity, there was a procession to sainte-geneviève-du-mont with the object of counteracting the evil of the times and allaying the animosity of the enemy. in it walked the canons of the palace, bearing the true cross.[ ] [footnote : register of the deliberations of the chapter of notre dame, in tuetey, notes to _le journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. , note . falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . le p. ayroles, _la vraie jeanne d'arc_, vol. iii, proofs and illustrations, p. .] that very day the army of the duke of alençon and of the maid was skirmishing beneath the walls. it retreated in the evening; and on that night the townsfolk slept in peace, for on the morrow christians celebrated the nativity of the blessed virgin.[ ] [footnote : register of the deliberations of the chapter of notre dame, _loc. cit._ _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . martial d'auvergne, _vigiles_, ed. coustelier, vol. i, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . _chronique des cordeliers_, folio, verso. le p. ayroles, _la vrai jeanne d'arc_, vol. iii, p. .] it was a great festival and a very ancient one. its origin is described in the following manner. there was a certain holy man, who passed his life in meditation. on a day he called to mind that for many years, on the th of september, he had heard marvellous angelic music in the air, and he prayed to god to reveal to him the reason for this concert of instruments and of celestial voices. he was vouchsafed the answer that it was the anniversary of the birth of the glorious virgin mary; and he received the command to instruct the faithful in order that they on that solemn day might join their voices to the angelic chorus. the matter was reported to the sovereign pontiff and the other heads of the church, who, after having prayed, fasted and consulted the witnesses and traditions of the church, decreed that henceforth that day, the th of september, should be universally consecrated to the celebration of the birth of the virgin mary.[ ] [footnote : voragine, _legenda aurea_. anquetil, _la nativité, miracle extrait de la légende dorée_, in _mem. soc. agr. de bayeux_, , vol. x, p. . douhet, _dictionnaire des mystères_, , p. .] that day were read at mass the words of the prophet isaiah: "and there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots." the people of paris thought that even the armagnacs would do no work on so high a festival and would keep the third commandment. on this thursday, the th of september, about eight o'clock in the morning, the maid, the dukes of alençon and of bourbon, the marshals of boussac and of rais, the count of vendôme, the lords of laval, of albret and of gaucourt, who with their men, to the number of ten thousand and more, had encamped in the village of la chapelle, half-way along the road from saint-denys to paris, set out on the march. at the hour of high mass, between eleven and twelve o'clock, they reached the height of les moulins, at the foot of which the swine market was held.[ ] here there was a gibbet. fifty-six years earlier, a woman of saintly life according to the people, but according to the holy inquisitors, a heretic and _a turlupine_, had been burned alive on that very market-place.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, pp. , . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , . _chronique des cordeliers_, fol. verso. p. cochon, ed. beaurepaire, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : gaguin, _hist. francorum_, frankfort, , book viii, chap. ii, p. . tanon, _histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition en france_, p. . lea, history of the inquisition in the middle age, vol. ii, p. . (the turlupins were a german sect who called themselves "the brethren of the free spirit." w.s.)] wherefore did the king's men appear first before the northern walls, those of charles v, which were the strongest? it is impossible to tell. a few days earlier they had thrown a bridge across the river above paris,[ ] which looks as if they intended to attack the old fortification and get into the city from the university side. did they mean to carry out the two attacks simultaneously? it is probable. did they renounce the project of their own accord or against their will? we cannot tell. [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. , note . g. lefèvre-pontalis, _un détail du siège de paris, par jeanne d'arc_, in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, vol. xlvi, , pp. _et seq._] beneath the walls of charles v they assembled a quantity of artillery, cannons, culverins, mortars; and in hand-carts they brought fagots to fill up the trenches, hurdles to bridge them over and seven hundred ladders: very elaborate material for the siege, despite their having, as we shall see, forgotten what was most necessary.[ ] they came not therefore to skirmish nor to do great feats of arms. they came to attempt in broad daylight the escalading and the storming of the greatest, the most illustrious, and the most populous town of the realm; an undertaking of vast importance, proposed doubtless and decided in the royal council and with the knowledge of the king, who can have been neither indifferent nor hostile to it.[ ] charles of valois wanted to retake paris. it remains to be seen whether for the accomplishment of his desire he depended merely on men-at-arms and ladders. [footnote : deliberation of the chapter of notre dame, _loc. cit._ _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , ; vol. iii, pp. , ; vol. v, pp. , , , .] it would seem that the maid had not been told of the resolutions taken.[ ] she was never consulted and was seldom informed of what had been decided. but she was as sure of entering the town that day as of going to paradise when she died. for more than three years her voices had been drumming the attack on paris in her ears.[ ] but the astonishing point is that, saint as she was, she should have consented to arm and fight on the day of the nativity. it was contrary to her action on the th of may, ascension day, and inconsistent with what she had said on the th of the same month: "as ye love and honour the sacred sabbath do not begin the battle."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , , , .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. v, p. (letter of the th of july, ), vol. i, p. . "et hoc sciebar per revelationem." cf. vol. i, pp. , , in contradiction.] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] true it is that afterwards, at montepilloy, she had engaged in a skirmish on the day of the assumption, and thus scandalized the masters of the university. she acted according to the counsel of her voices and her decisions depended on the vaguest murmurings in her ear. nothing is more inconstant and more contradictory than the inspirations of such visionaries, who are but the playthings of their dreams. what is certain at least is that jeanne now as always was convinced that she was doing right and committing no sin.[ ] arrayed on the height of les moulins, in front of paris with its grey fortifications, the french had immediately before them the outermost of the trenches, dry and narrow, some sixteen or seventeen feet deep, separated by a mound from the second trench, nearly one hundred feet broad, deep and filled with water which lapped the walls of the city. quite close, on their right, the road to roule led up to the saint honoré gate, also called the gate of the blind because it was near the hospital of les quinze vingts.[ ] it opened beneath a castlet flanked by turrets, and for an advanced defence it had a bulwark surrounded by wooden barriers, like those of orléans.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : in saint louis founded this hospital for three hundred blind knights whose eyes had been put out by the saracens. (w.s.)] [footnote : le roux de lincy and tisserand, _paris et ses historiens_, pp. and , note . adolphe berty, _topographie historique du vieux paris, région du louvre et des tuileries_, p. , and app. vi, p. ix. e. eude, _l'attaque de jeanne d'arc contre paris, _, in _cosmos_, nouv. série, xxix ( ), pp. , .] the parisians did not expect to be attacked on a feast day.[ ] and yet the ramparts were by no means deserted, and on the walls standards could be seen waving, and especially a great white banner with a saint andrew's cross in silver gilt.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] the french arrayed themselves slightly behind the moulin hill, which was to protect them from the stream of lead and stones beginning to be discharged from the artillery on the ramparts. there they ranged their mortars, their culverins and their cannon, ready to fire on the city walls. in this position, which commanded the widest stretch of the fortifications, was the main body of the army. led by messire de saint-vallier a knight of dauphiné, several captains and men-at-arms approached the saint honoré gate and set fire to the barriers. as the garrison of the gate had withdrawn within the fortification, and as the enemy was not seen to be coming out by any other exit, the maréchal de rais' company advanced with fagots, bundles and ladders right up to the ramparts. the maid rode at the head of her company. they halted between the saint-denys and the saint-honoré gates, but nearer the latter, and went down into the first trench, which was not difficult to cross. but on the mound they found themselves exposed to bolts and arrows which rained straight down from the walls.[ ] as at orléans, and at les tourelles, jeanne had given her banner to a man of valour to hold. [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] when she reached the top of the mound, she cried out to the folk in paris: "surrender the town to the king of france."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] the burgundians heard her saying also: "in jesus' name surrender to us speedily. for if ye yield not before nightfall, we shall enter by force, whether ye will or no, and ye shall all be put to death without mercy."[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] on the mound she remained, sounding the great dyke with her lance and marvelling to find it so full and so deep. and yet for eleven days she and her men-at-arms had been reconnoitring round the walls and seeking the most favourable point of attack. that she should not have known how to plan an attack was quite natural. but what is to be thought of the men-at-arms, who were there on the mound, taken by surprise, as baffled as she, and all aghast at finding so much water close to the seine when the river was in flood? to be able to reconnoitre the defences of a fortress was surely the _a b c_ of the trade of war. captains and soldiers of fortune never risked advancing against a fortification without knowing first whether there were water, morass or briars, and arming themselves accordingly with siege train suitable to the occasion. when the water of the moat was deep they launched leather boats carried on horses' backs.[ ] the men-at-arms of the maréchal de rais and my lord of alençon were more ignorant than the meanest adventurers. what would the doughty la hire have thought of them? such gross ineptitude and ignorance appeared so incredible that it was supposed that those fighting men knew the depth of the moat but concealed it from the maid, desiring her discomfiture.[ ] in such a case, while entrapping the damsel they were themselves entrapped, for there they stayed moving neither backwards nor forwards. [footnote : _le jouvencel_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . martial d'auvergne, _vigiles_, ed. coustelier, , vol. i, p. .] certain among them idly threw fagots into the moat. meanwhile the defenders assailed by flights of arrows, disappeared one after the other.[ ] but towards four o'clock in the afternoon, the citizens arrived in crowds. the cannon of the saint-denys gate thundered. arrows and abuse flew between those above and those below. the hours passed, the sun was sinking. the maid never ceased sounding the moat with the staff of her lance and crying out to the parisians to surrender. [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , . morosini, vol. iii, note . e. eude, _l'attaque de jeanne d'arc contre paris_, in _cosmos_, sept., , vol. xxix. p. marin, _le génie militaire de jeanne d'arc_, in _grande revue de paris et de saint-pétersbourg_, nd year, vol. i, , p. .] "there, wanton! there, minx!" cried a burgundian. and planting his cross-bow in the ground with his foot, he shot an arrow which split one of her greaves and wounded her in the thigh. another burgundian took aim at the maid's standard-bearer and wounded him in the foot. the wounded man raised his visor to see whence the arrow came and straightway received another between the eyes. the maid and the duke of alençon sorely regretted the loss of this man-at-arms.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . deliberations of the chapter of notre dame, _loc. cit._ falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . perceval de cagny, jean chartier, _journal du siège_, monstrelet, morosini, _loc. cit._] after she had been wounded, jeanne cried all the more loudly that the walls must be reached and the city taken. she was placed out of reach of the arrows in the shelter of a breast-work. there she urged the men-at-arms to throw fagots into the water and make a bridge. about ten or eleven o'clock in the evening, the sire de la trémouille charged the combatants to retreat. the maid would not leave the place. she was doubtless listening to her saints and beholding celestial hosts around her. the duke of alençon sent for her. the aged sire de gaucourt[ ] carried her off with the aid of a captain of picardy, one guichard bournel, who did not please her on that day, and who by his treachery six months later, was to please her still less.[ ] had she not been wounded she would have resisted more strongly.[ ] she yielded regretfully, saying: "in god's name! the city might have been taken."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. , . berry, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . f. brun, _jeanne d arc et le capitaine de soissons_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : the oath "_par mon martin_" (by my staff) is an invention of the scribe who wrote the _chronicle_ which is attributed to perceval de cagny, p. .] they put her on horseback; and thus she was able to follow the army. the rumour ran that she had been shot in both thighs; in sooth her wound was but slight.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , .] the french returned to la chapelle, whence they had set out in the morning. they carried their wounded on some of the carts which they had used for the transport of fagots and ladders. in the hands of the enemy they left three hundred hand-carts, six hundred and sixty ladders, four thousand hurdles and large fagots, of which they had used but a small number.[ ] their retreat must have been somewhat hurried, seeing that, when they came to the barn of les mathurins, near the swine market, they forsook their baggage and set fire to it. with horror it was related that, like pagans of rome, they had cast their dead into the flames.[ ] nevertheless the parisians dared not pursue them. in those days men-at-arms who knew their trade never retreated without laying some snare for the enemy. consequently the king's men posted a considerable company in ambush by the roadside, to lie in wait for the light troops who should come in pursuit of the retreating army.[ ] it was precisely such an ambuscade that the parisians feared; wherefore they permitted the armagnacs to regain their camp at la chapelle-saint-denys unmolested.[ ] [footnote : deliberation of the chapter of notre dame, _loc. cit._] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] [footnote : _le jouvencel_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , .] if we regard only the military tactics of the day, there is no doubt that the french had blundered and had lacked energy. but it was not on military tactics that the greatest reliance had been placed. those who conducted the war, the king and his council, certainly expected to enter paris that day. but how? as they had entered châlons, as they had entered reims, as they had entered all the king's good towns from troyes to compiègne. king charles had shown himself determined to recover his towns by means of the townsfolk; towards paris he acted as he had acted towards his other towns. during the coronation march, he had entered into communication with the bishops and burgesses of the cities of champagne; and like communications he had entered into in paris.[ ] he had dealings with the monks and notably with the carmelites of melun, whose prior, brother pierre d'allée, was working in his interest.[ ] for some time paid agents had been watching for an opportunity of throwing the city into disorder and of bringing in the enemy in a moment of panic and confusion. during the assault they were working for him in the streets. in the afternoon, on both sides of the bridges, were heard cries of "let every man look to his own safety! the enemy has entered! all is lost!" such of the citizens as were listening to the sermon hastened to shut themselves in their houses. and others who were out of doors sought refuge in the churches. but the tumult was quelled. wise men, like the clerk of the parlement, believed that it was but a feigned attack, and that charles of valois looked to recover the town not so much by force of arms as by a movement of the populace.[ ] [footnote : for the opinions of the townsfolk of paris, see various acts of henry vi of the th and th of sept., (ms. fontanieu, ). sauval, _antiquités de paris_, vol. iii, p. and _circ._] [footnote : a. longnon, _paris pendant la domination anglaise_, p. .] [footnote : falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , .] certain monks who were acting in paris as the king's spies, went out to him at saint-denys and informed him that the attempt had failed. according to them it had very nearly succeeded.[ ] [footnote : _relation du greffier de la rochelle_, p. .] the sire de la trémouille is said to have commanded the retreat, for fear of a massacre. indeed, once the french had entered they were quite capable of slaughtering the townsfolk and razing the city to the ground.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de normandie_, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , .] on the morrow, friday the th, the maid, rising with the dawn, despite her wound, asked the duke of alençon to have the call to arms sounded; for she was strongly determined to return to the walls of paris, swearing not to leave them until the city should be taken.[ ] meanwhile the french captains sent a herald to paris, charged to ask for a safe conduct for the removing of the bodies of the dead left behind in great numbers.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._ _chronique normande_, in _la chronique de la pucelle_, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. , note .] notwithstanding that they had suffered cruel hurt, after a retreat unmolested it is true, but none the less disastrous and involving the loss of all their siege train, several of the leaders were, like the maid, inclined to attempt a new assault. others would not hear of it. while they were disputing, they beheld a baron coming towards them and with him fifty nobles; it was the sire de montmorency, the first christian peer of france, that is the first among the ancient vassals of the bishop of paris. he was transferring his allegiance from the cross of st. andrew to the flowers-de-luce.[ ] his coming filled the king's men with courage and a desire to return to the city. the army was on its way back, when the count of clermont and the duke of bar were sent to arrest the march by order of the king, and to take the maid back to saint-denys.[ ] [footnote : duchesne, _histoire de la maison de montmorency_, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. , .] [footnote : g. lefèvre-pontalis, _un détail du siège de paris_, in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, vol. xlvi, , p. .] on saturday the th, at daybreak, the duke of alençon, with a few knights, appeared on the bank above the city, where a bridge had been thrown over the seine some days earlier. the maid, always eager for danger, accompanied the venturesome warriors. but the night before, the king had prudently caused the bridge to be taken down, and the little band had to retrace its steps.[ ] it was not that the king had renounced the idea of taking paris. he was thinking more than ever of the recovery of his great town; but he intended to regain it without an assault, by means of the compliance of certain burgesses. [footnote : perceval de cagny, pp. , . morosini, vol. iii, p. , note . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. , note . g. lefèvre-pontalis, _un détail du siège de paris_, _loc. cit._] at this same place of saint-denys there happened to jeanne a misadventure, which would seem to have impressed her comrades and possibly to have lessened their faith in her good luck in war. as was customary, women of ill-fame followed the army in great numbers; each man had his own; they were called _amiètes_.[ ] jeanne could not tolerate them because they caused disorder, but more especially because their sinful lives filled her with horror. at that very time, stories like the following were circulated far and wide, and spread even into germany. [footnote : diminutive of _amie_ (w.s.).] there was a certain man in the camp, who had with him his _amiète_. she rode in armour in order not to be recognised. now the maid said to the nobles and captains: "there is a woman with our men." they replied that they knew of none. whereupon the maid assembled the army, and, approaching the woman said: "this is she." then addressing the wench: "thou art of gien and thou art big with child. were it not so i would put thee to death. thou hast already let one child die and thou shalt not do the same for this one." when the maid had thus spoken, servants took the wench and conveyed her to her own home. there they kept her under watch and ward until she was delivered of her child. and she confessed that what the maid had said was true. after which, the maid again said: "there are women in the camp." whereupon two wantons, who did not belong to the army, and had already been dismissed from it, hearing these words, rode off on horseback. but the maid hastened after them crying: "ye foolish women, i have forbidden you to come into my company." and she drew her sword and struck one of them on the head, so sore that she died.[ ] [footnote : eberhard windecke, pp. , .] the tale was true; jeanne could not suffer these wenches. every time she met one she gave chase to her. this was precisely what she did at gien, when she saw women of ill-fame awaiting the king's men.[ ] at château-thierry, she espied an _amiète_ riding behind a man-at-arms, and, running after her, sword in hand, she came up with her, and without striking, bade her henceforth avoid the society of men-at-arms. "if thou wilt not," she added, "i shall do thee hurt."[ ] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] at saint-denys, being accompanied by the duke of alençon, jeanne pursued another of these wantons. this time she was not content with remonstrances and threats. she broke her sword over her.[ ] was it saint catherine's sword? so it was believed, and doubtless not without reason.[ ] in those days men's minds were full of the romantic stories of joyeuse and durandal. it would appear that jeanne, when she lost her sword, lost her power. a slight variation of the story was told afterwards, and it was related how the king, when he was acquainted with the matter of the broken sword, was displeased and said to the maid: "you should have taken a stick to strike withal and should not have risked the sword you received from divine hands."[ ] it was told likewise how the sword had been given to an armourer for him to join the pieces together, and that he could not, wherein lay a proof that the sword was enchanted.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , .] before his departure, the king appointed the count of clermont commander of the district with several lieutenants: the lords of culant, boussac, loré, and foucault. he constituted joint lieutenants-general the counts of clermont and of vendôme, the lords regnault de chartres, christophe d'harcourt and jean tudert. regnault de chartres established himself in the town of senlis, the lieutenant's headquarters. having thus disposed, the king quitted saint-denys on the th of september.[ ] the maid followed him against her will notwithstanding that she had the permission of her voices to do so.[ ] she offered her armour to the image of our lady and to the precious body of saint denys.[ ] this armour was white, that is to say devoid of armorial bearings.[ ] she was thus following the custom of men-at-arms, who, after they had received a wound, if they did not die of it, offered their armour to our lady and the saints as a token of thanksgiving. wherefore, in those warlike days, chapels, like that of notre-dame de fierbois, often presented the appearance of arsenals. to her armour the maid added a sword which she had won before paris.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. _et seq._ jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. _et seq._ monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . berry in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . gilles de roye, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . martial d'auvergne, _vigiles_, vol. i, p. . jacques doublet, _histoire de l'abbaye de saint-denys_, pp. , .] [footnote : la curne, at the word _blanc_: white armour was worn by squires, gilded armour by knights. bouteiller, in his _somme rurale_, refers to the "_harnais doré_" (gilded armour) of the knights. cf. du tillet, _recueil des rois de france_, ch. _des chevaliers_, p. . du cange, _observations sur les établissements de la france_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] chapter iv the taking of saint-pierre-le-moustier--friar richard's spiritual daughters--the siege of la charitÉ the king slept at lagny-sur-marne on the th of september, then crossed the seine at bray, forded the yonne near sens and went on through courtenay, châteaurenard and montargis. on the st of september he reached gien. there he disbanded the army he could no longer pay, and each man went to his own home. the duke of alençon withdrew into his viscounty of beaumont-sur-oise.[ ] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. . perceval de cagny, pp. , . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , . berry, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. .] learning that the queen was coming to meet the king, jeanne went before her and greeted her at selles-en-berry.[ ] she was afterwards taken to bourges, where my lord d'albret, half-brother of the sire de la trémouille, lodged her with messire régnier de bouligny. régnier was then receiver general. he had been one of those whose dismissal the university had requested in , as being worse than useless, for they held him responsible for many of the disorders in the kingdom. he had entered the dauphin's service, passed from the administration of the royal domain to that of taxes and attained the highest rank in the control of the finances.[ ] his wife, who had accompanied the queen to selles, beheld the maid and wondered. jeanne seemed to her a creature sent by god for the relief of the king and those of france who were loyal to him. she remembered the days not so very long ago when she had seen the dauphin and her husband not knowing where to turn for money. her name was marguerite la touroulde; she was damiselle, not dame; a comfortable _bourgeoise_ and that was all.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. . p. lanéry d'arc and l. jeny, _jeanne d'arc en berry, avec des documents et des éclaircissements inédits_, paris, , in mo, chap. vi.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. , note . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. , note .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] three weeks jeanne sojourned in the receiver general's house. she slept there, drank there, ate there. nearly every night, damiselle marguerite la touroulde slept with her; the etiquette of those days required it. no night-gowns were worn; folk slept naked in those vast beds. it would seem that jeanne disliked sleeping with old women.[ ] damiselle la touroulde, although not so very old, was of matronly age;[ ] she had moreover a matron's experience, and further she claimed, as we shall see directly, to know more than most matrons knew. several times she took jeanne to the bath and to the sweating-room.[ ] that also was one of the rules of etiquette; a host was not considered to be making his guests good cheer unless he took them to the bath. in this point of courtesy princes set an example; when the king and queen supped in the house of one of their retainers or ministers, fine baths richly ornamented were prepared for them before they came to table.[ ] mistress marguerite doubtless did not possess what was necessary in her own house; wherefore she took jeanne out to the bath and the sweating-room. such are her own expressions; and they probably indicate a vapour bath[ ] not a bath of hot water. [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : lanéry d'arc and l. jeny, _jeanne d'arc en berry_, pp. , .] [footnote : "_in balneo et stuphis._" _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _l'amant rendu cordelier à l'observance d'amour_; poem attributed to martial d'auvergne, a. de montaiglon, paris, , in vo, lines - and note p. . a. franklin, _la vie privée d'autrefois_, vol. ii, _les soins de la toilette_, paris, , in mo, pp. _et seq._ a. lecoy de la marche, _le bain au moyen âge_, in _revue du monde catholique_, vol. xiv, pp. - .] [footnote : _livre des métiers_, by Étienne boileau, edited by de lespinasse and f. bonnardot, paris, , pp. , , and note. g. bayle, _notes pour servir à l'histoire de la prostitution au moyen âge_, in _mémoires de l'académie de vauctuse_, , pp. , . dr. p. pansier, _histoire des prétendus statuts de la reine jeanne_, in _le janus_, , p. .] at bourges the sweating-rooms were in the auron quarter, in the lower town, near the river.[ ] jeanne was strictly devout, but she did not observe conventual rule; she, like chaste suzannah therefore, might permit herself to bathe and she must have had great need to do so after having slept on straw.[ ] what is more remarkable is that, after having seen jeanne in the bath, mistress marguerite judged her a virgin according to all appearances.[ ] [footnote : lanéry d'arc and l. jeny, _jeanne d'arc en berry_, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] in messire régnier de bouligny's house and likewise wherever she lodged, she led the life of a _béguine_ but did not practise excessive austerity. she confessed frequently. many a time she asked her hostess to come with her to matins. in the cathedral and in collegiate churches there were matins every day, between four and six, at the hour of sunset. the two women often talked together; the receiver general's wife found jeanne very simple and very ignorant. she was amazed to discover that the maiden knew absolutely nothing.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . lanéry d'arc and l. jeny, _jeanne d'arc en berry_, pp. , .] among other matters, jeanne told of her visit to the old duke of lorraine, and how she had rebuked him for his evil life; she spoke likewise of the interrogatory to which the doctors of poitiers had subjected her.[ ] she was persuaded that these clerks had questioned her with extreme severity, and she firmly believed that she had triumphed over their ill-will. alas! she was soon to know clerks even less accommodating. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] mistress marguerite said to her one day: "if you are not afraid when you fight, it is because you know you will not be killed." whereupon jeanne answered: "i am no surer of that than are the other combatants." oftentimes women came to the bouligny house, bringing paternosters and other trifling objects of devotion for the maid to touch. jeanne used to say laughingly to her hostess: "touch them yourself. your touch will do them as much good as mine."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] this ready repartee must have shown mistress marguerite that jeanne, ignorant as she may have been, was none the less capable of displaying a good grace and common sense in her conversation. while in many matters this good woman found the maid but a simple creature, in military affairs she deemed her an expert. whether, when she judged the saintly damsel's skill in wielding arms, she was giving her own opinion or merely speaking from hearsay, as would seem probable, she at any rate declared later that jeanne rode a horse and handled a lance as well as the best of knights and so well that the army marvelled.[ ] indeed most captains in those days could do no better. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] probably there were dice and dice-boxes in the bouligny house, otherwise jeanne would have had no opportunity of displaying that horror of gaming which struck her hostess. on this matter jeanne agreed with her comrade, friar richard, and indeed with everyone else of good life and good doctrine.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] what money she had jeanne distributed in alms. "i am come to succour the poor and needy," she used to say.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] when the multitude heard such words they were led to believe that this maid of god had been raised up for something more than the glorification of the lilies, and that she was come to dispel such ills as murder, pillage and other sins grievous to god, from which the realm was suffering. mystic souls looked to her for the reform of the church and the reign of jesus christ on earth. she was invoked as a saint, and throughout the loyal provinces were to be seen carved and painted images of her which were worshipped by the faithful. thus, even during her lifetime, she enjoyed certain of the privileges of beatification.[ ] [footnote : noël valois, _un nouveau témoignage sur jeanne d'arc_, in _annuaire bulletin de la société de l'histoire de france_, paris, , in vo, pp. and (separate issue).] north of the seine meanwhile, english and burgundians were at their old work. the duke of vendôme and his company fell back on senlis, the english descended on the town of saint-denys and sacked it once more. in the abbey church they found and carried off the maid's armour, thus, according to the french clergy, committing undeniable sacrilege and for this reason: because they gave the monks of the abbey nothing in exchange. the king was then at mehun-sur-yèvre, quite close to bourges, in one of the finest châteaux in the world, rising on a rock and overlooking the town. the late duke jean of berry, a great builder, had erected this château with the care that he never failed to exercise in matters of art. mehun was king charles's favourite abode.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. . a. buhot de kersers, _histoire et statistique du département du cher, canton de mehun_, bourges, , in to, pp. _et seq._ a. de champeaux and p. gauchery, _les travaux d'art exécutés pour jean de france, duc de berry_, paris, , in to, pp. , , and the miniature in _les grandes heures_ of duke jean of berry at chantilly.] the duke of alençon, eager to reconquer his duchy, was waiting for troops to accompany him into normandy, across the marches of brittany and maine. he sent to the king to know if it were his good pleasure to grant him the maid. "many there be," said the duke, "who would willingly come with her, while without her they will not stir from their homes." her discomfiture before paris had not, therefore, entirely ruined her prestige. the sire de la trémouille opposed her being sent to the duke of alençon, whom he mistrusted, and not without cause. he gave her into the care of his half-brother, the sire d'albret, lieutenant of the king in his own country of berry.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, pp. , . berry, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . letter from the sire d'albret to the people of riom, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . martin le franc, _champion des dames_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] the royal council deemed it necessary to recover la charité, left in the hands of perrinet gressart at the time of the coronation campaign;[ ] but it was decided first to attack saint-pierre-le-moustier, which commanded the approaches to bec-d'allier.[ ] the garrison of this little town was composed of english and burgundians, who were constantly plundering the villages and laying waste the fields of berry and bourbonnais. the army for this expedition assembled at bourges. it was commanded by my lord d'albret,[ ] but popular report attributed the command to jeanne. the common folk, the burgesses of the towns, especially the citizens of orléans knew no other commander. [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, p. . morosini, vol. ii, p. , note . perceval de cagny, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . jaladon de la barre, _jeanne d'arc à saint-pierre-le-moustier et deux juges nivernais à rouen_, nevers, , in vo, chaps. ix _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . lanéry d'arc and l. jeny, _jeanne d'arc en berry_, p. .] after two or three days' siege, the king's men stormed the town. but they were repulsed. squire jean d'aulon, the maid's steward, who some time before had been wounded in the heel and consequently walked on crutches, had retreated with the rest.[ ] he went back and found jeanne who had stayed almost alone by the side of the moat. fearing lest harm should come to her, he leapt on to his horse, spurred towards her and cried: "what are you doing, all alone? wherefore do you not retreat like the others?" [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] jeanne doffed her sallet and replied: "i am not alone. with me are fifty thousand of my folk. i will not quit this spot till i have taken the town." casting his eyes around, messire jean d'aulon saw the maid surrounded by but four or five men. more loudly he cried out to her: "depart hence and retreat like the others." her only reply was a request for fagots and hurdles to fill up the moat. and straightway in a loud voice she called: "to the fagots and the hurdles all of ye, and make a bridge!" the men-at-arms rushed to the spot, the bridge was constructed forthwith and the town taken by storm with no great difficulty. at any rate that is how the good squire, jean d'aulon, told the story.[ ] he was almost persuaded that the maid's fifty thousand shadows had taken saint-pierre-le-moustier. [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] with the little army on the loire at that time were certain holy women who like jeanne led a singular life and held communion with the church triumphant. they constituted, so to speak, a kind of flying squadron of _béguines_, which followed the men-at-arms. one of these women was called catherine de la rochelle; two others came from lower brittany.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , , , . nider, _formicarium_, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , . j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, pp. _et seq._ n. quellien, _perrinaïc, une compagne de jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in vo. mme. pascal-estienne, _perrinaïk_, paris, , in vo. j. trévedy, _histoire du roman de perrinaïc_, saint-brieuc, , in vo. _le roman de perrinaïc_, vannes, , in vo. a. de la borderie, _pierronne et perrinaïc_, paris, , in vo.] they all had miraculous visions; jeanne saw my lord saint michael in arms and saint catherine and saint margaret wearing crowns;[ ] pierronne beheld god in a long white robe and a purple cloak;[ ] catherine de la rochelle saw a white lady, clothed in cloth of gold; and, at the moment of the consecration of the host all manner of marvels of the high mystery of our lord were revealed unto her.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, index at the words _catherine_, _michel_, _marguerite_.] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , .] jean pasquerel was still with jeanne in the capacity of chaplain.[ ] he hoped to take his penitent to fight in the crusade against the hussites, for it was against these heretics that he felt most bitterly. but he had been entirely supplanted by the franciscan, friar richard, who, after troyes, had joined the mendicants of jeanne's earlier days. friar richard dominated this little band of the illuminated. he was called their good father. he it was who instructed them.[ ] his designs for these women did not greatly differ from those of jean pasquerel: he intended to conduct them to those wars of the cross, which he thought were bound to precede the impending end of the world.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , .] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] meanwhile, it was his endeavour to foster a good understanding between them, which, eloquent preacher though he was, he found very difficult. within the sisterhood there were constant suspicions and disputes. jeanne had been on friendly terms with catherine de la rochelle at montfaucon in brie and at jargeau; but now she began to suspect her of being a rival, and immediately she assumed an attitude of mistrust.[ ] possibly she was right. at any moment either catherine or the breton women might be made use of as she had been.[ ] in those days a prophetess was useful in so many ways: in the edification of the people, the reformation of the church, the leading of men-at-arms, the circulation of money, in war, in peace; no sooner did one appear than each party tried to get hold of her. it seems as if, after having employed the maid jeanne to deliver orléans, the king's councillors were now thinking of employing dame catherine to make peace with the duke of burgundy. such a task was deemed fitting for a saint less chivalrous than jeanne. catherine was married and the mother of a family. in this circumstance there need be no cause for astonishment; for if the gift of prophecy be more especially reserved for virgins, the example of judith proves that the lord may raise up strong matrons for the serving of his people. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] if we believe that, as her surname indicates, she came from la rochelle, her origin must have inspired the armagnacs with confidence. the inhabitants of la rochelle, all pirates more or less, were too profitably engaged in preying upon english vessels to forsake the dauphin's party. moreover, he rewarded their loyalty by granting them valuable commercial privileges.[ ] they had sent gifts of money to the people of orléans; and when, in the month of may, they learned the deliverance of duke charles's city, they instituted a public festival to commemorate so happy an event. [footnote : arcère, _histoire de la rochelle_, , in to, vol. i, p. . _trial_, vol. v, p. , note. vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. , _et seq._, , .] the first duty of a saint in the army, it would appear, was to collect money. jeanne was always sending letters asking the good towns for money or for munitions of war; the burgesses always promised to grant her request and sometimes they kept their promise. catherine de la rochelle appears to have had special revelations concerning the funds of the party; her mission, therefore, was financial, while jeanne's was martial. she announced that she was going to the duke of burgundy to conclude peace.[ ] if one may judge from the little that is known of her, the inspirations of this holy dame were not very elevated, not very orderly, not very profound. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] meeting jeanne at montfaucon in berry (or at jargeau) she addressed her thus: "there came unto me a white lady, attired in cloth of gold, who said to me: 'go thou through the good towns and let the king give unto thee heralds and trumpets to cry: "whosoever has gold, silver or hidden treasure, let him bring it forth instantly."'" dame catherine added: "such as have hidden treasure and do not thus, i shall know their treasure, and i shall go and find it." she deemed it necessary to fight against the english and seemed to believe that jeanne's mission was to drive them out of the land, since she obligingly offered her the whole of her miraculous takings. "wherewithal to pay your men-at-arms," she said. but the maid answered disdainfully: "go back to your husband, look after your household, and feed your children."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] disputes between saints are usually bitter. in her rival's missions jeanne refused to see anything but folly and futility. nevertheless it was not for her to deny the possibility of the white lady's visitations; for to jeanne herself did there not descend every day as many saints, angels and archangels as were ever painted on the pages of books or the walls of monasteries? in order to make up her mind on the subject, she adopted the most effectual measures. a learned doctor may reason concerning matter and substance, the origin and the form of ideas, the dawn of impressions in the intellect, but a shepherdess will resort to a surer method; she will appeal to her own eyesight. jeanne asked catherine if the white lady came every night, and learning that she did: "i will sleep with you," she said. when night came, she went to bed with catherine, watched till midnight, saw nothing and fell asleep, for she was young, and she had great need of sleep. in the morning, when she awoke, she asked: "did she come?" "she did," replied catherine; "you were asleep, so i did not like to wake you." "will she not come to-morrow?" catherine assured her that she would come without fail. this time jeanne slept in the day in order that she might keep awake at night; so she lay down at night in the bed with catherine and kept her eyes open. often she asked: "will she not come?" and catherine replied: "yes, directly." but jeanne saw nothing.[ ] she held the test to be a good one. nevertheless she could not get the white lady attired in cloth of gold out of her head. when saint catherine and saint margaret came to her, as they delayed not to do, she spoke to them concerning this white lady and asked them what she was to think of her. the reply was such as jeanne expected: "this catherine," they said, "is naught but futility and folly."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] then was jeanne constrained to cry: "that is just what i thought." the strife between these two prophetesses was brief but bitter. jeanne always maintained the opposite of what catherine said. when the latter was going to make peace with the duke of burgundy, jeanne said to her: "me seemeth that you will never find peace save at the lance's point."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] there was one matter at any rate wherein the white lady proved a better prophetess than the maid's council, to wit, the siege of la charité. when jeanne wished to go and deliver that town, catherine tried to dissuade her. "it is too cold," she said; "i would not go."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._] catherine's reason was not a high one; and yet it is true jeanne would have done better not to go to the siege of la charité. taken from the duke of burgundy by the dauphin in , la charité had been retaken in , by perrinet gressart,[ ] a successful captain, who had risen from the rank of mason's apprentice to that of pantler to the duke of burgundy and had been created lord of laigny by the king of england.[ ] on the th of december, , perrinet's men arrested the sire de la trémouille, when he was on his way to the duke of burgundy, having been appointed ambassador in one of those eternal negotiations, forever in process between the king and the duke. he was for several months kept a prisoner in the fortress which his captor commanded. he must needs pay a ransom of fourteen thousand golden crowns; and, albeit he took this sum from the royal treasury,[ ] he never ceased to bear perrinet a grudge. wherefore it may be concluded that when he sent men-at-arms to la charité it was in good sooth to capture the town and not with any evil design against the maid. [footnote : "perrinet crasset, mason and captain of men-at-arms." _chronique des cordeliers_, fol. verso. jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. cclxxviii. a. de villaret, _campagne des anglais_, p. . le p. ayroles, _la vraie jeanne d'arc_, vol. iii, pp. , , _et seq._ j. de fréminville, _les écorcheurs en bourgogne_ ( - ); _Étude sur les compagnies franches au xv'e siècle_, dijon, , in vo. p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_. proofs and illustrations, xxx.] [footnote : sainte-marthe, _histoire généalogique de la maison de la trémoïlle_, , in mo, pp. _et seq._ l. de la trémoïlle, _les la trémoïlle pendant cinq siècles_, nantes, , vol. i, p. .] the army despatched against this burgundian captain and this great plunder of pilgrims was composed of no mean folk. its leaders were louis of bourbon, count of montpensier, and charles ii, sire d'albret, la trémouille's half-brother and jeanne's companion in arms during the coronation campaign. the army was doubtless but scantily supplied with stores and with money.[ ] that was the normal condition of armies in those days. when the king wanted to attack a stronghold of the enemy, he must needs apply to his good towns for the necessary material. the maid, at once saint and warrior, could beg for arms with a good grace; but possibly she overrated the resources of the towns which had already given so much. [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. iii. _journal du siège_, p. . monstrelet, vol. v, chap, lxxii. a. de villaret, _campagne des anglais_, p. .] on the th of november, she and my lord d'alençon signed a letter asking the folk of clermont in auvergne for powder, arrows and artillery. churchmen, magistrates, and townsfolk sent two hundredweight of saltpetre, one hundredweight of sulphur, two cases of arrows; to these they added a sword, two poniards and a battle-axe for the maid; and they charged messire robert andrieu to present this contribution to jeanne and to my lord d'albret.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . f. perot, _un document inédit sur jeanne d'arc_, in _bulletin de la société archéologique de l'orléanais_, vol. xii, - , p. .] on the th of november, the maid was at moulins in bourbonnais.[ ] what was she doing there? no one knows. there was at that time in the town an abbess very holy and very greatly venerated. her name was colette boilet. she had won the highest praise and incurred the grossest insults by attempting to reform the order of saint clare. colette lived in the convent of the sisters of saint clare, which she had recently founded in this town. it has been thought that the maid went to moulins on purpose to meet her.[ ] but we ought first to ascertain whether these two saints had any liking for each other. they both worked miracles and miracles which were occasionally somewhat similar;[ ] but that was no reason why they should take the slightest pleasure in each other's society. one was called _la pucelle_,[ ] the other _la petite ancelle_.[ ] but these names, both equally humble, described persons widely different in fashion of attire and in manner of life. _la petite ancelle_ wended her way on foot, clothed in rags like a beggar-woman; _la pucelle_, wrapped in cloth of gold, rode forth with lords on horseback. that jeanne, surrounded by franciscans who observed no rule, felt any veneration for the reformer of the sisters of saint clare, there is no reason to believe; neither is there anything to indicate that the pacific colette, strongly attached to the burgundian house,[ ] had any desire to hold converse with one whom the english regarded as a destroying angel.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. - . lanéry d'arc and l. jeny, _jeanne d'arc en berry_, ch. viii.] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. cclxxix.] [footnote : acta sanctorum, march, i, , col. , no. . abbé bizouard, _histoire de sainte colette_, pp. , . s[ilvere], _histoire chronologique de la bienheureuse colette_, paris, , in vo.] [footnote : _the maid_ (w.s.).] [footnote : _servant._ cf. godefroy, _lexique de l'ancien français_ (w.s.).] [footnote : _histoire chronologique de la bienheureuse colette_, pp. - .] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc et les ordres mendiants_, in _revue des deux mondes_, , vol. xlv, p. . l. de kerval, _jeanne d'arc et les franciscains_, vanves, , pp. , . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. cclxxviii _et seq._ f. perot, _jeanne d'arc en bourbonnais_, orléans, in vo, pp., . f. andré, _la vérité sur jeanne d'arc_, in vo, , pp. _et seq._] from this town of moulins, jeanne dictated a letter by which she informed the inhabitants of riom that saint-pierre-le-moustier was taken, and asked them for materials of war as she had asked the folk of clermont.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. - .] here is the letter: good friends and beloved, ye wit how that the town of saint père le moustier hath been taken by storm; and with god's help it is our intention to cause to be evacuated the other places contrary to the king; but for this there hath been great expending of powder, arrows and other munition of war before the said town, and the lords who are in this town are but scantily provided for to go and lay siege to la charité, whither we wend presently; i pray you as ye love the welfare and honour of the king and likewise of all others here, that ye will straightway help and send for the said siege powder, saltpetre, sulphur, arrows, strong cross-bows and other munition of war. and do this lest by failure of the said powder and other habiliments of war, the siege should be long and ye should be called in this matter negligent or unwilling. good friends and beloved, may our lord keep you. written at molins, the ninth day of november. jehanne. addressed to: my good friends and beloved, the churchmen, burgesses and townsfolk of the town of rion.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , . facsimile in _le musée des archives départementales_, p. .] the magistrates of riom, in letters sealed with their own seal, undertook to give jeanne the maid and my lord d'albret the sum of sixty crowns; but when the masters of the siege-artillery came to demand this sum, the magistrates would not give a farthing.[ ] [footnote : f. perot (_bulletin de la société archéologique de l'orléanais_, vol. xii, p. ).] the folk of orléans, on the other hand, once more appeared both zealous and munificent; for they eagerly desired the reduction of a town commanding the loire for seventy-five miles above their own city. they deserve to be considered the true deliverers of the kingdom; had it not been for them neither jargeau nor beaugency would have been taken in june. quite in the beginning of july, when they thought the loire campaign was to be continued, they had sent their great mortar, la bougue, to gien. with it they had despatched ammunition and victuals; and now, in the early days of december, at the request of the king addressed to the magistrates, they sent to la charité all the artillery brought back from gien; likewise eighty-nine soldiers of the municipal troops, wearing the cloak with the duke of orléans' colours, the white cross on the breast; with their trumpeter at their head and commanded by captain boiau; craftsmen of all conditions, master-masons and journeymen, carpenters, smiths; the cannoneers fauveau, gervaise lefèvre and brother jacques, monk of the gray friars monastery, at orléans.[ ] what became of all this artillery and of these brave folk? [footnote : a. de villaret, _campagne des anglais_, p. , proofs and illustrations, xvii, pp. , . _trial_, vol. v, pp. , , according to the original documents in the orléans library.] on the th of november, the sire d'albret and the maid, being hard put to it before the walls of la charité, likewise solicited the town of bourges. on receipt of their letter, the burgesses decided to contribute thirteen hundred golden crowns. to raise this sum they had recourse to a measure by no means unusual; it had been employed notably by the townsfolk of orléans when, some time previously, to furnish forth jeanne with munition of war, they had bought from a certain citizen a quantity of salt which they had put up to auction in the city barn. the townsfolk of bourges sold by auction the annual revenue of a thirteenth part of the wine sold retail in the town. but the money thus raised never reached its destination.[ ] [footnote : la thaumassière, _histoire du berry_, p. . _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . lanéry d'arc and l. jeny, _jeanne d'arc en berry_, pp. _et seq._ a. de villaret, _campagne des anglais_, pp. , .] a right goodly knighthood was gathered beneath the walls of la charité; besides louis de bourbon and the sire d'albret, there was the maréchal de broussac, jean de bouray, seneschal of toulouse, and raymon de montremur, a baron of dauphiné, who was slain there.[ ] it was bitterly cold and the besiegers succeeded in nothing. at the end of a month perrinet gressart, who was full of craft, caused them to fall into an ambush. they raised the siege, abandoning the artillery furnished by the good towns, those fine cannon bought with the savings of thrifty citizens.[ ] their action was the less excusable because the town which had not been relieved and could not well expect to be, must have surrendered sooner or later. they pleaded that the king had sent them no victuals and no money;[ ] but that was not considered an excuse and their action was deemed dishonourable. according to a knight well acquainted with points of honour in war: "one ought never to besiege a place without being sure of victuals and of pay beforehand. for to besiege a stronghold and then to withdraw is great disgrace for an army, especially when there is present with it a king or a king's lieutenant."[ ] [footnote : _mémoires de la société des antiquaires du centre_, vol. iv, - , pp. , .] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. . lanéry d'arc and l. jeny, _jeanne d'arc en berry_, p. .] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] [footnote : _le jouvencel_, vol. ii, pp. , .] on the th of december there preached to the people of périgueux a dominican friar, brother hélie boudant, pope martin's penitentiary in that town. he took as his text the great miracles worked in france by the intervention of a maid, whom god had sent to the king. on this occasion the mayor and the magistrates heard mass sung and presented two candles. now for two months brother hélie had been under order to appear before the parlement of poitiers.[ ] on what charge we do not know. mendicant monks of those days were for the most part irregular in faith and in morals. the doctrine of friar richard himself was not altogether beyond suspicion. [footnote : extract from the book of accounts of the town of périgueux, in _bulletin de la société historique et archéologique du périgord_, vol. xiv, january to february, . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, proofs and illustrations, ccxvii, p. . le p. chapotin, _la guerre de cent ans et les dominicains_, pp. _et seq._] at christmas, in the year , the flying squadron of _béguines_ being assembled at jargeau,[ ] this good brother said mass and administered the communion thrice to jeanne the maid and twice to that pierronne of lower brittany, with whom our lord conversed as friend with friend. such an action might well be regarded, if not as a formal violation of the church's laws, at any rate as an unjustifiable abuse of the sacrament.[ ] a menacing theological tempest was then gathering and was about to break over the heads of friar richard's daughters in the spirit. a few days after the attack on paris, the venerable university had had composed or rather transcribed a treatise, _de bono et maligno spiritu_, with a view probably to finding therein arguments against friar richard and his prophetess jeanne, who had both appeared before the city with the armagnacs.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, pp. , . le p. denifle and chatelain, _cartularium univ. paris_, vol. iv, p. .] about the same time, a clerk of the faculty of law had published a summary reply to chancellor gerson's memorial concerning the maid. "it sufficeth not," he wrote, "that one simply affirm that he is sent of god; every heretic maketh such a claim; but he must prove the truth of that mysterious mission by some miraculous work or by some special testimony in the bible." this paris clerk denies that the maid has presented any such proof, and to judge her by her acts, he believes her rather to have been sent by the devil than by god. he reproaches her with wearing a dress forbidden to women under penalty of anathema, and he refutes the excuses for her conduct in this matter urged by gerson. he accuses her of having excited between princes and christian people a greater war than there had ever been before. he holds her to be an idolatress using enchantments and making false prophecies. he charges her with having induced men to slay their fellows on the two high festivals of the holy virgin, the assumption and the nativity. "sins committed by the enemy of mankind, through this woman, against the creator and his most glorious mother. and albeit there ensued certain murders, thanks be to god they were not so many as the enemy had intended." "all these things do manifestly prove error and heresy," adds this devout son of the university. whence he concludes that the maid should be taken before the bishop and the inquisitor; and he ends by quoting this text from saint jérôme: "the unhealthy flesh must be cut off; the diseased sheep must be driven from the fold."[ ] [footnote : noël valois, _un nouveau témoignage sur jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in vo, pages.] such was the unanimous opinion of the university of paris concerning her in whom the french clerks beheld an angel of the lord. at bruges, in november, a rumour ran and was eagerly welcomed by ecclesiastics that the university of paris had sent an embassy to the pope at rome to denounce the maid as a false prophetess and a deceiver, and likewise those who believed in her. we do not know the veritable object of this mission.[ ] but there is no doubt whatever that the doctors and masters of paris were henceforward firmly resolved that if ever they obtained possession of the damsel they would not let her go out of their hands, and certainly would not send her to be tried at rome, where she might escape with a mere penance, and even be enlisted as one of the pope's mercenaries.[ ] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , .] in english and burgundian lands, not only by clerks but by folk of all conditions, she was regarded as a heretic; in those countries the few who thought well of her had to conceal their opinions carefully. after the retreat from saint-denys, there may have remained some in picardy, and notably at abbeville, who were favourable to the prophetess of the french; but such persons must not be spoken of in public. colin gouye, surnamed le sourd, and jehannin daix, surnamed le petit, a man of abbeville, learned this to their cost. in this town about the middle of september, le sourd and le petit were near the blacksmith's forge with divers of the burgesses and other townsfolk, among whom was a herald. they fell to talking of the maid who was making so great a stir throughout christendom. to certain words the herald uttered concerning her, le petit replied eagerly: "well! well! everything that woman does and says is nought but deception." le sourd spoke likewise: "that woman," he said, "is not to be trusted. those who believe in her are mad, and there is a smell of burning about them."[ ] [footnote : _sentent la persinée_: literally, smell of roast parsley. cf. godefroy, _lexique de l'ancien français_ at the word _persinée_. _sentir la persinée_: to be suspected of heresy (w.s.).] by that he meant that their destiny was obvious, and that they were sure to be burned at the stake as heretics. then he had the misfortune to add: "in this town there be many with a smell of burning about them." such words were for the dwellers in abbeville a slander and a cause of suspicion. when the mayor and the aldermen heard of this speech they ordered le sourd to be thrown into prison. le petit must have said something similar, for he too was imprisoned.[ ] [footnote : pardon granted to le sourd and jehannin daix, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. - .] by saying that divers of his fellow-citizens were suspect of heresy, le sourd put them in danger of being sought out by the bishop and the inquisitor as heretics and sorcerers of notoriously evil repute. as for the maid, she must have been suspect indeed, for a smell of burning to be caused by the mere fact of being her partisan. while friar richard and his spiritual daughters were thus threatened with a bad end should they fall into the hands of the english or burgundians, serious troubles were agitating the sisterhood. on the subject of catherine, jeanne entered into an open dispute with her spiritual father. friar richard wanted the holy dame of la rochelle to be set to work. fearing lest his advice should be adopted, jeanne wrote to her king to tell him what to do with the woman, to wit that he should send her home to her husband and children. when she came to the king the first thing she had to say to him was: "catherine's doings are nought but folly and futility." friar richard made no attempt to hide from the maid his profound displeasure.[ ] he was thought much of at court, and it was doubtless with the consent of the royal council that he was endeavouring to compass the employment of dame catherine. the maid had succeeded. why should not another of the illuminated succeed? [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] meanwhile the council had by no means renounced the services jeanne was rendering to the french cause. even after the misfortunes of paris and of la charité, there were many who now as before held her power to be supernatural; and there is reason to believe that there was a party at court intending still to employ her.[ ] and even if they had wished to discard her she was now too intimately associated with the royal lilies for her rejection not to involve them too in dishonour. on the th of december, , at mehun-sur-yèvre, the king gave her a charter of nobility sealed with the great seal in green wax, with a double pendant, on a strip of red and green silk.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. ; vol. iv, pp. _et passim_. a. de villaret, _loc. cit._ proofs and illustrations.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. - . j. hordal, _heroinae nobilissimae joannae darc, lotharingæ, vulgo aurelianensis puellae historia...._ ponti-mussi, , small to. c. du lys, _traité sommaire tant du nom et des armes que de la naissance et parenté de la pucelle, justifié par plusieurs patentes et arrêts, enquêtes et informations...._ paris, , in to. de la roque, _traité de la noblesse_, paris, , in to, ch. xliii. lanéry d'arc, _jeanne d'arc en berry_, ch. x.] the grant of nobility was to jeanne, her father, mother, brothers even if they were not free, and to all their posterity, male and female. it was a singular grant corresponding to the singular services rendered by a woman. in the title she is described as johanna d'ay, doubtless because her father's name was given to the king's scribes by lorrainers who would speak with a soft drawl; but whether her name were ay or arc, she was seldom called by it, and was commonly spoken of as jeanne the maid.[ ] [footnote : see analytical index, in _trial_, vol. v, at the word _pucelle_.] chapter v letter to the citizens of reims--letter to the hussites--departure from sully the folk of orléans were grateful to the maid for what she had done for them. far from reproaching her with the unfortunate conclusion of the siege of la charité, they welcomed her into their city with the same rejoicing and with as good cheer as before. on the th of january, , they honoured her and likewise maître jean de velly and maître jean rabateau with a banquet, at which there was abundance of capons, partridges, hares, and even a pheasant.[ ] who that jean de velly was, who was feasted with her, we do not know. as for jean rabateau, he was none other than the king's councillor, who had been attorney-general at the parlement of poitiers since .[ ] he had been the maid's host at orléans. his wife had often seen jeanne kneeling in her private oratory.[ ] the citizens of orléans offered wine to the attorney-general, to jean de velly, and to the maid. in good sooth, 'twas a fine feast and a ceremonious. the burgesses loved and honoured jeanne, but they cannot have observed her very closely during the repast or they would not eight years later, when an adventuress gave herself out to be the maid, have mistaken her for jeanne, and offered her wine in the same manner and at the hands of the same city servant, jacques leprestre, as now presented it.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, pp. , , . h. daniel lacombe, _l'hôte de jeanne d'arc à poitiers, maître jean rabateau, président du parlement de paris_, in _revue du bas-poitou_, , pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : extract from the accounts of the town of orléans, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] the standard that jeanne loved even more than her saint catherine's sword had been painted at tours by one hamish power. he was now marrying his daughter héliote; and when jeanne heard of it, she sent a letter to the magistrates of tours, asking them to give a sum of one hundred crowns for the bride's trousseau. the nuptials were fixed for the th of february, . the magistrates assembled twice to deliberate on jeanne's request. they described her honourably and yet not without a certain caution as "the maid who hath come into this realm to the king, concerning the matter of the war, announcing that she is sent by the king of heaven against the english." in the end they refused to pay anything, because, they said, it behoved them to expend municipal funds on municipal matters and not otherwise; but they decided that for the affection and honour they bore the maid, the churchmen, burgesses, and other townsfolk should be present in the church at the wedding, and should offer prayers for the bride and present her with bread and wine. this cost them four _livres_, ten _sous_.[ ] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _un épisode de la vie de jeanne d'arc_, in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, vol. iv ( st series), p. . _trial_, vol. v, pp. - .] at a time which it is impossible to fix exactly the maid bought a house at orléans. to be more precise she took it on lease.[ ] a lease (_bail à vente_) was an agreement by which the proprietor of a house or other property transferred the ownership to the lessee in return for an annual payment in kind or in money. the duration of such leases was usually fifty-nine years. the house that jeanne acquired in this manner belonged to the chapter of the cathedral. it was in the centre of the town, in the parish of saint-malo, close to the saint-maclou chapel, next door to the shop of an oil-seller, one jean feu, in the rue des petits-souliers. it was in this street that, during the siege, there had fallen into the midst of five guests seated at table a stone cannon-ball weighing one hundred and sixty-four pounds, which had done no one any harm.[ ] what price did the maid give for this house? apparently six crowns of fine gold (at sixty crowns to the mark), due half-yearly at midsummer and christmas, for fifty-nine years. in addition, she must according to custom have undertaken to keep the house in good condition and to pay out of her own purse the ecclesiastical dues as well as rates for wells and paving and all other taxes. being obliged to have some one as surety, she chose as her guarantor a certain guillot de guyenne, of whom we know nothing further.[ ] [footnote : jules doinel, _note sur une maison de jeanne d'arc_, in _mémoires de la société archéologique et historique de l'orléanais_, vol. xv, pp. - .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : jules doinel, _note sur une maison de jeanne d'arc_, _loc. cit._] there is no reason to believe that the maid did not herself negotiate this agreement. saint as she was, she knew well what it was to possess property. such knowledge ran in her family; her father was the best business man in his village.[ ] she herself was domesticated and thrifty; for she kept her old clothes, and even in the field she knew where to find them when she wanted to make presents of them to her friends. she counted up her possessions in arms and horses, valued them at twelve thousand crowns, and, apparently made a pretty accurate reckoning.[ ] but what was her idea in taking this house? did she think of living in it? did she intend when the war was over to return to orléans and pass a peaceful old age in a house of her own? or was she planning for her parents to dwell there, or some vouthon uncle, or her brothers, one of whom was in great poverty and had got a doublet out of the citizens of orléans?[ ] [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : accounts of the fortress, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] on the third of march she followed king charles to sully.[ ] the château, in which she lodged near the king, belonged to the sire de la trémouille, who had inherited it from his mother, marie de sully, the daughter of louis i of bourbon. it had been recaptured from the english after the deliverance of orléans.[ ] a stronghold on the loire, on the highroad from paris to autun, and commanding the plain between orléans and briare and the ancient bridge with twenty arches, the château of sully linked together central france and those northern provinces which jeanne had so regretfully quitted, and whither with all her heart she longed to return to engage in fresh expeditions and fresh sieges. [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _berry_, in godefroy, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. , notes , . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, pp. , . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] during the first fortnight of march, from the townsfolk of reims she received a message in which they confided to her fears only too well grounded.[ ] on the th of march the regent had granted to the duke of burgundy the counties of champagne and of brie on condition of his reconquering them.[ ] armagnacs and english vied with each other in offering the biggest and most tempting morsels to this gargantuan duke. not being able to keep their promise and deliver to him compiègne which refused to be delivered, the french offered him in its place pont-sainte-maxence.[ ] but it was compiègne that he wanted. the truces, which had been very imperfectly kept, were to have expired at christmas, but first they had been prolonged till the th of march and then till easter. in the year easter fell on the th of april; and duke philip was only waiting for that date to put an army in the field.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . d. plancher, _histoire de bourgogne_, vol. iv, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : du tillet, _recueil des rois de france_, vol. ii, p. (ed. - ). rymer, _foedera_, march, .] [footnote : p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_, pp. , .] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. , .] in a manner concise and vivacious the maid replied to the townsfolk of reims: "dear friends and beloved and mightily desired. jehenne the maid hath received your letters making mention that ye fear a siege. know ye that it shall not so betide, and i may but encounter them shortly. and if i do not encounter them and they do not come to you, if you shut your gates firmly, i shall shortly be with you: and if they be there, i shall make them put on their spurs so hastily that they will not know where to take them and so quickly that it shall be very soon. other things i will not write unto you now, save that ye be always good and loyal. i pray god to have you in his keeping. written at sully, the th day of march. i would announce unto you other tidings at which ye would mightily rejoice; but i fear lest the letters be taken on the road, and the said tidings be seen. signed. jehanne. _addressed_ to my dear friends and beloved, churchmen, burgesses and other citizens of the town of rains."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. , according to rogier's copy. h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, proofs and illustrations xv. facsimile in wallon, edition, p. . the original of this letter exists, likewise the original of the letter addressed on the th of november, , to the citizens of riom. these two letters, about one hundred and twenty-six days apart, are not written by the same scribe. the signature of neither one nor the other can be attributed to the hand which indited the rest of the letter. the seven letters of the name _jehanne_ seem to have been written by some one whose hand was being held, which is not surprising, seeing that the maid did not know how to write. but a comparison of the two signatures reveals their close similarity. in both the stem of the j slopes in the same direction and is of identical length; the first _n_ through one letter being written on the top of another has three pothooks instead of two; the second pothook of the second _n_ obviously written in two strokes is too long, in short the two signatures correspond exactly. we must conclude therefore that having once obtained the maid's signature by guiding her hand, an impression was taken to serve as a model for all her other letters. to judge from the two missives of the th of november, and the th of march, , this impression was most faithfully reproduced. cf. _post_, p. , note .] there can be no doubt that the scribe wrote this letter faithfully as it was dictated by the maid, and that he wrote her words as they fell from her lips. in her haste she now and again forgot words and sometimes whole phrases; but the sense is clear all the same. and what confidence! "you will have no siege if i encounter the enemy." how completely is this the language of chivalry! on the eve of patay she had asked: "have you good spurs?"[ ] here she cries: "i will make them put on their spurs." she says that soon she will be in champagne, that she is about to start. surely we can no longer think of her shut up in the castle of la trémouille as in a kind of gilded cage.[ ] in conclusion, she tells her friends at reims that she does not write unto them all that she would like for fear lest her letter should be captured on the road. she knew what it was to be cautious. sometimes she affixed a cross to her letters to warn her followers to pay no heed to what she wrote, in the hope that the missive would be intercepted and the enemy deceived.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] it was from sully that on the rd of march brother pasquerel sent the emperor sigismund a letter intended for the hussites of bohemia.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. v, p. .] the hussites of those days were abhorred and execrated throughout christendom. they demanded the free preaching of god's word, communion in both kinds, and the return of the church to that evangelical life which allowed neither the wealth of priests nor the temporal power of popes. they desired the punishment of sin by the civil magistrates, a custom which could prevail only in very holy society. they were saints indeed and heretics too on every possible point. pope martin held the destruction of these wicked persons to be salutary, and such was the opinion of every good catholic. but how could this armed heresy be dealt with when it routed all the forces of the empire and the holy see? the hussites were too much for that worn-out ancient chivalry of christendom, for the knighthood of france and of germany, which was good for nothing but to be thrown on to the refuse heaps like so much old iron. and this was precisely what the towns of the realm of france did when over these knights of chivalry they placed a peasant girl.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , , . j. zeller, _histoire d'allemagne_, vol. vii, _la réforme_, paris, , pp. _et seq._ e. denis, _jean hus et la guerre des hussites_ ( ); _les origines de l'unité des frères bohêmes_, angers, , in vo, pp. _et seq._] at tachov, in , the crusaders, blessed by the holy father, had fled at the mere sound of the chariot wheels of the procops.[ ] pope martin knew not where to turn for defenders of holy church, one and indivisible. he had paid for the armament of five thousand english crusaders, which the cardinal of winchester was to lead against these accursed bohemians; but in this force the holy father was cruelly disappointed; hardly had his five thousand crusaders landed in france, than the regent of england diverted them from their route and sent them to brie to occupy the attention of the maid of the armagnacs.[ ] [footnote : two of the great leaders of the hussites who held large parts of central germany in terror from - (w.s.).] [footnote : l. paris, _cabinet historique_, vol. i, , pp. , . rogier, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. , , , , , , , ; vol. iv, supplement, xvii.] since her coming into france jeanne had spoken of the crusade as a work good and meritorious. in the letter dictated before the expedition to orléans, she summoned the english to join the french and go together to fight against the church's foe. and later, writing to the duke of burgundy, she invited the son of the duke vanquished at nicopolis to make war against the turks.[ ] who but the mendicants directing her can have put these crusading ideas into jeanne's head? immediately after the deliverance of orléans it was said that she would lead king charles to the conquest of the holy sepulchre and that she would die in the holy land.[ ] at the same time it was rumoured that she would make war on the hussites. in the month of july, , when the coronation campaign had barely begun, it was proclaimed in germany, on the faith of a prophetess of rome, that by a prophetess of france the bohemian kingdom should be recovered.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. v, p. .] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, pp. - . christine de pisan, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . eberhard windecke, pp. - .] [footnote : eberhard windecke, pp. , , .] already zealous for the crusade against the turks, the maid was now equally eager for the crusade against the hussites. turks or bohemians, it was all alike to her. of one and the other her only knowledge lay in the stories full of witchcraft related to her by the mendicants of her company. touching the hussites, stories were told, not all true, but which jeanne must have believed; and they cannot have pleased her. it was said that they worshipped the devil, and that they called him "the wronged one." it was told that as works of piety they committed all manner of fornication. every bohemian was said to be possessed by a hundred demons. they were accused of killing thousands of churchmen. again, and this time with truth, they were charged with burning churches and monasteries. the maid believed in the god who commanded israel to wipe out the philistines from the face of the earth. but recently there had arisen cathari who held the god of the old testament to be none other than lucifer or luciabelus, author of evil, liar and murderer. the cathari abhorred war; they refused to shed blood; they were heretics; they had been massacred, and none remained. the maid believed in good faith that the extirpation of the hussites was a work pleasing to god. men more learned than she, not like her addicted to chivalry, but of gentle life, clerks like the chancellor jean gerson, believed it likewise.[ ] of these bohemian heretics she thought what every one thought: her opinions were those of the multitude; her views were modelled on public opinion. wherefore in all the simplicity of her heart she hated the hussites, but she feared them not, because she feared nothing and because she believed, god helping her, that she was able to overcome all the english, all the turks, and all the bohemians in the world. at the first trumpet call she was ready to sally forth against them. on the rd of march, , brother pasquerel sent the emperor sigismund a letter written in the name of the maid and intended for the hussites of bohemia. this letter was indited in latin. the following is the purport of it: [footnote : lea, _a history of the inquisition in the middle ages_, vol. ii, p. ( ).] jesus [cross symbol] marie long ago there reached me the tidings that ye from the true christians that ye once were have become heretics, like unto the saracens, that ye have abolished true religion and worship and have turned to a superstition corrupt and fatal, the which in your zeal to maintain and to spread abroad there be no shame nor cruelty ye do not dare to perpetrate. you defile the sacraments of the church, tear to pieces the articles of her faith, overthrow her temples. the images which were made for similitudes you break and throw into the fire. finally such christians as embrace not your faith you massacre. what fury, what folly, what rage possesses you? that religion which god the all powerful, which the son, which the holy ghost raised up, instituted, exalted and revealed in a thousand manners, by a thousand miracles, ye persecute, ye employ all arts to overturn and to exterminate. it is you, you who are blind and not those who have not eyes nor sight. think ye that ye will go unpunished? do ye not know that if god prevent not your impious violence, if he suffer you to grope on in darkness and in error, it is that he is preparing for you a greater sorrow and a greater punishment? as for me, in good sooth, were i not occupied with the english wars, i would have already come against you. but in very deed if i learn not that ye have turned from your wicked ways, i will peradventure leave the english and hasten against you, in order that i may destroy by the sword your vain and violent superstition, if i can do so in no other manner, and that i may rid you either of heresy or of life. notwithstanding, if you prefer to return to the catholic faith and to the light of primitive days, send unto me your ambassadors and i will tell them what ye must do. if on the other hand ye will be stiff-necked and kick against the pricks, then remember all the crimes and offences ye have perpetrated and look for to see me coming unto you with all strength divine and human to render unto you again all the evil ye have done unto others. given at sully, on the rd of march, to the bohemian heretics. signed. pasquerel.[ ] [footnote : th. de sickel, _lettre de jeanne d'arc aux hussites_, in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, rd series, vol. ii, p. . a wrong date is given in the german translation used by quicherat, _trial_, vol. v, pp. - .] this was the letter sent to the emperor. how had jeanne really expressed herself in her dialect savouring alike of the speech of champagne and of that of l'Île de france? there can be no doubt but that her letter had been sadly embellished by the good brother. such ciceronian language cannot have proceeded from the maid. it is all very well to say that a saint of those days could do everything, could prophesy on any subject and in any tongue, so fine an epistle remains far too rhetorical to have been composed by a damsel whom even the armagnac captains considered simple. nevertheless, a careful examination will reveal in this missive, at any rate in the second half of it, certain of those bluntly naive passages and some of that childish assurance which are noticeable in jeanne's genuine letters, especially in her reply to the count of armagnac;[ ] and more than once there occurs an expression characteristic of a village sibyl. the following, for example, is quite in jeanne's own manner: "if you will return to the bosom of the catholic church, send me your ambassadors; i will tell you what you have to do." and her usual threat: "expect me with all strength human and divine."[ ] as for the phrase: "if i hear not shortly of your conversion, of your return to the bosom of the church, i will peradventure leave the english and come against you," here we may suspect the mendicant friar, less interested in the affairs of charles vii than in those of the church, of having ascribed to the maid greater eagerness to set forth on the crusade than she really felt. good and salutary as she deemed the taking of the cross, as far as we know her, she would never have consented to take it until she had driven the english out of the realm of france. she believed this to be her mission, and the persistence, the consistency, the strength of will she evinced in its fulfilment, are truly admirable. it is quite probable that she dictated to the good brother some phrase like: "when i have put the english out of the kingdom, i will turn against you." this would explain and excuse brother pasquerel's error. it is very likely that jeanne believed she would dispose of the english in a trice and that she already saw herself distributing good buffets and sound clouts to the renegade and infidel bohemians. the maid's simplicity makes itself felt through the clerk's latin. this epistle to the bohemians recalls, alas! that fagot placed upon the stake whereon john huss was burning, by the pious zeal of the good wife whose saintly simplicity john huss himself teaches us to admire. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. v, p. .] one cannot help reflecting that jeanne and those very men against whom she hurled menace and invective had much in common; alike they were impelled by faith, chastity, simple ignorance, pious duty, resignation to god's will, and a tendency to magnify the minor matters of devotion. zizka[ ] had established in his camp that purity of morals which the maid was endeavouring to introduce among the armagnacs. the peasant soldiers of bohemia and the peasant maid of france bearing her sword amidst mendicant monks had much in common. on the one hand and on the other, we have the religious spirit in the place of the political spirit, the fear of sin in the place of obedience to the civil law, the spiritual introduced into the temporal. here is indeed a woeful sight and a piteous; the devout set one against the other, the innocent against the innocent, the simple against the simple, the heretic against heretics; and it is painful to think that when she is threatening with extermination the disciples of that john huss, who had been treacherously taken and burned as a heretic, she herself is on the point of being sold to her enemies and condemned to suffer as a witch. it would have been different if this letter, at which the accomplished wits and humorists of the day looked askance, had won the approval of theologians. but they also found fault with it, an illustrious canonist, a zealous inquisitor deemed highly presumptuous this threatening of a multitude of men by a maid.[ ] [footnote : another of the hussite leaders (w.s.).] [footnote : j. nider, _formicarium_ in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. - .] we were right in saying that she was not prepared to leave the english immediately and hasten against the bohemians. five days after her appeal to the hussites she wrote to her friends at reims and in mysterious words gave them to understand that she would come to them shortly.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] the partisans of duke philip were at that time hatching plots in the towns of champagne, notably at troyes and at reims. on the nd of february, , a canon and a chaplain were arrested and brought before the chapter for having conspired to deliver the city to the english. it was well for them that they belonged to the church, for having been condemned to perpetual imprisonment, they obtained from the king a mitigation of their sentence, and the canon a complete remittance.[ ] the aldermen and ecclesiastics of the city, fearing they would be thought badly of on the other side of the loire, wrote to the maid entreating her to speak well of them to the king. the following is her reply to their request:[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iv, p. , and h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, pp. _et seq._ mémoires de pierre coquault, _ibid._, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : this letter was published by j. quicherat, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , , and by m. h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, pp. , and document xvi, according to rogier's inaccurate copy. the original which had disappeared from the municipal archives at reims was considered to be lost; but it has been found in the possession of the count de maleissye. cf. the reproduction by a. marty and m. lepet, _l'histoire de jeanne d'arc.... cent facsimilés de manuscrits, de miniatures_, paris, , in large to. here for the first time is to be found a text correct according to the original document.] "very good friends and beloved, may it please you to wit that i have received your letters, the which make mention how it hath been reported to the king that within the city of reims there be many wicked persons. therefore i give you to wit that it is indeed true that even such things have been reported to him and that he grieves much that there be folk in alliance with the burgundians; that they would betray the town and bring the burgundians into it. but since then the king has known the contrary by means of the assurance ye have sent him, and he is well pleased with you. and ye may believe that ye stand well in his favour; and if ye have need, he would help you with regard to the siege; and he knows well that ye have much to suffer from the hardness of those treacherous burgundians, your adversaries: thus may god in his pleasure deliver you shortly, that is as soon as may be. so i pray and entreat you my friends dearly beloved that ye hold well the said city for the king and that ye keep good watch. ye will soon have good tidings of me at greater length. other things for the present i write not unto you save that the whole of brittany is french and that the duke is to send to the king three thousand combatants paid for two months. to god i commend you, may he keep you. written at sully, the th of march. jehanne.[ ] addressed to: my good friends and dearly beloved, the churchmen, aldermen, burgesses and inhabitants and masters of the good town of reyms."[ ] [footnote : the signature appears to be autograph. it differs from the two identical signatures of the letters from riom and reims (see _ante_, p. , note ); and it bears trace of the resistance of a hand which was being guided.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . varin, _archives législatives de la ville de reims_, vol. i, p. . h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, pp. , .] touching the succour to be expected from the duke of brittany, the maid was labouring under a delusion. like all other prophetesses she was ignorant of what was passing around her. despite her failures, she believed in her good fortune; she doubted herself no more than she doubted god; and she was eager to pursue the fulfilment of her mission. "ye shall soon have tidings of me," she said to the townsfolk of reims. a few days after, and she left sully to go into france and fight, on the expiration of the truces. it has been said that she feigned an expedition of pleasure and set out without taking leave of the king, that it was a kind of innocent stratagem, an honourable flight.[ ] but it was nothing of the sort.[ ] the maid gathered a company of some hundred horse, sixty-eight archers and cross-bowmen, and two trumpeters, commanded by a lombard captain, bartolomeo baretta.[ ] in this company were italian men-at-arms, bearing broad shields, like some who had come to orléans at the time of the siege; possibly they were the same.[ ] she set out at the head of this company, with her brothers and her steward, the sire jean d'aulon. she was in the hands of jean d'aulon, and jean d'aulon was in the hands of the sire de la trémouille, to whom he owed money.[ ] the good squire would not have followed the maid against the king's will. [footnote : perceval de cagny, who was in the pay of the duke of alençon, is the only chronicler to suggest it, p. .] [footnote : "in the year , jeanne the maid started from the country of berry accompanied by divers fighting men...." jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . martial d'auvergne, _vigiles_, ed. coustellier, vol. i, p. . note concerning g. de flavy, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_, p. , note .] [footnote : _journal du siège_, p. .] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. , note . true, the loan was made later; none the less the dependence of jean d'aulon on the sire de la trémouille existed at this time.] the flying squadron of _béguines_ had recently been divided by a schism. friar richard, who was then in high favour with queen marie, and who had preached the lenten sermons of [ ] at orléans, stayed behind, on the loire, with catherine de la rochelle. jeanne took with her pierronne and the younger breton prophetess.[ ] if she went into france, it was not without the knowledge or against the will of the king and his council. very probably the chancellor of the kingdom had asked la trémouille to send her in order that he might employ her in the approaching campaign against the burgundians, who were threatening his government of beauvais and his city of reims.[ ] he was not very kindly disposed towards her, but already he had made use of her and he intended to do so again. possibly his intention was to employ her in a fresh attack on paris. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. , note. _journal du siège_, pp. , .] [footnote : this comes from the _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] the king had not abandoned the idea of taking his great city by the peaceful methods he always preferred. throughout lent, between sully and paris, there had been a constant passing to and fro of certain carmelite monks of melun, disguised as artisans. these were the churchmen who, during the attack on the porte saint honoré, on the day of the festival of our lady, had stirred up the popular rising which had spread from one bank of the seine to the other. now they were negotiating with certain influential citizens the entrance of the king's men into the rebel city. the prior of the melun carmelites was directing the conspiracy.[ ] there is reason to believe that jeanne had herself seen him or one of his monks. true it is that since the nd or the rd of march it was known at sully that the conspiracy had been discovered;[ ] but perhaps the hope of success still lingered. it was to melun that jeanne went with her company; and it is difficult to believe that there was no connection between the conspiracy of the carmelites and the expedition of the maid. [footnote : the pardon of jean de calais in a. longnon, _paris sous la domination anglaise_, pp. - . stevenson, _letters and papers_, vol. i, pp. - .] [footnote : so it appears from morosini, vol. iii, pp. - .] why should charles vii's councillors have ceased to employ her? it cannot be said that she appeared less divine to the french or less evil to the english. her failures, either unknown, or partially known, rendered unimportant by the fame of her victories, had not dispelled the idea that within her resided invincible power. at the time when the hapless damsel with the flower of french knighthood was receiving sore treatment under the walls of la charité at the hands of an ex-mason's apprentice, in burgundian lands it was rumoured that she was carrying by storm a castle twelve miles from paris.[ ] she was still considered miraculous; the burgesses, the men-at-arms of her party still believed in her. and as for the _godons_, from the regent to the humblest swordsman of the army, they all regarded her with a terror as great as that which had possessed them at orléans and patay. at this time so many english soldiers and captains refused to go to france, that a special edict was issued obliging them to do so.[ ] but they doubtless discovered reasons enough for not going into a country where henceforth they could hope only for hard knocks and nothing tempting; so that many declined, terrified by the enchantments of the maid.[ ] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, pp. - . concerning perrinet gressart see vol. i, p. .] [footnote : may , .] [footnote : g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la panique anglaise_. le p. ayroles, _la vraie jeanne d'arc_, vol. iii, pp. - .] chapter vi the maid in the trenches of melun--le seigneur de l'ours--the child of lagny in easter week, jeanne, at the head of a band of mercenaries, is before the walls of melun.[ ] she arrives just in time to fight. the truces have expired.[ ] is it possible that the town which was subject to king charles[ ] can have refused to admit the maid with her company when she came to it so generously? apparently it was so. was jeanne able to communicate with the carmelites of melun? probably. what misfortune befell her at the gates of the town? did she suffer ill treatment at the hands of a burgundian band? we know not. but when she was in the trenches she heard saint catherine and saint margaret saying unto her: "thou wilt be taken before saint john's day." [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , april - . perceval de cagny, p. . _chronique des cordeliers_, fol. recto. p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_, p. , note .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. (april ).] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . chastellain, vol. ii, p. . melun certainly belonged to the french on the rd of april, .] and she entreated them: "when i am taken, let me die immediately without suffering long." and the voices repeated that she would be taken and thus it must be. and they added gently: "be not troubled, be resigned. god will help thee."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - . g. leroy, _histoire de melun_, melun, , in vo, ch. xvi ... x ... [transcriber's note: ellipses in original] _jeanne d'arc à melun, mi-avril_, , melun, , pp.] saint john's day was the th of june, in less than ten weeks. many a time after that, jeanne asked her saints at what hour she would be taken; but they did not tell her; and thus doubting she ceased to follow her own ideas and consulted the captains.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] on her way from melun to lagny-sur-marne, in the month of may, she had to pass corbeil. it was probably then, and in her company, that the two devout women from lower brittany, pierronne and her younger sister in the spirit, were taken at corbeil by the english.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] for eight months the town of lagny had been subject to king charles and governed by messire ambroise de loré, who was energetically waging war against the english of paris and elsewhere.[ ] for the nonce messire ambroise de loré was absent; but his lieutenant, messire jean foucault, commanded the garrison. shortly after jeanne's coming to this town, tidings were brought that a company of between three and four hundred men of picardy and of champagne, fighting for the duke of burgundy, after having ranged through l'Île de france, were now on their way back to picardy with much booty. their captain was a valiant man-at-arms, one franquet d'arras.[ ] the french determined to cut off their retreat. under the command of messire jean foucault, messire geoffroy de saint-bellin, lord hugh kennedy, a scotchman, and captain baretta, they sallied forth from the town.[ ] [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, pp. , . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . f.a. denis, _le séjour de jeanne d'arc à lagny_, lagny, , in vo, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, pp. , . perceval de cagny, p. .] [footnote : jean chartier, _loc. cit._ martial d'auvergne, _vigiles_, vol. i, p. . p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_, p. , note.] the maid went with them. they encountered the burgundians near lagny, but failed to surprise them. messire franquet's archers had had time to take up their position with their backs to a hedge, in the english manner. king charles's men barely outnumbered the enemy. a certain clerk of that time, a frenchman, writes of the engagement. his innate ingeniousness was invincible. with candid common sense he states that this very slight numerical superiority rendered the enterprise very arduous and difficult for his party.[ ] and the battle was strong indeed. the burgundians were mightily afraid of the maid because they believed her to be a witch and in command of armies of devils; notwithstanding, they fought right valiantly. twice the french were repulsed; but they returned to the attack, and finally the burgundians were all slain or taken.[ ] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] the conquerers returned to lagny, loaded with booty and taking with them their prisoners, among whom was messire franquet d'arras. of noble birth and the lord of a manor, he was entitled to expect that he would be held to ransom, according to custom. both jean de troissy, bailie of senlis,[ ] and the maid demanded him from the soldier who was his captor. it was to the maid that he was finally delivered.[ ] did she obtain him in return for money? probably, for soldiers were not accustomed to give up noble and profitable prisoners for nothing. nevertheless, the maid, when questioned on this subject, replied, that being neither mistress nor steward of france, it was not for her to give out money. we must suppose, therefore, that some one paid for her. however that may be, captain franquet d'arras was given up to her, and she endeavoured to exchange him for a prisoner in the hands of the english. the man whom she thus desired to deliver was a parisian who was called le seigneur de l'ours.[ ] [footnote : h. jadart, _jeanne d'arc à reims_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] he was not of gentle birth and his arms were the sign of his hostelry. it was the custom in those days to give the title of seigneur to the masters of the great paris inns. thus colin, who kept the inn at the temple gate, was known as seigneur du boisseau. the hôtel de l'ours stood in the rue saint-antoine, near the gate properly called la porte baudoyer, but commonly known as porte baudet, baudet possessing the double advantage over baudoyer of being shorter and more comprehensible.[ ] it was an ancient and famous inn, equal in renown to the most famous, to the inn of l'arbre sec, in the street of that name, to the fleur de lis near the pont neuf, to the epée in the rue saint-denis, and to the chapeau fétu of the rue croix-du-tirouer. as early as king charles v's reign the inn was much frequented. before huge fires the spits were turning all day long, and there were hot bread, fresh herrings, and wine of auxerre in plenty. but since then the plunderings of men-at-arms had laid waste the countryside, and travellers no longer ventured forth for fear of being robbed and slain. knights and pilgrims had ceased coming into the town. only wolves came by night and devoured little children in the streets. there were no fagots in the grate, no dough in the kneading-trough. armagnacs and burgundians had drunk all the wine, laid waste all the vineyards, and nought was left in the cellar save a poor piquette of apples and of plums.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , . sauval, _antiquités de paris_, vol. i, p. . a. longnon, _paris pendant la domination anglaise_, p. . h. legrand, _paris en _, paris, , in to, p. .] [footnote : _piquette_, a sour wine or cider, made from the residue of grapes or apples. a kind of second brewing (w.s.). _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , , , . francisque-michel and edouard fournier, _histoire des hôtelleries, cabarets, hôtels garnis_, paris, ( vols. in vo), vol. ii, p. .] the seigneur de l'ours, whom the maid demanded, was called jaquet guillaume.[ ] although jeanne, like other folk, called him seigneur, it is not certain that he personally directed his inn, nor even that the inn was open through these years of disaster and desolation. the only ascertainable fact is that he was the proprietor of the house with the sign of the bear (_l'ours_). he held it by right of his wife jeannette, and had come into possession of it in the following manner. [footnote : a. longnon, _paris pendant la domination anglaise_, p. .] fourteen years before, when king henry with his knighthood had not yet landed in france, the host of the bear inn had been the king's sergeant-at-arms, one jean roche, a man of wealth and fair fame. he was a devoted follower of the duke of burgundy, and that was what ruined him. paris was then occupied by the armagnacs. in the year , in order to turn them out of the city, jean roche concerted with divers burgesses. the plot was to be carried out on easter day, which that year fell on the th of april. but the armagnacs discovered it. they threw the conspirators into prison and brought them to trial. on the first saturday in may the seigneur de l'ours was carried to the market place in a tumbrel with durand de brie, a dyer, master of the sixty cross-bowmen of paris, and jean perquin, pin-maker and brasier. all three were beheaded, and the body of the seigneur de l'ours was hanged at montfaucon where it remained until the entrance of the burgundians. six weeks after their coming, in july, , his body was taken down from gibbet and buried in consecrated ground.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , . a. longnon, _paris pendant la domination anglaise_, p. , note .] now the widow of jean roche had a daughter by a first marriage. her name was jeannette; she took for her first husband a certain bernard le breton; for her second, jaquet guillaume, who was not rich. he owed money to maître jean fleury, a clerk at law and the king's secretary. his wife's affairs were not more prosperous; her father's goods had been confiscated and she had been obliged to redeem a part of her maternal inheritance. in , the couple were short of money, and they sold a house, concealing the fact that it was mortgaged. being charged by the purchaser, they were thrown into prison, where they aggravated their offence by suborning two witnesses, one a priest, the other a chambermaid. fortunately for them, they procured a pardon.[ ] [footnote : a. longnon, _paris pendant la domination anglaise_, pp. - .] the jaquet guillaume couple, therefore, were in a sorry plight. there remained to them, however, the inheritance of jean roche, the inn near the place baudet, at the sign of the bear, the title of which jaquet guillaume bore. this second seigneur de l'ours was to be as strongly armagnac as the other had been burgundian, and was to pay the same price for his opinions. six years had passed since his release from prison, when, in the march of , there was plotted by the carmelites of melun and certain burgesses of paris that conspiracy which we mentioned on the occasion of jeanne's departure for l'Île de france. it was not the first plot into which the carmelites had entered; they had plotted that rising which had been on the point of breaking out on the day of the nativity, when the maid was leading the attack near la porte saint-honoré; but never before had so many burgesses and so many notables entered into a conspiracy. a clerk of the treasury, maître jean de la chapelle, two magistrates of the châtelet, maître renaud savin and maître pierre morant, a very wealthy man, named jean de calais, burgesses, merchants, artisans, more than one hundred and fifty persons, held the threads of this vast web, and among them, jaquet guillaume, seigneur de l'ours. the carmelites of melun directed the whole. clad as artisans, they went from king to burgesses, from burgesses to king; they kept up the communications between those within and those without, and regulated all the details of the enterprise. one of them asked the conspirators for a written undertaking to bring the king's men into the city. such a demand looks as if the majority of the conspirators were in the pay of the royal council. in exchange for this undertaking these monks brought acts of oblivion signed by the king. for the people of paris to be induced to receive the prince, whom they still called dauphin, they must needs be assured of a full and complete amnesty. for more than ten years, while the english and burgundians had been holding the town, no one had felt altogether free from the reproach of their lawful sovereign and the men of his party. and all the more desirous were they for charles of valois to forget the past when they recalled the cruel vengeance taken by the armagnacs after the suppression of the butchers. one of the conspirators, jaquet perdriel, advocated the sounding of a trumpet and the reading of the acts of oblivion on sunday at the porte baudet. "i have no doubt," he said, "but that we shall be joined by the craftsmen, who, in great numbers will flock to hear the reading." he intended leading them to the saint antoine gate and opening it to the king's men who were lying in ambush close by. some eighty or a hundred scotchmen, dressed as englishmen, wearing the saint andrew's cross, were then to enter the town, bringing in fish and cattle. "they will enter boldly by the saint-denys gate," said perdriel, "and take possession of it. whereupon the king's men will enter in force by the porte saint antoine." the plan was deemed good, except that it was considered better for the king's men to come in by the saint-denys gate. on sunday, the th of march, the second sunday in lent, maître jean de la chapelle invited the magistrate renaud savin to come to the tavern of _la pomme de pin_ and meet divers other conspirators in order to arrive at an understanding touching what was best to be done. they decided that on a certain day, under pretext of going to see his vines at chapelle-saint-denys, jean de calais should join the king's men outside the walls, make himself known to them by unfurling a white standard and bring them into the town. it was further determined that maître morant and a goodly company of citizens with him, should hold themselves in readiness in the taverns of the rue saint-denys to support the french when they came in. in one of the taverns of this street must have been the seigneur de l'ours, who, dwelling near by, had undertaken to bring together divers folk of the neighbourhood. the conspirators were acting in perfect agreement. all they now awaited was to be informed of the day chosen by the royal council; and they believed the attempt was to be made on the following sunday. but on the st of march brother pierre d'allée, prior of the carmelites of melun, was taken by the english. put to the torture, he confessed the plot and named his accomplices. on the information he gave, more than one hundred and fifty persons were arrested and tried. on the th of april, the eve of palm sunday, seven of the most important were taken to the market-place on a tumbrel. they were: jean de la chapelle, clerk of the treasury; renaud savin and pierre morant, magistrates at the châtelet; guillaume perdriau; jean le françois, called baudrin; jean le rigueur, baker, and jaquet guillaume, seigneur de l'ours. all seven were beheaded by the executioner, who afterwards quartered the bodies of jean de la chapelle and of baudrin. jaquet perdriel was merely deprived of his possessions. jean de calais soon procured a pardon. jeannette, the wife of jaquet guillaume, was banished from the kingdom and her goods confiscated.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , . falconbridge, in a. longnon, _paris pendant la domination anglaise_, p. , note . sauval, _antiquités de paris_, vol. iii, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] how can the maid have known the seigneur de l'ours? possibly the carmelites of melun had recommended him to her, and perhaps it was on their advice that she demanded his surrender. she may have seen him in the september of , at saint-denys or before the walls of paris, and he may have then undertaken to work for the dauphin and his party. why were attempts made at lagny to save this man alone of the one hundred and fifty parisians arrested on the information of brother pierre d'allée? rather than renaud savin and pierre morant, magistrates at the châtelet, rather than jean de la chapelle, clerk of the treasury, why choose the meanest of the band? and how could they look to exchange a man accused of treachery for a prisoner of war? all this seems to us mysterious and inexplicable. in the early days of may, jeanne did not know what had become of jaquet guillaume. when she heard that he had been tried and put to death she was sore grieved and vexed. none the less, she looked upon franquet as a captive held to ransom. but the bailie of senlis, who for some unknown reason was determined on the captain's ruin, took advantage of the maid's vexation at jaquet guillaume's execution, and persuaded her to give up her prisoner. he represented to her that this man had committed many a murder, many a theft, that he was a traitor, and that consequently he ought to be brought to trial. "you will be neglecting to execute justice," he said, "if you set this franquet free." these reasons decided her, or rather she yielded to the bailie's entreaty. "since the man i wished to have is dead," she said, "do with franquet as justice shall require you."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] thus she surrendered her prisoner. was she right or wrong? before deciding we must ask whether it were possible for her to do otherwise than she did. she was the maid of god, the angel of the lord of hosts, that is clear. but the leaders of war, the captains, paid no great heed to what she said. as for the bailie, he was the king's man, of noble birth and passing powerful. assisted by the judges of lagny, he himself conducted the trial. the accused confessed that he was a murderer, a thief, and a traitor. we must believe him; and yet we cannot forbear a doubt as to whether he really was, any more than the majority of armagnac or burgundian men-at-arms, any more than a damoiseau de commercy or a guillaume de flavy, for example. he was condemned to death. jeanne consented that he should die, if he had deserved death, and seeing that he had confessed his crimes[ ] he was beheaded. [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] when they heard of the scandalous treatment of messire franquet, the burgundians were loud in their sorrow and indignation.[ ] it would seem that in this matter the bailie of senlis and the judges of lagny did not act according to custom. we, however, are not sufficiently acquainted with the circumstances to form an opinion. there may have been some reason, of which we are ignorant, why the king of france should have demanded this prisoner. he had a right to do so on condition that he paid the maid the amount of the ransom. a soldier of those days, well informed in all things touching honour in war, was the author of _le jouvencel_. in his chivalrous romances he writes approvingly of the wise amydas, king of amydoine, who, learning that one of his enemies, the sire de morcellet, has been taken in battle and held to ransom, cries out that he is the vilest of traitors, ransoms him with good coins of the realm, and hands him over to the provost of the town and the officers of his council that they may execute justice upon him.[ ] such was the royal prerogative. [footnote : _ibid._, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . e. richer, _histoire manuscrite de la pucelle_, book i, folio .] [footnote : _le jouvencel_, vol. ii, pp. , .] whether it was that camp life was hardening her, or whether, like all mystics, she was subject to violent changes of mood, jeanne showed at lagny none of that gentleness she had displayed on the evening of patay. the virgin who once had no other arm in battle than her standard, now wielded a sword found there, at lagny, a burgundian sword and a trusty. those who regarded her as an angel of the lord, good brother pasquerel, for example, might justify her by saying that the archangel saint michael, the standard-bearer of celestial hosts, bore a flaming sword. and indeed jeanne remained a saint. while she was at lagny, folk came and told her that a child had died at birth, unbaptized.[ ] having entered into the mother at the time of her conception, the devil held the soul of this child, who, for lack of water, had died the enemy of its creator. the greatest anxiety was felt concerning the fate of this soul. some thought it was in limbo, banished forever from god's sight, but the more general and better founded opinion was that it was seething in hell; for has not saint augustine demonstrated that souls, little as well as great, are damned because of original sin. and how could it be otherwise, seeing that eve's fall had effaced the divine likeness in this child? he was destined to eternal death. and to think that with a few drops of water this death might have been avoided! so terrible a disaster afflicted not only the poor creature's kinsfolk, but likewise the neighbours and all good christians in the town of lagny. the body was carried to the church of saint-pierre and placed before the image of our lady, which had been highly venerated ever since the plague of . it was called notre-dame-des-ardents because it cured burns, and when there were no burns to be cured it was called notre-dame-des-aidants, or rather des aidances, that is, our lady the helper, because she granted succour to those in dire necessity.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : a. denis, _jeanne d'arc à lagny_, lagny, , in vo, pp. _et seq._ j.a. lepaire, _jeanne d'arc à lagny_, lagny, , in vo, pages.] the maidens of the town knelt before her, the little body in their midst, beseeching her to intercede with her divine son so that this little child might have his share in the redemption brought by our saviour.[ ] in such cases the holy virgin did not always deny her powerful intervention. here it may not be inappropriate to relate a miracle she had worked thirty-seven years before. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] at paris, in , a sinful creature, finding herself with child, concealed her pregnancy, and, when her time was come, was without aid delivered. then, having stuffed linen into the throat of the girl she had brought forth, she went and threw her on to the dust-heap outside la porte saint-martin-des-champs. but a dog scented the body, and scratching away the other refuse, discovered it. a devout woman, who happened to be passing by, took this poor little lifeless creature, and, followed by more than four hundred people, bore it to the church of saint-martin-des-champs, there placed it on the altar of our lady, and kneeling down with the multitude of folk and the monks of the abbey, with all her heart prayed the holy virgin not to suffer this innocent babe to be condemned eternally. the child stirred a little, opened her eyes, loosened the linen, which gagged her, and cried aloud. a priest baptized her on the altar of our lady, and gave her the name of marie. a nurse was found, and she was fed from the breast. she lived three hours, then died and was carried to consecrated ground.[ ] [footnote : _religieux de saint-denis_, vol. ii, p. . jean juvénal des ursins, in _coll. michaud et poujoulat_, p. , col. .] in those days resurrections of unbaptized children were frequent. that saintly abbess, colette of corbie, who, when jeanne was at lagny, dwelt at moulins with the reformed sisters of saint clare, had brought back to life two of these poor creatures: a girl, who received the name of colette at the font and afterwards became nun, then abbess at pont-à-mousson; a boy, who was said to have been two days buried and whom the servant of the poor declared to be one of the elect. he died at six months, thus fulfilling the prophecy made by the saint.[ ] [footnote : _acta sanctorum_, th of march, pp. and . abbé bizouard, _histoire de sainte colette_, pp. , . abbé douillet, _sainte colette, sa vie, ses oeuvres_, , pp. - .] with this kind of miracle jeanne was doubtless acquainted. about twenty-five miles from domremy, in the duchy of lorraine, near lunéville, was the sanctuary of notre-dame-des-aviots, of which she had probably heard. notre-dame-des-aviots, or our lady of those brought back to life, was famed for restoring life to unbaptized children. by means of her intervention they lived again long enough to be made christians.[ ] [footnote : le curé de saint-sulpice, _notre-dame de france_, paris, in vo, vol. vi, , p. .] in the duchy of luxembourg, near montmédy, on the hill of avioth,[ ] multitudes of pilgrims worshipped an image of our lady brought there by angels. on this hill a church had been built for her, with slim pillars and elaborate stonework in trefoils, roses and light foliage. this statue worked all manner of miracles. at its feet were placed children born dead; they were restored to life and straightway baptized.[ ] [footnote : for the etymology of avioth see c. bonnabelle, _petite étude sur avioth et son église_, in _annuaire de la meuse_, , in mo, p. .] [footnote : le curé de saint-sulpice, _loc. cit._, vol. v, pp. _et seq._ bonnabelle, _loc. cit._, pp. _et seq._ jacquemain, _notre-dame d'avioth et son église monumentale_, sedan, , in vo.] the folk, gathered in the church of saint-pierre de lagny, around the statue of notre-dame-des-aidances, hoped for a like grace. the damsels of the town prayed round the child's lifeless body. the maid was asked to come and join them in praying to our lord and our lady. she went to the church, and knelt down with the maidens and prayed. the child was black, "as black as my coat," said jeanne. when the maid and the damsels had prayed, it yawned three times and its colour came back. it was baptized and straightway it died; it was buried in consecrated ground. throughout the town this resurrection was said to be the work of the maid. according to the tales in circulation, during the three days since its birth the child had given no sign of life;[ ] but the gossips of lagny had doubtless extended the period of its comatose condition, like those good wives who of a single egg laid by the husband of one of them, made a hundred before the day was out. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] chapter vii soissons and compiÈgne--capture of the maid leaving lagny, the maid presented herself before senlis, with her own company and with the fighting men of the french nobles whom she had joined, in all some thousand horse. and for this force she demanded entrance into the town. no misfortune was more feared by burgesses than that of receiving men-at-arms, and no privilege more jealously guarded than that of keeping them outside the walls. king charles had experienced it during the peaceful coronation campaign. the folk of senlis made answer to the maid that, seeing the poverty of the town in forage, corn, oats, victuals and wine, they offered her an entrance with thirty or forty of the most notable of her company and no more.[ ] [footnote : arch. mun. of senlis in _musé des archives départementales_, pp. , . j. flammermont, _histoire de senlis pendant la seconds partie de la guerre de cent ans_, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. , note .] it is said that from senlis jeanne went to the castle of borenglise in the parish of elincourt, between compiègne and ressons; and, in ignorance as to what can have taken her there, it is supposed that she made a pilgrimage to the church of elincourt, which was dedicated to saint margaret; and it is possible that she wished to worship saint margaret there as she had worshipped saint catherine at fierbois, in order to do honour to one of those heavenly ladies who visited her every day and every hour.[ ] [footnote : manuscript history of beauvais by hermant, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . g. lecocq, _Étude historique sur le séjour de jeanne d'arc à elincourt-sainte-marguerite_, amiens, , in vo, pages. a. peyrecave, _notes sur le séjour de jeanne d'arc à elincourt-sainte-marguerite_, paris, , in vo. _elincourt-sainte-marguerite, notice historique et archéologique_, compiègne, . ch. vii, pp. , .] in those days, in the town of angers, was a licentiate of laws, canon of the churches of tours and angers and dean of saint-jean d'angers. less than ten days before jeanne's coming to sainte-marguerite d'elincourt, on april , about nine o'clock in the evening, he felt a pain in the head, which lasted until four o'clock in the morning, and was so severe that he thought he must die. he prayed to saint catherine, for whom he professed a special devotion, and straightway was cured. in thankfulness for so great a grace, he wended on foot to the sanctuary of saint catherine of fierbois; and there, on friday, the th of may, in a loud voice, said a mass for the king, for "the maid divinely worthy," and for the peace and prosperity of the realm.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . _les miracles de madame sainte katerine de fierboys_, pp. , , .] the council of king charles had made over pont-sainte-maxence to the duke of burgundy, in lieu of compiègne, which they were unable to deliver to him since that town absolutely refused to be delivered, and remained the king's despite the king. the duke of burgundy kept pont-sainte-maxence which had been granted him and resolved to take compiègne.[ ] [footnote : p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_. proofs and illustrations, pp. , . morosini, vol. iii, p. , note . note concerning g. de flavy, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] on the th of april, when the truce had expired, he took the field with a goodly knighthood and a powerful army, four thousand burgundians, picards and flemings, and fifteen hundred english, commanded by jean de luxembourg, count of ligny.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, ch. xxx. note concerning g. de flavy, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_. proofs and illustrations, xliv, xlv.] noble pieces of artillery did the duke bring to that siege; notably, remeswelle, rouge bombarde and houppembière, from all three of which were fired stone balls of enormous size. mortars, which the duke had brought and paid ready money for to messire jean de luxembourg, were brought likewise; beaurevoir and bourgogne, also a great "_coullard_" and a movable engine of war. the vast states of burgundy sent their archers and cross-bowmen to compiègne. the duke provided himself with bows from prussia and from caffa in georgia,[ ] and with arrows barbed and unbarbed. he engaged sappers and miners to lay powder mines round the town and to throw greek fire into it. in short my lord philip, richer than a king, the most magnificent lord in christendom and skilled in all the arts of knighthood, was resolved to make a gallant siege.[ ] [footnote : "in this country the emperor [of constantinople] has a city called capha, which is a seaport belonging to the genoese and whence is obtained wood for the making of bows and cross-bows, likewise wine called rommenie." _le livre de description des pays de gilles le bouvier._ ed. e.t. hamy, paris, , p. .] [footnote : de la fons-mélicocq, _documents inédits sur le siège de compiègne de _ in _la picardie_, vol. iii, , pp. , . p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_. proofs and illustrations, p. .] [illustration: philip, duke of burgundy] the town, then one of the largest and strongest in france, was defended by a garrison of between four and five hundred men,[ ] commanded by guillaume de flavy. scion of a noble house of that province, forever in dispute with the nobles his neighbours, and perpetually picking quarrels with the poor folk, he was as wicked and cruel as any armagnac baron.[ ] the citizens would have no other captain, and in that office they maintained him in defiance of king charles and his chamberlains. they did wisely, for none was better able to defend the town than my lord guillaume, none was more set on doing his duty. when the king of france had commanded him to deliver the place he had refused point-blank; and when later the duke promised him a good round sum and a rich inheritance in exchange for compiègne, he made answer that the town was not his, but the king's.[ ] [footnote : lefèvre de saint-rémy, vol. ii, p. . h. de lépinois, _notes extraites des archives communales de compiègne_, in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, , vol. xxiv, p. . a. sorel, _la prise de jeanne d'arc devant compiègne et l'histoire des sièges de la même ville sous charles vi et charles vii, d'après des documents inédits avec vues et plans_, paris, , in vo, p. .] [footnote : jacques duclercq, _mémoires_, ed. reiffenberg, vol. i, p. . _le temple de bocace_ in _les oeuvres de georges chastellain_, ed. kervyn de lettenhove, vol. vii, p. . p. champion, _guillaume de flavy, capitaine de compiègne, contribution à l'histoire de jeanne d'arc et à l'étude de la vie militaire et privée au xv'ième siècle_, paris, , in vo, _passim_.] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . _chronique des cordeliers_, fol. recto. rogier, in varin, _arch. de la ville de reims_, th part, statuts, vol. i, p. . a. sorel, _loc. cit._, p. . p. champion, _loc. cit._, p. .] the duke of burgundy easily took gournay-sur-aronde, and then laid siege to choisy-sur-aisne, also called choisy-au-bac, at the junction of the aisne and the oise.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , . _chronique des cordeliers_, fol. recto. _livre des trahisons_, p. .] the gascon squire, poton de saintrailles and the men of his company crossed the aisne between soissons and choisy, surprised the besiegers, and retired immediately, taking with them sundry prisoners.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , . berry, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] on the th of may, the maid entered compiègne, where she lodged in the rue de l'etoile.[ ] on the morrow, the attorneys[ ] offered her four pots of wine.[ ] they thereby intended to do her great honour, for they did no more for the lord archbishop of reims, chancellor of the realm, who was then in the town with the count of vendôme, the king's lieutenant and divers other leaders of war. these noble lords resolved to send artillery and other munitions to the castle of choisy, which could not hold out much longer;[ ] and now, as before, the maid was made use of. [footnote : according to a note by dom bertheau, in a. sorel, _séjours de jeanne d'arc à compiègne, maisons où elle a logé en et _, with view and plans, paris, , in vo, pp. , .] [footnote : magistrates of the town. cf. _ante_, p. , note .] [footnote : _accounts of the town of compiègne_, cc , folio . dom gillesson, _antiquités de compiègne_, vol. v, p. . a. sorel, _la prise de jeanne d'arc_, p. , note .] [footnote : choisy surrendered on the th of may. _chronique des cordeliers_, fol. , verso. _livre des trahisons_, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . berry, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . a. sorel, _la prise de jeanne d'arc_, pp. , . p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_, pp. - , - .] the army marched towards soissons in order to cross the aisne.[ ] the captain of the town was a squire of picardy, called by the french guichard bournel, by the burgundians guichard de thiembronne; he had served on both sides. jeanne knew him well; he reminded her of a painful incident. he had been one of those, who finding her wounded in the trenches before paris, had insisted on putting her on her horse against her will. on the approach of king charles's barons and men-at-arms, captain guichard made the folk of soissons believe that the whole army was coming to encamp in their town. wherefore they resolved not to receive them. then happened what had already befallen at senlis: captain bournel received the lord archbishop of reims, the count of vendôme and the maid, with a small company, and the rest of the army abode that night outside the walls.[ ] on the morrow, failing to obtain command of the bridge, they endeavoured to ford the river, but without success; for it was spring and the waters were high. the army had to turn back. when it was gone, captain bournel sold to the duke of burgundy the city he was charged to hold for the king of france; and he delivered it into the hand of messire jean de luxembourg for four thousand golden _saluts_.[ ] [footnote : berry, in _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , .] [footnote : f. brun, _jeanne d'arc et le capitaine de soissons en _, soissons, , p. (extract from _l'argus soissonnais_). p. champion, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : berry, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . p. champion, _loc. cit._, p. . proofs and illustrations, xxxv, p. . f. brun, _nouvelles recherches sur le fait de soissons (jeanne d'arc et bournel en ) à propos d'un livre récent_, meulan, , in vo.] at the tidings of this treacherous and dishonourable action on the part of the captain of soissons, jeanne cried out that if she had him, she would cut his body into four pieces, which was no empty imagining of her wrath. as the penalty of certain crimes it was the custom for the executioner, after he had beheaded the condemned, to cut his body in four pieces, which was called quartering. so that it was as if jeanne had said that the traitor deserved quartering. the words sounded hard to burgundian ears; certain even believed that they heard jeanne in her wrath taking god's name in vain. they did not hear correctly. never had jeanne taken the name of god or of any of his saints in vain. far from swearing when she was angered, she used to exclaim: "god's good will!" or "saint john!" or "by our lady!"[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] before soissons, jeanne and the generals separated. the latter with their men-at-arms went to senlis and the banks of the marne. the country between the aisne and the oise was no longer capable of supporting so large a number of men or such important personages. jeanne and her company wended their way back to compiègne.[ ] scarcely had she entered the town when she sallied forth to ravage the neighbourhood. [footnote : i have rejected the story told by alain bouchard of jeanne's meeting with the little children in the church of saint jacques. (_les grandes croniques de bretaigne_, paris, galliot du pré, , fol. cclxxxi.) m. pierre champion (_guillaume de flavy_, p. ) has irrefutably demonstrated its unauthenticity.] for example, she took part in an expedition against pont-l'evêque, a stronghold, some distance from noyon, occupied by a small english garrison, commanded by lord montgomery. the burgundians, who were besieging compiègne, made pont-l'evêque their base. in the middle of may, the french numbering about a thousand, commanded by captain poton, by messire jacques de chabannes and divers others, and accompanied by the maid, attacked the english under lord montgomery, and the battle was passing fierce. but the enemy, being relieved by the burgundians of noyon, the french must needs beat a retreat. they had slain thirty of their adversaries and had lost as many, wherefore the combat was held to have been right sanguinary.[ ] there was no longer any question of crossing the aisne and saving choisy. [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . lefèvre de saint-rémy, vol. ii, p. . _chronique des cordeliers_, fol. verso.] after returning to compiègne, jeanne, who never rested for a moment, hastened to crépy-en-valois, where were gathering the troops intended for the defence of compiègne. then, with these troops, she marched through the forest of guise, to the besieged town and entered it on the rd, at daybreak, without having encountered any burgundians. there were none in the neighbourhood of the forest, on the left bank of the oise.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . extract from a note concerning g. de flavy, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. , note .] they were all on the other side of the river. there meadowland extends for some three-quarters of a mile, while beyond rises the slope of picardy. because this meadow was low, damp and frequently flooded, a causeway had been built leading from the bridge to the village of margny, which rose on the steep slope of the hill. some two miles up the river there towered the belfry of clairoix, at the junction of the aronde and the oise. on the opposite bank rose the belfry of venette, about a mile and a quarter lower down, towards pont-sainte-maxence.[ ] [footnote : manuscript map of compiègne in , in debout, _jeanne d'arc_, vol. ii, p. . plan of the town of compiègne, engraved by aveline in the th century, reduction published by _la société historique de compiègne_, may, . lambert de ballyhier, _compiègne historique et monumental_, , vols. in vo, engravings. plan of the restitution of the town of compiègne in , in a. sorel, _la prise de jeanne d'arc_. p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_, p. .] a little band of burgundians commanded by a knight, messire baudot de noyelles, occupied the high ground of the village of margny. most renowned among the men of war of the burgundian party was messire jean de luxembourg. he with his picards was posted at clairoix, on the banks of the aronde, at the foot of mount ganelon. the five hundred english of lord montgomery watched the oise at venette. duke philip occupied coudun, a good two and a half miles from the town, towards picardy.[ ] such dispositions were in accordance with the precepts of the most experienced captains. it was their rule that when besieging a fortified town a large number of men-at-arms should never be concentrated in one spot, in one camp, as they said. in case of a sudden attack, it was thought that a large company, if it has but one base, will be surprised and routed just as easily as a lesser number, and the disaster will be grievous. wherefore it is better to divide the besiegers into small companies and to place them not far apart, in order that they may aid one another. in this wise, when those of one body are discomfited those of another have time to put themselves in battle array for their succour. while the assailants are sore aghast at seeing fresh troops come down upon them, those who are being attacked take heart of grace. at any rate such was the opinion of messire jean de bueil.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , .] [footnote : _le jouvencel_, vol. ii, p. .] that same day, the rd of may, towards five o'clock in the evening[ ] riding a fine dapple-grey horse, jeanne sallied forth, across the bridge, on to the causeway over the meadow. with her were her standard-bearer and her company of lombards, captain baretta and his three or four hundred men, both horse and foot, who had entered compiègne by night. she was girt with the burgundian sword, found at lagny, and over her armour she wore a surcoat of cloth of gold.[ ] such attire would have better beseemed a parade than a sortie; but in the simplicity of her rustic and religious soul she loved all the pompous show of chivalry. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . letter from philippe le bon to the inhabitants of saint-quentin, _trial_, vol. v, p. . letter from philippe le bon to amédée, duke of savoy in p. champion, _loc. cit._ proofs and illustrations, xxxvii. falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . william worcester, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. , and _le journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , . chastellain, vol. ii, p. . the clerk of the brabant _chambre des comptes_, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] the enterprise had been concerted between captain baretta, the other leaders of the party and messire guillaume de flavy. the last-named, in order to protect the line of retreat for the french, had posted archers, cross-bowmen, and cannoneers at the head of the bridge, while on the river he launched a number of small covered boats, intended if need were to bring back as many men as possible.[ ] jeanne was not consulted in the matter; her advice was never asked. without being told anything she was taken with the army as a bringer of good luck; she was exhibited to the enemy as a powerful enchantress, and they, especially if they were in mortal sin, feared lest she should cast a spell over them. certain there were doubtless on both sides, who perceived that she did not greatly differ from other women;[ ] but they were folk who believed in nothing, and that manner of person is always outside public opinion. [footnote : notes concerning g. de flavy, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . _chronique de tournai_, in _recueil des chroniques de flandre_, , vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : chastellain, vol. ii, p. .] this time she had not the remotest idea of what was to be done. with her head full of dreams, she imagined she was setting forth for some great and noble emprise. it is said that she had promised to discomfit the burgundians and bring back duke philip prisoner. but there was no question of that; captain baretta and those who commanded the soldiers of fortune proposed to surprise and plunder the little burgundian outpost, which was nearest the town and most accessible. that was margny, and there on a steep hill, which might be reached in twenty or twenty-five minutes along the causeway, was stationed messire baudot de noyelles. the attempt was worth making. the taking of outposts constituted the perquisites of men-at-arms. and, albeit the enemy's positions were very wisely chosen, the assailants if they proceeded with extreme swiftness had a chance of success. the burgundians at margny were very few. having but lately arrived, they had erected neither bastion nor bulwark, and their only defences were the outbuildings of the village. it was five o'clock in the afternoon when the french set out on the march. the days being at their longest, they did not depend on the darkness for success. in those times indeed, men-at-arms were chary of venturing much in the darkness. they deemed the night treacherous, capable of serving the fool's turn as well as the wise man's, and thus ran the saw: "night never blushes at her deed."[ ] [footnote : _le jouvencel_, vol. i, p. .] having climbed up to margny, the assailants found the burgundians scattered and unarmed. they took them by surprise; and the french set to work to strike here and there haphazard. the maid, for her part, overthrew everything before her. now just at this time sire jean de luxembourg and the sire de créquy had ridden over from their camp at clairoix.[ ] wearing no armour, and accompanied by eight or ten gentlemen-at-arms, they were climbing the margny hill. they were on their way to visit messire baudot de noyelles, and all unsuspecting, they were thinking to reconnoitre the defences of the town from this elevated spot, as the earl of salisbury had formerly done from les tourelles at orléans. having fallen into a regular skirmish, they sent to clairoix in all haste for their arms and to summon their company, which would take a good half hour to reach the scene of battle. meanwhile, all unarmed as they were, they joined messire baudot's little band, to help it to hold out against the enemy.[ ] thus to surprise my lord of luxembourg might be a stroke of good luck and certainly could not be bad; for in any event the margny men would have straightway summoned their comrades of clairoix to their aid, as they did in very deed summon the english from venette and the burgundians from coudun. [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . lefèvre de saint-rémy, vol. ii, p. . chastellain, vol. ii, p. . note concerning g. de flavy, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : letter from the duke of burgundy to the inhabitants of saint-quentin, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . monstrelet, lefèvre de saint-rémy, chastellain. notes concerning g. de flavy, _loc. cit._] having stormed the camp and pillaged it, the assailants should in all haste have fallen back on the town with their booty; but they dallied at margny, for what reason is not difficult to guess: that reason which so often transformed the robber into the robbed. the wearers of the white cross as well as those of the red, no matter what danger threatened them, never quitted a place as long as anything remained to be carried away. if the mercenaries of compiègne incurred peril by their greed, the maid on her side by her valour and prowess ran much greater risk; never would she consent to leave a battle; she must be wounded, pierced with bolts and arrows, before she would give in. meanwhile, having recovered from so sudden an alarm, messire baudot's men armed as best they might and endeavoured to win back the village. now they drove out the french, now they themselves were forced to retreat with great loss. the seigneur de créquy, among others, was sorely wounded in the face. but the hope of being reinforced gave them courage. the men of clairoix appeared. duke philip himself came up with the band from coudun. the french, outnumbered, abandoned margny, and retreated slowly. it may be that their booty impeded their march. but suddenly espying the _godons_ from venette advancing over the meadowland, they were seized with panic; to the cry of "_sauve qui peut!_" they broke into one mad rush and in utter rout reached the bank of the oise. some threw themselves into boats, others crowded round the bulwark of the bridge. thus they attracted the very misfortune they feared. for the english followed so hard on the fugitives that the defenders on the ramparts dared not fire their cannon for fear of striking the french.[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . monstrelet. note concerning g. de flavy; lefèvre de saint-rémy, chastellain, _loc. cit._] the latter having forced the barrier of the bulwark, the english were about to enter on their heels, cross the bridge and pass into the town. the captain of compiègne saw the danger and gave the command to close the town gate. the bridge was raised and the portcullis lowered.[ ] [footnote : note concerning g. de flavy, _loc. cit._ du fresne de beaucourt, _jeanne d'arc et guillaume de flavy_ in _bulletin de la société de l'histoire de france_, vol. iii, , pp. _et seq._ z. rendu, _jeanne d'arc et g. de flavy_, compiègne, , in vo, pp. a. sorel, _la prise de jeanne d'arc_, p. . p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_, appendix i, pp. , .] in the meadow, jeanne still laboured under the heroic delusion of victory. surrounded by a little band of kinsmen and personal retainers, she was withstanding the burgundians, and imagining that she would overthrow everything before her. her comrades shouted to her: "strive to regain the town or we are lost." but her eyes were dazzled by the splendour of angels and archangels, and she made answer: "hold your peace; it will be your fault if we are discomfited. think of nought but of attacking them." and once again she uttered those words which were forever in her mouth: "go forward! they are ours!"[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] her men took her horse by the bridle and forced her to turn towards the town. it was too late; the bulwarks commanding the bridge could not be entered: the english held the head of the causeway. the maid with her little band was penned into the corner between the side of the bulwark and the embankment of the road. her assailants were men of picardy, who, striking hard and driving away her protectors, succeeded in reaching her.[ ] a bowman pulled her by her cloak of cloth of gold and threw her to the ground. they all surrounded her and together cried: "surrender!" [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. . chastellain, vol. ii, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. ; vol. iii, p. . quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, p. .] urged to give her parole, she replied: "i have plighted my word to another, and i shall keep my oath."[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. .] one of those who pressed her said that he was of gentle birth. she surrendered to him. he was an archer, by name lyonnel, in the company of the bastard of wandomme. deeming that his fortune was made, he appeared more joyful than if he had taken a king.[ ] [footnote : letter from the duke of burgundy in _trial_, vol. v, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . lefèvre de saint-rémy, p. . chastellain, vol. ii, p. . note concerning g. de flavy, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . martial d'auvergne, _vigiles_, vol. i, p. . p. champion, _loc. cit._, pp. , . lanéry d'arc, _livre d'or_, pp. - .] with the maid was taken her brother, pierre d'arc, jean d'aulon, her steward, and jean d'aulon's brother, poton, surnamed the burgundian.[ ] according to the burgundians, the french in this engagement lost four hundred fighting men, killed or drowned;[ ] but according to the french most of the foot soldiers were taken up by the boats which were moored near the bank of the oise.[ ] [footnote : richer, _histoire manuscrite de la pucelle_, book iv, fol. _et seq._ p. champion, _loc. cit._ proofs and illustrations, xxxiii. monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . note concerning g. de flavy, _loc. cit._ letter from the duke of burgundy to the inhabitants of saint-quentin, _loc. cit._ _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : according to _le journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. , four hundred french were killed or drowned.] [footnote : note concerning g. de flavy, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . perceval de cagny, p. .] had it not been for the archers, cross-bowmen and cannoneers posted at the bridge end by the sire de flavy, the bulwark would have been captured. the burgundians had but twenty wounded and not one slain.[ ] the maid had not been very vigorously defended. [footnote : letter from the duke of burgundy to the inhabitants of saint-quentin, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] she was disarmed and taken to margny.[ ] at the tidings that the witch of the armagnacs had been taken, cries and rejoicings resounded throughout the burgundian camp. duke philip wished to see her. when he drew near to her, there were certain of his clergy and his knighthood who praised his piety, extolled his courage, and wondered that this mighty duke was not afraid of the spawn of hell.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . chastellain, vol. ii, p. . a. sorel, _la prise de jeanne d'arc_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : jean jouffroy, in d'achery, _spicilegium_, iii, pp. _et seq._] in this respect, his knighthood were as valiant as he, for many knights and squires flocked to satisfy this same curiosity. among them was messire enguerrand de monstrelet, a native of the county of boulogne, a retainer of the house of luxembourg, the author of the chronicles. he heard the words the duke addressed to the prisoner, and, albeit his calling required a good memory, he forgot them. possibly he did not consider them chivalrous enough to be written in his book.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] jeanne remained in the custody of messire jean de luxembourg, to whom she belonged henceforward. the bowman, her captor, had given her up to his captain, the bastard of wandomme, who, in his turn, had yielded her to his master, messire jean.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . p. champion, _loc. cit._, p. .] branches of the luxembourg tree extended from the west to the east of christendom, as far as bohemia and hungary; and it had produced six queens, an empress, four kings, and four emperors. a scion of a younger branch of this illustrious house and himself a but poorly landed cadet, jean de luxembourg, had with great labour won his spurs in the service of the duke of burgundy. when he held the maid to ransom, he was thirty-nine years of age, covered with wounds and one-eyed.[ ] [footnote : _la chronique des cordeliers_, and monstrelet, _passim_. vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. , .] that very evening from his quarters at coudun the duke of burgundy caused letters to be written to the towns of his dominions telling of the capture of the maid. "of this capture shall the fame spread far and wide," is written in the letter to the people of saint-quentin; "and there shall be bruited abroad the error and misbelief of all such as have approved and favoured the deeds of this woman."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, p. .] in like manner did the duke send the tidings to the duke of brittany by his herald lorraine; to the duke of savoy and to his good town of ghent.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . le p. ayroles, _la vraie jeanne d'arc_, vol. iii, p. . p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_, pp. - .] the survivors of the company the maid had taken to compiègne abandoned the siege, and on the morrow returned to their garrisons. the lombard captain, bartolomeo baretta, jeanne's lieutenant, remained in the town with thirty-two men-at-arms, two trumpeters, two pages, forty-eight cross bowmen, and twenty archers or targeteers.[ ] [footnote : note concerning guillaume de flavy in _trial_, vol. v, p. . a. sorel, _la prise de jeanne d'arc_, p. .] chapter viii the maid at beaulieu--the shepherd of gÉvaudan the tidings that jeanne was in the hands of the burgundians reached paris on the morning of may the th.[ ] on the morrow, the th, the university sent a summons to duke philip requiring him to give up his prisoner to the vicar-general of the grand inquisitor of france. at the same time, the vicar-general himself by letter required the redoubtable duke to bring prisoner before him the young woman suspected of divers crimes savouring of heresy.[ ] [footnote : falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, p. . u. chevalier, _l'abjuration de jeanne d'arc au cimetière de saint-ouen et l'authenticité de sa formule_, paris, , in vo, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - . e. o'reilly, _les deux procès_, vol. ii, pp. , . p. denifle and chatelain, _chartularium universitatis parisiensis_, vol. iv, p. , no. .] "... we beseech you in all good affection, o powerful prince," he said, "and we entreat your noble vassals that by them and by you jeanne be sent unto us surely and shortly, and we hope that thus ye will do as being the true protector of the faith and the defender of god's honour...."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . e. o'reilly, _les deux procès_.] the vicar-general of the grand inquisitor of france, brother martin billoray,[ ] master of theology, belonged to the order of friars preachers, the members of which exercised the principal functions of the holy office. in the days of innocent iii, when the inquisition was exterminating cathari and albigenses, the sons of dominic figured in paintings in monasteries and chapels as great white hounds spotted with black, biting at the throats of the wolves of heresy.[ ] in france in the fifteenth century the dominicans were always the dogs of the lord; they, jointly with the bishops, drove out the heretic. the grand inquisitor or his vicar was unable of his own initiative to set on foot and prosecute any judicial action; the bishops maintained their right to judge crimes committed against the church. in matters of faith trials were conducted by two judges, the ordinary, who might be the bishop himself or the official, and the inquisitor or his vicar. inquisitorial forms were observed.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , ; vol. iii, p. ; vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _domini canes._ thus they are represented in the frescoes of the capella degli spagnuoli in santa-maria-novella at florence.] [footnote : tanon, _histoire des tribuneaux de l'inquisition en france_, ch. ii.] in the maid's case it was not the bishop only who was prompting the holy inquisition, but the daughter of kings, the mother of learning, the bright and shining sun of france and of christendom, the university of paris. she arrogated to herself a peculiar jurisdiction in cases of heresy or other matters of doctrine occurring in the city or its neighbourhood; her advice was asked on every hand and regarded as authoritative over the face of the whole world, wheresoever the cross had been set up. for a year her masters and doctors, many in number and filled with sound learning, had been clamouring for the maid to be delivered up to the inquisition, as being good for the welfare of the church and conducive to the interests of the faith; for they had a deep-rooted suspicion that the damsel came not from god, but was deceived and seduced by the machinations of the devil; that she acted not by divine power but by the aid of demons; that she was addicted to witchcraft and practised idolatry.[ ] [footnote : le p. denifle and chatelain, _chartularium universitatis parisiensis_, vol. iv, p. ; _le procès de jeanne d'arc et l'université de paris_, paris, , in vo, pp.] such knowledge as they possessed of things divine and methods of reasoning corroborated this grave suspicion. they were burgundians and english by necessity and by inclination; they observed faithfully the treaty of troyes to which they had sworn; they were devoted to the regent who showed them great consideration; they abhorred the armagnacs, who desolated and laid waste their city, the most beautiful in the world;[ ] they held that the dauphin charles had forfeited his rights to the kingdom of the lilies. wherefore they inclined to believe that the maid of the armagnacs, the woman knight of the dauphin charles, was inspired by a company of loathsome demons. these scholars of the university were human; they believed what it was to their interest to believe; they were priests and they beheld the devil everywhere, but especially in a woman. without having devoted themselves to any profound examination of the deeds and sayings of this damsel, they knew enough to cause them to demand an immediate inquiry. she called herself the emissary of god, the daughter of god; and she appeared loquacious, vain, crafty, gorgeous in her attire. she had threatened the english that if they did not quit france she would have them all slain. she commanded armies, wherefore she was a slayer of her fellow-creatures and foolhardy. she was seditious, for are not all those seditious who support the opposite party? but recently having appeared before paris in company with friar richard, a heretic, and a rebel,[ ] she had threatened to put the parisians to death without mercy and committed the mortal sin of storming the city on the anniversary of the nativity of our lady. it was important to examine whether in all this she had been inspired by a good spirit or a bad.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, _passim_. falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . t. basin, _histoire de charles vii et de louis xi_, vol. iv, pp. , . monstrelet, vol. iv, ch. lxiii. bougenot, _deux documents inédits relatifs à jeanne d'arc_, in _revue bleue_, feb., , pp. , .] [footnote : le p. denifle and chatelain, _chartularium universitatis parisiensis_, vol. iv, p. , no. ; _le procès de jeanne d'arc et l'université de paris_.] despite his strong attachment to the interests of the church, the duke of burgundy did not respond to the urgent demand of the university; and messire jean de luxembourg, after having kept the maid three or four days in his quarters before compiègne, had her taken to the castle of beaulieu in vermandois, a few leagues from the camp.[ ] like his master, he ever appeared the obedient son of mother church; but prudence counselled him to await the approach of english and french and to see what each of them would offer. [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . perceval de cagny, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. - ; vol. iv, pp. - . de la fons-mélicocq, _une cité picarde au moyen âge ou noyon et les noyonnais aux xiv'e et xv'e siècles_, noyon, , vol. ii, pp. - . in lyonnel de wandomme, who was governor of this town, was driven out by the inhabitants on the death of jean de luxembourg (monstrelet, vol. v, p. ).] at beaulieu, jeanne was treated courteously and ceremoniously. her steward, messire jean d'aulon, waited on her in her prison; one day he said to her pitifully: "that poor town of compiègne, which you so dearly loved, will now be delivered into the hands of the enemies of france, whom it must needs obey." she made answer: "no, that shall not come to pass. for not one of those places, which the king of heaven hath conquered through me and restored to their allegiance to the fair king charles, shall be recaptured by the enemy, so diligently will he guard them."[ ] [footnote : perceval de cagny, p. , very doubtful.] one day she tried to escape by slipping between two planks. she had intended to shut up her guards in the tower and take to the fields, but the porter saw and stopped her. she concluded that it was not god's will that she should escape this time.[ ] notwithstanding she had far too much self-reliance to despair. her voices, like her enamoured of marvellous encounters and knightly adventures, told her that she must see the king of england.[ ] thus did her dreams encourage and console her in her misfortune. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] great was the mourning on the loire when the inhabitants of the towns loyal to king charles learnt the disaster which had befallen the maid. the people, who venerated her as a saint, who went so far as to say that she was the greatest of all god's saints after the blessed virgin mary, who erected images of her in the chapels of saints, who ordered masses to be said for her, and collects in the churches, who wore leaden medals on which she was represented as if the church had already canonized her,[ ] did not withdraw their trust, but continued to believe in her.[ ] such faithfulness scandalized the doctors and masters of the university, who reproached the hapless maid herself with it. "jeanne," they said, "hath so seduced the catholic people, that many have adored her as a saint in her presence, and now in her absence they adore her still."[ ] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _note sur deux médailles de plomb relatives à jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in vo, pages. forgeais, _notice sur les plombs historiés trouvés dans la seine_, paris, , in vo. j. quicherat, _médaille frappée en l'honneur de la pucelle, six dessins sur jeanne d'arc tirés d'un manuscrit du xv'e siècle_, in _l'autographe_, no. , nov., .] [footnote : p. lanéry d'arc, _le culte de jeanne d'arc au xv'e siècle_, paris, , in vo, pages.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] this was indeed true of many folk and many places. the councillors of the town of tours ordered public prayers to be offered for the deliverance of the maid. there was a public procession in which took part the canons of the cathedral church, the clergy of the town, secular and regular, all walking barefoot.[ ] [footnote : carreau, _histoire manuscrite de touraine_, in _procès_, vol. v, pp. , .] in the towns of dauphiné prayers for the maid were said at mass. "_collect._ o god, all powerful and eternal, who, in thy holy and ineffable mercy, hast commanded the maid to restore and deliver the realm of france, and to repulse, confound and annihilate her enemies, and who hast permitted her, in the accomplishment of this holy work, ordained by thee, to fall into the hands and into the bonds of her enemies, we beseech thee, by the intercession of the blessed virgin mary and of all the saints to deliver her out of their hands, without her having suffered any hurt, in order that she may finish the work whereto thou hast sent her." "for the sake of jesus christ, etc." "_secret._ o god all powerful, father of virtues, let thy holy benediction descend upon this sacrifice; let thy wondrous power be made manifest, that by the intercession of the blessed virgin mary and of all the saints, it may deliver the maid from the prisons of the enemy so that she may finish the work whereto thou hast sent her. through our lord jesus christ, etc." "_post communion._ o god all powerful, incline thine ear and listen unto the prayers of thy people: by the virtue of the sacrament we have just received, by the intercession of the blessed virgin mary, and of all the saints, burst the bonds of the maid, who, in the fulfilment of thy commands, hath been and is still confined in the prisons of our enemy; through thy divine compassion and thy mercy, permit her, freed from peril, to accomplish the work whereto thou hast sent her. through our lord jesus christ, etc."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . e. maignien, _oraisons latines pour la délivrance de jeanne d'arc_. grenoble, , in vo (_revue des sociétés savantes_, vol. iv, pp. - ). g. de braux, _trois oraisons pour la délivrance de jeanne d'arc_, in _journal de la société d'archéologie lorraine_, june, , pp. , .] learning that the maid, whom he had once suspected of evil intentions and then recognised to be wholly good, had just fallen into the hands of the enemy of the realm, messire jacques gélu, my lord archbishop of embrun, despatched to king charles a messenger bearing a letter touching the line of conduct to be adopted in such an unhappy conjuncture.[ ] [footnote : _vita jacobi gelu ab ipso conscripta_, in _bulletin de la société archéologique de touraine_, iii, , pp. _et seq._ the rev. father marcellin fornier, _histoire des alpes maritimes ou cottiennes_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] addressing the prince, whom in childhood he had directed, messire jacques begins by recalling what the maid had wrought for him by god's help and her own great courage. he beseeches him to examine his conscience and see whether he has in any wise sinned against the grace of god. for it may be that in wrath against the king the lord hath permitted this virgin to be taken. for his own honour he urges him to strain every effort for her deliverance. "i commend unto you," he said, "that for the recovery of this damsel and for her ransom, ye spare neither measures nor money, nor any cost, unless ye be ready to incur the ineffaceable disgrace of an ingratitude right unworthy." further he advises that prayers be ordered to be said everywhere for the deliverance of the maid, so that if this disaster should have befallen through any misdoing of the king or of his people, it might please god to pardon it.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] such were the words, lacking neither in strength nor in charity, of this aged prelate, who was more of a hermit than of a bishop. he remembered having been the dauphin's councillor in evil days and he dearly loved the king and the kingdom. the sire de la trémouille and the lord archbishop of reims have been suspected of desiring to get rid of the maid and of having promoted her discomfiture. there are those who think they have discovered the treacherous methods employed to compass her defeat at paris, at la charité and at compiègne.[ ] but in good sooth such methods were unnecessary. at paris there was but little chance of her being able to cross the moat, since neither she nor her companions in arms had ascertained its depth; besides, it was not the fault of the king and his council that the carmelites, on whom they relied, failed to open the gates. the siege of la charité was conducted not by the maid, but by the sire d'albret and divers valiant captains. in the sortie from compiègne, it was certain that any dallying at margny would cause the french to be cut off by the english from venette and by the burgundians from clairoix and to be promptly overcome by the burgundians from coudun. they forgot themselves in the delights of pillage; and the inevitable result followed. [footnote : thomassin, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _chronique du doyen de saint-thibaud_, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . _chronique de tournai_, in _recueil des chroniques de flandre_, vol. iii, p. . _chronique de normandie_, ed. a. hellot, rouen, , in vo, pp. , . _chronique de lorraine_, ed. abbé marchal (_recueil de documents sur l'histoire de lorraine_, vol. v).] and why should the lord chamberlain and the lord archbishop have wanted to get rid of the maid? she did not trouble them; on the contrary they found her useful and employed her. by her prophecy that she would cause the king to be anointed at reims, she rendered an immense service to my lord regnault, who more than any other profited from the champagne expedition, more even than the king, who, while he succeeded in being crowned, failed to recover paris and normandy. notwithstanding this great advantage, the lord archbishop felt no gratitude towards the maid; he was a hard man and an egoist. but did he wish her harm? had he not need of her? at senlis he was maintaining the king's cause; and he was maintaining it well, we may be sure, since, with the towns that had returned to their liege lord, he was defending his own episcopal and ducal city, his benefices and his canonries. did he not intend to use her against the burgundians? we have already noted reasons for believing that towards the end of march, he had asked the sire de la trémouille to send her from sully with a goodly company to wage war in l'Île-de-france. and our hypothesis is confirmed when, after they had been unhappily deprived of jeanne's services, we find the bishop and the chamberlain driven to replace her by someone likewise favoured with visions and claiming to be sent of god. unable to discover a maid they had to make shift with a youth. this resolution they took a few days after jeanne's capture and this is how it came about. some time before, a shepherd lad of gévaudan, by name guillaume, while tending his flocks at the foot of the lozère mountains and guarding them from wolf and lynx, had a revelation concerning the realm of france. this shepherd, like john, our lord's favourite disciple, was virgin. in one of the caves of the mende mountain, where the holy apostle privat had prayed and fasted, his ear was struck by a heavenly voice, and thus he knew that god was sending him to the king of france. he went to mende, just as jeanne had gone to vaucouleurs in order that he might be taken to the king. there he found pious folk, who, touched by his holiness and persuaded that there was power in him, provided for his equipment and for his journey, which provisions, in sooth, amounted to very little. the words he addressed to the king were much the same as those uttered by the maid. "sire," he said, "i am commanded to go with your people; and without fail the english and burgundians shall be discomfited."[ ] [footnote : summary of a letter from regnault de chartres to the inhabitants of reims, _trial_, vol. v, p. .] the king received him kindly. the clerks who had examined the maid must have feared lest if they repulsed this shepherd lad they might be rejecting the aid of the holy ghost. amos was a shepherd, and to him god granted the gift of prophecy: "i thank thee, o father, lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." matt. xi, . but before this shepherd could be believed he must give a sign. the clerks of poitiers, who in those evil days languished in dire penury, did not appear exacting in their demand for proofs; they had counselled the king to employ the maid merely on the promise that as a token of her mission she would deliver orléans. the gévaudan shepherd had more than promises to allege; he showed wondrous marks on his body. like saint francis he had received the stigmata; and on his hands, his feet and in his side were bleeding wounds.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . lefèvre de saint-rémy, vol. ii, p. . martial d'auvergne, _vigiles_, vol. i, p. .] the mendicant monks rejoiced that their spiritual father had thus participated in the passion of our lord. a like grace had been granted to the blessed catherine of sienna, of the order of saint dominic. but if there were miraculous stigmata imprinted by jesus christ himself, there were also the stigmata of enchantment, which were the work of the devil, and very important was it to distinguish between the two.[ ] it could only be done by great knowledge and great piety. it would appear that guillaume's stigmata were not the work of the devil; for it was resolved to employ him in the same manner as jeanne, as catherine de la rochelle, and as the two breton women, the spiritual daughters of friar richard. [footnote : a. maury, _la stigmatisation et les stigmates_, in _revue des deux mondes_, , ch. viii, pp. - . dr. subled, _les stigmates selon la science_, in _science catholique_, , vol. viii, pp. _et seq._; vol. ix, pp. _et seq._] when the maid fell into the hands of the burgundians, the sire de la trémouille was with the king, on the loire, where fighting had ceased since the disastrous siege of la charité. he sent the shepherd youth to the banks of the oise, to the lord archbishop of reims, who was there opposing the burgundians, commanded by duke philip, himself. messire regnault had probably asked for the boy. in any case he welcomed him willingly and kept him at beauvais, supervising and interrogating him, ready to use him at an auspicious moment. one day, either to try him or because the rumour was really in circulation, young guillaume was told that the english had put jeanne to death. "then," said he, "it will be the worse for them."[ ] [footnote : letter from regnault de chartres, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] by this time, after all the rivalries and jealousies which had torn asunder this company of the king's _béguines_, there remained to friar richard one only of his penitents, dame catherine of la rochelle, who had the gift of discovering hidden treasure.[ ] the young shepherd approved of the maid as little as dame catherine had done. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. _et seq._] "god suffered jeanne to be taken," he said, "because she was puffed up with pride and because of the rich clothes she wore and because she had not done as god commanded her but according to her own will."[ ] [footnote : letter from regnault de chartres, in _ibid._, vol. v, p. .] were these words suggested to him by the enemies of the maid? that may be: but it is also possible that he derived them from inspiration. saints are not always kind to one another. meanwhile messire regnault de chartres believed himself possessed of a marvel far surpassing the marvel he had lost. he wrote a letter to the inhabitants of his town of reims telling them that the maid had been taken at compiègne. this misfortune had befallen her through her own fault, he added. "she would not take advice, but would follow her own will." in her stead god had sent a shepherd, "who says neither more nor less than jeanne." god has strictly commanded him to discomfit the english and the burgundians. and the lord archbishop neglects not to repeat the words by which the prophet of gévaudan had represented jeanne as proud, gorgeous in attire, rebellious of heart.[ ] the reverend father in god, my lord regnault, would never have consented to employ a heretic and a sorcerer; he believed in guillaume as he had believed in jeanne; he held both one and the other to have been divinely sent, in the sense that all which is not of the devil is of god. it was sufficient for him that no evil had been found in the child, and he intended to essay him, hoping that guillaume would do what jeanne had done. whether the archbishop thus acted rightly or wrongly the issue was to decide, but he might have exalted the shepherd without denying the saint who was so near her martyrdom. doubtless he deemed it necessary to distinguish between the fortune of the kingdom and the fortune of jeanne. and he had the courage to do it. [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] chapter ix the maid at beaurevoir--catherine de la rochelle at paris--execution of la pierronne the maid had been taken captive in the diocese of beauvais.[ ] at that time the bishop count of beauvais was pierre cauchon of reims, a great and pompous clerk of the university of paris, which had elected him rector in . messire pierre cauchon was not a moderate man; with great ardour he had thrown himself into the cabochien riots.[ ] in , the duke of burgundy had sent him on an embassy to the council of constance to defend the doctrines of jean petit;[ ] then he had appointed him master of requests in , and finally raised him to the episcopal see of beauvais.[ ] standing equally high in the favour of the english, messire pierre was councillor of king henry vi, almoner of france and chancellor to the queen of england. since , his usual residence had been at rouen. by their submission to king charles the people of beauvais had deprived him of his episcopal revenue.[ ] and, as the english said and believed that the army of the king of france was at that time commanded by friar richard and the maid, messire pierre cauchon, the impoverished bishop of beauvais, had a personal grievance against jeanne. it would have been better for his own reputation that he should have abstained from avenging the church's honour on a damsel who was possibly an idolatress, a soothsayer and the invoker of devils, but who had certainly incurred his personal ill-will. he was in the regent's pay;[ ] and the regent was filled with bitter hatred of the maid.[ ] again for his reputation's sake, my lord bishop of beauvais should have reflected that in prosecuting jeanne for a matter of faith he was serving his master's wrath and furthering the temporal interests of the great of this world. on these things he did not reflect; on the contrary, this case at once temporal and spiritual, as ambiguous as his own position, excited his worst passions. he flung himself into it with all the thoughtlessness of the violent. a maiden to be denounced, a heretic and an armagnac to boot, what a feast for the prelate, the councillor of king henry! after having concerted with the doctors and masters of the university of paris, on the th of july, he presented himself before the camp of compiègne and demanded the maid as subject to his jurisdiction.[ ] [footnote : this point was not called in question at the time; but what might be discussed is whether the bishop of beauvais could exercise ordinary jurisdiction over the maid. on this subject see: abbé ph. h. dunand, _histoire complète de jeanne d'arc_, paris, , vol. ii, pp. , .] [footnote : robillard de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges et assesseurs du procès de jeanne d'arc_, rouen, , p. . douet d'arcq, _choix de pièces inédites relatives au règne de charles vi_, vol. i, pp. , . chanoine cerf, _pierre cauchon de sommièvre, chanoine de reims et de beauvais, évêque de beauvais et de lisieux; son origine, ses dignités, sa mort et ses sépultures_, in _travaux de l'académie de reims_, ci ( ), pp. _et seq._, a. sarrazin, _pierre cauchon, juge de jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in vo, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : le p. ayroles, _la vraie jeanne d'arc_, vol. i, p. . a. sarrazin, _p. cauchon_, pp. , .] [footnote : du boulay, _historia universitatis parisiensis_, , vol. v, p. . the abbé delettre, _histoire du diocèse de beauvais_, beauvais, , vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : robillard de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, p. .] [footnote : a. sarrazin, _p. cauchon_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : rymer, _foedera_, vol. x, p. , _passim_.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . vallet de viriville, _procès de condamnation_, pp. _et seq._ a. sarrazin, _p. cauchon_, pp. _et seq._] he supported his demand by letters from the _alma mater_ to the duke of burgundy and the lord jean de luxembourg. the university made known to the most illustrious prince, the duke of burgundy, that once before it had claimed this woman, called the maid, and had received no reply. "we greatly fear," continued the doctors and masters, "that by the false and seductive power of the hellish enemy and by the malice and subtlety of wicked persons, your enemies and adversaries who, it is said, are making every effort to deliver this woman by crooked means, will in some manner remove her out of your power. "wherefore, the university hopes that so great a dishonour may be spared to the most christian name of the house of france, and again it supplicates your highness, the duke of burgundy, to deliver over this woman either to the inquisitor of the evil of heresy or to my lord bishop of beauvais within whose spiritual jurisdiction she was captured." here follows the letter which the doctors and masters of the university entrusted to the lord bishop of beauvais for the lord jean de luxembourg: most noble, honoured and powerful lord, to your high nobility we very affectionately commend us. your noble wisdom doth well know and recognise that all good catholic knights should employ their strength and their power first in god's service and then for the common weal. above all, the first oath of the order of knighthood is to defend and keep the honour of god, the catholic faith and holy church. this sacred oath was present to your mind when you employed your noble power and your person in the taking of the woman who calleth herself the maid, by whom the glory of god hath been infinitely offended, the faith deeply wounded and the church greatly dishonoured: for through her there have arisen in this kingdom, idolatries, errors, false doctrines and other evils and misfortunes without end. and in truth all loyal christians must give unto you hearty thanks for having rendered so great service to our holy faith and to all the kingdom. as for us, we thank god with all our hearts, and you we thank for your noble prowess as affectionately as we may. but such a capture alone would be but a small thing were it not followed by a worthy issue whereby this woman may answer for the offences she hath committed against our merciful creator, his faith and his holy church, as well as for her other evil deeds which are said to be without number. the mischief would be greater than ever, the people would be wrapped in yet grosser error than before and his divine majesty too insufferably offended, if matters continued in their present state, or if it befell that this woman were delivered or retaken, as we are told, is wished, plotted and endeavoured by divers of our enemies, by all secret ways and by what is even worse by bribe or by ransom. but it is our hope that god will not permit so great an evil to betide his people, and that your great and high wisdom will not suffer it so to befall but will provide against it as becometh your nobility. for if without the retribution that behoveth she were to be delivered, irreparable would be the dishonour which should fall on your great nobility and on all those who have dealt in this matter. but your good and noble wisdom will know how to devise means whereby such scandal shall cease as soon as may be, whereof there is great need. and because all delay in this matter is very perilous and very injurious to this kingdom, very kindly and with a cordial affection do we beseech your powerful and honoured nobility to grant that for the glory of god, for the maintenance of the holy catholic faith, for the good and honour of the kingdom, this woman be delivered up to justice and given over here to the inquisitor of the faith, who hath demanded her and doth now demand her urgently, in order that he may examine the grievous charges under which she labours, so that god may be satisfied and the folk duly edified in good and holy doctrine. or, an it please you better, hand over this woman to the reverend father in god, our highly honoured lord bishop of beauvais, who it is said hath likewise claimed her, because she was taken within his jurisdiction. this prelate and this inquisitor are judges of this woman in matters of faith; and every christian of whatsoever estate owes them obedience in this case under heavy penalty of the law. by so doing you will attain to the love and grace of the most high and you will be the means of exalting the holy faith, and likewise will you glorify your own high and noble name and also that of the most high and most powerful prince, our redoubtable lord and yours, my lord of burgundy. every man shall be required to pray god for the prosperity of your most noble worship, whom may it please god our saviour in his grace, to guide and keep in all his affairs and finally to grant eternal joy. given at paris, the th day of july, .[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . m. fournier, _la faculté de décret_, vol. i, p. , note.] at the same time that he bore these letters, the reverend father in god, the bishop of beauvais was charged to offer money.[ ] to us it seems strange indeed that just at the very time when, by the mouth of the university, he was representing to the lord of luxembourg that he could not sell his prisoner without committing a crime, the bishop should himself offer to purchase her. according to these ecclesiastics, jean would incur terrible penalties in this world and in the next, if in conformity with the laws and customs of war he surrendered a prisoner held to ransom in return for money, and he would win praise and blessing if he treacherously sold his captive to those who wished to put her to death. but at least we might expect that this lord bishop who had come to buy this woman for the church, would purchase her with the church's money. not at all! the purchase money is furnished by the english. in the end therefore she is delivered not to the church but to the english. and it is a priest, acting in the interests of god and of his church, by virtue of his episcopal jurisdiction, who concludes the bargain. he offers ten thousand golden francs, a sum in return for which, he says, according to the custom prevailing in france, the king has the right to claim any prisoner even were he of the blood royal.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] there can be no doubt whatever that the high and solemn ecclesiastic, pierre cauchon, suspected jeanne of witchcraft. wishing to bring her to trial, he exercised his ecclesiastical functions. but he knew her to be the enemy of the english as well as of himself; there is no doubt on that point. so when he wished to bring her to trial he acted as the councillor of king henry. was it a witch or the enemy of the english he was buying with his ten thousand gold francs? and if it were merely a witch and an idolatress that the holy inquisitor, that the university, that the ordinary demanded for the glory of god, and at the price of gold, wherefore so much ado, wherefore so great an expenditure of money? would it not be better in this matter to act in concert with the ecclesiastics of king charles's party? the armagnacs were neither infidels nor heretics; they were neither turks nor hussites; they were catholics; they acknowledged the pope of rome to be the true head of christendom. the dauphin charles and his clergy had not been excommunicated. neither those who regarded the treaty of troyes as invalid nor those who had sworn to it had been pronounced anathema by the pope. this was not a question of faith. in the provinces ruled over by king charles the holy inquisition prosecuted heresy in a curious manner and the secular arm saw to it that the sentences pronounced by the church did not remain a dead letter. the armagnacs burned witches just as much as the french and the burgundians. for the present doubtless they did not believe the maid to be possessed by devils; most of them on the contrary were inclined to regard her as a saint. but might they not be undeceived? would it not be good christian charity to present them with fine canonical arguments? if the maid's case were really a case for the ecclesiastical court why not join with churchmen of both parties and take her before the pope and the council? and just at that time a council for the reformation of the church and the establishment of peace in the kingdom was sitting in the town of bâle; the university was sending its delegates, who would there meet the ecclesiastics of king charles, also gallicans and firmly attached to the privileges of the church of france.[ ] why not have this armagnac prophetess tried by the assembled fathers? but for the sake of henry of lancaster and the glory of old england matters had to take another turn. the regent's councillors were already accusing jeanne of witchcraft when she summoned them in the name of the king of heaven to depart out of france. during the siege of orléans, they wanted to burn her heralds and said that if they had her they would burn her also at the stake. such in good sooth was their firm intent and their unvarying intimation. this does not look as if they would be likely to hand her over to the church as soon as she was taken. in their own kingdom they burned as many witches and wizards as possible; but they had never suffered the holy inquisition to be established in their land, and they were ill acquainted with that form of justice. informed that jeanne was in the hands of the sire de luxembourg, the great council of england were unanimously in favour of her being purchased at any price. divers lords recommended that as soon as they obtained possession of the maid she should be sewn in a sack and cast into the river. but one of them (it is said to have been the earl of warwick) represented to them that she ought first to be tried, convicted of heresy and witchcraft by an ecclesiastical tribunal, and then solemnly degraded in order that her king might be degraded with her.[ ] what a disgrace for charles of valois, calling himself king of france, if the university of paris, if the french ecclesiastical dignitaries, bishops, abbots, canons, if in short the church universal were to declare that a witch had sat in his council and that a witch led his host, that one possessed had conducted him to his impious, sacrilegious and void anointing! thus would the trial of the maid be the trial of charles vii, the condemnation of the maid the condemnation of charles vii. the idea seemed good to them and was adopted. [footnote : du boulay, _historia universitatis parisiensis_, vol. v, pp. - . _monumenta conciliorum generalium seculi decimi quinti_, vol. i, pp. _et seq._ le p. denifle and chatelain, _le procès de jeanne d'arc et l'université de paris_.] [footnote : valeran varanius, ed. prarond, paris, , book iv, p. .] the lord bishop of beauvais was eager to put it into execution. he, a priest and councillor of state, was consumed with a desire, under the semblance of trying an unfortunate heretic, to sit in judgment on the descendant of clovis, of saint charlemagne and of saint louis. early in august, the sire de luxembourg had the maid taken from beaulieu, which was not safe enough, to beaurevoir, near cambrai.[ ] there dwelt dame jeanne de luxembourg and dame jeanne de béthune. jeanne de luxembourg was the aunt of lord jean, whom she loved dearly. among the great of this world she had lived as a saint, and she had never married. formerly lady-in-waiting to queen ysabeau, king charles vii's godmother, one of the most important events of her life had been to solicit from pope martin the canonisation of her brother, the cardinal of luxembourg, who had died at avignon in his ninetieth year. she was known as the demoiselle de luxembourg. she was sixty-seven years of age, infirm and near her end.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , ; vol. ii, p. ; vol. iii, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . e. gomart, _jeanne d'arc au château de beaurevoir_, cambrai, , in vo, pages (_mem. de la société d'émulation de cambrai_, xxxviii, , pp. - ). l. sambier, _jeanne d'arc et la région du nord_, lille, , in vo, pages. cf. morosini, vol. iii, p. , notes and , vol. iv, supplement xxi.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, pp. , .] jeanne de béthune, widow of lord robert de bar, slain at the battle of azincourt, had married lord jean in . she was reputed pitiful, because, in , she had obtained from her husband the pardon of a nobleman of picardy, who had been brought prisoner to beaurevoir and was in great danger of being beheaded and quartered.[ ] [footnote : a. duchêne, _histoire de la maison de béthune_, ch. iii, and proofs and illustrations, p. . vallet de viriville, _loc. cit._, and morosini, vol. iv, pp. , .] these two ladies treated jeanne kindly. they offered her woman's clothes or cloth with which to make them; and they urged her to abandon a dress which appeared to them unseemly. jeanne refused, alleging that she had not received permission from our lord and that it was not yet time; later she admitted that had she been able to quit man's attire, she would have done so at the request of these two dames rather than for any other dame of france, the queen excepted.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] a noble of the burgundian party, one aimond de macy, often came to see her and was pleased to converse with her. to him she seemed modest in word and in deed. still sire aimond, who was but thirty, had found her personally attractive.[ ] if certain witnesses of her own party are to be believed, jeanne, although beautiful, did not inspire men with desire. [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , ; vol. iii, p. .] this singular grace however applied to the armagnacs only; it was not extended to the burgundians, and seigneur aimond did not experience it, for one day he tried to thrust his hand into her bosom. she resisted and repulsed him with all her strength. lord aimond concluded as more than one would have done in his place that this was a damsel of rare virtue. he took warning.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] confined in the castle keep, jeanne's mind was for ever running on her return to her friends at compiègne; her one idea was to escape. somehow there reached her evil tidings from france. she got the idea that all the inhabitants of compiègne over seven years of age were to be massacred, "to perish by fire and sword," she said; and indeed such a fate was bound to overtake them if the town were taken. confiding her distress and her unconquerable desire to saint catherine, she asked: "how can god abandon to destruction those good folk of compiègne who have been so loyal to their lord?"[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] and in her dream, surrounded by saints, like the donors in church pictures, kneeling and in rapture, she wrestled with her heavenly counsellors for the poor folk of compiègne. what she had heard of their fate caused her infinite distress; she herself would rather die than continue to live after such a destruction of worthy people. for this reason she was strongly tempted to leap from the top of the keep. and because she knew all that could be said against it, she heard her voices putting her in mind of those arguments. nearly every day saint catherine said to her: "do not leap, god will help both you and those of compiègne." and jeanne replied to her: "since god will help those of compiègne, i want to be there." and once again saint catherine told her the marvellous story of the shepherdess and the king: "to all things must you be resigned. and you will not be delivered until you have seen the king of the english." to which jeanne made answer: "but in good sooth i do not desire to see him. i would rather die than fall into the hands of the english."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] one day she heard a rumour that the english had come to fetch her. the arrival of the lord bishop of beauvais who came to offer the blood money at beaurevoir may have given rise to the report.[ ] straightway jeanne became frantic and beside herself. she ceased to listen to her voices, who forbade her the fatal leap. the keep was at least seventy feet high; she commended her soul to god and leapt. [footnote : _ibid._, p. ; vol. v, p. .] having fallen to the ground, she heard cries: "she is dead." the guards hurried to the spot. finding her still alive, in their amazement they could only ask: "did you leap?" she felt sorely shaken; but saint catherine spoke to her and said: "be of good courage. you will recover." at the same time the saint gave her good tidings of her friends. "you will recover and the people of compiègne will receive succour." and she added that this succour would come before saint martin's day in the winter.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , , .] henceforth jeanne believed that it was her saints who had helped her and guarded her from death. she knew well that she had been wrong in attempting such a leap, despite her voices. saint catherine said to her: "you must confess and ask god to forgive you for having leapt." jeanne did confess and ask pardon of our lord. and after her confession saint catherine made known unto her that god had forgiven her. for three or four days she remained without eating or drinking; then she took some food and was whole.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, pp. , .] another story was told of the leap from beaurevoir; it was related that she had tried to escape through a window letting herself down by a sheet or something that broke; but we must believe the maid: she says she leapt; if she had been attached to a cord, she would not have committed sin and would not have confessed. this leap was known and the rumour spread abroad that she had escaped and joined her own party.[ ] [footnote : _chronique des cordeliers_, fol. , recto. morosini, vol. iii, pp. - . _chronique de tournai_, ed. smedt, in _recueil des chroniques de flandre_, vol. iii, pp. , .] meanwhile the lenten sermons at orléans had been delivered by that good preacher, friar richard, who was ill content with jeanne, and whom jeanne disliked and had quitted. the townsfolk as a token of regard presented him with the image of jesus sculptured in copper by a certain philippe, a metal-worker of the city. and the bookseller, jean moreau, bound him a book of hours at the town's expense.[ ] [footnote : lottin, _recherches sur la ville d'orléans_, vol. i, p. . _trial_, vol. i, p. , note . _journal du siège_, pp. - . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. cclxiii, note .] he brought back queen marie to jargeau and succeeded in obtaining her favour. jeanne was spared the bitterness of learning that while she was languishing in prison her friends at orléans, her fair dauphin and his queen marie, were making good cheer for the monk who had turned from her to prefer a dame catherine whom she considered worthless.[ ] only lately the idea of employing dame catherine had filled jeanne with alarm; she wrote to her king about it, and as soon as she saw him besought him not to employ her. however the king set no store by what she had said; he agreed to friar richard's favourite being allowed to set forth on her mission to obtain money from the good towns and to negotiate peace with the duke of burgundy. but perhaps this saintly dame was not possessed of all the wisdom necessary for the performance of man's work and king's service. for immediately she became a cause of embarrassment to her friends. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] being in the town of tours, she fell to saying: "in this town there be carpenters who work, but not at houses, and if ye have not a care, this town is in the way to a bad end and there be those in the town that know it."[ ] [footnote : register of the accounts of the town of tours for the year , in _trial_, vol. iv, p. , note .] this was a denunciation in the form of a parable. dame catherine was thereby accusing the churchmen and burgesses of tours of working against charles of valois, their lord. the woman must have been held to have influence with the king, his kinsmen and his council; for the inhabitants of tours took fright and sent an augustinian monk, brother jean bourget, to king charles, to the queen of sicily, to the bishop of séez, and to the lord of trèves, to inquire whether the words of this holy woman had been believed by them. the queen of sicily and the councillors of king charles gave the monk letters wherein they announced to the townsfolk of tours that they had never heard of such things, and king charles declared that he had every confidence in the churchmen, the burgesses and the other citizens of his town of tours.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] dame catherine had in like manner slandered the inhabitants of angers.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] whether, following the example of the blessed colette of corbie, this devout person wished to pass from one party to the other, or whether she had chanced to be taken captive by burgundian men-at-arms, she was brought before the official at paris. in their interrogation of her the ecclesiastics appear to have been concerned less about her than about the maid jeanne, whose prosecution was then being instituted. on the subject of the maid, catherine said: "jeanne has two counsellors, whom she calls counsellors of the spring."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] such was the confused recollection of the conversations she had had at jargeau and at montfaucon. the term council was the one jeanne usually employed when speaking of her voices; but dame catherine was confusing jeanne's heavenly visitants with what the maid had told her of the gooseberry spring at domremy. if jeanne felt unkindly towards catherine, catherine did not feel kindly towards jeanne. she did not assert jeanne's mission to be nought; but she let it be clearly understood that the hapless damsel, then a prisoner in the hands of the burgundians, was addicted to invoking evil spirits. "if jeanne be not well guarded," catherine told the official, "she will escape from prison with the aid of the devil."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. , note. _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . vallet de viriville, _procès de condamnation de jeanne d'arc_, pp. lxi-lxv.] whether jeanne was or was not aided by the devil was a matter to be decided between herself and the doctors of the church. but it is certain that her one thought was to burst her bonds, and that she was ceaselessly imagining means of escape. catherine de la rochelle knew her well and wished her ill. catherine was released. her ecclesiastical judges would not have treated her so leniently had she spoken well of the maid. the la rochelle dame returned to king charles.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] the two religious women who had followed jeanne on her departure from sully and had been taken at corbeil, pierronne of lower brittany and her companion, had been confined in ecclesiastical prisons at paris since the spring. they openly said that god had sent them to succour the maid jeanne. friar richard had been their spiritual father and they had been in the maid's company. wherefore they were strongly suspected of having offended against god and his holy religion. the grand inquisitor of france, brother jean graverent, prior of the jacobins at paris, prosecuted them according to the forms usual in that country. he proceeded in concurrence with the ordinary, represented by the official. pierronne maintained and believed it to be true that jeanne was good, and that what she did was well done and according to god's will. she admitted that on the christmas night of that year, at jargeau, friar richard had twice given her the body of jesus christ and had given it three times to jeanne.[ ] besides, the fact had been well proved by information gathered from eye-witnesses. the judges, who were authorities on this subject, held that the monk should not thus have lavished the bread of angels on such women. however, since frequent communion was not formally forbidden by canon law, pierronne could not be censured for having received it. the informers, who were then giving evidence against jeanne, did not remember the three communions at jargeau.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , .] [footnote : voltaire, _dictionnaire philosophique_, article, arc.] heavier charges weighed upon the two breton women. they were labouring under the accusation of witchcraft and sorcery. pierronne stated and took her oath that god often appeared to her in human form and spoke to her as friend to friend, and that the last time she had seen him he was clothed in a purple cloak and a long white robe.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , .] the illustrious masters who were trying her, represented to her that to speak thus of such apparitions was to blaspheme. and these women were convicted of being possessed by evil spirits, who caused them to err in word and in deed. on sunday, the rd of september, , they were taken to the parvis notre dame to hear a sermon. platforms had been erected as usual, and sunday had been chosen as the day in order that folk might benefit from this edifying spectacle. a famous doctor addressed a charitable exhortation to both women. one of them, the youngest, as she listened to him and looked at the stake that had been erected, was filled with repentance. she confessed that she had been seduced by an angel of the devil and duly renounced her error. pierronne, on the contrary, refused to retract. she obstinately persisted in the belief that she saw god often, clothed as she had said. the church could do nothing for her. given over to the secular arm, she was straightway conducted to the stake which had been prepared for her, and burned alive by the executioner.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. - , - . jean nider, _formicarium_, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . a. de la borderie, _pierronne et perrinaïc_, pp. _et seq._] thus did the grand inquisitor of france and the bishop of paris cruelly cause to perish by an ignominious death one of those women who had followed friar richard, one of the saints of the dauphin charles. but the most famous of these women and the most abounding in works was in their hands. the death of la pierronne was an earnest of the fate reserved for the maid. chapter x beaurevoir--arras--rouen--the trial for lapse in the month of september, , two inhabitants of tournai, the chief alderman, bietremieu carlier, and the chief councillor, henri romain, were returning from the banks of the loire, whither their town had despatched them on a mission to the king of france. they stopped at beaurevoir. albeit this place lay upon their direct route and afforded them a halt between two stages of their journey, one cannot help supposing some connection to have existed between their mission to charles of valois and their arrival in the domain of the sire de luxembourg. the existence of such a connection seems all the more probable when we remember the attachment of their fellow-citizens to the fleurs-de-lis, and when we know the relations already existing between the maid and these emissaries.[ ] [footnote : h. vandenbroeck, _extraits des anciens registres des consaux de la ville de tournai_, vol. ii ( - ), and morosini, vol. iii, pp. , .] it has been said that the district of the provost of tournai was loyal to the king of france, who had granted it freedom and privileges. message after message it sent him; it organised public processions in his honour, and it was ready to grant him anything, so long as he demanded neither men nor money. the alderman, carlier, and the councillor, romain, had both previously gone to reims as representatives of their town to witness the anointing and the coronation of king charles. there they had doubtless seen the maid in her glory and had held her to be a very great saint. in those days, their town, attentively watching the progress of the royal army, was in regular correspondence with the warlike _béguine_, and with her confessor, friar richard, or more probably friar pasquerel. to-day they wended to the castle, wherein she was imprisoned in the hands of her cruel enemies. we know not what it was they came to say to the sire de luxembourg, nor even whether he received them. he cannot have refused to hear them if he thought they came to make secret offers on the part of king charles for the ransom of the maid, who had fought in his battles. we know not, either, whether they were able to see the prisoner. the idea that they did enter her presence is quite tenable; for in those days it was generally easy to approach captives, and passers by when they visited them were given every facility for the performance of one of the seven works of mercy. one thing, however, is certain; that when they left beaurevoir, they carried with them a letter which jeanne had given them, charging them to deliver it to the magistrates of their town. in this letter she asked the folk of tournai, for the sake of her lord the king and in view of the good services she had rendered him, to send unto her twenty or thirty crowns, that she might employ them for her necessities.[ ] [footnote : h. vandenbroeck, _extraits analytiques des anciens registres des consaux de la ville de tournai_, vol. ii, pp. , - . canon h. debout, _jeanne d'arc et les villes d'arras et de tournai_, paris, n.d., p. .] it was the custom in those days thus to permit prisoners to beg their bread. it is said that the demoiselle de luxembourg, who had just made her will, and had but a few days longer to live,[ ] entreated her noble nephew not to give the maid up to the english.[ ] but what power had this good dame against the norman gold of the king of england and against the anathemas of holy church? for if my lord jean had refused to give up this damsel suspected of enchantments, of idolatries, of invoking devils and committing other crimes against religion, he would have been excommunicated. the venerable university of paris had not neglected to make him aware that a refusal would expose him to heavy legal penalties.[ ] [footnote : le p. anselme, _histoire généalogique de la maison de france_, vol. iii, pp. , . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. , . morosini, vol. iv, supplement xix.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] the sire de luxembourg, meanwhile, was ill at ease; he feared that in his castle of beaurevoir, a prisoner worth ten thousand golden livres was not sufficiently secure in case of a descent on the part of the french or of the english or of the burgundians, or of any of those folk, who, caring nought for burgundy or england or france, might wish to carry her off, cast her into a pit, and hold her to ransom, according to the custom of brigands in those days.[ ] [footnote : _les miracles de madame sainte katerine_, bourassé, _passim_.] towards the end of september, he asked his lord, the duke of burgundy, who ruled over fine towns and strong cities, if he would undertake the safe custody of the maid. my lord philip consented and, by his command, jeanne was taken to arras. this town was encircled by high walls; it had two castles, one of which, la cour-le-comte, was in the centre of the town. it was probably in the cells of cour-le-comte that jeanne was confined, under the watch and ward of my lord david de brimeu, lord of ligny, knight of the golden fleece, governor of arras. at that time it was rare for prisoners to be kept in isolation.[ ] at arras, jeanne received visitors; and among others, a scotsman, who showed her her portrait, in which she was represented kneeling on one knee and presenting a letter to her king.[ ] this letter might be supposed to have been from the sire de baudricourt, or from any other clerk or captain by whom the painter may have thought jeanne to have been sent to the dauphin; it might have been a letter announcing to the king the deliverance of orléans or the victory of patay. [footnote : "was waited on in prison like a lady," says _le journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. , concerning the rouen prison.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] this was the only portrait of herself jeanne ever saw and, for her own part, she never had any painted; but during the brief duration of her power, the inhabitants of the french towns placed images of her, carved and painted, in the chapels of the saints, and wore leaden medals on which she was represented; thus in her case following a custom established in honour of the saints canonised by the church.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , , ; vol. iii, p. ; vol. v, pp. , . chastellain, ed. kervyn de lettenhove, vol. ii, p. . p. lanéry d'arc, _le culte de jeanne d'arc au xv'e siècle_, orléans, , in vo. noël valois, _un nouveau témoignage sur jeanne d'arc_, pp. , , .] many burgundian lords, and among them a knight, one jean de pressy, controller of the finances of burgundy, offered her woman's dress, as the luxembourg dame had done, for her own good and in order to avoid scandal; but for nothing in the world would jeanne have cast off the garb which she had assumed according to divine command. she also received in her prison at arras a clerk of tournai, one jean naviel, charged by the magistrates of his town to deliver to her the sum of twenty-two golden crowns. this ecclesiastic enjoyed the confidence of his fellow citizens, who employed him in the town's most urgent affairs. in the may of this year, , he had been sent to messire regnault de chartres, chancellor of king charles. he had been taken by the burgundians at the same time as jeanne and held to ransom; but out of that predicament he soon escaped and at no great cost. he acquitted himself well of his mission[ ] to the maid, and, it would seem, received nothing for his trouble, doubtless because he wanted the reward of this work of mercy to be placed to his account in heaven.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , . canon henri debout, _jeanne d'arc prisonnière à arras_, arras, , in mo; _jeanne d'arc et les villes d'arras et de tournai_, paris, , in vo; _jeanne d'arc_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : on the th of november, , a messenger from the town of arras received forty shillings for having taken two sealed letters to the duke of burgundy, one from jean de luxembourg, the other from david de brimeu, governor of the bailiwick of arras; we know nothing of the tenor of these letters written concerning "the case of the maid." p. champion, _notes sur jeanne d'arc, ii; jeanne d'arc à arras_, in _le moyen Âge_, july-august, , pp. , .] neither the capture of the maid nor the retreat of the men-at-arms she had brought, put an end to the siege of compiègne. guillaume de flavy and his two brothers, charles and louis, and captain baretta with his italians, and the five hundred of the garrison[ ] displayed skill, vigour, and untiring energy. the burgundians conducted the siege in the same manner as the english had conducted that of orléans; mines, trenches, bulwarks, cannonades and bastions, those gigantic and absurd erections good for nothing but for burning. the suburbs of the town guillaume de flavy had demolished because they were in the way of his firing; boats he had sunk in order to bar the river. to the mortars and huge _couillards_ of the burgundians he replied with his artillery, and notably with those little copper culverins which did such good service.[ ] if the gay cannoneer of orléans and jargeau, maître jean de montesclère, were absent, there was a shoemaker of valenciennes, an artilleryman, named noirouffle, tall, dark, terrible to see, and terrible to hear.[ ] the townsfolk of compiègne, like those of orléans, made unsuccessful sallies. one day louis de flavy, the governor's brother, was killed by a burgundian bullet. but none the less on that day guillaume did as he was wont to do and made the minstrels play to keep his men-at-arms in good cheer.[ ] [footnote : h. de lépinois, _notes extraites des archives communales de compiègne_, in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, , vol. xxiv, p. . a. sorel, _prise de jeanne d'arc_, p. . p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_, pp. , _et seq._] [footnote : _chronique des cordeliers_, fol. verso.] [footnote : chastellain, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. .] in the month of june the bulwark, defending the bridge over the oise, like les tourelles at orléans which defended the bridge over the loire, was captured by the enemy without bringing about the reduction of the town. in like manner, the capture of les tourelles had not occasioned the fall of the town of duke charles.[ ] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , . lefèvre de saint-rémy, vol. ii, p. . morosini, vol. iii, pp. , . chastellain, vol. ii, pp. , . a. sorel, _la prise de jeanne d'arc_, pp. _et seq._ p. champion. _guillaume de flavy_, p. .] [illustration: henry vi _from a portrait in the "election chamber" at eton, reproduced by permission of the provost_] as for the bastions, they were just as little good on the oise as they had been on the loire; everything passed by them. the burgundians were unable to invest compiègne because its circumference was too great.[ ] they were short of money; and their men-at-arms, for lack of food and of pay, deserted with that perfect assurance which in those days characterised alike mercenaries of the red cross and of the white.[ ] to complete his misfortunes, duke philip was obliged to take away some of the troops engaged in the siege and send them against the inhabitants of liège who had revolted.[ ] on the th of october, a relieving army, commanded by the count of vendôme and the marshal de boussac, approached compiègne. the english and the burgundians having turned to encounter them, the garrison and all the inhabitants of the town, even the women, fell upon the rear of the besiegers and routed them.[ ] the relieving army entered compiègne. the flaring of the bastions was a fine sight. the duke of burgundy lost all his artillery.[ ] the sire de luxembourg, who had come to beaurevoir, where he had received the count bishop of beauvais, now appeared before compiègne just in time to bear his share in the disaster.[ ] the same causes which had constrained the english to depart, as they put it, from orléans, now obliged the burgundians to leave compiègne. but in those days the most ordinary events must needs have a supernatural cause assigned to them, wherefore the deliverance of the town was attributed to the vow of the count of vendôme, who, in the cathedral of senlis, had promised an annual mass to notre-dame-de-la-pierre if the place were not taken.[ ] [footnote : _le jouvencel_, vol. i, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _chronique des cordeliers_, fol. verso. p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_, proofs and illustrations, xli, xlii, xliii.] [footnote : _livre des trahisons_, p. .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iii, pp. - . lefèvre de saint-rémy, vol. ii, p. . _livre des trahisons_, p. . a. sorel, _la prise de jeanne d'arc_, proofs and illustrations, xiii, p. . p. champion, _loc. cit._, p. .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . de la fons-mélicocq, _documents inédits sur le siège de compiègne_, in _la picardie_, vol. iii, , pp. , . stevenson, _letters and papers_, vol. ii, part i, p. .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . p. champion, _guillaume de flavy_, p. .] [footnote : sorel, _la prise de jeanne d'arc_, proofs and illustrations, p. .] the lord treasurer of normandy raised aids to the amount of eighty thousand _livres tournois_, ten thousand of which were to be devoted to the purchase of jeanne. the count bishop of beauvais, who was taking this matter to heart, urged the sire de luxembourg to come to terms, mingled threats with coaxings, and caused the norman gold to glitter before his eyes. he seemed to fear, and his fear was shared by the masters and doctors of the university, that king charles would likewise make an offer, that he would promise more than king henry's ten thousand golden francs and that in the end, by dint of costly gifts, the armagnacs would succeed in winning back their fairy-godmother.[ ] the rumour ran that king charles, hearing that the english were about to gain possession of jeanne for a sum of money, sent an ambassador to warn the duke of burgundy not on any account to consent to such an agreement, adding that if he did, the burgundians in the hands of the king of france would be made to pay for the fate of the maid.[ ] doubtless the rumour was false; albeit the fears of the lord bishop and the masters of the paris university were not entirely groundless; and it is certain that from the banks of the loire the negotiations were being attentively followed with a view to intervention at a favourable moment. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, p. . u. chevalier, _l'abjuration de jeanne d'arc_, p. , note.] besides, some sudden descent of the french was always to be feared. captain la hire was ravaging normandy, the knight barbazan, la champagne, and marshal de boussac, the country between the seine, the marne and the somme.[ ] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, p. , note.] at length, about the middle of november, the sire de luxembourg consented to the bargain; jeanne was delivered up to the english. it was decided to take her to rouen, through ponthieu, along the sea-shore, through the north of normandy, where there would be less risk of falling in with the scouts of the various parties. from arras she was taken to the château of drugy, where the monks of saint-riquier were said to have visited her in prison.[ ] she was afterwards taken to crotoy, where the castle walls were washed by the ocean waves. the duke of alençon, whom she called her fair duke, had been imprisoned there after the battle of verneuil.[ ] at the time of her arrival, maître nicolas gueuville, chancellor of the cathedral church of notre dame d'amiens, was a prisoner in that castle in the hands of the english. he heard her confess and administered the communion to her.[ ] and there on that vast bay of the somme, grey and monotonous, with its low sky traversed by sea-birds in their long flight, jeanne beheld coming down to her the visitant of earlier days, the archangel saint michael; and she was comforted. it was said that the damsels and burgesses of abbeville went to see her in the castle where she was imprisoned.[ ] at the time of the coronation, these burgesses had thought of turning french; and they would have done so if king charles had come to their town; he did not come; and perhaps it was through christian charity that the folk of abbeville visited jeanne; but those among them who thought well of her did not say so, for fear they too should be suspected of heresy.[ ] [footnote : chronicle of jean de la chapelle, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. - . lefils, _histoire de la ville du crotoy et de son château_, pp. - . g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la panique anglaise_, p. , note . l'abbé bouthors, _histoire de saint-riquier_, abbeville, , pp. , , .] [footnote : perceval de cagny, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . a. sarrazin, _jeanne d'arc et la normandie_, pp. _et seq._; lanéry d'arc, _livre d'or_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. iii, p. . le p. ignace de jésus maria, _histoire généalogique des comtes de ponthieu et maïeurs d'abbeville_, paris, , p. . _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. , . _trial_, vol. v, p. .] the doctors and masters of the university pursued her with a bitterness hardly credible. in november, after they had been informed of the conclusion of the bargain between jean de luxembourg and the english, they wrote through their rector to the lord bishop of beauvais reproaching him for his delay in the matter of this woman and exhorting him to be more diligent. "for you it is no slight matter, holding as you do so high an office in god's church," ran this letter, "that the scandals committed against the christian religion be stamped out, especially when such scandals arise within your actual jurisdiction."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . m. fournier, _la faculté de décret et l'université de paris_, vol. i, p. .] filled with faith and zeal for the avenging of god's honour, these clerks were, as they said, always ready to burn witches. they feared the devil; but, perchance, though they may not have admitted it even to themselves, they feared him twenty times more when he was armagnac. jeanne was taken out of crotoy at high tide and conveyed by boat to saint-valery, then to dieppe, as is supposed, and certainly in the end to rouen.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . le p. ignace de jésus maria, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . f. poulaine, _jeanne d'arc à rouen_, paris, , in mo. ch. lemire, _jeanne d'arc en picardie et en normandie_, paris, , p. , _passim_. lanéry d'arc, _livre d'or_, pp. , .] she was conducted to the old castle, built in the time of philippe-auguste on the slope of the bouvreuil hill.[ ] king henry vi, who had come to france for his coronation, had been there since the end of august. he was a sad, serious child, harshly treated by the earl of warwick, who was governor of the castle.[ ] the castle was strongly fortified;[ ] it had seven towers, including the keep. jeanne was placed in a tower looking on to the open country.[ ] her room was on the middle storey, between the dungeon and the state apartment. eight steps led up to it.[ ] it extended over the whole of that floor, which was forty-three feet across, including the walls.[ ] a stone staircase approached it at an angle. there was but a dim light, for some of the window slits had been filled in.[ ] from a locksmith of rouen, one Étienne castille, the english had ordered an iron cage, in which it was said to be impossible to stand upright. if the reports of the ecclesiastical registrars are to be believed, jeanne was placed in it and chained by the neck, feet, and hands,[ ] and left there till the opening of the trial. at jean salvart's, at _l'Écu de france_, in front of the official's courtyard,[ ] a mason's apprentice saw the cage weighed. but no one ever found jeanne in it. if this treatment were inflicted on jeanne, it was not invented for her; when captain la hire, in the february of this same year, , took château gaillard, near rouen, he found the good knight barbazan in an iron cage, from which he would not come out, alleging that he was a prisoner on parole.[ ] jeanne, on the contrary, had been careful to promise nothing, or rather she had promised to escape as soon as she could.[ ] therefore the english, who believed that she had magical powers, mistrusted her greatly.[ ] as she was being prosecuted by the church, she ought to have been detained in an ecclesiastical prison,[ ] but the _godons_ were resolved to keep her in their custody. one among them said she was dear to them because they had paid dearly for her. on her feet they put shackles and round her waist a chain padlocked to a beam five or six feet long. at night this chain was carried over the foot of her bed and attached to the principal beam.[ ] in like manner, john huss, in , when he was delivered up to the bishop of constance and transferred to the fortress of gottlieben, was chained night and day until he was taken to the stake. [footnote : a. sarrazin, _jeanne d'arc et la normandie au xv'e siècle_, rouen, , in to, ch. v.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. - . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : l. de duranville, _le château de bouvreuil_, in _la revue de rouen_, , p. . a. deville, _la tour de la pucelle du château de rouen_, in _précis des travaux de l'académie de rouen_, - , pp. - . bouquet, _notice sur le donjon du château de philippe-auguste_, rouen, , pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , ; vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . a. sarrazin, _jeanne d'arc et la normandie_, p. , note . l. delisle, _revue des sociétés savantes_, , th series, vol. v, p. . f. bouquet, _jeanne d'arc au donjon de rouen_, in _revue de normandie_, , vol. vi, pp. - . l. delisle, _revue des sociétés savantes_, vol. v ( ). lanéry d'arc, pp. - .] [footnote : ballin, _renseignements sur le vieux-château de rouen_, in _revue de rouen_, , p. . a. sarrazin, _jeanne d'arc et la normandie_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. . a. sarrazin, pp. , .] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , . j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] five english men-at-arms,[ ] common soldiers (_houspilleurs_), guarded the prisoner;[ ] they were not the flower of chivalry. they mocked her and she rebuked them, a circumstance they must have found consolatory. at night two of them stayed behind the door; three remained with her, and constantly troubled her by saying first that she would die, then that she would be delivered. no one could speak to her without their consent.[ ] [footnote : lea, _a history of the inquisition in the middle ages_ ( ), vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , ; vol. iii, pp. , , , . a. sarrazin, _p. cauchon_, p. .] nevertheless folk entered the prison as if it were a fair (_comme au moulin_); people of all ranks came to see jeanne as they pleased. thus maître laurent guesdon, lieutenant of the bailie of rouen, came,[ ] and maître pierre manuel, advocate of the king of england, who was accompanied by maître pierre daron, magistrate of the city of rouen. they found her with her feet in shackles, guarded by soldiers.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] maître pierre manuel felt called upon to tell her that for certain she would never have come there if she had not been brought. sensible persons were always surprised when they saw witches and soothsayers falling into a trap like any ordinary christian. the king's advocate must have been a sensible person, since his surprise appeared in the questions he put to jeanne. "did you know you were to be taken?" he asked her. "i thought it likely," she replied. "then why," asked maître pierre again, "if you thought it likely, did you not take better care on the day you were captured?" "i knew neither the day nor the hour when i should be taken, nor when it should happen."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] a young fellow, one pierre cusquel, who worked for jean salvart, also called jeanson, the master-mason of the castle, through the influence of his employer, was permitted to enter the tower. he also found jeanne bound with a long chain attached to a beam, and with her feet in shackles. much later, he claimed to have warned her to be careful of what she said, because her life was involved in it. it is true that she talked volubly to her guards and that all she said was reported to her judges. and it may have happened that the young pierre, whose master was on the english side, wished to advise her and even did so. there is a suspicion, however, that like so many others he was merely boasting.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] the sire jean de luxembourg came to rouen. he went to the maid's tower accompanied by his brother, the lord bishop of thérouanne, chancellor of england; and also by humphrey, earl of stafford, constable of france for king henry; and the earl of warwick, governor of the castle of rouen. at this interview there was also present the young seigneur de macy, who held jeanne to be of very modest bearing, since she had repulsed his attempted familiarity. "jeanne," said the sire de luxembourg, "i have come to ransom you if you will promise never again to bear arms against us." these words do not accord with our knowledge of the negotiation for the purchase of the maid. they seem to indicate that even then the contract was not complete, or at any rate that the vendor thought he could break it if he chose. but the most remarkable point about the sire de luxembourg's speech is the condition on which he says he will ransom the maid. he asks her to promise never again to fight against england and burgundy. from these words it would seem to have been his intention to sell her to the king of france or to his representative.[ ] [footnote : morosini, vol. iii, p. .] there is no evidence, however, of this speech having made any impression on the english. jeanne set no store by it. "in god's name, you do but jest," she replied; "for i know well that it lieth neither within your will nor within your power." it is related that when he persisted in his statement, she replied: "i know that these english will put me to death, believing that afterwards they will conquer france." since she certainly did not believe it, it seems highly improbable that she should have said that the english would have put her to death. throughout the trial she was expecting, on the faith of her voices, to be delivered. she knew not how or when that deliverance would come to pass, but she was as certain of it as of the presence of our lord in the holy sacrament. she may have said to the sire de luxembourg: "i know that the english want to put me to death." then she repeated courageously what she had already said a thousand times: "but were there one hundred thousand _godons_ more than at present, they would not conquer the kingdom." on hearing these words, the earl of stafford unsheathed his sword and the earl of warwick had to restrain his hand.[ ] that the english constable of france should have raised his sword against a woman in chains would be incredible, did we not know that about this time this earl of stafford, hearing some one speak well of jeanne, straightway wished to transfix him.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] in order that the bishop and vidame of beauvais might exercise jurisdiction at rouen it was necessary that a concession of territory should be granted him. the archiepiscopal see of rouen was vacant.[ ] for this concession, therefore, the bishop of beauvais applied to the chapter, with whom he had had misunderstandings.[ ] the canons of rouen lacked neither firmness nor independence; more of them were honest than dishonest; some were highly educated, well-lettered and even kind-hearted. none of them nourished any ill will toward the english. the regent bedford himself was a canon of rouen, as charles vii was a canon of puy.[ ] on the th of october, in that same year , the regent, donning surplice and amice, had distributed the dole of bread and wine for the chapter.[ ] the canons of rouen were not prejudiced in favour of the maid of the armagnacs; they agreed to the demand of the bishop of beauvais and granted him the formal concession of territory.[ ] [footnote : c. de beaurepaire, _recherches sur le procès de condamnation de jeanne d'arc_, in _précis des travaux de l'académie de rouen_, - , pp. - . u. chevalier, _l'abjuration de jeanne d'arc_, p. .] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, p. .] [footnote : _gallia christiana_, vol. ii, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. , . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, p. ccxcv.] [footnote : c. de beaurepaire, _recherches sur le procès de condamnation de jeanne d'arc_, _loc. cit._ a. sarrazin, _jeanne d'arc et la normandie_, pp. , .] [footnote : december, . _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, p. .] on the rd of january, , by royal decree, king henry ordered the maid to be given up to the bishop and count of beauvais, reserving to himself the right to bring her before him, if she should be acquitted by the ecclesiastical tribunal.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] nevertheless she was not placed in the church prison, in one of those dungeons near the booksellers' porch, where in the shadow of the gigantic cathedral there rotted unhappy wretches who had erred in matters of faith.[ ] there she would have endured sufferings far more terrible than even the horrors of her military tower. the wrong the great council of england inflicted on jeanne by not handing her over to the ecclesiastical powers of rouen was far less than the indignity they thereby inflicted on her judges. [footnote : a. sarrazin, _jeanne d'arc et la normandie_, pp. , .] with the way thus opened before him, the bishop of beauvais proceeded with all the violence one might expect from a cabochien, albeit that violence was qualified by worldly arts and canonical knowledge.[ ] as promoter in the case, that is, as the magistrate who was to conduct the prosecution, he selected one jean d'estivet, called bénédicité, canon of bayeux and of beauvais, promoter-general of the diocese of beauvais. jean d'estivet was a friend of the lord bishop, and had been driven out of the diocese by the french at the same time. he was suspected of hostility to the maid.[ ] the lord bishop appointed jean de la fontaine, master of arts, licentiate of canon law, to be "councillor commissary" of the trial.[ ] one of the clerks of the ecclesiastical court of rouen, guillaume manchon, priest, he appointed first registrar. [footnote : j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, p. . de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. iii, p. . de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, p. . a. sarrazin, _jeanne d'arc et la normandie_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] in the course of instructing this official as to what would be expected of him, the lord bishop said to messire guillaume: "you must do the king good service. it is our intention to institute an elaborate prosecution (_un beau procès_) against this jeanne."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. iii, p. . a. sarrazin, _loc. cit._, pp. , .] as to the king's service, the lord bishop did not mean that it should be rendered at the expense of justice; he was a man of some priestly pride and was not likely to reveal his own evil designs. if he spoke thus, it was because in france, for a century at least, the jurisdiction of the inquisition had been regarded as the jurisdiction of the king.[ ] and as for the expression "an elaborate prosecution" (_un beau procès_), that meant a trial in which legal forms were observed and irregularities avoided, for it was a case in which were interested the doctors and masters of the realm of france and indeed the whole of christendom. messire guillaume manchon, well skilled in legal procedure, was not likely to err in a matter of legal language. an elaborate trial was a strictly regular trial. it was said, for example, that "n---- and n---- had by elaborate judicial procedure found such an one to be guilty."[ ] [footnote : l. tanon, _histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition en france_, pp. , .] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _recherches sur le procès de condamnation_, p. .] charged by the bishop to choose another registrar to assist him, guillaume manchon selected as his colleague guillaume colles, surnamed boisguillaume, who like him was a notary of the church.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. ; vol. iii, p. . de beaurepaire, _recherches...._ p. . a. sarrazin, _loc. cit._, pp. , .] jean massieu, priest, ecclesiastical dean of rouen, was appointed usher of the court.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . de beaurepaire, _recherches...._ p. . a. sarrazin, _loc. cit._, pp. , .] in that kind of trial, which was very common in those days, there were strictly only two judges, the ordinary and the inquisitor. but it was the custom for the bishop to summon as councillors and assessors persons learned in both canon and civil law. the number and the rank of those councillors varied according to the case. and it is clear that the obstinate upholder of a very pestilent heresy must needs be more particularly and more ceremoniously tried than an old wife, who had sold herself to some insignificant demon, and whose spells could harm nothing more important than cabbages. for the common wizard, for the multitude of those females, or _mulierculæ_, as they were described by one inquisitor who boasted of having burnt many, the judges were content with three or four ecclesiastical advocates and as many canons.[ ] when it was a question of a very notable personage who had set a highly pernicious example, of a king's advocate, for instance like master jean segueut, who that very year, in normandy, had spoken against the temporal power of the church, a large assembly of doctors and prelates, english and french, were convoked, and the doctors and masters of the university of paris were consulted in writing.[ ] now it was fitting that the maid of the armagnacs should be yet more elaborately and more solemnly tried, with a yet greater concourse of doctors and of prelates; and thus it was ordained by the lord bishop of beauvais. as councillors and assessors he summoned the canons of rouen in as great a number as possible. among those who answered his summons we may mention raoul roussel, treasurer of the chapter; gilles deschamps, who had been chaplain to the late king, charles vi, in ; pierre maurice, doctor in theology, rector of the university of paris in ; jean alespée, one of the sixteen who during the siege of had gone robed in black and with cheerful countenance to place at the feet of king henry v the life and honour of the city; pasquier de vaux, apostolic notary at the council of constance, president of the norman _chambre des comptes_; nicolas de vendères, whose candidature for the vacant see of rouen was being advocated by a powerful party; and, lastly, nicolas loiseleur. for the same purpose, the lord bishop summoned the abbots of the great norman abbeys, mont saint-michel-au-péril-de-la-mer, fécamp, jumièges, préaux, mortemer, saint-georges de boscherville, la trinité-du-mont-sainte-catherine, saint-ouen, bec, cormeilles, the priors of saint-lô, of rouen, of sigy, of longueville, and the abbot of saint corneille of compiègne. he summoned twelve ecclesiastical advocates; likewise famous doctors and masters of the university of paris, jean beaupère, rector in ; thomas fiefvé, rector in ; guillaume erart, nicolas midi,[ ] and that young doctor, abounding in knowledge and in modesty, the brightest star in the christian firmament of the day, thomas de courcelles.[ ] the lord bishop is bent upon turning the tribunal, which is to try jeanne, into a veritable synod; it is indeed a provincial council, before which she is cited. moreover, in effect, it is not only jeanne the maid, but charles of valois, calling himself king of france, and lawful successor of charles vi who is to be brought to justice. wherefore are assembled so many croziered and mitred abbots, so many renowned doctors and masters. [footnote : eymeric, _directorium inquisitorium_, quest. . j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, p. . de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, p. .] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _recherches...._ pp. _et seq._] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, pp. - . j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, pp. , . boucher de molandon, _guillaume erard l'un des juges de la pucelle_, in _bulletin du comité hist. and phil._, , pp. - .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. , note. du boulay, _historia universitatis, paris_, vol. v, pp. , . j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, p. . de beaurepaire, _notes_, pp. , . a. sarrazin, _loc. cit._, pp. , .] nevertheless, there were other bright and shining lights of the church, whom the bishop of beauvais neglected to summon. he consulted the two bishops of coutances and lisieux; he did not consult the senior bishop of normandy, the bishop of avranches, messire jean de saint-avit, whom the chapter of the cathedral had charged with the duty of ordination throughout the diocese during the vacancy of the see of rouen. but messire jean de saint-avit was considered and rightly considered to favour king charles.[ ] on the other hand those english doctors and masters, residing at rouen, who had been consulted in segueut's trial, were not consulted in that of jeanne.[ ] the doctors and masters of the university of paris, the abbots of normandy, the chapter of rouen, held firmly to the treaty of troyes; they were as prejudiced as the english clerks against the maid and the dauphin charles, and they were less suspected; it was all to the good.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , . de beaurepaire, _notes_, pp. - . a. sarrazin, _loc. cit._, pp. - .] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _recherches_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, p. .] on tuesday, the th of january, my lord of beauvais summoned eight councillors to his house: the abbots of fécamp and of jumièges, the prior of longueville, the canons roussel, venderès, barbier, coppequesne and loiseleur. "before entering upon the prosecution of this woman," he said to them, "we have judged it good, maturely and fully to confer with men learned and skilled in law, human and divine, of whom, thank god, there be great number in this city of rouen." the opinion of the doctors and masters was that information should be collected concerning the deeds and sayings publicly imputed to this woman. the lord bishop informed them that already certain information had been obtained by his command, and that he had decided to order more to be collected, which would be ultimately presented to the council.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - .] it is certain that a tabellion[ ] of andelot in champagne, nicolas bailly, requisitioned by messire jean de torcenay, bailie of chaumont for king henry, went to domremy, and with gérard petit, provost of andelot, and divers mendicant monks, made inquiry touching jeanne's life and reputation. the interrogators heard twelve or fifteen witnesses and among others jean hannequin[ ] of greux and jean bégot, with whom they lodged.[ ] we know from nicolas bailly himself that they gathered not a single fact derogatory to jeanne. and if we may believe jean moreau, a citizen of rouen, maître nicolas, having brought my lord of beauvais the result of his researches, was treated as a wicked man and a traitor; and obtained no reward for his expenditure or his labour.[ ] this is possible, but it seems strange. it can in no wise be true, however, that neither at vaucouleurs nor at domremy, nor in the neighbouring villages was anything discovered against jeanne. quite on the contrary, numbers of accusations were collected against the inhabitants in general, who were addicted to evil practices, and in particular against jeanne, who held intercourse with fairies,[ ] carried a mandrake in her bosom, and disobeyed her father and mother.[ ] [footnote : a notary or secretary in france under the old monarchy (w.s.).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , , .] abundant information was forthcoming, not only from lorraine and from paris, but from the districts loyal to king charles, from lagny, beauvais, reims, and even from so far as touraine and berry;[ ] which was information enough to burn ten heretics and twenty witches. devilries were discovered which filled the priests with horror: the finding of a lost cup and gloves, the exposure of an immoral priest, the sword of saint catherine, the restoration of a child to life. there was also a report of a rash letter concerning the pope and there were many other indications of witchcraft, heresy, and religious error.[ ] such information was not to be included among the documents of the trial.[ ] it was the custom of the holy inquisition to keep secret the evidence and even the names of the witnesses.[ ] in this case the bishop of beauvais might have pleaded as an excuse for so doing the safety of the deponents, who might have suffered had he published information gathered in provinces subject to the dauphin charles. even if their names were concealed, they would be identified by their evidence. for the purposes of the trial, jeanne's own conversation in prison was the best source of information: she spoke much and without any of the reserve which prudence might have dictated. [footnote : j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _recherches_, _loc. cit._ j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, pp. - . l. tanon, _histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition_, pp. - .] a painter, whose name is unknown, came to see her in her tower. he asked her aloud and before her guards what arms she bore, as if he wished to represent her with her escutcheon. in those days portraits were very seldom painted from life, except of persons of very high rank, and they were generally represented kneeling and with clasped hands in an attitude of prayer. though in flanders and in burgundy there may have been a few portraits bearing no signs of devotion, they were very rare. a portrait naturally suggested a person praying to god, to the holy virgin, or to some saint. wherefore the idea of painting the maid's picture doubtless must have met with the stern disapproval of her ecclesiastical judges. all the more so because they must have feared that the painter would represent this excommunicated woman in the guise of a saint, canonised by the church, as the armagnacs were wont to do. a careful consideration of this incident inclines us to think that this man was no painter but a spy. jeanne told him of the arms which the king had granted to her brothers: an azure shield bearing a sword between two golden _fleurs de lis_. and our suspicion is confirmed when at the trial she is reproached with pomp and vanity for having caused her arms to be painted.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] sundry clerks introduced into her prison gave her to believe that they were men-at-arms of the party of charles of valois.[ ] in order to deceive her, the promoter himself, maître jean d'estivet, disguised himself as a poor prisoner.[ ] one of the canons of rouen, who was summoned to the trial, by name maître nicolas loiseleur, would seem to have been especially inventive of devices for the discovery of jeanne's heresies. a native of chartres, he was not only a master of arts, but was greatly renowned for astuteness. in and he carried through difficult negotiations, which detained him long months in paris. in he was one of those deputed by the chapter to go to the cardinal of winchester in order to obtain an audience of king henry and commend to him the church of rouen. maître nicolas loiseleur was therefore a _persona grata_ with the great council.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, pp. - . a. sorel, _loc. cit._, pp. , .] having concerted with the bishop of beauvais and the earl of warwick, he entered jeanne's prison, wearing a short jacket like a layman. the guards had been instructed to withdraw; and maître nicolas, left alone with his prisoner, confided to her that he, like herself, was a native of the lorraine marches, a shoemaker by trade, one who held to the french party and had been taken prisoner by the english. from king charles he brought her tidings which were the fruit of his own imagination. no one was dearer to jeanne than her king. thus having won her confidence, the pseudo-shoemaker asked her sundry questions concerning the angels and saints who visited her. she answered him confidingly, speaking as friend to friend, as countryman to countryman. he gave her counsel, advising her not to believe all these churchmen and not to do all that they asked her; "for," he said, "if thou believest in them thou shalt be destroyed." many a time, we are told, did maître nicolas loiseleur act the part of the lorraine shoemaker. afterwards he dictated to the registrars all that jeanne had said, providing thus a valuable source of information of which a memorandum was made to be used during the examination. it would even appear that during certain of these visits the registrars were stationed at a peep-hole in an adjoining room.[ ] if we may believe the rumours current in the town, maître nicolas also disguised himself as saint catherine, and by this means brought jeanne to say all that he wanted. [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , ; vol. iii, pp. , , , _et seq._] he may not have been proud of such deceptions, but at any rate he made no secret of them.[ ] many famous masters approved him; others censured him.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] the angel of the schools, thomas de courcelles, when nicolas told him of his disguises, counselled him to abandon them. afterwards the registrars pretended that it had been extremely repugnant to them thus to overhear in hiding a conversation so craftily contrived. the golden age of inquisitorial justice must have been well over when so strict a doctor as maître thomas was willing thus to criticise the most solemn forms of that justice. inquisitorial proceedings must indeed have fallen into decay when two notaries of the church dream of eluding its most common prescriptions. the clerks who disguised themselves as soldiers, the promoter who took on the semblance of a poor prisoner, were exercising the most regular functions of the judicial system instituted by innocent iii. in acting the shoemaker and saint catherine, if he were seeking the salvation and not the destruction of the sinner, if, contrary to public report, far from inciting her to rebellion, he was reducing her to obedience, if, in short, he were but deceiving her for her own temporal and spiritual good, maître nicolas loiseleur was proceeding in conformity with established rules. in the _tractatus de hæresi_ it is written: "let no man approach the heretic, save from time to time two persons of faith and tact, who may warn him with precaution and as having compassion upon him, to eschew death by confessing his errors, and who may promise him that by so doing he shall escape death by fire; for the fear of death, and the hope of life may peradventure soften a heart which could be touched in no other wise."[ ] [footnote : _tractatus de hæresi pauperum de lugduno_, apud martene, _thesaurus anecd._, vol. v, col. . j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, pp. , .] the duty of registrars was laid down in the following manner: "matters shall be ordained thus, that certain persons shall be stationed in a suitable place so as to surprise the confidences of heretics and to overhear their words."[ ] [footnote : eymeric, _directorium_, part iii, _cautelæ inquisitorum contra hæreticorum cavilationes et fraudes_.] as for the bishop of beauvais, who had ordained and permitted such procedure, he found his justification and approbation in the words of the apostle saint paul to the corinthians: "i did not burden you: nevertheless, being crafty, i caught you with guile." "_ego vos non gravavi; sed cum essem astutus, dolo vos cepi_" (ii corinthians xii, ).[ ] [footnote : l. tanon, _histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition en france_, p. .] meanwhile, when jeanne saw the promoter, jean d'estivet, in his churchman's habit she did not recognise him. and maître nicolas loiseleur also often came to her in monkish dress. in this guise he inspired her with great confidence; she confessed to him devoutly and had no other confessor.[ ] she saw him sometimes as a shoemaker and sometimes as a canon and never perceived that he was the same person. wherefore we must indeed believe her to have been incredibly simple in certain respects; and these great theologians must have realised that it was not difficult to deceive her. [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , .] it was well known to all men versed in science, divine and human, that the enemy never entered into dealings with a maid without depriving her of her virginity.[ ] at poitiers the french clerks had thought of it, and when queen yolande assured them that jeanne was a virgin, they ceased to fear that she was sent by the devil.[ ] the lord bishop of beauvais in a different hope awaited a similar examination. the duchess of bedford herself went to the prison. she was assisted by lady anna bavon and another matron. it has been said that the regent was hidden meanwhile in an adjoining room and looking through a hole in the wall.[ ] this is by no means certain, but it is not impossible; he was at rouen a fortnight after jeanne had been brought there.[ ] whether the charge were groundless or well founded he was seriously reproached for this curiosity. if there were many who in his place would have been equally curious, every one must judge for himself; but we must bear in mind that my lord of bedford believed jeanne a witch, and that it was not the custom in those days to treat witches with the respect due to ladies. we must remember also that this was a matter in which old england was greatly concerned, and the regent loved his country with all his heart and all his strength. [footnote : vallet de viriville, _nouvelles recherches sur agnès sorel_, pp. _et seq._ du cange, _glossaire_, at the word _matrimonium_.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : a. sarrazin, _jeanne d'arc et la normandie_, p. .] upon the examination of the duchess of bedford as upon that of the queen of sicily jeanne appeared a virgin. the matrons knew various signs of virginity; but for us a more certain sign is jeanne's own word. when she was asked wherefore she called herself the maid, whether she were one in reality, she replied: "i may tell you that such i am."[ ] the judges, as far as we know, set no store by this favourable result of the examination. did they believe with the wise king solomon that in such matters all inquiry is vain, and did they reject the matrons' verdict by virtue of the saying: _virginitatis probatio non minus difficilis quam custodia_? no, they knew well that she was indeed a virgin. they allowed it to be understood when they did not assert the contrary.[ ] and since they persisted in believing her a witch, it must have been because they imagined her to have given herself to devils who had left her as they found her. the morals of devils abounded in such inconsistencies, which were the despair of the most learned doctors; every day new inconsistencies were being discovered. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , .] on saturday, the th of january, the lord abbot of fécamp, the doctors and masters, nicolas de venderès, guillaume haiton, nicolas coppequesne, jean de la fontaine, and nicolas loiseleur, met in the house of the lord bishop. there was read to them the information concerning the maid gathered in lorraine and elsewhere. and it was decided that according to this information a certain number of articles should be drawn up in due form; which was done.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] on tuesday, the rd of january, the doctors and masters above named considered the terms of these articles, and, finding them sufficient, they decided that they might be used for the examination. then they resolved that the bishop of beauvais should order a preliminary inquiry as to the deeds and sayings of jeanne.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] on tuesday, the th of february, jean d'estivet, called bénédicité, promoter, jean de la fontaine, commissioner, boisguillaume and manchon, registrars, and jean massieu, usher, took the oath faithfully to discharge their various offices. then straightway maître jean de la fontaine, assisted by two registrars, proceeded to the preliminary inquiry.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] on monday, the th of february, at eight o'clock in the morning, the doctors and masters assembled, to the number of eleven, in the house of the bishop of beauvais; there they heard the reading of the articles and the preliminary information. whereupon they gave it as their opinion, and, in conformity with this opinion, the bishop decided that there was matter sufficient to justify the woman called the maid being cited and charged touching a question of faith.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - .] but now a fresh difficulty arose. in such a trial it was necessary for the accused to appear at once before the ordinary and before the inquisitor. the two judges were equally necessary for the validity of the trial. now the grand inquisitor for the realm of france, brother jean graverent, was then at saint-lô, prosecuting on a religious charge a citizen of the town, one jean le couvreur.[ ] in the absence of brother jean graverent, the bishop of beauvais had invited the vice-inquisitor for the diocese of rouen to proceed against jeanne conjointly with himself. meanwhile the vice-inquisitor seemed not to understand; he made no response; and the bishop was left in embarrassment with his lawsuit on his hands. [footnote : _ibid._, p. . j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, p. . de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, pp. - . le p. chapotin, _la guerre de cent ans, jeanne d'arc et les dominicains_, pp. - . a. sarrazin, _p. cauchon_, p. .] this vice-inquisitor was brother jean lemaistre, prior of the dominicans of rouen, bachelor of theology, a monk right prudent and scrupulous.[ ] at length in answer to a summons from the usher, at four o'clock on the th of february, , he appeared in the house of the bishop of beauvais. he declared himself ready to intervene provided that he had the right to do so, which he doubted. as the reason for his uncertainty he alleged that he was the inquisitor of rouen; now the bishop of beauvais was exercising his jurisdiction as bishop of the diocese of beauvais, but on borrowed territory; wherefore was it not rather for the inquisitor of beauvais not for the inquisitor of rouen, to sit on the judgment seat side by side with the bishop?[ ] he declared that he would ask the grand inquisitor of france for an authorisation which should hold good for the diocese of beauvais. meanwhile he consented to act in order to satisfy his own conscience and to prevent the proceedings from lapsing, which, in the opinion of all, must have ensued had the trial been instituted without the concurrence of the holy inquisition.[ ] all preliminary difficulties were now removed. the maid was cited to appear on wednesday, the st of february,[ ] . [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, p. . doinel, _mémoire de la société archéologique-historique de l'orléanais_, , vol. xxiv, p. . le p. chapotin, _la guerre de cent ans, jeanne d'arc et les dominicains_, p. . u. chevalier, _l'abjuration de jeanne d'arc_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. - .] on that day, at eight o'clock in the morning, the bishop of beauvais, the vicar of the inquisitor, and forty-one councillors and assessors assembled in the castle chapel. fifteen of them were doctors in theology, five doctors in civil and canon law, six bachelors in theology, eleven bachelors in canon law, four licentiates in civil law. the bishop sat as judge. at his side were the councillors and assessors, clothed either in the fine camlet of canons or in the coarse cloth of mendicants, expressive, the one of sacerdotal solemnity, the other of evangelical meekness. some glared fiercely, others cast down their eyes. brother jean lemaistre, vice-inquisitor of the faith, was among them, silent, in the black and white livery of poverty and obedience.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] before bringing in the accused, the usher informed the bishop that jeanne, to whom the citation had been delivered, had replied that she would be willing to appear, but she demanded that an equal number of ecclesiastics of the french party should be added to those of the english party. she requested also the permission to hear mass.[ ] the bishop refused both demands;[ ] and jeanne was brought in, dressed as a man, with her feet in shackles. she was made to sit down at the table of the registrars. [footnote : _ibid._, pp. - .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] and now from the very outset these theologians and this damsel regarded each other with mutual horror and hatred. contrary to the custom of her sex, a custom which even loose women did not dare to infringe, she displayed her hair, which was brown and cut short over the ears. it was possibly the first time that some of those young monks seated behind their elders had ever seen a woman's hair. she wore hose like a youth. to them her dress appeared immodest and abominable.[ ] she exasperated and irritated them. had the bishop of beauvais insisted on her appearing in hood and gown their anger against her would have been less violent. this man's attire brought before their minds the works performed by the maid in the camp of the dauphin charles, calling himself king. by the stroke of a magic wand she had deprived the english men-at-arms of all their strength, and thereby she had inflicted sore hurt on the majority of the churchmen who were to judge her. some among them were thinking of the benefices of which she had despoiled them; others, doctors and masters of the university, recalled how she had been about to lay paris waste with fire and sword;[ ] others again, canons and abbots, could not forgive her perchance for having struck fear into their hearts even in remote normandy. was it possible for them to pardon the havoc she had thus wrought in a great part of the church of france, when they knew she had done it by sorcery, by divination and by invoking devils? "a man must be very ignorant if he will deny the reality of magic," said sprenger. as they were very learned, they saw magicians and wizards where others would never have suspected them; they held that to doubt the power of demons over men and things was not only heretical and impious, but tending to subvert the whole natural and social order. these doctors, seated in the castle chapel, had burned each one of them ten, twenty, fifty witches, all of whom had confessed their crimes. would it not have been madness after that to doubt the existence of witches? [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : le p. denifle and chatelain, _le procès de jeanne d'arc et l'université de paris_.] to us it seems curious that beings capable of causing hail-storms and casting spells over men and animals should allow themselves to be taken, judged, tortured, and burned without making any defence; but it was constantly occurring; every ecclesiastical judge must have observed it. very learned men were able to account for it: they explained that wizards and witches lost their power as soon as they fell into the hands of churchmen. this explanation was deemed sufficient. the hapless maid had lost her power like the others; they feared her no longer. at least jeanne hated them as bitterly as they hated her. it was natural for unlettered saints, for the fair inspired, frank of mind, capricious, and enthusiastic to feel an antipathy towards doctors all inflated with knowledge and stiffened with scholasticism. such an antipathy jeanne had recently felt towards clerks, even when as at poitiers they had been on the french side, and had not wished her evil and had not greatly troubled her. wherefore we may easily imagine how intense was the repulsion with which the clerks of rouen now inspired her. she knew that they sought to compass her death. but she feared them not; confidently she awaited from her saints and angels the fulfilment of their promise, their coming for her deliverance. she knew not when nor how her deliverance should come; but that come it would she never once doubted. to doubt it would indeed have been to doubt saint michael, saint catherine, and even our lord; it would have been to believe evil of her voices. they had told her to fear nothing, and of nothing was she afeard.[ ] fearless simplicity; whence came her confidence in her voices if not from her own heart? [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , , , _passim_.] the bishop required her to swear, according to the prescribed form with both hands on the holy gospels, that she would reply truly to all that should be asked her. she could not. her voices forbade her telling any one of the revelations they had so abundantly vouchsafed to her. she answered: "i do not know on what you wish to question me. you might ask me things that i would not tell you." and when the bishop insisted on her swearing to tell the whole truth: "touching my father and mother and what i did after my coming into france i will willingly swear," she said; "but touching god's revelations to me, those i have neither told nor communicated to any man, save to charles my king. and nought of them will i reveal, were i to lose my head for it." then, either because she wished to gain time or because she counted on receiving some new directions from her _council_, she added that in a week she would know whether she might so reveal those things. at length she took the oath, according to the prescribed form, on her knees, with both hands on the missal.[ ] then she answered concerning her name, her country, her parents, her baptism, her godfathers and godmothers. she said that to the best of her knowledge she was about nineteen years of age.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] questioned concerning her education, she replied: "from my mother i learnt my paternoster, my ave maria and my credo." but, asked to repeat her paternoster, she refused, for, she said, she would only say it in confession. this was because she wanted the bishop to hear her confess.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. - .] the assembly was profoundly agitated; all spoke at once. jeanne with her soft voice had scandalised the doctors. the bishop forbade her to leave her prison, under pain of being convicted of the crime of heresy. she refused to submit to this prohibition. "if i did escape," she said, "none could reproach me with having broken faith, for i never gave my word to any one." afterwards she complained of her chains. the bishop told her they were on account of her attempt to escape. she agreed: "it is true that i wanted to escape, and i still want to, just like every other prisoner."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] such a confession was very bold, if she had rightly understood the judge when he said that by flight from prison she would incur the punishment of a heretic. to escape from an ecclesiastical prison was to commit a crime against the church, but it was folly as well as crime; for the prisons of the church are penitentiaries, and the prisoner who refuses salutary penance is as foolish as he is guilty; for he is like a sick man who refuses to be cured. but jeanne was not, strictly speaking, in an ecclesiastical prison; she was in the castle of rouen, a prisoner of war in the hands of the english. could it be said that if she escaped she would incur excommunication and the spiritual and temporal penalties inflicted on the enemies of religion? there lay the difficulty. the lord bishop removed it forthwith by an elaborate legal fiction. three english men-at-arms, john grey, john berwoist, and william talbot, were appointed by the king to be jeanne's custodians. the bishop, acting as an ecclesiastical judge, himself delivered to them their charge, and made them swear on the holy gospels to bind the damsel and confine her.[ ] in this wise the maid became the prisoner of our holy mother, the church; and she could not burst her bonds without falling into heresy. the second sitting was appointed for the next day, the nd of february.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] chapter xi the trial for lapse (_continued_) when a record of the proceedings came to be written down after the first sitting, a dispute arose between the ecclesiastical notaries and the two or three royal registrars who had likewise taken down the replies of the accused. as might be expected, the two records differed in several places. it was decided that on the contested points jeanne should be further examined.[ ] the notaries of the church complained also that they experienced great difficulty in seizing jeanne's words on account of the constant interruptions of the bystanders. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. - .] in a trial by the inquisition there was no place fixed for the examination any more than for the other acts of the procedure. the judges might examine the accused in a chapel, in a chapter-house, or even in a prison or a torture-chamber. according to messire guillaume manchon it was in order to escape from the tumult of the first sitting,[ ] and because there was no longer any reason for proceeding with such solemn ceremony as at the opening of the trial, that the judge and his councillors met in the robing room, a little chamber at one end of the castle hall;[ ] and two english guards were stationed at the door. according to the rules of inquisitorial procedure, the assessors were not bound to be present at all the deliberations.[ ] this time forty-two were present, twenty-six of the original ones and six newly appointed. among these high clerics was brother jean lemaistre, vice inquisitor of the faith, a humble preaching friar. no longer as in the days of saint dominic was the vice inquisitor the hunting hound of the lord, now he was but the dog of the bishop, a poor monk, who dared neither to do nor to abstain from doing. such was the result of the assertion of gallican independence against papal supremacy. dumb and timid, brother jean lemaistre was the last and the least of all the brethren in that assembly, but he was ever looking for the day when he should be sovereign judge and without appeal.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . a. sarrazin, _jeanne d'arc et la normandie_, pp. , .] [footnote : l. tanon, _histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - .] jeanne was brought in by the usher, messire jean massieu. again she endeavoured to avoid taking the oath to tell everything; but she had to swear on the gospel.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] she was examined by maître jean beaupère, doctor in theology. in his university of paris he was regarded as a scholar of light and leading; it had twice appointed him rector. it had charged him with the functions of chancellor in the absence of gerson, and, in , had sent him with messire pierre cauchon to the town of troyes, to give aid and counsel to king charles vi. three years later it had despatched him to the queen of england and the duke of gloucester to enlist their support in its endeavour to obtain the confirmation of its privileges. king henry vi had just appointed him canon of rouen.[ ] [footnote : du boulay, _historia universitatis paris._, vol. v, p. . de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, pp. - .] maître jean's first question to jeanne was what was her age when she left her father's house. she was unable to say, although on the previous day she had stated her present age to be about nineteen.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] interrogated as to the occupations of her childhood, she replied that she was busy with household duties and seldom went into the fields with the cattle. "for spinning and sewing," she said, "i am as good as any woman in rouen."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._] thus even in things domestic she displayed her ardour and her chivalrous zeal; at the spinning-wheel and with the needle she challenged all the women in a town, without knowing one of them. questioned as to her confessions and her communions, she answered that she confessed to her parish priest or to another priest when the former was not able to hear her. but she refused to say whether she had received the communion on other feast-days than easter.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] in order to take her unawares, maître jean beaupère proceeded without method, passing abruptly from one subject to another. suddenly he spoke of her voices. she gave him the following reply: "being thirteen years of age, i heard the voice of god, bidding me lead a good life. and the first time i was sore afeard. and the voice came almost at the hour of noon, in summer, in my father's garden...." she heard the voice on the right towards the church. rarely did she hear it without seeing a light. this light was in the direction whence the voice came.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] when jeanne said that her voice spoke to her from the right, a doctor more learned and more kindly disposed than maître jean would have interpreted this circumstance favourably; for do we not read in ezekiel that the angels were upon the right hand of the dwelling; do we not find in the last chapter of saint mark, that the women beheld the angel seated on the right, and finally does not saint luke expressly state that the angel appeared unto zacharias on the right of the altar burning with incense; whereupon the venerable bede observes: "he appeared on the right as a sign that he was the bringer of divine mercy."[ ] but such things never occurred to the examiner. thinking to embarrass jeanne, he asked how she came to see the light if it appeared at her side.[ ] jeanne made no reply, and as if distraught, she said: "if i were in a wood i should easily hear the voices coming towards me.... it seems to me to be a voice right worthy. i believe that this voice was sent to me by god. after having heard it three times i knew it to be the voice of an angel." [footnote : bréhal, _mémoires et consultations en faveur de jeanne d'arc_, ed. lanéry d'arc, p. .] [footnote : see appendix i, letter from doctor g. dumas.] "what instruction did this voice give you for the salvation of your soul?" "it taught me to live well, to go to church, and it told me to fare forth into france."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] then jeanne related how, by the command of her voice, she had gone to vaucouleurs, to sire robert de baudricourt, whom she had recognised without ever having seen him before, how the duke of lorraine had summoned her to cure him, and how she had come into france.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] thereafter she was brought to say that she knew well that god loved the duke of orléans and that concerning him she had had more revelations than concerning any man living, save the king; that she had been obliged to change her woman's dress for man's attire and that her _council_ had advised her well.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] the letter to the english was read before her. she admitted having dictated it in those terms, with the exception of three passages. she had not said _body for body_ nor _chieftain of war_; and she had said _surrender to the king_ in the place _of surrender to the maid_. that the judges had not tampered with the text of the letter we may assure ourselves by comparing it with other texts, which did not pass through their hands, and which contain the expressions challenged by jeanne.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , ; vol. v, p. .] in the beginning of her career, she believed that our lord, the true king of france, had ordained her to deliver the government of the realm to charles of valois, as his deputy. the words in which she gave utterance to this idea are reported by too many persons strangers one to another for us to doubt her having spoken them. "the king shall hold the kingdom as a fief (_en commande_); the king of france is the lieutenant of the king of heaven." these are her own words and she did actually say to the dauphin: "make a gift of your realm to the king of heaven."[ ] but we are bound to admit that at rouen not one of these mystic ideas persists, indeed there they seem altogether beyond her. in all her replies to her examiners, she seems incapable of any abstract reasoning whatsoever and of any speculation however simple, so that it is hard to understand how she should ever have conceived the idea of the temporal rule of jesus christ over the land of the lilies. there is nothing in her speech or in her thoughts to suggest such meditations, wherefore we are led to believe that this politico-theology had been taught her in her tender, teachable years by ecclesiastics desiring to remove the woes of church and kingdom, but that she had failed to seize its spirit or grasp its inner meaning. now, in the midst of a hard life lived with men-at-arms, whose simple souls accorded better with her own than the more cultivated minds of the early directors of her meditations, she had forgotten even the phraseology in which those suggested meditations were expressed. interrogated concerning her coming to chinon, she replied: "without let or hindrance i went to my king. when i reached the town of sainte-catherine de fierbois, i sent first to the town of château-chinon, where my king was. i arrived there about the hour of noon and lodged in an inn, and, after dinner, i went to my king who was in his castle." [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. ; vol. iii, pp. , . morosini, vol. iii, p. . eberhard windecke, pp. , . j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, pp. - . le p. ayroles, _la vraie jeanne d'arc_, vol. iv, p. , ch. i, _la royauté de jésus christ_.] if we may believe the registrars, they never ceased wondering at her memory. they were amazed that she should recollect exactly what she had said a week before.[ ] nevertheless her memory was sometimes curiously uncertain, and we have reason for thinking with the bastard that she waited two days at the inn before being received by the king.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , , , , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] with regard to this audience in the castle of chinon, she told her judges she had recognised the king as she had recognised the sire de baudricourt, by revelation.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] the interrogator asked her: "when the voice revealed your king to you, was there any light?"[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] this question bore upon matters which were of great moment to her judges; for they suspected the maid of having committed a sacrilegious fraud, or rather witchcraft, with the complicity of the king of france. indeed, they had learnt from their informers that jeanne boasted of having given the king a sign in the form of a precious crown.[ ] the following is the actual truth of the matter: [footnote : we find it impossible to agree with quicherat (_aperçus nouveaux_) and admit that jeanne gradually invented the fable of the crown during her examination and while her judges were questioning her as to "the sign." the manner in which the judges conducted this part of their examination proves that they were acquainted with the whole of the extraordinary story.] the legend of saint catherine relates that on a day she received from the hand of an angel a resplendent crown and placed it on the head of the empress of the romans. this crown was the symbol of eternal blessedness.[ ] jeanne, who had been brought up on this legend, said that the same thing had happened to her. in france she had told sundry marvellous stories of crowns, and in one of these stories she imagined herself to be in the great hall of the castle at chinon, in the midst of the barons, receiving a crown from the hand of an angel to give it to her king.[ ] this was true in a spiritual sense, for she had taken charles to his anointing and to his coronation. jeanne was not quick to grasp the distinction between two kinds of truth. she may, nevertheless, have doubted the material reality of this vision. she may even have held it to be true in a spiritual sense only. in any case, she had of her own accord promised saint catherine and saint margaret not to speak of it to her judges.[ ] [footnote : _legenda aurea_, ed. , pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] "saw you any angel above the king?" she refused to reply.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] this time nothing more was said of the crown. maître jean beaupère asked jeanne if she often heard the voice. "not a day passes without my hearing it. and it is my stay in great need."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] she never spoke of her voices without describing them as her refuge and relief, her consolation and her joy. now all theologians agreed in believing that good spirits when they depart leave the soul filled with joy, with peace, and with comfort, and as proof they cited the angel's words to zacharias and mary: "be not afraid."[ ] this reason, however, was not strong enough to persuade clerks of the english party that voices hostile to the english were of god. [footnote : jean bréhal, _mémoires et consultations en faveur de jeanne d'arc_, ed. lanéry d'arc, p. .] and the maid added: "never have i required of them any other final reward than the salvation of my soul."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] the examination ended with a capital charge: the attack on paris on a feast day. it was in this connection possibly that brother jacques of touraine, a friar of the franciscan order, who from time to time put a question, asked jeanne whether she had ever been in a place where englishmen were being slain. "in god's name, was i ever in such a place?" jeanne responded vehemently. "how glibly you speak. why did they not depart from france and go into their own country?" a nobleman of england, who was in the chamber, on hearing these words, said to his neighbours: "by my troth she is a good woman. why is she not english?"[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] the third public sitting was appointed for two days thence, saturday, the th of february.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] it was lent. jeanne observed the fast very strictly.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] on friday, the rd, in the morning, she was awakened by her voices themselves. she arose from her bed and remained seated, her hands clasped, giving thanks. then she asked what she should reply to her judges, beseeching the voices thereupon to take counsel of our lord. first the voices uttered words she could not understand. that happened sometimes, in difficult circumstances especially. then they said:[ ] "reply boldly, god will aid thee." [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] that day she heard them a second time at the hour of vespers and a third time when the bells were ringing the _ave maria_ in the evening. in the night of friday and saturday they came and revealed to her many secrets for the weal of the king of france. thereupon she received great consolation.[ ] very probably they repeated the assurance that she would be delivered from the hands of her enemies, and that on the other hand her judges stood in great danger. [footnote : _ibid._, pp. - .] she depended absolutely on her voices for direction. when she was in difficulty as to what to say to her judges, she prayed to our lord; she addressed him devoutly, saying: "good god, for the sake of thy holy passion, i beseech thee if thou lovest me to reveal unto me what i should reply to these churchmen. touching my dress i know well how i was commanded to put it on; but as to leaving it i know nothing. in this may it please thee to teach me." then straightway the voices came.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] at the third sitting, held in the robing chamber, there were present sixty-two assessors, of whom twenty were new.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. - .] jeanne showed a greater repugnance than before to swearing on the holy gospels to reply to all that should be asked her. in charity the bishop warned her that this obstinate refusal caused her to be suspected, and he required her to swear, under pain of being convicted upon all the charges.[ ] such was indeed the rule in a trial by the inquisition. in a _béguine_, one la porète, refused to take the oath as required by the holy inquisitor of the faith, brother guillaume of paris. she was excommunicated forthwith, and without being further examined, after lengthy proceedings, she was handed over to the provost of paris, who caused her to be burned alive. her piety at the stake drew tears from all the bystanders.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : _grandes chroniques_, ed. p. paris, vol. v, p. .] still the bishop failed to force an unconditional oath from the maid; she swore to tell the truth on all she knew concerning the trial, reserving to herself the right to be silent on everything which in her opinion did not concern it. she spoke freely of the voices she had heard the previous day, but not of the revelations touching the king. when, however, maître jean beaupère appeared desirous to know them, she asked for a fortnight's delay before replying, sure that before then she would be delivered; and straightway she fell to boasting of the secrets her voices had confided to her for the king's weal. "i would wish him to know them at this moment," she said; "even if as the result i were to drink no wine from now till easter."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] "drink no wine from now till easter!" did she thus casually use an expression common in that land of the rose-tinted wine (_vin gris_), a drop or two of which with a slice of bread sufficed the domremy women for a meal?[ ] or had she caught this manner of speech with the habit of dealing hard clouts and good blows from the men-at-arms of her company? alas! what hypocras was she to drink during the five weeks before easter! she was merely making use of a current phrase, as was frequently her custom, and attributing no precise meaning to it, unless it were that wine vaguely suggested to her mind the idea of cordiality and the hope that after her deliverance she would see the lords of france filling a cup in her honour. [footnote : e. hinzelin, _chez jeanne d'arc_, pp. , .] maître jean beaupère asked her whether she saw anything when she heard her voices. she replied: "i cannot tell you everything. i am not permitted. the voice is good and worthy.... to this question i am not bound to reply." and she asked them to give her in writing the points concerning which she had not given an immediate reply.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] what use did she intend to make of this writing? she did not know how to read; she had no counsel. did she want to show the document to some false friend, like loiseleur, who was deceiving her? or was it her intent to present it to her saints? maître beaupère asked whether her voice had a face and eyes. she refused to answer and quoted a saying frequently on the lips of children: "one is often hanged for having spoken the truth."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . "_souvent on est blâmé de trop parler_," a proverb common in the th century. cf. le roux de lincy, _les proverbes français_, vol. ii, p. .] maître beaupère asked: "do you know whether you stand in god's grace?" this was an extremely insidious question; it placed jeanne in the dilemma of having to avow herself sinful or of appearing unpardonably bold. one of the assessors, maître jean lefèvre of the order of the hermit friars, observed that she was not bound to reply. there was murmuring throughout the chamber. but jeanne said: "if i be not, then may god bring me into it; if i be, then may god keep me in it."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] the assessors were astonished at so ready an answer. and yet no improvement ensued in their disposition towards her. they admitted that touching her king she spoke well, but for the rest she was too subtle, and with a subtlety peculiar to women.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , .] thereafter, maître jean beaupère examined jeanne concerning her childhood in her village. he essayed to show that she had been cruel, had displayed a homicidal tendency from her earliest years, and had been addicted to those idolatrous practices which had given the folk of domremy a bad name.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. - .] then he touched on a point of prime importance in elucidating the obscure origin of jeanne's mission: "were you not regarded as the one who was sent from the oak wood?" in this direction he might have succeeded in obtaining important revelations. false prophecies had indeed established jeanne's reputation in france; but these clerks were incapable of discriminating amongst all these pseudo-bedes and pseudo-merlins.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] jeanne replied: "when i came to the king, certain asked me whether there were in my country a wood called the oak wood; because of prophecies saying that from the neighbourhood of this wood should come a damsel who would work wonders. but to such things i paid no heed." this statement we must needs believe; but if she denied credence to the prophecy of merlin touching the virgin of the oak wood, she paid good heed to the prophecy foretelling the appearance of a deliverer in the person of a maid coming from the lorraine marches, since she repeated that prophecy to the two leroyers and to her uncle lassois, with an emphasis which filled them with astonishment. now we must admit that the two prophecies are as alike as two peas.[ ] [footnote : the french expression runs, "_se resemblent comme deux soeurs_."] passing abruptly from merlin the magician, maître jean beaupère asked: "jeanne, will you have a woman's dress?" she answered: "give me one; and i will accept it and depart. otherwise i will not have it. i will be content with this one, since god is pleased for me to wear it." on this reply, which contained two errors tending to heresy, the lord bishop adjourned the court.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] the morrow, the th of february, was the first sunday in lent. on that day or another, but probably on that day, my lord bishop sent jeanne a shad. having partaken of this fish she had fever and was seized with vomiting.[ ] two masters of arts of the paris university, both doctors of medicine, jean tiphaine and guillaume delachambre, assessors in the trial, were summoned by the earl of warwick, who said to them: "according to what has been told me, jeanne is sick. i have summoned you to devise measures for her recovery. the king would not for the world have her die a natural death. she is dear to him, for he has bought her dearly; his intent is that she die not, save by the hand of justice, and that she should be burned. do all that may be necessary, therefore, visit her attentively, and endeavour to restore her."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] conducted to jeanne by maître jean d'estivet, the doctors inquired of her the cause of her suffering. she answered that she had eaten a carp sent her by the lord bishop of beauvais, and that she believed it to be the cause of her sickness. did jeanne suspect the bishop of designing to poison her? that is what maître jean d'estivet thought, for he flew into a violent rage: "whore!" he cried, "it is thine own doing; thou hast eaten herrings and other things which have made thee ill." "i have not," she answered. they exchanged insults, and jeanne's sickness thereupon grew worse.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] the doctors examined her and found that she had fever. wherefore they decided to bleed her. they informed the earl of warwick, who became anxious: "a bleeding!" he cried; "take heed! she is artful and might kill herself." nevertheless jeanne was bled and recovered.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] on monday, the th, there was no examination.[ ] on the opening of the fourth sitting, tuesday, the th, maître jean beaupère asked her how she had been, which inquiry touched her but little. she replied drily: "you can see for yourself. i am as well as it is possible for me to be."[ ] [footnote : what induces me to fix this illness on the th of february is jean beaupère's question at the sitting of the th, "how have you been?" and jeanne's ironical reply. this indisposition must not be confused, as it generally has been, with jeanne's serious illness, which occurred after easter. the shad and the herrings belong naturally to lent; and maître delachambre says explicitly that jeanne recovered after the bleeding.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] this sitting was held in the robing chamber in the presence of fifty-four assessors.[ ] five of them had not been present before, and among them was maître nicolas loiseleur, canon of rouen, whose share in the proceedings had been to act the lorraine shoemaker and saint catherine of alexandria.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , ; vol. iii, pp. , , , , , , .] maître jean beaupère, as on the previous saturday, was curious to know whether jeanne had heard her voices. she heard them every day.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] he asked her: "is it an angel's voice that speaketh unto you, or the voice of a woman saint or of a man saint? or is it god speaking without an interpreter?" said jeanne: "this voice is the voice of saint catherine and of saint margaret; and on their heads are beautiful crowns, right rich and right precious. i am permitted to tell you so by messire. if you doubt it send to poitiers, where i was examined."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] she was right in appealing to the clerks of france. the armagnac doctors had no less authority in matters of faith than the english and burgundian doctors. were they not all to meet at the council? the examiner asked: "how know ye that they are these two saints? know ye them one from another?" said jeanne: "well do i know who they are; and i do know one from the other." "how?" "by the greeting they give me."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] let not jeanne be hastily taxed with error or untruth. did not the angel salute gideon (judges vi), and raphaël salute tobias (tobit xii)?[ ] [footnote : lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations en faveur de jeanne d'arc_, p. .] thereafter jeanne gave another reason: "i know them because they call themselves by name."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] when she was asked whether her saints were both clothed alike, whether they were of the same age, whether they spoke at once, whether one of them appeared before the other, she refused to reply, saying she had not permission to do so.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] maître jean beaupère inquired which of the apparitions came to her the first when she was about thirteen. jeanne said: "it was saint michael. i beheld him with my eyes. and he was not alone, but with him were angels from heaven. it was by messire's command alone that i came into france." "did you actually behold saint michael and these angels in the body?" "i saw them with the eyes of my head as plainly as i see you; and when they went away i wept and should have liked them to take me with them." "in what semblance was saint michael?"[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] she was not permitted to say. she was asked whether she had received permission from god to go into france and whether god had commanded her to put on man's dress. by keeping silence on this point she became liable to be suspected of heresy, and however she replied she laid herself open to serious charges,--she either took upon herself homicide and abomination, or she attributed it to god, which manifestly was to blaspheme. concerning her coming into france, she said: "i would rather have been dragged by the hair of my head than have come into france without permission from messire." concerning her dress she added: "dress is but a little thing, less than nothing. it was not according to the counsel of any man of this world that i put on man's clothing. i neither wore this attire nor did anything save by the command of messire and his angels."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] maître jean beaupère asked: "when you behold this voice coming towards you, is there any light?" then she replied with a jest, as at poitiers: "every light cometh not to you, my fair lord."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . i have re-inserted "my fine lord" according to _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] after all it was virtually against the king of france that these doctors of rouen were proceeding with craft and with cunning. maître jean beaupère threw out the question: "how did your king come to have faith in your sayings?" "because they were proved good to him by signs and also because of his clerks." "what revelations were made unto your king?" "that you will not hear from me this year." as he listened to the damsel's words, must not my lord of beauvais, who was in the counsels of king henry, have reflected on that verse in the book of tobias (xii, ): "it is good to keep close the secret of a king"? thereafter jeanne was called upon to reply at length concerning the sword of saint catherine. the clerks suspected her of having found it by the art of divination, and by invoking the aid of demons, and of having cast a spell over it. all that she was able to say did not remove their suspicions.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - .] then they passed on to the sword she had captured from a burgundian. "i wore it at compiègne," she said, "because it was good for dealing sound clouts and good buffets."[ ] the buffet was a flat blow, the clout was a side stroke. some moments later, on the subject of her banner, she said that, in order to avoid killing any one, she bore it herself when they charged the enemy. and she added: "i have never slain any one."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] the doctors found that her replies varied.[ ] of course they varied. but if like her every hour of the day and night the doctors had been seeing the heavens descending, if all their thoughts, all their instincts, good and bad, all their desires barely formulated, had been undergoing instant transformation into divine commands, their replies would likewise have varied, and they would have doubtless been in such a state of illusion that in their words and in their actions they would have displayed less good sense, less gentleness and less courage. [footnote : _ibid._, p. ; vol. ii, p. .] the examinations were long; they lasted between three and four hours.[ ] before closing this one, maître jean beaupère wished to know whether jeanne had been wounded at orléans. this was an interesting point. it was generally admitted that witches lost their power when they shed blood. finally, the doctors quibbled over the capitulation of jargeau, and the court adjourned.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , .] a famous norman clerk, maître jean lohier, having come to rouen, the count bishop of beauvais commanded that he should be informed concerning the trial. on the first saturday in lent, the th of february, the bishop summoned him to his house near saint-nicolas-le-painteur, and invited him to give his opinion of the proceedings. the views of maître jean lohier greatly disturbed the bishop. off he rushed to the doctors and masters, jean beaupère, jacques de touraine, nicolas midi, pierre maurice, thomas de courcelles, nicolas loiseleur, and said to them: "here's lohier, who holds fine views concerning our trial! he wants to object to everything, and says that our proceedings are invalid. if we were to take his advice we should begin everything over again, and all we have done would be worthless! it is easy to see what he is aiming at. by saint john, we will do nothing of the kind; we will go on with our trial now it is begun." the next day, in the church of notre dame, guillaume manchon met maître jean lohier and asked him: "have you seen anything of the records of the trial?" "i have," replied maître jean. "this trial is void. it is impossible to support it on many grounds: firstly, it is not in regular form."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , .] by that he meant that proceedings should not have been taken against jeanne without preliminary inquiries concerning the probability of her guilt; either he did not know of the inquiries instituted by my lord of beauvais, or he deemed them insufficient.[ ] [footnote : see the evidence of thomas de courcelles in _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] "secondly," continued maître jean lohier, "the judges and assessors when they are trying this case are shut up in the castle, where they are not free to utter their opinions frankly. thirdly, the trial involves divers persons who are not called, notably it touches the reputation of the king of france, to whose party jeanne belonged, yet neither he nor his representative is cited. fourthly, neither documents nor definite written charges have been produced, wherefore this woman, this simple girl, is left to reply without guidance to so many masters, to such great doctors and on such grave matters, especially those concerning her revelations. for all these reasons the trial appears to me to be invalid." then he added: "you see how they proceed. they will catch her if they can in her words. they take advantage of the statements in which she says, 'i know for certain,' concerning her apparitions. but if she were to say, 'it seems to me,' instead of 'i know for certain,' it is my opinion that no man could convict her. i perceive that the dominant sentiment which actuates them is one of hatred. their intention is to bring her to her death. wherefore i shall stay here no longer. i cannot witness it. what i say gives offence."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , , ; vol. iii, p. .] that same day maître jean left rouen.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , , , ; vol. iii, pp. , .] a somewhat similar incident occurred with regard to maître nicolas de houppeville, a famous cleric. in conference with certain churchmen, he expressed the opinion that to appoint as jeanne's judges members of the party hostile to her was not a correct method of procedure; and he added that jeanne had already been examined by the clerks of poitiers and by the archbishop of reims, the metropolitan of this very bishop of beauvais. hearing of this expression of opinion, my lord of beauvais flew into a violent rage, and summoned maître nicolas to appear before him. the latter replied that the official of rouen was his superior, and that the bishop of beauvais was not his judge. if it be true, as is related, that maître nicolas was thereafter cast into the king's prison, it was doubtless for a reason more strictly judicial than that of having offended the lord bishop of beauvais. it is more probable, however, that this famous cleric did not wish to act as assessor, and that he left rouen in order to avoid being summoned to take part in the trial.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , , , ; vol. iii, pp. , .] certain ecclesiastics, among others maître jean pigache, maître pierre minier, and maître richard de grouchet, discovered long afterwards that being threatened they had given their opinions under the influence of fear. "we were present at that trial," they said, "but throughout the proceedings we were always contemplating flight."[ ] as a matter of fact, no violence was done to any man's opinions, and such as refused to attend the trial were in no way molested. threats! but why should there be any? was it difficult to convict a witch in those days? jeanne was no witch. but, then, neither were the others. still, between jeanne and the other alleged witches there was this difference, that jeanne had cast her spells in favour of the armagnacs, and to convict her was to render a service to the english, who were the masters. this was a point to be taken into consideration; but there was something else which ought also to be borne in mind by thoughtful folk: such a conviction would at the same time offend the french, who were in a fair way to become the masters once more in the place of the english. these matters were very perplexing to the doctors; but the second consideration had less weight with them than the first; they had no idea that the french were so near reconquering normandy. [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , .] the fifth session of the court took place in the usual chamber on the st of march, in the presence of fifty-eight assessors, of whom nine had not sat previously.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , .] the first question the examiner put jeanne was: "what say you of our lord the pope, and whom think you to be the true pope?" she adroitly made answer by asking another question: "are there two?"[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] no, there were not two; clement viii's abdication had put an end to the schism; the great rift in the church had been closed for thirteen years and all christian nations recognized the pope of rome; even france who had become resigned to the disappearance of her avignon popes. there was something, however, which neither the accused nor her judges knew; on that st of march, , far from there being two popes, there was not even one; the holy see had fallen vacant by the death of martin v on the th of february, and the vacancy was only to be filled on the rd of march, by the election of eugenius iv.[ ] [footnote : _analecta juris pontif._, vol. xiv, p. .] the examiner in questioning jeanne concerning the holy see was not without a motive. that motive became obvious when he asked her whether she had not received a letter from the count of armagnac. she admitted having received the letter and having replied to it. copies of these two letters were included in the evidence to be used at the trial. they were read to jeanne. it appeared that the count of armagnac had asked the maid by letter which of the three popes was the true one, and that jeanne had replied to him, likewise by letter, that for the moment she had not time to answer, but that she would do so at her leisure when she should come to paris. having heard these two letters read, jeanne declared that the one attributed to her was only partially hers. and since she always dictated and could never read what had been taken down, it is conceivable that hasty words, uttered with her foot in the stirrup, may not have been accurately transcribed; but in a series of involved and contradictory replies she was unable to demonstrate how that which she had dictated differed from the written text;[ ] and in itself the letter appears much more likely to have proceeded from an ignorant visionary than from a clerk who would have some knowledge, however little, of church affairs. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] it contains certain words and turns of expression which are to be found in jeanne's other letters. there can hardly be any doubt that this letter is by her; she had forgotten it. there is nothing surprising in that; her memory, as we have seen, was curiously liable to fail her.[ ] [footnote : the expression, "_À dieu vous recommande, dieu soit garde de vous_," occurs in the letters to the people of tournai, to those of troyes and of reims, and in the letter to the duke of burgundy. and what is still more significant, in two of these letters, one to the people of troyes, the other to the duke of burgundy, are the words: "_le roi du ciel, mon droiturier et souverain seigneur_." _trial_, vol. i, p. .] on this document the judges based the most serious of charges; they regarded it as furnishing proof of a most blamable temerity. what arrogance on the part of this woman, so it seemed to them, to claim to have been told by god himself that which the church alone is entitled to teach! and to undertake by means of an inner illumination to point out the true pope, was that not to commit grave sin against the bride of christ, and with sacrilegious hand to rend the seamless robe of our lord? for once jeanne saw clearly how her judges were endeavouring to entrap her, wherefore she twice declared her belief in the sovereign pontiff of rome.[ ] how bitterly she would have smiled had she known that the lights of the university of paris, these famous doctors who held it mortal sin to believe in the wrong pope, themselves believed in his holiness about as much as they disbelieved in him; that at that very time certain of their number, maître thomas de courcelles, so great a doctor, maître jean beaupère, the examiner, maître nicolas loiseleur, who acted the part of saint catherine, were hastening to despatch her, in order that they might bestride their mules and amble away to bâle, there in the synagogue of satan to hurl thunderbolts against the holy apostolic see, and diabolically to decree the subjection of the pope to the council, the confiscation of his annates, dearer to him than the apple of his eye, and finally his own deposition.[ ] now would have been the time for her to have cried, with the voice of a simple soul, to the priests so keen to avenge upon her the church's honour: "i am more of a catholic than you!" and the words in her mouth would have been even more appropriate than on the lips of the limousin clerk of old. yet we must not reproach these clerics for having been good gallicans at bâle, but rather for having been cruel and hypocritical at rouen. [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, pp. , , , .] in her prison the maid prophesied before her guard, john grey. informed of these prophecies, the judges wished to hear them from jeanne's own mouth. "before seven years have passed," she said to them, "the english shall lose a greater wager than any they lost at orléans. they shall lose everything in france. they shall suffer greater loss than ever they have suffered in france, and that shall come to pass because god shall vouchsafe unto the french great victory." "how do you know this?" "i know it by revelation made unto me and that this shall befall within seven years. and greatly should i sorrow were it further delayed. i know it by revelation as surely as i know that you are before my eyes at this moment." "when shall this come to pass?" "i know neither the day nor the hour." "but the year?" "that ye shall not know for the present. but i should wish it to be before saint john's day." "did you not say that it should come to pass before saint martin in the winter?" "i said that before saint martin in the winter many things should befall and it might be that the english would be discomfited." whereupon the examiner asked jeanne whether when saint michael came to her he was accompanied by saint gabriel. jeanne replied: "i do not remember."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] she did not remember whether, in the multitude of angels who visited her, was the angel gabriel who had saluted our lady and announced unto her the salvation of mankind. so many angels and archangels had she seen that this one had not particularly impressed her. after an answer of such perfect simplicity how could these priests proceed to question her on her visions? were they not sufficiently edified? but no! these innocent answers whetted the examiner's zeal. with intense ardour and copious amplification, passing from angels to saints, he multiplied petty and insidious questions. did you see the hair on their heads? had they rings in their ears? was there anything between their crowns and their hair? was their hair long and hanging? had they arms? how did they speak? what kind of voices had they?[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] this last question touched on an important theological point. demons, whose voices are as rasping as a cart wheel or a winepress screw, cannot imitate the sweet tones of saints.[ ] [footnote : le loyer, iv, _livres des spectres_, angers, , in to.] jeanne replied that the voice was beautiful, sweet, and soft, and spoke in french. whereupon she was asked craftily wherefore saint margaret did not speak english. she replied: "how should she speak english, since she is not on the side of the english?"[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] two hundred years before, a poet of champagne had said that the french language, which our lord created beautiful and graceful, was the language of paradise. she was afterwards asked concerning her rings. this was a hard matter; in those days there were many magic rings or rings bearing amulets. they were fashioned by magicians under the influence of planets; and, by means of wonder-working herbs and stones, these rings had spells cast upon them and received miraculous virtues. constellation rings worked miracles. jeanne, alas! had possessed but two poor rings, one of brass, inscribed with the names jésus and marie, which she received from her father and mother, the other her brother had given her. the bishop kept the latter; the other had been taken from her by the burgundians.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , . vallet de viriville, _les anneaux de jeanne d'arc_, in _mémoires de la société des antiquaires de france_, vol. xxx, , pp. , .] an attempt was made to incriminate her in a pact made with the devil near the fairy tree. she was not to be caught thus, but retorted by prophesying her deliverance and the destruction of her enemies. "those who wish to banish me from this world may very likely leave it before me.... i know that my king will win the realm of france." she was asked what she had done with her mandrake. she said she had never had one.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] then the examiner appeared to be seized with curiosity concerning saint michael. "was he clothed?" she replied: "doubt ye that messire lacks wherewithal to clothe himself?" "had he hair?" "wherefore should he have cut it off?" "did he hold scales?" "i don't know."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] their object was to ascertain whether she saw saint michael as he was represented in the churches, with scales for weighing souls.[ ] [footnote : a. maury, _croyances et légendes du moyen âge_, pp. _et seq._] when she said that at the sight of the archangel it seemed to her she was not in a state of mortal sin, the examiner fell to arguing on the subject of her conscience. she replied like a true christian.[ ] then he returned to the miracle of the sign, which had not been referred to since the first sitting, to the mystery of chinon, to that wondrous crown, which jeanne, following saint catherine of alexandria, believed she had received from the hand of an angel. but she had promised saint catherine and saint margaret to say nothing about it. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] "when you showed the king the sign was there any one with him?" "i think there was no other person, albeit there were many folk not far off." "did you see a crown on the king's head when you gave him this sign?" "i cannot say without committing perjury." "had your king a crown at reims?" "my king, methinketh, took with pleasure the crown he found at reims. but afterwards a very rich crown was brought him. he did not wait for it, because he wished to hurry on the ceremony according to the request of the inhabitants of reims who desired to rid their town of the burden of men-at-arms. if he had waited he would have had a crown a thousand times more rich." "have you seen that richer crown?" "i cannot tell you without committing perjury. if i have not seen it i have heard tell how rich and how magnificent it is."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] jeanne suffered intensely from being deprived of the sacraments. one day when messire jean massieu, performing the office of ecclesiastical usher, was taking her before her judges, she asked him whether there were not on the way some church or chapel in which was the body of our lord jesus christ.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] messire jean massieu, dean of rouen, was a cleric of manners dissolute; his inveterate lewdness had involved him in difficulties with the chapter and with the official.[ ] he may have been neither as brave nor as frank as he wished to make out, but he was not hard or pitiless. [footnote : de beaurepaire, _recherches sur le procès de condamnation_, p. .] he told his prisoner that there was a chapel on the way. and he pointed out to her the chapel of the castle. then she besought him urgently to take her into the chapel in order that she might worship messire and pray. readily did messire jean massieu consent; and he permitted her to kneel before the sanctuary. devoutly bending, jeanne offered her prayer. the lord bishop, being informed of this incident, was highly displeased. he instructed the usher that in the future such devotions must not be tolerated. and the promoter, maître jean d'estivet, on his part, addressed many a reprimand to messire jean massieu. "rascal," he said, "what possesses thee to allow an excommunicated whore to approach a church without permission? if ever thou doest the like again i will imprison thee in that tower, where for a month thou wilt see neither sun nor moon." messire jean massieu heeded not this threat. and the promoter, perceiving this, himself took up his post at the chapel door when jeanne went that way. thus he prevented the hapless damsel from engaging in her devotions.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] the sixth sitting was held in the same court as before, in the presence of forty-one assessors, of whom six or seven were new, and among them was maître guillaume erart, doctor in theology.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , .] in the beginning, the examiner asked jeanne whether she had seen saint michael and the saints, and whether she had seen anything but their faces. he insisted: "you must say what you know." "rather than say all that i know, i would have my head cut off."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] they puzzled her with questions touching the nature of angelic bodies. she was simple; with her own eyes she had seen saint michael; she said so and could not say otherwise. the examiner, now as always, informed of the words she had let fall in prison, asked her whether she had heard her voices. "yes, in good sooth. they told me that i should be delivered. but i know neither the day nor the hour. and they told me to have good courage, and to be of good cheer."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] of all this the judges believed nothing, because demonologists teach that witches lose their power when an officer of holy church lays hands upon them. the examiner recurred to her man's dress. then he endeavoured to find out whether she had cast spells over the banners of her companions in arms. he sought out by what secret power she led the soldiers. this power she was willing to reveal: "i said to them: 'go on boldly against the english;' and at the same time i went myself."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. - .] in this examination, which was the most diffuse and the most captious of all, the following curious question was put to the accused: "when you were before jargeau, what was it you were wearing behind your helmet? was there not something round?"[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] at the siege of jargeau she had been struck on the head by a huge stone which had not hurt her; and this her own party deemed miraculous.[ ] did the judges of rouen imagine that she wore a golden halo, like the saints, and that this halo had protected her? [footnote : _chronique de la pucelle_, p. . _journal du siège_, pp. , .] later she was examined on a more ordinary subject, concerning a picture in the house of her host at orléans, representing three women: justice, peace, union. jeanne knew nothing about it;[ ] she was no connoisseur in tapestry and in paintings, like the duke of bar and the duke of orléans; neither were her judges, not on this occasion at any rate. and if they were concerned about a picture in the house of maître boucher, it was not so much on account of the painting as of the doctrine. these three women that the wealthy maître boucher kept in his house were doubtless nude. the painters of those days depicted on small panels allegories and bathing scenes, and they painted nude women. full foreheads, round heads, golden hair, short figures of small build but with embonpoint, their nudity minutely represented and but thinly veiled; many such were produced in flanders and in italy. the illustrious masters, to whom those pictures appeared corrupt and indecent, doubtless wished to reproach jeanne with having looked at them in the house of the treasurer of the duke of orléans. it is not difficult to divine what were the doctors' suspicions when they are found asking jeanne whether saint michael wore clothes, in what manner she greeted her saints, and how she gave them her rings to touch.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] they also wanted to make her admit that she had caused herself to be honoured as a saint. she disconcerted them by the following reply: "the poor folk came to me readily, because i did them no hurt, but aided them to the best of my power."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] then the examination ranged over many and various subjects: friar richard; the children jeanne had held over the baptismal fonts; the good wives of the town of reims who touched rings with her; the butterflies caught in a standard at château thierry.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] in this town, certain of the maid's followers were said to have caught butterflies in her standard. now doctors in theology knew for a certainty that necromancers sacrificed butterflies to the devil. a century before, at pamiers, the tribunal of the holy inquisition had condemned the carmelite pierre recordi, who was accused of having celebrated such a sacrifice. he had killed a butterfly and the devil had revealed his presence by a breath of wind.[ ] jeanne's judges may have wished to involve her in similar fashion, or their design may have been quite different. in war a butterfly in the cap was a sign either of unconditional surrender or of the possession of a safe conduct.[ ] were the judges accusing her or her followers of having feigned to surrender in order treacherously to attack the enemy? they were quite capable of making such a charge. however that may be, the examiner passed on to inquire concerning a lost glove found by jeanne in the town of reims.[ ] it was important to know whether it had been discovered by magic art. then the magistrate returned to several of the capital charges of the trial: communion received in man's dress; the hackney of the bishop of senlis, which jeanne had taken, thus committing a kind of sacrilege; the discoloured child she had brought back to life at lagny; catherine de la rochelle, who had recently borne witness against her before the official at paris; the siege of la charité which she had been obliged to raise; the leap which she had made in her despair from the keep of beaurevoir, and, finally, certain blasphemy she was falsely accused of having uttered at soissons concerning captain bournel.[ ] [footnote : lea ( ), vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _le jouvencel_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] then the lord bishop declared the examination concluded. he added, however, that should it appear expedient to interrogate jeanne more fully, certain doctors and masters would be appointed for that purpose.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] accordingly, on saturday, march the th, maître jean de la fontaine, the bishop's commissioner, went to the prison. he was accompanied by nicolas midi, gérard feuillet, jean fécard, and jean massieu.[ ] the first point touched upon at this inquiry was the sortie from compiègne. the priests took great pains to prove to jeanne that her voices must be bad or that she must have failed to understand them since her obedience to them had brought about her destruction. jacques gélu[ ] and jean gerson had foreseen this dilemma and had met it in anticipation with elaborate theological arguments.[ ] she was examined concerning the paintings on her standard, and she replied: "saint catherine and saint margaret bade me take the standard and bear it boldly, and have painted upon it the king of heaven. and this, much against my will, i told to my king. touching its meaning i know nought else."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : gélu, _questio quinta_, in _mémoires et consultations en faveur de jeanne d'arc_, ed. lanéry d'arc, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] they tried to make her out avaricious, proud, and ostentatious because she possessed a shield and arms, a stable, chargers, demi-chargers, and hackneys, and because she had money with which to pay her household, some ten to twelve thousand livres.[ ] but the point on which they questioned her most closely was the sign which had already been twice discussed in the public examinations. on this subject the doctors displayed an insatiable curiosity. for the sign was the exact reverse of the coronation at reims; it was an anointing, not with divine unction but with magic charm, the crowning of the king of france by a witch. maître jean de la fontaine had this advantage over jeanne, he knew what she was going to say and what she wished to conceal. "what is the sign that was given to your king?" [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] "it is beautiful and honourable and very credible; it is the best and the richest in the world...." "does it still last?" "it is well to know that it lasts and will last for a thousand years. my sign is in the king's treasury." "is it of gold or silver, or of precious stones, or is it a crown?" "nothing more will i tell unto you and no man can devise anything so rich as is this sign. nevertheless, the sign that you need is that god should deliver me out of your hands and no surer sign can he send you...." "when the sign came to your king what reverence did you make to it?" "i thanked our lord for having delivered me from the troubles caused me by the clerks of our party, who were arguing against me. and i knelt down several times. an angel from god and from none other gave the sign to my king. and many times did i give thanks to our lord. the clerks ceased to attack me when they had seen the said sign."[ ] [footnote : on the contrary it was then that they began to argue against her or that they began to argue most effectively. she seems to forget that the interview at chinon preceded the examination at poitiers. it is interesting to notice that brother pasquerel, who was informed of these matters by her, makes the same error in his evidence.] "did the churchmen of your party behold the sign?" "when my king and such as were with him had seen the sign and also the angel who gave it, i asked my king whether he were pleased, and he replied that he was. then i departed and went into a little chapel near by. i have since heard that after my departure more than three hundred persons saw the sign. for love of me and in order that i should be questioned no further, god was pleased to permit this sign to be seen by all those of my party who did see it." "did your king and you make any reverence to the angel when he brought the sign?" "yes, for my part, i did. i knelt and took off my hood."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] chapter xii the trial for lapse (_continued_) on monday, the th of march, brother jean lemaistre received from brother jean graverent, inquisitor of france, an order to proceed against and to pronounce the final sentence on a certain woman, named jeanne, commonly called the maid.[ ] on that same day, in the morning, maître jean de la fontaine, in presence of the bishop, for the second time examined jeanne in her prison.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] he first returned to the sign. "did not the angel who brought the sign speak?" "yes, he told my king that he must set me to work in order that the country might soon be relieved." "was the angel, who brought the sign, the angel who first appeared unto you or another?" "it was always the same and never did he fail me." "but inasmuch as you have been taken hath not the angel failed you with regard to the good things of this life?" "since it is our lord's good pleasure, i believe it was best for me to be taken." "in the good things of grace hath not your angel failed you?" "how can he have failed me when he comforteth me every day?"[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] maître jean de la fontaine then put her a subtle question and one as nearly approaching humour as was permissible in an ecclesiastical trial. "did saint denys ever appear to you?"[ ] [footnote : _ibid._] saint denys, patron of the most christian kings, saint denys, the war cry of france, had allowed the english to take his abbey, that rich church, to which queens came to receive their crowns, and wherein kings had their burying. he had turned english and burgundian, and it was not likely he would come to hold converse with the maid of the armagnacs. to the question: "were you addressing god himself when you promised to remain a virgin?" she replied: "it sufficed to give the promise to the messengers of god, to wit, saint catherine and saint margaret."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._] they had sought to entrap her, for a vow must be made directly to god. however, it might be argued, that it is lawful to promise a good thing to an angel or to a man; and that this good thing, thus promised, may form the substance of a vow. one vows to god what one has promised to the saints. pierre of tarentaise (iv, dist: xxviii, a. ) teaches that all vows should be made to god: either to himself directly or through the mediation of his saints.[ ] [footnote : lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations_, pp. , , . le p. ayroles, _la vraie jeanne d'arc_, vol. i, pp. _et seq._, _et seq._] according to a statement made during the inquiry, jeanne had given a promise of marriage to a young peasant. now the examiner endeavoured to prove that she had been at liberty to break her vow of virginity made in an irregular form; but jeanne maintained that she had not promised marriage, and she added: "the first time i heard my voices, i vowed to remain a virgin as long as it should please god." but this time it was saint michael and not the saints who had appeared to her.[ ] she herself found it difficult to unravel the tangled web of her dreams and her ecstasies. and from these vague visions of a child the doctors were laboriously essaying to elaborate a capital charge. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] then a very grave and serious question was asked her by the examiner: "did you speak to your priest or to any other churchman of those visions which you say were vouchsafed to you?" "no, i spoke of them only to robert de baudricourt and to my king."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._] the vavasour of champagne, a man of mature years and sound sense, when in the days of king john, he, like the maid, had heard a voice in the fields bidding him go to his king, went straightway and told his priest. the latter commanded him to fast for three days, to do penance, and then to return to the field where the voice had spoken to him. the vavasour obeyed. again the voice was heard repeating the command it had previously given. the peasant again told his priest, who said to him: "my brother, thou and i will abstain and fast for three days, and i will pray for thee to our lord jesus christ." this they did, and on the fourth day the good man returned to the field. after the voice had spoken for the third time, the priest enjoined his parishioner to go forthwith and fulfil his mission, since such was the will of god.[ ] [footnote : _chronique des quatre premiers valois_, p. .] there is no doubt that, according to all appearances, this vavasour had acted with greater wisdom than la romée's daughter. by concealing her visions from the priest the latter had slighted the authority of the church militant. still there might be urged in her defence the words of the apostle paul, that where the spirit of god is there is liberty.[ ] if ye be led of the spirit ye are not under the law.[ ] was she a heretic or was she a saint? therein lay the whole trial. [footnote : ii corinthians, iv.] [footnote : galatians v, . lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations_, p. .] then came this remarkable question: "have you received letters from saint michael or from your voices?" she replied: "i have not permission to tell you; but in a week i will willingly say all i know."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] such was her manner of speaking when there was something she wanted to conceal but not to deny. the question must have been embarrassing therefore. moreover, these interrogatories were based on a good store of facts either true or false; and in the questions addressed to the maid we may generally discern a certain anticipation of her replies. what were those letters from saint michael and her other saints, the existence of which she did not deny, but which were never produced by her judges? did certain of her party send them in the hope that she would carry out their intentions, while under the impression that she was obeying divine commands? without insisting further for the present, the examiner passed on to another grievance: "have not your voices called you _daughter of god_, _daughter of the church_, _great-hearted damsel_?" "before the siege of orléans and since, every day when they speak to me, many times have they called me _jeanne the maid, daughter of god_."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] the examination was suspended and resumed in the afternoon. maître jean de la fontaine questioned jeanne concerning a dream of her father, of which the judges had been informed in the preliminary inquiry.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] sad it is to reflect that when jeanne was accused of the sin of having broken god's commandment, "thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother," neither her mother nor any of her kin asked to be heard as witnesses. and yet there were churchmen in her family;[ ] but a trial on a question of faith struck terror into all hearts. [footnote : _ibid._, vol. v, p. . e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _nouvelles recherches sur la famille de jeanne d'arc_, pp. , . s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_, pp. xlvi _et seq._] again her man's dress was reverted to, and not for the last time.[ ] we marvel at the profound meditations into which the maid's doublet and hose plunged these clerics. they contemplated them with gloomy terror and in the light of the precepts of deuteronomy. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] thereafter they questioned her touching the duke of orléans. their object was to show from her own replies that her voices had deceived her when they promised the prisoner's deliverance. here they easily succeeded. then she pleaded that she had not had sufficient time. "had i continued for three years without let or hindrance i should have delivered him." in her revelations there had been mentioned a term shorter than three years and longer than one.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] questioned again touching the sign vouchsafed to her king, she replied that she would take counsel with saint catherine. on the morrow, tuesday, the th of march, the bishop and the vice-inquisitor went to her prison. for the first time the vice-inquisitor opened his mouth:[ ] "have you promised and sworn to saint catherine that you will not tell this sign?" [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] he spoke of the sign given to the king. jeanne replied: "i have sworn and i have promised that i will not myself reveal this sign, because i was too urgently pressed to tell it. i vow that never again will i speak of it to living man."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] then she continued forthwith: "the sign was that the angel assured my king, when bringing him the crown, that he should have the whole realm of france, with god's help and my labours, and that he should set me to work. that is to say, he should grant me men-at-arms. otherwise he would not be so soon crowned and anointed." "in what manner did the angel bring the crown? did he place it on your king's head?" "it was given to an archbishop, to the archbishop of reims, meseemeth in the king's presence. the said archbishop received it and gave it to the king; and i myself was present; and it is put in the king's treasury." "to what place was the crown brought?" "to the king's chamber in the castle of chinon." "on what day and at what hour?" "the day i know not, the hour was full day. no further recollection have i of the hour or of the month. but meseemeth it was the month of april or march; it will be two years this month or next april. it was after easter."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] "on the first day that you saw the sign did your king see it?" "yes. he had it the same day." "of what was the crown made?" "it is well to know that it was of fine gold, and so rich that i cannot count its riches; and the crown meant that he would hold the realm of france." "were there jewels in it?" "i have told you that i do not know." "did you touch it or kiss it?" "no." "did the angel who bore it come from above, or did he come from the earth?" "he came from above. i understand that he came by our lord's command, and he came in by the door of the chamber." "did the angel come along the ground, walking from the door of the room?" "when he was come before the king he did him reverence, bowing low before him and uttering the words concerning the sign which i have already repeated; and thereupon the angel recalled to the king's mind the great patience he had had in the midst of the long tribulation that had befallen him; and as he came towards the king the angel walked and touched the ground." "how far was it from the door to the king?" "methinketh it was a full lance's length;[ ] and as he had come so he returned. when the angel came, i accompanied him and went with him up the steps into the king's chamber; and the angel went in first. and i said to the king: 'sire, behold your sign; take it.'"[ ] [footnote : about ten feet (w.s.).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - .] in a spiritual sense we may say that this fable is true. this crown, which "flowers sweetly and will flower sweetly if it be well guarded,"[ ] is the crown of victory. when the maid beholds the angel who brought it, it is her own image that appears before her. had not a theologian of her own party said that she might be called an angel? not that she had the nature of an angel, but she did the work of one.[ ] [footnote : "_fleure bon et fleurera bon, pourvu qu'elle soit bien gardée._"] [footnote : lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations_, p. . le p. ayroles, _la vraie jeanne d'arc_, vol. i, p. .] she began to describe the angels who had come with her to the king: "so far as i saw, certain among them were very like, the others different. some had wings. some wore crowns, others did not. and they were with saint catherine and saint margaret, and they accompanied the angel of whom i have spoken and the other angels also into the chamber of the king."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] and thus for a long time, as she was pressed by her interrogator, she continued to tell these marvellous stories one after another. when she was asked for the second time whether the angel had written her letters, she denied it.[ ] but now it was the angel who bore the crown and not saint michael who was in question. and despite her having said they were one and the same, she may have distinguished between them. therefore we shall never know whether she did receive letters from saint michael the archangel, or from saint catherine and from saint margaret. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] thereafter the examiner inquired touching a cup lost at reims and found by jeanne as well as the gloves.[ ] saints sometimes condescended to find things that had been lost, as is proved by the example of saint antony of padua. it was always with the help of god. necromancers imitated their powers by invoking the aid of demons and by profaning sacred things. [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] she was also questioned concerning the priest who had a concubine. here again she was reproached with being possessed of a magic gift of clairvoyance. it was by magic she had known that this priest had a concubine. many other such things were reported of her. for example, it was said that at the sight of a certain loose woman she knew that this woman had killed her child.[ ] [footnote : eberhard windecke, pp. , .] then recurred the same old questions: "when you went to the attack on paris did you receive a revelation from your voices? was it revealed to you that you should go against la charité? was it a revelation that caused you to go to pont-l'evêque?" she denied that she had then received any revelation from her voices. the last question was: "did you not say before paris, 'surrender the town in the name of jesus'?" she answered that she had not spoken those words, but had said, "surrender the town to the king of france."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] the parisians who were engaged in repelling the attack had heard her saying, "surrender to us speedily in the name of jesus." these words are consistent with all we know of jeanne in the early years of her career. she believed it to be the will of messire that the towns of the realm should surrender to her, whom he had sent to reconquer them. we have noticed already that at the time of her trial jeanne had completely lost touch with her early illuminations and that she spoke in quite another language. on the morrow, wednesday, the th of march, there were two more examinations in the prison. the morning interrogatory turned on the leap from beaurevoir. she confessed to having leapt without permission from her voices, preferring to die rather than to fall into the hands of the english.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] she was accused of blasphemy against god; but that was false.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] the bishop intervened: "you have said that we, the lord bishop, run great danger by bringing you to trial. of what danger were you speaking? in what peril do we stand, we, your judges, and others?" "i said to my lord of beauvais: 'you declare that you are my judge, i know not if you be. but take heed that ye judge not wrongly, for thus would ye run great danger; and i warn you, so that if our lord chastise you for it, i have done my duty by warning you.'" "what is this peril or this danger?" "saint catherine has told me that i shall have succour. i know not whether it will be my deliverance from prison, or whether, during the trial, some tumult shall arise whereby i shall be delivered. i think it will be either one or the other. my voices most often tell me i shall be delivered by a great victory. and afterwards they say to me: 'be thou resigned, grieve not at thy martyrdom; thou shalt come in the end to the kingdom of paradise.' this do my voices say unto me simply and absolutely. i mean to say without fail. and i call my martyrdom the trouble and anguish i suffer in prison. i know not whether still greater sufferings are before me, but i wait on the lord."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] it would seem that thus her voices promised the maid at once a spiritual and a material deliverance, but the two could hardly occur together. this reply, expressive alike of fear and of illusion, was one to call forth pity from the hardest; and yet her judges regarded it merely as a means whereby they might entrap her. feigning to understand that from her revelations she derived a heretical confidence in her eternal salvation, the examiner put to her an old question in a new form. she had already given it a saintly answer. he inquired whether her voices had told her that she would finally come to the kingdom of paradise if she continued in the assurance that she would be saved and not condemned in hell. to this she replied with that perfect faith with which her voices inspired her: "i believe what my voices have told me touching my salvation as strongly as if i were already in paradise." such a reply was heretical. the examiner, albeit he was not accustomed to discuss the maid's replies, could not forbear remarking that this one was of great importance.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] accordingly in the afternoon of that same day, she was shown a consequence of her error; to wit, that if she received from her voices the assurance of eternal salvation she needed not to confess.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] on this occasion jeanne was questioned touching the affair of franquet d'arras. the bailie of senlis had done wrong in asking the maid for her prisoner,[ ] the lord franquet,[ ] in order to put him to death, and jeanne's judges now incriminated her. [footnote : see _ante_, pp. _et seq._ (w.s.).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] the examiner pointed out the mortal sins with which the accused might be charged: first, having attacked paris on a feast-day; second, having stolen the hackney of the lord bishop of senlis; third, having leapt from beaurevoir; fourth, having worn man's dress; fifth, having consented to the death of a prisoner of war. touching all these matters, jeanne did not believe that she had committed mortal sin; but with regard to the leap from beaurevoir she acknowledged that she was wrong, and that she had asked god to forgive her.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] it was sufficiently established that the accused had fallen into religious error. the tribunal of the inquisition, out of its abounding mercy, desired the salvation of the sinner. wherefore on the morning of the very next day, thursday, the th of march, my lord of beauvais exhorted jeanne to submit to the church, and essayed to make her understand that she ought to obey the church militant, for the church militant was one thing and the church triumphant another. jeanne listened to him dubiously.[ ] on that day she was again questioned touching her flight from the château of beaulieu and her intention to leave the tower without the permission of my lord of beauvais. as to the latter she was firmly resolute. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] "were i to see the door open, i would go, and it would be with the permission of our lord. i firmly believe that if i were to see the door open and if my guards and the other english were beyond power of resistance, i should regard it as my permission and as succour sent unto me by our lord. but without permission i would not go, save that i might essay to go, in order to know whether it were our lord's will. the proverb says: 'help thyself and god will help thee.'[ ] this i say so that, if i were to go, it should not be said i went without permission."[ ] [footnote : _ayde-toy, dieu te aidera._ _le jouvencel_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] then they reverted to the question of her wearing man's dress. "which would you prefer, to wear a woman's dress and hear mass, or to continue in man's dress and not to hear mass?" "promise me that i shall hear mass if i am in woman's dress, and then i will answer you." "i promise you that you shall hear mass when you are in woman's dress." "and what do you say if i have promised and sworn to our king not to put off these clothes? nevertheless, i say unto you: 'have me a robe made, long enough to touch the ground, but without a train. i will go to mass in it; then, when i come back, i will return to my present clothes.'" "you must wear woman's dress altogether and without conditions." "send me a dress like that worn by your burgess's daughters, to wit, a long _houppelande_; and i will take it and even a woman's hood to go and hear mass. but with all my heart i entreat you to leave me these clothes i am now wearing, and let me hear mass without changing anything."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] her aversion to putting off man's dress is not to be explained solely by the fact that this dress preserved her best against the violence of the men-at-arms; it is possible that no such objection existed. she was averse to wearing woman's dress because she had not received permission from her voices; and we may easily divine why not. was she not a chieftain of war? how humiliating for such an one to wear petticoats like a townsman's wife! and above all things just now, when at any moment the french might come and deliver her by some great feat of arms. ought they not to find their maid in man's attire, ready to put on her armour and fight with them? thereafter the examiner asked her whether she would submit to the church, whether she made a reverence to her voices, whether she believed the saints, whether she offered them lighted candles, whether she obeyed them, whether in war she had ever done anything without their permission or contrary to their command.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. - .] then they came to the question which they held to be the most difficult of all: "if the devil were to take upon himself the form of an angel, how would you know whether he were a good angel or a bad?" she replied with a simplicity which appeared presumptuous: "i should easily discern whether it were saint michael or an imitation of him."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] two days later, on saturday, the th of march, jeanne was examined in her prison both morning and evening.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] hitherto she had been very loath to describe the countenance and the dress of the angel and the saints who had visited her in the village. maître jean de la fontaine endeavoured to obtain some light on this subject. "in what form and semblance did saint michael come to you? was he tall and how was he clothed?" "he came in the form of a true _prud'homme_."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._] jeanne was not one to believe she saw the archangel in a long doctor's robe or wearing a cope of gold. moreover it was not thus that he figured in the churches. there he was represented in painting and in sculpture, clothed in glittering armour, with a golden crown on his helmet.[ ] in such guise did he appear to her "in the form of a right true _prud'homme_," to take a word from the _chanson de roland_, where a great sword thrust is called the thrust of a _prud'homme_. he came to her in the garb of a great knight, like arthur and charlemagne, wearing full armour. [footnote : s. luce, _jeanne d'arc à domremy_. proofs and illustrations, pp. , .] once again the examiner put to jeanne that question on which her life or death depended: "will you submit all your deeds and sayings, good or bad, to the judgment of our mother, holy church?" "as for the church, i love her and would maintain her with all my power, for religion's sake," the maid replied; "and i am not one to be kept from church and from hearing mass. but as for the good works which i have wrought, and touching my coming, for them i must give an account to the king of heaven, who has sent me to charles, son of charles, king of france. and you will see that the french will shortly accomplish a great work, to which god will appoint them, in which they will shake nearly all france. i say it in order that when it shall come to pass, it may be remembered that i have said it."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] but she was unable to name the time when this great work should be accomplished; and maître jean de la fontaine returned to the point on which jeanne's fate depended. "will you submit to the judgment of the church?" "i appeal to our lord, who hath sent me, to our lady and to all the blessed saints in paradise. to my mind our lord and his church are one, and no distinction should be made. wherefore do you essay to make out that they are not one?" in justice to maître jean de la fontaine we are bound to admit the lucidity of his reply. "there is the church triumphant, in which are god, his saints, the angels and the souls that are saved," he said. "there is also the church militant, which is our holy father, the pope, the vicar of god on earth; the cardinals, the prelates of the church and the clergy, with all good christians and catholics; and this church in its assembly cannot err, for it is moved by the holy ghost. will you appeal to the church militant?" "i am come to the king of france from god, from the virgin mary and all the blessed saints in paradise and from the church victorious above and by their command. to this church i submit all the good deeds i have done and shall do. as to replying whether i will submit to the church militant, for the present, i will make no further answer."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] again she was offered a woman's dress in which to hear mass; she refused it. "as for a woman's dress, i will not take it yet, not until it be our lord's will. and if it should come to pass that i be taken to judgment and there divested of my clothes, i beg my lords of the church the favour of a woman's smock and covering for my head. i would rather die than deny what our lord hath caused me to do. i believe firmly that our lord will not let it come to pass that i should be cast so low, and that soon i shall have help from god, and that by a miracle." thereafter the following questions were put to her: "do you not believe to-day that fairies are evil spirits?" "i do not know." "do you know whether saint catherine and saint margaret hate the english?" "they love what our lord loves and hate what god hates." "does god hate the english?" "touching the love or hatred of god for the english and what he will do for their souls i know nothing. but i do know that they will all be driven out of france, save those who die there, and that god will send victory to the french and defeat to the english." "was god on the side of the english when they prospered in france?" "i know not whether god hated the french. but i believe that he permitted them to be beaten for their sins, if they were in sin."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] jeanne was asked certain questions touching the banner on which she had caused angels to be painted. she replied that she had had angels painted as she had seen them represented in churches.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] at this point the examination was adjourned. the last interrogation in the prison[ ] took place after dinner. she had now endured fifteen in twenty-five days, but her courage never flagged. this last time the subjects were more than usually diverse and confused. first, the examiner essayed to discover by what charms and evil practices good fortune and victory had attended the standard painted with angelic figures. then he wanted to know wherefore the clerks put on jeanne's letters the sacred names of jésus and marie.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. - .] then came the following subtle question: "do you believe that if you were married your voices would come to you?" it was well known that she dearly cherished her virginity. certain of her words might be interpreted to mean that she considered this virginity to be the cause of her good fortune; wherefore her examiners were curious to know whether if she were adroitly approached she might not be brought to cast scorn on the married state and to condemn intercourse between husbands and wives. such a condemnation would have been a grievous error, savouring of the heresy of the cathari.[ ] [footnote : martène and durand, _thesaurus novus anecdotorum_, vol. v, col. _et seq._] she replied: "i know not and i appeal to our lord."[ ] then there followed another question much more dangerous for one who like jeanne loved her king with all her heart. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] "do you think and firmly believe that your king did right to kill or cause to be killed my lord of burgundy?" "it was sore pity for the realm of france."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] then did the examiner put to her this grave question: "do you hold yourself bound to answer the whole truth to the pope, god's vicar, on all that may be asked you touching religion and your conscience?" "i demand to be taken before him. then will i make unto him such answer as behoveth."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] these words involved an appeal to the pope, and such an appeal was lawful. "in doubtful matters touching on religion," said st. thomas, "there ought always to be an appeal to the pope or to the general council." if jeanne's appeal were not in regular judicial form, it was not her fault. she was ignorant of legal matters and neither guide nor counsel had been granted to her. to the best of her knowledge, and according to wont and justice, she appealed to the common father of the faithful. the doctors and masters were silent. and thus was closed against the accused the one way of deliverance remaining to her. she was now hopelessly lost. it is not surprising that jeanne's judges, who were partisans of england, ignored her right of appeal; but it is surprising that the doctors and masters of the french party, the clerks of the provinces loyal to king charles, did not all and with one voice sign an appeal and demand that the maid, who had been judged worthy by her examiners at poitiers, should be taken before the pope and the council. instead of replying to jeanne's request, the examiners inquired further concerning those much discussed magic rings and apparitions of demons.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] "did you ever kiss and embrace the saints, catherine and margaret?" "i embraced them both." "were they of a sweet savour?" "it is well to know. yea, their savour was sweet." "when embracing them did you feel heat or anything else?" "i could not have embraced them without feeling and touching them." "what part did you kiss, face or feet?" "it is more fitting to kiss their feet than their faces." "did you not give them chaplets of flowers?" "i have often done them honour by crowning with flowers their images in churches. but to those who appeared to me never have i given flowers as far as i can remember." "know you aught of those who consort with fairies?" "i have never done so nor have i known anything about them. yet i have heard of them and that they were seen on thursdays; but i do not believe it, and to me it seems sorcery."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] then came a question touching her standard, deemed enchanted by her judges. it elicited one of those epigrammatic replies she loved. "wherefore was your standard rather than those of the other captains carried into the church of reims?" "it had been in the contest, wherefore should it not share the prize?"[ ] [footnote : _ibid._] now that the inquiries and examinations were concluded, it was announced that the preliminary trial was at an end. the so-called trial in ordinary opened on the tuesday after palm sunday, the th of march, in a room near the great hall of the castle.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] before ordering the deed of accusation to be read, my lord of beauvais offered jeanne the aid of an advocate.[ ] if this offer had been postponed till then, it was doubtless because in his opinion jeanne had not previously needed such aid. it is well known that a heretic's advocate, if he would himself escape falling into heresy, must strictly limit his methods of defence. during the preliminary inquiry he must confine himself to discovering the names of the witnesses for the prosecution and to making them known to the accused. if the heretic pleaded guilty then it was useless to grant him an advocate.[ ] now my lord maintained that the accusation was founded not on the evidence of witnesses but on the avowals of the accused. and this was doubtless his reason for not offering jeanne an advocate before the opening of the trial in ordinary, which bore upon matters of doctrine. [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, pp. , . e. méru, _directorium inquisitorium_, romæ, , p. .] the lord bishop thus addressed the maid: "jeanne," said he, "all persons here present are churchmen of consummate knowledge, whose will and intention it is to proceed against you in all piety and kindness, seeking neither vengeance nor corporal chastisement, but your instruction and your return into the way of truth and salvation. as you are neither learned nor sufficiently instructed in letters or in the difficult matters which are to be discussed, to take counsel of yourself, touching what you should do or reply, we offer you to choose as your advocate one or more of those present, as you will. if you will not choose, then one shall be appointed for you by us, in order that he may advise you touching what you may do or say...."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, pp. , .] considering what the method of procedure was, this was a gracious offer. and even though my lord of beauvais obliged the accused to choose from among the counsellors and assessors, whom he had himself summoned to the trial, he did more than he was bound to do. the choice of a counsel did not belong to the accused; it belonged to the judge, whose duty it was to appoint an honest, upright person. moreover, it was permissible for an ecclesiastical judge to refuse to the end to grant the accused any counsel whatsoever. nicolas eymeric, in his _directorium_, decides that the bishop and the inquisitor, acting conjointly, may constitute authority sufficient for the interpretation of the law and may proceed informally, _de plano_, dispensing with the ceremony of appointing counsel and all the paraphernalia of a trial.[ ] [footnote : l. tanon, _histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition_, pp. _et seq._ u. chevalier, _l'abjuration de jeanne d'arc_, p. .] we may notice that my lord of beauvais offered the accused an advocate on the ground of her ignorance of things divine and human, but without taking her youthfulness into account. in other courts of law proceedings against a minor--that is, a person under twenty-five--who was not assisted by an advocate, were legally void.[ ] if this rule had been binding in inquisitorial procedure the bishop, by his offer of legal aid, would have avoided any breach of this rule; and as the choice of an advocate lay with him, he might well have done so without running any risk. "our justice is not like theirs," bernard gui rightly said, when he was comparing inquisitorial procedure with that of the other ecclesiastical courts which conformed to the roman law. [footnote : méru, _directorium inquisitorium_, p. .] jeanne did not accept the judge's offer: "first," she said, "touching what you admonish me for my good and in matters of religion, i thank you and the company here assembled. as for the advocate you offer me, i also thank you, but it is not my intent to depart from the counsel of our lord. as for the oath you wish me to take, i am ready to swear to speak the truth in all that concerns your suit."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] thereupon maître thomas de courcelles began to read in french the indictment which the promoter had drawn up in seventy articles.[ ] this text set forth in order the deeds with which jeanne had already been reproached and which were groundlessly held to have been confessed by her and duly proved. there were no less than seventy distinct charges of horrible crimes committed against religion and holy mother church. questioned on each article, jeanne with heroic candour repeated her previous replies. the tedious reading of this long accusation was continued and completed on the th of march, the wednesday after palm sunday.[ ] as was her wont, she asked for delay in order to reply on certain points. on easter eve, the st of march, the time granted having expired, my lord of beauvais went to the prison, and, in the presence of the doctors and masters of the university, demanded the promised replies. they nearly all touched on the one accusation which included all the rest, the heresy in which all heresies were comprehended,--the refusal to obey the church militant. jeanne finally declared her resolve to appeal to our lord rather than to any man; this was to set at naught the authority of the pope and the council.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] the doctors and masters of the university of paris advised that an epitome should be made of the promoter's voluminous indictment, its chief points selected, and the seventy charges considerably reduced.[ ] maître nicolas midi, doctor in theology, performed this task and submitted it when done to the judges and assessors.[ ] one of them proposed emendations. brother jacques of touraine, a friar of the franciscan order, who was charged to draw up the document in its final stage, admitted most of the corrections requested.[ ] in this wise the incriminating propositions,[ ] which the judges claimed, but claimed falsely, to have derived from the replies of the accused, were resolved into twelve articles.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. ; vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. . u. chevalier, _l'abjuration de jeanne d'arc_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , ; vol. iii, p. ; vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , .] these twelve articles were not communicated to jeanne. on thursday, the th of april, twenty-one masters and doctors met in the chapel of the bishop's palace, and, after having examined the articles, engaged in a conference, the result of which was unfavourable to the accused.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] according to them, the apparitions and revelations of which she boasted came not from god. they were human inventions, or the work of an evil spirit. she had not received signs sufficient to warrant her believing in them. in the case of this woman these doctors and masters discovered lies; a lack of verisimilitude; faith lightly given; superstitious divinings; deeds scandalous and irreligious; sayings rash, presumptuous, full of boasting; blasphemies against god and his saints. they found her to have lacked piety in her behaviour towards father and mother; to have come short in love towards her neighbour; to have been addicted to idolatry, or at any rate to the invention of lying tales and to schismatic conversation destructive of the unity, the authority and the power of the church; and, finally, to have been skilled in the black art and to have strongly inclined to heresy.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] had she not been sustained and comforted by her heavenly voices, the voices of her own heart, jeanne would never have endured to the end of this terrible trial. not only was she being tortured at once by the princes of the church and the rascals of the army, but her sufferings of body and mind were such as could never have been borne by any ordinary human being. yet she suffered them without her constancy, her faith, her divine hope, one might almost say her cheerfulness, ever being diminished. finally she gave way; her physical strength, but not her courage, was exhausted; she fell a victim to an illness which was expected to be fatal. she seemed near her end, or rather, alas! near her release.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] on wednesday, the th of april, my lord of beauvais and the vice-inquisitor of the faith went to her with divers doctors and masters to exhort her in all charity; she was still very seriously sick.[ ] my lord of beauvais represented to her that when on certain difficult matters she had been examined before persons of great wisdom, many things she had said had been noted as contrary to religion. wherefore, considering that she was but an unlettered woman, he offered to provide her with men learned and upright who would instruct her. he requested the doctors present to give her salutary counsel, and he invited her herself, if any other such persons were known to her, to indicate them, promising to summon them without fail. [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. - .] "the church," he added, "never closes her heart against those who will return to her." jeanne answered that she thanked him for what he had said for her salvation, and she added: "meseemeth, that seeing the sickness in which i lie, i am in great danger of death. if it be thus, then may god do with me according to his good pleasure. i demand that ye permit me to confess, that ye also give me the body of my saviour and bury me in holy ground." my lord of beauvais represented to her that if she would receive the sacraments she must submit to the church. "if my body die in prison," she replied, "i depend on you to have it put in holy ground; if you do not, then i appeal to our lord."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] then she vehemently maintained the truth of the revelations she had received from god, saint michael, saint catherine, and saint margaret. and when she was asked yet again whether she would submit herself and her acts to holy mother church, she replied: "whatever happens to me, i will never do or say aught save what i have already said at the trial."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] the doctors and masters one after the other exhorted her to submit to holy mother church. they quoted numerous passages from holy writ. they promised her the body of our lord if she would obey; but she remained resolute. "touching this submission," she said, "i will reply naught save what i have said already. i love god, i serve him, i am a good christian, and i wish with all my power to aid and support holy church."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] in times of great need recourse was had to processions. "do you not wish," she was asked, "that a fine and famous procession be ordained to restore you to a good estate if you be not therein?" she replied, "i desire the church and all catholics to pray for me."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] among the doctors consulted there were many who recommended that she should be again instructed and charitably admonished. on wednesday, the nd of may, sixty-three reverend doctors and masters met in the robing room of the castle.[ ] she was brought in, and maître jean de castillon, doctor in theology, archdeacon of Évreux,[ ] read a document in french, in which the deeds and sayings with which jeanne was reproached were summed up in six articles. then many doctors and masters addressed to her in turn admonitions and charitable counsels. they exhorted her to submit to the church militant universal, to the holy father the pope and to the general council. they warned her that if the church abandoned her, her soul would stand in great peril of the penalty of eternal fire, whilst her body might be burned in an earthly fire, and that by the sentence of other judges. [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, pp. , .] jeanne replied as before.[ ] on the morrow, thursday, the rd of may, the day of the invention of the holy cross, the archangel gabriel appeared to her. she was not sure whether she had seen him before. but this time she had no doubt. her voices told her that it was he, and she was greatly comforted. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] that same day she asked her voices whether she should submit to the church and obey the exhortation of the clerics. her voices replied: "if thou desirest help from our lord, then submit to him all thy doings." jeanne wanted to know from her voices whether she would be burned. her voices told her to wait upon the lord and he would help her.[ ] this mystic aid strengthened jeanne's heart. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] among heretics and those possessed, such obstinacy as hers was not unparalleled. ecclesiastical judges were well acquainted with the stiff-neckedness of women who had been deceived by the devil. in order to force them to tell the truth, when admonitions and exhortations failed, recourse was had to torture. and even such a measure did not always succeed. many of these wicked females (_mulierculæ_) endured the cruellest suffering with a constancy passing the ordinary strength of human nature. the doctors would not believe such constancy to be natural; they attributed it to the machinations of the evil one. the devil was capable of protecting his servants even when they had fallen into the hands of judges of the church; he granted them strength to bear the torture in silence. this strength was called the gift of taciturnity.[ ] [footnote : nicolas eymeric, _directorium inquisitorium...._ rome, , in fol. p. , col. . ludovicus a paramo, _de origine et progressu officii sanctæ inquisitionis_, mdxciix, in fol., lib. iii, questio , p. .] on wednesday, the th of may, jeanne was taken to the great tower of the castle, into the torture-chamber. there my lord of beauvais, in the presence of the vice inquisitor and nine doctors and masters, read her the articles, to which she had hitherto refused to reply; and he threatened her that if she did not confess the whole truth she would be put to the torture.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] the instruments were prepared; the two executioners, mauger leparmentier, a married clerk, and his companion, were in readiness close by her, awaiting the bishop's orders. six days before jeanne had received great comfort from her voices. now she replied resolutely: "verily, if you were to tear my limbs asunder and drive my soul out of my body, naught else would i tell you, and if i did say anything unto you, i would always maintain afterwards that you had dragged it from me by force."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] my lord of beauvais decided to defer the torture, fearing that it would do no good to so hardened a subject.[ ] on the following saturday, he deliberated in his house, with the vice-inquisitor and thirteen doctors and masters; opinion was divided. maître raoul roussel advised that jeanne should not be tortured lest ground for complaint should be given against a trial so carefully conducted. it would seem that he anticipated the devil's granting jeanne the gift of taciturnity, whereby in diabolical silence she would be able to brave the tortures of the holy inquisition. on the other hand maître aubert morel, licentiate in canon law, counsellor to the official of rouen, canon of the cathedral, and maître thomas de courcelles, deemed it expedient to apply torture. maître nicolas loiseleur, master of arts, canon of rouen, whose share in the proceedings had been to act saint catherine and the lorraine shoemaker, had no very decided opinion on the subject, still it seemed to him by no means unprofitable that jeanne for her soul's welfare should be tortured. the majority of doctors and masters agreed that for the present there was no need to subject her to this trial. some gave no reasons, others alleged that it behoved them yet once again to warn her charitably. maître guillaume erard, doctor in theology, held that sufficient material for the pronouncing of a sentence existed already.[ ] thus among those, who spared jeanne the torture, were to be found the least merciful; for the spirit of ecclesiastical tribunals was such that to refuse to torture an accused was in certain cases to refuse him mercy. [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] to the trial of marguerite la porète, the judges summoned no experts.[ ] touching the charges held as proven, they submitted a written report to the university of paris. the university gave its opinion on everything but the truth of the charges. this reservation was merely formal, and the decision of the university had the force of a sentence. in jeanne's trial this precedent was cited. on the st of april, maître jean beaupère, maître jacques de touraine and maître nicolas midi left rouen, and, at the risk of being attacked on the road by men-at-arms, journeyed to paris in order to present the twelve articles to their colleagues of the university. [footnote : _recueil des historiens de la france_, vol. xx, p. ; vol. xxi, p. . _histoire littéraire de la france_, vol. xxvii, p. .] on the th of april, the university, meeting in its general assembly at saint-bernard, charged the holy faculty of theology and the venerable faculty of decrees with the examination of the twelve articles.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , , . m. fournier, _la faculté de décret de l'université de paris_, p. . le p. denifle and chatelain, _chartularium universitatis parisiensis_, vol. iv, pp. _et seq._] on the th of may, the deliberations of the two faculties were submitted to all the faculties in solemn assembly, who ratified them and made them their own. the university then sent them to king henry, beseeching his royal majesty to execute justice promptly, in order that the people, so greatly scandalised by this woman, be brought back to good doctrine and holy faith.[ ] it is worthy of notice that in a trial, in which the pope, represented by the vice-inquisitor, was one judge, and the king, represented by the bishop, another, the eldest daughter of kings[ ] should have communicated directly with the king of france, the guardian of her privileges. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . u. chevalier, _l'abjuration de jeanne d'arc_, p. .] [footnote : the university of paris (w.s.).] according to the sacred faculty of theology, jeanne's apparitions were fictitious, lying, deceptive, inspired by devils. the sign given to the king was a presumptuous and pernicious lie, derogatory to the dignity of angels. jeanne's belief in the visitations of saint michael, saint catherine and saint margaret was an error rash and injurious because jeanne placed it on the same plane as the truths of religion. jeanne's predictions were but superstitions, idle divinations and vain boasting. her statement that she wore man's dress by the command of god was blasphemy, a violation of divine law and ecclesiastical sanction, a contemning of the sacraments and tainted with idolatry. in the letters she had dictated, jeanne appeared treacherous, perfidious, cruel, sanguinary, seditious, blasphemous and in favour of tyranny. in setting out for france she had broken the commandment to honour father and mother, she had given an occasion for scandal, she had committed blasphemy and had fallen from the faith. in the leap from beaurevoir, she had displayed a pusillanimity bordering on despair and homicide; and, moreover, it had caused her to utter rash statements touching the remission of her sin and erroneous pronouncements concerning free will. by proclaiming her confidence in her salvation, she uttered presumptuous and pernicious lies; by saying that saint catherine and saint margaret did not speak english, she blasphemed these saints and violated the precept: "thou shalt love thy neighbour." the honours she rendered these saints were nought but idolatry and the worship of devils. her refusal to submit her doings to the church tended to schism, to the denial of the unity and authority of the church and to apostasy.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] the doctors of the faculty of theology were very learned. they knew who the three evil spirits were whom jeanne in her delusion took for saint michael, saint catherine, and saint margaret. they were belial, satan, and behemoth. belial, worshipped by the people of sidon, was sometimes represented as an angel of great beauty; he is the demon of disobedience. satan is the lord of hell; and behemoth is a dull, heavy creature, who feeds on hay like an ox.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . migne, _dictionnaire des sciences occultes_.] the venerable faculty of decrees decided that this schismatic, this erring woman, this apostate, this liar, this soothsayer, be charitably exhorted and duly warned by competent judges, and that if notwithstanding she persisted in refusing to abjure her error, she must be given up to the secular arm to receive due chastisement.[ ] such were the deliberations and decisions which the venerable university of paris submitted to the examination and to the verdict of the holy apostolic see and of the sacrosanct general council. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] meanwhile, where were the clerks of france? had they nothing to say in this matter? had they no decision to submit to the pope and to the council? why did they not urge their opinions in opposition to those of the faculties of paris? why did they keep silence? jeanne demanded the record of the poitiers trial. wherefore did those poitiers doctors, who had recommended the king to employ the maid lest, by rejecting her, he should refuse the gift of the holy spirit, fail to send the record to rouen?[ ] before the maid espoused their waning cause, these poitiers doctors, these magistrates, these university professors banished from paris, advocates and counsellors of an exiled parlement, had not a robe to their backs nor shoes for their children. now, thanks to the maid, they were every day regaining new hope and vigour. and yet they left her, who had so nobly served their king, to be treated as a heretic and a reprobate. where were brother pasquerel, friar richard, and all those churchmen who but lately surrounded her in france and who looked to go with her to the crusade against the bohemians and the turks? why did they not demand a safe-conduct and come and give evidence at the trial? or at least why did they not send their evidence? why did not the archbishop of embrun, who but recently gave such noble counsels to the king, send some written statement in favour of the maid to the judges at rouen? my lord of reims, chancellor of the kingdom, had said that she was proud but not heretical. wherefore now, acting contrary to his own interests and honour, did he refrain from testifying in favour of her through whom he had recovered his episcopal city? wherefore did he not assert his right and do his duty as metropolitan and censure and suspend his suffragan, the bishop of beauvais, who was guilty of prevarication in the administration of justice? why did not the illustrious clerics, whom king charles had appointed deputies at the council of bâle, undertake to bring the cause of the maid before the council? and finally, why did not the priests, the ecclesiastics of the realm, with one voice demand an appeal to the holy father? [footnote : from a theological point of view the record of the poitiers trial may have been insignificant; but at any rate it contained the arguments presented to the king and the memoranda of gélu and of gerson.] they all with one accord, as if struck dumb with astonishment, remained passive and silent. can they have feared that too searching a light would be cast on jeanne's cause by that illustrious university, that sun of the church, which was consulted on religious matters by all christian states? can they have suspected that this woman, who in france had been considered a saint, might after all have been inspired by the devil? but if what they had once believed they still held to be true, if they believed that the maid had come from god to lead their king to his glorious coronation, then what are we to think of those clerks, those ecclesiastics who denied the daughter of god, on the eve of her passion? chapter xiii the abjuration--the first sentence on saturday, the th of may, the doctors and masters, to the number of fifty, assembled in the archiepiscopal chapel of rouen. there they unanimously declared their agreement with the decision of the university of paris; and my lord of beauvais ordained that a new charitable admonition be addressed to jeanne.[ ] accordingly, on wednesday the rd, the bishop, the vice-inquisitor, and the promoter went to a room in the castle, near jeanne's cell. they were accompanied by seven doctors and masters, by the lord bishop of noyon and by the lord bishop of thérouanne.[ ] the latter, brother to messire jean de luxembourg who had sold the maid, was held one of the most notable personages of the great council of england; he was chancellor of france for king henry, as messire regnault de chartres was for king charles.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, pp. - .] the accused was brought in, and maître pierre maurice, doctor in theology, read to her the twelve articles as they had been abridged and commented upon, in conformity with the deliberations of the university; the whole was drawn up as a discourse addressed to jeanne directly:[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] article i first, jeanne, thou saidst that at about the age of thirteen, thou didst receive revelations and behold apparitions of angels and of the saints, catherine and margaret, that thou didst behold them frequently with thy bodily eyes, that they spoke unto thee and do still oftentimes speak unto thee, and that they have said unto thee many things that thou hast fully declared in thy trial. the clerks of the university of paris and others have considered the manner of these revelations and apparitions, their object, the substance of the things revealed, the person to whom they were revealed; all points touching them have they considered. and now they pronounce these revelations and apparitions to be either lying fictions, deceptive and dangerous, or superstitions, proceeding from spirits evil and devilish. article ii item, thou hast said that thy king received a sign, by which he knew that thou wast sent of god: to wit that saint michael, accompanied by a multitude of angels, certain of whom had wings, others crowns, and with whom were saint catherine and saint margaret, came to thee in the town of château-chinon; and that they all entered with thee and went up the staircase of the castle, into the chamber of thy king, before whom the angel who wore the crown made obeisance. and once didst thou say that this crown which thou callest a sign, was delivered to the archbishop of reims who gave it to thy king, in the presence of a multitude of princes and lords whom thou didst call by name. now concerning this sign, the aforesaid clerks declare it to lack verisimilitude, to be a presumptuous lie, deceptive, pernicious, a thing counterfeited and attacking the dignity of angels. article iii item, thou hast said that thou knewest the angels and the saints by the good counsel, the comfort and the instruction they gave thee, because they told thee their names and because the saints saluted thee. thou didst believe also that it was saint michael who appeared unto thee; and that the deeds and sayings of this angel and these saints are good thou didst believe as firmly as thou believest in christ. now the clerks declare such signs to be insufficient for the recognition of the said saints and angels. the clerks maintain that thou hast lightly believed and rashly affirmed, and further that when thou sayst thou dost believe as firmly etc., thou dost err from the faith. article iv item, thou hast said thou art assured of certain things which are to come, that thou hast known hidden things, that thou hast also recognized men whom thou hadst never seen before, and this by the voices of saint catherine and saint margaret. thereupon the clerks declare that in these sayings are superstition, divination, presumptuous assertion and vain boasting. article v item, thou hast said that by god's command and according to his will, thou hast worn and dost still wear man's apparel. because thou hast god's commandment to wear this dress thou hast donned a short tunic, jerkin, and hose with many points. thou dost even wear thy hair cut short above the ears, without keeping about thee anything to denote the feminine sex, save what nature hath given thee. and oftentimes hast thou in this garb received the sacrament of the eucharist. and albeit thou hast been many times admonished to leave it, thou wouldest not, saying that thou wouldst liefer die than quit this apparel, unless it were by god's command; and that if thou wert still in this dress and with those of thine own party it would be for the great weal of france. thou sayest also that for nothing wouldst thou take an oath not to wear this dress and bear these arms; and for all this that thou doest thou dost plead divine command. in such matters the clerks declare that thou blasphemest against god, despising him and his sacraments, that thou dost transgress divine law, holy scripture and the canons of the church, that thou thinkest evil and dost err from the faith, that thou art full of vain boasting, that thou art addicted to idolatry and worship of thyself and thy clothes, according to the customs of the heathen. article vi item, thou hast often said, that in thy letters thou hast put these names, _jhesus maria_, and the sign of the cross, to warn those to whom thou didst write not to do what was indicated in the letter. in other letters thou hast boasted that thou wouldst slay all those who did not obey thee, and that by thy blows thou wouldst prove who had god on his side. also hast thou oftentimes said that all thy deeds were by revelation and according to divine command. touching such affirmations the clerks declare thee to be a traitor, perfidious, cruel, desiring human bloodshed, seditious, an instigator of tyranny, a blasphemer of god's commandments and revelations. article vii item, thou sayest that according to revelations vouchsafed unto thee at the age of seventeen, thou didst leave thy parents' house against their will, driving them almost mad. thou didst go to robert de baudricourt, who, at thy request, gave thee man's apparel and a sword, also men-at-arms to take thee to thy king. and being come to the king, thou didst say unto him that his enemies should be driven away, thou didst promise to bring him into a great kingdom, to make him victorious over his foes, and that for this god had sent thee. these things thou sayest thou didst accomplish in obedience to god and according to revelation. in such things the clerks declare thee to have been irreverent to thy father and mother, thus disobeying god's command; to have given occasion for scandal, to have blasphemed, to have erred from the faith and to have made a rash and presumptuous promise. article viii item, thou hast said, that voluntarily thou didst leap from the tower of beaurevoir, preferring rather to die than to be delivered into the hands of the english and to live after the destruction of compiègne. and albeit saint catherine and saint margaret forbade thee to leap, thou couldst not restrain thyself. and despite the great sin thou hast committed in offending these saints, thou didst know by thy voices, that after thy confession, thy sin was forgiven thee. this deed the clerks declare thee to have committed through cowardice turning to despair and probably to suicide. in this matter likewise thou didst utter a rash and presumptuous statement in asserting that thy sin is forgiven, and thou dost err from the faith touching the doctrine of free will. article ix item, thou hast said that saint catherine and saint margaret promised to lead thee to paradise provided thou didst remain a virgin; and that thou hadst vowed and promised them to cherish thy virginity, and of that thou art as well assured as if already thou hadst entered into the glory of the blessed. thou believest that thou hast not committed mortal sin. and it seemeth to thee that if thou wert in mortal sin the saints would not visit thee daily as they do. such an assertion the clerks pronounce to be a pernicious lie, presumptuous and rash, that therein lieth a contradiction of what thou hadst previously said, and that finally thy beliefs do err from the true christian faith. article x item, thou hast declared it to be within thy knowledge that god loveth certain living persons better than thee, and that this thou hast learnt by revelation from saint catherine and saint margaret: also that those saints speak french, not english, since they are not on the side of the english. and when thou knewest that thy voices were for thy king, you didst fall to disliking the burgundians. such matters the clerks pronounce to be a rash and presumptuous assertion, a superstitious divination, a blasphemy uttered against saint catherine and saint margaret, and a transgression of the commandment to love our neighbours. article xi item, thou hast said that to those whom thou callest saint michael, saint catherine and saint margaret, thou didst do reverence, bending the knee, taking off thy cap, kissing the ground on which they trod, vowing to them thy virginity: that in the instruction of these saints, whom thou didst invoke and kiss and embrace, thou didst believe as soon as they appeared unto thee, and without seeking counsel from thy priest or from any other ecclesiastic. and, notwithstanding, thou believest that these voices came from god as firmly as thou believest in the christian religion and the passion of our lord jesus christ. moreover thou hast said that did any evil spirit appear to thee in the form of saint michael thou wouldest know such a spirit and distinguish him from the saint. and again hast thou said, that of thine own accord, thou hast sworn not to reveal the sign thou gavest to thy king. and finally thou didst add: "save at god's command." now touching these matters, the clerks affirm that supposing thou hast had the revelations and beheld the apparitions of which thou boastest and in such a manner as thou dost say, then art thou an idolatress, an invoker of demons, an apostate from the faith, a maker of rash statements, a swearer of an unlawful oath. article xii item, thou hast said that if the church wished thee to disobey the orders thou sayest god gave thee, nothing would induce thee to do it; that thou knowest that all the deeds of which thou hast been accused in thy trial were wrought according to the command of god and that it was impossible for thee to do otherwise. touching these deeds, thou dost refuse to submit to the judgment of the church on earth or of any living man, and will submit therein to god alone. and moreover thou didst declare this reply itself not to be made of thine own accord but by god's command; despite the article of faith: _unam sanctam ecclesiam catholicam_, having been many times declared unto thee, and notwithstanding that it behoveth all christians to submit their deeds and sayings to the church militant especially concerning revelations and such like matters. wherefore the clerks declare thee to be schismatic, disbelieving in the unity and authority of the church, apostate and obstinately erring from the faith.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] having completed the reading of the articles, maître pierre maurice, on the invitation of the bishop, proceeded to exhort jeanne. he had been rector of the university of paris in .[ ] he was esteemed an orator. he it was who, on the th of june, had discoursed in the name of the chapter, before king henry vi on the occasion of his entering rouen. he would seem to have been distinguished by some knowledge of and taste for ancient letters, and to have been possessed of precious manuscripts, amongst which were the comedies of terence and the _Æneid_ of virgil.[ ] [footnote : du boulay, _historia universitatis parisiensis_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, p. .] in terms of calculated simplicity did this illustrious doctor call upon jeanne to reflect on the effects of her words and sayings, and tenderly did he exhort her to submit to the church. after the wormwood he offered her the honey; he spoke to her in words kind and familiar. with remarkable adroitness he entered into the feelings and inclinations of the maiden's heart. seeing her filled with knightly enthusiasm and loyalty to king charles, whose coronation was her doing, he drew his comparisons from chivalry, thereby essaying to prove to her that she ought rather to believe in the church militant than in her voices and apparitions. "if your king," he said to her, "had appointed you to defend a fortress, forbidding you to let any one enter it, would you not refuse to admit whomsoever claiming to come from him did not present letters and some other token. likewise, when our lord jesus christ, on his ascension into heaven, committed to the blessed apostle peter and to his successors the government of his church, he forbade them to receive such as claimed to come in his name but brought no credentials." and, to bring home to her how grievous a sin it was to disobey the church, he recalled the time when she waged war, and put the case of a knight who should disobey his king: "when you were in your king's dominion," he said to her, "if a knight or some other owing fealty to him had arisen, saying, 'i will not obey the king; i will not submit either to him or to his officers,' would you not have said, 'he is a man to be censured'? what say you then of yourself, you who, engendered in christ's religion, having become by baptism the daughter of the church and the bride of christ, dost now refuse obedience to the officers of christ, that is, to the prelates of the church?"[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] thus did maître pierre maurice endeavour to make jeanne understand him. he did not succeed. against the courage of this child all the reasons and all the eloquence of the world would have availed nothing. when maître pierre had finished speaking, jeanne, being asked whether she did not hold herself bound to submit her deeds and sayings to the church, replied: "what i have always held and said in the trial that will i maintain.... if i were condemned and saw the fagots lighted, and the executioner ready to stir the fire, and i in the fire, i would say and maintain till i died nought other than what i said during the trial." at these words the bishop declared the discussion at an end, and deferred the pronouncing of the sentence till the morrow.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] the next day, the thursday after whitsuntide and the th day of may, early in the morning, maître jean beaupère visited jeanne in her prison and warned her that she would be shortly taken to the scaffold to hear a sermon. "if you are a good christian," he said, "you will agree to submit all your deeds and sayings to holy mother church, and especially to the ecclesiastical judges." maître jean beaupère thought he heard her reply, "so i will."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] if such were her answer, then it must have been because, worn out by a flight of agony, her physical courage quailed at the thought of death by burning. just when he was leaving her, as she stood near a door, maître nicolas loiseleur gave her the same advice, and in order to induce her to follow it, he made her a false promise: "jeanne, believe me," he said. "you have your deliverance in your own hands. wear the apparel of your sex, and do what shall be required of you. otherwise you stand in danger of death. if you do as i tell you, good will come to you and no harm. you will be delivered into the hands of the church."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. . de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, pp. _et seq._] she was taken in a cart and with an armed guard to that part of the town called bourg-l'abbé, lying beneath the castle walls. and but a short distance away the cart was stopped, in the cemetery of saint-ouen, also called _les aitres[ ] saint-ouen_. here a highly popular fair was held every year on the feast day of the patron saint of the abbey.[ ] here it was that jeanne was to hear the sermon, as so many other unhappy creatures had done before her. places like this, to which the folk could flock in crowds, were generally chosen for these edifying spectacles. on the border of this vast charnel-house for a hundred years there had towered a parish church, and on the south there rose the nave of the abbey. against the magnificent edifice of the church two scaffolds had been erected,[ ] one large, the other smaller. they were west of the porch which was called _portail des marmousets_, because of the multitudes of tiny figures carved upon it.[ ] [footnote : old name for a cemetery close to a church. godefroy, _lexique de l'ancien français_ (w.s.).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _notes sur le cimetière de saint-ouen de rouen_, in _précis analytique des travaux de l'académie de rouen_ - , pp. , , plan. u. chevalier, _l'abjuration de jeanne d'arc et l'authenticité de sa formule_, p. . a. sarrazin, _jeanne d'arc et la normandie_, p. .] on the great scaffold the two judges, the lord bishop and the vice-inquisitor, took their places. they were assisted by the most reverend cardinal of winchester, the lord bishops of thérouanne, of noyon, and of norwich, the lord abbots of fécamp, of jumièges, of bec, of corneilles, of mont-saint-michel-au-péril-de-la-mer, of mortemart, of préaux, and of saint-ouen of rouen, where the assembly was held, the priors of longueville and of saint-lô, also many doctors and bachelors in theology, doctors and licentiates in canon and civil law.[ ] likewise were there many high personages of the english party. the other scaffold was a kind of pulpit. to it ascended the doctor who, according to the use and custom of the holy inquisition was to preach the sermon against jeanne. he was maître guillaume erard, doctor in theology, canon of the churches of langres and of beauvais.[ ] at this time he was very eager to go to flanders, where he was urgently needed; and he confided to his young servitor, brother jean de lenisoles, that the preaching of this sermon caused him great inconvenience. "i want to be in flanders," he said. "this affair is very annoying for me."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , . o'reilly, _les deux procès_, vol. i, pp. - .] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] from one point of view, however, he must have been pleased to perform this duty, since it afforded him the opportunity of attacking the king of france, charles vii, and of thereby showing his devotion to the english cause, to which he was strongly attached. jeanne, dressed as a man, was brought up and placed at his side, before all the people.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , .] maître guillaume erard began his sermon in the following manner: "i take as my text the words of god in the gospel of saint john, chapter xv: 'the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine.'[ ] thus it behoveth all catholics to remain abiding in holy mother church, the true vine, which the hand of our lord jesus christ hath planted. now this jeanne, whom you see before you, falling from error into error, and from crime into crime, hath become separate from the unity of holy mother church and in a thousand manners hath scandalised christian people." [footnote : _ibid._, p. . e. richer, _histoire manuscrite de la pucelle d'orléans_, bk. i, fol. ; bk. ii, fol. , v'o.] then he reproached her with having failed, with having sinned against royal majesty and against god and the catholic faith; and all these things must she henceforth eschew under pain of death by burning. he declaimed vehemently against the pride of this woman. he said that never had there appeared in france a monster so great as that which was manifest in jeanne; that she was a witch, a heretic, a schismatic, and that the king, who protected her, risked the same reproach from the moment that he became willing to recover his throne with the help of such a heretic.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] towards the middle of his sermon, he cried out with a loud voice: "ah! right terribly hast thou been deceived, noble house of france, once the most christian of houses! charles, who calls himself thy head and assumes the title of king hath, like a heretic and schismatic, received the words of an infamous woman, abounding in evil works and in all dishonour. and not he alone, but all the clergy in his lordship and dominion, by whom this woman, so she sayeth, hath been examined and not rejected. full sore is the pity of it."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , .] two or three times did maître guillaume repeat these words concerning king charles. then pointing at jeanne with his finger he said: "it is to you, jeanne, that i speak; and i say unto you that your king is a heretic and a schismatic." at these words jeanne was deeply wounded in her love for the lilies of france and for king charles. she was moved with great feeling, and she heard her voices saying unto her: "reply boldly to the preacher who is preaching to you."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , . u. chevalier, _l'abjuration de jeanne d'arc_, pp. , .] then obeying them heartily, she interrupted maître jean: "by my troth, messire," she said to him, "saving your reverence, i dare say unto you and swear at the risk of my life, that he is the noblest christian of all christians, that none loveth better religion and the church, and that he is not at all what you say."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , , , , , .] maître guillaume ordered the usher, jean massieu, to silence her.[ ] then he went on with his sermon, and concluded with these words: "jeanne, behold my lords the judges, who oftentimes have summoned you and required you to submit all your acts and sayings to mother church. in these acts and sayings were many things which, so it seemed to these clerics, were good neither to say nor to maintain."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , .] "i will answer you," said jeanne. touching the article of submission to the church, she recalled how she had asked for all the deeds she had wrought and the words she had uttered to be reported to rome, to our holy father the pope, to whom, after god, she appealed. then she added: "and as for the sayings i have uttered and the deeds i have done, they have all been by god's command."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] she declared that she had not understood that the record of her trial was being sent to rome to be judged by the pope. "i will not have it thus," she said. "i know not what you will insert in the record of these proceedings. i demand to be taken to the pope and questioned by him."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] they urged her to incriminate her king. but they wasted their breath. "for my deeds and sayings i hold no man responsible, neither my king nor another."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] "will you abjure all your deeds and sayings? will you abjure such of your deeds and sayings as have been condemned by the clerks?" "i appeal to god and to our holy father, the pope." "but that is not sufficient. we cannot go so far to seek the pope. each ordinary is judge in his own diocese. wherefore it is needful for you to appeal to our holy mother church, and to hold as true all that clerks and folks well learned in the matter say and determine touching your actions and your sayings."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] admonished with yet a third admonition, jeanne refused to recant.[ ] with confidence she awaited the deliverance promised by her voices, certain that of a sudden there would come men-at-arms from france and that in one great tumult of fighting-men and angels she would be liberated. that was why she had insisted on retaining man's attire. [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] two sentences had been prepared: one for the case in which the accused should abjure her error, the other for the case in which she should persevere. by the first there was removed from jeanne the ban of excommunication. by the second, the tribunal, declaring that it could do nothing more for her, abandoned her to the secular arm. the lord bishop had them both with him.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] he took the second and began to read: "in the name of the lord, amen. all the pastors of the church who have it in their hearts faithfully to tend their flocks...."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] meanwhile, as he read, the clerks who were round jeanne urged her to recant, while there was yet time. maître nicolas loiseleur exhorted her to do as he had recommended, and to put on woman's dress.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] maître guillaume erard was saying: "do as you are advised and you will be delivered from prison."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , ; vol. iii, pp. , .] then straightway came the voices unto her and said: "jeanne, passing sore is our pity for you! you must recant what you have said, or we abandon you to secular justice.... jeanne, do as you are advised. jeanne, will you bring death upon yourself!"[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] the sentence was long and the lord bishop read slowly: "we judges, having christ before our eyes and also the honour of the true faith, in order that our judgment may proceed from the lord himself, do say and decree that thou hast been a liar, an inventor of revelations and apparitions said to be divine; a deceiver, pernicious, presumptuous, light of faith, rash, superstitious, a soothsayer, a blasphemer against god and his saints. we declare thee to be a contemner of god even in his sacraments, a prevaricator of divine law, of sacred doctrine and of ecclesiastical sanction, seditious, cruel, apostate, schismatic, having committed a thousand errors against religion, and by all these tokens rashly guilty towards god and holy church.[ ]" [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , .] time was passing. already the lord bishop had uttered the greater part of the sentence.[ ] the executioner was there, ready to take off the condemned in his cart.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. note.] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, pp. , , , . de beaurepaire, _recherches sur le procès_, p. .] then suddenly, with hands clasped, jeanne cried that she was willing to obey the church.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] the judge paused in the reading of the sentence. an uproar arose in the crowd, consisting largely of english men-at-arms and officers of king henry. ignorant of the customs of the inquisition, which had not been introduced into their country, these _godons_ could not understand what was going on; all they knew was that the witch was saved. now they held jeanne's death to be necessary for the welfare of england; wherefore the unaccountable actions of these doctors and the lord bishop threw them into a fury. in their island witches were not treated thus; no mercy was shown them, and they were burned speedily. angry murmurs arose; stones were thrown at the registrars of the trial.[ ] maître pierre maurice, who was doing his best to strengthen jeanne in the resolution she had taken, was threatened and the _coués_ very nearly made short work with him.[ ] neither did maître jean beaupère and the delegates from the university of paris escape their share of the insults. they were accused of favouring jeanne's errors.[ ] who better than they knew the injustice of these reproaches? [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. ; vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] certain of the high personages sitting on the platform at the side of the judge complained to the lord bishop that he had not gone on to the end of the sentence but had admitted jeanne to repentance. he was even reproached with insults, for one was heard to cry: "you shall pay for this." he threatened to suspend the trial. "i have been insulted," he said. "i will proceed no further until honourable amends have been done me."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , .] in the tumult, maître guillaume erard unfolded a double sheet of paper, and read jeanne the form of abjuration, written down according to the opinion of the masters. it was no longer than the lord's prayer and consisted of six or seven lines of writing. it was in french and began with these words: "i, jeanne...." the maid submitted therein to the sentence, the judgment, and the commandment of the church; she acknowledged having committed the crime of high treason and having deceived the people. she undertook never again to bear arms or to wear man's dress or her hair cut round her ears.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , , , , . u. chevalier, _l'abjuration de jeanne d'arc_.] when maître guillaume had read the document, jeanne declared she did not understand it, and wished to be advised thereupon.[ ] she was heard to ask counsel of saint michael.[ ] she still believed firmly in her voices, albeit they had not aided her in her dire necessity, neither had spared her the shame of denying them. for, simple as she was, at the bottom of her heart she knew well what the clerks were asking of her; she realised that they would not let her go until she had pronounced a great recantation. all that she said was merely in order to gain time and because she was afraid of death; yet she could not bring herself to lie. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , (evidence of jean massieu, usher of the court).] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] without losing a moment maître guillaume said to messire jean massieu, the usher: "advise her touching this abjuration." and he passed him the document.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] messire jean massieu at first made excuse, but afterwards he complied and warned jeanne of the danger she was running by her refusal to recant. "you must know," he said, "that if you oppose any of these articles you will be burned. i counsel you to appeal to the church universal as to whether you should abjure these articles or not." maître guillaume erard asked jean massieu: "well, what are you saying to her?" jean massieu replied: "i make known unto jeanne the text of the deed of abjuration and i urge her to sign it. but she declares that she knoweth not whether she will." at this juncture, jeanne, who was still being pressed to sign, said aloud: "i wish the church to deliberate on the articles. i appeal to the church universal as to whether i should abjure them. let the document be read by the church and the clerks into whose hands i am to be delivered. if it be their counsel that i ought to sign it and do what i am told, then willingly will i do it."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. ; vol. iii, p. . this deed, written in a large hand and containing but a few lines, appears to be an abridgment of that contained in the _trial_, vol. i, pp. , (cf. vol. iii, pp. , ).] maître guillaume erard replied: "do it now, or you will be burned this very day." and he forbade jean massieu to confer with her any longer. whereupon jeanne said that she would liefer sign than be burned.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] then straightway messire jean massieu gave her a second reading of the deed of abjuration. and she repeated the words after the usher. as she spoke her countenance seemed to express a kind of sneer. it may have been that her features were contracted by the violent emotions which swayed her and that the horrors and tortures of an ecclesiastical trial may have overclouded her reason, subject at all times to strange vagaries, and that after such bitter suffering there may have come upon her the actual paroxysm of madness. on the other hand it may have been that with sound sense and calm mind she was mocking at the clerks of rouen; she was quite capable of it, for she had mocked at the clerks of poitiers. at any rate she had a jesting air, and the bystanders noticed that she pronounced the words of her abjuration with a smile.[ ] and her gaiety, whether real or apparent, roused the wrath of those burgesses, priests, artisans, and men-at-arms who desired her death. [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. ; vol. iii, p. .] "'tis all a mockery. jeanne doth but jest,"[ ] they cried. [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] among the most irate was master lawrence calot, secretary to the king of england. he was seen to be in a violent rage and to approach first the judge and then the accused. a noble of picardy who was present, the very same who had essayed familiarities with jeanne in the castle of beaurevoir, thought he saw this englishman forcing jeanne to sign a paper.[ ] he was mistaken. in every crowd there are those who see things that never happen. the bishop would not have permitted such a thing; he was devoted to the regent, but on a question of form he would never have given way. meanwhile, under this storm of insults, amidst the throwing of stones and the clashing of swords, these illustrious masters, these worthy doctors grew pale. the prior of longueville was awaiting an opportunity to make an apology to the cardinal of winchester.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. . j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, p. .] on the platform a chaplain of the cardinal violently accused the lord bishop. "you do wrong to accept such an abjuration. 'tis a mere mockery," he said. "you lie," retorted my lord pierre. "i, the judge of a religious suit, ought to seek the salvation of this woman rather than her death." the cardinal silenced his chaplain.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] it is said that the earl of warwick came up to the judges and complained of what they had done, adding: "the king is not well served, since jeanne escapes." and it is stated that one of them replied: "have no fear, my lord. she will not escape us long."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] it is hardly credible that any one should have actually said so, but doubtless there were many at that time who thought it. with what scorn must the bishop of beauvais have regarded those dull minds, incapable of understanding the service he was rendering to old england by forcing this damsel to acknowledge that all she had declared and maintained in honour of her king was but lying and illusion. with a pen that massieu gave her jeanne made a cross at the bottom of the deed.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. ; vol. iii, p. .] in the midst of howls and oaths from the english, my lord of beauvais read the more merciful of the sentences. it relieved jeanne from excommunication and reconciled her to holy mother church.[ ] further the sentence ran: "... because thou hast rashly sinned against god and holy church, we, thy judges, that thou mayest do salutary penance, out of our grace and moderation, do condemn thee finally and definitely to perpetual prison, with the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction, so that there thou mayest weep over thy offences and commit no other that may be an occasion of weeping."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] this penalty, like all other penalties, save death and mutilation, lay within the power of ecclesiastical judges. they inflicted it so frequently that in the early days of the holy inquisition, the fathers of the council of narbonne said that stones and mortar would become as scarce as money.[ ] it was a penalty doubtless, but one which in character and significance differed from the penalties inflicted by secular courts; it was a penance. according to the mercy of ecclesiastical law, prison was a place suitable for repentance, where, in one perpetual penance, the condemned might eat the bread of sorrow and drink the waters of affliction. [footnote : l. tanon, _tribunaux de l'inquisition_, p. .] how foolish was he, who by refusing to enter that prison or by escaping from it, should reject the salutary healing of his soul! by so doing he was fleeing from the gentle tribunal of penance, and the church in sadness cut him off from the communion of the faithful. by inflicting this penalty, which a good catholic must needs regard rather as a favour than a punishment, my lord the bishop and my lord the holy vicar of the inquisition were conforming to the custom, whereby our holy mother church became reconciled to heretics. but had they power to execute their sentence? the prison to which they condemned jeanne, the expiatory prison, the salutary confinement, must be in a dungeon of the church. could they send her there? jeanne, turning towards them, said: "now, you churchmen, take me to your prison. let me be no longer in the hands of the english."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] many of those clerics had promised it to her.[ ] they had deceived her. they knew it was not possible; for it had been stipulated that the king of england's men should resume possession of jeanne after the trial.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] the lord bishop gave the order: "take her back to the place whence you brought her."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] he, a judge of the church, committed the crime of surrendering the church's daughter reconciled and penitent, to laymen. among them she could not mourn over her sins; and they, hating her body and caring nought for her soul, were to tempt her and cause her to fall back into error. while jeanne was being taken back in the cart to her tower in the fields, the soldiers insulted her and their captains did not rebuke them.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] thereafter, the vice-inquisitor and with him divers doctors and masters, went to her prison and charitably exhorted her. she promised to wear woman's apparel, and to let her head be shaved.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. - .] the duchess of bedford, knowing that she was a virgin, saw to it that she was treated with respect.[ ] as the ladies of luxembourg had done formerly, she essayed to persuade her to wear the clothing of her sex. by a certain tailor, one jeannotin simon, she had had made for jeanne a gown which she had hitherto refused to wear. jeannotin brought the garment to the prisoner, who this time did not refuse it. in putting it on, jeannotin touched her bosom, which she resented. she boxed his ears;[ ] but she consented to wear the gown provided by the duchess. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] chapter xiv the trial for relapse--second sentence--death of the maid on the following sunday, which was trinity sunday, there arose a rumour that jeanne had resumed man's apparel. the report spread rapidly from the castle down the narrow streets where lived the clerks in the shadow of the cathedral. straightway notaries and assessors hastened to the tower which looked on the fields. in the outer court of the castle they found some hundred men-at-arms, who welcomed them with threats and curses.[ ] these fellows did not yet understand that the judges had conducted the trial so as to bring honour to old england and dishonour to the french. they did not realise what it meant when the maid of the armagnacs, who hitherto had obstinately persisted in her utterances, was at length brought to confess her impostures. they did not see how great was the advantage to their country when it was published abroad throughout the world that charles of valois had been conducted to his coronation by a heretic. but no, the only idea these brutes were capable of grasping was the burning of the girl prisoner who had struck terror into their hearts. the doctors and masters they treated as traitors, false counsellors and armagnacs.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. ; vol. iii, p. .] in the castle yard is maître andré marguerie, bachelor in decrees, archdeacon of petit-caux, king's counsellor,[ ] who is inquiring what has happened. he had displayed great assiduity in the trial. the maid he held to be a crafty damsel.[ ] now again he desired to give an expert's judgment touching what had just occurred. [footnote : de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] "that jeanne is to be seen dressed as a man is not everything," he said. "we must know what motives induced her to resume masculine attire." maître andré marguerie was an eloquent orator, one of the shining lights of the council of constance. but, when a man-at-arms raised his axe against him and called out "traitor! armagnac!" maître marguerie asked no further questions, but speedily departed, and went to bed very sick.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, pp. , .] the next day, monday the th, there came to the castle the vice-inquisitor, accompanied by divers doctors and masters. the registrar, messire guillaume manchon, was summoned. he was such a coward that he dared not come save under the escort of one of the earl of warwick's men-at-arms.[ ] they found jeanne wearing man's apparel, jerkin and short tunic, with a hood covering her shaved head. her face was in tears and disfigured by terrible suffering.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. ; vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. . isambart's evidence refers to this day, the th.] she was asked when and why she had assumed this attire. she replied: "'tis but now that i have donned man's dress and put off woman's." "wherefore did you put it on and who made you?" "i put it on of my own will and without constraint. i had liefer wear man's dress than woman's." "you promised and swore not to wear man's dress." "i never meant to take an oath not to wear it." "wherefore did you return to it?" "because it is more seemly to take it and wear man's dress, being amongst men, than to wear woman's dress.... i returned to it because the promise made me was not kept, to wit, that i should go to mass and should receive my saviour and be loosed from my bonds." "did you not abjure, and promise not to return to this dress?" "i had liefer die than be in bonds. but if i be allowed to go to mass and taken out of my bonds and put in a prison of grace, and given a woman to be with me, i will be good and do as the church shall command." "have you heard your voices since thursday?" "yes." "what did they say unto you?" "they told me that through saint catherine and saint margaret god gave me to wit his sore pity for the treachery, to which i consented in abjuring and recanting to save my life, and that in saving my life i was losing my soul. before thursday my voices had told me what i should do and what i did do on that day. on the scaffold my voices told me to reply boldly to the preacher. he is a false preacher.... many things did he say that i have never done. if i were to say that god has not sent me i should be damned. it is true that god has sent me. my voices have since told me that by confessing i committed a great wickedness which i ought never to have done. all that i said i uttered through fear of the fire."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - .] thus spake jeanne in sore sorrow. and now what becomes of those monkish tales of attempted violence related long afterwards by a registrar and two churchmen?[ ] and how can messire massieu make us believe that jeanne, unable to find her petticoats, put on her hose in order not to appear before her guards unclothed?[ ] the truth is very different. it is jeanne herself who confesses bravely and simply. she repented of her abjuration, as of the greatest sin she had ever committed. she could not forgive herself for having lied through fear of death. her voices, who, before the sermon at saint-ouen had foretold that she would deny them, now came to her and spoke of "the sore pity of her treachery." could they say otherwise since they were the voices of her own heart? and could jeanne fail to listen to them since she had always listened to them whenever they had counselled her to sacrifice and self-abnegation? [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , , ; vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] it was out of obedience to her heavenly _council_ that jeanne had returned to man's apparel, because she would not purchase her life at the price of denying the angel and the saints, and because with her whole heart and soul she rebelled against her recantation. still the english were seriously to blame for having left her man's clothes. it would have been more humane to have taken them from her, since if she wore them she must needs die. they had been put in a bag.[ ] her guards may even be suspected of having tempted her by placing under her very eyes those garments which recalled to her days of happiness. they had taken away all her few possessions, even her poor brass ring, everything save that suit which meant death to her. [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] to blame also were her ecclesiastical judges who should not have sentenced her to imprisonment if they foresaw that they could not place her in an ecclesiastical prison, nor have commanded her a penance which they knew they were unable to enforce. likewise to blame were the bishop of beauvais and the vice-inquisitor; because after having, for the good of her sinful soul, prescribed the bread of bitterness and the water of affliction, they gave her not this bread and this water, but delivered her in disgrace into the hands of her cruel enemies. when she uttered the words, "god by saint catherine and saint margaret hath given me to wit the sore pity of the treason to which i consented," jeanne consummated the sacrifice of her life.[ ] [footnote : "_responsio mortifera_," wrote the notary boisguillaume in the margin of his minutes. _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] the bishop and the inquisitor had now to proceed in conformity with the law. the interrogatory however lasted a few moments longer. "do you believe that your voices are saint margaret and saint catherine?" "yes, and they come from god." "tell us the truth touching the crown." "to the best of my knowledge i told you the truth of everything at the trial." "on the scaffold, at the time of your abjuration, you did acknowledge before us your judges and before many others, and in the presence of the people, that you had falsely boasted your voices to be those of saint catherine and saint margaret." "i did not mean thus to do or to say. i did not deny, neither did i intend to deny, my apparitions and to say that they were not saint margaret and saint catherine. all that i have said was through fear of the fire, and i recanted nothing that was not contrary to the truth. i had liefer do my penance once and for all, to wit by dying, than endure further anguish in prison. whatsoever abjuration i have been forced to make, i never did anything against god and religion. i did not understand what was in the deed of abjuration, wherefore i did not mean to abjure anything unless it were our lord's will. if the judges wish i will resume my woman's dress. but nothing else will i do."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - .] coming out of the prison, my lord of beauvais met the earl of warwick accompanied by many persons. he said to him: "farewell. _faites bonne chère._" it is said that he added, laughing: "it is done! we have caught her."[ ] the words are his, doubtless, but we are not certain that he laughed. [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , , .] on the morrow, tuesday the th, he assembled the tribunal in the chapel of the archbishop's house. the forty-two assessors present were informed of what had happened on the previous day and invited to state their opinions, the nature of which might easily be anticipated.[ ] every heretic who retracted his confession was held a perjurer, not only impenitent but relapsed. and the relapsed were given up to the secular arm.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : bernard gui, _pratique_, part iii, p. . l. tanon, _tribunaux de l'inquisition_, pp. _et seq._] maître nicholas de venderès, canon, archdeacon, was the first to state his opinion. "jeanne is and must be held a heretic. she must be delivered to the secular authority."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] the lord abbot of fécamp expressed his opinion in the following terms: "jeanne has relapsed. nevertheless it is well that the terms of her abjuration once read to her, be read a second time and explained, and that at the same time she be reminded of god's word. this done, it is for us, her judges, to declare her a heretic and to abandon her to the secular authority, entreating it to deal leniently with her."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] this plea for leniency was a mere matter of form. if the provost of rouen had taken it into consideration he also would have been excommunicated, with a further possibility of temporal punishment.[ ] and yet there were certain counsellors who even wished to dispense with this empty show of pity, urging that there was no need for such a supplication. [footnote : l. tanon, _tribunaux de l'inquisition_, pp. , .] maître guillaume erard and sundry other assessors, among whom were maîtres marguerie, loiseleur, pierre maurice, and brother martin ladvenu, were of the opinion of my lord abbot of fécamp.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] maître thomas de courcelles advised the woman being again charitably admonished touching the salvation of her soul. such likewise was the opinion of brother isambart de la pierre.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] the lord bishop, having listened to these opinions, concluded that jeanne must be proceeded against as one having relapsed. accordingly he summoned her to appear on the morrow, the th of may, in the old market square.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] on the morning of that wednesday, the th of may, by the command of my lord of beauvais, the two young friars preachers, bachelors in theology, brother martin ladvenu and brother isambart de la pierre, went to jeanne in her prison. brother martin told her that she was to die that day. at the approach of this cruel death, amidst the silence of her voices, she understood at length that she would not be delivered. cruelly awakened from her dream, she felt heaven and earth failing her, and fell into a deep despair. "alas!" she cried, "shall so terrible a fate betide me as that my body ever pure and intact shall to-day be burned and reduced to ashes? ah me! ah me! liefer would i be seven times beheaded than thus be burned. alas! had i been in the prison of the church, to which i submitted, and guarded by ecclesiastics and not by my foes and adversaries, so woeful a misfortune as this would not have befallen me. oh! i appeal to god, the great judge, against this violence and these sore wrongs with which i am afflicted."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , (evidence of brother isambart de la pierre). _ibid._, p. (evidence of brother martin ladvenu).] while she was lamenting, the doctors and masters, nicolas de venderès, pierre maurice and nicolas loiseleur, entered the prison; they came by order of my lord of beauvais.[ ] on the previous day thirty-nine counsellers out of forty-two, declaring that jeanne had relapsed, had added that they deemed it well she should be reminded of the terms of her abjuration.[ ] wherefore, according to the counsel of these clerics, the lord bishop had sent certain learned doctors to the relapsed heretic and had resolved to come to her himself. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . (in the introduction i have given my reasons for regarding the information given after the death of the maid as possessing great historical significance.)] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - .] she must needs submit to one last examination. "do you believe that your voices and apparitions come from good or from evil spirits?" "i know not; but i appeal to my mother the church."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . or "to such of you as are churchmen." _ibid._, p. (information furnished after her death).] maître pierre maurice, a reader of terence and virgil, was filled with pity for this hapless maid.[ ] on the previous day he had declared her to have relapsed because his knowledge of theology forced him to it; and now he was concerned for the salvation of this soul in peril, which could not be saved except by recognising the falseness of its voices. [footnote : robillard de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_.] "are they indeed real?" he asked her. she replied, "whether they be good or bad, they appeared to me." she affirmed that with her eyes she had seen, with her ears heard, the voices and apparitions which had been spoken of at the trial. she heard them most frequently, she said, at the hour of compline and of matins, when the bells were ringing.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] maître pierre maurice, being the pope's secretary, was debarred from openly professing the pyrrhonic philosophy. he inclined, however, to a rational interpretation of natural phenomena, if we may judge from his remarking to jeanne that the ringing of bells often sounded like voices. without describing the exact form of her apparitions, jeanne said they came to her in a great multitude and were very tiny. she believed in them no longer, being fully persuaded that they had deceived her. maître pierre maurice asked about the angel who had brought the crown. she replied that there had never been a crown save that promised by her to her king, and that the angel was herself.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , (information furnished after her death).] at that moment the lord bishop of beauvais and the vice-inquisitor entered the prison, accompanied by maître thomas de courcelles and maître jacques lecamus.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] at the sight of the judge who had brought her to such a pass she cried, "bishop, i die through you." he replied by piously admonishing her. "ah! jeanne, bear all in patience. you die because you have not kept your promise and have returned to evil-doing.[ ] now, jeanne," he asked her, "you have always said that your voices promised you deliverance; you behold how they have deceived you, wherefore tell us the truth." [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. (evidence of brother jehan toutmouillé).] she replied, "verily, i see that they have deceived me."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , (information given after jeanne's death).] the bishop and the vice-inquisitor withdrew. they had triumphed over a poor girl of twenty. "if after their condemnation heretics repent, and if the signs of their repentance are manifest, the sacraments of confession and the eucharist may not be denied them, provided they demand them with humility."[ ] thus ran the sacred decretals. but no recantation, no assurance of conformity, could save the relapsed heretic. he was permitted confession, absolution, and communion; which means that at the bar of the sacrament the sincerity of his repentance and conversion was believed in. but at the same time it was declared judicially that his repentance was not believed in and that consequently he must die.[ ] [footnote : _textus decretalium_, lib. v, ch. iv.] [footnote : ignace de doellinger, _la papauté_, traduit par a. giraud-teulon, paris, , in vo, p. .] brother martin ladvenu heard jeanne's confession. then he sent messire massieu, the usher, to my lord of beauvais, to inform him that she asked to be given the body of jesus christ. the bishop assembled certain doctors to confer on this subject; and after they had deliberated, he replied to the usher: "tell brother martin to give her the communion and all that she shall ask."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] messire massieu returned to the castle to bear this reply to brother martin. for a second time brother martin heard jeanne in confession and gave her absolution.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] a cleric, one pierre, brought the body of our lord in an unceremonious fashion, on a paten covered with the cloth used to put over the chalice, without lights or procession, without surplice or stole.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , . de beaurepaire, _recherches sur le procès_, pp. , .] this did not please brother martin, who sent to fetch a stole and candles. then, taking the consecrated host in his fingers and presenting it to jeanne, he said: "do you believe this to be the body of christ?" "yes, and it alone is able to deliver me." and she entreated that it should be given to her. "do you still believe in your voices?" asked the officiating priest. "i believe in god alone, and will place no trust in the voices who have thus deceived me."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , (information procured after jeanne's death).] and shedding many tears she received the body of our lord very devoutly. then to god, to the virgin mary and to the saints she offered prayers beautiful and reverent and gave such signs of repentance that those present were moved to tears.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , , ; vol. iii, pp. , , , .] contrite and sorrowful she said to maître pierre maurice:[ ] "maître pierre, where shall i be this evening?" [footnote : for jeanne's communion see also de beaurepaire, _recherches sur le procès_, pp. - .] "do you not trust in the lord?" asked the canon. "yea, god helping me, i shall be in paradise."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] maître nicolas loiseleur exhorted her to correct the error she had caused to grow up among the people. "to this end you must openly declare that you have been deceived and have deceived the folk and that you humbly ask pardon." then, fearing lest she might forget when the time came for her to be publicly judged, she asked brother martin to put her in mind of this matter and of others touching her salvation.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. . maître n. taquel would lead us to believe that the interrogatories took place after jeanne's communion, but this can hardly be admitted.] maître loiseleur went away giving signs of violent grief. walking through the streets like a madman, he was howled at by the _godons_.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. ; vol. iii, p. .] it was about nine o'clock in the morning when brother martin and messire massieu took jeanne out of the prison, wherein she had been in bonds one hundred and seventy-eight days. she was placed in a cart, and, escorted by eighty men-at-arms, was driven along the narrow streets to the old market square, close to the river.[ ] this square was bordered on the east by a wooden market-house, the butcher's market, on the west by the cemetery of saint-sauveur, on the edge of which, towards the square, stood the church of saint-sauveur.[ ] in this place three scaffolds had been raised, one against the northern gable of the market-house; and in its erection several tiles of the roof had been broken.[ ] on this scaffold jeanne was to be stationed, there to listen to the sermon. another and a larger scaffold had been erected adjoining the cemetery. there the judges and the prelates were to sit.[ ] the pronouncing of sentence in a religious trial was an act of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. for the place of its pronouncement the inquisitor and the ordinary preferred consecrated territory, holy ground. true it is that a bull of pope lucius forbade such sentences to be given in churches and cemeteries; but the judges eluded this rule by recommending the secular arm to modify its sentence. the third scaffold, opposite the second, was of plaster, and stood in the middle of the square, on the spot whereon executions usually took place. on it was piled the wood for the burning. on the stake which surmounted it was a scroll bearing the words: "jehanne, who hath caused herself to be called the maid, a liar, pernicious, deceiver of the people, soothsayer, superstitious, a blasphemer against god, presumptuous, miscreant, boaster, idolatress, cruel, dissolute, an invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic, and heretic."[ ] [footnote : a. sarrazin, _jeanne d'arc et la normandie_, p. .] [footnote : bouquet, _rouen aux différentes époques de son histoire_, pp. _et seq._ a. sarrazin, _jeanne d'arc et la normandie_, pp. , . de beaurepaire, _mémoires sur le lieu du supplice de jeanne d'arc_, with plan of the old market square of rouen according to the _livre de fontaine de _, rouen, , in vo.] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _note sur la prise du château de rouen, par ricarville_, rouen, , in vo, p. .] [footnote : bouquet, _jeanne d'arc au château de rouen_, p. . de beaurepaire, _mémoire sur le lieu du supplice de jeanne d'arc_, p. . a. sarrazin, _jeanne d'arc et la normandie_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] the square was guarded by one hundred and sixty men-at-arms. a crowd of curious folk pressed behind the guards, the windows were filled and the roofs covered with onlookers. jeanne was brought on to the scaffold which had its back to the market-house gable. she wore a long gown and hood.[ ] maître nicolas midi, doctor in theology, came up on to the same platform and began to preach to her.[ ] as the text of his sermon he took the words of the apostle in the first epistle to the corinthians:[ ] "and whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it." jeanne patiently listened to the sermon.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. ; vol. ii, pp. , , ; vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. ; vol. ii, p. ; vol. iii, pp. , , .] [footnote : chapter xii, (w.s.).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] then my lord of beauvais, in his own name and that of the vice-inquisitor, pronounced the sentence. he declared jeanne to be a relapsed heretic. "we declare that thou, jeanne, art a corrupt member, and in order that thou mayest not infect the other members, we are resolved to sever thee from the unity of the church, to tear thee from its body, and to deliver thee to the secular power. and we reject thee, we tear thee out, we abandon thee, beseeching this same secular power, that touching death and the mutilation of the limbs, it may be pleased to moderate its sentence...."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] by this formula, the ecclesiastical judge withdrew from any share in the violent death of a fellow creature: _ecclesia abhorret a sanguine_.[ ] but every one knew how much such an entreaty was worth; and all were aware that if the impossible had happened and the magistrate had granted it, he would have been subject to the same penalties as the heretic. things had now come to such a pass that had the city of rouen belonged to king charles, he himself could not have saved the maid from the stake. [footnote : l. tanon, _histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition_, p. .] when the sentence was announced jeanne breathed heart-rending sighs. weeping bitterly, she fell on her knees, commended her soul to god, to our lady, to the blessed saints of paradise, many of whom she mentioned by name. very humbly did she ask for mercy from all manner of folk, of whatsoever rank or condition, of her own party and of the enemy's, entreating them to forgive the wrong she had done them and to pray for her. she asked pardon of her judges, of the english, of king henry, of the english princes of the realm. addressing all the priests there present she besought each one to say a mass for the salvation of her soul.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. ; vol. iii, p. .] thus for one half hour did she continue with sighs and tears to give expression to the sentiments of humiliation and contrition with which the clerics had inspired her.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , .] and even now she did not neglect to defend the honour of the fair dauphin, whom she had so greatly loved. she was heard to say: "it was never my king who induced me to do anything i have done, either good or evil."[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] many of the bystanders wept. a few english laughed. certain of the captains, who could make nothing of the edifying ceremonial of ecclesiastical justice, grew impatient. seeing messire massieu in the pulpit and hearing him exhort jeanne to make a good end, they cried: "what now, priest! art thou going to keep us here to dinner?"[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , ; vol. iii, pp. , , .] at rouen, when a heretic was given up to the secular arm, it was customary to take him to the town hall, where the town council made known unto him his sentence.[ ] in jeanne's case these forms were not observed. the bailie, messire le bouteiller, who was present, waved his hand and said: "take her, take her."[ ] straightway, two of the king's sergeants dragged her to the base of the scaffold and placed her in a cart which was waiting. on her head was set a great fool's cap made of paper, on which were written the words: "_hérétique, relapse, apostate, idolâtre_"; and she was handed over to the executioner.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. . a. sarrazin, _jeanne d'arc et la normandie_, p. . guedon and ladvenu added to their evidence that not long afterwards a certain georges folenfant was also given up to the secular arm. but the archbishop and the inquisitor sent ladvenu to the bailie "in order to warn him that the said georges was not to be treated like the maid who was burned without the pronouncement of any definite and final sentence." _trial_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : falconbridge, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . yet martin ladvenu says "until the last hour," etc., which is obviously false.] a bystander heard her saying: "ah! rouen, sorely do i fear that thou mayest have to suffer for my death."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] she evidently still regarded herself as the messenger from heaven, the angel of the realm of france. possibly the illusion, so cruelly reft from her, returned at last to enfold her in its beneficent veil. at any rate, she appears to have been crushed; all that remained to her was an infinite horror of death and a childlike piety. the ecclesiastical judges had barely time to descend and flee from a spectacle which they could not have witnessed without violating the laws of clerical procedure. they were all weeping: the lord bishop of thérouanne, chancellor of england, had his eyes full of tears. the cardinal of winchester, who was said never to enter a church save to pray for the death of an enemy,[ ] had pity on this damsel so woeful and so contrite. brother pierre maurice, the canon who was a reader of the Æneid, could not keep back his tears. all the priests who had delivered her to the executioner were edified to see her make so holy an end. that is what maître jean alespée meant when he sighed: "i would that my soul were where i believe the soul of that woman to be."[ ] to himself and the hapless sufferer he applied the following lines from the _dies iræ_: _qui mariam absolvisti, mihi quoque spem dedisti._[ ] [footnote : shakespeare, henry vi, part , act i, scene .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. ; vol. iii, pp. , , .] [footnote : _missel romain, office des morts._ cf. le p. c. clair, _le dies iræ, histoire, traduction et commentaire_, paris, in vo, , pp. - .] but none the less he must have believed that by her heresies and her obstinacy she had brought death on herself. the two young friars preachers and the usher massieu accompanied jeanne to the stake. she asked for a cross. an englishman made a tiny one out of two pieces of wood, and gave it to her. she took it devoutly and put it in her bosom, on her breast. then she besought brother isambart to go to the neighbouring church to fetch a cross, to bring it to her and hold it before her, so that as long as she lived, the cross on which god was crucified should be ever in her sight. massieu asked a priest of saint-sauveur for one, and it was brought. jeanne weeping kissed it long and tenderly, and her hands held it while they were free.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , .] as she was being bound to the stake she invoked the aid of saint michael; and now at length no examiner was present to ask her whether it were really he she saw in her father's garden. she prayed also to saint catherine.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] when she saw a light put to the stake, she cried loudly, "jesus!" this name she repeated six times.[ ] she was also heard asking for holy water.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. ; vol. iii, pp. , .] it was usual for the executioner, in order to cut short the sufferings of the victim, to stifle him in dense smoke before the flames had had time to ascend; but the rouen executioner was too terrified of the prodigies worked by the maid to do thus; and besides he would have found it difficult to reach her, because the bailie had had the plaster scaffold made unusually high. wherefore the executioner himself, hardened man that he was, judged her death to have been a terribly cruel one.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, p. .] once again jeanne uttered the name of jesus; then she bowed her head and gave up her spirit.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] as soon as she was dead the bailie commanded the executioner to scatter the flames in order to see that the prophetess of the armagnacs had not escaped with the aid of the devil or in some other manner.[ ] then, after the poor blackened body had been shown to the people, the executioner, in order to reduce it to ashes, threw on to the fire coal, oil and sulphur. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , .] in such an execution the combustion of the corpse was rarely complete.[ ] among the ashes, when the fire was extinguished, the heart and entrails were found intact. for fear lest jeanne's remains should be taken and used for witchcraft or other evil practices,[ ] the bailie had them thrown into the seine.[ ] [footnote : l. tanon, _histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition_, p. .] [footnote : _chronique des cordeliers_, fol. verso. _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , ; vol. iv, p. . th. basin, _histoire de charles vii et de louis xi_, vol. i, p. . th. cochard, _existe-t-il des reliques de jeanne d'arc?_ orléans, , in vo.] chapter xv after the death of the maid--the end of the shepherd--la dame des armoises in the evening, after the burning, the executioner, as was his wont, went whining and begging to the monastery of the preaching friars. the creature complained that he had found it very difficult to make an end of jeanne. according to a legend invented afterwards, he told the monks that he feared damnation for having burned a saint.[ ] had he actually spoken thus in the house of the vice-inquisitor he would have been straightway cast into the lowest dungeon, there to await a trial for heresy, which would have probably resulted in his being sentenced to suffer the death he had inflicted on her whom he had called a saint. and what could have led him to suppose that the woman condemned by good father lemaistre and my lord of beauvais was not a bad woman? the truth is that in the presence of these friars he arrogated to himself merit for having executed a witch and taken pains therein, wherefore he came to ask for his pot of wine. one of the monks, who happened to be a friar preacher, brother pierre bosquier, forgot himself so far as to say that it was wrong to have condemned the maid. these words, albeit they were heard by only a few persons, were carried to the inquisitor general. when he was summoned to answer for them, brother pierre bosquier declared very humbly that his words were altogether wrong and tainted with heresy, and that indeed he had only uttered them when he was full of wine. on his knees and with clasped hands he entreated holy mother church, his judges and the most redoubtable lords to pardon him. having regard to his repentance and in consideration of his cloth and of his having spoken in a state of intoxication, my lord of beauvais and the vice-inquisitor showed indulgence to brother pierre bosquier. by a sentence pronounced on the th of august, , they condemned him to be imprisoned in the house of the friars preachers and fed on bread and water until easter.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] on the th of june the judges and counsellors, who had sat in judgment on jeanne, received letters of indemnity from the great council. what was the object of these letters? was it in case the holders of them should be proceeded against by the french? but in that event the letters would have done them more harm than good.[ ] [footnote : le p. denifle and chatelain, _cartularium universitatis parisiensis_, vol. iv, p. .] the lord chancellor of england sent to the emperor, to the kings and to the princes of christendom, letters in latin; to the prelates, dukes, counts, lords, and all the towns of france, letters in french.[ ] herein he made known unto them that king henry and his counsellors had had sore pity on the maid, and that if they had caused her death it was through their zeal for the faith and their solicitude christian folk.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , ; vol. iv, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, ch. cv.] in like tenor did the university of paris write to the holy father, the emperor and the college of cardinals.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] on the th of july, the day of saint-martin-le-bouillant, master jean graverent, prior of the jacobins, inquisitor of the faith, preached at saint-martin-des-champs. in his sermon he related the deeds of jeanne, and told how for her errors and shortcomings she had been delivered to the secular judges and burned alive. then he added: "there were four, three of whom have been taken, to wit, this maid, pierronne, and her companion. one, catherine de la rochelle, still remaineth with the armagnacs. friar richard, the franciscan, who attracted so great a multitude of folk when he preached in paris at the innocents and elsewhere, directed these women; he was their spiritual father."[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , . this sermon contains curious inaccuracies. are they the fault of the inquisitor or of the author of _le journal_?] with pierronne burned in paris, her companion eating the bread of bitterness and drinking the water of affliction in the prison of the church, and jeanne burned at rouen, the royal company of _béguines_ was now almost entirely annihilated. there only remained to the king the holy dame of la rochelle, who had escaped from the hands of the paris official; but her indiscreet talk had rendered her troublesome.[ ] while his penitents were being discredited, good friar richard himself had fallen on evil days. the vicars in the diocese of poitiers and the inquisitor of the faith had forbidden him to preach. the great orator, who had converted so many christian folk, could no longer thunder against gaming-tables and dice, against women's finery, and mandrakes arrayed in magnificent attire. no longer could he declare the coming of antichrist nor prepare souls for the terrible trials which were to herald the imminent end of the world. he was ordered to lie under arrest in the franciscan monastery at poitiers. and doubtless it was with no great docility that he submitted to the sentence of his superiors; for on friday, the rd of march, , we find the ordinary and the inquisitor, asking aid in the execution of the sentence from the parliament of poitiers, which did not refuse it. why did holy church exercise such severity towards a preacher endowed with so wondrous a power of moving sinful souls? we may at any rate suspect the reason. for some time the english and burgundian clergy had been accusing him of apostasy and magic. now, owing to the unity of the church in general and to that of the gallican church in particular, owing also to the authority of that bright sun of christendom, the university of paris, when a clerk was suspected of error and heresy by the doctors of the english and burgundian party he came to be looked at askance by the clergy who were loyal to king charles. especially was this so when in a matter touching the catholic faith, the university had pronounced against him and in favour of the english. it is quite likely that the clerks of poitiers had been prejudiced against friar richard by pierronne's conviction and even by the maid's trial. the good brother, who persisted in preaching the end of the world, was strongly suspected of dealing in the black art. wherefore, realising the fate which was threatening him, he fled, and was never heard of again.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iv, p. .] [footnote : th. basin, _histoire de charles vii et de louis xi_, vol. iv, pp. , . monstrelet, ch. lxiii. bougenot, _deux documents inédits relatifs à jeanne d'arc_, in _revue bleue_, feb., , pp. , .] none the less, however, did the counsellors of king charles continue to employ the devout in the army. at the time of the disappearance of friar richard and his penitents, they were making use of a young shepherd whom my lord the archbishop, duke of reims and chancellor of the kingdom, had proclaimed to be jeanne's miraculous successor. and it was in the following circumstance that the shepherd was permitted to display his power. the war continued. twenty days after jeanne's death the english in great force marched to recapture the town of louviers. they had delayed till then, not, as some have stated, because they despaired of succeeding in anything as long as the maid lived, but because they needed time to collect money and engines for the siege.[ ] in the july and august of this same year, at senlis and at beauvais, my lord of reims, chancellor of france and the maréchal de boussac, were upholding the french cause. and we may be sure that my lord of reims was upholding it with no little vigour since at the same time he was defending the benefices which were so dear to him.[ ] a maid had reconquered them, now he intended a lad to hold them. with this object he employed the little shepherd, guillaume, from the lozère mountains, who, like saint francis of assisi and saint catherine of sienna, had received stigmata. a party of french surprised the regent at mantes and were on the point of taking him prisoner. the alarm was given to the army besieging louviers; and two or three companies of men-at-arms were despatched. they hastened to mantes, where they learnt that the regent had succeeded in reaching paris. thereupon, having been reinforced by troops from gournay and certain other english garrisons, being some two thousand strong and commanded by the earls of warwick, arundel, salisbury, and suffolk, and by lord talbot and sir thomas kiriel, the english made bold to march upon beauvais. the french, informed of their approach, left the town at daybreak, and marched out to meet them in the direction of savignies. king charles's men, numbering between eight hundred and one thousand combatants, were commanded by the maréchal de boussac, the captains la hire, poton, and others.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , , , ; vol. iii, p. ; vol. v, pp. , , . dibon, _essai sur louviers_, rouen, , in vo, pp. _et seq._ vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : le p. denifle, _la désolation des églises de france vers le milieu du xv'e siècle_, vol. i, p. xvi.] [footnote : jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. i, p. . monstrelet, vol. iv, p. . lefèvre de saint-rémy, vol. ii, p. .] the shepherd guillaume, whom they believed to be sent of god, was at their head, riding side-saddle and displaying the miraculous wounds in his hands, his feet, and his left side.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] when they were about two and a half miles from the town, just when they least expected it, a shower of arrows came down upon them. the english, informed by their scouts of the french approach, had lain in wait for them in a hollow of the road. now they attacked them closely both in the van and in the rear. each side fought valiantly. a considerable number were slain, which was not the case in most of the battles of those days, when few but the fugitives were killed. but the french, feeling themselves surrounded, were seized with panic, and thus brought about their own destruction. most of them, with the maréchal de boussac and captain la hire, fled to the town of beauvais. captain poton and the shepherd, guillaume, remained in the hands of the english, who returned to rouen in triumph.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] poton made sure of being ransomed in the usual manner. but the little shepherd could not hope for such a fate; he was suspected of heresy and magic; he had deceived christian folk and accepted from them idolatrous veneration. the signs of our saviour's passion that he bore upon him helped him not a whit; on the contrary the wounds, by the french held to have been divinely imprinted, to the english seemed the marks of the devil. guillaume, like the maid, had been taken in the diocese of beauvais. the lord bishop of this town, messire pierre cauchon, who had claimed the right to try jeanne, made a similar claim for guillaume; and the shepherd was granted what the maid had been refused, he was cast into an ecclesiastical prison.[ ] he would seem to have been less difficult to guard than jeanne and also less important. but the english had recently learnt what was involved in a trial by the inquisition; they now knew how lengthy and how punctilious it was. moreover, they did not see how it would profit them if this shepherd were convicted of heresy. if the french had set their hope of success in war[ ] in guillaume as they had done in jeanne, then that hope was but short-lived. to put the armagnacs to shame by proving that their shepherd lad came from the devil, that game was not worth the candle. the youth was taken to rouen and thence to paris.[ ] [footnote : vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. . de beaurepaire, _recherches sur les juges_, p. .] [footnote : lea, _history of the inquisition_, vol. iii, (ed. ).] [footnote : lefèvre de saint-rémy, vol. ii, pp. , .] he had been a prisoner for four months when king henry vi, who was nine years old, came to paris to be crowned in the church of notre dame with the two crowns of france and england. with high pomp and great rejoicing he made his entrance into the city on sunday, the th of december. along the route of the procession, in the rue du ponceau-saint-denys, had been constructed a fountain adorned with three sirens; and from their midst rose a tall lily stalk, from the buds and blossoms of which flowed streams of wine and milk. folk flocked to drink of the fountain; and around its basin men disguised as savages entertained them with games and sham fights. from the porte saint-denys to the hôtel saint-paul in the marais, the child king rode beneath a great azure canopy, embroidered with flowers-de-luce in gold, borne first by the four aldermen hooded and clothed in purple, then by the corporations, drapers, grocers, money-changers, goldsmiths and hosiers. before him went twenty-five heralds and twenty-five trumpeters; followed by nine handsome men and nine beautiful ladies, wearing magnificent armour and bearing great shields, representing the nine _preux_ and the nine _preuses_, also by a number of knights and squires. in this brilliant procession appeared the little shepherd guillaume; he no longer stretched out his arms to show the wounds of the passion, for he was strongly bound.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] after the ceremony he was conducted back to prison, whence he was taken later to be sewn in a sack and thrown into the seine.[ ] even the french admitted that guillaume was but a simpleton and that his mission was not of god.[ ] [footnote : lefèvre de saint-rémy, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : martial d'auvergne, _vigiles_, ed. coustelier, vol. i.] in , the constable, with the assistance of the queen of sicily, caused the capture and planned the assassination of la trémouille. it was the custom of the nobles of that day to appoint counsellors for king charles and afterwards to kill them. however, the sword which was to have caused the death of la trémouille, owing to his corpulence, failed to inflict a mortal wound. his life was saved, but his influence was dead. king charles tolerated the constable as he had tolerated the sire de la trémouille.[ ] [footnote : gruel, _chronique d'arthur de richemont_, p. . vallet de viriville, in _nouvelle biographie générale_. de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. . e. cosneau, _le connétable de richemont_, pp. , .] the latter left behind him the reputation of having been grasping and indifferent to the welfare of the kingdom. perhaps his greatest fault was that he governed in a time of war and pillage, when friends and foes alike were devouring the realm. he was charged with the destruction of the maid, of whom he was said to have been jealous. this accusation proceeds from the house of alençon, with whom the lord chamberlain was not popular.[ ] on the contrary, it must be admitted, that after the lord chancellor, la trémouille was the boldest in employing the maid, and if later she did thwart his plans there is nothing to prove that it was his intention to have her destroyed by the english. she destroyed herself and was consumed by her own zeal. [footnote : perceval de cagny, pp. , , _passim_.] rightly or wrongly, the lord chamberlain was held to be a bad man; and, although his successor in the king's favour, the duc de richemont, was avaricious, hard, violent, incredibly stupid, surly, malicious, always beaten and always discontented, the exchange appeared to be no loss. the constable came in a fortunate hour, when the duke of burgundy was making peace with the king of france. in the words of a carthusian friar, the english who had entered the kingdom by the hole made in duke john's head on the bridge of montereau, only retained their hold on the kingdom by the hand of duke philip. they were but few in number, and if the giant were to withdraw his hand a breath of wind would suffice to blow them away. the regent died of sorrow and wrath, beholding the fulfilment of the horoscope of king henry vi: "exeter shall lose what monmouth hath won."[ ] [footnote : carlier, _histoire des valois_, , in to, vol. ii, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. i, p. . the regent also believed in astrology (b.n. ms. ).] on the th of april, , the count of richemont entered paris. the nursing mother of burgundian clerks and _cabochien_ doctors, the university herself, had helped to mediate peace.[ ] [footnote : gruel, _chronique d'arthur de richemont_, pp. , . dom félibien, _histoire de paris_, vol. iv, p. .] now, one month after paris had returned to her allegiance to king charles, there appeared in lorraine a certain damsel. she was about twenty-five years old. hitherto she had been called claude; but she now made herself known to divers lords of the town of metz as being jeanne the maid.[ ] [footnote : _chronique du doyen de saint-thibaud de metz_, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . jacomin husson, _chronique de metz_, ed. michelant, metz, , pp. , . cf. lecoy de la marche, _une fausse jeanne d'arc_, in _revue des questions historiques_, october, , pp. _et seq._ vergniaud-romagnési, _des portraits de jeanne d'arc et de la fausse jeanne d'arc_, in _mémoires de la société d'agriculture d'orléans_, vol. i ( ), pp. , . de puymaigre, _la fausse jeanne d'arc_, in _revue nouvelle d'alsace-lorraine_, vol. v ( ), pp. _et seq._ a. france, _une fausse jeanne d'arc_, in _revue des familles_, february, .] at this time, jeanne's father and eldest brother were dead.[ ] isabelle romée was alive. her two youngest sons were in the service of the king of france, who had raised them to the rank of nobility and given them the name of du lys. jean, the eldest, called petit-jean,[ ] had been appointed bailie of vermandois, then captain of chartres. about this year, , he was provost and captain of vaucouleurs.[ ] [footnote : varanius alone says that jacques d'arc died of sorrow at the loss of his daughter. _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , . g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la fausse jeanne d'arc_, p. , note .] the youngest, pierre, or pierrelot, who had fallen into the hands of the burgundians before compiègne at the same time as jeanne, had just been liberated from the prison of the bastard of vergy.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . lefèvre de saint-rémy, vol. ii, p. .] both brothers believed that their sister had been burned at rouen. but when they were told that she was living and wished to see them, they appointed a meeting at la-grange-aux-ormes, a village in the meadows of the sablon, between the seille and the moselle, about two and a half miles south of metz. they reached this place on the th of may. there they saw her and recognised her immediately to be their sister; and she recognised them to be her brothers.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] she was accompanied by certain lords of metz, among whom was a man right noble, messire nicole lowe, who was chamberlain to charles vii.[ ] by divers tokens these nobles recognised her to be the maid jeanne who had taken king charles to be crowned at reims. these tokens were certain signs on the skin.[ ] now there was a prophecy concerning jeanne which stated her to have a little red mark beneath the ear.[ ] but this prophecy was invented after the events to which it referred. consequently we may believe the maid to have been thus marked. was this the token by which the nobles of metz recognised her? [footnote : _le metz ancien_ (metz, , vol. in folio) by the baron d'hannoncelles, which contains the genealogy of nicole lowe.] [footnote : "and was recognised by divers tokens" (_enseignes_) (_trial_, vol. v, p. ). m. lecoy de la marche (_une fausse jeanne d'arc_, in _revue des questions historiques_, october, , p. ), and m. gaston save (_jehanne des armoises, pucelle d'orléans_, nancy, , p. ) understand that she was recognised by several officers or ensigns (_enseignes_). i have interpreted _enseignes_ in the ordinary sense of marks on the skin, birth-marks. (cf. la curne.)] [footnote : _chronique du doyen de saint-thibaud_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] we do not know by what means she claimed to have escaped death; but there is reason to think[ ] that she attributed her deliverance to her holiness. did she say that an angel had saved her from the fire? it might be read in books how in the ancient amphitheatres lions licked the bare feet of virgins, how boiling oil was as soothing as balm to the bodies of holy martyrs; and how according to many of the old stories nothing short of the sword could take the life of god's maidens. these ancient histories rested on a sure foundation. but if such tales had been related of the fifteenth century they might have appeared less credible. and this damsel does not seem to have employed them to adorn her adventure. she was probably content to say that another woman had been burned in her place. [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] according to a confession she made afterwards, she came from rome, where, accoutred in harness of war, she had fought valiantly in the service of pope eugenius. she may even have told the lorrainers of the feats of prowess she had there accomplished. now jeanne had prophesied (at least so it was believed) that she would die in battle against the infidel and that her mantle would fall upon a maid of rome. but such a saying, if it were known to these nobles of metz, would be more likely to denounce this so-called jeanne as an imposture than witness to the truth of her mission.[ ] however this might be, they believed what this woman told them. [footnote : nevertheless see on this subject m. germain lefèvre-pontalis, who is our authority for this prophecy (eberhard windecke, pp. - ).] perhaps, like many a noble of the republic,[ ] they were more inclined to king charles than to the duke of burgundy. and we may be sure that, chivalrous knights as they were, they esteemed chivalry wherever they found it; wherefore, because of her valour they admired the maid; and they made her good cheer. [footnote : the republic of metz (w.s.)] messire nicole lowe gave her a charger and a pair of hose. the charger was worth thirty francs--a sum wellnigh royal--for of the two horses which at soissons and at senlis the king gave the maid jeanne, one was worth thirty-eight livres ten sous, and the other thirty-seven livres ten sous.[ ] not more than sixteen francs had been paid for the horse with which she had been provided at vaucouleurs.[ ] [footnote : _chronique du doyen de saint-thibaud_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . chronique de philippe de vigneulles, in _les chroniques messines_ of huguenin, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, p. . l. champion, _jeanne d'arc écuyère_, ch. ii, ch. vi.] nicole grognot, governor of the town,[ ] offered a sword to the sister of the du lys brothers; aubert boullay presented her with a hood.[ ] [footnote : variant of _la chronique du doyen de saint-thibaud_ sent from metz to pierre du puy, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] she rode her horse with the same skill which seven years earlier, if we may believe some rather mythical stories, had filled with wonder the old duke of lorraine.[ ] and she spoke certain words to messire nicole lowe which confirmed him in his belief that she was indeed that same maid jeanne who had fared forth into france. she had the ready tongue of a prophetess, and spoke in symbols and parables, revealing nought of her intent. [footnote : d. calmet, _histoire de lorraine_, vol. vii. proofs and illustrations, col. vi.] her power would not come to her before saint john the baptist's day, she said. now this was the very time which the maid, after the battle of patay, in , had fixed for the extermination of the english in france.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . eberhard windecke, p. . morosini, vol. iii, p. , note.] this prophecy had not been fulfilled and consequently had not been mentioned again. jeanne, if she ever uttered it, and it is quite possible that she did, must have been the first to forget it. moreover, saint john's day was a term commonly cited in leases, fairs, contracts, hirings, etc., and it is quite conceivable that the calendar of a prophetess may have been the same as that of a labourer. the day after their arrival at la grange-aux-ormes, monday, the st of may, the du lys brothers took her, whom they held to be their sister, to that town of vaucouleurs[ ] whither isabelle romée's daughter had gone to see sire robert de baudricourt. in this town, in the year , there were still living many persons of different conditions, such as the leroyer couple and the seigneur aubert d'ourches,[ ] who had seen jeanne in february, . [footnote : m. le baron de braux was kind enough to write to me from boucq near foug, meurthe-et-moselle, on the th of june, , explaining that bacquillon (_trial_, vol. v, p. ) is an erroneous reading of one of the manuscripts of the doyen of saint-thibaud. "by comparing," he added, "the various versions (v. quicherat and _les chroniques messines_) we may ascertain that it is really vaucouleurs, valquelou," mistaken for bacquillon.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , , , .] after a week at vaucouleurs she went to marville, a small town between corny and pont-á-mousson. there she spent whitsuntide and abode for three weeks in the house of one jean quenat.[ ] on her departure she was visited by sundry inhabitants of metz, who gave her jewels, recognising her to be the maid of france.[ ] jeanne, it will be remembered, had been seen by divers knights of metz at the time of king charles's coronation at reims. at marville, geoffroy desch, following the example of nicole lowe, presented the so-called jeanne with a horse. geoffroy desch belonged to one of the most influential families of the republic of metz. he was related to jean desch, municipal secretary in .[ ] [footnote : the _chronique de tournai_ says of the true jeanne that she came from mareville, a small town between metz and pont-à-mousson. "this jeanne had long dwelt and served in a _métairie_ [a kind of farm] of this place."] [footnote : _chronique du doyen saint-thibaud_, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . lecoy de la marche, _jeanne des armoises_, p. . g. save, _jehanne des armoises, pucelle d'orléans_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. _et seq._] from marville, she went on a pilgrimage to notre dame de liance, called lienche by the picards and known later as notre dame de liesse. at liance was worshipped a black image of the virgin, which, according to tradition, had been brought by the crusaders from the holy land. the chapel containing this image was situated between laon and reims. it was said, by the priests who officiated there, to be one of the halting places on the route of the coronation procession, where the kings and their retinues were accustomed to stop on their return from reims; but this is very likely not to be true. whether it were such a halting place or no, there is no doubt that the folk of metz displayed a particular devotion to our lady of liance; and it seemed fitting that jeanne, who had escaped from an english prison, should go and give thanks for her marvellous deliverance to the black virgin of picardy.[ ] [footnote : _chronique du doyen de saint-thibaud_, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . dom lelong, _histoire du diocèse de laon_, , p. . abbé ledouble, _les origines de liesse et du pèlerinage de notre-dame_, soissons, , pp. _et seq._] thence she went on her way to arlon, to elisabeth of gorlitz, duchess of luxembourg, an aunt by marriage of the duke of burgundy.[ ] she was an old woman, who had been twice a widow. by extortion and oppression she had made herself detested by her vassals. by this princess jeanne was well received. there was nothing strange in that. persons living holy lives and working miracles were much sought after by princes and nobles who desired to discover secrets or to obtain the fulfilment of some wish. and the duchess of luxembourg might well believe this damsel to be the maid jeanne herself, since the brothers du lys, the nobles of metz and the folk of vaucouleurs were of that opinion. [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. , note . g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la fausse jeanne d'arc_, p. , note .] for the generality of men, jeanne's life and death were surrounded by marvels and mysteries. many had from the first doubted her having perished by the hand of the executioner. certain were curiously reticent on this point; they said: "the english had her publicly burnt at rouen, or some other woman like her."[ ] others confessed that they did not know what had become of her.[ ] [footnote : _chronique normande_ (ms. in the british museum), in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . symphorien champier, _nef des dames_, lyon, , _ibid._] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . _chronique normande_, in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, second series, vol. iii, p. . d. calmet, _histoire de lorraine_, p. vi, proofs and illustrations. g. save, _jehanne des armoises_, pp. , . it is well known that gabriel naudé maintained the paradox that jeanne was only burned in effigy. _considérations politiques sur les coups d'état_, rome, , in to. g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la fausse jeanne d'arc_, p. .] thus, when throughout germany and france the rumour spread that the maid was alive and had been seen near metz, the tidings were variously received. some believed them, others did not. an ardent dispute, which arose between two citizens of arles, gives some idea of the emotion aroused by such tidings. one maintained that the maid was still alive; the other asserted that she was dead; each one wagered that what he said was true. this was no light wager, for it was made and registered in the presence of a notary, on the th of june, , only five weeks after the interview at la grange-aux-ormes.[ ] [footnote : lanéry d'arc, _le culte de jeanne d'arc_, orléans, , in vo. _revue du midi._] meanwhile, in the beginning of august, the maid's eldest brother, jean du lys, called petit-jean, had gone to orléans to announce that his sister was alive. as a reward for these good tidings, he received for himself and his followers ten pints of wine, twelve hens, two goslings, and two leverets.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . lottin, _recherches_, vol. ii, p. .] the birds had been purchased by two magistrates; the name of one, pierre baratin, is to be found in the account books of the fortress, in ,[ ] at the time of the expedition to jargeau; the other was an old man of sixty-six, a burgess passing rich, aignan de saint-mesmin.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . lecoy de la marche, _jeanne des armoises_, p. .] [footnote : he died at the age of one hundred and eighteen. _trial_, iii, p. .] messengers were passing to and fro between the town of duke charles and the town of the duchess of luxembourg. on the th of august a letter from arlon reached orléans. about the middle of the month a pursuivant arrived at arlon. he was called coeur-de-lis, in honour of the heraldic symbol of the city of orléans, which was a lily-bud, a kind of trefoil. the magistrates of orléans had sent him to jeanne with a letter, the contents of which are unknown. jeanne gave him a letter for the king, in which she probably requested an audience. he took it straight to loches, where king charles was negotiating the betrothal of his daughter yolande to prince amedée of savoie.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . vallet de viriville, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. ii, p. , note. g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la fausse jeanne d'arc_, p. , note .] after forty-one days' journey the pursuivant returned to the magistrates, who had despatched him on the nd of september. the messenger complained of a great thirst, wherefore the magistrates, according to their wont, had him served in the chamber of the town-hall with bread, wine, pears, and green walnuts. this repast cost the town two _sous_ four _deniers_ of paris, while the pursuivant's travelling expenses amounted to six _livres_ which were paid in the following month. the town varlet who provided the walnuts was that same jacquet leprestre who had served during the siege. another letter from the maid had been received by the magistrates on the th of august.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. .] jean du lys proceeded just as if his miracle-working sister had in very deed been restored to him. he went to the king, to whom he announced the wonderful tidings. charles cannot have entirely disbelieved them since he ordered jean du lys to be given a gratuity of one hundred francs. whereupon jean promptly demanded these hundred francs from the king's treasurer, who gave him twenty. the coffers of the victorious king were not full even then. having returned to orléans, jean appeared before the town-council. he gave the magistrates to wit that he had only eight francs, a sum by no means sufficient to enable him and four retainers to return to lorraine. the magistrates gave him twelve francs.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, pp. - .] every year until then the anniversary of the maid had been celebrated in the church of saint-sanxon[ ] on the eve of corpus christi and on the previous day. in , eight ecclesiastics of the four mendicant orders sang a mass for the repose of jeanne's soul. in this year, , the magistrates had four candles burnt, weighing together nine and a half pounds, and pendent therefrom the maid's escutcheon, a silver shield bearing the crown of france. but when they heard the maid was alive they cancelled the arrangements for a funeral service in her memory.[ ] [footnote : since . but there is no evidence of any anniversary service having been held in and . it was reinstituted in .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, p. .] while these things were occurring in france, jeanne was still with the duchess of luxembourg. there she met the young count ulrich of wurtemberg, who refused to leave her. he had a handsome cuirasse made for her and took her to cologne. she still called herself the maid of france sent by god.[ ] [footnote : _chronique du doyen de saint-thibaud_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . jean nider, _formicarium_, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. . lecoy de la marche, _loc. cit._, p. .] since the th of june, saint john the baptist's day, her power had returned to her. count ulrich, recognising her supernatural gifts, entreated her to employ them on behalf of himself and his friends. being very contentious, he had become seriously involved in the schism which was then rending asunder the diocese of trèves. two prelates were contending for the see; one, udalric of manderscheit, appointed by the chapter, the other raban of helmstat, bishop of speyer, appointed by the pope.[ ] udalric took the field with a small force and twice besieged and bombarded the town of which he called himself the true shepherd. these proceedings brought the greater part of the diocese on to his side.[ ] but although aged and infirm, raban too had weapons; they were spiritual but powerful: he pronounced an interdict against all such as should espouse the cause of his rival. [footnote : _art de vérifier les dates_, vol. xv, pp. _et seq._ _gallia christiana_, vol. xiii, pp. _et seq._; gams, _series episcoporum_ ( ), pp. , .] [footnote : quicherat, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. , note, erroneously states that the contest for the archbishopric of trèves was between raban of helmstat and jacques of syrck. concerning jacques of syrck or sierck, see de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. iv, p. .] count ulrich of wurtemberg, who was among the most zealous of udalric's supporters, questioned the maid of god concerning him.[ ] similar cases had been submitted to the first jeanne when she was in france. she had been asked, for example, which of the three popes, benedict, martin, or clement, was the true father of the faithful, and without immediately pronouncing on the subject she had promised to designate the pope to whom obedience was due, after she had reached paris and rested there.[ ] the second jeanne replied with even more assurance; she declared that she knew who was the true archbishop and boasted that she would enthrone him. [footnote : jean nider, _formicarium_, book v, ch. viii. d. calmet, _histoire de lorraine_, vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. - .] according to her, it was udalric of manderscheit, he whom the chapter had appointed. but when udalric was summoned before the council of bâle, he was declared an usurper; and the fathers did what it was by no means their unvarying rule to do,--they confirmed the nomination of the pope. unfortunately the maid's intervention in this dispute attracted the attention of the inquisitor general of the city of cologne, heinrich kalt eysen, an illustrious professor of theology. he inquired into the rumours which were being circulated in the city touching the young prince's protégée; and he learnt that she wore unseemly apparel, danced with men, ate and drank more than she ought, and practised magic. he was informed notably that in a certain assembly the maid tore a table-cloth and straightway restored it to its original condition, and that having broken a glass against the wall she with marvellous skill put all its pieces together again. such deeds caused kalt eysen to suspect her strongly of heresy and witchcraft. he summoned her before his tribunal; she refused to appear. this disobedience displeased the inquisitor general, and he sent to fetch the defaulter. but the young count of wurtemberg hid his maid in his house, and afterwards contrived to get her secretly out of the town. thus she escaped the fate of her whom she was willing only partially to imitate. as he could do nothing else, the inquisitor excommunicated her.[ ] she took refuge at arlon with her protectress, the duchess of luxembourg. there she met robert des armoises, lord of tichemont. she may have seen him before, in the spring, at marville, where he usually resided. this nobleman was probably the son of lord richard, governor of the duchy of bar in . nothing is known of him, save that he surrendered this territory to the foreigner without the duke of bar's consent, and then beheld it confiscated and granted to the lord of apremont on condition that he should conquer it. [footnote : jean nider, _formicarium_, in _trial_, vol. iv, p. ; vol. v, p. .] it was not extraordinary that lord robert should be at arlon, seeing that his château of tichemont was near this town. he was poor, albeit of noble birth.[ ] [footnote : h. vincent, _la maison des armoises, originaire de champagne_, in _mémoires de la société d'archéologie lorraine_, rd series, vol. v ( ), p. . g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la fausse jeanne d'arc_, p. , note .] the so-called maid married him,[ ] apparently with the approval of the duchess of luxembourg. according to the opinion of the holy inquisitor of cologne, this marriage was contracted merely to protect the woman against the interdict and to save her from the sword of the church.[ ] [footnote : in his _histoire de lorraine_ (vol. v, pp. clxiv _et seq._), dom calmet says that the contract of marriage between robert des armoises and the maid of france, which had long been preserved in the family, was lost in his day. there is no need to regret it, for it is now known that this contract was forged by father jérôme vignier. le comte de marsy (_la fausse jeanne d'arc, claude des armoises; du degré de confiance à accorder aux découvertes de jérôme vignier_, compiègne, ) and m. tamizey de larroque (_revue critique_, the th october, ). for vignier's other forgeries cf. julien havet, _questions mérovingiennes_, ii.] [footnote : jean nider, _formicarium_, bk. v, ch. viii. _trial_, vol. iv, pp. , .] soon after her marriage she went to live at metz in her husband's house, opposite the church of sainte-ségolène, over the sainte-barbe gate. henceforth she was jeanne du lys, the maid of france, the lady of tichemont. by these names she is described in a contract dated the th of november, , by which robert des armoises and his wife, authorised by him, sell to collard de failly, squire, dwelling at marville, and to poinsette, his wife, one quarter of the lordship of haraucourt. at the request of their dear friends, messire robert and dame jeanne, jean de thoneletil, lord of villette, and saubelet de dun, provost of marville, as well as the vendors, put their seals to the contract to testify to its validity.[ ] [footnote : the preceding deed, by which "_robert des harmoises et la pucelle jehanne d'arc, sa femme_," acquired the estate of fléville, is very doubtful (d. calmet, nd edition, vol. v, p. clxiv, note).] in her dwelling, opposite the sainte-ségolène church, la dame des armoises gave birth to two children.[ ] somewhere in languedoc[ ] there was an honest squire who, when he heard of these births, seriously doubted whether jeanne the maid and la dame des armoises could be one and the same person. this was jean d'aulon, who had once been jeanne's steward. from information he had received from women who knew, he did not believe her to be the kind of woman likely to have children.[ ] [footnote : _chronique du doyen de saint-thibaud_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. - .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. , note .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] according to brother jean nider, doctor in theology of the university of vienne, this fruitful union turned out badly. a priest, and, as he says, a priest who might more appropriately be called a pander, seduced this witch with words of love and carried her off. but brother jean nider adds that the priest secretly took la dame des armoises to metz and there lived with her as his concubine.[ ] now it is proved that her own home was in that very town; hence we may conclude that this friar preacher does not know what he is talking about.[ ] [footnote : jean nider, _formicarium_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _chronique du doyen de saint-thibaud_, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. - .] the fact of the matter is that she did not remain longer than two years in the shadow of sainte-ségolène. although she had married, it was by no means her intention to forswear prophesying and chivalry. during her trial jeanne had been asked by the examiner: "jeanne, was it not revealed to you that if you lost your virginity your good fortune would cease and your voices desert you?" she denied that such things had been revealed to her. and when he insisted, asking her whether she believed that if she were married her voices would still come to her, she answered like a good christian: "i know not, and i appeal to god."[ ] jeanne des armoises likewise held that good fortune had not forsaken her on account of her marriage. moreover, in those days of prophecy there were both widows and married women who, like judith of bethulia, acted by divine inspiration. such had been dame catherine de la rochelle, although perhaps after all she had not done anything so very great.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, pp. , , , . _journal d'un bourgeois de paris._] in the summer of , la dame des armoises went to orléans. the magistrates offered her wine and meat as a token of gladness and devotion. on the first of august they gave her a dinner and presented her with two hundred and ten livres of paris as an acknowledgment of the service she had rendered to the town during the siege. these are the very terms in which this expenditure is entered in the account books of that city.[ ] [footnote : extracts from the accounts of the town of orléans, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. - . lecoy de la marche, _une fausse jeanne d'arc_, pp. - .] if the folk of orléans did actually take her for the real maid, jeanne, then it must have been more on account of the evidence of the du lys brothers, than on that of their own eyes. for, when one comes to think of it, they had seen her but very seldom. during that week in may, she had only appeared before them armed and on horseback. afterwards in june, , and january, , she had merely passed through the town. true it was she had been offered wine and the magistrates had sat at table with her;[ ] but that was nine years ago. and the lapse of nine years works many a change in a woman's face. they had seen her last as a young girl, now they found her a woman and the mother of two children. moreover they were guided by the opinion of her kinsfolk. their attitude provokes some astonishment, however, when one thinks of the conversation at the banquet, and of the awkward and inconsistent remarks the dame must have uttered. if they were not then undeceived, these burgesses must have been passing simple and strongly prejudiced in favour of their guest. [footnote : original documents of orléans, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] and who can say that they were not? who can say that, after having given credence to the tidings brought by jean du lys, the townsfolk did not begin to discover the imposture? that the belief in the survival of jeanne was by no means general in the city, during the visit of la dame des armoises, is proved by the entries in the municipal accounts of sums expended on the funeral services, which we have already mentioned. supposing we abstract the years and , the anniversary service had at any rate been held in , two days before corpus-christi, and only about three months before the banquet on the st of august.[ ] thus these grateful burgesses of orléans were at one and the same time entertaining their benefactress at banquets and saying masses in memory of her death. [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. . lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, p. .] la dame des armoises only spent a fortnight with them. she left the city towards the end of july. her departure would seem to have been hasty and sudden. she was invited to a supper, at which she was to have been presented with eight pints of wine, but when the wine was served she had gone, and the banquet had to be held without her.[ ] jean quillier and thévanon of bourges were present. this thévanon may have been that thévenin villedart, with whom jeanne's brothers dwelt during the siege.[ ] in jean quillier we recognise the young draper who, in june, , had furnished fine brussels cloth of purple, wherewith to make a gown for the maid.[ ] [footnote : extracts from the accounts of the town of orléans, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. - . lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. - .] la dame des armoises had gone to tours, where she gave herself out to be the true jeanne. she gave the bailie of touraine a letter for the king; and the bailie undertook to see that it was delivered to the prince, who was then at orléans, having arrived there but shortly after jeanne's departure. the bailie of touraine in was none other than that guillaume bellier who ten years before as lieutenant of chinon had received the maid into his house and committed her to the care of his devout wife.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. ; vol. v, p. .] to the messenger, who bore this letter, guillaume bellier also gave a note for the king written by himself, and "touching the deeds of la dame des armoises."[ ] we know nothing of its purport.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. v, p. . g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la fausse jeanne d'arc_, pp. - .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. .] shortly afterwards the dame went off into poitou. there she placed herself at the service of seigneur gille de rais, marshal of france.[ ] he it was who in his early youth had conducted the maid to orléans, had been with her throughout the coronation campaign, had fought at her side before the walls of paris. during jeanne's captivity he had occupied louviers and pushed on boldly to rouen. now throughout the length and breadth of his vast domains he was kidnapping children, mingling magic with debauchery, and offering to demons the blood and the limbs of his countless victims. his monstrous doings spread terror round his castles of tiffauges and machecoul, and already the hand of the church was upon him. [footnote : vallet de viriville, _notices et extraits de chartes et de manuscrits appartenant au british museum_, in _bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, vol. viii, , p. .] according to the holy inquisitor of cologne, la dame des armoises practised magic; but it was not as an invoker of demons that the maréchal de rais employed her; he placed her in authority over the men-at-arms,[ ] in somewhat the same position as jeanne had occupied at lagny and compiègne. did she do great prowess? we do not know. at any rate she did not hold her office long; and after her it was bestowed on a gascon squire, one jean de siquemville.[ ] in the spring of she was near paris.[ ] [footnote : abbé bossard, _gille de rais_, p. .] [footnote : pardon, in _trial_, vol. v, pp. - .] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. . lecoy de la marche, _une fausse jeanne d'arc_, p. .] for nearly two years and a half the great town had been loyal to king charles. he had entered the city, but had failed to restore it to prosperity. deserted houses were everywhere falling into ruins; wolves penetrated into the suburbs and devoured little children.[ ] the townsfolk, who had so recently been burgundian, could not all forget how the maid in company with friar richard and the armagnacs had attacked the city on the day of the nativity of our lady. there were many, doubtless, who bore her ill will and believed she had been burned for her sins; but her name no longer excited universal reprobation as in . certain even among her former enemies regarded her as a martyr to the cause of her liege lord.[ ] even in rouen such an opinion was not unknown, and it was much more likely to be held in the city of paris which had lately turned french. at the rumour that jeanne was not dead, that she had been recognised by the people of orléans and was coming to paris, the lower orders in the city grew excited and disturbances were threatening. [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. _et seq._ de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, p. .] under charles of valois in , the spirit of the university was just the same as it had been under henry of lancaster in . it honoured and respected the king of france, the guardian of its privileges and the defender of the liberties of the gallican church. the illustrious masters felt no remorse at having demanded and obtained the chastisement of the rebel and heretic, jeanne the maid. whosoever persists in error is a heretic; whosoever essays and fails to overthrow the powers that be is a rebel. it was god's will that in charles of valois should possess the city of paris; it had not been god's will in ; wherefore the maid had striven against god. with equal bitterness would the university, in , have proceeded against a maid of the english. the magistrates who had returned to their paris homes from their long dreary exile at poitiers sat in the parlement side by side with the converted burgundians.[ ] in the days of adversity these faithful servants of king charles had set the maid to work, but now in it was none of their business to maintain publicly the truth of her mission and the purity of her faith. burned by the english, that was all very well. but a trial conducted by a bishop and a vice-inquisitor with the concurrence of the university is not an english trial; it is a trial at once essentially gallican and essentially catholic. jeanne's name was forever branded throughout christendom. that ecclesiastical sentence could be reversed by the pope alone. but the pope had no intention of doing this. he was too much afraid of displeasing the king of catholic england; and moreover were he once to admit that an inquisitor of the faith had pronounced a wrong sentence he would undermine all human authority. the french clerks submit and are silent. in the assemblies of the clergy no one dares to utter jeanne's name. [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. iii, ch. xvi.] fortunately for them neither the doctors and masters of the university nor the sometime members of the parlement of poitiers share the popular delusion touching la dame des armoises. they have no doubt that the maid was burned at rouen. and they fear lest this woman, who gives herself out to be the deliverer of orléans, may arouse a tumult by her entrance into the city. wherefore the parlement and the university send out men-at-arms to meet her. she is arrested and brought to the palais.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , . lecoy de la marche, _une fausse jeanne d'arc_, p. .] she was examined, tried and sentenced to be publicly exhibited. in the palais de justice, leading up from the court called the cour-de-mai, there was a marble slab on which malefactors were exhibited. la dame des armoises was put up there and shown to the people whom she had deceived. the usual sermon was preached at her and she was forced to confess publicly.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, _loc. cit._] she declared that she was not the maid, that she was married to a knight and had two sons. she told how one day, in her mother's presence, she heard a woman speak slightingly of her; whereupon she proceeded to attack the slanderer, and, when her mother restrained her, she turned her blows against her parent. had she not been in a passion she would never have struck her mother. notwithstanding this provocation, here was a special case and one reserved for the papal jurisdiction. whosoever had raised his hand against his father or his mother, as likewise against a priest or a clerk, must go and ask forgiveness of the holy father, to whom alone belonged the power of convicting or acquitting the sinner. this was what she had done. "i went to rome," she said, "attired in man's apparel. i engaged as a soldier in the war of the holy father eugenius, and in this war i twice committed homicide." when had she journeyed to rome? probably before the exile of pope eugenius to florence, about the year , when the condottieri of the duke of milan were advancing to the gates of the eternal city.[ ] [footnote : _journal d'un bourgeois de paris_, pp. , . lecoy de la marche, _une fausse jeanne d'arc_, p. . g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la fausse jeanne d'arc_, p. .] we do not find either the university, or the ordinary, or the grand inquisitor demanding the trial of this woman, who was suspected of witchcraft and of homicide, and who was attired in unseemly garments. she was not prosecuted as a heretic, doubtless because she was not obstinate, and obstinacy alone constitutes heresy. henceforth she attracted no further attention. it is believed, but on no very trustworthy evidence, that she ended by returning to metz, to her husband, le chevalier des armoises, and that she lived quietly and respectably to a good old age, dwelling in the house over the door of which were her armorial bearings, or rather those of jeanne the maid, the sword, the crown and the lilies.[ ] [footnote : vergnaud-romagnési, _des portraits de jeanne d'arc et de la fausse jeanne d'arc_ and _mémoire sur les fausses jeanne d'arc_, in _les mémoires de la société d'agriculture d'orléans_, , in vo.] the success of this fraud had endured four years. after all it is not so very surprising. in every age people have been loath to believe in the final end of existences which have touched their imagination; they will not admit that great personalities can be struck down by death like ordinary folk; such an end to a noble career is repugnant to them. impostors, like la dame des armoises, never fail to find some who will believe in them. and the dame appeared at a time which was singularly favourable to such a delusion; intellects had been dulled by long suffering; communication between one district and another was rendered impossible or difficult, and what was happening in one place was unknown quite near at hand; in the minds of men there reigned dimness, ignorance, confusion. but even then folk would not have been imposed upon so long by this pseudo-jeanne had it not been for the support given her by the du lys brothers. were they her dupes or her accomplices? dull-witted as they may have been, it seems hardly credible that the adventuress could have imposed upon them. admitting that she very closely resembled la romée's daughter, the woman from la grange-aux-ormes cannot possibly for any length of time have deceived two men who knew jeanne intimately, having been brought up with her and come with her into france. if they were not imposed upon, then how can we account for their conduct? they had lost much when they lost their sister. when he arrived at la grange-aux-ormes, pierre du lys had just quitted a burgundian prison; his ransom had been paid with his wife's dowry, and he was then absolutely destitute.[ ] jean, bailie of vermandois, afterwards governor of chartres and about bailie of vaucouleurs, was hardly more prosperous.[ ] such circumstances explained much. and yet it is unlikely that they of themselves alone and unsupported would have played a game so difficult, so risky, and so dangerous. from the little we know of their lives we should conclude that they were both too simple, too naïf, too placid, to carry on such an intrigue. [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. .] we are tempted to believe that they were urged on by some higher and greater power. who knows? perhaps by certain indiscreet persons in the service of the king of france. the condemnation and death of jeanne was a serious attack upon the prestige of charles vii. may he not have had in his household or among his counsellors certain subjects who were rashly jealous enough to invent this appearance, in order to spread abroad the belief that jeanne the maid had not died the death of a witch, but that by virtue of her innocence and her holiness she had escaped the flames? if this were so, then we may regard the imposture of the pseudo-jeanne, invented at a time when it seemed impossible ever to obtain a papal revision of the trial of , as an attempt, surreptitious and fraudulent and speedily abandoned, to bring about her rehabilitation. such a hypothesis would explain why the du lys brothers were not punished or even disgraced, when they had put themselves in the wrong, had deceived king and people and committed the crime of high treason. jean continued provost of vaucouleurs for many a long year, and then, when relieved of his office, received a sum of money in lieu of it. pierre, as well as his mother, la romée, was living at orléans. in he received from duke charles, who had returned to france three years before, the grant of an island in the loire, l'Île-aux-boeufs,[ ] which was fair grazing land. nevertheless, he remained poor, and was constantly receiving help from the duke and the townsfolk of orléans.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, pp. , . lottin, _recherches_, vol. i, p. . duleau, _vidimus d'une charte de charles vii, concédant à pierre du lys la possession de l'isle-aux-boeufs_, orléans, , in vo. . g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la fausse jeanne d'arc_, p. , note .] [footnote : i have not made use of the very late evidence given by pierre sala (_trial_, vol. iv, p. ). it is vague and somewhat legendary, and cannot possibly be introduced into the life of la dame des armoises. for the bibliography of this interesting subject, see lanéry d'arc, _le livre d'or de jeanne d'arc_, pp. , , and g. lefèvre-pontalis, _la fausse jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in vo, concerning the account given by m. gaston save. there are those who have supposed, without adducing any proof, that this pseudo-jeanne was a sister of the maid (lebrun de charmettes, _histoire de jeanne d'arc_, vol. iv, pp. _et seq._). francis andré, _la vérité sur jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in mo, pp. _et seq._] chapter xvi after the death of the maid (_continued_)--the rouen judges at the council of bÂle and the pragmatic sanction--the rehabilitation trial--the maid of sarmaize--the maid of le mans from year to year the council of bâle drew out its deliberations in a series of sessions well nigh as lengthy as the tail of the dragon in the apocalypse. its manner of reforming at once the church, its members, and its head struck terror into the hearts of the sovereign pontiff and the sacred college. sorrowfully did Æneus sylvius exclaim, "there is assembled at bâle, not the church of god indeed, but the synagogue of satan."[ ] but though uttered by a roman cardinal, even such an expression can hardly be termed violent when applied to the synod which established free elections to bishoprics, suppressed the right of bestowing the pallium, of exacting annates and payments to the papal chancery, and which was endeavouring to restore the papacy to evangelical poverty. the king of france and the emperor, on the other hand, looked favourably on the council when it essayed to bridle the ambition and greed of the bishop of rome. [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. iii, p. .] now among the fathers who displayed the greatest zeal in the reformation of the church were the masters and doctors of the university of paris, those who had sat in judgment on jeanne the maid, and notably maître nicolas loiseleur and maître thomas de courcelles. charles vii convoked an assembly of the clergy of the realm in order to examine the canons of bâle. the assembly met in the sainte-chapelle at bourges, on the st of may, . master thomas de courcelles, appointed delegate by the council, there conferred with the lord bishop of castres. now in the bishop of castres was that elegant humanist, that zealous counsellor of the crown, who, in style truly ciceronian, complained in his letters that so closely was he bound to his glebe, the court, that no time remained to him to visit his spouse.[ ] he was none other than that gérard machet, the king's confessor, who had, in , along with the clerks at poitiers, pleaded the authority of prophecy in favour of the maid, in whom he found nought but sincerity and goodness.[ ] maître thomas de courcelles at rouen had urged the maid's being tortured and delivered to the secular arm.[ ] at the bourges assembly the two churchmen agreed touching the supremacy of general councils, the freedom of episcopal elections, the suppression of annates and the rights of the gallican church. at that moment it was not likely that either one or the other remembered the poor maid. from the deliberations of this assembly, in which maître thomas played an important part, there issued the solemn edict promulgated by the king on the th of july, ; the pragmatic sanction. by this edict the canons of bâle became the constitution of the church of france.[ ] [footnote : le p. ayroles, _la pucelle devant l'église de son temps_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. i, p. .] [footnote : _ordonnances_, vol. xiii, pp. , . _preuves des libertés de l'église gallicane_, edited by lenglet-dufresnoy, second part, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. iii, pp. , . n. arlos, _histoire de la pragmatique sanction, etc._] the emperor also agreed to the reforms of bâle. so audacious did the fathers become that they summoned pope eugenius to appear before their tribunal. when he refused to obey their summons, they deposed him, declaring him to be disobedient, obstinate, rebellious, a breaker of rules, a perturber of ecclesiastical unity, a perjurer, a schismatic, a hardened heretic, a squanderer of the treasures of the church, scandalous, simoniacal, pernicious and damnable.[ ] such was the condemnation of the holy fathers pronounced among other doctors by maître jean beaupère, maître thomas de courcelles and maître nicolas loiseleur, who had all three so sternly reproached jeanne with having refused to submit to the pope.[ ] maître nicolas had been extremely energetic throughout the maid's trial, playing alternately the parts of the lorraine prisoner and saint catherine; when she was led to the stake he had run after her like a madman.[ ] this same maître nicolas now displayed great activity in the council wherein he attained to some eminence. he upheld the view that the general council canonically convoked, was superior to the pope and in a position to depose him. and albeit this canon was a mere master of arts, he made such an impression on the fathers at bâle that in , they despatched him to act as juris-consult at the diet of mainz. meanwhile his attitude was strongly displeasing to the chapter which had sent him as deputy to the council. the canons of rouen sided with the sovereign pontiff and against the fathers, on this point joining issue with the university of paris. they disowned their delegate and sent to recall him on the th of july, .[ ] [footnote : hefelé, _histoire de l'Église gallicane_, vol. xx, p. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. iii, p. . de beaurepaire, _les états de normandie sous la domination anglaise_, pp. , , , .] [footnote : du boulay, _hist. universitatis_, vol. v, p. . de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_, p. .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , , , ; vol. iii, pp. , , , , , , , .] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges et assesseurs du procès de condamnation_, pp. , .] maître thomas de courcelles, one of those who had declared the pope disobedient, obstinate, rebellious and the rest, was nominated one of the commissioners to preside over the election of a new pope, and, like loiseleur, a delegate to the diet of mainz. but, unlike loiseleur, he was not disowned by those who had appointed him, for he was the deputy of the university of paris who recognised the pope of the council, felix, to be the true father of the faithful.[ ] in the assembly of the french clergy held at bourges in the august of , maître thomas spoke in the name of the fathers of bâle. he discoursed for two hours to the complete satisfaction of the king.[ ] charles vii, while remaining loyal to pope eugenius, maintained the pragmatic sanction. maître thomas de courcelles was henceforth one of the pillars of the french church. [footnote : j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, p. .] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. iii, p. .] meanwhile the english government had declared for the pope and against the council.[ ] my lord pierre cauchon, who had become bishop of lisieux, was henry vi's ambassador at the council. and at bâle a somewhat unpleasant experience befell him. by reason of his translation to the see of lisieux he owed rome annates to the amount of golden florins. in germany he was informed by the pope's treasurer that by his failure to pay this sum, despite the long delays granted to him, he had incurred excommunication, and that being excommunicate, by presuming to celebrate divine service he had committed irregularity.[ ] such accusations must have caused him considerable annoyance. but after all, such occurrences were frequent and of no great consequence. on churchmen these thunderbolts fell but lightly, doing them no great hurt. [footnote : de beaurepaire, _les états de normandie sous la domination anglaise_, pp. , , , . de beaucourt, _loc. cit._ p. .] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _loc. cit._, p. . _notes sur les juges et assesseurs du procès de condamnation_, p. . _recherches sur le procès_, p. .] from , the realm of france, disembarrassed alike of adversaries and of defenders, was free to labour, to work at various trades, to engage in commerce and to grow rich. in the intervals between wars and during truces, king charles's government, by the interchange of natural products and of merchandise, also, we may add, by the abolition of tolls and dues on the rivers seine, oise, and loire, effected the actual conquest of normandy. thus, when the time for nominal conquest came, the french had only to take possession of the province. so easy had this become, that in the rapid campaign of ,[ ] even the constable was not beaten, neither was the duke of alençon. in his royal and peaceful manner charles vii resumed possession of his town of rouen, just as twenty years before he had taken troyes and reims, as the result of an understanding with the townsfolk and in return for an amnesty and the grant of rights and privileges to the burghers. he entered the city on monday, the th of november, . [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. v, ch. i.] the french government felt itself strong enough even to attempt the reconquest of that essentially english province, aquitaine. in , my lord the bastard, now count of dunois, took possession of the fortress of blaye. bordeaux and bayonne surrendered in the same year. in the following manner did the lord bishop of le mans celebrate these conquests, worthy of the majesty of the most christian king. "maine, normandy, aquitaine, these goodly provinces have returned to their allegiance to the king. almost without the shedding of french blood hath this been accomplished. it hath not been necessary to overthrow the ramparts of many strongly walled towns, or to demolish their fortifications or for the inhabitants to suffer either pillage or murder."[ ] [footnote : lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations en faveur de jeanne d'arc_, p. .] indeed normandy and maine were quite content at being french once more. the town of bordeaux was alone in regretting the english, whose departure spelt its ruin. it revolted in ; and then after considerable difficulty was reconquered once and for all. king charles, henceforth rich and victorious, now desired to efface the stain inflicted on his reputation by the sentence of . he wanted to prove to the whole world that it was no witch who had conducted him to his coronation. he was now eager to appeal against the condemnation of the maid. but this condemnation had been pronounced by the church, and the pope alone could order it to be cancelled. the king hoped to bring the pope to do this, although he knew it would not be easy. in the march of , he proceeded to a preliminary inquiry;[ ] and matters remained in that position until the arrival in france of cardinal d'estouteville, the legate of the holy see. pope nicolas had sent him to negotiate with the king of france a peace with england and a crusade against the turks. cardinal d'estouteville, who belonged to a norman family, was just the man to discover the weak points in jeanne's trial. in order to curry favour with charles, he, as legate, set on foot a new inquiry at rouen, with the assistance of jean bréhal, of the order of preaching friars, the inquisitor of the faith in the kingdom of france. but the pope did not approve of the legate's intervention;[ ] and for three years the revision was not proceeded with. nicolas v would not allow it to be thought that the sacred tribunal of the most holy inquisition was fallible and had even once pronounced an unjust sentence. and there existed at rome a stronger reason for not interfering with the trial of : the french demanded revision; the english were opposed to it; and the pope did not wish to annoy the english, for they were then just as good and even better catholics than the french.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , .] [footnote : _gallia christiana_, vol. iii, col. and vol. xi, col. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. v, p. . le p. ayroles, _la pucelle devant l'église de son temps_, ch. vi.] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _les états de normandie sous la domination anglaise_, pp. , .] in order to relieve the pope from embarrassment and set him at his ease, the government of charles vii invented an expedient: the king was not to appear in the suit; his place was to be taken by the family of the maid. jeanne's mother, isabelle romée de vouthon, who lived in retirement at orléans,[ ] and her two sons, pierre and jean du lys, demanded the revision.[ ] by this legal artifice the case was converted from a political into a private suit. at this juncture nicolas v died, on the th of march, . his successor, calixtus iii, a borgia, an old man of seventy-eight, by a rescript dated the th of june, , authorised the institution of proceedings. to this end he appointed jean jouvenel des ursins, archbishop of reims, guillaume chartier, bishop of paris, and richard olivier, bishop of coutances, who were to act conjointly with the grand inquisitor of france.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. . le p. ayroles, _la pucelle devant l'église de son temps_, p. . j. belon and f. balme, _jean bréhal, grand inquisiteur de france et la réhabilitation de jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in to.] from the first it was agreed that certain of those concerned in the original trial were not now to be involved, "for they had been deceived." notably it was admitted that the daughter of kings, the mother of learning, the university of paris, had been led into error by a fraudulent indictment consisting of twelve articles. it was agreed that the whole responsibility should be thrown on to the bishop of beauvais and the promoter, guillaume d'estivet, who were both deceased. the precaution was necessary. had it not been taken, certain doctors very influential with the king and very dear to the church of france would have been greatly embarrassed. on the th of november, , isabelle romée and her two sons, followed by a long procession of innumerable ecclesiasties, laymen, and worthy women, approached the church of notre dame in paris to demand justice from the prelates and papal commissioners.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , .] informers and accusers in the trial of the late jeanne were summoned to appear at rouen on the th of december. not one came.[ ] the heirs of the late messire pierre cauchon declined all liability for the deeds of their deceased kinsman, and touching the civil responsibility, they pleaded the amnesty granted by the king on the reconquest of normandy.[ ] as had been expected, the proceedings went forward without any obstacle or even any discussion. [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] inquiries were instituted at domremy, at orléans, at paris, at rouen.[ ] the friends of jeannette's childhood, hauviette, mengette, either married or grown old; jeannette, the wife of thévenin; jeannette, the widow of estellin; jean morel of greux; gérardin of Épinal, the burgundian, and his wife isabellette, who had been godmother to jacques d'arc's daughter; perrin, the bell-ringer; jeanne's uncle lassois; the leroyer couple and a score of peasants from domremy all appeared. bertrand de poulengy, then sixty-three and gentleman of the horse to the king of france, was heard; likewise jean de novelompont, called jean de metz, who had been raised to noble rank and was now living at vaucouleurs, where he held some military office. gentlemen and ecclesiasties of lorraine and champagne were examined.[ ] burgesses of orléans were also called, and notably jean luillier, the draper, who in june, , had furnished fine brussels cloth of purple for jeanne's gown and ten years later had been present at the banquet given by the magistrates of orléans in honour of the maid who, as it was believed, had escaped burning.[ ] jean luillier was the most intelligent of the witnesses; as for the others, of whom there were about two dozen townsmen and townswomen, of between fifty and sixty years of age, they did little but repeat his evidence.[ ] he spoke well; but the fear of the english dazzled him and he saw many more of them than there had ever been. [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , ; vol. iii, pp. , .] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. v, pp. , , .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , .] touching the examination at poitiers there were called an advocate, a squire, a man of business, françois garivel, who was fifteen at the time of jeanne's interrogation.[ ] the only cleric summoned was brother seguin of limousin.[ ] the clerics of poitiers were first as disinclined to risk themselves in this matter as were those of rouen; a burnt child dreads the fire. la hire and poton of saintrailles were dead. the survivors of orléans and of patay were called; the bastard jean, now count of dunois and longueville, who gave his evidence like a clerk;[ ] the old sire de gaucourt, who in his eighty-fifth year made some effort of memory, and for the rest gave the same evidence as the count of dunois;[ ] the duke of alençon, on the point of making an alliance with the english and of procuring a powder with which to dry up the king,[ ] but who was none the less talkative and vain-glorious;[ ] jeanne's steward, messire jean d'aulon, who had become a knight, a king's counsellor and seneschal of beaucaire,[ ] and the little page louis de coutes, now a noble of forty-two.[ ] brother pasquerel too was called; even in his old-age he remained superficial and credulous.[ ] and there was heard also the widow of maître rené de bouligny, demoiselle marguerite la toroulde, who delicately and with a good grace related what she remembered.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. vi, p. . p. dupuy, _histoire des templiers_, , in to. cimber and danjou, _archives curieuses de l'histoire de france_, vol. i, pp. - . (see also, michelet, history of france, translated by g.h. smith, vol. ii, p. .) note--alençon says to his english valet: "if i could have a powder that i wot of and put it in the vessel in which the king's sheets are washed, he should sleep sound enough [_dormir tout sec_]." _trial of alençon_ (w.s.).] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] care was taken not to summon the lord archbishop of rouen, messire raoul roussel, as a witness of the actual incidents of the trial, albeit he had sat in judgment on the maid, side by side with my lord of beauvais. as for the vice inquisitor of religion, brother jean lemaistre, he might have been dead, so completely was he ignored. nevertheless, certain of the assessors were called: jean beaupère, canon of paris, of besançon and of rouen; jean de mailly, lord bishop of noyon; jean lefèvre, bishop of démétriade; divers canons of rouen, sundry ecclesiastics who appeared some unctuous, others stern and frowning;[ ] and, finally, the most illustrious thomas de courcelles, who, after having been the most laborious and assiduous collaborator of the bishop of beauvais, recalled nothing when he came before the commissioners for the revision.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. , , ; vol. iii, pp. , , _passim_.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , . j. quicherat, _aperçus nouveaux_, p. .] [illustration: the bastard of orleans _from an old engraving_] among those who had been most zealous to procure jeanne's condemnation were those who were now most eagerly labouring for her rehabilitation. the registrars of the lord bishop of beauvais, the boisguillaumes, the manchons, the taquels, all those ink-pots of the church who had been used for her death sentence, worked wonders when that sentence had to be annulled; all the zeal they had displayed in the institution of the trial they now displayed in its revision; they were prepared to discover in it every possible flaw.[ ] [footnote : _ibid._, vol. ii, pp. ; vol. iii, pp. , , .] and in what a poor and paltry tone did these benign fabricators of legal artifices denounce the cruel iniquity which they had themselves perpetrated in due form! among them was the usher, jean massieu, a dissolute priest,[ ] of scandalous morals, but a kindly fellow for all that, albeit somewhat crafty and the inventor of a thousand ridiculous stories against cauchon, as if the old bishop were not black enough already.[ ] the revision commissioners produced a couple of sorry monks, friar martin ladvenu and friar isambart de la pierre, from the monastery of the preaching friars at rouen. they wept in a heart-rending manner as they told of the pious end of that poor maid, whom they had declared a heretic, then a relapsed heretic, and had finally burned alive. there was not one of the clerks charged with the examination of jeanne but was touched to the heart at the memory of so saintly a damsel.[ ] [footnote : de beaurepaire, _notes sur les juges_.] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _trial_, vol. ii, pp. _et seq._, _et seq._] huge piles of memoranda drawn up by doctors of high repute, canonists, theologians and jurists, both french and foreign, were furnished for the trial. their chief object was to establish by scholastic reasoning that jeanne had submitted her deeds and sayings to the judgment of the church and of the holy father. these doctors proved that the judges of had been very subtle and jeanne very simple. doubtless, it was the best way to make out that she had submitted to the church; but they over-reached themselves and made her too simple. according to them she was absolutely ignorant, almost an idiot, understanding nothing, imagining that the clerics who examined her in themselves alone constituted the church militant. this had been the impression of the doctors on the french side in . _la pucelle_, "_une puce_," said the lord archbishop of embrun.[ ] [footnote : lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations en faveur de jeanne d'arc_, p. .] but there was another reason for making her appear as weak and imbecile as possible. such a representation exalted the power of god, who through her had restored the king of france to his inheritance. declarations confirming this view of the maid were obtained by the commissioners from most of the witnesses. she was simple, she was very simple, she was absolutely simple, they repeated one after the other. and they all in the same words added: "yes, she was simple, save in deeds of war, wherein she was well skilled."[ ] then the captains said how clever she was in placing cannon, albeit they knew well to the contrary. but how could she have failed to be well versed in deeds of war, since god himself led her against the english? and in this possession of the art of war by an unskilled girl lay the miracle. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, pp. , , , , , , , _et passim_.] the grand inquisitor of france, jean bréhal, in his reminiscence enumerates the reasons for believing that jeanne came from god. one of the proofs which seems to have struck him most forcibly is that her coming is foretold in the prophecies of merlin, the magician.[ ] [footnote : lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations_, p. .] believing that he could prove from one of jeanne's answers that her first apparitions were in her thirteenth year, brother jean bréhal argues that the fact is all the more credible seeing that this number , composed of , which indicates the blessed trinity, and of , which expresses the perfect observation of the decalogue, is marvellously favourable to divine visitations.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] on the th of june, , the sentence of was declared unjust, unfounded, iniquitous. it was nullified and pronounced invalid. thus was honour restored to the messenger of the coronation, thus was her memory reconciled with the church. but that abundant source whence on the appearance of this child there had flowed so many pious legends and heroic fables was henceforth dried up. the rehabilitation trial added little to the popular legend. it rendered it possible to connect with jeanne's death the usual incidents narrated of the martyrdom of virgins, such as the dove taking flight from the stake, the name of jesus written in letters of flame, the heart intact in the ashes.[ ] the miserable deaths of the wicked judges were insisted upon. true it is that jean d'estivet, the promoter, was found dead in a dove-cot,[ ] that nicolas midi was attacked by leprosy, that pierre cauchon died when he was being shaved.[ ] but, among those who aided and accompanied the maid, more than one came to a bad end. sire robert de baudricourt, who had sent jeanne to the king, died in prison, excommunicated for having laid waste the lands of the chapter of toul.[ ] the maréchal de rais was sentenced to death.[ ] the duke of alençon, convicted of high treason, was pardoned only to fall under a new condemnation and to die in captivity.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : _ibid._, p. .] [footnote : _gallia christiana_, vol. xi, col. .] [footnote : _histoire ecclésiastique et politique de la ville et du diocèse de toul_, , p. .] [footnote : abbé bossard, _gilles de rais_, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. vi, p. .] two years after charles vii had ordered the preliminary inquiry into the trial of , a woman, following the example of la dame des armoises, passed herself off as the maid jeanne. at this time there lived in the little town of sarmaize, between the marne and the meuse, two cousins german of the maid, poiresson and périnet, both sons of the late jean de vouthon, isabelle romée's brother, who in his lifetime had been a thatcher by trade. now, on a day in , it befell that the curé of notre dame de sarmaize, simon fauchard, being in the market-house of the town, there came to him a woman dressed as a youth who asked him to play at tennis with her. he consented, and when they had begun their game the woman said to him, "say boldly that you have played tennis with the maid." and at these words simon fauchard was right joyful. the woman afterwards went to the house of périnet, the carpenter, and said, "i am the maid; i come to visit my cousin henri." périnet, poiresson, and henri de vouthon made her good cheer and kept her in their house, where she ate and drank as she pleased.[ ] [footnote : inquiry of , in g. de braux and e. de bouteiller, _nouvelles recherches_, p. .] then, when she had had enough, she went away. whence came she? no one knows. whither did she go? she may probably be recognised in an adventuress, who not long afterwards, with her hair cut short and a hood on her head, wearing doublet and hose, wandered through anjou, calling herself jeanne the maid. while the doctors and masters, engaged in the revision of the trial, were gathering evidence of jeanne's life and death from all parts of the kingdom, this false jeanne was finding credence with many folk. but she became involved in difficulties with a certain dame of saumoussay,[ ] and was cast into the prison of saumur, where she lay for three months. at the end of this time, having been banished from the dominions of the good king rené, she married one jean douillet; and, by a document dated the rd day of february, , she received permission to return to saumur, on condition of living there respectably and ceasing to wear man's apparel.[ ] [footnote : or chaumussay. lecoy de la marche, _une fausse jeanne d'arc_, paris, , in vo, p. .] [footnote : lecoy de la marche, _une fausse jeanne d'arc_, in _revue des questions historiques_, october, , p. . _le roi rené_, paris, , vol. i, pp. - ; vol. ii, pp. - .] about this time there came to laval in the diocese of le mans, a damsel between eighteen and twenty-two, who was a native of a neighbouring place called chassé-les-usson. her father's name was jean féron and she was commonly called jeanne la férone. she was inspired from heaven, and the names jesus and mary were for ever on her lips; yet the devil cruelly tormented her. the dame de laval, mother of the lords andré and guy, being now very aged, marvelled at the piety and the sufferings of the holy damsel; and she sent her to le mans, to the bishop. since , the see of le mans had been held by messire martin berruyer of touraine. in his youth he had been professor of philosophy and rhetoric at the university of paris. later he had devoted himself to theology and had become one of the directors of the college of navarre. although he was infirm with age, his learning was such that he was consulted by the commissioners for the rehabilitation trial,[ ] whereupon he drew up a memorandum touching the maid. herein he believes her to have been verily sent of god because she was abject and very poor and appeared well nigh imbecile in everything that did not concern her mission. messire martin argues that it was by reason of the king's virtues that god had vouchsafed to him the help of the maid.[ ] such an idea found favour with the theologians of the french party. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii, p. , note . _gallia christiana_, vol. ii, fol. . du boulay, _hist. univ. paris_, vol. v, p. . le p. ayroles, _la pucelle devant l'église de son temps_, pp. , .] [footnote : lanéry d'arc, _mémoires et consultations_, p. .] the lord bishop, martin berruyer, heard jeanne la férone in confession, renewed her baptism, confirmed her in the faith and gave her the name of marie, in gratitude for the abounding grace which the most holy virgin, mother of god, had granted to his servant. this maid was subject to the violent attacks of evil spirits. many a time did my lord of mans behold her covered with bleeding wounds, struggling in the grasp of the enemy, and on several occasions he delivered her by means of exorcisms. greatly was he edified by this holy damsel, who made known unto him marvellous secrets, who abounded in pious revelations and noble christian utterances. wherefore in praise of la férone he wrote many letters[ ] to princes and communities of the realm. [footnote : du clercq, _mémoires_, ed. reiffenberg, brussels, , vol. iii, pp. _et seq._ jean de roye, _chronique scandaleuse_, ed. bernard de mandrot, , vol. i, pp. , . _chronique de bourdigné_, ed. quatrebarbes, vol. ii, p. . dom piolin, _histoire de l'église du mans_, vol. v, p. .] the queen of france, who was then very old and whose husband had long ago deserted her, heard tell of the maid of le mans, and wrote to messire martin berruyer, requesting him to make the damsel known unto her. thus there befel, what we have seen happening over and over again in this history, that when a devout person, leading a contemplative life uttered prophecies, those in places of authority grew curious concerning her and desired to submit her to the judgment of the church that they might know whether the goodness that appeared in her were true or false. certain officers of the king visited la férone at le mans. as revelations touching the realm of france had been vouchsafed to her, she spoke to them the following words: "commend me very humbly to the king and bid him recognise the grace which god granteth unto him, and lighten the burdens of his people." in the december of , she was summoned before the royal council, which was then sitting at tours, while the king, who was sick of an ulcer in the leg, was residing in the château of les montils.[ ] the maid of le mans was examined in like manner as the maid jeanne had been, but the result was unfavourable; she was found wanting in everything. brought before the ecclesiastical court she was convicted of imposture. it appeared that she was no maid, but was living in concubinage with a cleric, that certain persons in the service of my lord of le mans instructed her in what she was to say, and that such was the origin of the revelations she made to the reverend father in god, messire martin berruyer, under the seal of the confession. convicted of being a hypocrite, an idolatress, an invoker of demons, a witch, a magician, lascivious, dissolute, an enchantress, a mine of falsehood, she was condemned to have a fool's cap put on her head and to be preached at in public, in the towns of le mans, tours and laval. on the nd of may, , she was exhibited to the folk at tours, wearing a paper cap and over her head a scroll on which her deeds were set forth in lines of latin and of french. maître guillaume de châteaufort, grand master of the royal college of navarre, preached to her. then she was cast into close confinement in a prison, there to weep over her sins for the space of seven years, eating the bread of sorrow and drinking the water of affliction;[ ] at the end of which time she rented a house of ill fame.[ ] [footnote : chastellain, ed. kervyn de lettenhove, vol. iii, p. .] [footnote : jacques du clercq, _mémoires_, vol. iii, pp. _et seq._] [footnote : antoine du faur, _livre des femmes célèbres_, in _trial_, vol. v, p. .] on wednesday, the nd of july, , covered with ulcers internal and external, believing himself poisoned and perhaps not without reason, charles vii died, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, in his château of mehun-sur-yèvre.[ ] [footnote : de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. vi, pp. , . _chronique martiniane_, ed. p. champion, p. .] on thursday, the th of august, his body was borne to the church of saint-denys in france and placed in a chapel hung with velvet; the nave was draped with black satin, the vault was covered with blue cloth embroidered with flowers-de-luce.[ ] during the ceremony, which took place on the following day, a funeral oration was delivered on charles vii. the preacher was no less a personage than the most highly renowned professor at the university of paris, the doctor, who according to the princes of the roman church was ever aimable and modest, he who had been the stoutest defender of the liberties of the gallican church, the ecclesiastic who, having declined a cardinal's hat, bore to the threshold of an illustrious old age none other title than that of dean of the canons of notre dame de paris, maître thomas de courcelles.[ ] thus it befell that the assessor of rouen, who had been the most bitterly bent on procuring jeanne's cruel condemnation, celebrated the memory of the victorious king whom the maid had conducted to his solemn coronation. [footnote : mathieu d'escouchy, vol. ii, p. . jean chartier, _chronique_, vol. iii, pp. - .] [footnote : _gallia christiana_, vol. vii, col. and . hardouin, _acta conciliorum_, vol. ix, col. . de beaucourt, _histoire de charles vii_, vol. vi, p. .] appendices appendix i letter from doctor g. dumas my dear master,--you ask for my medical opinion in the case of jeanne d'arc. had i been able to examine it at my leisure with the doctors tiphaine and delachambre, who were summoned before the tribunal at rouen, i might have found it difficult to come to any definite conclusion. and even more difficult do i find it now, when my diagnosis must necessarily be retrospective and based upon examinations conducted by persons who never dreamed of attempting to discover the existence of any nervous disease. however since they ascribed what we now call disease to the influence of the devil, their questions are not without significance for us. therefore with many reservations i will endeavour to answer your question. of jeanne's inherited constitution we know nothing; and of her personal antecedents we are almost entirely ignorant. our only information concerning such matters comes from jean d'aulon, who, on the evidence of several women, states[ ] that she was never fully developed, a condition which frequently occurs in neurotic subjects. [footnote : _trial_, vol. iii. p. .] we should, however, be unable to arrive at any conclusion concerning jeanne's nervous constitution had not her judges, and in particular maître jean beaupère, in the numerous examinations to which they subjected her, elicited certain significant details on the subject of her hallucinations. maître beaupère begins by inquiring very judiciously whether jeanne had fasted the day before she first heard her voices. whence we infer that the interdependence of inanition and hallucinations was recognised by this illustrious professor of theology. before condemning jeanne as a witch he wanted to make sure that she was not merely suffering from weakness. some time later we find saint theresa suspecting that the visions said to have been seen by a certain nun were merely the result of long fasting. saint theresa insisted on the nun's partaking of food, and the visions ceased. jeanne replies that she had only fasted since the morning, and maître beaupère proceeds to ask: _q._ "in what direction did you hear the voice?" _a._ "i heard it on the right, towards the church." _q._ "was the voice accompanied by any light?" _a._ "i seldom heard it without there being a light. this light appeared in the direction whence the voice came."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. and _passim_.] we might wonder whether by the expression "_à droite_" (_a latere dextro_) jeanne meant her own right side or the position of the church in relation to her; and in the latter case, the information would have no clinical significance; but the context leaves no doubt as to the veritable meaning of her words. "how can you," urges jean beaupère, "see this light which you say appears to you, if it is on your right?" if it had been merely a question of the situation of the church and not of jeanne's own right side, she would only have had to turn her face to see the light in front of her, and jean beaupère's objection would have been pointless. consequently at about the age of thirteen, at the period of puberty, which for her never came, jeanne would appear to have been subject on her right side to unilateral hallucinations of sight and hearing. now charcot[ ] considered unilateral hallucinations of sight to be common in cases of hysteria.[ ] he even thought that in hysterical subjects they are allied to a hemianæsthesia situated on the same side of the body, and which in jeanne would be on the right side. jeanne's trial might have proved the existence of this hemianæsthesia, an extremely significant symptom in the diagnosis of hysteria, if the judges had applied torture or merely had examined the skin of the subject in order to discover anæsthesia patches which were called marks of the devil.[ ] but from the merely oral examination which took place we can only draw inferences concerning jeanne's general physical condition. in case excessive importance should be attached to such inferences i should add that in the diagnosis of hysteria contemporary neurologists pay less attention than did charcot to unilateral hallucinations of sight. [footnote : a famous french alienist ( - ).--w.s.] [footnote : _progrès medical_, january , .] [footnote : the existence of patches devoid of feeling was considered in the middle ages to prove that the subject was a witch. hence needles were run into the supposed witch. and if she felt them in every part of her body she was acquitted.--w.s.] the other characteristics of jeanne's hallucinations revealed by her examinations during the trial are no less interesting than these, although they do not lead to any more certain conclusions. those visions and voices, which the subject refers to an external source and which are so characteristic of hysterical hallucinations, proceed suddenly from the subconscious self. jeanne's conscious self was so far from being prepared for her voices that she declares she was very much afraid when she first heard them: "i was thirteen when i heard a voice coming from god telling me to lead a good life. and the first time i was very much afraid. this voice came to me about noon; it was in the summer, in my father's garden."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] and then straightway the voice becomes imperative. it demands an obedience which is not refused: "it said to me: 'go forth into france,' and i could no longer stay where i was."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] her visions all occur in the same manner. they appeal to the senses in exactly the same way and are received by the maid with equal credulity. finally, these hallucinations of hearing and of sight are soon associated with similar hallucinations of smell and touch, which serve to confirm jeanne's belief in their reality. _q._ "which part of saint catherine did you touch?" _a._ "you will hear nothing more." _q._ "did you kiss or embrace saint catherine or saint margaret?" _a._ "i embraced them both." _q._ "in embracing them did you feel heat or anything?" _a._ "i could not embrace them without feeling and touching them."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] because they thus appeal to the senses and seem to possess a certain material reality, hysterical hallucinations make a profound and ineffaceable impression on those who experience them. the subjects speak of them as being actual and very striking facts. when they become accusers, as so many women do who claim to have been the victims of imaginary assaults, they support their assertions in the most energetic fashion. not only does jeanne see, hear, smell and touch her saints, she joins the procession of angels they bring in their train. with them she performs actual deeds, as if there were perfect unity between her life and her hallucinations. "i was in my lodging, in the house of a good woman, near the _château_ of chinon, when the angel came. and then he and i went together to the king." _q._ "was this angel alone?" _a._ "this angel was with a goodly company of other angels.[ ] they were with him, but not every one saw them.... some were very much alike; others were not, or at any rate not as i saw them. some had wings. certain even wore crowns, and in their company were saint catherine and saint margaret. with the angel aforesaid and with the other angels they went right into the king's chamber." [footnote : according to the evidence of maître pierre maurice, at the condemnation trial (vol. i. p. ), jeanne must have seen the angels "in the form of certain infinitesimal things" (_sub specie quarumdam rerum minimarum_). this was also the character of the hallucinations experienced by saint rose of lima ("vie de sainte rose de lima," by p. léonard hansen, p. ).] _q._ "tell us how the angel left you." _a._ "he left me in a little chapel, and at his departure i was very sorrowful, and i even wept. willingly would i have gone away with him; i mean my soul would have gone."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] in all these hallucinations there is the same objective clearness, the same subjective certitude as in toxic hallucinations; and this clearness, this certitude, may in jeanne's case suggest hysteria. but if in certain respects jeanne resembles hysterical subjects, in others she differs from them. she seems early to have acquired an independence of her visions and an authority over them. without ever doubting their reality, she resists them and sometimes disobeys them, when, for example, in defiance of saint catherine, she leaps from her prison of beaurevoir: "well nigh every day saint catherine told me not to leap and that god would come to my aid, and also would succour those of compiègne. and i said to saint catherine: 'since god is to help those of compiègne, i want to be with them.'"[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. .] on another occasion she assumes such authority over her visions that she can make the two saints come at her bidding when they do not come of themselves. _q._ "do you call these saints, or do they come without being called?" _a._ "they often come without being called, and sometimes when they did not come i asked god to send them speedily."[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. and _passim_.] all this is not in the accepted manner of the hysterical, who are usually somewhat passive with regard to their nervous fits and hallucinations. but jeanne's dominance over her visions is a characteristic i have noted in many of the higher mystics and in those who have attained notoriety. this kind of subject, after having at first passively submitted to his hysteria, afterwards uses it rather than submits to it, and finally by means of it attains in his ecstasy to that divine union after which he strives. if jeanne were hysterical, such a characteristic would help us to determine the part played by the neurotic side of her nature in the development of her character and in her life. if there were any hysterical strain in her nature, then it was by means of this hysterical strain that the most secret sentiments of her heart took shape in the form of visions and celestial voices. her hysteria became the open door by which the divine--or what jeanne deemed the divine--entered into her life. it strengthened her faith and consecrated her mission; but in her intellect and in her will jeanne remains healthy and normal. nervous pathology can therefore cast but a feeble light on jeanne's nature. it can reveal only one part of that spirit which your book resuscitates in its entirety. with the expression of my respectful admiration, believe me, my dear master, doctor g. dumas. appendix ii the farrier of salon towards the end of the seventeenth century, there lived at salon-en-crau, near aix, a farrier, one françois michel. he came of a respectable family. he himself had served in the cavalry regiment of the chevalier de grignan. he was held to be a sensible man, honest and devout. he was close on forty when, in february, , he had a vision. returning to his home one evening, he beheld a spectre, holding a torch in its hand. this spectre said to him: "fear nothing. go to paris and speak to the king. if thou dost not obey this command thou shalt die. when thou shalt approach to within a league of versailles, i will not fail to make known unto thee what things thou shalt say to his majesty. go to the governor of thy province, who will order all that is necessary for thy journey." the figure which thus addressed him was in the form of a woman. she wore a royal crown and a mantle embroidered with flowers-de-luce of gold, like the late queen, marie-thérèse, who had died a holy death full fourteen years before. the poor farrier was greatly afraid. he fell down at the foot of a tree, knowing not whether he dreamed or was awake. then he went back to his house, and told no man of what he had seen. two days afterwards he passed the same spot. there again he beheld the same spectre, who repeated the same orders and the same threats. the farrier could no longer doubt the reality of what he saw; but as yet he could not make up his mind what to do. a third apparition, more imperious and more importunate than the first, reduced him to obedience. he went to aix, to the governor of the province; he saw him and told him how he had been given a mission to speak to the king. the governor at first paid no great heed to him. but the visionary's patient persistence could not fail to impress him. moreover, since the king was personally concerned in the matter, it ought not to be entirely neglected. these considerations led the governor to inquire from the magistrates of salon touching the farrier's family and manner of life. the result of these inquiries was very favourable. accordingly the governor deemed it fitting to proceed forthwith to action. in those days no one was quite sure whether advice, very useful to the most christian of kings, might not be sent by some member of the church triumphant through the medium of a common artisan. still less were they sure that some plot in which the welfare of the state was concerned might not be hatched under colour of an apparition. in both contingencies, the second of which was quite probable, it would be advisable to send françois michel to versailles. and this was the decision arrived at by the governor. for the transport of françois michel he adopted measures at once sure and inexpensive. he confided him to an officer who was taking recruits in that direction. after having received the communion in the church of the franciscans, who were edified by his pious bearing, the farrier set out on february with his majesty's young soldiers, with whom he travelled as far as la ferté-sous-jouarre. on his arrival at versailles, he asked to see the king or at least one of his ministers of state. he was directed to m. de barbezieux, who, when he was still very young, had succeeded his father, m. de louvois, and in that position had displayed some talent. but the good farrier declined to tell him anything, because he was not a minister of state. and it was true that barbezieux, although a minister, was not a minister of state. but that a farrier from provence should be capable of drawing such a distinction occasioned considerable surprise. m. de barbezieux doubtless did not evince such scorn for this compatriot of nostradamus as would have been shown in his place by a man of broader mind. for he, like his father, was addicted to the practice of astrology, and he was always inquiring concerning his horoscope of a certain franciscan friar who had predicted the hour of his death. we do not know whether he gave the king a favourable report of the farrier, or whether the latter was admitted to the presence of m. de pomponne, who was then at the head of the administration of provence. but we do know that louis xiv consented to see the man. he had him brought up the steps leading to the marble courtyard, and then granted him a lengthy audience in his private apartments. on the morrow, as the king was coming down his private staircase on his way out hunting, he met marshal de duras, who was captain of the king's bodyguard for the day. with his usual freedom of speech the marshal spoke to the king of the farrier, using a common saying: "either the man is mad, or the king is not noble." at these words the king, contrary to his usual habit, paused and turned to the marshal de duras: "then i am not noble," he said, "for i talked to him for a long time, and he spoke very sensibly; i assure you he is far from being mad." the last words he uttered with so solemn a gravity that those who were present were astonished. persons who claim to be inspired are expected to show some sign of their mission. in a second interview, françois michel showed the king a sign in fulfilment of a promise he had given. he reminded him of an extraordinary circumstance which the son of anne of austria believed known to himself alone. louis xiv himself admitted it, but for the rest preserved a profound silence touching this interview. saint simon, always eager to collect every court rumour, believed it was a question of some phantom, which more than twenty years before had appeared to louis xiv in the forest of saint-germain. for the third and last time the king received the farrier of salon. the courtiers displayed so much curiosity in this visionary that he had to be shut up in the monastery of des rècollets. there the little princess of savoy, who was shortly to marry the duke of burgundy, came to see him with several lords and ladies of the court. he appeared slow to speak, good, simple, and humble. the king ordered him to be furnished with a fine horse, clothes, and money; then he sent him back to provence. public opinion was divided on the subject of the apparition which had appeared to the farrier and the mission he had received from it. most people believed that he had seen the spirit of marie-thérèse; but some said it was nostradamus.[ ] [footnote : michel de nostre-dame, called nostradamus ( - ), a provençal astrologer, whose prophecies were published under the title of "centuries." he was invited to the french court by catherine de' medici, and became the doctor of charles ix.--w.s.] it was only at salon, where he slept in the church of the franciscans, that this astrologer was absolutely believed in. his "centuries," which appeared at paris and at lyon in no less than ten editions in the course of one century, entertained the credulous throughout the kingdom. in , there had just been published a book of the prophecies of nostradamus showing how they had been fulfilled in history from the reign of henry ii down to that of louis the great. it came to be believed that in the following mysterious quatrain the farrier's coming had been prophesied: "le penultiesme du surnom du prophète, prendra diane pour son iour et repos: loing vaguera par frénétique teste, en délivrant un grand peuple d'impos."[ ] [footnote : the last syllable but one of the surname of the prophet will diane take for her day and her rest. far shall wander that inspired one delivering a great nation from the burden of taxes.] an attempt was made to apply these obscure lines to the poor prophet of salon. in the first line he is said to figure as one of the twelve minor prophets, micah, which name is closely allied to michel. in the second line diane was said to be the mother of the farrier, who was certainly called by that name. but if the line means anything at all, it is more likely to refer to the day of the moon, monday. it was carefully pointed out that in the third line _frénétique_ means not _mad_ but _inspired_. the fourth and only intelligible line would suggest that the spectre bade michel ask the king to lessen the taxes and dues which then weighed so heavily on the good folk of town and country: _en délivrant un grand peuple d'impos._ this was enough to make the farrier popular and to cause those unhappy sufferers to centre in this poor windbag their hopes for a better future. his portrait was engraved in copper-plate, and below it was written the quatrain of nostradamus. m. d'argenson,[ ] who was at the head of the police department, had these portraits seized. they were suppressed, so says the _gazette d'amsterdam_, on account of the last line of the quatrain written beneath the portrait, the line which runs: _en délivrant un grand peuple d'impos_. such an expression was hardly likely to please the court. [footnote : marc rené marquis d'argenson ( - ), after being lieutenant général de la police at paris, became, from - , président du conseil des finances and garde des sceaux.--w.s.] no one ever knew exactly what was the mission the farrier received from his spectre. subtle folk suspected one of madame de maintenon's intrigues. she had a friend at marseille, a madame arnoul, who was as ugly as sin, it was said, and yet who managed to make men fall in love with her. they thought that this madame arnoul had shown marie-thérèse to the good man of salon in order to induce the king to live honourably with widow scarron. but in widow scarron had been married to louis for twelve years at least; and one cannot see why ghostly aid should have been necessary to attach the old king to her. on his return to his native town, françois michel shoed horses as before. he died at lançon, near salon, on december , .[ ] [footnote : _gazette d'amsterdam_, march-may, ; _annales de la cour et de paris_ (vol. ii. pp. , ); _theatrum europæum_ (vol. xv. pp. - ); _mémoires de sourches_ (vol. v. pp. , ); _lettres de madame dunoyer_ (letter xxvi); _saint simon, mémoires_, ed. régnier (_collection des grands ecrivains de la france_), vol. vi. pp. , , ; appendix x, p. ; _mémoires du duc de luynes_, vol. x. pp. , --abbé proyart, _vie du duc de bourgogne_ (ed. ), vol. i. pp. , .] appendix iii martin de gallardon ignace thomas martin was by calling a husbandman. a native of gallardon in eure-et-loir, he dwelt there with his wife and four children in the beginning of the nineteenth century. those who knew him tell us that he was of average height, with brown straight hair, a calm glance, a thin countenance and an air of quiet and assurance. a pencil portrait, which his son, m. le docteur martin, has kindly sent me, gives a more exact idea of the visionary. the portrait, which is in profile, presents a forehead curiously high and straight, a long narrow head, round eyes, broad nostrils, a compressed mouth, a protruding chin, hollow cheeks and an air of austerity. he is dressed as a _bourgeois_, with a collar and white cravat. according to the evidence of his brother, a man both physically and mentally sound, his was the gentlest of natures; he never sought to attract attention; in his regular piety there was nothing ecstatic. both the mayor and the priest of gallardon confirmed this description. they agreed in representing him to have been a good simple creature, with an intellect well-balanced although not very active. in he was thirty-three. on january in this year he was alone in his field, over which he was spreading manure, when in his ear he heard a voice which had not been preceded by footsteps. then he turned his head in the direction of the voice and saw a figure which alarmed him. in comparison with human size it was but slight; its countenance, which was very thin, dazzled by its unnatural whiteness. it was wearing a high hat and a frock-coat of a light colour, with laced shoes. it said in a kindly tone: "you must go to the king; you must warn him that his person is in danger, that wicked people are seeking to overthrow his government." it added further recommendations to louis xviii touching the necessity of having an efficient police, of keeping holy the sabbath, of ordering public prayers and of suppressing the disorders of the carnival. if such measures be neglected, it said, "france will fall into yet greater misfortunes." all this was doubtless nothing more or less than what m. la perruque, priest of gallardon, had a hundred times repeated from the pulpit on sunday. martin replied: "since you know so much about it, why don't you perform your errand yourself? why do you appeal to a poor man like me who knows not how to express himself?" then the unknown replied to martin: "it is not i who will go, but you; do as i command you." as soon as he had uttered these words, his feet rose from the ground, his body bent, and with this double movement he vanished. from this time onwards, martin was haunted by the mysterious being. one day, having gone down into his cellar, he found him there. on another occasion, during vespers, he saw him in church, near the holy water stoup, in a devout attitude. when the service was over, the unknown accompanied martin on his way home and again commanded him to go and see the king. the farmer told his relatives who were with him, but neither of them had seen or heard anything. tormented by these apparitions, martin communicated them to his priest, m. la perruque. he, being certain of the good faith of his parishioner and deeming that the case ought to be submitted to the diocesan authority, sent the visionary to the bishop of versailles. the bishop was then m. louis charrier de la roche, a priest who in the days of the revolution had taken the oath to the republic. he resolved to subject martin to a thorough examination; and from the first he told him to ask the unknown what was his name, and who it was who sent him. but when the messenger in the light-coloured frock-coat appeared again, he declared that his name must remain unknown. "i come," he added, "from him who has sent me, and he who has sent me is above me." he may have wished to conceal his name; but at least he did not conceal his views; the vexation he displayed on the escape of la valette[ ] proved that in politics he was an ultra royalist of the most violent type. [footnote : antoine marie chamans, comte de la valette ( - ), was a french general during the first empire. having been arrested in and condemned to death, he was saved by his wife.--w.s.] meanwhile the comte de bréteuil, prefect of eure-et-loir, had been told of the visionary at the same time as the bishop. he also questioned martin. he expected to find him a nervous, agitated person; but when he found him tranquil, speaking simply, but with logical sequence and precision, he was very astonished. like m. l'abbé la perruque he deemed the matter sufficiently important to bring before the higher authorities. accordingly he sent martin, under the escort of a lieutenant of _gendarmerie_, to the ministre de la police générale. having reached paris on march , martin lodged with the _gendarme_ at the hôtel de calais, in the rue montmartre. they occupied a double-bedded room. one morning, when martin was in bed, he beheld an apparition and told lieutenant andré, who could see nothing, although it was broad daylight. indeed, martin's visitations became so frequent that they ceased to cause him either surprise or concern. it was only to the abrupt disappearance of the unknown that he could never grow accustomed. the voice continued to give the same command. one day it told him that if it were not obeyed france would not know peace until . in the ministre de la police générale was the comte decazes who was afterwards created a duke. he was in the king's confidence. but he knew that the extreme royalists were hatching plots against his royal master. decazes wished to see the good man from gallardon, suspecting doubtless, that he was but a tool in the hands of the extremists. martin was brought to the minister, who questioned him and at once perceived that the poor creature was in no way dangerous. he spoke to him as he would to a madman, endeavouring to regard the subject of his mania as if it were real, and so he said: "don't be agitated; the man who has been troubling you is arrested; you will have nothing more to fear from him." but these words did not produce the desired effect. three or four hours after this interview, martin again beheld the unknown, who, after speaking to him in his usual manner, said: "when you were told that i had been arrested, you were told a lie; he who said so has no power over me." on sunday, march , the unknown returned; and on that day he disclosed the matter concerning which the bishop of versailles had inquired, and which he had said at first he would never reveal. "i am," he declared, "the archangel raphaël, an angel of great renown in the presence of god, and i have received power to afflict france with all manner of suffering." three days later, martin was shut up in charenton on the certificate of doctor pinel, who stated him to be suffering from intermittent mania with alienation of mind. he was treated in the kindest manner and was even permitted to enjoy some appearance of liberty. pinel himself originated the humane treatment of the insane. martin in the asylum was not forsaken by the blessed raphaël. on friday, the th, as the peasant was tying his shoe laces, the archangel in his frock-coat of a light colour, spoke to him these words: "have faith in god. if france persists in her incredulity, the misfortunes i have predicted will happen. moreover, if they doubt the truth of your visions, they have but to cause you to be examined by doctors in theology." these words martin repeated to m. legros; director of the royal institution of charenton, and asked him what a doctor in theology was. he did not know the meaning of the term. in the same manner, when he was at gallardon he had asked the priest, m. la perruque, the meaning of certain expressions the voice had used. for example, he did not understand the wild frenzy of france [_le délvie de la france_] nor the evils to which she would fall a victim [_elle serait en proie_]. but there is nothing that need puzzle us in such ignorance, if it really existed. martin may well have remembered the words he did not understand and which he afterwards attributed to his archangel still without understanding them. the visions recurred at brief intervals. on sunday, march , the archangel appeared to him in the garden, took his hand, which he pressed affectionately, opened his coat and displayed a bosom of so dazzling a whiteness that martin could not bear to gaze on it. then he took off his hat. "behold my forehead," he said, "and give heed that it beareth not the mark of the beast whereby the fallen angels were sealed." louis xviii expressed a desire to see martin and to question him. the king, like his favourite minister, believed the visionary to be a tool in the hands of the extreme party. on tuesday, april , martin was taken to the tuileries and brought into the king's closet, where was also m. decazes. as soon as the king saw the farmer, he said to him: "martin, i salute you." then he signed to his minister to withdraw. thereupon martin, according to his own telling, repeated to the king all that the archangel had revealed to him, and disclosed to louis xviii sundry secret matters concerning the years he had spent in exile; finally he made known to him certain plots which had been formed against his person. then the king, profoundly agitated and in tears, raised his hands and his eyes to heaven and said to martin: "martin, these are things which must never be known save to you and to me." the visionary promised him absolute secrecy. such was the interview of april , according to the account given of it by martin, who then, under the influence of m. la perruque's sermons, was an infatuated royalist. it would be interesting to know more of this priest whose inspiration is obvious throughout the whole story. louis xviii agreed with m. decazes that the man was quite harmless; and he was sent back to his plough. later, the agents of one of those false dauphins so numerous under the restoration, got hold of martin and made use of him in their own interest. after louis xviii's death, under the influence of these adventurers, the poor man, reconstituting the story of his interview with the late king, introduced into it other revelations he claimed to have received and completely changed the whole character of the incident. in this second version the passionate royalist of was transformed into an accusing prophet, who came to the king's own palace to denounce him as a usurper and a regicide, forbidding him in god's name to be crowned at reims. such ramblings i cannot relate at length. they are to be found fully detailed in the book of m. paul marin. the author of this work would have done well to indicate that these follies were suggested to the unhappy man by the partisans of naundorf, who was passing himself off as the duke of normandy, who had escaped from the temple. thomas ignace martin died at chartres in . it is alleged, but it has never been proved, that he was poisoned.[ ] [footnote : _rapport adressé à s. ex. le ministre de la police générale sur l'état du nommé martin, envoyé par son ordre à la maison royale de charenton, le mars, , par mm. pinel, médecin en chef de l'hôpital de la salpêtriere, et royer-collard, médecin en chef de la maison royale de charenton, et l'un et l'autre professeurs à la faculté de médecine de paris._ inscribed at the end with the date--paris, may, -- pages in 'o ms. in the library of the author. le capitaine paul marin, _thomas martin de gallardon les médecins et les thaumaturges du xix'e siècle_, paris, s.d. in 'o. _mémoires de la comtesse de boignes_, edited by charles nicoullaud, paris, , vol. iii. pp. and _passim_.] appendix iv iconographical note there is no authentic picture of jeanne. from her we know that at arras she saw in the hands of a scotsman a picture in which she was represented on her knees presenting a letter to her king. from her we know also that she never caused to be made either image or painting of herself, and that she was not aware of the existence of any such image or painting. the portrait painted by the scotsman, which was doubtless very small, is unfortunately lost and no copy of it is known.[ ] the slight pen-and-ink figure, drawn on a register of may , , by a clerk of the parlement of paris, who had never seen the maid, must be regarded as the mere scribbling of a scribe who was incapable of even designing a good initial letter.[ ] i shall not attempt to reconstruct the iconography of the maid.[ ] the bronze equestrian statue in the cluny museum produces a grotesque effect that one is tempted to believe deliberate, if one may ascribe such an intention to an old sculptor. it dates from the reign of charles viii. it is a saint george or a saint maurice, which, at a time doubtless quite recent, was taken to represent the maid. between the legs of the miserable jade, on which the figure is mounted, was engraved the inscription: _la pucelle dorlians_, a description which would not have been employed in the fifteenth century.[ ] about , the cluny museum exhibited another statuette, slightly larger, in painted wood, which was also believed to be fifteenth century, and to represent jeanne d'arc. it was relegated to the store-room, when it turned out to be a bad seventeenth-century saint maurice from a church at montargis.[ ] any saint in armour is frequently described as a jeanne d'arc. this is what happened to a small fifteenth-century head wearing a helmet, found buried in the ground at orléans, broken off from a statue and still bearing traces of painting: a work in good style and with a charming expression.[ ] i have not patience to relate how many initial letters of antiphonaries and sixteenth-, seventeenth- and even eighteenth-century miniatures have been touched up or repainted and passed off as true and ancient representations of jeanne. many of them i have had the opportunity of seeing.[ ] on the other hand, if they were not so well known, it would give me pleasure to recall certain manuscripts of the fifteenth century, which, like _le champion des dames_ and _les vigiles de charles vii_, contain miniatures in which the maid is portrayed according to the fancy of the illuminator. such pictures are interesting because they reveal her as she was imagined by those who lived during her lifetime or shortly afterwards. it is not their merit that appeals to us; they possess none; and in no way do they suggest jean foucquet.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, pp. , .] [footnote : there is a wood engraving of this figure in wallon, _jeanne d'arc_, p. .] [footnote : e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, _notes iconographiques sur jeanne d'arc_, paris and orléans, , in 'o royal paper.] [footnote : reproduced in many works, notably opposite p. in the book of e. de bouteiller and g. de braux, referred to above.] [footnote : _ibid._, see woodcut opposite p. .] [footnote : in the orléans museum. a copper-plate engraving by m. georges lavalley, in the _jeanne d'arc_, of m. raoul bergot, tours, s.d. large 'o.] [footnote : of this class of so-called portrait, i will merely mention the miniature which serves as frontispiece to vol. iv. of _la vrai jeanne d'arc_, of p. ayroles, paris, , in large 'o, and the miniature of the spetz collection, reproduced in the _jeanne d'arc_ of canon henri debout, vol. ii. p. (also in _the maid of france_ by andrew lang, . w.s.).] [footnote : _le champion des dames_, ms. of the fifteenth century; _bibl. nat._, fonds français, no. ; martial d'auvergne, ms. of the end of the fifteenth century, fonds français, no. . an initial of a fifteenth-century latin ms., _bibl. nat._, no. .] while the maid lived, and especially while she was in captivity, the french hung her picture in churches.[ ] in the museum of versailles there is a little painting on wood which is said to be one of those votive pictures. it represents the virgin with the child jesus, having saint michael on her right and jeanne d'arc on her left.[ ] it is of italian workmanship and very roughly executed. jeanne's head, which has disappeared beneath the blows of some hard-pointed instrument, must have been execrably drawn, if we may judge from the others remaining on this panel. all four figures are represented with a scrolled and beaded nimbus, which would have certainly been condemned by the clerics of paris and rouen. and indeed others less strict might accuse the painter of idolatry when he exalted to the left hand of the virgin, to be equal with the prince of heavenly hosts, a mere creature of the church militant. [footnote : _trial_, vol. i, p. . n. valois, _un nouveau témoignage sur jeanne d'arc_, pp. , .] [footnote : reproduced in chromo in wallon's _jeanne d'arc_.] standing, her head, neck, and shoulders covered with a kind of furred hood and tippet fringed with black, her gauntlets and shoes of mail, girt above her red tunic with a belt of gold, jeanne may be recognised by her name inscribed over her head, and also by the white banner, embroidered with _fleurs-de-lis_, which she raises in her right hand, and by her silver shield, embossed in the german style; on the shield is a sword bearing on its point a crown. a three-lined inscription in french is on the steps of the throne, whereon sits the virgin mary. although the inscription is three parts effaced and almost unintelligible, with the aid of my learned friend, m. pierre de nolhac, director of the museum of versailles, i have succeeded in deciphering a few words. these would convey the idea that the inscription consisted of prayers and wishes for the salvation of jeanne, who had fallen into the hands of the enemy. it would appear therefore that we have here one of those _ex voto_ hung in the churches of france during the captivity of the maid. in such a case the nimbus round the head of a living person and the isolated position of jeanne would be easily explained; it is possible that certain excellent frenchmen, thinking no evil, adapted to their own use some picture which originally represented the virgin between two personages of the church triumphant. by a few touches they transformed one of these personages into the maid of god. in so small a panel they could find no place more suitable to her mortal state, none like those generally occupied at the feet of the virgin and saints by the kneeling donors of pictures. this too might explain perhaps why saint michael, the virgin and the maid have their names inscribed above them. over the head of the maid we read _ane darc_. this form _darc_ may have been used in .[ ] in the inscription on the steps of the throne i discern _jehane darc_, with a small _d_ and a capital _a_ for _darc_, which is very curious. this causes me to doubt the genuineness of the inscription. [footnote : the form _darc_ occurs in the condemnation trial (_trial_, vol. i, p. , vol. ii, p. ). but side by side we find also _dars_ (document dated march , ), _day_ (patent of nobility), _daiz_ (communicated to me by m. pierre champion) and _daix_ (_chronique de la pucelle_).] the _bestion_ tapestry[ ] in the orléans museum,[ ] which represents jeanne's arrival before the king at chinon, is of german fifteenth-century workmanship. coarse of tissue, barbarous in design, and monotonous in colour, it evinces a certain taste for sumptuous adornment but also an absolute disregard for literal truth. [footnote : tapestry representing small animals.--w.s.] [footnote : reproduced in chromo in wallon's _jeanne d'arc_, _cf._ j. quicherat, _histoire du costume en france depuis les temps les plus reculés, jusqu' la fin du xviii'e siècle_, paris, , large octavo, p. .] another german work was exhibited at ratisbonne in . it represented the maid fighting in france. but this painting is lost.[ ] [footnote : _trial_, vol. v, p. .] index aaron, i. arras, bishop of, ii. abbeville, ii. , absalom, i. achilles, ii. Ænius sylvius, ii. aëtius, i. ahasuerus, i. ahaz, i. aimery, guillaume, examines jeanne, i. , , aisne, the, i. ; ii. , aix, ii. alain du bey, i. alain, jacques, i. , albi, consuls of, i. , albigenses, the, ii. albret, charles, sire d', i. , ; ii. , , , jeanne in charge of ii. , , alençon, bailie of, i. dame of, i. duchy of, i. duke of, i. ix, xii, , ; ii. and jeanne, i. , , , ; ii. at beaugency, i. - at blois, i. at reims, i. , , career of, i. commands the army, i. - , ; ii. , , , , , consults jeanne before patay, i. , evidence of, i. xxviii, xxix, xliv, xlix; ii. , , heads attack on paris, ii. , , skirmishes round paris, ii. , , uses jeanne as a mascotte, ii. imprisoned, ii. alespée, jean, ii. , alexander the great, i. , , alexandria, i. , , , alison du mai, i. , allée, pierre d', ii. , alphonso of aragon, ii. , amazons, the, i. , amblény, plain of, ii. ambleville, i. , detained by english, i. amboise, i. amedée of savoie, prince, i. ; ii. , amiens, ii. _amiète_, ii. amos, ii. ampulla, the sacred, i. liv, , , , - , amydas, king, ii. ananias, a hermit, i. andelot, i. ; ii. andouillette, lord guillaume, i. andré, lieutenant, ii. andrieu, robert, ii. angers, i. , , , ; ii. , angerville, i. anis, i. anjou, i. , , , duchess of, i. anne of austria, ii. annunciation, the, i. antichrist, coming of, i. antoine de lorraine, lord of joinville, i. antonio de rho, i. apollodorus, i. appleby, william, i. apples, cause of war, i. apremont, lord of, ii. aquitaine, ii. aragon, i. _arbre-des-dames_, or _arbre-des-fées_, romance of, i. arc, catherine d', i. , , , family ennobled, i. xvii; ii. , isabelle d', i. , , ; ii. origin of mother of jeanne, i. at puy, i. , , demands rehabilitation, ii. jacques d', i. xvii, , home of, i. freeman or serf, i. rents fortress of domremy, i. his duties as village elder, i. visits vaucouleurs, i. his anxiety about jeanne, i. simplicity of, i. at reims, i. jacques or jacquemin d', brother of jeanne, i. , jean d', i. ; ii. joins jeanne, i. enters orléans, i. , , believes jeanne to be alive, ii. - demands rehabilitation, ii. m. lanéry d', i. vii, xxii nicolas d', i. pierre d', i. , ; ii. , , joins jeanne, i. enters orléans, i. , , taken prisoner, ii. demands rehabilitation, ii. archambaud of villars, i. , , arcis, i. areopagite, the, ii. arezzo, i. argenson, m. d', ii. aristotle, i. , , arles, i. ; ii. arlon, ii. , armagnac conspiracy to enter paris, ii. - count of, _see_ jean iv armagnacs and burgundians, war between, i. _et passim_ armoises, robert des, lord of tichemont, ii. , arnaud of corraze, raimond, i. arnolin, messire, i. arnoul, madame, ii. arnoult of aulnoy, i. aronde, the, ii. arras, i. jeanne at, ii. - , franquet d', ii. artaxerxes, i. arthur of brittany, _see_ count of richemont artois, bailie of, i. arundel, earl of, ii. ascension day, i. - ; ii. astarac, ii. astrologers, i. , ; ii. foretell the death of salisbury, i. _see_ nostradamus attila, i. , , aube, the, i. , aubriot, hugues, ii. aubrit, jannet, i. jeanne, i. , augsburg, i. augustinians, i. , aulnoy, i. aulon, jean d', squire to jeanne, i. xiv, xxix, xxx, xxxiv, , , , , , , ; ii. , , , , at st.-loup, i. , at les tourelles, i. , , questions jeanne as to her council, i. at st. pierre-le-moustier, ii. , taken prisoner, ii. aunoy, jean d', i. marguerite d', i. autun, i. ; ii. auvergne, i. , , , aurelian, the emperor, i. auxerre, i. , , , bishop of, i. charles vii at, i. - avignon, i. , ; ii. avioth, hill of, ii. avranches, ii. bishop of, i. ; ii. ayroles, le père, i. xxxvii azincourt, i. , , , ; ii. babylon, i. , baignart, robert, i. bailiet, i. lvii balaam's ass, i. bâle, council of, ii. , , , bar, i. , ravaged by la hire, i. cardinal, duke of, i. ; ii. , , , , bar-sur-aube, i. bar-sur-seine, i. baratin, pierre, ii. barbazan, ii. , barbezieux, m. de, ii. barbier, canon, ii. barbin, guillaume, i. barcelona, i. baretta, bartolomeo, ii. , , , , , barrère, jean, i. xlvi, ii. barrey, edite, i. jean, godfather of jeanne, i. barrois, i. barron, ii. basque, the, upholds the standard, i. - bassigny, i. , bastard of granville, i. of orléans, i. xiii, lvi, , , , , , , , ; ii. , , evidence of, i. xxv, xxix, xxxii becomes count of dunois, i. xvi; ii. , obtains supplies, i. parentage of, i. enters orléans, i. , - achievements of, i. lends musicians to the english, i. leaves orléans, i. attacks fastolf's convoy, i. sends to inquire of jeanne, i. regards jeanne's mission as religious, i. , , advises jeanne to hold aloof, i. meets the army from blois, i. , speaks with jeanne of falstolf, i. pacifies jeanne, i. demands jeanne's heralds, i. at les tourelles, i. , attacks jargeau, i. , - marvels at jeanne, i. at patay, i. , policy of, ii. of poitiers, _see_ guillaume of vauru, ii. - of vergy, ii. of wandomme, ii. , bastardy, i. battle of the herrings, i. - , , , , , , , ; ii. baudot de noyelles, ii. , baudricourt, lord of, _see_ robert de baudricourt baudrin, jean, ii. bavon, lady anna, ii. bayeux, ii. bayonne, ii. bazoches, thomas de, i. beans sown at troyes, i. , béarn, i. beaucaire, ii. beaugency, i. xli, , , ; ii. , english at, i. , french take, i. - beaulieu, castle of, jeanne at, ii. , , beaumont, andrieu de, i. beaumont-sur-oise, i. ; ii. beaune, i. beaupère, jean, ii. , , , , , questions jeanne, ii. - , - , , - beaurepaire, m. robillard de, i. vii, xxxii beaurevoir, i. xix; ii. , , jeanne at, ii. - , , , , beauvais, i. ; ii. , , , archdeacon of, i. bishop of, _see_ cauchon surrenders to charles vii, ii. english march on, ii. bec, abbot of, ii. , bec-d'allier, ii. bede, the venerable, prophecies of, i. ; ii. , , bedford, duchess of, ii. , , duke of, i. , ; ii. , seizes alençon, i. returns to england, i. addressed by jeanne, i. , policy towards burgundy, i. robs the bishops, i. challenges charles, ii. - believes jeanne a witch, ii. , cedes paris to philip, ii. , keeps the crusaders in france, ii. canon of rouen, ii. death of, ii. bégot, jean, ii. _beguines_, ii. behemoth, ii. belial, ii. bellême, château de, i. belles, dames, i. bellier, guillaume, i. ; ii. bellona, i. lxxii bells and st. catherine, i. bénédicité, _see_ estivet benedict xiii, pope, i. , ; ii. , , , benedict xiv, pope, ii. , , bennade, bishop, i. bernard le breton, ii. bernardino of siena, i. , berne, i. lxxi berruyer, martin, ii. , berry, duc de, jean, ii. duchy of, i. xiv, , , ; ii. berthe, queen, i. , bertrand de poulengy, i. xxix, xxx, , , , , accompanies jeanne, i. - at blois, i. berwoist, john, ii. besançon, ii. bethlehem, i. bethsaida, i. bethulia, i. ; ii. béthune, jeanne de, ii. biget, jean, i. billoray, martin, grand inquisitor, ii. blackfriars, i. black prince, i. blaise, i. blanche of castile, queen, i. blasphemy forbidden, i. blaye, ii. blésois, i. , bloch, m. camille, i. lxxiv blois, i. , , , , , , jeanne at, i. xiii, , st. sauveur, i. army returns to, i. , , , english at, i. boian, captain, ii. boilet, colette, ii. , boillève, jean, i. , bois-chênu, i. , , ; ii. boisguillaume, _see_ colles bolingbroke, i. bona of milan, ii. bonne de savoie, i. bonnet, m. raoul, i. lxxiv simon, i. bonval, jean de, ii. bordeaux, ii. borenglise, castle of, ii. bosquier, pierre, ii. bossuet, i. lvi boucher, charlotte, i. xxiv, jacques, i. , , , ; ii. jeanne lodges with, i. xxiv, ; ii. bouchet, i. boudant, hélie, ii. boulainvilliers, percevalde, i. , bouligny, rené de, ii. boullay, aubert, ii. boulogne, ii. boulogne-la-petite, i. bouray, jean de, ii. bourbon, duke of, i. xii, lxiv; ii. , bourbonnais, i. , , bourgeois, jean, i. bourges, i. , , ; ii. chapter of, i. ; ii. jeanne at, ii. defray costs of war, ii. bourget, jean, ii. bourgogne, ii. bourlémont, château of, i. , pierre de, i. , bournel, guichard, ii. , , boussac, marshal de, i. , , , in command, i. , , , , , , , , , , ; ii. , , , , , , at blois, i. enters orléans with jeanne, i. goes to meet talbot, i. at les tourelles, i. , at patay, i. leads army towards reims, i. bouteiller, sire le, ii. bouvier, gilles le, i. x brabant, ii. bray-sur-seine, ii. , bréhal, jean, i. ; ii. , bréteuil, comte de, ii. bretigny, treaty of, i. lxiv bretons, the, i. briare, ii. brie, i. ; ii. , , brimeu, david de, _see_ lord of ligny brinion-l'archevêque, i. , , , brittany, i. , restored by duke john, i. brook of the three springs, i. brousson, m. jean, i. lxxiv bruges, ii. buchon, i. vii bueil, jean de, i. , , ; ii. , , builhon, jean de, i. , burey-en-vaux, i. , , , burey-la-côte, i. burgundy, i. duke of, _see_ philip butchers of paris, i. ; ii. butterflies, significance of, ii. cabasse, raymond, i. cabochiens, the, i. xxi, , ; ii. , caffa, ii. cagny, perceval de, i. ix, x cailly, guy de, i. xxxii, , , calais, jean de, ii. , _calendrier des vieillards_, i. calixtus iii, ii. calot, lawrence, ii. cambrai, ii. camilla, i. , , cana, ii. cany, dame de, i. _capitouls_ of toulouse, i. ; ii. carlier, bietremieu, ii. carmelites, the, i. , ; ii. , , plots of, ii. - cartesianism, i. lviii cassandra, i. ; ii. castille, Étienne, ii. castillon, jean de, ii. castres, bishop of, ii. cathari, the, i. , ; ii. , , catherine de la rochelle, ii. - , , , and jeanne, ii. - , employed by friar richard, ii. - , , , cato, i. catherine, queen, i. , , , cauchon, pierre, bishop of beauvais, i. xxvii, li, lii, ; ii. , , consults the university of paris, i. claims jeanne, ii. - , , , , , conducts her trial, ii. - reads the sentence on jeanne, ii. , , hears her retract, ii. - claims guillaume the shepherd, ii. at bâle, ii. responsibility thrown on, deceased, ii. death of, ii. cayeux, hugues de, ii. cazin du boys, i. ceffonds, i. cerquenceaux, abbot of, i. chabannes, jacques de, i. ; ii. chabot, jean, i. chailly, denis de, i. lord de, i. châlons, i. xxxii, , , , , ; ii. , count of, i. surrenders to charles vii, i. - chambley, alarde de, i. _chambre des comptes_, ii. champagne, i. lxix, , war in, i. , route through, i. champigny, ii. champion, m. pierre, i. xix, lxxiv chandos, standard of, i. , _chanson de roland_, ii. chapelain, i. lv, lxv chapelle, jean de la, ii. - chapelle-st.-denys, ii. chapon, perrot, i. charavay, m. noël, i. lxxiv charcot, dr., ii. charenton, ii. charlemagne, crown and sword of, i. , charles ii, duke of lorraine, _see_ lorraine sire d'albret, _see_ albret charles v, i. , , ; ii. piety of, i. charles vi, i. , , , , , ; ii. , , believer in prophecy, i. death of, i. charles vii, i. lxxi, , , , ; ii. attacked through jeanne, i. xii; ii. , , , , , escutcheons of, i. ; ii. jeanne's prophecies concerning, i. , , , prisoner of the english, i. sends for jeanne, i. character of, i. - , , resources of, i. - , , _le bien servi_, i. examines reports of jeanne, i. , , , , interviews jeanne, i. - , personal appearance of, i. legitimacy of, i. warned against jeanne, i. seeks a sign, i. , has jeanne armed and mounted, i. - announces the relief of orléans, i. urged by jeanne to reims, i. , voices not heard by, i. receives jeanne after patay, i. coronation of; moral value of, i. innocent of death of duke john, i. starts for reims, i. at troyes, i. - at châlons, i. summons reims to surrender, i. crowned at reims, i. - progress to compiègne, ii. - , , challenged by bedford, ii. - makes truce with burgundy, ii. - hated in paris, ii. , orders army back from paris, ii. leaves st. denys, ii. disbands the army, ii. peaceful policy of, ii. schemes to win paris, ii. maintains the pragmatic sanction, ii. enters rouen, ii. urges trial for rehabilitation, ii. - death of, ii. charles viii, i. lxxi charles, duke of orléans, i. , , ; ii. , bribes the english, i. raises supplies, i. ballad by, i. to be rescued by jeanne, i. , piety of, i. , colours of, i. captivity of, i. charles martel, i. , , , simon, i. charles the wise, ii. charny, lord of, ii. charpaigne, i. charpentier, p., i. xiii chartier, alain, i. xlv, lxiii, jean, i. xi-xiii, xx, xxxii, xlv chartiers, guillaume, ii. chartres, i. ; ii. , , chassé-les-usson, ii. chastel, jean du, i. chastellain, georges, i. xxi chastillon, sire de, commander of reims, i. - châteaubriand, i. lix châteaubrun, lord of, i. , châteaudun, i. , , governor of, i. , châteaufort, guillaume de, ii. châteauneuf, i. château-of-sully, i. châteaurenard, i. ; ii. château-thierry, i. ; ii. , , , , jeanne at, ii. châteauvillain, sire de, i. chatterton, thomas, i. lxix chaumont, i. , , , occupied by the english, i. lord of, i. , chécy, i. , , , army reaches, i. jeanne at, i. cheminon, abbey of, i. , chénier, marie-joseph, i. xlvi, lxv cher, the, i. chinon, i. xxxviii, , , , , , , , , , , ; ii. , jeanne at, i. xiii, xxv, , - , ; ii. , castles of, i. grand carroy, i. la vieille porte, i. castle of coudray, i. charles vii at, i. choisy-au-bac, ii. choisy-sur-aisne, ii. chorazin, i. christine de pisan, i. ; ii. poems of, ii. - chroniclers of the period, i. ix _chronique d'antonio morosini_, i. xxi _chronique de la pucelle_, _la_, i. xiv _chronique de l'etablissement de la fête_, _le_, i. xviii _chronique des cordeliers_, _le_, i. xix, xx chrysippus, i. chursates, i. cilinia, i. _city of god_, _the_, i. clain, the, i. clairoix, ii. , , claude de metz, ii. clefmont, barthélemy de, i. clement viii, pope, ii. , , , , clement of alexandria, i. clermont, i. ; ii. bishop of, i. count of, i. , , , , , , ; ii. , , , cowardice of, i. , , climat-du-camp, i. , clopinel, i. clorinda, i. lxxii clotaire, king, ii. clotilde, queen, i. - clovis, king, i. - , , , , , ; ii. coarraze, lord de, i. coeur-de-lis, i. ; ii. coinage, the maid an authority on, i. colard de mailly, i. colet de vienne, i. , , , , colette of corbie, i. xxxv, lxxii, , , ; ii. , colin, jean, i. , colles, guillaume, ii. , cologne, i. ; ii. , , , colonna, otto, ii. comberel, hugues de, i. combleux, i. comment-qu'il-soit, i. commercy, i. damoiseau de, _see_ robert de saarbruck compiègne, i. xx, xxxi, ; ii. , , , , , , , , surrenders to charles vii, ii. , jeanne at, ii. , , siege of, ii. , , , - st. corneille, ii. conches, governor of, i. confessor, the king's, i. constable of france, i. , ; ii. , feared by the king, i. plots to seize jeanne, i. succeeds as favourite, ii. , constable of scotland, i. , , constance, bishop of, ii. council of, i. ; ii. , , , constantinople, i. coppequesne, nicolas, ii. , corbeil, i. ; ii. , , corbie, jean de, i. , cordeliers, the, i. xix, cormeilles, ii. corneille, abbot of, ii. corny, ii. coronation, moral value of, i. at orléans, i. at reims, i. of queens, i. corraze, i. corsini, giovanni, i. costus, king, i. coudray, i. coudun, ii. , , coulommiers, ii. , council, jeanne's, _see_ voices, &c. of charles vii, makes use of the maid as a mascotte, i. ; ii. plans of, regarding the coronation, i. - ceases to employ jeanne, ii. courcelles, thomas de, during the trial, ii. , , , , , , , , at bâle, ii. delivers the funeral oration on charles vii, ii. courtenay, ii. cousinot, guillaume, chronicle of, i. xiv, , coussey, i. , coutances, ii. bishop of, ii. coutes, jean de, i. jeanne de, i. louis de, i. , , ; ii. couvreur, jean le, ii. crécy-en-brie, i. xlvii, ; ii. cremona, i. crépy-en-valois, ii. , , , , , , créquy, sire de, ii. , croissy, ii. crotoy, ii. crusades, the, i. , , ; ii. , , cuissart, c., i. xiii culant, admiral de, i. , , , ; ii. currency of the period, i. cusquel, pierre, ii. cyrus, i. dagobert, king, ii. daix, jehannin, ii. dammartin, ii. daniel, i. dante alighieri, i. lxviii darnley, i. daron, pierre, ii. dauphin, the, _see_ charles vii jeanne's use of title explained, i. dauphiné, i. david, king, i. , , , , , deborah, i. , , , ; ii. decazes, comte, ii. , delachambre, guillaume, ii. , démétriade, ii. denmark, i. desch, geoffroy, ii. jean, ii. deschamps, eustache, i. gilles, ii. devils, entrance of, i. didier of saint dié, i. , dieppe, i. ; ii. _dies iræ_, i. ; ii. dijon, i. , diminutives, origin of, i. dinteville, jean de, i. diocletian, ii. _directorium_, ii. dive, the, i. dominicans, the, ii. dommartin-la-cour, i. dommartin-le-franc, i. , domremy, i. xxiii, xxxi, , , situation of, i. , , inhabitants of suspected of witchcraft, i. feudal overlordship of, i. fortress of the island let, i. precautions against pillage, i. pillaged by henri of savoy, i. pillaged by antoine de vergy, i. , inquiries at, ii. freed from _tailles_, i. douillet, jean, ii. doulevant, i. drapier, perrin le, i. drugy, château of, ii. ducoudray, jean, i. duisy, guillaume, i. , dumas, dr. georges, i. xxxiv; ii. - dun, saubelet de, ii. dunand, canon, i. lxii dunois, count of, _see_ bastard of orléans durance, the, i. durand de brie, ii. of saint-dié, i. , durandal, ii. duras, marshal de, ii. dutaillis, m. petit, i. lxxiii edward iii, i. elijah, i. , , elincourt, ii. elisha, i. embrun, archbishop of, _see_ jacques gélu emilius, i. engélide, ii. english, hatred of the, i. , occupation of france, i. , army driven from france, i. xlvii-xlix hesitates between angers and orléans, i. lays siege to orléans, i. position in france, i. composition of, i. , deserters from, i. disorganised by salisbury's death, i. celebrates noël, i. plight of, outside orléans, i. appears in le portereau, i. , occupies st.-loup, i. erects worthless bastions, i. , privations of, i. , , summoned by jeanne to surrender, i. , , , receives jeanne's letter, i. - regards jeanne as a witch, i. - , ; ii. defends les tourelles, i. - defends les augustins, i. leaves orléans, i. in jargeau, i. , , at the battle of patay, i. - at bray-sur-seine, ii. skirmishes with french, ii. at jeanne's capture, ii. buys jeanne, ii. , gives her up to the bishop of beauvais, ii. tumult at the recantation, ii. , enoch, i. epictetus, i. lxvii Épinal, gérardin d', i. , , ; ii. isabellette d', i. , nicholas d', i. , erard, guillaume, ii. , , , preaches against jeanne, ii. - reads the abjuration, ii. eratosthenes, i. Érault, jean, i. examines jeanne, i. writes at her dictation, i. escouchy, mathieu d', i. xx estellin, beatrix, i. , jeannette, ii. esther, i. xxvi, , ; ii. estivet, jean d', ii. , , , , , estouteville, cardinal d', ii. Étampes, i. , count of, i. eugenius iv, pope, ii. , , , eure, the, i. euripides, i. eve, i. Évreux, i. , , ; ii. bailie of, i. eymerie, nicolas, ii. ezekiel, ii. fabre, m. joseph, i. lxii failly, collard, ii. fair of le lendit, ii. fairy lore of domremy, i. falconbridge, baron, i. , fastolf, sir john, i. convoys victuals, i. at janville, i. approaches jargeau, i. , , plans of, i. , at patay, i. uncertainty of fate of, i. , fauchard, simon, ii. fauveau, ii. fécamp, abbot of, ii. , , , , fécard, jean, ii. felix, pope, ii. féron, jean, ii. férone, jeanne la, ii. , ferrier, vincent, i. fesenzac, i. feuillet, gérard, ii. fiefvé, thomas, ii. fierbois, i. , ; ii. st. catherine's chapel, i. - fitz walter, i. flamenc, pierre, i. flavy, guillaume de, ii. , , , , louis de, ii. fleury, i. , jean, ii. florence, i. ; ii. flyeng hart, the, ii. foix, count of, ii. _fontaine-auz-bonnes-fées-notre-seigneur_, romance of, i. , , fontaine, jean de la, ii. , , , , , forest of guise, ii. forestel, wavrin du, i. xx fort st. george, i. fossé, guion du, i. foucault, jean, ii. lord of, ii. foucquet, jean, ii. foug, geoffrey de, i. fouquerel, jean, ii. fournier, jean, i. , exorcises jeanne, i. - france, kingdom of, distressful state of, i. , franciscans, the, i. franquet d'arras, prisoner of jeanne, ii. french army, ii. famine in, i. ; ii. fresnay-le-gelmert, lord of, i. fresnoy, abbé longlet du, i. lviii freycinet, m. de, i. xl friar richard, jeanne's chaplain, i. , ; ii. , , , , , , , , - history of, i. preaches in paris, i. - ; ii. suspects jeanne of witchcraft, i. , at troyes, i. , , , , designs of, ii. at orléans, ii. fribourg, i. friesland, lady of, i. froissart, i. xx frontey, guillaume, vicar of domremy, i. , furtivolus, i. gabriel, archangel appears to jeanne, ii. gaillard, château, ii. galelière, la, lord of, i. gallardon, i. xxxvi; ii. gamaliel, i. gambetta, i. xl gangres, council of, i. garivel, françois, ii. gascon's plan to fall on fastolf's convoy, i. gascony, i. gasque of avignon, la, i. , gath, i. gâtinais, i. , gaucourt, sire de, governor of orléans, i. xxx, , , , , , , ; ii. , , obtains supplies, i. lodges jeanne at coudray, i. at blois, i. leads the attack on les tourelles, i. , , , _gazette d'amsterdam_, ii. gélu, jacques, bishop of embrun, i. , , , ; ii. , his treatise on jeanne, i. , , - mistrusts jeanne, i. on jeanne's captivity, ii. geneva, i. germain, bishop, i. gerson, jean, i. lvii, , ; ii. , , career of, i. his treatise on jeanne, i. xlix, - ; ii. , gervais, canon, i. _geste des nobles françois_, i. xiv gethyn, sir richard, i. , , - gévaudan, ii. ghent, ii. ghiberti, lorenzo, ii. giac, lord de, i. , gibeaumex, i. gideon, i. , ; ii. story of, i. gien, i. , , , , , , ; ii. , french army at, i. xii, xxvi, , jeanne at, i. ; ii. giffart, sir thomas, i. girard, jean, i. , girault, guillaume, i. , giresme, nicole de, i. glacidas, i. glasdale, william, i. , , , , , answers jeanne, i. summoned to surrender, i. death of, i. , gloucester, duke of, i. ; ii. marriage of, i. , godefroy, jean, i. , _godons_, the, i. golden legend, the, i. goliath, i. , gondrecourt, castellany of, i. le-château, i. good friday, coinciding with the annunciation, i. gooseberry spring, _see_ fontaine-aux-bonnes-fées gorcum, heinrich von, i. xxii, , gorlitz, elizabeth of, ii. gottlieben, ii. gouges, lord martin, i. gough, matthew, i. gournay-sur-aronde, ii. , gouye, colin, ii. granier, pierre, i. graverent, jean, grand inquisitor, ii. , , , graville, lord of, i. , , , , , gray, lord richard, i. , great friday, i. grenoble, parliament of, i. gressart, perrinet, i. ; ii. , , greux, i. , , , ; ii. , situation of, i. , freed from _tallies_, i. colin de, i. grey friars, neufchâteau, monastery of, i. , , grey, john, ii. , grignan, chevalier de, ii. grognot, nicolas, ii. grouchet, richard de, ii. gubbio, i. guérard, sir thomas, i. , guesclin, bertrand du, i. , , ; ii. guesdon, laurent, ii. gueuville, nicolas, ii. gugen, arnault de, i. , gui, bernard, ii. guido da forli, i. guillaume, jaquet, ii. , of chaumont, i. of gévaudan, ii. - , - the bastard of poitiers, i. with the white hands, i. guillemette de la rochelle, i. gérard, i. guillot de guyenne, ii. guitry, i. lord de, i. guyenne, held by england, i. , a herald, i. detained by the english, i. - , _guyntonia vaticinium_, i. guyon du fossé, i. hainault, countess of, i. haiton, guillaume, ii. halbourd, jean, i. halsall, gilbert, i. hannequin, jean, ii. harancourt, ii. harcourt, christophe d', ii. , questions jeanne, i. , harfleur, i. lxiv; ii. hauviette, i. ; ii. hector de chartres, i. , ; ii. hellande, antoine de, i. hennequins, the, i. hennins, i. henri de savoie, pillages domremy, i. , henry ii of england, i. henry ii of france, ii. henry v of england, i. lxiv, , , , , , , , ; ii. death of, i. , betrothal of, i. henry vi of england, i. li, , , , ; ii. , , minority of, i. resources of, i. summoned to surrender, i. - to be crowned at reims, i. at rouen, ii. coronation of, ii. _henry vi_, i. heraclides ponticus, i. heresy, church's treatment of, i. heretics burnt at the stake, ii. , hermine, i. hermit friars, the, ii. hermite, pierre l', i. , herodias, i. _historia britonum_, i. history, art of writing, i. lxviii hodierne, guillaume, i. holophernes, i. , , honecourt, jean de, i. hordal, jean, i. lv hospitality, rules of, i. ; ii. houppembière, ii. houppeville, nicolas de, ii. hovecourt, i. hugh capet, i. hungerford, lord, i. huns invade gaul, i. huss, john, i. ; ii. , hussites, the, i. xxx, ; ii. , campaign against, ii. Île-aux-boeufs, i. , , ; ii. Île-aux-bourdons, i. , , Île-aux-toiles, i. , , , Île biche-d'orge, i. Île-charlemagne, i. , Île-de-france, i. lxix, , ; ii. , , , held by england, i. Île-jourdain, ii. Île martinet, i. Île saint-loup, i. illiers, florent d', i. , , , , , , immerguet, i. innocent iii, pope, ii. , inquisition, the, ii. , secrecy of, ii. invention of the holy cross, i. isabeau of bavaria, i. isabella of lorraine, i. isle-adam, sire de l', ii. jacob, i. dominique, i. jacobins, the, i. ; ii. jacqueline of bavaria, countess, i. , jacques de chabannes, i. , of touraine, ii. , , , , jacquier, i. jadart, m. henri, i. vii, lxxiv jahel, i. janville, i. , , , english at, i. , , jargeau, i. xli, , , , - ; ii. , , , , , , french attack on, i. xiv, , , , english occupy, i. jeanne at, ii. , jarry, m. l., i. vii jean iv, count d'armagnac asks jeanne to indicate true pope, ii. - cruelty of, ii. excommunicated, ii. jean, count of neufchâtel, i. count of salm, i. de gand, i. de metz, i. , , ; ii. questions jeanne, i. , , accompanies jeanne, i. , , at blois, i. enters orléans, i. of saintrailles, i. ; ii. le bon, i. warned by the vavasour, i. jean-sans-peur, i. jeanne d'arc, authorities for life of, i. vii-xxxiii, lxi mission of, i. xii, xxxix, lx; ii. , its political aspect, i. , ; ii. simplicity of, i. xxvii, lx military skill of, i. xxviii, xliii; ii. , visionary nature of, i. xxxiii-xxxvii priests' influence on, i. xxxviii, - , , virginity of, i. xxviii, ; ii. , , , character of, i. xxxiii historical reputation of, i. liv portraits of, i. liii, lxii, lxxi, ; ii. , , - birth of, i. , parentage of, i. baptism of, i. - early childhood of, i. , , , , , education of, i. piety of, i. , , , , shares the village rites, i. , childhood of, i. first hears voices, i. recognises st. michael, i. visited at domremy by ss. catherine and marguerite, i. , , , vows to preserve her virginity, i. her love of bells, i. visited by st. michael, i. , visits robert de baudricourt at vaucouleurs, i. - prophesies concerning the dauphin, i. , , , ridiculed, i. , , suspected of witchcraft, i. , , , ; ii. , , , , , , at neufchâteau, i. - summoned to appear at toul, i. visits robert de baudricourt again, i. her second visit to vaucouleurs, i. - announces her mission to relieve orléans, i. declares her mission to the dauphin, i. , - prophesies her death, i. , ; ii. , sent for by the dauphin, i. , - adopts man's attire, i. , , , exorcised by jean fournier, i. - sent for by duke of lorraine, i. - writes to her parents, i. dictates a letter to the king, i. at chinon, i. xiii, , , questioned as to her mission, i. , her interviews with charles, and the sign, i. - , ; ii. , , , dress of, i. , , , , ; ii. , , , , , , , , , , and the duke of alençon, i. - , is taken to poitiers, i. examined at poitiers, i. - her aversion to theologians, i. ; ii. , dictates a manifesto to the english, i. prophesies the coronation at reims, i. , retorts on seguin, i. foretells the raising of the siege, i. her sign victory itself, i. , result of examination at poitiers, i. miracles attributed to, i. , - ; ii. , sets out for orléans, i. armour of, i. , ; ii. , her chaplain, i. horses of, i. , ; ii. sword of, i. xii, , ; ii. - , , standard of, i. ; ii. , , , at blois, i. dictates manifestoes to the english from poitiers and blois, i. exhorts the french soldiers to repentance, i. her banner, i. leaves blois for orléans, i. xiii, misled as to route, i. - approaches the bastard, i. her ignorance of orléans, i. her mission at orléans, i. prophesies change of wind, i. asks to return to blois, i. at chécy, i. summons the english to surrender, i. , , , , , , , enters orléans, i. - leads the orléannais to the holy places, i. surveys the bastions, i. is offered wine, i. her belief in herself, i. , ; ii. , , meets the army from blois, i. jests with the bastard, i. roused from sleep by her council, i. at st.-loup, i. - her influence in orléans, i. , plans kept from, i. receives counsel in orléans, i. at les tourelles, i. xiii, - wounded in the foot, i. prophesies her wound, i. , prophesies success in orléans, i. is wounded in the shoulder, i. , ; ii. hears mass on the sabbath, i. leaves orléans for blois and tours, i. approved by gélu, i. approved by gerson, i. - urges the king to reims, i. questioned as to her voices, i. , ; ii. - , , , , , , , , , , , , - , - at loches, i. - fame of, i. , - ; ii. - , - her prayer for france, i. consulted as a saint, i. , , , ; ii. - , - , , at selles-en-berry, i. wishes for prayers for her soul, i. prophesies the english evacuation, i. prophesies to guy de laval, i. marches on jargeau, i. - receives gifts at orléans, i. , hopes to rescue the captive duke, i. meets the constable, i. at beaugency, i. - at patay, i. , prophesies victory at patay, i. , at orléans, i. , prophesies the coronation of charles, i. constable's plot to seize, i. her loyalty to charles vii, i. her progress to reims, i. , led by the king's council, i. at gien, i. dictates a letter to tournai, i. - invites burgundy to the coronation, i. dictates a letter to troyes, i. , at troyes, i. , , , - prophesies victory at troyes, i. at châlons, i. at reims, i. - dreams of a crown, i. , ; ii. , , , ring of, i. ; ii. writes to the duke of burgundy, i. legends of, i. - prophecies by, i. - ; ii. , _re_ the english, i. xvi; ii. , writes to reims, ii. - , , , political judgment of, ii. betrayed, ii. rides with the scouts, ii. poems in honour of, ii. prophecies relating to, ii. - personal appearance of, ii. at compiègne, ii. marches towards paris, ii. - replies to the count d'armagnac, ii. stands as godmother, ii. , parisian opinion of, ii. , , , summons paris to surrender, ii. , is wounded in the thigh, ii. , turned from paris, ii. drives prostitutes from the army, ii. , at selles-en-berry, ii. - at the attack on st.-pierre-le-moustier, ii. and catherine de la rochelle, ii. - , , collects money for the army, ii. , , , at moulins, ii. writes to riom, ii. , grant of nobility, ii. , fêted at orléans, ii. writes to tours, ii. leases a house in orléans, ii. at sully, ii. - on crusading, ii. her letter to sigismund, ii. in the trenches of melun, ii. attempts to exchange prisoners, ii. - at senlis, ii. used as a mascotte, ii. at margny, ii. - is taken prisoner, ii. attempts escape from beaulieu, ii. prayers for deliverance of, ii. - claimed by cauchon, ii. - , , , , at beaurevoir, ii. leaps from the tower, i. xix; ii. , , , , , writes to tournai, ii. at arras, ii. - , taken to rouen, ii. - in prison at rouen, ii. - , - information against, ii. - , her wish to escape, ii. , becomes a prisoner of the church, ii. preliminary trial, i. viii, xxiii, lii; ii. - place of trial of, ii. , her letter to the english, ii. illness of, ii. - , refuses to reveal the king's secret, ii. , , , trial of, pronounced illegal, ii. - her letter to the count d'armagnac, ii. does not speak to the priests of her visions, ii. charges against, ii. , - , , , - would appeal to the pope, ii. , is offered an advocate, ii. - trial in ordinary, ii. - sustained by her voices, ii. , her desire for the sacraments, ii. in the torture chamber, ii. deserted by her friends, i. liv; ii. exhorted by maurice, ii. - refuses to recant, ii. , preached at by erard, ii. - sentence against, ii. recants, ii. - english resume possession of, ii. resumes woman's attire, ii. resumes man's attire, ii. retracts her recantation, ii. - is told of her death, ii. second recantation of, i. ix, xxvii; ii. confesses and receives the sacrament, ii. is burnt at the stake, ii. - trial for rehabilitation, i. xxvi-xxxii, xlii; ii. - medical opinion on, ii. - jeanne of Évreux, i. de valois, queen, i. du lys, claude de metz, impersonates jeanne d'arc, ii. - the maid of sermaize, ii. , jeremiah, i. image carved by, i. jerusalem, i. , queen of, _see_ yolande jesus christ, i. jhesus-maria on the standard, i. on letters, i. , , , , ; ii. , on jeanne's ring, i. joachim, françois, i. joash, i. xl, john, count of porcien, _see_ the bastard of orléans duke of brittany, caution of, i. - duke of burgundy, murder of, i. , , ; ii. king of france, i. xxxvi, ; ii. xxiii, pope, i. joinville, jeanne de, inherits bourlémont, i. , , château de, i. , jonah, i. joshua, ii. _journal du siège, le_, i. xiii jouvenel des ursins, jean, i. lxiv, , , ; ii. judas maccabæus, i. judith, i. , , , , , , ; ii. , , julien, hill of, i. jumièges, abbot of, ii. , , justin, i. kalt eysen, heinrich, ii. kennedy, lord hugh, i. ; ii. kermoisan, thudal de, i. , kernanna, i. xxxv king's evil, i. kiriel, sir thomas, ii. kyrthrizian, richard, i. l'averdy, i. vii, lix la beauce, i. lxix, , , , , , , , , , plain of, i. route through, i. , , la belle d'anjou, i. la bergère, i. , la bougue, ii. la chapelle, ii. , , la charité, i. ; ii. , , , siege of, ii. , , , , la croix-boissée, i. , la croix-morin, i. la ferté-milon, ii. , , la ferté-sous-jouarre, ii. la grange-aux-ormes, ii. , , la hire, i. , , , , , , , , , , ; ii. , , , , , ravages bar, i. , comes to orléans, i. bribed by tours, i. at blois, i. meets the army from blois, i. in orléans, i. , , pursues the english, i. at jargeau, i. at patay, i. , on the way to reims, i. la joyeuse, i. la lomagne, ii. la motte-nangis, ii. la perruque, m., ii. , _la petite ancelle_, ii. la porète, ii. , _la pucelle_, ii. , la retrève, i. , la roche-st.-quentin, i. la rochelle, i. xviii, , , ; ii. la romée, i. la rousse, i. la sologne, i. , , , route through, i. , , , la trémouille, sire de, i. x, xlix, , , , , ; ii. , , king's favourite, i. , , , , at chinon, i. starts for reims, i. bribed by auxerre, i. governs compiègne, ii. , , before paris, ii. , held to ransom, ii. jeanne in charge of, ii. , tries a substitute for jeanne, ii. - taken prisoner, ii. la tour-d'auvergne, baron, i. , la valette, comte de, ii. laban, i. labrousse, suzette, i. xxxv lactantius, i. , ladvenu, martin, i. xxvi; ii. , , , lagny-sur-marne, i. xxxi, xlvi; ii. , , , , jeanne at, ii. , - laiguisé, gille, i. huet, i. jean, policy of, i. - , lançon, ii. lang, mr. andrew, i. v langeais, i. langres, bishop of, i. ; ii. langlois, jean, i. m. e., i. lxxiv languedoc, i. , laon, i. , , ; ii. , , duke of, i. lapau, i. laplace, i. lxviii lassois, durand, i. , , , , , , ; ii. , lattes, i. launoy, jean de, i. lv laval, andré de, i. , ; ii. , anne de, i. château of, i. ; ii. , family, the, i. dame jeanne de, i. , ; ii. , guy de, i. , , , , ; ii. , , , lavisse, m. ernest, i. lxxiii le boucher, marie, ii. le brun de charmettes, i. lxi le dunois, i. le fèvre de st.-remy, i. xx _le jouvencel_, i. ; ii. le langart, jean, i. le lendit, fair of, ii. le maçon, robert, i. xlii, , le maistre, husson, i. le mans, i. , , , , bishop of, ii. , maid of, ii. - les martinets, i. les montils, château of, ii. le petit, ii. le portereau, i. , orléannais at, i. , , le sourd, ii. le vauseul, aveline, i. , jeanne, i. les augustins, battle of, i. xiv les-douze-pierres, i. lebuin, michel, i. lecamus de beaulieu, i. ; ii. leclerc, jean, i. lecourt, gille, i. lefèvre, gervaise, ii. jean, ii. , lefèvre-pontalis, m. germain, i. v, vii, xxi, xxii, lxii legends of jeanne, i. xxii, liv legros, m., ii. leliis, théodore de, i. xxiii lemaistre, jean, ii. , , , , , lenisoles, jean de, ii. lenten observances, i. - leparmentier, mauger, ii. leprestre, jacques, i. ; ii. , leroyer, catherine, i. , , , , henri, i. , ; ii. , , lettrée, i. lévy, mm. calmann, i. lxxiv liébault de baudricourt, i. , liège, ii. lignerolles, i. , , ligny, david de brimeu, lord of, i. ; ii. , , jeanne in charge of, ii. lille, i. lxxiv limousin, i. lingui, jean, i. lisieux, ii. bishop of, ii. loches, ii. jeanne at, i. - _lætare_ sunday, i. , logic, picture of, i. lohéac, marshal of, ii. lohier, jean, ii. - loire, the, i. , ; ii. loiret, the, i. lxxiv, - loiseleur, nicolas, at the trial of jeanne, ii. , , , , , , , , , , , , at bâle, ii. - lombard, jean, examines jeanne, i. , london, fort, i. , tower of, i. longueville, i. ; ii. , duc de, i. lvi prior of, ii. , loré, lord ambrose de, i. , , , , , ; ii. , lorraine, i. a herald, ii. charles ii, duke of, i. , ; ii. , , , makes war on la hire, i. sends for jeanne, i. - louis i of bourbon, ii. , , louis viii, i. louis xi, i. xviii, lxxi louis xiv, i. xxxvi; ii. - louis xviii, i. xxxvi; ii. - louis, dauphin, i. ; ii. betrothed to margaret of scotland, i. louis, duke of orléans, i. , , , death of, i. louis of luxembourg, ii. louis the fat, i. louvet, president, i. louviers, ii. , louvois, m. de, ii. lowe, nicole, ii. , lozère mountains, ii. , luce, siméon, i. vii, xxxi, lxii luciabelus, ii. lucifer, ii. lucius, pope, ii. luçon, i. lude, sire du, i. luillier, jean, i. xxvi, , ; ii. lunéville, ii. luxembourg, dame jeanne de, ii. , , , , jean de, i. xi; ii. , count of ligny, ii. , , jeanne in charge of, ii. , , , , - , visits her at rouen, ii. luys, doctor, i. xxvi luzarches, i. lyon, i. xxiii; ii. les célestins, i. lyonnais, i. lyonnel, ii. lys, du, i. xvii; _see_ jean and pierre d'arc machecoul, i. xvi; ii. machet, gérard, i. xlii, , , , ; ii. circulates prophecies of jeanne, i. , maçon, jean de, i. , , macy, aimond de, ii. , magala, i. maguelonne, bishop of, i. examines jeanne, i. maillé, sire de, i. mailly, jean de, ii. maine, i. , , ; ii. maintenon, mme. de, ii. mainz, diet of, ii. maire, guillaume le, i. examines jeanne, i. manchon, guillaume, ii. , , , , , , mandrakes, i. ; ii. mantes, i. ; ii. manuel, nicolas, i. lxxi pierre, ii. marchenoir, i. , maréchal, humbert, i. margaret of scotland, i. , margny, ii. , , , attack on, ii. - marguerie, andré, ii. , marguerite of bavaria, i. marie de maillé, i. marie de sully, ii. marie, queen, i. , , , , ; ii. , , , marie-thérèse, queen, ii. marne, the, i. ; ii. , marseilles, ii. martin v, pope, i. , ; ii. , , , policy of, ii. crusaders of, ii. , martin, henri, i. l martin, ignace thomas, i. xxxvi mission of, ii. - martin, m. le dr., ii. martin, m. paul, ii. marville, ii. , , massieu, jean, i. xxvi; ii. , , , , , , , , , , , , mathieu ii, of lorraine, i. mathurins, the, i. , ; ii. matthias, don, i. maupertuis, i. maurice, pierre, ii. , , , , , , exhorts jeanne, ii. - , maxentius, the emperor, i. - maxey-sur-meuse, i. , , , , maxey-sur-vaise, i. , maximian, ii. mayenne, the, i. meaux, i. tree of vauru, ii. megret, i. mehun-sur-yèvre, i. , ; ii. , , meledon, jacques, i. , melun, ii. , , defenders of, i. jeanne at, ii. melusina, i. mende, bishop of, i. mountain, ii. mengette, ii. mennot, robert le, i. merari, i. mercier, catherine le, i. mercury, i. merlin, prophecies of, i. , - , ; ii. , , , story of, i. mesnage, mathieu, i. _messire_, jeanne's use of, i. jeanne as the herald of, i. , metz, ii. , , , bishop of, i. war against, i. meung-sur-loire, i. xli, , , , , , ; ii. english retreat to, i. , , , , , french take, i. meurthe, the, i. meuse, course of the, i. , meyer, m. paul, i. lxxiii micah, ii. michel, françois, farrier, mission of, i. xxxvi; ii. - michelet, i. lxi midi, nicolas, ii. , , , , , , midianites, i. miélot, jean, i. milan, i. , duke of, i. ; ii. milbeau, yves, questions jeanne, i. , minerva, i. lxxii minet, jean, vicar of domremy, i. minguet, i. minier, pierre, ii. miriam, i. , mitry, lord of, i. molandon, boucher, de, i. vii moleyns, lord, i. , , molyns, william, i. , _moniteur_, _le_, i. lx monks spread legends of jeanne, i. join the armies, i. monmouth, i. monod, m. gabriel, i. v monstrelet, enguerrand de, i. xix; ii. montacute, thomas, _see_ salisbury, earl of montaing, i. montalcin, jean de, i. montan, the hermit, i. montargis, i. , , , ; ii. , siege of, i. , governor of, i. , montbéliard-saarbruck, jean de, i. montéclaire, i. montendre, i. montepilloy, i. xx; ii. , montereau, bridge of, i. , , , , ; ii. , , , , , , montesclère, jean de, i. xiv, , , , , ; ii. montfaucon, ii. , , , montgomery, lord, ii. montier-en-saulx, i. , montigny-le-roi, i. montjoie, i. montmaillard, i. montmédy, ii. montmirail, ii. montmorency, sire de, ii. montpellier, i. , , montpensier, count of, ii. montpipeau, i. burnt by the english, i. montremur, raymon de, ii. mont-saint-michel-au-péril-de-la-mer, abbey of, i. ; ii. , morant, pierre, ii. , morcellet, sire de, ii. morel, aubert, ii. jean, godfather of jeanne, i. , , ; ii. moreau, jean, ii. , morhier, sir simon, i. ; ii. morieau, raulin, i. morin, jourdain, i. mortemart, abbot of, ii. mortemer, ii. jeanne de, i. moselle, the, ii. moses, i. , , ; ii. moslant, philibert de, i. , , , moulins, i. ; ii. jeanne at, ii. mount ganelon, ii. sombar, i. tombe, i. mousque, maître, i. mugot, i. , , muñoz, gil, ii. musnier, simonin, i. myrmidons, the, i. _mystère du siège_, _le_, i. xiv notre dame d'amiens, ii. d'ancis, i. des ardents, ii. des-aviots, ii. de bermont, i. , , de clèry, i. , de fierbois, ii. de liance or liesse, ii. de-la-pierre, ii. de-la-voûte, i. nancy, i. , , , , nantes bridge, i. xvi napoleon bonaparte, i. lix narbonne, council of, i. ; ii. nations, union of, i. lxvii nativity of the b.v.m., ii. naundorf, ii. navarre, college of, ii. naviel, jean, ii. nebuchadnezzar, i. , nennius, i. nettles, i. neufchâteau, i. , , , situation of, i. , people of domremy shelter at, i. neufchâtel, i. nevers, i. neville, william, i. nicanor, i. nicolas v, pope, ii. nicolazic, yves, i. xxxv nicole de giresme, i. nicopolis, i. , , ; ii. nider, jean, ii. noël, feast of, i. nogent-sur-seine, i. ; ii. noirouffle, ii. nolhac, m. pierre de, ii. nonnette, ii. normandy, held by england, i. , war in, i. , french lose, ii. , french conquest of, ii. norwich, bishop of, ii. nostradamus, i. xxxvi; ii. , novelompont, jean de, i. xxix, xxx, ; ii. noviant, dame de, i. noyon, bishop of, i. ; ii. , , , nucelles, lord of, i. nuremberg, i. nyssa, i. ogiviller, château d', i. henri d', i. oise, the, ii. , , olet stone, i. olibrius, governor, i. - ; ii. olivet, i. , , olivier, richard, ii. or, mme. d', i. _oriflamme_, i. origen, i. orléans, i. xxii, , ; ii. , , administration of, prior to siege, i. bishop of, i. citizens and garrison of, i. description of, i. - jeanne's house in, ii. citizens of, buy off the english, i. prepare for war, i. - refuse to surrender, i. destroy their suburbs, i. celebrate noël, i. send to the duke of burgundy, i. hear of the maid, i. lose faith in their defenders, i. , , pillage st.-laurent, i. penitence of, i. their belief in jeanne, i. , welcome jeanne, i. - , ; ii. rebel against the knights, i. overestimate the english forces, i. - , attack st.-loup, i. - attack les tourelles, i. - poverty of, i. recognise jeanne as their commander, i. , , ; ii. defray expedition to jargeau, i. ; and to beaugency, i. their gifts to jeanne, i. defray costs, ii. welcome jeanne's impersonator, ii. , city of: aumône, i. bouchet wharf, i. chesneau, i. , , , Écu st.-georges, i. field of st.-privé, i. hôtel de la pomme, i. Île de charlemagne, i. Île motte des poissonniers, i. , Île motte s.-antoine, i. , la belle croix, i. , , , jeanne at, i. la croix boissée, i. le portereau, i. , , , les augustins, i. , capture of, i. , les tourelles, i. xviii, xxx, xli, , , , ; ii. , attack on, i. , , - , , , abandoned by french, i. english garrison in, i. london, i. , , olivet, i. paris, i. , , attacked, i. pont jacquemin-rousselet, i. porte bernier or bannier, i. , , , porte de bourgogne, i. , , , , , , jeanne enters by, i. , porte paris, i. , porte du pont, i. , , porte renard, i. , , , , stormed, i. , porte s.-aignan, i. rouen, i. rue aux-petits-souliers, i. ; ii. rue de la rose, i. , rue des hôtelleries, i. rue des talmeliers, i. s.-aignan, i. , , ste.-croix, i. , s.-euverte, i. s.-jean-de-bray, i. s.-jean-le-blanc, i. , s.-ladre, chapel of, i. s.-laurent-des-orgerils, _see_ under st.-laurent st.-loup, _see_ under st.-loup s.-michel, church of, i. st.-paul, i. st.-pierre-empont, i. s.-pierre-ensentelée, i. st.-pouair, i. ; attacked, i. s.-sulpice, i. tour de l'abreuvoir, i. tour de la barre-flambert, i. tour croiche-meuffroy, i. tour neuve, i. , , , , tour de notre dame, i. , tour regnard, i. tour st.-antoine, i. tour s. samson, i. , university of, i. siege of, i. xli journal of, i. xiii defences of, i. xli surrounded by english, i. victuals sent by mme. yolande, i. procession in, i. first attack, i. attack by talbot, i. semi-investment of, i. sally from, i. victuals enter, i. burgundians leave, i. raised, i. cost of, i. orléans, a herald, i. orléans, duke of, _see_ charles orly, henri d', _see_ henri of savoy orne, the, i. ourches, aubert d', i. , ; ii. ours, seigneur de l', ii. - oxford, i. palm sunday, i. pamiers, ii. panyngel, richard, i. paradise, mediæval conception of, i. , pardiac, ii. count of, i. paris, i. xxiii, , , , ; ii. , english occupation of, i. , ; ii. , jeanne prophesies concerning, i. charles vii to enter, i. parliament of, i. synod at, i. , jeanne outside, ii. - governed by duke philip, ii. , , defences of, ii. , , , burgundian allegiance of, ii. , citizens of, their dislike of charles vii, ii. - their horror of jeanne, ii. attack on, ii. - , armagnac conspiracy in, ii. - examinations for witchcraft in, ii. , - bishop of, ii. henry vi crowned in, ii. returns to charles vii, ii. under charles vii, ii. jeanne's impersonator in, ii. - city of: hôtel de l'arbre-see, ii. hôtel de l'ours, ii. hôtel de la pomme de pin, ii. inns of, ii. les célestins, ii. les moulins, ii. , montmartre, i. ; ii. , pont neuf, ii. porte st.-antoine, ii. porte st.-denys, ii. , porte st.-martin, ii. , rue barbette, i. rue st.-antoine, ii. st.-antoine, ii. ste.-chapelle, i. st.-denys, i. , st.-eloi, i. ste.-geneviève, i. ; ii. st.-honoré, i. xxx; ii. st.-jean-en-grève, i. st.-laurent, i. st.-merry, i. university of, i. , , ; ii. , consulted, by the english, i. opinion of jeanne, ii. , , - rectors of, ii. claim jeanne for the inquisition, ii. , , , decision of, ii. mediates peace, ii. error of, ii. of troy, i. parlament at poitiers, i. partada, alonzo de, i. , parthenay, i. pasquerel, jean, i. xxiv, xxx, , , , , , , , , , ; ii. , , , , becomes jeanne's chaplain, i. , , jeanne confesses to, i. , writes at jeanne's dictation, i. jeanne talks with, i. , superseded, ii. writes to sigismund, ii. patay, battle of, i. xii, xx, xlii, - ; ii. , , , town of, i. _patrie, la_, idea of, i. lx, lxiii-lxviii paul, eléonore de, i. peñiscola, ii. , penthesilea, queen, i. , , pepin the short, i. perceval de cagny, i. perche, i. earl of, _see_ salisbury perdriau, guillaume, ii. perdriel, jaquet, ii. , _periapts_, i. périgueux, ii. périnet, ii. perquin, jean, ii. perrin, ii. petit, gérard, ii. jean, i. ; ii. pharaoh, i. philip, duke of burgundy, i. , , , , , , welcomes the english, i. ravages vaucouleurs, i. is offered orléans as a pledge, i. , invited to the coronation, i. , the truce with, i. ; ii. , - , commands paris, ii. his designs on compiègne, ii. - exults over jeanne, ii. refuses to give her up, ii. , makes peace with charles, ii. philip the good, i. philippe i, i. philippe vi, i. philippe le bel, i. philippe of valois, i. , , picardy, i. held by england, i. pierre de beauvau, i. de la chapelle, i. de st.-valerien, i. pierre de versailles, i. examines jeanne, i. rebukes jeanne, i. isambard de la, i. xxvi; ii. , , pierronne of brittany, ii. , , , , - , pigache, jean, ii. pillas, jean, i. pinel, dr., ii. pithiviers, i. plancy, sire de, i. plutarch, i. xlvi poignant, guyot, i. poiresson, ii. poissy, abbey of, ii. poitiers, i. xlvii, , , , , , ; ii. , , , battle of, i. , bishop of, i. charged with examination of jeanne, i. hôtel de la rose, i. parliament of, i. xvii, xxv, ; ii. examines jeanne, i. xli, , , , ; ii. examines guillaume the shepherd, ii. poverty of, i. rue st.-Étienne, i. poitou, i. , ; ii. pole, alexander, i. john, i. , sir john, i. william, _see_ suffolk, earl of pomponne, m. de, ii. pont-à-mousson, i. ; ii. , pontanus, paul, i. xxiii ponthieu, i. ; ii. pont-l'evêque, ii. , pontorson, governor of, i. pont-ste.-maxence, ii. , , porcien, i. porète, marguerite la, ii. , porphyrius, i. , port de lates, i. poton de saintrailles, i. , , , , , , , ; ii. , , , at blois, i. attacks jargean, i. at patay, i. on the way to reims, i. taken prisoner, ii. poulengy, _see_ bertrand power, hamish, i. ; ii. héliote, i. ; ii. poynings, lord, i. , , pragmatic sanction, ii. préaux, ii. abbot of, ii. premonstratensians, the, i. pressy, jean de, ii. prestre, jacquet le, i. preuilly, jeanne de, i. _preux_, _les_, i. priam of troy, i. xiv, lxviii, , , ; ii. priests, influence on jeanne, i. xxxviii, - , , , adapt the prophecy of merlin, i. - their view of her mission, i. spread legends, ii. privat, ii. procops, the, ii. prophecies, adaptation of, i. - by bede, i. by jeanne, i. , , , , - ; _see also_ under jeanne d'arc two distinct sources of, i. by merlin, i. - concerning jeanne, i. , ; ii. - , , literal interpretation of, i. , of our lord by sibyls, i. , of the maiden redemptress, revised, i. , , royal heed of, i. - prostitutes in the french army, i. , ; ii. provins, ii. , , pucelle, i. puy-en-velay, i. , ; ii. la vierge noire, i. puy, jean du, i. quenat, jean, ii. quicherat, jules, i. vii, x, xxxvii, l, lxi quillier, jean, ii. raban of helmstat, ii. rabateau, jean, lay attorney-general, jeanne in the house of, i. - ; ii. rabelais, i. lxv raguenel, tiphaine, i. raimondi, cosmo, i. rainguesson, jean, i. rais, maréchal de, marshal of france, i. xv, xvi, , , , , , , , , , ; ii. , , , , at les tourelles, i. , , resources of, i. leads to reims, i. rampston, thomas, i. raphaël, ii. , ratisbonne, ii. raymond, i. récollets, des, ii. recordi, pierre, ii. regent, _see_ bedford regnart family, the, i. régnier de bouligny, ii. regnault de chartres, chancellor of france, archbishop of reims, i. xli, xliii, xlix, , ; ii. , , , , held to ransom, i. finds the coronation at reims politic, i. , , , at blois, i. career of, i. - gathers an army, i. character of, i. , approves of jeanne, i. crowns charles vii, i. - questions jeanne as to her death, ii. policy of, ii. tries a substitute for jeanne, ii. - , - regnault, guillaume, i. reims, i. , , , , ; ii. , , , , , archbishop of, _see_ regnault de chartres ampulla of, i. , cathedral of, i. , labyrinth in, i. charles vii, crowned at, i. - citizens of, welcome charles vii, i. surrender to charles vii, i. - invoke help of charles vii, ii. , coronation at, prophesied, i. jeanne's letter to, ii. jeanne's progress to, i. , porte dieulimire, i. remi, bishop of, i. - route to, i. rue du parvis, i. st.-denys, i. tau, i. reinach, m. solomon, i. v _relation, la_, i. xviii remeswelle, ii. réné d'anjou, duke of bar, count of vaudémont, i. , , , ; ii. restores cattle to domremy, i. character of, i. succession of, disputed, i. requests, master of, i. ressons, ii. resurrections of unbaptized children, ii. - , reuilly, i. rhodes, order of, i. richemont, arthur, duke of brittany, constable of france, count of, i. , , , , held to ransom, i. at beaugency, i. - richer, edmond, i. lv, viii _rifflart_, i. , rigueur, jean le, ii. riom, ii. robert de baudricourt, captain of vaucouleurs, i. xx, , , , , , ; ii. , , offends the duke of burgundy, i. seen by jacques d'arc, i. character of, i. his opinion of jeanne, i. , , , , his letters concerning jeanne, i. , , , death of, ii. robert de saarbruck, makes war against didier et durand de saint-dié, i. , a formidable neighbour, i. , , taxes domremy, i. robert, duke of bar, i. the wise, i. robine, marie, i. roche, jean, ii. roche, m. louis charrier de la, ii. rochechouart, lord of, i. rochefort, sire de, i. , , rogier, i. xxxii rolland the scrivener, i. romain, henri, ii. _romance of the rose_, i. rome, i. ; ii. , , , empress of, i. romée, isabelle, mother of jeanne, _see_ isabelle origin of surname, i. romorantin, jeanne at, i. rosier family, the, i. rostrenen, françois de, i. , rouge bombarde, ii. roule, ii. roussel, raoul, ii. , , , rouvray-st.-denis, i. , , , , battle of, i. rouen, i. xxiii, xxxii, li, , ; ii. , , , , archbishop of, i. bourg-l'abbé, ii. jeanne at, i. ; ii. old market square, jeanne is burnt in, ii. - royer, thévenin le, i. roze, jeannette, i. ru, the, i. rude, i. lxiii saarbruck, robert de, _see_ robert sabbat, i. sabbath, fighting on the, i. sabinella, queen, i. sablon, the, ii. sailly, i. st.-agnes, i. st.-aignan, i. , story of, i. - shrine of, i. intercedes for orléans, i. , , charles vii at, i. st.-amance, i. st.-ambrose, i. st.-andrew, cross of, i. ; ii. , , st.-anthony of padua, i. xxxix; ii. st.-augustine, i. st.-avy, jean de, i. , ; ii. st.-barbara, i. st.-bellin, geoffroy de, ii. st.-benedict, order of, i. st.-benoit-sur-loire, jeanne at, i. st.-catherine, i. xxxix; ii. history and martyrdom of, i. - , , her shrine and miracles at fierbois, i. - , sword of, i. ; ii. , language of, i. touches rings, i. comforts jeanne at beaurevoir, ii. , crown of, ii. comforts jeanne in prison, ii. of siena, i. xxxv, lxxii, , ; ii. , st. catherine and st. margaret, i. lvi, , , , , , , , ; ii. appear to jeanne at domremy, i. , , , reassure jeanne at poitiers, i. appear to jeanne at chinon and tours, i. bid jeanne take the standard, i. appear to jeanne at orléans, i. , , , comfort jeanne wounded, i. appear at rouen, ii. , speak of catherine de la rochelle, ii. foretell jeanne's death, ii. jeanne's testimony concerning, ii. , , , - embraced by jeanne, i. xxxiii; ii. , ste.-catherine-de-fierbois, i. ; ii. st.-cecilia, i. st.-charlemagne, i. , ; ii. st.-christina, i. st.-claire, convent of neufchâteau, i. st.-clare, i. order of, ii. st.-claude, i. st.-cyr, i. xxxvii st.-denys, i. xlv, , , , , , , , , ; ii. , - , , head of, i. , ; ii. , story of, ii. - jeanne at, ii. - , english sack, ii. burial of charles vii at, ii. st.-dizier, i. st.-dominic, i. xxxix order of, i. st.-dorothea, i. st.-etienne, i. ; ii. cardinal, ii. st.-euphemia, i. st.-euphrosyne, i. st.-euverte, i. , , intercedes for orléans, i. , , st.-florentin, i. st.-florent-les-saumur, i. , abbey of, i. st.-fort, i. st.-francis of assisi, i. xxxix, , ; ii. , order of, i. - st.-gabriel, ii. st.-geneviève, i. st.-george, i. , ; ii. shield of, i. story of, i. english cry of, i. st.-georges de boscherville, ii. st.-gilles, lord, i. st.-grégoire de tours, ii. st.-gregory, pope, i. of nyssa, i. st.-hubert's day, i. st.-jean-d'-angers, ii. st.-jean-de-braye, i. , st.-jean-de-la ruelle, i. st.-jean-des-bois, i. st.-jean-le-blanc, i. , , , , , , st.-jerome, i. st.-john the baptist, high repute of, i. day of, i. , ; ii. , , , st.-john the evangelist, i. , , ; ii. , st.-julien, i. st.-ladre, i. , st.-laurent-des-orgerils, i. , , english camp at, i. , , , , , , , , , , pillaged by citizens of orléans, i. st.-laurence's eve, ii. st.-lawrence, i. ; ii. st.-lô, ii. , prior of, ii. st.-louis, i. , , , , ; ii. , , crown of, i. st.-loup, i. xli, , , abbaye aux dames, i. attack on, i. - , , convent of the ladies of, i. english occupy, i. , st.-luke, ii. st.-marc, i. st.-marcellin, i. st.-marcoul, i. st.-marcoul-de-corberry, i. st.-marie-de-vaucouleurs, i. st.-margaret, i. liv, , history and martyrdom of, i. - honoured in france, i. language of, i. ; ii. church of, at elincourt, ii. _see_ st. catherine and st. margaret st.-mark, ii. st.-martha, i. xxix st.-martin-de-tours, i. st.-martin-le-bouillant, ii. st.-martin's day, i. lxix; ii. , st.-mary magdalen, ii. st.-maurice, i. ; ii. st.-mesmin, aignan de, ii. st.-michael, i. lxxiv, , , , , , , , ; ii. , patron saint of france, i. , ; ii. appears to st. catherine, i. , visits jeanne, i. , , , , , ; ii. , feast of, i. personal appearance of, i. xxxiii; ii. , letters from, i. xliii; ii. , st.-nicholas, chapel of, i. st.-nicholas-du-port, i. , st.-nicolas-le-painteur, ii. st.-ouen, ii. , st.-paul, i. , ; ii. , st.-péravy, i. , st.-peter, i. , , , st.-phal, i. , , , st.-pierre de chaumont, priory of, i. st.-pierre-le-moustier, attack on, ii. , , st.-pol, bastard, i. st.-privé, i. , st.-quentin, ii. st.-remi, i. , , , history of, i. - miracles of, i. , st.-riquier, ii. st.-sanxon, ii. st.-sauveur, i. ste.-ségolène, ii. st.-sigismond, i. , , st.-sixtus, i. st.-thecla, i. st.-theresa, ii. st.-thiébault spring, i. st.-thomas, i. lxviii st.-urbain, abbey of, i. st.-urbain, pope, i. st.-valery, ii. st.-vallier, sire de, ii. saint simon, ii. saints consulted, i. sakya muni, i. xix salisbury, earl of, i. , , ; , invades france, i. reaches janville, i. death of, i. , salm, count of, _see_ jean salon-en-crau, i. xxxvi; ii. salvart, jean, ii. , samoy, i. samson, i. samuel, i. , sanguin, guillaume, ii. saonelle, the, i. sarmaize, maid of, ii. , satan, ii. saul, i. , saulcy, i. saumoussay, ii. saumur, i. , ; ii. sauve, catherine, i. savignies, ii. savin renaud, ii. - savoy, duke of, _see_ amédée scales, thomas, lord of, i. , , , , summoned by jeanne to surrender, i. at meung, i. taken prisoner at patay, i. , , scarron, i. lv; ii. scotland, i. secret, the king's, i. seguent, jean, ii. seguin, brother, examines jeanne, i. , ; ii. séez, bishop of, i. ; ii. , seille, the, ii. sein, island of, i. seine, the, i. , ; ii. , selles-en-berry, i. ; ii. jeanne at, i. - ; ii. selles-sur-cher, i. semendria, i. semoy, i. seneca, i. lxvii senlis, ii. , , , , , , , jeanne at, ii. , , , senlis, bailie of, ii. horse of bishop of, ii. , sens, i. , , ; ii. sepet, marius, i. lxi septfonds, i. sept-saulx, castle of, i. sermaize, i. , siege of, i. séverac, marshal de, ii. seville, i. shakespeare, quoted, i. _sibylla francica_, i. xxii, sibyls, the, i. , , , , , , ; ii. , sicily, queen of, _see_ yolande sidon, ii. siena, i. , sigismund, emperor, i. ; ii. , , sigy, ii. simon, jeannotin, ii. magus, i. siquemville, jean de, ii. soissons, i. ; ii. , , , , charles iii at, ii. - solomon, king, i. , ; ii. , somme, the, i. ; ii. songs, by a norman clerk, i. sorel, m. alexandre, i. vii spencer, richard, i. speyer, bishop of, ii. spiers, i. sprenger, ii. stafford, humphrey, earl of, ii. , standard, jeanne's, i. , , ; ii. at les tourelles, i. - states general, the, i. - stenay, i. stuart, john, i. lord william, i. , , suave, catherine, i. suffolk, earl of, i. , , ; ii. , summoned by, jeanne, i. in jargeau, i. - william pole, earl of, i. , suger, abbot, ii. sully, i. xxxi, xlix; ii. , jeanne at, ii. - suzannah, ii. tachov, ii. _taille_, i. talbot, sir john, i. xvi, , , , , , ; ii. , approaches les tourelles, i. conducts the siege, i. summoned by jeanne to surrender, i. , sallies from st.-laurent, i. plans of, i. - , advance of, i. taken prisoner at patay, i. , , , , william, ii. talmont, abbot of, i. taquel, ii. tarascon, beast of, i. xxix tarentaise, pierre of, ii. terence, ii. , termes, sire de, i. , théaulde de valpergue, i. theodosius, i. , thérouanne, bishop of, defends paris, ii. , , , , thévanon of bourges, ii. thévenin, jeannette, ii. thibault, gobert, i. xxix, , , thibonville, germain de, i. thiembronne, guichard de, ii. thoisy, jean de, i. thoneletil, jean de, ii. thons, i. thouars, baron de, i. , tichemont, ii. tiffanges, ii. tiphaine, jean, ii. , tillay, jamet du, i. , , , reports of jeanne, i. tillemonts, i. lvii titivillus, i. lxxiv tobias, ii. tonnerre, i. torcenay, jean de, ii. toul, i. xxiii, , , bishop of, i. toulouse, i. , , , , seneschal of, ii. touque, the, i. touraine, i. , , , , ; ii. tournai, citizens of, invited to reims, i. their loyalty to france, i. , ; ii. , touroulde, marguerite de la, i. xxviii; ii. - , tours, i. , , , , ; ii. , , jeanne at, i. - , resists pillage, i. trades of, i. charles vii at, i. council at, ii. prays for deliverance of jeanne, ii. loyal to charles vii, ii. , _tractatus_, _de hæresi_ ii. tree of vauru, ii. - trent, council of, i. xxxvii trèves, ii. lord of, i. l, , , , , ; ii. trie, pierre de, i. tringant, i. ix trinitarians, the, i. trinte-du-mont-st.-catherine, ii. troissy, jean de, ii. , , troyes, i. xxvi, xxxii, , , , , ; ii. , , , , , , , english disposition of, i. manufactures of, i. bishop of, i. charles vii at, i. , - jeanne's letter to, i. council of, write to reims, i. , , treat with charles, i. - opinion of jeanne, i. st.-pierre, i. fortifications of, i. comporté gates, i. the madeleine, i. surrender of, i. treaty of, i. xxxix, xlviii, , , , , , ; ii. , , truce, with burgundy, ii. - tudert, jean, ii. turelure, pierre, i. , examines jeanne, i. turks, threaten constantinople, i. turlaut, collot, i. turlupines, the, ii. udalric of manderscheit, ii. ulrich, count of wurtemberg, ii. unicorn and the maid, i. ursins, jean jouvenel des, ii. uruffe, i. vailly, i. ; ii. valenciennes, ii. valens, the emperor, i. valentia, ii. valentine of milan, i. valois, peasants of, ii. valpergue, i. van eyck, brothers, i. varambon, lord of, i. varro, i. , varville, i. vaucouleurs, situation of, i. , castellany of, i. , , , besieged by de vergy, i. , jeanne at, i. xxiii, xxxviii, , , , , , , , , , ; ii. , , , vaudémont, count of, _see_ réné d'anjou vaudrey, philibert de, i. vauru, lord denis de, ii. - vauseul, jeanne le, i. vaux, pasquier de, ii. vavasour warns king john, i. xxxvi, , ; ii. vegetius, i. velleda, i. velly, jean de, ii. venderès, nicolas de, ii. , , , , vendôme, count of, i. xii, , , ; ii. , , , , , , , presents jeanne to charles, i. at patay, i. , venette, ii. , , venice, i. venus, i. verdun, bishop of, i. , verduzan, lord of, i. , vergy, antoine de, i. , , lays siege to vaucouleurs, i. vergy jean de, seneschal of burgundy, i. , vermandois, i. ; ii. bailie of, ii. verneuil, i. xlvii, , , , , , , ; ii. crotoy tower, i. , versailles, ii. bishop of, ii. vesle, the, i. vian de bar, i. vienne, the, i. university of, ii. vierzon, i. vignolles, etienne de, _see_ la hire vigny, alfred de, i. lxix villars, i. lord of, i. , reports of jeanne, i. villedart, thévenin, i. ; ii. villette, lord of, ii. villon, françois, i. lxv vincennes, castle of, ii. fort of, i. virgil's _Æneid_, ii. , virgin mary, the, position of, i. image of, at tours, i. intercedes for orléans, i. virginity, special virtues of, i. - , ; ii. virgo, i. viriville, vallet de, i. vii, lxi visconti, the, ii. vittel, jeannette de, i. , thiesselin, de, i. , vivien, i. vitré, i. voices, hallucinatory, i. xxxiii; ii. , - first heard by jeanne, i. reveal her mission, i. , , at vaucouleurs, i. , at neufchâteau, i. at chinon and tours, i. at orléans, i. at les tourelles, i. at st.-denys, ii. jeanne questioned concerning, i. , ; ii. - , , , , , , , , , instruct jeanne as to the english, i. visit jeanne daily, i. counsel jeanne before patay, i. foretell french victory, i. speak of paris, ii. forbid escape, ii. instruct jeanne that she must see henry vi, ii. forbid her revelations, ii. , , , , jeanne in prison sustained by, ii. , , , , bid jeanne protest against erard, ii. , bid her recant, ii. _see also_ under ste.-catherine, st.-michael, _and_ jeanne d'arc voltaire, i. lvii vouthon, henri de, i. , , , ; ii. isabella de, i. at puy, i. jean de, i. ; ii. mengette de, i. , , , nicolas de, i. perrinet de, i. waldaires, jean, i. wallon, h., i. lxi wals, jean de, i. walter, richard, i. war of the apple baskets, i. ; ii. a punishment for sin, i. a trade, i. warwick, earl of, i. li, ; ii. , , , , , , , , wearmouth, i. well-dressings, i. wells, mr. h.g., i. lxix william, duke of normandy, i. winchester, i. bishop of, i. cardinal of, i. ; ii. , , , , , windecke, eberhard de, i. xxii windsor, i. , wine, valued, i. witchcraft, i. suspected at domremy, i. , jeanne suspected of, i. , ; _see_ jeanne and wounds, i. trials for, ii. , witches, burnt, i. ; ii. wurtemberg, count ulrich of, ii. yolande of aragon, queen of sicily, duchess of anjou, i. , , , , , , , , , ; ii. , , , sends victuals to orléans, i. , at blois, i. yonne, the, i. , ; ii. ysabeau, queen, i. , , , , , ; ii. , , zabillet, romée, i. zacharias, ii. zizka, ii. jeanne d'arc, her life and death by mrs. oliphant author of "makers of florence," "makers of venice," etc. to cousin annie (mrs. harry coghill) this book is inscribed in love of our common heroine and in remembrance of long and faithful affection and friendship preparer's note the original book for this text was published as a volume in a series "heroes of the nations," edited by evelyn abbot, m.h., fellow of balliol college, oxford, and published by g.p. putnam's sons _the knickerbocker press_ in . the title material includes the note: facta ducis vivent, operosaque gloria rerum--ovid, in liviam, . the hero's deeds and hard-won fame shall live. contents: chapter i � france in the fifteenth century. - . chapter ii � domremy and vaucouleurs. - . chapter iii � before the king. feb.-april, . chapter iv � the relief of orleans. may - , . chapter v � the campaign of the loire. june, july, . chapter vi � the coronation. july , . chapter vii � the second period. - . chapter viii � defeat and discouragement. autumn, . chapter ix � compiÈgne. . chapter x � the captive. may, -jan., . chapter xi � the judges. . chapter xii � before the trial. lent, . chapter xiii � the public examination. february, . chapter xiv �the examination in prison. lent, . chapter xv � re-examination. march-may, . chapter xvi � the abjuration. may , . chapter xviii � the sacrifice. may , . chapter xviii � after. jeanne d'arc chapter i -- france in the fifteenth century. - . it is no small effort for the mind, even of the most well-informed, how much more of those whose exact knowledge is not great (which is the case with most readers, and alas! with most writers also), to transport itself out of this nineteenth century which we know so thoroughly, and which has trained us in all our present habits and modes of thought, into the fifteenth, four hundred years back in time, and worlds apart in every custom and action of life. what is there indeed the same in the two ages? nothing but the man and the woman, the living agents in spheres so different; nothing but love and grief, the affections and the sufferings by which humanity is ruled and of which it is capable. everything else is changed: the customs of life, and its methods, and even its motives, the ruling principles of its continuance. peace and mutual consideration, the policy which even in its selfish developments is so far good that it enables men to live together, making existence possible,--scarcely existed in those days. the highest ideal was that of war, war no doubt sometimes for good ends, to redress wrongs, to avenge injuries, to make crooked things straight--but yet always war, implying a state of affairs in which the last thing that men thought of was the golden rule, and the highest attainment to be looked for was the position of a protector, doer of justice, deliverer of the oppressed. our aim now that no one should be oppressed, that every man should have justice as by the order of nature, was a thing unthought of. what individual help did feebly for the sufferer then, the laws do for us now, without fear or favour: which is a much greater thing to say than that the organisation of modern life, the mechanical helps, the comforts, the easements of the modern world, had no existence in those days. we are often told that the poorest peasant in our own time has aids to existence that had not been dreamt of for princes in the middle ages. thirty years ago the world was mostly of opinion that the balance was entirely on our side, and that in everything we were so much better off than our fathers, that comparison was impossible. since then there have been many revolutions of opinion, and we think it is now the general conclusion of wise men, that one period has little to boast itself of against another, that one form of civilisation replaces another without improving upon it, at least to the extent which appears on the surface. but yet the general prevalence of peace, interrupted only by occasional wars, even when we recognise a certain large and terrible utility in war itself, must always make a difference incalculable between the condition of the nations now, and then. it is difficult, indeed, to imagine any concatenation of affairs which could reduce a country now to the condition in which france was in the beginning of the fifteenth century. a strong and splendid kingdom, to which in early ages one great man had given the force and supremacy of a united nation, had fallen into a disintegration which seems almost incredible when regarded in the light of that warm flame of nationality which now illumines, almost above all others, the french nation. but frenchmen were not frenchmen, they were burgundians, armagnacs, bretons, provençaux five hundred years ago. the interests of one part of the kingdom were not those of the other. unity had no existence. princes of the same family were more furious enemies to each other, at the head of their respective fiefs and provinces, than the traditional foes of their race; and instead of meeting an invader with a united force of patriotic resistance, one or more of these subordinate rulers was sure to side with the invader and to execute greater atrocities against his own flesh and blood than anything the alien could do. when charles vii. of france began, nominally, his reign, his uncles and cousins, his nearest kinsmen, were as determinedly his opponents, as was henry v. of england, whose frank object was to take the crown from his head. the country was torn in pieces with different causes and cries. the english were but little farther off from the parisian than was the burgundian, and the english king was only a trifle less french than were the members of the royal family of france. these circumstances are little taken into consideration in face of the general history, in which a careless reader sees nothing but the two nations pitted against each other as they might be now, the french united in one strong and distinct nationality, the three kingdoms of great britain all welded into one. in the beginning of the fifteenth century the scots fought on the french side, against their intimate enemy of england, and if there had been any unity in ireland, the irish would have done the same. the advantages and disadvantages of subdivision were in full play. the scots fought furiously against the english--and when the latter won, as was usually the case, the scots contingent, whatever bounty might be shown to the french, was always exterminated. on the other side the burgundians, the armagnacs, and royalists met each other almost more fiercely than the latter encountered the english. each country was convulsed by struggles of its own, and fiercely sought its kindred foes in the ranks of its more honest and natural enemy. when we add to these strange circumstances the facts that the french king, charles vi., was mad, and incapable of any real share either in the internal government of his country or in resistance to its invader: that his only son, the dauphin, was no more than a foolish boy, led by incompetent councillors, and even of doubtful legitimacy, regarded with hesitation and uncertainty by many, everybody being willing to believe the worst of his mother, especially after the treaty of troyes in which she virtually gave him up: that the king's brothers or cousins at the head of their respective fiefs were all seeking their own advantage, and that some of them, especially the duke of burgundy, had cruel wrongs to avenge: it will be more easily understood that france had reached a period of depression and apparent despair which no principle of national elasticity or new spring of national impulse was present to amend. the extraordinary aspect of whole districts in so strong and populous a country, which disowned the native monarch, and of towns and castles innumerable which were held by the native nobility in the name of a foreign king, could scarcely have been possible under other circumstances. everything was out of joint. it is said to be characteristic of the nation that it is unable to play publicly (as we say) a losing game; but it is equally characteristic of the race to forget its humiliations as if they had never been, and to come out intact when the fortune of war changes, more french than ever, almost unabashed and wholly uninjured, by the catastrophe which had seemed fatal. if we had any right to theorise on such a subject--which is a thing the french themselves above all other men love to do,--we should be disposed to say, that wars and revolutions, legislation and politics, are things which go on over the head of france, so to speak--boilings on the surface, with which the great personality of the nation if such a word may be used, has little to do, and cares but little for; while she herself, the great race, neither giddy nor fickle, but unusually obstinate, tenacious, and sober, narrow even in the unwavering pursuit of a certain kind of well-being congenial to her--goes steadily on, less susceptible to temporary humiliation than many peoples much less excitable on the surface, and always coming back into sight when the commotion is over, acquisitive, money-making, profit-loving, uninjured in any essential particular by the most terrific of convulsions. this of course is to be said more or less of every country, the strain of common life being always, thank god, too strong for every temporary commotion--but it is true in a special way of france:--witness the extraordinary manner in which in our own time, and under our own eyes, that wonderful country righted herself after the tremendous misfortunes of the franco-german war, in which for a moment not only her prestige, her honour, but her money and credit seemed to be lost. it seems rather a paradox to point attention to the extraordinary tenacity of this basis of french character, the steady prudence and solidity which in the end always triumph over the light heart and light head, the excitability and often rash and dangerous _élan_, which are popularly supposed to be the chief distinguishing features of france--at the very moment of beginning such a fairy tale, such a wonderful embodiment of the visionary and ideal, as is the story of jeanne d'arc. to call it a fairy tale is, however, disrespectful: it is an angelic revelation, a vision made into flesh and blood, the dream of a woman's fancy, more ethereal, more impossible than that of any man--even a poet:--for the man, even in his most uncontrolled imaginations, carries with him a certain practical limitation of what can be--whereas the woman at her highest is absolute, and disregards all bounds of possibility. the maid of orleans, the virgin of france, is the sole being of her kind who has ever attained full expression in this world. she can neither be classified, as her countrymen love to classify, nor traced to any system of evolution as we all attempt to do nowadays. she is the impossible verified and attained. she is the thing in every race, in every form of humanity, which the dreaming girl, the visionary maid, held in at every turn by innumerable restrictions, her feet bound, her actions restrained, not only by outward force, but by the law of her nature, more effectual still,--has desired to be. that voiceless poet, to whom what can be is nothing, but only what should be if miracle could be attained to fulfil her trance and rapture of desire--is held by no conditions, modified by no circumstances; and miracle is all around her, the most credible, the most real of powers, the very air she breathers. jeanne of france is the very flower of this passion of the imagination. she is altogether impossible from beginning to end of her, inexplicable, alone, with neither rival nor even second in the one sole ineffable path: yet all true as one of the oaks in her wood, as one of the flowers in her garden, simple, actual, made of the flesh and blood which are common to us all. and she is all the more real because it is france, impure, the country of light loves and immodest passions, where all that is sensual comes to the surface, and the courtesan is the queen of ignoble fancy, that has brought forth this most perfect embodiment of purity among the nations. this is of itself one of those miracles which captivate the mind and charm the imagination, the living paradox in which the soul delights. how did she come out of that stolid peasant race, out of that distracted and ignoble age, out of riot and license and the fierce thirst for gain, and failure of every noble faculty? who can tell? by the grace of god, by the inspiration of heaven, the only origins in which the student of nature, which is over nature, can put any trust. no evolution, no system of development, can explain jeanne. there is but one of her and no more in all the astonished world. with the permission of the reader i will retain her natural and beautiful name. to translate it into joan seems quite unnecessary. though she is the finest emblem to the world in general of that noble, fearless, and spotless virginity which is one of the finest inspirations of the mediæval mind, yet she is inherently french, though france scarcely was in her time: and national, though as yet there were rather the elements of a nation than any indivisible people in that great country. was not she herself one of the strongest and purest threads of gold to draw that broken race together and bind it irrevocably, beneficially, into one? it is curious that it should have been from the farthest edge of french territory that this national deliverer came. it is a commonplace that a borderer should be a more hot partisan of his own country against the other from which but a line divides him in fact, and scarcely so much in race--than the calmer inhabitant of the midland country who knows no such press of constant antagonism; and jeanne is another example of this well known fact. it is even a question still languidly discussed whether jeanne and her family were actually on one side of the line or the other. "il faut opter," says m. blaze de bury, one of her latest biographers, as if the peasant household of had inhabited an alsatian cottage in . when the line is drawn so closely, it is difficult to determine, but jeanne herself does not ever seem to have entertained a moment's doubt on the subject, and she after all is the best authority. perhaps villon was thinking more of his rhyme than of absolute fact when he spoke of "jeanne la bonne lorraine." she was born on the th of january, , in the village of domremy, on the banks of the meuse, one of those little grey hamlets, with its little church tower, and remains of a little chateau on the soft elevation of a mound not sufficient for the name of hill--which are scattered everywhere through those level countries, like places which have never been built, which have grown out of the soil, of undecipherable antiquity--perhaps, one feels, only a hundred, perhaps a thousand years old--yet always inhabitable in all the ages, with the same names lingering about, the same surroundings, the same mild rural occupations, simple plenty and bare want mingling together with as little difference of level as exists in the sweeping lines of the landscape round. the life was calm in so humble a corner which offered nothing to the invader or marauder of the time, but yet was so much within the universal conditions of war that the next-door neighbour, so to speak, the adjacent village of maxey, held for the burgundian and english alliance, while little domremy was for the king. and once at least when jeanne was a girl at home, the family were startled in their quiet by the swoop of an armed party of burgundians, and had to gather up babies and what portable property they might have, and flee across the frontier, where the good lorrainers received and sheltered them, till they could go back to their village, sacked and pillaged and devastated in the meantime by the passing storm. thus even in their humility and inoffensiveness the domremy villagers knew what war and its miseries were, and the recollection would no doubt be vivid among the children, of that half terrible, half exhilarating adventure, the fright and excitement of personal participation in the troubles, of which, night and day, from one quarter or another, they must have heard. domremy had originally belonged( ) to the abbey of st. remy at rheims--the ancient church of which, in its great antiquity, is still an interest and a wonder even in comparison with the amazing splendour of the cathedral of that place, so rich and ornate, which draws the eyes of the visitor to itself, and its greater associations. it is possible that this ancient connection with rheims may have brought the great ceremony for which it is ever memorable, the consecration of the kings of france, more distinctly before the musing vision of the village girl; but i doubt whether such chance associations are ever much to be relied upon. the village was on the high-road to germany; it must have been therefore in the way of news, and of many rumours of what was going on in the centres of national life, more than many towns of importance. feudal bands, a rustic seigneur with his little troop, going out for their forty days' service, or returning home after it, must have passed along the banks of the lazy meuse many days during the fighting season, and indeed throughout the year, for garrison duty would be as necessary in winter as in summer; or a wandering pair of friars who had seen strange sights must have passed with their wallets from the neighbouring convents, collecting the day's provision, and leaving news and gossip behind, such as flowed to these monastic hostelries from all quarters--tales of battles, and anecdotes of the court, and dreadful stories of english atrocities, to stir the village and rouse ever generous sentiment and stirring of national indignation. they are said by michelet to have been no man's vassals, these outlying hamlets of champagne; the men were not called upon to follow their lord's banner at a day's notice, as were the sons of other villages. there is no appearance even of a lord at all upon this piece of church land, which was, we are told, directly held under the king, and would only therefore be touched by a general levy _en masse_--not even perhaps by that, so far off were they, and so near the frontier, where a reluctant man-at-arms could without difficulty make his escape, as the unwilling conscript sometimes does now. there would seem to have been no one of more importance in domremy than jacques d'arc himself and his wife, respectable peasants, with a little money, a considerable rural property in flocks and herds and pastures, and a good reputation among their kind. he had three sons working with their father in the peaceful routine of the fields; and two daughters, of whom some authorities indicate jeanne as the younger, and some as the elder. the cottage interior, however, appears more clearly to us than the outward aspect of the family life. the daughters were not, like the children of poorer peasants, brought up to the rude outdoor labours of the little farm. painters have represented jeanne as keeping her father's sheep, and even the early witnesses say the same; but it is contradicted by herself, who ought to know best--(except in taking her turn to herd them into a place of safety on an alarm). if she followed the flocks to the fields, it must have been, she says, in her childhood, and she has no recollection of it. hers was a more sheltered and safer lot. the girls were brought up by their mother indoors in all the labours of housewifery, but also in the delicate art of needlework, so much more exquisite in those days than now. perhaps isabeau, the mistress of the house, was of convent training, perhaps some ancient privilege in respect to the manufacture of ornaments for the altar, and church vestments, was still retained by the tenants of what had been church lands. at all events this, and other kindred works of the needle, seems to have been the chief occupation to which jeanne was brought up. the education of this humble house seems to have come entirely from the mother. it was natural that the children should not know a from b, as jeanne afterward said; but no one did, probably, in the village nor even on much higher levels than that occupied by the family of jacques d'arc. but the children at their mother's knee learned the credo, they learned the simple universal prayers which are common to the wisest and simplest, which no great savant or poet could improve, and no child fail to understand: "our father, which art in heaven," and that "hail, mary, full of grace," which the world in that day put next. these were the alphabet of life to the little champagnards in their rough woollen frocks and clattering sabots; and when the house had been set in order,--a house not without comfort, with its big wooden presses full of linen, and the _pot au feu_ hung over the cheerful fire,--came the real work, perhaps embroideries for the church, perhaps only good stout shirts made of flax spun by their own hands for the father and the boys, and the fine distinctive coif of the village for the women. "asked if she had learned any art or trade, said: yes, that her mother had taught her to sew and spin, and so well, that she did not think any woman in rouen could teach her anything." when the lady in the ballad makes her conditions with the peasant woman who is to bring up her boy, her "gay goss hawk," and have him trained in the use of sword and lance, she undertakes to teach the "turtle-doo," the woman child substituted for him, "to lay gold with her hand." no doubt isabeau's child learned this difficult and dainty art, and how to do the beautiful and delicate embroidery which fills the treasuries of the old churches. and while they sat by the table in the window, with their shining silks and gold thread, the mother made the quiet hours go by with tale and legend--of the saints first of all--and stories from scripture, quaintly interpreted into the costume and manners of their own time, as one may still hear them in the primitive corners of italy: mingled with incidents of the war, of the wounded man tended in the village, and the victors all flushed with triumph, and the defeated with trailing arms and bowed heads, riding for their lives: perhaps little epics and tragedies of the young knight riding by to do his devoir with his handful of followers all spruce and gay, and the battered and diminished remnant that would come back. and then the black burgundians, the horrible english ogres, whose names would make the children shudder! no _god-den_( ) had got so far as domremy; there was no personal knowledge to soften the picture of the invader. he was unspeakable as the turk to the imagination of the french peasant, diabolical as every invader is. this was the earliest training of the little maid before whom so strange and so great a fortune lay. _autre personne que sadite mère ne lui apprint_--any lore whatsoever; and she so little--yet everything that was wanted--her prayers, her belief, the happiness of serving god, and also man; for when any one was sick in the village, either a little child with the measles, or a wounded soldier from the wars, isabeau's modest child--no doubt the mother too--was always ready to help. it must have been a family _de bien_, in the simple phrase of the country, helpful, serviceable, with charity and aid for all. an honest labourer, who came to speak for jeanne at the second trial, held long after her death, gave his incontestable evidence to this. "i was then a child," he said, "and it was she who nursed me in my illness." they were all more or less devout in those days, when faith was without question, and the routine of church ceremonial was followed as a matter of course; but few so much as jeanne, whose chief pleasure it was to say her prayers in the little dark church, where perhaps in the morning sunshine, as she made her early devotions, there would blaze out upon her from a window, a holy michael in shining armour, transfixing the dragon with his spear, or a st. margaret dominating the same emblem of evil with her cross in her hand. so, at least, the historians conjecture, anxious to find out some reason for her visions; and there is nothing in the suggestion which is unpleasing. the little country church was in the gift of st. remy, and some benefactor of the rural curé might well have given a painted window to make glad the hearts of the simple people. st. margaret was no warrior-saint, but she overcame the dragon with her cross, and was thus a kind of sister spirit to the great archangel. sitting much of her time at or outside the cottage door with her needlework, in itself an occupation so apt to encourage musing and dreams, the bells were one of jeanne's great pleasures. we know a traveller, of the calmest english temperament and sobriety of protestant fancy, to whom the midday angelus always brings, he says, a touching reminder--which he never neglects wherever he may be--to uncover the head and lift up the heart; how much more the devout peasant girl softly startled in the midst of her dreaming by that call to prayer. she was so fond of those bells that she bribed the careless bell-ringer with simple presents to be more attentive to his duty. from the garden where she sat with her work, the cloudy foliage of the _bois de chêne_, the oak wood, where were legends of fairies and a magic well, to which her imagination, better inspired, seems to have given no great heed, filled up the prospect on one side. at a later period, her accusers attempted to make out that she had been a devotee of these nameless woodland spirits, but in vain. no doubt she was one of the procession on the holy day once a year, when the curé of the parish went out through the wood to the fairies' well to say his mass, and exorcise what evil enchantment might be there. but jeanne's imagination was not of the kind to require such stimulus. the saints were enough for her; and indeed they supplied to a great extent the fairy tales of the age, though it was not of love and fame and living happy ever after, but of sacrifice and suffering and valorous martyrdom that their glory was made up. we hear of the woods, the fields, the cottages, the little church and its bells, the garden where she sat and sewed, the mother's stories, the morning mass, in this quiet preface of the little maiden's life; but nothing of the highroad with its wayfarers, the convoys of provisions for the war, the fighting men that were coming and going. yet these, too, must have filled a large part in the village life, and it is evident that a strong impression of the pity of it all, of the distraction of the country and all the cruelties and miseries of which she could not but hear, must have early begun to work in jeanne's being, and that while she kept silence the fire burned in her heart. the love of god, and that love of country which has nothing to say to political patriotism but translates itself in an ardent longing and desire to do "some excelling thing" for the benefit and glory of that country, and to heal its wounds--were the two principles of her life. we have not the slightest indication how much or how little of this latter sentiment was shared by the simple community about her; unless from the fact that the domremy children fought with those of maxey, their disaffected neighbours, to the occasional effusion of blood. we do not know even of any volunteer from the village, or enthusiasm for the king.( ) the district was voiceless, the little clusters of cottages fully occupied in getting their own bread, and probably like most other village societies, disposed to treat any military impulse among their sons as mere vagabondism and love of adventure and idleness. nothing, so far as anyone knows, came near the most unlikely volunteer of all, to lead her thoughts to that art of war of which she knew nothing, and of which her little experience could only have shown her the horrors and miseries, the sufferings of wounded fugitives and the ruin of sacked houses. of all people in the world, the little daughter of a peasant was the last who could have been expected to respond to the appeal of the wretched country. she had three brothers who might have served the king, and there was no doubt many a stout clodhopper about, of that kind which in every country is the fittest material for fighting, and "food for powder." but to none of these did the call come. every detail goes to increase the profound impression of peacefulness which fills the atmosphere--the slow river floating by, the roofs clustered together, the church bells tinkling their continual summons, the girl with her work at the cottage door in the shadow of the apple trees. to pack the little knapsack of a brother or a lover, and to convoy him weeping a little way on his road to the army, coming back to the silent church to pray there, with the soft natural tears which the uses of common life must soon dry--that is all that imagination could have demanded of jeanne. she was even too young for any interposition of the lover, too undeveloped, the french historians tell us with their astonishing frankness, to the end of her short life, to have been moved by any such thought. she might have poured forth a song, a prayer, a rude but sweet lament for her country, out of the still bosom of that rustic existence. such things have been, the trouble of the age forcing an utterance from the very depths of its inarticulate life. but it was not for this that jeanne d'arc was born. ( ) mr. andrew lang informs me that the real proprietor was a certain "dame d'orgévillier." "on jeanne's side of the burn," he adds, with a picturesque touch of realism, "the people were probably _free_ as attached to the royal châtellenie of vancouleurs, as described below." ( ) this was probably not the god-dam of later french, a reflection of the supposed prevalent english oath, but most likely merely the god-den or good-day, the common salutation. ( ) domremy was split, mr. lang says, by the burn, and jeanne's side were probably king's men. we have it on her own word that there was but one burgundian in the village, but that might mean on her side. chapter ii -- domremy and vaucouleurs. - . in the year , the year in which, after the battle of agincourt, france was delivered over to henry v., an extraordinary event occurred in the life of this little french peasant. we have not the same horror of that treaty, naturally, as have the french. henry v. is a favourite of our history, probably not so much for his own merit as because of that master-magician, shakespeare, who of his supreme good pleasure, in the exercise of that voluntary preference, which even god himself seems to show to some men, has made of that monarch one of the best beloved of our hearts. dear to us as he is, in eastcheap as at agincourt, and more in the former than the latter, even our sense of the disgraceful character of that bargain, _le traité infâme_ of troyes, by which queen isabeau betrayed her son, and gave her daughter and her country to the invader, is softened a little by our high estimation of the hero. but this is simple national prejudice; regarded from the french side, or even by the impartial judgment of general humanity, it was an infamous treaty, and one which might well make the blood boil in french veins. we look at it at present, however, through the atmosphere of the nineteenth century, when france is all french, and when the royal house of england has no longer any french connection. if george iii., much more george ii., on the basis of his kingdom of hanover, had attempted to make himself master of a large portion of germany, the situation would have been more like that of henry v. in france than anything we can think of now. it is true the kings of england were no longer dukes of normandy--but they had been so within the memory of man: and that noble duchy was a hereditary appanage of the family of the conqueror; while to other portions of france they had the link of temporary possession and inheritance through french wives and mothers; added to which is the fact that jean sans peur of burgundy, thirsting to avenge his father's blood upon the dauphin, would have been probably a more dangerous usurper than henry, and that the actual sovereign, the unfortunate, mad charles vi., was in no condition to maintain his own rights. there is little evidence, however, that this treaty, or anything so distinct in detail, had made much impression on the outlying borders of france. what was known there, was only that the english were victorious, that the rightful king of france was still uncrowned and unacknowledged, and that the country was oppressed and humiliated under the foot of the invader. the fact that the new king was not yet the lord's anointed, and had never received the seal of god, as it were, to his commission, was a fact which struck the imagination of the village as of much more importance than many greater things--being at once more visible and matter-of-fact, and of more mystical and spiritual efficacy than any other circumstance in the dreadful tale. jeanne was in the garden as usual, seated, as we should say in scotland, at "her seam," not quite thirteen, a child in all the innocence of infancy, yet full of dreams, confused no doubt and vague, with those impulses and wonderings--impatient of trouble, yearning to give help--which tremble on the chaos of a young soul like the first lightening of dawn upon the earth. it was summer, and afternoon, the time of dreams. it would be easy in the employment of legitimate fancy to heighten the picturesqueness of that quiet scene--the little girl with her favourite bells, the birds picking up the crumbs of brown bread at her feet. she was thinking of nothing, most likely, in a vague suspense of musing, the wonder of youth, the awakening of thought, as yet come to little definite in her child's heart--looking up from her work to note some passing change of the sky, a something in the air which was new to her. all at once between her and the church there shone a light on the right hand, unlike anything she had ever seen before; and out of it came a voice equally unknown and wonderful. what did the voice say? only the simplest words, words fit for a child, no maxim or mandate above her faculties--"_jeanne, sois bonne et sage enfant; va souvent à l'église._" jeanne, be good! what more could an archangel, what less could the peasant mother within doors, say? the little girl was frightened, but soon composed herself. the voice could be nothing but sacred and blessed which spoke thus. it would not appear that she mentioned it to anyone. it is such a secret as a child, in that wavering between the real and unreal, the world not realised of childhood, would keep, in mingled shyness and awe, uncertain, rapt in the atmosphere of vision, within her own heart. it is curious how often this wonderful scene has been repeated in france, never connected with so high a mission, but yet embracing the same circumstances, the same situation, the same semi-angelic nature of the woman-child. the little bernadette of lourdes is almost of our own day; she, too is one who puts the scorner to silence. what her visions and her voices were, who can say? the last historian of them is not a man credulous of good or moved towards the ideal; yet he is silent, except in a wondering impression of the sacred and the true, before the little bearnaise in her sabots; and, notwithstanding the many sordid results that have followed and all that sad machinery of expected miracle through which even, repulsive as it must always be, a something breaks forth from time to time which no man can define and account for except in ways more incredible than miracle--so is the rest of the world. why has this logical, sceptical, doubting country, so able to quench with an epigram, or blow away with a breath of ridicule the finest vision--become the special sphere and birthplace of these spotless infant-saints? this is one of the wonders which nobody attempts to account for. yet bernadette is as jeanne, though there are more than four hundred years between. after what intervals the vision returned we are not told, nor in what circumstances. it seems to have come chiefly out-of-doors, in the silence and freedom of the fields or garden. presently the heavenly radiance shaped itself into some semblance of forms and figures, one of which, clearer than the others, was like a man, but with wings and a crown on his head and the air "_d'un vrai prud' homme_"; a noble apparition before whom at first the little maid trembled, but whose majestic, honest regard soon gave her confidence. he bade her once more to be good, and that god would help her; then he told her the sad story of her own suffering country, _la pitié qui estoit au royaume de france_. was it the pity of heaven that the archangel reported to the little trembling girl, or only that which woke with the word in her own childish soul? he has chosen the small things of this world to confound the great. jeanne's young heart was full of pity already, and of yearning over the helpless mother-country which had no champion to stand for her. "she had great doubts at first whether it was st. michael, but afterwards when he had instructed her and shown her many things, she believed firmly that it was he." it was this warrior-angel who opened the matter to her, and disclosed her mission. "jeanne," he said, "you must go to the help of the king of france; and it is you who shall give him back his kingdom." like a still greater maid, trembling, casting in her mind what this might mean, she replied, confused, as if that simple detail were all: "messire, i am only a poor girl; i cannot ride or lead armed men." the vision took no notice of this plea. he became minute in his directions, indicating exactly what she was to do. "go to messire de baudricourt, captain of vaucouleurs, and he will take you to the king. st. catherine and st. margaret will come and help you." jeanne was overwhelmed by this exactness, by the sensation of receiving direct orders. she cried, weeping and helpless, terrified to the bottom of her soul--what was she that she should do this? a little girl, able to guide nothing but her needle or her distaff, to lend her simple aid in nursing a sick child. but behind all her fright and hesitation, her heart was filled with the emotion thus suggested to her--the immeasurable _pitié que estoit au royaume de france_. her heart became heavy with this burden. by degrees it came about that she could think of nothing else; and her little life was confused by expectations and recollections of the celestial visitant, who might arrive upon her at any moment, in the midst perhaps of some innocent play, or when she sat sewing in the garden before her father's humble door. after a while the _vrai prud' homme_ came seldom; other figures more like herself, soft forms of women, white and shining, with golden circlets and ornaments, appeared to her in the great halo of the light; they bowed their heads, naming themselves, as to a sister spirit, catherine, and the other margaret. their voices were sweet and soft with a sound that made you weep. they were both martyrs, encouraging and strengthening the little martyr that was to be. "a lady is there in the heavens who loves thee": virgil could not say more to rouse the flagging strength of dante. when these gentle figures disappeared, the little maid wept in an anguish of tenderness, longing if only they would take her with them. it is curious that though she describes in this vague rapture the appearance of her visitors, it is always as "_mes voix_" that she names them--the sight must always have been more imperfect than the message. their outlines and their lovely faces might shine uncertain in the excess of light; but the words were always plain. the pity for france that was in their hearts spread itself into the silent rural atmosphere, touching every sensitive chord in the nature of little jeanne. it was as if her mother lay dying there before her eyes. curious to think how little anyone could have suspected such meetings as these, in the cottage hard by, where the weary ploughmen from the fields would come clamping in for their meal, and dame isabeau would call to the child, even sharply perhaps now and then, to leave that all-absorbing needlework and come in and help, as martha called mary fourteen hundred years before; and where the priest, mumbling his mass of a cold morning in the little church, would smile indulgent on the faithful little worshipper when it was done, sure of seeing jeanne there whoever might be absent. she was a shy girl, blushing and drooping her head when a stranger spoke to her, red and shame-faced when they laughed at her in the village as a _dévote_ before her time; but with nothing else to blush about in all her simple record. neither to her parents, nor to the curé when she made her confession, does she seem to have communicated these strange experiences, though they had lasted for some time before she felt impelled to act upon them, and could keep silence no longer. she was but thirteen when the revelations began and she was seventeen when at last she set forth to fulfil her mission. she had no guidance from her voices, she herself says, as to whether she should tell or not tell what had been communicated to her; and no doubt was kept back by her shyness, and by the dreamy confusion of childhood between the real and unreal. one would have thought that a life in which these visions were of constant recurrence would have been rapt altogether out of wholesome use and wont, and all practical service. but this does not seem for a moment to have been the case. jeanne was no hysterical girl, living with her head in a mist, abstracted from the world. she had all the enthusiasms even of youthful friendship, other girls surrounding her with the intimacy of the village, paying her visits, staying all night, sharing her room and her bed. she was ready to be sent for by any poor woman that needed help or nursing, she was always industrious at her needle; one would love to know if perhaps in the _trésor_ at rheims there was some stole or maniple with flowers on it, wrought by her hands. but the _trésor_ at rheims is nowadays rather vulgar if truth must be told, and the bottles and vases for the consecration of charles x., that _pauvre sire_, are more thought of than relics of an earlier age. at length, however, one does not know how, the secret of her double life came out. no doubt long brooding over these voices, long intercourse with such celestial visitors, and the mission continually pressed upon her--meaningless to the child at first, a thing only to shed terrified tears over and wonder at--ripened her intelligence so that she came at last to perceive that it was practicable, a thing to be done, a charge to be obeyed. she had this before her, as a girl in ordinary circumstances has the new developments of life to think of, and how to be a wife and mother. and the news brought by every passer-by would prove doubly interesting, doubly important to jeanne, in her daily growing comprehension of what she was called upon to do. as she felt the current more and more catching her feet, sweeping her on, overcoming all resistance in her own mind, she must have been more and more anxious to know what was going on in the distracted world, more and more touched by that great pity which had awakened her soul. and all these reports were of a nature to increase that pity till it became overwhelming. the tales she would hear of the english must have been tales of cruelty and horror; not so many years ago what tales did not we hear of german ferocity in the french villages, perhaps not true at all, yet making their impression always; and it was more probable in that age that every such story should be true. then the compassion which no one can help feeling for a young man deprived of his rights, his inheritance taken from him, his very life in danger, threatened by the stranger and usurper, was deepened in every particular by the fact that it was the king, the very impersonation of france, appointed by god as the head of the country, who was in danger. everything that jeanne heard would help to swell the stream. thus she must have come step by step--this extraordinary, impossible suggestion once sown in her dreaming soul--to perceive a kind of miraculous reasonableness in it, to see its necessity, and how everything pointed towards such a deliverance. it would have seemed natural to believe that the prophecies of the countryside which promised a virgin from an oak grove, a maiden from lorraine, to deliver france, might have affected her mind, did we not have it from her own voice that she had never heard that prophecy( ); but the word of the blessed michael, so often repeated, was more than an old wife's tale; and the child's alarm would seem to have died away as she came to her full growth. and jeanne was no ethereal spirit lost in visions, but a robust and capable peasant girl, fearing little, and full of sense and determination, as well as of an inspiration so far above the level of the crowd. we hear with wonder afterwards that she had the making of a great general in her untutored female soul,--which is perhaps the most wonderful thing in her career,--and saw with the eye of an experienced and able soldier, as even dunois did not always see it, the fit order of an attack, the best arrangement of the forces at her command. this i honestly avow is to me the most incredible point in the story. i am not disturbed by the apparition of the saints; there is in them an ineffable appropriateness and fitness against which the imagination, at least, has not a word to say. the wonder is not, to the natural mind, that such interpositions of heaven come, but that they come so seldom. but that jacques d'arc's daughter, the little girl over her sewing, whose only fault was that she went to church too often, should have the genius of a soldier, is too bewildering for words to say. a poet, yes, an inspiring influence leading on to miraculous victory; but a general, skilful with the rude artillery of the time, divining the better way in strategy,--this is a wonder beyond the reach of our faculties; yet according to alençon, dunois, and other military authorities, it was true. we have little means of finding out how it was that jeanne's long musings came at last to a point at which they could be hidden no longer, nor what it was which induced her at last to select the confidant she did. no doubt she must have been considering and weighing the matter for a long time before she fixed upon the man who was her relation, yet did not belong to domremy, and was safer than a townsman for the extraordinary revelations she had to make. one of her neighbours, her gossip, gerard of epinal, to whose child she was godmother, had perhaps at one moment seemed to her a likely helper. but he belonged to the opposite party. "if you were not a burgundian," she said to him once, "there is something i might tell you." the honest fellow took this to mean that she had some thought of marriage, the most likely and natural supposition. it was at this moment, when her heart was burning with her great secret, the voices urging her on day by day, and her power of self-constraint almost at an end, that providence sent durand laxart, her uncle by marriage, to domremy on some family visit. she would seem to have taken advantage of the opportunity with eagerness, asking him privately to take her home with him, and to explain to her father and mother that he wanted her to take care of his wife. no doubt the girl, devoured with so many thoughts, would have the air of requiring "a change" as we say, and that the mother would be very ready to accept for her an invitation which might bring back the brightness to her child. laxart was a peasant like the rest, a _prud' homme_ well thought of among his people. he lived in burey le petit, near to vaucouleurs, the chief place of the district, and jeanne already knew that it was to the captain of vaucouleurs that she was to address herself. thus she secured her object in the simplest and most natural way. yet the reader cannot but hold his breath at the thought of what that amazing revelation must have been to the homely, rustic soul, her companion, communicated as they went along the common road in the common daylight. "she said to the witness that she must go to france to the dauphin, to make him to be crowned king." it must have been as if a thunderbolt had fallen at his feet when the girl whom he had known in every development of her little life, thus suddenly disclosed to him her secret purpose and determination. all her simple excellence the good man knew, and that she was no fantastic chatterer, but truly _une bonne douce fille_, bold in nothing but kindness, with nothing to blush for but the fault of going too often to church. "did you never hear that france should be made desolate by a woman and restored by a maid?" she said; and this would seem to have been an unanswerable argument. he had, henceforth, nothing to do but to promote her purpose as best he could in every way. it would not seem at all unlikely to this good man that the archangel michael, if jeanne's revelation to him went so far, should have named robert de baudricourt, the chief of the district, captain of the town and its forces, the principal personage in all the neighbourhood, as the person to whom jeanne's purpose was to be revealed, but rather a guarantee of st. michael himself, familiar with good society; and the seigneur must have been more or less in good intelligence with his people, not too alarming to be referred to, even on so insignificant a subject as the vagaries of a country girl--though these by this time must have begun to seem something more than vagaries to the half-convinced peasant. and it was no doubt a great relief to his mind thus to put the decision of the question into the hands of a man better informed than himself. laxart proceeded to vaucouleurs upon his mission, shyly yet with confidence. he would seem to have had a preliminary interview with baudricourt before introducing jeanne. the stammering countryman, the bluff, rustic noble and soldier, cheerfully contemptuous, receiving, with a loud laugh into all the echoes, the extraordinary demand that he should send a little girl from domremy to the king, to deliver france, come before us like a picture in the countryman's simple words. robert de baudricourt would scarcely hear the story out. "box her ears," he said, "and send her home to her mother." the little fool! what did she know of the english, those brutal, downright fighters, against whom no _élan_ was sufficient, who stood their ground and set up vulgar posts around their lines, instead of trusting to the rush of sudden valour, and the tactics of the tournament! she deliver france! on a much smaller argument and to put down a less ambition, the half serious, half amused adviser has bidden a young fanatic's ears to be boxed on many an unimportant occasion, and has often been justified in so doing. there would be a half hour of gaiety after poor laxart, crestfallen, had got his dismissal. the good man must have turned back to jeanne, where she waited for him in courtyard or antechamber, with a heavy heart. no boxing of ears was possible to him. the mere thought of it was blasphemy. this was on ascension day the may, . jeanne, however, was not discouraged by m. de baudricourt's joke, and her interview with him changed his views completely. she appears indeed from the moment of setting out from her father's house to have taken a new attitude. these great personages of the country before whom all the peasants trembled, were nothing to this village maid, except, perhaps, instruments in the hand of god to speed her on her way if they could see their privileges--if not, to be swept out of it like straws by the wind. it had no doubt been hard for her to leave her father's house; but after that disruption what did anything matter? and she had gone through five years of gradual training of which no one knew. the tears and terror, the plea, "i am a poor girl; i cannot even ride," of her first childlike alarm had given place to a profound acquaintance with the voices and their meaning. they were now her familiar friends guiding her at every step; and what was the commonplace burly seigneur, with his roar of laughter, to jeanne? she went to her audience with none of the alarm of the peasant. a certain young man of baudricourt's suite, bertrand de poulengy, another young d'artagnan seeking his fortune, was present in the hall and witnessed the scene. the joke would seem to have been exhausted by the time jeanne appeared, or her perfect gravity and simplicity, and beautiful manners--so unlike her rustic dress and village coif--imposed upon the seigneur and his little court. this is how the story is told, twenty-five years after, by the witness, then an elderly knight, recalling the story of his youth. "she said that she came to robert on the part of her lord, that he should send to the dauphin, and tell him to hold out, and have no fear, for the lord would send him succour before the middle of lent. she also said that france did not belong to the dauphin but to her lord; but her lord willed that the dauphin should be its king, and hold it in command, and that in spite of his enemies she herself would conduct him to be consecrated. robert then asked her who was this lord? she answered, 'the king of heaven.' this being done (the witness adds) she returned to her father's house with her uncle, durand laxart of burey le petit." this brief and sudden preface to her career passed over and had no immediate effect; indeed but for bertrand we should have been unable to separate it from the confused narrative to which all these witnesses brought what recollection they had, often without sequence or order, durand himself taking no notice of any interval between this first visit to vaucouleurs and the final one.( ) the episode of ascension day appears like the formal _sommation_ of french law, made as a matter of form before the appellant takes action on his own responsibility; but baudricourt had probably more to do with it than appears to be at all certain from the after evidence. one of the persons present, at all events, young poulengy above mentioned, bore it in mind and pondered it in his heart. meantime, jeanne returned home--the strangest home-going,--for by this time her mission and her aspirations could no longer be hid, and rumour must have carried the news almost as quickly as any modern telegraph, to startle all the echoes of the village, heretofore unaware of any difference between jeanne and her companions save the greater goodness to which everybody bears testimony. no doubt, it must have reached jacques d'arc's cottage even before she came back with the kind durand, a changed creature, already the consecrated maid of france, la pucelle, apart from all others. the french peasant is a hard man, more fierce in his terror of the unconventional, of having his domestic affairs exposed to the public eye, or his family disgraced by an exhibition of anything unusual either in act or feeling, than almost any other class of beings. and it is evident that he took his daughter's intention according to the coarsest interpretation, as a wild desire for adventure and intention of joining herself to the roving troopers, the soldiers always hated and dreaded in rural life. he suddenly appears in the narrative in a fever of apprehension, with no imaginative alarm or anxiety about his girl, but the fiercest suspicion of her, and dread of disgrace to ensue. we do not know what passed when she returned, further than that her father had a dream, no doubt after the first astounding explanation of the purpose that had so long been ripening in her mind. he dreamed that he saw her surrounded by armed men, in the midst of the troopers, the most evident and natural interpretation of her purpose, for who could divine that she meant to be their leader and general, on a level not with the common men-at-arms, but of princes and nobles? in the morning he told his dream to his wife and also to his sons. "if i could think that the thing would happen that i dreamed, i would wish that she should be drowned; and if you would not do it, i should do it with my own hands." the reader remembers with a shudder the meuse flowing at the foot of the garden, while the fierce peasant, mad with fear lest shame should be coming to his family, clenched his strong fist and made this outcry of dismay. no doubt his wife smoothed the matter over as well as she could, and, whatever alarms were in her own mind, hastily thought of a feminine expedient to mend matters, and persuaded the angry father that to substitute other dreams for these would be an easier way. isabeau most probably knew the village lad who would fain have had her child, so good a housewife, so industrious a workwoman, and always so friendly and so helpful, for his wife. at all events there was such a one, too willing to exert himself, not discouraged by any refusal, who could be egged up to the very strong point of appearing before the bishop at toul and swearing that jeanne had been promised to him from her childhood. so timid a girl, they all thought, so devout a catholic, would simply obey the bishop's decision and would not be bold enough even to remonstrate, though it is curious that with the spectacle of her grave determination before them, and sorrowful sense of that necessity of her mission which had steeled her to dispense with their consent, they should have expected such an expedient to arrest her steps. the affair, we must suppose, had gone through all the more usual stages of entreaty on the lover's part, and persuasion on that of the parents, before such an attempt was finally made. but the shy jeanne had by this time attained that courage of desperation which is not inconsistent with the most gentle nature; and without saying anything to anyone, she too went to toul, appeared before the bishop, and easily freed herself from the pretended engagement, though whether with any reference to her very different destination we are not told.( ) these proceedings, however, and the father's dreams and the remonstrances of the mother, must have made troubled days in the cottage, and scenes of wrath and contradiction, hard to bear. the winter passed distracted by these contentions, and it is difficult to imagine how jeanne could have borne this had it not been that the period of her outset had already been indicated, and that it was only in the middle of lent that her succour was to reach the king. the village, no doubt, was almost as much distracted as her father's house to hear of these strange discussions and of the incredible purpose of the _bonne douce fille_, whose qualities everybody knew and about whom there was nothing eccentric, nothing unnatural, but only simple goodness, to distinguish her above her neighbours. in the meantime her voices called her continually to her work. they set her free from the ordinary yoke of obedience, always so strong in the mind of a french girl. the dreadful step of abandoning her home, not to be thought of under any other circumstances, was more and more urgently pressed upon her. could it indeed be saints and angels who ordained a step which was outside of all the habits and first duties of nature? but we have no reason to believe that this nineteenth-century doubt of her visitors, and of whether their mandates were right, entered into the mind of a girl who was of her own period and not of ours. she went on steadfastly, certain of her mission now, and inaccessible either to remonstrance or appeal. it was towards the beginning of lent, as poulengy tells us, that the decision was made, and she left home finally, to go "to france" as is always said. but it seems to have been in january that she set out once more for vaucouleurs, accompanied by her uncle, who took her to the house of some humble folk they knew, a carter and his wife, where they lodged. jeanne wore her peasant dress of heavy red homespun, her rude heavy shoes, her village coif. she never made any pretence of ladyhood or superiority to her class, but was always equal to the finest society in which she found herself, by dint of that simple good faith, sense, and seriousness, without excitement or exaggeration, and radiant purity and straightforwardness which were apparent to all seeing eyes. by this time all the little world about knew something of her purpose and followed her every step with wonder and quickly rising curiosity: and no doubt the whole town was astir, women gazing at their doors, all on her side from the first moment, the men half interested, half insolent, as she went once more to the chateau to make her personal appeal. simple as she was, the _bonne douce fille_ was not intimidated by the guard at the gates, the lounging soldiers, the no doubt impudent glances flung at her by these rude companions. she was inaccessible to alarms of that kind--which, perhaps, is one of the greatest safeguards against them even in more ordinary cases. we find little record of her second interview with baudricourt. the _journal du siège d'orleans_ and the _chronique de la pucelle_ both mention it as if it had been one of several, which may well have been the case, as she was for three weeks in vaucouleurs. it is almost impossible to arrange the incidents of this interval between her arrival there and her final departure for chinon on the d february, during which time she made a pilgrimage to a shrine of st. nicolas and also a visit to the duke of lorraine. it is clear, however, that she must have repeated her demand with such stress and urgency that the captain of vaucouleurs was a much perplexed man. it was a very natural idea then, and in accordance with every sentiment of the time that he should suspect this wonderful girl, who would not be daunted, of being a witch and capable of bringing an evil fate on all who crossed her. all thought of boxing her ears must ere this have departed from his mind. he hastened to consult the curé, which was the most reasonable thing to do. the curé was as much puzzled as the captain. the church, it must be said, if always ready to take advantage afterwards of such revelations, has always been timid, even sceptical about them at first. the wisdom of the rulers, secular and ecclesiastic, suggested only one thing to do, which was to exorcise, and perhaps to overawe and frighten, the young visionary. they paid a joint and solemn visit to the carter's house, where no doubt their entrance together was spied by many eager eyes; and there the priest solemnly taking out his stole invested himself in his priestly robes and exorcised the evil spirits, bidding them come out of the girl if they were her inspiration. there seems a certain absurdity in this sudden assault upon the evil one, taking him as it were by surprise: but it was not ridiculous to any of the performers, though jeanne no doubt looked on with serene and smiling eyes. she remarked afterwards to her hostess, that the curé had done wrong, as he had already heard her in confession. outside, the populace were in no uncertainty at all as to her mission. a little mob hung about the door to see her come and go, chiefly to church, with her good hostess in attendance, as was right and seemly, and a crowd streaming after them who perhaps of their own accord might have neglected mass, but who would not, if they could help it, lose a look at the new wonder. one day a young gentleman of the neighbourhood was passing by, and amused by the commotion, came through the crowd to have a word with the peasant lass. "what are you doing here, _ma mie_?" the young man said. "is the king to be driven out of the kingdom, and are we all to be made english?" there is a tone of banter in the speech, but he had already heard of the maid from his friend, bertrand, and had been affected by the other's enthusiasm. "robert de baudricourt will have none of me or my words," she replied, "nevertheless before mid-lent i must be with the king, if i should wear my feet up to my knees; for nobody in the world, be it king, duke, or the king of scotland's daughter, can save the kingdom of france except me alone: though i would rather spin beside my poor mother, and this is not my work: but i must go and do it, because my lord so wills it." "and who is your seigneur?" he asked. "god," said the girl. the young man was moved, he too, by that wind which bloweth where it listeth. he stretched out his hands through the gaping crowd and took hers, holding them between his own, to give her his pledge: and so swore by his faith, her hands in his hands, that he himself would conduct her to the king. "when will you go?" he said. "rather to-day than to-morrow," answered the messenger of god. this was the second convert of la pucelle. the peasant _bonhomme_ first, the noble gentleman after him; not to say all the women wherever she went, the gazing, weeping, admiring crowd which now followed her steps, and watched every opening of the door which concealed her from their eyes. the young gentleman was jean de novelonpont, "surnamed jean de metz": and so moved was he by the fervour of the girl, and by her strong sense of the necessity of immediate operations, that he proceeded at once to make preparations for the journey. they would seem to have discussed the dress she ought to wear, and jeanne decided for many obvious reasons to adopt the costume of a man--or rather boy. she must, one would imagine have been tall, for no remark is ever made on this subject, as if her dress had dwarfed her, which is generally the case when a woman assumes the habit of a man: and probably with her peasant birth and training, she was, though slim, strongly made and well knit, besides being at the age when the difference between boy and girl is sometimes but little noticeable. in the meantime baudricourt had not been idle. he must have been moved by the sight of jeanne, at least to perceive a certain gravity in the business for which he was not prepared; and her composure under the curé's exorcism would naturally deepen the effect which her own manners and aspect had upon all who were free of prejudice. another singular event, too, added weight to her character and demand. one day after her return from lorraine, february th, , she intimated to all her surroundings and specially to baudricourt, that the king had suffered a defeat near orleans, which made it still more necessary that she should be at once conducted to him. it was found when there was time for the news to come, that this defeat, the battle of the herrings, so-called, had happened as she said, at the exact time; and such a strange fact added much to the growing enthusiasm and excitement. baudricourt is said by michelet to have sent off a secret express to the court to ask what he should do; but of this there seems to be no direct evidence, though likelihood enough. the court at chinon contained a strong feminine element, behind the scenes. and it might be found that there were uses for the enthusiast, even if she did not turn out to be inspired. no doubt there were many comings and goings at this period which can only be traced confusedly through the depositions of jeanne's companions twenty-five years after. she had at least two interviews with baudricourt before the exorcism of the curé and his consequent change of procedure towards her. then, escorted by her uncle laxart, and apparently by jean de metz, she had made a pilgrimage to a shrine of st. nicolas, as already mentioned, on which occasion, being near nancy, she was sent for by the duke of lorraine, then lying ill at his castle in that city, who had a fancy to consult the young prophetess, sorceress--who could tell what she was?--on the subject apparently of his illness. he was the son of queen yolande of anjou, who was mother-in-law to charles vii., and it would no doubt be thought of some importance to secure his good opinion. jeanne gave the exalted patient no light on the subject of his health, but only the (probably unpleasing) advice to flee from the wrath of god and to be reconciled with his wife, from whom he was separated. he too, however, was moved by the sight of her and her straightforward, undeviating purpose. he gave her four francs, durand tells us,--not much of a present,--which she gave to her uncle, and which helped to buy her outfit. probably he made a good report of her to his mother, for shortly after her return to vaucouleurs (i again follow michelet who ought to be well informed) a messenger from chinon arrived to take her to the king.( ) in the councils of that troubled court, perhaps, the idea of a prodigy and miraculous leader, though she was nothing but a peasant girl, would be not without attraction, a thing to conjure withal, so far as the multitude were concerned. anyhow from any point of view, in the hopeless condition of affairs, it was expedient that nothing which gave promise of help, either real or visionary, should lightly be rejected. there was much anxiety no doubt in the careless court still dancing and singing in the midst of calamity, but the reception of the ambitious peasant would form an exciting incident at least, if nothing more important and notable. thus the whole anxious world of france stirred round that youthful figure in the little frontier town, repeating with many an alteration and exaggeration the sayings of jeanne, and those popular superstitions about the maid from lorraine which might be so naturally applied to her. it would seem, indeed, that she had herself attached some importance to this prophecy, for both her uncle laxart and her hostess at vaucouleurs report that she asked them if they had heard it: which question "stupefied" the latter, whose mind evidently jumped at once to the conviction that the prophecy was fulfilled. not in domremy itself, however, were these things considered with the same awe-stricken and admiring faith. nothing had softened the mood of jacques d'arc. it was a shame to the village _prud' homme_ to think of his daughter away from all the protection of home, living among men, encountering the young seigneurs who cared for no maiden's reputation, hearing the soldiers' rude talk, exposed to their insults, or worse still to their kindness. probably even now he thought of her as surrounded by troopers and men-at-arms, instead of the princes and peers with whom henceforth jeanne's lot was to be cast; but in the former case there would have perhaps been less to fear than in the latter. anyhow, jeanne's communications with her family were more painful to her than had been the jeers of baudricourt or the exorcism of the curé. they sent her angry orders to come back, threats of parental curses and abandonment. we may hope that the mother, grieved and helpless, had little to do with this persecution. the woman who had nourished her children upon saintly legend and scripture story could scarcely have been hard upon the child, of whom she, better than any, knew the perfect purity and steadfast resolution. one of the little household at least, revolted by the stern father's fury, perhaps secretly encouraged by the mother, broke away and joined his sister at a later period. but we hear, during her lifetime, little or nothing of pierre. much time, however, was passed in these preliminaries. the final start was not made till the d february, , when the permission is supposed to have come by the hands of colet de vienne, the king's messenger, who attended by a single archer, was to be her escort. it is possible that he had no mission to this effect, but he certainly did escort her to chinon. the whole town gathered before the house of baudricourt to see her depart. baudricourt, however, does not seem to have provided any guard for her. jean de metz, who had so chivalrously pledged himself to her service, with his friend de poulengy, equally ready for adventure, each with his servant, formed her sole protectors.( ) jean de metz had already sent her the clothes of one of his retainers, with the light breastplate and partial armour that suited it; and the townspeople had subscribed to buy her a further outfit, and a horse which seems to have cost sixteen francs--not so small a sum in those days as now. laxart declares himself to have been responsible for this outlay, though the money was afterwards paid by baudricourt, who gave jeanne a sword, which some of her historians consider a very poor gift: none, however, of her equipments would seem to have been costly. the little party set out thus, with a sanction of authority, from the captain's gate, the two gentlemen and the king's messenger at the head of the party with their attendants, and the maid in the midst. "go: and let what will happen," was the parting salutation of baudricourt. the gazers outside set up a cry when the decisive moment came, and someone, struck with the feeble force which was all the safeguard she had for her long journey through an agitated country--perhaps a woman in the sudden passion of misgiving which often follows enthusiasm,--called out to jeanne with an astonished outcry to ask how she could dare to go by such a dangerous road. "it was for that i was born," answered the fearless maid. the last thing she had done had been to write a letter to her parents, asking their pardon if she obeyed a higher command than theirs, and bidding them farewell. the french historians, with that amazement which they always show when they find a man behaving like a gentleman towards a woman confided to his honour, all pause with deep-drawn breath to note that the awe of jeanne's absolute purity preserved her from any unseemly overture, or even evil thought, on the part of her companions. we need not take up even the shadow of so grave a censure upon frenchmen in general, although in the far distance of the fifteenth century. the two young men, thus starting upon a dangerous adventure, pledged by their honour to protect and convey her safely to the king's presence, were noble and generous cavaliers, and we may well believe had no evil thoughts. they were not, however, without an occasional chill of reflection when once they had taken the irrevocable step of setting out upon this wild errand. they travelled by night to escape the danger of meeting bands of burgundians or english on the way, and sometimes had to ford a river to avoid the town, where they would have found a bridge. sometimes, too, they had many doubts, bertrand says, perhaps as to their reception at chinon, perhaps even whether their mission might not expose them to the ridicule of their kind, if not to unknown dangers of magic and contact with the evil one, should this wonderful girl turn out no inspired virgin but a pretender or sorceress. jean de metz informs us that she bade them not to fear, that she had been sent to do what she was now doing; that her brothers in paradise would tell her how to act, and that for the last four or five years her brothers in paradise and her god had told her that she must go to the war to save the kingdom of france. this phrase must have struck his ear, as he thus repeats it. her brothers in paradise! she had not apparently talked of them to anyone as yet, but now no one could hinder her more, and she felt herself free to speak. a great calm seems to have been in her soul. she had at last begun her work. how it was all to end for her she neither foresaw nor asked; she knew only what she had to do. when they ventured into a town she insisted on stopping to hear mass, bidding them fear nothing. "god clears the way for me," she said; "i was born for this," and so proceeded safe, though threatened with many dangers. there is something that breathes of supreme satisfaction and content in her repetition of those words. ( ) she was, however, acquainted with the simpler byword, that france should be destroyed by a woman and afterwards redeemed by a virgin, which she quoted to several persons on her first setting out. ( ) i have to thank mr. andrew lang for making the course of these events quite clear to myself. ( ) mr. andrew lang thinks that this appearance at toul was made after she had finally left domremy, and when she was already accompanied by the escort which was to attend her to chinon. ( ) mr. andrew lang will not hear of this. he thinks the man was a mere king's messenger with news, probably charged with the melancholy tidings of the loss at rouvray (battle of the herrings): and that the fact he did accompany jeanne and her little part was entirely accidental. ( ) her brother pierre is said by some to have been of the party. _la chronique de la pucelle_ says two of her brothers. mr. andrew lang, however, tells us that pierre did not join his sister's party till much later--in the beginning of june: and this is the statement of jean de metz. but quicherat is also of opinion that they both fought in the relief of orleans. chapter iii -- before the king. feb.-april, . jeanne and her little party were eleven days on the road, but do not seem to have encountered any special peril. they lodged sometimes in the security of a convent, sometimes in a village hostel, pursuing the long and tedious way across the great levels of midland france, which has so few features of beauty except in the picturesque towns with their castles and churches, which the escort avoided. at length they paused in the village of fierbois not far from chinon where the court was, in order to announce their arrival and ask for an audience, which was not immediately accorded. charles held his court with incredible gaiety and folly, in the midst of almost every disaster that could overtake a king, in the castle of chinon on the banks of the vienne. the situation and aspect of this noble building, now in ruins, is wonderfully like that of windsor castle. the great walls, interrupted and strengthened by huge towers, stretch along a low ridge of rocky hill, with the swift and clear river, a little broader and swifter than the thames, flowing at its foot. the red and high-pitched roofs of the houses clustered between the castle hill and the stream, give a point of resemblance the more. the large and ample dwelling, defensible, but with no thought of any need of defence, a midland castle surrounded by many a level league of wealthy country, which no hostile force should ever have power to get through, must have looked like the home of a well-established royalty. there was no sound or sight of war within its splendid enclosure. noble lords and gentlemen crowded the corridors; trains of gay ladies, attendant upon two queens, filled the castle with fine dresses and gay voices. there had been but lately a dreadful and indeed shameful defeat, inflicted by a mere english convoy of provisions upon a large force of french and scottish soldiers, the former led by such men as dunois, la hire, xaintrailles, etc., the latter by the constable of scotland, john stuart--which defeat might well have been enough to subdue every sound of revelry: yet charles's court was ringing with music and pleasantry, as if peace had reigned around. it may be believed that there were many doubts and questions how to receive this peasant from the fields, which prevented an immediate reply to her demand for an audience. from the first, de la tremoille, charles's prime minister and chief adviser, was strongly against any encouragement of the visionary, or dealings with the supernatural; but there would no doubt be others, hoping if not for a miraculous maid, yet at least for a passing wonder, who might kindle enthusiasm in the country and rouse the ignorant with hopes of a special blessing from heaven. the gayer and younger portion of the court probably expected a little amusement, above all, a new butt for their wit, or perhaps a soothsayer to tell their fortunes and promise good things to come. they had not very much to amuse them, though they made the best of it. the joys of paris were very far off; they were all but imprisoned in this dull province of touraine; nobody knew at what moment they might be forced to leave even that refuge. for the moment here was a new event, a little stir of interest, something to pass an hour. jeanne had to wait two days in chinon before she was granted an audience, but considering the carelessness of the court and the absence of any patron that was but a brief delay. the chamber of audience is now in ruins. a wild rose with long, arching, thorny branches and pale flowers, straggles over the greensward where once the floor was trod by so many gay figures. from the broken wall you look sheer down upon the shining river; one great chimney, which at that season must have been still the most pleasant centre of the large, draughty hall, shows at the end of the room, with a curious suggestion of warmth and light which makes ruin more conspicuous. the room must have been on the ground floor almost level with the soil towards the interior of the castle, but raised to the height of the cliffs outside. it was evening, an evening of march, and fifty torches lighted up the ample room; many noble personages, almost as great as kings, and clothed in the bewildering splendour of the time, and more than three hundred cavaliers of the best names in france filled it to overflowing. the peasant girl from domremy in the hose and doublet of a servant, a little travel-worn after her tedious journey, was led in by one of those splendid seigneurs, dazzled with the grandeur she had never seen before, looking about her in wonder to see which was the king--while charles, perhaps with boyish pleasure in the mystification, perhaps with a little half-conviction stealing over him that there might be something more in it, stood among the smiling crowd. the young stranger looked round upon all those amused, light-minded, sceptical faces, and without a moment's hesitation went forward and knelt down before him. "gentil dauphin," she said, "god give you good life." "but it is not i that am the king; there is the king," said charles. "gentil prince, it is you and no other," she said; then rising from her knee: "gentil dauphin, i am jeanne the maid. i am sent to you by the king of heaven to tell you that you shall be consecrated and crowned at rheims, and shall be lieutenant of the king of heaven, who is king of france." the little masquerade had failed, the jest was over. there would be little more laughing among the courtiers, when they saw the face of charles grow grave. he took the new-comer aside, perhaps to that deep recess of the window where in the darkening night the glimmer of the clear, flowing river, the great vault of sky would still be visible dimly, outside the circle of the blazing interior with all its smoky lights. charles vii. of france was, like many of his predecessors, a _pauvre sire_ enough. he had thought more of his amusements than of the troubles of his country; but a wild and senseless gaiety will sometimes spring from despair as well as from lightness of heart; and after all, the dread responsibility, the sense that in all his helplessness and inability to do anything he was still the man who ought to do all, would seem to have moved him from time to time. a secret doubt in his heart, divulged to no man, had added bitterness to the conviction of his own weakness. was he indeed the heir of france? had he any right to that sustaining confidence which would have borne up his heart in the midst of every discouragement? his very mother had given him up and set him aside. he was described as the so-called dauphin in treaties signed by charles and isabeau his parents. if anyone knew, she knew; and was it possible that more powerful even than the english, more cruel than the burgundians, this stain of illegitimacy was upon him, making all effort vain? there is no telling where the sensitive point is in any man's heart, and little worthy as was this king, the story we are here told has a thrill of truth in it. it is reported by a certain sala, who declares that he had it from the lips of charles's favourite and close follower, the seigneur de boisi, a courtier who, after the curious custom of the time, shared even the bed of his master. this was confided to boisi by the king in the deepest confidence, in the silence of the wakeful night: "this was in the time of the good king charles, when he knew not what step to take, and did nothing but think how to redeem his life: for as i have told you he was surrounded by enemies on all sides. the king in this extreme thought, went in one morning to his oratory all alone; and there he made a prayer to our lord, in his heart, without pronouncing any words, in which he asked of him devoutly that if he were indeed the true heir, descended from the royal house of france, and that justly the kingdom was his, that he would be pleased to guard and defend him, or at the worst to give him grace to escape into spain or scotland, whose people, from all antiquity, were brothers-in-arms, friends and allies of the kings of france, and that he might find a refuge there." perhaps there is some excuse for a young man's endeavour to forget himself in folly or even in dissipation when his secret thoughts are so despairing as these. it was soon after this melancholy moment that the arrival of jeanne took place. the king led her aside, touched as all were, by her look of perfect sincerity and good faith; but it is she herself, not charles, who repeats what she said to him. "i have to tell you," said the young messenger of god, "on the part of my lord (_messire_) that you are the true heir of france and the son of the king; he has sent me to conduct you to rheims that you may receive your consecration and your crown,"--perhaps here, jeanne caught some look which she did not understand in his eyes, for she adds with, one cannot but think a touch of sternness--"if you will." was it a direct message from god in answer to his prayer, uttered within his own heart, without words, so that no one could have guessed that secret? at least it would appear that charles thought so: for how should this peasant maid know the secret fear that had gnawed at his heart? "when thou wast in the garden under the fig-tree i saw thee." great was the difference between the israelite without guile and the troubled young man, with whose fate the career of a great nation was entangled; but it is not difficult to imagine what the effect must have been on the mind of charles when he was met by this strange, authoritative statement, uttered like all that jeanne said, _de la part de dieu_. the impression thus made, however, was on charles alone, and he was surrounded by councillors, so much the more pedantic and punctilious as they were incapable, and placed amidst pressing necessities with which in themselves they had no power to cope. it may easily be allowed, also, that to risk any hopes still belonging to the hapless young king on the word of a peasant girl was in itself, according to every law of reason, madness and folly. she would seem to have had the women on her side always and at every point. the church did not stir, or else was hostile; the commanders and military men about, regarded with scornful disgust the idea that an enterprise which they considered hopeless should be confided to an ignorant woman--all with perfect reason we are obliged to allow. probably it was to gain time--yet without losing the aid of such a stimulus to the superstitious among the masses--and to retard any rash undertaking--that it was proposed to subject jeanne to an examination of doctors and learned men touching her faith and the character of her visions, which all this time had been of continual recurrence, yet charged with no further revelation, no mystic creed, but only with the one simple, constantly repeated command. accordingly, after some preliminary handling by half a dozen bishops, jeanne was taken to poitiers--where the university and the local parliament, all the learning, law, and ecclesiastical wisdom which were on the side of the king, were assembled--to undergo this investigation. it is curious that the entire history of this wildest and strangest of all visionary occurrences is to be found in a series of processes at law, each part recorded and certified under oath; but so it is. the village maid was placed at the bar, before a number of acute legists, ecclesiastics, and statesmen, to submit her to a not-too-benevolent cross-examination. several of these men were still alive at the time of the rehabilitation and gave their recollections of this examination, though its formal records have not been preserved. a dominican monk, aymer, one of an order she loved, addressed her gravely with the severity with which that institution is always credited. "you say that god will deliver france; if he has so determined, he has no need of men-at-arms." "ah!" cried the girl, with perhaps a note of irritation in her voice, "the men must fight; it is god who gives the victory." to another discomfited brother, jeanne, exasperated, answered with a little roughness, showing that our maid, though gentle as a child to all gentle souls, was no piece of subdued perfection, but a woman of the fields, and lately much in the company of rough-spoken men. he was of limoges, a certain brother seguin, "_bien aigre homme_," and disposed apparently to weaken the trial by questions without importance: he asked her what language her celestial visitors spoke? "better than yours," answered the peasant girl. he could not have been, as we say in scotland, altogether "an ill man," for he acknowledged that he spoke the patois of his district, and therefore that the blow was fair. but perhaps for the moment he was irritated too. he asked her, a question equally unnecessary, "do you believe in god?" to which with more and more impatience she made a similar answer: "better than you do." there was nothing to be made of one so well able to defend herself. "words are all very well," said the monk, "but god would not have us believe you, unless you show us some sign." to this jeanne made an answer more dignified, though still showing signs of exasperation, "i have not come to poitiers to give signs," she said; "but take me to orleans--i will then show the signs i am sent to show. give me as small a band as you please, but let me go." the situation of orleans was at the time a desperate one. it was besieged by a strong army of english, who had built a succession of towers round the city, from which to assail it, after the manner of the times. the town lies in the midst of the plain of the loire, with not so much as a hillock to offer any advantage to the besiegers. therefore these great works were necessary in face of a very strenuous resistance, and the possibility of provisioning the besieged, which their river secured. the english from their high towers kept up a disastrous fire, which, though their artillery was of the rudest kind, did great execution. the siege was conducted by eminent generals. the works were of themselves great fortifications, the assailants numerous, and strengthened by the prestige of almost unbroken success; there seemed no human hope of the deliverance of the town unless by an overwhelming army, which the king's party did not possess, or by some wonderful and utterly unexpected event. jeanne had always declared the destruction of the english and the relief of orleans to be the first step in her mission. besides the formal and official examination of her faith and character, held at poitiers, private inquests of all kinds were made concerning of the claims of the miraculous maid. she was visited by every curious person, man or woman, in the neighbourhood, and plied with endless questions, so that her simple personal story, and that of her revelations--_mes voix_, as she called them--became familiarly known from her own report, to the whole country round about. the women pressed a question specially interesting--for no doubt, many a good mother half convinced otherwise, shook her head at jeanne's costume--why she wore the dress of a man? for which the maid gave very good reasons: in the first place because it was the only dress for fighting, which, though so far from her desires or from the habits of her life, was henceforward to be her work; and also because in her strange circumstances, constrained as she was to live among men, she considered it safest for herself--statements which evidently convinced the minds of the questioners. it was, no doubt, good policy to make her thus widely and generally known, and the result was a daily growing enthusiasm for her and belief in her, in all classes. the result of the formal process was that the doctors could find nothing against her, and they reluctantly allowed that the king might lawfully take what advantage he could of her offered services. jeanne was then brought back to chinon, where she was lodged in one of the great towers still standing, though no special room is pointed out as hers. and there she was subjected to another process, more penetrating still than the interrogations of the graver tribunals. the queens and their ladies and all the women of the court took her in hand. they inquired into her history in every subtle and intimate feminine way, testing her innocence and purity; and once more she came out triumphant. the final judgment was given as follows: "after hearing all these reports, the king taking into consideration the great goodness that was in the maid, and that she declared herself to be sent by god, it was by the said seigneur and his council determined that from henceforward he should make use of her for his wars, since it was for this that she was sent." it was now necessary to equip jeanne for her service. she had a _maison_, an _état majeur_, or staff, formed for her, the chief of which, jean d'aulon, already distinguished and worthy of such a trust never left her thenceforward until the end of her active career. her chaplain, jean pasquerel, also followed her fortunes faithfully. charles would have given her a sword to replace the probably indifferent weapon given her by baudricourt at vaucouleurs; but jeanne knew where to find the sword destined for her. she gave orders that someone should be sent to fierbois, the village at which she had paused on her way to chinon, to fetch a sword which would be found there buried behind the high altar of the church of st. catherine. to make this as little miraculous as possible, we are told by some historians that it was common for knights to be buried with their arms, and that jeanne, in her visit to this church, where she heard three masses in succession to make up for the absence of constant religious services on her journey--had probably seen some tomb or other token that such an interment had taken place. however, as we are compelled to receive the far greater miracle of jeanne herself and her work, without explanation, it is foolish to take the trouble to attempt any explanation of so small a matter as this. the sword in fact was found, by the clergy of the church, and was by them cleaned and polished and put in a scabbard of crimson velvet, scattered over with fleur-de-lys in gold, for her use. her standard, which she considered of the greatest importance was made apparently at tours. it was of white linen, fringed with silk and embroidered with a figure of the saviour holding a globe in his hands, while an angel knelt at either side in adoration. jhesus' maria was inscribed at the foot. a repetition of this banner, which must have been re-copied from age to age is to be seen now at tours. having indicated the exact device to be emblazoned upon the banner, as dictated to her by her saints,--margaret and catherine--jeanne announced her intention of carrying it herself, a somewhat surprising office for one who was to act as a general. but it was the command of her heavenly guides. "take the standard on the part of god, and carry it boldly," they had said. she had, besides, a simple, half-childish intention of her own in this, which she explained shame-faced--she had no wish to use her sword though she loved it, and would kill no man. the banner was a more safe occupation, and saved her from all possibility of blood-shedding; it must however, have required the robust arm of a peasant to sustain the heavy weight. it will show how long a time all these examinations and preparations had taken when we read that jeanne set out from blois, where she had passed some time in military preparations, only on the th day of april; nearly two whole months had thus been taken up in testing her truth, and arranging details, trifling and unnecessary in her eyes:--a period which had been passed in great anxiety by the people of orleans, with the huge bastilles of the english--three of which were named paris, rouen, and london--towering round them, their provisions often intercepted, all the business of life come to a standstill, and the overwhelming responsibility upon them of being almost the last barrier between the invader and the final subjugation of france. it is strange to add that, judging by ordinary rules, the garrison of orleans ought to have been quite sufficient in itself in numbers and science of war, to have beaten and dispersed the english force which had thus succeeded in shutting them in; there were many notable captains among them, with dunois, known as the bastard of orleans, one of the most celebrated and brave of french generals, at their head. dunois was in no way inferior to the generals of the english army; he was popular, beloved by the people and soldiers alike, and though illegitimate, of the house of orleans, one of the native seigneurs of the place. the wonder is how he and his officers permitted the building of these towers, and the shutting in of the town which they were quite strong enough to protect. but it was a losing game which they were playing, a part which does not suit the genius of the nation; and the superstition in favour of the english who had won so many battles with all the disadvantages on their side,--cutting the finest armies to pieces--was strong upon the imagination of the time. it seemed a fate which no valour or skill upon the side of the french could avert. dunois, himself an unlikely person, one would have thought, to yield the honour of the fight to a woman, seems to have perceived that without a strong counter-motive, not within the range of ordinary methods, the situation was beyond hope. accordingly, on the th or th of april, jeanne set out at the head of her little army, accompanied by a great number of generals and captains. she had been equipped by the queen of sicily (with a touch of that keen sense of decorative effect which belonged to the age) in white armour inlaid with silver--all shining like her own st. michael himself, a radiance of whiteness and glory under the sun--armed _de toutes pièces sauve la teste_, her uncovered head rising in full relief from the dazzling breastplate and gorget. this is the description given of her by an eye-witness a little later. the country is flat as the palm of one's hand. the white armour must have flashed back the sun for miles and miles of the level road, to the eyes which from the height of any neighbouring tower watched the party setting out. it is all fertile now, the richest plain, and even then, corn and wine must have been in full bourgeon, the great fresh greenness of the big leaves coming out upon such low stumps of vine as were left in the soil; but the devastated country was in those days covered with a wild growth like the _macchia_ of italian wilds, which half hid the movements of the expedition. they went by the loire to tours, where jeanne had been assigned a dwelling of her own, with the estate of a general; and from thence to blois, where they had to wait for some days while the convoy of provisions, which they were to convey to orleans, was being prepared. and there jeanne fulfilled one of the preliminary duties of her mission. she had informed her examiners at poitiers that she had been commanded to write to the english generals before attacking them, appealing to them _de la part de dieu_, to give up their conquests, and leave france to the french. the letter which we quote would seem to have been dictated by her at poitiers, probably to the confessor who now formed part of her suite and who attended her wherever she went: jhesus maria. king of england, and you duke of bedford calling yourself regent of france, you, william de la poule, comte de sulford, john, lord of talbot, and you thomas, lord of scales, who call yourself lieutenants of the said bedford, listen to the king of heaven: give back to the maid who is here sent on the part of god the king of heaven, the keys of all the good towns which you have taken by violence in his france. she is ready to make peace if you will hear reason and be just towards france and pay for what you have taken. and you archers, brothers-in-arms, gentles and others who are before the town of orleans, go in peace on the part of god; if you do not so you will soon have news of the maid who will see you shortly to your great damage. king of england, if you do not this, i am captain in this war, and in whatsoever place in france i find your people i will make them go away. i am sent here on the part of god the king of heaven to push you all forth of france. if you obey i will be merciful. and be not strong in your own opinion, for you do not hold the kingdom from god the son of the holy mary, but it is held by charles the true heir, for god, the king of heaven so wills, and it is revealed by the maid who shall enter paris in good company. if you will not believe this news on the part of god and the maid, in whatever place you may find yourselves we shall make our way there, and make so great a commotion as has not been in france for a thousand years, if you will not hear reason. and believe this, that the king of heaven will send more strength to the maid than you can bring against her in all your assaults, to her and to her good men-at-arms. you, duke of bedford, the maid prays and requires you to destroy no more. if you act according to reason you may still come in her company where the french shall do the greatest work that has ever been done for christianity. answer then if you will still continue against the city of orleans. if you do so you will soon recall it to yourself by great misfortunes. written the saturday of holy week ( march, ).( ) jeanne had by this time made a wonderful moral revolution in her little army; most likely she had not been in the least aware what an army was, until this moment; but frank and fearless, she had penetrated into every corner, and it was not in her to permit those abuses at which an ordinary captain has to smile. the pernicious and shameful crowd of camp followers fled before her like shadows before the day. she stopped the big oaths and unthinking blasphemies which were so common, so that la hire, one of the chief captains, a rough and ready gascon, was reduced to swear by his _bâton_, no more sacred name being permitted to him. perhaps this was the origin of the harmless swearing which abounds in france, meaning probably just as much and as little as bigger oaths in careless mouths; but no doubt the soldiers' language was very unfit for gentle ears. jeanne moved among the wondering ranks, all radiant in her silver armour and with her virginal undaunted countenance, exhorting all those rude and noisy brothers to take thought of their duties here, and of the other life that awaited them. she would stop the march of the army that a conscience-stricken soldier might make his confession, and desired the priests to hear it if necessary without ceremony, or church, under the first tree. her tender heart was such that she shrank from any man's death, and her hair rose up on her head, as she said, at the sight of french blood shed--although her mission was to shed it on all sides for a great end. but the one thing she could not bear was that either frenchmen or englishmen should die unconfessed, "unhouseled, disappointed, unannealed." the army went along attended by songs of choristers and masses of priests, the grave and solemn music of the church accompanied strangely by the fanfares and bugle notes. what a strange procession to pass along the great loire in its spring fulness, the raised banners and crosses, and that dazzling white figure, all effulgence, reflected in the wayward, quick flowing stream! la hire, who is like a figure out of dumas, and indeed did service as a model to that delightful romancer, had come from orleans to escort jeanne upon her way, and dunois met her as she approached the town. there could not be found more unlikely companions than these two, to conduct to a great battle the country maid who was to carry the honours of the day from them both, and make men fight like heroes, who under them did nothing but run away. the candour and true courage of such leaders in circumstances so extraordinary, are beyond praise, for it was an offence both to their pride and skill in their profession, had she been anything less than the messenger of god which she claimed to be; and these rude soldiers were not men to be easily moved by devout imaginations. there would seem, however, even in the case of the greater of the two, to have arisen a strange friendship and mutual understanding between the famous man of war and the peasant girl. jeanne, always straightforward and simple, speaks to him, not with the downcast eyes of her humility, but as an equal, as if the great dunois had been a _prud' homme_ of her own degree. there is no appearance indeed that the maid allowed herself to be overborne now by any shyness or undue humility. she speaks loudly, so as to be heard by those fighting men, taking something of their own brief and decisive tone, often even impatient, as one who would not be put aside either by cunning or force. her meeting with dunois makes this at once evident. she had been deceived in the manner of her approach to orleans, her companions, among whom there were several field-marshals and distinguished leaders, taking advantage of her ignorance of the place to lead her by the opposite bank of the river instead of that on which the english towers were built, which she desired to attack at once. this was the beginning of a long series of deceits and hostile combinations, by which at every step of her way she was met and retarded; but it turned, as these devices generally did, to the discomfiture of the adverse captains. she crossed the river at chécy above orleans, to meet dunois who had come so far to meet her. it will be seen by the conversation which she held with him on his first appearance, how completely jeanne had learnt to assert herself, and how much she had overcome any fear of man. "are you the bastard of orleans?" she said. "i am; and glad of your coming," he replied. "is it you who have had me led to this side of the river and not to the bank on which talbot is and his english?" he answered that he and the wisest of the leaders had thought it the best and safest way. "the counsel of god, our lord, is more sure and more powerful than yours," she replied. the expedition, as a matter of fact, had to turn back, and to lose precious time, there being, it is to be presumed, no means of transporting so large a force across the river. the large convoy of provisions which jeanne brought was embarked in boats while the majority of the army returned to blois, in order to cross by the bridge. jeanne, however, having freely expressed her opinion, adapted herself to the circumstances, though extremely averse to separate herself from her soldiers, good men who had confessed and prepared their souls for every emergency. she finally consented, however, to ride on with dunois and la hire. the wind was against the convoy, so that the heavy boats, deeply laden with beeves and corn, had a dangerous and slow voyage before them. "have patience," cried jeanne; "by the help of god all will go well"; and immediately the wind changed, to the astonishment and joy of all, and the boats arrived in safety "in spite of the english, who offered no hindrance whatever," as she had predicted. the little party made their way along the bank, and in the twilight of the april evening, about eight o'clock, entered orleans. the deliverer, it need not be said, was hailed with joy indescribable. she was on a white horse, and carried, dunois says, the banner in her hand, though it was carried before her when she entered the town. the white figure in the midst of those darkly gleaming mailed men, would in itself throw a certain glory through the dimness of the night, as she passed the gates and came into view by the blaze of all the torches, and the lights in the windows, over the dark swarming crowds of the citizens. her white banner waving, her white armour shining, it was little wonder that the throng that filled the streets received the maid "as if they had seen god descending among them." "and they had good reason," says the chronicle, "for they had suffered many disturbances, labours, and pains, and, what is worse, great doubt whether they ever should be delivered. but now all were comforted, as if the siege were over, by the divine strength that was in this simple maid whom they regarded most affectionately, men, women, and little children. there was a marvellous press around her to touch her or the horse on which she rode, so much so that one of the torchbearers approached too near and set fire to her pennon; upon which she touched her horse with her spurs, and turning him cleverly, extinguished the flame, as if she had long followed the wars." there could have been nothing she resembled so much as st. michael, the warrior-angel, who, as all the world knew, was her chief counsellor and guide, and who, no doubt, blazed, a familiar figure, from some window in the cathedral to which this his living picture rode without a pause, to give thanks to god before she thought of refreshment or rest. she spoke to the people who surrounded her on every side as she went on through the tumultuous streets, bidding them be of good courage and that if they had faith they should escape from all their troubles. and it was only after she had said her prayers and rendered her thanksgiving, that she returned to the house selected for her--the house of an important personage, jacques boucher, treasurer to the duke of orleans, not like the humble places where she had formerly lodged. the houses of that age were beautiful, airy and light, with much graceful ornament and solid comfort, the arched and vaulted gothic beginning to give place to those models of domestic architecture which followed the renaissance, with their ample windows and pleasant space and breadth. there the table was spread with a joyous meal in honour of this wonderful guest, to which, let us hope, dunois and la hire and the rest did full justice. but jeanne was indifferent to the feast. she mixed with water the wine poured for her into a silver cup, and dipped her bread in it, five or six small slices. the visionary peasant girl cared for none of the dainty meats. and then she retired to the comfort of a peaceful chamber, where the little daughter of the house shared her bed: strange return to the days when hauvette and mengette in domremy lay by her side and talked as girls love to do, through half the silent night. perhaps little charlotte, too, lay awake with awe to wonder at that other young head on the pillow, a little while ago shut into the silver helmet, and shining like the archangel's. the _état majeur_, the chevalier d'aulon, jean de metz, and bertrand de poulengy, who had never left her, first friends and most faithful, and her brother pierre d'arc, were lodged in the same house. it was the last night of april, . ( ) the dates must of course be reckoned by the old style.-- this letter was dispatched from tours, during her pause there. chapter iv -- the relief of orleans. may - , . next morning there was a council of war among the many leaders now collected within the town. it was the eager desire of jeanne that an assault should be made at once, in all the enthusiasm of the moment, upon the english towers, without waiting even for the arrival of the little army which she had preceded. but the captains of the defence who had borne the heat and burden of the day, and who might naturally enough be irritated by the enthusiasm with which this stranger had been received, were of a different opinion. i quote here a story, for which i am told there is no foundation whatever, touching a personage who probably never existed, so that the reader may take it as he pleases, with indulgence for the writer's weakness, or indignation at her credulity. it seems to me, however, to express very naturally a sentiment which must have existed among the many captains who had been fighting unsuccessfully for months in defence of the beleaguered city. a certain guillaume de gamache felt himself insulted above all by the suggestion. "what," he cried, "is the advice of this hussy from the fields (_une péronnelle de bas lieu_) to be taken against that of a knight and captain! i will fold up my banner and become again a simple soldier. i would rather have a nobleman for my master than a woman whom nobody knows." dunois, who was too wise to weaken the forces at his command by such a quarrel, is said to have done his best to reconcile and soothe the angry captain. this, however, if it was true, was only a mild instance of the perpetual opposition which the maid encountered from the very beginning of her career and wherever she went. notwithstanding her victories, she remained through all her career a _péronnelle_ to these men of war (with the noble exception, of course, of alençon, dunois, xaintrailles, la hire, and others). they were sore and wounded by her appearance and her claims. if they could cheat her, balk her designs, steal a march in any way, they did so, from first to last, always excepting the few who were faithful to her. dunois could afford to be magnanimous, but the lesser men were jealous, envious, embittered. a _péronnelle_, a woman nobody knew! and they themselves were belted knights, experienced soldiers, of the best blood of france. it was not unnatural; but this atmosphere of hate, malice, and mortification forms the background of the picture wherever the maid moves in her whiteness, illuminating to us the whole scene. the english hated her lustily as their enemy and a witch, casting spells and enchantments so that the strength was sucked out of a man's arm and the courage from his heart: but the frenchmen, all but those who were devoted to her, regarded her with an ungenerous opposition, the hate of men shamed and mortified by every triumph she achieved. jeanne was angry, too, and disappointed, more than she had been by all discouragements before. she had believed, perhaps, that once in the field these oppositions would be over, and that her mission would be rapidly accomplished. but she neither rebelled nor complained. what she did was to occupy herself about what she felt to be her business, without reference to any commander. she sent out two heralds,( ) who were attached to her staff, and therefore at her personal disposal, to summon once more talbot and glasdale (classidas, as the french called him) _de la part de dieu_ to evacuate their towers and return home. it would seem that in her miraculous soul she had a visionary hope that this appeal might be successful. what so noble, what so christian, as that the one nation should give up, of free-will, its attempt upon the freedom and rights of another, if once the duty were put simply before it--and both together joining hands, march off, as she had already suggested, to do the noblest deed that had ever yet been done for christianity? that same evening she rode forth with her little train; and placing herself on the town end of the bridge (which had been broken in the middle), as near as the breach would permit to the bastille, or fort of the tourelles, which was built across the further end of the bridge, on the left side of the loire--called out to the enemy, summoning them once more to withdraw while there was time. she was overwhelmed, as might have been expected, with a storm of abusive shouts and evil words, classidas and his captains hurrying to the walls to carry on the fierce exchange of abuse. to be called dairy-maid and _péronnelle_ was a light matter, but some of the terms used were so cruel that, according to some accounts, she betrayed her womanhood by tears, not prepared apparently for the use of such foul weapons against her. the _journal du siège_ declares, however, that she was "aucunement yrée" (angry), but answered that they lied, and rode back to the city. the next sunday, the st of may, dunois, alarmed by the delay of his main body, set out for blois to meet them, and we are told that jeanne accompanied him to the special point of danger, where the english from their fortifications might have stopped his progress, and took up a position there, along with la hire, between the expedition and the enemy. but in the towers not a man budged, not a shot was fired. it was again a miracle, and she had predicted it. the party of dunois marched on in safety, and jeanne returned to orleans, once more receiving on the breeze some words of abuse from the defenders of those battlements, which sent forth no more dangerous missile, and replying again with her summons, "_retournez de la par dieu à angleterre._" the townsfolk watched her coming and going with an excitement impossible to describe; they walked by the side of her charger to the cathedral, which was the end of every progress; they talked to her, all speaking together, pressing upon her--and she to them, bidding them to have no fear. "messire has sent me," she said again and again. she went out again, wednesday, th may, on the return of dunois, to meet the army, with the same result, that they entered quietly, the english not firing a shot. on this same day, in the afternoon, after the early dinner, there happened a wonderful scene. jeanne, it appeared, had fallen asleep after her meal, no doubt tired with the expedition of the morning, and her chief attendant, d'aulon, who had accompanied dunois to fetch the troops from blois, being weary after his journey, had also stretched himself on a couch to rest. they were all tired, the entry of the troops having been early in the morning, a fact of which the angry captains of orleans, who had not shared in that expedition, took advantage to make a secret sortie unknown to the new chiefs. all at once the maid awoke in agitation and alarm. her "voices" had awakened her from her sleep. "my council tell me to go against the english," she cried; "but if to assail their towers or to meet fastolfe i cannot tell." as she came to the full command of her faculties her trouble grew. "the blood of our soldiers is flowing," she said; "why did they not tell me? my arms, my arms!" then she rushed down stairs to find her page amusing himself in the tranquil afternoon, and called to him for her horse. all was quiet, and no doubt her attendants thought her mad: but d'aulon, who knew better than to contradict his mistress, armed her rapidly, and luis, the page, brought her horse to the door. by this time there began to rise a distant rumour and outcry, at which they all pricked their ears. as jeanne put her foot in the stirrup she perceived that her standard was wanting, and called to the page, louis de contes, above, to hand it to her out of the window. then with the heavy flag-staff in her hand she set spurs to her horse, her attendants one by one clattering after her, and dashed onward "so that the fire flashed from the pavement under the horse's feet." jeanne's presentiment was well-founded. there had been a private expedition against the english fort of st. loup carried out quietly to steal a march upon her--gamache, possibly, or other malcontents of his temper, in the hope perhaps of making use of her prestige to gain a victory without her presence. but it had happened with this sally as with many others which had been made from orleans; and when jeanne appeared outside the gate which she and the rest of the followers after her had almost forced--coming down upon them at full gallop, her standard streaming, her white armour in a blaze of reflection, she met the fugitives flying back towards the shelter of the town. she does not seem to have paused or to have deigned to address a word to them, though the troop of soldiers and citizens who had snatched arms and flung themselves after her, arrested and turned them back. straight to the foot of the tower she went, dunois startled in his turn, thundering after her. it is not for a woman to describe, any more than it was for a woman to execute such a feat of war. it is said that she put herself at the head of the citizens, dunois at the head of the soldiers. one moment of pity and horror and heart-sickness jeanne had felt when she met several wounded men who were being carried towards the town. she had never seen french blood shed before, and the dreadful thought that they might die unconfessed, overwhelmed her soul; but this was but an incident of her breathless gallop to the encounter. to isolate the tower which was attacked was the first necessity, and then the conflict was furious--the english discouraged, but fighting desperately against a mysterious force which overwhelmed them, at the same time that it redoubled the ardour of every frenchman. lord talbot sent forth parties from the other forts to help their companions, but these were met in the midst by the rest of the army arriving from orleans, which stopped their course. it was not till evening, "the hour of vespers," that the bastille was finally taken, with great slaughter, the orleanists giving little quarter. during these dreadful hours the maid was everywhere visible with her standard, the most marked figure, shouting to her men, weeping for the others, not fighting herself so far as we hear, but always in the front of the battle. when she went back to orleans triumphant, she led a band of prisoners with her, keeping a wary eye upon them that they might not come to harm. the next day, may th, was the feast of the ascension, and it was spent by jeanne in rest and in prayer. but the other leaders were not so devout. they held a crowded and anxious council of war, taking care that no news of it should reach the ears of the maid. when, however, they had decided upon the course to pursue they sent for her, and intimated to her their decision to attack only the smaller forts, which she heard with great impatience, not sitting down, but walking about the room in disappointment and anger. it is difficult( ) for the present writer to follow the plans of this council or to understand in what way jeanne felt herself contradicted and set aside. however it was, the fact seems certain that their plan failed at first, the english having themselves abandoned one of the smaller forts on the right side of the river and concentrated their forces in the greater ones of les augustins and les tourelles on the left bank. for all this, reference to the map is necessary, which will make it quite clear. it was classidas, as he is called, glasdale, the most furious enemy of france, and one of the bravest of the english captains who held the former, and for a moment succeeded in repulsing the attack. the fortune of war seemed about to turn back to its former current, and the french fell back on the boats which had brought them to the scene of action, carrying the maid with them in their retreat. but she perceived how critical the moment was, and reining up her horse from the bank, down which she was being forced by the crowd, turned back again, closely followed by la hire, and at once, no doubt, by the stouter hearts who only wanted a leader--and charging the english, who had regained their courage as the white armour of the witch disappeared, and were in full career after the fugitives--drove them back to their fortifications, which they gained with a rush, leaving the ground strewn with the wounded and dying. jeanne herself did not draw bridle till she had planted her standard on the edge of the moat which surrounded the tower. michelet is very brief concerning this first victory, and claims only that "the success was due in part to the maid," although the crowd of captains and men-at-arms where by themselves quite sufficient for the work, had there been any heart in them. but this was true to fact in almost every case: and it is clear that she was simply the heart, which was the only thing wanted to those often beaten frenchmen; where she was, where they could hear her robust young voice echoing over all the din, they were as men inspired; when the impetus of their flight carried her also away, they became once more the defeated of so many battles. the effect upon the english was equally strong; when the back of jeanne was turned, they were again the men of agincourt; when she turned upon them, her white breastplate blazing out like a star, the sunshine striking dazzling rays from her helmet, they trembled before the sorceress; an angel to her own side, she was the very spirit of magic and witchcraft to her opponents. classidas, or which captain soever of the english side it might happen to be, blaspheming from the battlements, hurled all the evil names of which a trooper was capable, upon her, while she from below summoned them, in different tones of appeal and menace, calling upon them to yield, to go home, to give up the struggle. her form, her voice are always evident in the midst of the great stone bullets, the cloth-yard shafts that were flying--they were so near, the one above, the other below, that they could hear each other speak. on the th of may the fort of les augustins on the left bank was taken. it will be seen by reference to the map, that this bastille, an ancient convent, stood at some distance from the river, in peaceful times a little way beyond the bridge, and no doubt a favourite sunday walk from the city. the bridge was now closed up by the frowning bulk of the tourelles built upon it, with a smaller tower or "boulevard" on the left bank communicating with it by a drawbridge. when les augustins was taken, the victorious french turned their arms against this boulevard, but as night had fallen by this time, they suspended the fighting, having driven back the english, who had made a sally in help of les augustins. here in the dark, which suited their purpose, another council was held. the captains decided that they would now pursue their victory no further, the town being fully supplied with provisions and joyful with success, but that they would await the arrival of reinforcements before they proceeded further; probably their object was solely to get rid of jeanne, to conclude the struggle without her, and secure the credit of it. the council was held in the camp within sight of the fort, by the light of torches; after she had been persuaded to withdraw, on account of a slight wound in her foot from a calthrop, it is said. this message was sent after her into orleans. she heard it with quiet disdain. "you have held your council, and i have had mine," she said calmly to the messengers; then turning to her chaplain, "come to me to-morrow at dawn," she said, "and do not leave me; i shall have much to do. my blood will be shed. i shall be wounded( ) to-morrow," pointing above her right breast. up to this time no weapon had touched her; she had stood fast among all the flying arrows, the fierce play of spear and sword, and had taken no harm. in the morning early, at sunrise, she dashed forth from the town again, though the generals, her hosts, and all the authorities who were in the plot endeavoured to detain her. "stay with us, jeanne," said the people with whom she lodged--official people, much above the rank of the maid--"stay and help us to eat this fish fresh out of the river." "keep it for this evening," she said, "and i shall return by the bridge and bring you some goddens to have their share." she had already brought in a party of the goddens on the night before to protect them from the fury of the crowd. the peculiarity of this promise lay in the fact that the bridge was broken, and could not be passed, even without that difficulty, without passing through the tourelles and the boulevard which blocked it at the other end. at the closed gates another great official stood by, to prevent her passing, but he was soon swept away by the flood of enthusiasts who followed the white horse and its white rider. the crowd flung themselves into the boats to cross the river with her, horse and man. les tourelles stood alone, black and frowning across the shining river in its early touch of golden sunshine, on the south side of the loire, the lower tower of the boulevard on the bank blackened with the fire of last night's attack, and the smoking ruins of les augustins beyond. the french army, whom orleans had been busy all night feeding and encouraging, lay below, not yet apparently moving either for action or retreat. jeanne plunged among them like a ray of light, d'aulon carrying her banner; and passing through the ranks, she took up her place on the border of the moat of the boulevard. her followers rushed after with that _élan_ of desperate and uncalculating valour which was the great power of the french arms. in the midst of the fray the girl's clear voice, _assez voix de femme_, kept shouting encouragements, _de la part de dieu_ always her war-cry. "_bon c�ur, bonne espérance_," she cried--"the hour is at hand." but after hours of desperate fighting the spirit of the assailants began to flag. jeanne, who apparently did not at any time take any active part in the struggle, though she exposed herself to all its dangers, seized a ladder, placed it against the wall, and was about to mount, when an arrow struck her full in the breast. the maid fell, the crowd closed round; for a moment it seemed as if all were lost. here we have over again in the fable our friend gamache. it is a pretty story, and though we ask no one to take it for absolute fact, there is no reason why some such incident might not have occurred. gamache, the angry captain who rather than follow a _péronnelle_ to the field was prepared to fold his banner round its staff, and give up his rank, is supposed to have been the nearest to her when she fell. it was he who cleared the crowd from about her and raised her up. "take my horse," he said, "brave creature. bear no malice. i confess that i was in the wrong." "it is i that should be wrong if i bore malice," cried jeanne, "for never was a knight so courteous" (_chevalier si bien apprins_). she was surrounded immediately by her people, the chaplain whom she had bidden to keep near her, her page, all her special attendants, who would have conveyed her out of the fight had she consented. jeanne had the courage to pull the arrow out of the wound with her own hand,--"it stood a hand breadth out" behind her shoulder--but then, being but a girl and this her first experience of the sort, notwithstanding her armour and her rank as general-in-chief, she cried with the pain, this commander of seventeen. somebody then proposed to charm the wound with an incantation, but the maid indignant, cried out, "i would rather die." finally a compress soaked in oil was placed upon it, and jeanne withdrew a little with her chaplain, and made her confession to him, as one who might be about to die. but soon her mood changed. she saw the assailants waver and fall back; the attack grew languid, and dunois talked of sounding the retreat. upon this she got to her feet, and scrambled somehow on her horse. "rest a little," she implored the generals about her, "eat something, refresh yourselves: and when you see my standard floating against the wall, forward, the place is yours." they seem to have done as she suggested, making a pause, while jeanne withdrew a little into a vineyard close by, where there must have been a tuft of trees, to afford her a little shelter. there she said her prayers, and tasted that meat to eat that men wot not of, which restores the devout soul. turning back she took her standard from her squire's hand, and planted it again on the edge of the moat. "let me know," she said, "when the pennon touches the wall." the folds of white and gold with the benign countenance of the saviour, now visible, now lost in the changes of movement, floated over their heads on the breeze of the may day. "jeanne," said the squire, "it touches!" "on!" cried the maid, her voice ringing through the momentary quiet. "on! all is yours!" the troops rose as one man; they flung themselves against the wall, at the foot of which that white figure stood, the staff of her banner in her hand, shouting, "all is yours." never had the french _élan_ been so wildly inspired, so irresistible; they swarmed up the wall "as if it had been a stair." "do they think themselves immortal?" the panic-stricken english cried among themselves--panic-stricken not by their old enemies, but by the white figure at the foot of the wall. was she a witch, as had been thought? was not she indeed the messenger of god? the dazzling rays that shot from her armour seemed like butterflies, like doves, like angels floating about her head. they had thought her dead, yet here she stood again without a sign of injury; or was it michael himself, the great archangel whom she resembled do much? arrows flew round her on every side but never touched her. she struck no blow, but the folds of her standard blew against the wall, and her voice rose through all the tumult. "on! enter! _de la part de dieu!_ for all is yours." the maid had other words to say, "_renty, renty_, classidas!" she cried, "you called me vile names, but i have a great pity for your soul." he on his side showered down blasphemies. he was at the last gasp; one desperate last effort he made with a handful of men to escape from the boulevard by the drawbridge to les tourelles, which crossed a narrow strip of the river. but the bridge had been fired by a fire-ship from orleans and gave way under the rush of the heavily-armed men; and the fierce classidas and his companions were plunged into the river, where a knight in armour, like a tower falling, went to the bottom in a moment. nearly thirty of them, it is said, plunged thus into the great loire and were seen no more. it was the end of the struggle. the french flag swung forth on the parapet, the french shout rose to heaven. meanwhile a strange sight was to be seen--the st. michael in shining armour, who had led that assault, shedding tears for the ferocious classidas, who had cursed her with his last breath. "_j'ai grande pitié de ton âme._" had he but had time to clear his soul and reconcile himself with god! this was virtually the end of the siege of orleans. the broken bridge on the loire had been rudely mended, with a great _gouttière_ and planks, and the people of orleans had poured out over it to take the tourelles in flank--the english being thus taken between jeanne's army on the one side and the citizens on the other. the whole south bank of the river was cleared, not an englishman left to threaten the richest part of france, the land flowing with milk and honey. and though there still remained several great generals on the other side with strong fortifications to fall back upon, they seem to have been paralysed, and did not strike a blow. jeanne was not afraid of them, but her ardour to continue the fight dropped all at once; enough had been done. she awaited the conclusion with confidence. needless to say that orleans was half mad with joy, every church sounding its bells, singing its song of triumph and praise, the streets so crowded that it was with difficulty that the maid could make her progress through them, with throngs of people pressing round to kiss her hand, if might be, her greaves, her mailed shoes, her charger, the floating folds of her banner. she had said she would be wounded and so she was, as might be seen, the envious rent of the arrow showing through the white plates of metal on her shoulder. she had said all should be theirs _de par dieu:_ and all was theirs, thanks to our lord and also to st. aignan and st. euvert, patrons of orleans, and to st. louis and st. charlemagne in heaven who had so great pity of the kingdom of france: and to the maid on earth, the heaven-sent deliverer, the spotless virgin, the celestial warrior--happy he who could reach to kiss it, the point of her mailed shoe. someone says that she rode through all this half-delirious joy like a creature in a dream,--fatigue, pain, the happy languor of the end attained, and also the profound pity that was the very inspiration of her spirit, for all those souls of men gone to their account without help of church or comfort of priest--overwhelming her. but next day, which was sunday, she was up again and eagerly watching all that went on. a strange sight was orleans on that sunday of may. on the south side of the loire, all those half-ruined bastilles smoking and silenced, which once had threatened not the city only but all the south of france; on the north the remaining bands of english drawn up in order of battle. the excitement of the town and of the generals in it, was intense; worn as they were with three days of continuous fighting, should they sally forth again and meet that compact, silent, doubly defiant army, which was more or less fresh and unexhausted? jeanne's opinion was, no; there had been enough of fighting, and it was sunday, the holy day; but apparently the french did go out though keeping at a distance, watching the enemy. by orders of the maid an altar was raised between the two armies in full sight of both sides, and there mass was celebrated, under the sunshine, by the side of the river which had swallowed classidas and all his men. french and english together devoutly turned towards and responded to that mass in the pause of bewildering uncertainty. "which way are their heads turned?" jeanne asked when it was over. "they are turned away from us, they are turned to meung," was the reply. "then let them go, _de par dieu_," the maid replied. the siege had lasted for seven months, but eight days of the maid were enough to bring it to an end. the people of orleans still, every year, on the th of may, make a procession round the town and give thanks to god for its deliverance. henceforth, the maid was known no longer as jeanne d'arc, the peasant of domremy, but as _la pucelle d'orléans_, in the same manner in which one might speak of the prince of waterloo, or the duc de malakoff. ( ) their special mission seems to have been a demand for the return of a herald previously sent who had never come back. as dunois accompanied the demand by a threat to kill the english prisoners in orleans if the herald was not sent back, the request was at once accorded, with fierce defiances to the maid, the dairy-maid as she is called, bidding her go back to her cows, and threatening to burn her if they caught her. ( ) i avail myself here as elsewhere of mr. lang's lucid description. "it is really perfectly intelligible. the council wanted a feint on the left bank, jeanne an attack on the right. she knew their scheme, untold, but entered into it. there was, however, no feint. she deliberately forced the fighting. there was grand fighting, well worth telling," adds my martial critic, who understands it so much better than i do, and who i am happy to think is himself telling the tale in another way. ( ) she had made this prophecy a month before, and it was recorded three weeks before the event in the town book of brabant.--a. l. chapter v -- the campaign of the loire. june, july, . the rescue of orleans and the defeat of the invincible english were news to move france from one end to the other, and especially to raise the spirits and restore the courage of that part of france which had no sympathy with the invaders and to which the english yoke was unaccustomed and disgraceful. the news flew up and down the loire from point to point, arousing every village, and breathing new heart and encouragement everywhere; while in the meantime jeanne, partially healed of her wound (on may th she rode out in a _maillet_, a light coat of chain-mail), after a few days' rest in the joyful city which she had saved with all its treasures, set out on her return to chinon. she found the king at loches, another of the strong places on the loire where there was room for a court, and means of defence for a siege should such be necessary, as is the case with so many of these wonderful castles upon the great french river. hot with eagerness to follow up her first great success and accomplish her mission, jeanne's object was to march on at once with the young prince, with or without his immense retinue, to rheims where he should be crowned and anointed king as she had promised. her instinctive sense of the necessities of the position, if we use that language--more justly, her boundless faith in the orders which she believed had been give her from heaven, to accomplish this great act without delay, urged her on. she was straitened, if we may quote the most divine of words, till it should be accomplished. but the maid, flushed with victory, with the shouts of orleans still ringing in her ears, the applause of her fellow-soldiers, the sound of the triumphant bells, was plunged all at once into the indolence, the intrigues, the busy nothingness of the court, in which whispering favourites surrounded a foolish young prince, beguiling him into foolish amusements, alarming him with coward fears. wise men and buffoons alike dragged him down into that paltry abyss, the one always counselling caution, the other inventing amusements. "let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die." was it worth while to lose everything that was enjoyable in the present moment, to subject a young sovereign to toils and excitement, and probable loss, for the uncertain advantage of a vain ceremony, when he might be enjoying himself safely and at his ease, throughout the summer months, on the cheerful banks of the loire? on the other hand, the chancellor, the chamberlains, the church, all his graver advisers (with the exception of gerson, the great theologian to whom has been ascribed the authorship of the _imitation of christ_, who is reported to have said, "if france deserts her, and she fails, she is none the less inspired") shook their hands and advised that the way should be quite safe and free of danger before the king risked himself upon it. it was thus that jeanne was received when, newly alighted from her charger, her shoulder still but half healed, her eyes scarcely clear of the dust and smoke, she found herself once more in the ante-chamber, wasting the days, waiting in vain behind closed doors, tormented by the lutes and madrigals, the light women and lighter men, useless and contemptible, of a foolish court. the maid, in all the energy and impulse of a success which had proved all her claims, had also a premonition that her own time was short, if not a direct intimation, as some believe, to that effect: and mingled her remonstrances and appeals with the cry of warning: "i shall only last a year: take the good of me as long as it is possible." no doubt she was a very great entertainment to the idle seigneurs and ladies who would try to persuade her to tell them what was to happen to them, she who had prophesied the death of glasdale and her own wound and so many other things. the duke of lorraine on her first setting out had attempted to discover from jeanne what course his illness would take, and whether he should get better; and all the demoiselles and demoiseaux, the flutterers of the ante-chamber, would be still more likely to surround with their foolish questions the stout-hearted, impatient girl who had acquired a little of the roughness of her soldier comrades, and had never been slow at any time in answering a fool according to his folly; for jeanne was no meek or sentimental maiden, but a robust and vigorous young woman, ready with a quick response, as well as with a ready blow did any one touch her unadvisedly, or use any inappropriate freedom. at last, one day while she waited vainly outside the cabinet in which the king was retired with a few of his councillors, jeanne's patience failed her altogether. she knocked at the door, and being admitted threw herself at the feet of the king. to jeanne he was no king till he had received the consecration necessary for every sovereign of france. "noble dauphin," she cried, "why should you hold such long and tedious councils? rather come to rheims and receive your worthy crown." the bishop of castres, christopher de harcourt, who was present, asked her if she would not now in the presence of the king describe to them the manner in which her council instructed her, when they talked with her. jeanne reddened and replied: "i understand that you would like to know, and i would gladly satisfy you." "jeanne," said the king in his turn, "it would be very good if you could do what they ask, in the presence of those here." she answered at once and with great feeling: "when i am vexed to find myself disbelieved in the things i say from god, i retire by myself and pray to god, complaining and asking of him why i am not listened to. and when i have prayed i hear a voice which says, 'daughter of god, go, go, go! i will help thee, go!' and when i hear that voice i feel a great joy." her face shone as she spoke, "lifting her eyes to heaven," like the face of moses while still it bore the reflection of the glory of god, so that the men were dazzled who sat, speechless, looking on. the result was that charles kindly promised to set out as soon as the road between him and rheims should be free of the english, especially the towns on the loire in which a great part of the army dispersed from orleans had taken refuge, with the addition of the auxiliary forces of sir john fastolfe, a name so much feared by the french, but at which the english reader can scarcely forbear a smile. that the young king did not think of putting himself at the head of the troops or of taking part in the campaign shows sufficiently that he was indeed a _pauvre sire_, unworthy his gallant people. jeanne, however, nothing better being possible, seems to have accepted this mission with readiness, and instantly began her preparations to carry it out. it is here that the young seigneur guy de laval comes in with his description of her already quoted. he was no humble squire but a great personage to whom the king was civil and pleased to show courtesy. the young man writes to _ses mères_, that is, it seems, his mother and grandmother, to whom, in their distant château, anxiously awaiting news of the two youths gone to the wars, their faithful son makes his report of himself and his brother. the king, he says, sent for the maid, in order, sir guy believes, that he might see her. and afterwards the young man went to selles where she was just setting out on the campaign. from selles, he writes on the th june, exactly a month after the deliverance of orleans: "i went to her lodging to see her, and she sent for wine and told me we should soon drink wine in paris. it was a miraculous thing (_toute divine_) to see her and hear her. she left selles on monday at the hour of vespers for romorantin, the marshal de boussac and a great many armed men with her. i saw her mount her horse, all in white armour excepting the head, a little axe in her hand. the great black charger was very restive at her door and would not let her mount. 'lead him,' she said, 'to the cross which is in front of the church,' and there she mounted, the horse standing still as if he had been bound. then turning towards the church which was close by she said in a womanly voice (_assez voix de femme_), 'you priests and people of the church, make processions and prayers to god for us'; then turning to the road, 'forward,' she said. her unfolded standard was carried by a page; she had her little axe in her hand, and by her side rode a brother who had joined her eight days before. the maid told me in her lodging that she had sent you, grandmother, a small gold ring, which was indeed a very small affair, and that she would fain have sent you something better, considering your recommendation. to-day m. d'alençon, the bastard of orleans, and gaucourt were to leave selles, following the maid. and men are arriving from all parts every day, all with good hope in god who i believe will help us. but money there is none at the court, so that for the present i have no hope of any help or assistance. therefore i desire you, _madame ma mère_, who have my seal, spare not the land neither in sale nor mortgage . . . . my much honoured ladies and mothers, i pray the blessed son of god that you have a good life and long; and both of us recommend ourselves to our brother louis. and we send our greetings to the reader of this letter. written from selles, wednesday, th june, . this afternoon are arrived m. de vendôme, m. de boussac, and others, and la hire has joined the army, and we shall soon be at work (_on besognera bientôt_)--may god grant that it should be according to your desire." it was with difficulty that the duc d'alençon had been got to start, his wife consenting with great reluctance. he had been long a prisoner in england, and had lately been ransomed for a great sum of money; "was not that a sufficient sacrifice?" the duchess asked indignantly. to risk once more a husband so costly was naturally a painful thing to do, and why could not jeanne be content and stay where she was? jeanne comforted the lady, perhaps with a little good-humoured contempt. "fear nothing, madame," she said; "i will bring him back to you safe and sound." probably alençon himself had no great desire to be second in command to this country lass, even though she had delivered orleans; and if he set out at all he would have preferred to take another direction and to protect his own property and province. the gathering of the army thus becomes visible to us; parties are continually coming in; and no doubt, as they marched along, many a little château--and they abound through the country each with its attendant hamlet--gave forth its master or heir, poor but noble, followed by as many men-at-arms, perhaps only two or three, as the little property could raise, to swell the forces with the best and surest of material, the trained gentlemen with hearts full of chivalry and pride, but with the same hardy, self-denying habits as the sturdy peasants who followed them, ready for any privation; with a proud delight to hear that _on besognera bientôt_--with that st. michael at their head, and no longer any fear of the english in their hearts. the first _besogne_ on which this army entered was the siege of jargeau, june th, into which town suffolk had thrown himself and his troops when the siege of orleans was raised. the town was strong and so was the garrison, experienced too in all the arts of war, and already aware of the wild enthusiasm by which jeanne was surrounded. she passed through orleans on the th of june, and had there been joined by various new detachments. the number of her army was now raised, we are told, to twelve hundred lances, which means, as each "lance" was a separate party, about three thousand six hundred men, though the _journal du siège_ gives a much larger number; at all events it was a small army with which to decide a quarrel between the two greatest nations of christendom. her associates in command were here once more seized by the prevailing sin of hesitation, and many arguments were used to induce her to postpone the assault. it would seem that this hesitation continued until the very moment of attack, and was only put an end to when jeanne herself impatiently seized her banner from the hand of her squire, and planting herself at the foot of the walls let loose the fervour of the troops and cheered them on to the irresistible rush in which lay their strength. for it was with the commanders, not with the followers, that the weakness lay. the maid herself was struck on the head by a stone from the battlements which threw her down; but she sprang up again in a moment unhurt. "_sus! sus!_ our lord has condemned the english--all is yours!" she cried. she would seem to have stood there in her place with her banner, a rallying-point and centre in the midst of all the confusion of the fight, taking this for her part in it, and though she is always in the thick of the combat, never, so far as we are told, striking a blow, exposed to all the instruments of war, but injured by none. the effect of her mere attitude, the steadiness of her stand, under the terrible rain of stone bullets and dreadful arrows, must of itself have been indescribable. in the midst of the fiery struggle, there is almost a comic point in her watch over alençon, for whose safety she had pledged herself, now dragging him from a dangerous spot with a cry of warning, now pushing him forward with an encouraging word. on the first of these occasions a gentleman of anjou, m. de lude, who took his place in the front was killed, which seems hard upon the poor gentleman, who was probably quite as well worth caring for as alençon. "_avant, gentil duc_," she cried at another moment, "forward! are you afraid? you know i promised your wife to bring you safe home." thus her voice keeps ringing through the din, her white armour gleams. "_sus! sus!_" the bold cry is almost audible, sibilant, whistling amid the whistling of the arrows. suffolk, the english bayard, the most chivalrous of knights, was at last forced to yield. one story tells us that he would give up his sword only to jeanne herself,( ) but there is a more authentic description of his selection of one youth among his assailants whom the quick perceptions of the leader had singled out. "are you noble?" suffolk asks in the brevity of such a crisis. "yes; guillame regnault, gentleman of auvergne." "are you a knight?" "not yet." the victor put a knee to the ground before his captive, the vanquished touched him lightly on the shoulder with the sword which he then gave over to him. suffolk was always the finest gentleman, the most perfect gentle knight of his time. "now let us go and see the english of meung," cried jeanne, unwearying, as soon as this victory was assured. that place fell easily; it is called the bridge of meung, in the chronicle, without further description, therefore presumably the fortress was not attacked--and they proceeded onward to beaugency. these towns still shine over the plain, along the line of the loire, visible as far as the eye will carry over the long levels, the great stream linking one to another like pearls on a thread. there is nothing in the landscape now to give even a moment's shelter to the progress of a marching army which must have been seen from afar, wherever it moved; or to veil the shining battlements, and piled up citadels rising here and there, concentrated points and centres of life. the great white castle of blois, the darker tower of beaugency, still stand where they stood when jeanne and her men drew near, as conspicuous in their elevation of walls and towers as if they had been planted on a mountain top. on more than one occasion during this wonderful progress from victory to victory, the triumphant leaders returned for a day or two to orleans to tell their good tidings, and to celebrate their success. and there is but one voice as to the military skill which she displayed in these repeated operations. the reader sees her, with her banner, posted in the middle of the fight, guiding her men with a sort of infallible instinct which adds force to her absolute quick perception of every difficulty and advantage, the unhesitating promptitude, attending like so many servants upon the inspiration which is the soul of all. these are things to which a writer ignorant of war is quite unable to do justice. what was almost more wonderful still was the manner in which the maid held her place among the captains, most of whom would have thwarted her if they could, with a consciousness of her own superior place, in which there is never the slightest token of presumption or self-esteem. she guarded and guided alençon with a good-natured and affectionate disdain; and when there was risk of a great quarrel and a splitting of forces she held the balance like an old and experienced guide of men. this latter crisis occurred before beaugency on the th of june, when the comte de richemont, constable of france, the brother of the duc de bretagne, a great nobleman and famous leader, but in disgrace with the king and exiled from the court, suddenly appeared with a considerable army to join himself to the royalist forces, probably with the hope of securing the leading place. richemont was no friend to jeanne; though he apparently asked her help and influence to reconcile him with the king. he seems indeed to have thought it a disgrace to france that her troops should be led, and victories gained by no properly appointed general, but by a woman, probably a witch, a creature unworthy to stand before armed men. it must not be forgotten that even now this was the general opinion of her out of the range of her immediate influence. the english held it like a religion. bedford, in his description of the siege of orleans and its total failure, reports to england that the discomfiture of the hitherto always triumphant army was "caused in great part by the fatal faith and vain fear that the french had, of a disciple and servant of the enemy of man, called the maid, who uses many false enchantments, and witchcraft, by which not only is the number of our soldiers diminished but their courage marvellously beaten down, and the boldness of our enemies increased." richemont was a sworn enemy of all such. "never man hated more, all heresies, sorcerers, and sorceresses, than he; for he burned more in france, in poitou, and bretagne, than any other of his time." the french generals were divided as to the merits of richemont and the advantages to be derived from his support. alençon, the nominal commander, declared that he would leave the army if richemont were permitted to join it. the letters of the king were equally hostile to him; but on the other hand there were some who held that the accession of the constable was of more importance than all the maids in france. it was a moment which demanded very wary guidance. jeanne, it would seem, did not regard his arrival with much pleasure; probably even the increase of her forces did not please her as it would have pleased most commanders, holding so strongly as she did, to the miraculous character of her own mission and that it was not so much the strength of her troops as the help of god that got her the victory. but it was not her part to reject or alienate any champion of france. we have an account of their meeting given by a retainer of richemont, which is picturesque enough. "the maid alighted from her horse, and the constable also. 'jeanne,' he said, 'they tell me that you are against me. i know not if you are from god (_de la part de dieu_) or not. if you are from god i do not fear you; if you are of the devil, i fear you still less.' 'brave constable,' said jeanne, 'you have not come here by any will of mine; but since you are here you are welcome.'" armed neutrality but suspicion on one side, dignified indifference but acceptance on the other, could not be better shown. these successes, however, had been attended by various _escarmouches_ going on behind. the english, who had been driven out of one town after another, had now drawn together under the command of talbot, and a party of troops under fastolfe, who came to relieve them, had turned back as jeanne proceeded, making various unsuccessful attempts to recover what had been lost. failing in all their efforts they returned across the country to genville, and were continuing their retreat to paris when the two enemies came within reach of each other. an encounter in open field was a new experience of which jeanne as yet had known nothing. she had been successful in assault, in the operations of the siege, but to meet the enemy hand to hand in battle was what she had never been required to do; and every tradition, every experience, was in favour of the english. from agincourt to the battle of the herrings at rouvray near orleans, which had taken place in the beginning of the year (a fight so named because the field of battle had been covered with herrings, the conquerors in this case being merely the convoy in charge of provisions for the english, which fastolfe commanded), such a thing had not been known as that the french should hold their own, much less attain any victory over the invaders. in these circumstances there was much talk of falling back upon the camp near beaugency and of retreating or avoiding an engagement; anything rather than hazard one of those encounters which had infallibly ended in disaster. but jeanne was of the same mind as always, to go forward and fear nothing. "fall upon them! go at them boldly," she cried. "if they were in the clouds we should have them. the gentle king will now gain the greatest victory he has ever had." it is curious to hear that in that great plain of the beauce, so flat, so fertile, with nothing but vines and cornfields now against the horizon, the two armies at last almost stumbled upon each other by accident, in the midst of the brushwood by which the country was wildly overgrown. the story is that a stag roused by the french scouts rushed into the midst of the english, who were advantageously placed among the brushwood to arrest the enemy on their march; the wild creature terrified and flying before an army blundered into the midst of the others, was fired at and thus betrayed the vicinity of the foe. the english had no time to form or set up their usual defences. they were so taken by surprise that the rush of the french came without warning, with a suddenness which gave it double force. la hire made the first attack as leader of the van, and there was thus emulation between the two parties, which should be first upon the enemy. when alençon asked jeanne what was to be the issue of the fight, she said calmly, "have you good spurs?" "what! you mean we shall turn our backs on our enemies?" cried her questioner. "not so," she replied. "the english will not fight, they will fly, and you will want good spurs to pursue them." even this somewhat fantastic prophecy put heart into the men, who up to this time had been wont to fly and not to fight. and this was what happened, strange as it may seem. talbot himself was with the english forces, and many a gallant captain beside: but the men and their leaders were alike broken in spirit and filled with superstitious terrors. whether these were the forces of hell or those of heaven that came against them no one could be sure; but it was a power beyond that of earth. the dazzled eyes which seemed to see flights of white butterflies fluttering about the standard of the maid, could scarcely belong to one who thought her a servant of the enemy of men. but she was a pernicious witch to talbot, and strangely enough to richemont also, who was on her own side. the english force was thrown into confusion, partly, we may suppose, from the broken ground on which they were discovered, the undergrowth of the wood which hid both armies from each other. but soon that disorder turned into the wildest panic and flight. it would almost seem as if between these two hereditary opponents one must always be forced into this miserable part. not all the chivalry of france had been able to prevent it at the long string of battles in which they were, before the revelation of the maid; and not the desperate and furious valour of talbot could preserve his english force from the infection now. fastolfe, with the philosophy of an old soldier, deciding that it was vain to risk his men when the field was already lost, rode off with all his band. talbot fought with desperation, half mad with rage to be thus a second time overcome by so unlikely an adversary, and finally was taken prisoner; while the whole force behind him fled and were killed in their flight, the plain being scattered with their dead bodies. jeanne herself made use of those spurs concerning which she had enquired, and carried away by the passion of battle, followed in the pursuit, we are told, until she met a frenchman brutally ill-using a prisoner whom he had taken, upon which the maid, indignant, flung herself from her horse, and, seating herself on the ground beside the unfortunate englishman, took his bleeding head upon her lap and, sending for a priest, made his departure from life at least as easy as pity and spiritual consolation could make it on such a disastrous field. in all the records there is no mention of any actual fighting on her part. she stands in the thick of the flying arrows with her banner, exposing herself to every danger; in moments of alarm, when her forces seem flagging, she seizes and places a ladder against the wall for an assault, and climbs the first as some say; but we never see her strike a blow. on the banks of the loire the fate of the mail-clad glasdale, hopeless in the strong stream underneath the ruined bridge, brought tears to her eyes, and now all the excitement of the pursuit vanished in an instant from her mind, when she saw the english man-at-arms dying without the succour of the church. pity was always in her heart; she was ever on the side of the angels, though an angel of war and not of peace. it is perhaps because the numbers engaged were so few that this flight or "chasse de patay," has not taken a more important place in the records of french historians. in general it is only by means of fontenoy that the _amour propre_ of the french nation defends itself against the overwhelming list of battles in which the english have had the better of it. but this was probably the most complete victory that has ever been gained over the stubborn enemy whom french tactics are so seldom able to touch; and the conquerors were purely french without any alloy of alien arms, except a few scots, to help them. the entire campaign on the loire was one of triumph for the french arms, and of disaster for the english. they--it is perhaps a point of national pride to admit it frankly--were as well beaten as heart of frenchman could desire, beaten not only in the result, but in the conduct of the campaign, in heart and in courage, in skill and in genius. there is no reason in the world why it should not be admitted. but it was not the french generals, not even dunois, who secured these victories. it was the young peasant woman, the dauntless maid, who underneath the white mantle of her inspiration, miraculous indeed, but not so miraculous as this, had already developed the genius of a soldier, and who in her simplicity, thinking nothing but of her "voices" and the counsel they gave her, was already the best general of them all. when talbot stood before the french generals, no less a person than alençon himself is reported to have made a remark to him, of that ungenerous kind which we call in feminine language "spiteful," and which is not foreign to the habit of that great nation. "you did not think this morning what would have happened to you before sunset," said the duc d'alençon to the prisoner. "it is the fortune of war," replied the english chief. once more, however it is like a sudden fall from the open air and sunshine when the victorious army and its chiefs turned back to the court where the king and his councillors sat idle, waiting for news of what was being done for them. a battle-field is no fine sight; the excitement of the conflict, the great end to be served by it, the sense of god's special protection, even the tremendous uproar of the fight, the intoxication of personal action, danger, and success have, we do not doubt a rapture and passion in them for the moment, which carry the mind away; but the bravest soldier holds his breath when he remembers the after scene, the dead and dying, the horrible injuries inflicted, the loss and misery. however, not even the miserable scene of the chasse de patay is so painful as the reverse of the dismal picture, the halls of the royal habitation where, while men died for him almost within hearing of the fiddling and the dances, the young king trifled away his useless days among his idle favourites, and the musicians played, the assemblies were held, and all went on as in the tuileries. we feel as if we had fallen fathoms deep into the meannesses of mankind when we come back from the bloodshed and the horror outside, to the king's presence within. the troops which had gone out in uncertainty, on an enterprise which might well have proved too great for them, had returned in full flush of triumph, having at last fully broken the spell of the english superiority--which was the greatest victory that could have been achieved: besides gaining the substantial advantage of three important towns brought back to the king's allegiance--only to find themselves as little advanced as before, coming back to the self-same struggle with indolent complaining, indifference, and ingratitude. jeanne had given the signs that had been demanded from her. she had delivered orleans, she cleared the king's road toward the north. she had filled the french forces with an enthusiasm and transport of valour which swept away all the traditions of ill fortune. from every point of view the instant march upon rheims and the accomplishment of the great object of her mission had not only become practicable, but was the wisest and most prudent thing to do. but this was not the opinion of the chancellor of france, the archbishop of rheims, and la tremouille, or of the indolent young king himself, who was very willing to rejoice in the relief from all immediate danger, the restoration of the surrounding country, and even the victory itself, if only they would have left him in quiet where he was, sufficiently comfortable, amused, and happy, without forcing necessary dangers. jeanne's successes and her unseasonable zeal and the commotion that she and her train of captains made, pouring in, in all the excitement of their triumph, into the midst of the madrigals--seem to have been anything but welcome. go to rheims to be crowned? yes, some time when it was convenient, when it was safe. but in the meantime what was more important was to forbid richemont, whom the chancellor hated and the king did not love, to come into the presence or to have any share either in warfare or in pageant. this was not only in itself an extremely foolish thing to do, which is always a recommendation, but it was at the same time an excuse for wasting a little precious time. when this was at last accomplished, and richemont, though deeply wounded and offended, proved himself so much a man of honour and a patriot, that though dismissed by the king he still upheld, if languidly, his cause--there was yet a great deal of resistance to be overcome. paris though so far off was thrown into great excitement and alarm by the flight at patay, and the whole city was in commotion fearing an immediate advance and attack. but in loches, or wherever charles may have been, it was all taken very easily. fastolfe, the fugitive, had his garter taken from him as the greatest disgrace that could be inflicted, for his shameful flight, about the time when richemont, one of the victors, was being sent off and disgraced on the other side for the crime of having helped to inflict, without the consent of the king, the greatest blow which had yet been given to the english domination! so the court held on its ridiculous and fatal course. however the force of public feeling which must have been very frankly expressed by many important voices was too much for charles and he was at length compelled to put himself in motion. the army had assembled at gien, where he joined it, and the great wave of enthusiasm awakened by jeanne, and on which he now moved forth as on the top of the wave, was for the time triumphant. no one dared say now that the maid was a sorceress, or that it was by the aid of beelzebub that she cast out devils; but a hundred jealousies and hatreds worked against her behind backs, among the courtiers, among the clergy, strange as that may sound, in sight of the absolute devotion of her mind, and the saintly life she led. so much was this the case still, notwithstanding the practical proofs she had given of her claims, that even persons of kindred mind, partially sharing her inspirations, such as the famous brother richard of troyes, looked upon her with suspicion and alarm--fearing a delusion of satan. it is more easy perhaps to understand why the archbishops and bishops should have been inclined against her, since, though perfectly orthodox and a good catholic, jeanne had been independent of all priestly guidance and had sought no sanction from the church to her commission, which she believed to be given by heaven. "give god the praise; but we know that this woman is a sinner." this was the best they could find to say of her in the moment of her greatest victories; but indeed it is no disparagement to jeanne or to any saint that she should share with her master the opprobrium of such words as these. at last however a reluctant start was made. jeanne with her "people," her little staff, in which, now, were two of her brothers, a second having joined her after orleans, left gien on the th of june; and the next day the king very unwillingly set out. there is given a long list of generals who surrounded and accompanied him, three or four princes of the blood, the bastard of orleans, the archbishop of rheims, marshals, admirals, and innumerable seigneurs, among whom was our young guy de laval who wrote the letter to his "mothers" which we have already quoted and whose faith in the maid we thus know; and our ever faithful la hire, the big-voiced gascon who had permission to swear by his _bâton_, the d'artagnan of this history. we reckon these names as those of friends: dunois the ever-brave, alençon the _gentil duc_ for whom jeanne had a special and protecting kindness, la hire the rough captain of free lances, and the graceful young seigneur, sir guy as we should have called him had he been english, who was so ready to sell or mortgage his land that he might convey his troop befittingly to the wars. this little group brightens the march for us with their friendly faces. we know that they have but one thought of the warrior maiden in whose genius they had begun to have a wondering confidence as well as in her divine mission. while they were there we feel that she had at least so many who understood her, and who bore her the affection of brothers. we are told that in the progress of the army jeanne had no definite place. she rode where she pleased, sometimes in the front, sometimes in the rear. one imagines with pleasure that wherever her charger passed along the lines it would be accompanied by one or other of those valiant and faithful companions. the first place at which a halt was made was auxerre, a town occupied chiefly by burgundians, which closed its gates, but by means of bribes, partly of provisions to be supplied, partly of gifts to la tremouille, secured itself from the attack which jeanne longed to lead. other smaller strongholds on the road yielded without hesitation. at last they came to troyes, a large and strong place, well garrisoned and confident in its strength, the town distinguished in the history of the time by the treaty made there, by which the young king had been disinherited--and by the marriage of henry of england with the princess catherine of france, in whose right he was to succeed to the throne. it was an ill-omened place for a french king and the camp was torn with dissensions. should the army march by, taking no notice of it and so get all the sooner to rheims? or should they pause first, to try their fortune against those solid walls? but indeed it was not the camp that debated this question. the camp was of jeanne's mind whichever side she took, and her side was always that of the promptest action. the garrison made a bold sortie, the very day of the arrival of charles and his forces, but had been beaten back: and the king encamped under the walls, wavering and uncertain whether he might not still depart on the morrow, but sending a repeated summons to surrender, to which no attention was paid. once more there was a pause of indecision; the king was not bold enough either to push on and leave the city, or to attack it. again councils of war succeeded each other day after day, discussing the matter over and over, leaving the king each time more doubtful, more timid than before. from these debates jeanne was anxiously held back, while every silken fool gave his opinion. at last, one of the councillors was stirred by this strange anomaly. he declared among them all, that as it was by the advice of the maid that the expedition had been undertaken, without her acquiescence it ought not to be abandoned. "when the king set out it was not because of the great puissance of the army he then had with him, or the great treasure he had to provide for them, nor yet because it seemed to him a probable thing to be accomplished; but the said expedition was undertaken solely at the suit of the said jeanne, who urged him constantly to go forward, to be crowned at rheims, and that he should find little resistance, for it was the pleasure and will of god. if the said jeanne is not to be allowed to give her advice now, it is my opinion that we should turn back," said the seigneur de treves, who had never been a partisan of or believer in jeanne. we are told that at this fortunate moment when one of her opponents had thus pronounced in her favour, jeanne, impatient and restless, knocked at the door of the council chamber as she had done before in her rustic boldness; and then there occurred a brief and characteristic dialogue. "jeanne," said the archbishop of rheims, taking the first word, probably with the ready instinct of a conspirator to excuse himself from having helped to shut her out, "the king and his council are in great perplexity to know what they should do." "shall i be believed if i speak?" said the maid. "i cannot tell," replied the king, interposing; "though if you say things that are reasonable and profitable, i shall certainly believe you." "shall i be believed?" she repeated. "yes," said the king, "according as you speak." "noble dauphin," she exclaimed, "order your people to assault the city of troyes, to hold no more councils; for, by my god, in three days i will introduce you into the town of troyes, by love or by force, and false burgundy shall be dismayed." "jeanne," said the chancellor, "if you could do that in six days, we might well wait." "you shall be master of the place," said the maid, addressing herself steadily to the king, "not in six days, but to-morrow." and then there occurred once more the now habitual scene. it was no longer the miracle it had been to see her dash forward to her post under the walls with her standard which was the signal for battle, to which the impatient troops responded, confident in her, as she in herself. but for the first time we hear how the young general, learning her trade of war day by day, made her preparations for the siege. she was a gunner born, according to all we hear, and was quick to perceive the advantage of her rude artillery though she had never seen one of these _bouches de feu_ till she encountered them at orleans. the whole army was set to work during the night, knights and men-at-arms alike, to raise--with any kind of handy material, palings faggots, tables, even doors and windows, taken it must be feared from some neighbouring village or faubourg--a mound on which to place the guns. the country as we have said is as flat as the palm of one's hand. they worked all night under cover of the darkness with incredible devotion, while the alarmed townsfolk not knowing what was being done, but no doubt divining something from the unusual commotion, betook themselves to the churches to pray, and began to ponder whether after all it might not be better to join the king whose armies were led by st. michael himself in the person of his representative, than to risk a siege. once more the spell of the maid fell on the defenders of the place. it was witchcraft, it was some vile art. they had no heart to man the battlements, to fight like their brothers at orleans and jargeau in face of all the powers of the evil one: the cry of "_sus! sus!_" was like the death-knell in their ears. while the soldiers within the walls were thus trembling and drawing back, the bishop and his clergy took the matter in hand; they sallied forth, a long procession attended by half the city, to parley with the king. it was in the earliest dawn, while yet the peaceful world was scarcely awake; but the town had been in commotion all night, every visionary person in it seeing visions and dreaming dreams, and a panic of superstition and spiritual terror taking the strength out of every arm. jeanne was already at her post, a glimmering white figure in the faint and visionary twilight of the morning, when the gates of the city swung back before this tremulous procession. the king, however, received the envoys graciously, and readily promised to guarantee all the rights of troyes, and to permit the garrison to depart in peace, if the town was given up to him. we are not told whether the maid acquiesced in this arrangement, though it at once secured the fulfilment of her prophecy; but in any case she would seem to have been suspicious of the good faith of the departing garrison. instead of retiring to her tent she took her place at the gate, watchful, to see the enemy march forth. and her suspicion was not without reason. the allied troops, english and burgundian, poured forth from the city gates, crestfallen, unwilling to look the way of the white witch, who might for aught they knew lay them under some dreadful spell, even in the moment of passing. but in the midst of them came a darker band, the french prisoners whom they had previously taken, who were as a sort of funded capital in their hands, each man worth so much money as a ransom, it was for this that jeanne had prepared herself. "_en nom dieu_," she cried, "they shall not be carried away." the march was stopped, the alarm given, the king unwillingly aroused once more from his slumbers. charles must have been disturbed at the most untimely hour by the ambassadors from the town, and it mattered little to his supreme indolence and indifference what might happen to his unfortunate lieges; but he was forced to bestir himself, and even to give something from his impoverished exchequer for the ransom of the prisoners, which must have been more disagreeable still. the feelings of these men who would have been dragged away in captivity under the eyes of their victorious countrymen, but for the vigilance of the maid, may easily be imagined. jeanne seems to have entered the town at once, to prepare for the reception of the king, and to take instant possession of the place, forestalling all further impediment. the people in the streets, however, received her in a very different way from those of orleans, with trouble and alarm, staring at her as at a dangerous and malignant visitor. the brother richard, before mentioned, the great preacher and reformer, was the oracle of troyes, and held the conscience of the city in his hands. when he suddenly appeared to confront her, every eye was turned upon them. but the friar himself was in no less doubt than his disciples; he approached her dubiously, crossing himself, making the sacred sign in the air, and sprinkling a shower of holy water before him to drive away the demon, if demon there was. jeanne was not unused to support the rudest accost, and her frank voice, still _assez femme_, made itself heard over every clamour. "come on, i shall not fly away," she cried, with, one hopes, a laugh of confident innocence and good-humour, in face of those significant gestures and the terrified looks of all about her. french art has been unkind to jeanne, occupying itself very little about her till recently; but her short career is full of pictures. here the simple page grows bright with the ancient houses and highly coloured crowd: the frightened and eager faces at every window, the white warrior in the midst, sending forth a thousand rays from the polished steel and silver of breastplate and helmet: and the brown franciscan monk advancing amid a shower of water drops, a mysterious repetition of signs. it gives us an extraordinary epitome of the history of france at that period to turn from this scene to the wild enthusiasm of orleans, its crowd of people thronging about her, its shouts rending the air; while troyes was full of terror, doubt, and ill-will, though its nearest neighbour, so to speak, the next town, and so short a distance away. a little later in the same day, the next after the surrender, jeanne, riding with her standard by the side of the king, conducted him to the cathedral where he confirmed his previous promises and received the homage of the town. it was a beautiful sight, the chronicle tells us, to see all these magnificent people, so well dressed and well mounted; "_il feroit très beau voir._" the fate of troyes decided that of chalons, the only other important town on the way, the gates of which were thrown open as charles and his army, which grew and increased every day, proceeded on its road. every promise of the maid had been so far accomplished, both in the greater object and in the details: and now there was nothing between charles the disinherited and almost ruined dauphin of three months ago, trying to forget himself in the seclusion and the sports of chinon--and the sacred ceremonial which drew with it every tradition and every assurance of an ancient and lawful throne. jeanne had her little adventure, personal to herself on the way. though there were neither posts nor telegraphs in those days, there has always been a strange swift current in the air or soil which has conveyed news, in a great national crisis, from one end of the country to the other. it was not so great a distance to domremy on the meuse from troyes on the loire, and it appears that a little group of peasants, bolder than the rest, had come forth to hang about the road when the army passed and see what was so fine a sight, and perhaps to catch a glimpse of their _payse_, their little neighbour, the _commère_ who was godmother to gerard d'epinal's child, the youthful gossip of his young wife--but who was now, if all tales were true, a great person, and rode by the side of the king. they went as far as chalons to see if perhaps all this were true and not a fable; and no doubt stood astonished to see her ride by, to hear all the marvellous tales that were told of her, and to assure themselves that it was truly jeanne upon whom, more than upon the king, every eye was bent. this small scene in the midst of so many great ones would probably have been the most interesting of all had it been told us at any length. the peasant travellers surrounded her with wistful questions, with wonder and admiration. was she never afraid among all those risks of war, when the arrows hailed about her and the _bouches de feu_, the mouths of fire, bellowed and flung forth great stones and bullets upon her? "i fear nothing but treason," said the victorious maid. she knew, though her humble visitors did not, how that base thing skulked at her heels, and infested every path. it must not be forgotten that this wonderful and victorious campaign, with all its lists of towns taken and armies discomfited, lasted six weeks only, almost every day of which was distinguished by some victory. ( ) the former story was written in , by the greffier of rochelle. "i will yield me only to her, the most valiant woman in the world." the greffier was writing at the moment, but not, of course, as an eyewitness.--a. l. chapter vi -- the coronation. july , . the road was now clear, and even the most timid of counsellors could not longer hold back the most indolent of kings. jeanne had kept her word once more and fulfilled her own prophecy, and a force of enthusiasm and certainty, not to be put down, pressed forward the unwilling court towards the great ceremonial of the coronation, to which all except those most chiefly concerned attached so great an importance. charles would have hesitated still, and questioned the possibility of resistance on the part of rheims, if that city had not sent a deputation of citizens with the keys of the town, to meet him. after this it was but a triumphal march into the sacred place, where the great cathedral dominated a swarming, busy, mediæval city. king and archbishop had a double triumph, for the priest like the monarch had been shut out from his lawful throne, and it was only in the train of the maid that this great ecclesiastic was able to take possession of his dignities. the king alighted with the archbishop at the archevêché which is close to the cathedral, an immense, old palace in which the heads of the expedition were lodged. there is a magnificent old hall still remaining in which no doubt they all assembled, scarcely able to believe that their object was accomplished and that the king of france was actually in rheims, and all the prophecies fulfilled. the archbishop marched into the city in the morning; charles and his court, and all his great seigneurs, and the body of his army, in which there were many fighting men half armed, and some in their rustic clothes as they had left their fields to join the king in his march--poured in in the evening, after the ecclesiastical procession, filling the town with commotion. jeanne rode beside the king, her banner in her hand. it was july, the vigil of the madeleine, and every church poured forth its crowd to witness the entry, and the populace, half troubled, half glad, gazed its eyes out upon the white warrior at the side of the king. her father and uncle were there to meet her at the old inn in the place, which still proudly preserves the record of the peasant guests: two astonished rustics, no doubt, were thrust forth from some window to watch that incredible sight--jacques who would rather have drowned his daughter with his own hands, than have seen her thus launched among men, gazing still aghast at the resplendent figure of the chevalière at the head of the procession. this was very different from what he had thought of when his village respectability was tortured by the idea of his girl among the troopers, yet probably the rigid peasant had never changed his mind. we are told by m. blaze de bury of an ancient custom which we do not find stated elsewhere. a platform was erected, he tells us, outside the choir of the cathedral to which the king was led the evening before the coronation, surrounded by his peers, who showed him to the assembled people with a traditional proclamation: "here is your king whom we, peers of france, crown as king and sovereign lord. and if there is a soul here which has any objection to make, let him speak and we will answer him. and to-morrow he shall be consecrated by the grace of the holy spirit if you have nothing to say against it." the people replied by cries of "noël, noël!" it is not to be supposed that the veto of the people of rheims would have been effectual had they opposed: but the scene is wonderfully picturesque. no doubt jeanne too was there, watching over her king, as she seems to have done, like a mother over her child, at this crisis of his affairs. that night there was little sleep in rheims, for everything had to be prepared in haste, the decorations of the cathedral, the provisions for the ceremonial. many of the necessary articles were at saint denis in the hands of the english, and the treasury of the cathedral had to be ransacked to find the fitting vessels. fortunately it was rich, more rich probably than it is now, when the commonplace silver of the beginning of this century has replaced the ancient vials. through the short summer night everyone was at work in these preparations; and by the dawn of day visitors began to flow into the city, great personages and small, to attend the great ceremonial and to pay their homage. the greatest of all was the duke of lorraine, he who had consulted jeanne about his health, husband of the heiress of that rich principality, and son of queen yolande who was no doubt with the court. all france seemed to pour into the famous town, where so important an act was about to be accomplished, with money and wine flowing on all hands, and the enthusiasm growing along with the popular excitement and profit. even great london is stirred to its limits, many miles off from the centre of proceedings, by such a great event; how much more the little mediæval city, in which every one might hope to see something of the pageant, as one shining group after another, with armour blazing in the sun, and sleek horses caracoling, arrived at the great gates of the archevêché: and lesser parties scarcely less interesting poured in in need of lodging, of equipment and provisions; while every housewife searched her stores for a piece of brilliant stuff, of old silk or embroidery, to make her house shine like the rest. early in the morning, a wonderful procession came out of the archbishop's house. four splendid peers of france, in full armour with their banners, rode through the streets to the old abbey of saint remy--the old church which leo ix. consecrated, in the eleventh century, on an equally splendid occasion, and which may still be seen to-day--to fetch from its shrine, where it was strictly guarded by the monks, the sainte ampoule, the holy and sacred vial in which the oil of consecration had been sent to clovis out of heaven. these noble messengers were the "hostages" of this sacred charge, engaging themselves by an oath never to lose sight of it by night or day, till it was restored to its appointed guardians. this vow having been made, the abbot of st. remy, in his richest robes, appeared surrounded by his monks, carrying the treasure in his hands; and under a splendid canopy, blazing in the sunshine with cloth of gold, marched towards the cathedral under the escort of the knights hostages, blazing also in the flashes of their armour. this procession was met half-way, before the church of st. denis, by another, that of the archbishop and his train, to whom the holy oil was solemnly confided, and carried by them to the cathedral, already filled by a dazzled and dazzling crowd. the maid had her occupations this july morning like the rest. we hear nothing of any interview with her father, or with durand the good uncle who had helped her in the beginning of her career; though it was durand who was sent for to the king and questioned as to jeanne's life in her childhood and early youth; which we may take as proof that jacques d'arc still stood aloof, _dour_, as a scotch peasant father might have been, suspicious of his daughter's intimacy with all these fine people, and in no way cured of his objections to the publicity which is little less than shame to such rugged folk. and there were his two sons who would take him about, and with whom probably in their easier commonplace he was more at home than with jeanne. what the maid had to do on the morning of the coronation day was something very different from any home talk with her relations. she who felt herself commissioned not only to lead the armies of france, but to deal with her princes and take part in her councils, occupied the morning in dictating a letter to the duke of burgundy. she had summoned the english by letter three times repeated, to withdraw peaceably from the possessions which by god's will were french. it was with still better reason that she summoned philip of burgundy to renounce his feud with his cousin, and thus to heal the breach which had torn france in two: jhesus, maria. high and redoubtable prince, duke of burgundy. jeanne the maid requires on the part of the king of heaven, my most just sovereign and lord (_mon droicturier souverain seigneur_), that the king of france and you make peace between yourselves, firm, strong and that will endure. pardon each other of good heart, entirely, as loyal christians ought to do, and if you desire to fight let it be against the saracens. prince of burgundy, i pray, supplicate, and require, as humbly as may be, fight no longer against the holy kingdom of france: withdraw, at once and speedily, your people who are in any strongholds or fortresses of the said holy kingdom; and on the part of the gentle king of france, he is ready to make peace with you, having respect to his honour, and upon your life that you never will gain a battle against loyal frenchmen and that all those who war against the said holy kingdom of france, war against the king jesus, king of heaven and of all the world and my just and sovereign lord. and i pray and require with clasped hands that you fight not, nor make any battle against us, neither your friends nor your subjects; but believe always however great in number may be the men you lead against us, that you will never win, and it would be great pity for the great battle and the blood that would be shed of those who came against us. three weeks ago i sent you a letter by a herald that you should be present at the consecration of the king, which to-day, sunday, the seventeenth of the present month of july, is done in the city of rheims: to which i have had no answer, nor even any news by the said herald. to god i commend you, and may he be your guard if it pleases him, and i pray god to make good peace. written at the aforesaid rheims, the seventeenth day of july, . when the letter was finished jeanne put on her armour and prepared for the great ceremony. we are not told what part she took in it, nor is any more prominent position assigned to her than among the noble crowd of peers and generals who surrounded the altar, where her place would naturally be, upon the broad raised platform of the choir, so excellently adapted for such ceremonies. her banner we are told was borne into the cathedral, in order, as she proudly explained afterwards, that having been foremost in the danger it should share the honour. but we have no right to suppose that the maid took the position of the chief actor in the pageant and stood alone by the side of charles, as the exigencies of the pictorial art have required her to do. when, however, the ceremony was completed, and he had received on his knees the anointing which separated him as king from every other class of men, and while the lofty vaults echoed with the cries of noël! noël! by which the people hailed the completed ceremony, jeanne could contain herself no longer. the object was attained for which she had laboured and struggled, and overcome every opponent. she stepped forward out of the brilliant crowd, and threw herself at the feet of the now crowned monarch, embracing his knees. "gentle king," she cried with tears, "now is the pleasure of god fulfilled--whose will it was that i should raise the siege of orleans and lead you to this city of rheims to receive your consecration. now has he shown that you are true king, and that the kingdom of france truly belongs to you alone." those broken words, her tears, the cry of that profound satisfaction which is almost anguish, the "lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace," which is so suitable to the lips of the old, so poignant from those of the young, pierced all hearts. it is added that she asked leave to withdraw, her work being done, and that all who saw her were filled with sympathy. it was no doubt the irresistible outburst of a heart too full; and though that fulness was all joy and triumph, yet there was in it a sense of completed work, a rending asunder and tearing away from life, the end of a wonderful and triumphant tale. there is a considerable controversy as to the precise meaning of that outburst of emotion. did the maid mean that her work was over, and her divine mission fulfilled? was this all that she believed herself to be appointed to do? or did she expect, as she sometimes said, to _bouter_ the english out of france altogether? in the one case she ought to have relinquished her work, and in not doing so she acted without the protection of god which had hitherto made her invulnerable. in the other, her "voices," her inspiration, must have failed her, for her course of triumph went no farther. it is impossible to decide between these contending theories. she did speak in both senses, sometimes declaring that she was to take paris, sometimes, her intention to _bouter_ the english out of the kingdom. at the same time she betrayed a constant conviction that her office had limitations and must come to an end. "i will last but a year," she said to the king and to alençon. the testimony of dunois seems to be the best we can have on this point. he says in his deposition, made many years after her death: "although jeanne sometimes talked playfully to amuse people, of things concerning the war which were not afterwards accomplished, yet when she spoke seriously of the war, and of her own career and her vocation, she never affirmed anything but that she was sent to raise the siege of orleans and to lead the king to rheims to be crowned." if this were so was she wrong in continuing her warfare, and did she place herself in the position of one who goes on her own charges, finding the mission from on high unnecessary? or in the other case did her inspiration fail her, or were the intrigues of charles and his court sufficient to balk the designs of heaven? we prefer to think that jeanne's commission concerned only those two things which she accomplished so completely; but that in continuing the war, she acted only as a well inspired and honourable young soldier might, though no longer as the direct messenger of god. she had as much right to do so as to return to her distaff or her needle in her native village; but she became subject to all the ordinary laws of war by so doing, exposed herself to be taken or overthrown like any man-at-arms, and accepted that risk. what is certain is, that every intrigue sprang up again afresh on the evening of that brilliant and triumphant ceremonial, and that from the moment of the accomplishment of her great work the failure of the maid began. these intrigues had been in her way since her very first beginning, as has been seen. at orleans, in the very field as well as in the council chamber and the presence, everything was done to balk her, and to cross her plans, but in vain; she triumphed over every contrivance against her, and broke through the plots, and overcame the plotters. but after rheims the combination of dangers became ever greater and greater, and we may say that no merely human general would have had a chance in face of the many and bewildering influences of evil. charles who was himself, at least at this period of his career, sufficiently indolent and unenterprising to have damped the energies of any commander, was, in addition, surrounded by advisers who had always been impatient and jealous of the interference of jeanne, and would have cast her off as a witch, or passed her by as an impostor, had that been possible, without permitting her to strike a blow. they had now grudgingly made use of her, or rather, for this is too much to say, had permitted her action where they had no power to restrain it: but they were as little friendly, as malignant in their treatment of the maid as ever, and more hopeful, now that so much had been done by her means, of being able to shake her off and pursue their fate in their own way. the position of charles crowned king of france with all the traditional pomp, master of the orleannais, with fresh bands of supporters coming in to swell his army day by day, and paris itself almost within his reach, was very different from that of the discredited dauphin at chinon, whom half the world believed to have no right to the crown which his own mother had signed away from him, and who wasted his idle days in folly to the profit of the greedy councillors who schemed and trafficked with his enemies, and to the destruction of all his hopes. the strange apparition of virginal purity, energy, and faith which had taken up and saved him against his will and all his efforts had not ceased for a moment to be hateful to la tremouille and his party; and charles--though he seems to have had a certain appreciation of the maid, and even a liking for her frank and fearless character, apart from any faith in her mission--was far too ready to accept the facts of the moment, and probably to believe that, after all, his own worth and favour with heaven had a great deal to do with this dazzling triumph and success: certainly he was not the man to make any stand for his deliverer. but that she was an auxiliary too important to be sent away was reluctantly apparent to them all. to keep her as a sort of tame angel about the court in order to be produced when she was wanted, to put heart into the soldiers and frighten the english as she certainly had the gift of doing, no doubt appeared to all as a thing desirable enough. and they dared not let her go "because of the people," nor, may we believe, would alençon, dunois, la hire, and the rest have tolerated thus the abandonment of their comrade. to dismiss her even at her own word would have been impossible, and it is hard to believe that jeanne, after that extraordinary brief career as a triumphant general and leader, could have gone back to her father's cottage of the village, though she thought she would fain have done so. if we are to believe that she felt her mission to be fulfilled, she was yet mistress of her fate to serve france and the king as seemed best. and we have no evidence that her "voices" forsook her, or discouraged her. they seem to have changed a little in their burden, they began to mingle a sadder tone in their intimations. it began to be breathed into her mind though not immediately, that something was to happen to her, some disaster not explained, yet that god was to be with her. it seems to me that all the circumstances are compatible with a change in jeanne's consciousness, from the moment of the coronation. it might have been a grander thing had she retired there and then, her work being accomplished as she declared it to be; but it would not have been human. she was still a power, if no longer the direct messenger from heaven; a general, with much skill and natural aptitude if not the sent of god; and the ardour of a military career had got into her veins. no doubt she was much more good for that, now, than for sitting by the side of isabeau d'arc at domremy, and working even into a piece of embroidery for the altar, her remembrances and visions of camp and siege and the intoxication of victory. she remained, conscious that she was no longer exactly as of old, to fight not only against the english, but with intimate enemies, far more bitter, whom now she knew, against the ordinary fortune of war, and against that which is a thousand times worse, the hatred and envy, the cruel carelessness, and the malignant schemes of her own countrymen for whom she had fought. this, so far as we can judge, appears to be the position of jeanne in the second portion of her career; perhaps only dimly apprehended and at moments, by herself; not much thought of probably by those around her, the wisest of whom had always been sceptical of her divine commission; while the populace never saw any change in her, and believed that at one time as well as at another the maid was the maid, and had victory at her command. and no doubt that influence would have endured for some time at least, and her dauntless rush against every obstacle would have carried success with it, had she been able to carry out her plans, and fly forth upon paris as she had done upon orleans, carrying on the campaign swiftly, promptly, without pause or uncertainty. bedford himself said that paris "would fall at a blow," if she came on. it had been hard enough, however, to do that, as we have seen, when she was the only hope of france and had the fire of the divine enthusiasm in her veins; but it was still more hard now to mould a young king elated with triumph, beginning to feel the crown safe upon his head, and to feel that if there was still much to gain, there was now a great deal to be lost. the position was complicated and made more difficult for jeanne by every advantage she had gained. in the meantime the secret negotiations, which were always being carried on under the surface, had come to this point, that charles had made a private treaty with philip of burgundy by which that prince pledged himself to give up paris into the king's hands within fifteen days. this agreement furnished a sufficient pretext for the delay in marching against paris, delay which was charles's invariable method, and which but for jeanne's hardihood and determination, had all but crushed the expedition to rheims itself. it was never with any will of his or of his adviser, la tremouille, that any stronghold was assailed. he would fain have passed by troyes, as the reader will remember, he would fain have delayed going to rheims; in each case he had been forced to move by the impetuosity of the maid. but a treaty which touched the honour of the king was a different matter. philip of burgundy, with whom it was made, seems to have held the key of the position. he was called to paris by bedford on one side to defend the city against its lawful king; he had pledged himself on the other to charles to give it up. he had in his hands, though it is uncertain whether he ever read it, that missive of the sorceress, the letter of jeanne which i have quoted, calling upon him on the part of god to make peace. what was he to do? there were reasons drawing him to both sides. he was the enemy of charles on account of the murder of his father, and therefore had every interest in keeping paris from him; he was angry with the english on account of the marriage of the duke of gloucester with jacqueline of brabant, which interfered with his own rights and safety in flanders, and therefore might have served himself by giving up the capital to the king. as for the appeal of jeanne, what was the letter of that mad creature to a prince and statesman? the progress of affairs was arrested by this double problem. jeanne had been the prominent, the only important figure in the history of france for some months past. now that shining figure was jostled aside, and the ordinary laws of life, with all the counter changes of negotiation, the ineffectual comings and goings, the meaner half-seen persons, the fierce contending personal interests--in which there was no love of either god or man, or any elevated notion of patriotism--came again into play. jeanne would seem to have already foreseen and felt this change even before she left rheims; there is a new tone of sadness in some of her recorded words; or if not of sadness, at least of consciousness that an end was approaching to all these triumphs and splendours. the following tale is told in various different versions, as occurring with different people; but the account i give is taken from the lips of dunois himself, a very competent witness. as the king, after his coronation, wended his way through the country, receiving submission and joyous welcome from every village and little town, it happened that while passing through the town of la ferté, jeanne rode between the archbishop of rheims and dunois. the archbishop had never been friendly to the maid, and now it was clear, watched her with that half satirical, half amused look of the wise man, curious and cynical in presence of the incomprehensible, observing her ways and very ready to catch her tripping and to entangle her if possible in her own words. the people thronged the way, full of enthusiasm, acclaiming the king and shouting their joyful exclamations of "noël!" though it does not appear that any part of their devotion was addressed to jeanne herself. "oh, the good people," she cried with tears in her eyes, "how joyful they are to see their noble king! and how happy should i be to end my days and be buried here among them!" the priest unmoved by such an exclamation from so young a mouth attempted instantly, like the jewish doctors with our lord, to catch her in her words and draw from her some expression that might be used against her. "jeanne," he said, "in what place do you expect to die?" it was a direct challenge to the messenger of heaven to take upon herself the gift of prophecy. but jeanne in her simplicity shattered the snare which probably she did not even perceive: "when it pleases god," she said. "i know neither the place nor the time." it was enough, however, that she should think of death and of the sweetness of it, after her work accomplished, in the very moment of her height of triumph--to show something of a new leaven working in her virgin soul. one characteristic reward, however, jeanne did receive. her father and uncle were lodged at the public cost as benefactors of the kingdom, as may still be seen by the inscription on the old inn in the great place at rheims; and when jacques d'arc left the city he carried with him a patent--better than one of nobility which, however, came to the family later--of exemption for the villages of domremy and greux of all taxes and tributes; "an exemption maintained and confirmed up to the revolution, in favour of the said maid, native of that parish, in which are her relations." "in the register of the exchequer," says m. blaze de bury, "at the name of the parish of greux and domremy, the place for the receipt is blank, with these words as explanation: _à cause de la pucelle_, on account of the maid." there could not have been a more delightful reward or one more after her own heart. it would be a graceful act of the france of to-day, which has so warmly revived the name and image of her maiden deliverer, to renew so touching a distinction to her native place. we are told that jeanne parted with her father and uncle with tears, longing that she might return with them and go back to her mother who would rejoice to see her again. this was no doubt quite true, though it might be equally true that she could not have gone back. did not the father return, a little sullen, grasping the present he had himself received, not sure still that it was not disreputable to have a daughter who wore coat armour and rode by the side of the king, a position certainly not proper for maidens of humble birth? the dazzled peasants turned their backs upon her while she was thus at the height of glory, and never, so far as appears, saw her face again. chapter vii -- the second period. - . the epic so brief, so exciting, so full of wonder had now reached its climax. whatever we may think on the question as to whether jeanne had now reached the limit of her commission, it is at least evident that she had reached the highest point of her triumph, and that her short day of glory and success came to an end in the great act which she had always spoken of as her chief object. she had crowned her king; she had recovered for him one of the richest of his provinces, and established a strong base for further action on his part. she had taught frenchmen how not to fly before the english, and she had filled those stout-hearted english, who for a time had the frenchmen in their powerful steel-clad grip, with terror and panic, and taught them how to fly in their turn. this was, from the first, what she had said she was appointed to do, and not one of her promises had been broken. her career had been a short one, begun in april, ending in july, one brief continuous course of glory. but this triumphant career had come to its conclusion. the messenger of god had done her work; the servant must not desire to be greater than his lord. there have been heroes in this world whose career has continued a glorious and a happy one to the end. our hearts follow them in their noble career, but when the strain and pain are over they come into their kingdom and reap their reward the interest fails. we are glad, very glad, that they should live happy ever after, but their happiness does not attract us like their struggle. it is different with those whose work and whose motives are not those of this world. when they step out of the brilliant lights of triumph into sorrow and suffering, all that is most human in us rises to follow the bleeding feet, our hearts swell with indignation, with sorrow and love, and that instinctive admiration for the noble and pure, which proves that our birthright too is of heaven, however we may tarnish or even deny that highest pedigree. the chivalrous romance of that age would have made of jeanne d'arc the heroine of human story. she would have had a noble lover, say our young guy de laval, or some other generous and brilliant seigneur of france, and after her achievements she would have laid by her sword, and clothed herself with the beautiful garments of the age, and would have grown to be a noble lady in some half regal chateau, to which her name would have given new lustre. the young reader will probably long that it should be so; he will feel it an injustice, a wrong to humanity that so generous a soul should have no reward; it will seem to him almost a personal injury that there should not be a noble chevalier at hand to snatch that devoted maid out of the danger that threatened her, out of the horrible fate that befell her; and we can imagine a generous boy, and enthusiastic girl, ready to gnash their teeth at the terrible and dishonouring thought that it was by english hands that this noble creature was tied to the stake and perished in the flames. for the last it becomes us( ) to repent, for it was to our everlasting shame; but not more to us than to france who condemned her, who lifted no finger to help her, who raised not even a cry, a protest, against the cruelty and wrong. but for her fate in itself let us not mourn over-much. had the maid become a great and honoured lady should not we all have said as satan says in the book of job: did jeanne serve god for nought? we should say: see what she made by it. honour and fame and love and happiness. she did nobly, but nobly has she been rewarded. but that is not god's way. the highest saint is born to martyrdom. to serve god for nought is the greatest distinction which he reserves for his chosen. and this was the fate to which the maid of france was consecrated from the moment she set out upon her mission. she had the supreme glory of accomplishing that which she believed herself to be sent to do, and which i also believe she was sent to do, miraculously, by means undreamed of, and in which no one beforehand could have believed. but when that was done a higher consecration awaited her. she had to drink of the cup of which our lord drank, and to be baptised with the baptism with which he was baptised. it was involved in every step of the progress that it should be so. and she was herself aware of it, vaguely, at heart, as soon as the object of her mission was attained. what else could have put the thought of dying into the mind of a girl of eighteen in the midst of the adoring crowd, to whom to see her, to touch her, was a benediction? when she went forth from those gates she was going to her execution, though the end was not to be yet. there was still a long struggle before her, lingering and slow, more bitter than death, the preface of discouragement, of disappointment, of failure when she had most hoped to succeed. she was on the threshold of this second period when she rode out of rheims all brilliant in the summer weather, her banner faded now, but glorious, her shining armour bearing signs of warfare, her end achieved--yet all the while her heart troubled, uncertain, and full of unrest. and it is impossible not to note that from this time her plans were less defined than before. up to the coronation she had known exactly what she meant to do, and in spite of all obstructions had done it, keeping her genial humour and her patience, steering her simple way through all the intrigues of the court, without bitterness and without fear. but now a vague mist seems to fall about the path which was so open and so clear. paris! yes, the best policy, the true generalship would have been to march straight upon paris, to lose no time, to leave as little leisure as possible to the intriguers to resume their old plots. so the generals thought as well as jeanne: but the courtiers were not of that mind. the weak and foolish notion of falling back upon what they had gained, and of contenting themselves with that, was all they thought of; and the un-french, unpatriotic temper of paris which wanted no native king, but was content with the foreigner, gave them a certain excuse. we could not even imagine london as being ever, at any time, contented with an alien rule. but paris evidently was so, and was ready to defend itself to the death against its lawful sovereign. jeanne had never before been brought face to face with such a complication. it had been a straightforward struggle, each man for his own side, up to this time. but now other things had to be taken into consideration. here was no faithful orleans holding out eager arms to its deliverer, but a crafty, self-seeking city, deaf to patriotism, indifferent to freedom, calculating which was most to its profit--and deciding that the stranger, with philip of burgundy at his back, was the safer guide. this was enough of itself to make a simple mind pause in astonishment and dismay. there is no evidence that the supernatural leaders who had shaped the course of the maid failed her now. she still heard her "voices." she still held communion with the three saints who, she believed devoutly, came out of heaven to aid her. the whole question of this supernatural guidance is one which is of course open to discussion. there are many in these days who do not believe in it at all, who believe in the exaltation of jeanne's brain, in the excitement of her nerves, in some strange complication of bodily conditions, which made her believe she saw and heard what she did not really see or hear. for our part, we confess frankly that these explanations are no explanation at all so far as we are concerned; we are far more inclined to believe that the maid spoke truth, she who never told a lie, she who fulfilled all the promises she made in the name of her guides, than that those people are right who tell us on their own authority that such interpositions of heaven are impossible. nobody in jeanne's day doubted that heaven did interpose directly in human affairs. the only question was, was it heaven in this instance? was it not rather the evil one? was it sorcery and witchcraft, or was it the agency of god? the english believed firmly that it was witchcraft; they could not imagine that it was god, the god of battles, who had always been on their side, who now took the courage out of their hearts and taught their feet to fly for the first time. it was the devil, and the maid herself was a wicked witch. neither one side nor the other believed that it was from jeanne's excited nerves that these great things came. there were plenty of women with excited nerves in france, nerves much more excited than those of jeanne, who was always reasonable at the height of her inspiration; but to none of them did it happen to mount the breach, to take the city, to drive the enemy--up to that moment invincible,--flying from the field. but it would seem as if these celestial visitants had no longer a clear and definite message for the maid. their words, which she quotes, were now promises of support, vague warnings of trouble to come. "fear not, for god will stand by you." she thought they meant that she would be delivered in safety as she had been hitherto, her wounds healing, her sacred person preserved from any profane touch. but yet such promises have always something enigmatical in them, and it might be, as proved to be the case, that they meant rather consolation and strength to endure than deliverance. for the first time the maid was often sad; she feared nothing, but the shadow was heavy on her heart. orleans and rheims had been clear as daylight, her "voices" had said to her "do this" and she had done it. now there was no definite direction. she had to judge for herself what was best, and to walk in darkness, hoping that what she did was what she was meant to do, but with no longer any certainty. this of itself was a great change, and one which no doubt she felt to her heart. m. fabre tells (alone among the biographers of jeanne) that there were symptoms of danger to her sound and steady mind, in her words and ways during the moment of triumph. her chaplain pasquerel wrote a letter in her name to the hussites, against whom the pope was then sending crusades, in which "i, the maid," threatened, if they were not converted, to come against them and give them the alternative of death or amendment. quicherat says that to the count d'armagnac who had written to her, whether in good faith or bad, to ask which of the three then existent popes was the real one, she is reported to have answered that she would tell him as soon as the english left her free to do so. but this is a perverted account of what she really did say, and m. fabre seems to be, like the rest of us, a little confused in his dates: and the documents themselves on which he builds are not of unquestioned authority. these, however, would be but small speck upon the sunshine of her perfect humility and sobriety; if indeed they are to be depended upon as authentic at all. the day of jeanne, her time of glory and success, was but a short one--orleans was delivered on the th of may, the coronation of charles took place on the th of july; before the earliest of these dates she had spent nearly two months in an anxious yet hopeful struggle of preparation, before she was permitted to enter upon her career. the time of her discouragement was longer. it was ten months from the day when she rode out of rheims, the th of july, , till the d of may, , when she was taken. she had said after the deliverance of orleans that she had but a year in which to accomplish her work, and at a later period, easter, , her "voices" told her that "before the st. jean" she would be in the power of her enemies. both these statements came true. she rose quickly but fell more slowly, struggling along upon the downward course, unable to carry out what she would, hampered on every hand, and not apparently followed with the same fervour as of old. it is true that the principal cause of all seems to have been the schemes of the court and the indolence of charles; but all these hindrances had existed before, and the king and his treacherous advisers had been unwillingly dragged every mile of the way, though every step made had been to charles's advantage. but now though the course is still one of victory the maid no longer seems to be either the chief cause or the immediate leader. perhaps this may be partly due to the fact that little fighting was necessary, town after town yielding to the king, which reduced the part of jeanne to that of a spectator; but there is a change of atmosphere and tone which seems to point to something more fundamental than this. the historians are very unwilling to acknowledge, except michelet who does so without hesitation, that she had herself fixed the term of her commission as ending at rheims; it is certain that she said many things which bear this meaning, and every fact of her after career seems to us to prove it: but it is also true that her conviction wavered, and other sayings indicate a different belief or hope. she did no wrong in following the profession of arms in which she had made so glorious a beginning; she had many gifts and aptitudes for it of which she was not herself at first aware: but she was no longer the envoy of god. enough had been done to arouse the old spirit of france, to break the spell of the english supremacy; it was right and fitting that france should do the rest for herself. perhaps jeanne was not herself very clear on this point, and after her first statement of it, became less assured. it is not necessary that the servant should know the designs of the master. it did not after all affect her. her business was to serve god to the best of her power, not to take the management out of his hands. the army went forth joyously upon its way, directing itself towards paris. there was a pilgrimage to make, such as the kings of france were in the habit of making after their coronation; there were pleasant incidents, the submission of a village, the faint resistance, instantly overcome, of a small town, to make the early days pleasant. laon and soissons both surrendered. senlis and beauvais received the king's envoys with joy. the independent captains of the army made little circles about, like parties of pleasure, bringing in another and another little stronghold to the allegiance of the king. when he turned aside, taking as he passed through, without as yet any serious deflection, the road rather to the loire than to paris, success still attended him. at château-thierry resistance was expected to give zest to the movement of the forces, but that too yielded at once as the others had done. the dates are very vague and it seems difficult to find any mode of reconciling them. almost all the historians while accusing the king of foolish dilatoriness and confusion of plans give us a description of the undefended state of paris at the moment, which a sudden stroke on the part of charles might have carried with little difficulty, during the absence of all the chiefs from the city and the great terror of the inhabitants; but a comparison of dates shows that the duke of bedford re-entered paris with strong reinforcements on the very day on which charles left rheims three days only after his coronation, so that he scarcely seems so much to blame as appears. but the general delay, inefficiency, and hesitation existing at headquarters, naturally lead to mistakes of this kind. the great point was that paris itself was by no means disposed to receive the king. strange as it seems to say so paris was bitterly, fiercely english at that extraordinary moment, a fact which ought to be taken into account as the most important in the whole matter. there was no answering enthusiasm in the capital of france to form an auxiliary force behind its ramparts and encourage the besiegers outside. the populace perhaps might be indifferent: at the best it had no feeling on the subject; but there was no welcome awaiting the king. during the time of bedford's absence the city felt itself to have "no lord"--_ceux de paris avoit grand peur car nul seigneur n' y avoit_. it was believed that charles would put all the inhabitants to the sword, and their desperation of feeling was rather that which leads to a wild and hopeless defence than to submission. the duke of bedford, governing in the name of the infant henry vi. of england, was their seigneur, instead of their natural sovereign. it is a fact which to us seems scarcely credible, but it was certainly true. there seems to have been no feeling even, on the subject, no general shame as of a national betrayal; nothing of the kind. paris was english, holding by the english kings who had never lost a certain hold on france, and thinking no shame of its party. it was a hostile town, the chief of the english possessions. in the _journal du bourgeois de paris_--who was no _bourgeois_ but a distinguished member of that university which held the maid and all her ways in horror--jeanne the deliverer, the incarnation of patriotism and of france is spoken of as "a creature in the form of a woman." how extraordinary is this evidence of a state of affairs in which it is almost impossible to believe! paris is france nowadays to many people, though no doubt this is but a superficial judgment; but in the early part of the fifteenth century, she was frankly english, not by compulsion even, but by habit and policy. perhaps the delays, the hesitation, the terrors of charles and his counsellors are thus rendered more excusable than by any other explanation. in the meantime it is almost impossible to follow the wanderings of this vacillating army without a map. if the reader should trace its movements, he would see what a stumbling and devious course it took as of a man blundering in the dark. from rheims to soissons the way was clear; then there came a sudden move southward to château-thierry from which indeed there was still a straight line to paris but which still more clearly indicated the highroad leading to the orleannais, the faithful districts of the loire. this retrograde movement was not made without a great outcry from the generals. their opinion was that the king ought to press on to conquer everything while the english forces were still depressed and discouraged. in their mind this deflection towards the south was an abandonment at once of honour and safety. an unimportant check on the way, however, gave an argument to the leaders of the army, and charles permitted himself to be dragged back. they then made their way by la ferté-milon, crépy, and daumartin, and on this road the english troops which had been led out from paris by bedford to intercept them came twice within fighting distance of the french army. the english, as all the french historians are eager to inform us, invariably entrenched themselves in their positions, surrounding their lines with sharp-pointed posts by which the equally invariable rush of the french could be broken. but the french on these occasions were too wise to repeat the impetuous charge which had ruined them at crécy and agincourt, and the consequence was that the two forces remained within sight of each other, with a few skirmishes going on at the flanks, but without any serious encounter. it will be more satisfactory, however, to copy the following _itineraire_ of charles's movements from the chronicle of perceval de cagny who was a member of the household of the duc d'alençon, and probably present, certainly at all events bound to have the best and most correct information. he informs us that the king left rheims on thursday the st of july, and dined, supped, and lay at the abbey of st. nanuol that night, where were brought to him the keys of the city of laon. he then set out on _le voyage à venir devant paris_. "and on saturday the d of the same month the king dined, supped and lay at soissons, and was there received the most honourably that the churchmen, burghers and other people of the town were capable of: for they had all great fear because of the destruction of the town which had been taken by the burgundians and made to rebel against the king. "friday the th day of july the king and his company were all day before château-thierry in order of battle, hoping that the duke of bedford would appear to fight. the place surrendered at the hour of vespers, and the king lodged there till monday the first of august. on that day the king lay at monmirail in brie. "tuesday the d of august he passed the night in the town of provins, and had the best possible reception there, and remained till the friday following, the th august. sunday the th the king lay at the town of coulommièrs in brie. wednesday the th he lay at la ferté- milon, thursday at crespy in valois--friday at laigny-le-sec. the following saturday the th the king held the field near dammartin-en-gouelle, for the whole day looking out for the english: but they came not. "on sunday the th august the maid, the duc d'alençon, the count de vendosme, the marshals and other captains accompanied by six or seven thousand combatants were at the hour of vespers lodged in the fields near montépilloy, nearly two leagues from the town of senlis--the duke of bedford and other english captains with between eight and ten thousand english lying half a league from senlis between our people and the said city on a little stream, in a village called notre dame de la victoire. that evening our people skirmished with the english near to their camp and in this skirmish were people taken on each side, and of the english captain d'orbec and ten or twelve others, and people wounded on both sides: when night fell each retired to their own quarters." the same writer records an appeal in the true tone of chivalry addressed to the english by jeanne and alençon desiring them to come out from their entrenchments and fight: and promising to withdraw to a sufficient distance to permit the enemy to place himself in the open field. the french troops had first "put themselves in the best state of conscience that could possibly be, hearing mass at an early hour and then to horse." but the english would not come out. jeanne, with her standard in her hand rode up to the english entrenchments, and some one says (not de cagny) struck the posts with her banner, challenging the force within to come out and fight; while they on their side waved at the french in defiance, a standard copied from that of jeanne, on which was depicted a distaff and spindle. but neither host approached any nearer. finally, charles made his way to compiègne. at château-thierry there was concluded an arrangement with philip of burgundy for a truce of fifteen days, before the end of which time the duke undertook to deliver paris peaceably to the french. that this was simply to gain time and that no idea of giving up paris had ever been entertained is evident; perhaps charles was not even deceived. he, no more than philip, had any desire to encounter the dangers of such a siege. but he was able at least to silence the clamours of the army and the representations of the persistent maid by this truce. to wait for fifteen days and receive the prize without a blow struck, would not that be best? the counsellors of the king held thus a strong position, though the delay made the hearts of the warriors sick. the figure of jeanne appears during these marchings and counter-marchings like that of any other general, pursuing a skilful but not unusual plan of campaign. that she did well and bravely there can be no doubt, and there is a characteristic touch which we recognise, in the fact that she and all of her company "put themselves in the best state of conscience that could be," before they took to horse; but the skirmishes and repulses are such as alençon himself might have made. "she made much diligence," the same chronicler tells us, "to reduce and place many towns in the obedience of the king," but so did many others with like success. we hear no more her vigorous knock at the door of the council chamber if the discussion there was too long or the proceedings too secret. her appearances are those of a general among many other generals, no longer with any special certainty in her movements as of a person inspired. we are reminded of a story told of a previous period, after the fight at patay, when blazing forth in the indignation of her youthful purity at the sight of one of the camp followers, a degraded woman with some soldiers, she struck the wanton with the flat of her sword, driving her forth from the camp, where was no longer that chastened army of awed and reverent soldiers making their confession on the eve of every battle, whom she had led to orleans. the sword she used on this occasion, was, it is said, the miraculous sword which had been found under the high altar of st. catharine at fierbois; but at the touch of the unclean the maiden brand broke in two. if this was an allegory( ) to show that the work of that weapon was over, and the common sword of the soldier enough for the warfare that remained, it could not be more clearly realised than in the history of this campaign. the only touch of our real maid in her own distinct person comes to us in a letter written in a field on that same wavering road to paris, dated as early as the th of august and addressed to the good people of rheims, some of whom had evidently written to her to ask what was the meaning of the delay, and whether she had given up the cause of the country. there is a terse determination in its brief, indignant sentences which is a relief to the reader weary of the wavering and purposeless campaign: "dear and good friends, good and loyal frenchmen of the town of rheims. jeanne, the maid, sends you news of her. it is true that the king has made a truce of fifteen days with the duke of burgundy, who promises to render peaceably the city of paris in that time. do not, however, be surprised if i enter there sooner, for i like not truces so made, and know not whether i will keep them, but if i keep them, it will be only because of the honour of the king." while jeanne and her army thus played with the unmoving english, advancing and retiring, attempting every means of drawing them out, the enemy took advantage of one of these seeming withdrawals to march out of their camp suddenly and return to paris, which all this time had been lying comparatively defenceless, had the french made their attack sooner. at the same time charles moved on to compiègne where he gave himself up to fresh intrigues with philip of burgundy, this time for a truce to last till christmas. the maid was grievously troubled by this step, _moult marrie_, and by the new period of delay and negotiation on which the court had entered. paris was not given up, nor was there any appearance that it ever would be, and to all the generals as well as to the maid it was very evident that this was the next step to be taken. some of the leaders wearied with inaction had pushed on to normandy where four great fortresses--greatest of all the immense and mysterious stronghold on the high cliffs of the seine, that imposing château gaillard which richard c�ur-de-lion had built, the ruins of which, white and mystic, still dominate, like some titanic ghost, above the course of the river--had yielded to them. so great was the danger of normandy, the most securely english of all french provinces, that bedford had again been drawn out of paris to defend it. here then was another opportunity to seize the capital. but charles could not be induced to move. he found many ways of amusing himself at compiègne, and the new treaty was being hatched with burgundy which gave an excuse for doing nothing. the pause which wearied them all out, both captains and soldiers, at last became more than flesh and blood could bear. jeanne once more was driven to take the initiative. already on one occasion she had forced the hand of the lingering court, and resumed the campaign of her own accord, an impatient movement which had been perfectly successful. no doubt again the army itself was becoming demoralised, and showing symptoms of falling to pieces. one day she sent for alençon in haste during the absence of the ambassadors at arras. "_beau duc_," she cried, "prepare your troops and the other captains. _en mon dieu, par mon martin_,( ) i will see paris nearer than i have yet seen it." she had seen the towers from afar as she wandered over the country in charles's lingering train. her sudden resolution struck like fire upon the impatient band. they set out at once, alençon and the maid at the head of their division of the army, and all rejoiced to get to horse again, to push their way through every obstacle. they started on the d august, nearly a month after the departure from rheims, a month entirely lost, though full of events, lost without remedy so far as paris was concerned. at senlis they made a pause, perhaps to await the king, who, it was hoped, would have been constrained to follow; then carrying with them all the forces that could be spared from that town, they spurred on to st. denis where they arrived on the th: st. denis, the other sacred town of france, the place of the tomb, as rheims was the place of the crown. the royalty of france was jeanne's passion. i do not say the king, which might be capable of malinterpretation, but the kings, the monarchy, the anointed of the lord, by whom france was represented, embodied and made into a living thing. she had loved rheims, its associations, its triumphs, the rejoicing of its citizens. these had been the accompaniments of her own highest victory. she came to st. denis in a different mood, her heart hot with disappointment and the thwarting of all her plans. from whatever cause it might spring, it was clear that she was no longer buoyed up by that certainty which only a little while before had carried her through every danger and over every obstacle. but to have reached st. denis at least was something. it was a place doubly sacred, consecrated to that royal house for which she would so willingly have given her life. and at last she was within sight of paris, the greatest prize of all. up to this time she had known in actual warfare nothing but victory. if her heart for the first time wavered and feared, there was still no certain reason that, _de par dieu_, she might not win the day again. at st. denis there was once more a cruel delay. nearly a fortnight passed and there was no news of the king. the maid employed the time in skirmishes and reconnoissances, but does not seem to have ventured on an attack without the sanction of charles, whom alençon, finally, going back on two several occasions, succeeded in setting in motion. charles had remained at compiègne to carry out his treaty with burgundy, and the last thing he desired was this attack; but when he could resist no longer he moved on reluctantly to st. denis, where his arrival was hailed with great delight. this was not until the th of september, and the army, wrought up to a high pitch of excitement and expectation, was eager for the fight. "there was no one of whatever condition, who did not say, 'she will lead the king into paris, if he will let her,'" says the chronicler. in the meantime the authorities in paris were at work, strengthening its fortifications, frightening the populace with threats of the vengeance of charles, persuading every citizen of the danger of submission. the _bourgeois_ tells us that letters came from "les arminoz," that is, the party of the king, sealed with the seal of the duc d'alençon, and addressed to the heads of the city guilds and municipality inviting their co-operation as frenchmen. "but," adds the parisian, "it was easy to see through their meaning, and an answer was returned that they need not throw away their paper as no attention was paid to it." there is no sign at all that any national feeling existed to respond to such an appeal. paris--its courts of law, parliaments (salaried by bedford), university, church--every department, was english in the first place, burgundian in the second, dependent on english support and money. there was no french party existing. the maid was to them an evil sorceress, a creature in the form of a woman, exercising the blackest arts. perhaps there was even a breath of consciousness in the air that charles himself had no desire for the fall of the city. he had left the parisians full time to make every preparation, he had held back as long as was possible. his favour was all on the side of his enemies; for his own forces and their leaders, and especially for the maid, he had nothing but discouragement, distrust, and auguries of evil. nevertheless, these oppositions came to an end, and jeanne, though less ready and eager for the assault, found herself under the walls of paris at last. ( ) "the english, not us," says mr. andrew lang: and it is pleasant to a scot to know that this is true. england and scotland were then twain, and the scots fought in the ranks of our auld ally. but for the present age the distinction lasts no longer, and to the writer of an english book on english soil it would be ungenerous to take the advantage. ( ) it is taken as a miraculous sign by another chronicler, jean chartier, who tells us that when this fact came to the knowledge of the king the sword was given by him to the workmen to be re-founded--"but they could not do it, nor put the pieces together again: which is a great proof (_grant approbation_) that the sword came to her divinely. and it is notorious that since the breaking of that sword, the said jeanne neither prospered in arms to the profit of the king nor otherwise as she had done before." ( ) "it was her oath," adds the chronicler; no one is quite sure what it means, but quicherat is of opinion that it was her _baton_, her stick or staff. perceval de cagny puts in this exclamation in almost all the speeches of the maid. it must have struck him as a curious adjuration. perhaps it explains why la hire, unable to do without something to swear by, was permitted by jeanne in their frank and humorous _camaraderie_ to swear by his stick, the same rustic oath. chapter viii -- defeat and discouragement. autumn, . it was on the th september that jeanne and her immediate followers reached the village of la chapelle, where they encamped for the night. the next day was the day of the nativity of the blessed virgin, a great festival of the church. it could scarcely be a matter of choice on the part of so devout a catholic as jeanne to take this day of all others, when every church bell was tinkling forth a summons to the faithful, for the day of assault. in all probability she was not now acting on her own impulse but on that of the other generals and nobles. had she refused, might it not have been alleged against her that after all her impatience it was she who was the cause of delay? the forces with jeanne were not very large, a great proportion of the army remaining with charles no one seems to know where, either at st. denis or at some intermediate spot, possibly to form a reserve force which could be brought up when wanted. the best informed historian only knows that charles was not with the active force. but alençon was at the head of the troops, along with many other names well known to us, la hire, and young guy de laval, and xantrailles, all mighty men of valour and the devoted friends of jeanne. there is a something, a mist, an incertitude in the beginning of the assault which was unlike the previous achievements of jeanne, a certain want of precaution or knowledge of the difficulties which does not reflect honour upon the generals with her. absolutely new to warfare as she was before orleans she had ridden out at once on her arrival there to inspect the fortifications of the besiegers. but probably the continual skirmishing of which we are told made this impossible here, so that, though the maid studied the situation of the town in order to choose the best point for attack, it was only when already engaged that the army discovered a double ditch round the walls, the inner one of which was full of water. by sheer impetuosity the french took the gate of st. honoré and its "boulevard" or tower, driving its defenders back into the city: but their further progress was arrested by that discovery. it was on this occasion that jeanne is supposed to have seized from a burgundian in the mêlée, a sword, of which she boasted afterwards that it was a good sword capable of good blows, though we have no certain record that in all her battles she ever gave one blow, or shed blood at all. it would seem to have been only after the taking of this gate that the discovery was made as to the two deep ditches, one dry, the other filled with water. jeanne, whose place had always been with her standard at the immediate foot of the wall, from whence to direct and cheer on her soldiers, pressed forward to this point of peril, descending into the first fosse, and climbing up again on the second, the _dos d'ane_, which separated them, where she stood in the midst of a rain of arrows, fully exposed to all the enraged crowd of archers and gunners on the ramparts above, testing with her lance the depth of the water. we seem in the story to see her all alone or with her standard-bearer only by her side making this investigation; but that of course is only a pictorial suggestion, though it might for a moment be the fact. she remained there, however, from two in the afternoon till night, when she was forced away. the struggle must have raged around while she stood on the dark edge of the ditch probing the muddy water to see where it could best be crossed, shouting directions to her men in that voice _assez femme_, which penetrated the noise of battle, and summoning the active and desperate enemy overhead. "_renty! renty!_" she cried as she had done at orleans--"_surrender to the king of france!_" we hear nothing now of the white armour; it must have been dimmed and worn by much fighting, and the banner torn and glorious with the chances of the war; but it still waved over her head, and she still stood fast, on the ridge between the two ditches, shouting her summons, cheering the men, a spot of light still, amid all the steely glimmering of the mail-coats and the dark downpour of that iron rain. half a hundred war cries rending the air, shrieks from the walls of "witch, devil, ribaude," and names still more insulting to her purity, could not silence that treble shout, the most wonderful, surely, that ever ran through such an infernal clamour, so prodigious, the chronicler says, that it was a marvel to hear it. _de par dieu, rendez vous, rendez vous, au roy de france_. if as we believe she never struck a blow, the aspect of that wonderful figure becomes more extraordinary still. while the boldest of her companions struggled across to fling themselves and what beams and ladders they could drag with them against the wall, she stood without even such shelter as close proximity to it might have given, cheering them on, exposed to every shot. the fight was desperate, and though there was no marked success on the part of the besiegers, yet there seems to have been nothing to discourage them, as the fight raged on. few were wounded, notwithstanding the noise of the cannons and culverins, "by the grace of god and the good luck of the maid." but towards the evening jeanne herself suddenly swayed and fell, an arrow having pierced her thigh; she seems, however, to have struggled to her feet again, undismayed, when a still greater misfortune befell: her standard-bearer was hit, first in the foot, and then, as he raised his visor to pull the arrow from the wound, between his eyes, falling dead at her feet. what happened to the banner, we are not told; jeanne most likely herself caught it as it fell. but at this stroke, more dreadful than her own wound, her strength failed her, and she crept behind a bush or heap of stones, where she lay, refusing to quit the place. some say she managed to slide into the dry ditch where there was a little shelter, but resisted all attempts to carry her away, and some add that while she lay there she employed herself in a vain attempt to throw faggots into the ditch to make it passable. it is said that she kept calling out to them to persevere, to go on and paris would be won. she had promised, they say, to sleep that night within the conquered city; but this promise comes to us with no seal of authority. jeanne knew that it had taken her eight days to free orleans, and she could scarcely have promised so sudden a success in the more formidable achievement. but she was at least determined in her conviction that perseverance only was needed. she must have lain for hours on the slope of the outer moat, urging on the troops with such force as her dauntless voice could give, repeating again and again that the place could be taken if they but held on. but when night came alençon and some other of the captains overcame her resistance, and there being clearly no further possibility for the moment, succeeded in setting her upon her horse, and conveyed her back to the camp. while they rode with her, supporting her on her charger, she did nothing but repeat "_quel dommage!_" oh, what a misfortune, that the siege of paris should fail, all for want of constancy and courage. "if they had but gone on till morning," she cried, "the inhabitants would have known." it is evident from this that she must have expected a rising within, and could not yet believe that no such thing was to be looked for. "_par mon martin_, the place would have been taken," she said in the hearing one cannot but feel of the chronicler, who reports so often those homely words. thus jeanne was led back after the first day's attack. her wound was not serious, and she had been repulsed during one of the day's fighting at orleans without losing courage. but something had changed her spirit as well as the spirit of the army she led. there is a curious glimpse given us into her camp at this point, which indeed comes to us through the observation of an enemy, yet seems to have in it an unmistakable gleam of truth. it comes from one of the parties which had been granted a safe-conduct to carry away the dead of the english and burgundian side. they tell us, among other circumstances,--such as that the french burnt their dead, a manifest falsehood, but admirably calculated to make them a horror to their neighbours,--that many in the ranks cursed the maid who had promised that they should without any doubt sleep that night in paris and plunder the wealthy city. the men with their safe-conduct creeping among the dead, to recover those bodies which had fallen on their own side, and furtively to count the fallen on the other--who were delighted to bring a report that the maid was no longer the fountain of strength and blessing, but secretly cursed by her own forces--are sinister figures groping their way through the darkness of the september night. next morning, however, her wound being slight, jeanne was up early and in conference with alençon, begging him to sound his trumpets and set forth once more. "i shall not budge from here, till paris is taken," she said. no doubt her spirit was up, and a determination to recover lost ground strong in her mind. while the commanders consulted together, there came a band of joyful augury into the camp, the seigneur of montmorency with sixty gentlemen, who had left the party of burgundy in order to take service under the banner of the maid. no doubt this important and welcome addition to their number exhilarated the entire camp, in the commotion of the reveillé, while each man looked to his weapons, wiping off from breastplate and helmet the heavy dew of the september morning, greeting the new friends and brothers-in-arms who had come in, and arranging, with a better knowledge of the ground than that of yesterday, the mode of attack. jeanne would not confess that she felt her wound, in her eagerness to begin the assault a second time. and all were in good spirits, the disappointment of the night having blown away, and the determination to do or die being stronger than ever. were the men-at-arms perhaps less amenable? were they whispering to each other that jeanne had promised them paris yesterday, and for the first time had not kept her word? it would almost require such a fact as this to explain what follows. for as they began to set out, the whole field in movement, there was suddenly seen approaching another party of cavaliers--perhaps another reinforcement like that of montmorency? this new band, however, consisted but of two gentlemen and their immediate attendants, the duc de bar and the comte de clermont,( ) always a bird of evil omen, riding hot from st. denis with orders from the king. these orders were abrupt and peremptory--to turn back. jeanne and her companions were struck dumb for the moment. to turn back, and paris at their feet! there must have burst forth a storm of remonstrance and appeal. we cannot tell how long the indignant parley lasted; the historians do not enlarge upon the disastrous incident. but at last the generals yielded to the orders of the king--jeanne humiliated, miserable, and almost in despair. we cannot but feel that on no former occasion would she have given way so completely; she would have rushed to the king's presence, overwhelmed him with impetuous prayers, extorted somehow the permission to go on. but charles was safe at seven miles' distance, and his envoys were imperious and peremptory, like men able to enforce obedience if it were not given. she obeyed at last, recovering courage a little in the hope of being able to persuade charles to change his mind, and sanction another assault on paris from the other side, by means of a bridge over the seine towards st. denis, which alençon had constructed. next morning it appears that without even asking that permission a portion of the army set out very early for this bridge: but the king had divined their project, and when they reached the river side the first thing they saw was their bridge in ruins. it had been treacherously destroyed in the night, not by their enemies, but by their king. it is natural that the french historians should exhaust themselves in explanation of this fatal change of policy. quicherat, who was the first to bring to light all the most important records of this period of history, lays the entire blame upon la tremoïlle, the chief adviser of charles. but that charles himself was at heart equally guilty no one can doubt. he was a man who proved himself in the end of his career to possess both sense and energy, though tardily developed. it was to him that jeanne had given that private sign of the truth of her mission, by which he was overawed and convinced in the first moment of their intercourse. within the few months which had elapsed since she appeared at chinon every thing that was wonderful had been done for him by her means. he was then a fugitive pretender, not even very certain of his own claim, driven into a corner of his lawful dominions, and fully prepared to abandon even that small standing ground, to fly into spain or scotland, and give up the attempt to hold his place as king of france. now he was the consecrated king, with the holy oil upon his brows, and the crown of his ancestors on his head, accepted and proclaimed, all france stirring to her old allegiance, new conquests falling into his hands every day, and the richest portion of his kingdom secure under his sway. to check thus peremptorily the career of the deliverer who had done so much for him, degrading her from her place, throwing more than doubt upon her inspiration, falsifying by force the promises which she had made--promises which had never failed before,--was a worse and deeper sin on the part of a young man, by right of his kingly office the very head of knighthood and every chivalrous undertaking, than it could be on the part of an old and subtle diplomatist who had never believed in such wild measures, and all through had clogged the steps and endeavoured to neutralise the mission of the warrior maid. it is very clear, however, that between them it was the king and his chamberlain who made this assault upon paris so evident and complete a failure. one day's repulse was nothing in a siege. there had been one great repulse and several lesser ones at orleans. jeanne, even though weakened by her wound, had sprung up that morning full of confidence and courage. in no way was the failure to be laid to her charge. but this could never, perhaps, have been explained to the whole body of the army, who had believed her word without a doubt and taken her success for granted. if they had been wavering before, which seems possible--for they must have been, to a considerable extent, new levies, the campaigners of the loire having accomplished their period of feudal service,--this sudden downfall must have strengthened every doubt and damped every enthusiasm. the maid of whom such wonderful tales had been told, she who had been the angel of triumph, the irresistible, before whom the english fled, and the very walls fell down--was she after all only a sorceress, as the others called her, a creature whose incantations had failed after the flash of momentary success? such impressions are too apt to come like clouds over every popular enthusiasm, quenching the light and chilling the heart. jeanne was thus dragged back to st. denis against her will and every instinct of her being, and there ensued three days of passionate debate and discussion. for a moment it appeared as if she would have thrown off the bonds of loyal obedience and pursued her mission at all hazards. her "voices," if they had previously given her uncertain sound, promising only the support and succour of god, but no success, now spoke more plainly and urged the continuance of the siege; and the maid was torn in pieces between the requirements of her celestial guardians and the force of authority around her. if she had broken out into open rebellion who would have followed her? she had never yet done so; when the king was against her she had pleaded or forced an agreement, and received or snatched a consent from the malevolent chamberlain, as at jargeau and troyes. never yet had she set herself in public opposition to the will of her sovereign. she had submitted to all kinds of tests and trials rather than this. and to have lain half a day wounded outside paris and to stand there pleading her cause with her wound still unhealed were not likely things to strengthen her powers of resistance. "the voices bade me remain at st. denis," she said afterwards at her trial, "and i desired to remain; but the seigneurs took me away in spite of myself. if i had not been wounded i should never have left." added to the force of these circumstances, it was no doubt apparent to all that to resume operations after that forced retreat, and the betrayal it gave of divided counsels, would be less hopeful than ever. these arguments even convinced the bold la hire, who for his part, being no better than a free lance, could move hither and thither as he would; and thus the first defeat of the maid, a disaster involving all the misfortunes that followed in its train, was accomplished. jeanne's last act in st. denis was one to which perhaps the modern reader gives undue significance, but which certainly must have had a certain melancholy meaning. before she left, dragged almost a captive in the train of the king, we are told that she laid on the altar of the cathedral the armour she had worn on that evil day before paris. it was not an unusual act for a warrior to do this on his return from the wars. and if she had been about to renounce her mission it would have been easily comprehensible. but no such thought was in her mind. was it a movement of despair, was it with some womanish fancy that the arms in which she had suffered defeat should not be borne again?--or was it done in some gleam of higher revelation made to her that defeat, too, was a part of victory, and that not without that bitterness of failure could the fame of the soldier of christ be perfected? i have remarked already that we hear no more of the white armour, inlaid with silver and dazzling like a mirror, in which she had begun her career; perhaps it was the remains of that panoply of triumph which she laid out before the altar of the patron saint of france, all dim now with hard work and the shadow of defeat. it must have marked a renunciation of one kind or another, the sacrifice of some hope. she was no longer jeanne the invincible, the triumphant, whose very look made the enemy tremble and flee, and gave double force to every frenchman's arm. was she then and there abdicating, becoming to her own consciousness jeanne the champion only, honest and true, but no longer the inspired maid, the envoy of god? to these questions we can give no answer; but the act is pathetic, and fills the mind with suggestions. she who had carried every force triumphantly with her, and quenched every opposition, bitter and determined though that had been, was now a thrall to be dragged almost by force in an unworthy train. it is evident that she felt the humiliation to the bottom of her heart. it is not for human nature to have the triumph alone: the humiliation, the overthrow, the chill and tragic shadow must follow. jeanne had entered into that cloud when she offered the armour, that had been like a star in front of the battle, at the shrine of st. denis.( ) hers was now to be a sadder, a humbler, perhaps a still nobler part. it is enough to trace the further movements of the king to perceive how at every step the iron must have entered deeper and deeper into the heart of the maid. he made his arrangements for the government of each of the towns which had acknowledged him: beauvais, compiègne, senlis, and the rest. he appointed commissioners for the due regulation of the truce with philip of burgundy. and then the retreating army took its march southward towards the mild and wealthy country, all fertility and quiet, where a recreant prince might feel himself safe and amuse himself at his leisure--by lagny, by provins, by bercy-sur seine, where he had been checked before in his retreat and almost forced to the march on paris--by sens, and montargis: until at last on the th of september, no doubt diminished by the withdrawal of many a local troop and knight whose service was over, the forces arrived at gien, whence they had set forth at the end of june for a series of victories. it is to be supposed that the king was well enough satisfied with the conquests accomplished in three months. and, indeed, in ordinary circumstances they would have formed a triumphant list. charles must have felt himself free to play after the work which he had not done; and to leave his good fortune and the able negotiators, who hoped to get paris and other good things from philip of burgundy without paying anything for them, to do the rest. we can imagine nothing more dreadful for the maid than the months that followed. the court was not ungrateful to her; she received the warmest welcome from the queen; she had a _maison_ arranged for her like the household of a noble chief, with the addition of women and maidens of rank to her existing staff, and everything which could serve to show that she was one whom the king delighted to honour. and charles would have her apparelled gloriously like the king's daughter in the psalm. "he gave her a mantle of cloth of gold, open at both sides, to wear over her armour," and apparently did his best to make her, if not a noble lady, yet into the semblance of a noble young chevalière, one the glories of his court, with all the distinction of her achievements and all the complacences of a carpet knight. it was said afterwards, in the absence of any graver possibility of accusation, that she liked her fine clothes. the tears rise to the eyes at such a suggestion. she was so natural that let us hope she did, the martyr maid whose torture had already begun. if that mantle of gold gave her a moment of pleasure, it is something to be thankful for in the midst of the dismal shadows that were already closing round her. they were ready to give her any shining mantle, any beautiful dress, even a title and a noble name if she would; but what the king and his counsellors were determined on, was, that she should no more have the fame of individual triumph, or do anything save under their orders. alençon, the gentle duke, with whom she had taken so much trouble, and who had grown into a true and noble comrade, made one effort to free his friend and leader. he planned an expedition into normandy, where, with the help of jeanne, he hoped to inflict upon the english a loss so tremendous, the destruction of their base of operations, that they would be compelled to abandon the centre of france altogether, and leave the way open to paris and to the recovery of the entire kingdom; but the king, or la tremoïlle, as the historians prefer to say, would not permit jeanne to accompany him, and this hope came to nothing. alençon disbanded his troops, everything in the form of an army was broken up--the short period of feudal service making this inevitable, unless new levies were made--and no forces were left under arms except those bands which formed the body-guard of the king. nevertheless, there was plenty of work to be done still, and the breaking up of the french forces encouraged many a little garrison of english partisans, which would have yielded naturally and easily to a strong national party. in the midst of the winter, however, it seemed appropriate to the court to launch forth an expedition against some of the unsubdued towns, perhaps on account of the mortal languishment of jeanne herself, perhaps for some other reason of its own. the first necessity was to collect the necessary forces, and for this reason jeanne came to bourges, where she was lodged in one of the great houses of the city, that of raynard de bouligny, _conseiller de roi_, and his wife, marguerite, one of the queen's ladies. she was there for three weeks collecting her men, and the noble gentlewoman, who was her hostess, was afterwards in the rehabilitation trial, one of the witnesses to the purity of her life. from this lady and others we have a clear enough view of what the maid was in this second chapter of her history. she spent her time in the most intimate intercourse with madam marguerite, sharing even her room, so that nothing could be more complete than the knowledge of her hostess of every detail of her young guest's life. and wonderful as was the difference between the peasant maiden of domremy and the most famous woman in france, the life of jeanne, the deliverer of her country, is as the life of jeanne, the cottage sempstress,--as simple, as devout, and as pure. she loved to go to church for the early matins, but as it was not fit that she should go out alone at that hour, she besought madame marguerite to go with her. in the evening she went to the nearest church, and there with all her old childish love for the church bells, she had them rung for half an hour, calling together the poor, the beggars who haunt every catholic church, the poor friars and bedesmen, the penniless and forlorn from all the neighbourhood. this custom would, no doubt, soon become known, and not only her poor pensioners, but the general crowd would gather to gaze at the maid as well as to join in her prayers. it was her great pleasure to sing a hymn to the virgin, probably one of the litanies which the unlearned worshipper loves, with its choruses and constant repetitions, in company with all those untutored voices, in the dimness of the church, while the twilight sank into night, and the twinkling stars of candles on the altar made a radiance in the middle of the gloom. when she had money to give she divided it, according to the liberal custom of her time, among her poor fellow-worshippers. these evening services were her recreation. the days were full of business, of enrolling soldiers, and regulating the "lances," groups of retainers, headed by their lord, who came to perform their feudal service. the ladies of the town who had the advantage of knowing madame marguerite did not fail to avail themselves of this privilege, and thronged to visit her wonderful guest. they brought her their sacred medals and rosaries to bless, and asked her a hundred questions. was she afraid of being wounded; or was she assured that she would not be wounded? "no more than others," she said; and she put away their religious ornaments with a smile, bidding madame marguerite touch them, or the visitors themselves, which would be just as good as if she did it. she would seem to have been always smiling, friendly, checking with a laugh the adulation of her visitors, many of whom wore medals with her own effigy (if only one had been saved for us!) as there were many banners made after the pattern of hers. but cheerful as she was, a prevailing tone of sadness now appears to run through her life. on several occasions she spoke to her confessor and chaplain, who attended her everywhere, of her death. "if it should be my fate to die soon, tell the king our master on my part to build chapels where prayer may be made to the most high for the salvation of the souls of those who shall die in the wars for the defence of the kingdom." this was the one thing she seemed anxious for, and it returned again and again to her mind. her thoughts indeed were heavy enough. her larger enterprises had been cruelly put a stop to: her companions-in-arms had been dispersed: she had been separated from her lieutenant alençon, and from all the friends between whom and herself great mutual confidence had sprung up. even the commission which had at last been put in her hands was a trifling one and led to nothing, bringing the king no nearer to any satisfactory end: and the troops were under command of a new captain whom she scarcely knew, d'albert, who was the son-in-law of la tremoïlle, and probably little inclined to be a friend to jeanne. in these circumstances there was little of an exhilarating or promising kind. nevertheless as an episode, few things had happened to jeanne more memorable than the siege of st. pierre-le-moutier. the first assault upon the town was unsuccessful; the retreat had sounded and the troops were streaming back from the point of attack, when jean d'aulon, the faithful friend and brave gentleman who was at the head of the maid's military household, being himself wounded in the heel and unable to stand or walk, saw the maid almost alone before the stronghold, four or five men only with her. he dragged himself up as well as he could upon his horse, and hastened towards her, calling out to her to ask what she did there, and why she did not retire with the rest. she answered him, taking off her helmet to speak, that she would leave only when the place was taken--and went on shouting for faggots and beams to make a bridge across the ditch. it is to be supposed that seeing she paid no attention, nor budged a step from that dangerous point, this brave man, wounded though he was, must have made an effort to rally the retiring besiegers: but jeanne seems to have taken no notice of her desertion nor ever to have paused in her shout for planks and gabions. "all to the bridge," she shouted, "_aux fagots et aux claies tout le monde!_ every one to the bridge." "jeanne, withdraw, withdraw! you are alone," some one said to her. bareheaded, her countenance all aglow, the maid replied: "i have still with me fifty thousand of my men." were those the men whom the prophet's servant saw when his eyes were opened and he beheld the innumerable company of angels that surrounded his master? but jeanne, rapt in the trance and ecstasy of battle, gave no explanation. "to work, to work!" her clear voice went on, ringing over the startled head of the good knight who knew war, but not any rapture like this. history itself, awe-stricken, would almost have us believe that alone with her own hand the maid took the city, so entirely does every figure disappear but that one, and the perplexed and terrified spectator vainly urging her to give up so desperate an attempt. but no doubt the shouts of a voice so strange to every such scene, the _vox infantile_, the amazing and clear voice, silvery and womanly, _assez femme_, and the efforts of d'aulon to bring back the retreating troops were successful, and jeanne once more, triumphantly kept her word. the place was strongly fortified, well provisioned, and full of people. therefore the whole narrative is little less than miraculous, though very little is said of it. had they but persevered, as she had said, a few hours longer before paris, who could tell that the same result might not have been obtained? she was not successful, however, with la charité, which after a siege of a month's duration still held out, and had to be abandoned. these long operations of regular warfare were not in jeanne's way; and her coadjutor in command, it must be remembered, was in this case commissioned by her chief enemy. we are told that she was left without supplies, and in the depths of winter, in cold and rain and snow, with every movement hampered, and the ineffective government ever ready to send orders of retreat, or to cause bewildering and confusing delays by the want of every munition of war. finally, at all events, the french forces withdrew, and again an unsuccessful enterprise was added to the record of the once victorious maid. that she went on continually promising victory as in her early times, is probably the mere rumour spread by her detractors who were now so many, for there is no real evidence that she did so. everything rather points to discouragement, uncertainty, and to a silent rage against the coercion which she could not overcome. ( ) clermont it was who deserted the scots at the battle of the herrings. ( ) jeanne's arms, offered at st. denis, were afterwards taken by the english and sent to the king of england (all except the sword with its ornaments of gold) without giving anything to the church in return: "qui est pur sacrilege et manifeste," says jean chartier. chapter ix -- compiÈgne. . by this time france was once more all in flames: the english and burgundians had entered and then abandoned paris--duke philip cynically leaving that city, which he had promised to give up to charles, to its own protection, in order to look after his more pressing personal concerns: while bedford spread fire and flame about the adjacent country, retaking with much slaughter many of the towns which had opened their gates to the king. thus while charles gave no attention to anything beyond the loire, and kept his chief champion there, as it were, on the leash, permitting no return to the most important field of operations, almost all that had been gained was again lost upon the banks of the seine. this was the state of affairs when jeanne returned humbled and sad from the abandoned siege of la charité. her enemy's counsels had triumphed all round and this was the result. individual fightings of no particular account and under no efficient organisation were taking place day by day; here a town stood out heroically, there another yielded to the foreign arms; the population were thrown back into universal misery, the spring fields trampled under foot, the villages burned, every evil of war in full operation, invasion aggravated by faction, the english always aided by one side of france against the other, and neither peace nor security anywhere. this was the aspect of affairs on one side. on the other appeared a still less satisfactory scene. charles amusing himself, his counsellors, la tremoïlle, and the archbishop of rheims carrying on fictitious negotiations with burgundy and playing with the maid who was in their power, sending her out to make a show and cast a spell, then dragging her back at the end of their shameful chain: while the court, the king and queen, and all their flattering attendants gilded that chain and tried to make her forget by fine clothes and caresses, at once her mission and her despair. they were not ungrateful, no: let us do them justice, for they might well have added this to the number of their sins: mantles of cloth of gold, patents of nobility were at her command, had these been what she wanted. the only personal wrong they did to jeanne was to set up against her a sort of opposition, another enchantress and visionary who had "voices" and apparitions too, and who was admitted to all the councils and gave her advice in contradiction of the maid, a certain catherine de la rochelle, who was ready to say anything that was put into her mouth, but who had done nothing to prove any mission for france or from god. we have little light however upon the state of affairs in those castles, which one after another were the abode of the court during this disastrous winter. they were safe enough on the other side of the loire in the fat country where the vines still flourished and the young corn grew. now and then a band of armed men was sent forth to succour a fighting town in the suffering and struggling Île-de-france, always under the conflicting orders of those intrigants and courtiers: but within the court, all was gay; "never man," as rough la hire had said on an earlier occasion, "lost his kingdom more gaily or with better grace" than did charles. where was la hire? where was dunois?--there is no appearance of these champions anywhere. alençon had returned to his province. only la tremoïlle and the archbishop holding all the strings in their hands, upsetting all military plans, disgusting every chief, met and talked and carried on their busy intrigues, and played their sibyl--_sibylle de carrefour_, says one of the historians indignantly--against the maid, who, all discouraged and downcast, fretted by caresses, sick of inactivity, dragged out the uneasy days in an uncongenial world; but jeanne has left no record of the sensations with which she saw these days pass, eating her heart out, gazing over that rapid river, on the other side of which all the devils were unchained and every result of her brief revolution was being lost. at length however the impatience and despair were more than she could bear; the court was then at sully and the spring had begun with its longer days and more passable roads. without a word to anyone the maid left the castle. the war had rolled towards these princely walls, as near as melun, which was threatened by the english. a little band of intimate servants and associates, her two brothers, and a few faithful followers, were with her. so far as we know she never saw charles or his courtiers again. they arrived at melun in time to witness and to take part in the repulse of the english, and it was here that a communication was make to jeanne by her saints of which afterwards there was frequent mention. little had been said of them during her dark time of inaction, and their tone was no longer as of old. it was on the side of the moat of melun where probably she was superintending some necessary work to strengthen the fortifications or to put them in better order for defence, that this message reached her. the "voices" which so often had urged her to victory and engaged the faith of heaven for her success, had now a word to say, secret and personal to herself. it was that she should be taken prisoner; and the date was fixed, before the st. jean. it was the middle of april when this communication was made and the feast of st. jean, as everybody knows, is in the end of june; two months only to work in, to strike another blow for france. the "voices" bade her not to fear, that god would sustain her. but it would be impossible not to be startled by such a sudden intimation in the midst of her reviving plans. the maid made one terrified prayer, that god would let her die when she was taken, not subject her to long imprisonment; her heart prophetically sprang to a sudden consciousness of the most likely, most terrible end that lay before her, for she had been often enough threatened with the stake and the fire to know what to expect. but the saintly voices made no reply. they bade her be strong and of good courage: is not that the all-sustaining, all-delusive message for every martyr? it was the will of god, and his support and sustaining power, which we often take to mean deliverance, but which is not always so--were promised. she asked where this terrible thing was to happen, but received no reply. natural and simple as she was, she confessed afterwards that had she known she was to be taken on any certain day, she would not have gone out to meet the catastrophe unless she had been forced by evident duty to do so. but this was not revealed to her. "before the st. jean!" it must almost have seemed a guarantee that until that time or near it she was safe. she would seem to have said nothing immediately of this vision to sadden those about her. in the meantime, however, there were other adventures in store for her. from melun to lagny was no long journey, but it was through a country full of enemies in which she must have been subject to attack at every corner of every road or field. and she had not been long in the latter place which is said to have had a garrison of scots, when news came of the passing of a band of burgundians, a troop of raiders indeed, ravaging the country, taking advantage of the war to rob and lay waste churches, villages, and the growing fields wherever they passed. the troops was led by franquet d'arras, a famous "_pillard_," robber of god and man. jeanne set out to encounter this bandit with a party of some four hundred men, and various noble companions, among whom, however, we find no name familiar in her previous career, a certain hugh kennedy, a scot, who is to be met with in various records of fighting, being one of the most notable among them. franquet's band fought vigorously but were cut to pieces, and the leader was taken prisoner. when this man was brought back to lagny, a prisoner to be ransomed, and whom jeanne desired to exchange for one of her own side, the law laid claim to him as a criminal. he was a prisoner of war: what was it the maid's duty to do? the question is hotly debated by the historians and it was brought against her at her trial. he was a murderer, a robber, the scourge of the country--especially to the poor whom jeanne protected and cared for everywhere, was he pitiless and cruel. she gave him up to justice, and he was tried, condemned, and beheaded. if it was wrong from a military point of view, it was her only error, and shows how little there was with which to reproach her. in lagny other things passed of a more private nature. every day and all day long her "voices" repeated their message in her ears. "before the st. jean." she repeated it to some of her closest comrades but left herself no time to dwell upon it. still worse than the giving up of franquet was the supposed resuscitation of a child, born dead, which its parents implored her to pray for that it might live again to be baptised. she explained the story to her judges afterwards. it was the habit of the time, nay, we believe continues to this day in some primitive places, to lay the dead infant on the altar in such a case, in hope of a miracle. "it is true," said jeanne, "that the maidens of the town were all assembled in the church praying god to restore life that it might be baptised. it is also true that i went and prayed with them. the child opened its eyes, yawned three or four times, was christened and died. this is all i know." the miracle is not one that will find much credit nowadays. but the devout custom was at least simple and intelligible enough, though it afforded an excellent occasion to attribute witchcraft to the one among those maidens who was not of lagny but of god. from lagny jeanne went on to various other places in danger, or which wanted encouragement and help. she made two or three hurried visits to compiègne, which was threatened by both parties of the enemy; at one time raising the siege of choicy, near compiègne, in company with the archbishop of rheims, a strange brother in arms. on another of her visits to compiègne there is said to have occurred an incident which, if true, reveals to us with very sad reality the trouble that overshadowed the maid. she had gone to early mass in the church of st. jacques, and communicated, as was her custom. it must have been near easter--perhaps the occasion of the first communion of some of the children who are so often referred to, among whom she loved to worship. she had retired behind a pillar on which she leaned as she stood, and a number of people, among whom were many children, drew near after the service to gaze at her. jeanne's heart was full, and she had no one near to whom she could open it and relieve her soul. as she stood against the pillar her trouble burst forth. "dear friends and children," she said, "i have to tell you that i have been sold and betrayed, and will soon be given up to death. i beg of you to pray for me; for soon i shall no longer have any power to serve the king and the kingdom." these words were told to the writer who records them, in the year , by two very old men who had heard them, being children at the time. the scene was one to dwell in a child's recollection, and, if true, it throws a melancholy light upon the thoughts that filled the mind of jeanne, though her actions may have seemed as energetic and her impulses as strong as in her best days. at last the news came speeding through the country that compiègne was being invested on all sides. it had been the headquarters of charles and had received him with acclamations, and therefore the alarm of the townsfolk for the retribution awaiting them, should they fall into the hands of the enemy, was great; it was besides a very important position. jeanne was at crespy en valois when this news reached her. she set out immediately (may , ) to carry aid to the garrison: "_f'irai voir mes bons amis de compiègne_," she said. the words are on the base of her statue which now stands in the place of that town. something of her early impetuosity was in this impulse, and no apparent dread of any fatality. she rode all night at the head of her party, and arrived before the dawn, a may morning, the d, still a month from the fatal "st. jean." though the prophecy was always in her ears, she must have felt that whole month still before her, with a sensation of almost greater safety because the dangerous moment was fixed. the town received her with joy, and no doubt the satisfaction and relief which hailed her and her reinforcements gave additional fervour to the maid, and drove out of her mind for a moment the fatal knowledge which oppressed it. there is some difficulty in understanding the events of this day, but the lucid narrative of quicherat, which we shall now quote, gives a very vivid picture of it. jeanne had timed her arrival so early in the morning, probably with the intention of keeping the adversaries in their camps unaware of so important an addition to the garrison, in order that she might surprise them by the sortie she had determined upon; but no doubt the news had leaked forth somehow, if through no other means, by the sudden ringing of the bells and sounds of joy from the city. she paid her usual visits to the churches, and noted and made all her arrangements for the sortie with her usual care, occupying the long summer day in these preparations. and it was not till five o'clock in the evening that everything was complete, and she sallied forth. we hear nothing of the state of the town, or of any suspicion existing at the time as to the governor flavy who was afterwards believed by some to be the man who sold and betrayed her. it is a question debated warmly like all these questions. he was a man of bad reputation, but there is no evidence that he was a traitor. the incidents are all natural enough, and seem to indicate clearly the mere fortune of war upon which no man can calculate. we add from quicherat the description of the field and what took place there: "compiègne is situated on the left bank of the oise. on the other side extends a great meadow, nearly a mile broad, at the end of which the rising ground of picardy rises suddenly like a wall, shutting in the horizon. the meadow is so low and so subject to floods that it is crossed by an ancient foot of the low hills. three village churches mark the extent of the landscape visible from the walls of compiègne; margny (sometimes spelt marigny) at the end of the road; clairoix three quarters of a league higher up, at the confluence of the two rivers, the aronde and the oise, close to the spot where another tributary, the aisne, also flows into the oise; and venette a mile and a half lower down. the burgundians had one camp at margny, another at clairoix; the headquarters of the english were at venette. as for the inhabitants of compiègne, their first defence facing the enemy was one of those redoubts or towers which the chronicles of the fifteenth century called a boulevard. it was placed at the end of the bridge and commanded the road. "the plan of the maid was to make a sortie towards the evening, to attack margny and afterwards clairoix, and then at the opening of the aronde valley to meet the duke of burgundy and his forces who were lodged there, and who would naturally come to the aid of his other troops when attacked. she took no thought for the english, having already carefully arranged with flavy how they should be prevented from cutting off her retreat. the governor provided against any chance of this by arming the boulevard strongly with archers to drive off any advancing force, and also by keeping ready on the oise a number of covered boats to receive the foot-soldiers in case of a retrograde movement. "the action began well: the garrison of margny yielded in the twinkling of an eye. that of clairoix rushing to the support of their brothers in arms was repulsed, then in its turn repulsed the french; and three times this alternative of advance and retreat took place on the flat ground of the meadow without serious injury to either party. this gave time to the english to take part in the fray;( ) though thanks to the precautions of flavy all they could do was to swell the ranks of the burgundians. but unfortunately the rear of the maid's army was struck with the possibility that a diversion might be attempted from behind, and their retreat cut off. a panic seized them; they broke their ranks, turned back and fled, some to the boats, some to the barrier of the boulevard. the english witnessing this flight rushed after them, secure now on the side of compiègne, where the archers no longer ventured to shoot lest they should kill the fugitives instead of the enemies. they (the english) thus got possession of the raised road, and pushed on so hotly after the fugitives that their horses' heads touched the backs of the crowd. it thus became necessary for the safety of the town to close the gates until the barrier of the boulevard should be set up again." ***** these disastrous accidents had taken place while jeanne, charging in front with her companions and body-guard, remained quite unaware of any misfortune. she would hear no call to retreat, even when her companions were roused to the dangers of their position. "forward, they are ours!" was all her cry. as at st. pierre-le-moutier she was ready to defeat the burgundian army alone. at length the others perceiving something of what had happened seized her bridle and forced her to retire. she was of herself too remarkable a figure to be concealed amid the group of armed men who rode with her, encircling her, defending the rear of the flying party. over her armour she wore a crimson tunic, or according to some authorities a short cloak, of gorgeous material embroidered with gold, and though by this time the twilight must have afforded a partial shelter, yet the knowledge that she was there gave keenness to every eye. behind, the scattered burgundians had rallied and begun to pursue, while the armour and spears of the english glittered in front between the little party and the barrier which was blocked by a terrified crowd of fugitives. even then a party of horsemen might have cut their way through; but at the moment when jeanne and her followers drew near, the barrier was sharply closed and the wild, confused, and fighting crowd, treading each other down, struggling for life, were forced back upon the english lances. thus the retreating band riding hard along the raised road, in order and unbroken, found the path suddenly barred by the forces of the enemy, the fugitives of their own army, and the closed gates of the town. an attempt was then made by the maid and her companions to turn towards the western gate where there still might have been a chance of safety; but by this time the smaller figure among all those steel-clad men, and the waving mantle, must have been distinguished through the dusk and the dust. there was a wild rush of combat and confusion, and in a moment she was surrounded, seized, her horse and her person, notwithstanding all resistance. with cries of "rendez vous," and many an evil name, fierce faces and threatening weapons closed round her. one of her assailants--a burgundian knight, a picard archer, the accounts differ--caught her by her mantle and dragged her from her horse; no englishman let us be thankful, though no doubt all were equally eager and ready. into the midst of that shouting mass of men, in the blinding cloud of dust, in the darkening of the night, the maid of france disappeared for one terrible moment, and was lost to view. and then, and not till then, came a clamour of bells into the night, and all the steeples of compiègne trembled with the call to arms, a sally to save the deliverer. was it treachery? was it only a perception, too late, of the danger? there are not wanting voices to say that a prompt sally might have saved jeanne, and that it was quite within the power of the governor and city had they chosen. who can answer so dreadful a suggestion? it is too much shame to human nature to believe it. perhaps within compiègne as without, they were too slow to perceive the supreme moment, too much overwhelmed to snatch any chance of rescue till it was too late. happily we have no light upon the tumult around the prisoner, the ugly triumph, the shouts and exultation of the captors who had seized the sorceress at last; nor upon the thoughts of jeanne, with her threatened doom fulfilled and unknown horrors before her, upon which imagination must have thrown the most dreadful light, however strongly her courage was sustained by the promise of succour from on high. she had not been sent upon this mission as of old. no heavenly voice had said to her "go and deliver compiègne." she had undertaken that warfare on her own charges with no promise to encourage her, only the certainty of being overthrown "before the st. jean." but the st. jean was still far off, a long month of summer days between her and that moment of fate! so far as we can see jeanne showed no unseemly weakness in this dark hour. one account tells us that she held her sword high over her head declaring that it was given by a higher than any who could claim its surrender there. but she neither struggled nor wept. not a word against her constancy and courage could any one, then or after, find to say. the burgundian chronicler tells us one thing, the french another. "the maid, easily recognised by her costume of crimson and by the standard which she carried in her hand, alone continued to defend herself," says one; but that we are sure could not have been the case as long as d'aulon, who accompanied her, was still able to keep on his horse. "she yielded and gave her parole to lyonnel, bâtard de wandomme," says another; but jeanne herself declares that she gave her faith to no one, reserving to herself the right to escape if she could. in that dark evening scene nothing is clear except the fact that the maid was taken, to the exultation and delight of her captors and to the terror and grief of the unhappy town, vainly screaming with all its bells to arms,--and with its sons and champions by hundreds dying under the english lances and in the dark waves of the oise. the archer or whoever it was who secured this prize, took jeanne back, along the bloody road with its relics of the fight, to margny, the burgundian camp, where the leaders crowded together to see so important a prisoner. "thither came soon after," says monstrelet, "the duke of burgundy from his camp of coudon, and there assembled the english, the said duke and those of the other camps in great numbers, making, one with the other, great cries and rejoicings on the taking of the maid: whom the said duke went to see in the lodging where she was and spoke some words to her which i cannot call to mind, though i was there present; after which the said duke and the others withdrew for the night, leaving the maid in the keeping of messer john of luxembourg"--to whom she had been immediately sold by her first captor. the same night, philip, this noble duke and prince of france, wrote a letter to convey the blessed information: "the great news of this capture should be spread everywhere and brought to the knowledge of all, that they may see the error of those who could believe and lend themselves to the pretensions of such a woman. we write this in the hope of giving you joy, comfort, and consolation, and that you may thank god our creator. pray that it may be his holy will to be more and more favourable to the enterprises of our royal master and to the restoration of his sway over all his good and faithful subjects." this royal master was henry vi. of england, the baby king, doomed already to expiate sins that were not his, by the saddest life and reign. the french historians whimsically but perhaps not unnaturally, have the air of putting down this baseness on philip's part, and on that of his contemporaries in general, to the score of the english, which is hard measure, seeing that the treachery of a frenchman could in no way be attributed to the other nation of which he was the natural enemy, or at least, antagonist. very naturally the subsequent proceedings in all their horror and cruelty are equally put down to the english account, although frenchmen took, exulted over as a prisoner, tried and condemned as an enemy of god and the church, the spotless creature who was france incarnate, the very embodiment of her country in all that was purest and noblest. we shall see with what spontaneous zeal all france, except her own small party, set to work to accomplish this noble office. almost before one could draw breath the university of paris claimed her as a proper victim for the inquisition. compiègne made no sally for her deliverance; charles, no attempt to ransom her. from end to end of france not a finger was lifted for her rescue; the women wept over her, the poor people still crowded around the prisoner wherever seen, but the france of every public document, of every practical power, the living nation, when it did not utter cries of hatred, kept silence. we in england have over and over again acknowledged with shame our guilty part in her murder; but still to this day the frenchman tries to shield his under cover of the english influence and terror. he cannot deny la tremoïlle, nor cauchon, nor the university, nor the learned doctors who did the deed; individually he is ready to give them all up to the everlasting fires which one cannot but hope are kept alive for some people in spite of all modern benevolences; but he skilfully turns back to the english as a moving cause of everything. nothing can be more untrue. the english were not better than the french, but they had the excuse at least of being the enemy. france saved by a happy chance her _blanches mains_ from the actual blood of the pure and spotless maid; but with exultation she prepared the victim for the stake, sent her thither, played with her like a cat with a mouse and condemned her to the fire. this is not to free us from our share: but it is the height of hypocrisy to lay the blood of jeanne, entirely to our door. thus jeanne's inspiration proved itself over again in blood and tears; it had been proved already on battle-field and city wall, with loud trumpets of joy and victory. but the "voices" had spoken again, sounding another strain; not always of glory--it is not the way of god; but of prison, downfall, distress. "be not astonished at it," they said to her; "god will be with you." from day to day they had spoken in the same strain, with no joyful commands to go forth and conquer, but the one refrain: "before the st. jean." perhaps there was a certain relief in her mind at first when the blow fell and the prophecy was accomplished. all she had to do now was to suffer, not to be surprised, to trust in god that he would support her. to jeanne, no doubt, in the confidence and inexperience of her youth, that meant that god would deliver her. and so he did; but not as she expected. the sunshine of her life was over, and now the long shadow, the bitter storm was to come. nothing could be more remarkable than the response of france in general to this extraordinary event. in paris there were bonfires lighted to show their joy, the _te deum_ was sung at notre dame. at the court charles and his counsellors amused themselves with another prophet, a shepherd from the hills who was to rival jeanne's best achievements, but never did so. only the towns which she had delivered had still a tender thought for jeanne. at tours the entire population appeared in the streets with bare feet, singing the _miserere_ in penance and affliction. orleans and blois made public prayers for her safety. rheims, in which there was much independent interest in jeanne and her truth, had to be specially soothed by a letter from the archbishop, in which he made out with great cleverness that it was the fault of jeanne alone that she was taken. "she did nothing but by her own will, without obeying the commandments of god," he says; "she would hear no counsel, but followed her own pleasure,"; and it is in this letter that we hear of the shepherd lad who was to replace jeanne, and that it was his opinion or revelation that god had suffered the maid to be taken because of her growing pride, because she loved fine clothes, and preferred her own will to any guidance. we do not know whether this contented the city of rheims; similar reasoning however seems to have silenced france. nobody uttered a protest, nor struck a blow; the mournful procession of tours, where she had been first known in the outset of her career, the prayers of orleans which she had delivered, are the only exceptions we know of. otherwise there was lifted in france neither voice nor hand to avert her doom. ( ) the three camps must have formed a sort of irregular triangle. the english at venette being only half a mile from the gates of compiègne. chapter x -- the captive. may, -jan., . we have here to remark a complete suspension of all the ordinary laws at once of chivalry and of honest warfare. jeanne had been captured as a general at the head of her forces. she was a prisoner of war. such a prisoner ordinarily, even in the most cruel ages, is in no bodily danger. he is worth more alive than dead--a great ransom perhaps--perhaps the very end of the warfare, and the accomplishment of everything it was intended to gain: at least he is most valuable to exchange for other important prisoners on the opposite side. it was like taking away so much personal property to kill a prisoner, an outrage deeply resented by his captor and unjustified by any law. it was true that jeanne herself had transgressed this universal custom but a little while before, by giving up franquet d'arras to his prosecutors. but franquet was beyond the courtesies of war, a noted criminal, robber, and destroyer: yet she ought not perhaps to have departed from the military laws of right and wrong while everything in the country was under the hasty arbitration of war. no one, however, so far as we know, produces this matter of franquet as a precedent in her own case. from the first moment of her seizure there was no question of the custom and privilege of warfare. she was taken as a wild animal might have been taken, the only doubt being how to make the most signal example of her. vengeance in the gloomy form of the inquisition claimed her the first day. no such word as ransom was breathed from her own side, none was demanded, none was offered. her case is at once separated from every other. yet the reign of chivalry was at its height, and women were supposed to be the objects of a kind of worship, every knight being sworn to succour and help them in need and trouble. there was perhaps something of the subtle jealousy of sex so constantly denied on the stronger side, but yet always existing, in the abrogation of every law of chivalry as well as of warfare, in respect to the maid. that man is indeed of the highest strain of generosity who can bear to be beaten by a woman. and all the seething, agitated world of france had been beaten by this girl. the english and burgundians, in the ordinary sense of the word, had been overcome in fair field, forced to fly before her; the french, her own side, had experienced an even more penetrating downfall by having the honours of victory taken from them, she alone winning the day where they had all failed. this is bitterer, perhaps, than merely to be compelled to raise a siege or to fail in a fight. the frenchmen fought like lions, but the praise was to jeanne who never struck a blow. such great hearts as dunois, such a courteous prince as alençon, were too magnanimous to feel, or at least to resent, the grievance; they seconded her and fought under her with a nobility of mind and disinterestedness beyond praise; but it was not to be supposed that the common mass of the french captains were like these; she had wronged and shamed them by taking the glory from them, as much as she had shamed the english by making those universal victors fly before her. the burghers whom she had rescued, the poor people who were her brethren and whom she sought everywhere, might weep and cry out to heaven, but they were powerless at such a moment. and every law that might have helped her was pushed aside. on the th the news was known in paris, and immediately there appears in the record a new adversary to jeanne, the most bitter and implacable of all; the next day, may , , without the loss of an hour, a letter was addressed to the burgundian camp from the capital. quicherat speaks of it as a letter from the inquisitor or vicar-general of the inquisition, written by the officials of the university; others tell us that an independent letter was sent from the university to second that of the inquisitor. the university we may add was not a university like one of ours, or like any existing at the present day. it was an ecclesiastical corporation of the highest authority in every cause connected with the church, while gathering law, philosophy, and literature under its wing. the first theologians, the most eminent jurists were collected there, not by any means always in alliance with the narrower tendencies and methods of the inquisition. it is notable, however, that this great institution lost no time in claiming the prisoner, whose chief offence in its eyes was less her career as a warrior than her position as a sorceress. the actual facts of her life were of secondary importance to them. orleans, rheims, even her attack upon paris were nothing in comparison with the black art which they believed to be her inspiration. the guidance of heaven which was not the guidance of the church was to them a claim which meant only rebellion of the direst kind. they had longed to seize her and strip her of her presumptuous pretensions from the first moment of her appearance. they could not allow a day of her overthrow to pass by without snatching at this much-desired victim. no one perhaps will ever be able to say what it is that makes a trial for heresy and sorcery, especially in the days when fire and flame, the rack and the stake, stood at the end, so exciting and horribly attractive to the mind. whether it is the revelations that are hoped for, of these strange commerces between earth and the unknown, into which we would all fain pry if we could, in pursuit of some better understanding than has ever yet fallen to the lot of man; whether it is the strange and dreadful pleasure of seeing a soul driven to extremity and fighting for its life through all the subtleties of thought and fierce attacks of interrogation--or the mere love of inflicting torture, misery, and death, which the church was prevented from doing in the common way, it is impossible to tell; but there is no doubt that a thrill like the wings of vultures crowding to the prey, a sense of horrible claws and beaks and greedy eyes is in the air, whenever such a tribunal is thought of. the thrill, the stir, the eagerness among those black birds of doom is more evident than usual in the headlong haste of that demand. _sous l'influence de l'angleterre_, say the historians; the more shame for them if it was so; but they were clearly under influence wider and more infallible, the influence of that instinct, whatever it may be, which makes a trial for heresy ten thousand times more cruel, less restrained by any humanities of nature, than any other kind of trial which history records. that is what the inquisitor demanded after a long description of jeanne, "called the maid," as having "dogmatised, sown, published, and caused to be published, many and diverse errors from which have ensued great scandals against the divine honour and our holy faith." "using the rights of our office and the authority committed to us by the holy see of rome we instantly command, and enjoin you in the name of the catholic faith, and under penalty of the law: and all other catholic persons of whatsoever condition, pre-eminence, authority, or estate, to send or to bring as prisoner before us with all speed and surety the said jeanne, vehemently suspected of various crimes springing from heresy, that proceedings may be taken against her before us in the name of the holy inquisition, and with the favour and aid of the doctors and masters of the university of paris, and other notable counsellors present there." it was the english who put it into the heads of the inquisitor and the university to do this, all the anxious frenchmen cry. we can only reply again, the more shame for the french doctors and priests! but there was very little time to bring that influence to bear; and there is an eagerness and precipitation in the demand which is far more like the headlong natural rush for a much desired prize than any course of action suggested by a third party. nor is there anything to lead us to believe that the movement was not spontaneous. it is little likely, indeed, that the sorbonne nowadays would concern itself about any inspired maid, any more than the enlightened oxford would do so. but the ideas of the fifteenth century were widely different, and witchcraft and heresy were the most enthralling and exciting of subjects, as they are still to whosoever believes in them, learned or unlearned, great or small. it must be added that the entire mind of france, even of those who loved jeanne and believed in her, must have been shaken to its depths by this catastrophe. we have no sympathy with those who compare the career of any mortal martyr with the far more mysterious agony and passion of our lord. yet we cannot but remember what a tremendous element the disappointment of their hopes must have been in the misery of the first disciples, the apostles, the mother, all the spectators who had watched with wonder and faith the mission of the messiah. had it failed? had all the signs come to nothing, all those divine words and ways, to our minds so much more wonderful than any miracles? was there no meaning in them? were they mere unaccountable delusions, deceptions of the senses, inspirations perhaps of mere genius--not from god at all except in a secondary way? in the three terrible days that followed the crucifixion the burden of a world must have lain on the minds of those who had seen every hope fail: no legions of angels appearing, no overwhelming revelation from heaven, no change in a moment out of misery into the universal kingship, the triumphant march. that was but the self-delusion of the earth which continually travesties the schemes of heaven; yet the most terrible of all despairs is such a pause and horror of doubt lest nothing should be true. but in the case of this little maiden, this handmaid of the lord, the deception might have been all natural and perhaps shared by herself. were her first triumphs accidents merely, were her "voices" delusions, had she been given up by heaven, of which she had called herself the servant? it was a stupor which quenched every voice--a great silence through the country, only broken by the penitential psalms at tours. the compiègne people, writing to charles two days after may d, do not mention jeanne at all. we need not immediately take into account the baser souls always plentiful, the envious captains and the rest who might be secretly rejoicing. the entire country, both friends and foes, had come to a dreadful pause and did not know what to think. the last circumstance of which we must remind the reader, and which was of the greatest importance, is, that it was only a small part of france that knew anything personally of jeanne. from tours it is a far cry to picardy. all her triumphs had taken place in the south. the captive of beaulieu and beaurevoir spent the sad months of her captivity among a population which could have heard of her only by flying rumours coming from hostile quarters. from the midland of france to the sea, near to which her prison was situated, is a long way, and those northern districts were as unlike the orleannais as if they had been in two different countries. rouen in normandy no more resembled rheims, than edinburgh resembled london: and in the fifteenth century that was saying a great deal. nothing can be more deceptive than to think of these separate and often hostile duchies as if they bore any resemblance to the france of to-day. the captor of jeanne was a vassal of jean de luxembourg and took her as we have seen to the quarters of his master at margny, into whose hands she thenceforward passed. she was kept in the camp three or four days and then transferred to the castle of beaulieu, which belonged to him; and afterwards to the more important stronghold of beaurevoir, which seems to have been his principal residence. we know very few details of her captivity. according to one chronicler, d'aulon, her faithful friend and intendant, was with her at least in the former of those prisons, where at first she would appear to have been hopeful and in good spirits, if we may trust to the brief conversation between her and d'aulon, which is one of the few details which reach us of that period. while he lamented over the probable fate of compiègne she was confident. "that poor town of compiègne that you loved so much," he said, "by this time it will be in the hands of the enemies of france." "no," said the maid, "the places which the king of heaven brought back to the allegiance of the gentle king charles by me, will not be retaken by his enemies." in this case at least the prophecy came true. and perhaps there might have been at first a certain relief in jeanne's mind, such as often follows after a long threatened blow has fallen. she had no longer the vague tortures of suspense, and probably believed that she would be ransomed as was usual: and in this silence and seclusion her "voices" which she had not obeyed as at first, but yet which had not abandoned her, nor shown estrangement, were more near and audible than amid the noise and tumult of war. they spoke to her often, sometimes three times a day, as she afterwards said, in the unbroken quiet of her prison. and though they no longer spoke of new enterprises and victories, their words were full of consolation. but it was not long that jeanne's young and vigorous spirit could content itself with inaction. she was no mystic; willingly giving herself over to dreams and visions is more possible to the old than to the young. her confidence and hope for her good friends of compiègne gave way before the continued tale of their sufferings, and the inveterate siege which was driving them to desperation. no doubt the worst news was told to jeanne, and twice over she made a desperate attempt to escape, in hope of being able to succour them, but without any sanction, as she confesses, from her spiritual instructors. at beaulieu the attempt was simple enough: the narrative seems to imply that the doorway, or some part of the wall of her room, had been closed with laths or planks nailed across an opening: and between these she succeeded in slipping, "as she was very slight," with the hope of locking the door to an adjoining guard-room upon the men who had charge of her, and thus getting free. but alas! the porter of the château, who had no business there, suddenly appeared in the corridor, and she was discovered and taken back to her chamber. at beaurevoir, which was farther off, her attempt was a much more desperate one, and indicates a despair and irritation of mind which had become unbearable. at this place her own condition was much alleviated; the castle was the residence of jean de luxembourg's wife and aunt, ladies who visited jeanne continually, and soon became interested and attached to her; but as the master of the house was himself in the camp before compiègne, they had the advantage or disadvantage, as far as the prisoner was concerned, of constant news, and jeanne's trouble for her friends grew daily. she seems, indeed, after the assurance she had expressed at first, to have fallen into great doubt and even carried on within herself a despairing argument with her spiritual guides on this point, battling with these saintly influences as in the depths of the troubled heart many have done with the creator himself in similar circumstances. "how," she cried, "could god let them perish who had been so good and loyal to their king?" st. catherine replied gently that he would himself care for these _bons amis_, and even promised that "before the st. martin" relief would come. but jeanne had probably by this time--in her great disappointment and loneliness, and with the sense in her of so much power to help were she only free--got beyond her own control. they bade her to be patient. one of them, amid their exhortations to accept her fate cheerfully, and not to be astonished at it, seems to have conveyed to her mind the impression that she should not be delivered till she had seen the king of england. "truly i will not see him! i would rather die than fall into the hands of the english," cried jeanne in her petulance. the king of england is spoken of always, it is curious to note, as if he had been a great, severe ruler like his father, never as the child he really was. but jeanne in her helplessness and impotence was impatient even with her saints. day by day the news came in from compiègne, all that was favourable to the burgundians received with joy and thanksgiving by the ladies of luxembourg, while the captive consumed her heart with vain indignation. at last jeanne would seem to have wrought herself up to the most desperate of expedients. whether her room was in the donjon, or whether she was allowed sufficient freedom in the house to mount to the battlements there, we are not informed--probably the latter was the case: for it was from the top of the tower that the rash girl at last flung herself down, carried away by what sudden frenzy of alarm or sting of evil tidings can never be known. probably she had hoped that a miracle would be wrought on her behalf, and that faith was all that was wanted, as on so many other occasions. perhaps she had heard of the negotiations to sell her to the english, which would give a keener urgency to her determination to get free; all that appears in the story, however, is her wild anxiety about compiègne and her _bons amis_. how she escaped destruction no one knows. she was rescued for a more tremendous and harder fate. the maid was taken up as dead from the foot of the tower (the height is estimated at sixty feet); but she was not dead, nor even seriously hurt. her frame, so slight that she had been able to slip between the bars put up to secure her, had so little solidity that the shock would seem to have been all that ailed her. she was stunned and unconscious and remained so far some time; and for three days neither ate nor drank. but though she was so humbled by the effects of the fall, "she was comforted by st. catherine, who bade her confess and implore the mercy of god" for her rash disobedience--and repeated the promise that before martinmas compiègne should be relieved. jeanne did not perhaps in her rebellion deserve this encouragement; but the heavenly ladies were kind and pitiful and did not stand upon their dignity. the wonderful thing was that jeanne recovered perfectly from this tremendous leap. the earthly ladies, though so completely on the other side, were scarcely less kind to the maid. they visited her daily, carried their news to her, were very friendly and sweet: and no doubt other visitors came to make the acquaintance of a prisoner so wonderful. there was one point on which they were very urgent, and this was about her dress. it shamed and troubled them to see her in the costume of a man. jeanne had her good reasons for that, which perhaps she did not care to tell them, fearing to shock the ears of a demoiselle of luxembourg with the suggestion of dangers of which she knew nothing. no doubt it was true that while doing the serious work of war, as she said afterwards, it was best that she should be dressed as a man; but jeanne had reason to know besides, that it was safer, among the rough comrades and gaolers who now surrounded her, to wear the tight-fitting and firmly fastened dress of a soldier. she answered the ladies and their remonstrances with all the grace of a courtier. could she have done it she would rather have yielded the point to them, she said, than to any one else in france, except the queen. the women wherever she went were always faithful to this young creature, so pure-womanly in her young angel-hood and man-hood. the poor followed to kiss her hands or her armour, the rich wooed her with tender flatteries and persuasions. there is not record in all her career of any woman who was not her friend. for the last dreary month of that winter she was sent to the fortress of crotoy on the somme, for what reason we are not told, probably to be more near the english into whose hands she was about to be given up: again another shameful bargain in which the guilt lies with the burgundians and not with the english. if charles i. was sold as we scots all indignantly deny, the shame of the sale was on our nation, not on england, whom nobody has ever blamed for the transaction. the sale of jeanne was brutally frank. it was indeed a ransom which was paid to jean of luxembourg with a share to the first captor, the archer who had secured her; but it was simple blood-money as everybody knew. at crotoy she had once more the solace of female society, again with much pressing upon her of their own heavy skirts and hanging sleeves. a fellow-prisoner in the dungeon of crotoy, a priest, said mass every day and gave her the holy communion. and her mind seems to have been soothed and calmed. compiègne was relieved; the saints had kept their word: she had that burden the less upon her soul: and over the country there were against stirrings of french valour and success. the day of the maid was over, but it began to bear the fruit of a national quickening of vigour and life. it was at crotoy, in december, that she was transferred to english hands. the eager offer of the university of paris to see her speedy condemnation had not been accepted, and perhaps the burgundians had been willing to wait, to see if any ransom was forthcoming from france. perhaps too, paris, which sang the _te deum_ when she was taken prisoner, began to be a little startled by its own enthusiasm and to ask itself the question what there was to be so thankful about?--a result which has happened before in the history of that impulsive city:--and paris was too near the centre of france, where the balance seemed to be turning again in favour of the national party, to have its thoughts distracted by such a trial as was impending. it seemed better to the english leaders to conduct their prisoner to a safer place, to the depths of normandy where they were most strong. they seem to have carried her away in the end of the year, travelling slowly along the coast, and reaching rouen by way of eu and dieppe, as far away as possible from any risk of rescue. she arrived in rouen in the beginning of the year , having thus been already for nearly eight months in close custody. but there were no further ministrations of kind women for jeanne. she was now distinctly in the hands of her enemies, those who had no sympathy or natural softening of feeling towards her. the severities inflicted upon her in her new prison at rouen were terrible, almost incredible. we are told that she was kept in an iron cage (like the countess of buchan in earlier days by edward i.), bound hands, and feet, and throat, to a pillar, and watched incessantly by english soldiers--the latter being an abominable and hideous method of torture which was never departed from during the rest of her life. afterwards, at the beginning of her trial she was relieved from the cage, but never from the presence and scrutiny of this fierce and hateful bodyguard. such detestable cruelties were in the manner of the time, which does not make us the less sicken at them with burning indignation and the rage of shame. for this aggravation of her sufferings england alone was responsible. the burgundians at their worst had not used her so. it is true that she was to them a piece of valuable property worth so much good money; which is a powerful argument everywhere. but to the english she meant no money: no one offered to ransom jeanne on the side of her own party, for whom she had done so much. even at tours and orleans, so far as appears, there was no subscription--to speak in modern terms,--no cry among the burghers to gather their crowns for her redemption--not a word, not an effort, only a barefooted procession, a mass, a miserere, which had no issue. france stood silent to see what would come of it; and her scholars and divines swarmed towards rouen to make sure that nothing but harm should come of it to the ignorant country lass, who had set up such pretences of knowing better than others. the king congratulated himself that he had another prophetess as good as she, and a heaven-sent boy from the mountains who would do as well and better than jeanne. where was dunois? where was la hire,( ) a soldier bound by no conventions, a captain whose troop went like the wind where it listed, and whose valour was known? where was young guy de laval, so ready to sell his lands that his men might be fit for service? all silent; no man drawing a sword or saying a word. it is evident that in this frightful pause of fate, jeanne had become to france as to england, the witch whom it was perhaps a danger to have had anything to do with, whose spells had turned the world upside down for a moment: but these spells had become ineffectual or worn out as is the nature of sorcery. no explanation, not even the well-worn and so often valid one of human baseness, could explain the terrible situation, if not this. ( ) la hire was at louvain, which we hear a little later the new english levies would not march to besiege till the maid was dead, and where dunois joined him in march of this fatal year. these two at louvain within a few leagues of rouen and not a sword drawn for jeanne!--the wonder grows. chapter xi -- the judges. . the name of pierre cauchon, bishop of beauvais, appears to us at this long distance as arising out of the infernal mists, into which, when his ministry of shame was accomplished, he disappeared again, bearing with him nothing but hatred and ill fame. yet in his own day and to his contemporaries, he was not an inconsiderable man. he was of rheims, a great student, and excellent scholar, the friend of many good men, highly esteemed among the ranks of the learned, a good man of business, which is not always the attribute of a scholar, and at the same time a burgundian of pronounced sentiments, holding for his duke, against the king. when beauvais was summoned by charles, after his coronation, at that moment of universal triumph when all seemed open for him to march upon paris if he would, the city had joyfully thrown open its doors to the royal army, and in doing so had driven out its bishop, who was hot on the other side. he would not seem to have been wanted in paris at that moment. the "triste bedford," as michelet calls him, had no means of employing an ambitious priest, no dirty work for the moment to give him. it is natural to suppose that a man so admirably adapted for that employment went in search of it to the ecclesiastical court, not beloved of england, which the cardinal bishop of winchester held there. winchester was the only one of the house of lancaster who had money to carry on the government either at home or abroad. the two priests, as the historians are always pleased to insinuate in respect to ecclesiastics, soon understood each other, and winchester became aware that he had in cauchon a tool ready for any shameful enterprise. it is not, however, necessary to assume so much as this, for we have not the least reason to believe that either one or the other of them had the slightest doubt on the subject of jeanne, or as to her character. she was a pernicious witch, filling a hitherto invincible army with that savage fright which is but too well understood among men, and which produces cruel outrages as well as cowardly panic. the air of this very day, while i write, is ringing with the story of a woman burnt to death by her own family under the influence of that same horrible panic and terror. cauchon was the countryman, almost the _pays_--an untranslatable expression,--of jeanne; but he did not believe in her any more than the loftier ecclesiastics of france believed in bernadette of lourdes, who was of the spiritual lineage of jeanne, nor than we should believe to-day in a similar pretender. it seems unnecessary then to think of dark plots hatched between these two dark priests against the white, angelic apparition of the maid. what services cauchon had done to recommend him to the favour of winchester we are not told, but he was so much in favour that the cardinal had recommended him to the pope for the vacant archbishopric of rouen a few months before there was any immediate question of jeanne. the appointment was opposed by the clergy of rouen, and the pope had not come to any decision as yet on the subject. but no doubt the ambition of cauchon made him very eager, with such a tempting prize before him, to recommend himself to his english patron by every means in his power. and he it was who undertook the office of negotiating the ransom of jeanne from the hands of jean de luxembourg. we doubt whether after all it would be just even to call this a nefarious bargain. to the careless seigneur it would probably be very much a matter of course. the ransom offered--six thousand francs--was as good as if she had been a prince. the ladies at home might be indignant, but what was their foolish fancy for a high-flown girl in comparison with these substantial crowns in his pocket; and to be free from the responsibility of guarding her would be an advantage too. and if her own party did not stir on her behalf, why should he? a most pertinent question. cauchon, on the other hand, could assure all objectors that no summary vengeance was to be taken on the maid. she was to be judged by the church, and by the best men the university could provide, and if she were found innocent, no doubt would go free. they must have been sanguine indeed who hoped for a triumphant acquittal of jeanne; but still it may have been hoped that a trial by her countrymen would in every case be better for her than to languish in prison or to be seized perhaps by the english on some after occasion, and to perish by their hands. let us therefore be fair to cauchon, if possible, up to the beginning of the _procès_. he was no frenchman, but a burgundian; his allegiance was to his duke, not to the king of england; but his natural sovereign did so, and many, very many men of note and importance were equally base, and did not esteem it base at all. had the inhabitants of rheims, his native town, or of rouen, in which _his_ trial and downfall took place as well as jeanne's, pronounced for the king of prussia in the last war, and proclaimed themselves his subjects, the traitors would have been hung with infamy from their own high towers, or driven into their river headlong. but things were very different in the fifteenth century. there has never been a moment in our history when either england or scotland has pronounced for a foreign sway. scotland fought with desperation for centuries against the mere name of suzerainty, though of a kindred race. there have been terrible moments of forced subjugation at the point of the sword; but never any such phenomena as appeared in france, so far on in the world's history as was that brilliant and highly cultured age. such a state of affairs is to our minds impossible to understand or almost to believe: but in the interests of justice it must be fully acknowledged and understood. cauchon arises accordingly, not at first with any infamy, out of the obscurity. he had been expelled and dethroned from his see, but this only for political reasons. he was ecclesiastically bishop of beauvais still; it was within his diocese that the maid had taken prisoner, and there also her last acts of magic, if magic there was, had taken place. he had therefore a legal right to claim the jurisdiction, a right which no one had any interest in taking from him. if paris was disappointed at not having so interesting a trial carried on before its courts, there was compensation in the fact that many doctors of the university were called to assist cauchon in his examination of the maid, and to bring her, witch, sorceress, heretic, whatever she might be, to question. these doctors were not undistinguished or unworthy men. a number of them held high office in the church; almost all were honourably connected with the university, the source of learning in france. "with what art were they chosen!" exclaims m. blaze de bury. "a number of theologians, the élite of the time, had been named to represent france at the council of bâle; of these cauchon chose the flower." this does not seem on the face of it to be a fact against, but rather in favour of, the tribunal, which the reader naturally supposes must have been the better, the more just, for being chosen among the flower of learning in france. they were not men who could be imagined to be the tools of any bishop. quicherat, in his moderate and able remarks on this subject, selects for special mention three men who took a very important part in it, guillame Érard, nicole midi, and tomas de courcelles. they were all men who held a high place in the respect of their generation. Érard was a friend of machet, the confessor of charles vii., who had been a member of the tribunal at poitiers which first pronounced upon the pretensions of jeanne; yet after the trial of the maid machet still describes him as a man of the highest virtue and heavenly wisdom. nicole midi continued to hold an honourable place in his university for many years, and was the man chosen to congratulate charles when paris finally became again the residence of the king. courcelles was considered the first theologian of the age. "he was an austere and eloquent young man," says quicherat, "of a lucid mind, though nourished on abstractions. he was the first of theologians long before he had attained the age at which he could assume the rank of doctor, and even before he had finished his studies he was considered as the successor of gerson. he was the light of the council of bâle. eneas piccolomini (pope pius ii.) speaks with admiration of his capacity and his modesty. in him we recognise the father of the freedom of the gallican church. his disinterestedness is shown by the simple position with which he contented himself. he died with no higher rank than that of dean of the chapter of paris." did this in cæsar seem ambitious? was this the man to be used for their vile ends by a savage english party thirsting for the blood of an innocent victim, and by the vile priest who was its tool? it does not seem so to our eyes across the long level of the centuries which clear away so many mists. and no more dreadful accusation can be brought against france than the suggestion that men like these, her best and most carefully trained, were willing to act as blood-hounds for the advantage and the pay of the invader. but there are many french historians to whom the mere fact of a black gown or at least an ecclesiastical robe, confounds every testimony, and to whom even the name of frenchman does not make it appear possible that a priest should retain a shred of honour or of honesty. we should have said by the light of nature and probability that had every guarantee been required for the impartiality and justice of such a tribunal, they could not have been better secured than by the selection of such men to conduct its proceedings. they made a great and terrible mistake, as the wisest of men have made before now. they did much worse, they behaved to an unfortunate girl who was in their power with indescribable ferocity and cruelty; but we must hope that this was owing to the period at which they lived rather than to themselves. it is not perhaps indeed from the wise and learned, the stoics and pundits of a university, that we should choose judges for the divine simplicity of those babes and sucklings out of whose mouth praise is perfected. at the same time to choose the best men is not generally the way adopted to procure a base judgement. cauchon might have been subject to this blame had he filled the benches of his court with creatures of his own, nameless priests and dialecticians, knowing nothing but their own poor science of words. he did not do so. there were but two englishmen in the assembly, neither of them men of any importance or influence although there must have been many english priests in the country and in the train of winchester. there were not even any special partisans of burgundy, though some of the assessors were burgundian by birth. we should have said, had we known no more than this, that every precaution had been taken to give the maid the fairest trial. but at the same time a trial which is conducted under the name of the inquisition is always suspect. the mere fact of that terrible name seems to establish a foregone conclusion; few are the prisoners at that bar who have ever escaped. this fact is almost all that can be set against the high character of the individuals who composed the tribunal. at all events it is no argument against the english that they permitted the best men in france to be chosen as jeanne's judges. it is the most bewildering and astonishing of historical facts that they were so, and yet came to the conclusion they did, by the means they did, and that without falling under the condemnation, or scorn, or horror of their fellow-men. this then was the assembly which gathered in rouen in the beginning of . quicherat will not venture to affirm even that intimidation was directly employed to effect their decision. he says that the evidence "tends to prove" that this was the case, but honestly allows that, "it is well to remark that the witnesses contradict each other." "in all that i have said," he adds, "my intention has been to prove that the judges of the maid had in no way the appearance of partisans hotly pursuing a political vengeance; but that, on the contrary, their known weight, the consideration which most of them enjoyed, and the nature of the tribunal for which they were assembled, were all calculated to produce generally an expectation full of confidence and respect." meanwhile there is not a word to be said for the treatment to which jeanne herself was subjected, she being, so far as is apparent, entirely in english custody. she had been treated with tolerable gentleness it would seem in the first part of her captivity while in the hands of jean de luxembourg, the count de ligny. the fact that the ladies of the house were for her friends must have assured this, and there is no complaint made anywhere of cruelty or even unkindness. when she arrived in rouen she was confined in the middle chamber of the donjon, which was the best we may suppose, neither a dungeon under the soil, nor a room under the leads, but one to which there was access by a short flight of steps from the courtyard, and which was fully lighted and not out of reach or sight of life. but in this chamber was an iron cage,( ) within which she was bound, feet, and waist and neck, from the time of her arrival until the beginning of the trial, a period of about six weeks. five english soldiers of the lowest class watched her night and day, three in the room itself, two at the door. it is enough to think for a moment of the probable manners and morals of these troopers to imagine what torture must have been inflicted by their presence upon a young woman who had always been sensitive above all things to the laws of personal modesty and reserve. their course jests would no doubt be unintelligible to her, which would be an alleviation; but their coarse laughter, their revolting touch, their impure looks, would be an endless incessant misery. we are told that she indignantly bestowed a hearty buffet on the cheek of a tailor who approached her too closely when it was intended to furnish her with female dress; but she was helpless to defend herself when in her irons, and had to endure as she best could--the bars of her cage let us hope, if cage there was, affording her some little protection from the horror of the continual presence of these rude attendants, with whom it was a shame to english gentlemen and knights to surround a helpless woman. when her trial began jeanne was released from her cage, but was still chained by one foot to a wooden beam during the day, and at night to the posts of her bed. sometimes her guards would wake her to tell her that she had been condemned and was immediately to be led forth to execution; but that was a small matter. attempts were also made to inflict the barest insult and outrage upon her, and on one occasion she is said to have been saved only by the earl of warwick, who heard her cries and went to her rescue. by night as by day she clung to her male garb, tightly fastened by the innumerable "points" of which shakespeare so often speaks. such were the horrible circumstances in which she awaited her public appearance before her judges. she was brought before them every day for months together, to be badgered by the keenest wits in france, coming back and back with artful questions upon every detail of every subject, to endeavour to shake her firmness or force her into self-contradiction. imagine a cross-examination going on for months, like those--only more cruel than those--to which we sometimes see an unfortunate witness exposed in our own courts of law. there is nothing more usual than to see people break down entirely after a day or two of such a tremendous ordeal, in which their hearts and lives are turned inside out, their minds so bewildered that they know not what they are saying, and everything they have done in their lives exhibited in the worst, often in an entirely fictitious, light, to the curiosity and amusement of the world. but all our processes are mercy in comparison with those to which french prisoners at the bar are still exposed. it is unnecessary to enter into an account of these which are so well known; but they show that even such a trial as that of jeanne was by no means so contrary to common usage, as it would be, and always would have been in england. in england we warn the accused to utter no rash word which may be used against him; in france the first principle is to draw from him every rash word that he can be made to bring forth. this was the method employed with jeanne. her judges were all churchmen and dialecticians of the subtlest wit and most dexterous faculties in france; they had all, or almost all, a strong prepossession against her. though we cannot believe that men of such quality were suborned, there was, no doubt, enough of jealous and indignant feeling among them to make the desire of convicting jeanne more powerful with them than the desire for pure justice. she was a true christian, but not perhaps the soundest of church-women. her visions had not the sanction of any priest's approval, except indeed the official but not warm affirmation of the council at poitiers. she had not hastened to take the church into her confidence nor to put herself under its protection. though her claims had been guaranteed by the company of divines at poitiers, she herself had always appealed to her private instructions, through her saints, rather than to the guiding of any priest. the chief ecclesiastical dignitary of her own party had just held her up to the reprobation of the people for this cause: she was too independent, so proud that she would take no advice but acted according to her own will. the more accustomed a churchman is to experience the unbounded devotion and obedience of women, the more enraged he is against those who judge for themselves or have other guides on whom they rely. jeanne was, beside all other sins alleged against her, a presumptuous woman: and very few of these men had any desire to acquit her. they were little accustomed to researches which were solely intended to discover the truth: their principle rather was, as it has been the principle of many, to obtain proofs that their own particular way of thinking was the right one. it is not perhaps very good even for a system of doctrine when this is the principle by which it is tested. it is more fatal still, on this principle, to judge an individual for death or for life. it will be abundantly proved, however, by all that is to follow, that in face of this tribunal, learned, able, powerful, and prejudiced, the peasant girl of nineteen stood like a rock, unmoved by all their cleverness, undaunted by their severity, seldom or never losing her head, or her temper, her modest steadfastness, or her high spirit. if they hoped to have an easy bargain of her, never were men more mistaken. not knowing a from b, as she herself said, untrained, unaided, she was more than a match for them all. round about this centre of eager intelligence, curiosity, and prejudice, the cathedral and council chamber teeming with churchmen, was a dark and silent ring of laymen and soldiers. a number of the english leaders were in rouen, but they appear very little. winchester, who had very lately come from england with an army, which according to some of the historians would not budge from calais, where it had landed, "for fear of the maid"--was the chief person in the place, but did not make any appearance at the trial, curiously enough; the duke of bedford we are informed was visible on one shameful occasion, but no more. but warwick, who was the governor of the town, appears frequently and various other lords with him. we see them in the mirror held up to us by the french historians, pressing round in an ever narrowing circle, closing up upon the tribunal in the midst, pricking the priests with perpetual sword points if they seem to loiter. they would have had everything pushed on, no delay, no possibility of escape. it is very possible that this was the case, for it is evident that the witch was deeply obnoxious to the english, and that they were eager to have her and her endless process out of the way; but the evidence for their terror and fierce desire to expedite matters is of the feeblest. a canon of rouen declared at the trial that he had heard it said by maître pierre morice, and nicolas l'oyseleur, judges assessors, and by other whose names he does not recollect, "that the said english were so afraid of her that they did not dare to begin the siege of louviers until she was dead; and that it was necessary if one would please them, to hasten the trial as much as possible and to find the means of condemning her." very likely this was quite true: but it cannot at all be taken for proved by such evidence. another contemporary witness allows that though some of the english pushed on her trial for hate, some were well disposed to her; the manner of jeanne's imprisonment is the only thing which inclines the reader to believe every evil thing that is said against them. such were the circumstances in which jeanne was brought to trail. the population, moved to pity and to tears as any population would have been, before the end, would seem at the beginning to have been indifferent and not to have taken much interest one way or another: the court, a hundred men and more with all their hangers-on, the cleverest men in france, one more distinguished and impeccable than the others: the stern ring of the englishmen outside keeping an eye upon the tedious suit and all its convolutions: these all appear before us, surrounding as with bands of iron the young lonely victim in the donjon, who submitting to every indignity, and deprived of every aid, feeling that all her friends had abandoned her, yet stood steadfast and strong in her absolute simplicity and honesty. it was but two years in that same spring weather since she had left vaucouleurs to seek the fortune of france, to offer herself to the struggle which now was coming to an end. not a soul had jeanne to comfort or stand by her. she had her saints who--one wonders if such a thought ever entered into her young visionary head--had lured her to her doom, and who still comforted her with enigmatical words, promises which came true in so sadly different a sense from that in which they were understood. ( ) we are glad to add that the learned quicherat has doubts on the subject of the cage. chapter xii -- before the trial. lent, . we have not, however, sufficiently described the horror of the prison, and the treatment to which jeanne was exposed, though the picture is already dark enough. it throws a horrible yet also a grotesque light upon the savage manners of the time to find that the chamber in which she was confined, had secret provision for an _espionnage_ of the most base kind, openings made in the walls through which everything that took place in the room, every proceeding of the unfortunate prisoner, could be spied upon and every word heard. the idea of such a secret watch has always been attractive to the vulgar mind, and no doubt it has been believed to exist many times when there was little or no justification for such an infernal thought. from the "ear" of dionysius, down to the _trou judas_, which early tourists on the continent were taught to fear in every chamber door, the idea has descended to our own times. it would seem, however, to be beyond doubt that this odious means of acquiring information was in full operation during the trial of jeanne, and various spies were permitted to peep at her, and to watch for any unadvised word she might say in her most private moments. we are told that the duke of bedford made use of the opportunity in a still more revolting way, and was present, a secret spectator, at the fantastic scene when jeanne was visited by a committee of matrons who examined her person to prove or to disprove one of the hateful insinuations which were made about her. the imagination, however, refuses to conceive that a man of serious age and of high functions should have degraded himself to the level of a peeping tom in this way; all the french historians, nevertheless, repeat the story though on the merest hearsay evidence. and they also relate, with more apparent truth, how a double treachery was committed upon the unfortunate prisoner by stationing two secretaries at these openings, to take down her conversation with a spy who had been sent to her in the guise of a countryman of her own; and that not only cauchon but warwick also was present on this occasion, listening, while their plot was carried out by the vile traitor inside. the clerks, we are glad to say, are credited with a refusal to act: but warwick did not shrink from the ignominy. the englishmen indeed shrank from no ignominy; nor did the great french savants assembled under the presidency of the bishop. it is necessary to grant to begin with that they were neither ignorant nor base men, yet from the beginning of the trial almost every step taken by them appears base, as well as marked, in the midst of all their subtlety and diabolical cunning, by the profoundest ignorance of human nature. the spy of whom we have spoken, l'oyseleur (bird-snarer, a significant name), was sent, and consented to be sent, to jeanne in her prison, as a fellow prisoner, a _pays_, like herself from lorraine, to invite her confidence: but his long conversations with the maid, which were heard behind their backs by the secretaries, elicited nothing from her that she did not say in the public examination. she had no secret devices to betray to a traitor. she would not seem, indeed, to have suspected the man at all, not even when she saw him among her judges taking part against her. jeanne herself suspected no falsehood, but made her confession to him, when she found that he was a priest, and trusted him fully. the bewildering and confusing fact, turning all the contrivances of her judges into foolishness, was, that she had nothing to confess that she was not ready to tell in the eye of day. the adoption of this abominable method of eliciting secrets from the candid soul which had none, was justified, it appears, by the manner of her trial, which was after the rules of the inquisition--by which even more than by those which regulate an ordinary french trial the guilt of the accused is a foregone conclusion for which proof is sought, not a fair investigation of facts for abstract purposes of justice. the first thing to be determined by the tribunal was the counts of the indictment against jeanne; was she to be tried for magical arts, for sorcery and witchcraft? it is very probable that the mission of l'oyseleur was to obtain evidence that would clear up this question by means of recalling to her the stories of her childhood, of the enchanted tree, and the fairies' well; from which sources, her accusers anxiously hoped to prove that she derived her inspiration. but it is very clear that no such evidence was forthcoming, and that it seemed to them hopeless to attribute sorcery to her; therefore the accusation was changed to that of heresy alone. the following mandate from the university authorising her prosecution will show what the charge was; and the reader will note that one of its darkest items is the costume, which for so many good and sufficient reasons she wore. here is the official description of the accused: "a woman, calling herself the maid, leaving the dress and habit of her sex against the divine law, a thing abominable to god, clothed and armed in the habit and condition of a man, has done cruel deeds of homicide, and as is said has made the simple people believe, in order to abuse and lead them astray, that she was sent by god, and had knowledge of his divine secrets; along with several other doctrines (_dogmatisations_), very dangerous, prejudicial, and scandalous to our holy catholic faith, in pursuing which abuses, and exercising hostility against us and our people, she has been taken in arms, before compiègne, and brought as a prisoner before us." according to french law the indictment ought to have been founded upon a preliminary examination into the previous life of the accused, which, as it does not appear in the formal accusations, it was supposed had never been made. recent researches, however, have proved that it was made, but was not of a nature to strengthen or justify any accusation. all that the examiners could discover was that jeanne d'arc was a good and honest maid who left a spotless reputation behind her in her native village, and that not a suspicion of _dogmatisations_, nor worship of fairies, nor any other unseemly thing was associated with her name. other things less favourable, we are told, were reported of her: the statement, for instance, made in apparent good faith by monstrelet the burgundian chronicler, that she had been for some time a servant in an _auberge_, and there had learned to ride, and to consort with men--a statement totally without foundation, which was scarcely referred to in the trial. the skill of m. quicherat discovered the substance of those inquiries among the many secondary papers, but they were not made use of in the formal proceedings. this also we are told, though contrary to the habit of french law, was justified by the methods of the inquisition, which were followed throughout the trial. one breach of law and justice, however, is permitted by no code. it is expressly forbidden by french, and even by inquisitorial law, that a prisoner should be tried by his enemies--that is by judges avowedly hostile to him: an initial difficulty which it would have been impossible to get over and which had therefore to be ignored. one brave and honest man, nicolas de houppeville, had the courage to make this observation in one of the earliest sittings of the assembly: "neither the bishop of beauvais" (he said) "nor the other members of the tribunal ought to be judges in the matter; and it did not seem to him a good mode of procedure that those who were of the opposite party to the accused should be her judges--considering also that she had been examined already by the clergy of poitiers, and by the archbishop of rheims, who was the metropolitan of the said bishop of beauvais." nicolas de houppeville was a lawyer and had a right to be heard on such a point; but the reply of the judges was to throw him into prison, not without threats on the part of the civil authorities to carry the point further by throwing him into the seine. this was the method by which every honest objection was silenced. that the examination at poitiers, where the judges, as has been seen, were by no means too favourable to jeanne, should never have been referred to by her present examiners, though there was no doubt it ought to have been one of the most important sources of the preliminary information--is also very remarkable. it was suggested indeed to jeanne at a late period of the trial, that she might appeal to the archbishop; but he was, as she well knew, one of her most cruel enemies. still more important was the breach of all justice apparent in the fact that she had no advocate, no counsel on her side, no one to speak to her and conduct her defence. it was suggested to her near the end of the proceedings that she might choose one of her judges to fill this office; but even if the proposal had been a genuine one or at all likely to be to her advantage, it was then too late to be of any use. these particulars, we believe, were enough to invalidate any process in strict law; but the name of law seems ridiculous altogether as applied to this rambling and cruel cross-examination in which was neither sense nor decorum. the reader will understand that there were no witnesses either for or against her, the answers of the accused herself forming the entire evidence. one or two particulars may still be added to make the background at least more clear. the prison of jeanne, as we have seen, was not left in the usual silence of such a place; the constant noise with which the english troopers filled the air, jesting, gossiping, and carrying on their noisy conversation, if nothing worse and more offensive--sometimes, as jeanne complains, preventing her from hearing (her sole solace) the soft voices of her saintly visitors--was not her only disturbance. her solitude was broken by curious and inquisitive visitors of various kinds. l'oyseleur, the abominable detective, who professed to be her countryman and who beguiled her into talk of her childhood and native place, was the first of these; and it is possible that at first his presence was a pleasure to her. one other visitor of whom we hear accidentally, a citizen of rouen, pierre casquel, seems to have got in private interest and with a more or less good motive and no evil meaning. he warned her to answer with prudence the questions put to her, since it was a matter of life and death. she seemed to him to be "very simple" and still to believe that she might be ransomed. earl warwick, the commander of the town, appears on various occasions. he probably had his headquarters in the castle, and thus heard her cry for help in her danger, executing, let us hope, summary vengeance on her brutal assailant; but he also evidently took advantage of his power to show his interesting prisoner to his friends on occasion. and it was he who took her original captor, jean de luxembourg, now comte de ligny, by whom she had been given up, to see her, along with an english lord, sometimes named as lord sheffield. the belgian who had put so many good crowns in his pocket for her ransom, thought it good taste to enter with a jesting suggestion that he had come to buy her back. "jeanne, i will have you ransomed if you will promise never to bear arms against us again," he said. the maid was not deceived by this mocking suggestion. "it is well for you to jest," she said, "but i know you have no such power. i know that the english will kill me, believing, after i am dead, that they will be able to win all the kingdom of france: but if there were a hundred thousand more goddens than there are, they shall never win the kingdom of france." the english lord drew his dagger to strike the helpless girl, all the stories say, but was prevented by warwick. warwick, however, we are told, though he had thus saved her twice, "recovered his barbarous instincts" as soon as he got outside, and indignantly lamented the possibility of jeanne's escape from the stake. such incidents as these alone lightened or darkened her weary days in prison. a traitor or spy, a prophet of evil shaking his head over her danger, a contemptuous party of jeering nobles; afterwards inquisitors, for ever repeating in private their tedious questions: these all visited her--but never a friend. jeanne was not afraid of the english lord's dagger, or of the watchful eye of warwick over her. even when spying through a hole, if the english earl and knight, indeed permitted himself that strange indulgence, his presence and inspection must have been almost the only defence of the prisoner. our historians all quote, with an admiration almost as misplaced as their horror of warwick's "barbarous instincts," the _vrai galant homme_ of an englishman who in the midst of the trial cried out "_brave femme_!" (it is difficult to translate the words, for _brave_ means more than brave)--"why was she not english?" however we are not concerned to defend the english share of the crime. the worst feature of all is that she never seems to have been visited by any one favourable and friendly to her, except afterwards, the two or three pitying priests whose hearts were touched by her great sufferings, though they remained among her judges, and gave sentence against her. no woman seems ever to have entered that dreadful prison except those "matrons" who came officially as has been already said. the ladies de ligny had cheered her in her first confinement, the kind women of abbeville had not been shut out even from the gloomy fortress of le crotoy. but here no woman ever seems to have been permitted to enter, a fact which must either be taken to prove the hostility of the population, or the very vigorous regulations of the prison. perhaps the barbarous watch set upon her, the soldiers ever present, may have been a reason for the absence of any female visitor. at all events it is a very distinct fact that during the whole period of her trial, five months of misery, except on the one occasion already referred to, no woman came to console the unfortunate maid. she had never before during all her vicissitudes been without their constant ministrations. one woman, the only one we ever hear of who was not the partisan and lover of the maid, does, however, make herself faintly seen amid the crowd. catherine of la rochelle--the woman who had laid claim to saintly visitors and voices like those of jeanne, and who had been for a time received and fêted at the court of charles with vile satisfaction, as making the loss of the maid no such great thing--had by this time been dropped as useless, on the appearance of the shepherd boy quoted by the archbishop of rheims, and had fallen into the hands of the english: was not she too a witch, and admirably qualified to give evidence as to the other witch, for whose blood all around her were thirsting? catherine was ready to say anything that was evil of her sister sorceress. "take care of her," she said; "if you lose sight of her for one moment, the devil will carry her away." perhaps this was the cause of the guard in jeanne's room, the ceaseless scrutiny to which she was exposed. the vulgar slanderer was allowed to escape after this valuable testimony. she comes into history like a will-o'-the-wisp, one of the marsh lights that mean nothing but putrescence and decay, and then flickers out again with her false witness into the wastes of inanity. that she should have been treated so leniently and jeanne so cruelly! say the historians. reason good: she was nothing, came of nothing, and meant nothing. it is profane to associate jeanne's pure and beautiful name with that of a mountebank. this is the only woman in all her generation, so far as appears to us, who was not the partisan and devoted friend of the spotless maid. the aspect of that old-world city of rouen, still so old and picturesque to the visitor of to-day, though all new since that time except the churches, is curious and interesting to look back upon. it must have hummed and rustled with life through every street; not only with the english troops, and many a burgundian man-at-arms, swaggering about, swearing big oaths and filling the air with loud voices,--but with all the polished bands of the doctors, men first in fame and learning of the famous university, and beneficed priests of all classes, canons and deans and bishops, with the countless array that followed them, the cardinal's tonsured court in addition, standing by and taking no share in the business: but all french and english alike, occupied with one subject, talking of the trial, of the new points brought out, of the opinions of this doctor and that, of maître nicolas who had presumed on his lawyership to correct the bishop, and had suffered for it: of the bold canon who ventured to whisper a suggestion to the prisoner, and who ever since had had the eye of the governor upon him: of warwick, keeping a rough shield of protection around the maid but himself fiercely impatient of the law's delay, anxious to burn the witch and be done with her. and jeanne herself, the one strange figure that nobody understood; was she a witch? was she an angelic messenger? her answers so simple, so bold, so full of the spirit and sentiment of truth, must have been reported from one to another. this is what she said; does that look like a deceiver? could the devils inspire that steadfastness, that constancy and quiet? or was it not rather the angels, the saints as she said? never, we may be sure, had there been in rouen a time of so much interest, such a theme for conversations, such a subject for all thoughts. the eager court sat with their tonsured heads together, keen to seize every weak point. did you observe how she hesitated on this? let us push that, we'll get an admission on that point to-morrow. it is impossible to believe that in such an assembly every man was a partisan, much less that each one of them was thinking of the fee of the english, the daily allowance which it was the english habit to make. that were to imagine a france, base indeed beyond the limits of human baseness. all the norman dignitaries of the church, all the most learned doctors of the university--no! that is too great a stretch of our faith. the greater part no doubt believed as an indisputable fact, that jeanne was either a witch or an impostor, as we should all probably do now. and the vertigo of inquisition gained upon them; they became day by day more exasperated with her seeming innocence, with what must have seemed to them the cunning and cleverness, impossible to her age and sex, of her replies. who could have kept the girl so cool, so dauntless, so embarrassing in her straight-forwardness and sincerity? the saints? the saints were not dialecticians; far more likely the evil one himself, in whom the church has always such faith. "he hath a devil and by beelzebub casteth out devils." it was all like a play, only more exciting than any play, and going on endlessly, the excitement always getting stronger till it became the chief stimulus and occupation of life. chapter xiii -- the public examination. february, . it was in the chapel of the castle of rouen, on the st of february, that the trial of jeanne was begun. the judges present numbered about forty, and are carefully classed as doctors in theology, abbots, canons, doctors in canonical and civil law, with the bishop of beauvais at their head (the archepiscopal see of rouen being vacant, as is added: but not that my lord of beauvais hoped for that promotion). they were assembled there in all the solemnity of their priestly and professional robes, the reporters ready with their pens, the range of dark figures forming a semicircle round the presiding bishop, when the officer of the court led in the prisoner, clothed in her worn and war-stained tunic, like a boy, with her hair cut close as for the helmet, and her slim figure, no doubt more slim than ever, after her long imprisonment. she had asked to be allowed to hear mass before coming to the bar, but this was refused. it was a privilege which she had never failed to avail herself of in her most triumphant days. now the chapel--the sanctuary of god contained for her no sacred sacrifice, but only those dark benches of priests amid whom she found no responsive countenance, no look of kindness. jeanne was addressed sternly by cauchon, in an exhortation which it is sad to think was not in latin, as it appears in the _procès_. she was then required to take the oath on the scriptures to speak the truth, and to answer all questions addressed to her. jeanne had already held that conversation with l'oyseleur in the prison which cauchon and warwick had listened to in secret with greedy ears, but which manchon, the honest reporter, had refused to take down. perhaps, therefore, the bishop knew that the slim creature before him, half boy half girl, was not likely to be overawed by his presence or questions; but it cannot have been but a wonder to the others, all gazing at her, the first men in normandy, the most learned in paris, to hear her voice, _assez femme_, young and clear, arising in the midst of them, "i know not what things i may be asked," said jeanne. "perhaps you may ask me questions which i cannot answer." the assembly was startled by this beginning. "will you swear to answer truly all that concerns the faith, and that you know?" "i will swear," said jeanne, "about my father and mother and what i have done since coming to france; but concerning my revelations from god i will answer to no man, except only to charles my king; i should not reveal them were you to cut off my head, unless by the secret counsel of my visions." the bishop continued not without gentleness, enjoining her to swear at least that in everything that touched the faith she would speak truth; and jeanne kneeling down crossed her hands upon the book of the gospel, or missal as it is called in the report, and took the required oath, always under the condition she stated, to answer truly on everything she knew concerning the faith, except in respect to her revelations. the examination then began with the usual formalities. she was asked her name (which she said with touching simplicity was jeannette at home but jeanne in france), the names of her father and mother, godfather and godmothers, the priest who baptised her, the place where she was born, etc., her age, almost nineteen; her education, consisting of the pater noster, ave maria, and credo, which her mother had taught her. here she was asked, a curious interruption to the formal interrogatory, to say the pater noster--the reason of which sudden demand was that witches and sorcerers were supposed to be unable to repeat that prayer. as unexpected as the question was jeanne's reply. she answered that if the bishop would hear her in confession she would say it willingly. she had been refused all the exercises of piety, and she was speaking to a company of priests. there is a great dignity of implied protest against this treatment in such an answer. the request was made a second time with a promise of selecting two worthy frenchmen to hear her: but her reply was the same. she would say the prayer when she made her confession but not otherwise. she was ready it would seem in proud humility to confess to any or to all of her enemies, as one whose conscience was clear, and who had nothing to conceal. she was then commanded not to attempt to escape from her prison, on pain of being condemned for heresy, but to this again she demurred at once. she would not accept the prohibition, but would escape if she could, so that no man could say that she had broken faith; although since her capture she had been bound in chains and her feet fastened with irons. to this, her examiner said that it was necessary so to secure her in order that she might not escape. "it is true and certain," she replied, "whatever others may wish, that to every prisoner it is lawful to escape if he can." it may be remarked, as she forcibly pointed out afterwards, that she had never given her faith, never surrendered, but had always retained her freedom of action. the tribunal thereupon called in the captain in charge of jeanne's prison, a gentleman called john gris in the record, probably john grey, along with two soldiers, bernoit and talbot, and enjoined them to guard her securely and not to permit her to talk with any one without the permission of the court. this was all the business done on the first day of audience. on the d of february at eight o'clock in the morning, the sitting was resumed. in the meantime, however, the chapel had been found too small and too near the outer world, the proceedings being much interrupted by shouts and noises from without, and probably incommoded within by the audience which had crowded it the first day. the judges accordingly assembled in the great hall of the castle; they were forty-nine in number on the second day, the number being chiefly swelled by canons of rouen. after some preliminary business the accused was once more introduced, and desired again to take the oath. jeanne replied that she had done so on the previous day and that this was enough; upon which there followed a short altercation, which, however, ended by her consent to swear again that she would answer truly in all things that concerned the faith. the questioner this day was jean beaupère (_pulchri patris_, as he is called in the latin), a theologian, master of arts, canon of paris and of besançon, "one of the greatest props of the university of paris," a man holding a number of important offices, and who afterwards appeared at the council of bâle as the deputy of normandy. he began by another exhortation to speak the truth, to which jeanne replied as before that what she did say she would say truly, but that she would not answer upon all subjects. "i have done nothing but by revelation," she said. these preliminaries on both sides having been gone through, the examination was resumed. jeanne informed the court in answer to beaupère's question that she had been taught by her mother to sew and did not fear to compete with any woman in rouen in these crafts; that she had once been absent from home when her family were driven out of their village by fear of the burgundians, and that she had then lived for about fifteen days in the house of a woman called la rousse, at neufchâteau; that when she was at home she was occupied in the work of the house and did not go to the fields with the sheep and other animals; that she went to confession regularly to the curé of her own village, or when he could not hear her, to some other priest, by permission of the curé; also that two or three times she had made her confession to the mendicant friars--this being during her stay in neufchâteau (where presumably she was not acquainted with the clergy); and that she received the sacrament always at easter. asked whether she had communicated at other feasts than easter, she said briefly that this was enough. "go on to the rest," _passez outre_, she added, and the questioner seems to have been satisfied. then came the really vital part of the matter. she proceeded--no direct question on the point being recorded, though no doubt it was made--to tell how when she was about thirteen she heard voices from god bidding her to be good and obedient. the first time she was much afraid. the voice came about the hour of noon, in summer, in her father's garden. she was fasting but had not fasted the preceding day. the voice came from the right, towards the church; and came rarely without a great light. this light came always from the side whence the voice proceeded, and was a very bright radiance. when she came into france she still continued to hear the same voices. she was then asked how she could see the light when it was at the side; to which foolish question jeanne gave no reply, but "turned to other matters," saying voluntarily with a soft implied reproof of the noise around her--that if she were in a wood, that is in a quiet place, she could hear the voices coming towards her. she added (going on, one could imagine, in a musing, forgetting the congregation of sinners about her) that it seemed to her a noble voice, and that she believed it came from god, and that when she had heard it three times she knew it was the voice of an angel; the voice always came quite clearly to her, and she understood it well. she was then asked what it said to her concerning the salvation of her soul. she said that it taught her to rule her life well, to go often to church: and told her that it was necessary that she, jeanne, should go to france. the said jeanne added that she would not be questioned further concerning the voice, or the manner in which it was made known to her, but that two or three times in a week it had said to her that she must go to france; but that her father knew nothing of this. the voice said to her that she should go to france, until she could endure it no longer; it said to her that she should raise the siege, which was set against the city of orleans. it said also that she must go to robert of baudricourt, in the city of vaucouleurs, who was captain of that place, and that he would give her people to go with her; to which she had answered that she was a poor girl who knew not how to ride, nor how to conduct war. she then said that she went to her uncle and told him that she wished to go with him for a little while to his house, and that she lived there for eight days; she then told her uncle that she must go to vaucouleurs, and the said uncle took her there. also she went on to say that when she came to the said city of vaucouleurs, she recognised robert of baudricourt; though she had never seen him before she knew him by the voice that said to her which was he. she then told this robert that it was necessary that she should go to france, but twice over he refused and repulsed her; the third time, however, he received her, and gave her certain men to go with her; the voice had told her that this would be so. she said also that the duke of lorraine sent for her to come to him, and that she went under a safe conduct granted by him, and told him that she must go to france. he asked her whether he should recover from his illness; but she told him that she knew nothing of that, and she talked very little to him of her journey. she told the duke that he ought to send his son and his people with her to take her to france, and that she would pray god to restore his health; and then she was taken back to vaucouleurs. she said also that when she left vaucouleurs she wore the dress of a man, without any other arms than a sword which robert de baudricourt had given her; and that she had with her a chevalier, a squire, and four servants, and that they slept for the first night at st. urbain, in the abbey there. she was then asked by whose advice she wore the dress of a man, but refused to answer. finally she said that she charged no man with giving her this advice. she went on to say that the said robert de baudricourt exacted an oath from those who went with her, that they would conduct her to the end of her journey well and safely; and that he said, as she left him, "go, and let come what will." she also said that she knew well that god loved the duke of orleans, concerning whom she had more revelations than about any other living man, except him whom she called her king. she added that it was necessary for her to wear male attire, and that whoever advised her to do so had given her wise counsel. she then said that she sent a letter to the english before orleans, in which she required them to go away, a copy of which letter had been read to her in rouen; but there were two or three mistakes, especially in the words which called upon them to surrender to the maid instead of to surrender to the king. (there is no indication why these two latter statements should have been introduced into the midst of her narrative of the journey; it may have been in reply to some other question interjected by another of her examiners: _passez outre_, as she herself says. she immediately resumes the simple and straightforward tale.) the said jeanne went on to say that her further journey to him whom she called her king was without any impediment; and that when she arrived at the town of st. catherine de fierbois she sent news of her arrival to the town of chasteau-chinon where the said king was. she arrived there herself about noon and went to an inn( ); and after dinner went to him whom she called her king, who was in the castle. she then said that when she entered the chamber where he was, she knew him among all others, by the revelation of her "voices." she told her king that she wished to make war against the english. she was then asked whether when she heard the "voices" in the presence of the king the light was also seen in that place. she answered as before: _passez outre: transeatis ultra_. "go on," as we might say, "to the other questions." she was asked if she had seen an angel hovering over her king. she answered: "spare me; _passez outre_." she added afterwards, however, that before he put his hand to the work, the king had many beautiful apparitions and revelations. she was asked what these were. she answered: "i will not tell you; it is not i who should answer; send to the king and he will tell you." she was then asked if her voices had promised her that when she came to the king he would receive her. she answered that those of her own party knew that she had been sent from god and that some had heard and recognised the voices. further, she said that her king and various others had heard and seen( ) the voices coming to her--charles of bourbon (comte de clermont) and two or three others with him. she then said that there was no day in which she did not hear that voice; but that she asked nothing from it except the salvation of her soul. besides this, jeanne confessed that the voice said she should be led to the town of st. denis in france, where she wished to remain--that is after the attack on paris--but that against her will the lords forced her to leave it: if she had not been wounded she would not have gone: but she was wounded in the moats of paris: however she was healed in five days. she then said that she had made an assault, called in french _escarmouche_ (skirmish), upon the town of paris. she was asked if it was on a holy day, and said that she believed it was on a festival. she was then asked if she thought it well done to fight on a holy day, and answered, "_passez outre_." go on to the next question. this is a verbatim account of one day of the trial. most of the translations which exist give questions as well as answers: but these are but occasionally given in the original document, and jeanne's narrative reads like a calm, continuous statement, only interrupted now and then by a question, usually a cunning attempt to startle her with a new subject, and to hurry some admission from her. the great dignity with which she makes her replies, the occasional flash of high spirit, the calm determination with which she refuses to be led into discussion of the subjects which she had from the first moment reserved, are very remarkable. we have seen her hitherto only in conflict, in the din of battle and the fatigue, yet exuberant energy, of rapid journeys. her circumstances were now very different. she had been shut up in prison for months, for six weeks at least she had been in irons, and the air of heaven had not blown upon this daughter of the fields; her robust yet sensitive maidenhood had been exposed to a hundred offences, and to the constant society, infecting the very air about, of the rudest of men; yet so far is her spirit from being broken that she meets all those potent, grave, and reverend doctors and ecclesiastics, with the simplicity and freedom of a princess, answering frankly or holding her peace as seems good to her, afraid of nothing, keeping her self-possession, all her wits about her as we say, without panic and without presumption. the trial of jeanne is indeed almost more miraculous than her fighting; a girl not yet nineteen, forsaken of all, without a friend! it is less wonderful that she should have developed the qualities of a general, of a gunner, every gift of war--than that in her humiliation and distress she should thus hold head against all the most subtle intellects in france, and bear, with but one moment of faltering, a continued cross-examination of three months, without losing her patience, her heart, or her courage. ***** the third day brought a still larger accession of judges, sixty-two of them taking their places on the benches round the bishop in the great hall; and the day began with another and longer altercation between cauchon and jeanne on the subject of the oath again demanded of her. she maintained her resolution to say nothing of her voices. "we" according to the record "required of her that she should swear simply and absolutely without reservation." she would seem to have replied with impatience, "let me speak freely:" adding "by my faith you may ask me many questions which i will not answer": then explaining, "many things you may ask me, but i will tell you nothing truly that concerns my revelations; for you might compel me to say things which i have sworn not to say; and so i should perjure myself, which you ought not to wish." this explains several statements which she made later in respect to her introduction to the king. she repeated emphatically: "i warn you well, you who call yourselves my judges, that you take a great responsibility upon you, and that you burden me too much." she said also that it was enough to have already sworn twice. she was again asked to swear simply and absolutely, and answered, "it is enough to have sworn twice," and that all the clerks in rouen and paris could not condemn her unless lawfully; also that of her coming she would speak the truth but not all the truth; and that the space of eight days would not be enough to tell all. "we the said bishop" (continues the report) "then said to her that she should ask advice from those present whether she ought to swear or not. she replied again that of her coming she would speak truly and not otherwise, nor would it be fit that she should talk at large. we then told her that it would throw suspicion on what she said if she did not swear to speak the truth. she answered as before. we repeated that she must swear precisely and absolutely. she answered that she would say what she knew, but not all, and that she had come on the part of god, and appealed to god from whom she came. again requested and admonished to swear on pain of every punishment that could be put on her, again answered '_passez outre_.' finally she consented to swear that she would speak the truth in everything that concerned the trial." her examination was then resumed by beaupère as before, who elicited from her that she had fasted (he seems to have wished to make out that the fasting had something to do with her visions) since noon the day before (it was lent); and also that she had heard her voices both on that day and the day before, three times on the previous day, the first time in the morning when she was asleep, and awakened by them. did she kneel and thank them? she thanked them, sitting up in her bed (to which she was chained, as her questioner knew) and clasping her hands. she asked them what she was to do, and they told her to answer boldly. it may be remarked here that more frequently as the examination goes on, part of jeanne's words are quoted in the first person, as if the reporters had been specially struck by them, while the bulk of her evidence goes on more calmly in the third person, the narrative form. after saying that she was bidden to answer boldly, she seems to have turned to the bishop, and to have addressed him individually: "you say you are my judge; i warn you to take care what you are doing, for i am sent from god, and you are putting yourself in much peril" (_magno periculo: gallice_, adds the reporter, _en grant dangier_). she was then asked if her voices ever changed their meaning, and answered that she had never heard two speak contrary to each other; what they had said that day was that she should speak boldly. asked, if the voice forbade her to reply to questions asked, she replied; "i will not answer you. i have revelations touching the king which i will not tell you." asked, if the voices forbade her to reveal these revelations, she answered, "i have not consulted them; give me fifteen days' delay and i will answer you"; but being again exhorted to reply, said: "if the voice forbade me to speak, how many times should i tell you?" again asked, if she were forbidden to speak, answered, "i believe i am not forbidden by men"--repeating that she would not reply, and knew not how far she should reply, for it had not been revealed to her; but that she believed firmly, as firmly as the christian faith, and that god had redeemed us from the pains of hell, that this voice came from him. questioned concerning the voice, what it appeared to be when it spoke, if that of an angel, or from god himself; or if it was the voice of a saint or of saints (feminine), answered: "the voice comes from god; and i believe that i should not tell you all i know, for i should displease these voices if i answered you; and as for this question i pray you to leave me free." asked if she thought that to speak the truth would displease god, she answered, "what the voices say i am to tell to the king, not to you," adding that during that night they had said much to her for the good of the king, and that if she could but let him know she would willingly drink no wine up to easter (the reader will remember that her frugal fare consisted of bread dipped in the wine and water, which is justly called _eau rougie_ in france). asked, if she could not induce the voices to speak to her king directly, she answered that she knew not whether her voices would consent, unless it were the will of god, and god consented to it, adding, "they might well reveal it to the king; and with that i should be content." asked, if the voices could not communicate with the king as they did in her presence, she answered, that she did not know whether this was god's will; and added, that unless it were the will of god she would not know how to act. asked, if it was by the advice of her voices that she attempted to escape from her prison, she answered, "i have nothing to say to you on that point." asked, if she always saw a light when the voices were heard, she answered: "yes: that with the sound of the voices light came." asked if she saw anything else coming with the voices, answered: "i do not tell you all. i am not allowed to do so, nor does my oath touch that; the voices are good and noble, but neither of that will i answer." she was then asked to give in writing the points on which she would not reply. then she was asked if her voices had eyes and ears, and answered, "you shall not have this either," adding, that it was a saying among children that men were sometimes hanged for speaking the truth. she was then asked if she knew herself to be in the grace of god. she replied: "if i am not so, may god put me in his grace; if i am, may god keep me in it. i should be the most miserable in the world if i were not in the grace of god." she said besides, that if she were in a state of sin she did not believe her voices would come to her, and she wished that everyone could understand them as she did, adding, that she was about thirteen when they came to her first. she was then asked, whether in her childhood she had played with the other children in the fields, and various other particulars about domremy, whether there were any burgundians there? to which jeanne answered boldly that there was one, and that she wished his head might be cut off, adding piously, "that is, if it pleased god"( ); she was also asked whether she had fought along with the other children against the children of the neighbouring burgundian village of maxy (maxey sur meuse): why she hated the burgundians, and many questions of this kind, with a close examination about a certain tree near the village of domremy, which some called the tree of the good ladies, and others, the fairies' tree; and also about a well there, the fairies' well, of which poor patients were said to drink and get well. jeanne (no doubt relieved by the simple character of these questions) made answer freely and without hesitation, in no way denying that she had danced and sung with the other children, and made garlands for the image of the blessed marie of domremy; but she did not remember whether she had ever done so after attaining years of discretion, and certainly she had never seen a fairy, nor worked any spell by their means. at the end, after having thus been put off her guard, she was suddenly asked about her dress (a capital point in the eyes of her judges): whether she wished to have a woman's dress. probably she was, as they hoped, tired, and expecting no such question, for she answered quickly yet with instant recovery: "bring me one to go home in and i will accept it; otherwise no. i prefer this, since it pleases god that i should wear it." the recollection of domremy and of the pleasant fields, must have carried her back to the days when the little jeanne was like the rest in her short, full petticoats of crimson stuff, free of any danger: what could be better to go home in? but she immediately remembered the obvious and excellent reasons she had for wearing another costume now. so ended the third day. in the meantime there had been, we are told, various interruptions during the examination; perhaps it was then that nicolas de houppeville protested against bishop cauchon as a partisan and a burgundian, and therefore incapable by law of judging a member of the opposite party: and had been rudely silenced, and afterwards punished, as we have already heard. another kind of opposition less bold had begun to be remarked, which was that one of the persons present, by word and sign, whispering suggestions to her, or warning her with his eyes, was helping the unfortunate prisoner in her defence. probably this did little good, "for she was often troubled and hurried in her answers," we are told; but it was a sign of good-will, at least. when frère isambard, who was the person in question, speaks at a later period he tells us that "the questions put to jeanne were too difficult, subtle, and dangerous, so that the great clerks and learned men who were present scarcely would have known how to answer them, and that many in the assembly murmured at them." perhaps the good frère isambard might have spared himself the trouble; for jeanne, however she may have suffered, was probably more able to hold her own than many of those great clerks, and did so with unfailing courage and spirit. one of the other judges, jean fabry, a bishop, declared afterwards that "her answers were so good, that for three weeks he believed that they were inspired." manchon, the reporter, he who had refused to take down the private conversation of jeanne in her prison with the vile traitor, l'oyseleur, makes his voice heard also to the effect that "monseigneur of beauvais would have had everything written as pleased him, and when there was anything that displeased him he forbade the secretaries to report it as being of no importance for the trial." on another day a humbler witness still, massieu, one of the officers of the court, who had the charge of taking jeanne daily from her prison to the hall, and back again, met in the courtyard an englishman, who seems to have been a singing man or lay clerk "of the king's chapel in england," probably attached to winchester's ecclesiastical retinue. this man asked him: "what do you think of her answers? will she be burned? what will happen?" "up to this time," said massieu, "i have heard nothing from her that was not honourable and good. she seems to me a good woman, but how it will all end god only knows!" no doubt conversations of this kind were being carried on all over rouen. would she be burned? what would happen? could any one stand and answer like that hour after hour and day by day, inspired only by the devil? there was no popular enthusiasm for her even now. how should there have been in that partisan province, more english than french? but a chill doubt began to steal into many minds whether she was so bad as had been thought, whether indeed she might not after all be something quite different from what she had been thought? nature had begun to work in the agitated place, and even in that black-robed, eager assembly. if there was a vile l'oyseleur trying to get her confidence in private, and so betray her, there was also a kind frère isambard, privately plucking at her sleeve, imploring her to be cautious, whispering an answer probably not half so wise as her own natural reply, yet warming her heart with the suggestion of a friend at hand. on the fourth day, jeanne was again required to swear, and replied as before, that so far as concerned the trial she would answer truly, but not all she knew. "you ought to be satisfied: i have sworn sufficiently," she said; and with this her judges seem to have been content. beaupère then resumed his questions, but first asked her, perhaps with a momentary gleam of compassion and a sudden consciousness of the pallor and weariness of the young prisoner, how she did. she answered, one can imagine with what tone of indignant disdain: "you see how i am: i am as well as i can be." he then cross-examined her closely as to what voices she had heard since her last appearance in court, but drew from her only the same answer, "the voice tells me to answer boldly," and that she would tell them as much as she was permitted by god to tell them, but concerning her revelations for the king of france she would say nothing except by permission of her voices. she was then asked what kind of voices they were which she heard, were they voices of angels, or of saints (_sancti aut sanctæ_, male or female saints) or from god himself? she answered that the voices were those of st. catherine and st. margaret, whose heads were crowned with beautiful crowns, very rich and precious. "so much as this god allows me to say. if you doubt send to poitiers, where i was questioned before." (it may perhaps be permissible to suppose that the kind whisperer at her elbow might have suggested the repeated references to poitiers that follow, but which are not to be found before: though it was most natural she should refer to this place where she was examined at the beginning of her mission.) asked how she knew which of these two saints, she answered that she could quite distinguish one from the other by the manner of their salutation; that she had been led and guided by them for seven years, and that she knew them because they had named themselves to her. she was then asked how they were dressed? and answered: "i cannot tell you; i am not permitted to reveal this; if you do not believe me send to poitiers." she said also that at her coming into france she had revealed these things, but could not now. she was asked what was the age of her saints, but replied that she was not permitted to tell. asked, if both saints spoke at once or one after the other, she replied: "i have not permission to tell you: but i always consult them both together." asked, which had appeared to her first, and answered: "i do not know which it was; i did know, but have forgotten. it is written in the register of poitiers." "she then said she had much comfort from st. michael. again, asked, which had come first, she replied that it was st. michael. asked, if a long time had passed since she first heard the voice of st. michael, answered: "i do not name to you the voice of st. michael; but his conversation was of great comfort to me." asked, again, what voice came first to her when she was thirteen, answered, that it was st. michael whom she saw before her eyes, and that he was not alone, but accompanied by many angels of heaven. she said also that she would not have come into france but by the command of god. asked, if she saw st. michael and the angels really, with her ordinary senses, she answered: "i saw them with my bodily eyes as i see you, and when they left me i wept, desiring much that they would take me with them." asked, what was the form in which he appeared, she replied: "i cannot answer you; i am not permitted." asked, what st. michael said to her the first time, she cried, "you shall have no answer to-day." then went on to say that her voices told her to reply boldly. afterwards she said that she had told her king once all that had been revealed to her; said also that she was not permitted to say here what st. michael had said; but that it would be better to send for a copy of the books which were at poitiers than to question her on this subject. asked, what sign she had that these were revelations of god, and that it was really st. catherine and st. margaret with whom she talked, she answered: "it is enough that i tell you they were st. catherine and st. margaret: believe me or not as you will." asked how she distinguished the points on which she was allowed to speak from the others, she answered, that on some points she had asked permission to speak, and not on others, adding, that she would rather have been torn by wild horses than to have come to france, unless by the license of god. asked how it was that she put on a man's dress, she answered, that dress appeared to her a small matter, that she did not adopt that dress by the counsel of any man, and that she neither put on a dress nor did anything, but according as god, or the angels, commanded her to do so. asked, if she knew whether such a command to assume the dress of a man was lawful, she answered: "all that i did, i did by the precepts of our lord; and if i were bidden to wear another dress i would do so, because it was at the bidding of god." asked, if she had done it by the orders of robert de baudricourt, answered "no." asked, if she thought that she had done well in assuming a man's dress, answered, that as all she did was by the command of the lord, she believed that she had done well, and expected a good guarantee and good succour. asked, if in this particular case of assuming the dress of a man she thought she had done well, answered, that nothing in the world had made her do it, but the command of god. she was then asked whether light always accompanied the voices when they came to her, she answered, with an evident reference to her first interview with charles, that there were many lights on every side as was fit. "it is not only to you that light comes" (or you have not all the light to yourself,--a curious phrase). asked, if there was an angel over the head of the king when she saw him for the first time, she answered: "by the blessed mary, if there were, i know not, i saw none." asked, if there was light, she answered: "there were about three hundred soldiers, and fifty of them held torches, without counting any spiritual light. and rarely do i have the revelations without light." asked, if her king had faith in what she said, she answered, that he had good signs, and also by his clergy. asked, what revelations her king had, she answered: "you shall have nothing from me this year." then added that for three weeks she was cross-examined by the clergy, both in the town of chinon and at poitiers, and that her king had signs concerning her, before he believed in her. and the clergy of his party had found nothing in her, in respect to her faith, that was not good. asked, whether she gone to the church of st. catherine of fierbois, answered: "yes," and that she had there heard three masses in one day, and from thence went to chinon; she added that she had sent a letter thence to the king, in which it was contained that she sent this to know if she might come to the town in which the king was; for that she had travelled a hundred and fifty leagues to come to him and to bring him help, for she knew much good concerning him. and she thought it was contained in this letter that she should recognise the king among all the rest. she said besides, that she had a sword which was given to her at vaucouleurs; she said also that, being in tours or at chinon, she sent for a sword which was in the church of st. catherine of fierbois behind the altar, and that when it was found it was rusty. asked, how she knew about this sword, she answered, that it was rusty because of being in the ground, and there were five crosses on it, and that she knew this sword by her voices, and not by any man's report. she wrote to the ecclesiastics of the place where it was and asked them for this sword, and they sent it to her. it was found not much below the ground behind the altar; she was not sure if it was before or behind the altar, but wrote that it was behind the altar. and when it was found the clergy cleaned it and rubbed off the rust, which came off easily; and it was an armourer of tours who went to fetch it. the clergy made a scabbard for it before sending it to the said jeanne, and they of tours made another, so that it had two scabbards, one of crimson velvet and one of cloth of gold. and she herself procured another of strong leather. she said also that when she was captured she had not that sword. said also that she continued to wear the said sword until she left st. denis after the assault on paris. asked, what benediction she made, or if she made any on this sword, she answered, that she made no benediction, nor knew how to make one, but that she loved the sword because it had come to her from the church of the blessed catherine whom she loved much. asked, if she had placed it on the altar at the village of coulenges, les vineuses, or elsewhere, placing it there that it might bring good luck, she answered, that she knew nothing of this. asked, if she did not pray that the sword might have good fortune: "it is good to know that i wish all my armour (_harnesseum meum; gallice, mon harnois_) to be very fortunate." asked, where she had left the sword, answered, that she had deposited a sword and armour at st. denis, but it was not this sword. she added that she had it in lagny: but that she afterwards wore the sword which had been taken from a burgundian, which was a good sword for war and gave good strokes (_gallice, de bonnes bouffes_ and _de bons torchons_). said also that to tell where she left it had nothing to do with the trial, and she would answer nothing. she said also that her brothers had everything that belonged to her, her horses, swords, and everything, and that she believed they were worth in all about , francs. she was also asked whether when she was at orleans she had a standard, and what colour it was; answered, that she had a standard, the field of which was sown with lilies, and on it was a figure of the world with angels on each side. it was white, and made of a stuff called boucassin, upon which was written the name _jhesus maria_, so that all might see, and it was fringed with silk. asked, if the name _jhesus maria_ was written above or below or at the side, she answered, "at the side." asked, if she loved her sword or standard best, she answered, that she loved her standard best. asked, why she had that picture on the standard, she answered: "i have sufficiently told you that i did nothing but by the command of god." she added that she herself carried her standard when in battle that she might not hurt anyone, and said that she had never killed any man. asked, how many men her king gave her when she began her work, answered, from ten to twelve( ) thousand men, and that she attacked first the bastile of st. loup at orleans, and afterwards that of the bridge. asked, from which bastile it was that her men were driven back, she answered, that she did not remember; adding, that she had been sure that she could raise the siege at orleans, for it had been so revealed to her; and that she told this to her king before it occurred. asked, whether, when she made assault, she told her men that all the arrows, stones, cannon-balls, etc., would be intercepted by her, she answered no--that more than a hundred were wounded: that what she had said to her people was that they should have no doubts, for they should certainly raise the siege of orleans. she said also that in attacking the bastile of the bridge she herself was wounded by an arrow in the neck, and was much comforted by st. catherine, and was healed in fifteen days; but that she never gave up riding and working all that time. asked, if she knew that she would be wounded, she answered, that she knew it well and had told her king, but that, notwithstanding, she went about her business. it was revealed to her by the voices of her two saints, the blessed catherine and the blessed margaret. she said besides, that she was the first to place a scaling ladder on the bastile of the bridge, and as she raised it she was struck in the neck. she was then asked why she did not treat with the captain of jargeau; she answered that the lords of her party had replied to the english, who had asked for a truce of fifteen days, that they could not have it, but that they might retire, they and their horses at once; she had said for her part that if they retired in their doublets and tunics their lives should be spared, otherwise the city would be taken by storm. asked, if she had consulted with her counsel, that is with her voices, whether the truce should be granted or not, she answered, that she did not remember. it will be remarked, as the slow examination goes on day after day, that jeanne, becoming at moments impatient, sometimes gives a rough answer, and at other times plays a little with her questioner as if in contempt. "by the blessed mary, i know not!" is evidently an outburst of impatience at the exhausting, exasperating folly of some of these questions, and this will be further visible in future sittings. it seems very likely that the reference to poitiers, which was an excellent suggestion, commending itself to her invariable good sense, came from the kind priest who tried to serve her as he best could; but there are other answers a little incoherent, which look as if frère isambard, if it were he, had confused her in her own response without conveying anything better to her mind, especially on the occasions when she refuses to reply, and then does so, abandoning her ground at once. her patience and steadiness are quite extraordinary however even in the less self-collected moments. thus end the proceedings of the fourth day. ***** the fifth day began with the usual dispute about the oath, jeanne still retaining her reservation with the greatest firmness. she seems, however, at the end, to have repeated her oath to answer everything that had to do with the trial--"and as much as i say i will say as if i were before the pope of rome." these words must have given the magister beaupère an admirable occasion for introducing one of the things charged against her for which there was actual proof--her letter to the comte d'armagnac in respect to the pope. he seized upon it evidently with eagerness, and asked her which she held to be the true pope. to this she answered quietly, "are there two?"--the most confusing reply.( ) she was asked if she had received letters from the comte d'armagnac, asking to know which of the three existing popes he ought to obey; she answered that she had his letter, and had replied to it, saying among other things that when she was in paris and at rest she would answer him; and added that she was on the point of mounting her horse when she gave that reply. the copy of the letter and the reply being read to her she was asked if that was what she had said; to which she replied that she had answered his letter in part, not in full. asked, if she knew the counsels of the king of kings so as to be able to say which the count should obey, she answered, that she knew nothing. asked, if she was in doubt as to which the count ought to obey, she replied that she knew not which to bid him obey; but that she, the said jeanne, held and believed that we ought to obey our pope who was in rome; that as for what he asked, that she should tell him which god desired him to obey, she had said she knew nothing; but she sent much to him which was not put in writing. and as for herself she believed in the lord pope of rome. asked, whether in respect to the three pontiffs she had received counsel, she answered, that she had neither written nor made to be written anything about the three pontiffs. and this she swore on her oath. asked, if she were in the habit of putting on her letters the name _jhesus maria_ with a cross, answered, that she did so sometimes but not always, and that sometimes she put a cross to shew that these letters were not to be taken seriously (as likely to fall into the enemy's hands). some questions were then put to her about her letters to the duke of bedford and to the english king, and copies were read to her to which she objected on some small points, but mistakenly it would seem, as that she had summoned them to surrender to the king, while the scribe had put "surrender to the maid." she said, however, that they were her letters, and that she held by them. she added that before seven years the english would lose more than they had lost at orleans,( ) and that their cause would be lost in france; she said also that the said english should have greater disasters than they had yet had in france, and that god would give greater victories to france. asked, how she knew this, she replied: "i know it by the revelations made to me, and that it will happen in seven years, and i might well be angry that it is deferred so long." asked, when this would happen, she said that she knew neither the day nor the hour. she was tormented a little further as to the dates, whether this would happen before the st. jean, or before the st. martin in winter, but made no answer except that before the st. martin in winter they should see many things, and it might be that the english should fail; as a matter of fact paris opened its gates to charles vii. within the seven years specified, so that jeanne's prophecy may be held to have been fulfilled. we then come once more to a long and profitless interrogatory upon her saints, in which the crowd of judges forgot their dignity and overwhelmed her with a flood of often very foolish, and sometimes worse than foolish questions. asked, how she knew the future, she answered that she knew it by st. catherine and st. margaret; asked, if st. gabriel was with st. michael when he came to her, she answered, that she could not remember. asked, if she saw them always in the same dress, answered yes, and they were crowned very richly. of their other garments she could not speak; she knew nothing of their tunics. asked, how she knew whether they were men or women, answered, that she knew well by their voices which revealed them to her; and that she knew nothing save by revelation and the precepts of god. asked, what appearances she saw, she answered, that she saw faces. asked, if these saints had hair, she answered, "it is good to know." asked, if there was anything between their crowns and their hair, answered, no. asked, if their hair was long and hanging down, answered, "i know nothing about it." she also said that their voices were beautiful sweet, and humble, and that she understood them well. asked, how they could speak when they had no bodies, she answered, "i refer it to god." she repeated that the voices were beautiful, humble, and sweet, and that they could speak french. asked, if st. margaret did not speak english, answered: "how could she speak english when she was not on the english side?" this would seem to infer that the st. margaret referred to was not the legendary st. margaret of the dragon, but st. margaret of scotland, well known in france from the long connection between those two countries, and a popular mediæval saint. she would naturally have spoken english, being a saxon, but also quite naturally would have been against the english, as a scottish queen; but of these refinements it is very unlikely that jeanne knew anything, and her prompt and somewhat sharp reply evidently cut the inquiry short. the next question was, did they wear gold rings in their ears or elsewhere, these crowned saints; to which she answered a little contemptuously, "i know nothing about it." she was then asked if she herself had rings: on which "turning to us the aforesaid bishop, she said, 'you have one of mine; give it back to me.' she then said that the burgundians had her other ring, and asked of us if we had the ring to shew it to her. asked, who gave her this ring, answered, her father or her mother, and that the name _jhesus maria_ was written upon it, but that she knew not who put it there, nor even whether there was a stone in the ring; it was given to her in the village of domremy. she added that her brother gave her another ring which we had, and said that she desired that it might be given to the church." a sudden change was now made in the cross-examination according to the methods of that operation, throwing her back without warning upon the village superstitions of domremy, the magic tree and fountain. many of the questions which follow are so trivial and are so evidently instinct with evil meaning, that it seems a wrong to beaupère to impute the whole of the interrogatory to him; other questions were evidently interposed by the excited assembly. asked, if st. catherine and st. margaret talked with her under the tree of which mention had been made above, she answered, "i know nothing about it." asked, if the saints were seen at the fountain near the tree, answered yes, that she had heard them there; but what her saints promised to her, there or elsewhere, she answered, that nothing was promised except by permission from god. asked, what promises were made to her, she answered, "this has nothing at all to do with your trial," but added, that among other things they said to her that her king should be restored to his kingdom, and that his adversaries should be destroyed. she said also that they promised to take her, the said jeanne, to paradise, as she had asked them to do. asked, if she had any other promises, she said there was one promise that had nothing to do with the trial, but that in three months she would tell them what that other promise was. asked, if the voices told her she would be set free from her prison in three months, she answered: "this does not concern your trial; nor do i know when i shall be set free." and she added that those who wished to send her out of this world might well go before her. asked, if her council did not tell her when she should be set free from her present prison, answered: "ask me this in three months' time; i can promise you as much as that"--but added: "you may ask those present, on their oaths, if this has anything to do with the trial." startled by this suggestion, the judges seem to have held a hurried consultation among themselves to see whether these matters did really touch the trial; the result apparently decided them to return again to the question of the local superstitions of domremy, the only point on which there seemed a chance of breaking down the extraordinarily just and steadfast intelligence of the girl who stood before them. after this pause she resumed, apparently not in answer to any question. "i have well told you that there were things you should not know, and some time i must needs be set free. but i must have permission if i speak; therefore i will ask to have delay in this." asked, if her voices forbade her to speak the truth, she said: "do you expect me to tell you things that concern the king of france? there is a great deal here that has nothing to do with the trial." she said also that she knew that her king should enjoy the kingdom of france, as well as she knew that they were there before her in judgment. she added that she would have been dead but for the revelations which comforted her daily. she was then asked what she had done with her mandragora (mandrake)? she answered that she had no mandragora, nor had ever had. she had heard say that near her village there was one, but had never seen it. she had heard say that it was a dangerous thing, and that it was wicked to keep it; but knew nothing of its use. asked, in what place this mandrake was, and what she had heard of it? she said that she had heard that it grew under the tree of which mention has been made, but did not know the place; she said also that she had heard that above the mandragora was a hazel tree. asked, what she heard was done with the mandragora, answered, that she had heard that it brought money, but did not believe it; and added that her voices had never told her anything about it. asked, what was the appearance of st. michael when she saw him first, she answered, that she saw no crown, and knew nothing of his dress. asked, if he was naked, she answered, "do you think god has nothing to clothe him with?" asked, if he had hair, she answered, "why should it have been cut?" she said further that she had not seen the blessed michael since she left the castle of crotoy, nor did she see him often. at last she said that she knew not whether he had hair or not. asked, whether he carried scales, she answered, "i know nothing of it," but added that she had much joy in seeing him, and she knew when she saw him that she was not in a state of sin. she also said that st. catherine and st. margaret often made her confess to them, and said that if she had been in a state of sin it was without knowing it. she was then asked whether, when she confessed, she believed herself to be in a state of mortal sin; she answered, that she knew not whether she had been in that state, but did not believe she had done the works of sin. "it would not have pleased god," she said, "that i should have been so; nor would it have pleased him that i should have done the works of sin by which my soul should have been burdened." she was then asked what sign she gave to the king that she came to him from god; she answered: "i have told you always that nothing should draw this from me.( ) ask me no more." asked, if she had not sworn to reveal what was asked of her touching the trial, answered, "i have told you that i will tell you nothing that was for our king; and of this which belongs to him i will not speak." asked, if she knew the sign which she gave to the king, she answered: "you shall know nothing from me." when it was said to her that this did concern the trial, she answered, "of that which i have promised to keep secret i shall tell you nothing"; and further she said, "i promised in that place and i could not tell you without perjuring myself." asked, to whom she promised? answered, that she had promised to saints catherine and margaret, and this was shown to the king. she also said she had promised it to these two saints, because they had required it of her. and the same jeanne had done this at their request. "too many people would have asked me concerning it, if i had not promised to the aforesaid saints." she was then asked, when she showed this sign to the king if there were others with him; she answered, that to her there was no one near him, even though many people might have been present. (as a matter of fact the sign was given to charles when he talked with the maid apart in a recess, the great hall being full of the court and followers; so that this was strictly true.) asked further, if she saw a crown over the head of her king when she showed him this sign, but replied: "i cannot answer you without perjury." asked further if her king had a crown when he was at rheims, answered, that in her opinion her king had a crown which he found at rheims, but a very fine one was afterwards brought for him. he did this to hasten matters, at the desire of the city of rheims; but if he had been more certain, he could have had a crown a thousand times richer. (all this is very obscure.) asked, if she had seen this crown, she answered: "i could not tell you without perjury, but i heard that it was a very rich one." it was then determined to conclude for this day. on the sixth day there was again the same questions about the oath, ending in the usual way. and the cross-examination was at once continued. she was asked if she would say whether st. michael had wings, and what bodies and members had st. catherine and st. margaret; and she answered, "i have told you what i know, and will make no other reply"; she said, moreover, that when she saw st. michael and st. catherine and st. margaret, she knew at once that they were saints of paradise. asked, if she saw anything more than their faces, she answered: "i have told you all i know of them: and i would rather have had my head taken off than tell you all i know." she then said that in whatever concerned the trial she would speak freely. asked, if she believed that st. michael and st. gabriel had natural heads, she answered: "i saw them with my eyes and i believe that they are, as firmly as i believe that god is." asked, if she believed that god made them in the form in which she saw them, she answered, "yes." asked, if she believed that god had created them in the same form from the beginning, answered: "you shall have no more for the present, except what i have already said." this subject was then dropped, and the examiner made another leap forward to a different part of her life. "did you know by revelation that you should break prison?" he said. to this jeanne answered indignantly: "this has nothing to do with your trial. would you have me speak against myself?" again questioned what her "voices" had said to her in respect to her attempts at escape, she again answered: "this has nothing to do with the trial; i go back to the trial. if all your questions were about that, i should tell you all." she said besides, on her faith, that she knew neither the day nor the hour when she should escape. she was then asked what the voices said to her generally, and answered: "in truth, they tell me i shall be freed, but neither the day nor the hour; and that i ought to speak boldly, and with a glad countenance." she was then asked whether, when first she saw her king, he asked her whether it was by revelation that she had assumed the dress of a man? she replied: "i have answered this. i cannot recollect whether he asked me. but it is written in the book at poitiers." asked, whether the doctors who examined her there, some for a month, some for three weeks, had asked her about her change of dress; she answered: "i don't remember; but i know they asked me when i assumed the dress of a man, and i told them it was in the town of vaucouleurs." asked, whether these doctors had inquired whether it was her voices which had made her take that dress, answered, "i don't remember." asked if her queen wished her to change her dress when she first saw her, answered, "i don't remember." asked if her king, queen, and all of her party did not ask her to lay aside the dress of a man, she answered, "this has nothing to do with the trial." asked, if the same was not requested of her in the castle of beaurevoir, she answered: "it is true. and i replied that i could not lay it aside without the permission of god." she said further that the demoiselle of luxembourg (aunt of jeanne's captor, and a very old woman) and the lady of beaurevoir offered her a woman's dress, or stuff to make one, and begged her to wear it; but she replied that she had not yet the permission of our lord, and that it was not yet time. asked, if m. jean de pressy and others at arras had offered her a woman's dress, she answered, "he and others have often asked it of me." asked, if she thought she would have done wrong in putting on a woman's dress, she answered, that it was better to obey her sovereign lord, that is, god; she said also that if she had done it, she would rather have done it at the request of these two ladies than of any other in france, except her queen. asked, if, when god revealed to her that she should change her dress, it was by the voice of st. michael, st. catherine, or st. margaret, she answered, "you shall hear no more about it." asked, when the king first employed her, and her standard was made, whether the men-at-arms and others who took part in the war did not have flags imitated from hers? she answered, "it is well to know that the lords retained their own arms"; she also added that her brothers-in-arms made such pennons as pleased them. asked, how these were made, if they were of linen or cloth, answered, that they were of white satin, some of them with lilies; that she had but two or three lances in her own company--but that in the rest of the army some carried pennons like hers, but only to distinguish them from others. asked, if the banners were often renewed, answered: "i know not; when the staff was broken it was renewed." asked, if she had not said that the pennons copied from hers were fortunate, answered, that she had said, "go in boldly among the english"; and that she had done the same herself. asked, if she said that they should have good luck if they bore the banners well, answered, that she had told them what would happen, and what should still happen. asked, if she had caused holy water to be sprinkled on the pennons when they were new, she answered, "that has nothing to do with the trial"; but added that if she did so sprinkle them she was not instructed to answer that question now. asked, if the others put _jhesus maria_ upon their pennons, she answered: "by my faith, i know nothing about it." asked, if she had ever carried or caused to be carried in a procession round a church or altar the linen of which the pennons were made, answered no, that she had never seen anything of the kind done. asked, when she was before jargeau, what it was that she wore behind her helmet, and if she had not something round it, she answered: "by my faith, there was nothing." asked, if she knew a certain brother richard, she answered: "i never saw him till i was before troyes." asked, what cheer brother richard made to her, answered, that she thought the people of troyes had sent him to her, doubting whether she had come on the part of god, and that as he approached her he made the sign of the cross, and sprinkled holy water; she said to him: "come on boldly; i shall not fly away." asked, if she had seen, or had caused to be made, any images or pictures of herself, she answered, that at arras she had seen a picture in the hands of a scot, where she was represented fully armed, kneeling on one knee, and presenting a letter to the king; but that she had never caused any image or picture of herself to be made. asked concerning a table in the house of her host, upon which were painted three women, with _justice, peace, union_ inscribed beneath, answered, that she knew nothing of it. asked, if she knew that those of her party caused masses and prayers to be made in her honour, she answered, that she knew not; and if they did so, it was not by any command of hers; but that if they did so, her opinion was that they did no wrong. asked, if those of her party firmly believed that she was sent from god, she answered: "i know not whether they believed it; but even if they did not believe it, i am none the less sent on the part of god." asked, whether she thought that to believe that she was sent from god was a worthy faith, she answered, that if they believed that she was sent from god they were not mistaken. asked, if she knew what her party meant by kissing her feet and hands and her garments, answered, that many people did it, but that her hands were kissed as little as she could help it. the poor people, however, came to her of their own free will, because she never oppressed them, but protected them as far as was in her power. asked, what reverence the people of troyes made to her, she answered, "none at all," and added that she believed brother richard came into troyes with her army, but that she had not seen him coming in. asked, if he had not preached at the gates when she came, answered, that she scarcely paused there at all, and knew nothing of any sermon. asked, how long she was at rheims, and answered, four or five days. asked, whether she baptised (stood godmother to) children there, she answered: to one at troyes, but did not remember any at rheims or at château-thierry; but there were two at st. denis; and willingly she called the boys "charles," in honour of her king, and the girls "jeanne," according to what their mothers wished. asked, if the good women of the town did not touch with their rings the rings she wore, she answered, that many women touched her hands and her rings; but she did not know why they did it. asked, what she did with the gloves in which her king was consecrated, she answered that "gloves were distributed to the knights and nobles that came there"; and there was one who lost his; but she did not say that she would find it for him. also she said that her standard was in the church at rheims, and she believed near the altar, and she herself had carried it for a short time, but did not know whether brother richard had held it. she was then asked if she communicated and went to confession often while moving about the country, and if she received the sacrament in her male costume; to which she answered "yes, but without her arms"; she was then questioned about a horse belonging to the bishop of senlis, which had not suited her, a matter completely without importance. the inference intended was that it was taken from him without being paid for; but there was no evidence that the maid knew anything about it. we then come to the incident of lagny. she was asked how old the child was which she saw at lagny, and answered, three days; it had been brought to lagny to the church of nôtre dame, and she was told that all the maids in lagny were before our lady praying for it, and she also wished to go and pray god and our lady that its life might come back; and she went, and prayed with the rest. and finally life appeared; it yawned three times, and was baptised and buried in consecrated ground. it had given no sign of life for three days and was black as her coat, but when it yawned its colour began to come back. she was there with the other maids on her knees before our lady to make her prayer. the reader must understand that this was no special appeal to jeanne's miraculous power, but a custom of that intense and tender charity with which the church of rome corrects her dogmatism upon questions of salvation. a child unbaptised could not be buried in consecrated ground, and was subject to all the sorrows of the unredeemed; but who could doubt that the priest would be easily persuaded by some wavering of the tapers on the altar upon the little dead face, some flicker of his own compassionate eyelids, that sufficient life had come back to permit the holy rite to be administered? the whole little scene is affecting in the extreme, the young creatures all kneeling, fervently appealing to the maiden-mother, the priest ready to take instant advantage of any possible flicker, the maid of france, no conspicuous figure, but weeping and praying among the rest. there was no thought here of the raising of the dead--the prayer was for breath enough only to allow of the holy observance, the blessed water, the last possibility of human love and effort. jeanne was then questioned concerning catherine of la rochelle, the supposed prophetess, who had been played against her by la tremouille and his follows, and narrated how she had watched two nights to see the mysterious lady clothed in cloth of gold who was said to appear to catherine, but had not seen her, and that she had advised the woman to return to her husband and children. catherine's mission was to go through the "good towns" with heralds and trumpets to call upon those who had money or treasure of any kind to give it to the king, and she professed to have a supernatural knowledge where such money was hidden. (no doubt la tremouille must have thought that to get money, which was so scarce, in such a simple way, was worth trying at least. but jeanne's opinion was that it was folly, and that there was nothing in it; an opinion fully verified. catherine's advice had been that jeanne should go to the duke of burgundy to make peace; but jeanne had answered that no peace could be made save at the end of the lance.) she was then asked about the siege of la charité; she answered, that she had made an assault: but had not sprinkled holy water, or caused it to be sprinkled. asked, why she did not enter the city as she had the command of god to do so, she replied: "who told you that i was commanded to enter?" asked, if she had not had the advice of her voices, she answered, that she had desired to go into france (meaning towards paris), but the generals had told her that it was better to go first to la charité. she was then asked if she had been long in the tower of beaurevoir; answered, that she was there about four months, and that when she heard the english come she was angry and much troubled. her voices forbade her several times to attempt to escape; but at last, in the doubt she had of the english she threw herself down, commending herself to god and to our lady, and was much hurt. but after she had done this the voice of st. catherine said to her not to be afraid, that she should be healed, and that compiègne would be relieved. also she said that she prayed always for the relief of compiègne with her council. asked, what she said after she had thrown herself down, she answered, that some said that she was dead; and as soon as the burgundians saw that she was not dead, they told her that she had thrown herself down. asked, if she had said that she would rather die than fall into the hands of the english, she answered, that she would much rather have rendered her soul to god than have fallen into the hands of the english. asked, if she was not in a great rage, and if she did not blaspheme the name of god, she answered, that she never said evil of any saint, and that it was not her custom to swear. asked respecting soissons, when the captain had surrendered the town, whether she had not cursed god, and said that if she had gotten hold of the captain, she would have cut him into four pieces; she answered, that she never swore by any saint, and that those who said so had not understood her. ***** at this point the public trial of jeanne came to a sudden end. either the feeling produced in the town, and even among the judges, by her undeviating, simple, and dignified testimony had begun to be more than her persecutors had calculated upon; or else they hoped to make shorter work with her when deprived of the free air of publicity, the sight no doubt of some sympathetic faces, and the consciousness of being still able to vindicate her cause and to maintain her faith before men. two or three fierce inquisitors within her cell, and the bishop, that man without heart or pity at their head, might still tear admissions from her weariness, which a certain sympathetic atmosphere in a large auditory, swept by waves of natural feeling, would strengthen her to keep back. the bishop made a proclamation that in order not to vex and tire his learned associates he would have the minutes of the previous sittings reduced into form, and submitted to them for judgment, while he himself carried on apart what further interrogatory was necessary. we are told that he was warned by a counsellor of the town that secret examinations without witnesses or advocate on the prisoner's side, were illegal; but monseigneur de beauvais was well aware that anything would be legal which effected his purpose, and that once jeanne was disposed of, the legality or illegality of the proceedings would be of small importance. i have thought it right to give to the best of my power a literal translation of these examinations, notwithstanding their great length; as, except in one book, now out of print and very difficult to procure, no such detailed translation,( ) so far as i am aware, exists; and it seems to me that, even at the risk of fatiguing the reader (always capable of skipping at his pleasure), it is better to unfold the complete scene with all its tedium and badgering, which brings out by every touch the extraordinary self-command, valour, and sense of this wonderful maid, the youngest, perhaps, and most ignorant of the assembly, yet meeting all with a modest and unabashed countenance, true, pure, and natural,--a far greater miracle in her simplicity and noble steadfastness than even in the wonders she had done. ( ) she was in reality detained two days, which fact, no doubt, she judged to be an unimportant detail. ( ) probably meaning, had been present when the voices came to her and had perceived her state of listening and abstraction. ( ) this was her special friend, gerard of epinal--her _compère_ and gossip; was it jesting beguiled by some childish recollection, or mock threat of youthful days that she said this? ( ) an answer evidently given in the vagueness of imperfect knowledge, meaning a very great number. ( ) quicherat gives a note on this subject to point out that there was really was but one pope at this moment, the question having been settled by the abdication of clement viii., benedict xiv. being a mere impostor. we cannot believe, however, that this historical cutting of the knot could be known to jeanne. she probably felt only, with her fine instinct, that there could be but one pope, and that to be deceived on such a matter ought to have been a thing impossible to all those priests and learned men; as a matter of fact the three claimants, on account of whom the comte d'armagnac had appealed to her, were no longer existing at the time he wrote. ( ) she meant paris, which was lost by the english, according to her prophecy within the time named. ( ) it should here be noted that jeanne's sign to the king being, as he afterwards declared, the answer to his most private devotions and the final setting at rest of a doubt which might have injured him much had it been known that he entertained it--it would have been dishonourable on her part and a great wrong to him had she revealed it. ( ) the translation of m. fabre is now, i believe, reprinted, but it is not satisfactory. chapter xiv --the examination in prison. lent, . it must not be forgotten, in the history of this strange trial, that the prisoner was brought from the other side of france expressly that she might be among a people who were not of her own party, and who had no natural sympathies with her, but a hereditary connection with england, which engaged all its partialities on that side. for this purpose it was that the _venue_, the town expected the coming of the witch, and all the dark revelations that might be extracted from her, her spells, and the details of that contract with the devil which was so entrancing to the popular imagination, with excitement and eagerness. such a _cause célèbre_ had never taken place among them before; and everybody no doubt looked forward to the pleasure of seeing it proved that it was not by the will of heaven, but by some monstrous combination of black arts, that such an extraordinary result as the defeat of the invincible english soldiers had been brought about. the litigious and logical normans no doubt looked forward to it as to the most interesting entertainment, ending in the complete vindication of their own side and the exposure of the nefarious arms used by their adversaries. but when the proceedings had been opened, and in place of some dark-browed and termagant sorceress, with the mark of every evil passion in her face, there appeared before the spectators crowding into every available corner, the slim, youthful figure--was it boy or girl?--the serene and luminous countenance of the maid, the flower of youth raising its whiteness and innocence in the midst of all those black-robed, subtle doctors, it is impossible but that the very first glance must have given a shock and thrill of amazement and doubt to what may be called the lay spectators, those who had no especial bias more than common report, and whose credit or interest were not involved in bringing this unlikely criminal to condemnation. "a girl! like our own jeanne at home," might many a father have said, dismayed and confounded. she had, they all say, those eyes of innocence which it is so impossible not to believe, and that virginal voice, _assez femme_, which a sentimental frenchman insists upon as belonging only to the spotless. at all events she had the bearing of honesty, purity, and truth. she was not afraid though all the powers of hell--or was it only of the church and the law?--were arrayed against her: no guilty mystery to be discovered, was in her countenance. but it must have been plain to the keen and not too charitable normans that such semblances are not always to be trusted, and that the devil himself even, on occasion, can take upon himself the appearance of an angel of light; so that after the first shock of wonder they no doubt settled themselves to listen, believing that soon they would have their imaginations fed with tales of horror, and would discover the hoofs and the horns and unveil with triumph the lurking demon. the french historians never take into consideration the fact that it was the belief of rouen and normandy, as well as of any similar town or province in england, that the child henry vi. was lawful king, and that whatever was on the other side was a hateful adversary, to be brought to such disaster and shame as was possible, without mercy and without delay. but after a few days of the examination which we have just reported, public opinion was greatly staggered, and knew not how to turn. gradually the conviction must have been forced upon every mind which had any candour left, that jeanne, at that dreadful bar, with the stake in sight, and all the learning of paris--the entire power of one great national and half of another, all england and half france against--(many more than half france, for the other part had abandoned her cause),--showed nothing of the demon, but all--if not of the angel, yet of the maid, the emblem of perfection to that rude world, though often so barbarously handled. it might almost be said of the age, notwithstanding its immorality and rampant viciousness, that in its eyes a true virgin could do no harm. and hers was one if ever such a thing existed on earth. the talk in the streets began to take a very different tone. massieu the clerical sheriff's officer saw nothing in her answers that was not good and right. out of the midst of the crowd of listeners would burst an occasional cry of "well said!" an englishman, even a knight, overcome by his feelings, cried out: "why was not she english, this brave girl!" all these were ominous sounds. still more ominous was the utterance of maître jean lohier, a lawyer of rouen, who declared loudly that the trial was not a legal trial for the reasons which follow: "in the first place because it was not in the form of an ordinary trial; secondly, because it was not held in a public court, and those present had not full and complete freedom to say what was their full and unbiassed opinion; thirdly, because there was question of the honour of the king of france of whose party jeanne was, without calling him, or any one for him; fourthly, because neither libel nor articles were produced, and this woman who was only an uninstructed girl, had no advocate to answer for her before so many masters and doctors, on such grave matters, and especially those which touched upon the revelations of which she spoke; therefore it seemed to him that the trial was worth nothing. for these things monseigneur de beauvais was very indignant against the said maître lohier, saying: 'here is lohier who is going to make a fine fuss about our trial; he calumniates us all, and tells the world it is of no good. if one were to go by him, one would have to begin everything over again, and all that has been done would be of no use.' monseigneur de beauvais said besides: 'it is easy to see on which foot he halts (_de quel pied il cloche_). by st. john, we shall do nothing of the kind; we shall go on with our trial as we have begun it.'" a day or two later manchon, the clerk of the court (he who refused to take down jeanne's conversation with her judas), met this same lawyer lohier at church, and asked him, as no doubt every man asked every other whom he met, how did he think the trial was going? to which lohier answered: "you see the manner in which they proceed; they will take her, if they can, in her words--that is to say, the assertions in which she says _i know for certain_, things that concern her apparitions. if she would say, 'it seems to me' instead of 'i know for certain,' i do not see how any man could condemn her. it appears that they proceed against her rather from hate than from any other cause, and for this reason i shall not remain here. i will have nothing to do with it." this i think shows very clearly that lohier, like the bulk of the population, by no means thought at first that it was "from hate" that the trial proceeded, but honestly believed that he had been called to try jeanne as a professor of the black arts; and that he had discovered from her own testimony that she was not so, and that the motive of the trial was entirely a different one from that of justice; one in fact with which an honest man could have nothing to do. it is very significant also that the number of judges present in court on the sixth day, the last of the public examination, was only thirty-eight, as against the sixty-two of the second day, which seems to prove that a general disgust and alarm was growing in the minds of those most closely concerned. warwick and the soldiers, impatient of all such business, striding in noisily from time to time to give a careless glance at the proceedings, might not stay long enough to share the impression--or might, who can say? their business was to get this pestilent woman, even if by chance she might be an innocent fanatic, cleared off the face of the earth and out of their way. after the sixth day, however, it would seem that the bishop and his tools had taken fright at the progress of public opinion. before dismissing the court on that occasion, cauchon made an address to the disturbed and anxious judges, informing them that he would not tire them out with prolonged sittings, but that a few specially chosen assistants would now examine into what further details were necessary. in the meantime all would be put in writing; so that they might think it over and deliberate within themselves, so as to be able each to make a report either to himself, the bishop, or to some one deputed by him. the assessors, thus thrown out of work, were however forbidden to leave rouen without the bishop's permission--probably because of the threat of lohier. repeated meetings were held in cauchon's house to arrange the details of the proceedings to follow; and during this time it was perhaps hoped that any excitement outside would quiet down. the bishop himself had in the meantime other work in hand. he had to receive certain important visitors, one of them the man who held the appointment of chancellor of france on the english side, and who was well acquainted with the mind of his masters. we have no information whatever whether cauchon ever himself wavered, or allowed the possibility of acquitting jeanne to enter his mind; but he must have seen that it was of the last necessity to know what would satisfy the english chiefs. no doubt he was confirmed and strengthened in the conviction that by hook or by crook her condemnation must be accomplished, by the conversation of these illustrious visitors. to save jeanne was impossible he must have been told. no english soldier would strike a blow while she lived. england itself, the whole country, trembled at her name. till she was got rid of nothing could be done. there was of course great exaggeration in all this, for the english had fought desperately enough in her presence except on the one occasion of patay, notwithstanding all the early prestige of jeanne. but at all events it was made perfectly clear that the foregoing conclusion must be carried out, and that jeanne must die: and, not only so, but she must die with opprobrium and disgrace as a witch, which almost everybody out of rouen now believed her to be. the public examination which lasted six days was concluded on the third of march, . on the following days, the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth of march, meetings were held, as we have said, in the bishop's house to consider what it would be well to do next, at one of which a select company of inquisitors was chosen to carry on the examination in private. these were jean de la fontaine, a lawyer learned in canon law; jean beaupère, already her interrogator; nicolas midi, a doctor in theology; pierre morice, canon of rouen and ambassador from the english king to the council of bâle; thomas de courcelles, the learned and excellent young doctor already described; nicolas l'oyseleur, the traitor, also already sufficiently referred to; and manchon, the honest clerk of the court: the names of gerard feuillet, also a distinguished man, and jean fecardo, an advocate, are likewise also mentioned. they seem to have served in their turn, three or four at a time. this private session began on the th of march, a week after the conclusion of the public trial, and was held in the prison chamber inhabited by the maid. we shall not attempt to follow literally those private examinations, which would take a great deal more space than we have at our command, and would be fatiguing to the reader from the constant and prolonged repetitions; we shall therefore quote only such parts as are new or so greatly enlarged from jeanne's original statements as to seem so. at the first day's examination in her prison she was questioned about compiègne and her various proceedings before reaching that place.( ) she was asked, for one thing, if her voices had bidden her make the sally in which she was taken; to which she answered that had she known the time she was to be taken she would not have gone out, unless upon the express command of the saints. she was then asked about her standard, her arms, and her horses, and replied that she had no coat-of-arms, but her brothers had, who also had all her money, from ten to twelve thousand francs, which was "no great treasure to make war upon," besides five chargers, and about seven other horses, all from the king. the examiners then came to their principal object, and having lulled her mind with these trifles, turned suddenly to a subject on which they still hoped she might commit herself, the sign which had proved her good faith to the king. it is scarcely possible to avoid the feeling, grave as all the circumstances were, that a little _malice_, a glance of mischievous pleasure, kindled in jeanne's eye. she had refused to enter into further explanations again and again. she had warned them that she would give them no true light on the subjects that concerned the king. now she would seem to have had sudden recourse to the mystification that is dear to youth, to have tossed her young head and said: "_have then your own way_"; and forthwith proceeded to romance, according to the indications given her of what was wanted, without thought of preserving any appearance of reality. most probably indeed, her air and tone would make it apparent to her persistent questioners how complete a fable, or at least parable, it was. asked, what sign she gave to the king, she replied that it was a beautiful and honourable sign, very creditable and very good, and rich above all. asked, if it still lasted; answered, "it would be good to know; it will last a thousand years and more if well guarded," adding that it was in the treasure of the king. asked, if it was of gold or silver or of precious stones, or in the form of a crown; answered: "i will tell you nothing more; but no man could devise a thing so rich as this sign; but the sign that is necessary for you is that god should deliver me out of your hands, and that is what he will do." she also said that when she had to go to the king it was said by her voices: "go boldly; and when you are before the king he will have a sign which will make him receive and believe in you." asked, what reverence she made when the sign came to the king, and if it came from god; answered, that she had thanked god for having delivered her from the priests of her own party who had argued against her, and that she had knelt down several times; she also said that an angel from god, and not from another, brought the sign to the king; and she had thanked the lord many times; she added that the priests ceased to argue against when they had seen that sign. asked, if the clergy of her party (_de par delà_) saw the above sign; answered yes, that her king if he were satisfied; and he answered yes. and afterwards she went to a little chapel close by, and heard them say that after she was gone more than three hundred people saw the said sign. she said besides that for love of her, and that they should give up questioning her, god permitted those of her party to see the sign. asked, if the king and she made reverence to the angel when he brought the sign; answered yes, for herself, that she knelt down and took off her hood. what jeanne meant by this strange romance can only, i think be explained by this hypothesis. she was "dazed and bewildered," say some of the historians, evidently not knowing how to interpret so strange an interruption to her narrative; but there is no other sign of bewilderment; her mind was always clear and her intelligence complete. granting that the whole story was boldly ironical, its object is very apparent. honour forbade her to betray the king's secret, and she had expressly said she would not do so. but her story seems to say--_since you will insist that there was a sign, though i have told you i could give you no information, have it your own way; you shall have a sign and one of the very best; it delivered me from the priests of my own party (de par delà)_. jeanne was no milk-sop; she was bold enough to send a winged shaft to the confusion of the priests of the other side who had tormented her in the same way. one can imagine a lurking smile at the corner of her mouth. let them take it since they would have it. and we may well believe there was that in her eye, and in the details heaped up so lightly to form the miraculous tale, which left little doubt in the minds of the questioners, of the spirit in which she spoke: though to us who only read the record the effect is of a more bewildering kind. two days after, on monday, the th of march, the inquisitors began by several additional questions concerning the angel who brought the sign to the king; was it the same whom she first saw, or another? she answered that it was the same, and no other was wanted. asked, if this angel had not deceived her since she had been taken prisoner; answered, that she believed since it so pleased our lord that it was best that she should be taken. asked, if the angel had not failed her; answered, "how could he have failed me, when he comforts me every day?" this comfort is what she understands to come through st. catherine and st. margaret. asked, whether she called them, or they came without being called, she answered, that they often came without being called, and if they did not come soon enough, she asked our saviour to send them. asked, if st. denis had ever appeared to her; answered, not that she knew. asked, if when she promised to our lord to remain a virgin she spoke to him; answered, that it ought to be enough to speak to those who were sent by him that is to say, st. catherine and st. margaret. asked, what induced her to summon a man to toul, in respect to marriage; answered, "i did not summon him; it was he who summoned me"; and that on that occasion she had sworn before the judge to speak the truth, which was that she had not made him any promise. she also said that the first time she had heard the voices she made a vow of virginity so long as it pleased god, being then about the age of thirteen. it was the object of the judges by these questions to prove that, according to a fable which had obtained some credit, jeanne during her visit to la rousse, the village inn-keeper at neufchâteau, had acted as servant in the house and tarnished her good fame--so that her betrothed had refused to marry her: and that he had been brought before the bishop's court at toul for his breach of promise, as we should say. exactly the reverse was the case, as the reader will remember. jeanne was further asked, if she had spoken of her visions to her curé or to any ecclesiastic: and answered no, but only to robert de baudricourt and to her king; but added that she was not bidden by her voices to conceal them, but feared to reveal them lest the burgundians should hear of them and prevent her going. and especially she had much doubt of her father, lest he should hinder her from going. asked, if she thought she did well to go away without the permission of her father and mother, when it is certain we ought to honour our father and mother; answered, that in every other thing she had fully obeyed him, except in respect to her departure; but she had written to them, and they had pardoned her. asked, if when she left her father and mother she did not think it was a sin; answered, that her voices were quite willing that she should tell them, if it were not for the pain it would have given them; but as for herself, she would not have told them for any consideration; also that her voices left her to do as she pleased, to tell or not. ***** having gone so far the reverend fathers went to dinner, and jeanne we hope had her piece of bread and her _eau rougie_. in the afternoon these indefatigable questioners returned, and the first few questions throw a fuller light on the troubled cottage at domremy, out of which this wonderful maiden came like a being of another kind. she was questioned as to the dreams of her father; and answered, that while she was still at home her mother told her several times that her father said he had dreamt that jeanne his daughter had gone away with the troopers, that her father and mother took great care of her and held her in great subjection: and she obeyed them in every point except that of her affair at toul in respect to marriage. she also said that her mother had told her what her father had said to her brothers: "if i could think that the thing would happen of which i have dreamed, i wish she might be drowned first; and if you would not do it, i would drown her with my own hands"; and that he nearly lost his senses when she went to vaucouleurs. how profound is this little village tragedy! the suspicious, stern, and unhopeful peasant, never sure even that the most transparent and pure may not be capable of infamy, distracted with that horror of personal degradation which is involved in family disgrace, cruel in the intensity of his pride and fear of shame! he has been revealed to us in many lands, always one of the most impressive of human pictures, with no trust of love in him but an overwhelming faith in every vicious possibility. if there is no evidence to prove that, even at the moment when jeanne was supreme, when he was induced to go to rheims to see the coronation, jacques d'arc was still dark, unresponsive, never more sure than any of the inquisitors that his daughter was not a witch, or worse, a shameless creature linked to the captains and the splendid personages about her by very different ties from those which appeared--there is at least not a word to prove that he had changed his mind. she does not add anything to soften the description here given. the sudden appearance of this dark remorseless figure, looking on from his village, who probably in all domremy--when domremy got to hear the news--would be the only person who would in his desperation almost applaud that stake and devouring flame, is too startling for words. the end of this day's examination was remarkable also for a sudden light upon the method she had intended to adopt in respect to the duke of orleans, then in prison in england, whom it was one of her most cherished hopes to deliver. asked, how she meant to rescue the duc d'orléans: she answered, that by that time she hoped to have taken english prisoners enough to exchange for him: and if she had not taken enough she should have crossed the sea, in power, to search for him in england. asked, if st. catherine and st. margaret had told her absolutely and without condition that she should take enough prisoners to exchange for the duc d'orléans, who was in england, or otherwise, that she should cross the sea to fetch him and bring him back within three years; she answered yes: and that she had told the king and had begged him to permit her to make prisoners. she said further that if she had lasted three years without hindrance, she should have delivered him. otherwise she said she had not thought of so long a time as three years, although it should have been more than one; but she did not at present recollect exactly. there is a curious story existing, though we do not remember whence it comes and there is not a scrap of evidence for it, which suggests a rumour that jeanne was not the child of the d'arc family at all, but in fact an abandoned and illegitimate child of the queen, isabel of bavaria, and that her real father was the murdered duc d'orléans. this suggestion might explain the ease with which she fell into the way of courts, a sort of air _à la princesse_ which certainly was about her, and her especial devotion to orleans, both to the city and the duke. a shadow of a supposed child of our own queen mary has also appeared in history, quite without warrant or likelihood. it is a little conventional and well worn even in the way of romance, yet there are certain fanciful suggestions in the thought. after the above, jeanne was again questioned and at great length upon the sign given to the king, upon the angel who brought it, the manner of his coming and going, the persons who saw him, those who saw the crown bestowed upon the king, and so on, in the most minute detail. that the purpose of the sign was that "they should give up arguing and so let her proceed on her mission," she repeated again and again; but here is a curious additional note. she was asked how the king and the people with him were convinced that it was an angel; and answered, that the king knew it by the instruction of the ecclesiastics who were there, and also by the sign of the crown. asked, how the ecclesiastics (_gens d'église_) knew it was an angel she answered, "by their knowledge (science), and because they were priests." was this the keenest irony, or was it the wandering of a weary mind? we cannot tell; but if the latter, it was the only occasion on which jeanne's mind wandered; and there was method and meaning in the strange tale. she was further questioned whether it was by the advice of her voices that she attacked la charité, and afterwards paris, her two points of failure; the purpose of her examiners clearly being to convince her that those voices had deceived her. to both questions she answered no. to paris she went at the request of gentlemen who wished to make a skirmish, or assault of arms (_vaillance d'armes_); but she intended to go farther, and to pass the moats; that is, to force the fighting and make the skirmish into a serious assault; the same was the case before la charité. she was asked whether she had no revelation concerning pont l'evêque, and said that since it was revealed to her at melun that she should be taken, she had had more recourse to the will of the captains than to her own; but she did not tell them that it was revealed to her that she should be taken. asked, if she thought it was well done to attack paris on the day of the nativity of our lady, which was a festival of the church; she answered, that it was always well to keep the festivals of our lady: and in her conscience it seemed to her that it was and always would be a good thing to keep the feasts of our lady, from one end to the other. in the afternoon the examiners returned to the attempt at escape or suicide--they seemed to have preferred the latter explanation--made at beaurevoir; and as jeanne expresses herself with more freedom as to her personal motives in these prison examinations and opens her heart more freely, there is much here which we give in full. she was asked first what was the cause of her leap from the tower of beaurevoir. she answered that she had heard that all the people of compiègne, down to the age of seven, were to be put to the sword, and that she would rather die than live after such a destruction of good people; this was one of the reasons; the other was that she knew that she was sold to the english and that she would rather die than fall into the hands of the english, her enemies. asked, if she made that leap by the command of her voices; answered, that st. catherine said to her almost every day that she was not to leap, for that god would help her, and also the people of compiègne: and she, jeanne, said to st. catherine that since god intended to help the people of compiègne she would fain be there. and st. catherine said: "you must take it in good part, but you will not be delivered till you have seen the king of the english." and she, jeanne, answered: "truly i do not wish to see him. i would rather die than fall into the hands of the english." asked, if she had said to st. catherine and st. margaret, "will god leave the good people of compiègne to die so cruelly?" answered, that she did not say "so cruelly," but said it in this way: "will god leave these good people of compiègne to die, who have been and are so loyal to their lord?" she added that after she fell there were two or three days that she would not eat; and that she was so hurt by the leap that she could not eat; but all the time she was comforted by st. catherine, who told her to confess and ask pardon of god for that act, and that without doubt the people of compiègne would have succour before martinmas. and then she took pains to recover and began to eat, and shortly was healed. asked, whether, when she threw herself down, she wished to kill herself, she answered no; but that in throwing herself down she commended herself to god, and hoped by means of that leap to escape and to avoid being delivered to the english. asked, if, when she recovered the power of speech, she had denied and blasphemed god and the saints, as had been reported; answered, that she remembered nothing of the kind, and that, as far as she knew, she had never denied and blasphemed god and his saints there nor anywhere else, and did not confess that she had done so, having no recollection of it. asked, if she would like to see the information taken on the spot, answered: "i refer myself to god, and not another, and to a good confession." asked, if her voices ever desired delay for their replies; answered, that st. catherine always answered her at once, but sometimes she, jeanne, could not hear because of the tumult round her (_turbacion des personnes_) and the noise of her guards; but that when she asked anything of st. catherine, sometimes she, and sometimes st. margaret asked of our lord, and then by the command of our lord an answer was given to her. asked, if, when they came, there was always light accompanying them, and if she did not see that light when she heard the voice in the castle without knowing whether it was in her chamber or not: answered, that there was never a day that they did not come into the castle, and that they never came without light: and that time she heard the voice, but did not remember whether she saw the light, or whether she saw st. catherine. also she said she had asked from her voices three things: one, her release: the other, that god would help the french, and keep the town faithful: and the other the salvation of her soul. afterwards she asked that she might have a copy of these questions and her answers if she were to be taken to paris, that she may give them to the people in paris, and say to them, "this is how i was questioned in rouen, and here are my replies," that she might not be exhausted by so many questions. asked, what she meant when she said that monseigneur de beauvais put himself in danger by bringing her to trial, and why monseigneur de beauvais more than others, she answered, that this was and is what she said to monseigneur de beauvais: "you say that you are my judge. i know not whether you are so; but take care that you judge well, or you will put yourself in great danger. i warn you, so that if our lord should chastise you for it, i may have done my duty in warning you." asked, what was that danger? she answered, that st. catherine had said that she should have succour, but that she knew not whether this meant that she would be delivered from prison, or that, when she was before the tribunal, there might come trouble by which she should be delivered; she thought, however, it would be the one or the other. and all the more that her voices told her that she would be delivered by a great victory; and afterwards they said to her: "take everything cheerfully, do not be disturbed by this martyrdom: thou shalt thence come at last to the kingdom of heaven." and this the voices said simply and absolutely--that is to say, without fail; she explained that she called it martyrdom because of all the pain and adversity that she had suffered in prison; and she knew not whether she might have still more to suffer, but waited upon our lord. she was then asked whether, since her voices had said that she should go to paradise, she felt assured that she should be saved and not damned in hell; she answered, that she believed firmly what her voices said about her being saved, as firmly as if she were so already. and when it was said to her that this answer was of great weight, she answered that she herself held it as a great treasure. we have said that jeanne's answers to the inquisitors in prison had a more familiar form than in the public examination; which seem to prove that they were not unkind to her, further, at least, than by the persistence and tediousness of their questions. the bishop for one thing was seldom present; the sittings were frequently presided over by the deputy inquisitor, who had made great efforts to be free of the business altogether, and had but very recently been forced into it; so that we may at least imagine, as he was so reluctant, that he did what he could to soften the proceedings. jean de la fontaine, too, was a milder man than her former questioners, and in so small an assembly she could not be disturbed and interrupted by frère isambard's well-meant signs and whispers. she speaks at length and with a self-disclosure which seems to have little that was painful in it, like one matured into a kind of age by long weariness and trouble, who regards the panorama of her life passing before her with almost a pensive pleasure. and it is clear that jeanne's ear, still so young and keen, notwithstanding that attitude of mind, was still intent upon sounds from without, and that jeanne's heart still expected a sudden assault, a great victory for france, which should open her prison doors--or even a rising in the very judgment hall to deliver her. how could they keep still outside, dunois, alençon, la hire, the mighty men of valour, while they knew that she was being racked and tortured within? she who could not bear to be out of the conflict to serve her friends at compiègne, even when succour from on high had been promised, how was it possible that these gallant knights could live and let her die, their gentle comrade, their dauntless leader? in those long hours, amid the noise of the guards within and the garrison around, how she must have thought, over and over again, where were they? when were they coming? how often imagined that a louder clang of arms than usual, a rush of hasty feet, meant that they were here! but honour and love kept jeanne's lips closed. not a word did she say that could discredit king, or party, or friends; not a reproach to those who had abandoned her. she still looked for the great victory in which monseigneur, if he did not take care, might run the risk of being roughly handled, or of a sudden tumult in his own very court that would pitch him form his guilty seat. it was but the fourteenth of march still, and there were six weary weeks to come. she did not know the hour or the day, but yet she believed that this great deliverance was on its way. and there was a great deliverance to come: but not of this kind. the voices of god--how can we deny it?--are often, though in a loftier sense, like those fantastic voices that keep the word of promise to the ear but break it to the heart. they promised her a great victory: and she had it, and also the fullest deliverance: but only by the stake and the fire, which were not less dreadful to jeanne than to any other girl of her age. they did not speak to deceive her, but she was deceived; they kept their promise, but not as she understood it. "these all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them." jeanne too was persuaded of them, but was not to receive them--except in the other way. on the afternoon of the same day (it was still lent, and jeanne fasted, whatever our priests may have done), she was again closely questioned on the subject, this time, of franquet d'arras, who, as has been above narrated, was taken by her in the course of some indiscriminate fighting in the north. she was asked if it was not mortal sin to take a man as prisoner of war and then give him up to be executed. there was evidently no perception of similarities in the minds of the judges, for this was precisely what had been done in the case of jeanne herself; but even she does not seem to have been struck by the fact. their object, apparently, was by proving that she was in a state of sin, to prove also that her voices were of no authority, as being unable to discover so simple a principle as this. when they spoke to her of "one named franquet d'arras, who was executed at lagny," she answered that she consented to his death, as he deserved it, for he had confessed to being a murderer, a thief, and a traitor. she said that his trial lasted fifteen days, the bailli de senlis and the law officers of lagny being the judges; and she added that she had wished to have franquet, to exchange him for a man of paris, seigneur de lours (corrected, innkeeper at the sign of l'ours); but when she heard that this man was dead, and when the bailli told her that she would go very much against justice if she set franquet free, she said to the bailli: "since my man is dead whom i wished to deliver, do with this one whatever justice demands." asked, if she took the money or allowed it to be taken by him who had taken franquet, she answered, that she was not a money changer or a treasurer of france, to deal with money. she was then reminded that having assaulted paris on a holy day, having taken the horse of monseigneur de senlis, having thrown herself down from the tower of beaurevoir, having consented to the death of franquet d'arras, and being still dressed in the costume of a man, did she not think that she must be in a state of mortal sin? she answered to the first question about paris: "i do not think i was guilty of mortal sin, and if i have sinned it is to god that i would make it known, and in confession to god by the priest." to the second question, concerning the horse of senlis, she answered, that she believed firmly that there was not mortal sin in this, seeing it was valued, and the bishop had due notice of it, and at all events it was sent back to the seigneur de la trémouille to give it back to monseigneur de senlis. the said horse was of no use to her; and, on the other hand, she did not wish to keep it because she heard that the bishop was displeased that his horse should have been taken. and as for the tower of beaurevoir: "i did it not to destroy myself, but in the hope of saving myself and of going to the aid of the good people who were in need." but after having done it, she had confessed her sin, and asked pardon of our lord, and had pardon of him. and she allowed that it was not right to have made that leap, but that she did wrong. the next day an important question was introduced, the only one as yet which jeanne does not seem to have been able to answer with understanding. on points of fact or in respect to her visions she was always quite clear, but questions concerning the church were beyond her knowledge. it is only indeed after some time has elapsed that we perceive why such a question was introduced. after admonitions made to her she was required, if she had done anything contrary to the faith, to submit herself to the decision of the church. she replied, that her answers had all been heard and seen by clerks, and that they could say whether there was anything in them against the faith: and that if they would point out to her where any error was, afterwards she would tell them what was said by her counsellors. at all events if there was anything against the faith which our lord had commanded, she would not sustain it, and would be very sorry to go against that. here it was shown to her that there was a church militant and a church triumphant, and she was asked if she knew the difference between them. she was also required to put herself under the jurisdiction of the church, in respect to what she had done, whether it was good or evil, but replied, "i will answer no more on this point for the present." having thrown in this tentative question which she did not understand, they returned to the question of her dress, which holds such an important place in the entire interrogatory. if she were allowed to hear mass as she wished, having been all this time deprived of religious ordinances, did not she think it would be more honest and befitting that she should go in the dress of a woman? to this she replied vaguely, that she would much rather go to mass in the dress of a woman than to retain her male costume and not to hear mass; and that if she were certified that she should hear mass, she would be there in a woman's dress. "i certify you that you shall hear mass," the examiner replied, "but you must be dressed as a woman." "what would you say," she answered as with a momentary doubt, "if i had sworn to my king never to change?" but she added: "anyhow i answer for it. find me a dress, long, touching the ground, without a train, and give it to me to go to mass; but i will return to my present dress when i come back." she was then asked why she would not have all the parts of a female dress to go to mass in; she said, "i will take counsel upon that, and answer you," and begged again for the honour of god and our lady that she might be allowed to hear mass in this good town. afterwards she was again recommended to assume the whole dress of a woman and gave a conditional assent: "get me a dress like that of a young _bourgeoise_, that is to say, a long _houppelande_; i will wear that and a woman's hood to go to mass." after having promised, however, she made an appeal to them to leave her free, and to think no more of her garb, but to allow her to hear mass without changing it. this would seem to have been refused, and all at once without warning the jurisdiction of the church was suddenly introduced again. she was asked, whether in all she did and said she would submit herself to the church, and replied: "all my deeds and works are in the hands of god, and i depend only on him; and i certify that i desire to do nothing and say nothing against the christian faith; and if i have done or said anything in the body that was against the christian faith which our lord has established, i should not defend it but cast it forth from me." asked again, if she would not submit to the laws of the church she replied: "i can answer no more to-day on this point; but on saturday send the clerk to me, if you do not come, and i will answer by the grace of god, and it can be put in writing." a great many questions followed as to her visions, but chiefly what had been asked before. one thing only we may note, since it was one of the special sayings all her own, which fell from the lips of jeanne, during this private and almost sympathetic examination. after being questioned closely as to how she knew her first visitor to be st. michael, etc., she was asked, how she would have known had he been "l'anemy" himself (a norman must surely have used this word), taking the form of an angel: and finally, what doctrine he taught her? she answered; above all things he said that she was to be a good child and that god would help her: and among other things that she was to go to the succour of the king of france. but the greater part of what the angel taught her, she continued, was already in their book; and the angel showed her the great pity there was of the kingdom of france. the pity of it! that which has always gone most to the tender heart: a country torn in pieces, brother fighting against brother, the invader seated at the native hearth, and blood and fire making the smiling land a desert: "_la pitie qui estoit au royaume de france_." did the inquisitor break down here? could no one go on? or was it mere human incompetence to feel the divine touch? some one broke into a foolish question about the height of the angel, and the sitting was hurriedly concluded. monseigneur might well be on his mettle; that very pity, was it not stealing into the souls of his private committee deputed for so different a use? ***** next day the questions about st. michael's personal appearance were resumed, as a little feint we can only suppose, for the great question of the church was again immediately introduced; but in the meantime jeanne had described her visitor in terms which it is pleasant to dwell on. "he was in the form of a _très vrai prud' homme_." the term is difficult to translate, as is the galantuomo of italy. the "king-honest man," we used to say in english in the days of his late majesty victor emmanuel of italy; but that is not all that is meant--_un vrai prud' homme_, a man good, honest, brave, the best man, is more like it. the girl's honest imagination thought of no paraphernalia of wings or shining plumes. it was not the theatrical angel, not even the angel of art whom she saw--whom it would have been so easy to invent, nay to take quite truthfully from the first painted window, radiating colour and brightness through the dim, low-roofed church. but even with such material handy, jeanne was not led into the conventional. she knew nothing about wings or emblematic scales. he was in the form of a brave and gentle man. she knew not anything greater, nor would she be seduced into fable however sacred. then once more the true assault began. she was asked, if she would submit all her sayings and doings, good or evil, to the judgment of our holy mother, the church. she replied, that as for the church, she loved it and would sustain it with all her might for our christian faith; and that it was not she whom they ought to disturb and hinder from going to church or from hearing mass. as to the good things she had done, and that had happened, she must refer all to the king of heaven, who had sent her to charles, king of france; and it should be seen that the french would soon gain a great advantage which god would send them, so great that all the kingdom of france would be shaken. and this, she said, that when it came to pass, they might remember that she had said it. she was again asked, if she would submit to the jurisdiction of the church, and answered, "i refer everything to our lord who sent me, to our lady, and to the blessed saints of paradise"; and added her opinion was that our lord and the church meant the same thing, and that difficulties should not be made concerning this, when there was no difficulty, and they were both one. she was then told that there was the church triumphant, in which are god, the saints, the angels, and all saved souls. the church militant is our holy father the pope, vicar of god on earth, the cardinals, the prelates of the church, and the clergy and all good christians and catholics, which church properly assembled cannot err, but is guided by the holy spirit. and this being the case she was asked if she would refer her cause to the church militant thus explained to her. she replied that she had come to the king of france on the part of god, on the part of the virgin mary, the blessed saints of paradise, and the church victorious in heaven, and at their commandment; and to that church she submitted all her good deeds, and all that she had done and might do. and if they asked her whether she would submit to the church militant, answered, that she would now answer no more than this. here again the argument strayed back to the futile subject of dress, always at hand to be taken up again, one would say, when the judges were non-plussed. her first reply on this subject is remarkable and shows that dark and terrible forebodings were already beginning to mingle with her hopes. asked, what she had to say about the woman's dress that had been offered to her, to hear mass in: she answered, that she would not take it yet, not until the lord pleased; but that if it were necessary to lead her out to be executed, and if she should then have to be undressed, she required of the lords of the church that they would give her the grace to have a long chemise, and a kerchief for her head; that she would prefer to die rather than to alter what our lord had directed her to do, and that she firmly believed our lord would not let her descend so low, but that she should soon be helped by god and by a miracle. she was then asked, if what she did in respect to the man's costume was by command of god, why she asked for a woman's chemise in case of death? answered, _it is enough that it should be long_. the effect of these words in which so much was implied, must have made a supreme sensation among the handful of men gathered round the helpless girl in her prison, bringing the stake in all its horror before the eyes of the judges as before her own. no other thing could have been suggested by that piteous prayer. the stake, the scaffold, the fire--and the shrinking figure all maidenly, helpless, exposed to every evil gaze, must have showed themselves at least for a moment against that dark background of prison wall. it was enough that it should be long--to hide her as much as was possible from those dreadful staring eyes. the interrogatory goes on wildly after this about the age and the dress of the saints. but a tone of fate had come into it, and jeanne herself, it was evident, was very serious; her mind turned to more weighty thoughts. presently they asked if the saints hated the english, to which she replied that they hated what god hated and loved what he loved. she was then asked if god hated the english. she replied that of the love or hate that god had for the english, or what god did for their souls, she knew nothing; but she knew well that they should be driven out of france, except those who died there; and that god would send victory to the french against the english. asked, if god was for the english so long as they were prosperous in france: she answered, that she knew not whether god hated the french, but believed he had allowed them to be beaten because of their sins. jeanne was then brought to a test which, had she been a great statesman or a learned doctor, would have been as dangerous, as the question concerning john the baptist was to the priests and scribes. "if we shall say: from heaven, he will say, why then believed ye him not? but if we shall say of men we fear the people." and she was only a peasant girl and the event of which they spoke had been before her little time. asked, if she thought and believed firmly that her king did well to kill monseigneur de bourgogne, she answered that it was a great misfortune for the kingdom of france: but that however it might be among themselves, god had sent her to the succour of the king. one or two other questions of some importance followed amid perpetual changes of the subject: one of which called forth as follows her last deliverance on the subject of the pope. asked, if she had said to monseigneur de beauvais that she would answer as exactly to him and to his clerks as she would have done before our holy father the pope, although at several points in the trial she would have had to refuse to answer, if she did not answer more plainly than before monseigneur de beauvais--she said that she had answered as much as she knew, and that if anything came to her memory that she had forgotten to say, she would say it willingly. asked, if it seemed to her that she would be bound to answer the plain truth to the pope, the vicar of god, in all he asked her touching the faith and her conscience, she replied that she desired to be taken before him, and then she would answer all that she ought to answer. here we seem to perceive dimly that there was beginning to be a second party among those examiners, one of which was covertly but earnestly attempting to lead jeanne into an appeal to the pope, which would have conveyed her out of the hands of the english at least, and gained time, probably deliverance for her, could jeanne have been made to understand it. this, however, was by no means the wish of cauchon, whose spy and whisperer, l'oyseleur, was working against it in the background. jeanne evidently failed to take up what they meant. she did not understand the distinction between the church militant and the church triumphant: that god alone was her judge, and that no tribunal could decide upon the questions which were between her lord and herself, was too firmly fixed in her mind: and again and again the men whose desire was to make her adopt this expedient, were driven back into the ever repeated questions about st. catherine and st. margaret. one other of her distinctive sayings fell from her in the little interval that remained, in a series of useless questions about her standard. was it true that this standard had been carried into the cathedral at rheims when those of the other captains were left behind? "it had been through the labour and the pain," she said, "there was good reason that it should have the honour." this last movement of a proud spirit, absolutely disinterested and without thought of honour or advancement in the usual sense of the word, gives a sort of trumpet note at the end of these wonderful wranglings in prison, in which, however, there is a softening of tone visible throughout, and evident effect of human nature bringing into immediate contact divers human creatures day after day. jeanne is often at her best, and never so frequently as during these less formal sittings utters those flying words, simple and noble and of absolute truth to nature, which are noted everywhere, even in the most rambling records. ***** the private examination, concluding with that last answer about the banner, came to an end on the th march, the day before passion sunday. several subsequent days were occupied with repeated consultations in the bishop's palace, and the reading over of the minutes of the examinations, to the judges first and afterwards to jeanne, who acknowledged their correctness, with one or two small amendments. it is only now that cauchon reappears in his own person. on the morning of the following sunday, which was palm sunday, he and four other doctors with him had a conversation with jeanne in her prison, very early in the morning, touching her repeated application to be allowed to hear mass and to communicate. the bishop offered her his ultimatum: if she consented to resume her woman's dress, she might hear mass, but not otherwise; to which jeanne replied, sorrowfully, that she would have done so before now if she could; but that it was not in her power to do so. thus after the long and bitter lent her hopes of sharing in the sacred feast were finally taken from her. it remains uncertain whether she considered that her change of dress would be direct disobedience to god, which her words seem often to imply; or whether it would mean renunciation of her mission, which she still hoped against hope to be able to resume; or if the fear of personal insult weighed most with her. the latter reason had evidently something to do with it, but, as evidently, not all. the background to these curious sittings, afterwards revealed to us, casts a hazy side-light upon them. probably the bishop, never present, must have been made aware by his spies of an intention on the part of those most favourable to jeanne to support an appeal to the pope; and l'oyseleur, the traitor, who was all this time admitted to her cell by permission of cauchon, and really as his tool and agent, was actively employed in prejudicing her mind against them, counselling her not to trust to those clerks, not to yield to the church. how he managed to explain his own appearance on the other side, his official connection with the trial, and constant presence as one of her judges, it is hard to imagine. probably he gave her to believe that he had sought that position (having got himself liberated from the imprisonment which he had represented himself as sharing) for her sake, to be able to help her. on the other hand her friends, whose hearts were touched by her candour and her sufferings, were not inactive. jean de la fontaine and the two monks--l'advenu and frère isambard--also succeeded in gaining admission to her, and pressed upon her the advantage of appealing to the church, to the council of bâle about to assemble, or to the pope himself, which would have again changed the _venue_, and transferred her into less prejudiced hands. it is very likely that jeanne in her ignorance and innocence might have held by her reference to the supreme tribunal of god in any case; and it is highly unlikely that of the english authorities, intent on removing the only thing in france of which their forces were afraid, should have given her up into the hands of the pope, or allowed her to be transferred to any place of defence beyond their reach; but at least it is a relief to the mind to find that all these men were not base, as appears on the face of things, but that pity and justice and human feeling sometimes existed under the priest's gown and the monk's cowl, if also treachery and falsehood of the blackest kind. the bishop, who remained withdrawn, we know not why, from all these private sittings in the prison (probably busy with his ecclesiastical duties as holy week was approaching), heard with fury of this visit and advice, and threatened vengeance upon the meddlers, not without effect, for jean de la fontaine, we are told--who had been deep in his councils, and indeed his deputy, as chief examiner--disappeared from rouen immediately after, and was heard of no more. ( ) compiègne was a strong point. had she proclaimed a promise from st. catherine, of victory? chastelain says so, long after date and with errors in fact. two anglo- compiègnais were at her trial. the rehabilitation does not go into this question.--(from mr. lang.) chapter xv -- re-examination. march-may, . upon all these contentions followed the calm of palm sunday, a great and touching festival, the first break upon the gloom of lent, and a forerunner of the blessedness of easter. we have already told how--a semblance of charity with which the reader might easily be deceived--the bishop and four of his assessors had gone to the prison to offer to the maid permission to receive the sacrament if she would do so in a woman's dress: and how after pleading that she might be allowed that privilege as she was, in her male costume, and with a pathetic statement that she would have yielded if she could, but that it was impossible--she finally refused; and was so left in her prison to pass that sacred day unsuccoured and alone. the historian michelet, in the wonderful sketch in which he rises superior to himself, and which amidst all after writings remains the most beautiful and touching memorial of jeanne d'arc, has made this day a central point in his tale, using with the skill of genius the service of the church appropriate to the day, in heart-rending contrast with those doors of the prison which did not open, and the help of god which did not come to the young and solitary captive. _le beau jour fleuri_ passed over her in darkness and desertion: her agony and passion lay before her like those of the divine sufferer, to whom every day of the succeeding week is specially consecrated. there is almost indeed a painful following of the saviour's steps in these dark days, the circumstances lending themselves in a wonderful way to the comparison which french writers love to make, but which many of us must always feel, however spotless the sufferer, to have a certain irreverence in them. but if ever martyr were worthy of being called a partaker of the sufferings of christ it was surely this girl, free, if ever human creature was, from self-seeking, or thought of reward, or ambitious hope, in whose heart there had never been any motive but the service of god and the deliverance of her country, who had neither looked before nor after, nor put her own interests into consideration in any way. silently the feast passed with no holy privileges of religion, no blessed token of the spring, no remembrance of the waving palms and scattered blossoms over which her lord rode into jerusalem to die. she had not that sweet fallacious triumph; but the darker ordeal remained for her to follow. on tuesday the th of march, her troubles began again. before palm sunday, the report of the trial had been read to her. she had now to hear the formal reading of the articles founded upon it, to give a final response if she had any to give, or explanation, or addition, if she thought proper. the sitting was held in the great hall of the castle of rouen before a band of more than forty, all assembled for this final test. the bishop made a prefactory speech to the prisoner, pointing out to her how benign and merciful were the judges now assembled, that they had no wish to punish, but rather to instruct and lead her in the right way; and requesting her at this late period in the proceedings to choose one or more from among them to help her. to which jeanne replied; "in the first place concerning my good and our faith, i thank you and all the company. as for the counsellor you offer me i thank you also, but i have no need to depart from our lord as my counsellor." the articles, in which the former questions put to her and answered by her, were now repeated in the form of accusations, were then read to her one by one; her sorcery, sacrilege, etc., being taken as facts. to a few she repeated, with various forcible and fine turns of phrase, her previous answers, with here and there a new explanation; but to the great majority she referred simply to her former replies, or denied the charge, as follows: "the second article concerning sortilège, superstitious acts and divination, she denied, and in respect to adoration (i.e. allowing herself to be adored) said: if any kissed her hands or her garments, it was not by her will, and that she kept herself from it as much as she could; and the rest of the article she denies." this is a specimen of the manner in which she responded, with a clear-headed and undisturbed intelligence, point after point--_ipsa johanna negat_, is the usual refrain: or else she referred with dignity to previous replies as her sole answer. but sometimes the girl was moved to indignation, sometimes added a word in her own defence: "as for fairies she knew not what they were, and as for her education she had been well and duly instructed what to believe, as a good child should." this was her answer to the article in which all the folk-lore of domremy, all the fairy tales, had been collected into a solemn statement of heresy. the matter of dress was once more treated in endless detail, with many interjected questions and reports of what she had already said: and at the end, answering the statement that woman's dress was most fit for woman's work, jeanne added the quick _mot_: "as for the usual work of women, there are enough of other women to do it." on another occasion when the report ran that she claimed to have done all things by the counsel of god, she interrupted and said "that it ought to be, all that i have done well." to her former answer that she had yielded to the desire of the french knights in attacking paris, she added the fine words, "it seemed to me that it was their duty to attack their adversaries." in respect to her visions she added to her former answer, "that she had not asked advice of bishop, curé, or any other before believing her revelations, but had many times prayed god to reveal them to others of her party." about calling her saints when she required their aid she added, that she asked god and our lady to send her council and comfort, and immediately her heavenly visitors came; and that this was the prayer she made: "gentle god, in honour of your( ) passion, i pray you, if you love me, that you would reveal to me how i ought to answer these people of the church. i know well by what command it was that i took this dress, but i know not in what manner i ought to give it up. for this may it please you to teach me." in respect to the reproach that she had been a general in the war (_chef de guerre_), she explained that if she were, it was to drive out the english, repelling the accusation that she had assumed this title in pride; and to that which accused her of preferring to live among men, she explained that when she was in a lodging she generally had a woman with her; but that when engaged in war she lived in her clothes whenever there was not a woman present. in respect to her hope of escaping from prison, she was asked if her council had thrown any light on that question, and replied, "i have yet to tell you." manchon, the clerk, makes a note upon his margin at these words, "proudly answered"--_superbe responsum_. this re-examination lasted for two long days, the th and th of march. on several points jeanne requested that she might be allowed to give an answer on saturday, and accordingly, on saturday, the last day of march, easter eve, she was visited in prison by the bishop and seven or eight assessors. she was then asked if she would submit to the judgment of the church on earth all that she had done and said, specially in things that concerned her trial. she answered that she would submit to the judgment of the church militant, provided that it did not enforce anything that was impossible. she explained that what she called impossible was to acknowledge that the visions and revelations came otherwise than from god, or that what she had done was not on the part of god: these she would never deny or revoke for any power on earth: and that which our lord had commanded or should command, she would not give up for any living man, and this would be impossible to her. and in case the church should command her to do anything contrary to the command given her by god she would not do it for any reason whatsoever. asked whether she would submit to the church if the church militant pronounced that her revelations were delusions or from the devil, or superstitious, or evil things, she answered that she would refer everything to our lord, whose command she always obeyed; and that she knew well that everything had come to her by the commandment of god; and that what she had affirmed during this trial to have been done by the commandment of god it would be impossible for her to deny. and in case the church militant commanded her to go against god, she would submit herself to no man in this world but to our lord, whose good commandment she had always obeyed. she was asked if she did not believe that she was subject to the church on earth, that is, to our holy father the pope, the cardinals, bishops, and other prelates of the church. she answered, "_yes, our lord being served first_." asked if she had directions from her voices not to submit to the church militant which is on earth, nor to its judgment, she replied that she does not answer according to what comes into her head, but that when she replies it is by commandment; and that she has never been told not to obey the church, our lord being served first (_noster sire premier servi_). other less formal particulars come to us long after, from various witnesses at the _procès de rehabilitation_, in which a lively picture is given of this scene. frère isambard had apparently managed, as was his wont, to get close to the prisoner, and to whisper to her to appeal to the council of bâle. "what is this council of bâle?" she asked in the same tone. isambard replied that it was the "congregation of the whole church, catholic and universal, and that there would be as many there on her side as on that of the english." "ah!" she cried, "since there will be some of our party in that place, i will willingly yield and submit to the council of bâle, to our holy father the pope, and to the sacred council."( ) and immediately--continues the deposition--the bishop of beauvais cried out, "silence, in the devil's name!" and told the notary to take no notice of what she said, that she would submit herself to the council of bâle; whereupon a second cry burst from the bosom of jeanne, "you write what is against me, but you will not write what is for me." "because of these things, the english and their officers threatened terribly the said frère isambard, warning him that if he did not hold his peace he would be thrown in the seine." no notice whatever is taken of any such interruption in the formal record. it must have been before this time that jean de la fontaine disappeared. he left rouen secretly and never returned, nor does he ever appear again. frère isambard is said to have taken temporary refuge in his convent; they scattered, _de par l'diable_, according to the christian adjuration of mgr. de beauvais; though l'advenu would seem to have held his ground, and served as confessor to jeanne in her agony, at which frère isambard was also present. we are told that the deputy inquisitor lemâitre, he who had been got to lend the aid of his presence with such difficulty, fiercely warned the authorities that he would have no harm done to those two friars, from which we may infer that he too had leanings towards the maid; and these honest and loyal men, well deserving of their country and of mankind, should not lose their record when the tragic story of so much human treachery and baseness has to be told. ***** after this there came a long pause, full of much business to the judges, councillors, and clerks who had to reduce the seventy articles to twelve, in order to forward a summary of the case to the university of paris for their judgment. jeanne in the meantime had been left, but not neglected, in her prison. the great feast of easter had passed without any sacred consolation of the church; but monseigneur de beauvais, in his kindness, sent her a carp to keep the feast withal, if not any spiritual food. it was quite congenial to the spirit of the time to imagine that the carp had been poisoned, and such a thought seems to have crossed the mind of jeanne, who was very ill after eating of it, and like to die. but it was not thus, poisoned in prison, that it would have suited any of her persecutors to let her die. as a matter of fact, as soon as it was known that she was ill, the best doctors procurable were sent to the prison with peremptory orders to prolong her life and cure her at any cost. but for a little time we lose sight of the sick-bed on which the unfortunate maid lay fully dressed, never relinquishing the garb which was her protection, with her feet chained to her uneasy couch. even at the moment when her life hung in the balance we read of no indulgence granted in this respect, no unlocking of the infamous chain, nor substitution of a gentler nurse for the attendant _houspillers_, who were her guards night and day. when the bishop and his court had completed their business and sent off to paris the important document on which so much depended, they found themselves at leisure to return to jeanne, to inquire after her health and to make her "a charitable admonition." it was on the th of april, after the silence of more than a fortnight, that their visit was made with this benevolent purpose. seven of her judges attended the bishop into the sick-chamber. they had come, he assured her, charitably and familiarly, to visit her in her sickness and to carry her comfort and consolation. most of these men were indeed familiar enough: she had seen their faces already through many a dreadful day, though there were one or two which were new and strange, come to stare at her in the depths of her distress. cauchon reminded her how much and how carefully she had been questioned by the most wise and learned men; and that those there present were ready to do anything for the salvation of her soul and body in every possible way, by instructing or advising her. he added, however, that if she still refused to accept advice, and to act according to the counsel of the church, she was in the greatest danger--to which she replied: "it seems to me, being so ill as i am, that i am in great danger of death. and if it is thus that god pleases to decide for me, i ask of you to be allowed to confess and receive my saviour, and to be laid in holy ground." "if you desire to have the rites and sacraments of the church," said cauchon, "you must do as good catholics ought to do, submit to holy church." she answered, "i can say no other thing to you." she was then told that if she was in fear of death through sickness she ought all the more to amend her life; but that she could not have the privileges of the church as a catholic, if she did not submit to the church. she answered: "if my body dies in prison, i hope that you will bury me in consecrated ground: yet if not, i still hope in our lord." she was then reminded that she had said in her trial--if anything had been said or done by her against our christian faith ordained by our lord, that she would not stand by it. she answered, "i refer to the answer i made, and to our lord." it was then asked of her, since she believed herself to have had many revelations from god by st. michael, st. catherine, and st. margaret, whether if there should appear some good creature (_sic_) who professed to have had a revelation from god in respect to her, she would believe that? she answered that there was no christian in the world who could come to her professing to have had a revelation, of whom she should not know whether he spoke the truth or not: she would know it through st. catherine and st. margaret. asked, if she could not imagine that god might reveal something to a good creature who might be unknown to her, she answered: "yes; but i would not believe either man or woman without a sign." asked, if she believed that the holy scripture was revealed by god, she answered, "you know that i do, and it is good to know." the last answer she made in respect to submission to holy church was this, "whatever may happen to me i will neither do nor say anything else, for i have answered before, during the trial." she was then "exhorted powerfully by the venerable doctors present" (four are mentioned by name) to submit to our mother the church, with many authorities and examples drawn from the holy scriptures; and finally, magister nicolas midi made her an exhortation from matthew xviii.: "if your brother trespass against you," and what follows, "if he will not hear the church, let him be to you as a heathen man and a publican." this was expounded to jeanne in the french tongue and, finally, she was told that if she would not obey and submit to the church she must be given up as if she was a saracen. to which jeanne replied that she was a good christian and well baptised, and that she desired to die as a christian. she was then asked whether, since she begged leave of the church to receive her saviour, she would submit to the church if it were promised to her that she should receive. she answered that she would say no more than she had said; that she loved god, served him, and was a good christian, and would aid and uphold the holy church with all her power. asked if she wished that a beautiful procession should be made for her to restore her to health, she answered that she would be glad if the church and the catholics would pray for her. for another fortnight jeanne was sent back into the silence, and to her own thoughts, which must have grown heavier and heavier as the weary days went on, and no sound of approaching deliverance came, no rumour of help at hand. all was quiet and safe at rouen; amid the babble of the courtyard which she might hear fitfully when her guardians were quieter than usual, there was not one word which brought the hope of a french army at hand, or of any movement to rescue her. all was silent in the world around, not a breath of hope, not the whisper of a friend. it was not till the d of may that the dreadful blank was again broken, and she was called to the great hall of the castle for another interview with her tormentors. when she was led into the hall it was full, as in the first sitting, sixty-three judges in all being present. the interest had flagged or the pity had grown as the trial dragged its slow length along; but now, when every day the verdict was expected from paris, the interest had risen again. on her way from her prison to the hall, it was necessary to pass the door of the castle chapel: and here once or twice massieu, the officer of the court, had permitted her to pause and kneel down as she passed. this was all the celebration of the paschal feast that was permitted to jeanne. the compassionate official, however, was discovered in this small service of charity, and sternly reprimanded and threatened. henceforward she had to pass without even a longing look through the door at the altar on which was the holy sacrament. she came in on the renewed sitting of the d may to find the assembled priests settling themselves, after the address which had been made to them, to hear another address which john de chasteillon, archdeacon, had prepared for herself, in which he said much that was good both for body and soul, to which she consented. he had a list of twelve articles in his hands, and explained and expounded them to her, as they were the occasion of the sitting. he then "admonished her in charity," explaining that those who were faithful to christ hold firmly and closely to the christian creed, and adjuring her to consent and to amend her ways. to this jeanne answered: "read your book," meaning the schedule held by monseigneur the archdeacon, "and then i will answer you. i refer myself to god my master in all things; and i love him with all my heart." to read this book, however, was precisely what monseigneur the archdeacon had no intention of doing. she was never allowed to hear the twelve articles upon which the verdict against her was founded; but the speaker gave her a long discourse by way of explanation, following more or less the schedule which he held. this "monition general," however, elicited no detailed reply from jeanne, who answered briefly with some impatience, "i refer myself to my judge, who is the king of heaven and earth." the "lord archdeacon" then proceeded to "monitions particulares." it was then once more explained to her that this reference to god alone was a refusal to submit to the church militant, and she was instructed in the authority of the church, which it was the duty of every christian to believe--_unam sanctam ecclesiam_ always guided by the holy spirit and which could not err, to the judgment of which every question should be referred. she answered: "i believe in the church here below; but my doings and sayings, as i have already said, i refer and submit to god. i believe that the church militant cannot err or fail; but as for my deeds and words i put them all before god, who has made me do that which i have done"; she also said that she submitted herself to god, her creator, who had made her do everything, and referred everything to him, and to him alone. she was then asked, if she would have no judge on earth and if our holy father the pope were not her judge; she answered: "i will tell you nothing more. i have a good master, that is our lord, on whom i depend for everything, and not an any other." she was then told that if she would not believe the church and the article _ecclesiam sanctam catholicam_, that she might be reckoned as a heretic and punished by burning: to which she answered: "i can say nothing else to you; and if i saw the fire before me, i should say only that which i say, and could do nothing else." (once more at this point the clerk writes on his margin, "proud reply"--_superba responsio_--but whether in admiration or in blame it would be hard to say.) asked, if the council general, or the holy father, cardinals, etc., were there--whether she would submit to them. "you shall have no other answer from me," she said. asked, if she would submit to our holy father the pope: she answered, "take me to him and i will answer him," but would say no more. questioned in respect to her dress, she answered, that she would willingly accept a long dress and a woman's hood to go to church to receive her saviour, provided that, as she had already said, she were allowed to wear it on that occasion only, and then to take back that which she at present wore. further, when it was set before her that she wore that dress without any need, being in prison, she answered, "when i have done that for which i was sent by god, i will then take back a woman's dress." asked, if she thought she did well in being dressed like a man, she answered, "i refer every thing to our lord." again, after the exhortation made to her, namely, that in saying that she did well and did not sin in wearing that dress, and in the circumstances which concerned her assuming and wearing it, and in saying that god and the saints made her do so--she blasphemed, and as is contained in this schedule, erred and did evil: she answered that she never blasphemed god or the saints. she was then admonished to give up that dress, and no longer to think it was right, and to return to the garb of a woman; but answered that she would make no change in this respect. concerning her revelations: she replied in regard to them, that she referred everything to her judge, that is god, and that her revelations were from god, without any other medium. asked concerning the sign given to the king if she would refer to the archbishop of rheims, the sire de boussac, charles de bourbon, la tremouille, and la hire, to them or to any one of them, who, according to what she formerly said, had seen the crown, and were present when the angel brought it, and gave it to the archbishop; or if she would refer to any others of her party who might write under their seals that it was so; she answered, "send a messenger, and i will write to them about the whole trial": but otherwise she was not disposed to refer to them. in respect to her presumption in divining the future, etc., she answered, "i refer everything to my judge who is god, and to what i have already answered, which is written in the book." asked, if two or three or four knights of her party were to be brought here under a safe conduct, whether she would refer to them her apparitions and other things contained in this trial; answered, "let them come and then i will answer:" but otherwise she was not willing to refer to anyone. asked whether, at the church of poitiers where she was examined, she had submitted to the church, she answered, "do you hope to catch me in this way, and by that draw advantage to yourselves?" in conclusion, "afresh and abundantly," she was admonished to submit herself to the church, on pain of being abandoned by the church; for if the church left her she would be in great danger of body and of soul; and she might well put herself in peril of eternal fire for the soul, as well as of temporal fire for the body, by the sentence of other judges. "you will not do this which you say against me, without doing injury to your own bodies and souls," she said. asked, whether she could give a reason why she would not submit to the church: but to this she would make no additional reply. again a week passed in busy talk and consultation without, in silence and desertion within. on the th of may the prisoner was again led, this time to the great tower, apparently the torture chamber of the castle, where she found nine of her judges awaiting her, and was once more adjured to speak the truth, with the threat of torture if she continued to refuse. never was her attitude more calm, more dignified and lofty in its simplicity, than at this grim moment. "truly," she replied, "if you tear the limbs from my body, and my soul out of it, i can say nothing other than what i have said; or if i said anything different, i should afterwards say that you had compelled me to do it by force." she added that on the day of the holy cross, the d of may past, she had been comforted by st. gabriel. she believed that it was st. gabriel: and she knew by her voices that it was st. gabriel. she had asked counsel of her voices whether she should submit to the church, because the priests pressed her so strongly to submit: but it had been said to her that if she desired our lord to help her she must depend upon him for everything. she added that she knew well that our lord had always been the master of all she did, and that the enemy had nothing to do with her deeds. also she had asked her voices if she should be burned, and the said voices had replied to her that she was to wait for the lord and he would help her. afterwards in respect to the crown which had been handed by the angel to the archbishop of rheims, she was asked if she would refer to him. she answered: "bring him here, that i may hear what he says, and then i shall answer you; he will not dare to say the contrary of that which i have said to you." the archbishop of rheims had been her constant enemy; all the hindrances that had occurred in her active life, and the constant attempts made to balk her even in her brief moment of triumph, came from him and his associate la trémouille. he was the last person in the world to whom jeanne naturally would have appealed. perhaps that was the admirable reason why he was suggested in this dreadful crisis of her fate. a few days later, it was discussed among those dark inquisitors whether the torture should be applied or not. finally, among thirteen there were but two (let not the voice of sacred vengeance be silent on their shame though after four centuries and more), thomas de courcelles, first of theologians, cleverest of ecclesiastical lawyers, mildest of men, and nicolas l'oyseleur, the spy and traitor, who voted for the torture. one man most reasonably asked why she should be put to torture when they had ample material for judgment without it? one cannot but feel that the proceedings on this occasion were either intended to beguile the impatience of the english authorities, eager to be done with the whole business, or to add a quite gratuitous pang to the sufferings of the heroic girl. as the men were not devils, though probably possessed by this time, the more cruel among them, by the horrible curiosity, innate alas! in human nature, of seeing how far a suffering soul could go, it is probable that the first motive was the true one. the english, warwick especially, whose every movement was restrained by this long-pending affair, were exceedingly impatient, and tempted at times to take the matter into their own hands, and spoil the perfectness of this well constructed work of art, conducted according to all the rules, the beautiful trial which was dear to the bishop's heart--and destined to be, though perhaps in a sense somewhat different to that which he hoped, his chief title to fame. ten days after, the decision of the university of paris arrived, and a great assembly of counsellors, fifty-one in all, besides the permanent presidents, collected together in the chapel of the archbishop's house, to hear that document read, along with many other documents, the individual opinions of a host of doctors and eminent authorities. after an explanation of the solemn care given by the university to the consideration of every one of the twelve articles of the indictment, that learned tribunal pronounced its verdict upon each. the length of the proceedings makes it impossible to reproduce these. first as to the early revelations given to jeanne, described in the first and second articles, they are denounced as "murderous, seductive, and pernicious fictions," the apparitions those of "malignant spirits and devils, belial, satan, and behemoth." the third article, which concerned her recognition of the saints, was described more mildly as containing errors in faith; the fourth, as to her knowledge of future events, was characterised as "superstitious and presumptuous divination." the fifth, concerning her dress, declared her to be "blasphemous and contemptuous of god in his sacraments." the sixth, by which she was accused of loving bloodshed, because she made war against those who did not obey the summons in her letters bearing the name jhesus maria, was declared to prove that she was cruel, "seeking the shedding of blood, seditious, and a blasphemer of god." the tenor is the same to the end: blasphemy, superstition, pernicious doctrine, impiety, cruelty, presumption, lying; a schismatic, a heretic, an apostate, an idolator, an invoker of demons. these are the conclusions drawn by the most solemn and weighty tribunal on matters of faith in france. the precautions taken to procure a full and trustworthy judgment, the appeal to each section in turn, the faculty of theology, the faculty of law, the "nations," all separately and than all together passing every item in review--are set forth at full length. every formality had been fulfilled, every rule followed, every detail was in the fullest order, signed and sealed and attested by solemn notaries, bristling with well-known names. a beautiful judgment, equal to the trial, which was beautiful too--not a rule omitted except those of justice, fairness, and truth! the doctors sat and listened with every fine professional sense satisfied. "if the beforesaid woman, charitably exhorted and admonished by competent judges, does not return spontaneously to the catholic faith, publicly abjure her errors, and give full satisfaction to her judges, she is hereby given up to the secular judge to receive the reward of her deeds." the attendant judges, each in his place, now added their adhesion. most of them simply stated their agreement with the judgment of the university, or with that of the bishop of fecamp, which was a similar tenor; a few wished that jeanne should be again "charitably admonished"; many desired that on this selfsame day the final sentence should be pronounced. one among them, a certain raoul sauvage (radulphus silvestris), suggested that she should be brought before the people in a public place, a suggestion afterwards carried out. frère isambard desired that she should be charitably admonished again and have another chance, and that her final fate should still be in the hands of "us her judges." the conclusion was that one more "charitable admonition" should be given to jeanne, and that the law should then take its course. the suggestion that she should make a public appearance had only one supporter. this dark scene in the chapel is very notable, each man rising to pronounce what was in reality a sentence of death,--fifty of them almost unanimous, filled no doubt with a hundred different motives, to please this man or that, to win favour, to get into the way of promotion,--but all with a distinct consciousness of the great yet horrible spectacle, the stake, the burning:--though perhaps here and there was one with a hope that perpetual imprisonment, bread of sorrow and water of anguish, might be substituted for that terrible death. finally, it was decided that--always on the side of mercy, as every act proved--the tribunal should once more "charitably admonish" the prisoner for the salvation of her soul and body, and that after all this "good deliberation and wholesome counsel" the case should be concluded. again there follows a pause of four days. no doubt the bishop and his assessors had other things to do, their ecclesiastical functions, their private business, which could not always be put aside because one forsaken soul was held in suspense day after day. finally on the th of may, jeanne again received in her prison a dignified company, some quite new and strange to her (indeed the idea may cross the reader's mind that it was perhaps to show off the interesting prisoner to two new and powerful bishops, the first, louis of luxembourg, a relative of her first captor, that this last examination was held), nine men in all, crowding her chamber--_exponuntur johannæ defectus sui_, says the record--to expound to jeanne her faults. it was magister peter morice to whom this office was confided. once more the "schedule" was gone over, and an address delivered laden with all the bad words of the university. "jeanne, dearest friend," said the orator at last, "it is now time, at the end of the trial, to think well what words these are." she would seem to have spoken during this address, at least once--to say that she held to everything she had said during the trial. when morice had finished she was once more questioned personally. she was asked if she still thought and believed that it was not her duty to submit her deeds and words to the church militant, or to any other except god, upon which she replied, "what i have always said and held to during the trial, i maintain to this moment"; and added that if she were in judgment and saw the fire lighted, the faggots burning, and the executioner ready to rake the fire, and she herself within the fire, she could say nothing else, but would sustain what she had said in her trial, to death. once more the scribe has written on his margin the words _responsio johannæ superba_--the proud answer of jeanne. her raised head, her expanded breast, something of a splendour of indignation about her, must have moved the man, thus for the third time to send down to us his distinctly human impression of the worn out prisoner before her judges. "and immediately the promoter and she refusing to say more, the cause was concluded," says the record, so formal, sustained within such purely abstract limits, yet here and there with a sort of throb and reverberation of the mortal encounter. from the lips of the inquisitor too all words seemed to have been taken. it is as when amid the excited crowd in the temple the officers of the pharisees approaching to lay hands on a greater than jeanne, fell back, not knowing why, and could not do their office. this man was silenced also. two bishops were present, and one a great man full of patronage; but not for the richest living in normandy could peter morice find any more to say. these are in one sense the words of jeanne; the last we have from her in her prison, the last of her consistent and unbroken life. after, there was a deeper horror to go through, a moment when all her forces failed. here on the verge of eternity she stands heroic and unyielding, brave, calm, and steadfast as at the outset of her career, the maid of france. were the fires lighted and the faggots burning, and she herself within the fire, she had no other word to say. ( ) it is correct in french to use the second person plural in addressing god, _thou_ being a more intimate and less respectful form of speech. such a difference is difficult to remember, and troubles the ear. the french, even those who ought to know better, sometimes speak of it as a supreme profanity on the part of the profane english, that they address god as _thou_. ( ) the french report goes on, "et requiert ----," but no more. it is not in the latin. the scribe was stopped by the bishop's profane outcry, and forbidden to register the fact she was about to make a direct appeal to the pope. chapter xvi -- the abjuration. may , . on the d of may jeanne was taken back to her prison attended by the officer of the court, massieu, her frame still thrilling, her heart still high, with that great note of constancy yet defiance. she had been no doubt strongly excited, the commotion within her growing with every repetition of these scenes, each one of which promised to be the last. and the fire and the stake and the executioner had come very near to her; no doubt a whole murmuring world of rumour, of strange information about herself, never long inaudible, never heard outside of the castle of rouen, rose half-comprehended from the echoing courtyard outside and the babble of her guards within. she would hear even as she was conveyed along the echoing stone passages something here and there of the popular expectation:--a burning! the wonderful unheard of sight, which by hook or by crook everyone must see; and no doubt among the english talk she might now be able to make out something concerning this long business which had retarded all warlike proceedings but which would soon be over now, and the witch burnt. there must have been some, even among those rude companions, who would be sorry, who would feel that she was no witch, yet be helpless to do anything for her, any more than massieu could, or frère isambard: and if it was all for the sake of certain words to be said, was the wench mad? would it not be better to say anything, to give up anything rather than be burned at the stake? jeanne, notwithstanding the wonderful courage of her last speech, must have returned to her cell with small illusion possible to her intelligent spirit. the stake had indeed come very near, the flames already dazzled her eyes, she must have felt her slender form shrink together at the thought. all that long night, through the early daylight of the may morning did she lie and ponder, as for far less reasons so many of us have pondered as we lay wakeful through those morning watches. god's promises are great, but where is the fulfilment? we ask for bread and he gives us, if not a stone, yet something which we cannot realise to be bread till after many days. jeanne's voices had never paused in their pledge to her of succour. "speak boldly, god will help you--fear nothing"; there would be aid for her before three months, and great victory. they went on saying so, though the stake was already being raised. what did they mean? what did they mean? could she still trust them? or was it possible----? her heart was like to break. at their word she would have faced the fire. she meant to do so now, notwithstanding the terrible, the heartrending ache of hope that was still in her. but they did not give her that heroic command. still and always, they said god will help you, our lord will stand by you. what did that mean? it must mean deliverance, deliverance! what else could it mean? if she held her head high as she returned to the horrible monotony of that prison so often left with hope, so often re-entered in sadness, it must soon have dropped upon her tired bosom. slowly the clouds had settled round her. over and over again had she affirmed them to be true--these voices that had guided her steps and led her to victory. and they had promised her the aid of god if she went forward boldly, and spoke and did not fear. but now every way of salvation was closing; all around her were fierce soldiers thirsting for her blood, smooth priests who admonished her in charity, threatening her with eternal fire for the soul, temporal fire for the body. she felt that fire, already blowing towards her as if on the breath of the evening wind, and her girlish flesh shrank. was that what the voices had called deliverance? was that the grand victory, the aid of the lord? it may well be imagined that jeanne slept but little that night; she had reached the lowest depths; her soul had begun to lose itself in bitterness, in the horror of a doubt. the atmosphere of her prison became intolerable, and the noise of her guards keeping up their rough jests half through the night, their stamping and clamour, and the clang of their arms when relieved. early next morning a party of her usual visitors came in upon her to give her fresh instruction and advice. something new was about to happen to-day. she was to be led forth, to breathe the air of heaven, to confront the people, the raging sea of men's faces, all the unknown world about her. the crowd had never been unfriendly to jeanne. it had closed about her, almost wherever she was visible, with sweet applause and outcries of joy. perhaps a little hope stirred her heart in the thought of being surrounded once more by the common folk, though probably it did not occur to her to think of these norman strangers as her own people. and a great day was before her, a day in which something might still be done, in which deliverance might yet come. l'oyseleur, who was one of her visitors, adjured her now to change her conduct, to accept whatever means of salvation might be offered to her. there was no longer any mention of pope or council, but only of the church to which she ought to yield. how it was that he preserved his influence over her, having been proved to be a member of the tribunal that judged her, and not a fellow-prisoner, nor a fellow-countryman, nor any of the things he had professed to be, no once can tell us; but evidently he had managed to do so. jeanne would seem to have received him without signs of repulsion or displeasure. indeed she seems to have been ready to hear anyone, to believe in those who professed to wish her well, even when she did not follow their counsel. it would require, however, no great persuasion on l'oyseleur's part to convince her that this was a more than usually important day, and that something decisive must be done, now or never. why should she be so determined to resist her only chance of safety? if she were but delivered from the hands of the english, safe in the gentler keeping of the church, there would be time to think of everything, even to make her peace with her voices who would surely understand if, for the saving of her life, and out of terror for the dreadful fire, she abandoned them for a moment. she had disobeyed them at beaurevoir and they had forgiven. one faltering word now, a mark of her hand upon a paper, and she would be safe--even if still all they said was true; and if indeed and in fact, after buoying her up from day to day, such a dreadful thing might be as that they were not true---- the traitor was at her ear whispering; the cold chill of disappointment, of disillusion, of sickening doubt was in her heart. then there came into the prison a better man than l'oyseleur, jean beaupère, her questioner in the public trial, the representative of all these notabilities. what he said was spoken with authority and he came in all seriousness, may not we believe in some kindness too? to warn her. he came with permission of the bishop, no stealthy visitor. "jean beaupère entered alone into the prison of the said jeanne by permission, and advertised her that she would straightway be taken to the scaffold to be addressed (_pour y être preschée_), and that if she was a good christian she would on that scaffold place all her acts and words under the jurisdiction of our holy mother, the church, and specially of the ecclesiastical judges." "accept the woman's dress and do all that you are told," her other adviser had said. when the car that was to convey her came to the prison doors, l'oyseleur accompanied her, no doubt with a show of supporting her to the end. what a change from the confined and gloomy prison to the dazzling clearness of the may daylight, the air, the murmuring streets, the throng that gazed and shouted and followed! life that had run so low in the prisoner's veins must have bounded up within her in response to that sunshine and open sky, and movement and sound of existence--summer weather too, and everything softened in the medium of that soft breathing air, sound and sensation and hope. she had been three months in her prison. as the charrette rumbled along the roughly paved streets drawing all those crowds after it, a strange object appeared to jeanne's eyes in the midst of the market-place, a lofty scaffold with a stake upon it, rising over the heads of the crowd, the logs all arranged ready for the fire, a car waiting below with four horses, to bring hither the victim. the place of sacrifice was ready, everything arranged--for whom? for her? they drove her noisily past that she might see the preparations. it was all ready; and where then was the great victory, the deliverance in which she had believed? in front of the beautiful gates of st. ouen there was a different scene. that stately church was surrounded then by a churchyard, a great open space, which afforded room for a very large assembly. in this were erected two platforms, one facing the other. on the first sat the court of judges in number about forty, cardinal winchester having a place by the side of monseigneur de beauvais, the president, with several other bishops and dignified ecclesiastics. opposite, on the other platform, were a pulpit and a place for the accused, to which jeanne was conducted by massieu, who never left her, and l'oyseleur, who kept as near as he could, the rest of the platform being immediately covered by lawyers, doctors, all the camp followers, so to speak, of the black army, who could find footing there. jeanne was in her usual male dress, the doublet and hose, with her short-clipped hair--no doubt looking like a slim boy among all this dark crowd of men. the people swayed like a sea all about and around--the throng which had gathered in her progress through the streets pushing out the crowd already assembled with a movement like the waves of the sea. every step of the trial all through had been attended by preaching, by discourses and reasoning and admonishments, charitable and otherwise. now she was to be "preached" for the last time. it was doctor guillaume Érard who ascended the pulpit, a great preacher, one whom the "copious multitude" ran after and were eager to hear. he himself had not been disposed to accept this office, but no doubt, set up there on that height before the eyes of all the people, he thought of his own reputation, and of the great audience, and winchester the more than king, the great english prince, the wealthiest and most influential of men. the preacher took his text from a verse in st. john's gospel: "a branch cannot bear fruit except it remain in the vine." the centre circle containing the two platforms was surrounded by a close ring of english soldiers, understanding none of it, and anxious only that the witch should be condemned. it was in this strange and crowded scene that the sermon which was long and eloquent began. when it was half over, in one of his fine periods admired by all the people, the preacher, after heaping every reproach upon the head of jeanne, suddenly turned to apostrophise the house of france, and the head of that house, "charles who calls himself king." "he has," cried the preacher, stimulated no doubt by the eye of winchester upon him, "adhered, like a schismatic and heretical person as he is, to the words and acts of a useless woman, disgraced and full of dishonour; and not he only, but the clergy who are under his sway, and the nobility. this guilt is thine, jeanne, and to thee i say that thy king is a schismatic and a heretic." in the full flood of his oratory the preacher was arrested here by that clear voice that had so often made itself heard through the tumult of battle. jeanne could bear much, but not this. she was used to abuse in her own person, but all her spirit came back at this assault on her king. and interruption to a sermon has always a dramatic and startling effect, but when that voice arose now, when the startled speaker stopped, and every dulled attention revived, it is easy to imagine what a stir, what a wonderful, sudden sensation must have arisen in the midst of the crowd. "by my faith, sire," cried jeanne, "saving your respect, i swear upon my life that my king is the most noble christian of all christians, that he is not what you say." the sermon, however, was resumed after this interruption. and finally the preacher turned to jeanne, who had subsided from that start of animation, and was again the subdued and silent prisoner, her heart overwhelmed with many heavy thoughts. "here," said Èrard, "are my lords the judges who have so often summoned and required of you to submit your acts and words to our holy mother the church; because in these acts and words there are many things which it seemed to the clergy were not good either to say or to sustain." to which she replied (we quote again from the formal records), "i will answer you." and as to her submission to the church she said: "i have told them on that point that all the works which i have done and said may be sent to rome, to our holy father the pope, to whom, but to god first, i refer in all. and as for my acts and words i have done all on the part of god." she also said that no one was to blame for her acts and words, neither her king nor any other; and if there were faults in them, the blame was hers and no other's. asked, if she would renounce all that she had done wrong; answered, "i refer everything to god and to our holy father the pope." it was then told her that this was not enough, and that our holy father was too far off; also that the ordinaries were judges each in his diocese, and it was necessary that she should submit to our mother the holy church, and that she should confess that the clergy and officers of the church had a right to determine in her case. and of this she was admonished three times. after this the bishop began to read the definitive sentence. when a great part of it was read, jeanne began to speak and said that she would hold to all that the judges and the church said, and obey in everything their ordinance and will. and there in the presence of the above-named and of the great multitude assembled she made her abjuration in the manner that follows: and she said several times that since the church said her apparitions and revelations should not be sustained or believed, she would not sustain them; but in everything submit to the judges and to our mother the holy church. ***** in this strange, brief, subdued manner is the formal record made. manchon writes on his margin: _at the end of the sentence jeanne, fearing the fire, said she would obey the church_. even into the bare legal document there comes a hush as of awe, the one voice responding in the silence of the crowd, with a quiver in it; the very animation of the previous outcry enhancing the effect of this low and faltering submission, _timens igneum_--in fear of the fire. the more familiar record, and the recollections long after of those eye-witnesses, give us another version of the scene. Èrard, from his pulpit, read the form of abjuration prepared. but jeanne answered that she did not know what abjuration meant, and the preacher called upon massieu to explain it to her. "and he" (we quote from his own deposition), "after excusing himself, said that it meant this: that if she opposed the said articles she would be burnt; but he advised her to refer it to the church universal whether she should abjure or not. which thing she did, saying to Èrard, 'i refer to the church universal whether i should abjure or not.' to which Èrard answered, 'you shall abjure at once or you will be burnt.' massieu gives further particulars in another part of the rehabilitation process. Èrard, he says, asked what he was saying to the prisoner, and he answered that she would sign if the schedule was read to her; but jeanne said that she could not write, and then added that she wished it to be decided by the church, and ought not to sign unless that was done: and also required that she should be placed in the custody of the church, and freed from the hands of the english. the same Èrard answered that there had been ample delay, and that if she did not sign at once she should be burned, and forbade massieu to say any more." meanwhile many cries and entreaties came, as far as they dared, from the crowd. some one, in the excitement of the moment, would seem to have promised that she should be transferred to the custody of the church. "jeanne, why will you die? jeanne, will you not save yourself?" was called to her by many a bystander. the girl stood fast, but her heart failed her in this terrible climax of her suffering. once she called out over their heads, "all that i did was done for good, and it was well to do it:"--her last cry. then she would seem to have recovered in some measure her composure. probably her agitated brain was unable to understand the formula of recantation which was read to her amid all the increasing noises of the crowd, but she had a vague faith in the condition she had herself stated, that the paper should be submitted to the church, and that she should at once be transferred to an ecclesiastical prison. other suggestions are made, namely, that it was a very short document upon which she hastily in her despair made a cross, and that it was a long one, consisting of several pages, which was shown afterwards with _jehanne_ scribbled underneath. "in fact," says massieu, "she abjured and made a cross with the pen which the witness handed to her:" he, if any one must have known exactly what happened. no doubt all this would be imperfectly heard on the other platform. but the agitation must have been visible enough, the spectators closing round the young figure in the midst, the pleadings, the appeals, seconded by many a cry from the crowd. such a small matter to risk her young life for! "sign, sign; why should you die!" cauchon had gone on reading the sentence, half through the struggle. he had two sentences all ready, two courses of procedure, cut and dry: either to absolve her--which meant condemning her to perpetual imprisonment on bread and water: or to carry her off at once to the stake. the english were impatient for the last. it is a horrible thing to acknowledge, but it is evidently true. they had never wished to play with her as a cat with a mouse, as her learned countrymen had done those three months past; they had desired at once to get her out of their way. but the idea of her perpetual imprisonment did not please them at all; the risk of such a prisoner was more than they chose to encounter. nevertheless there are some things a churchman cannot do. when it was seen that jeanne had yielded, that she had put her mark to something on a paper flourished forth in somebody's hand in the sunshine, the bishop turned to the cardinal on his right hand, and asked what he was to do? there was but one answer possible to winchester, had he been english and jeanne's natural enemy ten times over. to admit her to penitence was the only practicable way. here arises a great question, already referred to, as to what it was that jeanne signed. she could not write, she could only put her cross on the document hurriedly read to her, amid the confusion and the murmurs of the crowd. the _cédule_ to which she put her sign "contained eight lines:" what she is reported to have signed is three pages long, and full of detail. massieu declares certainly that this (the abjuration published) was not the one of which mention is made in the trial; "for the one read by the deponent and signed by the said jeanne was quite different." this would seem to prove the fact that a much enlarged version of an act of abjuration, in its original form strictly confined to the necessary points and expressed in few words--was afterwards published as that bearing the sign of the penitent. her own admissions, as will be seen, are of the scantiest, scarcely enough to tell as an abjuration at all. when the shouts of the people proved that this great step had been taken, and winchester had signified his conviction that the penitence must be accepted, cauchon replaced one sentence by another and pronounced the prisoner's fate. "seeing that thou hast returned to the bosom of the church by the grace of god, and hast revoked and denied all thy errors, we, the bishop aforesaid, commit thee to perpetual prison, with the bread of sorrow and water of anguish, to purge thy soul by solitary penitence." whether the words reached her over all those crowding heads, or whether they were reported to her, or what jeanne expected to follow standing there upon her platform, more shamed and downcast than through all her trial, no one can tell. there seems even to have been a moment of uncertainty among the officials. some of them congratulated jeanne, l'oyseleur for one pressing forward to say, "you have done a good day's work, you have saved your soul." she herself, excited and anxious, desired eagerly to know where she was not to go. she would seem for the moment to have accepted the fact of her perpetual imprisonment with complete faith and content. it meant to her instant relief from her hideous prison-house, and she could not contain her impatience and eagerness. "people of the church--_gens de' Église_--lead me to your prison; let me be no longer in the hands of the english," she cried with feverish anxiety. to gain this point, to escape the irons and the dreadful durance which she had suffered so long, was all her thought. the men about her could not answer this appeal. some of them no doubt knew very well what the answer must be, and some must have seen the angry looks and stern exclamation which warwick addressed to cauchon, deceived like jeanne by this unsatisfactory conclusion, and the stir among the soldiers at sight of his displeasure. but perhaps flurried by all that had happened, perhaps hoping to strengthen the victim in her moment of hope, some of them hurried across to the bishop to ask where they were to take her. one of these was pierre miger, friar of longueville. where was she to be taken? in winchester's hearing, perhaps in warwick's, what a question to put! an english bishop, says this witness turned to him angrily and said to cauchon that this was a "fauteur de ladite jeanne," "_this fellow was also one of them_." miger excused himself in alarm as st. peter did before him, and cauchon turning upon him commanded grimly that she should be taken back whence she came. thus ended the last hope of the maid. her abjuration, which by no just title could be called an abjuration, had been in vain. jeanne was taken back, dismayed and miserable, to the prison which she had perilled her soul to escape. it was very little she had done in reality, and at that moment she could scarcely yet have realised what she had done, except that it had failed. at the end of so long and bitter a struggle she had thrown down her arms--but for what? to escape those horrible gaolers and that accursed room with its ear of dionysius, its judas hole in the wall. the bitterness of the going back was beyond words. we hear of no word that she said when she realised the hideous fact that nothing was changed for her; the bitter waters closed over her head. again the chains to be locked and double locked that bound her to her dreadful bed, again the presence of those men who must have been all the more odious to her from the momentary hope that she had got free from them for ever. the same afternoon the vicar-inquisitor, who had never been hard upon her, accompanied by nicole midi, by the young seraphic doctor, courcelles, and l'oyseleur, along with various other ecclesiastical persons, visited her prison. the inquisitor congratulated and almost blessed her, sermonising as usual, but briefly and not ungently, though with a word of warning that should she change her mind and return to her evil ways there would be no further place for repentance. as a return for the mercy and clemency of the church, he required her immediately to put on the female dress which his attendants had brought. there is something almost ludicrous, could we forget the tragedy to follow, in the bundle of humble clothing brought by such exalted personages, with the solemnity which became a thing upon which hung the issues of life or death. jeanne replied with the humility of a broken spirit. "i take them willingly," she said, "and in everything i will obey the church." then silence closed upon her, the horrible silence of the prison, full of hidden listeners and of watching eyes. meantime there was great discontent and strife of tongues outside. it was said that many even of the doctors who condemned her would fain have seen jeanne removed to some less dangerous prison: but monseigneur de beauvais had to hold head against the great english authorities who were out of all patience, fearing that the witch might still slip through their fingers and by her spells and incantations make the heart of the troops melt once more within them. if the mind of the church had been as charitable as it professed to be, i doubt if all the power of rome could have got the maid now out of the english grip. they were exasperated, and felt that they too, as well as the prisoner, had been played with. but the bishop had good hope in his mind, still to be able to content his patrons. jeanne had abjured, it was true, but the more he inquired into that act, the less secure he must have felt about it. and she might relapse; and if she relapsed there would be no longer any place for repentance. and it is evident that his confidence in the power of the clothes was boundless. in any case a few days more would make all clear. they did not have many days to wait. there are two, to all appearance, well-authenticated stories of the cause of jeanne's "relapse." one account is given by frère isambard, whom she told in the presence of several others, that she had been assaulted in her cell by a _millourt anglois_, and barbarously used, and in self-defence had resumed again the man's dress which had been left in her cell. the story of massieu is different: to him jeanne explained that when she asked to be released from her bed on the morning of trinity sunday, her guards took away her female dress which she was wearing, and emptied the sack containing the other upon her bed. she appealed to them, reminding them that these were forbidden to her; but got no answer except a brutal order to get up. it is very probable that both stories are true. frère isambard found her weeping and agitated, and nothing is more probable than this was the occasion on which warwick heard her cries, and interfered to save her. massieu's version, of which he is certain, was communicated to him a day or two after when they happened to be alone together. it was on the thursday before trinity sunday that she put on the female dress, but it would seem that rumours on the subject of a relapse had begun to spread even before the sunday on which that event happened: and beaupère and midi were sent by the bishop to investigate. but they were very ill-received in the castle, sworn at by the guards, and forced to go back without seeing jeanne, there being as yet, it appeared, nothing to see. on the morning of the monday, however, the rumours arose with greater force; and no doubt secret messages must have informed the bishop that the hoped-for relapse had taken place. he set out himself accordingly, accompanied by the vicar-inquisitor and attended by eight of the familiar names so often quoted, triumphant, important, no doubt with much show of pompous solemnity, to find out for himself. the castle was all in excitement, report and gossip already busy with the new event so trifling, so all-important. there was no idea now of turning back the visitors. the prison doors were eagerly thrown open, and there indeed once more, in her tunic and hose, was jeanne, whom they had left four days before painfully contemplating the garments they had given her, and humbly promising obedience. the men burst in upon her with an outcry of astonishment. what she had changed her dress again? "yes," she replied, "she had resumed the costume of a man." there was no triumph in what she said, but rather a subdued tone of sadness, as of one who in the most desperate strait has taken her resolution and must abide by it, whether she likes it or not. she was asked why she had resumed that dress, and who had made her do so. there was no question of anything else at first. the tunic and _gippon_ were at once enough to decide her fate. she answered that she had done it by her own will, no one influencing her to do so; and that she preferred the dress of a man to that of a woman. she was reminded that she had promised and sworn not to resume the dress of a man. she answered that she was not aware she had ever sworn or had made any such oath. she was asked why she had done it. she answered that it was more lawful to wear a man's dress among men, than the dress of a woman; and also that she had taken it back because the promise made to her had not been kept, that she should hear the mass, and receive her saviour, and be delivered from her irons. she was asked if she had not abjured that dress, and sworn not to resume it. she answered that she would rather die than be left in irons; but if they would allow her to go to mass and take her out of her irons and put her in a gracious prison, and a woman with her, she would be good, and do whatever the church pleased. she was then asked suddenly, as if there had been no condemnation of her voices as lying fables, whether since thursday she had heard them again. to this she answered, recovering a little courage, "yes." she was asked what they said to her; she answered that they said god had made known to her by st. catherine and st. margaret the great pity there was of the treason to which she had consented by making abjuration and revocation in order to save her life: and that she had earned damnation for herself to save her life. also that before thursday her voices had told her that she should do what she did that day, that on the scaffold they had told her to answer the preachers boldly, and that this preacher whom she called a false preacher had accused her of many things she never did. she also added that if she said god had not sent her she would damn herself, for true it was that god had sent her. also that her voices had told her since, that she had done a great sin in confessing that she had sinned; but that for fear of the fire she had said that which she had said. she was asked (all over again) if she believed that these voices were those of st. catherine and st. margaret. she answered, yes, they were so; and from god. and as for what had been said to her on the scaffold that she had spoken lies and boasted concerning st. catherine and st. margaret, she had not intended any such thing. also she said that she never intended to deny her apparitions, or to say that they were not st. catherine and st. margaret. all that she had done was in fear of the fire, and she had denied nothing but what was contrary to truth; and she said that she would like better to make her penitence all at one time--that is to say, in dying, than to endure a long penitence in prison. also that she had never done anything against god or the faith whatever they might have made her say; and that for what was in the schedule of the abjuration she did not know what it was. also she said that she never intended to revoke anything so long as it pleased our lord. at the end she said that if her judges would have her do so, she might put on again her female dress; but for the rest she would do no more. "what need we any further witness; for we ourselves have heard of his own mouth." jeanne's protracted, broken, yet continuous apology and defence, overawed her judges; they do not seem to have interrupted it with questions. it was enough and more than enough. she had relapsed; the end of all things had come, the will of her enemies could now be accomplished. no one could say she had not had full justice done her; every formality had been fulfilled, every lingering formula carried out. now there was but one thing before her, whose sad young voice with many pauses thus sighed forth its last utterance; and for her judges, one last spectacle to prepare, and the work to complete which it had taken them three long months to do. chapter xviii -- the sacrifice. may , . it is not necessary to be a good man in order to divine what in certain circumstances a good and pure spirit will do. the bishop of beauvais had entertained no doubt as to what would happen. he knew exactly, with a perspicuity creditable to his perceptions at least, that, notwithstanding the effect which his theatrical _mise en scène_ had produced upon the imagination of jeanne, no power in heaven or earth would induce that young soul to content itself with a lie. he knew it, though lies were his daily bread; the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. he had bidden his english patrons to wait a little, and now his predictions were triumphantly fulfilled. it is hard to believe of any man that on such a certainty he could have calculated and laid his devilish plans; but there would seem to have existed in the mediæval churchman a certain horrible thirst for the blood of a relapsed heretic which was peculiar to their age and profession, and which no better principle in their own minds could subdue. it was their appetite, their delight of sensation, in distinction from the other appetites perhaps scarcely less cruel which other men indulged with no such horrified denunciation from the rest of the world. others, it is evident, shared with cauchon that sharp sensation of dreadful pleasure in finding her out; young courcelles, so modest and unassuming and so learned, among the rest; not l'oyseleur, it appears by the sequel. that judas, like the greater traitor, was struck to the heart; but the less bad man who had only persecuted, not betrayed, stood high in superior virtue, and only rejoiced that at last the victim was ready to drop into the flames which had been so carefully prepared. the next morning, tuesday after trinity sunday, the witnesses hurried with their news to the quickly summoned assembly in the chapel of the archbishop's house; thirty-three of the judges, having been hastily called together, were there to hear. jeanne had relapsed; the sinner escaped had been re-caught; and what was now to be done? one by one each man rose again and gave his verdict. once more egidius, abbot of fécamp, led the tide of opinion. there was but one thing to be done: to give her up to the secular justice, "praying that she might be gently dealt with." man after man added his voice "to that of abbot of fécamp aforesaid"--that she might be gently dealt with! not one of them could be under any doubt what gentle meaning would be in the execution; but apparently the words were of some strange use in salving their consciences. the decree was pronounced at once without further formalities. in point of view of the law, there should have followed another trial, more evidence, pleadings, and admonitions. we may be thankful to monseigneur de beauvais that he now defied law, and no longer prolonged the useless ceremonials of that mockery of justice. it is said that in coming out of the prison, through the courtyard full of englishmen, where warwick was in waiting to hear what news, the bishop greeted them with all the satisfaction of success, laughing and bidding them "make good cheer, the thing is done." in the same spirit of satisfaction was the rapid action of the further proceedings. on tuesday she was condemned, summoned on wednesday morning at eight 'clock to the old market of rouen to hear her sentence, and there, without even that formality, the penalty was at once carried out. no time, certainly, was lost in this last stage. all the interest of the heart-rending tragedy now turns to the prison where jeanne woke in the early morning without, as yet, any knowledge of her fate. it must be remembered that the details of this wonderful scene, which we have in abundance, are taken from reports made twenty years after by eye-witnesses indeed, but men to whom by that time it had become the only policy to represent jeanne in the brightest colours, and themselves as her sympathetic friends. there is no doubt that so remarkable an occurrence as her martyrdom must have made a deep impression on the minds of all those who were in any way actors in or spectators of that wonderful scene. and every word of all these different reports is on oath; but notwithstanding, a touch of unconscious colour, a more favourable sentiment, influenced by the feeling of later days, may well have crept in. with this warning we may yet accept these depositions as trustworthy, all the more for the atmosphere of truth, perfectly realistic, and in no way idealised, which is in every description of the great catastrophe; in which jeanne figures as no supernatural heroine, but as a terrified, tormented, and often trembling girl. on the fatal morning very early, brother martin l'advenu appeared in the cell of the maid. he had a mingled tale to tell--first "to announce to her her approaching death, and to lead her to true contrition and penitence; and also to hear her confession, which the said l'advenu did very carefully and charitably." jeanne on her part received the news with no conventional resignation or calm. was it possible that she had been deceived and really hoped for mercy? she began to weep and to cry at the sudden stroke of fate. notwithstanding the solemnity of her last declaration, that she would rather bear her punishment all at once than to endure the long punishment of her prison, her heart failed before the imminent stake, the immediate martyrdom. she cried out to heaven and earth: "my body, which has never been corrupted, must it be burned to ashes to-day!" no one but jeanne knew at what cost she had kept her perfect purity; was it good for nothing but to be burned, that young body not nineteen years old? "ah," she said, "i would rather be beheaded seven times than burned! i appeal to god against all these great wrongs they do me." but after a while the passion wore itself out, the child's outburst was stilled; calming herself, she knelt down and made her confession to the compassionate friar, then asked for the sacrament, to "receive her saviour" as she had so often prayed and entreated before. it would appear that this had not been within friar martin's commission. he sent to ask the bishop's leave, and it was granted "anything she asked for"--as they give whatever he may wish to eat to a condemned convict. but the host was brought into the prison without ceremony, without accompanying candles or vestment for the priest. there are always some things which are insupportable to a man. brother martin could bear the sight of the girl's anguish, but not to administer to her a diminished rite. he sent again to demand what was needful, out of respect for the holy sacrament and the present victim. and his request had come, it would seem, to some canon or person in authority whose heart had been touched by the wonderful maid in her long martyrdom. this nameless sympathiser did all that a man could do. he sent the host with a train of priests chanting litanies as they went through the streets, with torches burning in the pure early daylight; some of these exhorted the people who knelt as they passed, to pray for her. she must have heard in her prison the sound of the bell, the chant of the clergy, the pause of awe, and then the rising, irregular murmur of the voices, that sound of prayer never to be mistaken. pray for her! at last the city was touched to its heart. there is no sign that it had been sympathetic to jeanne before; it was half english or more. but she was about to die: she had stood bravely against the world and answered like a true maid; and they had now seen her led through their streets, a girl just nineteen. the popular imagination at least was subjugated for the time. thus jeanne for the first time, after all the feasts were over, received at last "her saviour" as she said, the consecration of that rite which he himself had instituted before he died. but she was not permitted to receive it in simplicity and silence as becomes the sacred commemoration. all the time she was still _preschée_ and admonished by the men about her. a few days after her death the bishop and his followers assembled, and set down in evidence their different parts in that scene. how far it is to be relied upon, it is difficult to say. the speakers did not testify under oath; there is no formal warrant for their truth, and an anxious attempt to prove her change of mind is evident throughout; still there seem elements of truth in it, and a certain glimpse is afforded of jeanne in the depths, when hope and strength were gone. the general burden of their testimony is that she sadly allowed herself to have been deceived, as to the liberation for which all along she had hoped. peter morice, often already mentioned, importuning her on the subject of the spirits, endeavouring to get from her an admission that she had not seen them at all, and was herself a deceiver: or if not that, at least that they were evil spirits, not good,--drew from her the impatient exclamation: "be they good spirits, or be they evil, they appeared to me." even in the act of giving her her last communion, brother martin paused with the consecrated host in his hands. "do you believe," he said, "that this is the body of christ?" jeanne answered: "yes, and he alone can free me; i pray you to administer." then this brother said to jeanne: "do you believe as fully in your voices?" jeanne answered: "i believe in god alone and not in the voices, which have deceived me." l'advenu himself, however, does not give this deposition, but another of the persons present, le camus, who did not live to revise his testimony at the rehabilitation. the rite being over, the bishop himself bustled in with an air of satisfaction, rubbing his hands, one may suppose from his tone. "so, jeanne," he said, "you have always told us that your 'voices' said you were to be delivered, and you see now they have deceived you. tell us the truth at last." then jeanne answered: "truly i see that they have deceived me." the report is cauchon's, and therefore little to be trusted; but the sad reply is at least not unlike the sentiment that, even in records more trustworthy, seems to have breathed forth in her. the other spectators all report another portion of this conversation. "bishop, it is by you i die," are the words with which the maid is said to have met him. "oh jeanne, have patience," he replied. "it is because you did not keep your promise." "if you had kept yours, and sent me to the prison of the church, and put me in gentle hands, it would not have happened," she replied. "i appeal from you to god." several of the attendants, also according to the bishop's account, heard from her the same sad words: "they have deceived me"; and there seems no reason why we should not believe it. her mind was weighed down under this dreadful unaccountable fact. she was forsaken--as a greater sufferer was; and a horror of darkness had closed around her. "ah, sieur pierre," she said to morice, "where shall i be to-night?" the man had condemned her as a relapsed heretic, a daughter of perdition. he had just suggested to her that her angels must have been devils. nevertheless perhaps his face was not unkindly, he had not meant all the harm he did. he ought to have answered, "in hell, with the spirits you have trusted"; that would have been the only logical response. what he did say was very different. "have you not good faith in the lord?" said the judge who had doomed her. amazing and notable speech! they had sentenced her to be burned for blasphemy as an envoy of the devil; they believed in fact that she was the child of god, and going straight in that flame to the skies. jeanne, with the sound, clear head and the "sane mind" to which all of them testified, did she perceive, even at that dreadful moment, the inconceivable contradiction? "ah," she said, "yes, god helping me, i shall be in paradise." there is one point in the equivocal report which commends itself to the mind, which several of these men unite in, but which was carefully not repeated at the rehabilitation: and this was that jeanne allowed "as if it had been a thing of small importance," that her story of the angel bearing the crown at chinon was a romance which she neither expected nor intended to be believed. for this we have to thank l'oyseleur and the rest of the reverend ghouls assembled on that dreadful morning in the prison. jeanne was then dressed, for her last appearance in this world, in the long white garment of penitence, the robe of sacrifice: and the mitre was placed on her head which was worn by the victims of the holy office. she was led for the last time down the echoing stair to the crowded courtyard where her "chariot" awaited her. it was her confessor's part to remain by her side, and frère isambard and massieu, the officer, both her friends, were also with her. it is said that l'oyseleur rushed forward at this moment, either to accompany her also, or, as many say, to fling himself at her feet and implore her pardon. he was hustled aside by the crowd and would have been killed by the english, it is said, but for warwick. the bystanders would seem to have been seized with a sudden disgust for all the priests about, thinking them jeanne's friends, the historians insinuate--more likely in scorn and horror of their treachery. and then the melancholy procession set forth. the streets were overflowing as was natural, crowded in every part: eight hundred english soldiers surrounded and followed the cortège, as the car rumbled along over the rough stones. not yet had the maid attained to the calm of consent. she looked wildly about her at all the high houses and windows crowded with gazers, and at the throngs that gaped and gazed upon her on every side. in the midst of the consolations of the confessor who poured pious words in her ears, other words, the plaints of a wondering despair fell from her lips, "rouen! rouen!" she said; "am i to die here?" it seemed incredible to her, impossible. she looked about still for some sign of disturbance, some rising among the crowd, some cry of "france! france!" or glitter of mail. nothing: but the crowds ever gazing, murmuring at her, the soldiers roughly clearing the way, the rude chariot rumbling on. "rouen, rouen! i fear that you shall yet suffer because of this," she murmured in her distraction, amid her moanings and tears. at last the procession came to the old market, an open space encumbered with three erections--one reaching up so high that the shadow of it seemed to touch the sky, the horrid stake with wood piled up in an enormous mass, made so high, it is said, in order that the executioner himself might not reach it to give a merciful blow, to secure unconsciousness before the flames could touch the trembling form. two platforms were raised opposite, one furnished with chairs and benches for winchester and his court, another for the judges, with the civil officers of rouen who ought to have pronounced sentence in their turn. without this form the execution was illegal: what did it matter? no sentence at all was read to her, not even the ecclesiastical one which was illegal also. she was probably placed first on the same platform with her judges, where there was a pulpit from which she was to be _preschée_ for the last time. of all jeanne's sufferings this could scarcely be the least, that she was always _preschée_, lectured, addressed, sermonised through every painful step of her career. the moan was still unsilenced on her lips, and her distracted soul scarcely yet freed from the sick thought of a possible deliverance, when the everlasting strain of admonishment, and re-enumeration of her errors, again penetrated the hum of the crowd. the preacher was nicolas midi, one of the eloquent members of that dark fraternity; and his text was in st. paul's words: "if any of the members suffer, all the other members suffer with it." jeanne was a rotten branch which had to be cut off from the church for the good of her own soul, and that the church might not suffer by her sin; a heretic, a blasphemer, an impostor, giving forth false fables at one time, and making a false penitence the next. it is very unlikely that she heard anything of that flood of invective. at the end of the sermon the preacher bade her "go in peace." even then, however, the fountain of abuse did not cease. the bishop himself rose, and once more by way of exhorting her to a final repentance, heaped ill names upon her helpless head. the narrative shows that the prisoner, now arrived at the last point in her career, paid no attention to the tirade levelled at her from the president's place. "she knelt down on the platform showing great signs and appearance of contrition, so that all those who looked upon her wept. she called on her knees upon the blessed trinity, the blessed glorious virgin mary, and all the blessed saints of paradise." she called specially--was it with still a return towards the hoped for miracle? was it with the instinctive cry towards an old and faithful friend?--"st. michael, st. michael, st. michael, help!" there would seem to have been a moment in which the hush and silence of a great crowd surrounded this wonderful stage, where was that white figure on her knees, praying, speaking--sometimes to god, sometimes to the saintly unseen companions of her life, sometimes in broken phrases to those about her. she asked the priests, thronging all round, those who had churches, to say a mass for her soul. she asked all whom she might have offended to forgive her. through her tears and prayers broke again and again the sorrowful cry of "rouen, rouen! is it here truly that i must die?" no reason is given for the special pang that seems to echo in this cry. jeanne had once planned a campaign in normandy with alençon. had there been perhaps some special hope which made this conclusion all the more bitter, of setting up in the norman capital her standard and that of her king? there have been martyrs more exalted above the circumstances of their fate than jeanne. she was no abstract heroine. she felt every pang to the depth of her natural, spontaneous being, and the humiliation and the deep distress of having been abandoned in the sight of men, perhaps the profoundest pang of which nature is capable. "he trusted in god that he would deliver him: let him deliver him if he will have him." that which her lord had borne, the little sister had now to bear. she called upon the saints, but they did not answer. she was shamed in the sight of men. but as she knelt there weeping, the bishop's evil voice scarcely silenced, the soldiers waiting impatient--the entire crowd, touched to its heart with one impulse, broke into a burst of weeping and lamentation, "_à chaudes larmes_" according to the graphic french expression. they wept hot tears as in the keen personal pang of sorrow and fellow-feeling and impotence to help. winchester--withdrawn high on his platform, ostentatiously separated from any share in it, a spectator merely--wept; and the judges wept. the bishop of boulogne was overwhelmed with emotion, iron tears flowed down the accursed cauchon's cheeks. the very world stood still to see that white form of purity, and valour, and faith, the maid, not shouting triumphant on the height of victory, but kneeling, weeping, on the verge of torture. human nature could not bear this long. a hoarse cry burst forth: "will you keep us here all day; must we dine here?" a voice perhaps of unendurable pain that simulated cruelty. and then the executioner stepped in and seized the victim. it has been said that her stake was set so high, that there might be no chance of a merciful blow, or of strangulation to spare the victim the atrocities of the fire; perhaps, let us hope, it was rather that the ascending smoke might suffocate her before the flame could reach her: the fifteenth century would naturally accept the most cruel explanation. there was a writing set over the little platform which gave footing to the attendants below the stake, upon which were written the following words: jeanne called the maid, liar, abuser of the people, soothsayer, blasphemer of god, pernicious, superstitious, idolatrous, cruel, dissolute, invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic, heretic. this was how her countrymen in the name of law and justice and religion branded the maid of france--one half of her countrymen: the other half, silent, speaking no word, looking on. before she began to ascend the stake, jeanne, rising from her knees, asked for a cross. no place so fit for that emblem ever was: but no cross was to be found. one of the english soldiers who kept the way seized a stick from some one by, broke it across his knee in unequal parts, and bound them hurriedly together; so, in the legend and in all the pictures, when mary of nazareth was led to her espousals, one of her disappointed suitors broke his wand. the cross was rough with its broken edges which jeanne accepted from her enemy, and carried, pressing it against her bosom. one would rather have that rude cross to preserve as a sacred thing, than the highest effort of art in gold and silver. this was her ornament and consolation as she trod the few remaining steps and mounted the pile of the faggots to her place high over all that sea of heads. when she was bound securely to her stake, she asked again for a cross, a cross blessed and sacred from a church, to be held before her as long as her eyes could see. frère isambard and massieu, following her closely still, sent to the nearest church, and procured probably some cross which was used for processional purposes on a long staff which could be held up before her. the friar stood upon the faggots holding it up, and calling out broken words of encouragement so long that jeanne bade him withdraw, lest the fire should catch his robes. and so at last, as the flames began to rise, she was left alone, the good brother always at the foot of the pile, painfully holding up with uplifted arms the cross that she might still see it, the soldiers crowding, lit up with the red glow of the fire, the horrified, trembling crowd like an agitated sea around. the wild flames rose and fell in sinister gleams and flashes, the smoke blew upwards, by times enveloping that white maid standing out alone against a sky still blue and sweet with may--pandemonium underneath, but heaven above. then suddenly there came a great cry from among the black fumes that began to reach the clouds: "my voices were of god! they have not deceived me!" she had seen and recognised it at last. here it was, the miracle: the great victory that had been promised--though not with clang of swords and triumph of rescuing knights, and "st. denis for france!"--but by the sole hand of god, a victory and triumph for all time, for her country a crown of glory and ineffable shame. thus died the maid of france--with "jesus, jesus," on her lips--till the merciful smoke breathing upwards choked that voice in her throat; and one who was like unto the son of god, who was with her in the fire, wiped all memory of the bitter cross, wavering uplifted through the air in the good monk's trembling hands--from eyes which opened bright upon the light and peace of that paradise of which she had so long thought and dreamed. chapter xviii -- after. the natural burst of remorse which follows such an event is well known in history; and is as certainly to be expected as the details of the great catastrophe itself. we feel almost as if, had there not been fact and evidence for such a revulsion of feeling, it must have been recorded all the same, being inevitable. the executioner, perhaps the most innocent of all, sought out frère isambard, and confessed to him in an anguish of remorse fearing never to be pardoned for what he had done. an englishman who had sworn to add a faggot to the flames in which the witch should be burned, when he rushed forward to keep his word was seized with sudden compunction--believed that he saw a white dove flutter forth from amid the smoke over her head, and, almost fainting at the sight, had to be led by his comrades to the nearest tavern for refreshment, a life-like touch in which we recognise our countryman; but he too found his way that afternoon to frère isambard like the other. a horrible story is told by the _bourgeois de paris_, whose contemporary journal is one of the authorities for this period, that "the fire was drawn aside" in order that jeanne's form, with all its clothing burned away, should be visible by one last act of shameless insult to the crowd. the fifteenth century believed, as we have said, everything that is cruel and horrible, as indeed the vulgar mind does at all ages; but such brutal imaginings have seldom any truth to support them, and there is no such suggestion in the actual record. isambard and massieu heard from one of the officials that when every other part of her body was destroyed the heart was found intact, but was, by the order of winchester, flung into the seine along with all the ashes of that sacrifice. it was wise no doubt that no relics should be kept. other details were murmured abroad amid the excited talk that followed this dreadful scene. "when she was enveloped by the smoke, she cried out for water, holy water, and called to st. michæl; then hung her head upon her breast and breathing forth the name of jesus, gently died." "being in the flame her voice never ceased repeating in a loud voice the holy name of jesus, and invoking without cease the saints of paradise, she gave up her spirit, bowing her head and saying the name of jesus in sign of the fervour of her faith." one of the canons of rouen, standing sobbing in the crowd, said to another: "would that my soul were in the same place where the soul of that woman is at this moment"; which indeed is not very different from the authorised saying of pierre morice in the prison. guillaume manchon, the reporter, he who wrote _superba responsio_ on his margin, and had written down every word of her long examination--his occupation for three months,--says that he "never wept so much for anything that happened to himself, and that for a whole month he could not recover his calm." this man adds a very characteristic touch, to wit, that "with part of the pay which he had for the trial, he bought a missal, that he might have a reason for praying for her." jean tressat, "secretary to the king of england" (whatever that office may have been), went home from the execution crying out, "we are all lost, for we have burned a saint." a priest, afterwards bishop, jean fabry, "did not believe that there was any man who could restrain his tears." the modern historians speak of the mockeries of the english, but none are visible in the record. indeed, the part of the english in it is extraordinarily diminished on investigation; they are the supposed inspirers of the whole proceedings; they are believed to be continually pushing on the inquisitors; still more, they are supposed to have bought all that large tribunal, the sixty or seventy judges, among whom were the most learned and esteemed doctors in france; but of none of this is there any proof given. that they were anxious to procure jeanne's condemnation and death, is very certain. not one among them believed in her sacred mission, almost all considered her a sorceress, the most dangerous of evil influences, a witch who had brought shame and loss to england by her incantations and evil spells. on that point there could be no doubt whatever. she alone had stopped the progress of the invaders, and broken the charm of their invariable success. but all that she had done had been in favour of charles, who made no attempt to serve or help her, and who had thwarted her plans, and hindered her work so long as it was possible to do so, even when she was performing miracles for his sake. and alençon, dunois, la hire, where were they and all the knights? two of them at least were at louvins, within a day's march, but never made a step to rescue her. we need not ask where were the statesmen and clergy on the french side, for they were unfeignedly glad to have the burden of condemning her taken from their hands. no one in her own country said a word or struck a blow for jeanne. as for the suborning of the university of paris _en masse_, and all its best members in particular, that is a general baseness in which it is impossible to believe. there is no appearance even of any particular pressure put upon the judges. jean de la fontaine disappeared, we are told, and no one ever knew what became of him: but it was from cauchon he fled. and nothing seems to have happened to the monks who attended the maid to the scaffold, nor to the others who sobbed about the pile. on the other side, the doctors who condemned her were in no way persecuted or troubled by the french authorities when the king came to his own. there was at the time a universal tacit consent in france to all that was done at rouen on the st of may, . one reason for this was not far to seek. we have perhaps already sufficiently dwelt upon it. it was that france was not france at that dolorous moment. it was no unanimous nation repulsing an invader. it was two at least, if not more countries, one of them frankly and sympathetically attaching itself to the invader, almost as nearly allied to him in blood, and more nearly by other bonds, than any tie existing between france and burgundy. this does not account for the hostile indifference of southern france and of the french monarch to jeanne, who had delivered them; but it accounts for the hostility of paris and the adjacent provinces, and normandy. she was as much against them as against the english, and the national sentiment to which she, a patriot before her age, appealed,--bidding not only the english go home, or fight and be vanquished, which was their only alternative--but the burgundians to be converted and to live in peace with their brothers,--did not exist. neither to burgundians, picards, or normans was the daughter of far champagne a fellow countrywoman. there was neither sympathy nor kindness in their hearts on that score. some were humane and full of pity for a simple woman in such terrible straits; but no more in paris than in rouen was the maid of orleans a native champion persecuted by the english; she was to both an enemy, a sorceress, putting their soldiers and themselves to shame. i have no desire to lessen our( ) guilt, whatever cruelty may have been practised by english hands against the heavenly maid. and much was practised--the iron cage, the chains, the brutal guards, the final stake, for which may god and also the world, forgive a crime fully and often confessed. but it was by french wits and french ingenuity that she was tortured for three months and betrayed to her death. a prisoner of war, yet taken and tried as a criminal, the first step in her downfall was a disgrace to two chivalrous nations; but the shame is greater upon those who sold than upon those who bought; and greatest of all upon those who did not move heaven and earth, nay, did not move a finger, to rescue. and indeed we have been the most penitent of all concerned; we have shrived ourselves by open confession and tears. we have quarrelled with our shakespeare on account of the maid, and do not know how we could have forgiven him, but for the notable and delightful discovery that it was not he after all, but another and a lesser hand that endeavoured to befoul her shining garments. france has never quarrelled with her voltaire for a much fouler and more intentional blasphemy. the most significant and the most curious after-scene, a pendant to the remorse and pity of so many of the humbler spectators, was the assembly held on the thursday after jeanne's death, how and when we are not told. it consisted of "nos judices antedicti," but neither is the place of meeting named, nor the person who presided. its sole testimonial is that the manuscript is in the same hand which has written the previous records: but whereas each page in that record was signed at the bottom by responsible notaries, manchon and his colleagues, no name whatever certifies this. seven men, doctors and persons of high importance, all judges on the trial, all concerned in that last scene in the prison, stand up and give their report of what happened there--part of which we have quoted--their object being to establish that jeanne at the last acknowledged herself to be deceived. according to their own showing it was exactly such an acknowledgment as our lord might have been supposed to make in the moment of his agony when the words of the psalm, "my god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me?" burst from his lips. there seems no reason that we can see, why this evidence should not be received as substantially true. the inference that any real recantation on jeanne's part was then made, is untrue, and not even asserted. she was deceived in respect to her deliverance, and felt it to the bottom of her heart. it was to her the bitterness of death. but the flames of her burning showed her the truth, and with her last breath she proclaimed her renewed conviction. the scene at the stake would lose something of its greatness without that momentary cloud which weighed down her troubled soul. twenty years after the martyrdom of jeanne, long after he had, according to her prophecy, regained paris and all that had been lost, it became a danger to the king of france that it should be possible to imagine that his kingdom had been recovered for him by means of sorcery; and accordingly a great new trial was appointed to revise the decisions of the old. in the same palace of the archbishop at rouen, which had witnessed so many scenes of the previous tragedy, the depositions of witnesses collected with the minutest care, and which it had taken a long time to gather from all quarters, were submitted for judgment, and a full and complete reversal of the condemnation was given. the _procès_ was a civil one, instituted (nominally) by the mother and brothers of jeanne, one of the latter being now a knight, pierre de lys, a gentleman of coat armour--against the heirs and representatives of cauchon, bishop of beauvais, and lemaître, the deputy inquisitor--with other persons chiefly concerned in the judgment. some of these men were dead, some, wisely, not to be found. the result was such a mass of testimony as put every incident of the life of the maid in the fullest light from her childhood to her death, and in consequence secured a triumphant and full acquittal of herself and her name from every reproach. this remarkable and indeed unique occurrence does not seem, however, to have roused any enthusiasm. perhaps france felt herself too guilty: perhaps the extraordinary calm of contemporary opinion which was still too near the catastrophe to see it fully: perhaps that difficulty in the diffusion of news which hindered the common knowledge of a trial--a thing too heavy to be blown upon the winds,--while it promulgated the legend, a thing so much more light to carry: may be the cause of this. but it is an extraordinary fact that jeanne's name remained in abeyance for many ages, and that only in this century has it come to any sort of glory, in the country of which jeanne is the first and greatest of patriots and champions, a country, too, to which national glory is more dear than daily bread. in the new and wonderful spring of life that succeeded the revolution of , the martyr of the fifteenth century came to light as by a revelation. the episode of the pucelle in michelet's _history of france_ touched the heart of the world, and remains one of the finest efforts of history and the most popular picture of the saint. and perhaps, though so much less important in point of art, the maiden work of another maiden of orleans--the little statue of jeanne, so pure, so simple, so spiritual, made by the princess marie of that house, the daughter of the race which the maid held in visionary love, and which thus only has ever attempted any return of that devotion--had its part in reawakening her name and memory. it fell again, however, after the great work of quicherat had finally given to the country the means of fully forming its opinion on the subject which fabre's translation, though unfortunately not literal and adorned with modern decorations, was calculated to render popular. a great crop of statues and some pictures not of any great artistic merit have since been dedicated to the memory of the maid: but yet the public enthusiasm has never risen above the tide mark of literary applause. there has been, however, a great movement of enthusiasm lately to gain for jeanne the honour of canonisation( ); but it seems to have failed, or at least to have sunk again for the moment into silence. perhaps these honours are out of date in our time. one of the most recent writers on the subject, m. henri blaze de bury, suggests that one reason which retards this final consecration is "england, certainly not a negligible quantity to a pope of our time." let no such illusion move any mind, french or ecclesiastical. canonisation means to us, i presume, and even to a great number of catholics, simply the highest honour that can be paid to a holy and spotless name. in that sense there is no distinction of nation, and the english as warmly as the french, both being guilty towards her, and before god on her account--would welcome all honour that could be paid to one who, more truly than any princess of the blood, is jeanne of france, the maid, alone in her lofty humility and valour, and in everlasting fragrance of modesty and youth. ( ) the writer must add that personally, as a scot, she has no right to use this pronoun. scotland is entirely guiltless of this crime. the scots were fighting on the side of france through all these wars, a little perhaps for love of france, but much more out of natural hostility to the english. yet at this time of day, except to state that fact, it is scarcely necessary to throw off the responsibility. the english side is now our side, though it was not so in the fifteenth century: and a writer of the english tongue must naturally desire that there should at least be fair play. ( ) i am informed, however, that she is already "venerable," not a very appropriate title--the same, i presume, as bienheureuse, which is prettier,--and may therefore be addressed by the faithful in prayer, though her rank is only, as it were, brevet rank, and her elevation incomplete. the maid of orleans. by frederich schiller translated by anna swanwick dramatis personae. charles the seventh, king of france. queen isabel, his mother. agnes sorel. philip the good, duke of burgundy. earl dunois, bastard of orleans. la hire, ducratel, french offers. archbishop of rheims. cratillon, a burgundian knight. raoul, a lotharingian knight. talbot, the english general, lionel, fastolfe, english officers. montgomery, a welshman. councillors of orleans. an english herald. thibaut d'arc, a wealthy countryman. margot, louison, johanna, his daughters. etienne, claude marie, raimond, their suitors. bertrand, another countryman. apparition of a black knight. charcoal-burner and his wife. soldiers and people, officers of the crown, bishops, monks, marshals, magistrates, courtiers, and other mute persons in the coronation procession. prologue. a rural district. to the right, a chapel with an image of the virgin; to the left, an ancient oak. scene i. thibaut d'arc. his three daughters. three young shepherds, their suitors. thibaut. ay, my good neighbors! we at least to-day are frenchmen still, free citizens and lords of the old soil which our forefathers tilled. who knows whom we to-morrow must obey? for england her triumphal banner waves from every wall: the blooming fields of france are trampled down beneath her chargers' hoofs; paris hath yielded to her conquering arms, and with the ancient crown of dagobert adorns the scion of a foreign race. our king's descendant, disinherited, must steal in secret through his own domain; while his first peer and nearest relative contends against him in the hostile ranks; ay, his unnatural mother leads them on. around us towns and peaceful hamlets burn. near and more near the devastating fire rolls toward these vales, which yet repose in peace. therefore, good neighbors, i have now resolved, while god still grants us safety, to provide for my three daughters; for 'midst war's alarms women require protection, and true love hath power to render lighter every load. [to the first shepherd. come, etienne! you seek my margot's hand. fields lying side by side and loving hearts promise a happy union! [to the second. claude! you're silent, and my louison looks upon the ground? how, shall i separate two loving hearts because you have no wealth to offer me? who now has wealth? our barns and homes afford spoil to the foe, and fuel to the fires. in times like these a husband's faithful breast affords the only shelter from the storm. louison. my father! claude marie. my louison! louison (embracing johanna). my dear sister! thibaut. i give to each a yard, a stall and herd, and also thirty acres; and as god gave me his blessing, so i give you mine! margot (embracing johanna). gladden our father--follow our example! let this day see three unions ratified! thibaut. now go; make all things ready; for the morn shall see the wedding. let our village friends be all assembled for the festival. [the two couples retire arm in arm. scene ii. thibaut, raimond, johanna. thibaut. thy sisters, joan, will soon be happy brides; i see them gladly; they rejoice my age; but thou, my youngest, giv'st me grief and pain. raimond. what is the matter? why upbraid thy child? thibaut. here is this noble youth, the flower and pride of all our village; he hath fixed on thee his fond affections, and for three long years has wooed thee with respectful tenderness; but thou dost thrust him back with cold reserve. nor is there one 'mong all our shepherd youths who e'er can win a gracious smile from thee. i see thee blooming in thy youthful prime; thy spring it is, the joyous time of hope; thy person, like a tender flower, hath now disclosed its beauty, but i vainly wait for love's sweet blossom genially to blow, and ripen joyously to golden fruit! oh, that must ever grieve me, and betrays some sad deficiency in nature's work! the heart i like not which, severe and cold, expands not in the genial years of youth. raimond. forbear, good father! cease to urge her thus! a noble, tender fruit of heavenly growth is my johanna's love, and time alone bringeth the costly to maturity! still she delights to range among the hills, and fears descending from the wild, free heath, to tarry 'neath the lowly roofs of men, where dwell the narrow cares of humble life. from the deep vale, with silent wonder, oft i mark her, when, upon a lofty hill surrounded by her flock, erect she stands, with noble port, and bends her earnest gaze down on the small domains of earth. to me she looketh then, as if from other times she came, foreboding things of import high. thibaut. 'tis that precisely which displeases me! she shuns her sisters' gay companionship; seeks out the desert mountains, leaves her couch before the crowing of the morning cock, and in the dreadful hour, when men are wont confidingly to seek their fellow-men, she, like the solitary bird, creeps forth, and in the fearful spirit-realm of night, to yon crossway repairs, and there alone holds secret commune with the mountain wind. wherefore this place precisely doth she choose? why hither always doth she drive her flock? for hours together i have seen her sit in dreamy musing 'neath the druid tree, which every happy creature shuns with awe. for 'tis not holy there; an evil spirit hath since the fearful pagan days of old beneath its branches fixed his dread abode. the oldest of our villagers relate strange tales of horror of the druid tree; mysterious voices of unearthly sound from its unhallowed shade oft meet the ear. myself, when in the gloomy twilight hour my path once chanced to lead me near this tree, beheld a spectral figure sitting there, which slowly from its long and ample robe stretched forth its withered hand, and beckoned me. but on i went with speed, nor looked behind, and to the care of god consigned my soul. raimond (pointing to the image of the virgin). yon holy image of the virgin blest, whose presence heavenly peace diffuseth round, not satan's work, leadeth thy daughter here. thibaut. no! not in vain hath it in fearful dreams and apparitions strange revealed itself. for three successive nights i have beheld johanna sitting on the throne at rheims, a sparkling diadem of seven stars upon her brow, the sceptre in her hand, from which three lilies sprung, and i, her sire, with her two sisters, and the noble peers, the earls, archbishops, and the king himself, bowed down before her. in my humble home how could this splendor enter my poor brain? oh, 'tis the prelude to some fearful fall! this warning dream, in pictured show, reveals the vain and sinful longing of her heart. she looks with shame upon her lowly birth. because with richer beauty god hath graced her form, and dowered her with wondrous gifts above the other maidens of this vale, she in her heart indulges sinful pride, and pride it is through which the angels fell, by which the fiend of hell seduces man. raimond. who cherishes a purer, humbler mind than doth thy pious daughter? does she not with cheerful spirit work her sisters' will? she is more highly gifted far than they, yet, like a servant maiden, it is she who silently performs the humblest tasks. beneath her guiding hands prosperity attendeth still thy harvest and thy flocks; and around all she does there ceaseless flows a blessing, rare and unaccountable. thibaut. ah truly! unaccountable indeed! sad horror at this blessing seizes me! but now no more; henceforth i will be silent. shall i accuse my own beloved child? i can do naught but warn and pray for her. yet warn i must. oh, shun the druid tree! stay not alone, and in the midnight hour break not the ground for roots, no drinks prepare, no characters inscribe upon the sand! 'tis easy to unlock the realm of spirits; listening each sound, beneath a film of earth they lay in wait, ready to rush aloft. stay not alone, for in the wilderness the prince of darkness tempted e'en the lord. scene iii. thibaut, raimond, johanna. bertrand enters, a helmet in his hand. raimond. hush! here is bertrand coming back from town; what bears he in his hand? bertrand. you look at me with wondering gaze; no doubt you are surprised to see this martial helm! thibaut. we are indeed! come, tell us how you come by it? why bring this fearful omen to our peaceful vale? [johanna, who has remained indifferent during the two previous scenes, becomes attentive, and steps nearer. bertrand. i scarce can tell you how i came by it. i had procured some tools at vaucouleurs; a crowd was gathered in the market-place, for fugitives were just arrived in haste from orleans, bringing most disastrous news. in tumult all the town together flocked, and as i forced a passage through the crowds, a brown bohemian woman, with this helm, approached me, eyed me narrowly, and said: "fellow, you seek a helm; i know it well. take this one! for a trifle it is yours." "go with it to the soldiers," i replied, "i am a husbandman, and want no helm." she would not cease, however, and went on: "none knoweth if he may not want a helm. a roof of metal for the head just now is of more value than a house of stone." thus she pursued me closely through the streets, still offering the helm, which i refused. i marked it well, and saw that it was bright, and fair and worthy of a knightly head; and when in doubt i weighed it in my hand, the strangeness of the incident revolving, the woman disappeared, for suddenly the rushing crowd had carried her away. and i was left the helmet in my hand. johanna (attempting eagerly to seize it). give me the helmet! bertrand. why, what boots it you? it is not suited to a maiden's head. johanna (seizing it from him). mine is the helmet--it belongs to me! thibaut. what whim is this? raimond. nay, let her have her way! this warlike ornament becomes her well, for in her bosom beats a manly heart. remember how she once subdued the wolf, the savage monster which destroyed our herds, and filled the neighb'ring shepherds with dismay. she all alone--the lion-hearted maid fought with the wolf, and from him snatched the lamb which he was bearing in his bloody jaws. how brave soe'er the head this helm adorned, it cannot grace a worthier one than hers! thibaut (to bertrand). relate what new disasters have occurred. what tidings brought the fugitives? bertrand. may god have pity on our land, and save the king! in two great battles we have lost the day; our foes are stationed in the heart of france, far as the river loire our lands are theirs-- now their whole force they have combined, and lay close siege to orleans. thibaut. god protect the king! bertrand. artillery is brought from every side, and as the dusky squadrons of the bees swarm round the hive upon a summer day, as clouds of locusts from the sultry air descend and shroud the country round for miles, so doth the cloud of war, o'er orleans' fields, pour forth its many-nationed multitudes, whose varied speech, in wild confusion blent, with strange and hollow murmurs fill the air. for burgundy, the mighty potentate, conducts his motley host; the hennegarians, the men of liege and of luxemburg, the people of namur, and those who dwell in fair brabant; the wealthy men of ghent, who boast their velvets, and their costly silks; the zealanders, whose cleanly towns appear emerging from the ocean; hollanders who milk the lowing herds; men from utrecht, and even from west friesland's distant realm, who look towards the ice-pole--all combine, beneath the banner of the powerful duke, together to accomplish orleans' fall. thibaut. oh, the unblest, the lamentable strife, which turns the arms of france against itself! bertrand. e'en she, the mother-queen, proud isabel bavaria's haughty princess--may be seen, arrayed in armor, riding through the camp; with poisonous words of irony she fires the hostile troops to fury 'gainst her son, whom she hath clasped to her maternal breast. thibaut. a curse upon her, and may god prepare for her a death like haughty jezebel's! bertrand. the fearful salisbury conducts the siege, the town-destroyer; with him lionel, the brother of the lion; talbot, too, who, with his murd'rous weapon, moweth down the people in the battle: they have sworn, with ruthless insolence to doom to shame the hapless maidens, and to sacrifice all who the sword have wielded, with the sword. four lofty watch-towers, to o'ertop the town, they have upreared; earl salisbury from on high casteth abroad his cruel, murd'rous glance, and marks the rapid wanderers in the streets. thousands of cannon-balls, of pond'rous weight, are hurled into the city. churches lie in ruined heaps, and notre dame's royal tower begins at length to bow its lofty head. they also have formed powder-vaults below, and thus, above a subterranean hell, the timid city every hour expects, 'midst crashing thunder, to break forth in flames. [johanna listens with close attention, and places the helmet on her head. thibaut. but where were then our heroes? where the swords of saintrailles, and la hire, and brave dunois, of france the bulwark, that the haughty foe with such impetuous force thus onward rushed? where is the king? can he supinely see his kingdom's peril and his cities' fall? bertrand. the king at chinon holds his court; he lacks soldiers to keep the field. of what avail the leader's courage, and the hero's arm, when pallid fear doth paralyze the host? a sudden panic, as if sent from god, unnerves the courage of the bravest men. in vain the summons of the king resounds as when the howling of the wolf is heard, the sheep in terror gather side by side, so frenchmen, careless of their ancient fame, seek only now the shelter of the towns. one knight alone, i have been told, has brought a feeble company, and joins the king with sixteen banners. johanna (quickly). what's the hero's name? bertrand. 'tis baudricour. but much i fear the knight will not be able to elude the foe, who track him closely with too numerous hosts. johanna. where halts the knight? pray tell me, if you know. bertrand. about a one day's march from vaucouleurs. thibaut (to johanna). why, what is that to thee? thou dost inquire concerning matters which become thee not. bertrand. the foe being now so strong, and from the king no safety to be hoped, at vaucouleurs they have with unanimity resolved to yield them to the duke of burgundy. thus we avoid the foreign yoke, and still continue by our ancient royal line; ay, to the ancient crown we may fall back should france and burgundy be reconciled. johanna (as if inspired). speak not of treaty! speak not of surrender! the savior comes, he arms him for the fight. the fortunes of the foe before the walls of orleans shall be wrecked! his hour is come, he now is ready for the reaper's hand, and with her sickle will the maid appear, and mow to earth the harvest of his pride. she from the heavens will tear his glory down, which he had hung aloft among the stars; despair not! fly not! for ere yonder corn assumes its golden hue, or ere the moon displays her perfect orb, no english horse shall drink the rolling waters of the loire. bertrand. alas! no miracle will happen now! johanna. yes, there shall yet be one--a snow-white dove shall fly, and with the eagle's boldness, tear the birds of prey which rend her fatherland. she shall o'erthrow this haughty burgundy, betrayer of the kingdom; talbot, too, the hundred-handed, heaven-defying scourge; this salisbury, who violates our fanes, and all these island robbers shall she drive before her like a flock of timid lambs. the lord will be with her, the god of battle; a weak and trembling creature he will choose, and through a tender maid proclaim his power, for he is the almighty! thibault. what strange power hath seized the maiden? raimond. doubtless 'tis the helmet which doth inspire her with such martial thoughts. look at your daughter. mark her flashing eye, her glowing cheek, which kindles as with fire. johanna. this realm shall fall! this ancient land of fame, the fairest that, in his majestic course, the eternal sun surveys--this paradise, which, as the apple of his eye, god loves-- endure the fetters of a foreign yoke? here were the heathen scattered, and the cross and holy image first were planted here; here rest st. louis' ashes, and from hence the troops went forth who set jerusalem free. bertrand (in astonishment). hark how she speaks! why, whence can she obtain this glorious revelation? father arc! a wondrous daughter god hath given you! johanna. we shall no longer serve a native prince! the king, who never dies, shall pass away-- the guardian of the sacred plough, who fills the earth with plenty, who protects our herds, who frees the bondmen from captivity, who gathers all his cities round his throne-- who aids the helpless, and appals the base, who envies no one, for he reigns supreme; who is a mortal, yet an angel too, dispensing mercy on the hostile earth. for the king's throne, which glitters o'er with gold, affords a shelter for the destitute; power and compassion meet together there, the guilty tremble, but the just draw near, and with the guardian lion fearless sport! the stranger king, who cometh from afar, whose fathers' sacred ashes do not lie interred among us; can he love our land? who was not young among our youth, whose heart respondeth not to our familiar words, can he be as a father to our sons? thibaut. god save the king and france! we're peaceful folk, who neither wield the sword, nor rein the steed. --let us await the king whom victory crowns; the fate of battle is the voice of god. he is our lord who crowns himself at rheims, and on his head receives the holy oil. --come, now to work! come! and let every one think only of the duty of the hour! let the earth's great ones for the earth contend, untroubled we may view the desolation, for steadfast stand the acres which we till. the flames consume our villages, our corn is trampled 'neath the tread of warlike steeds; with the new spring new harvests reappear, and our light huts are quickly reared again! [they all retire except the maiden. scene iv. johanna (alone). farewell ye mountains, ye beloved glades, ye lone and peaceful valleys, fare ye well! through you johanna never more may stray! for, ay, johanna bids you now farewell. ye meads which i have watered, and ye trees which i have planted, still in beauty bloom! farewell ye grottos, and ye crystal springs! sweet echo, vocal spirit of the vale. who sang'st responsive to my simple strain, johanna goes, and ne'er returns again. ye scenes where all my tranquil joys i knew, forever now i leave you far behind! poor foldless lambs, no shepherd now have you! o'er the wide heath stray henceforth unconfined! for i to danger's field, of crimson hue, am summoned hence another flock to find. such is to me the spirit's high behest; no earthly, vain ambition fires my breast. for who in glory did on horeb's height descend to moses in the bush of flame, and bade him go and stand in pharaoh's sight-- who once to israel's pious shepherd came, and sent him forth, his champion in the fight,-- who aye hath loved the lowly shepherd train,-- he, from these leafy boughs, thus spake to me, "go forth! thou shalt on earth my witness be. "thou in rude armor must thy limbs invest, a plate of steel upon thy bosom wear; vain earthly love may never stir thy breast, nor passion's sinful glow be kindled there. ne'er with the bride-wreath shall thy locks be dressed, nor on thy bosom bloom an infant fair; but war's triumphant glory shall be thine; thy martial fame all women's shall outshine. "for when in fight the stoutest hearts despair, when direful ruin threatens france, forlorn, then thou aloft my oriflamme shalt bear, and swiftly as the reaper mows the corn, thou shalt lay low the haughty conqueror; his fortune's wheel thou rapidly shalt turn, to gaul's heroic sons deliverance bring, relieve beleaguered rheims, and crown thy king!" the heavenly spirit promised me a sign; he sends the helmet, it hath come from him. its iron filleth me with strength divine, i feel the courage of the cherubim; as with the rushing of a mighty wind it drives me forth to join the battles din; the clanging trumpets sound, the chargers rear, and the loud war-cry thunders in mine ear. [she goes out. act i. scene i. the royal residence at chinon. dunois and duchatel. dunois. no longer i'll endure it. i renounce this recreant monarch who forsakes himself. my valiant heart doth bleed, and i could rain hot tear-drops from mine eyes, that robber-swords partition thus the royal realm of france; that cities, ancient as the monarchy, deliver to the foe the rusty keys, while here in idle and inglorious ease we lose the precious season of redemption. tidings of orleans' peril reach mine ear, hither i sped from distant normandy, thinking, arrayed in panoply of war, to find the monarch with his marshalled hosts; and find him--here! begirt with troubadours, and juggling knaves, engaged in solving riddles, and planning festivals in sorel's honor, as brooded o'er the land profoundest peace! the constable hath gone; he will not brook longer the spectacle of shame. i, too, depart, and leave him to his evil fate. duchatel. here comes the king. scene ii. king charles. the same. charles. the constable hath sent us back his sword and doth renounce our service. now, by heaven! he thus hath rid us of a churlish man, who insolently sought to lord it o'er us. dunois. a man is precious in such perilous times; i would not deal thus lightly with his loss. charles. thou speakest thus from love of opposition; while he was here thou never wert his friend. dunois. he was a tiresome, proud, vexatious fool, who never could resolve. for once, however, he hath resolved. betimes he goeth hence, where honor can no longer be achieved. charles. thou'rt in a pleasant humor; undisturbed i'll leave thee to enjoy it. hark, duchatel! ambassadors are here from old king rene, of tuneful songs the master, far renowned. let them as honored guests be entertained, and unto each present a chain of gold. [to the bastard. why smilest thou, dunois? dunois. that from thy mouth thou shakest golden chains. duchatel. alas! my king! no gold existeth in thy treasury. charles. then gold must be procured. it must not be that bards unhonored from our court depart. 'tis they who make our barren sceptre bloom, 'tis they who wreath around our fruitless crown life's joyous branch of never-fading green. reigning, they justly rank themselves as kings, of gentle wishes they erect their throne, their harmless realm existeth not in space; hence should the bard accompany the king, life's higher sphere the heritage of both! duchatel. my royal liege! i sought to spare thine ear so long as aid and counsel could be found; now dire necessity doth loose my tongue. naught hast thou now in presents to bestow, thou hast not wherewithal to live to-morrow! the spring-tide of thy fortune is run out, and lowest ebb is in thy treasury! the soldiers, disappointed of their pay, with sullen murmurs, threaten to retire. my counsel faileth, not with royal splendor but meagerly, to furnish out thy household. charles. my royal customs pledge, and borrow gold from the lombardians. duchatel. sire, thy revenues, thy royal customs are for three years pledged. dunois. and pledge meanwhile and kingdom both are lost. charles. still many rich and beauteous lands are ours. dunois. so long as god and talbot's sword permit! when orleans falleth into english hands then with king rene thou may'st tend thy sheep! charles. still at this king thou lov'st to point thy jest; yet 'tis this lackland monarch who to-day hath with a princely crown invested me. dunois. not, in the name of heaven, with that of naples, which is for sale, i hear, since he kept sheep. charles. it is a sportive festival, a jest, wherein he giveth to his fancy play, to found a world all innocent and pure in this barbaric, rude reality. yet noble--ay, right royal is his aim! he will again restore the golden age, when gentle manners reigned, when faithful love the heroic hearts of valiant knights inspired, and noble women, whose accomplished taste diffuseth grace around, in judgment sat. the old man dwelleth in those bygone times, and in our workday world would realize the dreams of ancient bards, who picture life 'mid bowers celestial, throned on golden clouds. he hath established hence a court of love where valiant knights may dwell, and homage yield to noble women, who are there enthroned, and where pure love and true may find a home. me he hath chosen as the prince of love. dunois. i am not such a base, degenerate churl as love's dominion rudely to assail. i am her son, from her derive my name, and in her kingdom lies my heritage. the prince of orleans was my sire, and while no woman's heart was proof against his love, no hostile fortress could withstand his shock! wilt thou, indeed, with honor name thyself the prince of love--be bravest of the brave! as i have read in those old chronicles, love aye went coupled with heroic deeds, and valiant heroes, not inglorious shepherds, so legends tell us, graced king arthur's board. the man whose valor is not beauty's shield is all unworthy of her golden prize. here the arena! combat for the crown, thy royal heritage! with knightly sword thy lady's honor and thy realm defend-- and hast thou with hot valor snatched the crown from streams of hostile blood,--then is the time, and it would well become thee as a prince, love's myrtle chaplet round thy brows to wreathe. charles (to a page, who enters). what is the matter? page. senators from orleans entreat an audience, sire. charles. conduct them hither! [page retires. doubtless they succor need; what can i do, myself all-succorless! scene iii. the same. three senators. charles. welcome, my trusty citizens of orleans! what tidings bring ye from my faithful town? doth she continue with her wonted zeal still bravely to withstand the leaguering foe? senator. ah, sire! the city's peril is extreme; and giant ruin, waxing hour by hour, still onward strides. the bulwarks are destroyed-- the foe at each assault advantage gains; bare of defenders are the city walls, for with rash valor forth our soldiers rush, while few, alas! return to view their homes, and famine's scourge impendeth o'er the town. in this extremity the noble count of rochepierre, commander of the town, hath made a compact with the enemy, according to old custom, to yield up, on the twelfth day, the city to the foe, unless, meanwhile, before the town appear a host of magnitude to raise the siege. [dunois manifests the strongest indignation. charles. the interval is brief. senator. we hither come, attended by a hostile retinue, to implore thee, sire, to pity thy poor town, and to send succor ere the appointed day, when, if still unrelieved, she must surrender. dunois. and could saintrailles consent to give his voice to such a shameful compact? senator. never, sir! long as the hero lived, none dared to breathe a single word of treaty or surrender. dunois. he then is dead? senator. the noble hero fell, his monarch's cause defending on our walls. charles. what! saintrailles dead! oh, in that single man a host is foundered! [a knight enters and speaks apart with dunois, who starts with surprise. dunois. that too! charles. well? what is it? dunois. count douglass sendeth here. the scottish troops revolt, and threaten to retire at once. unless their full arrears are paid to-day. charles. duchatel! duchatel (shrugs his shoulders). sire! i know not what to counsel. charles. pledge, promise all, even unto half my realm. duchatel. 'tis vain! they have been fed with hope too often. charles. they are the finest troops of all my hosts! they must not now, not now abandon me! senator (throwing himself at the king's feet). oh, king, assist us! think of our distress! charles (in despair). how! can i summon armies from the earth? or grow a cornfield on my open palm? rend me in pieces! pluck my bleeding heart forth from my breast, and coin it 'stead of gold! i've blood for you, but neither gold nor troops. [he sees sorel approach, and hastens towards her with outstretched arms. scene iv. the same. agnes sorel, a casket in her hand. charles. my agnes! oh, my love! my dearest life! thou comest here to snatch me from despair! refuge i take within thy loving arms! possessing thee i feel that nothing is lost. sorel. my king, beloved! [looking round with an anxious, inquiring gaze. dunois! say, is it true, duchatel? duchatel. 'tis, alas! sorel. so great the need? no treasure left? the soldiers will disband? duchatel. alas! it is too true! sorel (giving him the casket). here-here is gold, here too are jewels! melt my silver down! sell, pledge my castles--on my fair domains in provence--treasure raise, turn all to gold, appease the troops! no time to be lost! [she urges him to depart. charles. well now, dunois! duchatel! do ye still account me poor, when i possess the crown of womankind? she's nobly born as i; the royal blood of valois not more pure; the most exalted throne she would adorn-- yet she rejects it with disdain, and claims no other title than to be my love. no gift more costly will she e'er receive than early flower in winter, or rare fruit! no sacrifice on my part she permits, yet sacrificeth all she had to me! with generous spirit she doth venture all her wealth and fortune in my sinking bark. dunois. ay, she is mad indeed, my king, as thou; she throws her all into a burning house, and draweth water in the leaky vessel of the danaides. thee she will not save, and in thy ruin but involve herself. sorel. believe him not! full many a time he hath perilled his life for thee, and now, forsooth, chafeth because i risk my worthless gold! how? have i freely sacrificed to thee what is esteemed far more than gold and pearls, and shall i now hold back the gifts of fortune? oh, come! let my example challenge thee to noble self-denial! let's at once cast off the needless ornaments of life! thy courtiers metamorphose into soldiers; thy gold transmute to iron; all thou hast, with resolute daring, venture for thy crown! peril and want we will participate! let us bestride the war-horse, and expose our tender person to the fiery glow of the hot sun, take for our canopy the clouds above, and make the stones our pillow. the rudest warrior, when he sees his king bear hardship and privation like the meanest will patiently endure his own hard lot! charles (laughing). ay! now is realized an ancient word of prophesy, once uttered by a nun of clairmont, in prophetic mood, who said, that through a woman's aid i o'er my foes should triumph, and achieve my father's crown. far off i sought her in the english camp; i strove to reconcile a mother's heart; here stands the heroine--my guide to rheims! my agnes! i shall triumph through thy love! sorel. thou'lt triumph through the valiant swords of friends. charles. and from my foes' dissensions much i hope for sure intelligence hath reached mine ear, that 'twixt these english lords and burgundy things do not stand precisely as they did; hence to the duke i have despatched la hire, to try if he can lead my angry vassal back to his ancient loyalty and faith: each moment now i look for his return. duchatel (at the window). a knight e'en now dismounteth in the court. charles. a welcome messenger! we soon shall learn whether we're doomed to conquer or to yield. scene v. the same. la hire. charles (meeting him). hope bringest thou, or not? be brief, la hire, out with thy tidings! what must we expect? la hire. expect naught, sire, save from thine own good sword. charles. the haughty duke will not be reconciled! speak! how did he receive my embassy? la hire. his first and unconditional demand, ere he consent to listen to thine errand, is that duchatel be delivered up, whom he doth name the murderer of his sire. charles. this base condition we reject with scorn! la hire. then be the league dissolved ere it commence! charles. hast thou thereon, as i commanded thee, challenged the duke to meet him in fair fight on montereau's bridge, whereon his father fell? la hire. before him on the ground i flung thy glove, and said: "thou wouldst forget thy majesty, and like a knight do battle for thy realm." he scornfully rejoined "he needed not to fight for that which he possessed already, but if thou wert so eager for the fray, before the walls of orleans thou wouldst find him, whither he purposed going on the morrow;" thereon he laughing turned his back upon me. charles. say, did not justice raise her sacred voice, within the precincts of my parliament? la hire. the rage of party, sire, hath silenced her. an edict of the parliament declares thee and thy race excluded from the throne. dunois. these upstart burghers' haughty insolence! charles. hast thou attempted with my mother aught? la hire. with her? charles. ay! how did she demean herself? la hire (after a few moments' reflection). i chanced to step within st. denis' walls precisely at the royal coronation. the crowds were dressed as for a festival; triumphal arches rose in every street through which the english monarch was to pass. the way was strewed with flowers, and with huzzas, as france some brilliant conquest had achieved, the people thronged around the royal car. sorel. they could huzza--huzza, while trampling thus upon a gracious sovereign's loving heart! la hire. i saw young harry lancaster--the boy-- on good st. lewis' regal chair enthroned; on either side his haughty uncles stood, bedford and gloucester, and before him kneeled, to render homage for his lands, duke philip. charles. oh, peer dishonored! oh, unworthy cousin! la hire. the child was timid, and his footing lost as up the steps he mounted towards the throne. an evil omen! murmured forth the crowd, and scornful laughter burst on every side. then forward stepped queen isabel--thy mother, and--but it angers me to utter it! charles. say on. la hire. within her arms she clasped the boy, and herself placed him on thy father's throne. charles. oh, mother! mother! la hire. e'en the murderous bands of the burgundians, at this spectacle, evinced some tokens of indignant shame. the queen perceived it, and addressed the crowds, exclaiming with loud voice: "be grateful, frenchmen, that i engraft upon a sickly stock a healthy scion, and redeem you from the misbegotten son of a mad sire!" [the king hides his face; agnes hastens towards him and clasps him in her arms; all the bystanders express aversion and horror. dunois. she-wolf of france! rage-breathing megara! charles (after a pause, to the senators). yourselves have heard the posture of affairs. delay no longer, back return to orleans, and bear this message to my faithful town; i do absolve my subjects from their oath, their own best interests let them now consult, and yield them to the duke of burgundy; 'yclept the good, he need must prove humane. dunois. what say'st thou, sire? thou wilt abandon orleans! senator (kneels down). my king! abandon not thy faithful town! consign her not to england's harsh control. she is a precious jewel in the crown, and none hath more inviolate faith maintained towards the kings, thy royal ancestors. dunois. have we been routed? is it lawful, sire, to leave the english masters of the field, without a single stroke to save the town? and thinkest thou, with careless breath, forsooth, ere blood hath flowed, rashly to give away the fairest city from the heart of france? charles. blood hath been poured forth freely, and in vain the hand of heaven is visibly against me; in every battle is my host o'erthrown, i am rejected of my parliament, my capital, my people, hail me foe, those of my blood,--my nearest relatives,-- forsake me and betray--and my own mother doth nurture at her breast the hostile brood. beyond the loire we will retire, and yield to the o'ermastering hand of destiny which sideth with the english. sorel. god forbid that we in weak despair should quit this realm! this utterance came not from thy heart, my king, thy noble heart, which hath been sorely riven by the fell deed of thy unnatural mother, thou'lt be thyself again, right valiantly thou'lt battle with thine adverse destiny, which doth oppose thee with relentless ire. charles (lost in gloomy thought). is it not true? a dark and ominous doom impendeth o'er the heaven-abandoned house of valois--there preside the avenging powers, to whom a mother's crime unbarred the way. for thirty years my sire in madness raved; already have three elder brothers been mowed down by death; 'tis the decree of heaven, the house of the sixth charles is doomed to fall. sorel. in thee 'twill rise with renovated life! oh, in thyself have faith!--believe me, king, not vainly hath a gracious destiny redeemed thee from the ruin of thy house, and by thy brethren's death exalted thee, the youngest born, to an unlooked-for throne heaven in thy gentle spirit hath prepared the leech to remedy the thousand ills by party rage inflicted on the land. the flames of civil discord thou wilt quench, and my heart tells me thou'lt establish peace, and found anew the monarchy of france. charles. not i! the rude and storm-vexed times require a pilot formed by nature to command. a peaceful nation i could render happy a wild, rebellious people not subdue. i never with the sword could open hearts against me closed in hatred's cold reserve. sorel. the people's eye is dimmed, an error blinds them, but this delusion will not long endure; the day is not far distant when the love deep rooted in the bosom of the french, towards their native monarch, will revive, together with the ancient jealousy, which forms a barrier 'twixt the hostile nations. the haughty foe precipitates his doom. hence, with rash haste abandon not the field, with dauntless front contest each foot of ground, as thine own heart defend the town of orleans! let every boat be sunk beneath the wave, each bridge be burned, sooner than carry thee across the loire, the boundary of thy realm, the stygian flood, o'er which there's no return. charles. what could be done i have done. i have offered, in single fight, to combat for the crown. i was refused. in vain my people bleed, in vain my towns are levelled with the dust. shall i, like that unnatural mother, see my child in pieces severed with the sword? no; i forego my claim, that it may live. dunois. how, sire! is this fit language for a king? is a crown thus renounced? thy meanest subject, for his opinion's sake, his hate and love, sets property and life upon a cast; when civil war hangs out her bloody flag, each private end is drowned in party zeal. the husbandman forsakes his plough, the wife neglects her distaff; children, and old men, don the rude garb of war; the citizen consigns his town to the devouring flames, the peasant burns the produce of his fields; and all to injure or advantage thee, and to achieve the purpose of his heart. men show no mercy, and they wish for none, when they at honor's call maintain the fight, or for their idols or their gods contend. a truce to such effeminate pity, then, which is not suited to a monarch's breast. thou didst not heedlessly provoke the war; as it commenced, so let it spend its fury. it is the law of destiny that nations should for their monarchs immolate themselves. we frenchmen recognize this sacred law, nor would annul it. base, indeed, the nation that for its honor ventures not its all. charles (to the senators). you've heard my last resolve; expect no other. may god protect you! i can do no more. dunois. as thou dost turn thy back upon thy realm, so may the god of battle aye avert his visage from thee. thou forsak'st thyself, so i forsake thee. not the power combined of england and rebellious burgundy, thy own mean spirit hurls thee from the throne. born heroes ever were the kings of france; thou wert a craven, even from thy birth. [to the senators. the king abandons you. but i will throw myself into your town--my father's town-- and 'neath its ruins find a soldier's grave. [he is about to depart. agnes sorel detains him. sorel (to the king). oh, let him not depart in anger from thee! harsh words his lips have uttered, but his heart is true as gold. 'tis he, himself, my king, who loves thee, and hath often bled for thee. dunois, confess, the heat of noble wrath made thee forget thyself; and oh, do thou forgive a faithful friend's o'erhasty speech! come, let me quickly reconcile your hearts, ere anger bursteth forth in quenchless flame. [dunois looks fixedly at the king, and appears to await an answer. charles. our way lies over the loire. duchatel, see all our equipage embarked. dunois (quickly to sorel). farewell. [he turns quickly round, and goes out. the senators follow. sorel (wringing her hands in despair). oh, if he goes, we are forsaken quite! follow, la hire! oh, seek to soften him! [la hire goes out. scene vi. charles, sorel, duchatel. charles. is, then, the sceptre such a peerless treasure? is it so hard to loose it from our grasp? believe me, 'tis more galling to endure the domineering rule of these proud vassals. to be dependent on their will and pleasure is, to a noble heart, more bitter far than to submit to fate. [to duchatel, who still lingers. duchatel, go, and do what i commanded. duchatel (throws himself at the king's feet). oh, my king! charles. no more! thou'st heard my absolute resolve! duchatel. sire, with the duke of burgundy make peace! 'tis the sole outlet from destruction left! charles. thou giv'st this counsel, and thy blood alone can ratify this peace. duchatel. here is my head. i oft have risked it for thee in the fight, and with a joyful spirit i, for thee, would lay it down upon the block of death. conciliate the duke! deliver me to the full measure of his wrath, and let my flowing blood appease the ancient hate. charles (looks at him for some time in silence, and with deep emotion). can it be true? am i, then, sunk so low, that even friends, who read my inmost heart, point out for my escape the path of shame? yes, now i recognize my abject fall. my honor is no more confided in. duchatel. reflect---- charles. be silent, and incense me not! had i ten realms, on which to turn my back, with my friend's life i would not purchase them. do what i have commanded. hence, and see my equipage embarked. duchatel. 'twill speedily be done. [he stands up and retires. agnes sorel weeps passionately. scene vii. the royal palace at chinon. charles, agnes sorel. charles (seizing the hand of agnes). my agnes, be not sorrowful! beyond the loire we still shall find a france; we are departing to a happier land, where laughs a milder, an unclouded sky, and gales more genial blow; we there shall meet more gentle manners; song abideth there, and love and life in richer beauty bloom. sorel. oh, must i contemplate this day of woe! the king must roam in banishment! the son depart, an exile from his father's house, and turn his back upon his childhood's home! oh, pleasant, happy land that we forsake, ne'er shall we tread thee joyously again. scene viii. la hire returns, charles, sorel. sorel. you come alone? you do not bring him back? [observing him more closely. la hire! what news? what does that look announce? some new calamity? la hire. calamity hath spent itself; sunshine is now returned. sorel. what is it? i implore you. la hire (to the king). summon back the delegates from orleans. charles. why? what is it? la hire. summon them back! thy fortune is reversed. a battle has been fought, and thou hast conquered. sorel. conquered! oh, heavenly music of that word! charles. la hire! a fabulous report deceives thee; conquered! in conquest i believe no more. la hire. still greater wonders thou wilt soon believe. here cometh the archbishop. to thine arms he leadeth back dunois. sorel. o beauteous flower of victory, which doth the heavenly fruits of peace and reconcilement bear at once! scene ix. the same, archbishop of rheims, dunois, duchatel, with raoul, a knight in armor. archbishop (leading dunois to the king, and joining their hands). princes, embrace! let rage and discord cease, since heaven itself hath for our cause declared. [dunois embraces the king. charles. relieve my wonder and perplexity. what may this solemn earnestness portend? whence this unlooked-for change of fortune? archbishop (leads the knight forward, and presents him to the king). speak! raoul. we had assembled sixteen regiments of lotharingian troops to join your host; and baudricourt, a knight of vaucouleurs, was our commander. having gained the heights by vermanton, we wound our downward way into the valley watered by the yonne. there, in the plain before us, lay the foe, and when we turned, arms glittered in our rear. we saw ourselves surrounded by two hosts, and could not hope for conquest or for flight. then sank the bravest heart, and in despair we all prepared to lay our weapons down. the leaders with each other anxiously sought counsel and found none; when to our eyes a spectacle of wonder showed itself. for suddenly from forth the thickets' depths a maiden, on her head a polished helm, like a war-goddess, issued; terrible yet lovely was her aspect, and her hair in dusky ringlets round her shoulders fell. a heavenly radiance shone around the height; when she upraised her voice and thus addressed us: "why be dismayed, brave frenchmen? on the foe! were they more numerous than the ocean sands, god and the holy maiden lead you on!" then quickly from the standard-bearer's hand she snatched the banner, and before our troop with valiant bearing strode the wondrous maid. silent with awe, scarce knowing what we did, the banner and the maiden we pursue, and fired with ardor, rush upon the foe, who, much amazed, stand motionless and view the miracle with fixed and wondering gaze. then, as if seized by terror sent from god, they suddenly betake themselves to flight, and casting arms and armor to the ground, disperse in wild disorder o'er the field. no leader's call, no signal now avails; senseless from terror, without looking back, horses and men plunge headlong in the stream, where they without resistance are despatched. it was a slaughter rather than a fight! two thousand of the foe bestrewed the field, not reckoning numbers swallowed by the flood, while of our company not one was slain. charles. 'tis strange, by heaven! most wonderful and strange! sorel. a maiden worked this miracle, you say? whence did she come? who is she? raoul. who she is she will reveal to no one but the king! she calls herself a seer and prophetess ordained by god, and promises to raise the siege of orleans ere the moon shall change. the people credit her, and thirst for war. the host she follows--she'll be here anon. [the ringing of bells is heard, together with the clang of arms. hark to the din! the pealing of the bells! 'tis she! the people greet god's messenger. charles (to duchatel). conduct her thither. [to the archbishop. what should i believe? a maiden brings me conquest even now, when naught can save me but a hand divine! this is not in the common course of things. and dare i here believe a miracle? many voices (behind the scene). hail to the maiden!--the deliverer! charles. she comes! dunois, now occupy my place! we will make trial of this wondrous maid. is she indeed inspired and sent by god she will be able to discern the king. [dunois seats himself; the king stands at his right hand, agnes sorel near him; the archbishop and the others opposite; so that the intermediate space remains vacant. scene x. the same. johanna, accompanied by the councillors and many knights, who occupy the background of the scene; she advances with noble bearing, and slowly surveys the company. dunois (after a long and solemn pause). art thou the wondrous maiden---- johanna (interrupts him, regarding him with dignity). bastard of orleans, thou wilt tempt thy god! this place abandon, which becomes thee not! to this more mighty one the maid is sent. [with a firm step she approaches the king, bows one knee before him, and, rising immediately, steps back. all present express their astonishment, dunois forsakes his seat, which is occupied by the king. charles. maiden, thou ne'er hast seen my face before. whence hast thou then this knowledge? johanna. thee i saw when none beside, save god in heaven, beheld thee. [she approaches the king, and speaks mysteriously. bethink thee, dauphin, in the bygone night, when all around lay buried in deep sleep, thou from thy couch didst rise and offer up an earnest prayer to god. let these retire and i will name the subject of thy prayer. charles. what! to heaven confided need not be from men concealed. disclose to me my prayer, and i shall doubt no more that god inspires thee. johanna. three prayers thou offeredst, dauphin; listen now whether i name them to thee! thou didst pray that if there were appended to this crown unjust possession, or if heavy guilt, not yet atoned for, from thy father's times, occasioned this most lamentable war, god would accept thee as a sacrifice, have mercy on thy people, and pour forth upon thy head the chalice of his wrath. charles (steps back with awe). who art thou, mighty one? whence comest thou? [all express their astonishment. johanna. to god thou offeredst this second prayer: that if it were his will and high decree to take away the sceptre from thy race, and from thee to withdraw whate'er thy sires, the monarchs of this kingdom, once possessed, he in his mercy would preserve to thee three priceless treasures--a contented heart, thy friend's affection, and thine agnes' love. [the king conceals his face: the spectators express their astonishment. after a pause. thy third petition shall i name to thee? charles. enough; i credit thee! this doth surpass mere human knowledge: thou art sent by god! archbishop. who art thou, wonderful and holy maid? what favored region bore thee? what blest pair, beloved of heaven, may claim thee as their child? johanna. most reverend father, i am named johanna, i am a shepherd's lowly daughter, born in dom remi, a village of my king. included in the diocese of toul, and from a child i kept my father's sheep. and much and frequently i heard them tell of the strange islanders, who o'er the sea had come to make us slaves, and on us force a foreign lord, who loveth not the people; how the great city, paris, they had seized, and had usurped dominion o'er the realm. then earnestly god's mother i implored to save us from the shame of foreign chains, and to preserve to us our lawful king. not distant from my native village stands an ancient image of the virgin blest, to which the pious pilgrims oft repaired; hard by a holy oak, of blessed power, standeth, far-famed through wonders manifold. beneath the oak's broad shade i loved to sit tending my flock--my heart still drew me there. and if by chance among the desert hills a lambkin strayed, 'twas shown me in a dream, when in the shadow of this oak i slept. and once, when through the night beneath this tree in pious adoration i had sat, resisting sleep, the holy one appeared, bearing a sword and banner, otherwise clad like a shepherdess, and thus she spake: "'tis i; arise, johanna! leave thy flock, the lord appoints thee to another task! receive this banner! gird thee with this sword! therewith exterminate my people's foes; conduct to rheims thy royal master's son, and crown him with the kingly diadem!" and i made answer: "how may i presume to undertake such deeds, a tender maid, unpractised in the dreadful art of war!" and she replied: "a maiden pure and chaste achieves whate'er on earth is glorious if she to earthly love ne'er yields her heart. look upon me! a virgin, like thyself; i to the christ, the lord divine, gave birth, and am myself divine!" mine eyelids then she touched, and when i upward turned my amaze, heaven's wide expanse was filled with angel-boys, who bore white lilies in their hands, while tones of sweetest music floated through the air. and thus on three successive nights appeared the holy one, and cried,--"arise, johanna! the lord appoints thee to another task!" and when the third night she revealed herself, wrathful she seemed, and chiding spake these words: "obedience, woman's duty here on earth; severe endurance is her heavy doom; she must be purified through discipline; who serveth here, is glorified above!" while thus she spake, she let her shepherd garb fail from her, and as queen of heaven stood forth enshrined in radiant light, while golden clouds upbore her slowly to the realms of bliss. [all are moved; agnes sorel weeping, hides her face on the bosom of the king. archbishop (after a long pause). before divine credentials such as these each doubt of earthly prudence must subside, her deeds attest the truth of what she speaks, for god alone such wonders can achieve. dunois. i credit not her wonders, but her eyes which beam with innocence and purity. charles. am i, a sinner, worthy of such favor? infallible, all-searching eye, thou seest mine inmost heart, my deep humility! johanna. humility shines brightly in the skies; thou art abased, hence god exalteth thee. charles. shall i indeed withstand mine enemies? johanna. france i will lay submissive at thy feet! charles. and orleans, say'st thou, will not be surrendered? johanna. the loire shall sooner roll its waters back. charles. shall i in triumph enter into rheims? johanna. i through ten thousand foes will lead you there. [the knights make a noise with their lances and shields, and evince signs of courage. dunois. appoint the maiden to command the host! we follow blindly whereso'er she leads! the holy one's prophetic eye shall guide, and this brave sword from danger shall protect her! la hire. a universe in arms we will not fear, if she, the mighty one, precede our troops. the god of battle walketh by her side; let her conduct us on to victory! [the knights clang their arms and step forward. charles. yes, holy maiden, do thou lead mine host; my chiefs and warriors shall submit to thee. this sword of matchless temper, proved in war, sent back in anger by the constable, hath found a hand more worthy. prophetess, do thou receive it, and henceforward be---- johanna. no, noble dauphin! conquest to my liege is not accorded through this instrument of earthly might. i know another sword wherewith i am to conquer, which to thee, i, as the spirit taught, will indicate; let it be hither brought. charles. name it, johanna. johanna. send to the ancient town of fierbois; there in saint catherine's churchyard is a vault where lie in heaps the spoils of bygone war. among them is the sword which i must use. it by three golden lilies may be known, upon the blade impressed. let it be brought for thou, my liege, shalt conquer through this sword. charles. perform what she commands. johanna. and a white banner, edged with a purple border, let me bear. upon this banner let the queen of heaven be pictured with the beauteous jesus child floating in glory o'er this earthly ball. for so the holy mother showed it me. charles. so be it as thou sayest. johanna (to the archbishop). reverend bishop; lay on my head thy consecrated hands! pronounce a blessing, father, on thy child! [she kneels down. archbishop. not blessings to receive, but to dispense art thou appointed. go, with power divine! but we are sinners all and most unworthy. [she rises: a page enters. page. a herald from the english generals. johanna. let him appear, for he is sent by god! [the king motions to the page, who retires. scene xi. the herald. the same. charles. thy tidings, herald? what thy message! speak! herald. who is it, who for charles of valois, the count of pointhieu, in this presence speaks? dunois. unworthy herald! base, insulting knave! dost thou presume the monarch of the french thus in his own dominions to deny? thou art protected by thine office, else---- herald. one king alone is recognized by france, and he resideth in the english camp. charles. peace, peace, good cousin! speak thy message, herald! herald. my noble general laments the blood which hath already flowed, and still must flow. hence, in the scabbard holding back the sword, before by storm the town of orleans falls, he offers thee an amicable treaty. charles. proceed! johanna (stepping forward). permit me, dauphin, in thy stead, to parley with this herald. charles. do so, maid! determine thou, for peace, or bloody war. johanna (to the herald). who sendeth thee? who speaketh through thy mouth? herald. the earl of salisbury; the british chief. johanna. herald, 'tis false! the earl speaks not through thee. only the living speak, the dead are silent. herald. the earl is well, and full of lusty strength; he lives to bring down ruin on your heads. johanna. when thou didst quit the british army he lived. this morn, while gazing from le tournelle's tower, a ball from orleans struck him to the ground. smilest thou that i discern what is remote? not to my words give credence; but believe the witness of thine eyes! his funeral train thou shalt encounter as you goest hence! now, herald, speak, and do thine errand here. herald. if what is hidden thou canst thus reveal, thou knowest mine errand ere i tell it thee. johanna. it boots me not to know it. but do thou give ear unto my words! this message bear in answer to the lords who sent thee here. monarch of england, and ye haughty dukes, bedford and gloucester, regents of this realm! to heaven's high king you are accountable for all the blood that hath been shed. restore the keys of all the cities ta'en by force in opposition to god's holy law! the maiden cometh from the king of heaven and offers you or peace or bloody war. choose ye! for this i say, that you may know it: to you this beauteous realm is not assigned by mary's son;--but god hath given it to charles, my lord and dauphin, who ere long will enter paris with a monarch's pomp, attended by the great ones of his realm. now, herald, go, and speedily depart, for ere thou canst attain the british camp and do thine errand, is the maiden there, to plant the sign of victory at orleans. [she retires. in the midst of a general movement, the curtain falls. act ii. landscape, bounded by rocks. scene i. talbot and lionel, english generals, philip, duke of burgundy, fastolfe, and chatillon, with soldiers and banners. talbot. here let us make a halt beneath these rocks, and pitch our camp, in case our scattered troops, dispersed in panic fear, again should rally. choose trusty sentinels, and guard the heights! 'tis true the darkness shields us from pursuit, and sure i am, unless the foe have wings, we need not fear surprisal. still 'tis well to practice caution, for we have to do with a bold foe, and have sustained defeat. [fastolfe goes out with the soldiers. lionel. defeat! my general, do not speak that word. it stings me to the quick to think the french to-day have seen the backs of englishmen. oh, orleans! orleans! grave of england's glory! our honor lies upon thy fatal plains defeat most ignominious and burlesque! who will in future years believe the tale! the victors of poictiers and agincourt, cressy's bold heroes, routed by a woman? burgundy. that must console us. not by mortal power, but by the devil have we been o'erthrown! talbot. the devil of our own stupidity! how, burgundy? do princes quake and fear before the phantom which appals the vulgar? credulity is but a sorry cloak for cowardice. your people first took flight. burgundy. none stood their ground. the flight was general. talbot. 'tis false! your wing fled first. you wildly broke into our camp, exclaiming: "hell is loose, the devil combats on the side of france!" and thus you brought confusion 'mong our troops. lionel. you can't deny it. your wing yielded first. burgundy. because the brunt of battle there commenced. talbot. the maiden knew the weakness of our camp; she rightly judged where fear was to be found. burgundy. how? shall the blame of our disaster rest with burgundy? lionel. by heaven! were we alone, we english, never had we orleans lost! burgundy. no, truly! for ye ne'er had orleans seen! who opened you a way into this realm, and reached you forth a kind and friendly hand when you descended on this hostile coast? who was it crowned your henry at paris, and unto him subdued the people's hearts? had this burgundian arm not guided you into this realm, by heaven you ne'er had seen the smoke ascending from a single hearth! lionel. were conquests with big words effected, duke, you, doubtless, would have conquered france alone. burgundy. the loss of orleans angers you, and now you vent your gall on me, your friend and ally. what lost us orleans but your avarice? the city was prepared to yield to me, your envy was the sole impediment. talbot. we did not undertake the siege for you. burgundy. how would it stand with you if i withdrew with all my host? lionel. we should not be worse off than when, at agincourt, we proved a match for you and all the banded power of france. burgundy. yet much you stood in need of our alliance; the regent purchased it at heavy cost. talbot. most dearly, with the forfeit of our honor, at orleans have we paid for it to-day. burgundy. urge me no further, lords. ye may repent it! did i forsake the banners of my king, draw down upon my head the traitor's name, to be insulted thus by foreigners? why am i here to combat against france? if i must needs endure ingratitude, let it come rather from my native king! talbot. you're in communication with the dauphin, we know it well, but we soon shall find means to guard ourselves 'gainst treason. burgundy. death and hell! am i encountered thus? chatillon, hark! let all my troops prepare to quit the camp. we will retire into our own domain. [chatillon goes out. lionel. god speed you there! never did britain's fame more brightly shine than when she stood alone, confiding solely in her own good sword. let each one fight his battle for himself, for 'tis eternal truth that english blood cannot, with honor, blend with blood of france. scene ii. the same. queen isabel, attended by a page. isabel. what must i hear? this fatal strife forbear! what brain-bewildering planet o'er your minds sheds dire perplexity? when unity alone can save you, will you part in hate, and, warring 'mong yourselves, prepare your doom?-- i do entreat you, noble duke, recall your hasty order. you, renowned talbot, seek to appease an irritated friend! come, lionel, aid me to reconcile these haughty spirits and establish peace. lionel. not i, madame. it is all one to me. 'tis my belief, when things are misallied, the sooner they part company the better. isabel. how? do the arts of hell, which on the field wrought such disastrous ruin, even here bewilder and befool us? who began this fatal quarrel? speak! lord-general! your own advantage did you so forget, as to offend your worthy friend and ally? what could you do without his powerful arm? 'twas he who placed your monarch on the throne, he holds him there, and he can hurl him thence; his army strengthens you--still more his name. were england all her citizens to pour upon our coasts, she never o'er this realm would gain dominion did she stand alone; no! france can only be subdued by france! talbot. a faithful friend we honor as we ought; discretion warns us to beware the false. burgundy. the liar's brazen front beseemeth him who would absolve himself from gratitude. isabel. how, noble duke? could you so far renounce your princely honor, and your sense of shame, as clasp the hand of him who slew your sire? are you so mad to entertain the thought of cordial reconcilement with the dauphin, whom you yourself have hurled to ruin's brink? his overthrow you have well nigh achieved, and madly now would you renounce your work? here stand your allies. your salvation lies in an indissoluble bond with england? burgundy. far is my thought from treaty with the dauphin; but the contempt and insolent demeanor of haughty england i will not endure. isabel. come, noble duke? excuse a hasty word. heavy the grief which bows the general down, and well you know misfortune makes unjust. come! come! embrace; let me this fatal breach repair at once, ere it becomes eternal. talbot. what think you, burgundy? a noble heart, by reason vanquished, doth confess its fault. a wise and prudent word the queen hath spoken; come, let my hand with friendly pressure heal the wound inflicted by my angry tongue. burgundy. discreet the counsel offered by the queen! my just wrath yieldeth to necessity. isabel. 'tis well! now, with a brotherly embrace confirm and seal the new-established bond; and may the winds disperse what hath been spoken. [burgundy and talbot embrace. lionel (contemplating the group aside). hail to an union by the furies planned! isabel. fate hath proved adverse, we have lost a battle, but do not, therefore, let your courage sink. the dauphin, in despair of heavenly aid, doth make alliance with the powers of hell; vainly his soul he forfeits to the devil, for hell itself cannot deliver him. a conquering maiden leads the hostile force; yours, i myself will lead; to you i'll stand in place of maiden or of prophetess. lionel. madame, return to paris! we desire to war with trusty weapons, not with women. talbot. go! go! since your arrival in the camp, fortune hath fled our banners, and our course hath still been retrograde. depart at once! burgundy. your presence here doth scandalize the host. isabel (looks from one to the other with astonishment). this, burgundy, from you? do you take part against me with these thankless english lords? burgundy. go! go! the thought of combating for you unnerves the courage of the bravest men. isabel. i scarce among you have established peace, and you already form a league against me! talbot. go, in god's name. when you have left the camp no devil will again appal our troops. isabel. say, am i not your true confederate? are we not banded in a common cause? talbot. thank god! your cause of quarrel is not ours. we combat in an honorable strife. burgundy. a father's bloody murder i avenge. stern filial duty consecrates my arms. talbot. confess at once. your conduct towards the dauphin is an offence alike to god and man. isabel. curses blast him and his posterity! the shameless son who sins against his mother! burgundy. ay! to avenge a husband and a father! isabel. to judge his mother's conduct he presumed! lionel. that was, indeed, irreverent in a son! isabel. and me, forsooth, he banished from the realm. talbot. urged to the measure by the public voice. isabel. a curse light on him if i e'er forgive him! rather than see him on his father's throne---- talbot. his mother's honor you would sacrifice! isabel. your feeble natures cannot comprehend the vengeance of an outraged mother's heart. who pleasures me, i love; who wrongs, i hate. if he who wrongs me chance to be my son, all the more worthy is he of my hate. the life i gave i will again take back from him who doth, with ruthless violence, the bosom rend which bore and nourished him. ye, who do thus make war upon the dauphin, what rightful cause have ye to plunder him? what crime hath he committed against you? what insult are you called on to avenge? ambition, paltry envy, goad you on; i have a right to hate him--he's my son. talbot. he feels his mother in her dire revenge! isabel. mean hypocrites! i hate you and despise. together with the world, you cheat yourselves! with robber-hands you english seek to clutch this realm of france, where you have no just right, nor equitable claim, to so much earth as could be covered by your charger's hoof. --this duke, too, whom the people style the good, doth to a foreign lord, his country's foe, for gold betray the birthland of his sires. and yet is justice ever on your tongue. --hypocrisy i scorn. such as i am, so let the world behold me! burgundy. it is true! your reputation you have well maintained. isabel. i've passions and warm blood, and as a queen came to this realm to live, and not to seem. should i have lingered out a joyless life because the curse of adverse destiny to a mad consort joined my blooming youth? more than my life i prize my liberty. and who assails me here----but why should i stoop to dispute with you about my rights? your sluggish blood flows slowly in your veins! strangers to pleasure, ye know only rage! this duke, too--who, throughout his whole career, hath wavered to and fro, 'twixt good and ill-- can neither love or hate with his whole heart. --i go to melun. let this gentleman, [pointing to lionel. who doth my fancy please, attend me there, to cheer my solitude, and you may work your own good pleasure! i'll inquire no more concerning the burgundians or the english. [she beckons to her page, and is about to retire. lionel. rely upon us, we will send to melun the fairest youths whom we in battle take. [coming back. isabel. skilful your arm to wield the sword of death, the french alone can round the polished phrase. [she goes out. scene iii. talbot, burgundy, lionel. talbot. heavens! what a woman! lionel. now, brave generals, your counsel! shall we prosecute our flight, or turn, and with a bold and sudden stroke wipe out the foul dishonor of to-day? burgundy. we are too weak, our soldiers are dispersed, the recent terror still unnerves the host. talbot. blind terror, sudden impulse of a moment, alone occasioned our disastrous rout. this phantom of the terror-stricken brain, more closely viewed will vanish into air. my counsel, therefore, is, at break of day, to lead the army back, across the stream, to meet the enemy. burgundy. consider well---- lionel. your pardon! here is nothing to consider what we have lost we must at once retrieve, or look to be eternally disgraced. talbot. it is resolved. to-morrow morn we fight, this dread-inspiring phantom to destroy, which thus doth blind and terrify the host let us in fight encounter this she-devil. if she oppose her person to our sword, trust me, she never will molest us more; if she avoid our stroke--and be assured she will not stand the hazard of a battle-- then is the dire enchantment at an end? lionel. so be it! and to me, my general, leave this easy, bloodless combat, for i hope alive to take this ghost, and in my arms, before the bastard's eyes--her paramour-- to bear her over to the english camp, to be the sport and mockery of the host. burgundy. make not too sure. talbot. if she encounter me, i shall not give her such a soft embrace. come now, exhausted nature to restore through gentle sleep. at daybreak we set forth. [they go out. scene iv. johanna with her banner, in a helmet and breastplate, otherwise attired as a woman. dunois, la hire, knights and soldiers appear above upon the rocky path, pass silently over, and appear immediately after on the scene. johanna (to the knights who surround her while the procession continues above). the wall is scaled and we are in the camp! now fling aside the mantle of still night, which hitherto hath veiled your silent march, and your dread presence to the foe proclaim. by your loud battle-cry--god and the maiden! all (exclaim aloud, amidst the loud clang of arms). god and the maiden! [drums and trumpets. sentinels (behind the scene). the foe! the foe! the foe! johanna. ho! torches here. hurl fire into the tents! let the devouring flames augment the horror, while threatening death doth compass them around! [soldiers hasten on, she is about to follow. dunois (holding her back). thy part thou hast accomplished now, johanna! into the camp thou hast conducted us, the foe thou hast delivered in our hands, now from the rush of war remain apart! the bloody consummation leave to us. la hire. point out the path of conquest to the host; before us, in pure hand, the banner bear. but wield the fatal weapon not thyself; tempt not the treacherous god of battle, for he rageth blindly, and he spareth not. johanna. who dares impede my progress? who presume the spirit to control which guideth me? still must the arrow wing its destined flight! where danger is, there must johanna be; nor now, nor here, am i foredoomed to fall; our monarch's royal brow i first must see invested with the round of sovereignty. no hostile power can rob me of my life, till i've accomplished the commands of god. [she goes out. la hire. come, let us follow after her, dunois, and let our valiant bosoms be her shield! [exit. scene v. english soldiers hurry over the stage. afterwards talbot. soldier. the maiden in the camp! soldier. impossible! it cannot be! how came she in the camp? soldier. why, through the air! the devil aided her! and soldiers. fly! fly! we are dead men! talbot (enters). they heed me not! they stay not at my call! the sacred bands of discipline are loosed! as hell had poured her damned legions forth, a wild, distracting impulse whirls along, in one mad throng, the cowardly and brave. i cannot rally e'en the smallest troop to form a bulwark gainst the hostile flood, whose raging billows press into our camp! do i alone retain my sober senses, while all around in wild delirium rave? to fly before these weak, degenerate frenchmen whom we in twenty battles have overthrown? who is she then--the irresistible-- the dread-inspiring goddess, who doth turn at once the tide of battle, and transform the lions bold a herd of timid deer? a juggling minx, who plays the well-learned part of heroine, thus to appal the brave? a woman snatch from me all martial fame? soldier (rushing in). the maiden comes! fly, general, fly! fly! talbot (strikes him down). fly thou, thyself, to hell! this sword shall pierce who talks to me of fear, or coward flight! [he goes out. scene vi. the prospect opens. the english camp is seen in flames. drums, flight, and pursuit. after a while montgomery enters. montgomery (alone). where shall i flee? foes all around and death! lo! here the furious general, who with threatening sword, prevents escape, and drives us back into the jaws of death. the dreadful maiden there--the terrible--who like devouring flame, destruction spreads; while all around appears no bush wherein to hide--no sheltering cave! oh, would that o'er the sea i never had come here! me miserable--empty dreams deluded me-- cheap glory to achieve on gallia's martial fields. and i am guided by malignant destiny into this murderous flight. oh, were i far, far hence. still in my peaceful home, on severn's flowery banks, where in my father's house, in sorrow and in tears, i left my mother and my fair young bride. [johanna appears in the distance. wo's me! what do i see! the dreadful form appears! arrayed in lurid light, she from the raging fire issues, as from the jaws of hell, a midnight ghost. where shall i go? where flee? already from afar she seizes on me with her eye of fire, and flings her fatal and unerring coil, whose magic folds with ever-tightening pressure, bind my feet and make escape impossible! howe'er my heart rebels, i am compelled to follow with my gaze that form of dread! [johanna advances towards him some steps; and again remains standing. she comes! i will not passively await her furious onset! imploringly i'll clasp her knees! i'll sue to her for life. she is a woman. i may perchance to pity move her by my tears! [while he is on the point of approaching her she draws near. scene vii. johanna, montgomery. johanna. prepare to die! a british mother bore thee! montgomery (falls at her feet). fall back, terrific one! forbear to strike an unprotected foe! my sword and shield i've flung aside, and supplicating fall defenceless at thy feet. a ransom take! extinguish not the precious light of life! with fair possessions crowned, my father dwells in wales' fair land, where among verdant meads the winding severn rolls his silver tide, and fifty villages confess his sway. with heavy gold he will redeem his son, when he shall hear i'm in the camp of france. jhanna. deluded mortal! to destruction doomed! thou'rt fallen in the maiden's hand, from which redemption or deliverance there is none. had adverse fortune given thee a prey to the fierce tiger or the crocodile-- hadst robbed the lion mother of her brood-- compassion thou might'st hope to find and pity; but to encounter me is certain death. for my dread compact with the spirit realm-- the stern inviolable--bindeth me, to slay each living thing whom battle's god, full charged with doom, delivers to my sword. montgomery. thy speech is fearful, but thy look is mild; not dreadful art thou to contemplate near; my heart is drawn towards thy lovely form. oh! by the mildness of thy gentle sex, attend my prayer. compassionate my youth. johanna. name me not woman! speak not of my sex! like to the bodiless spirits, who know naught of earth's humanities, i own no sex; beneath this vest of steel there beats no heart. montgomery. oh! by love's sacred, all-pervading power, to whom all hearts yield homage, i conjure thee. at home i left behind a gentle bride, beauteous as thou, and rich in blooming grace: weeping she waiteth her betrothed's return. oh! if thyself dost ever hope to love, if in thy love thou hopest to be happy, then ruthless sever not two gentle hearts, together linked in love's most holy bond! johanna. thou dost appeal to earthly, unknown gods, to whom i yield no homage. of love's bond, by which thou dost conjure me, i know naught nor ever will i know his empty service. defend thy life, for death doth summon thee. montgomery. take pity on my sorrowing parents, whom i left at home. doubtless thou, too, hast left parents, who feel disquietude for thee. johanna. unhappy man! thou dost remember me how many mothers of this land your arms have rendered childless and disconsolate; how many gentle children fatherless; how many fair young brides dejected widows! let england's mothers now be taught despair, and learn to weep the bitter tear oft shed by the bereaved and sorrowing wives of france. montgomery. 'tis hard in foreign lands to die unwept. johanna. who called you over to this foreign land, to waste the blooming culture of our fields, to chase the peasant from his household hearth, and in our cities' peaceful sanctuary to hurl the direful thunderbolt of war? in the delusion of your hearts ye thought to plunge in servitude the freeborn french, and to attach their fair and goodly realm, like a small boat, to your proud english bark! ye fools! the royal arms of france are hung fast by the throne of god; and ye as soon from the bright wain of heaven might snatch a star as rend a single village from this realm, which shall remain inviolate forever! the day of vengeance is at length arrived; not living shall ye measure back the sea, the sacred sea--the boundary set by god betwixt our hostile nations--and the which ye ventured impiously to overpass. montgomery (lets go her hands). oh, i must die! i feel the grasp of death! johanna. die, friend! why tremble at the approach of death? of mortals the irrevocable doom? look upon me! i'm born a shepherd maid; this hand, accustomed to the peaceful crook, is all unused to wield the sword of death. yet, snatched away from childhood's peaceful haunts, from the fond love of father and of sisters, urged by no idle dream of earthly glory, but heaven-appointed to achieve your ruin, like a destroying angel i must roam, spreading dire havoc around me, and at length myself must fall a sacrifice to death! never again shall i behold my home! still, many of your people i must slay, still, many widows make, but i at length myself shall perish, and fulfil my doom. now thine fulfil. arise! resume thy sword, and let us fight for the sweet prize of life. montgomery (stands up). now, if thou art a mortal like myself, can weapons wound thee, it may be assigned to this good arm to end my country's woe, thee sending, sorceress, to the depths of hell. in god's most gracious hands i leave my fate. accursed one! to thine assistance call the fiends of hell! now combat for thy life! [he seizes his sword and shield, and rushes upon her; martial music is heard in the distance. after a short conflict montgomery falls. scene viii. johanna (alone). to death thy foot did bear thee--fare thee well! [she steps away from him and remains absorbed in thought. virgin, thou workest mightily in me! my feeble arm thou dost endue with strength, and steep'st my woman's heart in cruelty. in pity melts the soul and the hand trembles, as it did violate some sacred fane, to mar the goodly person of the foe. once i did shudder at the polished sheath, but when 'tis needed, i'm possessed with strength, and as it were itself a thing of life, the fatal weapon, in my trembling grasp, self-swayed, inflicteth the unerring stroke. scene ix. a knight with closed visor, johanna. knight. accursed one! thy hour of death has come! long have i sought thee on the battle-field, fatal delusion! get thee back to hell, whence thou didst issue forth. johanna. say, who art thou, whom his bad genius sendeth in my way? princely thy port, no briton dost thou seem, for the burgundian colors stripe thy shield, before the which my sword inclines its point. knight. vile castaway! thou all unworthy art to fall beneath a prince's noble hand. the hangman's axe should thy accursed head cleave from thy trunk, unfit for such vile use the royal duke of burgundy's brave sword. johanna. art thou indeed that noble duke himself? knight (raises his visor). i'm he, vile creature, tremble and despair! the arts of hell shall not protect thee more. thou hast till now weak dastards overcome; now thou dost meet a man. scene x. dunois and la hire. the same. dunois. hold, burgundy! turn! combat now with men, and not with maids. la hire. we will defend the holy prophetess; first must thy weapon penetrate this breast. burgundy. i fear not this seducing circe; no, nor you, whom she hath changed so shamefully! oh, blush, dunois! and do thou blush, la hire to stoop thy valor to these hellish arts-- to be shield-bearer to a sorceress! come one--come all! he only who despairs of heaven's protection seeks the aid of hell. [they prepare for combat, johanna steps between. johanna. forbear! burgundy. dost tremble for thy lover? thus before thine eyes he shall---- [he makes a thrust at dunois. johanna. dunois, forbear! part them, la hire! no blood of france must flow: not hostile weapons must this strife decide, above the stars 'tis otherwise decreed. fall back! i say. attend and venerate the spirit which hath seized, which speaks through me! dunois. why, maiden, now hold back my upraised arm? why check the just decision of the sword? my weapon pants to deal the fatal blow which shall avenge and heal the woes of france. [she places herself in the midst and separates the parties. johanna. fall back, dunois! stand where thou art, la hire! somewhat i have to say to burgundy. [when all is quiet. what wouldst thou, burgundy? who is the foe whom eagerly thy murderous glances seek? this prince is, like thyself, a son of france,-- this hero is thy countryman, thy friend; i am a daughter of thy fatherland. we all, whom thou art eager to destroy, are of thy friends;--our longing arms prepare to clasp, our bending knees to honor thee. our sword 'gainst thee is pointless, and that face e'en in a hostile helm is dear to us, for there we trace the features of our king. burgundy. what, syren! wilt thou with seducing words allure thy victim? cunning sorceress, me thou deludest not. mine ears are closed against thy treacherous words; and vainly dart thy fiery glances 'gainst this mail of proof. to arms, dunois! with weapons let us fight, and not with words. dunois. first words, then weapons, burgundy! do words with dread inspire thee? 'tis a coward's fear, and the betrayer of an evil cause. johanna. 'tis not imperious necessity which throws us at thy feet! we do not come as suppliants before thee. look around! the english tents are level with the ground, and all the field is covered with your slain. hark! the war-trumpets of the french resound; god hath decided--ours the victory! our new-culled laurel garland with our friend we fain would share. come, noble fugitive! oh, come where justice and where victory dwell! even i, the messenger of heaven, extend a sister's hand to thee. i fain would save and draw thee over to our righteous cause! heaven hath declared for france! angelic powers, unseen by thee, do battle for our king; with lilies are the holy ones adorned, pure as this radiant banner is our cause; its blessed symbol is the queen of heaven. burgundy. falsehood's fallacious words are full of guile, but hers are pure and simple as a child's. if evil spirits borrow this disguise, they copy innocence triumphantly. i'll hear no more. to arms, dunois! to arms! mine ear, i feel, is weaker than mine arm. johanna. you call me an enchantress, and accuse of hellish arts. is it the work of hell to heal dissension and to foster peace? comes holy concord from the depths below? say, what is holy, innocent, and good, if not to combat for our fatherland? since when hath nature been so self-opposed that heaven forsakes the just and righteous cause, while hell protects it? if my words are true, whence could i draw them but from heaven above? who ever sought me in my shepherd-walks, to teach the humble maid affairs of state? i ne'er have stood with princes, to these lips unknown the arts of eloquence. yet now, when i have need of it to touch thy heart, insight and varied knowledge i possess; the fate of empires and the doom of kings lie clearly spread before my childish mind, and words of thunder issue from my mouth. burgundy (greatly moved, looks at her with emotion and astonishment). how is it with me? doth some heavenly power thus strangely stir my spirit's inmost depths? this pure, this gentle creature cannot lie! no, if enchantment blinds me, 'tis from heaven. my spirit tells me she is sent from god. johanna. oh, he is moved! i have not prayed in vain, wrath's thunder-cloud dissolves in gentle tears, and leaves his brow, while mercy's golden beams break from his eyes and gently promise peace. away with arms, now clasp him to your hearts, he weeps--he's conquered, he is ours once more! [her sword and banner fall; she hastens to him with outstretched arms, and embraces him in great agitation. la hire and dunois throw down their swords, and hasten also to embrace him. act iii. residence of the king at chalons on the marne. scene i. dunois, la hire. dunois. we have been true heart-friends, brothers in arms, still have we battled in a common cause, and held together amid toil and death. let not the love of woman rend the bond which hath resisted every stroke of fate. la hire. hear me, my prince! dunois. you love the wondrous maid, and well i know the purpose of your heart. you think without delay to seek the king, and to entreat him to bestow on you her hand in marriage. of your bravery the well-earned guerdon he cannot refuse but know,--ere i behold her in the arms of any other---- la hire. listen to me, prince! dunois. 'tis not the fleeting passion of the eye attracts me to her. my unconquered sense had set at naught the fiery shafts of love till i beheld this wondrous maiden, sent by a divine appointment to become the savior of this kingdom, and my wife; and on the instant in my heart i vowed a sacred oath, to bear her home, my bride. for she alone who is endowed with strength can be the strong man's friend. this glowing heart longs to repose upon a kindred breast, which can sustain and comprehend its strength. la hire. how dare i venture, prince, my poor deserts to measure with your name's heroic fame! when count dunois appeareth in the lists, each humbler suitor must forsake the field; still it doth ill become a shepherd maid to stand as consort by your princely side. the royal current in your veins would scorn to mix with blood of baser quality. dunois. she, like myself, is holy nature's child, a child divine--hence we by birth are equal. she bring dishonor on a prince's hand, who is the holy angel's bride, whose head is by a heavenly glory circled round, whose radiance far outshineth earthly crowns, who seeth lying far beneath her feet all that is greatest, highest of this earth! for thrones on thrones, ascending to the stars, would fail to reach the height where she abides in angel majesty! la hire. our monarch must decide. dunois. not so! she must decide! free hath she made this realm of france, and she herself must freely give her heart. la hire. here comes the king! scene ii. charles, agnes, sorel, duchatel, and chatillon. the same. charles (to chatillon). he comes! my title he will recognize, and do me homage as his sovereign liege? chatillon. here, in his royal town of chalons, sire, the duke, my master, will fall down before thee. he did command me, as my lord and king, to give thee greeting. he'll be here anon. sorel. he comes! hail beauteous and auspicious day, which bringeth joy, and peace, and reconcilement! chatillon. the duke, attended by two hundred knights, will hither come; he at thy feet will kneel; but he expecteth not that thou to him should yield the cordial greeting of a kinsman. charles. i long to clasp him to my throbbing heart. chatillon. the duke entreats that at this interview, no word be spoken of the ancient strife! charles. in lethe be the past forever sunk! the smiling future now invites our gaze. chatillon. all who have combated for burgundy shall be included in the amnesty. charles. so shall my realm be doubled in extent! chatillon. queen isabel, if she consent thereto, shall also be included in the peace. charles. she maketh war on me, not i on her. with her alone it rests to end our quarrel. chatillon. twelve knights shall answer for thy royal word. charles. my word is sacred. chatillon. the archbishop shall between you break the consecrated host, as pledge and seal of cordial reconcilement. charles. let my eternal weal be forfeited, if my hand's friendly grasp belie my heart. what other surety doth the duke require? chatillon (glancing at duchatel). i see one standing here, whose presence, sire, perchance might poison the first interview. [duchatel retires in silence. charles. depart, duchatel, and remain concealed until the duke can bear thee in his sight. [he follows him with his eye, then hastens after and embraces him. true-hearted friend! thou wouldst far more than this have done for my repose! [exit duchatel. chatillon. this instrument doth name the other points. charles (to the archbishop). let it be settled. we agree to all. we count no price too high to gain a friend. go now, dunois, and with a hundred knights, give courteous conduct to the noble duke. let the troops, garlanded with verdant boughs, receive their comrades with a joyous welcome. be the whole town arrayed in festive pomp, and let the bells with joyous peal, proclaim that france and burgundy are reconciled. [a page enters. trumpets sound. hark! what importeth that loud trumpet's call? page. the duke of burgundy hath stayed his march. [exit. dunois. up! forth to meet him! [exit with la hire and chatillon. charles (to sorel). my agnes! thou dost weep! even my strength doth almost fail me at this interview. how many victims have been doomed to fall ere we could meet in peace and reconcilement! but every storm at length suspends its rage, day follows on the murkiest night; and still when comes the hour, the latest fruits mature! archbishop (at the window). the thronging crowds impede the duke's advance; he scarce can free himself. they lift him now from off his horse; they kiss his spurs, his mantle. charles. they're a good people, in whom love flames forth as suddenly as wrath. in how brief space they do forget that 'tis this very duke who slew, in fight, their fathers and their sons; the moment swallows up the whole of life! be tranquil, sorel. e'en thy passionate joy perchance might to his conscience prove a thorn. nothing should either shame or grieve him here. scene iii. the duke of burgundy, dunois, la hire, chatillon, and two other knights of the duke's train. the duke remains standing at the door; the king inclines towards him; burgundy immediately advances, and in the moment when he is about to throw himself upon his knees, the king receives him in his arms. charles. you have surprised us; it was our intent to fetch you hither, but your steeds are fleet. burgundy. they bore me to my duty. [he embraces sorel, and kisses her brow. with your leave! at arras, niece, it is our privilege, and no fair damsel may exemption claim. charles. rumor doth speak your court the seat of love, the mart where all that's beautiful must tarry. burgundy. we are a traffic-loving people, sire; whate'er of costly earth's wide realms produce, for show and for enjoyment, is displayed upon our mart at bruges; but above all there woman's beauty is pre-eminent. sorel. more precious far is woman's truth; but it appeareth not upon the public mart. charles. kinsman, 'tis rumored to your prejudice that woman's fairest virtue you despise. burgundy. the heresy inflicteth on itself the heaviest penalty. 'tis well for you, from your own heart, my king, you learned betimes what a wild life hath late revealed to me. [he perceives the archbishop, and extends his hand. most reverend minister of god! your blessing! you still are to be found on duty's path, where those must walk who would encounter you. archbishop. now let my master call me when he will; my heart is full, i can with joy depart, since that mine eyes have seen this day! burgundy (to sorel). 'tis said that of your precious stones you robbed yourself, therefrom to forge 'gainst me the tools of war! bear you a soul so martial? were you then so resolute to work my overthrow? well, now our strife is over; what was lost will in due season all be found again. even your jewels have returned to you. against me to make war they were designed; receive them from me as a pledge of peace. [he receives a casket from one of the attendants, and presents it to her to open. sorel, embarrassed, looks at the king. charles. receive this present; 'tis a twofold pledge of reconcilement and of fairest love. burgundy (placing a diamond rose in her hair). why, is it not the diadem of france? with full as glad a spirit i would place the golden circle on this lovely brow. [taking her hand significantly. and count on me if, at some future time you should require a friend. [agnes sorel bursts into tears, and steps aside. the king struggles with his feelings. the bystanders contemplate the two princes with emotion. burgundy (after gazing round the circle, throws himself into the king's arms). oh, my king! [at the same moment the three burgundian knights hasten to dunois, la hire, and the archbishop. they embrace each other. the two princes remain for a time speechless in each other's arms. i could renounce you! i could bear your hate! charles. hush! hush! no further! burgundy. i this english king could crown! swear fealty to this foreigner! and you, my sovereign, into ruin plunge! charles. forget it! everything's forgiven now! this single moment doth obliterate all. 'twas a malignant star! a destiny! burgundy (grasps his hand). believe me, sire, i'll make amends for all. your bitter sorrow i will compensate; you shall receive your kingdom back entire, a solitary village shall not fail! charles. we are united. now i fear no foe. burgundy. trust me, it was not with a joyous spirit that i bore arms against you. did you know? oh, wherefore sent you not this messenger? [pointing to sorel. i must have yielded to her gentle tears. henceforth, since breast to breast we have embraced, no power of hell again shall sever us! my erring course ends here. his sovereign's heart is the true resting-place for burgundy. archbishop (steps between them). ye are united, princes! france doth rise a renovated phoenix from its ashes. the auspicious future greets us with a smile. the country's bleeding wounds will heal again, the villages, the desolated towns, rise in new splendor from their ruined heaps, the fields array themselves in beauteous green; but those who, victims of your quarrel, fell, the dead, rise not again; the bitter tears, caused by your strife, remain forever wept! one generation hath been doomed to woe; on their descendants dawns a brighter day; the gladness of the son wakes not the sire. this the dire fruitage of your brother-strife! oh, princes, learn from hence to pause with dread, ere from its scabbard ye unsheath the sword. the man of power lets loose the god of war, but not, obedient, as from fields of air returns the falcon to the sportsman's hand, doth the wild deity obey the call of mortal voice; nor will the saviour's hand a second time forth issue from the clouds. burgundy. oh, sire! an angel walketh by your side. where is she? why do i behold her not? charles. where is johanna? wherefore faileth she to grace the festival we owe to her? archbishop. she loves not, sire, the idleness of the court, and when the heavenly mandate calls her not forth to the world's observance, she retires, and doth avoid the notice of the crowd. doubtless, unless the welfare of the realm claims her regard, she communes with her god, for still a blessing on her steps attends. scene iv. the same. johanna enters. she is clad in armor, and wears a garland in her hair. charles. thou comest as a priestess decked, johanna, to consecrate the union formed by thee! burgundy. how dreadful was the maiden in the fight! how lovely circled by the beams of peace! my word, johanna, have i now fulfilled? art thou contented? have i thine applause? johanna. the greatest favor thou hast shown thyself. arrayed in blessed light thou shinest now, who didst erewhile with bloody, ominous ray, hang like a moon of terror in the heavens. [looking round. many brave knights i find assembled here, and joy's glad radiance beams in every eye; one mourner, one alone i have encountered; he must conceal himself, where all rejoice. burgundy. and who is conscious of such heavy guilt, that of our favor he must needs despair? johanna. may he approach? oh, tell me that he may; complete thy merit. void the reconcilement that frees not the whole heart. a drop of hate remaining in the cup of joy converts the blessed draught to poison. let there be no deed so stained with blood that burgundy cannot forgive it on this day of joy. burgundy. ha! now i understand! johanna. and thou'lt forgive? thou wilt indeed forgive? come in, duchatel! [she opens the door and leads in duchatel, who remains standing at a distance. the duke is reconciled to all his foes, and he is so to thee. [duchatel approaches a few steps nearer, and tries to read the countenance of the duke. burgundy. what makest thou of me, johanna? know'st thou what thou askest? johanna. a gracious sovereign throws his portals wide, admitting every guest, excluding none; as freely as the firmament the world, so mercy must encircle friend and foe. impartially the sun pours forth his beams through all the regions of infinity; the heaven's reviving dew falls everywhere, and brings refreshment to each thirsty plant; whate'er is good, and cometh from on high, is universal, and without reserve; but in the heart's recesses darkness dwells! burgundy. oh, she can mould me to her wish; my heart is in her forming hand like melted wax. --duchatel, i forgive thee--come, embrace me! shade of my sire! oh, not with wrathful eye behold me clasp the hand that shed thy blood. ye death-gods, reckon not to my account, that my dread oath of vengeance i abjure. with you, in yon drear realm of endless night, there beats no human heart, and all remains eternal, steadfast, and immovable. here in the light of day 'tis otherwise. man, living, feeling man, is aye the sport of the o'ermastering present. charles (to johanna). lofty maid! what owe i not to thee! how truly now hast thou fulfilled thy word,--how rapidly reversed my destiny! thou hast appeased my friends, and in the dust o'erwhelmed my foes; from foreign yoke redeemed my cities. thou hast all achieved. speak, how can i reward thee? johanna. sire, in prosperity be still humane, as in misfortune thou hast ever been; and on the height of greatness ne'er forget the value of a friend in times of need; thou hast approved it in adversity. refuse not to the lowest of thy people the claims of justice and humanity, for thy deliverer from the fold was called. beneath thy royal sceptre thou shalt gather the realm entire of france. thou shalt become the root and ancestor of mighty kings; succeeding monarchs, in their regal state, shall those outshine, who filled the throne before. thy stock, in majesty shall bloom so long as it stands rooted in the people's love. pride only can achieve its overthrow, and from the lowly station, whence to-day god summoned thy deliverer, ruin dire obscurely threats thy crime-polluted sons! burgundy. exalted maid! possessed with sacred fire! if thou canst look into the gulf of time, speak also of my race! shall coming years with ampler honors crown my princely line! johanna. high as the throne, thou, burgundy, hast built thy seat of power, and thy aspiring heart would raise still higher, even to the clouds, the lofty edifice. but from on high a hand omnipotent shall check its rise. fear thou not hence the downfall of thy house! its glory in a maiden shall survive; upon her breast shall sceptre-bearing kings, the people's shepherds, bloom. their ample sway shall o'er two realms extend, they shall ordain laws to control the known world, and the new, which god still veils behind the pathless waves. charles. oh, if the spirit doth reveal it, speak; shall this alliance which we now renew in distant ages still unite our sons? johanna (after a pause). sovereigns and kings! disunion shun with dread! wake not contention from the murky cave where he doth lie asleep, for once aroused he cannot soon be quelled? he doth beget an iron brood, a ruthless progeny; wildly the sweeping conflagration spreads. --be satisfied! seek not to question further in the glad present let your hearts rejoice, the future let me shroud! sorel. exalted maid! thou canst explore my heart, thou readest there if after worldly greatness it aspires, to me to give a joyous oracle. johanna. of empires only i discern the doom; in thine own bosom lies thy destiny! dunois. what, holy maid, will be thy destiny? doubtless, for thee, who art beloved of heaven, the fairest earthly happiness shall bloom, for thou art pure and holy. johanna. happiness abideth yonder, with our god, in heaven. charles. thy fortune be henceforth thy monarch's care! for i will glorify thy name in france, and the remotest age shall call thee blest. thus i fulfil my word. kneel down! [he draws his sword and touches her with it. and rise! a noble! i, thy monarch, from the dust of thy mean birth exalt thee. in the grave thy fathers i ennoble--thou shalt bear upon thy shield the fleur-de-lis, and be of equal lineage with the best in france. only the royal blood of valois shall be nobler than thine own! the highest peer shall feel himself exalted by thy hand; to wed thee nobly, maid, shall be my care! dunois (advancing). my heart made choice of her when she was lowly. the recent honor which encircles her, neither exalts her merit nor my love. here in my sovereign's presence, and before this holy bishop, maid, i tender thee my hand, and take thee as my princely wife, if thou esteem me worthy to be thine. charles. resistless maiden! wonder thou dost add to wonder! yes, i now believe that naught's impossible to thee! thou hast subdued this haughty heart, which still hath scoffed till now at love's omnipotence. la hire (advancing). if i have read aright johanna's soul, her modest heart's her fairest jewel. she deserveth well the homage of the great, but her desires soar not so high. she striveth not to reach a giddy eminence; an honest heart's true love content's her, and the quiet lot which with this hand i humbly proffer her. charles. thou, too, la hire! two brave competitors,-- peers in heroic virtue and renown! --wilt thou, who hast appeased mine enemies, my realms united, part my dearest friends? one only can possess her; i esteem each to be justly worthy such a prize. speak, maid! thy heart alone must here decide. sorel. the noble maiden is surprised, her cheek is crimsoned over with a modest blush. let her have leisure to consult her heart, and in confiding friendship to unseal her long-closed bosom. now the hour is come when, with a sister's love, i also may approach the maid severe, and offer her this silent, faithful breast. permit us women alone to weigh this womanly affair; do you await the issue. charles (about to retire). be it so! johanna. no, sire, not so! the crimson on my cheek is not the blush of bashful modesty. naught have i for this noble lady's ear which in this presence i may not proclaim. the choice of these brave knights much honors me, but i did not forsake my shepherd-walks, to chase vain worldly splendor, nor array my tender frame in panoply of war, to twine the bridal garland in my hair. far other labor is assigned to me, which a pure maiden can alone achieve. i am the soldier of the lord of hosts, and to no mortal man can i be wife. archbishop. to be a fond companion unto man is woman born--when nature she obeys, most wisely she fulfils high heaven's decree! when his behest who called thee to the field shall be accomplished, thou'lt resign thy arms, and once again rejoin the softer sex, whose gentle nature thou dost now forego, and which from war's stern duties is exempt. johanna. most reverend sir! as yet i cannot say what work the spirit will enjoin on me. but when the time comes round, his guiding voice will not be mute, and it i will obey. now he commands me to complete my task; my royal master's brow is still uncrowned, 'twere better for me i had ne'er been born! henceforth no more of this, unless ye would provoke the spirit's wrath who in me dwells! the eye of man, regarding me with love, to me is horror and profanity. charles. forbear! it is in vain to urge her further. johanna. command the trumpets of the war to sound! this stillness doth perplex and harass me; an inward impulse drives me from repose, it still impels me to achieve my work, and sternly beckons me to meet my doom. scene v. a knight, entering hastily. charles. what tidings? speak! knight. the foe has crossed the marne, and marshalleth his army for the fight. johanna (inspired). battle and tumult! now my soul is free. arm, warriors, arm! while i prepare the troops. [she goes out. charles. follow, la hire! e'en at the gates of rheims they will compel us to dispute the crown! dunois. no genuine courage prompts them. this essay is the last effort of enraged despair. charles. i do not urge you, duke. to-day's the time to compensate the errors of the past. burgundy. you shall be satisfied with me. charles. myself will march before you on the path of fame; here, with my royal town of rheims in view, i'll fight, and gallantry achieve the crown. thy knight, my agnes, bids thee now farewell! agnes (embracing him). i do not weep, i do not tremble for thee; my faith, unshaken, cleaveth unto god! heaven, were we doomed to failure, had not given so many gracious pledges of success! my heart doth whisper me that, victory-crowned, in conquered rheims, i shall embrace my king. [trumpets sound with a spirited tone, and while the scene is changing pass into a wild martial strain. when the scene opens, the orchestra joins in, accompanied by warlike instruments behind the scene. scene vi. the scene changes to an open country skirted with trees. during the music soldiers are seen retreating hastily across the background. talbot, leaning on fastolfe, and accompanied by soldiers. soon after, lionel. talbot. here lay me down beneath the trees, and then betake you back, with speed, unto the fight; i need no aid to die. fastolfe. oh, woful day! [lionel enters. behold what sign awaits you, lionel! here lies our general wounded unto death. lionel. now, god forbid! my noble lord, arise! no moment this to falter and to sink. yield not to death. by your all-powerful will command your ebbing spirit still to live. talbot. in vain! the day of destiny is come, which will o'erthrow the english power in france. in desperate combat i have vainly risked the remnant of our force to ward it off. struck by the thunderbolt i prostrate lie, never to rise again. rheims now is lost, hasten to succor paris! lionel. paris is with the dauphin reconciled; a courier even now has brought the news. talbot (tearing off his bandages). then freely flow, ye currents of my blood, for talbot now is weary of the sun! lionel. i may no longer tarry: fastolfe, haste! convey our leader to a place of safety. no longer now can we maintain this post; our flying troops disperse on every side, on, with resistless might, the maiden comes. talbot. folly, thou conquerest, and i must yield! against stupidity the very gods. themselves contend in vain. exalted reason, resplendent daughter of the head divine, wise foundress of the system of the world, guide of the stars, who art thou then if thou, bound to the tail of folly's uncurbed steed, must, vainly shrieking with the drunken crowd, eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss. accursed, who striveth after noble ends, and with deliberate wisdom forms his plans! to the fool-king belongs the world. lionel. my lord, but for a few brief moments can you live-- think of your maker! talbot. had we, like brave men, been vanquished by the brave, we might, indeed, console ourselves that 'twas the common lot; for fickle fortune aye revolves her wheel. but to be baffled by such juggling arts! deserved our earnest and laborious life not a more earnest issue? lionel (extends his hand to him). fare you well! the debt of honest tears i will discharge after the battle--if i then survive. now fate doth call me hence, where on the field her web she waveth, and dispenseth doom. we in another world shall meet again; for our long friendship, this a brief farewell. [exit. talbot. soon is the struggle past, and to the earth, to the eternal sun, i render back these atoms, joined in me for pain and pleasure. and of the mighty talbot, who the world filled with his martial glory, there remains naught save a modicum of senseless dust. such is the end of man--the only spoil we carry with us from life's battle-field, is but an insight into nothingness, and utter scorn of all which once appeared to us exalted and desirable. scene vii. charles, burgundy, dunois, duchatel, and soldiers. burgundy. the trench is stormed! dunois. the victory is ours! charles (perceiving talbot.) look! who is he, who yonder of the sun taketh reluctant, sorrowful farewell? his armor indicates no common man; go, succor him, if aid may yet avail. [soldiers of the king's retinue step forward. fastolfe. back! stand apart! respect the mighty dead, whom ye in life ne'er ventured to approach! burgundy. what do i see? lord talbot in his blood! [he approaches him. talbot gazes fixedly at him, and dies. fastolfe. traitor, avaunt! let not the sight of thee poison the dying hero's parting glance. dunois. resistless hero! dread-inspiring talbot! does such a narrow space suffice thee now, and this vast kingdom could not satisfy the large ambition of thy giant soul! now first i can salute you, sire, as king: the diadem but tottered on your brow, while yet a spirit tenanted this clay. charles (after contemplating the body in silence). a higher power hath vanquished him, not we! he lies upon the soil of france, as lies the hero on the shield he would not quit. well, peace be with his ashes! bear him hence! [soldiers take up the body and carry it away. here in the heart of france, where his career of conquest ended, let his relics lie! so far no hostile sword attained before. a fitting tomb shall memorize his name; his epitaph the spot whereon he fell. fastolfe (yielding his sword). i am your prisoner, sir. charles (returning his sword). not so! rude war respects each pious office; you are free to render the last honors to the dead, go now, duchatel--still my agnes trembles-- hasten to snatch her from anxiety-- bring her the tidings of our victory, and usher her in triumph into rheims! [exit duchatel. scene viii. the same. la hire. dunois. la hire, where is the maiden? la hire. that i ask of you; i left her fighting by your side. dunois. i thought she was protected by your arm, when i departed to assist the king. burgundy. not long ago i saw her banner wave amidst the thickest of the hostile ranks. dunois. alas! where is she? evil i forebode? come, let us haste to rescue her. i fear her daring soul hath led her on too far; alone she combats in the midst of foes, and without succor yieldeth to the crowd. charles. haste to her rescue! la hire. come! burgundy. we follow all! [exit. [they retire in haste. a deserted part of the battle-field. in the distance are seen the towers of rheims illumined by the sun. scene ix. a knight in black armor, with closed visor. johanna follows him to the front of the stage, where he stops and awaits her. johanna. deluder! now i see thy stratagem! thou hast deceitfully, through seeming flight, allured me from the battle, doom and death averting thus from many a british head. destruction now doth overtake thyself. black knight. why dost thou follow after me and track my steps with quenchless rage? i am not doomed to perish by thy hand. johanna. deep in my soul i hate thee as the night, which is thy color; to blot thee out from the fair light of day an irresistible desire impels me. who art thou? raise thy visor. i had said that thou wert talbot had i not myself seen warlike talbot in the battle fall. black knight. is the divining-spirit mute in thee? johanna. his voice speaks loudly in my spirit's depth the near approach of woe. black knight. johanna d'arc! borne on the wings of conquest, thou hast reached the gates of rheims. let thy achieved renown content thee. fortune, like thy slave, till now hath followed thee; dismiss her, ere in wrath she free herself; fidelity she hates; she serveth none with constancy till death. johanna. why check me in the midst of my career? why bid me falter and forsake my work? i will complete it and fulfil my vow! black knight. nothing can thee, thou mighty one, withstand, in battle thou art aye invincible. but henceforth shun the fight; attend my warning. johanna. not from my hand will i resign this sword till haughty england's prostrate in the dust. black knight. behold! there rheims ariseth with its towers, the goal and end of thy career. thou seest the lofty minster's sun-illumined dome; thou in triumphal pomp wouldst enter there, thy monarch crown, and ratify thy vow. enter not there! return! attend my warning! johanna. what art thou, double-tongued, deceitful being, who wouldst bewilder and appal me? speak! by what authority dost thou presume to greet me with fallacious oracles? [the black knight is about to depart, she steps in his way. no, thou shalt speak, or perish by my hand! [she endeavors to strike him. black knight (touches her with his hand, she remains motionless). slay what is mortal! [darkness, thunder and lightning. the knight sinks into the earth. johanna (stands at first in amazement, but soon recovers herself). 'twas nothing living. 'twas a base delusion, an instrument of hell, a juggling fiend, uprisen hither from the fiery pool to shake and terrify my steadfast heart. wielding the sword of god, whom should i fear! i will triumphantly achieve my work. my courage should not waver, should not fail were hell itself to champion me to fight! [she is about to depart. scene x. lionel, johanna. lionel. accursed one, prepare thee for the fight! not both of us shall quit this field alive. thou hast destroyed the bravest of our host the noble talbot hath his mighty soul breathed forth upon my bosom. i'll avenge the hero, or participate his doom. and wouldst thou know who brings thee glory now, whether he live or die,--i'm lionel, the sole survivor of the english chiefs, and still unconquered is this valiant arm. [he rushes upon her; after a short combat she strikes the sword out of his hand. perfidious fortune! [he wrestles with her. johanna seizes him by the crest and tears open his helmet; his face is thus exposed; at the same time she draws her sword with her right hand. johanna. suffer, what thou soughtest! the virgin sacrifices thee through me! [at this moment she gazes in his face. his aspect softens her, she remains motionless and slowly lets her arm sink. lionel. why linger, why withhold the stroke of death? my glory thou hast taken--take my life! i want no mercy, i am in thy power. [she makes him a sign with her hand to fly. how! shall i fly and owe my life to thee? no, i would rather die. johanna (with averted face). i will not know that ever thou didst owe thy life to me. lionel. i hate alike thee and thy proffered gift. i want no mercy--kill thine enemy who loathes and would have slain thee. johanna. slay me, then, and fly! lionel. ha! what is this? johanna (hiding her face). woe's me! lionel (approaching her). 'tis said thou killest all the english whom thy sword subdues in battle--why spare me alone? johanna (raises her sword with a rapid movement as if to strike him, but lets it fall quickly when she gazes on his face). oh, holy virgin! lionel. wherefore namest thou the holy virgin? she knows naught of thee; heaven hath no part in thee. johanna (in the greatest anxiety). what have i done? alas! i've broke my vow! [she wrings her hands in despair. lionel (looks at her with sympathy and approaches her). unhappy maid! i pity thee! thy sorrow touches me; thou hast shown mercy unto me alone, my hatred yielded unto sympathy! who art thou, and whence comest thou? johanna. away! lionel. thy youth, thy beauty, move my soul to pity! thy look sinks in my heart. i fain would save thee! how may i do so? tell me. come! oh, come! renounce this fearful league--throw down these arms! johanna. i am unworthy now to carry them! lionel. then throw them from thee--quick! come, follow me! johanna (with horror). how! follow thee! lionel. thou may'st be saved. oh, come! i will deliver thee, but linger not. strange sorrow for thy sake doth seize my heart, unspeakable desire to rescue thee---- [he seizes her arm. johanna. the bastard comes! 'tis they! they seek for me! if they should find thee---- lionel. i'll defend thee, maid. johanna. i die if thou shouldst perish by their hands! lionel. am i then dear to thee? johanna. ye heavenly powers! lionel. shall i again behold thee--hear from thee? johanna. no! never! lionel. thus this sword i seize in pledge that i again behold thee! [he snatches her sword. johanna. madman, hold! thou darest? lionel. now i yield to force--again i'll see thee! [he retires. scene xi. johanna, dunois, la hire. la hire. it is she! the maiden lives! dunois. fear not, johanna! friends are at thy side. la hire. is not that lionel who yonder flies? dunois. let him escape! maiden, the righteous cause hath triumphed now. rheims opens wide its gates; the joyous crowds pour forth to meet their king. la hire. what ails thee, maiden? she grows pale--she sinks! [johanna grows dizzy, and is about to fall. dunois. she's wounded--rend her breastplate--'tis her arm! the wound is not severe. la hire. her blood doth flow. johanna. oh, that my life would stream forth with my blood! [she lies senseless in la hire's arms. act iv. a hall adorned as for a festival; the columns are hung with garlands; behind the scene flutes and hautboys. scene i. johanna. hushed is the din of arms, war's storms subside, glad songs and dance succeed the bloody fray, through all the streets joy echoes far and wide, altar and church are decked in rich array, triumphal arches rise in vernal pride, wreathes round the columns wind their flowery way, wide rheims cannot contain the mighty throng, which to joyous pageant rolls along. one thought alone doth every heart possess, one rapt'rous feeling o'er each breast preside. and those to-day are linked in happiness whom bloody hatred did erewhile divide. all who themselves of gallic race confess the name of frenchman own with conscious pride, france sees the splendor of her ancient crown, and to her monarch's son bows humbly down. yet i, the author of this wide delight, the joy, myself created, cannot share; my heart is changed, in sad and dreary plight it flies the festive pageant in despair; still to the british camp it taketh flight, against my will my gaze still wanders there, and from the throng i steal, with grief oppressed, to hide the guilt which weighs upon my breast! what! i permit a human form to haunt my bosom's sacred cell? and there, where heavenly radiance shone, doth earthly love presume to dwell? the savior of my country, i, the warrior of god most high, burn for my country's foeman? dare i name heaven's holy light, nor feel o'erwhelmed with shame? [the music behind the scene passes into a soft and moving melody. woe is me! those melting tones! they distract my 'wildered brain! every note, his voice recalling, conjures up his form again would that spears were whizzing round! would that battle's thunder roared! 'midst the wild tumultuous sound my former strength were then restored. these sweet tones, these melting voices, with seductive power are fraught! they dissolve, in gentle longing, every feeling, every thought, waking tears of plaintive sadness. [after a pause, with more energy. should i have killed him? could i, when i gazed upon his face? killed him? oh, rather far would i have turned my weapon 'gainst myself! and am i culpable because humane? is pity sinful? pity! didst then hear the voice of pity and humanity when others fell the victims of thy sword? why was she silent when the gentle youth from wales entreated thee to spare his life? oh, cunning heart! thou liest before high heaven! it is not pity's voice impels thee now! why was i doomed to look into his eyes! to mark his noble features! with that glance, thy crime, thy woe commenced. unhappy one! a sightless instrument thy god demands, blindly thou must accomplish his behest! when thou didst see, god's shield abandoned thee, and the dire snares of hell around thee pressed! [flutes are again heard, and she subsides into a quiet melancholy. harmless staff! oh, that i ne'er had for the sword abandoned thee! had voices never reached mine ear, from thy branches, sacred tree! high queen of heaven! oh, would that thou hadst ne'er revealed thyself to me! take back--i dare not claim it now-- take back thy crown, 'tis not for me! i saw the heavens open wide, i gazed upon that face of love! yet here on earth my hopes abide, they do not dwell in heaven above! why, holy one, on me impose this dread vocation? could i steel, and to each soft emotion close this heart, by nature formed to feel? wouldst thou proclaim thy high command, make choice of those who, free from sin, in thy eternal mansions stand; send forth thy flaming cherubim! immortal ones, thy law they keep, they do not feel, they do not weep! choose not a tender woman's aid, not the frail soul of shepherd maid! was i concerned with warlike things, with battles or the strife of kings? in innocence i led my sheep adown the mountain's silent steep, but thou didst send me into life, midst princely halls and scenes of strife, to lose my spirit's tender bloom alas, i did not seek my doom! scene ii. agnes sorel, johanna. sorel (advances joyfully. when she perceives johanna she hastens to her and falls upon her neck; then suddenly recollecting herself; she relinquishes her hold, and falls down before her). no! no! not so! before thee in the dust---- johanna (trying to raise her). arise! thou dost forget thyself and me. sorel. forbid me not! 'tis the excess of joy which throws me at thy feet--i must pour forth my o'ercharged heart in gratitude to god; i worship the invisible in thee. thou art the angel who has led my lord to rheims, to crown him with the royal crown. what i ne'er dreamed to see is realized! the coronation march will soon set forth; arrayed in festal pomp the monarch stands; assembled are the nobles of the realm, the mighty peers to bear the insignia; to the cathedral rolls the billowy crowd; glad songs resound, the bells unite their peal: oh, this excess of joy i cannot bear! [johanna gently raises her. agnes sorel pauses a moment, and surveys the maiden more narrowly. yet thou remainest ever grave and stern; thou canst create delight, yet share it not. thy heart is cold, thou feelest not our joy, thou hast beheld the glories of the skies; no earthly interest moveth thy pure breast. [johanna seizes her hand passionately, but soon lets it fall again. oh, couldst thou own a woman's feeling heart! put off this armor, war is over now, confess thy union with the softer sex! my loving heart shrinks timidly from thee, while thus thou wearest pallas' brow severe. johanna. what wouldst thou have me do? sorel. unarm thyself! put off this coat of mail! the god of love fears to approach a bosom clad in steel. oh, be a woman, thou wilt feel his power! johanna. what, now unarm myself? midst battle's roar i'll bare my bosom to the stroke of death! not now! would that a sevenfold wall of brass could hide me from your revels, from myself! sorel. thou'rt loved by count dunois. his noble heart, which virtue and renown alone inspire, with pure and holy passion glows for thee. oh, it is sweet to know oneself beloved by such a hero--sweeter still to love him! [johanna turns away with aversion. thou hatest him?--no, no, thou only canst not love him:--how could hatred stir thy breast! those who would tear us from the one we love, we hate alone; but none can claim thy love. thy heart is tranquil--if it could but feel---- johanna. oh, pity me! lament my hapless fate! sorel. what can be wanting to complete thy joy? thou hast fulfilled thy promise, france is free, to rheims, in triumph, thou hast led the king, thy mighty deeds have gained thee high renown, a happy people praise and worship thee; thy name, the honored theme of every tongue; thou art the goddess of this festival; the monarch, with his crown and regal state, shines not with greater majesty than thou! johanna. oh, could i hide me in the depths of earth! sorel. why this emotion? whence this strange distress? who may to-day look up without a fear if thou dost cast thine eyes upon the ground! it is for me to blush, me, who near thee feel all my littleness; i cannot reach the lofty virtue, thy heroic strength! for--all my weakness shall i own to thee? not the renown of france, my fatherland, not the new splendor of the monarch's crow, not the triumphant gladness of the crowds, engage this woman's heart. one only form is in its depths enshrined; it hath no room for any feeling save for one alone: he is the idol, him the people bless, him they extol, for him they strew these flowers, and he is mine, he is my own true love! johanna. oh, thou art happy! thou art blessed indeed! thou lovest, where all love. thou may'st, unblamed pour forth thy rapture, and thine inmost heart, fearless discover to the gaze of man! thy country's triumph is thy lover's too. the vast, innumerable multitudes, who, rolling onward, crowd within these walls, participate thy joy, they hallow it; thee they salute, for thee they twine the wreath, thou art a portion of the general joy; thou lovest the all-inspiring soul, the sun, and what thou seest is thy lover's glory! sorel (falling on her neck). thou dost delight me, thou canst read my heart! i did thee wrong, thou knowest what love is, thou tell'st my feelings with a voice of power. my heart forgets its fear and its reserve, and seeks confidingly to blend with thine---- johanna (tearing herself from her with violence). forsake me! turn away! do not pollute thyself by longer intercourse with me! be happy! go--and in the deepest night leave me to hide my infamy, my woe! sorel. thou frighten'st me, i understand thee not, i ne'er have understood thee--for from me thy dark mysterious being still was veiled. who may divine what thus disturbs thy heart, thus terrifies thy pure and sacred soul! johanna. thou art the pure, the holy one! couldst thou behold mine inmost heart, thou, shuddering, wouldst fly the traitoress, the enemy! scene iii. dunois, duchatel, and la hire, with the banner of johanna. dunois. johanna, thee we seek. all is prepared; the king hath sent us, 'tis his royal will that thou before him shouldst thy banner bear, the company of princes thou shalt join; and march immediately before the king: for he doth not deny it, and the world shall witness, maiden, that to thee alone he doth ascribe the honor of this day. la hire. here is the banner. take it, noble maiden thou'rt stayed for by the princes and the people. johanna. i march before him? i the banner bear? dunois. whom else would it become? what other hand is pure enough to bear the sacred ensign! amid the battle thou hast waved it oft; to grace our glad procession bear it now. [la hire presents the banner to her, she draws back, shuddering. johanna. away! away! la hire. art thou terrified at thine own banner, maiden? look at it! [he displays the banner. it is the same thou didst in conquest wave. imaged upon it is the queen of heaven, floating in glory o'er this earthly ball; for so the holy mother showed it thee. [johanna gazing upon it with horror. 'tis she herself! so she appeared to me. see, how she looks at me and knits her brow, and anger flashes from her threatening eye! sorel. alas, she raveth! maiden, be composed! collect thyself! thou seest nothing real! that is her pictured image; she herself wanders above, amid the angelic choir! johanna. thou comest, fearful one, to punish me? destroy, o'erwhelm, thy lightnings hurl, and let them fall upon my guilty head. alas, my vow i've broken. i've profaned and desecrated thy most holy name! dunois. woe's us! what may this mean? what unblest words? la hire (in astonishment, to duchatel). this strange emotion canst thou comprehend? duchatel. that which i see, i see--i long have feared it. dunois. what sayest thou? duchatel. i dare not speak my thoughts. i would to heaven that the king were crowned! la hire. how! hath the awe this banner doth inspire turned back upon thyself? before this sign let britons tremble; to the foes of france 'tis fearful, but to all true citizens it is auspicious. johanna. yes, thou sayest truly! to friends 'tis gracious! but to enemies it causeth horror! [the coronation march is heard. dunois. take thy banner, then! the march begins--no time is to be lost! [they press the banner upon her; she seizes it with evident emotion, and retires; the others follow. [the scene changes to an open place before the cathedral. scene iv. spectators occupy the background; bertrand, claude marie, and etienne come forward; then margot and louison. the coronation march is heard in the distance. bertrand. hark to the music! they approach already! what had we better do? shall we mount up upon the platform, or press through the crowd, that we may nothing lose of the procession? etienne. it is not to be thought of. all the streets are thronged with horsemen and with carriages. beside these houses let us take our stand, here we without annoyance may behold the train as it goes by. claude marie. almost it seems as were the half of france assembled here, so mighty is the flood that it hath reached even our distant lotharingian land and borne us thither! bertrand. who would sit at home when great events are stirring in the land! it hath cost plenty, both of sweat and blood, ere the crown rested on its rightful head! nor shall our lawful king, to whom we give the crown, be worse accompanied than he whom the parisians in st. denis crowned! he is no loyal, honest-minded man who doth absent him from this festival, and joins not in the cry: "god save the king!" scene v. margot and louison join them. louison. we shall again behold our sister, margot! how my heart beats! margot. in majesty and pomp we shall behold her, saying to ourselves: it is our sister, it is our johanna! louison. till i have seen her, i can scarce believe that she, whom men the maid of orleans name, the mighty warrior, is indeed johanna, our sister whom we lost! [the music draws nearer. margot. thou doubtest still! thou wilt thyself behold her! bertrand. see, they come! scene vi. musicians, with flutes and hautboys, open the procession. children follow, dressed in white, with branches in their hands; behind them two heralds. then a procession of halberdiers, followed by magistrates in their robes. then two marshals with their staves; the duke of burgundy, bearing the sword; dunois with the sceptre, other nobles with the regalia; others with sacrificial offerings. behind these, knights with the ornaments of their order; choristers with incense; two bishops with the ampulla; the archbishop with the crucifix. johanna follows, with her banner, she walks with downcast head and wavering steps; her sisters, on beholding her, express their astonishment and joy. behind her comes the king under a canopy, supported by four barons; courtiers follow, soldiers conclude the procession; as soon as it has entered the church the music ceases. scene vii. louison, margot, claude marie, etienne, bertrand. margot. saw you our sister? claude marie. she in golden armor, who with the banner walked before the king? margot. it was johanna. it was she, our sister! louison. she recognized us not! she did not feel that we, her sisters, were so near to her. she looked upon the ground, and seemed so pale, and trembled so beneath her banner's weight when i beheld her, i could not rejoice. margot. so now, arrayed in splendor and in pomp, i have beheld our sister--who in dreams would ever have imagined or conceived, when on our native hills she drove the flock, that we should see her in such majesty? louison. our father's dream is realized, that we in rheims before our sister should bow down. that is the church, which in his dream he saw and each particular is now fulfilled. but images of woe he also saw! alas! i'm grieved to see her raised so high! bertrand. why stand we idly here? let's to the church to view the coronation! margot. yes! perchance we there may meet our sister; let us go! louison. we have beheld her. let us now return back to our village. margot. how? ere we with her have interchanged a word? louison. she doth belong to us no longer; she with princes stands and monarchs. who are we, that we should seek with foolish vanity to near her state? she was a stranger while she dwelt with us! margot. will she despise, and treat us with contempt? bertrand. the king himself is not ashamed of us, he kindly greets the meanest of the crowd. how high soever she may be exalted, the king is raised still higher! [trumpets and kettle-drums are heard from the church. claude marie. let's to the church! [they hasten to the background, where they are lost among the crowd. scene viii. thibaut enters, clad in black. raimond follows him, and tries to hold him back. raimond. stay, father thibaut! do not join the crowds! here, at this joyous festival you meet none but the happy, whom your grief offends. come! let us quit the town with hasty steps. thibaut. hast thou beheld my child? my wretched child? didst thou observe her? raimmond. i entreat you, fly! thibaut. didst mark her tottering and uncertain steps, her countenance, so pallid and disturbed? she feels her dreadful state; the hour is come to save my child, and i will not neglect it. [he is about to retire. raimond. what would you do? thibaut. surprise her, hurl her down from her vain happiness, and forcibly restore her to the god whom she denies. raimond. oh, do not work the ruin of your child! thibaut. if her soul lives, her mortal part may die. [johanna rushes out of the church, without her banner. the people press around her, worship her, and kiss her garments. she is detained in the background by the crowd. she comes! 'tis she! she rushes from the church. her troubled conscience drives her from the fane! 'tis visibly the judgment of her god! raimond. farewell! require not my attendance further! hopeful i came, and sorrowful depart. your daughter once again i have beheld, and feel again that she is lost to me! [he goes out. thibaut retires on the opposite side. scene ix. johanna, people. afterwards her sisters. johanna (she has freed herself from the crowd and comes forward). remain i cannot--spirits chase me forth! the organ's pealing tones like thunder sound, the dome's arched roof threatens to overwhelm me! i must escape and seek heaven's wide expanse! i left my banner in the sanctuary, never, oh, never, will i touch it more! it seemed to me as if i had beheld my sisters pass before me like a dream. 'twas only a delusion!--they, alas! are far, far distant--inaccessible-- e'en as my childhood, as mine innocence! margot (stepping forward). 'tis she! it is johanna! louison (hastening toward her). oh, my sister! johanna. then it was no delusion--you are here-- thee i embrace, louison! thee, my margot? here in this strange and crowded solitude, i clasp once more my sisters' faithful breasts! margot. she knows us still, she is our own kind sister. johanna. your love hath led you to me here so far! so very far! you are not wroth with her who left her home without one parting word! louison. god's unseen providence conducted thee. margot. thy great renown, which agitates the world, which makes thy name the theme of every tongue, hath in our quiet village wakened us, and led us hither to this festival. to witness all thy glory we are come; and we are not alone! johanna (quickly). our father's here! where is he? why doth he conceal himself? margot. our father is not with us. johanna. not with you? he will not see me, then! you do not bring his blessing for his child? louison. he knoweth not that we are here. johanna. not know it! wherefore not? you are embarrassed, and you do not speak; you look upon the ground! where is our father? margot. since thou hast left---- louison (making a sign to margot). margot! margot. our father hath become dejected. johanna. ah! louison. console thyself! our sire's foreboding spirit well thou knowest! he will collect himself, and be composed, when he shall learn from us that thou art happy. margot. and thou art happy? yes, it must be so, for thou art great and honored! johanna. i am so, now i again behold you, once again your voices hear, whose fond, familiar tones bring to my mind my dear paternal fields. when on my native hills i drove my herd, then i was happy as in paradise-- i ne'er can be so more, no, never more! [she hides her face on louison's bosom. claude marie, etienne, and bertrand appear, and remain timidly standing in the distance. margot. come, bertrand! claude marie! come, etienne! our sister is not proud: she is so gentle, and speaks so kindly,--more so than of yore, when in our village she abode with us. [they draw near, and hold out their hands; johanna gazes on them fixedly, and appears amazed. johanna. where am i? tell me! was it all a dream, a long, long dream? and am i now awake? am i away from dom remi? is't so? i fell asleep beneath the druid tree, and i am now awake; and round me stand the kind, familiar forms? i only dreamed of all these battles, kings, and deeds of war,-- they were but shadows which before me passed; for dreams are always vivid 'neath that tree. how did you come to rheims? how came i here? no, i have never quitted dom remi! confess it to me, and rejoice my heart. louison. we are at rheims. thou hast not merely dreamed of these great deeds--thou hast achieved them all. come to thyself, johanna! look around-- thy splendid armor feel, of burnished gold! [johanna lays her hand upon her breast, recollects herself, and shrinks back. bertrand. out of my hand thou didst receive this helm. claude marie. no wonder thou shouldst think it all a dream; for nothing in a dream could come to pass more wonderful than what thou hast achieved. johanna (quickly). come, let us fly! i will return with you back to our village, to our father's bosom. louison. oh, come! return with us! johanna. the people here exalt me far above what i deserve. you have beheld me weak and like a child; you love me, but you do not worship me. margot. thou wilt abandon this magnificence. johanna. i will throw off the hated ornaments which were a barrier 'twixt my heart and yours, and i will be a shepherdess again, and like a humble maiden i will serve you, and will with bitter penitence atone, that i above you vainly raised myself. [trumpets sound. scene x. the king comes forth from the church. he is in the coronation robes. agnes sorel, archbishop, burgundy, dunois, la hire, duchatel, knights, courtiers, and people. many voices shout repeatedly, while the king advances,-- long live the king! long live king charles the seventh! [the trumpets sound. upon a signal from the king, the heralds with their staves command silence. king. thanks, my good people! thank you for your love! the crown which god hath placed upon our brow hath with our valiant swords been hardly won: with noble blood 'tis wetted; but henceforth the peaceful olive branch shall round it twine. let those who fought for us receive our thanks; our pardon, those who joined the hostile ranks, for god hath shown us mercy in our need, and our first royal word shall now be, mercy! people. long live the king! long live king charles the good! king. from god alone, the highest potentate, the monarchs of the french receive the crown; but visibly from his almighty hand have we received it. [turning to the maiden. here stands the holy delegate of heaven, who hath restored to you your rightful king, and rent the yoke of foreign tyranny. her name shall equal that of holy denis, the guardian and protector of this realm, and to her fame an altar shall be reared. people. hail to the maiden, the deliverer! [trumpets. king (to johanna). if thou art born of woman, like ourselves, name aught that can augment thy happiness. but if thy fatherland is there above, if in this virgin form thou dost conceal the radiant glory of a heavenly nature, from our deluded sense remove the veil, and let us see thee in thy form of light as thou art seen in heaven, that in the dust we may bow down before thee. [a general silence; every eye is fixed upon the maiden. johanna (with a sudden cry). god! my father! scene xi. thibaut comes forth from the crowd, and stands opposite to her. many voices exclaim,-- her father! thibaut. yes, her miserable father, who did beget her, and whom god impels now to accuse his daughter. burgundy. ha! what's this? duchatel. now will the fearful truth appear! thibaut (to the king). thou think'st that thou art rescued through the power of god? deluded prince! deluded multitude! ye have been rescued through the arts of hell! [all step back with horror. dunois. is this man mad? thibaut. not i, but thou art mad. and this wise bishop, and these noble lords, who think that through a weak and sinful maid the god of heaven would reveal himself. come, let us see if to her father's face she will maintain the specious, juggling arts wherewith she hath deluded king and people. now, in the name of the blest trinity, belongst thou to the pure and holy ones? [a general silence; all eyes are fixed upon her; she remains motionless. sorel. god! she is dumb! thibaut. before that awful name, which even in the depths of hell is feared, she must be silent! she a holy one, by god commissioned? on a cursed spot it was conceived; beneath the druid tree where evil spirits have from olden time their sabbath held. there her immortal soul she bartered with the enemy of man for transient, worldly glory. let her bare her arm, and ye will see impressed thereon the fatal marks of hell! burgundy. most horrible! yet we must needs believe a father's words who 'gainst his daughter gives his evidence. dunois. the madman cannot be believed who in his child brings shame upon himself. sorel (to johanna). oh, maiden, speak! this fatal silence break! we firmly trust thee! we believe in thee! one syllable from thee, one single word shall be sufficient. speak! annihilate this horrid accusation. but declare thine innocence, and we will all believe thee. [johanna remains motionless; agnes steps back with horror. la hire. she's frightened. horror and astonishment impede her utterance. before a charge so horrible e'en innocence must tremble. [he approaches her. collect thyself, johanna! innocence hath a triumphant look, whose lightning flash strikes slander to the earth! in noble wrath arise! look up, and punish this base doubt, an insult to thy holy innocence. [johanna remains motionless; la hire steps back; the excitement increases. dunois. why do the people fear, the princes tremble? i'll stake my honor on her innocence! here on the ground i throw my knightly gage; who now will venture to maintain her guilt? [a loud clap of thunder; all are horror-struck. thibaut. answer, by him whose thunders roll above! give me the lie! proclaim thine innocence; say that the enemy hath not thy heart! [another clap of thunder, louder than the first; the people fly on all sides. burgundy. god guard and save us! what appalling signs! duchatel (to the king). come, come, my king! forsake this fearful place! archbishop (to johanna). i ask thee in god's name. art thou thus silent from consciousness of innocence or guilt? if in thy favor the dread thunder speaks, touch with thy hand this cross, and give a sign! [johanna remains motionless. more violent peals of thunder. the king, agnes sorel, the archbishop, burgundy, la hire, duchatel retire. scene xii. dunois, johanna. dunois. thou art my wife; i have believed in thee from the first glance, and i am still unchanged. in thee i have more faith than in these signs, than in the thunder's voice, which speaks above. in noble anger thou art silent thus; enveloped in thy holy innocence, thou scornest to refute so base a charge. still scorn it, maiden, but confide in me; i never doubted of thine innocence. speak not one word; only extend thy hand in pledge and token that thou wilt confide in my protection and thine own good cause. [he extends his hand to her; she turns from him with a convulsive motion; he remains transfixed with horror. scene xiii. johanna, duchatel, dunois, afterwards raimond. duchatel (returning). johanna d'arc! uninjured from the town the king permits you to depart. the gates stand open to you. fear no injury,-- you are protected by the royal word. come follow me, dunois! you cannot here longer abide with honor. what an issue! [he retires. dunois recovers from his stupor, casts one look upon johanna, and retires. she remains standing for a moment quite alone. at length raimond appears; he regards her for a time with silent sorrow, and then approaching takes her hand. raimond. embrace this opportunity. the streets are empty now. your hand! i will conduct you. [on perceiving him, she gives the first sign of consciousness. she gazes on him fixedly, and looks up to heaven; then taking his hand she retires. act v. a wild wood: charcoal-burners' huts in the distance. it is quite dark; violent thunder and lightning; firing heard at intervals. scene i. charcoal-burner and his wife. charcoal-burner. this is a fearful storm, the heavens seem as if they would vent themselves in streams of fire; so thick the darkness which usurps the day, that one might see the stars. the angry winds bluster and howl like spirits loosed from hell. the firm earth trembles, and the aged elms groaning, bow down their venerable tops. yet this terrific tumult, o'er our heads, which teacheth gentleness to savage beasts, so that they seek the shelter of their caves, appeaseth not the bloody strife of men-- amidst the raging of the wind and storm at intervals is heard the cannon's roar; so near the hostile armaments approach, the wood alone doth part them; any hour may see them mingle in the shock of battle. wife. may god protect us then! our enemies, not long ago, were vanquished and dispersed. how comes it that they trouble us again? charcoal-burner. because they now no longer fear the king, since that the maid turned out to be a witch at rheims, the devil aideth us no longer, and things have gone against us. wife. who comes here? scene ii. raimond and johanna enter. raimond. see! here are cottages; in them at least we may find shelter from the raging storm. you are not able longer to endure it. three days already you have wandered on, shunning the eye of man--wild herbs and root your only nourishment. come, enter in. these are kind-hearted cottagers. [the storm subsides; the air grows bright and clear. charcoal-burner. you seem to need refreshment and repose--you're welcome to what our humble roof can offer you! wife. what has a tender maid to do with arms? yet truly! these are rude and troublous times when even women don the coat of mail! the queen herself, proud isabel, 'tis said, appears in armor in the hostile camp; and a young maid, a shepherd's lowly daughter, has led the armies of our lord the king. charcoal-burner. what sayest thou? enter the hut, and bring a goblet of refreshment for the damsel. [she enters the hut. raimond (to johanna). all men, you see, are not so cruel; here e'en in the wilderness are gentle hearts. cheer up! the pelting storm hath spent its rage, and, beaming peacefully, the sun declines. charcoal-burner. i fancy, as you travel thus in arms, you seek the army of the king. take heed! not far remote the english are encamped, their troops are roaming idly through the wood. raimond. alas for us! how then can we escape? charcoal-burner. stay here till from the town my boy returns. he shall conduct you safe by secret paths. you need not fear-we know each hidden way. raimond (to johanna). put off your helmet and your coat-of-mail, they will not now protect you, but betray. [johanna shakes her head. charcoal-burner. the maid seems very sad--hush! who comes here? scene iii. charcoal-burner's wife comes out of the hut with a bowl. a boy. wife. it is our boy whom we expected back. [to johanna. drink, noble maiden! may god bless it to you! charcoal-burner (to his son). art come, anet? what news? [the boy looks at johanna, who is just raising the bowl to her lips; he recognizes her, steps forward, and snatches it from her. boy. oh, mother! mother! whom do you entertain? this is the witch of orleans! charcoal-burner (and his wife). god be gracious to our souls! [they cross themselves and fly. scene iv. raimond, johanna. johanna (calmly and gently) thou seest, i am followed by the curse, and all fly from me. do thou leave me, too; seek safety for thyself. raimond. i leave thee! now alas, who then would bear thee company? johanna. i am not unaccompanied. thou hast heard the loud thunder rolling o'er my head-- my destiny conducts me. do not fear; without my seeking i shall reach the goal. raimond. and whither wouldst thou go? here stand our foes, who have against thee bloody vengeance sworn-- there stand our people who have banished thee. johanna. naught will befall me but what heaven ordains. raimond. who will provide thee food? and who protect thee from savage beasts, and still more savage men? who cherish thee in sickness and in grief? johanna. i know all roots and healing herbs; my sheep taught me to know the poisonous from the wholesome. i understand the movements of the stars, and the clouds' flight; i also hear the sound of hidden springs. man hath not many wants, and nature richly ministers to life. raimond (seizing her hand). wilt thou not look within? oh, wilt thou not repent thy sin, be reconciled to god, and to the bosom of the church return? johanna. thou hold'st me guilty of this heavy sin? raimond. needs must i--thou didst silently confess---- johanna. thou, who hast followed me in misery, the only being who continued true, who slave to me when all the world forsook, thou also hold'st me for a reprobate who hath renounced her god---- [raimond is silent. oh, this is hard! raimond (in astonishment). and thou wert really then no sorceress? johanna. a sorceress! raimond. and all these miracles thou hast accomplished through the power of god and of his holy saints? johanna. through whom besides? raimond. and thou wert silent to that fearful charge? thou speakest now, and yet before the king, when words would have availed thee, thou wert dumb! johanna. i silently submitted to the doom which god, my lord and master, o'er me hung. raimond. thou couldst not to thy father aught reply? johanna. coming from him, methought it came from god; and fatherly the chastisement will prove. raimond. the heavens themselves bore witness to thy guilt! johanna. the heavens spoke, and therefore i was silent. raimond. thou with one word couldst clear thyself, and hast in this unhappy error left the world? johanna. it was no error--'twas the will of heaven. raimond. thou innocently sufferedst this shame, and no complaint proceeded from thy lips! --i am amazed at thee, i stand o'erwhelmed. my heart is troubled in its inmost depths. most gladly i receive the word as truth, for to believe thy guilt was hard indeed. but could i ever dream a human heart would meet in silence such a fearful doom! johanna. should i deserve to be heaven's messenger unless the master's will i blindly honored? and i am not so wretched as thou thinkest. i feel privation--this in humble life is no misfortune; i'm a fugitive,-- but in the waste i learned to know myself. when honor's dazzling radiance round me shone, there was a painful struggle in my breast; i was most wretched, when to all i seemed most worthy to be envied. now my mind is healed once more, and this fierce storm in nature, which threatened your destruction, was my friend; it purified alike the world and me! i feel an inward peace--and come, what may, of no more weakness am i conscious now! raimond. oh, let us hasten! come, let us proclaim thine innocence aloud to all the world! johanna. he who sent this delusion will dispel it! the fruit of fate falls only when 'tis ripe! a day is coming that will clear my name, when those who now condemn and banish me, will see their error and will weep my doom. raimond. and shall i wait in silence, until chance---- johanna (gently taking her hand). thy sense is shrouded by an earthly veil, and dwelleth only on external things, mine eye hath gazed on the invisible! --without permission from our god no hair falls from the head of man. seest thou the sun declining to the west? so certainly as morn returneth in her radiant light, infallibly the day of truth shall come! scene v. queen isabel, with soldiers, appears in the background. isabel (behind the scene). this is the way toward the english camp! raimond. alas! the foe! [the soldiers advance, and perceiving jobanna fall back in terror. isabel. what now obstructs the march? soldiers. may god protect us! isabel. do ye see a spirit? how! are ye soldiers! ye are cowards all! [she presses forward, but starts back on beholding the maiden. what do i see! [she collects herself quickly and approaches her. submit thyself! thou art my prisoner! johanna. i am. [raimond flies in despair. isabel (to the soldiers). lay her in chains! [the soldiers timidly approach the maiden; she extends her arms and is chained. is this the mighty, the terrific one, who chased your warriors like a flock of lambs, who, powerless now, cannot protect herself? doth she work miracles with credulous fools, and lose her influence when she meets a man? [to the maiden. why didst thou leave the army? where's dunois, thy knight and thy protector. johanna. i am banished. [isabel, stepping back astonished. isabel. what say'st thou? thou art banished? by the dauphin? johanna. inquire no further! i am in thy power, decide my fate. isabel. banished, because thou hast snatched him from ruin, placed upon his brow the crown at rheims, and made him king of france? banished! therein i recognize my son! --conduct her to the camp, and let the host behold the phantom before whom they trembled! she a magician? her sole magic lies in your delusion and your cowardice! she is a fool who sacrificed herself to save her king, and reapeth for her pains a king's reward. bear her to lionel. the fortune of the french! send him bound; i'll follow anon. johanna. to lionel? slay me at once, ere send me unto him. isabel (to the soldiers). obey your orders, soldiers! bear her hence. [exit. scene vi. johanna, soldiers. johanna (to the soldiers). ye english, suffer not that i escape alive out of your hands! revenge yourselves! unsheath your weapons, plunge them in my heart, and drag me lifeless to your general's feet! remember it was i who slew your heroes, who never showed compassion, who poured forth torrents of english blood, who from your sons snatched the sweet pleasure of returning home! take now a bloody vengeance! murder me! i now am in your power; i may perchance not always be so weak. conductor of the soldiers. obey the queen! johanna. must i be yet more wretched than i was! unpitying virgin! heavy is thy hand hast thou completely thrust me from thy favor? no god appears, no angel shows himself; closed are heaven's portals, miracles have ceased. [she follows the soldiers. scene vii. the french camp. dunois, between the archbishop and duchatel. archbishop. conquer your sullen indignation, prince! return with us! come back unto your king! in this emergency abandon not the general cause, when we are sorely pressed, and stand in need of your heroic arm. dunois. why are ye sorely pressed? why doth the foe again exalt himself? all was achieved;-- france was triumphant--war was at an end;-- the savior you have banished; you henceforth may save yourselves; i'll not again behold the camp wherein the maid abideth not. duchatel. think better of it, prince! dismiss us not with such an answer! dunois. silence, duchatel! you're hateful to me; i'll hear naught from you; you were the first who doubted of her truth. archbishop. who had not wavered on that fatal day, and been bewildered, when so many signs bore evidence against her! we were stunned, our hearts were crushed beneath the sudden blow. --who in that hour of dread could weigh the proofs? our calmer judgment now returns to us, we see the maid as when she walked with us, nor have we any fault to charge her with. we are perplexed--we fear that we have done a grievous wrong. the king is penitent, the duke remorseful, comfortless la hire, and every heart doth shroud itself in woe. dunois. she a deluder? if celestial truth would clothe herself in a corporeal form, she needs must choose the features of the maiden. if purity of heart, faith, innocence, dwell anywhere on earth, upon her lips and in her eyes' clear depths they find their home. archbishop. may the almighty, through a miracle, shed light upon this awful mystery, which baffles human insight. howsoe'er this sad perplexity may be resolved, one of two grievous sins we have committed! either in fight we have availed ourselves of hellish arms, or banished hence a saint! and both call down upon this wretched land the vengeance and the punishment of heaven. scene viii. the same, a nobleman, afterwards raimond. nobleman. a shepherd youth inquires after your highness, he urgently entreats an interview, he says he cometh from the maiden---- dunois. haste! conduct him hither! he doth come from her! [the nobleman opens the door to raimond, dunois hastens to meet him. where is she? where is the maid? raimond. hail! noble prince! and blessed am i that i find with you this holy man, the shield of the oppressed, the father of the poor and destitute! dunois. where is the maiden? archbishop. speak, my son, inform us! raimond. she is not, sir, a wicked sorceress! to god and all his saints i make appeal. an error blinds the people. you've cast forth god's messenger, you've banished innocence! dunois. where is she? raimond. i accompanied her flight towards the woods of ardennes; there she hath revealed to me her spirit's inmost depths. in torture i'll expire, and will resign my hopes of everlasting happiness, if she's not guiltless, sir, of every sin! dunois. the sun in heaven is not more pure than she! where is she? speak! raimond. if god hath turned your hearts, oh hasten, i entreat you--rescue her she is a prisoner in the english camp. dunois. a prisoner say you? archbishop. poor unfortunate! raimond. there in the forest as we sought for shelter, we were encountered by queen isabel, who seized and sent her to the english host. oh, from a cruel death deliver her who hath full many a time delivered you! dunois. sound an alarm! to arms! up! beat the drums. forth to the field! let france appear in arms! the crown and the palladium are at stake! our honor is in pledge! risk blood and life! she must be rescued ere the day is done! [exit. scene ix. a watch-tower--an opening above. johanna and lionel. fastolfe (entering hastily). the people can no longer be restrained. with fury they demand the maiden's death. in vain your opposition. let her die and throw her head down from the battlements! her blood alone will satisfy the host. isabel (coming in). with ladders they begin to scale the walls. appease the angry people! will you wait till in blind fury they o'erthrow the tower, and we beneath its towers are destroyed? protect her here you cannot. give her up! lionel. let them storm on. in fury let them rage! firm is this castle, and beneath its ruins i will be buried ere i yield to them. --johanna, answer me! only be mine, and i will shield thee 'gainst a world in arms. isabel. are you a man? lionel. thy friends have cast thee off. to thy ungrateful country then dost owe duty and faith no longer. the false cowards who sought thy hand, forsake thee in thy need. they for thy honor venture not the fight, but i, against my people and 'gainst thine, will be thy champion. once thou didst confess my life was dear to thee; in combat then i stood before thee as thine enemy-- thou hast not now a single friend but me. johanna. thou art my people's enemy and mine. between us there can be no fellowship. thee i can never love, but if thy heart cherish affection for me, let it bring a blessing on my people. lead thy troops far from the borders of my fatherland; give up the keys of all the captured towns, restore the booty, set the captives free, send hostages the compact to confirm, and peace i offer thee in my king's name. isabel. wilt thou, a captive, dictate laws to us? johanna. it must be done; 'tis useless to delay. never, oh never, will this land endure the english yoke; sooner will france become a mighty sepulchre for england's hosts. fallen in battle are your bravest chiefs. think how you may achieve a safe retreat; your fame is forfeited, your power is lost. isabel. can you endure her raving insolence? scene x. a captain enters hastily. captain. haste, general! prepare the host for battle. the french with flying banners come this way, their shining weapons glitter in the vale. johanna (with enthusiasm). my people come this way! proud england now forth in the field! now boldly must you fight! fastolfe. deluded woman, moderate your joy! you will not see the issue of this day. johanna. my friends will win the fight and i shall die! the gallant heroes need my arm no more. lionel. these dastard enemies i scorn. they have in twenty battles fled before our arms, ere this heroic maiden fought for them. all the whole nation i despise, save one, and this one they have banished. come, fastolfe, we soon will give them such another day as that of poictiers and of agincourt. do you remain with the fortress, queen, and guard the maiden till the fight is o'er. i leave for your protection fifty knights. fastolfe. how! general, shall we march against the foe and leave this raging fury in our rear? johanna. what! can a fettered woman frighten thee? lionel. promise, johanna, not to free thyself. johanna. to free myself is now my only wish. isabel. bind her with triple chains. i pledged my life that she shall not escape. [she is bound with heavy chains. lionel (to johanna). thou will'st it so! thou dost compel us! still it rests with thee! renounce the french--the english banner bear, and thou art free, and these rude, savage men who now desire thy blood shall do thy will. fastolfe (urgently). away, away, my general! johanna. spare thy words, the french are drawing near. defend thyself! [trumpets sound, lionel hastens forth. fastolfe. you know your duty, queen! if fate declares against us, should you see our people fly. isabel (showing a dagger). fear not. she shall not live to see our fall. fastolfe (to johanna). thou knowest what awaits thee, now implore a blessing on the weapons of thy people. [exit. scene xi. isabel, johanna, soldiers. johanna. ay! that i will! no power can hinder me. hark to that sound, the war-march of my people! how its triumphant notes inspire my heart! ruin to england! victory to france! up, valiant countrymen! the maid is near; she cannot, as of yore, before you bear her banner--she is bound with heavy chains; but freely from her prison soars her soul, upon the pinions of your battle-song. isabel (to a soldier). ascend the watch-tower which commands the field, and thence report the progress of the fight. [soldier ascends. johanna. courage, my people! 'tis the final struggle-- another victory, and the foe lies low! isabel. what see'st thou? soldier. they're already in close fight. a furious warrior on a barbary steed, in tiger's skin, leads forward the gens d'armes. johanna. that's count dunois! on, gallant warrior! conquest goes with thee. soldier. the burgundian duke attacks the bridge. isabel. would that ten hostile spears might his perfidious heart transfix, the traitor! soldier. lord fastolfe gallantly opposes him. now they dismount--they combat man to man our people and the troops of burgundy. isabel. behold'st thou not the dauphin? see'st thou not the royal wave? soldier. a cloud of dust shrouds everything. i can distinguish naught. johanna. had he my eyes, or stood i there aloft, the smallest speck would not elude my gaze! the wild fowl i can number on the wing, and mark the falcon in his towering flight. soldier. there is a fearful tumult near the trench; the chiefs, it seems, the nobles, combat there. isabel. still doth our banner wave? soldier. it proudly floats. johanna. could i look through the loopholes of the wall, i with my lance the battle would control. soldier. alas! what do i see? our general's surrounded by the foe! isabel (points the dagger at johanna). die, wretch! soldier (quickly). he's free! the gallant fastolfe in the rear attacks the enemy--he breaks their serried ranks. isabel (withdrawing the dagger). there spoke thy angel! soldier. victory! they fly. isabel. who fly? soldier. the french and the burgundians fly; the field is covered o'er with fugitives. johanna. my god! thou wilt not thus abandon me! soldier. yonder they lead a sorely wounded knight; the people rush to aid him--he's a prince. isabel. one of our country, or a son of france? soldier. they loose his helmet--it is count dunois. johanna (seizes her fetters with convulsive violence). and i am nothing but a fettered woman! soldier. look yonder! who the azure mantle wears bordered with gold? johanna. that is my lord, the king. soldier. his horse is restive, plunges, rears and falls-- he struggles hard to extricate himself. [johanna accompanies these words with passionate movements. our troops are pressing on in full career, they near him, reach him--they surround him now. johanna. oh, have the heavens above no angels more! isabel (laughing scornfully). now is the time, deliverer--now deliver! johanna (throws herself upon her knees, and prays with passionate violence). hear me, o god, in my extremity! in fervent supplication up to thee, up to thy heaven above i send my soul. the fragile texture of a spider's web, as a ship's cable, thou canst render strong; easy it is to thine omnipotence to change these fetters into spider's webs-- command it, and these massy chains shall fall, and these thick walls be rent, thou, lord of old, didst strengthen samson, when enchained and blind he bore the bitter scorn of his proud foes. trusting in thee, he seized with mighty power the pillars of his prison, bowed himself, and overthrew the structure. soldier. triumph! isabel. how? soldier. the king is taken! johanna (springing up). then god be gracious to me! [she seizes her chains violently with both hands, and breaks them asunder. at the same moment rushing upon the nearest soldier, she seizes his sword and hurries out. all gaze after her, transfixed with astonishment. scene xii. the same, without johanna. isabel (after a long pause). how was it? did i dream? where is she gone? how did she break these ponderous iron chains? a world could not have made me credit it, if i had not beheld it with these eyes. soldier (from the tower). how? hath she wings? hath the wind borne her down? isabel. is she below? soldier. she strides amidst the fight: her course outspeeds my sight--now she is here-- now there--i see her everywhere at once! --she separates the troops--all yield to her: the scattered french collect--they form anew! --alas! what do i see! our people cast their weapons to the ground, our banners sink---- isabel. what? will she snatch from us the victory? soldier. she presses forward, right towards the king. she reaches him--she bears him from the fight-- lord fastolfe falls--the general is taken! isabel. i'll hear no more! come down! soldier. fly, queen! you will be taken by surprise. armed soldiers are advancing tow'rds the tower. [he comes down. isabel (drawing her sword). then fight, ye cowards! scene iv. la hire with soldiers. at his entrance the people of the queen lay down their arms. la hire (approaching her respectfully). queen, submit yourself-- your knights have yielded--to resist is vain! --accept my proffered services. command where you would be conducted. isabel. every place the same, where i encounter not the dauphin. [she resigns her sword, and follows him with the soldiers. the scene changes to the battle-field. scene xiv. soldiers with flying banners occupy the background. before them the king and the duke of burgundy appear, bearing johanna in their arms; she is mortally wounded, and apparently lifeless. they advance slowly to the front of the stage. agnes sorel rushes in. sorel (throwing herself on the bosom of the king). you're free--you live--i have you back again! king. yes, i am free--i am so at this price! [pointing to johanna. sorel. johanna! god! she's dying! burgundy. she is gone an angel passeth hence! see, how she lies, easy and tranquil, like a sleeping child! the peace of heaven around her features plays, the breath of life no longer heaves her breast, but vital warmth still lingers in her hand. king. she's gone! she never will awaken more, her eye will gaze no more on earthly things. she soars on high, a spirit glorified, she seeth not our grief, our penitence. sorel. her eyes unclose--she lives! burgundy (in astonishment). can she return back from the grave, triumphant e'en o'er death? she riseth up! she standeth! johanna (standing up, and looking round). where am i? burgundy. with thine own people, maiden--with thy friends! king. supported by thy friend, and by thy king. johanna (after looking at him fixedly for some time). no! i am not a sorceress! indeed i am not one. king. thou'rt holy, as an angel; a cloud of error dimmed our mental sight. johanna (gazing round her with a joyful smile). and am i really, then, among my friends, and am no more rejected and despised? they curse me not--kindly they look on me! --yes, all around me now seems clear again! that is my king!--the banners these of france! my banner i behold not--where is it? without my banner i dare not appear; to me it was confided by my lord, and i before his throne must lay it down; i there may show it, for i bore it truly. king (averting his face). give her the banner! [it is given to her. she stands quite unsupported, the banner in her hand. the heaven is illumined by a rosy light. johanna. see you the rainbow yonder in the air? its golden portals heaven doth wide unfold, amid the angel choir she radiant stands, the eternal son she claspeth to her breast, her arms she stretcheth forth to me in love. how is it with me? light clouds bear me up-- my ponderous mail becomes a winged robe; i mount--i fly--back rolls the dwindling earth-- brief is the sorrow--endless is the joy! [her banner falls and she sinks lifeless on the ground. all remain for some time in speechless sorrow. upon a signal from the king, all the banners are gently placed over her, so that she is entirely concealed by them. the english mail-coach and joan of arc by thomas de quincey edited with introduction and notes by milton haight turk, ph.d. to charles deacon cree this little volume is affectionately inscribed _glencairn, kilmacolm, scotland june , _ preface some portions of this introduction have been taken from the athenæum press _selections from de quincey_; many of the notes have also been transferred from that volume. a number of the new notes i owe to a review of the _selections_ by dr. lane cooper, of cornell university. i wish also to thank for many favors the committee and officers of the glasgow university library. if a word by way of suggestion to teachers be pertinent, i would venture to remark that the object of the teacher of literature is, of course, only to fulfill the desire of the author--to make clear his facts and to bring home his ideas in all their power and beauty. introductions and notes are only means to this end. teachers, i think, sometimes lose sight of this fact; i know it is fatally easy for students to forget it. that teacher will have rendered a great service who has kept his pupils alive to the real aim of their studies,--to know the author, not to know of him. m.h.t contents introduction i. life ii. critical remarks iii. bibliographical note selections the english mail-coach joan of arc notes introduction i. life thomas de quincey was born in manchester on the th of august, . his father was a man of high character and great taste for literature as well as a successful man of business; he died, most unfortunately, when thomas was quite young. very soon after our author's birth the family removed to the farm, and later to greenhay, a larger country place near manchester. in de quincey's mother, now for some years a widow, removed to bath and placed him in the grammar school there. thomas, the future opium-eater, was a weak and sickly child. his first years were spent in solitude, and when his elder brother, william, a real boy, came home, the young author followed in humility mingled with terror the diversions of that ingenious and pugnacious "son of eternal racket." de quincey's mother was a woman of strong character and emotions, as well as excellent mind, but she was excessively formal, and she seems to have inspired more awe than affection in her children, to whom she was for all that deeply devoted. her notions of conduct in general and of child rearing in particular were very strict. she took thomas out of bath school, after three years' excellent work there, because he was too much praised, and kept him for a year at an inferior school at winkfield in wiltshire. in , at the age of fifteen, de quincey was ready for oxford; he had not been praised without reason, for his scholarship was far in advance of that of ordinary pupils of his years. "that boy," his master at bath school had said, "that boy could harangue an athenian mob better than you or i could address an english one." he was sent to manchester grammar school, however, in order that after three years' stay he might secure a scholarship at brasenose college, oxford. he remained there--strongly protesting against a situation which deprived him "of _health_, of _society_, of _amusement_, of _liberty_, of _congeniality of pursuits_"--for nineteen months, and then ran away. his first plan had been to reach wordsworth, whose _lyrical ballads_ ( ) had solaced him in fits of melancholy and had awakened in him a deep reverence for the neglected poet. his timidity preventing this, he made his way to chester, where his mother then lived, in the hope of seeing a sister; was apprehended by the older members of the family; and through the intercession of his uncle, colonel penson, received the promise of a guinea a week to carry out his later project of a solitary tramp through wales. from july to november, , de quincey then led a wayfarer's life. [footnote: for a most interesting account of this period see the _confessions of an english opium-eater_, athenæum press _selections from de quincey_, pp. - , and notes.] he soon lost his guinea, however, by ceasing to keep his family informed of his whereabouts, and subsisted for a time with great difficulty. still apparently fearing pursuit, with a little borrowed money he broke away entirely from his home by exchanging the solitude of wales for the greater wilderness of london. failing there to raise money on his expected patrimony, he for some time deliberately clung to a life of degradation and starvation rather than return to his lawful governors. discovered by chance by his friends, de quincey was brought home and finally allowed ( ) to go to worcester college, oxford, on a reduced income. here, we are told, "he came to be looked upon as a strange being who associated with no one." during this time he learned to take opium. he left, apparently about , without a degree. in the same year he made the acquaintance of coleridge and wordsworth; lamb he had sought out in london several years before. his acquaintance with wordsworth led to his settlement in at grasmere, in the beautiful english lake district; his home for ten years was dove cottage, which wordsworth had occupied for several years and which is now held in trust as a memorial of the poet. de quincey was married in , and soon after, his patrimony having been exhausted, he took up literary work in earnest. in he went to london to dispose of some translations from german authors, but was persuaded first to write and publish an account of his opium experiences, which accordingly appeared in the _london magazine_ in that year. this new sensation eclipsed lamb's _essays of elia_, which were appearing in the same periodical. the _confessions of an english opium-eater_ was forthwith published in book form. de quincey now made literary acquaintances. tom hood found the shrinking author "at home in a german ocean of literature, in a storm, flooding all the floor, the tables, and the chairs--billows of books." richard woodhouse speaks of the "depth and reality of his knowledge. ... his conversation appeared like the elaboration of a mine of results. ... taylor led him into political economy, into the greek and latin accents, into antiquities, roman roads, old castles, the origin and analogy of languages; upon all these he was informed to considerable minuteness. the same with regard to shakespeare's sonnets, spenser's minor poems, and the great writers and characters of elizabeth's age and those of cromwell's time." from this time on de quincey maintained himself by contributing to various magazines. he soon exchanged london and the lakes for edinburgh and its suburb, lasswade, where the remainder of his life was spent. _blackwood's edinburgh magazine_ and its rival _tatt's magazine_ received a large number of contributions. _the english mail-coach_ appeared in in blackwood. _joan of arc_ had already been published ( ) in _tait_. de quincey continued to drink laudanum throughout his life,--twice after in very great excess. during his last years he nearly completed a collected edition of his works. he died in edinburgh on the th of december, . ii. critical remarks the opium-eater had been a weak, lonely, and over-studious child, and he was a solitary and ill-developed man. his character and his work present strange contradictions. he is most precise in statement, yet often very careless of fact; he is most courteous in manner, yet inexcusably inconsiderate in his behavior. again, he sets up a high standard of purity of diction, yet uses slang quite unnecessarily and inappropriately; and though a great master of style, he is guilty, at times, of digression within digression until all trace of the original subject is lost. de quincey divides his writings into three groups: first, that class which "proposes primarily to amuse the reader, but which, in doing so, may or may not happen occasionally to reach a higher station, at which the amusement passes into an impassioned interest." to this class would belong the _autobiographic sketches_ and the _literary reminiscences_. as a second class he groups "those papers which address themselves purely to the understanding as an insulated faculty, or do so primarily." these essays would include, according to professor masson's subdivision, (a) biographies, such as _shakespeare_ or _pope_--_joan of arc_ falls here, yet has some claim to a place in the first class; (b) historical essays, like the _cæsars_; (c) speculative and theological essays; (d) essays in political economy and politics; (e) papers of literary theory and criticism, such as the brilliant discussions of _rhetoric, style_, and _conversation_, and the famous _on the knocking at the gate in 'macbeth_.' as a third and "far higher" class the author ranks the _confessions of an english opium-eater_, and also (but more emphatically) the _suspiria de profundis_. "on these," he says, "as modes of impassioned prose ranging under no precedents that i am aware of in any literature, it is much more difficult to speak justly, whether in a hostile or a friendly character." of de quincey's essays in general it may be said that they bear witness alike to the diversity of his knowledge and the penetrative power of his intellect. the wide range of his subjects, however, deprives his papers when taken together of the weight which might attach to a series of related discussions. and, remarkable as is de quincey's aptitude for analysis and speculation, more than once we have to regret the lack of the "saving common-sense" possessed by many far less gifted men. his erudition and insight are always a little in advance of his good judgment. as to the works of the first class, the _reminiscences_ are defaced by the shrewish spirit shown in the accounts of wordsworth and other friends; nor can we depend upon them as records of fact. but our author had had exceptional opportunities to observe these famous men and women, and he possessed no little insight into literature and personality. as to the _autobiographic sketches_, the handling of events is hopelessly arbitrary and fragmentary. in truth, de quincey is drawing an idealized picture of childhood,--creating a type rather than re-creating a person; it is a study of a child of talent that we receive from him, and as such these sketches form one of the most satisfactory products of his pen. the _confessions_ as a narrative is related to the autobiography, while its poetical passages range it with the _suspiria_ and the _mail-coach_. de quincey seems to have believed that he was creating in such writings a new literary type of prose poetry or prose phantasy; he had, with his splendid dreams as subject-matter, lifted prose to heights hitherto scaled only by the poet. in reality his style owed much to the seventeenth-century writers, such as milton and sir thomas browne. he took part with coleridge, lamb, and others in the general revival of interest in earlier modern english prose, which is a feature of the romantic movement. still none of his contemporaries wrote as he did; evidently de quincey has a distinct quality of his own. ruskin, in our own day, is like him, but never the same. yet de quincey's prose poetry is a very small portion of his work, and it is not in this way only that he excels. mr. saintsbury has spoken of the strong appeal that de quincey makes to boys. [footnote: "probably more boys have in the last forty years been brought to a love of literature proper by de quincy than by any other writer whatever."--_history of nineteenth-century literature_, p. .] it is not without significance that he mentions as especially attractive to the young only writings with a large narrative element. [footnote: "to read the _essay on murder_, the _english mail-coach_, _the spanish nun_, _the cæsars_, and half a score other things at the age of about fifteen or sixteen is, or ought to be, to fall in love with them."--_essays in english literature_, - , p. .] few boys read poetry, whether in verse or prose, and fewer still criticism or philosophy; to every normal boy the gate of good literature is the good story. it is the narrative skill of de quincey that has secured for him, in preference to other writers of his class, the favor of youthful readers. it would be too much to say that the talent that attracts the young to him must needs be the opium-eater's grand talent, though the notion is defensible, seeing that only salient qualities in good writing appeal to inexperienced readers. i believe, however, that this skill in narration is de quincey's most persistent quality,--the golden thread that unites all his most distinguished and most enduring work. and it is with him a part of his genius for style. creative power of the kind that goes to the making of plots de quincey had not; he has proved that forever by the mediocrity of _klosterheim_. give him bergmann's account of the tartar migration, or the story of the fighting nun,--give him the matter,--and a brilliant narrative will result. indeed, de quincey loved a story for its own sake; he rejoiced to see it extend its winding course before him; he delighted to follow it, touch it, color it, see it grow into body and being under his hand. that this enthusiasm should now and then tend to endanger the integrity of the facts need not surprise us; as i have said elsewhere, accuracy in these matters is hardly to be expected of de quincey. and we can take our pleasure in the skillful unfolding of the dramatic narrative of the tartar flight--we can feel the author's joy in the scenic possibilities of his theme--even if we know that here and there an incident appears that is quite in its proper place--but is unknown to history. in his _confessions_ the same constructive power bears its part in the author's triumph. a peculiar end was to be reached in that narrative,--an end in which the writer had a deep personal interest. what is an opium-eater? says a character in a recent work of fiction, of a social wreck: "if it isn't whisky with him, it's opium; if it isn't opium, it's whisky." this speech establishes the popular category in which de quincey's habit had placed him. our attention was to be drawn from these degrading connections. and this is done not merely by the correction of some widespread fallacies as to the effects of the drug; far more it is the result of narrative skill. as we follow with ever-increasing sympathy the lonely and sensitive child, the wandering youth, the neuralgic patient, into the terrible grasp of opium, who realizes, amid the gorgeous delights and the awful horrors of the tale, that the writer is after all the victim of the worst of bad habits? we can hardly praise too highly the art which even as we look beneath it throws its glamour over us still. nor is it only in this constructive power, in the selection and arrangement of details, that de quincey excels as a narrator; a score of minor excellences of his style, such as the fine latin words or the sweeping periodic sentences, contribute to the effective progress of his narrative prose. mr. lowell has said that "there are no such vistas and avenues of verse as milton's." the comparison is somewhat hazardous, still i should like to venture the parallel claim that there are no such streams of prose as de quincey's. the movement of his discourse is that of the broad river, not in its weight or force perhaps, but in its easy flowing progress, in its serene, unhurried certainty of its end. to be sure, only too often the waters overflow their banks and run far afield in alien channels. yet, when great power over the instrument of language is joined to so much constructive skill, the result is narrative art of high quality,--an achievement that must be in no small measure the solid basis of de quincey's fame. iii. bibliographical note i. works . _the collected writings of thomas de quincey_. new and enlarged edition by david masson. edinburgh: a. and c. black, - . [new york: the macmillan co. vols., with footnotes, a preface to each volume, and index. reissued in cheaper form. the standard edition.] . _the works of thomas de quincey_. riverside edition. boston: houghton, mifflin & co., . [ vols., with notes and index.] . _selections from de quincey._ edited with an introduction and notes, by m. h. turk. athenaeum press series. boston, u.s.a., and london: ginn and company, . ["the largest body of selections from de quincey recently published.... the selections are _the affliction of childhood, introduction to the world of strife, a meeting with lamb, a meeting with coleridge, recollections of wordsworth, confessions, a portion of suspiria, the english mail-coach, murder as one of the fine arts, second paper, joan of arc,_ and _on the knocking at the gate in 'macbeth.'_"] ii. biography and criticism . d. masson. _thomas de quincey._ english men of letters. london. [new york: harper. an excellent brief biography. this book, with a good volume of selections, should go far toward supplying the ordinary student's needs.] . h. s. salt. de quincey. bell's miniature series of great writers. london: george bell and sons. [a good short life.] . a. h. japp. _thomas de quincey: his life and writings._ london, . [new york: scribner. first edition by "h. a. page," . the standard life of de quincey; it contains valuable communications from de quincey's daughters, j. hogg, rev. f. jacox, professor masson, and others.] . a. h. japp. _de quincey memorials. being letters and other records, here first published. with communications from coleridge, the wordsworths, hannah more, professor wilson, and others._ vols. london: w. heinemann, . . j. hogg. _de quincey and his friends, personal recollections, souvenirs, and anecdotes_ [including woodhouse's _conversations_, findlay's _personal recollections_, hodgson's _on the genius of de quincey_, and a mass of personal notes from a host of friends]. london: sampson low, marston & co., . . e. t. mason. _personal traits of british authors_. new york, . [ vols. the volume subtitled _scott, hogg,_ etc., contains some accounts of de quincey not included by japp or hogg.] . l. stephen. _hours in a library_. vol. i. new york, . . w. minto. _manual of english prose literature_. boston, . [contains the best general discussion of de quincey's style.] . l. cooper. _the prose poetry of thomas de quincey_. leipzig, . the english mail-coach section i--the glory of motion some twenty or more years before i matriculated at oxford, mr. palmer, at that time m.p. for bath, had accomplished two things, very hard to do on our little planet, the earth, however cheap they may be held by eccentric people in comets: he had invented mail-coaches, and he had married the daughter of a duke. he was, therefore, just twice as great a man as galileo, who did certainly invent (or, which is the same thing, [footnote: "_the same thing_":--thus, in the calendar of the church festivals, the discovery of the true cross (by helen, the mother of constantine) is recorded (and, one might think, with the express consciousness of sarcasm) as the _invention_ of the cross.] discover) the satellites of jupiter, those very next things extant to mail-coaches in the two capital pretensions of speed and keeping time, but, on the other hand, who did _not_ marry the daughter of a duke. these mail-coaches, as organised by mr. palmer, are entitled to a circumstantial notice from myself, having had so large a share in developing the anarchies of my subsequent dreams: an agency which they accomplished, st, through velocity at that time unprecedented--for they first revealed the glory of motion; dly, through grand effects for the eye between lamplight and the darkness upon solitary roads; dly, through animal beauty and power so often displayed in the class of horses selected for this mail service; thly, through the conscious presence of a central intellect, that, in the midst of vast distances [footnote: "vast distances":--one case was familiar to mail-coach travellers where two mails in opposite directions, north and south, starting at the same minute from points six hundred miles apart, met almost constantly at a particular bridge which bisected the total distance.]--of storms, of darkness, of danger--overruled all obstacles into one steady co-operation to a national result. for my own feeling, this post-office service spoke as by some mighty orchestra, where a thousand instruments, all disregarding each other, and so far in danger of discord, yet all obedient as slaves to the supreme _baton_ of some great leader, terminate in a perfection of harmony like that of heart, brain, and lungs in a healthy animal organisation. but, finally, that particular element in this whole combination which most impressed myself, and through which it is that to this hour mr. palmer's mail-coach system tyrannises over my dreams by terror and terrific beauty, lay in the awful _political_ mission which at that time it fulfilled. the mail-coach it was that distributed over the face of the land, like the opening of apocalyptic vials, the heart-shaking news of trafalgar, of salamanca, of vittoria, of waterloo. these were the harvests that, in the grandeur of their reaping, redeemed the tears and blood in which they had been sown. neither was the meanest peasant so much below the grandeur and the sorrow of the times as to confound battles such as these, which were gradually moulding the destinies of christendom, with the vulgar conflicts of ordinary warfare, so often no more than gladiatorial trials of national prowess. the victories of england in this stupendous contest rose of themselves as natural _te deums_ to heaven; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such a crisis of general prostration, were not more beneficial to ourselves than finally to france, our enemy, and to the nations of all western or central europe, through whose pusillanimity it was that the french domination had prospered. the mail-coach, as the national organ for publishing these mighty events, thus diffusively influential, became itself a spiritualised and glorified object to an impassioned heart; and naturally, in the oxford of that day, _all_ hearts were impassioned, as being all (or nearly all) in _early_ manhood. in most universities there is one single college; in oxford there were five-and-twenty, all of which were peopled by young men, the _élite_ of their own generation; not boys, but men: none under eighteen. in some of these many colleges the custom permitted the student to keep what are called "short terms"; that is, the four terms of michaelmas, lent, easter, and act, were kept by a residence, in the aggregate, of ninety-one days, or thirteen weeks. under this interrupted residence, it was possible that a student might have a reason for going down to his home four times in the year. this made eight journeys to and fro. but, as these homes lay dispersed through all the shires of the island, and most of us disdained all coaches except his majesty's mail, no city out of london could pretend to so extensive a connexion with mr. palmer's establishment as oxford. three mails, at the least, i remember as passing every day through oxford, and benefiting by my personal patronage--viz., the worcester, the gloucester, and the holyhead mail. naturally, therefore, it became a point of some interest with us, whose journeys revolved every six weeks on an average, to look a little into the executive details of the system. with some of these mr. palmer had no concern; they rested upon bye-laws enacted by posting-houses for their own benefit, and upon other bye-laws, equally stern, enacted by the inside passengers for the illustration of their own haughty exclusiveness. these last were of a nature to rouse our scorn; from which the transition was not very long to systematic mutiny. up to this time, say , or (the year of trafalgar), it had been the fixed assumption of the four inside people (as an old tradition of all public carriages derived from the reign of charles ii) that they, the illustrious quaternion, constituted a porcelain variety of the human race, whose dignity would have been compromised by exchanging one word of civility with the three miserable delf-ware outsides. even to have kicked an outsider might have been held to attaint the foot concerned in that operation, so that, perhaps, it would have required an act of parliament to restore its purity of blood. what words, then, could express the horror, and the sense of treason, in that case, which _had_ happened, where all three outsides (the trinity of pariahs) made a vain attempt to sit down at the same breakfast-table or dinner-table with the consecrated four? i myself witnessed such an attempt; and on that occasion a benevolent old gentleman endeavoured to soothe his three holy associates, by suggesting that, if the outsides were indicted for this criminal attempt at the next assizes, the court would regard it as a case of lunacy or _delirium tremens_ rather than of treason. england owes much of her grandeur to the depth of the aristocratic element in her social composition, when pulling against her strong democracy. i am not the man to laugh at it. but sometimes, undoubtedly, it expressed itself in comic shapes. the course taken with the infatuated outsiders, in the particular attempt which i have noticed, was that the waiter, beckoning them away from the privileged _salle-à-manger_, sang out, "this way, my good men," and then enticed these good men away to the kitchen. but that plan had not always answered. sometimes, though rarely, cases occurred where the intruders, being stronger than usual, or more vicious than usual, resolutely refused to budge, and so far carried their point as to have a separate table arranged for themselves in a corner of the general room. yet, if an indian screen could be found ample enough to plant them out from the very eyes of the high table, or _dais_, it then became possible to assume as a fiction of law that the three delf fellows, after all, were not present. they could be ignored by the porcelain men, under the maxim that objects not appearing and objects not existing are governed by the same logical construction. [footnote: _de non apparentibus_, etc.] such being, at that time, the usage of mail-coaches, what was to be done by us of young oxford? we, the most aristocratic of people, who were addicted to the practice of looking down superciliously even upon the insides themselves as often very questionable characters--were we, by voluntarily going outside, to court indignities? if our dress and bearing sheltered us generally from the suspicion of being "raff" (the name at that period for "snobs" [footnote: "_snobs_," and its antithesis, "_nobs_," arose among the internal factions of shoemakers perhaps ten years later. possibly enough, the terms may have existed much earlier; but they were then first made known, picturesquely and effectively, by a trial at some assizes which happened to fix the public attention.]), we really _were_ such constructively by the place we assumed. if we did not submit to the deep shadow of eclipse, we entered at least the skirts of its penumbra. and the analogy of theatres was valid against us,--where no man can complain of the annoyances incident to the pit or gallery, having his instant remedy in paying the higher price of the boxes. but the soundness of this analogy we disputed. in the case of the theatre, it cannot be pretended that the inferior situations have any separate attractions, unless the pit may be supposed to have an advantage for the purposes of the critic or the dramatic reporter. but the critic or reporter is a rarity. for most people, the sole benefit is in the price. now, on the contrary, the outside of the mail had its own incommunicable advantages. these we could not forego. the higher price we would willingly have paid, but not the price connected with the condition of riding inside; which condition we pronounced insufferable. the air, the freedom of prospect, the proximity to the horses, the elevation of seat: these were what we required; but, above all, the certain anticipation of purchasing occasional opportunities of driving. such was the difficulty which pressed us; and under the coercion of this difficulty we instituted a searching inquiry into the true quality and valuation of the different apartments about the mail. we conducted this inquiry on metaphysical principles; and it was ascertained satisfactorily that the roof of the coach, which by some weak men had been called the attics, and by some the garrets, was in reality the drawing-room; in which drawing-room the box was the chief ottoman or sofa; whilst it appeared that the _inside_ which had been traditionally regarded as the only room tenantable by gentlemen, was, in fact, the coal-cellar in disguise. great wits jump. the very same idea had not long before struck the celestial intellect of china. amongst the presents carried out by our first embassy to that country was a state-coach. it had been specially selected as a personal gift by george iii; but the exact mode of using it was an intense mystery to pekin. the ambassador, indeed (lord macartney), had made some imperfect explanations upon this point; but, as his excellency communicated these in a diplomatic whisper at the very moment of his departure, the celestial intellect was very feebly illuminated, and it became necessary to call a cabinet council on the grand state question, "where was the emperor to sit?" the hammer-cloth happened to be unusually gorgeous; and, partly on that consideration, but partly also because the box offered the most elevated seat, was nearest to the moon, and undeniably went foremost, it was resolved by acclamation that the box was the imperial throne, and, for the scoundrel who drove,--he might sit where he could find a perch. the horses, therefore, being harnessed, solemnly his imperial majesty ascended his new english throne under a flourish of trumpets, having the first lord of the treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester on his left. pekin gloried in the spectacle; and in the whole flowery people, constructively present by representation, there was but one discontented person, and _that_ was the coachman. this mutinous individual audaciously shouted, "where am _i_ to sit?" but the privy council, incensed by his disloyalty, unanimously opened the door, and kicked him into the inside. he had all the inside places to himself; but such is the rapacity of ambition that he was still dissatisfied. "i say," he cried out in an extempore petition addressed to the emperor through the window--"i say, how am i to catch hold of the reins?"--"anyhow," was the imperial answer; "don't trouble _me_, man, in my glory. how catch the reins? why, through the windows, through the keyholes--_anyhow_." finally this contumacious coachman lengthened the check-strings into a sort of jury-reins communicating with the horses; with these he drove as steadily as pekin had any right to expect. the emperor returned after the briefest of circuits; he descended in great pomp from his throne, with the severest resolution never to remount it. a public thanksgiving was ordered for his majesty's happy escape from the disease of a broken neck; and the state-coach was dedicated thenceforward as a votive offering to the god fo fo--whom the learned more accurately called fi fi. a revolution of this same chinese character did young oxford of that era effect in the constitution of mail-coach society. it was a perfect french revolution; and we had good reason to say, _ça ira_. in fact, it soon became _too_ popular. the "public"--a well-known character, particularly disagreeable, though slightly respectable, and notorious for affecting the chief seats in synagogues--had at first loudly opposed this revolution; but, when the opposition showed itself to be ineffectual, our disagreeable friend went into it with headlong zeal. at first it was a sort of race between us; and, as the public is usually from thirty to fifty years old, naturally we of young oxford, that averaged about twenty, had the advantage. then the public took to bribing, giving fees to horse-keepers, &c., who hired out their persons as warming-pans on the box seat. _that_, you know, was shocking to all moral sensibilities. come to bribery, said we, and there is an end to all morality,--aristotle's, zeno's, cicero's, or anybody's. and, besides, of what use was it? for _we_ bribed also. and, as our bribes, to those of the public, were as five shillings to sixpence, here again young oxford had the advantage. but the contest was ruinous to the principles of the stables connected with the mails. this whole corporation was constantly bribed, rebribed, and often surrebribed; a mail-coach yard was like the hustings in a contested election; and a horse-keeper, ostler, or helper, was held by the philosophical at that time to be the most corrupt character in the nation. there was an impression upon the public mind, natural enough from the continually augmenting velocity of the mail, but quite erroneous, that an outside seat on this class of carriages was a post of danger. on the contrary, i maintained that, if a man had become nervous from some gipsy prediction in his childhood, allocating to a particular moon now approaching some unknown danger, and he should inquire earnestly, "whither can i fly for shelter? is a prison the safest retreat? or a lunatic hospital? or the british museum?" i should have replied, "oh no; i'll tell you what to do. take lodgings for the next forty days on the box of his majesty's mail. nobody can touch you there. if it is by bills at ninety days after date that you are made unhappy--if noters and protesters are the sort of wretches whose astrological shadows darken the house of life--then note you what i vehemently protest: viz., that, no matter though the sheriff and under-sheriff in every county should be running after you with his _posse_, touch a hair of your head he cannot whilst you keep house and have your legal domicile on the box of the mail. it is felony to stop the mail; even the sheriff cannot do that. and an _extra_ touch of the whip to the leaders (no great matter if it grazes the sheriff) at any time guarantees your safety." in fact, a bedroom in a quiet house seems a safe enough retreat; yet it is liable to its own notorious nuisances--to robbers by night, to rats, to fire. but the mail laughs at these terrors. to robbers, the answer is packed up and ready for delivery in the barrel of the guard's blunderbuss. rats again! there _are_ none about mail-coaches any more than snakes in von troil's iceland; [footnote: "_von troil's iceland_":--the allusion is to a well-known chapter in von troil's work, entitled, "concerning the snakes of iceland." the entire chapter consists of these six words--"_there art no snakes in iceland_."] except, indeed, now and then a parliamentary rat, who always hides his shame in what i have shown to be the "coal-cellar." and, as to fire, i never knew but one in a mail-coach; which was in the exeter mail, and caused by an obstinate sailor bound to devonport. jack, making light of the law and the lawgiver that had set their faces against his offence, insisted on taking up a forbidden seat [footnote: "_forbidden seat_":--the very sternest code of rules was enforced upon the mails by the post-office. throughout england, only three outsides were allowed, of whom one was to sit on the box, and the other two immediately behind the box; none, under any pretext, to come near the guard; an indispensable caution; since else, under the guise of a passenger, a robber might by any one of a thousand advantages--which sometimes are created, but always are favoured, by the animation of frank social intercourse--have disarmed the guard. beyond the scottish border, the regulation was so far relaxed as to allow of _four_ outsides, but not relaxed at all as to the mode of placing them. one, as before, was seated on the box, and the other three on the front of the roof, with a determinate and ample separation from the little insulated chair of the guard. this relaxation was conceded by way of compensating to scotland her disadvantages in point of population. england, by the superior density of her population, might always count upon a large fund of profits in the fractional trips of chance passengers riding for short distances of two or three stages. in scotland this chance counted for much less. and therefore, to make good the deficiency, scotland was allowed a compensatory profit upon one _extra_ passenger.] in the rear of the roof, from which he could exchange his own yarns with those of the guard. no greater offence was then known to mail-coaches; it was treason, it was _læsa majestas_, it was by tendency arson; and the ashes of jack's pipe, falling amongst the straw of the hinder boot, containing the mail-bags, raised a flame which (aided by the wind of our motion) threatened a revolution in the republic of letters. yet even this left the sanctity of the box unviolated. in dignified repose, the coachman and myself sat on, resting with benign composure upon our knowledge that the fire would have to burn its way through four inside passengers before it could reach ourselves. i remarked to the coachman, with a quotation from virgil's "Æneid" really too hackneyed-- "jam proximus ardet ucalegon." but, recollecting that the virgilian part of the coachman's education might have been neglected, i interpreted so far as to say that perhaps at that moment the flames were catching hold of our worthy brother and inside passenger, ucalegon. the coachman made no answer,--which is my own way when a stranger addresses me either in syriac or in coptic; but by his faint sceptical smile he seemed to insinuate that he knew better,--for that ucalegon, as it happened, was not in the way-bill, and therefore could not have been booked. no dignity is perfect which does not at some point ally itself with the mysterious. the connexion of the mail with the state and the executive government--a connexion obvious, but yet not strictly defined--gave to the whole mail establishment an official grandeur which did us service on the roads, and invested us with seasonable terrors. not the less impressive were those terrors because their legal limits were imperfectly ascertained. look at those turnpike gates: with what deferential hurry, with what an obedient start, they fly open at our approach! look at that long line of carts and carters ahead, audaciously usurping the very crest of the road. ah! traitors, they do not hear us as yet; but, as soon as the dreadful blast of our horn reaches them with proclamation of our approach, see with what frenzy of trepidation they fly to their horses' heads, and deprecate our wrath by the precipitation of their crane-neck quarterings. treason they feel to be their crime; each individual carter feels himself under the ban of confiscation and attainder; his blood is attainted through six generations; and nothing is wanting but the headsman and his axe, the block and the sawdust, to close up the vista of his horrors. what! shall it be within benefit of clergy to delay the king's message on the high road?--to interrupt the great respirations, ebb and flood, _systole_ and _diastole_, of the national intercourse?--to endanger the safety of tidings running day and night between all nations and languages? or can it be fancied, amongst the weakest of men, that the bodies of the criminals will be given up to their widows for christian burial? now, the doubts which were raised as to our powers did more to wrap them in terror, by wrapping them in uncertainty, than could have been effected by the sharpest definitions of the law from the quarter sessions. we, on our parts (we, the collective mail, i mean), did our utmost to exalt the idea of our privileges by the insolence with which we wielded them. whether this insolence rested upon law that gave it a sanction, or upon conscious power that haughtily dispensed with that sanction, equally it spoke from a potential station; and the agent, in each particular insolence of the moment, was viewed reverentially, as one having authority. sometimes after breakfast his majesty's mail would become frisky; and, in its difficult wheelings amongst the intricacies of early markets, it would upset an apple-cart, a cart loaded with eggs, &c. huge was the affliction and dismay, awful was the smash. i, as far as possible, endeavoured in such a case to represent the conscience and moral sensibilities of the mail; and, when wildernesses of eggs were lying poached under our horses' hoofs, then would i stretch forth my hands in sorrow, saying (in words too celebrated at that time, from the false echoes [footnote: "_false echoes_":--yes, false! for the words ascribed to napoleon, as breathed to the memory of desaix, never were uttered at all. they stand in the same category of theatrical fictions as the cry of the foundering line-of-battle ship _vengeur_, as the vaunt of general cambronne at waterloo, "la garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas," or as the repartees of talleyrand.] of marengo), "ah! wherefore have we not time to weep over you?"--which was evidently impossible, since, in fact, we had not time to laugh over them. tied to post-office allowance in some cases of fifty minutes for eleven miles, could the royal mail pretend to undertake the offices of sympathy and condolence? could it be expected to provide tears for the accidents of the road? if even it seemed to trample on humanity, it did so, i felt, in discharge of its own more peremptory duties. upholding the morality of the mail, _a fortiori_ i upheld its rights; as a matter of duty, i stretched to the uttermost its privilege of imperial precedency, and astonished weak minds by the feudal powers which i hinted to be lurking constructively in the charters of this proud establishment. once i remember being on the box of the holyhead mail, between shrewsbury and oswestry, when a tawdry thing from birmingham, some "tallyho" or "highflyer," all flaunting with green and gold, came up alongside of us. what a contrast to our royal simplicity of form and colour in this plebeian wretch! the single ornament on our dark ground of chocolate colour was the mighty shield of the imperial arms, but emblazoned in proportions as modest as a signet-ring bears to a seal of office. even this was displayed only on a single panel, whispering, rather than proclaiming, our relations to the mighty state; whilst the beast from birmingham, our green-and-gold friend from false, fleeting, perjured brummagem, had as much writing and painting on its sprawling flanks as would have puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of luxor. for some time this birmingham machine ran along by our side--a piece of familiarity that already of itself seemed to me sufficiently jacobinical. but all at once a movement of the horses announced a desperate intention of leaving us behind. "do you see _that?_" i said to the coachman.--"i see," was his short answer. he was wide awake,--yet he waited longer than seemed prudent; for the horses of our audacious opponent had a disagreeable air of freshness and power. but his motive was loyal; his wish was that the birmingham conceit should be full-blown before he froze it. when _that_ seemed right, he unloosed, or, to speak by a stronger word, he _sprang_, his known resources: he slipped our royal horses like cheetahs, or hunting-leopards, after the affrighted game. how they could retain such a reserve of fiery power after the work they had accomplished seemed hard to explain. but on our side, besides the physical superiority, was a tower of moral strength, namely the king's name, "which they upon the adverse faction wanted." passing them without an effort, as it seemed, we threw them into the rear with so lengthening an interval between us as proved in itself the bitterest mockery of their presumption; whilst our guard blew back a shattering blast of triumph that was really too painfully full of derision. i mention this little incident for its connexion with what followed. a welsh rustic, sitting behind me, asked if i had not felt my heart burn within me during the progress of the race? i said, with philosophic calmness, _no_; because we were not racing with a mail, so that no glory could be gained. in fact, it was sufficiently mortifying that such a birmingham thing should dare to challenge us. the welshman replied that he didn't see _that_; for that a cat might look at a king, and a brummagem coach might lawfully race the holyhead mail. "_race_ us, if you like," i replied, "though even _that_ has an air of sedition; but not _beat_ us. this would have been treason; and for its own sake i am glad that the 'tallyho' was disappointed." so dissatisfied did the welshman seem with this opinion that at last i was obliged to tell him a very fine story from one of our elder dramatists: viz., that once, in some far oriental kingdom, when the sultan of all the land, with his princes, ladies, and chief omrahs, were flying their falcons, a hawk suddenly flew at a majestic eagle, and, in defiance of the eagle's natural advantages, in contempt also of the eagle's traditional royalty, and before the whole assembled field of astonished spectators from agra and lahore, killed the eagle on the spot. amazement seized the sultan at the unequal contest, and burning admiration for its unparalleled result. he commanded that the hawk should be brought before him; he caressed the bird with enthusiasm; and he ordered that, for the commemoration of his matchless courage, a diadem of gold and rubies should be solemnly placed on the hawk's head, but then that, immediately after this solemn coronation, the bird should be led off to execution, as the most valiant indeed of traitors, but not the less a traitor, as having dared to rise rebelliously against his liege lord and anointed sovereign, the eagle. "now," said i to the welshman, "to you and me, as men of refined sensibilities, how painful it would have been that this poor brummagem brute, the 'tallyho,' in the impossible case of a victory over us, should have been crowned with birmingham tinsel, with paste diamonds and roman pearls, and then led off to instant execution." the welshman doubted if that could be warranted by law. and, when i hinted at the th of edward longshanks, chap. , for regulating the precedency of coaches, as being probably the statute relied on for the capital punishment of such offences, he replied drily that, if the attempt to pass a mail really were treasonable, it was a pity that the "tallyho" appeared to have so imperfect an acquaintance with law. the modern modes of travelling cannot compare with the old mail-coach system in grandeur and power. they boast of more velocity,--not, however, as a consciousness, but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge, resting upon _alien_ evidence: as, for instance, because somebody _says_ that we have gone fifty miles in the hour, though we are far from feeling it as a personal experience; or upon the evidence of a result, as that actually we find ourselves in york four hours after leaving london. apart from such an assertion, or such a result, i myself am little aware of the pace. but, seated on the old mail-coach, we needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity. on this system the word was not _magna loquimur_, as upon railways, but _vivimus_. yes, "magna _vivimus_"; we do not make verbal ostentation of our grandeurs, we realise our grandeurs in act, and in the very experience of life. the vital experience of the glad animal sensibilities made doubts impossible on the question of our speed; we heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thunder-beating hoofs. the sensibility of the horse, uttering itself in the maniac light of his eye, might be the last vibration of such a movement; the glory of salamanca might be the first. but the intervening links that connected them, that spread the earthquake of battle into the eyeballs of the horse, were the heart of man and its electric thrillings--kindling in the rapture of the fiery strife, and then propagating its own tumults by contagious shouts and gestures to the heart of his servant the horse. but now, on the new system of travelling, iron tubes and boilers have disconnected man's heart from the ministers of his locomotion. nile nor trafalgar has power to raise an extra bubble in a steam-kettle. the galvanic cycle is broken up for ever; man's imperial nature no longer sends itself forward through the electric sensibility of the horse; the inter-agencies are gone in the mode of communication between the horse and his master out of which grew so many aspects of sublimity under accidents of mists that hid, or sudden blazes that revealed, of mobs that agitated, or midnight solitudes that awed. tidings fitted to convulse all nations must henceforwards travel by culinary process; and the trumpet that once announced from afar the laurelled mail, heart-shaking when heard screaming on the wind and proclaiming itself through the darkness to every village or solitary house on its route, has now given way for ever to the pot-wallopings of the boiler. thus have perished multiform openings for public expressions of interest, scenical yet natural, in great national tidings,--for revelations of faces and groups that could not offer themselves amongst the fluctuating mobs of a railway station. the gatherings of gazers about a laurelled mail had one centre, and acknowledged one sole interest. but the crowds attending at a railway station have as little unity as running water, and own as many centres as there are separate carriages in the train. how else, for example, than as a constant watcher for the dawn, and for the london mail that in summer months entered about daybreak amongst the lawny thickets of maryborough forest, couldst thou, sweet fanny of the bath road, have become the glorified inmate of my dreams? yet fanny, as the loveliest young woman for face and person that perhaps in my whole life i have beheld, merited the station which even now, from a distance of forty years, she holds in my dreams; yes, though by links of natural association she brings along with her a troop of dreadful creatures, fabulous and not fabulous, that are more abominable to the heart than fanny and the dawn are delightful. miss fanny of the bath road, strictly speaking, lived at a mile's distance from that road, but came so continually to meet the mail that i on my frequent transits rarely missed her, and naturally connected her image with the great thoroughfare where only i had ever seen her. why she came so punctually i do not exactly know; but i believe with some burden of commissions, to be executed in bath, which had gathered to her own residence as a central rendezvous for converging them. the mail-coachman who drove the bath mail and wore the royal livery [footnote: "wore the royal livery":--the general impression was that the royal livery belonged of right to the mail-coachmen as their professional dress. but that was an error. to the guard it _did_ belong, i believe, and was obviously essential as an official warrant, and as a means of instant identification for his person, in the discharge of his important public duties. but the coachman, and especially if his place in the series did not connect him immediately with london and the general post-office, obtained the scarlet coat only as an honorary distinction after long (or, if not long, trying and special) service.] happened to be fanny's grandfather. a good man he was, that loved his beautiful granddaughter, and, loving her wisely, was vigilant over her deportment in any case where young oxford might happen to be concerned. did my vanity then suggest that i myself, individually, could fall within the line of his terrors? certainly not, as regarded any physical pretensions that i could plead; for fanny (as a chance passenger from her own neighbourhood once told me) counted in her train a hundred and ninety-nine professed admirers, if not open aspirants to her favour; and probably not one of the whole brigade but excelled myself in personal advantages. ulysses even, with the unfair advantage of his accursed bow, could hardly have undertaken that amount of suitors. so the danger might have seemed slight--only that woman is universally aristocratic; it is amongst her nobilities of heart that she _is_ so. now, the aristocratic distinctions in my favour might easily with miss fanny have compensated my physical deficiencies. did i then make love to fanny? why, yes; about as much love as one _could_ make whilst the mail was changing horses--a process which, ten years later, did not occupy above eighty seconds; but _then_,--viz., about waterloo--it occupied five times eighty. now, four hundred seconds offer a field quite ample enough for whispering into a young woman's ear a great deal of truth, and (by way of parenthesis) some trifle of falsehood. grandpapa did right, therefore, to watch me. and yet, as happens too often to the grandpapas of earth in a contest with the admirers of granddaughters, how vainly would he have watched me had i meditated any evil whispers to fanny! she, it is my belief, would have protected herself against any man's evil suggestions. but he, as the result showed, could not have intercepted the opportunities for such suggestions. yet, why not? was he not active? was he not blooming? blooming he was as fanny herself. "say, all our praises why should lords----" stop, that's not the line. "say, all our roses why should girls engross?" the coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face deeper even than his granddaughter's--_his_ being drawn from the ale-cask, fanny's from the fountains of the dawn. but, in spite of his blooming face, some infirmities he had; and one particularly in which he too much resembled a crocodile. this lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round. the crocodile, i presume, owes that inaptitude to the absurd _length_ of his back; but in our grandpapa it arose rather from the absurd _breadth_ of his back, combined, possibly, with some growing stiffness in his legs. now, upon this crocodile infirmity of his i planted a human advantage for tendering my homage to miss fanny. in defiance of all his honourable vigilance, no sooner had he presented to us his mighty jovian back (what a field for displaying to mankind his royal scarlet!), whilst inspecting professionally the buckles, the straps, and the silvery turrets [footnote: "_turrets_":--as one who loves and venerates chaucer for his unrivalled merits of tenderness, of picturesque characterisation, and of narrative skill, i noticed with great pleasure that the word _torrettes_ is used by him to designate the little devices through which the reins are made to pass. this same word, in the same exact sense, i heard uniformly used by many scores of illustrious mail-coachmen to whose confidential friendship i had the honour of being admitted in my younger days.] of his harness, than i raised miss fanny's hand to my lips, and, by the mixed tenderness and respectfulness of my manner, caused her easily to understand how happy it would make me to rank upon her list as no. or : in which case a few casualties amongst her lovers (and, observe, they _hanged_ liberally in those days) might have promoted me speedily to the top of the tree; as, on the other hand, with how much loyalty of submission i acquiesced by anticipation in her award, supposing that she should plant me in the very rearward of her favour, as no. + . most truly i loved this beautiful and ingenuous girl; and, had it not been for the bath mail, timing all courtships by post-office allowance, heaven only knows what might have come of it. people talk of being over head and ears in love; now, the mail was the cause that i sank only over ears in love,--which, you know, still left a trifle of brain to overlook the whole conduct of the affair. ah, reader! when i look back upon those days, it seems to me that all things change--all things perish. "perish the roses and the palms of kings": perish even the crowns and trophies of waterloo: thunder and lightning are not the thunder and lightning which i remember. roses are degenerating. the fannies of our island--though this i say with reluctance--are not visibly improving; and the bath road is notoriously superannuated. crocodiles, you will say, are stationary. mr. waterton tells me that the crocodile does _not change_,--that a cayman, in fact, or an alligator, is just as good for riding upon as he was in the time of the pharaohs. _that_ may be; but the reason is that the crocodile does not live fast--he is a slow coach. i believe it is generally understood among naturalists that the crocodile is a blockhead. it is my own impression that the pharaohs were also blockheads. now, as the pharaohs and the crocodile domineered over egyptian society, this accounts for a singular mistake that prevailed through innumerable generations on the nile. the crocodile made the ridiculous blunder of supposing man to be meant chiefly for his own eating. man, taking a different view of the subject, naturally met that mistake by another: he viewed the crocodile as a thing sometimes to worship, but always to run away from. and this continued till mr. waterton [footnote: "_mr. waterton_":--had the reader lived through the last generation, he would not need to be told that, some thirty or thirty-five years back, mr. waterton, a distinguished country gentleman of ancient family in northumberland, publicly mounted and rode in top-boots a savage old crocodile, that was restive and very impertinent, but all to no purpose. the crocodile jibbed and tried to kick, but vainly. he was no more able to throw the squire than sinbad was to throw the old scoundrel who used his back without paying for it, until he discovered a mode (slightly immoral, perhaps, though some think not) of murdering the old fraudulent jockey, and so circuitously of unhorsing him.] changed the relations between the animals. the mode of escaping from the reptile he showed to be not by running away, but by leaping on its back booted and spurred. the two animals had misunderstood each other. the use of the crocodile has now been cleared up--viz., to be ridden; and the final cause of man is that he may improve the health of the crocodile by riding him a-fox-hunting before breakfast. and it is pretty certain that any crocodile who has been regularly hunted through the season, and is master of the weight he carries, will take a six-barred gate now as well as ever he would have done in the infancy of the pyramids. if, therefore, the crocodile does _not_ change, all things else undeniably _do_: even the shadow of the pyramids grows less. and often the restoration in vision of fanny and the bath road makes me too pathetically sensible of that truth. out of the darkness, if i happen to call back the image of fanny, up rises suddenly from a gulf of forty years a rose in june; or, if i think for an instant of the rose in june, up rises the heavenly face of fanny. one after the other, like the antiphonies in the choral service, rise fanny and the rose in june, then back again the rose in june and fanny. then come both together, as in a chorus--roses and fannies, fannies and roses, without end, thick as blossoms in paradise. then comes a venerable crocodile, in a royal livery of scarlet and gold, with sixteen capes; and the crocodile is driving four-in-hand from the box of the bath mail. and suddenly we upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty dial, sculptured with the hours, that mingle with the heavens and the heavenly host. then all at once we are arrived at marlborough forest, amongst the lovely households [footnote: "_households_":--roe-deer do not congregate in herds like the fallow or the red deer, but by separate families, parents and children; which feature of approximation to the sanctity of human hearths, added to their comparatively miniature and graceful proportions, conciliates to them an interest of peculiar tenderness, supposing even that this beautiful creature is less characteristically impressed with the grandeurs of savage and forest life.] of the roe-deer; the deer and their fawns retire into the dewy thickets; the thickets are rich with roses; once again the roses call up the sweet countenance of fanny; and she, being the granddaughter of a crocodile, awakens a dreadful host of semi-legendary animals--griffins, dragons, basilisks, sphinxes--till at length the whole vision of fighting images crowds into one towering armorial shield, a vast emblazonry of human charities and human loveliness that have perished, but quartered heraldically with unutterable and demoniac natures, whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest, one fair female hand, with the forefinger pointing, in sweet, sorrowful admonition, upwards to heaven, where is sculptured the eternal writing which proclaims the frailty of earth and her children. going down with victory but the grandest chapter of our experience within the whole mail-coach service was on those occasions when we went down from london with the news of victory. a period of about ten years stretched from trafalgar to waterloo; the second and third years of which period ( and ) were comparatively sterile; but the other nine (from to inclusively) furnished a long succession of victories, the least of which, in such a contest of titans, had an inappreciable value of position: partly for its absolute interference with the plans of our enemy, but still more from its keeping alive through central europe the sense of a deep-seated vulnerability in france. even to tease the coasts of our enemy, to mortify them by continual blockades, to insult them by capturing if it were but a baubling schooner under the eyes of their arrogant armies, repeated from time to time a sullen proclamation of power lodged in one quarter to which the hopes of christendom turned in secret. how much more loudly must this proclamation have spoken in the audacity [footnote: "_audacity_":--such the french accounted it; and it has struck me that soult would not have been so popular in london, at the period of her present majesty's coronation, or in manchester, on occasion of his visit to that town, if they had been aware of the insolence with which he spoke of us in notes written at intervals from the field of waterloo. as though it had been mere felony in our army to look a french one in the face, he said in more notes than one, dated from two to four p.m. on the field of waterloo, "here are the english--we have them; they are caught _en flagrant délit_" yet no man should have known us better; no man had drunk deeper from the cup of humiliation than soult had in , when ejected by us with headlong violence from oporto, and pursued through a long line of wrecks to the frontier of spain; and subsequently at albuera, in the bloodiest of recorded battles, to say nothing of toulouse, he should have learned our pretensions.] of having bearded the _élite_ of their troops, and having beaten them in pitched battles! five years of life it was worth paying down for the privilege of an outside place on a mail-coach, when carrying down the first tidings of any such event. and it is to be noted that, from our insular situation, and the multitude of our frigates disposable for the rapid transmission of intelligence, rarely did any unauthorised rumour steal away a prelibation from the first aroma of the regular despatches. the government news was generally the earliest news. from eight p.m. to fifteen or twenty minutes later imagine the mails assembled on parade in lombard street; where, at that time, [footnote: "_at that time_":--i speak of the era previous to waterloo.] and not in st. martin's-le-grand, was seated the general post-office. in what exact strength we mustered i do not remember; but, from the length of each separate _attelage_, we filled the street, though a long one, and though we were drawn up in double file. on _any_ night the spectacle was beautiful. the absolute perfection of all the appointments about the carriages and the harness, their strength, their brilliant cleanliness, their beautiful simplicity--but, more than all, the royal magnificence of the horses--were what might first have fixed the attention. every carriage on every morning in the year was taken down to an official inspector for examination: wheels, axles, linchpins, pole, glasses, lamps, were all critically probed and tested. every part of every carriage had been cleaned, every horse had been groomed, with as much rigour as if they belonged to a private gentleman; and that part of the spectacle offered itself always. but the night before us is a night of victory; and, behold! to the ordinary display what a heart-shaking addition!--horses, men, carriages, all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves and ribbons. the guards, as being officially his majesty's servants, and of the coachmen such as are within the privilege of the post-office, wear the royal liveries of course; and, as it is summer (for all the _land_ victories were naturally won in summer), they wear, on this fine evening, these liveries exposed to view, without any covering of upper coats. such a costume, and the elaborate arrangement of the laurels in their hats, dilate their hearts, by giving to them openly a personal connexion with the great news in which already they have the general interest of patriotism. that great national sentiment surmounts and quells all sense of ordinary distinctions. those passengers who happen to be gentlemen are now hardly to be distinguished as such except by dress; for the usual reserve of their manner in speaking to the attendants has on this night melted away. one heart, one pride, one glory, connects every man by the transcendent bond of his national blood. the spectators, who are numerous beyond precedent, express their sympathy with these fervent feelings by continual hurrahs. every moment are shouted aloud by the post-office servants, and summoned to draw up, the great ancestral names of cities known to history through a thousand years--lincoln, winchester, portsmouth, gloucester, oxford, bristol, manchester, york, newcastle, edinburgh, glasgow, perth, stirling, aberdeen--expressing the grandeur of the empire by the antiquity of its towns, and the grandeur of the mail establishment by the diffusive radiation of its separate missions. every moment you hear the thunder of lids locked down upon the mail-bags. that sound to each individual mail is the signal for drawing off; which process is the finest part of the entire spectacle. then come the horses into play. horses! can these be horses that bound off with the action and gestures of leopards? what stir!--what sea-like ferment!--what a thundering of wheels!--what a trampling of hoofs!--what a sounding of trumpets!--what farewell cheers--what redoubling peals of brotherly congratulation, connecting the name of the particular mail--"liverpool for ever!"--with the name of the particular victory--"badajoz for ever!" or "salamanca for ever!" the half-slumbering consciousness that all night long, and all the next day--perhaps for even a longer period--many of these mails, like fire racing along a train of gunpowder, will be kindling at every instant new successions of burning joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying the victory itself, by multiplying to the imagination into infinity the stages of its progressive diffusion. a fiery arrow seems to be let loose, which from that moment is destined to travel, without intermission, westwards for three hundred [footnote: "_three hundred_":--of necessity, this scale of measurement, to an american, if he happens to be a thoughtless man, must sound ludicrous. accordingly, i remember a case in which an american writer indulges himself in the luxury of a little fibbing, by ascribing to an englishman a pompous account of the thames, constructed entirely upon american ideas of grandeur, and concluding in something like these terms:--"and, sir, arriving at london, this mighty father of rivers attains a breadth of at least two furlongs, having, in its winding course, traversed the astonishing distance of one hundred and seventy miles." and this the candid american thinks it fair to contrast with the scale of the mississippi. now, it is hardly worth while to answer a pure fiction gravely; else one might say that no englishman out of bedlam ever thought of looking in an island for the rivers of a continent, nor, consequently, could have thought of looking for the peculiar grandeur of the thames in the length of its course, or in the extent of soil which it drains. yet, if he _had_ been so absurd, the american might have recollected that a river, not to be compared with the thames even as to volume of water--viz., the tiber--has contrived to make itself heard of in this world for twenty-five centuries to an extent not reached as yet by any river, however corpulent, of his own land. the glory of the thames is measured by the destiny of the population to which it ministers, by the commerce which it supports, by the grandeur of the empire in which, though far from the largest, it is the most influential stream. upon some such scale, and not by a transfer of columbian standards, is the course of our english mails to be valued. the american may fancy the effect of his own valuations to our english ears by supposing the case of a siberian glorifying his country in these terms:--"these wretches, sir, in france and england, cannot march half a mile in any direction without finding a house where food can be had and lodging; whereas such is the noble desolation of our magnificent country that in many a direction for a thousand miles i will engage that a dog shall not find shelter from a snow-storm, nor a wren find an apology for breakfast."] miles--northwards for six hundred; and the sympathy of our lombard street friends at parting is exalted a hundredfold by a sort of visionary sympathy with the yet slumbering sympathies which in so vast a succession we are going to awake. liberated from the embarrassments of the city, and issuing into the broad uncrowded avenues of the northern suburbs, we soon begin to enter upon our natural pace of ten miles an hour. in the broad light of the summer evening, the sun, perhaps, only just at the point of setting, we are seen from every storey of every house. heads of every age crowd to the windows; young and old understand the language of our victorious symbols; and rolling volleys of sympathising cheers run along us, behind us, and before us. the beggar, rearing himself against the wall, forgets his lameness--real or assumed--thinks not of his whining trade, but stands erect, with bold exulting smiles, as we pass him. the victory has healed him, and says, be thou whole! women and children, from garrets alike and cellars, through infinite london, look down or look up with loving eyes upon our gay ribbons and our martial laurels; sometimes kiss their hands; sometimes hang out, as signals of affection, pocket-handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, anything that, by catching the summer breezes, will express an aerial jubilation. on the london side of barnet, to which we draw near within a few minutes after nine, observe that private carriage which is approaching us. the weather being so warm, the glasses are all down; and one may read, as on the stage of a theatre, everything that goes on within. it contains three ladies--one likely to be "mamma," and two of seventeen or eighteen, who are probably her daughters. what lovely animation, what beautiful unpremeditated pantomime, explaining to us every syllable that passes, in these ingenuous girls! by the sudden start and raising of the hands on first discovering our laurelled equipage, by the sudden movement and appeal to the elder lady from both of them, and by the heightened colour on their animated countenances, we can almost hear them saying, "see, see! look at their laurels! oh, mamma! there has been a great battle in spain; and it has been a great victory." in a moment we are on the point of passing them. we passengers--i on the box, and the two on the roof behind me--raise our hats to the ladies; the coachman makes his professional salute with the whip; the guard even, though punctilious on the matter of his dignity as an officer under the crown, touches his hat. the ladies move to us, in return, with a winning graciousness of gesture; all smile on each side in a way that nobody could misunderstand, and that nothing short of a grand national sympathy could so instantaneously prompt. will these ladies say that we are nothing to _them_? oh no; they will not say _that_. they cannot deny--they do not deny--that for this night they are our sisters; gentle or simple, scholar or illiterate servant, for twelve hours to come, we on the outside have the honour to be their brothers. those poor women, again, who stop to gaze upon us with delight at the entrance of barnet, and seem, by their air of weariness, to be returning from labour--do you mean to say that they are washerwomen and charwomen? oh, my poor friend, you are quite mistaken. i assure you they stand in a far higher rank; for this one night they feel themselves by birthright to be daughters of england, and answer to no humbler title. every joy, however, even rapturous joy--such is the sad law of earth--may carry with it grief, or fear of grief, to some. three miles beyond barnet, we see approaching us another private carriage, nearly repeating the circumstances of the former case. here, also, the glasses are all down; here, also, is an elderly lady seated; but the two daughters are missing; for the single young person sitting by the lady's side seems to be an attendant--so i judge from her dress, and her air of respectful reserve. the lady is in mourning; and her countenance expresses sorrow. at first she does not look up; so that i believe she is not aware of our approach, until she hears the measured beating of our horses' hoofs. then she raises her eyes to settle them painfully on our triumphal equipage. our decorations explain the case to her at once; but she beholds them with apparent anxiety, or even with terror. some time before this, i, finding it difficult to hit a flying mark when embarrassed by the coachman's person and reins intervening, had given to the guard a "courier" evening paper, containing the gazette, for the next carriage that might pass. accordingly he tossed it in, so folded that the huge capitals expressing some such legend as glorious victory might catch the eye at once. to see the paper, however, at all, interpreted as it was by our ensigns of triumph, explained everything; and, if the guard were right in thinking the lady to have received it with a gesture of horror, it could not be doubtful that she had suffered some deep personal affliction in connexion with this spanish war. here, now, was the case of one who, having formerly suffered, might, erroneously perhaps, be distressing herself with anticipations of another similar suffering. that same night, and hardly three hours later, occurred the reverse case. a poor woman, who too probably would find herself, in a day or two, to have suffered the heaviest of afflictions by the battle, blindly allowed herself to express an exultation so unmeasured in the news and its details as gave to her the appearance which amongst celtic highlanders is called _fey_. this was at some little town where we changed horses an hour or two after midnight. some fair or wake had kept the people up out of their beds, and had occasioned a partial illumination of the stalls and booths, presenting an unusual but very impressive effect. we saw many lights moving about as we drew near; and perhaps the most striking scene on the whole route was our reception at this place. the flashing of torches and the beautiful radiance of blue lights (technically, bengal lights) upon the heads of our horses; the fine effect of such a showery and ghostly illumination falling upon our flowers and glittering laurels [footnote: "_glittering laurels_":--i must observe that the colour of _green_ suffers almost a spiritual change and exaltation under the effect of bengal lights.]; whilst all around ourselves, that formed a centre of light, the darkness gathered on the rear and flanks in massy blackness: these optical splendours, together with the prodigious enthusiasm of the people, composed a picture at once scenical and affecting, theatrical and holy. as we staid for three or four minutes, i alighted; and immediately from a dismantled stall in the street, where no doubt she had been presiding through the earlier part of the night, advanced eagerly a middle-aged woman. the sight of my newspaper it was that had drawn her attention upon myself. the victory which we were carrying down to the provinces on _this_ occasion was the imperfect one of talavera--imperfect for its results, such was the virtual treachery of the spanish general, cuesta, but not imperfect in its ever-memorable heroism. i told her the main outline of the battle. the agitation of her enthusiasm had been so conspicuous when listening, and when first applying for information, that i could not but ask her if she had not some relative in the peninsular army. oh yes; her only son was there. in what regiment? he was a trooper in the d dragoons. my heart sank within me as she made that answer. this sublime regiment, which an englishman should never mention without raising his hat to their memory, had made the most memorable and effective charge recorded in military annals. they leaped their horses--_over_ a trench where they could; _into_ it, and with the result of death or mutilation, when they could _not_. what proportion cleared the trench is nowhere stated. those who _did_ closed up and went down upon the enemy with such divinity of fervour (i use the word _divinity_ by design: the inspiration of god must have prompted this movement for those whom even then he was calling to his presence) that two results followed. as regarded the enemy, this d dragoons, not, i believe, originally three hundred and fifty strong, paralysed a french column six thousand strong, then ascended the hill, and fixed the gaze of the whole french army. as regarded themselves, the d were supposed at first to have been barely not annihilated; but eventually, i believe, about one in four survived. and this, then, was the regiment--a regiment already for some hours glorified and hallowed to the ear of all london, as lying stretched, by a large majority, upon one bloody aceldama--in which the young trooper served whose mother was now talking in a spirit of such joyous enthusiasm. did i tell her the truth? had i the heart to break up her dreams? no. to-morrow, said i to myself--to-morrow, or the next day, will publish the worst. for one night more wherefore should she not sleep in peace? after to-morrow the chances are too many that peace will forsake her pillow. this brief respite, then, let her owe to _my_ gift and _my_ forbearance. but, if i told her not of the bloody price that had been paid, not therefore was i silent on the contributions from her son's regiment to that day's service and glory. i showed her not the funeral banners under which the noble regiment was sleeping. i lifted not the overshadowing laurels from the bloody trench in which horse and rider lay mangled together. but i told her how these dear children of england, officers and privates, had leaped their horses over all obstacles as gaily as hunters to the morning's chase. i told her how they rode their horses into the midst of death,--saying to myself, but not saying to _her_ "and laid down their young lives for thee, o mother england! as willingly--poured out their noble blood as cheerfully--as ever, after a long day's sport, when infants, they had rested their weary heads upon their mother's knees, or had sunk to sleep in her arms." strange it is, yet true, that she seemed to have no fears for her son's safety, even after this knowledge that the d dragoons had been memorably engaged; but so much was she enraptured by the knowledge that _his_ regiment, and therefore that _he_, had rendered conspicuous service in the dreadful conflict--a service which had actually made them, within the last twelve hours, the foremost topic of conversation in london--so absolutely was fear swallowed up in joy--that, in the mere simplicity of her fervent nature, the poor woman threw her arms round my neck, as she thought of her son, and gave to _me_ the kiss which secretly was meant for _him_. section ii--the vision of sudden death what is to be taken as the predominant opinion of man, reflective and philosophic, upon sudden death? it is remarkable that, in different conditions of society, sudden death has been variously regarded as the consummation of an earthly career most fervently to be desired, or, again, as that consummation which is with most horror to be deprecated. cæsar the dictator, at his last dinner-party (_coena_), on the very evening before his assassination, when the minutes of his earthly career were numbered, being asked what death, in _his_ judgment, might be pronounced the most eligible, replied "that which should be most sudden." on the other hand, the divine litany of our english church, when breathing forth supplications, as if in some representative character, for the whole human race prostrate before god, places such a death in the very van of horrors: "from lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death--_good lord, deliver us_." sudden death is here made to crown the climax in a grand ascent of calamities; it is ranked among the last of curses; and yet by the noblest of romans it was ranked as the first of blessings. in that difference most readers will see little more than the essential difference between christianity and paganism. but this, on consideration, i doubt. the christian church may be right in its estimate of sudden death; and it is a natural feeling, though after all it may also be an infirm one, to wish for a quiet dismissal from life, as that which _seems_ most reconcilable with meditation, with penitential retrospects, and with the humilities of farewell prayer. there does not, however, occur to me any direct scriptural warrant for this earnest petition of the english litany, unless under a special construction of the word "sudden." it seems a petition indulged rather and conceded to human infirmity than exacted from human piety. it is not so much a doctrine built upon the eternities of the christian system as a plausible opinion built upon special varieties of physical temperament. let that, however, be as it may, two remarks suggest themselves as prudent restraints upon a doctrine which else _may_ wander, and _has_ wandered, into an uncharitable superstition. the first is this: that many people are likely to exaggerate the horror of a sudden death from the disposition to lay a false stress upon words or acts simply because by an accident they have become _final_ words or acts. if a man dies, for instance, by some sudden death when he happens to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely regarded with peculiar horror; as though the intoxication were suddenly exalted into a blasphemy. but _that_ is unphilosophic. the man was, or he was not, _habitually_ a drunkard. if not, if his intoxication were a solitary accident, there can be no reason for allowing special emphasis to this act simply because through misfortune it became his final act. nor, on the other hand, if it were no accident, but one of his _habitual_ transgressions, will it be the more habitual or the more a transgression because some sudden calamity, surprising him, has caused this habitual transgression to be also a final one. could the man have had any reason even dimly to foresee his own sudden death, there would have been a new feature in his act of intemperance--a feature of presumption and irreverence, as in one that, having known himself drawing near to the presence of god, should have suited his demeanour to an expectation so awful. but this is no part of the case supposed. and the only new element in the man's act is not any element of special immorality, but simply of special misfortune. the other remark has reference to the meaning of the word _sudden_. very possibly cæsar and the christian church do not differ in the way supposed,--that is, do not differ by any difference of doctrine as between pagan and christian views of the moral temper appropriate to death; but perhaps they are contemplating different cases. both contemplate a violent death, a _biathanatos_--death that is _biaios_, or, in other words, death that is brought about, not by internal and spontaneous change, but by active force having its origin from without. in this meaning the two authorities agree. thus far they are in harmony. but the difference is that the roman by the word "sudden" means _unlingering_, whereas the christian litany by "sudden death" means a death _without warning_, consequently without any available summons to religious preparation. the poor mutineer who kneels down to gather into his heart the bullets from twelve firelocks of his pitying comrades dies by a most sudden death in cæsar's sense; one shock, one mighty spasm, one (possibly _not_ one) groan, and all is over. but, in the sense of the litany, the mutineer's death is far from sudden: his offence originally, his imprisonment, his trial, the interval between his sentence and its execution, having all furnished him with separate warnings of his fate--having all summoned him to meet it with solemn preparation. here at once, in this sharp verbal distinction, we comprehend the faithful earnestness with which a holy christian church pleads on behalf of her poor departing children that god would vouchsafe to them the last great privilege and distinction possible on a death-bed, viz., the opportunity of untroubled preparation for facing this mighty trial. sudden death, as a mere variety in the modes of dying where death in some shape is inevitable, proposes a question of choice which, equally in the roman and the christian sense, will be variously answered according to each man's variety of temperament. meantime, one aspect of sudden death there is, one modification, upon which no doubt can arise, that of all martyrdoms it is the most agitating--viz., where it surprises a man under circumstances which offer (or which seem to offer) some hurrying, flying, inappreciably minute chance of evading it. sudden as the danger which it affronts must be any effort by which such an evasion can be accomplished. even _that_, even the sickening necessity for hurrying in extremity where all hurry seems destined to be vain,--even that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation in one particular case: viz., where the appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self-preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf of some other life besides your own, accidentally thrown upon _your_ protection. to fail, to collapse in a service merely your own, might seem comparatively venial; though, in fact, it is far from venial. but to fail in a case where providence has suddenly thrown into your hands the final interests of another,--a fellow creature shuddering between the gates of life and death: this, to a man of apprehensive conscience, would mingle the misery of an atrocious criminality with the misery of a bloody calamity. you are called upon, by the case supposed, possibly to die, but to die at the very moment when, by any even partial failure or effeminate collapse of your energies, you will be self-denounced as a murderer. you had but the twinkling of an eye for your effort, and that effort might have been unavailing; but to have risen to the level of such an effort would have rescued you, though not from dying, yet from dying as a traitor to your final and farewell duty. the situation here contemplated exposes a dreadful ulcer, lurking far down in the depths of human nature. it is not that men generally are summoned to face such awful trials. but potentially, and in shadowy outline, such a trial is moving subterraneously in perhaps all men's natures. upon the secret mirror of our dreams such a trial is darkly projected, perhaps, to every one of us. that dream, so familiar to childhood, of meeting a lion, and, through languishing prostration in hope and the energies of hope, that constant sequel of lying down before the lion publishes the secret frailty of human nature--reveals its deep-seated falsehood to itself--records its abysmal treachery. perhaps not one of us escapes that dream; perhaps, as by some sorrowful doom of man, that dream repeats for every one of us, through every generation, the original temptation in eden. every one of us, in this dream, has a bait offered to the infirm places of his own individual will; once again a snare is presented for tempting him into captivity to a luxury of ruin; once again, as in aboriginal paradise, the man falls by his own choice; again, by infinite iteration, the ancient earth groans to heaven, through her secret caves, over the weakness of her child. "nature, from her seat, sighing through all her works," again "gives signs of woe that all is lost"; and again the counter-sigh is repeated to the sorrowing heavens for the endless rebellion against god. it is not without probability that in the world of dreams every one of us ratifies for himself the original transgression. in dreams, perhaps under some secret conflict of the midnight sleeper, lighted up to the consciousness at the time, but darkened to the memory as soon as all is finished, each several child of our mysterious race completes for himself the treason of the aboriginal fall. the incident, so memorable in itself by its features of horror, and so scenical by its grouping for the eye, which furnished the text for this reverie upon _sudden death_ occurred to myself in the dead of night, as a solitary spectator, when seated on the box of the manchester and glasgow mail, in the second or third summer after waterloo. i find it necessary to relate the circumstances, because they are such as could not have occurred unless under a singular combination of accidents. in those days, the oblique and lateral communications with many rural post-offices were so arranged, either through necessity or through defect of system, as to make it requisite for the main north-western mail (_i.e._, the _down_ mail) on reaching manchester to halt for a number of hours; how many, i do not remember; six or seven, i think; but the result was that, in the ordinary course, the mail recommenced its journey northwards about midnight. wearied with the long detention at a gloomy hotel, i walked out about eleven o'clock at night for the sake of fresh air; meaning to fall in with the mail and resume my seat at the post-office. the night, however, being yet dark, as the moon had scarcely risen, and the streets being at that hour empty, so as to offer no opportunities for asking the road, i lost my way, and did not reach the post-office until it was considerably past midnight; but, to my great relief (as it was important for me to be in westmoreland by the morning), i saw in the huge saucer eyes of the mail, blazing through the gloom, an evidence that my chance was not yet lost. past the time it was; but, by some rare accident, the mail was not even yet ready to start. i ascended to my seat on the box, where my cloak was still lying as it had lain at the bridgewater arms. i had left it there in imitation of a nautical discoverer, who leaves a bit of bunting on the shore of his discovery, by way of warning off the ground the whole human race, and notifying to the christian and the heathen worlds, with his best compliments, that he has hoisted his pocket-handkerchief once and for ever upon that virgin soil: thenceforward claiming the _jus dominii_ to the top of the atmosphere above it, and also the right of driving shafts to the centre of the earth below it; so that all people found after this warning either aloft in upper chambers of the atmosphere, or groping in subterraneous shafts, or squatting audaciously on the surface of the soil, will be treated as trespassers--kicked, that is to say, or decapitated, as circumstances may suggest, by their very faithful servant, the owner of the said pocket-handkerchief. in the present case, it is probable that my cloak might not have been respected, and the _jus gentium_ might have been cruelly violated in my person--for, in the dark, people commit deeds of darkness, gas being a great ally of morality; but it so happened that on this night there was no other outside passenger; and thus the crime, which else was but too probable, missed fire for want of a criminal. having mounted the box, i took a small quantity of laudanum, having already travelled two hundred and fifty miles--viz., from a point seventy miles beyond london. in the taking of laudanum there was nothing extraordinary. but by accident it drew upon me the special attention of my assessor on the box, the coachman. and in _that_ also there was nothing extraordinary. but by accident, and with great delight, it drew my own attention to the fact that this coachman was a monster in point of bulk, and that he had but one eye. in fact, he had been foretold by virgil as "monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." he answered to the conditions in every one of the items:-- , a monster he was; , dreadful; , shapeless; , huge; , who had lost an eye. but why should _that_ delight me? had he been one of the calendars in the "arabian nights," and had paid down his eye as the price of his criminal curiosity, what right had _i_ to exult in his misfortune? i did _not_ exult; i delighted in no man's punishment, though it were even merited. but these personal distinctions (nos. , , , , ) identified in an instant an old friend of mine whom i had known in the south for some years as the most masterly of mail-coachmen. he was the man in all europe that could (if _any_ could) have driven six-in-hand full gallop over _al sirat_--that dreadful bridge of mahomet, with no side battlements, and of _extra_ room not enough for a razor's edge--leading right across the bottomless gulf. under this eminent man, whom in greek i cognominated cyclops _diphrélates_ (cyclops the charioteer), i, and others known to me, studied the diphrelatic art. excuse, reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic. as a pupil, though i paid extra fees, it is to be lamented that i did not stand high in his esteem. it showed his dogged honesty (though, observe, not his discernment) that he could not see my merits. let us excuse his absurdity in this particular by remembering his want of an eye. doubtless _that_ made him blind to my merits. in the art of conversation, however, he admitted that i had the whip-hand of him. on the present occasion great joy was at our meeting. but what was cyclops doing here? had the medical men recommended northern air, or how? i collected, from such explanations as he volunteered, that he had an interest at stake in some suit-at-law now pending at lancaster; so that probably he had got himself transferred to this station for the purpose of connecting with his professional pursuits an instant readiness for the calls of his lawsuit. meantime, what are we stopping for? surely we have now waited long enough. oh, this procrastinating mail, and this procrastinating post-office! can't they take a lesson upon that subject from _me_? some people have called _me_ procrastinating. yet you are witness, reader, that i was here kept waiting for the post-office. will the post-office lay its hand on its heart, in its moments of sobriety, and assert that ever it waited for me? what are they about? the guard tells me that there is a large extra accumulation of foreign mails this night, owing to irregularities caused by war, by wind, by weather, in the packet service, which as yet does not benefit at all by steam. for an _extra_ hour, it seems, the post-office has been engaged in threshing out the pure wheaten correspondence of glasgow, and winnowing it from the chaff of all baser intermediate towns. but at last all is finished. sound your horn, guard! manchester, good-bye! we've lost an hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office: which, however, though i do not mean to part with a serviceable ground of complaint, and one which really _is_ such for the horses, to me secretly is an advantage, since it compels us to look sharply for this lost hour amongst the next eight or nine, and to recover it (if we can) at the rate of one mile extra per hour. off we are at last, and at eleven miles an hour; and for the moment i detect no changes in the energy or in the skill of cyclops. from manchester to kendal, which virtually (though not in law) is the capital of westmoreland, there were at this time seven stages of eleven miles each. the first five of these, counting from manchester, terminate in lancaster; which is therefore fifty-five miles north of manchester, and the same distance exactly from liverpool. the first three stages terminate in preston (called, by way of distinction from other towns of that name, _proud_ preston); at which place it is that the separate roads from liverpool and from manchester to the north become confluent. [footnote: "_confluent_":--suppose a capital y (the pythagorean letter): lancaster is at the foot of this letter; liverpool at the top of the _right_ branch; manchester at the top of the _left_; proud preston at the centre, where the two branches unite. it is thirty-three miles along either of the two branches; it is twenty-two miles along the stem,--viz., from preston in the middle to lancaster at the root. there's a lesson in geography for the reader!] within these first three stages lay the foundation, the progress, and termination of our night's adventure. during the first stage, i found out that cyclops was mortal: he was liable to the shocking affection of sleep--a thing which previously i had never suspected. if a man indulges in the vicious habit of sleeping, all the skill in aurigation of apollo himself, with the horses of aurora to execute his notions, avails him nothing. "oh, cyclops!" i exclaimed, "thou art mortal. my friend, thou snorest." through the first eleven miles, however, this infirmity--which i grieve to say that he shared with the whole pagan pantheon--betrayed itself only by brief snatches. on waking up, he made an apology for himself which, instead of mending matters, laid open a gloomy vista of coming disasters. the summer assizes, he reminded me, were now going on at lancaster: in consequence of which for three nights and three days he had not lain down on a bed. during the day he was waiting for his own summons as a witness on the trial in which he was interested, or else, lest he should be missing at the critical moment, was drinking with the other witnesses under the pastoral surveillance of the attorneys. during the night, or that part of it which at sea would form the middle watch, he was driving. this explanation certainly accounted for his drowsiness, but in a way which made it much more alarming; since now, after several days' resistance to this infirmity, at length he was steadily giving way. throughout the second stage he grew more and more drowsy. in the second mile of the third stage he surrendered himself finally and without a struggle to his perilous temptation. all his past resistance had but deepened the weight of this final oppression. seven atmospheres of sleep rested upon him; and, to consummate the case, our worthy guard, after singing "love amongst the roses" for perhaps thirty times, without invitation and without applause, had in revenge moodily resigned himself to slumber--not so deep, doubtless, as the coachman's, but deep enough for mischief. and thus at last, about ten miles from preston, it came about that i found myself left in charge of his majesty's london and glasgow mail, then running at the least twelve miles an hour. what made this negligence less criminal than else it must have been thought was the condition of the roads at night during the assizes. at that time, all the law business of populous liverpool, and also of populous manchester, with its vast cincture of populous rural districts, was called up by ancient usage to the tribunal of lilliputian lancaster. to break up this old traditional usage required, , a conflict with powerful established interests, , a large system of new arrangements, and , a new parliamentary statute. but as yet this change was merely in contemplation. as things were at present, twice in the year [footnote: "_twice in the year_":--there were at that time only two assizes even in the most populous counties--viz., the lent assizes and the summer assizes.] so vast a body of business rolled northwards from the southern quarter of the county that for a fortnight at least it occupied the severe exertions of two judges in its despatch. the consequence of this was that every horse available for such a service, along the whole line of road, was exhausted in carrying down the multitudes of people who were parties to the different suits. by sunset, therefore, it usually happened that, through utter exhaustion amongst men and horses, the road sank into profound silence. except the exhaustion in the vast adjacent county of york from a contested election, no such silence succeeding to no such fiery uproar was ever witnessed in england. on this occasion the usual silence and solitude prevailed along the road. not a hoof nor a wheel was to be heard. and, to strengthen this false luxurious confidence in the noiseless roads, it happened also that the night was one of peculiar solemnity and peace. for my own part, though slightly alive to the possibilities of peril, i had so far yielded to the influence of the mighty calm as to sink into a profound reverie. the month was august; in the middle of which lay my own birthday--a festival to every thoughtful man suggesting solemn and often sigh-born [footnote: "_sigh-born_":--i owe the suggestion of this word to an obscure remembrance of a beautiful phrase in "giraldus cambrensis"--viz., _suspiriosæ cogitationes_.] thoughts. the county was my own native county--upon which, in its southern section, more than upon any equal area known to man past or present, had descended the original curse of labour in its heaviest form, not mastering the bodies only of men, as of slaves, or criminals in mines, but working through the fiery will. upon no equal space of earth was, or ever had been, the same energy of human power put forth daily. at this particular season also of the assizes, that dreadful hurricane of flight and pursuit, as it might have seemed to a stranger, which swept to and from lancaster all day long, hunting the county up and down, and regularly subsiding back into silence about sunset, could not fail (when united with this permanent distinction of lancashire as the very metropolis and citadel of labour) to point the thoughts pathetically upon that counter-vision of rest, of saintly repose from strife and sorrow, towards which, as to their secret haven, the profounder aspirations of man's heart are in solitude continually travelling. obliquely upon our left we were nearing the sea; which also must, under the present circumstances, be repeating the general state of halcyon repose. the sea, the atmosphere, the light, bore each an orchestral part in this universal lull. moonlight and the first timid tremblings of the dawn were by this time blending; and the blendings were brought into a still more exquisite state of unity by a slight silvery mist, motionless and dreamy, that covered the woods and fields, but with a veil of equable transparency. except the feet of our own horses,--which, running on a sandy margin of the road, made but little disturbance,--there was no sound abroad. in the clouds and on the earth prevailed the same majestic peace; and, in spite of all that the villain of a schoolmaster has done for the ruin of our sublimer thoughts, which are the thoughts of our infancy, we still believe in no such nonsense as a limited atmosphere. whatever we may swear with our false feigning lips, in our faithful hearts we still believe, and must for ever believe, in fields of air traversing the total gulf between earth and the central heavens. still, in the confidence of children that tread without fear every chamber in their father's house, and to whom no door is closed, we, in that sabbatic vision which sometimes is revealed for an hour upon nights like this, ascend with easy steps from the sorrow-stricken fields of earth upwards to the sandals of god. suddenly, from thoughts like these i was awakened to a sullen sound, as of some motion on the distant road. it stole upon the air for a moment; i listened in awe; but then it died away. once roused, however, i could not but observe with alarm the quickened motion of our horses. ten years' experience had made my eye learned in the valuing of motion; and i saw that we were now running thirteen miles an hour. i pretend to no presence of mind. on the contrary, my fear is that i am miserably and shamefully deficient in that quality as regards action. the palsy of doubt and distraction hangs like some guilty weight of dark unfathomed remembrances upon my energies when the signal is flying for _action_. but, on the other hand, this accursed gift i have, as regards _thought_, that in the first step towards the possibility of a misfortune i see its total evolution; in the radix of the series i see too certainly and too instantly its entire expansion; in the first syllable of the dreadful sentence i read already the last. it was not that i feared for ourselves. _us_ our bulk and impetus charmed against peril in any collision. and i had ridden through too many hundreds of perils that were frightful to approach, that were matter of laughter to look back upon, the first face of which was horror, the parting face a jest--for any anxiety to rest upon _our_ interests. the mail was not built, i felt assured, nor bespoke, that could betray _me_ who trusted to its protection. but any carriage that we could meet would be frail and light in comparison of ourselves. and i remarked this ominous accident of our situation,--we were on the wrong side of the road. but then, it may be said, the other party, if other there was, might also be on the wrong side; and two wrongs might make a right. _that_ was not likely. the same motive which had drawn _us_ to the right-hand side of the road--viz., the luxury of the soft beaten sand as contrasted with the paved centre--would prove attractive to others. the two adverse carriages would therefore, to a certainty, be travelling on the same side; and from this side, as not being ours in law, the crossing over to the other would, of course, be looked for from _us_. [footnote: it is true that, according to the law of the case as established by legal precedents, all carriages were required to give way before royal equipages, and therefore before the mail as one of them. but this only increased the danger, as being a regulation very imperfectly made known, very unequally enforced, and therefore often embarrassing the movements on both sides.] our lamps, still lighted, would give the impression of vigilance on our part. and every creature that met us would rely upon _us_ for quartering. [footnote: "_quartering_":--this is the technical word, and, i presume, derived from the french _cartayer_, to evade a rut or any obstacle.] all this, and if the separate links of the anticipation had been a thousand times more, i saw, not discursively, or by effort, or by succession, but by one flash of horrid simultaneous intuition. under this steady though rapid anticipation of the evil which _might_ be gathering ahead, ah! what a sullen mystery of fear, what a sigh of woe, was that which stole upon the air, as again the far-off sound of a wheel was heard! a whisper it was--a whisper from, perhaps, four miles off--secretly announcing a ruin that, being foreseen, was not the less inevitable; that, being known, was not therefore healed. what could be done--who was it that could do it--to check the storm-flight of these maniacal horses? could i not seize the reins from the grasp of the slumbering coachman? you, reader, think that it would have been in _your_ power to do so. and i quarrel not with your estimate of yourself. but, from the way in which the coachman's hand was viced between his upper and lower thigh, this was impossible. easy was it? see, then, that bronze equestrian statue. the cruel rider has kept the bit in his horse's mouth for two centuries. unbridle him for a minute, if you please, and wash his mouth with water. easy was it? unhorse me, then, that imperial rider; knock me those marble feet from those marble stirrups of charlemagne. the sounds ahead strengthened, and were now too clearly the sounds of wheels. who and what could it be? was it industry in a taxed cart? was it youthful gaiety in a gig? was it sorrow that loitered, or joy that raced? for as yet the snatches of sound were too intermitting, from distance, to decipher the character of the motion. whoever were the travellers, something must be done to warn them. upon the other party rests the active responsibility, but upon _us_--and, woe is me! that _us_ was reduced to my frail opium-shattered self--rests the responsibility of warning. yet, how should this be accomplished? might i not sound the guard's horn? already, on the first thought, i was making my way over the roof of the guard's seat. but this, from the accident which i have mentioned, of the foreign mails being piled upon the roof, was a difficult and even dangerous attempt to one cramped by nearly three hundred miles of outside travelling. and, fortunately, before i had lost much time in the attempt, our frantic horses swept round an angle of the road which opened upon us that final stage where the collision must be accomplished and the catastrophe sealed. all was apparently finished. the court was sitting; the case was heard; the judge had finished; and only the verdict was yet in arrear. before us lay an avenue straight as an arrow, six hundred yards, perhaps, in length; and the umbrageous trees, which rose in a regular line from either side, meeting high overhead, gave to it the character of a cathedral aisle. these trees lent a deeper solemnity to the early light; but there was still light enough to perceive, at the further end of this gothic aisle, a frail reedy gig, in which were seated a young man, and by his side a young lady. ah, young sir! what are you about? if it is requisite that you should whisper your communications to this young lady--though really i see nobody, at an hour and on a road so solitary, likely to overhear you--is it therefore requisite that you should carry your lips forward to hers? the little carriage is creeping on at one mile an hour; and the parties within it, being thus tenderly engaged, are naturally bending down their heads. between them and eternity, to all human calculation, there is but a minute and a half. oh heavens! what is it that i shall do? speaking or acting, what help can i offer? strange it is, and to a mere auditor of the tale might seem laughable, that i should need a suggestion from the "iliad" to prompt the sole resource that remained. yet so it was. suddenly i remembered the shout of achilles, and its effect. but could i pretend to shout like the son of peleus, aided by pallas? no: but then i needed not the shout that should alarm all asia militant; such a shout would suffice as might carry terror into the hearts of two thoughtless young people and one gig-horse. i shouted--and the young man heard me not. a second time i shouted--and now he heard me, for now he raised his head. here, then, all had been done that, by me, _could_ be done; more on _my_ part was not possible. mine had been the first step; the second was for the young man; the third was for god. if, said i, this stranger is a brave man, and if indeed he loves the young girl at his side--or, loving her not, if he feels the obligation, pressing upon every man worthy to be called a man, of doing his utmost for a woman confided to his protection--he will at least make some effort to save her. if _that_ fails, he will not perish the more, or by a death more cruel, for having made it; and he will die as a brave man should, with his face to the danger, and with his arm about the woman that he sought in vain to save. but, if he makes no effort,--shrinking without a struggle from his duty,--he himself will not the less certainly perish for this baseness of poltroonery. he will die no less: and why not? wherefore should we grieve that there is one craven less in the world? no; _let_ him perish, without a pitying thought of ours wasted upon him; and, in that case, all our grief will be reserved for the fate of the helpless girl who now, upon the least shadow of failure in _him_, must by the fiercest of translations--must without time for a prayer--must within seventy seconds stand before the judgment-seat of god. but craven he was not: sudden had been the call upon him, and sudden was his answer to the call. he saw, he heard, he comprehended, the ruin that was coming down: already its gloomy shadow darkened above him; and already he was measuring his strength to deal with it. ah! what a vulgar thing does courage seem when we see nations buying it and selling it for a shilling a-day: ah! what a sublime thing does courage seem when some fearful summons on the great deeps of life carries a man, as if running before a hurricane, up to the giddy crest of some tumultuous crisis from which lie two courses, and a voice says to him audibly, "one way lies hope; take the other, and mourn for ever!" how grand a triumph if, even then, amidst the raving of all around him, and the frenzy of the danger, the man is able to confront his situation--is able to retire for a moment into solitude with god, and to seek his counsel from _him!_ for seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, the stranger settled his countenance steadfastly upon us, as if to search and value every element in the conflict before him. for five seconds more of his seventy he sat immovably, like one that mused on some great purpose. for five more, perhaps, he sat with eyes upraised, like one that prayed in sorrow, under some extremity of doubt, for light that should guide him to the better choice. then suddenly he rose; stood upright; and, by a powerful strain upon the reins, raising his horse's fore-feet from the ground, he slewed him round on the pivot of his hind-legs, so as to plant the little equipage in a position nearly at right angles to ours. thus far his condition was not improved; except as a first step had been taken towards the possibility of a second. if no more were done, nothing was done; for the little carriage still occupied the very centre of our path, though in an altered direction. yet even now it may not be too late: fifteen of the seventy seconds may still be unexhausted; and one almighty bound may avail to clear the ground. hurry, then, hurry! for the flying moments--_they_ hurry. oh, hurry, hurry, my brave young man! for the cruel hoofs of our horses--_they_ also hurry! fast are the flying moments, faster are the hoofs of our horses. but fear not for _him_, if human energy can suffice; faithful was he that drove to his terrific duty; faithful was the horse to _his_ command. one blow, one impulse given with voice and hand, by the stranger, one rush from the horse, one bound as if in the act of rising to a fence, landed the docile creature's forefeet upon the crown or arching centre of the road. the larger half of the little equipage had then cleared our over-towering shadow: _that_ was evident even to my own agitated sight. but it mattered little that one wreck should float off in safety if upon the wreck that perished were embarked the human freightage. the rear part of the carriage--was _that_ certainly beyond the line of absolute ruin? what power could answer the question? glance of eye, thought of man, wing of angel, which of these had speed enough to sweep between the question and the answer, and divide the one from the other? light does not tread upon the steps of light more indivisibly than did our all-conquering arrival upon the escaping efforts of the gig. _that_ must the young man have felt too plainly. his back was now turned to us; not by sight could he any longer communicate with the peril; but, by the dreadful rattle of our harness, too truly had his ear been instructed that all was finished as regarded any effort of _his_. already in resignation he had rested from his struggle; and perhaps in his heart he was whispering, "father, which art in heaven, do thou finish above what i on earth have attempted." faster than ever mill-race we ran past them in our inexorable flight. oh, raving of hurricanes that must have sounded in their young ears at the moment of our transit! even in that moment the thunder of collision spoke aloud. either with the swingle-bar, or with the haunch of our near leader, we had struck the off-wheel of the little gig; which stood rather obliquely, and not quite so far advanced as to be accurately parallel with the near-wheel. the blow, from the fury of our passage, resounded terrifically. i rose in horror, to gaze upon the ruins we might have caused. from my elevated station i looked down, and looked back upon the scene; which in a moment told its own tale, and wrote all its records on my heart for ever. here was the map of the passion that now had finished. the horse was planted immovably, with his fore-feet upon the paved crest of the central road. he of the whole party might be supposed untouched by the passion of death. the little cany carriage--partly, perhaps, from the violent torsion of the wheels in its recent movement, partly from the thundering blow we had given to it--as if it sympathised with human horror, was all alive with tremblings and shiverings. the young man trembled not, nor shivered. he sat like a rock. but _his_ was the steadiness of agitation frozen into rest by horror. as yet he dared not to look round; for he knew that, if anything remained to do, by him it could no longer be done. and as yet he knew not for certain if their safety were accomplished. but the lady-- but the lady--! oh, heavens! will that spectacle ever depart from my dreams, as she rose and sank upon her seat, sank and rose, threw up her arms wildly to heaven, clutched at some visionary object in the air, fainting, praying, raving, despairing? figure to yourself, reader, the elements of the case; suffer me to recall before your mind the circumstances of that unparalleled situation. from the silence and deep peace of this saintly summer night--from the pathetic blending of this sweet moonlight, dawnlight, dreamlight--from the manly tenderness of this flattering, whispering, murmuring love--suddenly as from the woods and fields--suddenly as from the chambers of the air opening in revelation--suddenly as from the ground yawning at her feet, leaped upon her, with the flashing of cataracts, death the crowned phantom, with all the equipage of his terrors, and the tiger roar of his voice. the moments were numbered; the strife was finished; the vision was closed. in the twinkling of an eye, our flying horses had carried us to the termination of the umbrageous aisle; at the right angles we wheeled into our former direction; the turn of the road carried the scene out of my eyes in an instant, and swept it into my dreams for ever. section iii--dream-fugue: founded on the preceding theme of sudden death "whence the sound of instruments, that made melodious chime, was heard, of harp and organ; and who moved their stops and chords was seen; his volant touch instinct through all proportions, low and high, fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue." _par. lost_, bk. xi. _tumultuosissimamente_ passion of sudden death! that once in youth i read and interpreted by the shadows of thy averted signs [footnote: "_averted signs_":--i read the course and changes of the lady's agony in the succession of her involuntary gestures; but it must be remembered that i read all this from the rear, never once catching the lady's full face, and even her profile imperfectly.]!--rapture of panic taking the shape (which amongst tombs in churches i have seen) of woman bursting her sepulchral bonds--of woman's ionic form bending forward from the ruins of her grave with arching foot, with eyes upraised, with clasped adoring hands--waiting, watching, trembling, praying for the trumpet's call to rise from dust for ever! ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on the brink of almighty abysses!--vision that didst start back, that didst reel away, like a shrivelling scroll from before the wrath of fire racing on the wings of the wind! epilepsy so brief of horror, wherefore is it that thou canst not die? passing so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon the gorgeous mosaics of dreams? fragment of music too passionate, heard once, and heard no more, what aileth thee, that thy deep rolling chords come up at intervals through all the worlds of sleep, and after forty years have lost no element of horror? i lo, it is summer--almighty summer! the everlasting gates of life and summer are thrown open wide; and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant as a savannah, the unknown lady from the dreadful vision and i myself are floating--she upon a fairy pinnace, and i upon an english three-decker. both of us are wooing gales of festal happiness within the domain of our common country, within that ancient watery park, within the pathless chase of ocean, where england takes her pleasure as a huntress through winter and summer, from the rising to the setting sun. ah, what a wilderness of floral beauty was hidden, or was suddenly revealed, upon the tropic islands through which the pinnace moved! and upon her deck what a bevy of human flowers: young women how lovely, young men how noble, that were dancing together, and slowly drifting towards _us_ amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms from forests and gorgeous corymbi from vintages, amidst natural carolling, and the echoes of sweet girlish laughter. slowly the pinnace nears us, gaily she hails us, and silently she disappears beneath the shadow of our mighty bows. but then, as at some signal from heaven, the music, and the carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter--all are hushed. what evil has smitten the pinnace, meeting or overtaking her? did ruin to our friends couch within our own dreadful shadow? was our shadow the shadow of death? i looked over the bow for an answer, and, behold! the pinnace was dismantled; the revel and the revellers were found no more; the glory of the vintage was dust; and the forests with their beauty were left without a witness upon the seas. "but where," and i turned to our crew--"where are the lovely women that danced beneath the awning of flowers and clustering corymbi? whither have fled the noble young men that danced with _them_?" answer there was none. but suddenly the man at the mast-head, whose countenance darkened with alarm, cried out, "sail on the weather beam! down she comes upon us: in seventy seconds she also will founder." ii i looked to the weather side, and the summer had departed. the sea was rocking, and shaken with gathering wrath. upon its surface sat mighty mists, which grouped themselves into arches and long cathedral aisles. down one of these, with the fiery pace of a quarrel from a cross-bow, ran a frigate right athwart our course. "are they mad?" some voice exclaimed from our deck. "do they woo their ruin?" but in a moment, as she was close upon us, some impulse of a heady current or local vortex gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off she forged without a shock. as she ran past us, high aloft amongst the shrouds stood the lady of the pinnace. the deeps opened ahead in malice to receive her, towering surges of foam ran after her, the billows were fierce to catch her. but far away she was borne into desert spaces of the sea: whilst still by sight i followed her, as she ran before the howling gale, chased by angry sea-birds and by maddening billows; still i saw her, as at the moment when she ran past us, standing amongst the shrouds, with her white draperies streaming before the wind. there she stood, with hair dishevelled, one hand clutched amongst the tackling--rising, sinking, fluttering, trembling, praying; there for leagues i saw her as she stood, raising at intervals one hand to heaven, amidst the fiery crests of the pursuing waves and the raving of the storm; until at last, upon a sound from afar of malicious laughter and mockery, all was hidden for ever in driving showers; and afterwards, but when i knew not, nor how. iii sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, wailing over the dead that die before the dawn, awakened me as i slept in a boat moored to some familiar shore. the morning twilight even then was breaking; and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, i saw a girl, adorned with a garland of white roses about her head for some great festival, running along the solitary strand in extremity of haste. her running was the running of panic; and often she looked back as to some dreadful enemy in the rear. but, when i leaped ashore, and followed on her steps to warn her of a peril in front, alas! from me she fled as from another peril, and vainly i shouted to her of quicksands that lay ahead. faster and faster she ran; round a promontory of rocks she wheeled out of sight; in an instant i also wheeled round it, but only to see the treacherous sands gathering above her head. already her person was buried; only the fair young head and the diadem of white roses around it were still visible to the pitying heavens; and, last of all, was visible one white marble arm. i saw by the early twilight this fair young head, as it was sinking down to darkness--saw this marble arm, as it rose above her head and her treacherous grave, tossing, faltering, rising, clutching, as at some false deceiving hand stretched out from the clouds--saw this marble arm uttering her dying hope, and then uttering her dying despair. the head, the diadem, the arm--these all had sunk; at last over these also the cruel quicksand had closed; and no memorial of the fair young girl remained on earth, except my own solitary tears, and the funeral bells from the desert seas, that, rising again more softly, sang a requiem over the grave of the buried child, and over her blighted dawn. i sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have ever given to the memory of those that died before the dawn, and by the treachery of earth, our mother. but suddenly the tears and funeral bells were hushed by a shout as of many nations, and by a roar as from some great king's artillery, advancing rapidly along the valleys, and heard afar by echoes from the mountains. "hush!" i said, as i bent my ear earthwards to listen--"hush!--this either is the very anarchy of strife, or else"--and then i listened more profoundly, and whispered as i raised my head--"or else, oh heavens! it is _victory_ that is final, victory that swallows up all strife." iv immediately, in trance, i was carried over land and sea to some distant kingdom, and placed upon a triumphal car, amongst companions crowned with laurel. the darkness of gathering midnight, brooding over all the land, hid from us the mighty crowds that were weaving restlessly about ourselves as a centre: we heard them, but saw them not. tidings had arrived, within an hour, of a grandeur that measured itself against centuries; too full of pathos they were, too full of joy, to utter themselves by other language than by tears, by restless anthems, and _te deums_ reverberated from the choirs and orchestras of earth. these tidings we that sat upon the laurelled car had it for our privilege to publish amongst all nations. and already, by signs audible through the darkness, by snortings and tramplings, our angry horses, that knew no fear or fleshly weariness, upbraided us with delay. wherefore _was_ it that we delayed? we waited for a secret word, that should bear witness to the hope of nations as now accomplished for ever. at midnight the secret word arrived; which word was--_waterloo and recovered christendom!_ the dreadful word shone by its own light; before us it went; high above our leaders' heads it rode, and spread a golden light over the paths which we traversed. every city, at the presence of the secret word, threw open its gates. the rivers were conscious as we crossed. all the forests, as we ran along their margins, shivered in homage to the secret word. and the darkness comprehended it. two hours after midnight we approached a mighty minster. its gates, which rose to the clouds, were closed. but, when the dreadful word that rode before us reached them with its golden light, silently they moved back upon their hinges; and at a flying gallop our equipage entered the grand aisle of the cathedral. headlong was our pace; and at every altar, in the little chapels and oratories to the right hand and left of our course, the lamps, dying or sickening, kindled anew in sympathy with the secret word that was flying past. forty leagues we might have run in the cathedral, and as yet no strength of morning light had reached us, when before us we saw the aerial galleries of organ and choir. every pinnacle of fretwork, every station of advantage amongst the traceries, was crested by white-robed choristers that sang deliverance; that wept no more tears, as once their fathers had wept; but at intervals that sang together to the generations, saying, "chant the deliverer's praise in every tongue," and receiving answers from afar, "such as once in heaven and earth were sung." and of their chanting was no end; of our headlong pace was neither pause nor slackening. thus as we ran like torrents--thus as we swept with bridal rapture over the campo santo [footnote: "_campo santo_":--it is probable that most of my readers will be acquainted with the history of the campo santo (or cemetery) at pisa, composed of earth brought from jerusalem from a bed of sanctity as the highest prize which the noble piety of crusaders could ask or imagine. to readers who are unacquainted with england, or who (being english) are yet unacquainted with the cathedral cities of england, it may be right to mention that the graves within-side the cathedrals often form a flat pavement over which carriages and horses _might_ run; and perhaps a boyish remembrance of one particular cathedral, across which i had seen passengers walk and burdens carried, as about two centuries back they were through the middle of st. paul's in london, may have assisted my dream.] of the cathedral graves--suddenly we became aware of a vast necropolis rising upon the far-off horizon--a city of sepulchres, built within the saintly cathedral for the warrior dead that rested from their feuds on earth. of purple granite was the necropolis; yet, in the first minute, it lay like a purple stain upon the horizon, so mighty was the distance. in the second minute it trembled through many changes, growing into terraces and towers of wondrous altitude, so mighty was the pace. in the third minute already, with our dreadful gallop, we were entering its suburbs. vast sarcophagi rose on every side, having towers and turrets that, upon the limits of the central aisle, strode forward with haughty intrusion, that ran back with mighty shadows into answering recesses. every sarcophagus showed many bas-reliefs--bas-reliefs of battles and of battle-fields; battles from forgotten ages, battles from yesterday; battle-fields that, long since, nature had healed and reconciled to herself with the sweet oblivion of flowers; battle-fields that were yet angry and crimson with carnage. where the terraces ran, there did _we_ run; where the towers curved, there did _we_ curve. with the flight of swallows our horses swept round every angle. like rivers in flood wheeling round headlands, like hurricanes that ride into the secrets of forests, faster than ever light unwove the mazes of darkness, our flying equipage carried earthly passions, kindled warrior instincts, amongst the dust that lay around us--dust oftentimes of our noble fathers that had slept in god from crécy to trafalgar. and now had we reached the last sarcophagus, now were we abreast of the last bas-relief, already had we recovered the arrow-like flight of the illimitable central aisle, when coming up this aisle to meet us we beheld afar off a female child, that rode in a carriage as frail as flowers. the mists which went before her hid the fawns that drew her, but could not hide the shells and tropic flowers with which she played--but could not hide the lovely smiles by which she uttered her trust in the mighty cathedral, and in the cherubim that looked down upon her from the mighty shafts of its pillars. face to face she was meeting us; face to face she rode, as if danger there were none. "oh, baby!" i exclaimed, "shalt thou be the ransom for waterloo? must we, that carry tidings of great joy to every people, be messengers of ruin to thee!" in horror i rose at the thought; but then also, in horror at the thought, rose one that was sculptured on a bas-relief--a dying trumpeter. solemnly from the field of battle he rose to his feet; and, unslinging his stony trumpet, carried it, in his dying anguish, to his stony lips--sounding once, and yet once again; proclamation that, in _thy_ ears, oh baby! spoke from the battlements of death. immediately deep shadows fell between us, and aboriginal silence. the choir had ceased to sing. the hoofs of our horses, the dreadful rattle of our harness, the groaning of our wheels, alarmed the graves no more. by horror the bas-relief had been unlocked unto life. by horror we, that were so full of life, we men and our horses, with their fiery fore-legs rising in mid air to their everlasting gallop, were frozen to a bas-relief. then a third time the trumpet sounded; the seals were taken off all pulses; life, and the frenzy of life, tore into their channels again; again the choir burst forth in sunny grandeur, as from the muffling of storms and darkness; again the thunderings of our horses carried temptation into the graves. one cry burst from our lips, as the clouds, drawing off from the aisle, showed it empty before us.--"whither has the infant fled?--is the young child caught up to god?" lo! afar off, in a vast recess, rose three mighty windows to the clouds; and on a level with their summits, at height insuperable to man, rose an altar of purest alabaster. on its eastern face was trembling a crimson glory. a glory was it from the reddening dawn that now streamed _through_ the windows? was it from the crimson robes of the martyrs painted _on_ the windows? was it from the bloody bas-reliefs of earth? there, suddenly, within that crimson radiance, rose the apparition of a woman's head, and then of a woman's figure. the child it was--grown up to woman's height. clinging to the horns of the altar, voiceless she stood--sinking, rising, raving, despairing; and behind the volume of incense that, night and day, streamed upwards from the altar, dimly was seen the fiery font, and the shadow of that dreadful being who should have baptized her with the baptism of death. but by her side was kneeling her better angel, that hid his face with wings; that wept and pleaded for _her_; that prayed when _she_ could _not_; that fought with heaven by tears for _her_ deliverance; which also, as he raised his immortal countenance from his wings, i saw, by the glory in his eye, that from heaven he had won at last. v then was completed the passion of the mighty fugue. the golden tubes of the organ, which as yet had but muttered at intervals--gleaming amongst clouds and surges of incense--threw up, as from fountains unfathomable, columns of heart-shattering music. choir and anti-choir were filling fast with unknown voices. thou also, dying trumpeter, with thy love that was victorious, and thy anguish that was finishing, didst enter the tumult; trumpet and echo--farewell love, and farewell anguish--rang through the dreadful _sanctus_. oh, darkness of the grave! that from the crimson altar and from the fiery font wert visited and searched by the effulgence in the angel's eye--were these indeed thy children? pomps of life, that, from the burials of centuries, rose again to the voice of perfect joy, did ye indeed mingle with the festivals of death? lo! as i looked back for seventy leagues through the mighty cathedral, i saw the quick and the dead that sang together to god, together that sang to the generations of man. all the hosts of jubilation, like armies that ride in pursuit, moved with one step. us, that, with laurelled heads, were passing from the cathedral, they overtook, and, as with a garment, they wrapped us round with thunders greater than our own. as brothers we moved together; to the dawn that advanced, to the stars that fled; rendering thanks to god in the highest--that, having hid his face through one generation behind thick clouds of war, once again was ascending, from the campo santo of waterloo was ascending, in the visions of peace; rendering thanks for thee, young girl! whom having overshadowed with his ineffable passion of death, suddenly did god relent, suffered thy angel to turn aside his arm, and even in thee, sister unknown! shown to me for a moment only to be hidden for ever, found an occasion to glorify his goodness. a thousand times, amongst the phantoms of sleep, have i seen thee entering the gates of the golden dawn, with the secret word riding before thee, with the armies of the grave behind thee,--seen thee sinking, rising, raving, despairing; a thousand times in the worlds of sleep have i seen thee followed by god's angel through storms, through desert seas, through the darkness of quicksands, through dreams and the dreadful revelations that are in dreams; only that at the last, with one sling of his victorious arm, he might snatch thee back from ruin, and might emblazon in thy deliverance the endless resurrections of his love! joan of arc [footnote: "_arc_":--modern france, that should know a great deal better than myself, insists that the name is not d'arc--_i.e._, of arc--but _darc_. now it happens sometimes that, if a person whose position guarantees his access to the best information will content himself with gloomy dogmatism, striking the table with his fist, and saying in a terrific voice, "it _is_ so, and there's an end of it," one bows deferentially, and submits. but, if, unhappily for himself, won by this docility, he relents too amiably into reasons and arguments, probably one raises an insurrection against him that may never be crushed; for in the fields of logic one can skirmish, perhaps, as well as he. had he confined himself to dogmatism, he would have intrenched his position in darkness, and have hidden his own vulnerable points. but coming down to base reasons he lets in light, and one sees where to plant the blows. now, the worshipful reason of modern france for disturbing the old received spelling is that jean hordal, a descendant of la pucelle's brother, spelled the name _darc_ in . but what of that? it is notorious that what small matter of spelling providence had thought fit to disburse amongst man in the seventeenth century was all monopolised by printers; now, m. hordal was _not_ a printer.] what is to be thought of _her_? what is to be thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of lorraine, that--like the hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests of judea--rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings? the hebrew boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an _act_, by a victorious _act_, such as no man could deny. but so did the girl of lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by those who saw her nearest. adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no pretender; but so they did to the gentle girl. judged by the voices of all who saw them _from a station of good will_, both were found true and loyal to any promises involved in their first acts. enemies it was that made the difference between their subsequent fortunes. the boy rose to a splendour and a noonday prosperity, both personal and public, that rang through the records of his people, and became a byword among his posterity for a thousand years, until the sceptre was departing from judah. the poor, forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from that cup of rest which she had secured for france. she never sang together with the songs that rose in her native domrémy as echoes to the departing steps of invaders. she mingled not in the festal dances at vaucouleurs which celebrated in rapture the redemption of france. no! for her voice was then silent; no! for her feet were dust. pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl! whom, from earliest youth, ever i believed in as full of truth and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest pledges for _thy_ truth, that never once--no, not for a moment of weakness--didst thou revel in the vision of coronets and honour from man. coronets for thee! oh, no! honours, if they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood. [footnote: "_those that share thy blood_":--a collateral relative of joanna's was subsequently ennobled by the title of _du lys_.] daughter of domrémy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. call her, king of france, but she will not hear thee. cite her by the apparitors to come and receive a robe of honour, but she will be found _en contumace_. when the thunders of universal france, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. to suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this life; that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. life, thou saidst, is short; and the sleep which is in the grave is long; let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so long! this pure creature--pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious--never once did this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet her. she might not prefigure the very manner of her death; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aerial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end, on every road, pouring into rouen as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the pitying eye that lurked but here and there, until nature and imperishable truth broke loose from artificial restraints--these might not be apparent through the mists of the hurrying future. but the voice that called her to death, _that_ she heard for ever. great was the throne of france even in those days, and great was he that sat upon it; but well joanna knew that not the throne, nor he that sat upon it, was for _her_; but, on the contrary, that she was for _them_; not she by them, but they by her, should rise from the dust. gorgeous were the lilies of france, and for centuries had the privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another century, the wrath of god and man combined to wither them; but well joanna knew, early at domrémy she had read that bitter truth, that the lilies of france would decorate no garland for _her_. flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would ever bloom for _her_! * * * * * but stay. what reason is there for taking up this subject of joanna precisely in the spring of ? might it not have been left till the spring of , or, perhaps, left till called for? yes, but it _is_ called for, and clamorously. you are aware, reader, that amongst the many original thinkers whom modern france has produced, one of the reputed leaders is m. michelet. all these writers are of a revolutionary cast; not in a political sense merely, but in all senses; mad, oftentimes, as march hares; crazy with the laughing gas of recovered liberty; drunk with the wine cup of their mighty revolution, snorting, whinnying, throwing up their heels, like wild horses in the boundless pampas, and running races of defiance with snipes, or with the winds, or with their own shadows, if they can find nothing else to challenge. some time or other, i, that have leisure to read, may introduce _you_, that have not, to two or three dozen of these writers; of whom i can assure you beforehand that they are often profound, and at intervals are even as impassioned as if they were come of our best english blood. but now, confining our attention to m. michelet, we in england--who know him best by his worst book, the book against priests, etc.--know him disadvantageously. that book is a rhapsody of incoherence. but his "history of france" is quite another thing. a man, in whatsoever craft he sails, cannot stretch away out of sight when he is linked to the windings of the shore by towing-ropes of history. facts, and the consequences of facts, draw the writer back to the falconer's lure from the giddiest heights of speculation. here, therefore--in his "france"--if not always free from flightiness, if now and then off like a rocket for an airy wheel in the clouds, m. michelet, with natural politeness, never forgets that he has left a large audience waiting for him on earth, and gazing upward in anxiety for his return; return, therefore, he does. but history, though clear of certain temptations in one direction, has separate dangers of its own. it is impossible so to write a history of france, or of england--works becoming every hour more indispensable to the inevitably political man of this day--without perilous openings for error. if i, for instance, on the part of england, should happen to turn my labours into that channel, and (on the model of lord percy going to chevy chase) "a vow to god should make my pleasure in the michelet woods three summer days to take," probably, from simple delirium, i might hunt m. michelet into _delirium tremens_. two strong angels stand by the side of history, whether french history or english, as heraldic supporters: the angel of research on the left hand, that must read millions of dusty parchments, and of pages blotted with lies; the angel of meditation on the right hand, that must cleanse these lying records with fire, even as of old the draperies of _asbestos_ were cleansed, and must quicken them into regenerated life. willingly i acknowledge that no man will ever avoid innumerable errors of detail; with so vast a compass of ground to traverse, this is impossible; but such errors (though i have a bushel on hand, at m. michelet's service) are not the game i chase; it is the bitter and unfair spirit in which m. michelet writes against england. even _that_, after all, is but my secondary object; the real one is joanna, the pucelle d'orléans herself. i am not going to write the history of la pucelle: to do this, or even circumstantially to report the history of her persecution and bitter death, of her struggle with false witnesses and with ensnaring judges, it would be necessary to have before us _all_ the documents, and therefore the collection only now forthcoming in paris. [footnote: "_only now forthcoming_":--in _began_ the publication (from official records) of joanna's trial. it was interrupted, i fear, by the convulsions of ; and whether even yet finished i do not know.] but _my_ purpose is narrower. there have been great thinkers, disdaining the careless judgments of contemporaries, who have thrown themselves boldly on the judgment of a far posterity, that should have had time to review, to ponder, to compare. there have been great actors on the stage of tragic humanity that might, with the same depth of confidence, have appealed from the levity of compatriot friends--too heartless for the sublime interest of their story, and too impatient for the labour of sifting its perplexities--to the magnanimity and justice of enemies. to this class belongs the maid of arc. the ancient romans were too faithful to the ideal of grandeur in themselves not to relent, after a generation or two, before the grandeur of hannibal. mithridates, a more doubtful person, yet, merely for the magic perseverance of his indomitable malice, won from the same romans the only real honour that ever he received on earth. and we english have ever shown the same homage to stubborn enmity. to work unflinchingly for the ruin of england; to say through life, by word and by deed, _delenda est anglia victrix_!--that one purpose of malice, faithfully pursued, has quartered some people upon our national funds of homage as by a perpetual annuity. better than an inheritance of service rendered to england herself has sometimes proved the most insane hatred to england. hyder ali, even his son tippoo, though so far inferior, and napoleon, have all benefited by this disposition among ourselves to exaggerate the merit of diabolic enmity. not one of these men was ever capable, in a solitary instance, of praising an enemy (what do you say to _that_, reader?); and yet in _their_ behalf, we consent to forget, not their crimes only, but (which is worse) their hideous bigotry and anti-magnanimous egotism--for nationality it was not. suffren, and some half dozen of other french nautical heroes, because rightly they did us all the mischief they could (which was really great), are names justly reverenced in england. on the same principle, la pucelle d'orléans, the victorious enemy of england, has been destined to receive her deepest commemoration from the magnanimous justice of englishmen. joanna, as we in england should call her, but according to her own statement, jeanne (or, as m. michelet asserts, jean [footnote: "_jean_":--m. michelet asserts that there was a mystical meaning at that era in calling a child _jean_; it implied a secret commendation of a child, if not a dedication, to st. john the evangelist, the beloved disciple, the apostle of love and mysterious visions. but, really, as the name was so exceedingly common, few people will detect a mystery in calling a _boy_ by the name of jack, though it _does_ seem mysterious to call a girl jack. it may be less so in france, where a beautiful practice has always prevailed of giving a boy his mother's name--preceded and strengthened by a male name, as _charles anne_, _victor victoire_. in cases where a mother's memory has been unusually dear to a son, this vocal memento of her, locked into the circle of his own name, gives to it the tenderness of a testamentary relic, or a funeral ring. i presume, therefore, that la pucelle must have borne the baptismal name of jeanne jean; the latter with no reference, perhaps, to so sublime a person as st. john, but simply to some relative.]) d'arc was born at domrémy, a village on the marches of lorraine and champagne, and dependent upon the town of vaucouleurs. i have called her a lorrainer, not simply because the word is prettier, but because champagne too odiously reminds us english of what are for _us_ imaginary wines--which, undoubtedly, la pucelle tasted as rarely as we english: we english, because the champagne of london is chiefly grown in devonshire; la pucelle, because the champagne of champagne never, by any chance, flowed into the fountain of domrémy, from which only she drank. m. michelet will have her to be a _champenoise_, and for no better reason than that she "took after her father," who happened to be a _champenois_. these disputes, however, turn on refinements too nice. domrémy stood upon the frontiers, and, like other frontiers, produced a _mixed_ race, representing the _cis_ and the _trans_. a river (it is true) formed the boundary line at this point--the river meuse; and _that_, in old days, might have divided the populations; but in these days it did not; there were bridges, there were ferries, and weddings crossed from the right bank to the left. here lay two great roads, not so much for travellers that were few, as for armies that were too many by half. these two roads, one of which was the great highroad between france and germany, _decussated_ at this very point; which is a learned way of saying that they formed a st. andrew's cross, or letter x. i hope the compositor will choose a good large x; in which case the point of intersection, the _locus_ of conflux and intersection for these four diverging arms, will finish the reader's geographical education, by showing him to a hair's-breadth where it was that domrémy stood. these roads, so grandly situated, as great trunk arteries between two mighty realms,[footnote: and reminding one of that inscription, so justly admired by paul richter, which a russian czarina placed on a guide-post near moscow: _this is the road that leads to constantinople._] and haunted for ever by wars or rumours of wars, decussated (for anything i know to the contrary) absolutely under joanna's bedroom window; one rolling away to the right, past m. d'arc's old barn, and the other unaccountably preferring to sweep round that odious man's pig-sty to the left. on whichever side of the border chance had thrown joanna, the same love to france would have been nurtured. for it is a strange fact, noticed by m. michelet and others, that the dukes of bar and lorraine had for generations pursued the policy of eternal warfare with france on their own account, yet also of eternal amity and league with france in case anybody else presumed to attack her. let peace settle upon france, and before long you might rely upon seeing the little vixen lorraine flying at the throat of france. let france be assailed by a formidable enemy, and instantly you saw a duke of lorraine insisting on having his own throat cut in support of france; which favour accordingly was cheerfully granted to him in three great successive battles: twice by the english, viz., at crécy and agincourt, once by the sultan at nicopolis. this sympathy with france during great eclipses, in those that during ordinary seasons were always teasing her with brawls and guerilla inroads, strengthened the natural piety to france of those that were confessedly the children of her own house. the outposts of france, as one may call the great frontier provinces, were of all localities the most devoted to the fleurs de lys. to witness, at any great crisis, the generous devotion to these lilies of the little fiery cousin that in gentler weather was for ever tilting at the breast of france, could not but fan the zeal of france's legitimate daughters; while to occupy a post of honour on the frontiers against an old hereditary enemy of france would naturally stimulate this zeal by a sentiment of martial pride, by a sense of danger always threatening, and of hatred always smouldering. that great four-headed road was a perpetual memento to patriotic ardour. to say "this way lies the road to paris, and that other way to aix-la-chapelle; this to prague, that to vienna," nourished the warfare of the heart by daily ministrations of sense. the eye that watched for the gleams of lance or helmet from the hostile frontier, the ear that listened for the groaning of wheels, made the highroad itself, with its relations to centres so remote, into a manual of patriotic duty. the situation, therefore, _locally_, of joanna was full of profound suggestions to a heart that listened for the stealthy steps of change and fear that too surely were in motion. but, if the place were grand, the time, the burden of the time, was far more so. the air overhead in its upper chambers was _hurtling_ with the obscure sound; was dark with sullen fermenting of storms that had been gathering for a hundred and thirty years. the battle of agincourt in joanna's childhood had reopened the wounds of france. crécy and poictiers, those withering overthrows for the chivalry of france, had, before agincourt occurred, been tranquilised by more than half a century; but this resurrection of their trumpet wails made the whole series of battles and endless skirmishes take their stations as parts in one drama. the graves that had closed sixty years ago seemed to fly open in sympathy with a sorrow that echoed their own. the monarchy of france laboured in extremity, rocked and reeled like a ship fighting with the darkness of monsoons. the madness of the poor king (charles vi), falling in at such a crisis, like the case of women labouring in child-birth during the storming of a city, trebled the awfulness of the time. even the wild story of the incident which had immediately occasioned the explosion of this madness--the case of a man unknown, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself, coming out of a forest at noonday, laying his hand upon the bridle of the king's horse, checking him for a moment to say, "oh, king, thou art betrayed," and then vanishing, no man knew whither, as he had appeared for no man knew what--fell in with the universal prostration of mind that laid france on her knees, as before the slow unweaving of some ancient prophetic doom. the famines, the extraordinary diseases, the insurrections of the peasantry up and down europe--these were chords struck from the same mysterious harp; but these were transitory chords. there had been others of deeper and more ominous sound. the termination of the crusades, the destruction of the templars, the papal interdicts, the tragedies caused or suffered by the house of anjou, and by the emperor--these were full of a more permanent significance. but, since then, the colossal figure of feudalism was seen standing, as it were on tiptoe, at crécy, for flight from earth: that was a revolution unparalleled; yet _that_ was a trifle by comparison with the more fearful revolutions that were mining below the church. by her own internal schisms, by the abominable spectacle of a double pope--so that no man, except through political bias, could even guess which was heaven's vicegerent, and which the creature of hell--the church was rehearsing, as in still earlier forms she had already rehearsed, those vast rents in her foundations which no man should ever heal. these were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland in the skies that to the scientific gazer first caught the colors of the _new_ morning in advance. but the whole vast range alike of sweeping glooms overhead dwelt upon all meditative minds, even upon those that could not distinguish the tendencies nor decipher the forms. it was, therefore, not her own age alone, as affected by its immediate calamities, that lay with such weight upon joanna's mind, but her own age as one section in a vast mysterious drama, unweaving through a century back, and drawing nearer continually to some dreadful crisis. cataracts and rapids were heard roaring ahead; and signs were seen far back, by help of old men's memories, which answered secretly to signs now coming forward on the eye, even as locks answer to keys. it was not wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with such a haunted heart, joanna should see angelic visions, and hear angelic voices. these voices whispered to her for ever the duty, self-imposed, of delivering france. five years she listened to these monitory voices with internal struggles. at length she could resist no longer. doubt gave way; and she left her home for ever in order to present herself at the dauphin's court. the education of this poor girl was mean according to the present standard: was ineffably grand, according to a purer philosophic standard: and only not good for our age because for us it would be unattainable. she read nothing, for she could not read; but she had heard others read parts of the roman martyrology. she wept in sympathy with the sad "misereres" of the romish church; she rose to heaven with the glad triumphant "te deums" of rome; she drew her comfort and her vital strength from the rites of the same church. but, next after these spiritual advantages, she owed most to the advantages of her situation. the fountain of domrémy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies that the parish priest (_curé_) was obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to keep them in any decent bounds. fairies are important, even in a statistical view: certain weeds mark poverty in the soil; fairies mark its solitude. as surely as the wolf retires before cities does the fairy sequester herself from the haunts of the licensed victualer. a village is too much for her nervous delicacy; at most, she can tolerate a distant view of a hamlet. we may judge, therefore, by the uneasiness and extra trouble which they gave to the parson, in what strength the fairies mustered at domrémy, and, by a satisfactory consequence, how thinly sown with men and women must have been that region even in its inhabited spots. but the forests of domrémy--those were the glories of the land: for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient secrets that towered into tragic strength. "abbeys there were, and abbey windows"--"like moorish temples of the hindoos"--that exercised even princely power both in lorraine and in the german diets. these had their sweet bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. few enough, and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so as in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the region; yet many enough to spread a network or awning of christian sanctity over what else might have seemed a heathen wilderness. this sort of religious talisman being secured, a man the most afraid of ghosts (like myself, suppose, or the reader) becomes armed into courage to wander for days in their sylvan recesses. the mountains of the vosges, on the eastern frontier of france, have never attracted much notice from europe, except in - for a few brief months, when they fell within napoleon's line of defence against the allies. but they are interesting for this among other features, that they do not, like some loftier ranges, repel woods; the forests and the hills are on sociable terms. "live and let live" is their motto. for this reason, in part, these tracts in lorraine were a favourite hunting-ground with the carlovingian princes. about six hundred years before joanna's childhood, charlemagne was known to have hunted there. that, of itself, was a grand incident in the traditions of a forest or a chase. in these vast forests, also, were to be found (if anywhere to be found) those mysterious fawns that tempted solitary hunters into visionary and perilous pursuits. here was seen (if anywhere seen) that ancient stag who was already nine hundred years old, but possibly a hundred or two more, when met by charlemagne; and the thing was put beyond doubt by the inscription upon his golden collar. i believe charlemagne knighted the stag; and, if ever he is met again by a king, he ought to be made an earl, or, being upon the marches of france, a marquis. observe, i don't absolutely vouch for all these things: my own opinion varies. on a fine breezy forenoon i am audaciously sceptical; but as twilight sets in my credulity grows steadily, till it becomes equal to anything that could be desired. and i have heard candid sportsmen declare that, outside of these very forests, they laughed loudly at all the dim tales connected with their haunted solitudes, but, on reaching a spot notoriously eighteen miles deep within them, they agreed with sir roger de coverley that a good deal might be said on both sides. such traditions, or any others that (like the stag) connect distant generations with each other, are, for that cause, sublime; and the sense of the shadowy, connected with such appearances that reveal themselves or not according to circumstances, leaves a colouring of sanctity over ancient forests, even in those minds that utterly reject the legend as a fact. but, apart from all distinct stories of that order, in any solitary frontier between two great empires--as here, for instance, or in the desert between syria and the euphrates--there is an inevitable tendency, in minds of any deep sensibility, to people the solitudes with phantom images of powers that were of old so vast. joanna, therefore, in her quiet occupation of a shepherdess, would be led continually to brood over the political condition of her country by the traditions of the past no less than by the mementoes of the local present. m. michelet, indeed, says that la pucelle was not a shepherdess. i beg his pardon; she was. what he rests upon i guess pretty well: it is the evidence of a woman called haumette, the most confidential friend of joanna. now, she is a good witness, and a good girl, and i like her; for she makes a natural and affectionate report of joanna's ordinary life. but still, however good she may be as a witness, joanna is better; and she, when speaking to the dauphin, calls herself in the latin report _bergereta_. even haumette confesses that joanna tended sheep in her girlhood. and i believe that, if miss haumette were taking coffee along with me this very evening (february , )--in which there would be no subject for scandal or for maiden blushes, because i am an intense philosopher, and miss h. would be hard upon years old--she would admit the following comment upon her evidence to be right. a frenchman, about forty years ago--m. simond, in his "travels"--mentions accidentally the following hideous scene as one steadily observed and watched by himself in chivalrous france not very long before the french revolution: a peasant was plowing; and the team that drew his plow was a donkey and a woman. both were regularly harnessed; both pulled alike. this is bad enough; but the frenchman adds that, in distributing his lashes, the peasant was obviously desirous of being impartial; or, if either of the yokefellows had a right to complain, certainly it was not the donkey. now, in any country where such degradation of females could be tolerated by the state of manners, a woman of delicacy would shrink from acknowledging, either for herself or her friend, that she had ever been addicted to any mode of labour not strictly domestic; because, if once owning herself a prædial servant, she would be sensible that this confession extended by probability in the hearer's thoughts to the having incurred indignities of this horrible kind. haumette clearly thinks it more dignified for joanna to have been darning the stockings of her horny-hoofed father, m. d'arc, than keeping sheep, lest she might then be suspected of having ever done something worse. but, luckily, there was no danger of _that_: joanna never was in service; and my opinion is that her father should have mended his own stockings, since probably he was the party to make the holes in them, as many a better man than d'arc does--meaning by _that_ not myself, because, though probably a better man than d'arc, i protest against doing anything of the kind. if i lived even with friday in juan fernandez, either friday must do all the darning, or else it must go undone. the better men that i meant were the sailors in the british navy, every man of whom mends his own stockings. who else is to do it? do you suppose, reader, that the junior lords of the admiralty are under articles to darn for the navy? the reason, meantime, for my systematic hatred of d'arc is this: there was a story current in france before the revolution, framed to ridicule the pauper aristocracy, who happened to have long pedigrees and short rent rolls: viz., that a head of such a house, dating from the crusades, was overheard saying to his son, a chevalier of st. louis, "_chevalier, as-tu donné au cochon à manger_?" now, it is clearly made out by the surviving evidence that d'arc would much have preferred continuing to say, "_ma fille, as-tu donné au cochon à manger_?" to saying, "_pucelle d'orléans, as-tu sauvé les fleurs-de-lys_?" there is an old english copy of verses which argues thus: "if the man that turnips cries cry not when his father dies, then 'tis plain the man had rather have a turnip than his father." i cannot say that the logic of these verses was ever _entirely_ to my satisfaction. i do not see my way through it as clearly as could be wished. but i see my way most clearly through d'arc; and the result is--that he would greatly have preferred not merely a turnip to his father, but the saving a pound or so of bacon to saving the oriflamme of france. it is probable (as m. michelet suggests) that the title of virgin or pucelle had in itself, and apart from the miraculous stories about her, a secret power over the rude soldiery and partisan chiefs of that period; for in such a person they saw a representative manifestation of the virgin mary, who, in a course of centuries, had grown steadily upon the popular heart. as to joanna's supernatural detection of the dauphin (charles vii) among three hundred lords and knights, i am surprised at the credulity which could ever lend itself to that theatrical juggle. who admires more than myself the sublime enthusiasm, the rapturous faith in herself, of this pure creature? but i am far from admiring stage artifices which not la pucelle, but the court, must have arranged; nor can surrender myself to the conjurer's legerdemain, such as may be seen every day for a shilling. southey's "joan of arc" was published in . twenty years after, talking with southey, i was surprised to find him still owning a secret bias in favor of joan, founded on her detection of the dauphin. the story, for the benefit of the reader new to the case, was this: la pucelle was first made known to the dauphin, and presented to his court, at chinon; and here came her first trial. by way of testing her supernatural pretensions, she was to find out the royal personage amongst the whole ark of clean and unclean creatures. failing in this _coup d'essai_, she would not simply disappoint many a beating heart in the glittering crowd that on different motives yearned for her success, but she would ruin herself, and, as the oracle within had told her, would, by ruining herself, ruin france. our own sovereign lady victoria rehearses annually a trial not so severe in degree, but the same in kind. she "pricks" for sheriffs. joanna pricked for a king. but observe the difference: our own lady pricks for two men out of three; joanna for one man out of three hundred. happy lady of the islands and the orient!--she _can_ go astray in her choice only by one-half: to the extent of one-half she _must_ have the satisfaction of being right. and yet, even with these tight limits to the misery of a boundless discretion, permit me, liege lady, with all loyalty, to submit that now and then you prick with your pin the wrong man. but the poor child from domremy, shrinking under the gaze of a dazzling court--not _because_ dazzling (for in visions she had seen those that were more so), but because some of them wore a scoffing smile on their features--how should _she_ throw her line into so deep a river to angle for a king, where many a gay creature was sporting that masqueraded as kings in dress! nay, even more than any true king would have done: for, in southey's version of the story, the dauphin says, by way of trying the virgin's magnetic sympathy with royalty, "on the throne, i the while mingling with the menial throng, some courtier shall be seated." this usurper is even crowned: "the jeweled crown shines on a menial's head." but, really, that is "_un peu fort_"; and the mob of spectators might raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, and the dauphin himself, were not grazing the shins of treason. for the dauphin could not lend more than belonged to him. according to the popular notion, he had no crown for himself; consequently none to lend, on any pretence whatever, until the consecrated maid should take him to rheims. this was the _popular_ notion in france. but certainly it was the dauphin's interest to support the popular notion, as he meant to use the services of joanna. for if he were king already, what was it that she could do for him beyond orleans? that is to say, what more than a merely _military_ service could she render him? and, above all, if he were king without a coronation, and without the oil from the sacred ampulla, what advantage was yet open to him by celerity above his competitor, the english boy? now was to be a race for a coronation: he that should win _that_ race carried the superstition of france along with him: he that should first be drawn from the ovens of rheims was under that superstition baked into a king. la pucelle, before she could be allowed to practise as a warrior, was put through her manual and platoon exercise, as a pupil in divinity, at the bar of six eminent men in wigs. according to southey (v. , bk. iii., in the original edition of his "joan of arc,") she "appalled the doctors." it's not easy to do _that_: but they had some reason to feel bothered, as that surgeon would assuredly feel bothered who, upon proceeding to dissect a subject, should find the subject retaliating as a dissector upon himself, especially if joanna ever made the speech to them which occupies v. - , bk. iii. it is a double impossibility: st, because a piracy from tindal's "christianity as old as the creation"--a piracy _a parte ante_, and by three centuries; d, it is quite contrary to the evidence on joanna's trial. southey's "joan" of a.d. (cottle, bristol) tells the doctors, among other secrets, that she never in her life attended-- st, mass; nor d, the sacramental table; nor d, confession. in the meantime, all this deistical confession of joanna's, besides being suicidal for the interest of her cause, is opposed to the depositions upon _both_ trials. the very best witness called from first to last deposes that joanna attended these rites of her church even too often; was taxed with doing so; and, by blushing, owned the charge as a fact, though certainly not as a fault. joanna was a girl of natural piety, that saw god in forests and hills and fountains, but did not the less seek him in chapels and consecrated oratories. this peasant girl was self-educated through her own natural meditativeness. if the reader turns to that divine passage in "paradise regained" which milton has put into the mouth of our saviour when first entering the wilderness, and musing upon the tendency of those great impulses growing within himself----- "oh, what a multitude of thoughts at once awakened in me swarm, while i consider what from within i feel myself, and hear what from without comes often to my ears, ill sorting with my present state compared! when i was yet a child, no childish play to me was pleasing; all my mind was set serious to learn and know, and thence to do, what might be public good; myself i thought born to that end----" he will have some notion of the vast reveries which brooded over the heart of joanna in early girlhood, when the wings were budding that should carry her from orleans to rheims; when the golden chariot was dimly revealing itself that should carry her from the kingdom of _france delivered_ to the eternal kingdom. it is not requisite for the honour of joanna, nor is there in this place room, to pursue her brief career of _action._ that, though wonderful, forms the earthly part of her story; the spiritual part is the saintly passion of her imprisonment, trial, and execution. it is unfortunate, therefore, for southey's "joan of arc" (which, however, should always be regarded as a _juvenile_ effort), that precisely when her real glory begins the poem ends. but this limitation of the interest grew, no doubt, from the constraint inseparably attached to the law of epic unity. joanna's history bisects into two opposite hemispheres, and both could not have been presented to the eye in one poem, unless by sacrificing all unity of theme, or else by involving the earlier half, as a narrative episode, in the latter; which, however, might have been done, for it might have been communicated to a fellow-prisoner, or a confessor, by joanna herself. it is sufficient, as concerns _this_ section of joanna's life, to say that she fulfilled, to the height of her promises, the restoration of the prostrate throne. france had become a province of england, and for the ruin of both, if such a yoke could be maintained. dreadful pecuniary exhaustion caused the english energy to droop; and that critical opening la pucelle used with a corresponding felicity of audacity and suddenness (that were in themselves portentous) for introducing the wedge of french native resources, for rekindling the national pride, and for planting the dauphin once more upon his feet. when joanna appeared, he had been on the point of giving up the struggle with the english, distressed as they were, and of flying to the south of france. she taught him to blush for such abject counsels. she liberated orleans, that great city, so decisive by its fate for the issue of the war, and then beleaguered by the english with an elaborate application of engineering skill unprecedented in europe. entering the city after sunset on the th of april, she sang mass on sunday, may th, for the entire disappearance of the besieging force. on the th of june she fought and gained over the english the decisive battle of patay; on the th of july she took troyes by a _coup-de-main_ from a mixed garrison of english and burgundians; on the th of that month she carried the dauphin into rheims; on sunday the th she crowned him; and there she rested from her labour of triumph. all that was to be _done_ she had now accomplished; what remained was--to _suffer_. all this forward movement was her own; excepting one man, the whole council was against her. her enemies were all that drew power from earth. her supporters were her own strong enthusiasm, and the headlong contagion by which she carried this sublime frenzy into the hearts of women, of soldiers, and of all who lived by labour. henceforward she was thwarted; and the worst error that she committed was to lend the sanction of her presence to counsels which she had ceased to approve. but she had now accomplished the capital objects which her own visions had dictated. these involved all the rest. errors were now less important; and doubtless it had now become more difficult for herself to pronounce authentically what _were_ errors. the noble girl had achieved, as by a rapture of motion, the capital end of clearing out a free space around her sovereign, giving him the power to move his arms with effect, and, secondly, the inappreciable end of winning for that sovereign what seemed to all france the heavenly ratification of his rights, by crowning him with the ancient solemnities. she had made it impossible for the english now to step before her. they were caught in an irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord among the uncles of henry vi, partly to a want of funds, but partly to the very impossibility which they believed to press with tenfold force upon any french attempt to forestall theirs. they laughed at such a thought; and, while they laughed, _she_ did it. henceforth the single redress for the english of this capital oversight, but which never _could_ have redressed it effectually, was to vitiate and taint the coronation of charles vii as the work of a witch. that policy, and not malice (as m. michelet is so happy to believe), was the moving principle in the subsequent prosecution of joanna. unless they unhinged the force of the first coronation in the popular mind by associating it with power given from hell, they felt that the sceptre of the invader was broken. but she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought wonders so great for france, was she not elated? did she not lose, as men so often _have_ lost, all sobriety of mind when standing upon the pinnacle of success so giddy? let her enemies declare. during the progress of her movement, and in the centre of ferocious struggles, she had manifested the temper of her feelings by the pity which she had everywhere expressed for the suffering enemy. she forwarded to the english leaders a touching invitation to unite with the french, as brothers, in a common crusade against infidels--thus opening the road for a soldierly retreat. she interposed to protect the captive or the wounded; she mourned over the excesses of her countrymen; she threw herself off her horse to kneel by the dying english soldier, and to comfort him with such ministrations, physical or spiritual, as his situation allowed. "nolebat," says the evidence, "uti ense suo, aut quemquam interficere." she sheltered the english that invoked her aid in her own quarters. she wept as she beheld, stretched on the field of battle, so many brave enemies that had died without confession. and, as regarded herself, her elation expressed itself thus: on the day when she had finished her work, she wept; for she knew that, when her _triumphal_ task was done, her end must be approaching. her aspirations pointed only to a place which seemed to her more than usually full of natural piety, as one in which it would give her pleasure to die. and she uttered, between smiles and tears, as a wish that inexpressibly fascinated her heart, and yet was half fantastic, a broken prayer that god would return her to the solitudes from which he had drawn her, and suffer her to become a shepherdess once more. it was a natural prayer, because nature has laid a necessity upon every human heart to seek for rest and to shrink from torment. yet, again, it was a half-fantastic prayer, because, from childhood upward, visions that she had no power to mistrust, and the voices which sounded in her ear for ever, had long since persuaded her mind that for _her_ no such prayer could be granted. too well she felt that her mission must be worked out to the end, and that the end was now at hand. all went wrong from this time. she herself had created the _funds_ out of which the french restoration should grow; but she was not suffered to witness their development or their prosperous application. more than one military plan was entered upon which she did not approve. but she still continued to expose her person as before. severe wounds had not taught her caution. and at length, in a sortie from compiègne (whether through treacherous collusion on the part of her own friends is doubtful to this day), she was made prisoner by the burgundians, and finally surrendered to the english. now came her trial. this trial, moving of course under english influence, was conducted in chief by the bishop of beauvais. he was a frenchman, sold to english interests, and hoping, by favour of the english leaders, to reach the highest preferment. "bishop that art, archbishop that shalt be, cardinal that mayest be," were the words that sounded continually in his ear; and doubtless a whisper of visions still higher, of a triple crown, and feet upon the necks of kings, sometimes stole into his heart. m. michelet is anxious to keep us in mind that this bishop was but an agent of the english. true. but it does not better the case for his countryman that, being an accomplice in the crime, making himself the leader in the persecution against the helpless girl, he was willing to be all this in the spirit, and with the conscious vileness of a cat's-paw. never from the foundations of the earth was there such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty of defence and all its hellishness of attack. oh, child of france! shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot by all around thee, how i honour thy flashing intellect, quick as god's lightning, and true as god's lightning to its mark, that ran before france and laggard europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of falsehood! is it not scandalous, is it not humiliating to civilization, that, even at this day, france exhibits the horrid spectacle of judges examining the prisoner against himself; seducing him, by fraud, into treacherous conclusions against his own head; using the terrors of their power for extorting confessions from the frailty of hope; nay (which is worse), using the blandishments of condescension and snaky kindness for thawing into compliances of gratitude those whom they had failed to freeze into terror? wicked judges! barbarian jurisprudence!--that, sitting in your own conceit on the summits of social wisdom, have yet failed to learn the first principles of criminal justice--sit ye humbly and with docility at the feet of this girl from domrémy, that tore your webs of cruelty into shreds and dust. "would you examine me as a witness against myself?" was the question by which many times she defied their arts. continually she showed that their interrogations were irrelevant to any business before the court, or that entered into the ridiculous charges against her. general questions were proposed to her on points of casuistical divinity; two-edged questions, which not one of themselves could have answered, without, on the one side, landing himself in heresy (as then interpreted), or, on the other, in some presumptuous expression of self-esteem. next came a wretched dominican, that pressed her with an objection, which, if applied to the bible, would tax every one of its miracles with unsoundness. the monk had the excuse of never having read the bible. m. michelet has no such excuse; and it makes one blush for him, as a philosopher, to find him describing such an argument as "weighty," whereas it is but a varied expression of rude mahometan metaphysics. her answer to this, if there were room to place the whole in a clear light, was as shattering as it was rapid. another thought to entrap her by asking what language the angelic visitors of her solitude had talked--as though heavenly counsels could want polyglot interpreters for every word, or that god needed language at all in whispering thoughts to a human heart. then came a worse devil, who asked her whether the archangel michael had appeared naked. not comprehending the vile insinuation, joanna, whose poverty suggested to her simplicity that it might be the _costliness_ of suitable robes which caused the demur, asked them if they fancied god, who clothed the flowers of the valleys, unable to find raiment for his servants. the answer of joanna moves a smile of tenderness, but the disappointment of her judges makes one laugh exultingly. others succeeded by troops, who upbraided her with leaving her father; as if that greater father, whom she believed herself to have been serving, did not retain the power of dispensing with his own rules, or had not said that for a less cause than martyrdom man and woman should leave both father and mother. on easter sunday, when the trial had been long proceeding, the poor girl fell so ill as to cause a belief that she had been poisoned. it was not poison. nobody had any interest in hastening a death so certain. m. michelet, whose sympathies with all feelings are so quick that one would gladly see them always as justly directed, reads the case most truly. joanna had a twofold malady. she was visited by a paroxysm of the complaint called _homesickness_. the cruel nature of her imprisonment, and its length, could not but point her solitary thoughts, in darkness and in chains (for chained she was), to domrémy. and the season, which was the most heavenly period of the spring, added stings to this yearning. that was one of her maladies--_nostalgia_, as medicine calls it; the other was weariness and exhaustion from daily combats with malice. she saw that everybody hated her and thirsted for her blood; nay, many kind-hearted creatures that would have pitied her profoundly, as regarded all political charges, had their natural feelings warped by the belief that she had dealings with fiendish powers. she knew she was to die; that was _not_ the misery! the misery was that this consummation could not be reached without so much intermediate strife, as if she were contending for some chance (where chance was none) of happiness, or were dreaming for a moment of escaping the inevitable. why, then, _did_ she contend? knowing that she would reap nothing from answering her persecutors, why did she not retire by silence from the superfluous contest? it was because her quick and eager loyalty to truth would not suffer her to see it darkened by frauds which _she_ could expose, but others, even of candid listeners, perhaps, could not; it was through that imperishable grandeur of soul which taught her to submit meekly and without a struggle to her punishment, but taught her _not_ to submit--no, not for a moment--to calumny as to facts, or to misconstruction as to motives. besides, there were secretaries all around the court taking down her words. that was meant for no good to _her_. but the end does not always correspond to the meaning. and joanna might say to herself, "these words that will be used against me to-morrow and the next day, perhaps, in some nobler generation, may rise again for my justification." yes, joanna, they _are_ rising even now in paris, and for more than justification! woman, sister, there are some things which you do not execute as well as your brother, man; no, nor ever will. pardon me if i doubt whether you will ever produce a great poet from your choirs, or a mozart, or a phidias, or a michael angelo, or a great philosopher, or a great scholar. by which last is meant--not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination; bringing together from the four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life. if you _can_ create yourselves into any of these great creators, why have you not? yet, sister woman, though i cannot consent to find a mozart or a michael angelo in your sex, cheerfully, and with the love that burns in depths of admiration, i acknowledge that you can do one thing as well as the best of us men--a greater thing than even milton is known to have done, or michael angelo; you can die grandly, and as goddesses would die, were goddesses mortal. if any distant worlds (which _may_ be the case) are so far ahead of us tellurians in optical resources as to see distinctly through their telescopes all that we do on earth, what is the grandest sight to which we ever treat them? st. peter's at rome, do you fancy, on easter sunday, or luxor, or perhaps the himalayas? oh, no! my friend; suggest something better; these are baubles to _them_; they see in other worlds, in their own, far better toys of the same kind. these, take my word for it, are nothing. do you give it up? the finest thing, then, we have to show them is a scaffold on the morning of execution. i assure you there is a strong muster in those far telescopic worlds, on any such morning, of those who happen to find themselves occupying the right hemisphere for a peep at _us_. how, then, if it be announced in some such telescopic world by those who make a livelihood of catching glimpses at our newspapers, whose language they have long since deciphered, that the poor victim in the morning's sacrifice is a woman? how, if it be published in that distant world that the sufferer wears upon her head, in the eyes of many, the garlands of martyrdom? how, if it should be some marie antoinette, the widowed queen, coming forward on the scaffold, and presenting to the morning air her head, turned gray by sorrow--daughter of caesars kneeling down humbly to kiss the guillotine, as one that worships death? how, if it were the noble charlotte corday, that in the bloom of youth, that with the loveliest of persons, that with homage waiting upon her smiles wherever she turned her face to scatter them--homage that followed those smiles as surely as the carols of birds, after showers in spring, follow the reappearing sun and the racing of sunbeams over the hills--yet thought all these things cheaper than the dust upon her sandals, in comparison of deliverance from hell for her dear suffering france! ah! these were spectacles indeed for those sympathising people in distant worlds; and some, perhaps, would suffer a sort of martyrdom themselves, because they could not testify their wrath, could not bear witness to the strength of love and to the fury of hatred that burned within them at such scenes, could not gather into golden urns some of that glorious dust which rested in the catacombs of earth. on the wednesday after trinity sunday in , being then about nineteen years of age, the maid of arc underwent her martyrdom. she was conducted before mid-day, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a platform of prodigious height, constructed of wooden billets supported by occasional walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by hollow spaces in every direction for the creation of air currents. the pile "struck terror," says m. michelet, "by its height"; and, as usual, the english purpose in this is viewed as one of pure malignity. but there are two ways of explaining all that. it is probable that the purpose was merciful. on the circumstances of the execution i shall not linger. yet, to mark the almost fatal felicity of m. michelet in finding out whatever may injure the english name, at a moment when every reader will be interested in joanna's personal appearance, it is really edifying to notice the ingenuity by which he draws into light from a dark corner a very unjust account of it, and neglects, though lying upon the highroad, a very pleasing one. both are from english pens. grafton, a chronicler, but little read, being a stiff-necked john bull, thought fit to say that no wonder joanna should be a virgin, since her "foule face" was a satisfactory solution of that particular merit. holinshead, on the other hand, a chronicler somewhat later, every way more important, and at one time universally read, has given a very pleasing testimony to the interesting character of joanna's person and engaging manners. neither of these men lived till the following century, so that personally this evidence is none at all. grafton sullenly and carelessly believed as he wished to believe; holinshead took pains to inquire, and reports undoubtedly the general impression of france. but i cite the case as illustrating m. michelet's candour. [footnote: amongst the many ebullitions of m. michelet's fury against us poor english are four which will be likely to amuse the reader; and they are the more conspicuous in collision with the justice which he sometimes does us, and the very indignant admiration which, under some aspects, he grants to us. . our english literature he admires with some gnashing of teeth. he pronounces it "fine and sombre," but, i lament to add, "skeptical, judaic, satanic--in a word, antichristian." that lord byron should figure as a member of this diabolical corporation will not surprise men. it _will_ surprise them to hear that milton is one of its satanic leaders. many are the generous and eloquent frenchmen, besides chateaubriand, who have, in the course of the last thirty years, nobly suspended their own burning nationality, in order to render a more rapturous homage at the feet of milton; and some of them have raised milton almost to a level with angelic natures. not one of them has thought of looking for him _below_ the earth. as to shakspere, m. michelet detects in him a most extraordinary mare's nest. it is this: he does "not recollect to have seen the name of god" in any part of his works. on reading such words, it is natural to rub one's eyes, and suspect that all one has ever seen in this world may have been a pure ocular delusion. in particular, i begin myself to suspect that the word "_la gloire_" never occurs in any parisian journal. "the great english nation," says m. michelet, "has one immense profound vice"--to wit, "pride." why, really, that may be true; but we have a neighbour not absolutely clear of an "immense profound vice," as like ours in colour and shape as cherry to cherry. in short, m. michelet thinks us, by fits and starts, admirable--only that we are detestable; and he would adore some of our authors, were it not that so intensely he could have wished to kick them. . m. michelet thinks to lodge an arrow in our sides by a very odd remark upon thomas à kempis: which is, that a man of any conceivable european blood--a finlander, suppose, or a zantiote--might have written tom; only not an englishman. whether an englishman could have forged tom must remain a matter of doubt, unless the thing had been tried long ago. that problem was intercepted for ever by tom's perverseness in choosing to manufacture himself. yet, since nobody is better aware than m. michelet that this very point of kempis _having_ manufactured kempis is furiously and hopelessly litigated, three or four nations claiming to have forged his work for him, the shocking old doubt will raise its snaky head once more--whether this forger, who rests in so much darkness, might not, after all, be of english blood. tom, it may be feared, is known to modern english literature chiefly by an irreverent mention of his name in a line of peter pindar's (dr wolcot) fifty years back, where he is described as "kempis tom, who clearly shows the way to kingdom come" few in these days can have read him, unless in the methodist version of john wesley among those few, however, happens to be myself, which arose from the accident of having, when a boy of eleven, received a copy of the "de imitatione christi" as a bequest from a relation who died very young, from which cause, and from the external prettiness of the book--being a glasgow reprint by the celebrated foulis, and gaily bound--i was induced to look into it, and finally read it many times over, partly out of some sympathy which, even in those days, i had with its simplicity and devotional fervour, but much more from the savage delight i found in laughing at tom's latinity that, i freely grant to m michelet, is inimitable. yet, after all, it is not certain whether the original _was_ latin. but, however that may have been, if it is possible that m michelet [footnote: "_if m. michelet can be accurate_"--however, on consideration, this statement does not depend on michelet. the bibliographer barbier has absolutely _specified_ sixty in a separate dissertation, _soixante traductions_ among those even that have not escaped the search. the italian translations are said to be thirty. as to mere editions, not counting the early mss. for half a century before printing was introduced, those in latin amount to , and those in french to . meantime it is very clear to me that this astonishing popularity so entirely unparalleled in literature, could not have existed except in roman catholic times, nor subsequently have lingered in any protestant land. it was the denial of scripture fountains to thirsty lands which made this slender rill of scripture truth so passionately welcome.] can be accurate in saying that there are no less than sixty french versions (not editions, observe, but separate versions) existing of the "de imitatione," how prodigious must have been the adaptation of the book to the religious heart of the fifteenth century! excepting the bible, but excepting _that_ only in protestant lands, no book known to man has had the same distinction. it is the most marvellous bibliographical fact on record. . our english girls, it seems, are as faulty in one way as we english males in another. none of us men could have written the _opera omnia_ of mr. à kempis; neither could any of our girls have assumed male attire like la pucelle. but why? because, says michelet, english girls and german think so much of an indecorum. well, that is a good fault, generally speaking. but m. michelet ought to have remembered a fact in the martyrologies which justifies both parties--the french heroine for doing, and the general choir of english girls for _not_ doing. a female saint, specially renowned in france, had, for a reason as weighty as joanna's--viz., expressly to shield her modesty among men--worn a male military harness. that reason and that example authorised la pucelle; but our english girls, as a body, have seldom any such reason, and certainly no such saintly example, to plead. this excuses _them_. yet, still, if it is indispensable to the national character that our young women should now and then trespass over the frontier of decorum, it then becomes a patriotic duty in me to assure m. michelet that we _have_ such ardent females among us, and in a long series; some detected in naval hospitals when too sick to remember their disguise; some on fields of battle; multitudes never detected at all; some only suspected; and others discharged without noise by war offices and other absurd people. in our navy, both royal and commercial, and generally from deep remembrances of slighted love, women have sometimes served in disguise for many years, taking contentedly their daily allowance of burgoo, biscuit, or cannon-balls--anything, in short, digestible or indigestible, that it might please providence to send. one thing, at least, is to their credit: never any of these poor masks, with their deep silent remembrances, have been detected through murmuring, or what is nautically understood by "skulking." so, for once, m. michelet has an _erratum_ to enter upon the fly-leaf of his book in presentation copies. . but the last of these ebullitions is the most lively. we english, at orleans, and after orleans (which is not quite so extraordinary, if all were told), fled before the maid of arc. yes, says m. michelet, you _did_: deny it, if you can. deny it, _mon cher_? i don't mean to deny it. running away, in many cases, is a thing so excellent that no philosopher would, at times, condescend to adopt any other step. all of us nations in europe, without one exception, have shown our philosophy in that way at times. even people "_qui ne se rendent pas_" have deigned both to run and to shout, "_sauve qui peut_!" at odd times of sunset; though, for my part, i have no pleasure in recalling unpleasant remembrances to brave men; and yet, really, being so philosophic, they ought _not_ to be unpleasant. but the amusing feature in m. michelet's reproach is the way in which he _improves_ and varies against us the charge of running, as if he were singing a catch. listen to him: they "_showed their backs_" did these english. (hip, hip, hurrah! three times three!) "_behind good walls they let themselves be taken_." (hip, hip! nine times nine!) they "_ran as fast as their legs could carry them_" (hurrah! twenty-seven times twenty-seven!) they "_ran before a girl_"; they did. (hurrah! eighty-one times eighty-one!) this reminds one of criminal indictments on the old model in english courts, where (for fear the prisoner should escape) the crown lawyer varied the charge perhaps through forty counts. the law laid its guns so as to rake the accused at every possible angle. while the indictment was reading, he seemed a monster of crime in his own eyes; and yet, after all, the poor fellow had but committed one offence, and not always _that_. n. b.--not having the french original at hand, i make my quotations from a friend's copy of mr. walter kelly's translation; which seems to me faithful, spirited, and idiomatically english--liable, in fact, only to the single reproach of occasional provincialisms.] the circumstantial incidents of the execution, unless with more space than i can now command, i should be unwilling to relate. i should fear to injure, by imperfect report, a martyrdom which to myself appears so unspeakably grand. yet, for a purpose, pointing not at joanna, but at m. michelet--viz, to convince him that an englishman is capable of thinking more highly of la pucelle than even her admiring countrymen--i shall, in parting, allude to one or two traits in joanna's demeanour on the scaffold, and to one or two in that of the bystanders, which authorise me in questioning an opinion of his upon this martyr's firmness. the reader ought to be reminded that joanna d'arc was subjected to an unusually unfair trial of opinion. any of the elder christian martyrs had not much to fear of _personal_ rancour. the martyr was chiefly regarded as the enemy of cæsar; at times, also, where any knowledge of the christian faith and morals existed, with the enmity that arises spontaneously in the worldly against the spiritual. but the martyr, though disloyal, was not supposed to be therefore anti-national; and still less was _individually_ hateful. what was hated (if anything) belonged to his class, not to himself separately. now, joanna, if hated at all, was hated personally, and in rouen on national grounds. hence there would be a certainty of calumny arising against _her_ such as would not affect martyrs in general. that being the case, it would follow of necessity that some people would impute to her a willingness to recant. no innocence could escape _that_. now, had she really testified this willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued nothing at all but the weakness of a genial nature shrinking from the instant approach of torment. and those will often pity that weakness most who, in their own persons, would yield to it least. meantime, there never was a calumny uttered that drew less support from the recorded circumstances. it rests upon no _positive_ testimony, and it has a weight of contradicting testimony to stem. and yet, strange to say, m, michelet, who at times seems to admire the maid of arc as much as i do, is the one sole writer among her _friends_ who lends some countenance to this odious slander. his words are that, if she did not utter this word _recant_ with her lips, she uttered it in her heart. "whether she _said_ the word is uncertain; but i affirm that she _thought_ it." now, i affirm that she did not; not in any sense of the word "_thought_" applicable to the case. here is france calumniating la pucelle; here is england defending her. m. michelet can only mean that, on _a priori_ principles, every woman must be presumed liable to such a weakness; that joanna was a woman; _ergo_, that she was liable to such a weakness. that is, he only supposes her to have uttered the word by an argument which presumes it impossible for anybody to have done otherwise. i, on the contrary, throw the onus of the argument not on presumable tendencies of nature, but on the known facts of that morning's execution, as recorded by multitudes. what else, i demand, than mere weight of metal, absolute nobility of deportment, broke the vast line of battle then arrayed against her? what else but her meek, saintly demeanour won, from the enemies that till now had believed her a witch, tears of rapturous admiration? "ten thousand men," says m. michelet himself--"ten thousand men wept"; and of these ten thousand the majority were political enemies knitted together by cords of superstition. what else was it but her constancy, united with her angelic gentleness, that drove the fanatic english soldier--who had sworn to throw a fagot on her scaffold as _his_ tribute of abhorrence, that _did_ so, that fulfilled his vow--suddenly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had stood? what else drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to _his_ share in the tragedy? and, if all this were insufficient, then i cite the closing act of her life as valid on her behalf, were all other testimonies against her. the executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below. he did so. the fiery smoke rose upward in billowing volumes. a dominican monk was then standing almost at her side. wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted in his prayers. even then, when the last enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment did this noblest of girls think only for _him_, the one friend that would not forsake her, and not for herself; bidding him with her last breath to care for his own preservation, but to leave _her_ to god. that girl, whose latest breath ascended in this sublime expression of self-oblivion, did not utter the word _recant_ either with her lips or in her heart. no; she did not, though one should rise from the dead to swear it. * * * * * bishop of beauvais! thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold--thou upon a down bed. but, for the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. at the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the torturer have the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together into sleep; together both sometimes kindle into dreams. when the mortal mists were gathering fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl--when the pavilions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about you--let us try, through the gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your separate visions. the shepherd girl that had delivered france--she, from her dungeon, she, from her baiting at the stake, she, from her duel with fire, as she entered her last dream--saw domrémy, saw the fountain of domrémy, saw the pomp of forests in which her childhood had wandered. that easter festival which man had denied to her languishing heart--that resurrection of springtime, which the darkness of dungeons had intercepted from _her_, hungering after the glorious liberty of forests--were by god given back into her hands as jewels that had been stolen from her by robbers. with those, perhaps (for the minutes of dreams can stretch into ages), was given back to her by god the bliss of childhood. by special privilege for _her_ might be created, in this farewell dream, a second childhood, innocent as the first; but not, like _that_, sad with the gloom of a fearful mission in the rear. this mission had now been fulfilled. the storm was weathered; the skirts even of that mighty storm were drawing off. the blood that she was to reckon for had been exacted; the tears that she was to shed in secret had been paid to the last. the hatred to herself in all eyes had been faced steadily, had been suffered, had been survived. and in her last fight upon the scaffold she had triumphed gloriously; victoriously she had tasted the stings of death. for all, except this comfort from her farewell dream, she had died--died amid the tears of ten thousand enemies--died amid the drums and trumpets of armies--died amid peals redoubling upon peals, volleys upon volleys, from the saluting clarions of martyrs. bishop of beauvais! because the guilt-burdened man is in dreams haunted and waylaid by the most frightful of his crimes, and because upon that fluctuating mirror--rising (like the mocking mirrors of _mirage_ in arabian deserts) from the fens of death-most of all are reflected the sweet countenances which the man has laid in ruins; therefore i know, bishop, that you also, entering your final dream, saw domrémy. that fountain, of which the witnesses spoke so much, showed itself to your eyes in pure morning dews; but neither dews, nor the holy dawn, could cleanse away the bright spots of innocent blood upon its surface. by the fountain, bishop, you saw a woman seated, that hid her face. but, as _you_ draw near, the woman raises her wasted features. would domrémy know them again for the features of her child? ah, but _you_ know them, bishop, well! oh, mercy! what a groan was _that_ which the servants, waiting outside the bishop's dream at his bedside, heard from his labouring heart, as at this moment he turned away from the fountain and the woman, seeking rest in the forests afar off. yet not _so_ to escape the woman, whom once again he must behold before he dies. in the forests to which he prays for pity, will he find a respite? what a tumult, what a gathering of feet is there! in glades where only wild deer should run armies and nations are assembling; towering in the fluctuating crowd are phantoms that belong to departed hours. there is the great english prince, regent of france. there is my lord of winchester, the princely cardinal, that died and made no sign. there is the bishop of beauvais, clinging to the shelter of thickets. what building is that which hands so rapid are raising? is it a martyr's scaffold? will they burn the child of domrémy a second time? no; it is a tribunal that rises to the clouds; and two nations stand around it, waiting for a trial. shall my lord of beauvais sit again upon the judgment-seat, and again number the hours for the innocent? ah, no! he is the prisoner at the bar. already all is waiting: the mighty audience is gathered, the court is hurrying to their seats, the witnesses are arrayed, the trumpets are sounding, the judge is taking his place. oh, but this is sudden! my lord, have you no counsel? "counsel i have none; in heaven above, or on earth beneath, counsellor there is none now that would take a brief from _me_: all are silent." is it, indeed, come to this? alas! the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, the crowd stretches away into infinity; but yet i will search in it for somebody to take your brief; i know of somebody that will be your counsel. who is this that cometh from domrémy? who is she in bloody coronation robes from rheims? who is she that cometh with blackened flesh from walking the furnaces of rouen? this is she, the shepherd girl, counsellor that had none for herself, whom i choose, bishop, for yours. she it is, i engage, that shall take my lord's brief. she it is, bishop, that would plead for you; yes, bishop, _she_--when heaven and earth are silent. notes the english mail-coach "in october there appeared in _blackwood's magazine_ an article entitled _the english mail-coach, or the glory of motion_. there was no intimation that it was to be continued; but in december there followed in the same magazine an article in two sections, headed by a paragraph explaining that it was by the author of the previous article in the october number, and was to be taken in connexion with that article. one of the sections of this second article was entitled _the vision of sudden death_, and the other _dream-fugue on the above theme of sudden death_. when de quincey revised the papers in for republication in volume iv of the collective edition of his writings, he brought the whole under the one general title of _the english mail-coach_, dividing the text, as at present, into three sections or chapters, the first with the sub-title _the glory of motion_, the second with the sub-title _the vision of sudden death_, and the third with the sub-title _dream-fugue, founded on the preceding theme of sudden death_. great care was bestowed on the revision. passages that had appeared in the magazine articles were omitted; new sentences were inserted; and the language was retouched throughout."--masson. cf. as to the revision, professor dowden's article, "how de quincey worked," _saturday review_, feb. , . this selection is found in _works_, masson's ed., vol. xiii, pp. - ; riverside ed., vol. i, pp. - . he had married the daughter of a duke: "mr. john palmer, a native of bath, and from about the energetic proprietor of the theatre royal in that city, had been led, by the wretched state in those days of the means of intercommunication between bath and london, wand his own consequent difficulties in arranging for a punctual succession of good actors at his theatre, to turn his attention to the improvement of the whole system of post-office conveyance, and of locomotive machinery generally, in the british islands. the result was a scheme for superseding, on the great roads at least, the then existing system of sluggish and irregular stage-coaches, the property of private persons and companies, by a new system of government coaches, in connexion with the post-office, carrying the mails and also a regulated number of passengers, with clockwork precision, at a rate of comparative speed, which he hoped should ultimately be not less than ten miles an hour. the opposition to the scheme was, of course, enormous; coach proprietors, innkeepers, the post-office officials themselves, were all against mr. palmer; he was voted a crazy enthusiast and a public bore. pitt, however, when the scheme was submitted to him, recognized its feasibility; on the th of august the first mail-coach on mr. palmer's plan started from london at o'clock in the morning and reached bristol at o'clock at night; and from that day the success of the new system was assured.--mr. palmer himself, having been appointed surveyor and comptroller-general of the post-office, took rank as an eminent and wealthy public man, m. p. for bath and what not, and lived till . de quincey makes it one of his distinctions that he "had married the daughter of a duke," and in a footnote to that paragraph he gives the lady's name as "lady madeline gordon." from an old debrett, however, i learn that lady madelina gordon, second daughter of alexander, fourth duke of gordon, was first married, on the d of april , to sir robert sinclair, bart., and next, on the th of november , to _charles palmer, of lockley park, berks, esq._ if debrett is right, her second husband was not john palmer of mail-coach celebrity, and de quincey is wrong."--masson. (footnote) invention of the cross: concerning the _inventio sanctae crucis_, see smith, _dictionary of christian antiquities_, vol. i, p. . national result: cf. de quincey's paper on _travelling, works,_ riverside ed., vol. ii, especially pp. - ; masson's ed., vol. i, especially pp. - . the four terms of michaelmas, lent, easter, and act: these might be called respectively the autumn, winter, spring, and summer terms. michaelmas, the feast of st. michael and all angels, is on september . hilary and trinity are other names for lent term and act term respectively. act term is the last term of the academic year; its name is that originally given to a disputation for a master's degree; such disputations took place at the end of the year generally, and hence gave a name to the summer term. although the rules concerning residence at oxford are more stringent than in de quincey's time, only eighteen weeks' residence is required during the year, six in michaelmas, six in lent, and six in easter and act. going down: cf. "going down with victory," i.e. from london into the country. posting-houses: inns where relays of horses were furnished for coaches and carriages. cf. de quincey on _travelling, loc. cit._ an old tradition... from the reign of charles ii: then no one sat outside; later, outside places were taken by servants, and were quite cheap. attaint the foot: the word is used in its legal sense. the blood of one convicted of high treason is "attaint," and his deprivations extend to his descendants, unless parliament remove the attainder. pariahs: the fate of social outcasts seems to have taken early and strong hold upon de quincey's mind; one of the _suspiria_ was to have enlarged upon this theme. strictly speaking, the pariahs is that one of the lower castes of hindoo society of which foreigners have seen most; it is not in all districts the lowest caste, however. objects not appearing, etc.: _de non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est lex_, a roman legal phrase. "snobs": apparently snob originally meant "shoemaker"; then, in university cant, a "townsman" as opposed to a "gownsman." cf. _gradus ad cantabrigiam_ ( ), quoted in _century dictionary_: "_snobs_.--a term applied indiscriminately to all who have not the honour of being members of the university; but in a more particular manner to the 'profanum vulgus,' the tag-rag and bob-tail, who vegetate on the sedgy banks of camus." this use is in de quincey's mind. later, in the strikes of that time, the workmen who accepted lower wages were called _snobs_; those who held out for higher, _nobs_. fo fo... fi fi: "this paragraph is a caricature of a story told in staunton's account of the earl of macartney's embassy to china in ."--masson. Ça ira ("this will do," "this is the go"): "a proverb of the french revolutionists when they were hanging the aristocrats in the streets, &c., and the burden of one of the most popular revolutionary songs, 'Ça ira, ça ira, ça ira.'"--masson. all morality,--aristotle's, zeno's, cicero's: each of these three has a high place in the history of ethical teaching. aristotle wrote the so-called _nicomachean ethics_. according to his teaching, "ethical virtue is that permanent direction of the will which guards the mean [_to méson_] proper for us... bravery is the mean between cowardice and temerity; temperance, the mean between inordinate desire and stupid indifference; etc." (ueberweg, _history of philosophy_, vol. i, p. ). zeno, who died about b.c., founded about the stoic sect, which took its name from the "painted porch" (_stoa poklae_) in the agora at athens, where the master taught. the stoics held that men should be free from passion, and undisturbed by joy or grief, submitting themselves uncomplainingly to their fate. such austere views are, of course, as far as possible removed from those of the eudæmonist, who sought happiness as the end of life. cicero was the author of de officiis, "of duties." astrological shadows: misfortunes due to being born under an unlucky star; house of life is also an astrological term. von troil's iceland: the letters on iceland (pinkerton's voyages and travels, vol. i, p. ), containing observations ... made during a voyage undertaken in the year , by uno von troil, d.d., of stockholm, contains no chapter of the kind. such a chapter had appeared, however, in n. horrebow's (danish, ) natural history of iceland: "chap. lxxii. concerning snakes. no snakes of any kind are to be met with throughout the whole island." in boswell's johnson, vol. iv, p. , temple ed., there is a much more correct allusion, which may have been in de quincey's mind: "langton said very well to me afterwards, that he could repeat johnson's conversation before dinner, as johnson had said that he could repeat a complete chapter of the natural history of iceland, from the danish of horrebow, the whole of which was exactly thus: 'chap. lxxii. concerning snakes. there are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.'" a parliamentary rat: one who deserts his own party when it is losing. "jam proximus," etc.: Æneid, ii, lines - : "now next (to deiphobus' house) ucalegon (i.e. his house) blazes!" quarterings: see p. , footnote, and note . within benefit of clergy: benefit of clergy was, under old english law, the right of clerics, afterward extended to all who could read, to plead exemption from trial before a secular judge. this privilege was first legally recognized in , and was not wholly abolished until . quarter sessions: this court is held in england in the counties by justices of the peace for the trial of minor criminal offenses and to administer the poor laws, etc. false echoes of marengo: general desaix was shot through the heart at the battle of marengo (june , ); he died without a word, and his body was found by rovigo (cf. memoirs of the duke of rovigo, london, , vol. i, p. ), "stripped of his clothes, and surrounded by other naked bodies." napoleon, however, published three different versions of an heroic and devoted message from desaix to himself, the original version being: "go, tell the first consul that i die with this regret,--that i have not done enough for posterity." (cf. lanfrey, history of napoleon the first, d ed., london, , vol. ii, p. .) napoleon himself was credited likewise with the words de quincey adopts. "why is it not permitted me to weep" is one version (bussey, _history of napoleon_, london, , vol. i, p. ). cf. hazlitt, _life of napoleon_, d ed., london, , vol. ii, p. , footnote. (footnote) the cry of the foundering line-of-battle ship "vengeur": on the st of june, , the english fleet under lord howe defeated the french under villaret-joyeuse, taking six ships and sinking a seventh, the _vengeur_. this ship sank, as a matter of fact, with part of her crew on board, imploring kid which there was not time to give them. some two hundred and fifty men had been taken off by the english; the rest were lost. on the th of july barrere published a report setting forth "how the _vengeur_, ... being entirely disabled, ... refused to strike, though sinking; how the enemies fired on her, but she returned their fire, shot aloft all her tricolor streamers, shouted _vive la république_, ... and so, in this mad whirlwind of fire and shouting and invincible despair, went down into the ocean depths; _vive la république_ and a universal volley from the upper deck being the last sounds she made." cf. carlyle, _sinking of the vengeur_, and _french revolution, book_ xviii, chap. vi. (footnote) la garde meurt, etc.: "this phrase, attributed to cambronne, who was made prisoner at waterloo, was vehemently denied by him. it was invented by rougemont, a prolific author of _mots_, two days after the battle, in the _indépendant_."--fournier's _l'esprit dans l'histoire_, trans. bartlett, _familiar quotations_, p. . brummagem: birmingham became early the chief place of manufacture of cheap wares. hence the name _brummagem_, a vulgar pronunciation of the name of the city, has become in england a common name for cheap, tawdry jewelry. cf. also shakespeare, richard iii, act i, sc. iv, . : false, fleeting, perjured clarence. luxor occupies part of the site of ancient thebes, capital of egypt; its antiquities are famous. but on our side... was a tower of moral strength, etc.: cf. shakespeare, _richard_ iii, act v, sc. in, . - : besides, the king's name is a tower of strength, which they upon the adverse party want. felt my heart burn within me: cf. luke xxiv. . a very fine story from one of our elder dramatists: the dramatist in question has not been identified. i am indebted indirectly to professor w. strunk, jr., of cornell university, for reference to johann caius' of english dogs, translated by a. fleming, in arber's english garner, original edition, vol. iii, p. (new edition, social england illustrated, pp. - ), where, after telling how henry the seventh, perceiving that four mastiffs could overcome a lion, ordered the dogs all hanged, the writer continues: "i read an history answerable to this, of the selfsame henry, who having a notable and an excellent fair falcon, it fortuned that the king's falconers, in the presence and hearing of his grace, highly commended his majesty's falcon, saying, that it feared not to intermeddle with an eagle, it was so venturous and so mighty a bird; which when the king heard, he charged that the falcon should be killed without delay: for the selfsame reason, as it may seem, which was rehearsed in the conclusion of the former history concerning the same king." l omrahs... from agra and lahore: there seems to be a reminiscence here of wordsworth's prelude, book x, . - : the great mogul, when he erewhile went forth from agra or lahore, rajahs and omrahs in his train. omrah, which is not found in century dictionary, is itself really plural of arabic amir (ameer), a commander, nobleman. the th of edward longshanks: a de quinceyan jest, of course. this wrould refer to a law of the sixth year of edward i, or , but there are but fifteen chapters in the laws of that year. not magna loquimur,... but vivimus: not "we speak great things," but "we live" them. marlborough forest is twenty-seven miles east of bath, where de quincey attended school. ulysses, etc.: the allusion is, of course, to the slaughter of the suitors of penelope, his wife, by ulysses, after his return. cf. odyssey, books xxi-xxii. about waterloo: i.e. about . this phrase is one of many that indicate the deep impression made by this event upon the english mind. cf. p. . "say, all our praises," etc.: cf. pope, moral essays: epistle iii, of the use of riches, ii. - : but all our praises why should lords engross, rise, honest muse! and sing the man of ross. turrets: "tourettes fyled rounde" appears in chaucer's knight's tale, . , where it means the ring on a dog's collar through which the leash was passed. skeat explains _torets_ as "probably eyes in which rings will turn round, because each eye is a little larger than the thickness of the ring." cf. chaucer's _treatise on the astrolabe_, part i, sec. , "this ring renneth in a maner turet," "this ring runs in a kind of eye." but chaucer does not refer to harness. mr. waterton tells me: charles waterton, the naturalist, was born in and died in . his _wanderings in south america_ was published in . earth and her children: this paragraph is about one fifth of the length of the corresponding paragraph as it appeared in _blackwood_. for the longer version see masson's ed., vol. xiii, p. , note . the general post-office: the present office was opened sept. , . st. martin's-le-grand is a church within the "city" of london, so named to distinguish it from st. martin's-in-the-fields, which faces what is now trafalgar square, and is, as the name indicates, outside the "city." the street takes its name from the church. barnet is a hertfordshire village, eleven miles north of london. a "courier" evening paper, containing the gazette: a gazette was originally one of the three official papers of the kingdom; afterwards any official announcement, as this of a great victory. fey: this is not a celtic word; it is the anglo-saxon _faege_ retained in lowland scotch, which is the most northerly english dialect. the word appears frequently in descriptions of battles, the anglo-saxon fatalistic philosophy teaching that, certain warriors entered the conflict _faege_, "doomed." now the meaning is altered slightly: "you are surely fey," would be said in scotland, as professor masson remarks, to a person observed to be in extravagantly high spirits, or in any mood surprisingly beyond the bounds of his ordinary temperament,--the notion being that the excitement is supernatural, and a presage of his approaching death, or of some other calamity about to befall him. the inspiration of god, etc.: this is an indication--more interesting than agreeable, perhaps--of the heights to which the martial ardor of de quincey's toryism rises. cÆsar the dictator, at his last dinner-party, etc.: related by suetonius in his life of julius cæsar, chap. lxxxvii: "the day before he died, some discourse occurring at dinner in m. lepidus' house upon that subject, which was the most agreeable way of dying, he expressed his preference for what is sudden and unexpected" (repentinum inopinatumque praetulerat). the story is told by plutarch and appian also. _biathanatos_: "de quincey has evidently taken this from john donne's treatise: _biathanatos, a declaration of that paradoxe or thesis, that self-homicide is not so naturally sin, that it may never be otherwise_, . see his paper on _suicide, etc._, masson's ed., viii, [riverside, ix, ]. but not even donne's precedent justifies the word formation. the only acknowledged compounds are _biaio-thanasia_, 'violent death,' and _biaio-thanatos_, 'dying a violent death.' even _bia thanatos_, 'death by violence,' is not classical."--hart. but the form _biathanatos_ is older than donne and is said to be common in mss. it should be further remarked that neither of the two compounds cited is classical. as to de quincey's interpretation of cæsar's meaning here, cf. merivale's _history of the romans under the empire_, chap. xxi, where he translates cæsar's famous reply: "that which is least expected." cf. also shakespeare, _julius cæsar_, act ii, sc. ii, . . "nature, from her seat," etc.: cf. milton's _paradise lost_, book ix, . - : so saying, her rash hand in evil hour forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck'd, she eat: earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat sighing through all her works gave signs of woe, that all was lost. so scenical, etc.: de quincey's love for effects of this sort appears everywhere. cf. the opening paragraphs of the _revolt of the tartars_, masson's ed., vol. vii; riverside ed., vol. xii. jus dominii: "the law of ownership," a legal term. jus gentium: "the law of nations," a legal term. "monstrum horrendum," etc..: _Æneid_, iii, . polyphemus, one of the cyclopes, whose eye was put out by ulysses, is meant. cf. _odyssey_, ix, et seq.; _Æneid_, iii, _et seq_. one of the calendars, etc.: the histories of the three calenders, sons of kings, will be found in most selections from the _arabian nights_. a calender is one of an order of dervishes founded in the fourteenth century by an andalusian arab; they are wanderers who preach in market places and live by alms. al sirat: according to mahometan teaching this bridge over hades was in width as a sword's edge. over it souls must pass to paradise. under this eminent man, etc.: for these two sentences the original in _blackwood_ had this, with its addition of good de quinceyan doctrine: "i used to call him _cyclops mastigophorus_, cyclops the whip-bearer, until i observed that his skill made whips useless, except to fetch off an impertinent fly from a leader's head, upon which i changed his grecian name to _cyclops diphrelates_ (cyclops the charioteer). i, and others known to me, studied under him the diphrelatic art. excuse, reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic. and also take this remark from me as a _gage d'amitié_--that no word ever was or _can_ be pedantic which, by supporting a distinction, supports the accuracy of logic, or which fills up a chasm for the understanding." some people have called me procrastinating: cf. page's (japp's) _life_, chap. xix, and japp's _de quincey memorials_, vol. ii, pp. , , - the whole pagan pantheon: i.e. all the gods put together; from the greek _pantheion_, a temple dedicated to all the gods. seven atmospheres of sleep, etc.: professor hart suggests that de quincey is here "indulging in jocular arithmetic. the three nights plus the three days, plus the present night, equal seven." dr. cooper compares with this a reference to the seven sleepers of ephesus. but it seems doubtful whether any explanation is necessary. lilliputian lancaster: the county town of lancashire, in which liverpool and manchester, towns of recent and far greater growth, are situated. (footnote) "giraldus cambrensis," or gerald de barry ( - ), was a welsh historian; one of his chief works is the _itinerarium cambrica_, or voyage in wales. quartering: de quincey's derivation of this word in his footnote is correct, but its use in this french sense is not common. de quincey, however, has it above, p. . the shout of achilles: cf. homer, _iliad_, xviii, _et seq_. buying it, etc.: de quincey refers, no doubt, to the pay of common soldiers and to the practice of employing mercenaries. faster than ever mill-race, etc.: the change in the wording of this sentence in de quincey's revision is, as masson remarks, particularly characteristic of his sense of melody; it read in _blackwood_, "we ran past them faster than ever mill-race in our inexorable flight." here was the map, etc.: this sentence is an addition in the reprint. masson remarks "how artistically it causes the due pause between the horror as still in rush of transaction and the backward look at the wreck when the crash was past." "whence the sound," etc.: _paradise lost_, book xi, . - . woman's ionic form: in thus using the word ionic, de quincey doubtless has in mind the character of ionic architecture, with its tall and graceful column, differing from the severity of the doric on the one hand and from the floridity of the corinthian on the other. probably he is thinking of a caryatid. cf. the following version of the old story of the origin of the styles of greek architecture in vitruvius, iv, chap. i (gwilt's translation), quoted by hart: "they measured a man's foot, and finding its length the sixth part of his height, they gave the column a similar proportion, that is, they made its height six times the thickness of the shaft measured at the base. thus the doric order obtained its proportion, its strength, and its beauty from the human figure. with a similar feeling they afterward built the temple of diana. but in that, seeking a new proportion, they used the female figure as a standard; and for the purpose of producing a more lofty effect they first made it eight times its thickness in height. under it they placed a base, after the manner of a shoe to the foot; they also added volutes to its capital, like graceful curling hair hanging on each side, and the front they ornamented with _cymatia_ and festoons in the place of hair. on the shafts they sunk channels, which bear a resemblance to the folds of a matronal garment. thus two orders were invented, one of a masculine character, without ornament, the other bearing a character which resembled the delicacy, ornament, and proportion of a female. the successors of these people, improving in taste, and preferring a more slender proportion, assigned seven diameters to the height of the doric column, and eight and a half to the ionic." corymbi: clusters of fruit or flowers. quarrel: the bolt of a crossbow, an arrow having a square, or four-edged head (from middle latin _quadrellus_, diminutive of _quadrum_, a square). waterloo and recovered christendom! cf. note . then a third time the trumpet sounded: there are throughout this passage, as dr. cooper remarks, many reminiscences of the language of the book of revelation. cf. this with revelation viii. ; cf. with revelation xii. , and with ix. . the endless resurrections of his love: the following, which masson prints as a postscript, was a part of de quincey's introduction to the volume of the collective edition containing this piece: "'the english mail-coach.'--this little paper, according to my original intention, formed part of the 'suspiria de profundis'; from which, for a momentary purpose, i did not scruple to detach it, and to publish it apart, as sufficiently intelligible even when dislocated from its place in a larger whole. to my surprise, however, one or two critics, not carelessly in conversation, but deliberately in print, professed their inability to apprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the links of the connexion between its several parts. i am myself as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking obscurity, as these critics found themselves to unravel my logic. possibly i may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. i will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according to my original design, and then leave the reader to judge how far this design is kept in sight through the actual execution. "thirty-seven years ago, or rather more, accident made me, in the dead of night, and of a night memorably solemn, the solitary witness of an appalling scene, which threatened instant death in a shape the most terrific to two young people whom i had no means of assisting, except in so far as i was able to give them a most hurried warning of their danger; but even _that_ not until they stood within the very shadow of the catastrophe, being divided from the most frightful of deaths by scarcely more, if more at all, than seventy seconds. "such was the scene, such in its outline, from which the whole of this paper radiates as a natural expansion. this scene is circumstantially narrated in section the second, entitled 'the vision of sudden death.' "but a movement of horror, and of spontaneous recoil from this dreadful scene, naturally carried the whole of that scene, raised and idealised, into my dreams, and very soon into a rolling succession of dreams. the actual scene, as looked down upon from the box of the mail, was transformed into a dream, as tumultuous and changing as a musical fugue. this troubled dream is circumstantially reported in section the third, entitled 'dream-fugue on the theme of sudden death.' what i had beheld from my seat upon the mail,--the scenical strife of action and passion, of anguish and fear, as i had there witnessed them moving in ghostly silence,--this duel between life and death narrowing itself to a point of such exquisite evanescence as the collision neared; all these elements of the scene blended, under the law of association, with the previous and permanent features of distinction investing the mail itself; which features at that time lay-- st, in velocity unprecedented, dly, in the power and beauty of the horses, dly, in the official connexion with the government of a great nation, and, thly, in the function, almost a consecrated function, of publishing and diffusing through the land the great political events, and especially the great battles, during a conflict of unparalleled grandeur. these honorary distinctions are all described circumstantially in the first or introductory section ('the glory of motion'). the three first were distinctions maintained at all times; but the fourth and grandest belonged exclusively to the war with napoleon; and this it was which most naturally introduced waterloo into the dream. waterloo, i understand, was the particular feature of the 'dream-fugue' which my censors were least able to account for. yet surely waterloo, which, in common with every other great battle, it had been our special privilege to publish over all the land, most naturally entered the dream under the licence of our privilege. if not--if there be anything amiss--let the dream be responsible. the dream is a law to itself; and as well quarrel with a rainbow for showing, or for _not_ showing, a secondary arch. so far as i know, every element in the shifting movements of the dream derived itself either primarily from the incidents of the actual scene, or from secondary features associated with the mail. for example, the cathedral aisle derived itself from the mimic combination of features which grouped themselves together at the point of approaching collision--viz. an arrow-like section of the road, six hundred yards long, under the solemn lights described, with lofty trees meeting overhead in arches. the guard's horn, again--a humble instrument in itself--was yet glorified as the organ of publication for so many great national events. and the incident of the dying trumpeter, who rises from a marble bas-relief, and carries a marble trumpet to his marble lips for the purpose of warning the female infant, was doubtless secretly suggested by my own imperfect effort to seize the guard's horn, and to blow the warning blast. but the dream knows best; and the dream, i say again, is the responsible party." joan of arc this article appeared originally in _taifs magazine_ for march and august, ; it was reprinted by de quincey in in the third volume of his _collected writings_. it is found in _works_, masson's ed., vol. v, pp. - ; riverside ed., vol. vi, pp. - . lorraine, now in great part in the possession of germany, is the district in which domrémy, joan's birthplace, is situated. vaucouleurs: a town near domrémy; cf. p. . en contumace: "in contumacy," a legal term applied to one who, when summoned to court, fails to appear. rouen: the city in normandy where joan was burned at the stake. the lilies of france: the royal emblem of france from very early times until the revolution of , when "the wrath of god and man combined to wither them." m. michelet: jules michelet ( - ) is said to have spent forty years in the preparation of his great work, the _history of france_. cf. the same, translated by g. h. smith, vols., appleton, vol. ii, pp. - ; or _joan of arc_, from michelet's _history of france_, translated by o. w. wight, new york, . recovered liberty: the revolution of had expelled the restored bourbon kings. the book against priests: michelet's lectures as professor of history in the collège de france, in which he attacked the jesuits, were published as follows: _des jésuites_, ; _du prêtre, de la femme et de la famille_, ; _du peuple_, . to the second de quincey apparently refers. back to the falconer's lure: the lure was a decoy used to recall the hawk to its perch,--sometimes a dead pigeon, sometimes an artificial bird, with some meat attached. on the model of lord percy: these lines, as professor hart notes, in percy's folio, ed. hales and furnivall, vol. ii, p. , run: the stout erle of northumberland a vow to god did make, his pleasure in the scottish woods som_m_ers days to take. pucelle d'orlÉans: maid of orleans (the city on the loire which joan saved). the collection, etc.: the work meant is quicherat, _procès de condamnation et réhabilitation de jeanne d'arc_, vols., paris, - . cf. de quincey's note. delenda est anglia victrix! "victorious england must be destroyed!" cf. _delenda est carthago_! "carthage must be destroyed!" _delenda est karthago_ is the version of florus (ii, ) of the words used by cato the censor, just before the third punic war, whenever he was called upon to record his vote in the senate on any subject under discussion. hyder ali ( - ), a mahometan adventurer, made himself maharajah of mysore and gave the english in india serious trouble; he was defeated in by sir eyre coote. tippoo sahib, his son and successor, proved less dangerous and was finally killed at seringapatam in . nationality it was not: i.e. nationalism--patriotism--it was not. cf. _revolt of the tartars_, riverside ed., vol. xii, p. ; masson's ed., vol. vii, p. , where de quincey speaks of the torgod as "tribes whose native ferocity was exasperated by debasing forms of superstition, and by a nationality as well as an inflated conceit of their own merit absolutely unparalleled." cf. also footnote, p. . suffren: the great french admiral who in - inflicted so much loss upon the british. magnanimous justice of englishmen: as professor hart observes, the treatment of joan in _henry vi_ is hardly magnanimous. that odious man: cf. pp. - . three great successive battles: rudolf of lorraine fell at crécy ( ); frederick of lorraine at agincourt ( ); the battle of nicopolis, which sacrificed the third lorrainer, took place in . charles vi ( - ) had killed several men during his first fit of insanity. he was for the rest of his life wholly unfit to govern. he declared henry v of england, the conqueror of agincourt, his successor, thus disinheriting the dauphin, his son. the famines, etc.: horrible famines occurred in france and england in , , and . such insurrections as wat tyler's, in , are probably in de quincey's mind. the termination of the crusades: the crusades came to an end about . "the ulterior results of the crusades," concludes cox in _encyclopedia britannica_, "were the breaking up of the feudal system, the abolition of serfdom, the supremacy of a common law over the independent jurisdiction of chiefs who claimed the right of private wars." the destruction of the templars: this most famous of the military orders, founded in the twelfth century for the defense of the latin kingdom of jerusalem, having grown so powerful as to be greatly feared, was suppressed at the beginning of the fourteenth century. the papal interdicts: "de quincey has probably in mind such an interdict as that pronounced in , by innocent iii, against france. all ecclesiastical functions were suspended and the land was in desolation."--hart. england was put under interdict several times, as in (for the murder of becket) and . the tragedies caused or suffered by the house of anjou, and by the emperor: "the emperor is konradin, the last of the hohenstaufen, beheaded by charles of anjou at naples, . the subsequent cruelties of charles in sicily caused the popular uprising known as the sicilian vespers, , in which many thousands of frenchmen were assassinated."--hart. the colossal figure of feudalism, etc.: the english yeomen at crecy, overpowering the mounted knights of france, took from feudalism its chief support,--the superiority of the mounted knight to the unmounted yeoman. cf. green, _history of the english people_, book iv, chap. ii. the abominable spectacle of a double pope: for thirty-eight years this paradoxical state of things endured. the roman martyrology: a list of the martyrs of the church, arranged according to the order of their festivals, and with accounts of their lives and sufferings. "abbeys there were," etc.: cf. wordsworth, _peter bell_, part second: temples like those among the hindoos, and mosques, and spires, and abbey windows, and castles all with ivy green. the vosges ... have never attracted much notice, etc.: they came into like prominence after de quincey's day in the franco-prussian war of . those mysterious fawns, etc.: in some of the romances of the middle ages, especially those containing celtic material, a knight, while hunting, is led by his pursuit of a white fawn (or a white stag or boar) to a _fee_ (i.e. an inhabitant of the "happy other-world") or into the confines of the "happy other-world" itself. sometimes, as in the _guigemar_ of marie de france, the knight passes on to a series of adventures in consequence of his meeting with the white fawn. i owe this note to the kindness of mr. s. w. kinney, a.m., of baltimore. that ancient stag: see _englische studien,_ vol. v, p. , where additions are made to the following account from hardwicke's _traditions, superstitions, and folk-lore,_ manchester and london, , p. : this chasing of the white doe or the white hart by the spectre huntsman has assumed various forms. according to aristotle a white hart was killed by agathocles, king of sicily, which a thousand years beforehand had been consecrated to diana by diomedes. alexander the great is said by pliny to have caught a white stag, placed a collar of gold about its neck, and afterwards set it free. succeeding heroes have in after days been announced as the capturers of this famous white hart. julius caesar took the place of alexander, and charlemagne caught a white hart at both magdeburg, and in the holstein woods. in william [henry] the lion is reported to have accomplished a similar feat, according to a latin inscription on the walls of lubeck cathedral. tradition says the white hart has been caught on rothwell hay common, in yorkshire, and in windsor forest. this reference i owe indirectly to professor j. m. manly, of chicago. or, being upon the marches of france, a marquis: _marquis_ is derived from _march,_ and was originally the title of the guardian of the frontier, or march. agreed with sir roger de coverley that a good deal might be said on both sides: this expression, as has been pointed out to me, is from the middle of _spectator_ no. , where sir roger, having been appealed to on a question of fishing privileges, replied, "with an air of a man who would not give his judgment rashly, that much might be said on both sides." it is likely, however, that de quincey may have connected it in his mind with the discussion of witchcraft at the beginning of _spectator_ no. , where addison balances the grounds for belief and unbelief somewhat as de quincey does here. bergereta: a very late latin form of french _bergerette,_ "a shepherdess." m. simond, in his "travels": the reference is to _journal of a tour and residence in great britain during the years and ,_ by louis simond, d ed. (edinburgh, ), to which is added an appendix on france, written in december, , and october, . de quincey refers to this story with horror several times, but such scenes are not yet wholly unknown. a chevalier of st. louis: the french order of st. louis was founded by louis xiv in for military service. after its discontinuance at the revolution this order was reinstated in ; but no knights have been created since . "chevalier" is the lowest rank in such an order; it is here erroneously used by de quincey as a title of address. "chevalier, as-tu donnÉ," etc.: "chevalier, have you fed the hog?" "ma fille," etc.: "my daughter, have you," etc. "pucelle," etc.: "maid of orleans, have you saved the lilies (i.e. france)?" if the man that turnips cries: cf. _johnsoniana_, ed. r. napier, london, , where, in _anecdotes of johnson_, by mrs. piozzi, p. , is found: "'t is a mere play of words (added he)"--johnson is speaking of certain "verses by lopez de vega"--"and you might as well say, that "if the man who turnips cries, cry not when his father dies, 't is a proof that he had rather have a turnip than his father." this reference is given in bartlett's _familiar quotations_. the oriflamme of france: the red banner of st. denis, preserved in the abbey of that name, near paris, and borne before the french king as a consecrated flag. twenty years after, talking with southey: in de quincey was a resident of grasmere; southey lived for many years at keswick, a few miles away; they met first in . for de quincey's estimate of southey's _joan of arc_, see _works_, riverside ed., vol. vi, pp. - ; masson's ed., vol. v, pp. - . chinon is a little town near tours. she "pricks" for sheriffs: the old custom was to prick with a pin the names of those chosen by the sovereign for sheriffs. ampulla: the flask containing the sacred oil used at coronations. the english boy: henry vi was nine months old when he was proclaimed king of england and france in , charles vi of france, and henry v, his legal heir, having both died in that year. henry's mother was the eldest daughter of charles vi. drawn from the ovens of rheims: rheims, where the kings of france were crowned, was famous for its biscuits and gingerbread. tindal's "christianity as old as the creation": matthew tindal ( - ) published this work in ; its greatest interest lies in the fact that to this book more than to any other butler's _analogy_ was a reply. tindal's argument was that natural religion, as taught by the deists, was complete; that no revelation was necessary. a life according to nature is all that the best religion can teach. such doctrine as this joan preached in the speech ascribed to her. a parte ante: "from the part gone before"; joan's speech being three centuries earlier than the book from which it was taken. that divine passage in "paradise regained": from book i, ii. - . patay is near orleans: troyes was the capital of the old province of champagne. "nolebat," etc.: "she would not use her sword or kill any one." made prisoner by the burgundians: the english have accused the french officers of conniving at joan's capture through jealousy of her successes. compiègne is fifty miles northeast of paris. bishop of beauvais: beauvais is forty-three miles northwest of paris, in normandy. this bishop, pierre cauchon, rector of the university at paris, was devoted to the english party. "bishop that art," etc.: cf. shakespeare's _macbeth_, act i, sc. v, . . a triple crown: the papacy is meant, of course. the pope's tiara is a tall cap of golden cloth, encircled by three coronets. judges examining the prisoner: the judge in france questions a prisoner minutely when he is first taken, before he is remanded for trial. de quincey displays here his inveterate prejudice against the french; but this practice is widely regarded as the vital error of french criminal procedure., a wretched dominican: a member of the order of mendicant friars established in france by domingo de guzman in . their official name was fratres predicatores, "preaching friars," and their chief objects were preaching and instruction. their influence was very great until the rise of the jesuit order in the sixteenth century. the dominicans le maitre and graverent (the grand inquisitor) both took part in the prosecution. for a less cause than martyrdom: cf. genesis ii. . from the four winds: there may be a reminiscence here of ezekiel xxxvii. - , especially verse : "come from the four winds, o breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." luxor. see note . daughter of cÆsars: she was the daughter of the german emperor, francis i, whose sovereignty, as the name "holy roman empire" shows, was supposed to continue that of the ancient roman emperors. charlotte corday ( - ) murdered the revolutionist marat in the belief that the good of france required it; two days later she paid the penalty, as she had expected, with her life. grafton, a chronicler: richard grafton died about . he was printer to edward vi. his chronicle was published in . "foule face": _foule_ formerly meant "ugly." holinshead: raphael holinshed died about . his great work, _chronicles of england, scotland, and ireland_, was used by shakespeare as the source of several plays. he writes of joan: "of favor [appearance] was she counted likesome; of person stronglie made, and manlie; of courage, great, hardie, and stout withall." (footnote) satanic: this epithet was applied to the work of some of his contemporaries by southey in the preface to his _vision of judgement_, . it has been generally assumed that byron and shelley are meant. see introduction to byron's _vision of judgment_ in the new murray edition of byron, vol. iv. (footnote) burgoo: a thick oatmeal gruel or porridge used by seamen. according to the _new english dictionary_ the derivation is unknown; but in the _athenaeum_, oct. , , quoted by hart, the word is explained as a corruption of arabic _burghul_. english prince, regent of france: john, duke of bedford, uncle of henry vi. "in genius for war as in political capacity," says j. r. green, "john was hardly inferior to henry [the fifth, his brother] himself" (_a history of the english people_, book iv, chap. vi). my lord of winchester: henry beaufort, bishop of winchester, half-brother of henry iv. he was the most prominent english prelate of his time and was the only englishman in the court that condemned joan. as to the story of his death, to which de quincey alludes, see shakespeare, henry vi, act iii, sc. in. beaufort became cardinal in . who is this that cometh from domrÉmy? this is an evident imitation of the famous passage from isaiah ixiii. i: "who is this that cometh from edom, with dyed garments from bozrah?" "bloody coronation robes" is rather obscure, but probably refers to the fact that joan had shed her own blood to bring about the coronation of her sovereign; she is supposed to have appeared in armor at the actual coronation ceremony, and this armor might with reason be imagined as "bloody." she ... shall take my lord's brief: that is, she shall act as the bishop's counsel. in the case of beauvais, as in that of winchester, it must be remembered that in all monarchical countries the bishops are "lords spiritual," on an equality with the greater secular nobles, the "lords temporal." [illustration: tour coudray--chinon.] joan of arc by lord ronald gower, f.s.a. a trustee of the national portrait gallery with ten illustrations seven etchings and three photo-etchings london john c. nimmo king william street, strand mdcccxciii dedication. my mother had what the french call a _culte_ for the heroine whose life i have attempted to write in the following pages. it was but natural that one who loved and admired all that is good and beautiful and high-minded should have a strong feeling of admiration for the memory of joan of arc. on the pedestal of the bronze statue, which my mother placed in her house at cliveden, are inscribed those words which sum up the life and career of the maid of orleans:-- '_la grande pitié qu'il y avait au royaume de france._' thinking that could my mother have read the following pages she would have approved the feeling which prompted me to write them, i inscribe this little book to her beloved memory. r.g. arcachon, _november ._ preface. the authors whose works i have chiefly used in writing this life of joan of arc, are--first, quicherat, who was the first to publish at length the minutes of the two trials concerning the maid--that of her trial at rouen in , and of her rehabilitation in , and who unearthed so many chronicles relating to her times; secondly, wallon, whose life of joan of arc is of all the fullest and most reliable; thirdly, fabre, who has within the last few years published several most important books respecting the life and death of joan. fabre was the first to make a translation in full of the two trials which quicherat had first published in the original latin text. thinking references at the foot of the page a nuisance to the reader, these have been avoided. the subjects for the etched illustrations in this volume have been kindly supplied by my friend, mr. lee latrobe bateman, during a journey we made together to places connected with the story of the heroine. r.g. london, _january, ._ contents. page chapter i. the call chapter ii. the delivery of orleans chapter iii. the coronation at rheims chapter iv. the capture chapter v. imprisonment and trial chapter vi. martyrdom chapter vii. the rehabilitation appendix. i. joan of arc in french and english history ii. joan of arc in poetry french bibliography english bibliography index list of illustrations (_seven etchings, three photo-etchings_). tour coudray--chinon frontispiece chinon to face page street in chinon " hall of audience--chinon " tour d'horloge--chinon " west portal--rheims " interior--rheims " fifteenth-century houses--compiÈgne " tour de la pucelle--compiÈgne " st. ouen--rouen " _joan of arc._ chapter i. _the call._ never perhaps in modern times had a country sunk so low as france, when, in the year , the treaty of troyes was signed. henry v. of england had made himself master of nearly the whole kingdom; and although the treaty only conferred the title of regent of france on the english sovereign during the lifetime of the imbecile charles vi., henry was assured in the near future of the full possession of the french throne, to the exclusion of the dauphin. henry received with the daughter of charles vi. the duchy of normandy, besides the places conquered by edward iii. and his famous son; and of fourteen provinces left by charles v. to his successor only three remained in the power of the french crown. the french parliament assented to these hard conditions, and but one voice was raised in protest to the dismemberment of france; that solitary voice, a voice crying in a wilderness, was that of charles the dauphin--afterwards charles vii. henry v. had fondly imagined that by the treaty of troyes and his marriage with a french princess the war, which had lasted over a century between the two countries, would now cease, and that france would lie for ever at the foot of england. indeed, up to henry's death, at the end of august , events seemed to justify such hopes; but after a score of years from henry's death france had recovered almost the whole of her lost territory. there is nothing in history more strange and yet more true than the story which has been told so often, but which never palls in its interest--that life of the maiden through whose instrumentality france regained her place among the nations. no poet's fancy has spun from out his imagination a more glorious tale, or pictured in glowing words an epic of heroic love and transcendent valour, to compete with the actual reality of the career of this simple village maiden of old france: she who, almost unassisted and alone, through her intense love of her native land and deep pity for the woes of her people, was enabled, when the day of action at length arrived, to triumph over unnumbered obstacles, and, in spite of all opposition, ridicule, and contumely, to fulfil her glorious mission. sainte-beuve has written that, in his opinion, the way to honour the history of joan of arc is to tell the truth about her as simply as possible. this has been my object in the following pages. on the border of lorraine and champagne, in the canton of the barrois--between the rivers marne and meuse--extended, at the time of which we are writing, a vast forest, called the der. by the side of a little streamlet, which took its source from the river meuse, and dividing it east by west, stands the village of domremy. the southern portion, confined within its banks and watered by its stream, contained a little fortalice, with a score of cottages grouped around. these were situated in the county of champagne, under the suzerainty of the count de bar. the northern side of the village, containing the church, belonged to the manor of vaucouleurs. in this part of the village, in a cottage built between the church and the rivulet close by, joan of arc was born, on or about the th of january, . the house which now exists on the site of her birthplace was built in , but the little streamlet still takes its course at its foot. michelet, in his account of the heroine, says the station in life of joan's father was that of a labourer; later investigations have proved that he was what we should call a small farmer. in the course of the trial held for the rehabilitation of joan of arc's memory, which yields valuable and authentic information relating to her family as well as to her life and actions, it appears that the neighbours of the heroine deposed that her parents were well-to-do agriculturists, holding a small property besides this house at domremy; they held about twenty acres of land, twelve of which were arable, four meadow-land, and four for fuel. besides this they had some two to three hundred francs kept safe in case of emergency, and the furniture goods and chattels of their modest home. the money thus kept in case of sudden trouble came in usefully when the family had to escape from the english to neufchâteau. all told, the fortune of the family of joan attained an annual income of about two hundred pounds of our money, a not inconsiderable revenue at that time; and with it they were enabled to raise a family in comfort, and to give alms and hospitality to the poor, and wandering friars and other needy wayfarers, then so common in the land. two documents lately discovered prove joan's father to have held a position of some importance at domremy. in the one, dated , he is styled '_doyen_' (senior inhabitant) of the village, which gave him rank next to the mayor. in the other, four years later, he fills a post which tallies with what is called in scotland the procurator-fiscal. the name of the family was arc, and much ink has been shed as to the origin of that name. by some it is derived from the village of d'arc, in the barrois, now in the department of the haute marne; and this hypothesis is as good as any other. jacques d'arc had taken to wife one isabeau romée, from the village of vouthon, near domremy. isabeau is said to have had some property in her native village. the family of jacques d'arc and isabella or isabeau consisted of five children: three sons, jacquemin, jean, and pierre, and two daughters, the elder catherine, the younger jeanne, or jennette, as she was generally called in her family, whose name was to go through the ages as one of the most glorious in any land. well favoured by nature was the birthplace of joan of arc, with its woods of chestnut and of oak, then in their primeval abundance. the vine of greux, which was famous all over the country-side as far back as the fourteenth century, grew on the southern slopes of the hills about joan's birthplace. beneath these vineyards the fields were thickly clothed with rye and oats, and the meadow-lands washed by the waters of the meuse were fragrant with hay that had no rival in the country. it was in these rich fields that, after the hay-making was over, the peasants let out their cattle to graze, the number of each man's kine corresponding with the number of fields which he owned and which he had reaped. the little maid sometimes helped her father's labourers, and the idea has become general that joan of arc was a shepherdess; in reality, it was only an occasional occupation, and probably undertaken by joan out of mere good-nature, seeing that her parents were well-to-do people. all that we gather of joan's early years proves her nature to have been a compound of love and goodness. every trait recorded of the little maid's life at home which has come down to us reveals a mixture of amiability, unselfishness, and charity. from her earliest years she loved to help the weak and poor: she was known, when there was no room for the weary wayfarer to pass the night in her parents' house, to give up her bed to them, and to sleep on the floor, by the hearth. she loved her mother tenderly, and in her trial she bore witness before men to the good influence that she had derived from that parent. isabeau d'arc appears to have been a devout woman, and to have brought up her children to love work and religion. joan loved to sit by her mother's side for the hour together, spinning, and doubtless listening to the stories of wars with the hereditary enemy. when she could be of use, joan was ever ready to lend a hand to help her father or brothers in the rougher labours of coach-house, stable, or farmyard, to keep watch over the flocks as they browsed by the river-side along the meadow-lands. joan had not the defect of so many excellent but tedious women, who love talk for the mere sake of talking: she seems to have been reserved; but, as she proved later on, she was never at a loss for a word in season, and with a few words could speak volumes. from her childhood she showed an intense and ever-increasing devotion to things holy; her delight in prayer became almost a passion. she never wearied of visiting the churches in and about her native village, and she passed many an hour in a kind of rapt trance before the crucifixes and saintly images in these churches. every morning saw her at her accustomed place at the early celebration of her lord's sacrifice; and if in the afternoon the evening bells sounded across the fields, she would kneel devoutly, and commune in her heart with her divine master and adored saints. she loved above all things these evening bells, and, when it seemed to her the ringer grew negligent, would bribe him with some little gift--the worked wool from one of her sheep or some other trifle--to remind him in the future to be more instant in his office. that this little trait in joan is true, we have the testimony of the bell-ringer himself to attest. this devotion to her religious duties had not the effect of making joan less of a companion to her fellow-villagers. she could not have been so much beloved by them as she was had she held herself aloof from them: on the contrary, joan enjoyed to play with the lads and village lasses; and we hear of her swiftness of foot in the race, of her gracefulness in the village dance, either by the stream or around an old oak-tree in the forest, which was said to be the favourite haunt of the fairies. often in the midst of these sports joan would break away from her companions, and enter some church or chapel, where she placed garlands of flowers around statues of her beloved saints. thus passed away the early years of the maiden's gentle life, among her native fields, with nothing especially to distinguish her from her companions beyond her goodness and piety. a great change, however, was near at hand. the first of those mysterious and supernatural events which played so all-important a part in the life of our heroine occurred in the summer of , when joan was in her thirteenth year. in her trial at rouen, on being asked by her judges what was the first manifestation of these visions, she answered that the first indication of what she always called 'my voices' was that of st. michel. it is not a little remarkable that this vision of st. michel, the patron saint of the french army, should have taken place in the summer of , at the time of a double defeat by land and sea of the enemy of france, and when the holy mount in normandy, crowned by the chapel guarded by st. michel, was once again in the hands of the french. at the same time, joan of arc experienced some of the hardships of war when the country around domremy was overrun by the enemy; and the little household of the arcs had to fly for shelter to the neighbouring village of châteauneuf, in lorraine. i will pass somewhat rapidly over the visions, or rather revelations--for, whatever doubts one may hold as to such heavenly messengers appearing literally on this earth, no man can honestly doubt that joan believed as firmly in these unearthly visitants coming from heaven direct as she did in the existence of herself or of her parents. on the subject of these voices and visions no one has written with more sense than a distinguished prelate who was a contemporary of the heroine's--namely, thomas basin, bishop of lisieux, who, in a work relating to joan of arc, writes thus:-- 'as regards her mission, and as regards the apparitions and revelations that she affirmed having had, we leave to every one the liberty to believe as he pleases, to reject or to hold, according to his point of view or way of thinking. what is important regarding these visions is the fact that joan had herself no shadow of a doubt regarding their reality, and it was their effect upon her, and not her natural inclination, which impelled her to leave her parents and her home to undertake great perils and to endure great hardships, and, as it proved, a terrible death. it was these visions and voices, and they alone, which made her believe that she would succeed, if she obeyed them, in saving her country and in replacing her king on his throne. it was these visions and voices which finally enabled her to do those marvellous deeds, and accomplish what appeared to all the world the impossible; these voices and visions will ever be connected with joan of arc, and with her deathless fame and glory.' from the year till , the apparitions and voices were heard and seen more or less frequently. it is the year : all that remains to charles of his kingdom north of the loire, with the exception of tournay, are a pitiful half-dozen places. among these is vaucouleurs, near domremy. they are defended by a body of men under the command of a knight, robert de baudricourt, who is about to play an important part in the history of joan. in one of her visions the maid was told to seek this knight, that through his help she might be brought to the french court; for the voices had told her she might find the king and tell him her message, by which she should deliver the land from the english, and restore him to his throne. there had not been wanting legends and prophecies upon the country-side which may have impressed joan, and helped her to believe that it was her mission to deliver france. one of the prophecies was to the effect that a maiden from the borders of lorraine should save france, that this maiden would appear from a place near an oak forest. this seemed to point directly to our heroine. the old oak-tree haunted by the fairies, the neighbouring country of lorraine, were all in help of the tradition. since the betrayal of her husband's country by the wife of charles vi., another saying had been spread abroad throughout all that remained of that small portion of france still held by the french king--namely, that although france would be lost by a woman, a maiden should save it. any hope to the people in those distressful days was eagerly seized on; and although the first prophecy dated from the mythical times of merlin, it stirred the people, especially when, later on, joan of arc appeared among them, and her story became known. these prophecies appear to have struck deeply into joan's soul; they, and her voices aiding, made her believe she was the maiden by whom her country would be delivered from the presence of the enemy. but how was she to make her parents understand that it was their child who was appointed by heaven to fulfil this great deliverance? her father seems to have been a somewhat harsh, at any rate a practical, parent. when told of her intention to join the army, he said he would rather throw her into the river than allow her to do so. an attempt was made by her parents to induce her to marry. they tried their best, but joan would none of it; and bringing the case before the lawyers at toul, where she proved that she had never thought of marrying a youth whom her parents required her to wed, she gained her cause and her freedom. in order to take the first step in her mission, joan felt it necessary to rely on some one outside her immediate family. a distant relation of her mother's, one durand laxart, who with his wife lived in a little village then named burey-le-petit (now called burey-en-vaux), near vaucouleurs, was the relation in whose care she placed her fate. with him and his wife joan remained eight days; and it might have been then that the plan was arranged to hold an interview with baudricourt at vaucouleurs, in order to see whether that knight would interest himself in joan's mission. the interview took place about the middle of the month of may ( ), and nothing could have been less propitious. a soldier named bertrand de poulangy, who was one of the garrison of vaucouleurs, was an eye-witness of the meeting. he accompanied joan of arc later on to chinon, and left a record of the almost brutal manner with which baudricourt received the maid. from this soldier's narrative we possess one of the rare glimpses which have come down to us of the appearance of the heroine: not indeed a description of what would be of such intense interest as to make known to us the appearance and features of her face; but he describes her dress, which was that then worn by the better-to-do agricultural class of lorraine peasant women, made of rough red serge, the cap such as is still worn by the peasantry of her native place. it is much to be regretted that no portrait of joan of arc exists either in sculpture or painting. a life-size bronze statue which portrayed the maid kneeling on one side of a crucifix, with charles vii. opposite, forming part of a group near the old bridge of orleans, was destroyed by the huguenots; and all the portraits of joan painted in oils are spurious. none are earlier than the sixteenth century, and all are mere imaginary daubs. in most of these joan figures in a hat and feathers, of the style worn in the court of francis i. from various contemporary notices, it appears that her hair was dark in colour, as in bastien lepage's celebrated picture, which supplies as good an idea of what joan may have been as any pictured representation of her form and face. would that the frescoes which montaigne describes as being painted on the front of the house upon the site of which joan was born could have come down to us. they might have given some conception of her appearance. montaigne saw those frescoes on his way to italy, and says that all the front of the house was painted with representations of her deeds, but even in his day they were much injured. when joan at length stood before the knight of vaucouleurs, she told him boldly that she had come to him by god's command, and that she was destined to give the king victory over the english. she even said that she was assured that early in the following march this would be accomplished, and that the dauphin would then be crowned at rheims, for all these things had been promised to her through her lord. 'and who is he?' asked de baudricourt. 'he is the king of heaven,' she answered. the knight treated joan's words with derision, and joan herself with insults; and thus ended the first of their interviews. it was only in the season of lent of the next year (march ) that joan again sought the aid of de baudricourt. on the plea of attending her cousin laxart's wife's confinement, joan returned to burey-le-petit. she left domremy without bidding her parents farewell; but it has been recorded by one of her friends, named mengeth, a neighbour of the d'arcs, that she told this woman of her intention of going to vaucouleurs, and recommended her to god's keeping, as if she felt that she would not see her again. at burey-le-petit joan remained between the end of january until her departure for chinon, on the rd of february; and before taking final leave she asked and received her parents' pardon for her abrupt departure from them. while with the laxarts, news reached vaucouleurs that the english had commenced the siege of orleans. this intelligence brought matters to a crisis, for with the loss of orleans the whole of what remained to the french king must fall into the hands of the enemy, and france felt her last hour of independence had come. joan determined on again seeking an interview with robert de baudricourt, and this second meeting between her and the knight, which took place six months after the first, had far happier results. as m. simeon luce has pointed out in his history of 'jeanne d'arc at domremy,' the situation both of charles vi. and of the knight of vaucouleurs was far different in to what it had been when joan first saw de baudricourt at vaucouleurs in the previous year. the most important stronghold held by the french in their ever-lessening territory was in utmost danger of falling into the grasp of the english; while de baudricourt was anxiously waiting to hear whether his protector, the duc de bar, whom bedford had summoned to enter into a treaty with the english, would not be prevailed upon to do so. if he consented, this would make the knight's tenure of vaucouleurs impracticable. it was probably owing to this state of affairs that, on her second interview with the knight of vaucouleurs, joan of arc was favourably received by him. since the first visit to de baudricourt by the maid of domremy, her name had become familiar to many of the people in and about vaucouleurs. an officer named jean de metz has left some record of his meeting at this time with joan; for he was afterwards examined among other witnesses at the time of the maid's rehabilitation in . de metz describes the maid as being clothed in a dress of coarse red serge, the same as she wore on her first visit to vaucouleurs. when he questioned her as to what she expected to gain by coming again to vaucouleurs, she answered that she had returned to induce robert de baudricourt to conduct her to the king; but that on her first visit he was deaf to her entreaties and prayers. but, she added, she was still determined to appear before charles, even if she had to go to him all the way on her knees. 'for i alone,' she added, 'and no other person, whether he be king, or duke, or daughter of the king of scots' (alluding to the future wife of charles vii.'s son, louis xi.--margaret of scotland) 'can recover the kingdom of france.' as far as her own wishes were concerned, she said she would prefer to return to her home, and to spin again by the side of her beloved mother; for, she added: 'i am not made to follow the career of a soldier; but i must go and carry out this my calling, for my lord has appointed me to do so.' 'and who,' asked de metz, 'is your lord?' 'my lord,' answered the maid, 'is god himself.' the enthusiasm of joan seems to have at once gained the soldier's heart. he took her by the hand, and swore that god willing he would accompany her to the king. when asked how soon she would be ready to start, she said that she was ready. 'better to-day than to-morrow, and better to-morrow than later on.' during her second visit to vaucouleurs, joan remained with the same friends as on her former visit; they appear to have been an honest couple, of the name of le royer. one day while joan was helping in the domestic work of her hosts, and seated by the side of catherine le royer, robert de baudricourt suddenly entered the room, accompanied by a priest, one jean fournier, in full canonicals. it appeared that the knight had conceived the brilliant idea of finding out, through the assistance of the holy man, whether joan was under the influence of good or evil spirits, before allowing her to go to the king's court. as may be imagined, joan received the priest with all respect, kneeling before him; and the good father was soon able to reassure de baudricourt that the evil spirits had no part or parcel in the heart of the maid who received him with so much humility. [illustration: chinon.] for three weeks joan was left in suspense at vaucouleurs, and probably it was not until a messenger had been sent to chinon and had returned with a favourable answer, that at length de baudricourt gave a somewhat unwilling consent to joan's leaving vaucouleurs on her mission to chinon. during those weary weeks of anxious waiting, joan's hostess bore witness in after days to the manner in which the time was passed: of how she would help catherine in her spinning and other homely work, but, as when at home, her chief delight was to attend the church services, and she would often remain to confession, after the early communion in the church. the chapel in which she worshipped was not the parochial church of vaucouleurs, but was attached to the castle, and it still exists. in that castle chapel, and in a subterranean crypt beneath the collegiate church of notre dame de vaucouleurs, joan passed much of her time. seven and twenty years after these events, one jean le fumeux, at that time a chorister of the chapel, a lad of eleven, bore witness, at the trial in which the memory of joan was vindicated, to having often seen her kneeling before an image of the virgin. this image, a battered and rude one, still exists. nothing less artistic can be imagined; but no one, be his religious views what they may, be his abhorrence of mariolatry as strong as that of a calvinist, if he have a grain of sympathy in his nature for what is glorious in patriotism and sublime in devotion, can look on that battered and broken figure without a feeling deeper than one of ordinary curiosity. a short time before leaving vaucouleurs, joan made a visit into lorraine--a visit which proved how early her fame had spread abroad. the then reigning duke of that province, charles ii. of lorraine, an aged and superstitious prince, had heard of the mystic maid of domremy, and he had expressed his wish to see her, probably thinking that she might afford him relief from the infirmities from which he suffered. whatever the reason may have been, he sent her an urgent request to visit him, a message with which joan at once complied. accompanied by jean de metz, joan went to toul, and thence with her cousin, durand laxart, she proceeded to nancy. little is known of her deeds while there. she visited duke charles, and gave him some advice as to how he should regain his character more than his health, over which she said she had no control. the old duke appears to have been rather a reprobate, but whether he profited by joan's advice does not appear. possibly this rather vague visit of the maid's to nancy was undertaken as a kind of test as to how she would comport herself among dukes and princes. that she showed most perfect modesty of bearing under somewhat difficult circumstances seems to have struck those who were with her at nancy. she also showed practical sagacity; for she advised duke charles to give active support to the french king, and persuaded him to allow his son-in-law, young rené of anjou, duke of bar, to enter the ranks of the king's army, and even to allow him to accompany her to the court at chinon. by this she bound the more than lukewarm duke of lorraine to exert all his influence on the side of king charles. before leaving nancy on her return to vaucouleurs, joan visited a famous shrine, not far from the capital, dedicated to st. nicolas, after which she hastened back to vaucouleurs to make ready for an immediate start for chinon. joan's equipment for her journey to chinon was subscribed for by the people of vaucouleurs; for among the common folk there, as wherever she was known, her popularity was great. she seems to have won in every instance the hearts of the good simple peasantry, the poorer classes in general, called by a saintly king of france the 'common people of our lord,' who believed in her long before others of the higher classes and the patricians were persuaded to put any faith in her. to the peasantry joan was already the maiden pointed out in the old prophecy then known all over france, which said that the country would be first lost by a woman and then recovered by a maiden hailing from lorraine. the former was believed to be the queen-mother, who had sided with the english; joan, the maid out of lorraine who should save france, and by whose arm the english would be driven out of the country. clad in a semi-male attire, composed of a tight-fitting doublet of dark cloth and tunic reaching to the knees, high leggings and spurred boots, with a black cap on her head, and a hauberk, the maid was armed with lance and sword, the latter the gift of de baudricourt. her good friends of vaucouleurs had also subscribed for a horse. thus completely equipped, she prepared for war, ready for her eventful voyage. her escort consisted of a knight named colet de vienne, accompanied by his squire, one richard l'archer, two men-at-arms from vaucouleurs, and the two knights bertrand de poulangy and jean de metz--eight men in all, well armed and well mounted, and thoroughly prepared to defend their charge should the occasion arise. nor were precautions and means of repelling an attack unnecessary, for at this time the country around vaucouleurs was infested by roving bands of soldiers belonging to the anglo-burgundian party. especially dangerous was that stretch of country lying between vaucouleurs and joinville, the first of the many stages on the way to chinon. although the knights and men of the small expedition were not without apprehension, joan seems to have shown no sign of fear: calm and cheerful, she said that, being under the protection of heaven, they had nothing to fear, for that no evil could befall her. there still exists the narrow gate of the old castle of vaucouleurs through which that little band rode out into the night; hard by is the small subterranean chapel, now under repair, where joan had passed so many hours of her weary weeks of waiting at vaucouleurs. the old gate is still called the french gate, as it was in the days of the maid. [illustration: street in chinon.] it was the evening of the rd of february, , that the little band rode away into the open country on their perilous journey. joan, besides adopting a military attire, had trimmed her dark hair close, as it was then the fashion of knights to do--cut round above the ears. even this harmless act was later brought as an accusation against her. joan was then in her seventeenth year, and, although nothing but tradition has reached us of her looks and outward form, it is not difficult to imagine her as she rides out of that old gate, a comely maid, with a frank, brave countenance, lit up by the flame of an intense enthusiasm for her country and people. there can be no doubt that by her companions in arms--rough soldiers though most of them were--she was held in veneration; they bore testimony to their feelings by a kind of adoration for one who seemed indeed to them more than mortal. wherever joan appeared, this feeling of veneration spread rapidly through the length and breadth of the land; and the people were wont to speak of the future saviour of france, not by the name of joan the maid, or joan of arc, but as the angelic one--'l'angélique.' among the crowd who gathered to see joan depart was de baudricourt, who then made amends for his rudeness and churlish behaviour on her first visit by presenting her with his own sword, and bidding her heartily god-speed. '_advienne que pourra!_' was his parting salute. the journey between vaucouleurs and chinon occupied eleven days. not only was the danger of attack from the english and burgundian soldiers a great and a constant one, but the winter, which had been exceptionally wet, had flooded all the rivers. five of these had to be crossed--namely, the marne, the aube, the seine, the yonne, and the loire: and most of the bridges and fords of these rivers were strictly guarded by the enemy. the little band, for greater security, mostly travelled during the night. their first halt was made at the monastery of saint-urbain-les-joinville. the celibat of this monastery was named arnoult d'aunoy, and was a relative of de baudricourt. after leaving that shelter they had to camp out in the open country. joan's chief anxiety was that she might be able to attend mass every day. 'if we are able to attend the service of the church, all will be well,' she said to her escort. the soldiers only twice allowed her the opportunity of doing so, on one occasion in the principal church of the town of auxerre. they crossed the loire at gien; and at that place, in the church dedicated to one of joan's special saints--st. catherine, for whom she held a personal adoration--she thrice attended mass. when the little band entered touraine, they were out of danger, and here the news of the approach of the maid spread like wildfire over the country-side. even the besieged burghers of orleans learned that the time of their delivery from the english was at hand. perhaps it was when passing through fierbois that joan may have been told of the existence in its church of the sword which so conspicuously figured in her later story, and was believed to have been miraculously revealed to her. a letter was despatched from fierbois to charles at chinon, announcing the maid's approach, and craving an audience. at length, on the th of march, joan of arc arrived beneath the long stretch of castle walls of the splendid old castle of chinon. that imposing ruin on the banks of the river vienne is even in its present abandoned state one of the grandest piles of mediæval building in the whole of france. crowning the rich vale of touraine, with the river winding below, and reflecting its castle towers in the still water, this time-honoured home of our plantagenet kings has been not inaptly compared to windsor. beneath the castle walls and the river, nestles the quaint old town, in which are mediæval houses once inhabited by the court and followers of the french and english kings. when joan arrived at chinon, charles's affairs were in a very perilous state. the yet uncrowned king of france regarded the chances of being able to hold his own in france as highly problematical. he had doubts as to his legitimacy. financially, so low were his affairs that even the turnspits in the palace were clamouring for their unpaid wages. the unfortunate monarch had already sold his jewels and precious trinkets. even his clothes showed signs of poverty and patching, and to such a state of penury was he reduced that his bootmaker, finding that the king was unable to pay him the price of a new pair of boots, and not trusting the royal credit, refused to leave the new boots, and charles had to wear out his old shoe-leather. all that remained in the way of money in the royal chest consisted of four gold 'écus.' to such a pitch of distress had the poor king, who was contemptuously called by the english the king of bourges, sunken. now that orleans was in daily peril of falling into the hands of the english, and with paris and rouen in their hold, the wretched sovereign had serious thoughts of leaving his ever-narrowing territory and taking refuge either in spain or in scotland. up to this time in his life charles had shown little strength of character. his existence was passed among a set of idle courtiers. he had placed himself and his broken fortunes in the hands of the ambitious la tremoïlle, whose object it was that the king should be a mere cipher in his hands, and who lulled him into a false security by encouraging him to continue a listless career of self-indulgence in his various palaces and pleasure castles on the banks of the loire. charles had, indeed, become a mere tool in the hands of this powerful minister. the historian quicherat has summed up george de la tremoïlle's character as an avaricious courtier, false and despotic, with sufficient talent to make a name and a fortune by being a traitor to every side. that such a man did not see joan of arc's arrival with a favourable eye is not a matter of surprise, and la tremoïlle seems early to have done his utmost to undermine the maid's influence with his sovereign. from the day she arrived at chinon, if not even before her arrival there--if we may trust one story--an ambush was arranged by tremoïlle to cut her off with her escort. that plot failed, but her capture at compiègne may be indirectly traced to la tremoïlle's machinations. those who have visited chinon will recall the ancient and picturesque street, named la haute rue saint maurice, which runs beneath and parallel with the castle walls and the vienne. local tradition pointed out till very recently, in this old street, the stone well on the side of which the maid of domremy placed her foot on her arrival in the town. this ancient well stone has recently been removed by the municipality of chinon, but fortunately the 'margelle' (to use the native term) has come into reverent hands, and the stone, with its deeply dented border, reminding one of the artistic wells in venice, is religiously preserved. of chinon it has been said: chynon, petit ville, grande renom. its renown dates back from the early days of our plantagenets, when they lived in the old fortress above its dwellings: how henry iii. died of a broken heart, and the fame of rabelais, will ever be associated with the ancient castle and town. still, the deathless interest of chinon is owing to the residence of the maid of domremy--as one has a better right to call her than of orleans--in those early days of her short career, in its burgh and castle. in or near the street la haute rue saint maurice, hard by a square which now bears the name of the heroine, joan of arc arrived at noon on sunday, the th of march. it would be interesting to know in which of the old gabled houses joan resided during the two days before she was admitted to enter the castle. local tradition reports that she dwelt with a good housewife ('_chez une bonne femme_'). according to a contemporary plan of chinon, dated , a house which belonged to a family named la barre was where she lodged; and although the actual house of the la barres cannot be identified, there are many houses in the street of saint maurice old enough to have witnessed the advent of the maid on that memorable sunday in the month of march . few french towns are so rich in the domestic architecture of the better kind dating from the early part of the fifteenth century as that of chinon; and now that rouen, orleans, and poitiers have been so terribly modernised, a journey to chinon well repays the trouble. little imagination is required to picture the street with its crowd of courtiers and court hangers-on, upon their way to and from the castle above; so mercifully have time and that far greater destroyer of things of yore dealt with this old thoroughfare. two days elapsed before joan was admitted to the presence of the king. a council had been summoned in the castle to determine whether the maid should be received by the monarch. the testimony of the knights who had accompanied the maid from vaucouleurs carried the day in her favour. while waiting to see the king, we have from joan's own lips a description of how her time was passed. 'i was constantly at prayers in order that god should send the king a sign. i was lodging with a good woman when that sign was given him, and then i was summoned to the king.' the church in which she passed her time in prayer was doubtless that of saint maurice, close by the place at which she lodged. it owed its origin to henry ii. of england; it is a rare and beautiful little building of good norman architecture, but much defaced by modern restoration. its age is marked by the depth at which its pavement stands, the ground rising many feet above its present level. a reliable account of joan of arc's interview with king charles has come down to us, as have so many other facts in her life's history, through the witnesses examined at the time of the heroine's rehabilitation. foremost among these is the testimony of a priest named pasquerel, who was soon to become joan's almoner, and to accompany her in her warfare. he tells how, when joan was on her road to enter the castle, a soldier used some coarse language as he saw the young maid pass by--some rude remark which the fellow qualified with an oath. turning to him, the maid rebuked him for blaspheming, and added that he had denied his god at the very moment in which he would be summoned before his judge, for that within an hour he would appear before the heavenly throne. the soldier was drowned within the hour. at least such is the tale as told by priest pasquerel. the castle was shrouded in outer darkness, but brilliantly lit within, as joan entered its gates. the king's chamberlain, the comte de vendôme, received the maid at the entrance of the royal apartments, and ushered her into the great gallery, of which fragments still exist--a blasted fireplace, and sufficient remains of the original stone-work to prove that this hall was the principal apartment in the palace. flambeaux and torches glowed from the roof and from the sides of this hall, and here the court had assembled, half amused, half serious, as to the arrival of the peasant girl, about whom there had been so much strange gossip stirring. now the grass grows in wild luxuriance over the pavement, and the ivy clings to the old walls of that noble room, in which, perhaps, the most noteworthy of all recorded meetings between king and subject then took place. a score of torches held by pages lit the sides of the chamber. before these were ranged the knights and ladies, the latter clothed in the fantastically rich costume of that time, with high erections on their heads, from which floated long festoons of cloth, and glittering with the emblems of their families on their storied robes. the king, in order to test the divination of the maid, had purposely clad himself in common garb, and had withdrawn himself behind his more brilliantly attired courtiers. ascending the flight of eighteen steps which led into the hall, and following vendôme, joan passed across the threshold of the hall, and, without a moment's hesitation singling out the king at the end of the gallery, walked to within a few paces of him, and falling on her knees before him--'the length of a lance,' as one of the spectators recorded--said, 'god give you good life, noble king!' ('_dieu vous donne bonne vie, gentil roi_'). 'but,' said charles, 'i am not the king. this,' pointing to one of his courtiers, 'is the king.' joan, however, was not to be hoodwinked, and, finding that in spite of his subterfuges he was known, charles acknowledged his identity, and entered at once with joan on the subject of her mission. [illustration: hall of audience--chinon] it appears, from all the accounts which have come to us of this interview, that charles was at first somewhat loth to take joan and her mission seriously. he appears to have treated the maid as a mere visionary; but after an interview which the king gave her apart from the crowded gallery, when she is supposed to have revealed to him a secret known only to himself, his whole manner changed, and from that moment joan exercised a strong influence over the man, all-vacillating as was his character. it has never been known what words actually passed in this private interview between the pair, but the subject probably was connected with a doubt that had long tortured the mind of the king--namely, whether he were legitimately the heir to the late king's throne. at any rate the impression joan had produced on the king was, after that conversation, a favourable one, and charles commanded that, instead of returning to her lodging in the town, joan should be lodged in the castle. the tower which she occupied still exists--one of the large circular towers on the third line of the fortifications. a gloomy-looking cryptal room on the ground floor was probably the one occupied by joan. it goes by the name of belier's tower--a knight whose wife, anne de maille, bore a reputation for great goodness among the people of the court. close to belier's tower is a chapel within another part of the castle grounds, but the church which in those days stood hard by joan's tower has long since disappeared--its site is now a mass of wild foliage. while joan was at chinon, there arrived, from his three years' imprisonment in england, the young duke of anjou. of all those who were attached to the court and related to the french sovereign, this young prince was the most sympathetic to joan of arc. he seems to have fulfilled the character of some hero of romance more than any of the french princes of that time, and joan at once found in him a chivalrous ally and a firm friend. that she admired him we cannot doubt, and she loved to call him her knight. hurrying to chinon, having heard of the maid of domremy's arrival, he found joan with the king. her enthusiasm was contagious with the young prince, who declared how eagerly he would help her in her enterprise. 'the more there are of the blood royal of france to help in our enterprise the better,' answered joan. many obstacles had still to be met before the king accorded liberty of action to the maid. la tremoïlle and others of his stamp threw all the difficulties they could suggest in the way of joan of arc's expedition to deliver orleans: these men preferred their easy life at chinon to the arbitrament of battle. in vain joan sought the king and pressed him to come to a decision: one day he said he would consent to her progress, and the following he refused to give his consent. he listened to the maid, but also to the courtiers, priests, and lawyers, and among so many counsellors he could come to no determination. joan during these days trained herself to the vocation which her career compelled her to follow. we hear of her on one occasion surprising the king and the court by the dexterity with which she rode and tilted with a lance. from the young duke of alençon she received the gift of a horse; and the king carried out on a large scale what de baudricourt had done on a small one, by making her a gift of arms and accoutrements. before, however, deciding to entrust the fate of hostilities into the hands of the maid, it was decided that the advice and counsel of the prelates assembled at poitiers should be taken. it was in the great hall of that town that the french parliament held its conferences. the moment was critical, for should the decision of these churchmen be favourable to joan, then charles could no longer have any scruples in making use of her abilities, and of profiting by her influence. it was, therefore, determined that joan should be examined by the parliament and clergy assembled at poitiers. the king in person accompanied the maid to the parliament. the majestic hall, which still calls forth the admiration of all travellers at poitiers, is little changed in its appearance since the time of that memorable event. it is one of the noblest specimens of domestic architecture in france: its graceful pillars and arched roof, and immense fireplace, remain as they were in the early days of the fifteenth century. of the proceedings of that examination unfortunately no complete report exists. within a tower connected with the parliament hall is still pointed out a little chamber, said to have been occupied by the maid while undergoing this, the first of her judicial and clerical examinations. but later investigations point to her having been lodged in a house within the town belonging to the family of the parliamentary advocate-general, maître jean rabuteau. it must have been a solemn moment for joan when summoned for the first time into the presence of the court of bishops, judges, and lawyers, whom charles had gathered together to examine her on her visions and on her mission. the orders had been sent out by the king and the archbishop of rheims; gerard machot, the bishop of castres and the king's confessor; simon bonnet, afterwards bishop of senlis; and the bishops of macquelonne and of poitiers. among the lesser dignitaries of the church was present a dominican monk, named sequier, whose account of the proceedings, and the notes kept by gobert thibault, an equerry of the king, are the only records of the examination extant. the scantiness of these accounts is all the more to be regretted, inasmuch as joan frequently referred to the questions made to her, and her answers, at this trial at poitiers, during her trial at rouen; and they would probably have thrown much light on the obscure passages of her early years, for at poitiers she had not to guard against hostile inquisition, and, doubtless, gave her questioners a full and free record of her past life. [illustration: tour d'horloge--chinon.] the first conference between these prelates, lawyers, and joan lasted two hours. at first they appeared to doubt the maid, but her frank and straightforward answers to all the questions put her impressed them with the truth of her character. they were, according to the old chronicles, 'grandement ebahis comme une ce simple bergère jeune fille pouvait ainsi repondre.' one of her examiners, jean lombard by name, a professor of theology from the university of paris, in asking joan what had induced her to visit the king, was told she had been encouraged so to do by 'her voices'--those voices which had taught her the great pity felt by her for the land of france; that although at first she had hesitated to obey them, they became ever more urgent, and commanded her to go. 'and, joan,' then asked a doctor of theology named william aymeri, 'why do you require soldiers, if you tell us that it is god's will that the english shall be driven out of france? if that is the case, then there is no need of soldiers, for surely, if it be god's will that the enemy should fly the country, go they must!' to which joan answered: 'the soldiers will do the fighting, and god will give the victory!' sequier, whose account of the proceedings has come down to us, then asked joan in what language the saints addressed her. 'in a better one than yours,' she answered. now brother sequier, although a doctor of theology, had a strong and disagreeable accent which he had brought from his native town of limoges, and, doubtless, the other clerks and priests tittered not a little at joan's answer. sequier appears to have been somewhat irritated, and sharply asked joan whether she believed in god. 'better than you do,' was the reply; but sequier, who is described as a 'bien aigre homme,' was not yet satisfied, and returned to the charge. like the pharisees, he wished for a sign, and he declared that he for one could not believe in the sacred mission of the maid, did she not show them all a sign, nor without such a sign could he advise the king to place any one in peril, merely on the strength of joan's declaration and word. to this joan said that she had not come to poitiers to show signs, but she added:-- 'let me go to orleans, and there you will be able to judge by the signs i shall show wherefore i have been sent on this mission. let the force of soldiers with me be as small as you choose; but to orleans i must go!' for three weeks did these conferences last. nothing was neglected to discover every detail regarding joan's life: of her childhood, of her family and her friends. and one of the council visited domremy to ferret out all the details that could be got at. needless to say, all that he heard only redounded to the maid's credit; nothing transpired which was not honourable to the maid's character and way of life, and in keeping with the testimony jean de metz and poulangy had given the king at chinon. one day she said to one of the council, pierre de versailles, 'i believe you have come to put questions to me, and although i know not a or b, what i do know is that i am sent by the king of heaven to raise the siege of orleans, and to conduct the king to rheims, in order that he shall be there anointed and crowned.' on another occasion she addressed the following words in a letter which john erault took down from her dictation--to write she knew not--to the english commanders before orleans: 'in the name of the king of heaven i command you, suffolk [spelt in the missive suffort], scales [classidas], and pole [la poule], to return to england.' one sees by the above missive that the french spelling of english names was about as correct in the fifteenth as it is in the nineteenth century. what stirred the curiosity of joan's examiners was to try and discover whether her reported visions and her voices were from heaven or not. this was the crucial question over which these churchmen and lawyers puzzled their brains during those three weeks of the blithe spring-tide at poitiers. how were they to arrive at a certain knowledge regarding those mystic portents? all the armoury of theological knowledge accumulated by the doctors of the church was made use of; but this availed less than the simple answers of joan in bringing conviction to these puzzled pundits that her call was a heavenly one. when they produced piles of theological books and parchments, joan simply said: 'god's books are to me more than all these.' when at length it was officially notified that the parliament approved and sanctioned the mission of the maid, and that nothing against her had appeared which could in any way detract from the faith she professed to follow out her mission of deliverance, the rejoicing in the good town of poitiers was extreme. the glad news spread rapidly over the country, and fluttered the hearts of the besieged within the walls of orleans. the cry was, 'when will the angelic one arrive?' the brave dunois--bastard of orleans--in command of the french in that city, had ere this sent two knights, villars and jamet de tilloy, to hear all details about the maid, whose advent was so eagerly looked forward to. these messengers of dunois had seen and spoken with joan, and on their return to orleans dunois allowed them to tell the citizens their impressions of the maid. those people at orleans were now as enthusiastic about the deliverance as the inhabitants at poitiers, who had seen her daily for three weeks in their midst. all who had been admitted to her presence left her with tears of joy and devotion; her simple and modest behaviour, blended with her splendid enthusiasm, won every heart. her manner and modesty, and the gay brightness of her answers, had also won the suffrage of the priests and lawyers, and the military were as much delighted as surprised at her good sense when the talk fell on subjects relating to their trade. it was on or about the th of april that joan of arc left poitiers and proceeded to tours. the king had now appointed a military establishment to accompany her; and her two younger brothers, john and peter, had joined her. the faithful john de metz and bertrand de poulangy were also at her side. the king had selected as her esquire john d'aulon; besides this she was followed by two noble pages, louis de contes and raimond. there were also some men-at-arms and a couple of heralds. a priest accompanied the little band, brother john pasquerel, who was also joan's almoner. the king had furthermore made joan a gift of a complete suit of armour, and the royal purse had armed her retainers. during her stay at poitiers joan prepared her standard, on which were emblazoned the lilies of france, in gold on a white ground. on one side of the standard was a painting representing the almighty seated in the heavens, in one hand bearing a globe, flanked by two kneeling angels, each holding a fleur-de-lis. besides this standard, which joan greatly prized, she had had a smaller banner made, with the annunciation painted on it. this standard was triangular in form; and, in addition to those mentioned, she had a banneret on which was represented the crucifixion. these three flags or pennons were all symbolic of the maid's mission: the large one was to be used on the field of battle and for general command; the smaller, to rally, in case of need, her followers around her; and probably she herself bore one of the smaller pennons. the names 'jesu' and 'maria' were inscribed in large golden letters on all the flags. the national royal standard of france till this period had been a dark blue, and it is not unlikely that the awe and veneration which these white flags of the maid, with their sacred pictures on them, was the reason of the later french kings adopting the white ground as their characteristic colour on military banners. joan never made use of her sword, and bore one of the smaller banners into the fight. she declared she would never use her sword, although she attached a deep importance to it. 'my banner,' she declared, 'i love forty times as much as my sword!' and yet the sword which she obtained from the altar at fierbois was in her eyes a sacred weapon. chapter ii. _the delivery of orleans._ it will be now necessary to go back in our story to the commencement of the siege by the english of the town of orleans, in order to understand the work which joan of arc had promised to accomplish. orleans was the place of the utmost importance; not merely as being the second city in france, but as forming the 'tête du pont' for the passage of the river loire. the french knew that were it to fall into the hands of the english the whole of france would soon become subject to the enemy. the town was strongly fortified; huge towers of immense thickness, and three stories in height, surrounded by deep and wide moats, encircled the city. the only bridge then in existence was also strongly defended with towers, called 'les tournelles,' while at the end of the town side of the bridge were large 'bastilles,' powerful fortresses which dated from the year , when henry v. threatened orleans after his triumphal march through normandy. in the orleanists defied the victor of agincourt: again they were in the agony of a desperate defence against their invaders, ready to sustain all the horrors of a siege. equally keen and determined were the english leaders to take orleans, which they rightly considered as the key of what remained unconquered to them in france. both countries looked anxiously on as the siege progressed. salisbury commanded the english; he had been up to this point successful in taking all the places of importance in the neighbourhood of orleans, and that portion of the valley of the loire was commanded by his forces, both above and below orleans. on the approach of the enemy, the inhabitants of orleans turned out to strengthen the outer fortifications, and to place cannon and catapults on the walls and ramparts. the priests on this occasion worked as hard as the other citizens, and even the women and children helped with a will. besides dunois, who commanded the besieged garrison, was raoul de gaucourt, who had defended harfleur in ; he had but recently returned from imprisonment in england, and was burning to avenge his captivity. la hire, xaintrailles, coulant, coaraze, and armagnac were among the defenders of orleans. many gascons belonging to the marshal-saint sévère and soldiers from brittany helped to swell the forces of the besieged. it was on the th day of october ( ) that salisbury crossed the loire and established his besieging force at the village of portereau, in front of the strongly defended bridge. in the meanwhile the besieged had razed the houses and the convent of st. augustin, in order to prevent the enemy from entrenching themselves so near the city gates. salisbury, however, threw up fortifications on the site of st. augustin's, and placed a battery of guns opposite to the bridge and its 'bastilles,' whence he was able to bombard the town with huge stones. the english also placed mines below the bridge and the fortresses of the tournelles. on the st, an assault was made on the bridge and its defences, which was vigorously repulsed; the whole population were in arms, and manned the walls; the women fought by the side of their husbands and brothers. after a severe fight of four hours, the besiegers were forced to withdraw. the tournelles were now mined and counter-mined, and were soon found to be untenable. the besieged then abandoned this fortification, and retired further back towards the centre of the bridge, which, as well as its approaches, was defended by towers. part of the bridge on the side near the english was blown up, and a drawbridge, which could be raised or lowered at pleasure, was thrown across the open space. salisbury was satisfied with the result of that day's fighting, for he knew that, once he had the command of the northern side of the tower, he could take it when necessary from that quarter. what he aimed at for the present was to prevent all communication between the town and the south of france. holding the bridge, he could prevent relief from coming to the city, and when the moment arrived he would be able to throw his men with certain success upon it from the northern side. the evening of the day in which he had made so successful an attack, salisbury mounted into the tournelles in order to inspect thence the city which lay beneath him. while gazing on it, a stray cannon shot struck him on the face; he was carried, mortally wounded, from the place. that fatal shot was said to have been fired by a lad, who, finding a loaded cannon on the ramparts, had discharged it. for the english, it was the deadliest shot of the whole war. readers of shakespeare will remember that, in the first part of _henry vi._, the master gunner (no doubt that very 'maître jean' whose fame was great in the besieged town) and his boy are introduced on the scene, and that the boy fires the shot which proved fatal both to salisbury and sir thomas gargrave. the prominent place given to this french master gunner in the english play shows what a high reputation maître jean must have had, even among the english, at the siege. salisbury's death, occurring a few days after he received the wound, caused the siege to languish. glansdale succeeded salisbury in the command; but it was not until the doughty talbot and lord scales appeared on the scene that siege operations recommenced with vigour. the great pounding match then began again; the huge stone shot of the english, which weighed one hundred and sixty-four livres, came tumbling about the heads of the besieged, to which cannonade the french promptly replied by a heavy fire. they had a kind of bomb, of which they were not a little proud, wherefrom they fired iron shot of one hundred and twenty livres in weight. the master of gunners of shakespeare's play, whose name was john de monsteschère, made also extraordinary practice with his culverin; and he could pick off marked men in the tournelles, as, for the misfortune of the english, had been proved in the case of salisbury. at times master john would sham dead, and, just as the english were congratulating themselves on his demise, would reappear, and again use his culverin with deadly effect. on the last day but one of the year ( ), the english had been reinforced, and were now commanded by william de la pole, earl, and afterwards duke of suffolk, under whose command acted suffolk's brother, john de la pole, lord scales, and lancelot de lisle. in order to maintain touch with his troops posted at the tournelles, suffolk threw up flanking batteries on the northern side of the town. to suffolk's already large force sir john fastolfe brought a force of twelve hundred men, in the month of january ( ). the number of troops mustered by the besieged and besiegers was as follows:-- on the side of the english, there were quartered at the tournelles five hundred men, under the command of glansdale; three hundred under talbot; twelve hundred with fastolfe. including those who had come with suffolk at the commencement of the siege, the english force amounted to four thousand five hundred men. on the side of the besieged, excluding the armed citizens, who were from three to four thousand strong, was a garrison numbering between six and seven hundred men; also some thousand soldiers had been thrown into the city between the middle of october and the january following. both in strength of position, and as regards the number of their troops, the french had the advantage. the comparative weakness of the english force--which, all told, could only count about four thousand men to carry on the siege--is to be accounted for by the garrisons which were left in the conquered places over the north and south of the country. the siege was weakly conducted during the winter--a series of skirmishes from the bastilles or towers thrown up by the besiegers led to little result on either side; and it was not till the month of february that a decisive engagement took place. near rouvray a battle was fought, which is known by the singular appellation of the battle of the herrings, from the circumstance that, at that lenten season, a huge convoy of fish was being taken from the coast to paris. in the fight, the fish-laden barrels were overthrown, and their contents scattered over the field; whence the name of the battle of the herrings. during this engagement, in which the french were defeated, fell, on the side of the french, two noble scots--john stuart, the constable of scotland, and his brother william. after this action, the position of the besieged in orleans became more perilous, and the citizens, despairing of help coming to them from charles, were inclined to call in aid from the duke of burgundy. the east, north, and west of the city were covered by the bastilles or huge towers which the besiegers had thrown up, and from which they could bombard the place; and the pressure on the devoted city waxed ever stronger. by the month of april, orleans was girdled by a chain of fortresses, from which the cannonade was incessant. the english gave names of french towns to these huge towers which threatened orleans on every side; one they named paris, another rouen, and one other they called london. the thirty thousand men, women, and children within the city walls were now beginning to suffer from the horrors of a long siege. in the town disturbances broke out, and the cry of treachery was heard--that sure precursor of the fears of the strong that the hardships of the siege would undermine the patriotism of their weaker citizens. but when things seemed at their worst, succour was near at hand. during those winter months the queen-mother, who had warmly interested herself in joan of arc's mission, had, in the castle of blois, been collecting troops and securing the services of some notable officers, including the duke of alençon. towards the end of april joan arrived at blois from poitiers, accompanied by the archbishop of rheims, regnault de chartres. on the th of april she left blois on her first warlike expedition. no certain account of the numbers of troops which accompanied the maid has been kept. monstrelet gives the numbers at seven thousand; but joan, during her trial, asserted that she had between ten and twelve thousand men committed to her charge by the king. joan's historian, m. wallon, points out that this may be an incorrect entry made in the interest of the english at the trial, as they naturally would wish the relieving force to appear as large as possible. it has even been placed as low as three thousand. among the officers who accompanied the maid was a gascon knight, named la hire, half freebooter, half condottiere, a brave and reckless soldier, of whom it is recorded that, before making a raid, he would offer up the following prayer:-- 'i pray my god to do for la hire what la hire would do for him, if he were captain and la hire was god.' from having been a mighty swearer, owing to joan of arc's influence la hire broke off this habit, but, in order to give him some scope for venting his temper, joan allowed him to swear by his stick. these are but trivial details: still, they are of interest as showing what influence a simple village maiden like joan was able to exert on those who, from their position and habits of life, might have been thought to be the last to tolerate such interference. so changed, it is said, had this rough warrior, la hire, and many of his fellow-soldiers become in their habits while with the maid, that they were happy to be able to kneel by the side of the sainted maiden and partake in her lord's sacrament of the eucharist; and then to confess themselves to her good father confessor, peton de xaintrailles, the marshal de boussac, and the seigneur de rais. joan had the following letter despatched to the duke of bedford:-- 'in the name of jesus and mary--you, king of england; and you, duke of bedford [bethfort], who call yourself regent of france; you, william de la pole; you, earl of suffolk; you, john lord talbot [thalebot]; and you, thomas lord scales, who call yourselves lieutenants of the said bedford, in the name of the king of heaven, render the keys of all the good towns which you have taken and violated in france, to the maid sent hither by the king of heaven. she is ready to make peace if you will consent to return and to pay for what you have taken. and all of you, soldiers, and archers, and men-at-arms, now before orleans, return to your country, in god's name. if this is not done, king of england, i, as a leader in war, whenever i shall meet with your people in france, will oblige them to go whether they be willing or not; and if they go not, they will perish; but if they will depart i will pardon them. i have come from the king of heaven to drive you out [_bouter_] of france. and do not imagine that you will ever permanently hold france, for the true heir, king charles, shall possess it, for it is god's wish that it should belong to him. and this has been revealed to him by the maid, who will enter paris. if you will not obey, we shall make such a stir [_ferons un si gros hahaye_] as hath not happened these thousand years in france. the maid and her soldiers will have the victory. therefore the maid is willing that you, duke of bedford, should not destroy yourself.' and joan finishes this strange effusion by proposing to bedford that they should combine in making a holy war for christianity! this letter, written 'in the name of the maid,' was dated on a tuesday in holy week. the address ran thus: 'to the duke of bedford, so called regent of the kingdom of france, or to his lieutenants, now before the town of orleans.' doubtless the reference to the deed of arms which, once again at peace together, might be accomplished by the combined english and french armies, was an idea which seems to have floated in joan's enthusiastic imagination, that the day might come when the two foremost nations in christendom would fight together for the recovery of the holy sepulchre. as might be expected, this letter was received by the english with gibes and jeers, which was pardonable; but what was not so was the bad treatment of the messenger who had brought it to the english camp. he was kept prisoner, and, if some rather doubtful french writers of the day are to be believed, it was seriously debated whether or not he should be burnt. let us trust this is but an invention of the enemy. joan, before leaving blois, insisted on the dismissal of all camp followers--such bad baggage was certainly well left behind, and could not have followed an army led by one who, night and morning, had an altar erected, around which her hallowed flags were placed, and where the maid, and those willing, took the sacrament at the head of the army. it must have been a striking sight during that spring-time--that army, led by a maiden all clad in white armour, and mounted on a black charger, surrounded by a brilliant band of knights, riding along the pleasant fields of touraine, then in their first livery of brilliant green. and a striking sight it must have been, when, at the close of the long day's march, the tents were pitched and the altar raised, the officiating priests grouped about it and the sacred pictured standards waving above, while the solemn chant was raised, and the soldiers knelt around. one can well think how ready were those soldiers to follow joan wherever she would lead them, and it is not improbable that such a crusade as she dreamt of, had it been possible, in which the two nations, so closely connected by religious feeling, and so closely united by position, but so long enemies owing to the rapacity and greed of their kings, might have again placed the cross on the battlements of the holy city, under the leadership of her whom her countrymen rightly called 'the angelic.' joan rode out of blois bearing her pennon in her hand, and as she rode she chanted the '_veni creator_.' the sacred strain was taken up by those who followed, and thus passed the maid forth on her first great deed of deliverance. during the whole of the first night joan remained, as was her custom when she had no women about her, in her armour. it was the maid's wish to enter orleans from the northern side, but the officers with her thought this would be a great imprudence, and followed the opposite bank of the river. passing through beaugency and meung, they went on by saint die, saint laurent, and clery, without meeting with any attack from the enemy who occupied these places. on arriving at a place called olivet, they were within the neighbourhood of the beleaguered city. below them rose the english bastille towers; beyond, the walls, towers, and steeples of orleans. joan had hoped that the city could have been entered without further difficulty; she now found that not only the river lay between her and the town, but that the english were in force on all sides. she wished that the nearest of these bastilles, at saint jean le blanc, should be stormed, and the river forded there; but this scheme was judged by her companions-in-arms to be too perilous, and joan had again to comply with the opinion of the officers. riding to the eastwards, and skirting the river some four miles below the town, she and her knights forded it at a spot where some low long islands, or 'eyots' as we call them on the thames, lay in this part of the loire. on one of these, called l'isle aux bourdons, the provisions and stores for the beleaguered city were shipped and transhipped, and carried down to orleans when the wind lay in that quarter. it was at reuilly that dunois met the maid, still chafing from her thwarted plan of attacking the english in their stronghold at saint jean le blanc, and she appears to have shown him her displeasure. while this interview took place the wind changed, and the provision boats, which, owing to the wind being contrary, had not been able to make the islands, were now enabled to leave the city. they soon arrived, were laden with provisions, corn, and even cattle embarked on them, and, when thus provisioned, returned to orleans by the canal on the left bank of the loire, and successfully arrived at the city end of the broken bridge, whence the provisions and live stock were passed into the town. the river was too much in flood to allow of the army being taken across, nor could a bridge of boats be made, owing to the height of the waters. joan, however, was determined to enter orleans, flood or no flood, for she knew what the moral effect of her appearing to the townspeople would be. accompanied by dunois, la hire, and some two hundred lances, just after darkness had hidden her movements from the enemy, she left reuilly and entered the city. preceded by a great banner, the maid of orleans, as she may now be called, with dunois by her side, and followed by her knights and men-at-arms, rode slowly through the streets, filled with a crowd almost delirious in its joy at welcoming within its walls its long-looked-for deliverer. the people clung to her, kissing her knees and feet, and, according to the old chroniclers, behaved as if god himself had appeared among them. so eager was the throng to approach her, that in the press one of her standards was set on fire by a flambeau. after returning thanks for the delivery of her countrymen in the cathedral, joan was made welcome at the house of the treasurer of the imprisoned duke of orleans. this citizen's name was james boucher; and here she lodged, with her brothers, and the two faithful knights who had accompanied her during her journey from vaucouleurs to chinon. a vaulted room in this house is still shown, which purports to have been that occupied by the maid of orleans. if it is the same building it has been much modernised, although a beautiful specimen of the domestic gothic of the early part of the fifteenth century, known as the house of agnes sorel, remains much in the condition that it must have been in during the famous year of deliverance, . although orleans, by the action of joan of arc, had been succoured for the time, the enemy was still at its gates, and joan's mission was but half accomplished. the aspect of affairs since the th of april was, however, greatly changed in favour of the french, and the _rôles_ of besieged and besiegers changed. joan's arrival had infused a fresh spirit of enthusiasm and patriotism into the citizens, and the english were no longer feared. we have dunois's authority for the fact that whereas, up to that time, two hundred english could put eight hundred french to the rout, now five hundred french soldiers were prepared to meet the entire english army. on the th of april, hostilities had recommenced. four hundred men, commanded by florent d'illiers, made a sortie against the english near the trenches at saint pouair, driving them into their quarters. but the success was not followed up, and appears to have been undertaken without joan of arc's advice. to the heralds that she sent into the english camp only jeers and taunts were returned; and already the threat of burning her when caught was made use of. joan was, however, not to be deterred by menaces and insults from doing all she could to prevent unnecessary loss of life. on one occasion she rode out half-way across the bridge, to where there stood a crucifix called la belle croix, within speaking distance of the english in the tournelles. thence she summoned glansdale and his men to surrender, promising that their lives should be spared. they answered with derisive shouts and villainous abuse. still commanding her patience, which was only equalled by her courage, and before returning to the town, she told them that, in spite of their boasting, the time was near at hand when they would be driven forth, and that their leader would never see england again. that they feared the maid was evident, in spite of the insults with which they greeted her; at any rate, no attempt was made to attack her: even when almost alone, she came close to their fortifications. meanwhile dunois left for blois to bring up the bulk of the army, while joan remained in orleans, encouraging its inhabitants by her confidence, faith, and courage. the people, writes the chronicler of the siege, were never sated with the sight of the maid: 'ils ne pouvaient saouler de la voir,' he graphically says. a second ineffectual effort was made by joan, this time at a place called the croix morin, to negotiate with the english, she again promising them quarter if they would capitulate, but, as might be expected, with no better result than before. on the nd of may, followed by a vast throng, joan of arc rode out along the enemy's forts, and after closely inspecting their defences returned to vespers at the church of sainte-croix. certainly among the people there was no want of belief in, and enthusiastic devotion to, the maid; but she had already enemies among the _entourage_ of the king. we have already alluded to tremoïlle's feelings with regard to her and her mission. a still more formidable enemy was the chancellor of france, the archbishop of rheims, regnault de chartres; he and tremoïlle worked in concert to undermine all the prestige which joan's success in revictualling orleans had caused at court. the historian quicherat, whose work on joan of arc is by far the most complete and reliable, considers this man to have been an astute politician, without any moral strength or courage. when with joan of arc, he seems to have shown firmness and even enthusiasm in her mission, but he sank into the _rôle_ of a poltroon when her influence was withdrawn. instead of hastening the despatch of the reinforcements from blois to orleans, he threw delay in the way; he seems to have hesitated in letting these troops join those under the maid, for fear that were she to gain a thorough success his influence at court would be weakened. when joan fell into the hands of her foes, the archbishop had the incredible baseness publicly to show his pleasure, declaring that her capture by the enemy was a proof of divine justice. it was not till the th of may, and not until dunois had ridden in hot haste from blois, that at length the aid, so long and eagerly expected, arrived. joan rode to meet the succouring army some two miles out of the city, bearing her flag, accompanied by la hire and others of her knights. after a joyful meeting, they turned, riding right through the enemy's lines and along the fortified bastilles occupied by the english. whether it was fear, or superstition mixed with fear, not a man from the english side stirred, although the english outnumbered the french. it seemed that a terror had seized on the enemy as they saw her, whom they called the sorceress, ride by in her white panoply, bearing aloft her mystic banner. the english had now run short of supplies, and eagerly awaited the arrival of sir john fastolfe, who was on his road to orleans. joan of arc felt uneasy, lest she might not be able to cut off fastolfe and his supplies, and she playfully threatened dunois with his instant execution if he failed to tell her of the moment he learnt of his approach. her anxiety was well founded, for the attack commenced before she had been apprised of it. she had lain down for a short repose one afternoon, when she heard the sounds of a cannonade. she instantly ordered her squire d'aulon to arm her, as she must immediately attack the english; but whether those at the tournelles, or the advancing force under fastolfe, she could not yet tell. while arming, a great clamour rang through the town: the enemy were said to be at hand, and the battle already engaged. hastily throwing on her armour, with the assistance of her hostess and d'aulon, she dashed off on her horse, and had only time to snatch her flag, as it was handed to her from a window, so impetuous was she to enter the fray. as she galloped down the street the sparks flew from the stones, through the high street and past the cathedral, and out by the burgundy gate. the action had already been raging, and the wounded were being borne back into the town. it was the first time the maid came face to face with such grisly sights--the agony of the wounded, the blood and gaping wounds. her squire, d'aulon, who has left some record of that day, says how much she grieved over the wounded as they were carried past her; her beloved countrymen bleeding and dying affected her deeply. as her page writes, she said she could not see french blood without her hair rising with horror at the sight. before she reached the field the day had been lost and won, the english were in full retreat, and the battle now lay around the bastilles of saint loup. about a mile to the north-east of the town were the englishmen; strongly entrenched, the place commanded that portion of the river which talbot had garrisoned with some three hundred of his best troops. joan now gave instructions that no aid should reach this portion of the english defences from the adjacent bastilles. all around the fight raged, and joan was soon in the hottest of the engagement, encouraging her soldiers, her flag in her hand. dismounting, she stood on the edge of the earthwork, beyond which the english were at bay. talbot, seeing his men hard pressed, gave orders for a sortie to be made from one of the other towers, named paris, and thus cause a diversion, while another force attacked the french in their rear. this expedient, however, failed, for a fresh force appeared at this juncture from orleans, led by boussac and de graville, who beat back the attack of the english. the english troops within the fortress of saint loup were slain or taken. joan herself rescued some of these, and placed them under her protection; caring for them in the house she was staying in. at the close of the day, on returning into the town, joan told the people that they might count on being free from the enemy in five days' time, and that by that time not a single englishman would remain before orleans. no wonder that the joy-bells rang out in victorious clamour during all that night in may, the eve of the ascension. on the following day no hostilities occurred. joan again had a letter sent to the english, summoning them as before to surrender and to quit their forts; she said this was the third and the last time that she could give them a chance of escaping with their lives. on this occasion she made use of a new way of communicating with the foe; she tied the letter to an arrow, which was discharged into the english lines. no answer was received in return. it was now determined that the next attack against the english should be made from the left bank of the river, where they were strongly fortified at the bastille des augustins, a little further down the loire than the tournelles. on the opposite side this fortress communicated with the boulevard of saint privé, as well as with the strong fortress of saint laurent, near which a small island, which exists no longer, called the isle of charlemagne, kept open their connections on both sides of the loire. to the east, on the same side of the river, a fortress, that of saint jean le blanc, which had been abandoned on the approach of joan, had since been reoccupied by the english. it was at this spot that the next and all-important attack was directed to be made. the french forces crossed the river over an island called saint aignan. the distance was so narrow between the river bank on the town side and this island, that a couple of boats moored together served as a bridge. when saint jean le blanc was reached, it was found deserted by the english, glansdale having left it in order to concentrate his forces at the tournelles. joan led the attack. at first the french fought badly; they had been seized by a panic, believing that a strong force of the enemy were coming down on them from saint privé. rallying her men, joan threw herself on the english, and drove them back into the augustins. she was now eagerly followed by the soldiers. the first barricade was carried in a hand-to-hand fight, and soon the french flags waved above the fortress so long held by the enemy. the few english able to escape retired to the tournelles. eager to carry on the success of the attack, and to prevent delay, joan ordered that the fort of the augustins be fired, with the booty it contained. the victors, who only numbered three thousand strong, captured six hundred prisoners, one third were slain of the english, and two hundred french prisoners recovered. this was the second occasion on which the maid had carried all before her. the day was closing, and the attack on the tournelles had to be deferred for that evening. that night joan of arc said to her almoner: 'rise early to-morrow, for we shall have a hard day's work before us. keep close to me, for i shall have much to do, more than i have ever had to do yet. i shall be wounded; my blood will flow!' this prophetic speech of the maid is among the most curious facts relating to her life; for not only did she, during her trial at rouen, tell her judges that she had been aware that she would be wounded on that day, and even knew the position beforehand of the wound, but that she had known it would occur a long time before, and had told the king about it. a letter is extant in the public library at brussels, written on the nd of april ( ), by the sire de rotslaer, dated from lyons, in which joan's prophecy regarding her wound is mentioned. this letter was written fifteen days before the date ( th of may) of the engagement when that event occurred. a facsimile of the passage in this letter referring to joan's prophecy appears in the illustrated edition of m. wallon's _life of joan of arc_. very early on the following day, saturday, the th of may, it appears that an attempt was made to prevent the maid from starting for the field, as, at a council held on the evening before by the officers, it had been considered more prudent, before renewing the attack on the english fortifications, to await fresh reinforcements from the king. when this was reported to joan, she said: 'you have taken your counsel, and i have received mine,' and at break of day she was ready, armed and prepared for the attack. before starting, her host wished her to eat some fish, an 'alose,' which had just been brought to him. 'keep it,' said joan with a smile, 'till the evening, and i will bring with me a "godon" who will, eat his share of it.' this sobriquet of 'godon' was evidently the generic term for the english, as far back as the early years of the fifteenth century, and may have been centuries before the french designation for our countrymen. thus, full of spirits and with a brave heart, the maid rode off to meet the foe. when she reached the gate called burgundy, she found it closed by order of de gaucourt, grand master of the king's household, who had done so at the instigation of those officers who wished the attack on the english deferred until fresh reinforcements arrived. but the maid was not to be beaten and kept back even by barred gates. 'you are doing a bad deed,' she indignantly said to those about the gate, 'and whether you wish it or not, my soldiers shall pass.' the gate was opened, and joan, followed by her men, galloped to where some troops who had been left in possession of the fortifications taken on the previous day were stationed. the attack on the tournelles commenced as soon as joan arrived--it was then between six and seven in the morning. meanwhile dunois, la hire, and the principal forces from the town came up. a desperate struggle ensued; both sides knew that, whatever the result, that day would decide the fate of orleans--even that of the war. the french were fighting under the eyes of their countrymen, who manned the walls, and under the guidance of a leader they already regarded as more than human--and never had they fought so well, during that long and bloody century of warfare, as they did on that day. the english, on the other hand, knew that if they were beaten out of the tournelles their defeat would be complete, and they too fought with desperate courage. down into the ditches rushed the french, and up the sides of the glacis; scaling-ladders were placed against the walls, to which the men upon them clung like a swarm of bees. the defenders met them with showers of arrows and shot, and hurled them back with lance and hatchets. constantly beaten back, they returned as constantly to the charge. for six hours this fight lasted, and weariness and discouragement fell on the french. joan, who had been all these hours in the thick of the engagement, seeing her men were losing heart, redoubled her efforts; and, helping to raise a scaling-ladder, she placed it against the parapet of one of the towers. while thus engaged she was struck by a bolt from a cross-bow, between her shoulder and neck. the wound was a severe one; she fell, and was carried out of the press. although she suffered acutely, she had the nerve to draw the arrow from the wound. she refused to have the wound 'charmed,' as some of those standing around her suggested, saying she would sooner die than do anything that might be displeasing in the sight of heaven. a compress, steeped in oil, was then applied, and it staunched the bleeding. she was faint and unnerved, and, as she seemed to feel her death was near, made her confession to her priest. still the tournelles held out in spite of these repeated attacks, and dunois, as the shadows lengthened, was on the point of calling back his forces and sounding the retreat. joan, in the meanwhile, had been withdrawn from the fighting, and placed in a meadow at some distance from the carnage; but when she heard that the troops were about to be recalled from their attack on the tournelles, she seemed to forget her wound, and, making her way to dunois, implored him not to give up the fight. she assured him that she was certain they would even yet be victorious. in a few stirring sentences she rallied the men to fresh efforts, and told them that now or never would they conquer; the english, she declared, could not hold out much longer. mounting her horse, and with flag unfurled, she again led the van; to those near her she said, 'watch my standard; when it reaches the walls the place will be ours.' the struggle that ensued was fierce and decisive. inspired by the valour of joan, the french, who appeared as fresh as before her wound, stormed the bastions and towers of the tournelles with tremendous energy. reinforcements had meanwhile arrived from the town, and these attacked the tournelles in the rear. passing over the broken arches of the bridge by means of ladders thrown across the masonry, the first man to reach the other bank was a knight of rhodes, nicolas de giresme. attacked from two sides, the english still held the tournelles with bull-dog tenacity; but the sight of the witch and sorceress, as they considered joan, and who they thought had met with a mortal hurt, leading the soldiers with unabated courage, caused a panic to spread through their ranks; and when a sudden shout of victory proclaimed that the white and golden banner had at length struck the walls of the fortress, the doom of the tournelles had arrived. clear above the din of battle rang out the triumphant voice of the maid: 'the victory is ours!' she cried. seeing the day was lost, the english now attempted to escape destruction by swimming the river; others threw themselves on a bridge, which, however, having been set on fire by the french, only caused those who hoped to cross to fall either into the flames or into the river below. glansdale, the english leader, who had grossly insulted joan but a few days before, was among those who were drowning in the loire. seeing his peril, joan of arc attempted to save him, but glansdale was swept, before her aid could reach him, down the stream, never more to return to his own land again, as joan had prophesied. five hundred english perished either in the tournelles or were drowned in attempting to escape; the rest were made prisoners by the french. darkness had now fallen, and although joan had been taking part in the battle for more than a dozen hours, and had besides been grievously hurt, she would not leave the field till late in the night, in case the english at the bastille of saint laurent should be inclined to avenge the fall of the tournelles, and the victory over their comrades. but for that day, at all events, the english had had enough of fighting: 'ils n'en avaient une vouloir' for more, as the old chronicler quaintly expresses himself. riding back across the bridge which the citizens had in the meanwhile partially restored, joan re-entered the city which her splendid courage had rescued from the english. 'god knows,' writes perceval de cagny, 'with what joy she was received'; and our english historian of those days, hall, has left the following graphic account of the joy that went out from the people of orleans to their saviour:-- 'after the siege was thus broken up, to tell you what triumphs were made in the city of orleans, what wood was spent in fire, what wine was drunk in houses, what songs were sung in the streets, what melody was made in taverns, what rounds were danced in large and broad places, what lights were set up in the churches, what anthems were sung in chapels, and what joy was showed in every place--it were a long work, and yet no necessary cause. for they did as we in like case would have done; and we, being in like estate, would have done as they did.' all that day joan of arc had eaten nothing, and her strength must have been more than mortal to have sustained the heat, fatigue, and, above all, the anguish of her wound. at length she was able to find some repose with her kind hosts, and, after taking a little bread dipped in wine, she retired to enjoy her well-earned rest. orleans was now delivered, as the citizens found on waking the next morning after the battle, when the joyful news spread through the town that the english had abandoned the bastilles on the northern side of the city, leaving all their sick, stores, artillery, and ammunition. that day lord talbot must have used expressions probably not as poetical as those put into his mouth in the play of _henry vi._; but doubtless far more forcible--for it was now that he, for the first time, felt the bitterness of defeat, the shame of turning his back on his enemy; that enemy whom, until now, he had, after so many victories, almost grown to despise. 'my thoughts are whirled like a potter's wheel; i know not where i am, nor what i do: a witch, by fear, not force, like hannibal, drives back our troops, and conquers as she lists.' but although retire he had to, talbot's retreat was made in perfect order, and in a kind of defiant fashion. ranging his forces near to and facing the town, he seemed inclined to make a further stand, if not to carry out an attack against the city. joan was prepared to repel such an attack, but the english contented themselves with a mere feint, a military demonstration. the day was a sunday, and joan, ever loath to fight on that day, refused to give the signal for attack, saying that if the enemy chose to begin an engagement they would be met and defeated; but that she could not sanction fighting on that holy day. prepared for whatever might occur, the maid of orleans then ordered that mass should be said at the head of her troops. when the religious act was over: 'look,' she said, 'whether the english have their faces or their backs turned to us.' and when she heard that they were in full retreat on mehun-sur-loire, she added, 'let them depart, in god's name: it is not his wish that you should attack them to-day, and you will meet them again.' after an hour's halt, the english continued to retreat, previously setting fire to their bastilles, and carrying their prisoners with them. the day that saw the deliverance of orleans was held for centuries as a national day of rejoicing in the town, and seldom have the citizens of any place had better cause for celebrating so joyful and honourable an event. the siege which joan had thus brought to an end began on the th of october ( ), and ended on the th of may ( ). ten days had sufficed for the heroic maid to raise the english blockade. throughout france the effect of the news of the deliverance of orleans was prodigious; and although most of the english, no doubt, believed that the result was owing to the instrumentality of the powers of darkness, many saw in it the finger of god. when the great news reached paris on the th of may, fauconbridge, a clerk of parliament, made the following note in his register:--'quis eventus fuerit novit deus bellorum'; and on the margin of the register he has traced a little profile sketch of a woman in armour, holding in her right hand a pennon on which are inscribed the letters i.h.s. in the other hand she holds a sword. this parchment may still be seen in the national archives in paris. joan, having accomplished her undertaking, lost no time in returning to the king at chinon. chapter iii. _the coronation at rheims._ leaving the now free and happy town to jubilate in its deliverance from the enemy, joan of arc went by blois and tours to chinon. at tours the king had come to meet the maid. when within sight of the king, joan dismounted and knelt before him. charles came forward bareheaded to meet her, and embraced her on the cheek; and, to use the words of the chronicler, made her '_grande chère_'. it was on this occasion that the king bestowed on joan of arc the badge of the royal lily of france to place in her coat-of-arms. the cognizance consisted of a sword supporting a royal crown, with the fleur-de-lis on either side. joan now strongly urged the king to lose no time, but at once go to rheims, to be crowned. the fact of his being crowned and proclaimed king of france would add infinitely to his prestige and authority; he would then no longer be a mere dauphin or king of bourges, as the english and burgundians styled him. but now joan found how many at court were lukewarm. the council summoned to deliberate on her proposal alleged that the king's powers and purse would not enable him to make so long and hazardous an expedition. joan used every argument in favour of setting out forthwith for rheims: she declared that the time given to her for carrying out her mission was short, and, according to the duke of alençon's testimony, she said that after the king was crowned she would deliver the duke of orleans from his captivity in england, but that she had only one year in which to accomplish this task; and therefore she prayed that there might be no delay in starting for rheims. charles was now staying at the castle of loches, that gloomy prison-fortress whose dungeons were to become so terribly notorious in the succeeding reign. joan, whose impatience for action carried her beyond the etiquette of the court, entered on one occasion into the king's private apartment, where the feeble and irresolute monarch was consulting with his confessor the bishop of castres, christophe d'harcourt, and robert de maçon. kneeling, the maid said:-- 'noble dauphin, hold not such long and so many councils, but start at once for rheims, and there receive your crown.' 'do your voices inspire this advice?' asked the king's confessor. 'yes,' was the answer, 'and with vehemence.' 'then,' said the bishop, 'will you not tell us in the king's presence in what way your voices communicate with you?' to this jesuitical query, joan, in her simple and straightforward manner, answered the priest, that when she met with people who doubted the truth of her mission she would retire to her room and pray, and then voices returned and spoke to her:--'go forward, daughter of god, and we will assist you,' and how hearing those voices and those words she would rejoice and take courage, and only long that her then state of happiness might last always. while telling them these things she seemed a being transformed, surrounded by a something divine and holy. it was not unnatural that the king and his councillors should hesitate before making up their minds to undertake the journey to rheims, for the english were posted in force at beaugency, at meun, where talbot was encamped, and at jargeau. they also held a strong position on the loire; it would be difficult to reach rheims without encountering some of their forces. jargeau had been attacked, indeed, by dunois and xaintrailles, but unsuccessfully; and there was real danger in going northwards while the english were still so plentiful and so strongly entrenched in the towns of the centre and south of france. another reason for delaying the journey to rheims and the ceremony of the coronation, was that some time must elapse before the princes and great nobles, who would have to take part in the coronation, could assemble at rheims. joan, thus thwarted in her wish of marching directly on to rheims, suggested driving the english from their fortresses and encampments on the loire. to this scheme the royal consent was obtained, and the duke of alençon was placed in command of a small force of soldiers. joan directed the expedition, and it was ordered that nothing should be done without the sanction of the maid. in a letter, dated the th june, , written by the young count of laval, who met joan of arc in selles in berri, the place of rendezvous for the expedition, is a pleasant notice of the impression the heroine caused him. he describes her as being completely armed, except that her head was bare. she entertained the count and his brother at selles. 'she ordered some wine,' he writes, 'and told me that i should soon drink wine with her in paris.' he adds that it was marvellous to see and hear her. he also describes her leaving selles that same evening for romorantin, with a portion of her troops. 'we saw her,' he writes, 'clothed all in white armour excepting her head; her charger, a great black one, plunged and reared at the door of her lodging, so that she could not mount him. then she said, "lead him to the cross," which cross stood in front of the church on the high road. and then he stood quite still before the cross, and she mounted him; then as she was riding away she turned her face to the people who were standing near the door of the church; in her clear woman's voice she said:--"you priests and clergy, make processions, and pray to god for our success." then she gave the word to advance, and with her banner borne by a handsome page, and with her little battle-axe in her hand, she rode away.' the church before which this scene took place at selles-sur-cher still exists, a fine massive building, dating from between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries; but the old cross that stood before it, to which joan of arc's black charger was led, has long ago disappeared. in my opinion, this graphic description of the maid of orleans, written by guy de laval to his parents, is the best that has come down to our day of the heroine. there is to us a freshness about it which proves how deeply the writer must have been stirred by that wonderful character; it shows too that, with all her intensely religious and mystic temperament, joan of arc had a good part of sprightliness and _bonhomie_ in her character, which endeared her to those whose good fortune it was to meet her. the incident of the black charger standing so still beside the cross, and the figure of the maid, mystic, wonderful, in her white panoply, with her head bare--that head which, in spite of no authentic portrait having come down to us, we cannot but imagine a grand and noble one--make up a living picture of historic truth, far above the fancies evolved out of the brains of any writer of fiction--for is it not romance realised? the eagerness to accompany joan of arc in this expedition of the loire was great. the duke of alençon wrote to his mother to sell his lands in order that money might be raised for the army. the king was unable or unwilling to pay out of his coffers the expenses of the campaign. from all sides came officers and men eager for new victories under the banner of the maid. joan led the vanguard, followed by alençon, de rais, dunois, and gaucourt. at orleans they were joined by fresh forces under vendôme and boussac. on the th of june the army amounted to eight thousand men. jargeau was the first place to be attacked. here suffolk, with between six and seven thousand men, all picked soldiers, had established himself. inferior in numbers, the english had the advantage over the french in their artillery. in the meanwhile, bedford, who had news of suffolk's peril, sent fastolfe to jargeau, with a fresh force of five thousand men. but for some reason or other fastolfe seemed in no hurry to come to suffolk's assistance; he lost four days at etampes, and four more at jauville. some alarm seems to have been felt among the french troops at the news of fastolfe's approach. joan mildly rebuked those who showed anxiety by saying to them: 'were i not sure of success, i would prefer to keep sheep than to endure these perils.' the faubourgs of the town of jargeau were attacked and taken, but before storming the place, joan, according to her habit, sent a summons to the army. she bade the enemy surrender: doing so, he would be spared, and allowed to depart with his side-arms; if he refused, the assault should be made at once. the english demanded an armistice of fifteen days: hardly a reasonable request when it is remembered that fastolfe, with his reinforcements, might any day arrive before jargeau. joan said they might leave, taking their horses with them, but within the hour. to this the english would not consent, and it was decided to attack upon the following morning. the next day was a tuesday; the signal was given at nine in the morning. joan had the trumpets sounded, and led on the attacking column in person. alençon appears to have thought the hour somewhat early; but joan overruled him by telling him that it was the divine will that the engagement should then take place. 'travaillez,' she repeated, 'travaillez! et dieu travaillera!' these words may well be called joan of arc's life motto, and the secret of her success. 'had she,' she asked alençon, 'ever given him reason to doubt her word?' and she reminded him how she had promised his wife to bring him, alençon, back safe and sound from this expedition. joan seems throughout that day's fighting to have watched over the duke's safety with much anxious care; at one hour of the day she bade him leave a position from which he was watching the attack, as she told him that if he remained longer in that place he would get slain from some catapult or engine, to which she pointed on the walls. hardly had the duke left the spot when a seigneur de lude was struck and killed by a shot from the very engine about which joan had warned alençon. hour after hour raged the attack; both joan and alençon directed the storming parties under a heavy fire. a stone from a catapult struck joan on her helmet as she was in the act of mounting a ladder--she fell back, stunned, into the ditch, but soon revived, and rising, with her undaunted courage, she turned to hearten her followers, declaring that the victory would be theirs. in a few more moments the place was in possession of the french. suffolk fled to the bridge which spanned the loire: there he was captured. a soldier named william regnault beat him to the ground, but suffolk refused to yield to one so low in rank, and is said to have dubbed his victor knight before giving him up his sword. besides suffolk, a brother of his was taken, and four or five hundred men were killed or captured. the place was pillaged. the most important of the prisoners were shipped to orleans. the following day joan returned to orleans with alençon, where they remained two days to rest their men, after which they proceeded to meun. this was a strongly fortified town on the loire, about an equal distance from orleans on the west and from jargeau on the east. the first success of the french was the occupation of a bridge held by the english. they then descended the river, and attacked the town of beaugency. this town had been abandoned by the english garrison, who had thrown themselves into the castle. here it was that the army of the loire was joined by the constable de richemont, who could be almost considered as a little monarch in his own territory of brittany. this magnate appears to have been a somewhat unwelcome addition to joan and alençon's army. he was, however, tolerated, if not welcomed. alençon and the constable, who had till now been at enmity, were reconciled by joan's influence, and she paved the way for a reconciliation between richemont and the king. it was high time that all the french princes should be reconciled, for the danger from the invaders was still great even in the immediate circle of the court and army. a strong body of men was known to be on the way from paris, under the command of fastolfe, and talbot was marching to meet him with a force from the loire district; they soon met, and together proceeded directly upon orleans. fastolfe appears to have been disinclined to attack, his force being smaller than that of the french; but talbot was beside himself with rage at having to retreat from orleans, and swore by god and st. george that, even had he to fight the enemy alone, fight he would. fastolfe had to give way to the fiery lord, although he told his commander that they had but a handful of men compared to the french; and that if they were beaten, all that king henry v. had won in france with so much loss of life would be again lost to the english. leaving some troops to watch the english garrisons in the castle of beaugency, joan marched against the english. the hostile armies met some two miles between beaugency and meun. the english had taken up a place of vantage on the brow of a hill; their archers as usual were placed in the front line, and before them bristled a stockade. the french force numbered about six thousand, led by joan of arc, the duke of alençon, dunois, lafayette, la hire, xaintrailles, and other officers. it was late in the day when heralds from the english lines arrived with a defiant message for the french. joan's answer was firm and dignified. 'go,' she said to the heralds, 'and tell your chiefs that it is too late for us to meet to-night, but to-morrow, please god and our lady, we shall come to close quarters.' the english were still strongly fortified in the little town of meun. a portion of their army left beaugency in order to effect a junction with their other comrades, and in perfect order talbot commenced his retreat on paris, taking the northern road through the wooded land of la beauce. they were closely followed by the french, but neither army had any idea how near they were to one another till a stag, startled by the approach of the french, crossed the english advanced guard. the shouts of the english soldiers on seeing the stag gallop by was the first sign the french had of the propinquity of their foes. a hasty council of war was held by the french commanders. some were for delay and postponing the attack until all their forces should be united; and these, the more prudent, pointed out the inferiority of their force to that of the enemy, arguing that a battle under the circumstances, in the open country, would be hazardous. joan of arc, however, would not listen to these monitions. 'even,' she cried, 'if they reach up to the clouds we must fight them!' and she prophesied a complete victory. although, as ever, anxious to command the attack, she allowed la hire to lead the van. his orders were to prevent the enemy advancing, and to keep him on the defensive till the entire french force could reach the ground. la hire's attack proved so impetuous that the english rearguard broke and fled back in confusion. talbot, who had not had time, so sudden and unexpected had been the french attack, to place his archers and defend the ground, as was his wont, with palisades and stockades, turned on the enemy like a lion at bay. fastolfe now came up to talbot's succour; but his men were met by the rout of the rearguard of the broken battle, and the fugitives caused a panic among the new-comers. in vain did sir john attempt to rally his men and face the enemy. after a hopeless struggle, he too was borne off by the tide of fugitives. one of these, an officer named waverin, states the english loss that day to have amounted to two thousand slain and two hundred taken, but dunois gives a higher figure, and places the english killed at four thousand. [illustration: rheims cathedral--west door.] this battle of patay was the most complete defeat that the english had met with during the whole length of that war of a hundred years between france and england; and, to add to its completeness, the hitherto undefeated talbot was himself amongst the taken. 'you little thought,' said alençon to him, when brought before him, 'that this would have happened to you!' ''tis the fortune of war,' was the old hero's laconic answer. the effects of this victory of patay on the fortunes of the english in france were greater than the deliverance of orleans, and far more disastrous, for the french had now for the first time beaten in the open field their former victors. the once invincible were now the vanquished, and the great names of crecy, poitiers, and agincourt had lost their glamour. when the news was known that the english under talbot and fastolfe had been beaten, and that the great commander for so many years the terror of france had been made a prisoner, and that these mighty deeds had been accomplished by the advanced guard of the french army under the inspiration of the maid of orleans, the whole country felt that the knell of doom of the english occupation in france had rung. there is an anecdote relating to joan of arc at patay that should find a place here. after the battle, and while the prisoners were being marched off by the french, joan was distressed to see the brutality with which those captives unable to pay a ransom were treated. one poor fellow she saw mortally wounded by his captors. flinging herself from her saddle, she knelt by the side of the dying man, and, having sent for a priest to shrive him, she remained by the poor fellow's side and attended to him to the end, and by her tender ministrations helped him to pass more gently over the dark valley of death. michelet discovered this story in the deposition of joan of arc's page, louis de contes, who was probably an eye-witness of the scene. with this brilliant victory at patay closed joan of arc's short but glorious campaign on the loire. briefly, this was the career of her victories:--on the th of june the maid attacked jargeau, which surrendered the next day. on the th she re-entered orleans, where she rallied her troops. on the th she occupied the bridge at meun, and the following day she attacked beaugency, which yielded on the day after. the english had in vain hoped to relieve jargeau: they arrived too late. after the fall of beaugency they fell back, and were defeated at patay on the th. a wonderful week's work was this campaign, ordered and led by a maiden of eighteen. what made joan of arc's success more remarkable is the fact that among the officers who served under her many were lukewarm and repeatedly foiled her wishes. and it is not difficult to trace the feeling of jealousy that existed among her officers; for here was one not knight or noble, not prince, or even soldier, but a village maiden, who had succeeded in a few days in turning the whole tide of a war, which had lasted with disastrous effects for several generations, into a succession of national victories. this professional jealousy, as one may call it, among the french military leaders was fomented and aggravated by the perfidious counsellors about the king. the only class who thoroughly appreciated and were really worthy of the maid and her mission, were the people. and it is still by the people that everlasting gratitude and love of the heroic maid are most deeply felt. while joan was gaining a succession of victories on the loire, the indolent king was on a visit to la tremoïlle at his castle of sully-sur-loire. accompanied by alençon and the constable richemont, joan repaired to sully. she had promised to make the peace between charles and richemont, and as the constable had brought with him from his lands in brittany fifteen hundred men as a peace-offering, the reconciliation was not a matter of much difficulty. la tremoïlle saw with an evil feeling the ever-growing popularity of joan, and feared her daily increasing influence with the king; but he could not prevent the march on rheims, much as he probably wished to do so. it was arranged that the army should be concentrated at gien. from gien, joan addressed a letter to the citizens of tournay, a town of doubtful loyalty to charles, and much under the influence of the burgundian party. she summoned in this letter those who were loyal to charles to attend the king's forthcoming coronation. on the th of june the king and court left gien, on their northern march. that march was not a simple matter, for a country had to be traversed in which the towns and castles still bristled with english garrisons, or with doubtful allies. auxerre belonged to the burgundian party, always in alliance with the english; troyes was garrisoned with a mixed force of english and burgundians; and the strongly fortified places on the loire, such as marchenois, cosne, and la charité, were still held by the english troops. charles' army had no artillery; it was therefore out of the question to storm or besiege towns however hostile, and the counsellors and creatures of the king urged him not to risk the dangers of a journey to rheims under such disadvantageous circumstances. joan, wearied out by the endless procrastination and hesitation of the king, left him, and preferred a free camp in the open fields to the purlieus of the court, with its feeble sovereign and plotting courtiers. joan of arc on this occasion may be said to have 'sulked,' but she showed her usual common sense in what she did, and her leaving the court seems to have given the vacillating king a momentary feeling of shame and remorse. orders were issued that the court should be moved on the th of june. the royal army which started on that day for rheims numbered twelve thousand men; but this force was greatly increased on its march. by the side of the king rode the maid of orleans; on the other side of the king, alençon. the counts of clermont, of vendôme, and of boulogne--all princes of the blood--came next. dunois, the maréchal de boussac (saint-sevère), and louis admiral de culan followed. and then, in a crowd of knights and captains, rode the seigneurs de rais, de laval, de loheac, de chauvigny, la hire, xaintrailles, la tremoïlle, and many others. before the town of auxerre a halt was called: it was still under the influence of the english and burgundians. a deputation waited upon charles, provisions were sent to the army, but the town was not entered. outside its fortifications the army rested three days, after which it continued its march to saint-florentin, whose gates swung open to the king; thence on to brinon l'archevêque, whence charles forwarded a messenger with a letter to his lieges at rheims, announcing his approach. on the th of july the royal force had reached saint-fal, near troyes. joan of arc despatched a messenger summoning that place to open its gates to the king; but troyes was strongly garrisoned by a force of half english half burgundian soldiers, and these had sent for succour to the english regent, the duke of bedford. the army of the king arrived before the gates of the town on the th of july; a sally was made by the hostile garrison, but this was driven back. _pour-parlers_ ensued. the king's heralds were informed by the garrison officers that they had sworn to the duke of burgundy not to allow, without his leave, any other troops to enter their gates. they went further, and insulted the maid of orleans in gross terms, calling her a '_cocquarde_'--whatever that ugly term may mean. the situation was embarrassing. how could the town be taken without a siege train and artillery? but to leave it in the rear, with its strong garrison, would be madness. the king's men were in favour of retiring and abandoning the expedition to rheims. there happened to be within the town of troyes at this time a famous monk of the preaching kind, named father richard. father richard had been a pilgrim, and had visited the holy land, and had made himself notorious by interminable sermons, for he was wont to preach half-a-dozen hours at a time. crowds had listened to him in paris and other places. the english, who probably thought his sermons insufferably long, or too much leavened with french sympathies, drove him out of paris, and he had taken refuge at troyes. the monk had heard much of joan of arc, and was eager to see and speak with her, but his enthusiasm was mixed with a religious and even superstitious fear in regard to the heroine. he was allowed to enter the royal precincts, and approached the maid of orleans with many a sign of the cross, and with sprinkling of holy water. seeing the good man's terror, joan told him to approach her without fear. 'come forward boldly!' she said to the monk. 'i shall not fly away!' and after convincing him that she was not a demon in any way, she made him the bearer of a letter from her to the people in the town. the negotiations between the army and the burghers lasted five days; the town refusing to admit the king, and the king unwilling to pass the town, but unable to take it by force. charles was on the point of giving up the attempt to reach rheims when one of his council pointed out that as the expedition had been undertaken at the instigation of joan of arc, it was only fair her judgment should now be followed, and not that of any one else. joan was summoned before the council, when she solemnly assured the king that in three days' time the place would be taken. 'if we were sure of it,' said the chancellor, 'we would wait here six days.' 'six days!' said the maid. 'you will enter troyes to-morrow.' mounting her horse, the maid rode into the camp, and ordered all to prepare to carry out a general assault on the next morning. anything that could be used in the shape of furniture and fagots, to make a bridge across the town ditches, was collected. joan, who had now her tent moved up close to the moat, worked harder, says an eye-witness, than any two of the most skilful captains in preparing the attack. she directed that fascines should be thrown into the moat, across which the troops were to pass to the town. early next day everything was in readiness for the attack, but at this juncture, just as she was preparing to lead the storming party, the bishop of troyes, john laiguise, attended by a deputation of the principal citizens, came from the town with offers of capitulation. the people were ready to place themselves at the king's mercy, owing probably to the terror the preparations made by joan of arc on the previous evening had inspired them with, mixed, too, with the superstitious dread they felt for her presence. had not even the english soldiers declared that, when attacked by the terrible maiden, they had seen what appeared to be flights of white butterflies sparkling all around her form! how could these good people of troyes hope to withstand such a power? to add to this fear, it was remembered by the citizens of troyes that in it had been signed and concluded the shameful treaty by which charles vii. had been disinherited from his crown and possessions. the people therefore gave in without further struggle. the conditions of capitulation were soon arranged. the burghers were granted the immunity of their persons and their goods, and certain liberties for their commerce. all those traders who held any office at the hands of the english government were to continue the enjoyment of these offices or benefices, with the condition of taking them up again at the hands of the king of france. no garrison would be quartered upon the town, and the english and burgundian soldiers were to be allowed to depart with their goods. the next day--the th of july--charles and his host entered troyes in state, the maid of orleans riding by the side of the king, her banner displayed as was her custom. when, as had been arranged in the treaty of capitulation, the foreign soldiers began to leave the place with bag and baggage (goods), joan was indignant at finding that some of these so-called goods were nothing less than french prisoners. this was a thing that she could not tolerate, treaty or no treaty; and, placing herself at the gate of the town, she insisted that her imprisoned countrymen should be left in her charge. the king naturally felt obliged to gratify her; so he released the captives, and paid their ransom down. before leaving troyes the next day, william bellier, who had been joan's host at chinon, was left as bailiff of the place, along with other officers. thence the army moved on by way of châlons. though still in the hands of the english, a deputation of clergy and citizens met the king, and placed themselves at his orders. while in the neighbourhood of châlons, joan of arc met some friends who had arrived from domremy; among them were two old village companions, gerardin d'epinal and john morel, to whom she gave her red dress. in conversation with these she said that the only dread she had in the future was treachery: a dread which seems to point in some strange prophetic manner to the fate which was so soon to meet her at compiègne. it was on the evening of the th of july that the royal host at length came in sight of the massive towers of the great cathedral church of rheims. it was at sept saulx, about eight miles' distance from rheims, that the king waited for a deputation to reach him from the town. rheims was still filled with the english and burgundian adherents, and had bedford chosen to throw, as he could well have done, a force into that place, charles might yet have been prevented from entering its gates. perhaps bedford did not believe in the possibility of charles arriving at his goal, and had counted on the king's well-known weakness and indecision, and on the hesitation of such men as la tremoïlle and others of his council. the regent had received assurances from the officials in rheims that they would not admit charles. but after what passed at troyes and at châlons, charles had not long to wait for a favourable answer from his lieges at rheims. indeed, the deputation which met him at sept saulx were effusive in their good offices and entreaties that the king should forthwith enter his good city of rheims. the archbishop (regnault de chartres), who had preceded the king by a few hours to his town, came out to meet the king at the head of the corporation and civic companies. from all sides flocked crowds eager to welcome the king, and even more the maid of orleans. in those days the people's cry of joy and triumph was '_noël!_'--but why that cry of christmas joy had become the popular hosanna, it is not easy to conjecture. throughout that night the preparations for the coronation were feverishly made both within and without the cathedral. on the th of july, with all the pomp and ceremony that the church and army could bestow, the king was crowned and anointed with the holy oil which four of his principal officers had brought to the cathedral from the ancient abbey church of saint-remy. there exist few grander fanes in christendom than the great cathedral of rheims. the thirteenth century, so prolific of splendid churches, had expended all its wealth of lavish decoration on the gorgeous portal, with its array of saints and sovereigns, under which passed charles vii. of france, with the maid of orleans on his right hand. hurried as had been the preparations for the ceremonial, the even then ancient and venerable rites must have deeply impressed the spectators, and the semi-sacred act was carried out with scrupulous care--the king crowned and anointed with the holy oil, surrounded on his throne by the ecclesiastical peers and high dignitaries of the church, and waited on by the secular peers during the crowning and after at the coronation banquet. at length was accomplished the darling wish of joan of arc's heart, for now her king was regarded and sanctioned by all true french persons as king of france, by the grace of god and holy church. when the king received the crown from the hands of the archbishop, a peal of trumpets rang out, with such a mighty volume of sound that the very roof of the cathedral seemed to shake again. ingres, in his striking picture of joan of arc, now in the gallery of the louvre, represents her standing by the high altar, clad in her white panoply of shining steel, her banner held on high; below bows in prayer her confessor, the priest pasquerel, in his brown robes of the order of augustin; and beyond stand her faithful squire and pages. the heroine's face is raised, and on it sits a radiant look of mingled gratitude and triumph. it is a noble idea of a sublime figure. when the long-drawn-out ceremony came to an end, and after the people had shouted themselves hoarse in crying 'noël!' and 'long live king charles!'--joan, who had remained by the king throughout the day, knelt at his feet and, according to one chronicle, said these words: 'now is finished the pleasure of god, who willed that you should come to rheims and receive your crown, proving that you are truly the king, and no other, to whom belongs this land of france.' many besides the king are said to have shed tears at that moment. that seemed indeed the moment of joan of arc's triumph. the _nunc dimittis_ might well have then echoed from her lips; but in the midst of all the rejoicing and festivity at this time joan had saddened thoughts and melancholy forebodings as to the future. while the people shouted 'noël!' as she rode through the jubilant streets by the side of the king, she turned to the archbishop, and said: 'when i die i should wish to be buried here among these good and devout people.' and on the prelate asking her how it was that at such a moment her mind should set itself on the thought of death, and when she expected her death to happen, she answered: 'i know not--it will come when god pleases; but how i would that god would allow me to return to my home, to my sister and my brothers! for how glad would they be to see me back again. at any rate,' she added, 'i have done what my saviour commanded me to do.' her mission was indeed accomplished: that is to say, if her mission consisted of the two great deeds which while at chinon she had repeatedly assured her listeners she was born to accomplish. these were, first, to drive the english out of orleans, and thereby deliver that town; the second, to take the king to rheims, where he would receive his crown. the other enterprises, such as the wish to deliver the duke of orleans from his captivity in england, and then to wage a holy war against the moslems, may be left out of the actual task which, encouraged by her voices, joan had set herself to accomplish. but the two great deeds had now been carried out--and with what marvellous rapidity! in spite of all the obstacles placed in her path, not only by the enemies of her country, but by those nearest to the ear of the king, orleans had been delivered in four days' time, the english host had been in a week driven out of their strongholds on the loire, and defeated in a pitched battle! the king unwillingly, and with many of his court opposed to the enterprise, after passing through a country strongly occupied by the enemy without having lost a man, had by the tact and courage of joan of arc been enabled to reach rheims; and after this successful march he had received his crown among his peers and lieges, as though the country were again at peace, and no english left on the soil of france. what was still more surprising was, that all these things should have been accomplished at the instigation and by the direction of a maid who only a few months before had been an unknown peasant in a small village of lorraine. how had she been able not only to learn the tactics of a campaign, the rudiments of the art of war, but even the art itself? no one had shown in these wars a keener eye for selecting the weakest place to attack, or where artillery and culverin fire could be used with most effect, or had been quicker to avail himself of these weapons. no one saw with greater rapidity--(that rarest of military gifts)--when the decisive moment had arrived for a sudden attack, or had a better judgment for the right moment to head a charge and assault. how indeed must the knights and commanders, bred to the use of arms since their boyhood, have wondered how this daughter of the peasants had obtained the knowledge which had placed her at their head, and enabled her to gain successes and reap victories against the enemy, which until she came none of them had any hope of obtaining. they indeed could not account for it, except that in joan of arc was united not only the soul of patriotism and a faith to move mountains, but the qualities of a great captain as well. that, it seems to us, must have been the conclusion that her comrades in arms arrived at regarding the maid of orleans. dunois stated that until the advent of the maid the french had no longer the courage to attack the english in the open field, but that since she had inspired them with her courage they were ready to attack any force of the army, however superior it might be. this testimony was confirmed by alençon also: he declared that in things outside the province of warfare she was in every respect as simple as a young girl; but in all that concerned the science of war she was thoroughly skilled, from the management of a lance in rest to that of marshalling an army; and that as regarded the use of artillery she was eminently qualified. all the military commanders, he said, were amazed to see in her as much skill as could be expected in a seasoned captain who had profited by a training of from twenty to thirty years. 'but,' added the duke, 'it is principally in her use of artillery that she displays her most complete talent.' and he proceeds to bear his high tribute to her goodness of heart, which she displayed on every possible occasion. [illustration: rheims cathedral interior] although her physical courage enabled her to face the greatest perils and personal risks, she had a horror of bloodshed, and though her spirit was 'full of haughty courage, not fearing death nor shrinking distress, but resolute in most extremes,' she never entered battle but bearing her banner in her hand; and to the last day of her appearance on the field she strove with all her great moral force to induce the rude and brutal men around her to become more humane even in the hurly-burly of the din of battle. all unnecessary cruelty and bloodshed made her suffer intensely, and we have seen how she ministered to the english wounded who had fallen in fight. as far as she could she prevented pillage, and she would only promise her countrymen success on the condition that they should not prey upon the citizens of the places they conquered. even when she had passed the day fasting on horseback, joan would refuse any food unless it had been honourably obtained. as a child she had been taught to be charitable and to give to the needy, and she carried out these christian principles when at the head of armies; the 'quality of mercy' with her was ever present. she distributed to the poor all she had with her, and would say, with what truth god knows, 'i have been sent for the consolation of the poor and the relief of the needy.' she would take upon herself the charge of the wounded; indeed, she may be considered as the precursor of all the noble hearts who in modern warfare follow armies in order to alleviate and help the sick and wounded. and she tended with equal care and sympathy the wounded among the enemy, as well as those of her own side. this is no invention, no fancy of romance, but the plain truth; for there can be no disputing the testimony of those who followed joan of arc and saw her acts. regarding herself, joan of arc said she was but a servant and an instrument under divine command. when people would avow that such works as she had carried out had never been done in former times, she would simply say: 'my saviour has a book in which no one has ever read, however learned a scholar he may be.' in all things she was pure and saint-like, and her wonderful life, as michelet has truly said of it, was a living legend. had she not been inspired by her voices and her visions to take up arms for the salvation of her country, joan of arc would probably have lived and ended her obscure life in some place of holy retreat. an all-absorbing love for all things sacred was her ruling idiosyncrasy. from her childhood her delight was to hear the church bells, the music of anthems, the sacred notes of the organ. never did she miss attending the church festivals. when within hail of a church it was her wont, however hurried the march, to enter, attended by any of the soldiers whom she could induce to follow her, and kneel with them before the altar. at the close of some stirring day passed in the midst of the din of battle, and after being for hours in the saddle, she would, ere she sought rest, always return thanks to her god and his saints for their succour. joan also loved to mix in the crowd of poor citizens, and begged that the little children should be brought to her. pasquerel, her confessor, was always told to remind joan of arc of the feast days on which children were allowed to receive the communion, in order that she too might receive it with these innocents. the army has probably ever been the home of high swearing: the expression in french of '_ton de garnison_' is an amiable way of referring to that habit of speech; and we all know ancient warriors whose conversation is thickly larded with oaths and profanity. this habit joan of arc seems to have held in great abhorrence. we have seen how she got la hire to swear only by his stick; to another officer of high rank, who had been making use of some strong oaths, she said: 'how can you thus blaspheme your saviour and your god by so using his name?' let us hope her lesson bore fruit. throughout the land joan of arc was now regarded as the saviour of france. nor at this time did the king prove ungrateful. in those days nobility was highly regarded. it brought with it great prestige, and much benefit accrued to the holders of titles. charles now raised the maid of orleans to the equal in rank of a count, and bestowed upon her an establishment and household. the grateful burghers of orleans, too, loaded her with gifts, all which honours joan received with quiet modesty. for herself she never asked anything. after the coronation at rheims, when the king begged her to make him a request, the only thing she asked was, that the taxes might be taken off her native village. her father, who came to see her at rheims, had the satisfaction of carrying back this news to domremy. although both king and nobles vied in paying honours to joan of arc, it was from the common people, from the heart of the nation, that she received what seems to have amounted to a feeling approaching adoration. wherever she passed she was followed by crowds eager to kiss her feet and her hands, and who even threw themselves before her horse's feet. medals were struck and worn as charms, with her effigy or coat-of-arms struck on them. her name was introduced into the prayers of the church. joan, although touched by these marks of affection, never allowed the people, as far as in her power lay, to ascribe unearthly influence to her person. when in the course of her trial the accusation that the people had made her an object of adoration was brought as a proof of her heresy, she said: 'in truth i should not have been able to have prevented that from being so, had god not protected me himself from such a danger.' chapter iv. _the capture._ we must now glance at the movements of the english since the deliverance of orleans and their defeat at patay, and the french king's coronation. what proves the utter demoralisation of the english at this time is that the regent bedford was not only afraid of remaining in paris, but had also taken refuge in the fortress of vincennes. he was so poor that he could not pay the members of parliament sitting in paris. like other bodies receiving no pay, the parliament declined to work. so restricted were all things then in paris that when the child-king (henry vi.) was brought from london to be crowned there, not enough parchment could be found on which to register the details of his arrival. for want of a victim to assuage his ire, the regent disgraced sir john fastolfe, whom he unknighted and ungartered, in order to punish him for the defeat at patay; and he wrote that the english reverses had been caused by 'a disciple and lyme of the feende, called the pucelle, that used fals enchantements and sorcerie.' the regent, whose degrading of fastolfe and vituperation of joan of arc did not serve to help, applied to his powerful brother-in-law, the duke of burgundy, for aid. burgundy came to the regent's assistance, bringing a small force with him from picardy. then bedford bethought him of his powerful relation in england, henry beaufort, the bishop of winchester. most opportunely for the regent, the bishop had collected an army for the suppression of the bohemian hussites. the regent implored his uncle, the bishop, to send this army for the defence of the english and their interests, now in such dire jeopardy. winchester was a mean, avaricious prince, and his aid had to be bought. a treaty was signed on the st of july, in which winchester promised to bring his troops to his nephew's assistance; but he delayed stirring till the middle of that month. it pleased the crafty bishop to know that his great wealth made him all-powerful in england; for the english protector, the duke of gloucester, was a mere cipher compared to winchester; and now that his other nephew, the protector of france, was in distress, he could dictate his own terms to both. it was not until the th of july that winchester at length arrived with his army in paris. then bedford breathed more freely, and left the capital with an army of observation to watch the movements of the french king. it was now the earnest wish of joan of arc that charles should march direct on paris, and perhaps had he done so he might have entered that city with as little difficulty as he had entered rheims; for if once the king of france had appeared in person, many of the wealthy citizens, as well as the majority of the common people, would have welcomed him. charles, however, as usual vacillated, and the precious moment slipped by. philip (called 'the good'), duke of burgundy, was at this time one of the most powerful princes of christendom. in addition to his titular domain, he held the wealthy provinces of burgundy, including brabant, flanders, franche-comté, holland, namur, lower lorraine, luxembourg, artois, hainault, zealand, friesland, malines, and salines. this much-territoried potentate was at the present juncture coquetting both with bedford and with charles, playing one against the other. to the former he promised an army, but only contributed a handful of men; to the latter he made advances of friendship, as false as the man who made them. joan had despatched two letters of a conciliatory tone to the duke of burgundy from rheims. the original of one of these is to be seen in the archives at lille. like most of joan of arc's letters, it commences with the name of jesus and mary. as joan could not write, the only portion of this letter which bears the mark of her hand is the sign of the cross placed at the left of those names at the top of the document. she strongly urged the duke in these letters to make peace with the king; she appeals on the score of his relationship with charles, to his french blood, in order to prevent further bloodshed, and to aid the rightful king. while waiting some definite answer from the duke, the king went to vailly-sur-aisne from rheims. he arrived at soissons on the th of july, and château thierry on the next day. montmirail was reached on the st of august, provins on the nd. it will be seen that, instead of marching straight upon paris, the king was making a mere detour from rheims towards the loire. it was soon evident that charles and his civil councillors had no intention of advancing direct upon paris, and were merely marching and counter-marching until they could, as they trusted, get the duke of burgundy to join them. in the meanwhile, bedford saw his opportunity, and made prompt use of it. early in the month of august he issued a proclamation calling on all the subjects of henry of england in france and normandy to rally round their liege lord. leaving paris on the th of july, bedford marched to melun with a force of ten thousand men. melun was reached on the th of august. on the day after bedford's arrival at melun a letter was sent by joan of arc to her friends at rheims, announcing that the king's retreat on the loire would not be continued by his majesty. the king had, in fact, met with a check to his advanced guard at bray-sur-seine. charles had, she informed her correspondents, concluded a truce of fifteen days with the duke of burgundy, at the expiration of which the duke had promised to surrender paris to the king. but, she adds, it could not be certain whether the duke would keep to his promise. she concludes her letter by saying that should the treaty not hold good, then the army of the king would be able to take active measures. this letter is vaguely dated from a lodging on the road to paris. it was, she knew, necessary to be near the capital at the close of the period stipulated by burgundy, and the royal army accordingly took the northern road, leading to paris. on the th of august the royal force reached coulommiers; on the th la ferté milon, and on the th crespy-en-valois. bedford, apprised of this change in the movements of his foe, sent off an insulting letter to charles, whom he addressed as 'charles who called himself dauphin, and now calls himself king!' the regent reproaches the king for having taken the crown of france, which he said belonged to the rightful king of france and of england, king henry; and he then styles the maid of orleans 'an abandoned and ill-famed woman, draped in men's clothes and leading a corrupt life.' he bids charles to make either his peace with him or to meet him face to face. altogether a most rude, abusive, and ungallant letter for one prince to send to another. this letter reached charles at crespy-en-valois on the th of august. bedford was then close at hand, and eager to provoke the king into attacking him. charles contented himself with pushing on his advanced guard as far as dammartin, remaining himself at lagny-le-sec. during the th of august skirmishes took place between the advanced guards of the armies, but without any result. bedford now returned to paris--in order to collect more troops, some said, others that he had found the french too strong to attack. the towns and villages around paris, hearing of these events, and that the english had returned to the capital, showed now their readiness to join the french cause. on his way to compiègne news reached the french king that bedford had left paris and marched on senlis. on the th of august the french attacked the english at dawn. their army, formed into companies, was commanded by alençon, rené d'anjou, the king, who had with him la tremoïlle, and clermont. joan of arc was at the head of a detachment with dunois and la hire. the english held a strong position, which they had made still more so by throwing up palisades and digging ditches. what appeared destined to be a great engagement ended in a mere skirmish. neither charles nor bedford were eager to pit all on a stake, and both preferred to play a waiting game. charles retired on crecy, while joan of arc remained in the field. she had done all that courage and audacity could to induce the english to attack. she had ridden up to their palisades and struck them with the staff of her banner. but nothing would make the english fight that day; and the next, joan had the mortification of watching the retreat of the english upon paris. joan had nothing now left her to do but to rejoin the king at crecy. on the th the king received the keys of the town of compiègne, and there he was welcomed on the next day with much loyalty. it was during his stay at compiègne that charles heard the welcome news that the people of senlis had admitted the count of vendôme within their walls, and had bestowed on him the governorship of their town. beauvais had also shown its loyalty, had made an ovation in honour of the king, and had ordered the _te deum_ to be sung, greatly to the annoyance of the bishop of that place--peter cauchon--a creature of the anglo-burgundian faction, of whom we shall hear a good deal later on. charles remained at compiègne until the expiration of the term during which the treaty with the duke of burgundy relating to the disposal of paris remained open; but the negotiations ended in burgundy contenting himself with sending to charles, john of luxembourg and the bishop of arras with words of peace. arrangements were projected that in order to come to a general peace the duke of savoy was to be called in as mediator. in the meanwhile a truce was proposed, which was to last until christmas, with the proviso that the town of compiègne should be ceded to burgundy during the continuance of the armistice. no allusion appears to have been made regarding the fate of paris. joan of arc, knowing that without paris all that she had fought for and obtained would soon again be lost, resolved to see what she could do without coming to the king for assistance. she bade alençon be ready to accompany her, as she wished, so she expressed it, to see paris at closer quarters than she had yet been able to do. joan of arc left compiègne accompanied by the duke of alençon on the rd of august, taking a strong force with them. at senlis they collected more troops; on the th they arrived at saint denis. here they were joined by the king, who may be supposed to have felt some shame at not having started with them from compiègne; he came very unwillingly, it is said, for all that. bedford left paris precipitately for normandy, owing to the discovery of a plot having been started to make over rouen to the french. this event must have opened the regent's eyes to the uncertain tenure the english held even in the old duchy of their kings. bedford had left louis of luxembourg in paris to command its garrison of two thousand english soldiers. de l'isle adam was in command of the burgundian soldiers. in addition to luxembourg, who was a bishop (of thérouanne) as well as a soldier, bedford had given charge of the joint command to an english officer named radley. the bishop summoned the parliament in order that it should swear fealty to king henry vi. the town walls and ditches were carefully repaired and renewed. guns were placed on the towers, walls, and batteries; immense quantities of ammunition of iron and stone were piled ready at hand, to be used for the defence of all the gates and approaches of the city. the moats were deepened, and by dint of threats and menace, and by frightening the people as to the terrible revenge the french king would take on the town and its people when it fell into his power, the citizens were cajoled into being made the agents of their natural enemies, and in sheer terror helped to strengthen the defences of their town. during the first days of the siege only a few unimportant skirmishes took place between besieged and besiegers. joan of arc was indefatigable, and with her keen eye sought out the likeliest place where an assault might be successfully carried; but she lacked troops for storming such strong outworks as paris then had. the capital was not only defended by walls and towers, but the english held both the upper and lower banks of the seine. from saint denis no assistance came from the king, and it was only on the th of september that, having received reinforcements, joan of arc was at length enabled to make a determined attack. it was a very high and holy day in the church calendar--the feast of the virgin's nativity--and, not unmindful of the sacredness of that feast-day, joan of arc had determined to make a general attack; for 'the better the day the better the deed!' was her feeling on that anniversary. in those times the western limit of paris was where now the wide thoroughfare of the avenue de l'opéra runs from north to south. the walls of the city erected under charles v., flanked by huge moats and protected by double fortress towers, each tower having a double drawbridge, made any attack almost a forlorn hope. the regent's departure from paris points to the little fear he felt that paris could be taken by assault; and in this matter bedford judged rightly. whether or not joan felt that some divine assistance would enable her to surmount the barriers that lay between her and the town she was so determined to win back for her king, we cannot say. she fought below the walls with a courage which, if the others had equalled, might have made paris their own. the attacking force was divided into two parts--one, commanded by joan, rais, and de gaucourt, was to attack the city at the gate of saint honoré; the other, led by alençon and clermont, was to cover the assailants, and prevent any sorties being made by the garrison. joan's impetuous onslaught successfully carried the first barriers and the boulevard in front of the gate; but here she met with a check--the heavy gates were barred, nor could she prevail on the enemy to make a sortie. joan of arc, carrying her flag, dashed, under a heavy fire, into the ditch, followed by a few of the most courageous of the soldiers. the ditch was a deep but a dry one; and rising on the further side, close beneath the town walls, was a second and a wider moat, full of water. here, unable to advance, but unwilling to retire, joan of arc and her followers were exposed to a murderous hail of shot, arrows, and other missiles. sending for fagots and fascines to be cast into the moat, in order to enable a kind of bridge to be thrown across, while probing with the staff of her banner the depth of the water, joan was struck by a cross-bow bolt, which made a deep wound in her thigh. refusing to leave the spot, she urged on the soldiers to fill the ditch. the day was waxing late, and the men, who had been fighting since noon, were nearly exhausted. the news of joan having been wounded caused a kind of panic among the french. there came a lull in the fighting, and the recall was sounded. joan had almost to be forced back from before the walls by the duke of alençon and other of the officers. placed upon her horse, she was led back to the camp, joan protesting the whole time that if the attack had only been continued it would have been crowned with success. the spot where the heroine is supposed to have been wounded is near where now stands fremiet's spirited statue of the maid of orleans, between the rue saint honoré--named in later days after the gate she had so gallantly attacked--and the gardens of the tuileries. within the town a great fear had fallen on the citizens, divided as they were between the hope of their countrymen forcing their way into the city and fear as to how they would be treated by charles should he be victorious. perhaps, had joan of arc's urgent entreaties of continuing the attack been more vigorously responded to by the other french commanders, she might have been in the end successful. at any rate joan herself was of that opinion. the following day she was, in spite of the previous evening's failure and her wound, as urgent as ever for further fighting; and again and again implored alençon to renew the attack. it seems the duke was on the point of complying, when there appeared on the scene rené d'anjou and clermont, sent by the king with the order for the maid's immediate return to saint denis. there was nothing to do but to obey, but it must have been a bitter disappointment to the brave maiden when she turned her back on paris. alençon did his best to encourage her in the hope that it might yet fall. he gave orders for a bridge to be thrown across the seine at saint denis, in order to make a fresh attack on the city from that quarter. however, on the next night this bridge was ordered by charles to be removed, and with its destruction fell any hopes joan might still have entertained of being able to take paris. all the blame of the want of success of the army before paris was now laid at the door of joan of arc; and the creatures of the court, who had long waited for an opportunity of this kind to show their bitter jealousy of the heroine, now made no secret of their enmity. foremost of these was the archbishop of rheims, who now, in spite of joan of arc's entreaties, was allowed by the king to make a truce with the enemy. another powerful foe was la tremoïlle, who (as has been pointed out by captain marin in his work on joan of arc) thought it to be against his personal influence that the french should take paris. la tremoïlle had shown, from joan's first appearance at court, his entire want of confidence in her mission. he had unwillingly, after the examination of the maid by the doctors and lawyers at poitiers, conformed to the king's wish that a command should be given her in the army. he had done all in his power to induce the king not to undertake the expedition to rheims. he had told the king, when nothing else could be urged against the journey, that there was no money in the royal coffers, and that consequently the soldiers would not receive their pay. as it turned out, volunteers offered their services gratuitously to escort charles to his crowning. at auxerre, la tremoïlle concluded a treaty with the citizens, which prevented joan from taking that town. at troyes he tried to create a like impediment; but here he was foiled, for troyes capitulated. after the coronation, he persuaded charles not to go to paris, but to go instead to linger in his castle on the loire; and thereby prevented what might then have proved a successful attack on the capital. and he again succeeded in thwarting the maid of orleans when he resisted her wish to make a second attack upon paris. later on it was la tremoïlle who tried to make joan of arc fail at the siege of saint pierre-le-moutier. when she was unsuccessful before la charité-sur-loire, and when the blame of that failure was laid at joan's door, la tremoïlle for very shame was obliged publicly to acknowledge the heroic zeal with which she had carried out the operations of that siege. the higher joan's popularity rose among the people and in the army, the more her two bitter enemies, la tremoïlle and the archbishop of rheims, shared between them their jealous dislike. [illustration: xv century house--compiÈgne.] thus, even before her capture and trial, joan of arc met with some of her worst foes among those whose duty it was to have been her staunchest friends and helpers; and, deplorable to say, among her own countrymen. charles left saint denis on the th of september. before his departure, joan of arc performed an act which indicated that she felt her mission to be finished. in the old fane of saint denis, the tomb-house of the long line of french kings, she solemnly placed her armour and arms at the foot of an image of the holy mother, near the spot where were kept the relics of the patron saint of france. by that act of humility she seemed to wish to show her abnegation of any further earthly victory by the aid of arms. we have now arrived at the turning-point of joan of arc's successes, and although the heroine is even more admirable in her days of misfortune and suffering than in those of her triumphs, when she led her followers on from victory to victory, the course of her brief life now darkens rapidly, and the approaching fate of the brave-hearted maiden is so terrible that it requires some courage to follow her to the very end, glorious as that end was, and bright with its sainted heroism. the king's return journey from compiègne to gien was so hurried that it almost resembled a flight. avoiding the towns still doubtful in their loyalty to him, charles sped from lagny to bovins, then to bray, courtenay, château-regnaut, and montargis, arriving at gien on the st of september. ere this time there could be little doubt of the duke of burgundy's unwillingness to abide by his pledge, and restore paris to charles. the duke and bedford had in fact already come to terms. the regent resigned to burgundy the lieutenancy of the country, keeping only the now empty title of regent and the charge of normandy. the result of the king's withdrawal from the neighbourhood of paris, and his hurried march, or rather retreat, to gien, was that the english felt that there was now no longer any fear of their being drawn out of the capital. they promptly marched on and occupied saint denis, pillaging that town and carrying off as a trophy the arms which joan of arc had placed by the shrine of saint denis, in the ancient basilica of dagobert. the other towns, which had so recently returned to their allegiance to charles, were again abandoned to the english, who punished them by levying large ransoms on the citizens. the surrounding country was laid waste, and joan of arc had the mortification of seeing that, without any attempt being made to defend her people, the places which had so shortly before been the scene of her triumphs were now allowed to be reoccupied by the english and their allies. normandy, picardy, and burgundy were once more in possession of the enemy. at length joan obtained charles' permission to attack la charité, where the enemy were in force, and from whence they threatened the french forts on the loire. at bourges she assembled a few troops, and in company with the sire d'albret she laid siege to saint pierre-le-moutier. then, although feebly supported, joan led the first column of attack. this attacking column might have been called a forlorn hope, so few men had she with her. the little party were repulsed, and at one moment her squire, d'aulon, saw that his brave mistress was fighting alone, surrounded by the english. at great peril she was rescued from the mêlée. asked how she could hope to succeed in taking the place with hardly any support, she answered, while she raised her helmet, 'there are fifty thousand of my host around me,' alluding to the vision of angels that in moments of extreme peril she relied on. d'aulon in vain urged her to beat a retreat, and retire to a place of safety; she insisted on renewing the attack, and gave orders for crossing the moat on logs and fascines. a roughly constructed bridge over the fosse was then made, and after a desperate struggle the fortress was taken. this occurred early in the month of november ( ). a few years ago a stained-glass window commemorative of the maid of orleans having saved the church in saint pierre-le-moutier (it had been converted by the besieged into a warehouse for the goods and chattels of the citizens) was placed in the building she had preserved from destruction. the next siege undertaken by joan of arc was that of la charité--a far larger and more strongly garrisoned town than the other. la charité was held by one peter grasset, who had been its governor for seven years. it was not only strongly defended by fortifications, but fully victualled for a prolonged siege. joan and her little army had not the material necessary for carrying on such a siege as that of la charité would require--the very sinews of war were wanting. charles would not or could not contribute a single écu d'or, and joan had to solicit help and funds from the towns. in the public library at riom is preserved the original letter addressed by the maid of orleans to 'my dear and good friends the clergy, burghers, and citizens of the town of riom.' it was sent to that place on the th of november from moulins. in this letter, the only one to which is affixed the maid's signature, spelt 'jehonne,' possibly signed by herself, she says that her friends at riom are aware of how the town of saint pierre-le-moutier had been taken, and she adds that she has the intention of driving out (_de faire vider_) the other towns hostile to king charles. she begs the citizens of riom, in order to accomplish this, to provide her with the means of pushing forward the siege of la charité, and asks them to supply her with powder, saltpetre, sulphur, bows and arrows, cross-bows, and other material of war, having exhausted all her stock of such things in the late siege. whether or not the burghers of riom were able to carry out joan's wishes is not known. the town of bourges, however, provided funds out of its customs, and orleans also sent soldiers and artillerymen ('_joueurs de coulverines_') to the maid's army for the siege of la charité. but in spite of all efforts joan of arc was destined to fail in this undertaking. no doubt her enemies at court helped to thwart all her attempts at raising a sufficient force to beleaguer so strong a place of arms, and seeing her hopes of taking la charité by assault vanish, joan of arc relinquished the undertaking. the remainder of that winter joan of arc passed in what must have tried her high spirit sorely--inaction. accompanying the court, she went from bourges to sully-sur-loire, and revisited orleans. in the latter town we find some traces of her passage, and some further traits of her sweet nature, and of that simplicity which had endeared her so deeply to the hearts of the people: a disposition no success altered, no disappointment embittered. what was the chief charm of her character was this simplicity, her entire freedom from self-glorification, her horror of it being imagined that she was a supernatural or miraculous being, even when those supernatural and miraculous powers were considered as coming direct to her from heaven--in fact, to use a slang but expressive phrase, her utter freedom from humbug. this is one of the most marked features of her character, although not the most glorious or salient to those who are dazzled by her triumphs and extraordinary career. when she was told by people that they could well understand how little she feared being in action and under fire, knowing that she had a charmed life, she answered them that she had no more assurance of not being killed than the commonest of her soldiers; and when some foolish creatures brought her their rosaries and beads to touch, she told them to touch these themselves, and that their rosaries would benefit quite as much as if she had done so. on one occasion at lagny she was asked to resuscitate a dead child. one of the greatest of the french nobles wrote to ask her which of the rival popes was the true one. when asked on the eve of a battle who would be victor, she answered that she could no more tell than any of the soldiers could. a woman named catherine de la rochelle, who assumed the power of knowing where money was hidden, was commanded by the king to take joan of arc into her confidence. the latter soon discovered that catherine was a fraud, and refused to have anything to do with her. catherine had suggested going to the duke of burgundy to arrange a peace between him and the french king, to which proposition joan of arc very sensibly said that it seemed to her that no peace could be made between them but at the lance's point. joan had seen too much of the duplicity of the duke to believe in any of his treaties and promises. the early months of the year were months of anxiety for the citizens of orleans and the other towns which had thrown off the english allegiance. the truce made between burgundy and france expired at christmas of the former year, but was renewed till easter. early in the year, the burghers of rheims implored help of joan of arc, and not of the king, thus proving how far greater trust was placed in the hands of the maid of orleans, by such a town as rheims, than in the goodwill of the king. twice during the month of march did joan have letters written to reassure them of aid in case of need. 'know,' she says in a letter dated the th of march, 'that if i can prevent it you will not be assailed; and if i cannot come to your rescue, close your gates, and i will make them [the english] buckle on their spurs in such a hurry that they will not be able to use them.' in the second letter to the people of rheims, written at sully on the th of march, joan tells them that they will soon hear some good news about herself. this good news referred no doubt to her return to the field, for we find that by the end of that month she was again on the march. it was early in the month of april, , that joan of arc left the court and rode to the north, on what was to prove her last expedition. it is said that while at melun, during easter week, she was told by her voices that she would be taken prisoner before st. john's day. it was at lagny that an incident occurred which formed one of the accusations brought against the maid by her judges, and to which reference may now be made. a freebooter, named franquet d'arras, had, at the head of a band of about three hundred english freelances, held all the country-side in terror round about lagny. hearing of this, being in the neighbourhood of lagny, joan of arc gave orders that franquet and his band should be attacked. the french were in number about equal to the english. after a stubborn fight, the english were all killed or captured. among the latter was the chief of the robbers, franquet d'arras. it was proved before the bailiff and justices of lagny that franquet had not only been a thief, but a murderer, and he was consequently condemned to die. joan of arc wished that he should be exchanged for a french prisoner, but this french prisoner had meanwhile died. the justices of lagny insisted on having their sentence carried out, to which joan at length unwillingly gave way, and franquet met with his deserts. we cannot see how the maid was to blame in this affair; but this thing was one of the accusations which helped to bring her to the stake. on the th of april the truce agreed to between king charles and burgundy came to an end. at this time the town of greatest strategical importance to burgundy was that of compiègne. holding compiègne, the duke of burgundy held the key of france. king charles, with his habitual carelessness, had been on the point of handing over compiègne to the duke as a pledge of peace; and no doubt he would have done so had not the inhabitants protested. charles then surrendered the town of pont sainte-maxence to burgundy instead of compiègne. but this sop did not at all satisfy the greedy duke, whose mouth watered for compiègne, which he was determined to obtain by fair or by foul means. at soissons the duke had succeeded in gaining the governor by a bribe, and had, through this bribe, obtained the place; and there is little reason not to suppose that he was still more ready to offer a still greater bribe to obtain compiègne. the governor of compiègne, william de flavigny--a man very deeply suspected, writes michelet of him--was not likely to refuse a bribe; and, as we shall see, he acted in a manner that has made the accusation of his treachery to his country and joan of arc almost a certainty. it was to prevent, if possible, compiègne falling into the hands of burgundy that joan of arc hastened to its defence. on the th of may she reached compiègne, where she was received with great joy by the citizens. the maid lodged in the town with mary le boucher, wife of the _procureur_ of the king. at compiègne were some important court officials--the chancellor regnault de chartres, no friend to joan as we have seen, vendôme, and others. the country around and the places of armed strength were all in the occupation of the english and burgundians; near noyon, the town of pont-l'evêque was in the possession of the english. this place joan of arc attacked, and she was on the point of capturing it when a strong force of burgundians arrived from noyon, and joan had to beat a retreat on crecy. on the rd of may, news reached joan that compiègne was threatened by the united english and burgundian forces, under the command of the duke and the earl of arundel. by midnight of that day, joan of arc was back again in compiègne. she had been warned of the danger of passing, to gain the town, through the enemies' lines with so small a company. 'never fear!' she answered, 'we are enough. i must go and see my good friends at compiègne.' these words have been appropriately placed on the pedestal of the statue of the heroine in front of the hôtel de ville in compiègne. by sunrise all her troopers were within the town: not a man was missing. compiègne was a strongly fortified place, resting on the left bank of the river oise, across which, as at orleans, one long stoutly defended bridge connected the right bank with the town. in front of the bridge was one of those redoubts which were in those days called 'boulevards.' this boulevard was surrounded by a wet moat or ditch connected with the principal bridge by a drawbridge, closed or opened from within at pleasure. the town was surrounded and protected by a broad and deep moat, filled from the river. behind this moat rose the town walls, girt with strong towers at short intervals. on the right bank of the river extended a wide stretch of fertile meadow land, bounded on the northern horizon by the soft low-lying hills of picardy. from the circuit of the walls across the plain the eye rested on the towns of margny, of clairvoix, and of venette. the burgundians were encamped at margny and at clairvoix; the english, under the command of montgomery, were encamped at venette. the evening of the day on which she had arrived at compiègne (the th of may), joan of arc resolved to attack the burgundians, both at margny and also at clairvoix. her plan was to draw out the duke of burgundy, should he come to the support of his men at these places. as to the english at venette, she trusted that flavy with his troops at compiègne would prevent them from cutting her off after her attack on the burgundians, and so intercepting her return to the town; but this unfortunately was the very disaster which occurred. in front of the bridge the redoubts were filled by french archers to keep off any attack made by the english, and flavy had placed a large number of boats filled with armed men, principally bowmen, in readiness along the river to receive their companions should they meet with a repulse in their attack on the burgundians. it was about five o'clock that afternoon when joan of arc rode out of compiègne at the head of five hundred horsemen and foot soldiers. flavy remained within the town, of which he was governor. the attack led by the maid on margny, with splendid impetuosity, proved a complete success, and the enemy fled for shelter to their companions at clairvoix. here the resistance made was far more stubborn. while the french and burgundians were combating in the meadows at clairvoix, the english came from venette to the assistance of their allies, and attacked the french in their rear. a panic was created by this attack among the french troops, and a _sauve qui peut_ ensued, both foot and horse dashing back in confusion towards compiègne, and when they reached the river either taking refuge in the boats or on the redoubts near the bridge. mixed among this panic-stricken crowd of fugitives came the english in hot pursuit, followed by the burgundians. carried away by the throng of frightened soldiers, joan was among the last to leave the field, and to those who cried to her to make her escape she answered that all might yet be saved, and urged her men to rally. nevertheless, she was forced back towards the bridge, across which fugitives were making their escape into the town. in a few seconds joan could have been safe across the drawbridge, and under shelter of the towers which defended it. at this instant, whether intentionally to exclude the heroine from safety, or through panic and fear of the burgundians and english entering the town along with the french, the drawbridge was lifted, and joan, with a handful of the faithful few who were ever at her side in time of peril, was surrounded by a sea of foemen. in a moment half a dozen soldiers secured her horse and seized her on every side, trying to drag her out of the saddle. the long skirts which the heroine wore were soon torn off by these rough hands. an archer of picardy, belonging to the army of john of luxembourg, wrenched her from her horse and made her prisoner. her brother peter, her faithful squire d'aulon, and pothon de xaintrailles were all captured at the same time. thus fell joan of arc into the hands of her enemies, and the question whether through treachery or not has never been settled. according to an old work published early in the sixteenth century, called _le miroir des femmes vertueuses_, joan of arc had taken the communion in the church of saint james at compiègne, and was standing leaning against a pillar of that church; a large number of citizens with many children stood around, to whom she said: 'my children and dear friends, i bid you to mark that i have been sold and betrayed, and that i shall be shortly put to death. so i beseech you all to pray to god for me, for never more shall i be able to be of service to the king or to the kingdom of france.' this story, which, whether authentic or not, is surely a touching one, is full of the spirit of the heroine. it rests upon the testimony of two persons, one eighty-six and the other eighty-eight years of age, by whom the author was told the tale in , both affirming that they had been in the church when joan of arc spoke of her betrayal. there can be but little doubt that joan had had for some time before she went to compiègne a presentiment of her soon falling into her enemies' power. on the eve of the king's coronation at rheims she said to her friends that what she alone feared was treason--a foreboding too soon, alas! to come true. she never, however, seems to have fixed on any particular period when the treason she dreaded would occur; and during her trial she acknowledged that, had she known she would have been taken prisoner during the sortie on the th of may, she would not have undertaken that adventure. one of her best historians, m. wallon, thinks that the words which she is supposed to have spoken to the people in the church of saint james at compiègne were owing to her discouragement at not having, a few weeks previously, been able to cross the river aisne at soissons, and thus finding herself prevented from attacking the duke of burgundy at choisy, and thence having been obliged to return to compiègne. wallon points out that in coming to defend compiègne, joan of arc came entirely at her own instigation, and that during the previous six months flavy had defended compiègne against the english and burgundians with success and energy; nay more, that, in spite of bribes from the duke of burgundy, flavy contrived to hold the town till the close of the war. on the other side, a recent writer of the heroine's life, especially as regarded from a military standpoint, m. marin, gives at great length his reasons for believing in the treachery of flavy. m. marin points out that, in the first place, flavy's character was a notoriously bad one; secondly, that he was very possibly under the influence of both la tremoïlle and the chancellor regnault de chartres, bitter opponents, as we have already shown, of the maid; thirdly, that it was in flavy's interest that the prestige of saving compiègne from the burgundians and english should be entirely owing to his own conduct; and fourthly, that he, flavy, with the majority of the french officers, was affected against joan of arc since the execution of franquet d'arras. m. marin goes on to prove that joan of arc might have been rescued without difficulty, and that the enemy could not have forced their way into the town alongside of the retreating french, unless they were ready to be cut up as soon as they had come within its walls. m. marin's opinion, having the authority of a soldier, carries weight with it; and his opinion is that joan of arc was deliberately betrayed by flavy, and purposely allowed to fall into the hands of her enemies. the names of la tremoïlle and regnault de chartres should also be pilloried by the side of that of flavy--the two great courtiers who held the ear of the king, and who had always plotted against joan of arc. as has already been said, it was regnault de chartres who had the effrontery to announce the news of joan of arc's capture to the citizens of rheims as being a judgment of heaven upon her. she had, this mean prelate said, offended god by her pride, and in wearing rich apparel, and in having preferred to follow her own will rather than that of god! verily, and with reason, might poor joan have prayed to be delivered from such friends as those creatures and courtiers about her king, for whom she had done and suffered so much. * * * * * the archer who had captured joan of arc was in the pay of the bastard of wandome, or wandoune, and this wandome was himself in the service of john de ligny, a vassal of the duke of burgundy, and a cadet of the princely house of luxembourg. like most younger sons, john de ligny was badly off, and the temptation of the english reward in exchange for his prisoner, whose escape he greatly feared, overtopped any scruples he may have felt in receiving this blood-money. [illustration: tour de la pucelle--compiÈgne.] the historian monstrelet tells us he was present when joan of arc was brought into the burgundian camp, at margny, and before the duke of burgundy. but the old chronicler relates nothing with regard to that eventful meeting; only he is eloquent on the joy caused by the capture of the maid of orleans among the english and their allies; and he tells us that in their opinion joan's capture was equal by itself to that of five hundred ordinary prisoners, for they had feared her, he adds, more than all the other french leaders put together. of the high opinion held by her enemies of the maid's influence, one could not ask for a more remarkable proof than this testimony, coming as it does from a partisan of her foes. after three days passed at margny, joan of arc was taken, for greater security, by luxembourg to the castle of beaulieu, in picardy. chapter v. _imprisonment and trial._ the news of joan's capture soon reached paris, and within a few hours of that event becoming known, the vicar-general of the order of the inquisition sent a letter to the duke of burgundy, accompanied by another from the university of paris, praying that joan of arc might be delivered up to the keeping of mother church as a sorceress and idolatress. that terrible engine, the inquisition, had, like some mighty reptile scenting its prey near, slowly unfolded its coils. whether bedford had or had not caused these letters to be sent the duke is not known, but the regent had both in the church and the university of paris the men he wanted--instruments by whom his vengeance could be worked on joan of arc; and he had the astuteness to see that in calling in the aid of the church, and treating joan of arc as a heretic and witch, the rules of war could be laid aside. what no civilised body of men could do, namely, kill a prisoner of war, that thing could be done in the name and by the authority of the church and its holy office; and in the bishop of beauvais, the inexorable cauchon, bedford had the tool necessary to his hand whereby this dastardly plot could be carried out. the first move that bedford now was obliged to take was to secure the victim; and in order to do so the bishop of beauvais was applied to. the name of peter cauchon, bishop of beauvais, will go down to the latest posterity with the execration of humanity, for the part he played in the tragedy of the worst of judicial murders of which any record exists. let us give even the devil his due. according to michelet the bishop was 'not a man without merit,' although the historian does not say in what cauchon's merit consisted. born at rheims, he had been considered a learned priest when at the university of paris; but he had the reputation of being a harsh and vindictive opponent to all who disagreed with his views, within or without the church. he was forced to leave paris, in , for some misconduct. it was then that cauchon became a strong partisan of the duke of burgundy. it was through the duke that he obtained the see of beauvais. the english also favoured cauchon, and obtained for him a high post in the university of paris. when the tide of french success reached beauvais, in , cauchon was obliged to escape, and found shelter in england. there winchester received him with cordiality. while in england, cauchon became a thorough partisan of the english, and the humble servant of the proud prince-cardinal. winchester promised cauchon preferment, and, when the see of rouen fell vacant, recommended the pope to place cauchon on its throne. the pope, however, refused his consent, and the rouen chapters would hear naught of the anglicised bishop. at that time the church at rouen was at war with the university of paris, and did not wish one of the members of that university placed over it. joan of arc's place of capture happened to be in the diocese of beauvais, and although cauchon was now only nominally bishop of beauvais, he still retained that title. cauchon now placed himself, body and soul, at the disposal of the english, hoping thereby sooner to obtain the long-coveted archbishopric of rouen in exchange for helping his friends to the utmost in his power by furthering their schemes and in ridding them of their prisoner once and for ever. the bait held out by winchester and bedford was the archbishopric of rouen, and eagerly did cauchon seize his prey. what added to his zeal was his wish to gratify base feelings of revenge on those who had thrust him out of his bishopric of beauvais, and on her without whose deeds he might have still been living in security in his palatial home there. after a consultation with the leaders of the university of paris, cauchon arrived at the burgundian camp before compiègne on the th of july, and claimed joan of arc as prisoner from the keeping of the duke of burgundy. cauchon justified his demand by letters which he had obtained from the doctors of the university, and he made the offer in the name of the child-king of england. the sum handed over for the purchase of the prisoner was , livres tournois, equivalent to , francs of french money of to-day--about £ sterling. this was the ordinary price in that day for the ransom of any prisoner of high rank. luxembourg, to his shame and that of his order, consented to the sale on those terms, and cauchon soon returned with the news of his bargain to his english employers. the whole transaction sounds more like what one might expect to have occurred amongst an uncivilised nation rather than among a people who prided themselves on their chivalry and their usages of fair-play in matters relating to warfare. that a high dignitary of the church, and a countryman of joan of arc, should have bought her from a prince, the descendant of emperors and kings, also a countryman of the heroic maid's, for english gold, is bad enough; and that the so-called 'good' duke of burgundy should have been a silent spectator of the infamous transaction, brands all the actors as among the most sordid and meanest of individuals. but what is infinitely worse is the fact that no steps appear to have been taken by charles to rescue the maid, or to attempt an exchange of her for any other prisoner or prisoners. thus joan of arc, bound literally hand and foot, was led like a lamb to the shambles, not a hand being raised by those for whom she had done such great and noble deeds. the university of paris, whose decisions carried so great a weight in the issue of the trial of the maid of orleans, consisted at this period of an ecclesiastical body of doctors; but as far as its attributes consisted it was a body secular, and holding an independent position owing to its many privileges. the university was a political as well as an ecclesiastical body, supreme under the pope above the whole of the gallican church. although divided into two parties through the war then raging between england and france, its judicature was greatly influenced by the church. it was a matter of certainty that the doctors of theology who sat in the university of paris, and who were all, or nearly all, french by birth, would favour the english, and give an adverse decision to that of those french ecclesiastics who had examined into joan's life and character when assembled at poitiers, and who then considered her to be acting under the influence and with the protection of the almighty. as a prisoner, joan of arc's behaviour was as modest and courageous as it had been in her days of success and liberty. in the first times of her durance, d'aulon, who, as we mentioned, had been captured at the same time, appears to have been allowed to remain with her. on his telling her that he feared compiègne would now probably be taken by the enemy, joan of arc said such a thing could not occur, 'for all the places,' she added, 'which the king of heaven has placed in the keeping of king charles by my means will never again be retaken by his enemies, at any rate as long as he cares to keep them.' although willing to endure for the sake of her beloved country all the cruelty her enemies could inflict upon her, joan was most anxious to return in order to continue her mission. while in the castle of beaulieu she made a desperate attempt to escape. she managed to squeeze herself between two beams of wood placed across an opening in her prison, and was on the point of leaving her dungeon tower when one of the jailers caught sight of her, and she was retaken. probably in consequence of this attempt, joan of arc, after an imprisonment of four months at beaulieu, was transferred thence by ligny to his castle of beaurevoir, near the town of cambrai, a place far removed from the neighbourhood of the war, and consequently more secure than beaulieu. at beaurevoir lived the wife and the aunt of ligny; they showed some attention and compassion to the prisoner. they offered her some of their dresses, and tried to persuade her to quit her male attire. joan, however, refused: she gave as her reason for not complying with their request that the time had not yet arrived for her to cease wearing the clothes she had worn during the time of her mission. that she had good reason not to don woman's attire even when at beaurevoir, and keep to her male attire as a protection, is probable, as she was not safe from wanton insult at the hands of the rough soldiery placed about her person. this clinging to her male dress, we shall see, under similar circumstances at rouen, was the principal indictment made against her by her executioners. at beaurevoir joan of arc was placed in a chamber at the top of a high tower, whence ligny thought that no attempt at escape would be made, but joan of arc tried once again to recover her liberty. in the course of her trial she told her judges how her voices counselled her not again to make this venture, and of her perplexity whether she should obey them, or, at the risk of her life, escape from the clutches of the english, for at this time she knew that she had been sold to her bitterest foes. what appears to have determined her decision was hearing that compiègne was in imminent peril of falling into the hands of the english, and that the inhabitants would be massacred. in her desperation, feeling, like young arthur, that 'the wall is high; and yet will i leap down:-- good ground, be pitiful, and hurt me not!... as good to die, and go, as die, and stay' she knotted some thongs together and let herself out of a window; but the thongs broke, and she fell from a great height--the tower is supposed to have been no less than sixty feet high. she was found unconscious at its foot, and for several days she was not expected to recover from the injuries she had received. but she was doomed for a far more terrible death. for several days joan of arc took no nourishment. gradually she revived, and she told her jailers that her beloved saint catherine had visited and comforted her; and she also told them that she knew compiègne would not be taken, and would be free from its enemies before the feast of saint martin. beaurevoir is now a ruin: although above the lintel can still be seen the coat-of-arms of the jailer of the maid, the tower in which she was imprisoned, and from which she so nearly met her death, has been destroyed. in the month of november of that year ( ), in spite of the entreaties of his wife and aunt, ligny delivered up his prisoner into the custody of the duke of burgundy, from whose keeping she was soon transferred into that of the english. on the th of november the university of paris sent a message to cauchon, advising him to bring joan of arc before a tribunal. cauchon, however, waited the arrival of winchester, bringing with him his great-nephew, henry vi. winchester arrived with the boy-king on the nd of december. the cardinal intended the function of the crowning of his great-nephew to be as imposing a ceremony as possible; and he also meant, by defaming the source of the french king's successes, to show the french people that charles' coronation at rheims had been brought about by what the regent bedford called a 'limb of the evil one.' it was, therefore, bedford's plan that it should be declared before the world that joan of arc was inspired by satanic agencies, and that consequently the french king's coronation was also due to these agencies. by similar means it would be made clear that all the french victories were owing to the same influence; for were it not, argued the english, they would be proved to have been themselves fighting against and defeated by--not the spirit of evil but--the spirit of righteousness. nothing, indeed, could be clearer than winchester's argument. it was now only necessary that joan of arc should be at once placed on her trial as a sorceress and a witch--one who was in league with the evil one; and, when that had been satisfactorily proved, that she should publicly meet with the fate which a merciful church had, in its infinite wisdom, ordained for such as she. thus would the english army and people be avenged, and the french king's crown and prerogative suffer an irreparable damage. from beaurevoir, joan of arc was first taken to the town of arras, thence to crotoy, where, about the st of november, she was handed over to the english. a chronicler of that day writes that the english rejoiced as greatly on that occasion as if they had received all the wealth of lombardy. the duke of burgundy had never merited the title of 'good,' which, somehow or other, has been linked with his name. had he been the most virtuous of princes of any time, he yet deserves to have his memory branded for the part he then took in the sale of joan of arc--a transaction whereof the poor excuse of not losing the benefits of his alliance with the english avails nothing. for this, if nothing else, we reverse the good fame which lying history has accorded him. in the underground portion of a tower at crotoy, still to be seen, although the upper part has disappeared, facing the sea, is a door-way, which local tradition points out as that of the dungeon of joan of arc. crotoy, or le crotoy, is on the coast of picardy, a little to the north of abbeville. in the fifteenth century it was a place of some warlike importance, especially to the english. its situation near the coast, and the strength of its fortress, made le crotoy one of the principal places on the sea line, whence stores and war provender could be carried into france. le crotoy had fallen into possession of the english through the marriage of henry iii. with eleanor of castille, countess of ponthieu, of which crotoy formed a part. during the hundred years' war, the port could receive vessels of considerable tonnage; and from this point the booty taken by the english could be shipped and sent across the channel. now but a few vestiges can be traced of its once strong and ably fortified castle. a few years ago, a statue, representing the maid of orleans in the garb of a prisoner, was placed near the ruins of the castle in which she passed most of the month of december, . at crotoy, joan of arc was permitted to assist at the celebration of the mass in the chapel of the castle; and while here she received a visit from some of her admirers from abbeville--a few noble hearts who still remained loyal to the once all-powerful deliveress of their country, now a poor and abandoned prisoner on her road to a long imprisonment and a cruel death! touched by this mark of sympathy from these abbeville folk, joan gave them, on parting from them, her blessing, and asked them to remember her in their prayers. the enlightened clergy and doctors, lay and spiritual, who formed the body known as the university of paris, preferred that joan of arc should be sent to the capital, there to undergo her trial, and wrote to this effect to bedford, through the name of the boy-king. they also despatched a letter to cauchon (probably inspired by bedford), in which they rated him for not bringing the maid at once to her trial. they told him he was showing a lamentable laxness in not immediately punishing the scandals which had been committed under his jurisdiction against the christian religion. paris was not considered enough of a safe place to take joan of arc into; the french lay too near its walls, and the loyalty of its citizens to the english was a doubtful quantity. besides, it was not convenient that the university of paris should be allowed the entire direction of the trial. it was well that the university should be made use of; but cauchon relied on the inquisition to carry out his and bedford's plan. cauchon must be the principal agent and judge, and he felt, with bedford, that they had a freer hand if the trial were to be at rouen; therefore rouen was decided on as the place of trial and punishment. rouen, also, being in the midst of the english possessions, was perfectly safe from attack, should it occur to any of joan of arc's countrymen to attempt a rescue. at the close of december joan of arc was taken across the river somme, in a boat, to saint valery, and thence, strongly guarded, and placed on horseback, she was led along the normandy coast by eure and dieppe to the place of her martyrdom. on arriving at rouen it was seriously debated by some of her captors whether or not she should be at once put to death. they suggested her being sewn into a sack and thrown into the river! the reason these people gave for summarily disposing of joan of arc without form or trial was that, as long as she lived, there was no security for the english in france. as has already been noticed, those who commanded and sided with the english were desirous that joan of arc should be first branded as a witch and a sorceress, both by the doctors of the church and by the state, before being put to death. arrived at rouen, joan of arc was immured in the old fortress built by philip augustus. one tower alone remains of the seven massive round towers which surrounded the circular castle. her jailers had the barbarity to place their prisoner in an iron cage, in which she was fastened with iron rings and chains, one at the neck, another at the hands, and a third confining the feet. joan was thus caged as if she were a wild animal until her trial commenced. after that, she was chained to a miserable truckle bed. a chronicler of that time, named macy, tells the following story of an incident which, for the sake of english manhood, one trusts is untrue. among others who went to see joan of arc in her prison came one day the earl of warwick, with lord stafford and ligny--joan's former jailer. the latter told her in a jeering way that he had come to buy her back from the english, provided she promised never again to make war against them. 'you are mocking me,' said joan of arc. 'for i know that you have not the power to do that, neither the will.' and she added, 'i know well that these english will kill me, thinking that by doing so they will reconquer the kingdom of france; but even if there were one hundred thousand godons more in france than there are now, they will never again conquer the kingdom!' on hearing these words stafford drew his dagger, and would have struck her had not warwick prevented the cowardly act. cauchon formed his tribunal of the following:-- . john graverent, a dominican priest, d.d., grand inquisitor of france. it was he who appointed john lemaître as judge in the trial of the maid. the following july this graverent preached a sermon in paris, in which he glorified the death of joan of arc. . john lemaître, who represented the inquisition on the trial. he was a dominican prior. he appears to have been a feeble-minded creature, and a mere tool of cauchon and graverent. . martin bellarme, d.d., another dominican, and also a member of the inquisition. . john d'estivet, surnamed 'bénédicité,' canon of beauvais and bayeux, was another of cauchon's creatures. he acted the part of _procureur-général_ during the trial. d'estivet was a gross and cruel ecclesiastic, and it is somewhat satisfactory to know his end. he was found dead in a muddy ditch soon after joan of arc's death. as m. fabre justly says, 'he perished in his native element.' . john de la fontaine, m.a. he was _conseille d'instruction_ during the trial. in the course of it he was threatened by cauchon for having given some friendly advice to the prisoner, and escaped from rouen before the conclusion of the trial. , , . william manchon, william colles, and nicolas taquel, all three recorders. they belonged to the church. it is to manchon that we are indebted for a summary of the most interesting account of the trial. we shall find that at the time of joan's execution this man was horrified at the part he had taken in it. he confesses his horror at having received money for his infamy, but instead of casting his blood-money at the feet of cauchon, and hanging himself like another judas, he somewhat naïvely informs us that he laid it out in the purchase of a breviary in order to pray for the soul of the martyr. . massieu, another priest, who acted as the sheriffs officer. he appears to have had feelings of humanity, and attended joan to the end. . louis de luxembourg, bishop of thérouenne and the chancellor of france to king henry vi. this bishop was the go-between of cauchon and winchester throughout the trial; but he only appears to have taken part in these occasions during the examinations. it was he who was made archbishop of rouen, which post cauchon had hoped to gain; and it was for this archbishopric that cauchon had taken the presiding post during the trial. . john de mailly, bishop of noyon; he was another staunch auxiliary of cauchon. in the year , at the trial for the rehabilitation of joan of arc's memory, mailly signed his name among those who condemned the deed he had helped to carry out. . zanon de castiglione, bishop of lisieux. one of the reasons that this man gave for condemning joan of arc to the stake was that she was born in too low a rank of life to have been inspired by god. this decision makes one wonder so aristocratic a prelate could demean himself by belonging to a religion which owed its origin to one who had followed the trade of a carpenter. . philibert de montjeu, bishop of coutances. . john de saint avét, bishop of avranches. the latter was the only one of the above bishops, dominicans, and members of the french church who gave his vote against the condemnation of joan of arc, although the trial minutes have not recorded the fact. besides the above french prelates, were:-- . john beaupère, m.a. and d.d., formerly a rector of the university of paris, also a canon of besançon. it was he who, with the following five representatives of the university of paris, took the most prominent part in the cross-questioning of the prisoner. . thomas de courcelles, a canon of amiens, of thérouenne, and of laon. this person was employed to read the articles of accusation to the prisoner, and was in favour of employing torture to make joan confess what was required of her by her prosecutors. he was considered one of the shining lights of the university of paris. he died in , and until the revolution an engraved slab, on which his virtues and learning were recorded, covered his remains. . gerard feuillet. he was sent to paris during the trial in order to lay the twelve articles of accusation before the university, and did not take part in the latter portion of the trial. . nicolas midi, d.d., a celebrated preacher. he is supposed to have been the author of the twelve articles; and he it was who preached a sermon at the time of the execution of joan of arc. attacked soon after by leprosy, he sufficiently recovered to see charles vii. enter paris; and he had the audacity to send the king an address of felicitation in the name of the faculties of the university by whose instrumentality joan of arc had been executed. . peter morice, a doctor of the university and a canon of rouen. he was one of the most eager to bring joan to the stake. . james de touraine, also a doctor of the university, was violently hostile to joan of arc. the above six doctors, with cauchon, were those who had most to do with the proceedings of the trial, and those whose duty it was principally to question the prisoner. . nicolas loiseleur, m.a., a canon of rouen; he was the most abject of all the gang of priests and doctors who formed part of this infamous tribunal. it was loiseleur who, in the disguise of a layman, attempted to worm secrets from joan, pretending to be her friend and sympathiser. when he found he gained nothing by the subterfuge, he resumed his clerical garb, and succeeded in getting, under the promise of secrecy from his order, a confession from the prisoner. he also introduced spies into the prison who took notes of joan's words. when the idea was mooted of putting joan of arc to the torture, loiseleur was one of the most urgent for it to be applied. however, on the day of the execution this man, who, strange as it may seem, appears to have had some kind of conscience, or at least to have been able to feel remorse for the base part he had played in the trial of the maid, implored joan of arc's forgiveness. he, however, after the execution, helped cauchon to spread calumnies regarding their victim. this infamous scoundrel died suddenly at basle. . raoul roussel de vernon, d.c.l., and the canon treasurer of the cathedral of rouen. he acted throughout the trial as reporter. in roussel became archbishop of rouen. . robert barbier, also a d.c.l., and canon of rouen cathedral. . nicolas coppequesne, also a canon of rouen cathedral. . nicolas de venderès, a canon of rouen, and cauchon's chaplain. . john alessée, also a canon of rouen. this alessée was greatly moved at the heroine's death, and exclaimed, 'i pray to god my soul may one day be where hers is now.' . raoul auguy, another canon. . william de baubribosc, also a canon of rouen. . john brullot, another canon and precentor of rouen. . john basset, another canon and a m.a. . john brullot, another canon. besides these were seventeen others, named caval, columbel, cormeilles, crotoy, duchemin, dubesert, garin, gastinel, ledoux, leroy, maguerie, manzier, morel, morellet, pinchon, saulx, and pasquier de vaux, who became bishop of meaux, evreux, and lisieux. in all, nine-and-twenty canons of rouen. after these came a list of mitred abbots, priors, and heads of religious houses: peter de crique, prior of sigy; william lebourg, prior of the college of saint lô of rouen; peter migiet, prior of longueville. after these priors came eleven abbots: durement, abbot of fécamp, later bishop of coutances; benel, abbot of courcelles; de conti, abbot of sainte catherine; dacier, abbot of saint corneille of compiègne; frique, abbot of bee; jolivet, abbot of saint michael's mount in normandy; labbé, abbot of saint george de bocherville; leroux, abbot of jumièges; du masle, abbot of saint ouen; moret, abbot of préaux; and theroude, abbot of mortemer. besides these there were many doctors and assessors from the university of paris; among the latter lot appears the name of an english priest, william haiton, a secretary of henry vi. he and william alnwick, bishop of norwich, privy seal to the english king, are the only two names belonging to the english clergy who took part in the trial. the cardinal of winchester never once appeared during the proceedings, although he was, together with cauchon, the prime mover in the business. to complete the list of the other french clergy--french only by birth and nationality indeed--must be added the names of chatillon, archdeacon of evreux; erard, canon of langres, laon, and beauvais; martin ladvenu, a dominican priest, one of the few who showed some humanity to the prisoner. it was ladvenu who heard her confession on the day of her execution, and who after her death testified to her saintliness. isambard de la pierre, also a dominican. although he voted for her death, de la pierre showed signs of pity and compassion for his victim, and assisted her at her last moments. testimony to her pure character was given by him in the time of her rehabilitation. besides these were emenyart, fiexvet, guerdon, le fèvre, delachambre, and tiphanie, all of whom, with the exception of the last two, who were doctors of medicine, were members of the university. as we have already stated, out of this vast crowd of ecclesiastics and a few laymen, only two englishmen took part in the trial. but the immediate guard of the prisoner was composed of english soldiers--namely, of the following: john gris, an english knight, one of henry's bodyguard, who was in personal attendance on joan of arc; also john berwoit (?) and william talbot, subordinator to gris. these men commanded a set of soldiers called _houspilleurs_, placed in the cell of the prisoner day and night. according to j. bellow's pocket dictionary, the term _houspilleur_ is derived from the old french term _houspiller_--ang. 'to worry.' and these fellows certainly carried out that meaning of the word. if anything is needed to prove what an important case the english and those allied to them in france considered that of joan of arc, the great number of prelates and doctors assembled to judge her is sufficient to show. the doctors who had been summoned to attend the trial, and who had come to rouen from paris, were well paid by winchester. some of the receipts are still in existence. the inquisition and cauchon also received pay from the english government. besides money, as we have said, cauchon expected also to receive the archbishopric of rouen for his zeal in bringing joan of arc to the stake. cupidity, lust of place and power, and fear of the enemies of the french were the principal motives which influenced these men, whose names should for ever be execrated. in truth, a vulgar greed induced them to destroy one of the noblest creatures that had ever honoured humanity. the _procès-verbal_ and the minutes of the trial were written in latin, and translated by thomas de courcelles; only a portion of the original translation has been preserved. there were three reporters who took notes during the trial--manchon, colles, and taquel. the notes in latin, written as the trial proceeded, were collected in the evenings, and translated into french by manchon. one difficult question arises--namely, are these notes to be relied on? manchon appears to have been honest in his writing, but cauchon was not to be trifled with in what he wished noted, as the following instance will show. a sheriff's officer, named massieu, was overheard to say that joan of arc had done nothing worthy of the death sentence. it was repeated to cauchon, who threatened to have massieu drowned. when isambert de la pierre advised joan to submit herself to the council then holding meetings at bâle, to which she assented, cauchon shouted out, 'in the devil's name hold your peace!' on being asked by manchon whether the prisoner's wish to submit her case to the council at bâle should be placed on the minutes of the trial, cauchon roughly refused. joan of arc overhearing this, said, 'you write down what is against my interest, but not what is in my favour.' but we think the truth comes out, on the whole, pretty clearly; and we have in the answers of joan to her judges, however much these answers may have been altered to suit cauchon's views and ultimate object, a splendid proof of her presence of mind and courage. this she maintained day after day in the face of that crowd of enemies who left no stone unturned, no subtlety of law or superstition disused, to bring a charge of guilt against her. no victory of arms that joan of arc might have accomplished, had her career continued one bright and unclouded success, could have shown in a grander way the greatness of her character than her answers and her bearing during the entire course of her examinations before her implacable enemies, her judicial murderers. after holding some preliminary and private meetings, in which cauchon, with some of the prelates, drew up a series of articles of indictment against the prisoner, the first public sitting of the tribunal took place in the chapel of the castle, in the same building in which joan was imprisoned. this was on the st of february, . as we have said, from the day of her arrival in rouen, at the end of december of the previous year, till this st day of february, joan had been kept in an iron cage--a martyrdom of fifty days' daily and nightly torture. during the trial her confinement was less barbarous, but she was kept chained to a wooden bed, and the only wonder is that she did not succumb to this barbarous imprisonment. we shall see that she fell seriously ill, and the english at one time feared she would die a natural death, and defeat their object of having her exposed and destroyed as a witch and a heretic. on the day before the meeting of the tribunal, cauchon sent summonses for all the judges to attend. joan of arc had meanwhile made two demands, both of which were refused. one was, that an equal number of clergy belonging to the french party should form an equal number in the tribunal to those of the english faction. the other demand was that she should be allowed to hear mass before appearing before the tribunal. at eight in the morning of wednesday, the st of february, cauchon took his seat as presiding judge for the trial about to commence. beneath him were ranged forty-three assessors--there were ninety-five assessors in all who took part in the trial. on the public days their numbers varied from between forty to sixty. the prisoner was led into the chapel by the priest massieu. cauchon opened the proceedings with the following harangue:-- 'this woman,' he said, pointing to joan of arc, 'this woman has been seized and apprehended some time back, in the territory of our diocese of beauvais. numerous acts injurious to the orthodox faith have been committed by her, not merely in our diocese, but in many other regions. the public voice which accuses her of such crimes has become known throughout christendom, and quite recently the high and very christian prince, our lord the king, has delivered her up and given her in our custody in order that a trial in the cause of religion shall be made, as it seemeth right and proper. for as much in the eyes of public opinion, and owing to certain matters which have come to our knowledge'--(cauchon here refers to the information that he sought to obtain from domremy: as nothing could be learnt there but what redounded to joan of arc's credit, no further use was made of the information by the bishop)--'we have, with the assistance of learned doctors in religious and civil law, called you together in order to examine the said joan, in order that she be examined on matters relating to faith. therefore,' he continued, 'we desire in this trial that you fill the duty of your office for the preservation and exaltation of the catholic faith; and, with the divine assistance of our lord, we call upon you to expedite these proceedings for the welfare of your consciences, that you speak the plain and honest truth, without subterfuge or concealment, on all questions that will be made you touching the faith. and in the first place we call upon you to take the oath in the form prescribed. swear, the hands placed on the gospels, that you will answer the truth in the questions that will be asked you.' the latter words the bishop had addressed to joan; who answered that she knew not on what cauchon would question her. 'perhaps,' she said, 'you will ask me things about which i cannot answer you.' 'will you swear,' said cauchon, 'to tell the truth respecting the things which will be asked you concerning the faith, and of which you are cognisant?' 'of all things regarding my family, and what things i have done since coming into france, i will gladly answer; but, as regards the revelation which i have received from god, i have never revealed to any one, except to charles my king, and i will never reveal these things, even if my head were to be cut off, because my voices have ordered me not to confide these things to any one save the king. but,' she continued, 'in eight days' time i shall know whether or not i may be allowed to tell you about them.' cauchon then repeated his question to the prisoner, namely, whether she would answer any questions put to her regarding matters of faith, and the gospels were placed before her. the prisoner, kneeling, laid her hands upon them, and swore to speak the truth in what was asked her as regarded matters of faith. 'what is your name?' asked cauchon. j.--'in my home i was called jeannette. since i came to france i was called joan. i have no surname.' c.--'where were you born?' j.--'at domremy, near greux. the principal church is at greux.' c.--'what are your parents' names?' j.--'my father's name is james d'arc; my mother's, isabella.' c.--'where were you baptized?' j.--'at domremy.' cauchon then asked her the names of her god-parents, who baptized her, her age (she was about nineteen), and what her education amounted to. 'i have learnt,' joan said, in answer to the last question, 'from my mother the paternoster, the ave maria, and the belief. all that i know has been taught me by my mother.' cauchon then called upon her to repeat the lord's prayer. in trials for heresy the prisoners had to repeat this prayer before the judges. at the commencement of joan of arc's trial the crime of magic was brought against her, but as cauchon completely failed to find any evidence for such a charge against his prisoner, he altered the charge of magic into one of heresy. it was probably supposed that a heretic would be unable to repeat the prayer and the creed, being under diabolic influence. joan of arc then asked whether she might make her confession before the tribunal. cauchon refused this request, but told her that he would send some one to whom she might confess. he then warned her that if she were to leave her prison she would be condemned as a heretic. considering the way she was chained to her cell, it sounds strange that cauchon should fear her flight. 'i have never,' the maid said, 'given my promise not to attempt to escape if i can.' 'have you anything to complain about?' asked the bishop; and joan then said how cruelly she was fastened by chains round her body and her feet. probably, had she then promised not to escape from prison, this severity would have been relaxed, but joan of arc had not the spirit to stoop to her persecutors; she would not give her word not to get free if she could. 'the hope of escape is allowed to every prisoner,' she bravely said. at the close of the sitting, john gris, the english knight who had the chief charge over the prisoner, with the two soldiers berwoit and talbot, were called, and took an oath not to allow the prisoner to see any one without cauchon's permission, and to strictly guard the prisoner. and with that the first day's trial ended. manchon, in his minutes on the day's proceedings, says that shouts and interruptions interfered with the reporters and their notes, and that joan of arc was repeatedly interrupted. cauchon had placed some of his clerks behind the tapestry in the depth of a window of the chapel, whose duty it was to make a garbled copy of joan of arc's answers to suit the bishop. possibly finding the chapel of the castle too small for the number of people present at the trial, the next meeting of the judges was held in a different place, more suitable--namely, in the great hall of the castle. that second day's trial took place on the nd of february. the tribunal consisted of cauchon and forty-seven assessors. cauchon commenced the proceedings by introducing john lemaître, vicar of the inquisition, to the judges, after which joan was brought into the hall--a splendid chamber used on happier occasions for festivities and court pageants. cauchon again commanded the prisoner to take the oath, as on the first day's trial. she said that she had already once sworn to speak nothing but the truth, and that that should suffice. cauchon still insisted, and again joan replied that as far as any question was put to her regarding faith and religion she had promised to answer, but that she could not promise more, and cauchon failed to get anything more from her. the bishop then applied to one of the doctors of theology to examine and cross-question the prisoner. this man's name was beaupère. b.--'in the first place, joan, i will exhort you to tell the truth, as you have sworn to do, on all that i may have to ask you.' j.--'you may ask me questions on which i shall be able to answer you, and on others about which i cannot. if you were well informed about me you should wish me out of your power. all that i have done has been the work of revelation.' b.--'how old were you when you left your home?' j.--'i do not exactly know.' b.--'did you learn any trade at home?' j.--'yes, to sew and to spin, and for that i am not afraid to be matched by any woman in rouen?' b.--'did you not once leave your father's house before you left it altogether?' j.--'we left for fear of the burgundians, and i once left my father's house and went to neufchâteau in lorraine, to visit a woman named la rousse, where i remained for fifteen days.' b.--'what was your occupation when at home?' j.--'when i was with my father i looked after the household affairs, and i went but seldom with the sheep and cattle to the fields.' b.--'did you make your confession every year?' j.--'yes, to my curate, and when he was prevented hearing it, to another priest, with my curate's permission. i think on two or three occasions i have confessed to mendicant friars. that happened at neufchâteau. i took the communion at easter.' b.--'have you received the eucharist at other festivals besides that of easter?' joan of arc said that what she had already told regarding this question was sufficient. '_passez outre_' is the term she used, not an easy one to translate. perhaps 'that will suffice' is like it. beaupère now began questioning joan of arc regarding 'her voices,' and one can imagine how eagerly this portion of the prisoner's examination must have been listened to by all present. 'when did you first hear the voices?' asked beaupère. 'i was thirteen,' answered joan, 'when i first heard a voice coming from god to help me to live well. that first time i was much alarmed. the voice came to me about mid-day; it was in the summer, and i was in my father's garden.' 'had you been fasting?' asked beaupère. j.--'yes, i had been fasting.' b.--'had you fasted on the day before?' j.--'no, i had not.' b.--'from what direction did the voices come?' j.--'i heard the voice coming from my right--from towards the church.' b.--'was the voice accompanied with a bright light?' j.--'seldom did i hear it without seeing a bright light. the light came from the same side as did the voice, and it was generally very brilliant. when i came into france i often heard the voices very loud.' b.--'how could you see the light when you say it was at the side?' to this question joan gave no direct answer, but she said that when she was in a wood she would hear the voices coming towards her. 'what,' next asked beaupère, 'what did you think this voice which manifested itself to you sounded like?' j.--'it seemed to me a very noble voice, and i think it was sent to me by god. when i heard it for the third time i recognised it as being the voice of an angel.' b.--'could you understand it?' j.--'it was always quite clear, and i could easily understand it.' b.--'what advice did it give you regarding the salvation of your soul?' j.--'it told me to conduct myself well, and to attend the services of the church regularly; and it told me that it was necessary that i should go to france.' b.--'in what manner of form did the voice appear?' j.--'as to that i will give you no answer.' b.--'did that voice solicit you often?' j.--'it said to me two or three times a week, "leave your village and go to france."' b.--'did your father know of your departure?' j.--'he knew nothing about it. the voice said, "go to france," so i could not remain at home any longer.' b.--'what else did it say to you?' j.--'it told me that i should raise the siege of orleans.' b.--'was that all?' j.--'the same voice told me to go to vaucouleurs, to robert de baudricourt, captain of that place, and that he would give me soldiers to accompany me on my journey; and i answered it, that i was a poor girl who did not know how to ride, neither how to fight.' b.--'what did you do then?' j.--'i went to my uncle, and told him that i wished to remain with him for some time, and i lived with him eight days. i then told him that i must go to vaucouleurs, and he took me there. when i arrived there i recognised robert de baudricourt, although it was the first time that i saw him.' b.--'how, then, did you recognise him?' j.--'i knew him through my voices. they said to me, "this is the man," and i said to him, "i must go to france." twice he refused to listen to me. the third time he received me. the voices had told me this would happen.' b.--'had you not some business with the duke of lorraine?' j.--'the duke ordered that i should be brought to him. i went and said to him, "i must go to france." the duke asked me how he should recover his health. i told him i knew nothing about that.' b.--'did you speak much to him about your journey?' j.--'i told him very little about it. but i asked him to allow his son, with some soldiers, to go to france with me, and that i should pray god to cure him. i had gone to him with a safe conduct. after leaving him i returned to vaucouleurs.' b.--'how were you dressed when you left vaucouleurs?' j.--'when i left vaucouleurs i wore a man's dress. i had on a sword which robert de baudricourt had given me, without any other arms. i was accompanied by a knight, a squire, and four servants. we went to the town of saint urban, and i passed that night in the abbey. on the way, we passed through the town of auxerre, where i attended mass in the principal church. at that time i heard my voices often, with that one of which i have already spoken.' b.--'tell me, now, by whose advice did you come to wear the dress of a man?' joan of arc refused to answer, in spite of being repeatedly told to do so. b.--'what did baudricourt say to you when you left?' j.--'he made them who went with me promise to take charge of me, and as i left he said, "go, and let come what may!"' (_advienne que pourra!_) b.--'what do you know regarding the duke of orleans, now a prisoner in england?' j.--'i know that god protects the duke of orleans, and i have had more revelations about the duke than about any other person in the world, with the exception of the king.' she was now again asked as to who it was who had advised her to wear male attire. she said it was necessary that she should dress in that manner. 'did your voice tell you so?' was asked her. 'i believe my voice gave me good advice,' she answered. b.--'what did you do on arriving at orleans?' j.--'i sent a letter to the english before orleans. in it i told them to depart; a copy of this letter has been read to me here in rouen. there are two or three sentences in that copy which were not in my letter. for instance, "give back to the maiden" should read, "give back to the king." also these words, "troop for troop" and "commander-in-chief," which were not in my letters.' in this joan of arc was mistaken, m. fabre points out in his _life of the maid of orleans_, the text being the same both in the original and in the copy of the letter. b.--'when at chinon, could you see as often as you wished him you call your king?' j.--'i used to go whenever i wished to see my king. when i arrived at the village of sainte catherine de fierbois, i sent a messenger to chinon to the king. we arrived about mid-day at chinon, and lodged at an inn. after dinner i went to see the king at the castle.' either here joan of arc, or the reporter, which is more likely, makes a slip, as she did not see charles till two days after her arrival at chinon. b.--'who pointed out the king to you?' j.--'when i entered the chamber i recognised the king from among all the others, my voices having revealed him to me. i told the king that i wished to go and make war on the english.' b.--'when your voices revealed your king to you, were they accompanied by any light?' joan made no answer. b.--'did you see any angel above the figure of the king?' 'spare me such questions,' pleaded joan; but the inquisitor was not to be so easily put off, and repeated the question again and again, until joan said that the king had also seen visions and heard revelations. 'what were these revelations?' asked the priest. this joan refused to answer, and told beaupère that he might, if he liked, send to charles and ask him. 'did you expect the king to see you?' then asked the priest. her answer was that the voice had promised her that the king would soon see her after her arrival. 'and why,' asked beaupère, 'did he receive you?' 'those on my side,' said joan, 'knew well that i was sent by god; they have known and acknowledged that voice.' 'who?' asked beaupère. 'the king and others,' answered joan, 'have heard the voices coming to me. charles of bourbon also, and two or three others.' (the charles of bourbon was the count of clermont.) 'did you often hear that voice?' asked the priest. 'not a day passes that i do not hear it,' joan replied. 'what do you ask of it?' inquired beaupère. 'i have never,' answered joan, 'asked for any recompense, except the salvation of my soul.' 'did the voice always encourage you to follow the army?' 'the voice told me to remain at saint denis. i wished to remain, but against my will the knights obliged me to leave. i would have remained had i had my free-will.' 'when were you wounded?' asked beaupère. 'i was wounded,' joan answered, 'in the moat before paris, having gone there from saint denis. at the end of five days i recovered.' 'what did you attempt to do against paris?' joan answered that she had made one skirmish (_escarmouche_) in front of paris. 'was it on a feast day?' asked the priest. 'it was,' replied joan. and on being asked if she considered it right to make an attack on such a day, she refused to answer. it is plain that the gist of those questions made by beaupère was to try and make joan of arc avow that her voices had given her evil counsel. on the following day the same tactics were pursued. the third meeting of the tribunal was held on the th of february, in the same chamber. sixty-two assessors were present. again cauchon commenced by admonishing joan to tell the truth on all subjects asked her, and again she protested that as far as her revelations were concerned she could give no answers. on cauchon insisting, she said, 'take care what you, who are my judge, undertake, for you take a terrible responsibility on yourself, and you presume too far. it is enough,' she added, 'that i have already twice taken the oath.' upon her saying this, cauchon lost all control, and he stormed and threatened her with instant condemnation if she refused to take the oath. 'all the clergy in paris and rouen could not condemn me,' was the proud answer, 'if they had not the right to do so.' but, as on the previous occasions, she said she would willingly answer all questions relating to her deeds since leaving her home, but that it would take many days for her to tell them all. wearied with the persistence and threats of her arch-tormentor, cauchon, joan said that she had been sent by god and wished to return to god. 'i have nothing more to do here,' she added. beaupère was again ordered to cross-examine the prisoner. he began by asking her when she had last eaten. 'not since yesterday at mid-day,' she said. (it was then lent.) beaupère then began again to question her regarding the voice. when had she last heard it? 'on the previous day,' joan said, 'and also on that day too.' 'at what o'clock of the day before?' thrice she had heard the voice in the morning, and once at the hour of vespers, and again when the _ave maria_ was being sung. 'what were you doing,' asked beaupère, 'when the voices called you?' 'i was sleeping,' answered joan, 'and the voice awoke me.' 'did it awake you by touching your arm?' 'the voice awoke me without its touching me.' 'was it in your room?' 'not that i know, but it was in the castle.' 'did you acknowledge it by kneeling?' 'i acknowledged its presence by sitting up and clasping my hands. i had begged for its help.' 'and what did it say to you?' 'it told me to answer boldly.' 'tell us more clearly what it said to you.' 'i asked its advice in what i should answer, and bade it ask the saviour for counsel. and the voice said, "answer boldly; god will help you."' 'had it said anything to you before you interrupted it?' 'some words it had said which i did not clearly comprehend; but when fully awake i understood it to tell me to answer boldly.' then, emboldened as it seemed by the recollection of that voice, she turned to cauchon and exclaimed, 'you, bishop, you tell me that you are my judge--have a care how you act, for in truth i am sent by god, and your position is one of great peril.' then beaupère broke in again, and asked joan of arc if the voice had ever altered its advice, and whether it had told joan not to answer all the questions that would be put to her. 'i cannot answer you about that,' said joan. 'i have revelations of matters concerning the king which i shall not reveal.' the maid then asked whether she might wait for fifteen days, in order that, by that time, she might know whether she might, or might not, answer questions relating to this point. the priest then asked whether she knew that the voice came from god. 'yes,' she answered, 'and by this order--that,' she continued, 'i believe as firmly as i believe the christian religion, and that god has saved us from the pains of hell.' she was then asked if the voice was that of a male or of a female. 'it is a voice sent by god,' she only deigned to say to this. joan again asked for an interval of fifteen days, in order that she might better be able in that time to know how much she might reveal to her judges relating to her voices. on being asked whether she believed the almighty would be displeased at her telling the whole truth, she said that she had been ordered by the voices to reveal certain things to the king, and not to her judges; that her voices had told her that very night many things for the good of the king which he alone was to know. but, asked beaupère, could she not prevail on the voices to visit the king? 'i know not if the voices would consent,' she answered. 'but why,' then asked beaupère, 'does the voice not speak to the king now, as it did formerly, when you were with him?' 'i know not if it be the wish of god,' joan answered: 'without the grace of god i should be able to do nothing.' this remark, most innocent to our comprehension, was afterwards made use of as a weapon to accuse the prisoner of the charge of heresy. later on in the day beaupère asked joan if the voice had form and features. this the prisoner refused to answer. 'there is a saying among children,' she said, 'that one is sometimes hanged for speaking the truth.' on being asked by beaupère if she was sure of being in a state of grace--a question to which he had carefully led up, and whereby cauchon hoped to entrap her into a statement which might be used in the accusation of heresy he was now framing against joan of arc--her answer even disarmed the bishop. 'if i am not, may god place me in it; if i am already, may he keep me in it.' when that test question had been put to the prisoner, one of the judges, guessing the object of its being made, expostulated, to cauchon's rage--who roughly bade him hold his peace. to that triumphant reply joan of arc added these words: 'if i am not in god's grace i should be the most unhappy being in the world, and i do not think, were i living in sin, that my voices would come to me. would,' she cried, 'that every one could hear them as well as i do myself!' beaupère then asked her about her childhood, and when she had first heard the voices. asked if there were many people at domremy in favour of the burgundians, she said she only knew of one individual. then came a string of questions about the fairy-well, the haunted oak-tree. all these questions joan fully answered. she had never, she said, seen a fairy, nor had she heard the prophecy about the oak wood from which a maid was to come and deliver france. when asked if she would leave off wearing man's clothes, she said she would not, as it was the will of heaven for her to wear them. the fourth day of the trial was the th of february. fifty-three judges were present. the usual attempt to make joan take the oath was made to the prisoner by cauchon, and she was again cross-examined by beaupère. again questioned as to her voices, she said that without their permission she could not say what they said to her relating to the king. asked if the voices came to her direct from god, or through some intermediary channel, she answered, 'the voices are those of saint catherine and saint margaret; they wear beautiful crowns--of this i may speak, for they allow me to do so.' if, she added, her words were doubted, they might send to poitiers, where she had already been questioned on the same subject. 'how do you distinguish one from the other?' asked beaupère. 'by the manner in which they salute me,' joan answered. 'how long have they been in communication with you?' 'i have been under their protection seven years,' was the answer. joan had referred to the succour which she had received from saint michel. on being asked which of these saints was the first to appear to her, she said it was the last named. she had seen him, she said, as clearly as she saw beaupère, and that he was not by himself, but in a company of angels. when he left her she felt miserable, and longed to have been taken with the flight of angels. when beaupère asked her if it was her own idea to come into france, joan replied in the affirmative, and also that she would sooner have been torn to pieces by horses than have come without the will of god. 'does he,' asked the priest, 'tell you not to wear the man's dress? and had not baudricourt,' he added, 'wished she should dress as a man?' she said it was not by man's but by god's orders that she wore the dress of a man. the questions again turned upon the vision and the voice. had an angel appeared above the head of the king at chinon? she answered that when she entered the king's presence, three hundred soldiers stood in the hall, and fifty torches burnt in the great hall of the castle, and that without counting the spiritual light within. she was then asked respecting her examination before the clergy at poitiers. 'they believed,' joan answered, 'that there was nothing in me against matters of religion.' then beaupère asked the prisoner if she had visited sainte catherine de fierbois. 'yes,' she answered; 'i heard mass there twice in one day, on my way to chinon.' 'how did you communicate your message to the king?' 'i sent a letter asking him if i might be allowed to see him. that i had come one hundred and fifty miles to bring him assistance, and that i had much to do for him. i think,' she added, 'that i also said i should know him amongst all those who might be present.' 'did you then wear a sword?' asked beaupère. 'i had one that i had taken at vaucouleurs.' 'had you not another one as well?' 'yes; i had sent to the church of fierbois, either from troyes or chinon, for a sword from the back of the altar of sainte catherine. it was found, much rusted.' 'how did you know there was a sword there?' 'through my voices. i asked in a letter that the sword should be given me, and the clergy sent me it. it lay underground--i am not certain whether at the front or at the back of the altar. it was cleaned by the people belonging to the church. they had a scabbard made for me; also one was made at tours--one of velvet, the other of black cloth. i had also a third one for the fierbois sword made of very strong leather.' 'were you wearing that sword,' asked beaupère, 'when you were captured?' 'no, i had not one then; i used to wear it constantly up to the time that i left saint denis, after the assault on paris.' 'what benediction did you bestow on that sword?' 'none,' said joan; and she added, on being questioned as to her feeling about the sword, that she had a particular liking for it, from its having been found in the church of sainte catherine, her favourite saint. then beaupère inquired whether joan was not in the habit of placing this sword on the altar, in order to bring it good luck. joan answered in the negative. 'but then,' the priest asked, 'had she not prayed that it might bring her good fortune?' 'it is enough to know,' answered joan, 'that i wished my armour might bring me good fortune.' 'what had become of the fierbois sword?' asked the priest. 'i offered up at saint denis,' answered joan, 'a sword and some armour, but not the fierbois sword.' 'had you it when at lagny?' asked beaupère. 'yes,' answered the prisoner. but between the time passed at lagny and compiègne she wore another sword, taken from a burgundian soldier, which she said was a good weapon, able to deal shrewd blows. but she would not satisfy beaupère's curiosity as to what had become of the sword of fierbois: 'that,' she said, 'has nothing to do with the trial.' beaupère next inquired as to what had become of joan of arc's goods. she said her brother had her horses and her goods; she said she believed the latter amounted to some twelve thousand _écus_. 'had you not,' asked the priest, 'when you went to orleans, a banner or pennon? of what colour was that?' 'my banner had a field all covered with _fleurs-de-lis_. in it was represented the world, with angels on either side. it was white, made of white cloth, of a kind called _coucassin_. on it was written _jesu maria_. it was bordered with silk.' 'which were you fondest of?' asked beaupère,--'your banner or your sword?' 'i loved my banner,' was the answer, 'forty times as much as i did my sword.' 'who painted your banner?' this joan would not say. 'who bore your flag?' asked the priest. joan of arc said she carried it herself when charging the enemy, 'in order,' she added, 'to avoid killing any one. i never killed any one,' she said. 'how many soldiers did the king give you,' asked the priest, 'when he gave you a command?' 'between ten and twelve thousand men,' answered joan. then beaupère questioned her regarding the relief of orleans, and he was told by the maid that she first went to the redoubt of saint loup by the bridge. 'did you expect,' was the next question, 'that you would be able to raise the siege?' 'yes,' she was certain, joan answered, from a revelation which she had received, and of which she had told the king before making the expedition. 'at the time of the assault,' asked beaupère, 'did you not tell your soldiers that you alone would receive all the arrows, bolts, and stones discharged by the cannon and culverins?' 'no,' she answered, 'there were over a hundred wounded; but,' she added, 'i said to my people, "be assured that you will raise the siege."' 'were you wounded?' asked the priest. 'i was wounded,' joan answered, 'at the assault of the fortress on the bridge. i was struck and wounded by an arrow or a dart; but i received much comfort from saint catherine, and i recovered in less than fifteen days. i recovered, and in spite of the wound i did not give up riding or working.' 'did you know beforehand that you would be wounded?' asked beaupère. 'yes,' was the answer; 'and i had told my king i should be wounded. my saints had told me of it.' 'in what manner were you wounded?' he asked. 'i was,' she answered, 'the first to raise a ladder against the fortress at the bridge. while raising the ladder i was struck by the bolt.' 'why,' now asked the priest, 'did you not come to terms with the english captains at jargeau?' 'the knights about me,' she answered, 'told the english that they could not have a truce of fifteen days, which they wanted; but that they and their horses must leave the place at once.' 'and what did you say?' 'i told them that if they left the place with their side arms (_petites cottes_) their lives would be spared. if not, that jargeau would be stormed.' 'had you then consulted your voices to know whether you should accord them that delay or not?' joan did not remember. here closed the fourth day's trial. the fifth day of the trial took place on the st of march. fifty-eight judges were present. the opening proceedings were the same as on the former occasions, and joan of arc again professed her willingness to answer all questions put to her regarding her deeds as readily as if she were in the presence of the pope of rome himself; but, as formerly, she gave no promise of revealing what her voices had told her. beaupère caught immediately at the opportunity of her having spoken of the pope to lay a pitfall in her path: which pope did she believe the authentic one--he at avignon or the one in rome? 'are there two?' she asked. this was an awkward question to those bishops and doctors of the faith who had for so long a time encouraged the schism in the church. beaupère evaded the question, and asked her if it were true that she had received a letter from the count of armagnac asking her which of the two popes he was bound to obey. a copy of this letter was produced, as well as the one sent by joan of arc in reply. when she sent her answer, the maid said, she was about to mount her horse, and had told him she would be able better to answer his question when at rest in paris or elsewhere. the copy of her letter which was now read, joan said, did not quite agree with that she had sent to armagnac. 'she had not,' joan added, 'said in her letter that what she knew was by the inspiration of heaven.' again pressed as to which of the two popes she believed the true one, she said that the one then in rome was to her that one. questioned regarding her letter to the english before orleans, she acknowledged the accurateness of the copy produced, with the exception of a slight mistake. she retracted nothing regarding this letter, and declared that the english would, ere seven years were passed from that time, give a more striking proof of their loss of power in france than that which they had shown before orleans. this prediction was literally carried out when, in , paris opened its gates to charles vii., the loss of the capital being shortly after followed by the loss of all the other english conquests, with the exception of the town of calais--the gains of a century of war being snatched from them in a score of years. 'they will meet,' said joan of arc, 'with greater reverses than have yet befallen them.' when she was asked what made her speak thus, she answered that these things had been revealed to her. the examination again turned upon her voices and apparitions. 'do they always appear to you in the same dress? always in the same form, and richly crowned?' similar foolish questions were then put to her. had the saints long hair? she did not know. and what language did they converse in with her? 'their language,' she replied, 'is good and beautiful.' 'what sort of voices were theirs?' 'they speak to me in soft and beautiful french voices,' she said. 'does not saint margaret speak in english?' 'how should she,' was the answer, 'when she is not on the side of the english?' 'do they wear ear-rings?' this joan could not say; but the idiotic question reminded the prisoner that cauchon had taken a ring from her. she had worn two--one had been taken by the burgundians when she was captured, the other by the bishop. the former had been given her by her parents, the latter by one of her brothers. this ring she asked cauchon to give the church. 'had she not,' she was asked, 'made use of these rings to heal the sick?' she had never done so. it is very easy throughout all these questionings to see how eager cauchon and the other judges were to find some acknowledgment from the lips of joan of arc, upon which they could found a charge of heresy against her. her visions were distorted by them into a proof of infernal agency; even the harmless superstitions of her village home did not escape being turned into idolatrous and infernal matters of belief. had not her saints, questioned the bishop, appeared to her beneath the haunted oak of domremy?--and what had they promised her besides the re-establishment of charles upon the throne? 'they promised,' she answered, 'to take me with them to paradise, which i had prayed them to do.' 'nothing more?' queried cauchon. 'if they made me another promise,' joan replied, 'i am not at liberty to say what that promise is till three months are past.' 'did they say that you would be free in three months' time?' that question remained unanswered, but before those three months had passed, the heroine had been delivered by death from all earthly sufferings. she was again minutely questioned regarding the superstitions of her country. was there not growing there a certain fabulous plant, called mandragora? joan of arc knew nothing regarding such a plant--had never seen it, and did not know the use of it. again the apparitions were brought forward. 'what was saint michel like? was he clothed?' 'do you think,' was the answer to this question, which could only have occurred to a foul-minded priest, 'do you think that god cannot clothe him?' other absurd questions followed--as to his hair; long or short? had he a pair of scales with him? as before, joan of arc answered these futile, and sometimes indecent, questions with her wonderful patience. at one moment she could not help exclaiming how supremely happy the sight of her saints made her; it seemed as if a sudden vision of her beloved saints had been vouchsafed her in the midst of that crowd of persecuting priests. she was again told to tell what the sign or secret was which she had revealed to the king on first seeing him at chinon; but about this she was firm as adamant, and refused to give any information. to reveal that sign or secret would, she felt, be not only a breach of confidence and disloyalty between her and her king, but a crime to divulge a sacred secret, which charles kept sealed in his breast, and which she was determined to utter to no one, and least of all to his enemies. 'i have already said,' she told her judges, 'that you will have nothing from me about that. go and ask the king!' then followed questions as to the fashion of the crown that the king had worn at rheims: which brought the fifth day of the trial to a close. the sixth and last day's public examination took place on the rd of march, forty-two judges present. the long series of questions were nearly all relating to the appearance of the saints. both questions and answers were nearly the same as on the previous occasions, and little more information was got from the prisoner. after these, the subject of her dress--what she then wore, and what she had worn--was entered upon. 'when you came to the king,' she was asked, 'did he not inquire if your change in dress was owing to a revelation or not?' 'i have already answered,' said joan, 'that i do not remember if he asked me. this evidence was made known when i was at poitiers.' 'and the doctors who examined you,' asked beaupère, 'at poitiers, did they not want to know regarding your being dressed in man's clothes?' 'i don't remember,' she answered; 'but they asked me when i had first begun to wear man's dress, and i told them that it was when i was at vaucouleurs.' she was then asked whether the queen had not asked her to leave off wearing male clothes. she answered that that had nothing to do with the trial. 'but,' next inquired beaupère, 'when you were at the castle of beaurevoir, did not the ladies there ask you to do so?' 'yes,' was the answer, 'and they offered to give me a woman's dress. but the time had not yet come.' she would, she added, have yielded sooner to the wishes of those ladies than to those of any other, the queen excepted. the subject of the flags and banners used by her during her campaigns was now entered on. had her standards not been copied by the men-at-arms? 'they did so at their pleasures,' she answered. 'of what material was the banner made? if the poles were broken, were they renewed?' 'they were,' she answered, 'when broken.' 'did you not,' asked beaupère, 'say that the flags made like your banners were of good augury?' 'what i said,' answered joan, 'to my soldiers was, that they should attack the enemy with boldness.' 'did you not sprinkle holy water on the banners?' to this question joan refused to answer. next she was questioned about a certain friar richard, the preaching friar who had seen her at troyes. she answered that he came to her making the sign of the cross, and that she told him to come up to her without fear. she was asked if it was true that she had pictures painted of herself in the likeness of a saint. 'when at arras,' she answered, 'she had seen a portrait of herself, in which she was represented kneeling before the king and presenting him with a letter.' 'but was there not a picture of you,' asked beaupère, 'in your host's house at orleans?' joan of arc knew nothing regarding such a picture. 'did you not know,' was the next question put, 'that your partisans had prayers and masses said in your honour?' 'if they did so,' she answered, 'it was not by my wish; but if they prayed for me,' she added, 'there was no harm in so doing.' she was then asked what her opinion was regarding the people who kissed her hands and her feet, and even her clothes. she answered that, inasmuch as she could, she prevented them doing so; but she acknowledged that the poor people flocked eagerly around her, and that she gave them all the assistance in her power. she was next asked if she had not stood sponsor to some children baptized at rheims. 'not at rheims,' she said; but she had for one child at troyes. she had also stood sponsor for two children at saint denis, and she had gladly had the boy christened by the name of charles in honour of the king, and the girl joan, as it pleased their mothers. 'did the women not touch your rings and charms?' 'many,' she answered, 'were wont to touch both my hands and my rings; but i know not with what intention.' 'did she not receive the sacrament and confess herself as she passed through the country?' 'often,' she answered. 'and did you,' asked the priest, 'receive the sacrament in your male attire?' 'yes,' she said; 'but not, if i recollect right, when wearing my armour.' this confession of having received the eucharist in her male dress was made one of the accusations of sacrilege by joan of arc's judges. she was next questioned about a horse she had bought from the bishop of senlis, and ridden in battle. the next point related to the supposed miraculous resurrection--a very temporary one however--of an infant three days old at lagny. when joan was in that place, this child appeared to have died, and was put before the image of the virgin, in front of which some young women were kneeling. joan of arc joined them in their prayers, upon which it was noticed that the supposed dead infant gave some signs of life; he or she was baptized, and soon after expired. joan of arc had never for a moment supposed that it was owing to her presence and her prayers that this miracle had occurred. 'but,' asked beaupère, 'was it not the common talk of the town of lagny that you had performed this miracle, and had been the means of restoring the infant to life?' 'i did not inquire,' she said. she was then asked about the woman, catherine de la rochelle, whom, it may be remembered, joan had discovered to be a vulgar impostor, and whom she had tried to dissuade from making people believe that she could discover hidden treasures, advising her to return to her husband and her children. next she was asked why she had tried to escape from her prison tower at beaurevoir. she said that she had made the attempt, although against the warning of her voices, which had counselled her to have patience--but that saint catherine had comforted her after her fall from the tower, telling her that she would recover, and also that compiègne would not be taken. it was tried to prove that in order not to fall into the hands of the enemy she intended committing suicide. to this accusation she answered:-- 'i have already said that i would sooner give up my soul into god's keeping, than fall into the hands of the english.' and with this ended the sixth and last public day of the heroine's trial. joan of arc's judges had found nothing to attach guilt to her in any of her replies; but as she had been condemned before the farce was enacted of trying her, her innocence could not save her life. as michelet observes, joan of arc's answers may have had some effect in touching the hearts of even such men as were her judges; and it was perhaps on this account that cauchon thought it more prudent to continue holding the trial with only a few, and those few picked men, of whose sympathies, characters, and feelings he was sure. the bishop's ostensible reason in having the trial henceforth carried on in private was in order 'not to tire the others.' a most thoughtful and tender-hearted bishop! the details of the trial were now placed in the hands of two judges and two witnesses. cauchon now felt he had a free hand. on the th of march he had obtained the permission of the grand inquisitor of the holy office in france to make use of the services of his vicar-general--his name, as has already been said, was john lemaître. the first of the long series of secret interrogations was held in joan of arc's prison--probably in the principal tower--on the th of march. john de la fontaine questioned the prisoner as follows:-- 'when you went to compiègne from which place did you start?' 'from crespy-en-valois.' 'when you arrived at compiègne did many days elapse before you made the sortie?' 'i arrived secretly at an early hour of the morning, and entered the town so that the enemy could not be aware of my arrival, and the same day, in the evening, i made the sortie in which i was captured.' 'were the bells of the church rung on the occasion of your arrival?' 'if they were, it was not by my command. i had not given it a thought.' 'did you not order them to be rung?' 'i have no recollection of having done so.' 'did you make the sortie by the command of your voices?' 'last easter, when in the trenches of melun, the voices of saint catherine and saint margaret told me i should be taken prisoner before st. john's day; but that i was to keep a brave heart, and take all that befell me with patience, and that in the end god would come to my aid.' 'since then, did your voices tell you that you would be taken?' 'yes, often; nearly every day; and i implored my voices that when i was taken i might then die, and not suffer a long imprisonment: and the voices said, "be without fear, for these things must happen." but they did not tell me the time when i should be taken, for had i known that i should not have made that sortie.' 'did you not question them about the time in which you would be taken?' 'i often inquired; but they never told me.' 'did your voices cause you to make that sortie, and not tell you the manner by which you would be captured?' 'had i known the hour of my capture i should not have gone out voluntarily; but had my voices ordered me to go and i had known, then would i have gone all the same, whatever might have happened.' 'when you made the sally did you pass over the bridge at compiègne?' 'i passed over the bridge and along the redoubt; and i charged with my soldiers against john de luxembourg's men. twice were they driven back as far as the quarters of the burgundians; the third time half as far. while so engaged the english arrived, and cut off our communications. while returning towards the bridge, i was taken in the meadows on the side nearest to picardy.' 'upon your banner, the one you carried, was not a picture painted representing the world and two angels? what was the significance of that?' 'my saints told me to carry that banner boldly.' 'did you not also bear arms and a shield?' 'not i; but the king gave my brothers a coat-of-arms; a shield with a blue ground, on which were two _fleurs-de-lis_ of gold, and a sword between.' 'did you make a present to your brothers of those arms?' 'they were given my brothers by the king, without any request made by me.' 'what kind of horse were you riding when you were captured?' 'i was mounted on a _demi-coursier_.' 'who had given you that horse?' 'my king,' answered joan of arc; and she went on to tell them how she had had fine horses purchased by the king for her use; she also gave them an account of her few possessions. there is, indeed, so much repetition in the questions and answers during these long examinations, that it would be a weariness to the reader did one minutely re-write them as they appear in the chronicle. we shall therefore confine ourselves to the principal and most important facts and statements which bear most prominently on our heroine's career, and on the answers most characteristic made by her. the remainder of that first day's trial in the prison consisted nearly entirely of trying to elicit from joan of arc what was the special sign or secret that she had revealed to the king at chinon. she, however, gave them no further information than in saying that the sign was a beautiful and honoured mark of divine favour. for hours she was urged to tell of what this special sign or token consisted--whether of precious stones, gold, or silver. joan, who apparently was wearied out by the pertinacity of her inquisitors, seems to have allowed herself to mix with the reality the fabulous, and described that an angel had appeared to charles bringing him a crown of matchless beauty. she seems, poor creature, half dazed and bewildered by her sufferings and her tormentors, to have mixed up in her mind and in her replies the actual event of the king's coronation at rheims with her angelic visions and voices; for to her one must have appeared as real and actual as the other. nine examinations in the prison tower of rouen were undergone by joan of arc:--once on the th of march; twice on the th, and again on the th; twice on the th; again on the th; and twice more on the th. in all these successive trials, nothing of importance was obtained by the judges from the prisoner. both answers and questions were similar to those which have already been recorded during the days of her examinations in public. throughout all this trying process of a week's long and minute cross-questioning, the heroine maintained the same firmness, and answered with the same simple dignity as on the former occasions. two of her answers may be justly called sublime. when during the course of the seventh day's trial, she was asked what doctrine saint michel had inspired her with, she answered:-- 'the pity that i have for the kingdom of france!' and again, when at the close of the last day's examination she was asked why she had taken such special care that her banner should be carried and held near the king during the ceremony of the coronation, she answered:-- 'if it had been in the travail it was right that it should be in the place of greatest honour.' ('_il avait été à la peine; c'était bien raison qu'il fut à l'honneur!_') glorious words, worthy of her who spoke them! they bear with them an heroic ring, and reveal by one sublime expression the very soul and spirit of joan of arc! little as the secret interrogations had revealed to joan of arc's examiners regarding the mysterious sign they were so eager to wrest from her, cauchon had succeeded in inveigling his victim into making statements he considered could be used in a charge of heresy against her. when bidden to say if she would be ready to submit herself regarding all her actions to the determination of the church, she answered that she loved the church, and was ready to obey its doctrines as far as lay in her power; and on being asked to which church she alluded, whether to the church militant or to the church triumphant, she replied, 'i have been sent to france by god and the virgin mary, and by the saints of the church victorious from above, and to that church i submit myself, and all that i have done or may have to do!' this answer did not satisfy cauchon, and he again inquired to which church she submitted; but joan had already answered, and would say no more--and on this cauchon fixed his accusation of heresy against the heroine. having failed throughout the trial to get joan to say anything incriminating regarding charles vii. or anything which might tend to injure him in the minds of his subjects, cauchon had joan questioned as to what she thought respecting the murder of the duke of orleans by charles. 'it was a great misfortune for the kingdom of france,' was her answer. could the wariest statesman have better parried that question? not on one single occasion during the long series of questions that joan of arc was made to undergo, without any counsel or help, and with some of the subtlest brains in the country eager to involve her in damaging statements and to entangle her in saying something which might be taken up as injurious to charles--that mean prince, who made so much by her devotion to him and his cause, and in return for that devotion had not taken a step towards attempting her deliverance--not at any time did she drop one word or let an expression escape her which could cause any uneasiness to the king, who had proved himself so utterly unworthy of such a subject, or to the men about the king's person, some of whom, if not actually guilty of having given her over to her enemies, at any rate had allowed her to be kept during all those long months a close prisoner, without protest or any sign of sympathy. when the judges asked joan if she were as willing to answer the questions put to her, standing in the presence of the pope, as she had done in the presence of the bishop of beauvais, she replied that she would willingly do so. the idea of referring her case to the pope was not at all what cauchon wished to enter her mind; and when he found that john de la fontaine and two monks had visited the prisoner and advised her to submit herself to rome, he was furious, and threatened them with condign punishment. they only escaped the bishop's anger by taking flight from rouen. it was not too soon for cauchon's object that the trial was now conducted with closed doors. joan of arc's courage, firmness, and simplicity, accompanied by her transparent truth and pure fervent belief in her mission, impressed even her judges--and much more so those who had attended the public days of her trial as spectators. now and again, after one of her straightforward and brave answers, which would expose and lay bare the malicious intention of the question, voices were heard to say in the great hall, 'well spoken, joan!' and an english knight was overheard to declare that, for his part, he regretted that such a courageous maid had not been born an englishwoman. a reaction in favour of the heroine might have set in, and, as we have already said, it was for fear of this that cauchon caused the trial in future to be held in private. it is clear from the previous narrative that the prisoner had no one to advise her, no one to support her. at the commencement of the trial she asked to be allowed counsel, but cauchon refused this most just demand. among the crowd of doctors and clergy it was impossible but that, now and again, some feeling of interest, even of sympathy, should gain a few of these men, who, in spite of their education and surroundings, were human beings after all. but whenever such feeling was shown, cauchon, ever on the watch, sternly repressed its manifestation. the name of isambard de la pierre should be remembered for good; for he, although one of the creatures of the detestable inquisition, showed humanity to cauchon's victim. during the examinations it was the wont of isambard to place himself as near as possible to joan of arc, and by nudging her, or by some sign, he attempted to help her and advise her in her answers to the questions of the judges. cauchon's evil eye, however, at length detected isambard's conduct, and he informed warwick of it. soon after, isambard was confronted by warwick, and the latter, with many abusive words, threatened to have him drowned in the seine if he dared assist joan of arc. though the maid's treatment in the dungeon of the castle was not, after the beginning of the trial, so barbarous as in the first days after her arrival at rouen, when she was treated like a caged wild animal, the poor prisoner was watched day and night by three soldiers, who, one must fear, outraged every sense of humanity in their treatment of joan. the very term _houspiller_ proves that they were set apart to embitter the prisoner's already too cruel state. although joan of arc never herself disclosed the abominable fact, the reason for retaining and continuing to wear her male dress was that it served her as a protection from these ruffians. chained to a heavy wooden beam, her sufferings must have been at times almost beyond endurance; but in this long torture, which was only to terminate in the flaming death, her wonderful constancy and heaven-inspired spirit never failed. had she given way to a kind of despair, as happened shortly before her final release--for only a few moments indeed--her jailers would not have neglected to record such weakness as a sign that her heavenly agencies had failed, if not forsaken her utterly. what appears to have constituted the greatest privation to joan of arc during her imprisonment was not being allowed the consolation of receiving the rites of the religion she so fervently believed. during the days on which the public examinations were held in the hall of the castle, she was wont to be led from her dungeon by a passage leading to the place of judgment: the castle chapel was passed in traversing this passage. one day while going by the chapel door she asked one of the sheriffs, massieu, whether the eucharist was then exposed within the chapel, and, if so, whether she might be permitted to kneel before the entrance. the man was humane enough to allow her to do so, but this coming to the knowledge of one of cauchon's familiars, the sheriff was told if he allowed the prisoner again to kneel before the chapel door that he would be thrown into prison--'and,' added cauchon, 'in a prison where no light of sun or moon should appear!' but perhaps among so many instances of cruelty and bigotry, the most infamous act of all the many in this tragedy was that performed by the canon nicolas loiseleur, a creature of cauchon, as false, as cruel, and as unscrupulous as his master and patron. this reverend scoundrel had, at the beginning of the trial, by his feigned sympathy for the prisoner, wormed himself into joan of arc's confidence. he told her that he, too, came from near her home, that he in his heart of hearts belonged to the french side, that he was a prisoner on account of his known devotion to charles and to france, and many other such lies. this judas--half in the character of a layman, half in that of a confessor, and wholly as a sympathetic friend and a fellow-sufferer--paid the prisoner long visits, disguised both as priest and layman, as the part suited the day's action best. loiseleur actually used the means of extracting information from joan of arc under the seal of confession, to be afterwards employed against her by cauchon. while these conversations and confessions took place, warwick and cauchon would be concealed in a part of the dungeon from which they could overhear what passed between the two--one of whom worthily might be called an angel, the other truthfully a devil. with the bishop and knight--whose conduct as regards joan of arc deeply tarnished an otherwise high character--were seated clerks, who wrote down what passed in these meetings. the clerks, to their credit, are said to have at first refused to comply with doing such dirty work. cauchon gained but little by this infamy. nothing of any importance could be constructed out of the prisoner's confidence and confessions; but cauchon was, through loiseleur, enabled to tender such advice to joan as made her answers coincide more closely with his wishes than they otherwise could have done; especially those relating to the church triumphant and militant. when his crime had borne fruit, loiseleur, like another judas, was overwhelmed with an intolerable remorse; and, although he obtained his victim's pardon, his end appears to have been as sudden as that of judas, if not also self-inflicted. by a lawyer named john lohier, whom he consulted during the course of the trial, cauchon was not so well served as he had been by loiseleur. this lohier, who was a norman and seems to have been a worthy man, had the courage to tell cauchon that inasmuch as joan of arc was being tried in secret and without benefit of counsel, the proceedings were null and worthless. like all who showed any interest for the prisoner, lohier was threatened by cauchon with imprisonment, but he escaped and found refuge in rome. on passion sunday, the th of march, cauchon held a meeting of a dozen of the lawyers, including the vice-inquisitor, and asked them to give their opinion on some of the answers of joan of arc. he held a second and similar consistory on the nd of that month, at which it was decided to shape into the form of a series of articles the chief heads of accusation. this, when made out, was to be submitted to the prisoner. on the th, the bishop, accompanied by the vice-inquisitor and some others, proceeded to the dungeon in which joan of arc was kept. the day was palm sunday, and the great french historian michelet has, with his accustomed skill and bright, vivid word-painting, in his short but incomparable _life_ of the heroine not only of france but of humanity, reminded his readers with what a longing joan of arc must, on that festival of joy and triumph, have yearned for the privilege 'to breathe once again the fresh air of heaven.' daughter of the fields, born on the border of the woods, she who had always lived under the open sky had to pass easter day in a dark dungeon tower. to her the great succour which the church invokes upon that day did not reach--her prison door did not fly open. it may be recalled that on palm sunday the morning prayer in the office of the roman church contains these words: '_deus in adjutorium meum intende._' for her, however, no earthly gate was to be thrown open wide. the gate through which she was to pass from suffering and death into life eternal and peace everlasting--(_per angusta ad augusta_)--was, however, not far distant. but she had still to wait awhile amid the ever-darkening shadows. 'if,' said cauchon to joan, 'you will cease to wear this man's dress, and dress as you would do were you back in your home, you shall be allowed to hear mass.' but joan could not be prevailed on to consent to abandon the costume, which, as we have said, proved her safeguard against the brutality of her jailers. by the th of march the articles were drawn up and ready, and were approved of in a meeting held by cauchon in his own house. and on these articles, or rather heads of articles, the further trial of the prisoner was to be carried on. the examination took place on the days following in a chamber next to the great hall in the castle. nine judges, besides cauchon, attended. the bishop ordered joan to answer categorically all the accusations on which she was arraigned; if she refused to do so, or remained silent beyond a given time, he threatened her with excommunication. he went on to declare that all her judges were men of high position, well versed in all matters appertaining to church and state; and he had the audacity to qualify them--and probably included himself among them--as being _benins et pitoyables_, having no wish to inflict corporal punishment upon joan, but filled only with the pious desire of leading her into the way of truth and salvation. 'seeing that,' he continued, 'she was not sufficiently versed in such weighty matters as those they had now to deal with, they in their pitifulness and benignity, would allow her to choose among the learned doctors present, one or more to aid her with counsel and advice.' the bishop had probably guessed that by this time joan of arc would have ceased to care for the benefit of counsel, having had to do without it till now; and his asking her whether she wished for it was merely made in order to appear as an act of judicial indulgence on his part--perhaps, also, what lohier had urged regarding the illegality of trying his prisoner without giving her the help of counsel may have influenced him. in a few simple words joan of arc thanked the bishop and the others for the offer, of which she, however, declined to avail herself. she added that she felt no need now of having any human counsel, for that she had that of her lord to aid her. thomas de courcelles next proceeded to read the articles contained in the act of accusation. these were so long that they occupied the remainder of that and the next day's sitting. this first series of articles--for there were forty more to follow--consisted of thirty heads, and forms one of the most glaring examples of what the human mind is capable of inventing when thoroughly steeped in bigotry, stupidity, and cruelty. the bishop of beauvais may have been congratulated on producing the most momentous mass of accusation, intended to destroy the life and reputation of a peerless and perfect woman and to blast the career of his native sovereign: it only redounded to the bishop's everlasting shame and infamy. we will spare the reader a detailed summary of these articles--articles which have the lie so palpably and strongly writ all over them, that we can but hesitate whether to be more surprised or disgusted that even such a man as cauchon could dare to bring them into court. the preamble of the articles gave the gist of what was to follow, and showed up the true spirit of joan's 'benign and merciful judges.' it consisted of one long string of abuse, in which the terms 'sorceress,' 'false prophet,' 'a practiser of magic,' and 'devilish arts,' were freely used. joan of arc was declared in this preamble to be 'abominable in the eyes of god and man'; a violator of all laws--divine, ecclesiastical and natural. to sum up all the epithets, she was termed 'heretical, or, at any rate, strongly suspected of being so.' this accusation, the most awful that those cruel times held, must have sounded to all those men present as the heroine's knell of doom. then followed the thirty articles of accusation. never, indeed, had a short but well filled career, bright with glorious deeds, undertaken for king and fatherland--never had such a life (for no life ever approached that of the maid's) been so ludicrously, so violently and wilfully misrepresented. her most innocent words and actions were turned into accusations of sorcery, witchcraft, vice, and every kind of wickedness. her harmless and pure youth was made to appear a childhood of sorcery and idolatrous superstition; she was accused in her earliest years of having trafficked with evil spirits: it was alleged that she had consorted with witches; that she had frequented places where spirits and fairies best loved to congregate; that she had taken part in sacrilegious dancing; that she had suspended wreaths on the trees in honour of these rural spirits; that she had carried hidden about her person a plant called mandragora, hoping by it to obtain good luck; that she had left her parents against their will to go to neufchâteau, and lived in that place among a debauched set of people: that in consequence of all these wicked acts, a youth who intended marrying her had not done so. then, having left not a stage or an act of her innocent girlhood unblasted, and covered with the slime of the bishop's reptile-like imagination, her acts when with the king were reviewed. she had promised charles to slay all the english in france; her cruelty and love of bloodshed were insatiable; she had influenced charles by acts of magic; her banners and her rings were bewitched; she was schismatic, and doubted as to which was the right pope; and, in spite of this, she had the wickedness to inform the earl of armagnac which of the two popes he was to believe the genuine. of all this long tissue of crimes laid to her charge, that of wearing a man's dress was made the most heinous; for the almighty had made it a crime abominable to himself, that woman should wear man's dress. now, not only had the prisoner committed this sin, but she had added to it by affirming that she did so by the wish of god--she had done even worse; for did she not refuse when at the castle of beaurevoir to wear woman's dress, also when at arras, and even now in rouen? so obstinate was she in her wickedness that she had refused to comply with the bishop's wish that she should leave off these clothes, although he had told her she would be allowed to assist at the offices of the church if she would consent to do so. to all these accusations, at the end of each paragraph, cauchon bade courcelles, who read the accusations, to pause, and would then ask the prisoner what answer she had to make to that accusation. joan of arc contented herself by simply denying the alleged crime, or else she referred to the answers she had made to the same, or similar questions, during the former days when under examination. some of her replies were, as they often had been during those trials, grand in their simplicity. for instance, when asked a difficult and even perplexing question relating to her belief in the church militant, she said:--'i believe that the holy father, the bishops, and other clergy, are here for the protection of the christian faith, and to punish those who deserve it. as to my acts,' she continued, 'i submit them to the church in heaven, to god, to the holy virgin, and the saints in paradise. i have not failed,' she proudly added, 'in the christian religion; nor will i ever do so.' when repeatedly questioned about the change of costume, and of its importance regarding her being allowed to attend mass or not, she said: 'in the eyes of the saviour the dress of those who receive the sacrament can have no importance.' on the day after, the th of march, the same chamber was used for the trial, and the same indictments were entered on. that almost interminable series of accusations numbered some seventy charges. on that day, joan of arc appears to have ceased to deny at any length the string of false evidence brought against her; she generally replied that she had already answered as to the crimes laid to her charge, or simply said, 'i refer myself to my saviour.' two of her answers are worth recording: the first, when accused of having been guilty not only of discarding the proper dress of her sex, but also of having acted the part of a man, she said: 'as to women's occupation there are plenty of them to occupy themselves with such things'; and to the second question, when taunted with having carried out her mission with violence and slaughter, she answered: 'i implored at the commencement of my mission that peace might be made, while, at the same time, i declared that if that was not agreed to, i was willing to fight.' when she was accused of having made war on the burgundians and the english alike, she made the distinguishing difference between them by saying:--'as to the duke of burgundy, i wrote to him, and asked him through his envoys that peace should be made between him and my king. as regards the english, the only peace that could be made with them is when they have returned to england.' the maid's natural modesty and simplicity are apparent in a circumstance which occurred in one of those long days of searching examination and cross-questioning. when the sentence she had used, and which had been noted down in the minutes of an early day of the trial, was read as follows: 'all that i have done has been done by the advice of my saviour,' she stopped the clerk, and said that it should stand thus: 'all that i have done well has been done by the advice of my saviour.' when she was asked by what form of words she prayed to her saints to come to her assistance, she repeated the following prayer:--'very blessed god, in honour of your holy passion, i beseech you, if you love me, that you will reveal to me what i am to answer these churchmen. i know concerning the dress the reason for which i have adopted it, but i know not in what manner i am to discard it. for this thing i beseech you to tell me what to do.' and she added that after this prayer her voices were soon heard. on the st of march, cauchon, accompanied by the vice-inquisitor and some other of the judges, had an interview with the prisoner. they again inquired of joan of arc whether she submitted herself wholly and entirely into the hands of the church militant. she answered that if such were her saviour's wish she was quite willing to do so. the accusations were now set forth afresh, in twelve chief heads or articles, under which the series of calumnies was summarised before they should be submitted to the university of paris. these twelve heads, which formed the foundation of joan of arc's condemnation, were never shown her; and she had therefore no chance of contradicting any of the grossly false charges of which they were full. like the trial itself, these articles were merely a sham invented for the purpose of throwing dust in the eyes of the people, who by these, it was hoped, would be persuaded that the law of the church and state had been acted up to. the heads of these articles were as follows:-- _first_--a woman pretends to have had communication with saints from her thirteenth year; and she affirms that they have counselled her to dress in male attire; she affirms that she has found her salvation, and refuses to submit herself to the church. _second_--she affirms that, through a sign, she persuaded the king to believe in her; and that accompanied by an angel she placed a crown upon his head. _third_--she affirms her companionship with saint michel and other saints. _fourth_--she affirms certain things will occur by the revelation obtained by her from certain saints. _fifth_--she affirms that her wearing a man's dress is done by her through the will of god; she has sinned by receiving the sacrament in that garb, which she says she would sooner die than quit wearing. _sixth_--she admits having written letters signed with the names of jesus and mary and with the sign of a cross. that, also, she admits having threatened death to those who would not obey her; and she affirms that all she has done has been accomplished by the divine will. _seventh_--she gives a false account of her journey to vaucouleurs and to chinon. _eighth_--she also gives an untrue account of her attempt to kill herself at beaurevoir, sooner than fall into the power of the english. _ninth_--and also gives false statements of her assurance of salvation, provided she remains a maid, and of never having committed any sin. _tenth_--and also of her pretending that saints catherine and margaret speak to her in french, and not in english, as they do not belong to the latter side. _eleventh_--she admits the adoration of her saints; her disobedience to her parents; and of saying that if the evil one were to appear in the likeness of saint michel she would know it was not the saint. _twelfth_--admits that she refuses to submit to the church militant, and this in spite of being told that all faithful members of the church must, by the article '_unam sanctam ecclesiam catholicam_,' comply with and submit to the commands of the church militant, and principally in all things which pertain to sacred doctrines and the ecclesiastical sanctions. this was the substance of the twelve articles which cauchon laid before the doctors of theology and law in paris. no one knew better than the bishop how false these were; manchon himself had been so impressed with their utter fraudulence that he had inserted in their margin, under the date of the th of april, the statement that in many instances the facts alleged were entirely at variance with the declarations of the prisoner. cauchon despatched the articles to paris on the following day, april the th. m. wallon, in his admirable and exhaustive history of joan of arc, has remarked that all her deeds were in these twelve articles travestied from acts of piety or patriotism into acts of superstition and rebellion against god and his church. 'what,' asks m. wallon, 'had her accusers to reproach her with? her visions? none of her judges could declare these were impossible, for then they would declare themselves unbelievers in the history of all the saints, which is full of such visions. they might deny them if they pleased, but it required all the wilful blindness of passion to affirm, once such things were articles of belief, that they came from satanic influence.' as regards joan of arc's costume, she had on several occasions answered with sufficient clearness, and every person might have made a like answer, that there is no hard and fast law laid down by the church relating to the costume that may be worn by members of the church. nay more, it was notorious that one of the female saints of the church (sainte marine) had always worn a man's dress. the question as to her dress had been gone into thoroughly during joan of arc's examination by the churchmen and laymen at poitiers; that which the church had not blamed at poitiers could not therefore be a sin in rouen. by the same token, how was it possible for joan to believe that what had not been disapproved of by the archbishop at rheims should be considered a criminal offence by the bishop of beauvais? as regards the question of her submission to the church, joan of arc replied, when asked if she would submit to its will, in these words: 'you speak to me of the "church militant" and of the "church triumphant." i do not understand the signification of those terms; but i wish to submit myself to the church as all good christians should do.' what more could be required of her than this entire submission to the church? she had made that answer to the doctors and clergy at poitiers, and it had entirely satisfied those men. what joan of arc had a clear right not to do was to submit herself to her arch-enemy the bishop of beauvais. when she asked what cauchon and his judges called the 'church militant,' she was told it consisted of the pope and the prelates below him. she thereupon exclaimed she would willingly appear before him, but that she would not submit to the judgment of her enemies, and particularly not to cauchon. 'in saying this,' adds m. wallon, 'she displayed her usual courageous spirit. how eagerly had she,' he remarks (when told that if she would submit herself to the council then sitting at bâle, where she would find some judges of her party among the english), 'appealed to be allowed to bring her case before that council; and it will be remembered how cauchon cursed the lawyer who had brought forward the suggestion during the trial.' on that occasion escaped from the prisoner's lips the cry which showed how well she knew the unscrupulousness of her judges. on learning that her wish to appeal to the council of bâle by cauchon's order was not to appear in that day's report of the trial, she said, 'you write down what is against me, but you will not write what is favourable to me.' along with the twelve articles, cauchon enclosed a letter to the lawyers in paris asking for their opinion on what he calls the facts submitted to them, 'whether they do not appear to be contrary to the orthodox faith, to the scriptures, and to the church of rome, and whether the learned members of the church and doctors do not consider such things as stated in these articles as scandalous, dangerous to civil order, injurious and adverse to public morals.' in every way cauchon's letter was worthy of its author. on the th of april a meeting under the presidency of erard emenyart, consisting of a score of lawyers and clergy, was held in the chapel of the archiepiscopal palace. at this meeting, with scarcely a dissentient voice, it was voted that joan of arc had by her deeds and her expressed opinions proved herself schismatical and strongly tainted with heresy. a second meeting took place in the same building on the following day, attended by some more church functionaries. some of these suggested that the prisoner should be promptly handed over to the secular arm--if she refuses still to renounce her errors--and if she acknowledges them, her fate will then be to be imprisoned for life, and given for nourishment 'the bread of sorrows and the water of anguish.' eleven advocates--all belonging to rouen--however, added the following clause, that the latter should be her punishment, 'provided that her revelations do not come from god.' but with the fear of cauchon before them, they added to this clause that the revelations coming from such a source seems hardly probable, and they appeal to the bachelors in theology to set them right on that head. the bishop of lisieux, who had already given as his reason for not believing that joan of arc's mission could be heaven-inspired the fact of the low station from which she came, now repeated the same absurdity on this occasion. there were others who preferred delaying their verdict until the decision arrived at by the university of paris had been made known. a number of the churchmen belonging to the chapter of the cathedral of rouen hesitated, divided between two opinions, for and against the maid, and of these only twenty put in an appearance when summoned by cauchon to meet on the th of april. they were threatened and bullied by the bishop to come in stronger numbers on the next day, when they attended to the number of thirty-one, but could not be prevailed on to give a definite opinion until the answer arrived from the university--which ultimatum cauchon had to take with as much grace as he could. while these things were taking place, joan of arc fell ill--worn out probably by her long and harsh imprisonment, by the mental as well as physical torment she must have undergone during those weeks of cross-questioning and endless browbeating. her jailers were more alarmed about her condition than she was herself, for were she to die a natural death, half the moral effect her enemies counted on obtaining by giving her the death of a sorceress and heretic would be lost. doctors were sent for--sent by the cardinal of winchester and warwick. when asked what ailed her she said that her illness had commenced after eating a fish that had been sent her by the bishop of beauvais. warwick is said to have had the brutality to tell the doctors that her life must be saved at all hazards, for she had to die by the hands of the executioners. the doctors ordered her to be bled, and her naturally strong constitution soon restored her to health. during the days of the weakness following her illness, cauchon, thinking probably that more might be then wrung from her than when well, came to see her. this was on the th of april. he went to the dungeon accompanied by the vice-inquisitor and half-a-dozen judges, and the following charitable exhortation, as the chronicler styles it, took place. 'we have come,' began cauchon, 'to you with charitable and amiable intentions, to console you in your sickness. you will remember, joan, how you have been questioned on various matters relating to the faith, and you know the answers you made. knowing your ignorance relating to such matters, we are willing to send learned and well-versed men in such matters.' then turning to the lawyers and others present, the bishop continued: 'we exhort you to give joan profitable counsel on the obligations which appertain to the true doctrine of the faith, and to the furtherance of the safety and welfare of her body and soul. 'joan,' continued cauchon, 'if there be any one else you wish to consult in this matter, we are ready to send for such in order that they may aid you. we are men of the church, ever ready to aid those in need of advice good for the soul as well as the body, and ready to benefit you or any of your own kith, or ourselves. we should gladly give you daily such to advise you. in a word, we are ready, under the circumstances, to aid you, as does the church itself, ever ready to help all such who will willingly come to her. but beware to act against our advice and exhortation. for if you still should refuse to submit yourself to us, we shall abandon you. judge then of the peril you lie in in that case. it is this peril which we hope to prevent you from falling into with all our strength and all our affection.' to this mephistophelean address joan of arc made the following reply: 'i render you my best thanks for what you have said respecting the salvation of my soul; and it seems to me, seeing the illness i am now suffering, that i am in danger of dying. if this is to happen, god's will be done. i will only ask you to allow me to confess, and to partake of the blessed sacrament, and that my body may be laid in holy ground.' cauchon replied as follows: 'if you wish to receive the sacraments of the church you must confess yourself like a good catholic, and you must also submit yourself to the church. if you persevere in not doing so, you cannot obtain what you desire, except that for penitence, which we are always ready to administer.' joan wearily said to this: 'i have then nothing more to say.' the bishop, however, had no wish that the interview should end thus, and continued: 'the greater your danger of now dying is, the greater reason have you to amend your life; if you do not submit yourself to the church, then you will not obtain the privilege of a catholic to its sacraments.' to this she answered: 'if i die here in prison, i trust my body will be placed in consecrated earth. if you refuse me this favour, i can but appeal to my saviour!' 'you said,' quoth cauchon, 'during the trial that if you had done or said anything that was against our christian faith you could not support it!' 'i refer myself,' said joan, 'to the answer i then made, and to our lord!' 'you said,' continued the bishop, 'that you had received many revelations both from god and from the saints. suppose, then, that now some worthy person were to appear, declaring that they had received a revelation from god about your deeds, would you believe that person?' to this the prisoner replied: 'there is not a christian on earth, who, coming to me and saying that he came by such revelation, i should not know whether to believe or not, for i should know whether he were true or false by saint catherine and saint margaret.' 'but,' said cauchon, 'do you imagine then that god is not able to reveal to some one besides yourself things that you may be ignorant about?' joan answered: 'without a sign, i should not believe man or woman.' then cauchon asked joan if she believed in the holy scriptures? 'you know that i do,' she answered. then the bishop again returned to the question whether or not the prisoner consented to submit herself to the church militant, by which the church temporal should be understood. now, as before, joan of arc's answer was unchanged. 'whatever,' she said, 'may happen to me, i shall neither do nor say anything further than that i have already declared during the trial.' in vain all the venerable doctors present exhorted the prisoner to make her submission; they quoted scripture, chapter and verse, to her (matt. xviii.), without obtaining any more success than the bishop had done. as they were leaving the prison one of these 'venerable doctors' hissed to joan: 'if you refuse to submit to the church, the church will abandon you as if you were a saracen.' to this joan of arc replied: 'i am a good christian--a christian born and baptized--and a christian i shall die.' before cauchon left his victim he made one further attempt to obtain a decided answer from joan of arc, this time making use of a bait which he thought must catch her--namely, permission to receive the communion: 'as,' he said, 'you desire the eucharist, will you, if you are allowed to do so, submit yourself to the church?' to this offer joan answered: 'as to that submission i can give no other answer than that i have already given you. i love god; him i serve, as a good christian should. were i able i would help the church with all my strength.' 'but,' said cauchon, 'if we were to order a grand procession to restore your health, then would you not submit yourself?' 'i only request,' she answered, 'that the church and all good catholics will pray for me.' some of the judges had suggested that, in a more public place than in her prison, joan of arc should be again admonished relating to the crimes of which she was accused; and cauchon accordingly summoned a public meeting of the judges for the nd of may, to be held in a chamber near the great hall. on that day sixty-two judges were present. cauchon took care that the actual charges contained in the twelve articles which had been sent to the university should not be read in the presence of the prisoner, and told her that she had only been summoned in order to receive another admonition before a larger assemblage than had as yet met. in his opening allocution he told his audience that the private admonition had been unattended with good results, that joan had refused to submit herself to the church, and that he had accordingly invited to the present meeting a learned doctor of theology, namely, john de chatillon, archdeacon of evreux, whose eloquence he doubted not would have a beneficial effect upon the stubbornness of the prisoner. on joan being led into the room, the bishop admonished her to listen to what chatillon would now lay before her, and to agree to what he would advise. if she would not do so, he added, she would place herself in jeopardy, both as to her body and as to her soul. chatillon then took up his parable, which was to the effect that all faithful christians must conform to the tenets of the church; and that he trusted she would do so to all that the doctors lay and spiritual there present expected her. the archdeacon held a digest of his sermon in his hand. seeing this, joan of arc requested him to read his book, after which, she said, she would make her answer. the speech, or sermon, that he then delivered was an exhaustive examination of the twelve articles, brought under six heads, but much altered and garbled. in the first place, he admonished her of not having given a full account of her apparitions to the church through her judges; secondly, he told her of her culpability in insisting on retaining her male attire; thirdly, of her wickedness in asserting that she committed no crime in retaining that dress; fourthly, her sin in holding as true revelations that could only lead the people into error; fifthly, that she had, owing to these revelations, done deeds displeasing to the divine will; and lastly, that she was committing a sin in treating the apparitions as holy, when she was not certain whether they did not come from evil spirits. when chatillon said that by not conforming to the article '_sanctam ecclesiam_,' she placed herself in the power of the church to condemn her to the flames, and to be burnt as a heretic, she answered boldly: 'i will not say aught else than that i have already spoken; and were i even to see the fire i should say the same!' after this answer in the minutes of that day's trial is written by the clerk in the margin of the vellum: '_superba responsio!_' that was a testimony of admiration which neither the fears of persecution nor of superstition could prevent from appearing. nothing more was to be obtained from the prisoner's lips than this declaration, either by private or public examinations. this being so, cauchon bethought him what further cruelty could be employed to force the prisoner to give way, and the barbarous scheme of torture was decided on. the only portion of the old castle of rouen that has survived time, war, revolutions, and rebuilding (although partially restored), is a massive high tower, built of white stone, called the tower of joan of arc. this is not the tower of the castle which contained the heroine's dungeon, but it has always been traditionally regarded as that in which, on the th of may, joan of arc was led to where her judges intended, by fear or by the infliction of bodily torment, to oblige her to make the confession which she had so steadily and for so long a time refused. the lower portion of this tower only is ancient, for from about its centre to the top is a restoration. the chamber to which joan of arc was led, and where the instruments of torture and the executioners were waiting, is probably that on the ground floor, and is but little changed from what it was on that may morning in the year of grace . in that dark stone chamber with its groined roof, besides the prisoner, were present cauchon, with the vice-inquisitor, the abbot of saint corneille of compiègne, william erard, andrew marguerie, nicolas de venderès, john massieu, william haiton, aubert morel, and the infamous loiseleur. ranged round the circular walls were placed the instruments of torture, and men skilled in their use were ready at hand. 'joan,' said cauchon, who had now dropped his hypocritical semblance of sympathy, which he had assumed when interrogating the prisoner in her cell, 'i command you to tell the truth. in your examination many and various points have been touched on, about which you refused to answer, or, when you did so, answered untruthfully. of this we have certain proof. these points will now be read to you.' what was then read was probably a summary of the articles of impeachment. cauchon then continued: 'if, joan, you now refuse to speak the truth, you will be put to the torture. you see before you the instruments which are prepared, and by them stand the executioners, who are ready to do their office at our command. you will be tortured in order that you may be led into the way of truth, and for the salvation of your body and soul, which you by your lies have exposed to so great a peril.' it was at this terrible juncture that joan showed her indomitable spirit more clearly than at any moment since her capture. in front of her lay the rack upon which, at a signal from cauchon, her limbs would be wrenched asunder; but her reply, as given in the minutes written by the clerk who was present, bears the ring of a courage superior to all the terrors which confronted her. 'even,' she said, 'if you tear me limb from limb, and even if you kill me, i will not tell you anything further. and even were i forced to do so, i should afterwards declare that it was only because of the torture that i had spoken differently.' that was an answer which sums up the whole folly and crime of obtaining evidence by means of torture, and recalls galileo's famous phrase when in a somewhat similar situation. cauchon then again ordered joan to tell them of her revelations, and asked her if she had again sought counsel from her voices. she had, answered joan. 'and have they,' asked the bishop, 'foretold what will now happen?' 'i asked them,' answered joan of arc, 'if i should be burnt, and they answered: "abide by your lord and he will aid you."' there is little more than the above recorded of what took place, but it is probable that joan, who had as yet hardly recovered from her illness, was, from fear of her dying under the torture, not subjected to it. at any rate, that additional horror was not to be laid on the consciences of the already heavily burthened judges of the maid. it appears, however, that these men had not altogether given up the idea of carrying out this barbarity, so congenial to such a man as cauchon and to his friend the inquisitor; for a meeting was summoned by cauchon at his house three days after joan had been brought face to face with the torture apparatus, at which the question was discussed as to whether it should not after all be used. thirteen judges met the bishop and the inquisitor to discuss the question. of these the following were against applying torture: maîtres roussel, venderès, marguerie, erard, barbier, gastinel, coppequesne, ledoux, de la pierre, haiton, and lemaîstre. one of these, erard, remarked that it was unnecessary to torture the prisoner seeing that, as he expressed it, 'they had already sufficient evidence to condemn her to death without putting her to torment.' but morel de courcelles, and loiseleur were in favour that it should be made use of. surely the names of these men deserve to be held in execration, and placed by the side of cauchon's in the historic pillory of everlasting infamy. [illustration: st. ouen--rouen.] meanwhile the university of paris were deliberating upon their answer to the twelve articles. this body met on the th of april, within the convent of saint bernard. the ancient building, in which the university held many notable conclaves when even popes were judged by the doctors of paris, still exists, but it has been transformed into an oil warehouse. john de troyes, senior of the faculty of theology, was the spokesman, and read the decisions of the faculty on each of the twelve articles. it is unnecessary to go through the long verbiage of abuse and blasphemy with which these theologians thought it their duty to bespatter joan of arc. on every head these reverend seigneurs condemned her. after de troyes had finished his reading of the opinions and the judgment, guérold de boissel read the deliberations of the faculty of decrees upon the six points of accusation. 'if this woman,' so ran the rede, 'was in her right mind when she made affirmation of the propositions contained in the twelve articles, one may say in the manner of counsel and of doctrine, and to speak charitably, first, that she is schismatic in separating herself from obedience to the church; secondly, that she is out of the pale of the law in contradicting the article "_unam sanctam ecclesiam catholicam_"; thirdly, apostate, for having cut short her hair, which was given her by god to hide her head with, and also in having abandoned the dress of a woman for that of a man; fourthly, vicious and a soothsayer, for saying, without showing miracles, that she is sent by god, as was moses and john the baptist; fifthly, rebel to the faith, by remaining under the anathema framed by the canons of the church, and by not receiving the sacraments of the church at the season set apart by the church, in order not to have to cease wearing the dress of a man; and, sixthly, blasphemous in saying that she knows she will be received into paradise. therefore, if after being charitably warned she refuses to re-enter the catholic faith, and thereby give satisfaction, she shall be given over to the secular judges, and meet with the punishment due to her crimes.' and the university of paris in solemn conclave ratified the above judgment. the university also sent cauchon a letter of commendation, in which he was held up to the general admiration as a faithful pastor, zealous in good works, on whom the university trusted that the almighty would, on the day of his manifestation, bestow an imperishable crown of glory. such were the sentiments of the most erudite, most pious, and most eminent school of learning existing in the capital of france. on the th of may cauchon summoned yet another gathering of joan's judges in the archiepiscopal palace at rouen. fifty of them attended. after some discussion, during which a few of the learned men present expressed their opinion that joan of arc should be at once handed over to the secular arm, it was decided that the prisoner should again be brought before them to be what they were pleased to call 'charitably admonished.' accordingly, four days after, on the rd of may, in a chamber near joan of arc's dungeon, another meeting was held. on this occasion a canon of rouen, named peter morice, was ordered to question the prisoner. he commenced by delivering a long lecture, in which he recapitulated the twelve articles, and wound up his oration by imploring joan to submit herself to the church militant, and threatening her with the loss of body and soul in this world and the next if she still refused to do so. joan of arc was as unmoved and as firm when thus threatened as she had been when placed before the instruments of torture, and she replied:-- 'if i were to see the fire itself, the stake, and the executioner ready to light the pile, and were i in the midst of the flames, i should not say anything else than what i have already spoken during the trial, and this is my determination, even unto my death!' there is some probability for believing that, during the following evening after this last meeting of joan of arc and her judges, loiseleur gained admittance to the prisoner, and, under the disguise of a friendly and sympathetic priest, promised joan that if she would conform to the wishes of the judges, she should be taken out of the prison she now lay in and the custody of the english, and transferred to prisons belonging to the church. poor joan's chief desire was that she might be set free from the hands of the english. be this as it may, there is no authority given for this idea of loiseleur having probed her on this point; and wallon, in his history of the maid, makes no allusion to such an interview, and only states that john beaupère went in the morning of the th to the prison, and he was soon followed there by nicolas loiseleur, who vehemently urged on joan to comply with the demands which the judges had made. nothing had been neglected to give the greatest solemnity to the cruel farce which cauchon had prepared to be now enacted--a solemnity by which the bishop hoped to degrade joan of arc in the eyes of the people. it was that of obliging the prisoner to make a public apology and recantation of all her deeds--a declaration in fact to be made by her in the eyes of the whole world that all she had undertaken and accomplished had been through and by the aid of evil spirits. by this stroke the bishop hoped to show to france that its heroine, instead of being a sainted and holy maid sent by god to deliver her country from the invader, was, by her own open and public confession, proved to be an emanation from satan--a being abhorrent in the eyes of god and man. by this device, cauchon hoped also to deal a blow to charles, for when once it became known that his servant and saviour was a creature in league with the fiends, all the works done through her influence, and by her prowess, including his coronation, would also be proved to have been accomplished by the powers of darkness, and therefore deeds abhorrent to all good catholics throughout his realm. the place chosen for the stage on which joan of arc was to abjure before the eyes of rouen--and through rouen the rest of france--her deeds and her words, was the cemetery in front of that most beautiful of all gothic fanes--the church of saint ouen. adjacent to its southern wall the exquisitely carved portal named the marmousets, then as now rich in statuary of royal and imperial benefactors of the church, looks down upon what is the entrance to a fair public garden. in the fifteenth century this space was used as a place of burial. here, arranged with a view to dramatic effect, were placed two huge wooden scaffolds, or rather platforms, which faced one another. upon one of these sat the bishop of beauvais in state. he had on his right hand the prince cardinal of winchester, great-uncle of the child-king henry vi., with other notabilities of the church; the bishops of norwich, of noyon, and of thérouenne; the vice-inquisitor, eight abbots, and a large number of friars and doctors, clerical and lay--in fact all those who had attended the trials of the maid of orleans during the two preceding months. upon the opposite platform stood joan of arc, a crowd of lawyers and priests about her. here, too, stood loiseleur close by the prisoner; he never ceased urging her to conform to the commands of the clergy about her. a vast throng of the town's-people gathered below, and the place was all in a turmoil. a seething mob had followed the maid from her prison to the cemetery, which, already full, now held with difficulty the fresh press of people who accompanied joan of arc and her guards to the purlieus of the church of saint ouen. william erard had been appointed by cauchon to preach in this 'terrible comedy,' as michelet calls this farce of the maid's abjuration. for text the monk selected the fifteenth chapter of saint john's gospel: 'the branch,' etc. erard showed in his discourse how joan had fallen from one sin into another, till she had at length separated herself from the church. to a long string of abuse about herself joan of arc listened with perfect patience; but the preacher, not content with hurling his invectives at the prisoner, began to attack her king for having listened to joan's advice, by which conduct the king had, erard said, also incurred the crime of heresy. this attack on charles roused the indignation of the maid. turning on the monk, without a moment's thought of her own situation, and the fresh danger she exposed herself to, the noble girl exclaimed: 'by my faith, and with all respect to you, i dare to affirm on my peril that the king of this realm is the noblest of christians, and no one has greater love for the faith and church than my king!' 'silence her!' shrieked the preacher, beside himself with rage at finding that these few words from the lips of joan of arc had destroyed all the effect of his eloquence on that vast crowd, whose sympathy must have been now strongly shown towards the glorious victim before them. again summoned to submit to the church, joan said: 'i have answered on that point already to my judges. i call upon them to send an account of all my actions to the holy father at rome, to whom after god i submit myself.' this was not what cauchon wished his victim to express, for one of the charges that he had made against her was her refusal to submit to the pope. he therefore changed the subject, and asked joan of arc whether she acknowledged that there were any things evil among those deeds she had committed or said. 'as to my deeds and sayings,' she answered, 'i have done them by the command of god.' 'then you admit,' said the bishop, 'that the king and others have sometimes urged you to act as you have done?' 'as to my words and actions,' she answered, 'i make no one, and particularly not the king, responsible. if any wrong has been committed, it is i who am to blame, and not another.' 'but,' said cauchon, 'those acts and words of yours which have been found evil by the judges, will you recant them?' 'i submit them,' said joan, 'to god and our holy father the pope.' 'the bishops,' continued cauchon, 'are the judges in their dioceses, therefore you must submit to the church as your judges have determined that you shall do.' joan still refused, and the bishop then began to read the sentence condemning her to death as a heretic. now arose a great uproar among the clergy and others on the platforms and among the crowd beneath. loiseleur and massieu urged her to abjure; the former promising that if she consented she would, after abjuring, be taken from her english jailers and placed in keeping of the clergy. in the midst of the hubbub erard produced a parchment scroll, on which, he told joan, were written the different accusations against her, which she had only to sign with her mark to be saved. all about this abjuration was a mesh of confusion to the mind of joan. massieu told her she need but make a mark on the parchment before her to be delivered: if not--and he pointed down to a grim figure near the foot of the stage they were on, where stood the headsman with cart and assistants, ready to draw her to the stake. 'abjure!' cried erard and massieu, 'or you will be taken and burnt.' even joan of arc's courage failed at that sight, and all the woman in her nature asserted itself. 'do what i tell you,' cried loiseleur; 'abjure and put on woman's dress, and all will yet be well.' the text of the abjuration was then hurriedly read, joan of arc following it, and repeating the words, the sense of which she had no time to understand. she spoke the words, it is said, as one in a dream. some said she did this mockingly, for she was observed to smile once or twice; but the poor soul's spirit was crushed, and doubtless the whole scene was to her like an evil dream--the poor broken-down body could not discriminate what words she was forced to repeat. a troubled, horrible dream must that have seemed to the hapless maiden, standing on that scaffold, with all the shouting mob about, and all her deadly enemies at hand. she made her mark on the parchment--a little cross--and the deed was done. in the recantation, or abjuration, thus obtained from joan of arc, the twelve articles were included, with all their abuse set down. thus was joan obliged by her signature to declare that all her visions and voices were false and from evil spirits; also that she had been guilty of transgressing laws divine in having worn her hair cut short and the dress of a man; also in having caused bloodshed; also in having idolatrously invoked evil spirits; also in having treated god and his sacraments with contempt; and, besides all this, of having acted schismatically, and of having fallen foul of the church: all of which crimes and errors she now abjured, and humbly submitted herself to the will of the church and its ordinances. she promised with her abjuration not to relapse, and called on saint peter, the pope, as well as the bishop of beauvais and other of her judges, to keep her word. not content with having inveigled joan of arc into signing this farrago of blasphemous nonsense, her judges, it seems, added fraud to their crime by reading to the prisoner a different recantation from that to which they had forced her to sign her mark. the one she marked contained only six lines, and it did not take longer to read these few lines, an eye-witness afterwards asserted, than it does to repeat the 'paternoster'; whereas the one produced after the ceremony of the abjuration filled several sides. but in an act of such infamy as this of having cheated joan of arc not only into signing a recantation of her life-work, but of confessing to her existence having been one long series of superstitious and criminal workings with the spirits of evil, it matters very little whether she signed a longer or a shorter list of falsehoods invented by her persecuting judges. while these things were taking place upon the platform on which joan was bullied into signing this abjuration, the english and their faction in the crowd below began to fear that their victim would escape them; they had not grasped the astuteness of the french prelate, who was ready to hand his prisoner over to them directly he had obtained this recantation from her hand. cauchon was, however, obliged to keep them waiting until he had got that by which he hoped to destroy joan of arc's fame, and at the same time, and by the same deed, to retain in his possession a formidable weapon by which he thought to weaken the cause of the french monarch. cauchon may well have felt on that afternoon that what he had done for the english cause merited as his reward the coveted archbishopric of rouen. there remained but one further act for him to play in this drama before he quitted his platform. rising from among his brother bishops he read a list of the crimes committed by the prisoner, and announced that, as joan had now, owing to her abjuration of her sins, re-entered into the fold of the church, she was absolved by him from her excommunication. however, he added, as she had sinned so grievously against god and the church, he, for the sake of her soul's welfare, condemned her to perpetual imprisonment--'to the water of sorrow, and the bread of anguish,' so that she might repent of her faults, and cease ever to commit any more. then, in spite of the promises made to her of being placed in the charge of the clergy, cauchon ordered that joan should be taken back to her former prison. warwick is said to have displayed anger at this termination of the proceedings. observing this, one of the judges pacified him by assuring him that joan should not be allowed to escape her fate: 'do not fear, my lord,' he said; 'you will catch her yet.' that evening the vice-inquisitor, accompanied by loiseleur, thomas de courcelles, isambard de la pierre, and a few other of the judges who had taken part in the proceedings that day at saint ouen, visited the prisoner. their object in going to her was to insist upon her changing her man's dress, with which demand she now had to comply. that occurred on thursday night, and on the sunday following a rumour was spread abroad that joan of arc had discarded the woman's dress, and had again put on male dress. although, during the last days of the heroine's life, it is most difficult to gather anything authentic as to her treatment in the prison, we are led to understand, by the least untrustworthy testimony, that what happened in the interval between thursday night and the following sunday was as follows. the soldiers placed in charge of joan after her recantation and her return to the prison had rendered her existence a long martyrdom; and there is reason to believe that on her discarding her man's dress these ruffians attempted to violate the prisoner: so, sooner than suffer this, although she knew that to return to her former dress would be equivalent to meeting certain death, she did not hesitate to save her maidenhood at the exposure of her life. michelet, in his history of the maid, quotes from the deposition of one of the officials--massieu, who saw much of joan of arc in those last days--the statement that on the morning of trinity sunday, on waking, she asked the soldiers to leave her alone for a few moments while she dressed; that one of the men removed her woman's clothes, and in place substituted the dress of a man; and that, in order not to be naked, she was obliged to put on the latter. be this as it may, on the following morning, cauchon, followed by several of his creatures, returned to the prison, in order that he might see and show to others that his victim had been entrapped at last. 'we have come,' he said to the prisoner, 'to find out the state of your soul, and we find you, in despite of our command, and despite of your promise to renounce this man's dress, again thus attired. tell us the reason why you have dared again to wear these clothes.' joan's answer was that she preferred that dress to the other, and that, being placed among men, it was better that she should wear it than the dress of a woman. although not placed in the judicial record of this interview, manchon adds in his account of the proceedings on that day, that joan of arc also said that she had returned to wearing her male attire, feeling safer when in that dress than when she was dressed in woman's clothes. this seems to us an evident avowal that she had to resist the brutality of the men placed over her in the dungeon. massieu also adds to manchon's testimony that he knew joan was unable to protect herself against attempts made to violate her. her legs were chained to the wood with which her pallet bed was framed, and this chain was again fixed to a large beam about six feet long, and locked with a padlock; so that the poor creature could hardly move. to the above testimony of these two men, isambard de la pierre adds his. he states that when cauchon came to the maid's dungeon she bore all the traces of having undergone a violent struggle, 'being all in tears, and so bruised and outraged (_outrageé_) that he (isambard) could not help feeling pity for her.' but the strongest testimony of all is that of the priest, martin ladvenu, who heard her confession on the eve of her death, and he confirms isambard's statement entirely. he even adds that not only had joan of arc to suffer from the brutality of the soldiery placed about her, but that a _millourt d'angleterre_ had acted as shamefully as these men towards her. although michelet and other french writers have naturally not allowed this 'millourt' (which, by the way, is quite as correct a form of spelling that title as the better known 'milor') to escape the branding he deserves for his attempted villainy, it is but fair to add that isambard de la pierre, as well as manchon, qualify his conduct as that not of a would-be violator, but of a tempter--a not inconsiderable difference in the scale of infamy. to return to cauchon and joan of arc. 'but,' said the bishop, 'are you not aware you have now no right to wear such a dress?' joan answered that she had been misled into believing that if she wore the woman's dress she would be allowed to hear mass and to communicate, and to be, she added, 'delivered from these chains.' 'but,' replied cauchon, 'have you not abjured, and promised never to take to wearing this dress again?' 'i would prefer to die,' she answered, 'than to remain on a prisoner here. but if i were allowed to go to the mass, and these chains were taken off me, and if i was placed in some other prison where some woman could be near me, then i should do all that is required of me by the church.' in all joan of arc's answers it should be noticed that she never, in spite of the terrible sufferings she endured, and the gross barbarities inflicted on her, in any single instance ever made any complaint of her treatment. there is something superhuman in this utter absence of any shade of vindictiveness, when one thinks that, by a few words, she might have saved herself from much of what she had to suffer. never once did she blame even those who had deceived, insulted, and ill-treated her; her life was one beautiful example, full of divine charity and forgiveness. cauchon, to make doubly sure of completing his work, then asked joan: 'have you, since last thursday, heard the voices of saint catherine and saint margaret?' 'yes,' she answered. 'and,' continued the bishop, 'what did they say?' 'they told me of the great sorrow they felt for the great treason to which i have been led, by my abjuring and revoking my deeds in order to save my life, and that by so doing i have lost my soul.' on the margin of the original document of the mss. of this examination, written in the prison, the original of which is in the national library in paris, we find alongside of this answer of joan of arc's the following words: '_responsio mortifera_.' indeed it was an answer of deadliest import; for joan in asserting that her voices had again spoken to her, and in saying that she had committed a mortal sin by recanting her deeds, had thrown away the only plank of safety left her. it seems to us evident, however, that joan of arc was now quite eager and willing to meet the worst that her enemies could inflict upon her: death itself must now have seemed more tolerable than the daily death she was undergoing in her prison. 'did your voices urge you to resist giving way about the recantation?' questioned the bishop. 'my voices,' joan said, 'told me as i stood on the platform before the people that i should answer the preacher with boldness.' 'did he not,' said cauchon, 'speak the truth?' 'no,' she answered, 'he was a false preacher; and he accused me of having done things which i never did.' 'but,' then said cauchon, 'do you mean to tell us that you still persist in saying that you have been sent by god?' to which joan replied that that was still her belief. 'then,' continued the bishop, 'you deny that to which you swore on oath only last thursday?' 'my voices,' said joan, 'have told me since then that i had committed a bad deed in saying that i had not done the things which i have done!' 'then,' continued the bishop, with eagerness, 'you retract your abjuration?' 'it was,' said joan of arc, 'from the fear of being burnt that i retracted what i had done; but i never intended to deny or revoke my voices.' 'but then,' said cauchon, 'are you now no longer afraid of being burnt?' 'i had rather die than endure any longer what i have now to undergo.' and with these broken-hearted words of the sufferer ended this long mockery of a trial, so patiently endured during three weariful months by the martyr maid. on quitting the prison, cauchon met lord warwick among some englishmen in the outer court of the castle. they were clamouring that the execution of joan of arc should be soon carried out. the bishop accosted the earl with a smile of triumph, and said to him in english:-- 'you can dine now with a good appetite. we have caught her at last!' chapter vi. _martyrdom_. the next day, the th of may, cauchon summoned a large number of prelates and doctors--forty-two in all--to meet him at the archiepiscopal chapel, where he recounted to them all the circumstances of his late interview with the prisoner. he told them how he had found joan, in spite of her abjuration, again dressed as a man, and of her having reaffirmed all that she had so recently abjured regarding her voices and apparitions. when he had concluded, cauchon took the opinion of those around him. without one dissentient voice, they all affirmed that she should be handed over to the secular arm--_i.e._, burnt. the deliberation had not taken long, and, after thanking the company, the bishop made out a formal order by which joan was summoned at eight o'clock on the next morning to the old market-place, there to be delivered into the hands of the civil judge, and by him to be handed over to those of the executioners. 'we conclude,' said the bishop, as he dismissed the meeting, 'that joan shall be treated as a relapsed heretic, for this appears to us right and proper in the sight of law and justice.' early in the morning of wednesday, the th of may--a date which should be held sacred in france as that of the martyrdom of her who through all time must be her country's greatest glory--two priests (martin ladvenu and john toutmouillé) were sent by the bishop's order to the prisoner to tell her that her last day on earth had come. toutmouillé describes, with some pathos, the manner in which joan of arc received the terrible news. she, he tells us, at first wept bitterly, and said she would sooner be beheaded seven times than suffer such a death as that of burning. she recalled with pain the promises made by cauchon to her--that after she had abjured she would be taken to the prison of the church, for then, she said, this cruel death would not have befallen her; and she called upon god, 'the omnipotent and just judge,' to take pity on her. while she thus lamented her fate, cauchon entered the dungeon. turning on him, she cried: 'i lay my death at your door; for had you placed me in the prison of the church, this cruel death would not have befallen me, and i make you responsible to god for my death.' then, turning away from the bishop, she appeared more calm, and, addressing one of the judges who had followed cauchon into the prison, exclaimed: 'master peter'--the man's name was peter maurice--'where shall i be this evening?' 'have you not good hope in god's mercy?' he answered. 'yes,' said joan; 'and by his grace i hope to be in paradise.' cauchon and the others having left her alone with martin ladvenu, she made her confession to him, and when that was finished she begged that the sacrament might be administered to her. without cauchon's leave ladvenu did not dare to obtain this supreme consolation for the martyr. he despatched a messenger to the bishop, who, after consulting with some of the clergy, gave his permission. in the meanwhile, the city had heard that the day of the maid of orleans' execution had come, and the people crowded about the neighbourhood of the castle. in spite of the english soldiery, the people did not conceal their grief and dismay on learning that the heroine was so soon to perish. the eucharist was brought into the prison, but without the usual accompaniments of candle, stole, and surplice. these 'maimed rights' raised the indignation of the priest martin, and he indignantly refused to proceed with the ceremony until lights and stole were brought. during the time in which joan of arc was receiving the sacrament, those persons who had been admitted within the castle recited the litany for the departing soul, and never had the mournful invocation for the dying, the supplication of the solemn chant, '_kyrie eleison! christe eleison!_' been raised from a more tragic place, or on a more heart-stirring occasion. outside, in the street, and all around the prison gates, knelt the weeping people, fervently praying, and earnestly invoking the almighty and his saints for her who was about to lay down her young life in their behalf. 'christ have pity! saint margaret have pity! pray for her, all ye saints, archangels, and blessed martyrs, pray for her! saints and angels intercede for her! from thy wrath, good lord, deliver her! o, lord god, save her! have mercy on her, we beseech thee, good lord!' the poor, helpless people had nothing but their prayers to give joan of arc; but these we may believe were not unavailing. there are few more pathetic events recorded in history than this weeping, helpless, praying crowd, holding their lighted candles, and kneeling, on the pavement, beneath the prison walls of the old fortress. it was about nine o'clock when they placed on joan of arc a long white shirt, such as criminals wore at their execution, and on her head they set a mitre-shaped paper cap, on which the words 'heretic, relapsed, apostate, idolatress,' were written. this was the head-dress which the victims of the inquisition carried, and in which they were burnt. when joan of arc was taken forth to die, there mounted with her on to the cart the two priests, martin ladvenu and isambard. eight hundred english troops lined the road by which the death-cart and its load passed from the castle to the old market-place; they were armed with staves and with axes. these soldiers, as the victim passed, fell into line behind the cart, and kept off with their staves the crowd, eager to show its sympathy for joan. suddenly, when as yet the procession had gone but a short distance, a man pushed his way through the crowd and the soldiers, and threw himself at joan of arc's feet, imploring her forgiveness. it was the priest loiseleur, joan's confessor and betrayer. roughly thrown back by the men-at-arms, loiseleur disappeared in the throng, but not before joan had bestowed her pardon on him. on the old market-place--where now not a single building remains which witnessed the tragedy of that day--was a wide space, surrounded by picturesquely gabled and high-roofed houses, like those which still survive in the old norman capital, and within a short distance of the churches of saint sauveur and saint michel, now destroyed. two tribunes had been raised on either side of the square. between this, placed high on a stage of masonry, stood the pile. a placard affixed in front of this pile bore a long inscription, beginning thus: 'joan, known as the maid' ... and ending with a cumbrous list of epithets, among which 'apostate' and 'schismatic' were the least abusive. pending the final act, a monk named nicolas midi was ordered by cauchon to address the prisoner and those present. the bishop's words have come down to us. 'for your admonition,' he began, 'and for the edification of all those present, a learned discourse will now be delivered by the distinguished doctor, nicolas midi'; and the distinguished doctor then took for his text, from the first epistle of saint paul to the corinthians, twelfth chapter, the words: 'if one member suffereth,' etc. the gist of his sermon was to prove that it was necessary, in order to prevent others falling into sin, that the guilty member should be removed. strange, indeed, how often the words of scripture have been used and mis-used in excuse, or in vindication, of the most atrocious cruelties by so-called christians, professing to preach the religion of mercy, of forgiveness, and of humanity. the sermon being finished, the preacher addressed joan of arc in the following words: 'joan, the church, wishing to prevent infection, casts you from her. she no longer protects you. depart in peace!' then cauchon took up his text, which was to the effect that joan, 'by renouncing her abjuration, had returned as the dog of scripture did to its vomit; for which cause we, peter, by the divine mercy bishop of beauvais, and brother john lemaître, vicar of the very reverend doctor john graverent inquisitor of the heretical evil [especially retained by cauchon in the present case], have by a just judgment, declared you, joan, commonly styled the maid, fallen back into diverse errors and crimes, schismatical, idolatrous, and guilty of other sins in great number. for these causes we declare you fallen back into your former errors, and by the sentence of excommunication under which you were already found guilty we declare you to be heretical and relapsed; and we declare that you, as a decayed member, to prevent the contagion from spreading to others, are cast from the unity of the church, and given over to the secular power. we reject, we cast you off, and we abandon you, praying that, beyond death and the mutilation of your limbs, the church treats you with moderation.' these last words were the usual formula used by the inquisition when its victims were about to be committed to the flames. joan of arc meanwhile was praying fervently; and when cauchon had finished speaking, she humbly begged those around her to pray for her. her tears, her fervour, and her submission, overcame the feelings even of her judges. winchester was seen to weep, and a great wave of pity swept over the immense confused crowd; for her enemies as well as her friends among the people were all more or less under its influence. in her prayers the heroine implored the divine mercy to pardon those from whom she had suffered so much. 'pray for me in your churches,' she said to the priests--to those priests and to the church that had deserted and condemned her; for in spite of all that she had endured at the hands of those churchmen, joan of arc remained to the end as fervent and loyal a churchwoman as she had been throughout her life. one thing she missed. turning to massieu, she asked him if he had a cross. he had not, nor could one be found; but an englishman broke his stave into two pieces, and these tied together formed a rude cross. this cross joan took, and placed it against her heart; but she still wanted a consecrated cross to be held before her while struggling in the flames, and this was at length obtained by the priest isambard, who fetched one from the adjacent church of saint sauveur. meanwhile the english soldiers began to grumble at the length of these preparations: 'do they expect us to dine here?' they growled. as soon as the cross from the church had been placed in her hands, she devoutly kissed it, invoking god and her saints to assist her in this the heaviest of her needs, when all human help had abandoned her. the heroine appears to have been then seized by the english sergeants-at-arms, and given by them into the charge of the executioners; and while she was being led to the foot of the high pile of clay and wood--the instrument of her martyrdom--the men-at-arms surrounded and roughly handled their prisoner. the scene had become so poignant that many of the judges left their tribune, unable to endure the sight of that white-robed and helpless figure in the midst of the brutal soldiers hounding her on to her death. it must indeed have been a ghastly spectacle, even for men accustomed to scenes of savage brutality and cruelty. at length she was delivered from her tormentors, and, preceded by the executioner, she mounted the ladder, and was bound round the body by a chain attached to the stake. the good priest, isambard, closely followed her, and stood immediately beneath her, with the cross held and raised towards joan, who but once removed her gaze from off it. 'keep it,' she said to isambard, 'keep it always before my eyes, till death.' then she took a last look around her--a last look on a world which had been so harsh and cruel a world to her, poor victim of all the powers of evil on this earth! she looked but once on the surging crowd beneath, at the old timbered houses of the town, filled from basement to high-peaked roof, with thousands of its citizens. 'o, rouen, rouen!' she cried, 'must i die here? i have great fear lest you will suffer for my death.' and with that she put away from her all earthly things, and gave herself up to heaven. in the interval the executioners had lighted the lower portion of the pile of wood, and the fire, fed by the pitch-covered fagots, mounted rapidly. joan of arc gave a cry of terror, and called aloud for 'water, holy water!' the body had for an instant conquered the spirit--but it was only for an instant. at that moment cauchon had the inconceivable and apparently devil-driven curiosity to approach the martyr, hoping, perhaps, that in the first terror at seeing the fire springing up to her, joan of arc would let fall some words of reproach against her king or her saints. 'joan,' he cried through the crackling of the flames, 'i have come to exhort you for the last time.' 'i die through you,' she said, as she had said once before, and then she was allowed to die in peace, so far as cauchon and his church were concerned. for her all earthly things were now over. till the last sign of life expired the eye-witnesses who have given us the fullest account of her last moments--the priests isambard and massieu--declared that she continued to call on her god and on her saints. frequently through the blinding smoke and the fierce rush of flame her face looked that of a blessed saint uplifted and radiant. with one loud cry of 'jesus!' her head fell on her breast. thus came joan of arc to her glorious end. there is a tradition that when the ashes of the martyr maid were gathered to be cast into the seine, the heart was found unconsumed--_cor cordium!_ many other traditions are related regarding her death, but none with much certainty. the executioner is said to have come later on that day to isambard in an agony of grief. he confessed himself, and told isambard that he felt heaven would never pardon him for the part he had taken in killing a saint. the poor fellow's responsibility for her death was really not greater than that of the fagots and the flames which had destroyed her life. on cauchon and his gang of judges, lay and clerical--on the university of paris and the catholic church--on winchester and the english, noble and simple, who had sold and bought the glorious maid, the crime of her martyrdom will ever rest, and surely no other crime but one in the world's history can be paralleled with it. chapter vii. _the rehabilitation_. twenty years after the events which i have attempted to describe, an act of tardy justice was accorded to joan of arc. charles vii. at length felt it necessary, more for his own interest than for any care of the memory of joan of arc, to have a revision made of the iniquitous condemnation of the heroine. this king, even if unable to rescue the maid of orleans from her captors, might at least have attempted her release, yet during all the time--over a year--of her imprisonment he had not even made a sign in her behalf. there does not exist in the documents of the time a trace of any negotiation, of the smallest offer made to obtain her exchange by prisoners or by ransom, or of any wish to effect her release. but charles was anxious on his own account, when france had almost wholly been gained back to its allegiance, that his coronation at rheims should not be imputed to the actions and to the aid of one whom the french clergy and the french judges had condemned and executed as a heretic and apostate. hence the vast judicial inquiry set on foot by the king to vindicate the fame of her whom the english and the anglo-french had hoped, through the condemnation pronounced by cauchon in the name of the church, to vilify, and through her, by her trial, condemnation, and death, to discredit charles and his coronation. on the th of february, , charles vii. declared that joan of arc's enemies had destroyed her 'against reason'--so ran the formula--'and very cruelly,' and that it was his, the king's, intention 'to obtain the truth regarding this affair.' pope nicolas v. made difficulties. cardinal d'estouteville, who had undertaken to manage the process of rehabilitation, presented the pope with a claim for a revision of the sentence of condemnation in the name of joan of arc's mother and of her two brothers. the petition ran thus: 'the brothers, mother, and relations of joan, anxious that her memory and their own should be cleansed from this unmerited disgrace, demand that the sentence of condemnation that was given at rouen shall be annulled.' not, however, until the death of pope nicolas v., and the accession of calixtus iii., was anything further done. the new pope (alfonso borgia) did not hesitate as to the line he intended taking in the matter, and he gave his sanction to the rehabilitation of the heroine by a rescript dated the th of june, . it was as follows:-- 'we, calixtus, servant of the servants of god, accord a favourable ear to the request which has been made us. there has lately been brought before us on the part of peter and john of arc, also of isabella of arc, their mother, and some of their relations, a petition stating that their sister, daughter, and relative, joan of arc deceased, had been unjustly condemned as guilty of the crime of heresy and other crimes against the faith, on the false testimony of the late william [john, it should be] d'estivet of the episcopal court of beauvais, and of peter of happy memory, at that time bishop of beauvais, and of the late john lemaître, belonging to the inquisition. the nullity of their proceedings and the innocence of joan are clearly established both by documents and further by clearest proofs. in consequence of this, the brothers, mother, and relatives of joan are therefore at liberty to cast off the mark of infamy with which this trial has falsely stamped them; and thus they have humbly supplicated our permission to authorise and to proceed in this trial of rehabilitation.' the prelates selected by the pope as commissioners to follow the course of the trial of rehabilitation were john jouvenel des ursins, archbishop of rheims, william chartrier, bishop of paris, and richard de longueil, bishop of coutances. on the th of november, , this trial was solemnly begun in the church of notre dame, in paris. it has been said that joan of arc's father died of grief on hearing of his daughter's martyrdom. he was certainly dead before the date of this trial. however, the now aged mother of joan of arc, isabella romée d'arc, in her sixty-seventh year, was there. she was supported by her two sons, john and peter, and was accompanied by many of her relations from vaucouleurs, and friends from orleans. the poor soul appears to have been much affected when she appeared before the sympathetic crowd. many of those present must have come from far to see the mother of the famous heroine claiming at the hands of the church the vindication of her daughter's fame. two meetings took place at notre dame, and a third was held at rouen, at which the family of joan of arc were unable to be present--the mother from illness, and the brothers by affairs at home. the _procureur_, whose name was prévosteau, was the advocate for the arc family. the debates lasted all through the winter, and into the early part of the year . during the debates a hundred articles were drawn up and agreed to, relating to the life, death, and trial of the heroine. none of these are of much importance or interest. it was not until the witnesses of joan of arc's life at home, and of her actions abroad, gave their testimony that the debates became interesting. then began to pass before the eyes of the spectators a succession of people who had known joan of arc, and who had taken part in the same actions as those of the maid--peasants from her native village, townsfolk from orleans, generals and soldiers who had ridden with her into battle and fought by her side. in fact, here appeared all sorts and conditions of men, from farm labourers to princes of the blood royal. the testimony of these people helps one to follow the life of joan of arc throughout its short career with something like precision. the sittings of the commissioners took place at paris, orleans, rouen, and also at domremy. it may be said without exaggeration that the whole of france and all its classes seemed, after an interval of a quarter of a century, to raise its voice in honour of the memory of its martyr maid, and to attest to the spotless and noble life of her country's saviour. at domremy, at vaucouleurs, and at toul, thirty-four witnesses were heard on the th of january and on the th of february, . at orleans, during the months of february and of march, forty-one depositions were collected by the archbishop of rheims. in paris, in april and may, the same prelate, assisted by the bishop of paris, heard the evidence of twenty witnesses. at rouen, the same commission heard nineteen others. finally, at lyons, the deposition of joan of arc's esquire, d'aulon, who had attended her throughout her campaigns, was made before the vice-inquisitor of that province, john desprès. all these depositions are recorded in latin, the only exception being that of d'aulon, which was taken down in french. all those written in latin have been translated into french by m. fabre, and published in his _procès de réhabilitation de jeanne d'arc_. among the witnesses first appear the friends and neighbours of joan of arc in her childhood and early years. from her birthplace came her greatest friends, henriette, mengette, and isabellette. the first of these, in the year , was aged forty-five, the second was a year older, and the third was in her fiftieth year. all three were the wives of labourers. henriette was married to gerard, mengette to john joyart, and isabellette to gerardin d'epinal. to the child of the last joan had stood god-mother. next came from the same village three older women, all three being god-mothers to joan. in those days the french peasantry seem to have had an almost unlimited number of god-fathers and god-mothers. these were named jeannette, widow of thépelin de viteau, aged sixty; jeannette théverien, aged sixty-six; and beatrix, widow of d'estelin, a labourer of domremy, then in her eightieth year. after these three god-mothers, came to give their evidence her god-fathers. four of these appear--john rainguesson, john barrey, john de langart, and john morel de greux. of these four god-fathers, only the last one seems to have been called to give evidence; he was in his seventieth year. gerardin d'epinal, husband of one of the god-mothers, also gave his evidence; it was his son nicolas for whom joan of arc had stood sponsor. in those days it was held that the god-mother of a child stood to it in the relation of a second mother: hence originated the term of 'commère' and 'compère,' which joan gave the d'epinals. six labourers, who had been playmates with joan in childhood, then came forward. these men, named respectively le cuin, guillemeth, waterin, colin, masnier, and jacquard, were between the ages of forty-four and fifty. all these humbly born witnesses agreed in their answers to the twelve questions asked them in the following order:-- . when and where was joan born? . who were her parents? were they of good character and of good repute? . who were her god-fathers? . was she piously brought up? . how did she conduct herself between her seventh year up to the time she left her home? . did she often frequent the churches and places of devotion of her free-will? . how did she occupy herself, and what were her duties? . did she confess often? . did she frequent the fairies' tree and the haunted well, and did she go to places with the other young people of the neighbourhood? . how did she leave her home, and how did she accomplish her journey? . were any investigations made in her native country at the time she was taken prisoner? . did joan on one occasion escape to neufchâteau on account of a military raid, and was she then in the company of her parents? we now arrive at a higher grade in the ranks of the witnesses, in the shape of 'l'honorable homme nicolas bailly.' bailly was a man of sixty; he had been employed by the english in , and by cauchon--he was a scrivener (_tabellion_) by profession--to make investigations into the character of joan in her native place. then came the old bell-ringer of joan of arc's village--perrin le drassier, aged sixty. he told how the maiden loved the sound of the church bells, and how she would blame him when he neglected ringing them, and of her little gifts to him to make him more diligent in his office. after the bell-ringer came three priests--all belonging to the neighbourhood of domremy. the first--namely, the 'discrète personne messire henri arnolin'--belonged to gondrecourt-le-château, near to commercy, and was sixty-four. the next is the 'vénérable personne messire etienne de sionne,' curate of the parish church at raucessey-sous-neufchâteau, aged fifty-four; and the third was named dominic jocab, curate of the parish church of moutier-sur-saulx. next came an old peasant from domremy, named bertrand laclopssé, a thatcher by profession, ninety years of age; after him three neighbours of joan's father--thevenin le royer, seventy years old; jacquier, sixty; and john moen, wheelwright, fifty-six. but a far more important witness than any of the preceding three-and-twenty was the uncle of the heroine, durand laxart, farm labourer at burey-le-petit, whom, it will be remembered, joan first took into her confidence regarding her voices and her mission. laxart was then in his sixtieth year. at the close of his evidence he states that all he had said regarding his niece he had also told charles vii.--probably at the time of the coronation, for laxart was then at rheims. laxart was followed by the couple with whom joan of arc lodged when living at vaucouleurs, henry and joan le royer (or le charron). after this worthy pair appeared the two brave knights who had guarded the maid of orleans during her perilous journey to chinon--john de novelem-hont, commonly called john de metz, aged fifty-seven, and the other, named bertrand de poulangy--one of the king's esquires--aged sixty-three. three other knights were heard after them--namely, albert d'ourche, from ourche, near commercy, aged sixty; geoffrey du fay, aged fifty; and louis de martigny, living at martigny-les-gerboneaux, a village near neufchâteau, aged fifty-four. these were followed by two curates and a sergeant. 'discrète personne messire jean le fumeux,' of vaucouleurs, canon of the church of sainte marie in that village, also curate of the parish church of d'ugny, aged only thirty-eight, was, as he admitted, a mere child when joan of arc came to vaucouleurs; but he remembered distinctly having seen her praying in the church at vaucouleurs, and kneeling for a long time in the subterranean chapel of sainte marie's church before an image of the blessed virgin. the other priest, named john colin, was the curate of the parish church of domremy, and a canon of the collegiate church of saint nicolas de brixey, near vaucouleurs. his age was sixty-six. the last of these thirty-four witnesses was the sergeant, guillot jacquier, aged thirty-six: why he was called as a witness does not appear. as a child he had heard joan of arc spoken of as 'une brave fille, de bonne renommée, et de conduite honnête,' which opinion was the general one given in their evidence by all the other witnesses, whose names only we have been able to give. relating to the period in the life of the heroine between the time of the king's coronation and that of her capture, the facts told by the various persons examined are few and far between. in the trial for the rehabilitation of the maid of orleans, the story of her deeds in the field was not of much importance to the commissioners. what they principally desired to ascertain was the fact that no taint of heresy could attach to the life of the heroine. it was for this reason that all those persons who could throw any light upon joan's early days and the actions of her childhood had been collected to give their evidence. we now come to those witnesses who were examined regarding the life of joan of arc after her interview with the king at chinon and about the stirring events which immediately followed that interview. the first of these is the 'nobile et savant homme messire simon charles,' master of the requests (_maître des requêtes_) in the year . he had been president of the state exchequer in , and was aged sixty. simon's evidence is of interest and importance both as regards joan of arc's arrival at chinon, and also with respect to the siege of orleans and the triumphant entry into rheims. the next witness was one of the clergy who examined joan when at poitiers; this was a preaching friar from limousin who had asked joan of arc in what language her saints spoke to her, and had been answered by 'in a better language than yours'--for this good friar, whose name was brother sequier, spoke with a strong limousin accent. when he was giving his evidence before the commission (in ) he was an old man in his seventy-third year, and head of the theological college of poitiers. next to him came the evidence given by the 'vénérable et savant homme maître jean barbier, docteur ès lois.' barbier was king's-advocate in the house of parliament, and had also been one of the judges at joan of arc's examination at poitiers: he was aged fifty. barbier had been at loches when the people threw themselves before joan of arc's horse, and embraced the heroine's feet and hands. barbier reproved her for allowing them to do so. he told her that if she permitted them to act thus it would render them idolatrous in their worship of her, to which reprimand joan answered, 'indeed, without god's help i could not prevent them from becoming so.' another of the poitiers witnesses was gobert thibault, also aged fifty. this thibault had been at chinon when joan arrived there, and had followed her to orleans. among these poitiers witnesses was francis garivel, aged forty. garivel, when a lad of fifteen, had seen joan at poitiers, and he remembered that on her being asked why she styled charles dauphin, and not by his kingly title, she replied that she could not give him his regal title until he had been crowned and anointed at rheims. the collected testimony of the above witnesses, whose evidence covers the time passed by joan at poitiers, was submitted to charles vii., and the mss. exist in the national library in paris. it has been edited by the historians bachon and quicherat, and translated from the latin into french by fabre. the next batch of witnesses' evidence concerns the fighting period of joan of arc's life, and consists principally of the testimony given by her companions in her different campaigns, and this appears to us by far the most interesting and curious. of those witnesses the first to testify was a prince of the blood, joan of arc's 'beau duc,' as she loved to call john, duke of alençon. he is thus styled in the original document: '_illustris ac potentissimus princeps et dominus_.' alençon came of a truly noble line of ancestors, and was descended also from brave warriors. his great-grandfather fell at crecy, leading the vanguard of the french host. his grandfather was the companion-in-arms of the great du guesclin. his father, on the field of agincourt, after having wounded the duke of york and stricken him to the ground, crossed swords with king harry, and then, overwhelmed by numbers, had fallen under a rain of blows. with dunois (bastard of orleans) alençon is one of the most prominent of the french leaders who appear in shakespeare's play, in the first part of _henry vi_. duke john, like his illustrious forebears, had also fought and bled for his country. his first campaign was made when he was but eighteen. alençon first saw joan of arc in . a strong mutual regard sprang up between the prince and the maid of domremy. alençon had wedded the daughter of the duke of orleans, and it was to her that the heroine, when she left with the duke for their expedition against paris, promised to bring back her husband in safety. no one had seen more of joan of arc during those days of fighting than had alençon, and no one bore a higher testimony than did the duke to her purity, her courage, and the sublime simplicity of her character. it was the duke of alençon who was especially struck with the skill shown by the heroine in warlike matters; particularly in her science in the management of artillery--ridiculously rude as that branch of the service appears to us. 'everybody,' alençon says, 'was amazed to see that in all that appertained to warfare she acted with as much knowledge and capacity as if she had been twenty or thirty years trained in the art of war.' next to alençon's evidence came that of the famous bastard of orleans, the count de dunois, one of the most engaging and sympathetic figures of the whole age of chivalry. john of orleans was the natural son of the duke of orleans, and, as fabre says of him, he 'glorified the appellation of bastard.' indeed, the bastard's name deserves to be handed down in his country's annals with as much glory as that of his great english rival and foe, talbot, in those of the english. he was a consummate soldier, who even at the early age of twenty-three had brilliantly distinguished himself, and he lived to liberate normandy and guyenne from the english. well may m. fabre, in his book on the rehabilitation of joan of arc, express his regret that dunois' evidence was not set forth in the language in which it was delivered, and that it has come down to us weakened by translation into latin. what is worse is that we have only the translation of a translation. dunois had, besides his high military reputation, that of being skilled in oratory. there is, however, in the translation more than a trace of the enthusiasm with which dunois speaks of the deeds of the heroic maiden. dunois, bastard of orleans as he is always called, bore the following titles, as recited by the chronicler: 'l'illustrieuse prince jean comte de dunois et de longueville, lieutenant-général de notre seigneur le roi.' he was fifty-one years old in the month of february, . his deposition extends over the entire period of the life of joan of arc between the time of her arrival before orleans and the period of the king's coronation. dunois' evidence closes thus:--'to conclude, it was habitual to joan to speak playfully on matters relating to war, in order to cheer the soldiers, and she may have alluded to many military events which never were to take place. but i declare that, when she spoke seriously about the war, of her deeds, and of her vocation, she said her work was limited to raising the siege of orleans, to succouring the unhappy people shut up in that town and in its suburbs, and to leading the king to rheims for his coronation and anointing.' next we have the testimony of the noble knight, raoul de gaucourt, who had so stoutly defended orleans during its long siege. de gaucourt was eighty-five years old. this fine old warrior's evidence confirms all that dunois had said in praise of joan of arc. the next to appear was the heroine's page, louis de contes, aged fifteen when appointed to attend on joan of arc: at the time of the trial of her rehabilitation he was forty-two. next came a very interesting witness, to wit, joan of arc's almoner, 'vénérable et religieux personne jean pasquerel.' this worthy priest had been formerly in a tours monastery. we do not find his age given at this time. the clear graphic testimony of this good man is a pleasure to read. his love and admiration for the heroine appear in every line of his testimony, and although this narrative is already too long, it will not perhaps be considered tedious if some of his evidence is quoted. 'when i first had tidings,' he says, 'of joan of arc and of her arrival at court, i was at puy, where at that time were her mother and some people who had accompanied her to chinon. having come to me, they said, "you must come with us and see joan; we will not allow you to leave us until you have seen her." so i went with them to chinon, and also to tours. at that time i was reader in a convent in that town. when she came to tours, joan lived in the house of john dupuy, a burgher of that place. it was there that i first met her. "joan," they said to her, "we have brought this good father to see you. when you know him well you will like him very much." and joan answered them and said, "the good father pleases me much; i have heard about him already, and i will make my confession to him to-morrow." 'and i heard her confession on the day following, when i also sang the mass before her. since that i have always followed joan, and i remained her chaplain till the time of her capture at compiègne.' it was in this good priest's evidence that the touching trait of joan of arc's fondness for gathering children about her was made known. 'she confessed nearly every day,' he said, 'and took the sacrament often. when near any community of begging friars she asked me to remind her of the days on which the beggar children received the eucharist, so that she might receive it at the same time with them. it was her delight,' he said, 'to take the sacrament along with the poor mendicant children. she shed tears often at confession.' later on in his evidence pasquerel adds to the above, 'that often at night i have seen her kneeling, praying for her king and for the success of her mission. i certainly,' he said, 'firmly believed in the divine source of her mission, for she was always engaged in good works, and she was full of every good quality. during a campaign when provisions ran short joan would never take that which had been gained by pillage. to the wounded she was ever pitiful--to the english as well as to those of her own country, and she always tried to get them to make their confession, if badly, and even if only slightly, wounded. the fear of god was ever before her, nor would she for anything in the world do anything which she considered contrary to his will: for instance, when she was wounded in the shoulder by the dart from a crossbow, when some people wished her to allow the wound to be charmed, promising that if she had it done her hurt would be healed, joan said that to do so would be a sin, and that she would sooner die than commit one. 'i am greatly surprised,' continued the unsophisticated old priest, 'that such great lawyers (_grands clercs_) as were those at rouen could have sentenced joan to death. how could they put to death that poor child, who was such a good and such a simple christian, and that too, so cruelly, without a reason--for surely they had not sufficient reason at any rate to kill her!' pasquerel could evidently not grasp the real reason for the part played by cauchon in the execution of the maid of orleans, or imagine that in order to obtain an archbishopric his beloved joan had been condemned by the bishop of beauvais to the flames. pasquerel's evidence ends thus:-- 'i have nothing more to add except this. on several occasions joan told me that if she were to die, she hoped our lord the king would found chantries in which the almighty might be entreated in intercession for the souls of those who had been slain in the defence of the kingdom.' the next witness is john d'aulon, knight, seneschal of beaucaire, member of the king's council. it was he who had served joan of arc as esquire during all her campaigns. his evidence is of importance, as it proves clearly the grounds on which the trial of rehabilitation was held--namely, to clear the king of having been crowned and anointed through the agency of one condemned by the church as an apostate and heretic. the archbishop thus wrote to d'aulon on the th of april, :-- 'by the sentence pronounced against joan the english wish it to be believed that the maid was a sorceress, a heretic, and in league with the devil, and therefore that the king had received his kingdom by those means; and thus they hold as heretics the king and those that have served him.' nothing can be clearer than this declaration, or show better the real object for which that utterly selfish prince, charles vii., had, after the lapse of a quarter of a century since the death of joan of arc, instituted these proceedings--not at all in order to do honour to the heroine's memory, but in order that his position as king of france should not be tainted with the heresy which had been charged to the account of joan by and through the clergy and french doctors of theology and learning. d'aulon's evidence is one of the most complete of the entire set of testimonies. it was given, not at rouen, but at lyons, in , before the vice-inquisitor, john desprès. his depositions are remarkable in this, that, unlike those of the other witnesses, they are recorded in french, and not in latin. next to d'aulon succeeds, in the chain of witnesses, simon beaucroix, aged fifty. simon was a youth at chinon when joan of arc came there. beaucroix's evidence is followed by that of john luillier, a citizen of orleans. he bore evidence to the immense popularity of the maid during and after the siege of orleans. at the time of the trial of rehabilitation luillier was fifty. to the part played by the maid at the siege of his native town he speaks thus:-- 'as to the question you put me, whether i think the siege of orleans was raised and the town saved from the enemy by the intervention and the ministration (_ministère_) of the maid, even more than by the force of arms, this is my answer: all my fellow citizens, as well as i myself, believe that had the maid not come there by the will of god to our rescue, we should very soon, both town and people, have been in the power of the besiegers. it is my belief,' he adds, 'that it was impossible for the people of orleans and for the army present at orleans to have held out much longer against the superior strength of the enemy.' more people from orleans next gave their evidence: viz. william le charron, john volant, william postian, denis roger, james de thou, john canelier, aignan de saint-mesmin, john hilaire, jacques l'esbalny, cosmé de commy, john de champcoux, peter hue, peter jonqualt, john aubert, william rouillart, gentien cabu, peter vaillant, john beaucharnys, john coulon. all these men were burghers of the town, and their ages varied between forty and seventy. all agreed with luillier in their belief that, under god, it was joan of arc who rescued their city from the english. following these men we now come to the evidence of some of the women who had seen or known the heroine. first of these is joan, wife of gilles de saint-mesmin, aged seventy. she says: 'the general opinion was and is still at orleans that joan was a good catholic--simple, humble, and of a holy life.' such, too, is the opinion of joan, the wife of guy boyleau, and of guillemette, wife of john de coulon; also of the widow of john de mouchy. all these agree with the first lady's testimony. we have next the evidence of the daughter of james boucher, the treasurer of orleans, at whose house joan of arc lodged while in orleans. charlotte boucher had married william houet. when her deposition was taken in she was thirty-six years old, and consequently only nine when joan lodged at her father's house. however, young as she was then, the visit of the maid had left a great memory behind; she had been joan's bed-fellow. 'often,' she says, 'joan said to my mother, "hope in god, for he will deliver the town of orleans, and drive the enemy away."' and last we find the evidence of two good wives of orleans, one widow of john huré, the other petronillé, wife of beaucharnys. after these came six clerics, canons of the church of saint aignan at orleans--robert de farciaux, peter compaing, peter de la censurey, raoul godert, hervé bonart, and andré bordez. peter milet and his wife, colette, were also witnesses. all had known joan when she was at orleans, as had aignan viole, an advocate of parliament, who had been in orleans during the siege. the 'noble homme guillaume de richarville, panetier de la cour,' gave his evidence, relating to joan of arc's appearance at court, as also did an old court physician named reginald thierry; it is he who relates how, at the capture of saint pierre-le-moutier, joan prevented its church from being pillaged. a doughty warrior follows, namely, 'noble et prudent seigneur le chevalier thibauld d'armagnac, sire de thermes, bailli de chartres.' d'armagnac was fifty years old; he had followed joan of arc all through her campaign, and, like alençon, had a very high opinion of her military talents. at the close of his evidence, he says: 'in the manner of the conduct and ordering of troops, in that of placing them in battle array, and of animating the men, joan of arc had as much capacity for these things as the most accomplished captain in the art of war.' after the soldier, the peasant. this peasant, or rather mechanic, is a coppersmith named husson lemaître. lemaître hailed from domremy. being in the year at rouen, he then and there gave his evidence. he had known joan of arc's family, and joan too in her childhood; of all of them he spoke most highly. next comes 'honnête et prude femme demoiselle marguerite la tournelle,' the widow of réné de bouligny. it was at her house at bourges that joan lodged after the coronation at rheims. we now pass to an entirely different category of witnesses. these are the men who sat in the trial of the heroine. one can well understand the embarrassment shown by such folk in their replies to the questions they had to answer, and their wish if it were possible to turn the responsibility of their previous judgment on the heads of those who were no longer in this world to answer the charges made against them. the first of these men is 'vénérable et savante personne maître thomas de courcelles.' de courcelles was only fifty-six in , when called on to make his deposition as to the part he had played in the heroine's trial at rouen, five-and-twenty years before. his evidence is full of the feeblest argument, and his memory appears to have been a very convenient one, as he repeatedly evades an answer by the plea of having forgotten all about the incident alluded to. next follows that 'vénérable et circonspecte personne, maître jean beaupère'--a doctor of theology, and canon of rouen, paris, and besançon. this circumspect person was now in his seventieth year. he laid most of the blame of joan of arc's death upon the english, and the rest on cauchon. the english being away, and cauchon dead, the circumspection of this doctor's evidence is evident. we next have that of the bishop of noyon, john de mailly. this bishop had been in the service of the english king, but had, when charles became prosperous, returned to him. in he was aged sixty. an intimate of the prince cardinal of winchester, and one of the foremost of the judges who condemned joan of arc to death, his deposition in is quite a study in the art of trying to convince people that black is white. he had shown some kind of feeling of humanity at the time of the martyrdom of the maid, and had left that scene of horror early. to the memory of his old friend and colleague, cauchon, he gives a parting kick by saying at the close of his examination that of one thing he was quite certain, and that was that cauchon received money for the conduct of the trial from his friends, the english. but he might have now been reminded that he too had received some of this blood-money. next to appear is another french bishop, monseigneur jean le fèvre, evêque in partibus de démétriade. this prelate was in his seventieth year. at the time of joan of arc's trial he was professor of theology of the order of hermit monks of saint augustins. the bishop had taken an active part in the trial and condemnation. like his brother bishop, le fèvre enjoyed a very convenient memory, and had quite forgotten many things of importance which occurred during the trial in . nor did he even take part as a spectator in the martyrdom which he had helped to bring about--'i left before the end,' he said, 'not feeling the strength to see more.' let that shred of humanity in the composition of priests like him be allowed before we entirely condemn them. the next witness is also a churchman, peter migiet, the prior of longueville, aged seventy. he also had been one of cauchon's crawling creatures. there is little of interest in his evidence, except the passage where he says that an english knight had told him that the english feared joan of arc more than a hundred soldiers, and that her very name was a source of terror to the foe. although this sounds an exaggerated statement, it is not so, as is proved by an edict having been issued by the english government in the may of , in which english officers and soldiers who refused to enter france for fear of 'the enchantments of the maid' were threatened with severe punishment. there is, moreover, an edict, bearing the date of december , which was also issued by the english military authorities, describing the trial and the punishment by court martial of all soldiers who had deserted the army in france from fear of joan of arc. after the above priests, on whom rests the infamy of having taken part in the death of the heroine, it is a relief to find the next witness, although a churchman, a man of sufficient honesty and courage to have been one of those few who refused to take any part in the iniquitous proceedings connected with joan of arc's trial, and who suffered imprisonment owing to his unwillingness to carry out cauchon's wishes. this worthy priest was named nicolas de houppeville, a doctor of theology, now in his sixty-fifth year. the next witness is john tiphanie, a canon of the sainte chapelle of paris. he was also a doctor in medicine. tiphanie had been compelled much against his inclination to take part in the trial of joan. he was one of the doctors who were sent to see her when she lay ill in prison. then follows another doctor; this is william delachambre, aged only forty-eight in . he must have practised his vocation at a very early age. delachambre had also joined in the trial of the maid, from fear of cauchon. his evidence relating to the scene at saint ouen is important. 'i remember well,' he says, 'the abjuration which joan of arc made. she hesitated a long while before she made it. at length william erard determined her to make it by telling her that, when she had made it, she should be delivered from her prison. under this promise she at length decided to do so, and she then read a short profession of some six or seven lines written on a piece of folded paper. i was so near that i could see the writing on the paper.' we next come to the witness whose evidence is, next to that of dunois, of the greatest importance; it is that of the recorder, or judges' clerk, william manchon. born in , he was sixty-one years of age when the rehabilitation trial took place. manchon's evidence takes up thirty pages in m. fabre's work, already often referred to--_le procès de réhabilitation de jeanne d'arc_. much against his will was manchon obliged to act in the trial of the maid, but he did not dare disobey the orders of those who formed the council of henry vi. all that he deposed has been made use of in the account of the heroine's life; so now we need do no more than refer to it. the other recorder who helped manchon to draw up the minutes of the trial was also examined; this was william colles, called boisguillaume. he was in his sixty-sixth year. colles relates that, after the execution, the people used to point out the author of joan's death with horror--'besides,' he adds, 'i have been told that the most prominent of those who took part in her condemnation died miserably. nicolas midi [who had preached the sermon on the day of her execution, and just before it took place] was stricken with leprosy, and cauchon died suddenly, while being shaved.' a third recorder was also examined, nicolas taquel. then followed the priest massieu. during the trial of joan he had acted as bailiff to the court, and in that capacity had seen much of the prisoner; he had always conveyed her to and from her prison. it may be remembered that it was he who, on joan's petition to be allowed to kneel before the chapel on her way to the hall of judgment, granted her request, and was threatened by cauchon, should it again occur, to be thrown into prison where, as cauchon said to him, he would not have 'the light of sun or moon.' massieu remained till the end with joan, and it is he who records that the executioner found, after the body had been destroyed, that the heart remained unconsumed. he also relates that the executioner was ordered to collect the ashes and all that remained, and to throw those few relics of humanity into the seine, which was accordingly done. martin ladvenu followed massieu. ladvenu was a dominican friar: he was one of the few priests who showed some humanity to the victim. it was to him that joan of arc confessed on the morning of her death, and it was also to him that the executioner came on the night of the martyrdom, and said that no execution had ever affected him as that one had done. next to arrive was isambard de la pierre, a dominican priest. he had been an acolyte of the vice-inquisitor, lemaître; he too, like ladvenu, had shown sympathy with the sufferer, had given her advice during the trial, and had helped to soothe her last moments. de la pierre states in his evidence regarding her supposed refusal to submit herself to the church, that joan of arc, when she was told by her judges to submit herself, thought they meant themselves by the church of which they spoke to her; but when she was told by him what the church really signified she always said she submitted herself to it and to the pope. it was to isambard de la pierre that joan begged for a cross when on the pile and about to die. 'as i was close by the poor child,' he says, 'she begged me humbly to go to the church close at hand and bring her a cross to hold up right before her eyes, till her death, so that the cross on which god hung might as long as she lived appear before her. she died a true and good christian. in the midst of the flames she never ceased calling on the sacred name of jesus, and invoking the aid of the saints in paradise. when the fire was lit she begged me to get down from off the stake with my cross, but to hold it still before her, which i did. at last, bending down her head, with a strong voice calling on the name of jesus, she gave up the ghost.' yet another priest succeeds: this is 'vénérable et religieux personne, frère jean toutmouillé,' of the order of the preaching friars of rouen. toutmouillé was quite a youth at the time of joan of arc's death. another priest follows, william daval, also one of the order of preaching friars, and belonging to the church of saint james at rouen. he, too, had been, with isambard, one of the acolytes of the vice-inquisitor. in his evidence, he tells of how, after isambard had been advising joan in her prison, he was met by warwick, who threatened to have him thrown into the river if he continued seeing the prisoner. we next have 'vénérable et circonspecte personne maître andré marguerie'; this was one of cauchon's most trusted creatures. his '_âme damnée_,' richard de grouchet, canon of the collegiate church of sans faye, is the next witness. there is nothing of any interest in the testimony of these churchmen, nor in that of nicolas dubesert, another canon of rouen, nor in that of nicolas caval. next appears a prior, thomas marie, of the church of saint michel, near rouen. four other ecclesiastics follow them--john roquier, peter bouchier, john bonnet, john de lenozoles; but none of these men's testimony is of any interest. the evidence of no less a person than the torturer is called next. he is named--to give him his titles in full--'honnête homme mauger lessarmentrer, clerc non marier, appariteur de la cour archiepiscopalle de rouen.' the name of the chief torturer of the good city of rouen, mauger, has a gruesome ring about it--it reminds one of the headsman in harrison ainsworth's novel of the _tower of london_. aged fifty-six in , mauger had seen joan of arc when she was brought into the yet extant tower of the castle, and threatened by cauchon with the torture. 'we were,' deposed mauger, 'my companion and myself, ordered to go there to torture her. she was questioned, and she answered with much prudence, and so well, that every one was amazed. finally, i and my companion left the tower without having laid hands upon her.' mauger attended at the execution, and this is what he heard and saw there and then. 'as soon as the bishop (cauchon) had read the sentence, joan was taken to the fire. i did not hear whether the civil judges delivered the sentence or not. joan was placed instantly upon the fire. in the midst of the flames she called out more than six times the name of jesus. it was when about to give the last breath that she called out with a loud voice, "jesus!" so that every one could hear her. nearly everybody wept, for all were overcome with pity.' after the torturer's witness came that of a soldier, aimonde de macy, who was thirty years old when he met joan in the castle of beaurevoir; she being then a prisoner in the charge of ligny. de macy was at rouen at the time when lord stafford came so nearly stabbing the maid in her prison, and was only prevented from that dastardly act by warwick. we next hear the evidence of an attorney, peter daron: he had also seen joan in her prison at rouen, and had seen her die. next we have 'prudent homme maître jean fave, maître des requêtes du roi charles vii.': he, too, was present at the execution. next appears upon the scene 'honnête personne laurent guesdon,' clerk and advocate to the lay court of rouen. he also had been present at the death of joan of arc, and, from his office as lieutenant of the bailiff of rouen, he held an important position at the execution; and this is some of his evidence relating to it: 'i assisted at the last sermon preached at the old market-place. i had accompanied the bailiff, being then his deputy. the sentence was read by which joan was abandoned to the secular arm; after that sentence had been pronounced the executioners seized her, before either the bailiff or myself had time to read the sentence; and she was led up to the stake--which was not as it should have been ordered.' next arrive as witnesses two burghers of rouen, peter cusquel and john moreaux. both of them had been spectators of the martyrdom, but they have nothing of interest to say about it. and finally--(and doubtless the reader will be glad to come to the end of this interminable procession, as is the writer)--comes the deposition of john marcel--'bourgeois' of paris. marcel had been in rouen during the time of the maid's trial, and was also present at the end of her life. m. fabre, in concluding in his book the translation of the testimonies of the long list of witnesses given by him for the first time in full, makes a great point of the universal concurrence of those who knew joan of arc as to her undoubted purity of person as well as of mind: that fact is of the greatest importance as regarded the rehabilitation of the maid of orleans. that is a subject which it is not now necessary to do more than to allude to; but to the french judges in the time of the trial of the rehabilitation, the fact of joan of arc being proved to have been incontestably a virgin was of the highest interest. it was reserved for a countryman of joan of arc's (du bellay) to invent a legend to disprove the fact; and to the everlasting shame of french literature, voltaire adopted the lying calumny in his licentious burlesque-heroic poem, _la pucelle d'orléans_. the sentence of rehabilitation which fills in the translation a dozen of m. fabre's pages, was solemnly delivered in the great hall of the archiepiscopal palace at rouen. on that occasion one of joan of arc's brothers, john, was present. the sentence which was framed to wipe away the iniquity of the judgment by which the heroine had been condemned, was delivered by the archbishop of rheims in the presence of a vast concourse of people, among whom were the bishops of paris and of coutances. among other things ordered to honour the memory of the martyr, it was ordained that after a sermon preached on the spot where the act of abjuration had taken place in the cemetery of the church of saint ouen, and also on the site of the spot where had stood the stake and pyre, two crosses should be erected. crosses were placed not only there, and in rouen, but also on other spots. it is interesting to know that one of these crosses can still be seen in the forest of compiègne; and it is traditionally said that this cross at compiègne was placed there by no other than dunois himself. both the crosses at rouen have disappeared centuries ago. processions took place at rouen, and all was done that the church could do to wash out the indelible stain of its action four-and-twenty years before the time of the rehabilitation. in , the clergy of france, to please the english, had in the name of orthodoxy, and with the tolerance of the pope, denounced joan of arc as 'a heretic and idolatress.' in , the same french clergy, to please charles vii., in the name of religion and justice pronounced the memory of joan of arc free from all taint of heresy and of idolatry, and ordered processions and erected crosses in her honour to keep her memory fresh in the land. appendix appendix no. i. _joan of arc in french and english history._ even in france no thoroughly satisfactory history exists of joan of arc, although a large number of histories have been written. following is an enumeration of the most important. as was natural while her countrymen were divided into two camps, those writers who belonged to the side of the english attacked the heroine, or rather her mission, with ill-placed zeal. of them enguerrand de monstrelet was the most eminent. less well known chroniclers on the national side, such as philip de bergame, an augustinian monk, on the other hand exaggerate the deeds of the maid. none of these chroniclers' writings can be called histories of joan of arc. nor in the following (the sixteenth) century, did such writers as du bellay and haillon do more than allude to joan of arc; the first in his _instructions sur le fait de la guerre_, and the second in his book on the _affaires de france_. haillon had written disparagingly of the heroine. it had the effect of raising the ire of that learned scribe william postel, who wrote that the actions and renown of joan of arc were as necessary to maintain as the bible itself. with postel the celebrated jurisconsult stephen pasquier was quite in accord, and in his work called _recherches sur la france_, he writes that 'never had any one saved france so opportunely or so well as did this maid.' in a book was published by the magistrates of orleans relating to the siege of their town, in which all honour was given to the heroine for the part she had taken in its delivery. in the preface to that book the following sentiment is expressed:--'it is a lamentable fact that the maid, respected by all other nations, the english alone excepted, finds amongst her countrymen writings to injure her memory by people who are greater enemies to the honour of france than those who are strangers to that country.' it should be noted that as early as the year the famous early chronicler polydore virgile, italian by origin, wrote a voluminous history of england in twenty-six books, and treated the maid's mission as one inspired by divine influence, severely blaming her judges for their inhuman conduct towards her. in a book was published discussing the origin of the family of the maid of orleans; a work of little value. in one of the descendants of a brother of joan of arc--charles du lys--published a slight work called _traité sommaire sur le nom, les armes, la naissance et la parenté de la pucelle et de ses frères_. in that same year the first history of joan of arc was published, also by a descendant of one of her brothers, john hordal. this book was in latin; it was entitled '_the history of joan of arc, that very noble heroine_.' soon after an elaborated work, based on this book, was produced by edmond richer, a doctor of theology in paris. the next account of the maid of any length occurs in mézarie's huge _history of france_, it was published between and . in appeared a work called _l'histoire du roi charles vii., contenant les choses mémorables de à _. it was in this work, which was compiled by denis godefroy, that the manuscripts of the _chronique de la pucelle_ were first printed. this chronicle concerns the events which occurred between the years and . although not a complete history of the heroine, it is the earliest account. it was republished by buchon, by petitot, and by quicherat; and it was consulted by michelet when writing his account of joan of arc. m. vallet de viriville believes the chronicle of the maiden to have been written by g. cousinot, chancellor of the duke of orleans, who was present at the siege of orleans. at the close of the seventeenth century was published a history of france by a jesuit priest named david, in which there is some account of joan of arc; but david's history is more remarkable for being a colossal list of falsehoods than for any other merit. we now arrive at the eighteenth century, and still find no tolerable history of joan of arc. in the year the abbé longlet dufresnoy published a _life of joan of arc_; it is totally devoid of any merit. in clément de l'averdy published some notices relating to the trial and condemnation of joan of arc. these notices led up to, and were followed by the publications of petitot, buchon, michaud, and pougoulat. at length, under the protection of the society of french history, the learned author quicherat produced his all-important works. that distinguished historian and antiquarian began his career under charlet. in he was appointed professor of archæology, and later, director of the institute of the charters. between and he edited the original documents relating to the trials of joan of arc--those of her condemnation and of her rehabilitation. of these only a few extracts had previously been published by m. l'averdy. the series edited by quicherat consists of five bulky tomes. although when michelet was writing his history of france, quicherat's work had not yet been published, the chronicler helped the historian by lending michelet the mss. he was then annotating. but to return to the earlier years of the century. in , lebrun des charnettes published a history of joan of arc in four volumes; this history of the maid was up to that time the best that had been written. in the same year there was published another history of the heroine by m. berriat saint-prix. the best thing that work contains is an itinerary of the different places at which joan of arc passed the last three years of her short existence. it is a useful list for any one who wishes to visit the scenes connected with her wonderful history. the list commences with her flight to neufchâteau in , and the journey to toul, and continues as follows:-- . may. from domremy to burey-le-petit, vaucouleurs. return to domremy. . february. from domremy to vaucouleurs, toul, nancy, saint nicolas-du-port. th return to vaucouleurs, saint urbain, auxerre. march. gien, sainte catherine de fierbois. th chinon, le coudray en touraine, poitiers. april. chinon, tours, saint florent-les-saumur. th blois. th rully près de checy. th orleans. may. nd reconnaissance before orleans. th sortie on the road of blois. th return to blois from orleans. to tours and loches. june. th selles-en-berri. th selles to romorantin and orleans, th jargeau. th meun-sur-loire. th beaugency. th patay and jauville. th orleans, saint benoit-sur-loire. nd châteauneuf. th departure from orleans for gien. th departure from gien in the direction of montargis. july. st before auxerre. nd saint florentin. th saint fal. th before troyes. th entry into troyes. th bussy. th châlons-sur-marne. th sept saulx. th rheims. st saint marcoul de corbeny. nd vailly. rd soissons. th château thierry. august. st montmirail-en-brive. nd provins. sortie as far as lamotte-de-nangis, bray-sur-seine. th return towards paris by provins. th coulommiers, château thierry. th la ferté milon. th crespy-en-valois. th lagny-le-sec. th dammartin and thieux. th baron, montessilloy. th crespy. th compiègne, senlis. rd leave compiègne. th saint denis. september. th la chapelle, near paris. th attack on the gate saint honoré. th retreat from la chapelle to saint denis. th lagny-sur-marne. th provins, bray-sur-seine. passage of the river yonne at a ford near sens courtenay. château regnaut, montargis. st gien. selles-en-berri, bourges. october. meun-sur-yèvre, bourges. november. saint pierre-le-moutier. th moulins. th la charité-sur-loire, meun-sur-yèvre. december. jargeau. . january. th bourges. th orleans. march. rd sully. th flight from sully. april. th before melun, lagny, sortie against franquet d'arras, senlis, compiègne, pont l'evêque, soissons, compiègne. may. lagny, crecy, compiègne. th sortie from compiègne against margny and clairvoix. june, july. at beaulieu-en-vermandois. august, september, october, and november. beaurevoir, arras, drugy, near saint riquier, le crotoy. december. saint valéry-sur-somme, eu, dieppe, rouen. . january, february, march, april, and may. rouen. sismondi devotes a part of the thirteenth volume of his _history of france_, published between and , to the maid of orleans. he sums up the action of the church to her in these words: 'the church was against the maid. all persons not delegated by her who pretended to have supernatural powers were accused of using magical arts.' barante in his famous history of the dukes of burgundy, published in , gives a somewhat meagre and uninteresting account of joan of arc. in appeared a _life_ of the heroine, by jollois, under whose direction the little monument was placed at domremy in honour of the maid. alexandre dumas has left among his numberless works a life of _johanne la pucelle,_ which is neither true history nor romance, but a jumble of both, and is a work hardly worthy the author, but there are some fine expressions in the book. dumas christened joan of arc 'the christ of france.' michelet in the fifth volume of his _histoire de france_ published in , has written what will probably always be considered the best account of the maid. although only one hundred and thirty pages are given to her life, these pages form a book in themselves, and as a separate volume michelet's _life of joan of arc_ has gone through a large number of editions, the latest a handsome illustrated one, published by hachette in . one cannot help regretting that so great a writer should allow his anglophobism to appear to such an extent in some of the pages of his work. michelet attacks the entire english nation as if they had been individually and collectively guilty of joan of arc's death. he even goes out of his way to abuse english literature in this amazing passage: 'de shakespeare à milton, de milton à byron leur belle et simple littérature est sceptique, judaïque, satanique.' it is pitiable that so distinguished a writer as was michelet should pen such rubbish, but when a frenchman writes on the subject of joan of arc much should be forgiven him. more serious than the abuse of the english in michelet's work are the inaccuracies in his account of joan of arc. for instance, he writes of the heroine watching the english coast from her prison in the castle of crotoy. her eyesight must have been telescopic had she been able to do so, for eighty miles of sea stretch between the site of crotoy and the english coast. we next come to henry martin's history of france. in this work a third part of the sixth volume is consecrated to joan of arc, whom he calls the 'messiah of france.' m. wallon, however, is the writer who has given france the most complete biography of her heroine. this work, published by hachette, had in attained its fifth edition. a most sumptuously illustrated edition appeared in , one of those splendidly illustrated books in which the french press has no rival. that book is the finest monument which has appeared to honour the memory of the maid of orleans. its illustrations contain views of all places and memorials connected with the heroine from the fifteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century. the text of wallon's life is, however, wanting in charm, and it is, as m. veuillot writes of it, 'un livre sérieuse et solide.' sainte-beuve has been still more severe in his judgment on wallon's book, which he calls 'la faiblesse même.' some slighter histories may be alluded to: one by lamartine, unworthy of the author and the subject; another by m. abel desjardins; a third by villaume; a fourth by m. lafontaine. there is an interesting study by simon luce on joan of arc's early years; and last, but certainly not least, the three works by m. joseph fabre, relating to joan of arc's life, her trial, her condemnation, and her rehabilitation. in the two last works the whole of the long examination appears for the first time, translated into french from the latin--documents invaluable to any one studying the heroine's life. in england little has been written in prose relating to joan of arc that will be likely to live. the early chroniclers were monstrously unjust to her. it is enough to allude to the lying and scurrilous abuse which such writers as robert fabyan, in his chronicles on the history of england and of france, published in , heaped upon joan of arc. hall's and holinshed's chronicles, from which the author of the first part of _king henry vi._ borrowed so largely, sinned as deeply. hall's authorities among french writers were monstrelet, bouchet, mayer, argentan, gile corozet, and the annals of france and aquitaine--and of english writers, fabyan, caxton, john harding, sir thomas more, basset, balantyne, and the chronicle of london. the annalist stow, hume's 'honest historian,' is less unjust and bitter in his account of joan of arc than are hall and holinshed. thomas fuller appears not to have settled to his satisfaction whether joan of arc was a witch or a heroine. in the seventeenth century we have only a handful of poor writers who have treated more or less badly of the maid, such as daniel, martyn, and sir richard baker. it is not until well into the eighteenth century that a man of letters appears capable of giving an unprejudiced and true history of the life of joan of arc: this historian is guthrie, who published, between the years and , a long history of england. m. darmesteter has named this author 'a village bossuet.' coming to our own days we have quite a crowd of writers who have written with enthusiasm on the maid of domremy. it is sufficient to name the most prominent of these--landor, sir james mackintosh, john sterling, lord mahon, de quincey, and j.r. green. no. ii. _joan of arc in poetry._ the maid of orleans (though a more poetical figure cannot be found in all history) has not been more fortunate at the hands of the poets than at those of the historians. to begin with her own countrywoman--for the first who sang of joan of arc was appropriately enough a fellow-countrywoman--christine de pisan. as the name indicates, this poetess was an italian by origin, but appears to have lived most of her life in france. the latter part she passed in a convent. in the year , christine was sixty-seven years old; she had been living in some conventual establishment for eleven years. her verses in praise of joan of arc--which number several hundred stanzas--were undoubtedly written in the heroine's life-time. they are supposed to have been the last lines she wrote. these stanzas were completed shortly after the coronation of charles vii. a manuscript copy of this poem exists in which joan of arc is compared to deborah, judith, and queen esther. these poems are curious and quaint in their old french expressions, but they are quite unreadable for any but french students well versed in the literature of the fifteenth century. in , martin le france, provost of the cathedral of lausanne, bestows some lines on joan of arc in his poem called the _champion des dames_. in , martial de paris published, under the title of _vigiles du roi charles vii._, a rhymed translation of jean chartrier's chronicle of that monarch. villon has left some charming lines in which he has placed the heroine's name as it were on a string of pearls; they occur in his exquisite ballad 'dames du temps jadis,' and, as it would be profanation to try and translate, i give them here in the original:-- 'la reine blanche comme un lys qui chantait à voix de sirène, berthe au grand pied, biétris, allis, haremburge qui tint le maine, et jeanne la bonne lorraine qu' anglais brûlèrent à rouen, où sont-ils, vierge souveraine? mais où sont les neiges d'antan?' long before those beautiful lines were written by villon, a play called _le mystère du siège d'orléans_ had been acted. as early as the year this performance appears to have taken place on the anniversary of the deliverance of the city, and the dramatic piece was probably acted on the return of that day for many a year after. this was one of the so-called 'miracle plays,' popular both in france and in england at that period. the author or authors of the play are not known. some one has taken the trouble to count the number of lines: they amount to , , and are all in dialogue! whether the unfortunate audience had to sit all through this performance one does not know. one hopes, for their sake, that, like a chinese play or a bayreuth performance of wagner's operas, the performance was extended over a number of days. joan is naturally the heroine throughout; she first appears as the bearer of the divine mandate to drive the enemy from off the sacred soil of france. the play closes with her triumphant return to orleans after the victory of patay. as far as the mission is concerned the play is historically correct, and it is in this respect an improvement on shakespeare and schiller. there is a point of great interest concerning this piece which, so far as we know, has never been noticed--namely, the fact of one of its acts being almost identical with one in the first part of _king henry vi_. in the mystery play the scene of this act is laid before orleans. the french are determined to defend their city to the last; the english are determined on taking it. we are in front of the besieged and the besiegers. salisbury has entered the tournelles, and he looks out over the city from a window in the tower. glansdale ('glassidas') stands beside him, and says to salisbury, 'look to your right, and to your left--it looks like a terrestrial paradise, all this country flowing with milk and honey; you will soon be its master.' salisbury expresses his satisfaction at the sight of all the plunder at his feet, and gives vent to some very sanguinary sentiments about the french; he will slay every one in the place--all the men, 'et leurs femmes et leurs enfants. personne je n'épargnerai.' but scarcely has he been able to give vent to this terrible threat when his head is carried off by a cannon ball fired from the town. the english cry out 'ha! hay! maudite journée!' earl salisbury is carried out stiff and stark. talbot and the other english officers now vow vengeance on the french in these words:-- 'ha, sallebery, noble coraige! ta mort nous sera vendue chère, jamais un tel de ton paraige, ne se trouvera en frontière.' if we turn to scene of the first act of shakespeare's first part of _king henry vi._, we shall find almost the same scene enacted. enter on the turrets, lord salisbury, talbot, etc. salisbury, after welcoming talbot, calls on sir william glansdale to look down into the town, and while conversing the shot is fired which kills salisbury. after the death of salisbury, talbot vows vengeance on the french, and says he will 'nero-like play on the lute, beholding the towns burn.' there can be little doubt that whoever wrote the first part of _king henry vi._ had seen the mystery play of the _siege of orleans_ acted in that town. this brings one to the much debated question, 'who wrote the first part of _king henry vi._?' there can be no doubt that shakespeare had studied both hall's and holinshed's chronicles. the former styled joan of arc 'a monstrous woman,' and also suggested that fine passage beginning 'why ring not the bells throughout the town?' we are of those who would wish to believe that our greatest poet had but little hand in delineating the french heroine of all time as she is described in hall and in holinshed, and to believe that he left the play--originally written, we think, by greene--very much as he found it. it is not indeed till the fifth act, when joan is represented as a magician, and when the grotesqueness of the author passes even the limits of burlesque, that we fail to see a shred of the poet's skill. nothing in shakespeare is at once so unpoetical as well as so untrue to history as the last scene, in which joan repudiates her father. if it is by shakespeare--which we cannot believe--it must have been one of the very earliest of his historical plays; and, with ben jonson, we could wish that the passages referring to the maid of orleans had been freely blotted. the era of the renaissance brought with it in france no poets to sing of joan of arc, and we only find--besides the mystery play of the _siege of orleans_--one literary work relating to her at this period; that is a five-act tragedy written by a jesuit priest named fronton du duc, a gloomy piece, which was acted in at pont-à-mousson. in the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared another tragedy by a norman squire named virey: it was titled _jeanne d'arques, dite la pucelle d'orléans_. this very mellifluous production was published at rouen in the year . another tragedy on the same subject appeared in , written by the abbé d'aubignac--a very pedantic play. next appears an 'heroic poem' by chapelain, published in , entitled _la pucelle_. great things had been expected of this poem, but it fell very flat after a long expectancy of thirty years when it at length saw the light. chapelain's ridiculous poem gave the idea to voltaire of his licentious one. even voltaire was ashamed of his work, and long denied that he was its author. as a very slight reparation for his deed, he writes of joan of arc in his _essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des natives_, that the heroine would have had altars built in the days when altars were erected by primitive men to their liberators. southey, referring to voltaire's infamous production, said, 'i never committed the crime of reading voltaire's _pucelle_.' after all, voltaire did infinitely more harm to himself by writing his poem _la pucelle_ than he did to the memory of the maid of orleans, for it revealed to the world what an amount of depravity was mixed up within that wonderful shrewd mind, and how it weakened its genius. the great revolution which swept so many shams away with its terrible breath, venerated, to its honour be it said, both the spirit of humanity displayed by the poet-philosopher and the spirit of patriotism that possessed the virgin heroine and martyr. in appeared southey's heroic play on joan of arc. that drama is more a glorification of the principles of the french revolution than of joan of arc. there is no attempt made to follow out her history. the play contains a love episode due entirely to the youthful poet's imagination, but it contains fine passages as well, and seems to us to have merited more praise from posterity than it has received. schiller's play, like southey's, sins grievously as far as historical truth is concerned. the german poet wishes, it seems, to remove the bad impression made by voltaire's poem. the play was first performed on the stage at weimar in ; and the _jungfrau von orleans_ met with considerable success. it contains noble lines, but is historically a mere travesty of the life and death of the heroine. in casimir delavigne wrote, as a counterblast to the double invasion that france had just undergone, his well known _messeniennes_ to the honour of the french heroine. these poems had a great success, the second being the most admired; but they are now forgotten. two other dramatic poets followed in delavigne's steps: these were d'avrigni and soumet. by the former appeared, in , a tragedy in five acts and in verse; it was performed at the théâtre français. soumet's play was also acted; it almost equals d'avrigni's in length and tediousness. besides the above tragedies which had, as the french term it, the honour of seeing the light of the footlights, desnoyers wrote a play on joan of arc in , and was followed by a series of other writers in verse and in prose--caze, dumolard, maurin, cramar, hédouville, millot, lequesme, crepot, puymaigre, porchat, haldy, renard, jouve, cozic, daniel stern, bousson de maviet, constant materne. all the above wrote plays and tragedies on the subject of joan of arc between the years and . daniel stern was the only authoress who composed a drama in honour of the heroine. while all this _galimatias_ of dramas has sunk into the limbo which waits for all such work, villon's two lines remain as bright as the day on which, four centuries ago, he wrote them:-- 'jeanne la bonne lorraine, qu' anglais brûlèrent à rouen.' some plays on the subject of the maid of orleans also appeared in italy and in england, but none is likely to retain a long hold of the stage. the drama of joan of arc's life has inspired two of the greatest masters of music of our day. verdi set a tragedy by solera to music in , and in gounod wrote some music for a piece by jules barbier, which was performed with some success at the gaîté théâtre in paris in . what will always remain an unfortunate fact in the history of modern literature is that the two greatest minds of england and france have written on the subject of the maid of orleans lines which--for their fame--it were well they had never written. whether shakespeare composed the first part of _king henry vi._ may for long remain a disputed point, but he is responsible for that play, and consequently for the manner in which joan of arc is treated in it. no genius can pardon or excuse the abuse and filth with which voltaire bespatters the immortal memory of the glorious maid of orleans. voltaire's attack on church and state had much to excuse them in his day; but that on joan of arc was entirely unwarranted, uncalled for, and unpardonable. still, could joan have known the offence and the offender, we have no doubt she would have forgiven the ribaldry and the ribald as freely as she forgave all her enemies. french bibliography of joan of arc. anonym, 'chanson historique de jeanne d'arc et de ses hauts faits.' orléans, . mo. (il n'a été publié que exemplaires de cet ouvrage.) attel de lutange, j.f.d. d', 'l'héroïne d'orléans, ^e siècle, avec une carte de tous les lieux cités dans cet ouvrage et un plan de la ville d'orléans à l'époque de sa délivrance par jeanne d'arc.' tom. paris, . vo. aufrère-duvernoy, c., 'notice sur les monuments érigés à orléans en l'honneur de jeanne darc.' . vo. ayroles, j.b.j., 'jeanne d'arc sur les autels, et la régénération de la france, . mo. barbier, jules, 'jeanne d'arc.' drame en actes et en vers, musique de ch. gounod, rep^te. à la gaîté en nov. . barthélemy (e.m. de) et kerviler (r.), 'un tournoi de pucelles en l'honneur de jeanne d'arc.' . vo. baunard, l'abbé l., 'jeanne d'arc et la délivrance d'orléans.' discours. paris (imp. à orléans), . vo. beauregard, l'abbé barthélemy de, 'histoire de jeanne d'arc.' . benserade, j. de (?), ou tilet de la mesnardière (?), 'la pucelle d'orléans.' tragédie en actes et en vers. paris, . to. ---- ---- autre édition. paris, . to. berriat de saint-prix, j., 'jeanne d'arc, ou coup-d'oeil sur les révolutions de france au temps de charles vi. et charles vii. et surtout de la pucelle d'orléans.' paris, . vo. boucher de molandon, 'première expédition de jeanne d'arc: le ravitaillement d'orléans. nouveaux documents. plan du siège et de l'expédition.' orléans, . vo. ---- 'jacques d'arc, père de la pucelle. sa notabilité personnelle, d'après les documents récemment découverts.' orléans, . vo. ---- 'la famille de jeanne d'arc, son séjour à orléans.' orléans, . vo. bouquet, f., 'faut-il écrire jeanne d'arc ou jeanne darc.' . vo. bourbon lignières, h. comte de, 'etude sur jeanne d'arc.' . vo. bouteiller (e. de) et braux (g. de), 'la famille de jeanne d'arc. documents inédits, généalogie, lettres de j. hordal et de claude du lys à charles du lys, publiés pour la ^e fois.' paris, . vo. ---- 'nouvelles recherches sur la famille de jeanne d'arc.' enquêtes inédites. généalogie. paris, . vo. ---- 'notes iconographiques sur jeanne d'arc.' paris (imp. à orléans), . vo. calianthe (pseud.), 'tragédie de jeanne d'argues, dite la pucelle d'orléans, en actes et en vers.' rouen, . mo. canet, v., 'jeanne d'arc et sa mission nationale.' lille (imp. à bruges), . vo. carné-marcein, comte de, 'les fondateurs de l'unité française. etude historiques.' tomes. paris, . vo. chabannes, baronne de clémentine, 'la vierge lorraine jeanne d'arc. son histoire au point de vue de l'héroïsme, de la sainteté et du martyre.' paris, . mo. chapelain, 'la pucelle ou la france délivrée. poëme héroïque.' paris, . fol. chartier, alain, 'les croniques du feu roy charles septièsme de ce nom.' paris, . fol. chaussard, p.j.b., 'jeanne d'arc; recueil historique et complet.' orléans, . vo. chevalier, c.u.j., 'jeanne d'arc; biobibliographie.' montbéliard, . mo. chevojon, l.c., 'panégyrique de jeanne d'arc.' orléans, . vo. clément, 'vie de jeanne d'arc.' rouen, . vo. (faisant partie de la bibliothèque morale de la jeunesse.) delisle, l.v., 'nouveau témoignage relatif à la mission de jeanne d'arc, &c.' paris (imp. à nogent-le-rotrou), . vo. delort, joseph, 'essai critique sur l'histoire de charles vii., d'agnès sorelle et de jeanne d'arc, avec portraits et facsimile.' paris, . vo. desbrosses, 'panégyrique de jeanne d'arc.' orléans, . vo. desjardins, abel, 'vie de jeanne d'arc, d'après les documents nouvellement publiés (avec des cartes d'itinéraire).' paris, firmin-didot (imp. à mesnil), . mo. du castel (christine du pisan), 'jeanne d'arc, chronique rimée publiée par h.h., (c.-à.-d. henri herluison). . mo. dumas, alexandre, 'jeanne d'arc.' . vo. dupanloup, f.a.p. (evêque d'orléans), 'panégyrique de jeanne d'arc, pron. le mai .' imp. à orléans. paris, (?) vo. ---- 'second panégyrique de jeanne d'arc.' orléans, . vo. f...., e.g., 'jeanne d'arc a-t-elle existé? a-t-elle été brûlée?' orléans, . vo. fabert, l., 'histoire populaire illustrée des deux procès de jeanne d'arc. (condamnation, : réhabilitation, .)' paris, . to. fabre, j., 'procès de condamnation de jeanne d'arc, d'après les textes authentiques des procès verbaux officiels. traduction (du latin) avec éclaircissements.' paris, . mo. ---- 'jeanne d'arc, libératrice de la france.' . mo. favre, jules, 'quatre conférence faites en belgique. eloge de jeanne d'arc.' paris, . mo. favre, l., 'duguesclin et jeanne d'arc, ou la france aux xiv^e et xv^e siècles. récits historiques d'après les chroniques de l'époque. illustrations à deux teintes par v. adam.' niort, . vo. gillis, james (evêque de limyre), 'panégyrique de jeanne d'arc, prononcé dans la cathédrale d'orléans à la fête du mai .' ^e éd. (imp. à orléans), londres et edimbourg, , vo. godefroy, f., 'le livre d'or français. la mission de jeanne d'arc.' ouvrage illustré. paris, . vo. guerry, g. de, 'eloges de jeanne d'arc, prononcé dans l'église cathédrale d'orléans les mai et mai .' paris, . vo. guillemin, a., 'jeanne d'arc, l'épée de dieu, ouvrage posthume, revu et complété par a. rastoul et illustré par s. langlois.' paris (imp. à boulogne-sur-seine), . vo. ---- 'jeanne d'arc, poëme en douze chants. illustrations de m. panquet.' paris, . vo. guyon, 'la parthénie orléanaise.' orléans, . vo. h.h. (c.-à.-d. henri herluison), 'liste chronologique des orateurs qui ont prononcé le panégyrique de jeanne d'arc depuis jusqu'à nos jour, avec la nomenclature des éloges qui ont été imprimés.' orléans, . vo. haldat, c.h.a. de, 'examen critique de l'histoire de jeanne d'arc, suivi de la relation de la fête célébrée à dom-remi, en , et de mémoire sur la maison de jacques d'arc et sur sa descendance.' nancy, . vo. hellis, c.e., 'la prison de jeanne d'arc à rouen. mémoire lu à l'académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de rouen, en février .' 'histoire et discours au vray du siège qui fut mis devant la ville d'orléans. harangue de la pucelle jeanne au roy pour l'induire à aller à rheims.' . vo. hubert et maréschalle, 'scène ajoutée à "l'epée de jeanne d'arc" (par maréschalle, v. ci-dessous) à l'occasion de la pièce jouée à feydeau.' paris, . vo. jacob, p.l., 'chronique de la pucelle, ou chronique de cousinot, suivie de la chronique normande de p. cochon relative aux règnes de charles vi. et charles vii. avec notices, notes et développements par m. vallet de viriville.' (faisant partie de la bibliothèque gauloise publiée par jacob.) . vo. jadart, v., 'jeanne d'arc à reims, ses relations avec rheims, ses lettres aux rémois. notice accompagnée de documents originaux.' reims, . vo. jaugey, j.b., 'etude sur jeanne d'arc, sa vie, ses voix, sa sainteté.' langres (imp. à chaumont), . vo. jeanne d'arc, 'notice historique servant d'explication aux bas-reliefs du monument élevé sur la place du martroi.' orléans, . vo. jollois, j.b.p., 'histoire abrégée de la vie et des exploits de jeanne d'arc, surnommée la pucelle d'orléans, suivie d'une notice descriptive d'un monument érigé à sa mémoire à domremy.' paris, . fol. ---- 'histoire du siège d'orléans.' paris, . fol. lafontaine, a.p., 'vie de jeanne d'arc.' orléans, . mo. lamartine, de, 'vie de jeanne d'arc.' ( ^e biographie dans le 'civilisateur.') . vo. la roque, g.a. de (sieur de la lontière), 'de la noblesse de jeanne d'arc et des principales circonstances de sa vie et de sa mort.' orléans, . vo. leber, j.m.c., 'collection des meilleures dissertations, traités, &c. tom. . procès, mariage et histoire de jeanne d'arc.' , &c. vo. lebrun des charmettes, 'histoire de jeanne d'arc.' . tomes. vo. lemaire, 'vie de jeanne d'arc.' . mo. lémann, l'abbé j., 'jeanne d'arc; récompense de les croisades.' . vo. lemerle, b., 'essai d'une bibliographie raisonnée de jeanne d'arc.' (chez h. herluison.) orléans, . vo. lenglet du fresnoy, 'histoire de jeanne d'arc, vierge, héroïne et martyre d'état.' orléans--paris, et . pts. mo. ---- 'histoire de jeanne d'arc, dite la pucelle d'orléans.' parties. amsterdam, . mo. lepage, h., 'jeanne d'arc est-elle lorraine? deux dissertations successives publiées à nancy l'une en et l'autre en .' vo. lesigne, ernest, 'par la fin d'une légende. vie de jeanne darc.' ch. bayle, éditeur. paris, . levaillant de la fieffe, 'de la noblesse de jeanne d'arc et de sa famille.' rouen, . vo. luce, s., 'jeanne d'arc à domremy. recherches critiques sur les origines de la mission de la pucelle accompagnée de pièce justificatives.' paris (imp. au mans), . vo. maréschalle, 'l'épée de jeanne d'arc, à propos burlesque et grivois.' paris, . vo. (v. 'hubert et maréschalle.') marolles, de (prêtre d'orléans), 'discours sur la pucelle d'orléans (jeanne d'arc) et sur la délivrance d'orléans.' . vo. martin, bon louis henri, 'jeanne d'arc.' paris, . vo. martin, felix (littérateur), 'la légende de jeanne d'arc ( - ).' paris (imp. à nantes), . mo. martin, henri, 'jeanne d'arc.' (extrait de son histoire de france.) paris, . vo. masson, j., 'histoire de la vie de jeanne d'arc, appelée la pucelle d'orléans.' paris, . vo. mérard st.-just, s.p. de, 'cantiques et pots-pourris (dont l'un intitulé "la pucelle d'orléans").' londres (imp. à paris), . mo. merlet, l., 'souvenirs de jeanne d'arc dans le pays chartrain.' chartres, . vo. mermet, a., 'jeanne d'arc. opéra; livres et musique de m.a. mermet, rep^te. à l'opéra le avril .' mermillod, g., 'panégyrique de jeanne d'arc, prononcé dans la cathédrale d'orléans le mai , etc.' orléans, . vo. michaud (j.f.) et poujoulat (j.j.f.), 'notice sur jeanne d'arc, surnommée la pucelle d'orléans.' paris, . vo. ---- 'vie de jeanne d'arc, précédée par son panégyrique par mgr. dupanloup.' (bibliothèque de la famille.) paris, . vo. micguel, l., 'histoire du siège d'orléans et de la pucelle jeanne (par un principal du collège d'orléans au temps de charles septièsme) mise en nostre langue par le sr. dubreton.' paris, . vo. michelet, j., 'jeanne d'arc. - . avec dix eaux-fortes d'après les dessins de bida.' paris, . to. 'mirouer des femmes vertueuses.... ensemble la patience griselidis, par laquelle est démonstrée l'obéissance des femmes vertueuses. l'histoire admirable de jehanne pucelle, native de vaucouleur.' (reprod. de l'éd^n. de .) paris, . to. monstrelet, enguerrand de, 'chroniques: faisant partie du panthéon littéraire.' paris, . vo. mont-louis, r. de, 'jeanne d'arc ou l'héroïne de domremy.' limoges (imp.): paris, . vo. montenon, p. de, 'récit national. jeanne d'arc.' paris (imp. à st. germain), . mo. mouchy, le ricque de, 'etude historique et physiologique: jeanne d'arc.' montpellier, . vo. mourot, v., 'jeanne d'arc en face de l'eglise romaine et de la révolution.' lille, . vo. ---- 'jeanne d'arc, modèle des vertus chrétiennes.' tomes. lille, . vo. 'l'oracle de la pucelle d'orléans proposé au roy, le dimanche trezièsme de juillet, ou sont déduites les royales aventures de sa majesté.' paris, . vo. o'reilly, e., 'les deux procès de condamnation, les enquêtes et la sentence de réhabilitation de jeanne d'arc mis en français, avec notes et introduction.' tomes. paris, . vo. 'panégyrique de jeanne d'arc prononcé dans l'église st^e croix d'orléans le mai . publié pour la première fois d'après le manuscrit de la bibliothèque nationale par h. stein. orléans, . vo. pau, mlle. marie edmée, 'histoire de notre petite soeur jeanne d'arc.' paris, plon, . vo. paul, marius (capitaine d'artillerie), 'jeanne darc, tacticienne et stratégiste.' paris, . vo. perraud a. (evêque d'autun), 'panégyrique de jeanne d'arc, prononcé dans la cathédrale d'orléans le mai en la fête du ^ze anniversaire de la délivrance de la ville.' orléans, . vo. perreyve, h., 'panégyrique de jeanne d'arc, prononcé dans la cathédrale d'orléans à la fête anniversaire du mai .' orléans, . vo. petitot, c.b., 'mémoires concernant la pucelle d'orléans, dans lesquel se trouvent plusieurs particularités du règne de charles vii.' (collection complète des mémoires relatifs à l'histoire de france. sér. ^e, tome .) , etc. vo. place, l'abbé c. de, 'panégyrique de jeanne d'arc, prononcé à la fête du mai .' orléans, . vo. quicherat, j.e.j., 'procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de jeanne d'arc, dite la pucelle, publiés pour la ^e fois d'après les manuscrits de la bibliothèque royale, suivis de tous les documents historiques qu'on à pu réunis et accompagnés de notes et d'éclaircissement.' tomes. paris, - . vo. ---- 'aperçus nouveaux sur l'histoire de jeanne d'arc.' paris, . vo. renard, a., 'du nom de jeanne d'arc. examen d'une opinion de m. vallet de viriville.' paris, . vo. ---- 'jeanne d'arc était-elle française? réponse au mémoire de m.h. lepage.' (v. 'lepage.') imp. chaumont, langres, . vo. ---- ---- ' ^e réponse à m. lepage.' paris, . vo. ---- ---- ' ^e réponse à m. lepage.' paris, . vo. ---- 'la mission de jeanne d'arc. examen d'une opinion de j. quicherat.' . vo. ---- 'souvenirs de bassigny-champenois. jeanne d'arc et domremy. société historique et archéologique de langres.' paris, . vo. renard, c., 'jeanne darc n'a point été brûlée à rouen. ré-impression de trois écrits (par vignier, de vienne plancy et s. polluche) sur ce problème historique.' rouen, . vo. renzi, a., 'jeanne d'arc, sa mission et son martyre.' paris (imp. à st. germain-en-laye), . vo. rigaud, j., 'atlas général des voyages et expéditions militaire de jeanne d'arc, avec une préface par p.l. d'arc.' robillard de beaurepaire, c. de, 'académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de rouen: mémoire sur le lieu de supplice de jeanne d'arc, accompagné d'un plan de la place ou vieux-marché de rouen, d'après le livre des fontaines de et la reproduction de la gravure d'israël silvestre, représentant l'ancienne fontaine de la pucelle.' rouen, . vo. ---- 'recherches sur le procès de condamnation de jeanne d'arc' rouen, . vo. robville, ---- de, 'histoire de jeanne d'arc, suivie de jeanne hachette, ou l'héroïne de beauvais.' paris, . mo. roux, nicolas le, 'cy commence le livre de la pucelle, natifve de lorraine, qui reduict france entre les mains du roy, ensêble le iugemêt et comme elle fust bruslée au vieil-marché de rouen.' rouen, (?) mo. sainte-james, e. de (marquis de gaucourt), 'des faits relatifs à jeanne d'arc et au sire de gaucourt. lettres à m.h. martin, auteur d'une histoire de france.' paris, . mo. sepet, m., 'jeanne d'arc.' tours, . vo. soumet, 'jeanne d'arc' tragédie. . stein. (v. 'panégyrique.') thomas, a., 'panégyrique de jeanne d'arc, prononcé dans la cathédrale d'orléans le mai .' orléans, . vo. 'trésor des pièces rares ou inédites.' paris, , etc. vo. trippault, l., 'les faits, pourtraict et iugement de jeanne d'arc, dicte la pucelle d'orléans (avec le texte latin).' . mo. v., m. de, 'la pucelle d'orléans.' . mo. vallet de viriville, 'procès de condamnation de jeanne d'arc traduit du latin et publié intégralement pour la première fois en français d'après les documents manuscrits et originaux.' paris (mesnil), . vo. ---- 'recherches sur la famille de jeanne d'arc' firmin-didot, paris, . vo. ---- 'notices, notes et développements, annexe de la chronique de cousinot,' jacob, paris, . vo. (v. 'jacob,' p. de la présente bibliographie.) vergnaud-romagnesi, c.f., 'examen philosophique et impartial des apparitions de la mission divine de jeanne d'arc.' orléans, . vo. ---- 'fête de jeanne d'arc à orléans. précis sur la vie et les exploits de jeanne d'arc, ses portraits.' orléans (imp. à paris), . vo. ---- 'fête de la délivrance d'orléans, dite fête de jeanne arc, mai .' orléans, . vo. ---- 'histoire de la ville d'orléans.' orléans, . vo. vigneulles, p. gérard de, 'jeanne d'arc dans les chroniques messines de p. de vigneulles.' . vo. villaume, n., 'histoire de jeanne d'arc, et réfutation des diverses erreurs publiées jusqu'à ce jour.' paris, . mo. voltaire, 'la pucelle d'orléans: poëme divisé en vingt chants, avec des notes.' préface de 'dom apulejus risorius' (c.-à.-d. voltaire lui-même). genève , et londres . vo. ---- ---- avec notes de 'm. de morza' (c.-à.-d. voltaire) genève, . vo. ---- ---- londres (paris?), - . mo. (le ^e vol. porte l'année à la ^e page.) wallon, h.a., 'jeanne d'arc.' edition illustrée. paris, . vo. zeller et luchaire (a.), 'charles vii. et jeanne d'arc.' . mo. english bibliography of joan of arc. bartlett, david w., 'the life of joan of arc.' auburn, new york, . mo. blake, robert, 'joan of arc.' a poem. london, . vo. bray, mrs., 'life of joan d'arc.' london, . vo. caddy, mrs. florence, 'footsteps of jeanne d'arc: a pilgrimage.' london, . vo. charles, mrs. e., 'joan of arc: a story of the fifteenth century.' london, . vo. 'commines, philip de, the memoirs of.' vols. london, . mo. davenport-adams, w.h., 'the maid of orleans.' london, . vo. delepierre, joseph octave, 'historical difficulties and contested events.' london, . vo. doran, john, 'knights and their days.' london, . vo. fuller, thomas, 'the holy state and the profane state.' london, . vo. pp. . guizot, f.p.g., 'the history of france from the earliest times to the year .' translated by r. black. london, . vo. jameson, mrs. a., 'lives of celebrated sovereigns.' london, . mo. 'joan of arc: the story of a noble life.' edinburgh, . mo. maceroni, cecilia, 'illustrations from the history of the maid of orleans.' london, . vo. owen, emily, 'heroines of history.' london, . vo. parr, harriet, 'the life and death of jeanne d'arc.' london, . vo. parton, james, 'the people's book of biography.' new york, . vo. pauli, rheinhold, 'pictures of old england.' translated by e.c. otté. london, . vo. quincey, t. de, 'miscellaneous essays: joan of arc.' london, . vo. russell, wm., 'extraordinary women.' london, . vo. r., c.l., 'the story of joan of arc.' london, . mo. southey, robert, 'joan of arc; an epic poem.' bristol, &c., . to. stanhope, p.h. ( th earl), 'the life of joan of arc.' london, . vo. sterling, j., 'essays and tales,' vol. i. london, . vo. stothart, a.e., 'joan of arc.' london, . vo. 'the wonderful exploits of the maid of orleans.' falkirk, . mo. tuckey, janet, 'life of joan of arc.' london, . vo. * * * * * magazine articles on joan of arc. _blackwood's magazine_, vol. xlvii. p. ( ). _dublin review_, vol. lx. p. ( ). _dublin university magazine_, vol. lxxxix. p. ( ). _encyclopædia britannica_, article, 'joan of arc.' _temple bar_, vol. xxi. p. ( ). _fortnightly review_, vol. vi. p. ( ). _harper's magazine_, vol. lxiii. p. ( ). index index. adam, de l'isle, commander of the burgundian soldiers in paris, albret, sire d', assists joan of arc at the siege of saint pierre-le-moutier, alençon, duke of, entrusted with the command of the expedition on the loire, , ; his personal safety vouchsafed by joan of arc, ; accompanies the king to rheims, ; testifies to the military talents of joan, ; gives evidence at the trial for her rehabilitation, alessée, john, canon at rouen, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, alnwick, william, bishop of norwich, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, anjou, duke of, his sympathy with joan of arc, anjou, rené d', arc, origin of the name, arc, isabeau d' (mother of joan of arc), her influence upon her daughter, ; at the trial for rehabilitation, arc, jacques d' (father of joan of arc), his social position, ; his death, arc, joan of. _see_ joan of arc arc, john d' (brother of joan of arc), ; at the trial for her rehabilitation, , arc, peter d' (brother of joan of arc), ; taken prisoner with his sister, ; at the trial for rehabilitation, armagnac, thibauld d', sire de thermes, ; at the trial for the rehabilitation of joan of arc, arnolin, henri, priest, arras, bishop of, arundel, earl of, threatens the town of compiègne, aubert, john, burgher of orleans, aubignac, abbé d', his tragedy on joan of arc, auguy, raoul, canon at rouen, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, aulon, john d', esquire of joan of arc, , , ; rescues his mistress, ; taken prisoner with her, , ; gives evidence at the trial for her rehabilitation, , aunoy, arnoult d', celibat of the monastery of saint urban-les-joinville, averdy, clément de l', avét, john de saint, bishop of avranches, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, avrigni, d', dramatic poet, aymeri, william, doctor of theology, bailly, nicolas, scrivener, baker, sir richard, english writer, bar, count de, barante, historian, barbier, robert, canon of rouen, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, barbier, jean, king's advocate, ; at the trial for the rehabilitation of joan of arc, barbier, jules, barrey, john, godfather of joan of arc, basin, thomas, bishop of lisieux, quoted for joan of arc's belief in the reality of her visions, basset, john, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, baubribosc, william de, canon at rouen, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, baudricourt, robert de, ; his first interview with joan of arc, ; second interview, ; presents her with his sword, beaucharnys, john, burgher of orleans, beaucharnys, petronillé, beaucroix, simon, at the trial for rehabilitation, beaufort, henry, bishop of winchester. _see_ winchester. beaupère, john, canon at besançon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, ; examines and cross-questions her, ; seeks to effect her abjuration, ; at the trial for rehabilitation, bedford, duke of, sends fastolfe to suffolk's assistance at jargeau, ; takes refuge in the fortress of vincennes, ; appeals for help to the duke of burgundy and the bishop of winchester, ; advances from paris, ; returns there, ; leaves for normandy, ; comes to terms with the duke of burgundy, ; invokes the aid of the church against joan of arc, bellarme, martin, dominican priest, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, bellier, william, bailiff of troyes, bellow, j., cited, benel, abbot of courcelles, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, bergame, philip de, augustinian monk, berwoit, john, attendant on joan of arc, , bibliography of joan of arc: french, ; english, boissel, guérold de, bonart, hervé, canon at orleans, bonnet, john, priest, bonnet, simon, bishop of senlis, bordez, andré, canon at rouen, boucher, charlotte, bedfellow of joan of arc, at the trial for rehabilitation, boucher, james, host of joan of arc in orleans, boucher, mary le, bouchier, peter, priest, boulogne, count of, accompanies charles vii. to rheims, boussac, marshal de (saint-sévère), , , , boyleau, joan, brullot, john, canon at rouen, assessor at trial of joan of arc, buchon, , burgundy, philip, duke of, his trimming conduct after the coronation at rheims, ; comes to terms with bedford, ; intrigues to obtain possession of compiègne, ; hands over joan of arc to the english, cabu, gentien, burgher of orleans, cagny, perceval de, cited, calixtus iii., pope, sanctions the rehabilitation of joan of arc, canelier, john, burgher of orleans, castiglione, zanon de, bishop of lisieux, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , cauchon, peter, bishop of beauvais, ; his early career, ; offered preferment by winchester, ; ransoms joan of arc for the english, ; resolves that her trial shall take place in rouen, ; constitution of his tribunal, ; his policy at the beginning of the trial, , ; his opening speech, ; his examination of the maid, _et seq._; fails to attach guilt to her in the public trial, ; subjects her to a secret examination in prison, ; contents of his letter of indictment to the university of paris, ; tries to extort her submission in illness, ; decides to put her to the torture, ; commended for his zealous conduct, ; seeks to effect her abjuration, ; absolves her from excommunication, ; interviews her in prison, ; hands her over to the secular powers, caval, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, ; at the trial for rehabilitation, censurey, peter de la, canon at rouen, chapelain, his 'heroic poem' on the maid, charles ii., duke of lorraine, seeks an interview with joan of arc, charles v. of france, charles vi. of france, charles the dauphin (afterwards charles vii.), protests against the dismemberment of france, ; his wretched condition at the beginning of , ; interview with joan of arc at chinon, ; presents her with a suit of armour, ; meets her after the delivery of orleans, ; sets out for rheims, ; is crowned there, ; ennobles joan, ; vacillating conduct, ; marches on paris, ; retreats to gien, ; takes measures for the rehabilitation of the maid, ; real object in doing so, charles, simon, master of the requests, charlet, charnettes, lebrun les, historian, charron, william le, burgher of orleans, chartres, regnault de, archbishop of rheims, ; accompanies joan of arc to blois, ; tries to thwart her mission, ; meets charles vii. on his entry into rheims, ; makes a truce with the english, ; announces the capture of the maid to the citizens of rheims, chartrier, william, bishop of paris, appointed a commissioner for the rehabilitation of joan of arc, chatillon, archdeacon of evreux, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, ; his sermon before joan, chauvigny, seigneur de, accompanies charles vii. to rheims, chinon, the castle of, clermont, count of, accompanies charles vii. to rheims, , coaraze, colin, playmate of joan of arc, colin, john, priest, colles, william, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , ; at the trial for rehabilitation, columbel, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, compaing, peter, canon at orleans, compiègne, the town of, contes, louis de, page of joan, , conti, de, abbot of sainte catherine, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, coppequesne, nicolas, canon at rouen, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , cormeilles, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, coulant, coulon, john, burgher of orleans, coulon, guillemette de, courcelles, thomas de, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , , , , ; nature of his evidence at the trial for rehabilitation, cousinot, g., chancellor of the duke of orleans, crique, peter de, prior of sigy, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, crotoy, le, importance of, to the english in the fifteenth century, crotoy, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, culan, louis, admiral de, accompanies charles vii. to rheims, cusquel, peter, burgher of rouen, dacier, abbot of saint corneille of compiègne, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , daniel, english writer, darmesteter, m., cited, daron, peter, attorney, daval, william, priest, at the trial for rehabilitation, david, jesuit priest, de champcoux, john, burgher of orleans, de commy, cosmé, burgher of orleans, delachambre, william, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, ; at the trial for rehabilitation, ; joan of arc's doctor, _ib._ delavigne, casimir, his poems on joan of arc, desjardins, abel, biographer of joan of arc, desnoyers, dramatist, desprès, john, domremy, birthplace of joan of arc, du bellay, french writer, cited, , dubesert, canon at rouen, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, ; at the trial for rehabilitation, duchemin, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, du duc, fronton, his tragedy on joan of arc, du fay, geoffrey, knight, dufresnoy, abbé longlet, his life of joan of arc, du lys, charles, descendant of the arc family, dumas, alexandre, his life of joan of arc, dunois, bastard of orleans, commander of the french troops in orleans, , ; interview with joan of arc at reuilly, ; goes to blois to bring up reinforcements, ; attacks the tournelles, , ; testifies to the military talents of joan, ; at the trial for rehabilitation, durement, abbot of fécamp, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, edward iii. of england, emenyart, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , epinal, gerardin d', village companion of joan of arc, , epinal, isabellette d', friend of joan of arc, erard, william, canon of beauvais, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, ; opposed to applying the torture to her, ; preaches on the occasion of joan's abjuration, , erault, john, esbalny, jacques l', burgher of orleans, estelin, beatrix d', godmother of joan of arc, estivet, john d', surnamed 'bénédicité,' at trial of joan of arc, estouteville, cardinal d', fabre, joseph, historian, cited, , , , ; his works on joan of arc, fabyan, robert, english writer, farciaux, robert de, canon, fastolfe, sir john, at the siege of orleans, ; sent to jargeau to reinforce suffolk, ; joins forces with talbot, ; defeated at the battle of patay, ; disgraced, fauconbridge, clerk of the french parliament, quoted, fave, jean, master of requests, feuillet, gerard, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, fèvre, le, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, fiexvet, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, flavigny, william de, governor of compiègne, , , ; his supposed treachery towards joan, fontaine, john de la, at the trial of joan of arc, ; secretly examines her in prison, ; flies from the wrath of couchon, fournier, jean, priest, testifies in favour of joan of arc, france, state of, in , france, martin le, franquet d'arras, english freebooter, captured by joan of arc, fremiet, sculptor, frique, abbot of bee, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, fuller, thomas, fumeux, jean le, priest, testifies to the piety of joan of arc, ; at the trial for rehabilitation, gargrave, sir thomas, mortally wounded in the attack on orleans, garin, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, garivel, francis, at the trial for rehabilitation, gastinel, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , gaucourt, raoul de, grand master of the king's household, ; closes the burgundy gate at orleans against joan of arc, , ; at the trial for her rehabilitation, gerard, henriette, friend of joan of arc, giresme, nicolas de, knight of rhodes, in the attack on the tournelles, glansdale, sir william, succeeds salisbury in the command of the english forces before orleans, , ; drowned in the loire, gloucester, duke of, english protector, godart, raoul, canon at rouen, godefroy, denis, 'godon,' the french sobriquet for the english, gounod, grasset, peter, governor of la charité, graverent, john, dominican priest and grand inquisitor of france, at the trial of joan of arc, graville, de, green, j.r., greene, robert, dramatist, gris, john, english knight, personal attendant on joan of arc, , grouchet, richard de, priest, guerdon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, guesdon, laurent, clerk and advocate to the lay court of rouen, guillemeth, playmate of joan of arc, guthrie, his life of joan of arc, haillon, french writer, haiton, william, english priest, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , , hall, english historian, quoted, for the delivery of orleans, , harcourt, christophe d', bishop of castres, confessor of charles vii., henry ii. of england, henry iii. of england, his death at chinon, henry v. of england, his position in france in , , henry vi. of england, , herrings, the battle of the, hilaire, john, burgher of orleans, hire, la, ; persuaded to break off swearing by joan of arc, ; assists in the attack on the tournelles, ; leads the van at the battle of patay, ; accompanies charles vii. to rheims, holinshed, english writer, hordal, john, descendant of the arc family, houppeville, nicolas de, doctor of theology, hue, peter, burgher of orleans, illiers, florent d', ingres, his picture of joan of arc, inquisition, the, resolve to prosecute joan of arc as a sorceress and idolatress, jacquard, playmate of joan of arc, jacquier, native of domremy, jacquier, guillot, joan of arc, her birth and parentage, ; her amiable character, ; devotion to religious duties, ; first visions, ; her belief in their reality, ; interviews with baudricourt, , ; visits duke charles of lorraine, ; her popularity at vaucouleurs, ; her equipment, ; sets out for chinon, ; opposed by la tremoïlle, ; arrival at chinon, ; interview with the king, ; favourably impresses him, ; trains herself in military exercises, ; examined at poitiers before the french parliament, ; her mission sanctioned, ; prepares her standard, ; arrives at blois, ; despatches a letter to the duke of bedford, ; her interview with dunois before orleans, ; enthusiastic entry into the city, ; summons the english to surrender, ; meets dunois with the relieving forces, ; her first engagement, ; carries the bastille des augustins, ; prophesies she will be wounded, ; leads the attack on the tournelles, ; wounded, ; rallies the wavering french, ; compels the english to raise the siege, ; returns to chinon, ; urges charles vii. to go to rheims, ; leads the expedition on the loire, ; storms and takes jargeau, ; gains the battle of patay, ; sets out for rheims with charles, ; the enforced halt before troyes, ; expresses her fear of treachery, ; at the king's coronation in rheims cathedral, ; her military talents, ; her humane conduct in war, ; ennobled by charles, ; advises the latter to march on paris, ; writes to the duke of burgundy for assistance, ; resolves to attempt to take paris, ; her impetuous onslaught, ; again wounded, ; deposits her armour and arms in the fane of saint denis, ; assaults and captures the fortress of saint pierre-le-moutier, ; fails to take la charité, ; her simplicity and freedom from egotism, _ib._; captures an english freebooter and his band at lagny, ; received with joy in compiègne, ; attacks the burgundians at margny, ; driven back from clairvoix, ; taken prisoner, ; removed to the castle of beaulieu, in picardy, ; handed over to peter cauchon, ; attempts to escape, , ; delivered to the english, ; taken to rouen, ; barbarously treated, ; demands that her judges should be equally divided in nationality, ; her answers to cauchon and beaupère, _sq._; secretly interrogated in prison, ; continued maltreatment, ; the twelve articles on which her condemnation was founded, ; falls ill in prison, ; again interrogated by cauchon, ; threatened with torture, ; condemned by the university of paris, ; her abjuration, _sq._; discards her male attire, ; roughly treated by her guard, _ib._; her forgiving nature, ; is apprised of her fate, ; upbraids cauchon, _ib._; confesses and receives the sacrament, ; pardons loiseleur, ; handed over to the secular powers, ; implores pardon for her enemies, _ib._; her martyrdom, ; the trial for her rehabilitation, _sq._ jocab, dominic, curate, jolivet, abbot of st. michel's mount, normandy, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, jollois, historian, jonqualt, peter, burgher at orleans, jonson, ben, cited for the authorship of the first part of _king henry vi._, jouvenel des ursins, john, archbishop of rheims, appointed commissioner for the rehabilitation of joan of arc, joyart, mengette, friend of joan of arc, labbé, abbot of saint george de bocherville, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, laclopssé, bertrand, thatcher, ladvenu, martin, dominican priest, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, ; cited for her brutal treatment in prison, ; sent to apprise her of her fate, ; receives her confession and administers the sacrament, ; attends her to execution, ; at the trial for her rehabilitation, la fontaine, biographer of joan of arc, laiguise, john, bishop of troyes, offers to capitulate troyes to king charles vii., lamartine, landor, walter savage, langart, john de, godfather of joan of arc, laval, count guy de, cited, ; accompanies the king to rheims, laxart, durand, cousin of joan of arc, ; at the trial for rehabilitation, lebourg, william, prior, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, le cuin, playmate of joan of arc, ledoux, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , le france, martin, french poet, le fèvre, jean, bishop, at the trial for rehabilitation, lemaître, husson, coppersmith, lemaître, john, dominican prior, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , , , lenozoles, john de, priest, lepage, bastien, his picture of joan of arc, leroux, abbot of jumièges, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, leroy, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, lessarmentrer, mauger, chief torturer of rouen, at the trial for rehabilitation, ligny, john de, ; transfers joan of arc to his castle of beaurevoir, ; delivers her into the hands of the duke of burgundy, ; taunts her in prison, lisle, lancelot de, at the siege of orleans, loheac, seigneur de, accompanies charles vii. to rheims, lohier, john, threatened by cauchon for his sympathy with joan of arc, loiseleur, nicolas, canon of rouen, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, ; his infamous conduct, _ib._, ; his remorse, ; intent on torture, , ; seeks to effect her abjuration, , , ; asks pardon of her, lombard, jean, professor of theology, longueil, richard de, bishop of coutances, appointed a commissioner for the rehabilitation of joan of arc, luce, simeon, cited, , luillier, john, at the trial for rehabilitation, luxembourg, john of, luxembourg, louis of, bishop of thérouanne, in command of the english soldiers in paris, ; consents to the sale of joan of arc to the english, ; an assessor at the trial of the maid, machot, gerard, bishop of castres, mackintosh, sir james, maçon, robert de, macquelonne, the bishop of, macy, historian, cited, macy, aimonde de, soldier, mahon, lord, mailly, john de, bishop of noyon, assessor at trial of joan of arc, ; at the trial for rehabilitation, manchon, william, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , , , ; cited for the brutal treatment of her guard, , ; at the trial for rehabilitation, mansier, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, marcel, john, 'margette,' the, marguerie, canon at rouen, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , , , marie, thomas, priest, marin, captain, cited, , martigny, louis de, martin, henry, historian, martyn, english writer, masle, du, abbot of saint ouen, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, masnier, playmate of joan of arc, massieu, john, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , , ; grants her permission to kneel at the prison chapel door, , ; urges her to abjure, ; cited for the brutal treatment of her guard, , ; at the trial for rehabilitation, maurice, peter, metz, jean de, becomes acquainted with joan of arc, ; escorts her to chinon, ; at the trial for rehabilitation, mézarie, historian, michelet, cited, , , , , , , , , ; his life of joan of arc, midi, nicolas, d.d., assessor at the trial of joan of arc, ; his sermon on the eve of joan's death, migiet, peter, prior of longueville, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, ; at trial for rehabilitation, milet, peter, moen, john, of domremy, monsteschère, john de, master gunner at the siege of orleans, monstrelet, enguerrand de, cited, , ; the most eminent writer against joan of arc, montaigne, cited, montgomery, commands the english forces before compiègne, montjeu, philibert de, bishop of coutances, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, moreaux, john, burgher of rouen, morel, aubert, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , , morel, john, village companion of joan of arc, morel de greux, john, godfather of joan of arc, morellet, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, moret, abbot of préaux, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, morice, peter, canon at rouen, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , mystery play, the french, on joan of arc, nicolas v., pope, opposed to the rehabilitation of joan of arc, orleans, the siege of, begun by the english, ; enthusiasm of the people of, for joan of arc, ; its defences, ; horrors of the siege, ; the siege raised, , ourche, albert d', knight, paris, martial de, french poet, paris, university of. _see_ university parliament, french, at poitiers, ; examine joan of arc, ; sanction her mission, pasquerel, jean, cited, , ; at the trial for rehabilitation, pasquier, stephen, french jurisconsult, patay, the battle of, perrin le drassier, bell-ringer of domremy, petitot, , pierre, isambard de la, dominican priest, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , ; his sympathy for her, , , ; cited for the brutal treatment of her guard, ; attends her last moments, , , ; at the trial for rehabilitation, pinchon, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, pisan, christine de, poetess, poitiers, the great hall of, ; the bishop of, pole, john de la, at the siege of orleans, pole, william de la. _see_ suffolk postel, william, french writer, postian, william, burgher of orleans, pougoulat, poulangy, bertrand de, ; escorts joan of arc on her journey to chinon, ; at the trial for rehabilitation, prévosteau, advocate, at the trial for rehabilitation, quicherat, historian, cited, , , ; his literary labours, quincey, de, rabelais, connection with chinon, rabuteau, maître jean, parliamentary advocate-general, radley, english officer, raimond, page of joan, rainguesson, john, godfather of joan of arc, rais, seigneur de, , ; accompanies charles vii. to rheims, regnault, william, captures the earl of suffolk at jargeau, rheims, coronation of charles vii. at, rheims, the archbishop of. _see_ chartres, regnault de richard, father, his interview with joan of arc, richarville, guillaume de, richemont, constable de, joins the army of the loire, richer, edmond, doctor of theology, rochelle, catherine de la, her deceit exposed by joan of arc, roger, denis, burgher of orleans, roquier, john, priest, rotslaer, sire de, cited, rouillart, william, burgher of orleans, roussel, rouvray, the battle of the herrings near, royer, henry and joan le, sainte-beuve, cited, ; on wallon's biography of joan of arc, saint-mesmin, aignan de, burgher of orleans, saint-prix, berriat, historian, ; his itinerary of the last three years of the life of joan of arc, _ib._ saint-sévère, marshal. _see_ boussac. salisbury, commands the english forces before orleans, ; mortally wounded, saulx, canon, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, savoy, duke of, scales, lord, at siege of orleans, schiller, his _jungfrau von orleans_, sequier, dominican monk, ; questions joan, ; at the trial for rehabilitation, shakespeare and the character of joan of arc, , sionne, etienne de, curate, sismondi, historian, solera, sorel, agnes, soumet, dramatic poet, southey, cited, ; his heroic poem on joan of arc, stafford, lord, visits joan of arc in prison, sterling, john, stern, daniel, french authoress, stow, historian, stuart, john, constable of scotland, killed at the battle of the herrings, stuart, william, brother of the constable of scotland, killed at the battle of the herrings, suffolk, william de la pole, earl of, commands the english forces before orleans, ; confronts the french at jargeau, ; defeated and captured, talbot, lord, at the siege of orleans, ; withdraws his forces, ; joins hands with fastolfe, ; defeated and taken prisoner, talbot, william, attendant on joan of arc, , taquel, nicolas, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, ; at the trial for rehabilitation, thépelin de viteau, jeannette, god-mother of joan of arc, theroude, abbot of mortemer, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, thevenin le royer, of domremy, théverien, jeannette, godmother of joan of arc, thibault, gobert, , thierry, reginald, court physician, thou, james de, burgher of orleans, tilloy, jamet de, french knight, tiphanie, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , touraine, james de, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, toutmouillé, john, apprises joan of arc of her fate, ; at the trial for rehabilitation, tremoïlle, george de la, minister of charles vii., ; tries to thwart joan of arc in her mission, , , , ; alarmed at her ever-growing popularity, ; accompanies the king to rheims, , troyes, the treaty of ( ), troyes, john de, senior of the faculty of theology in the university of paris, university of paris, aid in the prosecution of joan of arc, ; constitution of the, ; recommend the removal of joan to paris, ; their decision regarding her guilt, vaillant, peter, burgher of orleans, vaux, pasquier de, canon, one of the tribunal on the trial of joan of arc, venderès, nicolas de, canon of rouen, assessor at the trial of joan of arc, , , vendôme, comte de, chamberlain to charles vii., , ; accompanies the king to rheims, verdi, vernon, raoul roussel de, reporter at the trial of joan of arc, versailles, pierre de, veuillot, on wallon's life of joan of arc, viennne, colet de, escorts joan of arc to chinon, villars, french knight, villaume, biographer of joan of arc, villon, françois, his lines on joan of arc, , viole, aignan, advocate, virey, his tragedy on joan of arc, virgile, polydore, french writer, viriville, vallet de, volant, john, burgher of orleans, voltaire, cited, ; his _pucelle_, , wallon, historian, cited, , , , , , wandome, the bastard of, warwick, earl of, visits joan of arc in prison, ; threatens isambard de la pierre for his sympathy with her, ; demands that she should be saved from a natural death, ; enraged at the prospect of her release, waterin, playmate of joan of arc, waverin, english officer, cited for the english loss at the battle of patay, winchester, henry beaufort, bishop of, arrives in paris with his army, ; retains peter cauchon to prosecute joan of arc, ; his scheme for this purpose, ; at the abjuration of joan, ; weeps over her fate, xaintrailles, , ; accompanies charles vii. to rheims, ; taken prisoner, the end. * * * * * produced from scanned images of public domain material from the google print project.) transcriber's note: the original text has been presented as such with the exception of minor punctuation corrections and formatting changes. joan of arc: a play in five acts. by mrs. j. a. sargant. london: joseph rickerby, sherbourn lane, king william street, city. . london: printed by joseph rickerby, sherbourn lane. to the queen dowager. madam, when i first requested permission to dedicate this humble effort to your majesty, i felt--a feeling i confess which i had no right to indulge--that i should be much disappointed if you were pleased to refuse me; but now that you have graciously condescended to honour me by granting it, a fear of the unworthiness of my offering diminishes the gratification i should otherwise experience, and makes me almost envious of talents which might better have justified your patronage. let others, however, excel me as much as they may in those endowments which are supposed to constitute genius, i have at least the comfort of reflecting that none can excel me in dutiful affection to your royal person, in profound reverence for your character, and in respectful admiration of those virtues which have long endeared you to all british hearts, and will remain a monument of your goodness when you shall have exchanged time for eternity. more than this i dare not say, lest it should be imputed to a want of delicacy: less than this i will not say, certain that it would be considered as an omission of duty. i remain, with the highest respect, madam, your majesty's most dutiful, most humble, and most devoted servant, j. a. sargant. preface. in laying this play before the public some apology is perhaps due. sensible that it cannot compete with many of the productions of the present day, the author yet pleads for such exemption only from severe criticism, as true humility, and a respect for the opinions of an enlightened and intellectual age, may entitle her to. she has not aimed at any display of originality, nor has she been deceived by a presumptuous estimation of her powers, to attempt that which she may not have more ability than leisure and opportunity to accomplish. unlike those who write for amusement, or by profession, or in the consciousness of their talents, to gain for themselves competence or fame, her pen is exercised only to soothe anxiety, to refresh exhausted energy, and to vary the monotony of seclusion. she would not, however, be thought indifferent to the praise or censure of her contemporaries. far from it. no exertion, compatible with higher duties, would be thought too severe to obtain the former, nor any degree of patient labour too lengthened to avoid the latter. she is, however, so circumstanced as to preclude such a dedication of her time, and therefore is it that she ventures to ask for that indulgence which, in another case, she would have deemed it unjustifiable to claim or to expect. but whilst all attempt at originality is disclaimed, imitation of any one, or assistance from any one is equally disavowed. this play was written before the late productions, which bear the same title, made their appearance. its defects therefore are its own; its merits--if happily it possess any--are its own also; and standing thus entirely upon its native ground, it is respectfully submitted to the judgment of the public. j. a. s. clapton square, _may, ._ dramatis personÆ. men. charles. duke of bedford. du nois. john talbot. duke alenÇon. earl of warwick. xaintrailles. earl of richemont. valancour. earl of suffolk. cardinal beauvais. arnault. louvel. arlington. abbot. austin. archbishop. officer. _soldiers_, &c. women. joan. countess of warwick. bertha. widow of camouse. joan of arc. act i. scene i.--_chinon._ alenÇon. xaintrailles. alenÇon. welcome again to freedom! france may rejoice, since thou in arms once more art seen for her. xaint. in arms to little purpose. our cause is lost, my lord. orleans, our best, last hope, must fall, and shortly. but i have sought thee, eager to know, to learn,-- alen. what wouldst thou know? xaint. this strange report! this damsel, who, 'tis said, is hither come to work such wondrous feats-- whence doth she spring? alen. from domremie; her birth not less obscure than this her native village. xaint. how introduced? alen. she first besought from baudricour an escort to the dauphin; but in vain. at length, her suit oft urged, fair character, and lofty words prevailed with him. xaint. the prince will ne'er demean himself to listen to her? alen. a drowning man will catch, and eagerly, at weeds uprooted by the storm that wrecked him. she comes to-day, by order from himself, before the council. xaint. hast seen her? alen. i have. xaint. describe her: is she young? alen. of that sweet age when girlish smiles assume the dignity which conscious womanhood doth first confer: the rose just blushing to the full. xaint. rustic, no doubt, and ignorant. alen. her soul hath stamped her manner simple, yet dignified--lofty, yet meek. xaint. ta'en captive--grown poetic. alen. age like mine has little thought of love or poesy; but yet there is a charm where loveliness meets virtue, which it were a shame to slight. the snow which crowns the old man's head should make his reason cool, yet need not chill his heart. but come--the council must be now assembled. xaint. one question more--is richemont here? alen. not he, nor e'en desired. the hate the dauphin bears him continues undiminished. xaint. yet the world believes them cordial friends; that with the rank he craved, the constable of france has lost all that disgust the earl of richemont felt. alen. charles never will forgive the insult shown to them he valued most. du châtel first, then louvel he required should be dismissed his service and the council--price of friendship. the first his interest in his master's sank, but louvel's firm adherence to his post, bringing camouse's death. xaint. camouse's death! alen. ay, 'twas a bloody deed: but more anon, this maid absorbs all thought. xaint. let's hasten then: my curiosity is all awake-- and more, i bear an answer from the regent, which to the prince and council i must show. scene ii.--_council._ charles, louvel, valancour, &c. cha. we'll hear no more. whilst one poor hope remained we would have hazarded our chance; but now tis madness to resist. _enter xaintrailles and alenÇon._ returned! how met the haughty occupant of our own place the offer tendered him? xaint. as one who holds the game already in his hands may hear his adversary's scheme to share the stake. "i am not one," he said, "to beat the bush that others may secure the birds. ere orleans can be sequestered, we must see good title to execute the deed; bedford, not burgundy, must hold that city for his liege and lord." cha. fool that we were to court such insolence! but yet perhaps 'tis only what ourselves had, in like circumstances, said more rudely. alen. will not your grace resent the indignity? cha. but how? words are but poor revenge; and words are all we boast. we will retire to dauphiné. omnes. to dauphiné! alen. you jest. you cannot mean-- cha. we've said, and mean it too. fear not, my friends, we'll lead a joyous life. war we will have, as dappled deer shall find, a court midst sylvan shades, not lacking beauty, though of but rural kind, to cheer our toils. alen. (_aside._ will nought correct this levity of speech? xaintrailles himself, though not a whit more staid, is by his thoughtless master shamed to gravity.) your grace forgets the maid from domremie doth wait an audience. cha. we much regret, my lord, our weak compliance with such folly. alen. the royal word is pledged. cha. we'll not retract it. it may at least afford us novelty. let her appear. xaint. why not devise some plan to prove her truth, or to detect the fraud? cha. well thought--but how? xaint. to thee she bears this message. if heaven, as she asserts, has sent her hither, he will not fail, by certain proof, to mark the mission his. amongst ourselves then mingle, and let another represent thee. cha. good. no better representative than thou; in truth we do but play the part of king, and thou as aptly as ourself may act it. [_they exchange places._ _enter_ joan. xaint. thou hast an audience asked: thy suit thus granted, we bid thee fearlessly declare thy will. joan. i seek the royal ear: this is my prince! and thus with veneration deep-- [_kneels to charles._ cha. not so. no female at my feet may kneel thus lowly. maiden! i own no earthly state which claims such reverence; but simply as a man i stand midst men, protector of thy sex, admirer of thy charms! joan. just is the homage-- but now (_rises_) i stand the delegate of heav'n, and thus declare my mission. "go!" said the mighty, "go! tell thy prince deliverance is nigh: and thine the hand to rid him of his foes! thou shalt raise the siege of orleans!" cha. indeed! strong arms, and steeled, have not availed to raise it, and shall a hand more fitting for the dance-- joan. beware of such a sneer. the mountain lily would crush the mountain if 'twere bid to do it; and midst the mighty ruin it had wrought itself would smile in safety. this i pledge thee! the foe shall fly, the land once more be free, the sceptre to thy line shall be confirmed, and holy hands at rheims shall crown thee. cha. thy bearing forbids all thought of fraud, and proves that thou and falsehood have no fellowship: thou art thyself deceived. joan. i know that i may seem a mere enthusiast, a frail, weak woman: none think more meanly of me than myself: but sense of weakness proves me not deceived. then scorn me not; if mercy once be spurned, indignant heaven in frowns may hide his face, and change the dew of blessing to a curse. cha. we have declared our will, but even now, to pass to dauphiné. joan. fly from the foe! leave thy inheritance! forfeit thy birthright! desert the post consigned to thee! the shepherd throw thus aside his crook, mean safety seeking, and leave the hapless flock the fell wolf's prey! o! france! poor land! then art thou lost indeed, though not by heaven cast off. thy prince deserts thee-- in evil hour betrays himself and thee. these are my country's tears; and mark me, prince, such tears as these shall, in a sea of woe, in judgment's awful hour, submerge thy soul. alen. the prince is moved. cha. we'll think upon this matter. meanwhile thou mayst retire. [_they withdraw._ joan. yet dost thou doubt me? cha. and now, sweet maid, we must evince our sense of kindness such--(_takes her hand._) joan. thou dost mistake me. cha. (_aside_, oh! majesty of virtue! i stand abashed before the simple form thou hast assumed, still lower than the lowly who reproves me.) forgive the offence. joan. it is forgotten; thou hast not injured me. cha. thou sayst aright. the assailer not assailed sustains the injury, when vice would sully purity. speak thy wishes. joan. i dare not trust the air with such a secret as that which trembles here. (_approaches and whispers._) cha. who told thee this? can death then ope his mouldy jaws, and speak without a tongue? joan. wouldst thou hear more? cha. forbear! joan. the sword, which in the keeping of that church has since remained, must to my hand be given, and thou must claim it. cha. approach! (_to the court._) omnes. is there hope? cha. reason and hope are yet at variance; but instantly to fierbois we will send, and prove the truth of words declared to us. valancour, the embassy is thine. haste thee, thy failure or success decides our movements. louvel protect the maid.--on his return we will again assemble. scene iii.--_church of st. catherine de fierbois._--_midnight._ abbot _and_ father austin. aus. nay, rest awhile, my lord. abb. it may not be, a secret presses here, which ere my soul can quit in peace its tenement of clay, must be discharged; and on no other spot may i divulge that secret. aus. aid me then. here divers tombs of knights attract my eyes, but none with such device as thou hast said. abb. look where the eastern window proudly throws a stream of crimson light, when ev'ning's gloom enshrouds all else--in token of respect to him who sleeps below. did not the chill of age, perhaps of death, benumb my limbs, my watchful feet, accustomed to the path, had led me to the spot. aus. 'tis here. abb. alas! there then at rest lies he, the brave, the young, and oh! for kingly shame, for kingly woe, the murdered, the betrayed. aus. compose thyself. here on this mutilated effigy, (stern lesson of rebuke for haughty pride,) by warrior felt, rest thee. abb. what sound was that? aus. nought save the wind, which tired of being pent within these cloistered aisles, and heavy made by penitential sighs, doth sullen moan for liberty, and free access to heaven. abb. 'tis hushed, whate'er it was. now listen, austin:-- when 'gainst the legions of the saracen the hearts of knights with holy ardour burned, and kings and nobles left their native land, the young montalbert, fav'rite of his prince, joined those heroic ranks. aus. montalbert! he of whom tradition speaks a royal damsel viewed with eyes of love? abb. alas! here secretly their marriage vows were pledged. aus. he fell in fight. abb. oh! would that it were so. come nigher, austin. that marriage was discovered to the monarch, and pride, primeval sin of men and angels, betrayed the kingly mind, and he-- aus. why pause? abb. it is a dreadful thing, my son, to drag forgotten crime to light, and turn aside the veil which time hath drawn o'er guilt in pity. montalbert secretly was sent to france on private embassy.--he sought his bride! his steps were tracked--beneath these walls he fell, here breathed his parting groan. aus. hark! midnight strikes! abb. beneath this stone his cold remains were laid, in stately armour clad, as he desired, that he might lie, as warrior ought to lie, prepared at once to start again to life, when the last trump shall sound. all save his sword, all in this grave, name, honours, wrongs, revenge, were buried deep. aus. why not his sword? abb. the screen which darkens life ofttimes unveils futurity; and simple dying men have proved true prophets. "this sword," he cried, to our good, weeping father, "first won from holiest tomb in palestine, hath earnest reaped of glorious deeds to come. darkness shall cover france: in that her hour of utmost peril, blood of mine shall claim it, and with it work deliverance. where it lies let none ere know, save those who shall succeed thee." his wish has been obeyed. aus. how of his race? abb. he left a babe--its fate unknown to me. aus. what greater need than that which now afflicts us? abb. i have not laid me down to rest, for months, without impatient hope i might be called, before night visited again these walls, to yield the sacred weapon. [_knocking._ aus. hark! that tumult! abb. may righteous heaven forfend no danger nigh. let us withdraw behind this massy pillar, lest we create suspicion. _enter valancour, and monks._ val. to the abbot!-- we have an embassy to him, on which the fate of france may rest. abb. dost hear? release me. [_advances._ who thus disturbs the peaceful hours of night, and what thy purpose? val. this: in the king's name, we here demand a sword which in the keeping of this house has long been held. abb. wherefore claimed? val. in faith of one, a wondrous maid, who says she is decreed to save the country. abb. what proof produced of such a mission? val. this with others-- she has in private told the prince a fact, known to himself alone, and challenges production of this sword, as pledge and proof of her authority. abb. of noble birth the maid? val. most humble. aus. crushed the rising hope of near deliverance. abb. and why? faint heart, why doubt that noble blood doth show itself, though severed from its fount by laspe of years? hast thou ne'er marked the far and devious course of proudest rivers, borne from highest mountain, now lost midst rocks; now over beds impure, slow, sluggish seen; now hidden from all sight, and only heard in murmurs low beneath the shade of dark, impervious boughs; and now so shallow found, that urchin foot dare tempt its depth, and laughing overleap its banks; then sudden bursting forth, and scorning bounds, it pours its sparkling waters in a flood, spreads its wide bosom to the smiling sun, the pride and wonder of the land it feeds? val. we wait impatient thy reply, good father. is there such weapon in these walls? abb. there is:-- and knowledge of the fact attests the mission heaven's work. see where the holy weapon lies, beneath yon massy stone. _chorus of monks._ spring from thy resting-place, sword of the brave! arm the deliv'rer's hand, destined to save-- france calls on thee. _chorus of soldiers._ give it rejoicing light--see! it is ours.-- now we defy the foe--england's great pow'rs!-- france shall be free. scene iv.--_chinon._ joan. bertha. joan. alas! not yet returned? ber. the way is far. joan. what, if too careful of his charge, the abbot coldly deny his suit, some fraud suspecting? wouldst know the heaviest ill mortality can bear? 'tis this--suspense. suspense dries up the fertile mind, holds captive ev'ry nerve, the spirit sinks, impedes swift time's career, and stays the golden chariot of the sky; clothes noon's resplendent face with heavy clouds, makes peaceful night laborious, watchful day. ill, and its train of ills, may all be borne; but dire suspense, that canker of the soul, like a fell blight encrusts each energy of mind and frame, and with unnatural heat consumes the oil of life. ber. let's cheat the hours with converse of the past. sit on this turf, and here recount the story of thy days. sure thou wert deemed, from reason's dawn, a treasure. joan. e'en from my childhood i was never like those whom my childhood shared. to be alone my joy, thoughts undefined my fancy filling. sometimes my heart would throb, my young eye swim with sudden tears; but why i could not tell. i seemed, e'en then, cast from some other sphere, of which sufficient memory was left to link me closer to a former state! and make me feel an exile. ber. would i'd known thee! how sweet to mark developement of mind pregnant as thine! joan. thou might'st have been as others. i was not loved. i was not understood. some deemed me void of nature's kindly gifts, in intellect deficient, and in heart most cold. oh! how they wronged that heart! i loved too keen, alas! yet had but few to love, and fewer still to answer to my love. ber. i pain thee now. joan. regret it not; the heart, like the swelled ocean, must exceed its bounds, and find departed calm best in exhaustion. 'tis past, and i can smile again, dear bertha. it was a bitter time, and i, perhaps, had been a ruined child, when heaven first sent a holy man to shelter in our village. a warrior he had been, but heavy woes had made him change the helmet for the cowl. in hist'ry's page he deep was skilled. i heard, and stole beside him. he did not notice me. then afterwards he marked my kindling eye, and soon, amazed, i found myself his favourite. a new bright world was opened to my view. he told of ages past, of heroes bold, of women too, who, for their country's weal, had nobly died. no longer now alone, i dwelt where mighty spirits dwelt. i heard their lofty thoughts, their sentiments sublime, and lived but in the glorious creation my fancy had called forth. had i a sorrow? 'twas, how mean myself. had i a hope? it was that i might emulate their deeds, and prove as great as them whom thus i honoured. ber. strange tissue of events, which heaven delights ofttimes to weave, making the link which seems meanest to our poor, erring comprehension, the chief on which the chain of life depends. joan. now could i feel the smart of england's yoke, and now one burning wish my heart consumed-- to save my country and my prince. day-dreams or nightly visions had one single theme. whole nights i wept, whole nights i prayed. one day, upon a gentle slope i stood. beneath me lay the smiling plain in vernal beauty. thence i beheld (how swells my heart e'en now!) a squadron of the foe passing triumphant. the trumpet's voice i heard, and the loud laugh alternate rang in echoes through the woods. i gazed; a madd'ning fire, a deadly chill seized on my frame. i fled the sound, nor paused till at the altar's foot i threw myself, in agony and spent. words issued not-- i raised my supplicating hands on high: then sank into a trance, as since i find. ber. scarce have i drawn my breath, lest one brief word should 'scape my ear; and now i gaze on thee almost with awe, temp'ring my fond affection. what followed? joan. as i lay soft music fell upon my ear, diffusing calm ineffable, when thus a voice pronounc'd--"go, raise the siege of orleans." i awoke. the organ's swell filled aisle and vault, and choral voices sang the hymn of praise; but i could hear alone the voice which still was thrilling on my ear, and in a burst of joy i joined the chaunt. then forth i rushed to execute my mission. ber. and that resplendent vision shall not fail-- thy simple name brightest shall stand upon the roll of time--the glory of thy sex-- the wonder of thy age. joan. hark! hasty footsteps! 'tis valancour! how hast thou sped?--the sword? val. is found. [_joan sinks on her knee._ ber. dost hear? val. forbear. joan. omnipotent! now lead me forth, strong in thy strength, prepared to meet what thou hast marked for my career; and though, with gory steps or painful death i work thy will, so freedom crown the land, i'll bless thy mercy. val. the prince impatiently summons thee in council. joan. i obey. scene v.--_french camp at orleans._ du nois. xaintrailles. du n. i tell thee it is a gross affront, and such he means it. a woman too to lead my gallant soldiers, and point the path of duty to myself! i choke with indignation. xaint. hear but all. du n. what more have i to hear? behold the scrawl that marks his folly, my disgrace. canst read, or are thy eyes, like mine, made dim and blistered? hast nought to say? art dumb? xaint. (_reads the letter._) i own 'tis strange. that she should supersede thee in command is more than i had thought. du n. i understand the cause too well! charles had not dared insult me had i been other than i am. xaint. been other! who honour'd as thyself? whose fame fills europe? du n. i tell thee truth, and this the scourge that lashes me. the bar of bastardy is on my shield; the bar of alienation, mock alliance, pride trampling on the outraged laws of decency. witness me, heaven! i would prefer to date honest descent from humblest parentage, than trace within these veins the highest blood illegal mixed. xaint. think on thy own brave deeds-- deeds that---- du n. more widely spread the guilt that shames me, spreading the name of bastard through the world. xaint. why, you've looked on good till 'tis become evil. men love distinction, or in camp or state; and he has fortune won whose kin may serve as staves to mount ambition's proudest ladder. du n. i have no kin. what owe i to their love that i should claim them such? the life i have? the debt is cancelled by the shame entailed. to me my country is both sire and mother; and i for her such gallant deeds will work, that should i ever boast the name of father, my children shall exult in their descent, and swear by france, by honour, and their sire. xaint. no more! she comes! now smooth thy ruffled brow; and let thy courtesy, at least, ne'er blush for thy neglect. du n. i will not meet her here. if i be mocked, 't shall be where all may see it, and learn with me to ridicule the cheat. [_exit._ scene vi.--_english camp._ earls of suffolk, warwick, arlington, john talbot. suf. our work is near its end. yon city's fall completes our triumph and ensures repose. john t. alas! war. how! does this cause sorrow? john t. yes, truly. war. and why? to me the prospect is most welcome. john t. because, upon a course of glorious years, in tented fields, you proudly may revert; but i---- suf. thou'rt spared from sights that might have shocked thy wiser manhood. war is a noble game, but full of much humanity deplores. john t. but i was never born for dull, still paths; the trumpet's clang, and the loud din of battle suit me. arl. pity such taste cannot be humoured. with scarce a raw recruit to man his ranks, the flower of french nobility with us conjoined-- john t. shame on them all! i do despise them. suf. despise! thou dost forget thee. arl. their shame, forsooth? john t. are not their arms against their country turned in aid of foreign foes? are they not traitors; aye, traitors to the land they help to fetter? these fields may haply drink my heart's life-blood; but as i hope for glory, ere i die, (the winding sheet i crave,) i would prefer to clasp in friendliness the hand which slew me in brave defence of its own rights and laws; than the false caitiff's, fighting by my side, those rights, those laws to crush beneath our feet. war. talbot an advocate for charles! john t. not so. yet there is something here that pleads for him. his mother's hatred drives him from a throne, whilst my fond mother's parting kiss still glows upon my brow; and when i heard what tears he shed, when told his father was no more, i mingled mine with his; and his bereavement making my own, i honoured him for all the grief he show'd, and felt him nobler foe. _enter officer._ offi. my lord, breathless i haste. suf. speak on. what news? offi. a champion for france is on her way. suf. a female too! charles is indeed beset, to have recourse to aid like this. to arms! we'll plant the royal standard on those walls to give her greeting. scene vii.--_chinon._ valancour. arnault. arn. sayst thou the siege is raised? val. orleans is free. arn. and she, the sainted maid, has done the deed? val. herself! the maid of orleans henceforth named. oh! 'twas a noble sight to see her entrance into the city she herself had saved. each distant quarter had disgorged itself of its inhabitants. age had forgotten all its decrepitude; sickness, its pains. walls, windows, streets, each edifice and pillar seemed as a living mass; and waving hands and loud acclaims filled the astonished air. the sun burst forth in joy. onward she came, our civil functionaries at her head, the wonderous sword and standard borne before her. the princely duke alençon at her side, his stately countenance impressed alike with patriotic joy and martial pride. arn. and thou wert in the fight? val. i was, and near her; a proud distinction, for where'er she stood there hottest battle raged: the foe to crush her, friends to rival her. sight alone of her gave spirit to the faint, and kindled courage e'en to its height. herself in ev'ry part, like lightning's bolt was seen, sudden as fatal. arn. the night was terrible. the heavens appeared to threaten earth with wreck. val. it has no fellow. terrific thunders rattled through the sky, and fiery vengeance hissed upon the ground, with human gore and heavy rain deep drenched. "see! heaven itself doth fight for us!" she cried. as struck with terror back our troops recoiled. the happy augury was hailed with shouts, and victory was ours. arn. but yet, methinks, the hand of woman should be free from stain, and most from stain of blood: the lamb for innocence, the kite for prey. val. no blood has stained her hand. the sword she bears nor forms defence, nor wounds, but guides the fight. amidst its loudest din and fiercest rage she shows a countenance most calmly brave, most femininely gentle. arn. and he, great orleans' valiant son, was he-- val. ah! 'twas a curious sight to see how proud he scorned the maid when first she reached the camp. his great heart swelled against her, and his gibe, keen as his sword, betrayed contempt. arn. and well he might be pardoned, if he deemed the thought injurious, that a woman should succeed where he himself had failed. val. forth armed she went, a graceful female, though in martial garb. he marked her lack of sword and loosed his own; and with a curled lip and mock humility he turned the heft, and offered it in silence. "i may not trust to arms," she calmly said. his searching eye glanced on her countenance, he coloured crimson deep, and the proud sneer forsook his lip, and, like a lion tamed, he showed him gentlest where he least intended. arn. he must beware: the stream turned suddenly may suddenly become a torrent. love, from hatred sprung, can only be excelled by hatred born from love. val. (_aside._) why should the thought dart agony like this into my heart? arn. what next is her intent? val. to pass to rheims. thither, at dawn, the prince departs to join her, and the army she conducts. arn. heaven speed the journey. end of the first act. act ii. scene i. warwick and arlington. war. how swift a courier is this winged love! why i have made this journey in less time, impelled by thought of her, than ere before, though martial glory spurred me on the way, and every proud ambitious hope to boot. arl. our jaded horses prove that truth. war. and yet they sped not swift enough for my fond wishes. say, hast thou ever marked the moon's full beams upon the wave, when broken by the breeze? such is the image of my heart: joy's rays illume its depths and sparkle on its surface; but all within is restless--bright confusion. arl. well may she wake such love, such fond impatience; not breath of closing flowers, not eve's soft beam-- war. with nought that marks decline compare my alice. she is the blush of morn first caught by earth, when seraph hands unbar the gates of heaven, and from its courts bright beams of glory stream. fresh as the od'rous breath by zephyr scattered, when first from dewy flowers he springs rejoicing; light as the froth by chafed ocean cast, when young aurora, laughing at his suit, refuses to retard her rosy steps; and playful as the changeful hues reflected upon its quivering breast. arl. she comes.--farewell. love bears no eyes but those he lights to view the rapture he creates, and turns offended from the stranger's gaze. [_exit._ _enter countess._ countess. my life, my warwick! war. my own! thus let me clasp thee to my heart. count. no! let me see thou art indeed my lord, and read in those dear eyes the joy of mine. thou hast been long in coming. war. sweetest, no. impatient, like myself, thou hast, i see, been measuring the hours by love's slow glass, and made them sad and heavy. count. now thou'rt wrong-- not sad. war. not sad when warwick is away? count. have i not hope to share the hours with me? and who can e'er be sad in such sweet fellowship? thy last receding step dries up my tears, for thus she gently whispers to my heart-- "the moment passed that bore him from thy view, the next but draws him nearer to thy arms." war. but how deceive the intervening moments? art thou not lonesome oft? count. how may that be? from thee i never am divided. thought personates thyself, and thus i talk with thee, sit by thy side, frame answers for thyself so full of love, so paint thy face with smiles, thy eyes with such approval fill, my heart leaps with delight: then only am i lone when some intruder comes intent to cheer me. war. why thus thou'lt make me jealous of myself, and envious of the shadow i supply. count. then too i sing to thee, or deck myself, and try which ornament doth suit me best: smile at the smiling image i behold, and bid the vivid blush, which spreads my cheek, fade not away, that it may tell my warwick 'twas thought of him which makes me value beauty, and prize the charms that justifies his choice. war. sweet flatterer! then thou art happy, alice! count. indeed i do not know what means unhappiness. e'en from my infancy i have been blessed. my eyes first opened on the laughing spring, and all of life, of hope, of fond affection has been passed in springtide. i never shed a tear till my great father died; and those first tears were wiped away by him whom first i loved. war. but how! thou dost not even ask if salisbury's sad death has been avenged! count. contains revenge then ought that may impart joy to felicity, or make repose more tranquil, which already was complete, that it should be desired? war. nor yet enquire how speeds the war? count. i love not war. war. and yet art salisbury's child, art-- count. warwick's bride, thou'dst say. of him whose gallant heart of war makes pastime, and who a rival gives me in renown. and yet i do repeat, i love not war, and rather in our native woods would stray, listening the thrush's early note of love, or plucking wild flowers from the bank to crown thee, than hail thee, warwick, conqueror of france. ha! there is blood upon thy arm! war. for shame! turn pale--a very coward thou. count. not i: but nature is to blame, who doth abhor the sight of blood: but if i must, as fits a soldier's wife, enquire of war, then tell me, not how many thousands perished, but what new honours thou hast gained; and better still, say, how much nearer is the end of strife. war. my honours gained is not to feel disgraced. a strange reverse has visited our arms. not alone has orleans been relieved, and other strong posts fall'n, but at the name of joan of arc our stoutest cheeks turn pale. myself beheld the maid, banner in hand, march by our troops, with suffolk at their head, not only unmolested, but with dread,-- such awe hath filled all hearts. count. tell me no more. unbend that brow, and think alone of me, and in these smiles forget-- war. aye! all forget but this--that thou art mine--my own for ever. forget that with the dawn i must depart. count. oh, no! thou must not go. war. i dare not tarry. exasperated by our late reverse, and fearing that success to bolder deeds may tempt the foe, the regent hath desired lord scales and talbot to unite with us-- we wait at patay for their promised force. count. no more. now let love's rosy fingers press the swift foot of time and stay his flight. scene ii. richemont. valancour. riche. pass on to rheims! e'en through the heart of bedford's army! what rashness! val. 'tis by order of the maid. riche. what folly next, is son as father mad? thou canst not mean it. val. 'tis fact, my lord. she must behold the crown plac'd on his head. riche. eternal curses light upon her own. thwarted in all my views, fortune but mocks, instead of crowning me. these rival states should from my fiat take their destiny. nor care i whether charles or bedford win, so either make a step for my ascent. val. yet both have slighted-- riche. me!--'tis false as hell. they may appear to show me some neglect, and why? both fear me, both are jealous of me. what else could instigate the wary bedford to waive my offer to command his host? what too but envy influences charles? val. the dauphin's heart is warm--he may feel sore. riche. at what? that i should cause his myrmidons to shed their forfeit blood! his fav'rites banish? yet little have i gained--his present minion provokes my stronger hate, and worse contempt. val. but you will grace the fête with your high presence. riche. no: let them play the part of fools without me. his majesty of bourges doth well to merge his title, erst bestowed on him, for one still more absurd in folly. val. think, my lord-- with reverence-- riche. peace! i see the issue. my own name tarnished by severe defeat on beuvron's plains, my promises proved empty, while hers, though most extravagant, fulfilled, the fools will honour her, o'erlook myself; or worse, most odious contrast may be made betwixt successful rashness on her part, and baffled skill on mine. not heaven itself shall force me to such chance. val. if fortune's tide have met a turn, no matter by what means, would it be well to stand aloof, and miss the way to honour? will not thy absence rather awake impertinent remark,-- be deemed his will? riche. there's reason in thy words; and more, so prodigal is he, so reckless, new honours he may heap on her, and plead omission on my part as his excuse. i'll spare him that pretence.--prepare for baugenci. scene iii.--_camp._ du nois. xaintrailles. du n. there is a magic in the full sweet tones of her impressive voice, which heard but once, dwells long upon the ear, charmed with the sound; then sinks into the heart, no more to be forgotten, pleading still when she herself is mute. how goes the hour? xaint. day's harbinger, with chilly lips, has kissed the pine's tall top. the camp is locked in sleep so deep, that yon marauding fox's step distinctly may be heard. du n. sleep flies my lids-- for the first time i dread to-morrow's chance. the attempt is bold, and skilfully conceived, on suffolk's ranks to fall, and break his force ere talbot can arrive and strength unite; but if the project fail!--(_aside,_) i cannot think of her disgraced, without a pang. xaint. should fail! who fears defeat in what the maid devises? du n. heaven doth not always smile on those he loves. time offers marvels: once the name of joan i scorned, abhorred! i do not hate it now, though now i've cause. she robs me of renown, and at her bidding i unsheath my sword. xaint. she may be proud!--a victory she has won, that spirit to subdue. she hath in truth a charm to make stern hearts most meek, and yet she is not beautiful, as men count beauty. du n. she is the better suited to my taste; i do despise the doll, where nought of soul is ever seen to light the faultless eye. xaint. yet glances have been cast on thee which might have thawed the coldest heart, and caused an angry lance to tremble in its rest. du n. hers is that beauty by the mind conferred, the outward vestment lumined by the soul, which sets respect as centinel to guard the treasure stored within, and from approach too near, restrains those whisperers of nought, who throng impertinent around the form, which owes to symmetry alone, and feature, its power to fascinate. there is a dignity withal in her simplicity, which awes the surer for the company unwont in which 'tis found. nature herein has mocked the cunning artist's skill, who, in a rim of purest silver sets his goodliest stone, making the metal richer for the gem. xaint. thou lovest her then? du n. are words denied the heart of firmest mould, or what enchains my tongue? if life for life, if soul for soul exchanged, so honour were retained, be mark of love, then love i her. xaint. thou surely wilt not wed her, when easier terms-- du n. now, by my sword's good point, for that foul thought i could a vengeance take which should forbid all chance of like offence. ah! witness not these swelling veins, that i myself am heir of wanton shame, and worse, of broken faith? sits not the stamp accursed of bastardy upon my brow, to dim the gems that in my coronet might sparkle? and shall i imitate the vice i scorn, and wring some breast with anguish like my own? hear me, ye mighty pow'rs above, if e'er, through me, should fall the tear of broken virtue; if cry of babe that may not bear my name, ascend, then may that tear consume my heart, and that faint cry o'erpower my prayer for mercy. xaint. i meant not to offend: my foolish words thus oft disgrace my thoughts. du n. enough! if mine she e'er become 't shall be in holiest bands; but if thou value me, ne'er breathe the secret. she is not to be won as other maids, and never can i brook refusal. hark! the trumpet calls. xaint. i leave thee for my post. du n. and i for mine. scene iv. joan, du nois, xaintrailles, valancour, &c. joan. warriors and chiefs of france! from such a presence i should have shrunk, had i not felt within me a mighty impulse not to be controlled. impute not then to arrogance, or worse, unfeminine delight, that here i stand prepared to lead to deeds of ghastly carnage. let my sex and weakness sleep in my mission, and view me only as the choice of heaven. look at this banner! mark its waving folds! the breath of liberty doth swell it wide, and liberty shall make its ample shade a freeman's shroud to cover him that falls; a freeman's home for him who shall survive. this day we must inflict a blow so fatal that our proud foe may stagger in her strength. du n. and time it were that such a blow were struck. look on our desolated fields, our vines, our groves destroyed. the sword hath mown the corn, and felled the arm that should have reaped the harvest. xaint. and heavy made the foot of many a maid whose heart was only lighter than her steps. joan. oh, hapless country! loved, insulted soil! birth-place of heroes, martyrs, and of saints! land of my sires, by kindred blood embued! grave of my mother! altar of my god! to thee i pledge the life which first thou gavest, nor ask a higher, happier boon than this-- to die for thee! du n. here also do i swear to pluck my country from a foreign yoke, or perish in her cause! omnes. so swear we all! val. (_aside._) ah! 'tis not glory's flame, nor love of france, but love of her that flashes in his eye. joan. what wait we? du n. but the signal. joan. give the word:-- advance! scene v.--_an english camp._ suffolk, officers, &c. suff. to arms! sound an alarm! summon our chiefs!--each to his post!--away! _enter warwick and john talbot._ war. war's hounds have slipped again their leash, and bear upon us.--hark! the cry is up. suf. be thine then first to meet the foe. [_exit warwick._ john t. and i! oh! give me danger's post!--forget my youth;-- think the father's honour hangs on the son. suf. seek warwick's side. john t. my deeds shall thank thee. father! oh! tarry only till this field i've fought. we must not meet till i have proved this gift, whose motto to the sun i now display,[a] (_draws his sword,_) and claim it witness to the truth it speaks. for my brave sire, old england, and st. george! [_exit._ [a] sum talboti, sur vincere inimicos meos. scene vi.--_field of battle._--_thunder and lightning._ warwick. war. are earth and heaven again in fury met, as late on orleans' fields? the elements pour forth their wrath in such tremendous peals, such bolts of fiery death illume the sky, that earthly weapons seem the lesser ill. our soldiers falter.--ho! look to john talbot! ardour like his will lead him into peril. [_exit._ _enter soldiers, followed by john talbot._ john t. hold! cowards! when did england's sons e'er turn their backs to frenchmen--seeking mean safety? have ye then quite forgot proud cressy's field, poictiers or agincourt? soldiers. we will not fight with _her_. john t. then back to england, quick, disgrace to men; tell there your sons ye fled a woman's arm, and ask your wives to welcome back their slaves. give them your swords, and take instead their distaffs, and let the colour which has fled your cheeks rest in hot blushes on the veteran brows of your more valiant fathers. away! ye are not worthy of your name; but in your flight, if ye should meet john talbot, as like ye may, tell him, "we left your son to wipe out our disgrace in his heart's blood!" sol. lead us back!--a talbot! john t. come on! and when they speak of this in england, bold ones and brave shall wish they had been with us. _another part of the field._ du nois. joan. du n. new vigour suddenly hath armed the foe, while our brave troops, fatigued with their own valour, now sorely pressed, pause in their course, and deal uncertain blows. the fate of this day's battle hangs on a point. joan. is not his promise ours who leads the hosts of heaven? who doubts then victory? onward, ye brave! yon lightnings be your guide! the hand that wields them is the patriot's shield! _another part of the field._ suffolk _and_ warwick. suf. our troops at length give way: four times th' attack has been renewed; bravely as oft repelled. if talbot tarry long the day is lost. war. our bravest veterans are seized with dread, thinking they fight against a power unearthly. _enter soldiers in flight._ war. back to your ranks, base cowards! sol. we fight in vain!--john talbot-- war. what of him? sol. is either dead, or taken prisoner. war. i'll rescue him, or perish!--dead or living his father shall again behold him. scene vii. joan. du nois. french officers. du n. the field is ours! the victory complete! the foe on all sides flies! talbot is ta'en! xaint. the glory be our champion's-- joan. forbear! give not the instrument the giver's meed; but rather let us imitate his mercy. quick! let the carnage cease! and ev'ry tenderness show friend and foe. now let our clarions proclaim the joyful news of our success! fling wide the sound, ye gales of heav'n! hills, vales re-echo it, and tell th' awakened land her freedom is begun!--her chains are broken! end of the second act. act iii. scene i.--_field of battle._--_moonlight._ arlington. officer. off. here let us rest till morning. like ourselves, the foe are glad to seek that needful rest which victory and defeat alike demand. arl. no, let us on. we yet may find it hard to reach our friends, and richemont hovers near us. off. whate'er the peril, here i swear to rest me. see! the bright moon looks down upon the field, as if in scorn to view such waste of life. arl. it is a ghastly sight. not drops of heaven bedew the earth, but blood of men; and blood has dyed the stream so deep, that thirsty lip of death rejects the draught it craved so wistfully. off. wide is the difference 'twixt the gallant scene ere fight begins, and that which marks its close: bright shields and dancing plumes, and brighter eyes, and animating speech abrupt, and tramp of martial steed, and neigh, impatient sent, and spirit-stirring trumpet, and the drum; the banner waving wide, and heavy sound of mighty engines breathing fire, showed life this morn in brightest mood and proudest pomp; now death sits centinel in horrid silence. arl. our loss is great, and will be greater still if we continue this unhallowed war: many brave men this day have breathed their last:-- most i regret young talbot. off. is he dead? i saw brave warwick rushing to his rescue. arl. he came too late. from heaps of slain he snatched him, then bore him to a distance, yet alive; but dews of death were gathering on his brow, and his dim eye betrayed departure near. he dared not turn him on his side, lest life from that deep welling wound should 'scape too fast. he watched the sun go down, and darker shades o'erspread his face. impatient now become, often he murmured to himself and said, "it is too late; he will not come, and i must die at last without my father's blessing." off. many brave hearts will mourn for him: he was a noble scion of a noble stem. arl. we thought that he was gone, when the quick step of his despairing father sounded near. stern death relaxed his hold, and for short space allowed his spirit to reanimate his chilly frame. he raised him on his side, clung round his father's neck, and looking on him, feebly he said, "have i done well, my father? am i john talbot's son?" "too well! too well! my brave"--was all the father could reply; but 'twas enough--the young man caught the sound. and dropping back his head, he smiled and died. off. and his brave sire? arl. as if transfixed, he gazed, and mute--then by the body of his son he threw him down, kissed his cold lips, and oft, midst sobs, he cried, "and art thou gone so soon? thy morning ended ere thy noon begun; and such a noon!" but sudden on his hands he saw the crimson stain of that dear blood, and like a lion maddened at the sight, his grief was checked, and springing on his feet he seized his massy sword, and wildly rushed into the fight. off. see figures in the dusk moving apace. (_two soldiers appear._) arl. let's draw aside. off. they make for yonder cottage. scene ii.--_a cottage._ widow of camouse. wid. half light, half dark. oh, would that reason's lamp were utterly extinct, and i could lose the sense that thus i am a tomb to self, where the dim taper only shows its gloom. then i should feel no more, no longer mourn, and my poor heart would cease to throb, my head to burn. one,--three are gone, and now the last. i have no more to lose! i'll lay him in the bed these hands have dug, (i've kiss'd his eyes to sleep,) and then i'll seek the spirits of my lord and other boys, and bring them here to see, how, e'en in poverty, i've made a home fitting camouse's son. e'en now i lose myself, and at my folly smile while i weep. but hark! what steps are these? i must within and guard. _enter two soldiers._ first sol. stay! we are hungry and thirsty.--what have you to give us to eat? wid. my food is woe; and such my appetite i am not to be cloyed, though e'en to surfeit i've been supplied. second sol. her words are strange--her manner is stranger still.-- hunger is not nice, to be sure. first sol. i see but little chance of satisfying hunger here. second sol. ho! there is a smell of wine!--produce it!--come! quick! our master is at hand. wid. those arms upon their shields! away! no longer blast me with your sight. first sol. when we have got what we wish, we will.--the wine, the wine, or look, this shall find it. (_draws his sword._) wid. think you i care for threat of you, or yours? back with your sword; i fear ye not, i tell you; and mark! a fiercer thirst ye all shall have, nor find one drop to cool your burning tongue. second sol. don't exasperate her; these are strange times, and-- first sol. pshaw! the wine we'll have! wid. search for it, then--so wondrous keen your longing. no need have ye of guide. [_soldiers enter the inner apartment._ does vengeance sleep? or will not e'en the dead arise in wrath, and punish the intrusion? [_soldiers return._ why that look? what have ye seen to discompose ye thus? a ghastly corpse? what's that to men like you? hast found the wine? i see ye have. [_soldiers shudder--she laughs._ how now! what! was it not delicious to the taste? the flavour surely should have charmed your palate; quick to detect its excellence and merit. know ye what 'tis? 'tis blood! blood of my son, whose sire your treacherous master slew: for blood ye thirsted once, and blood ye now have drunk. sol. she's mad! she does not know what she says. wid. i tell ye truth. if i be mad, 'tis ye have made me so. sol. 'tis false! we do not even know you. wid. no matter if ye don't. i know you well--too well! ye're richemont's slaves. yon was my son: time was when i had four; where are they now? with him your master murdered! do maniacs know what wakes their frenzy? why then is madness cursed, accursed doubly. saw ye his wounds? gaped they not wide? didst mark? i would have washed them in the stream hard by, had it not crimson flowed, and the foul taint of many a blackened corpse corrupted it. what could i do? i washed them in the wine i had reserved to cheer his bridal day. i never, never thought ye would have pledged him on his cold bier. now from my sight be gone, lest haply i should wither you with curses before the time. [_exeunt soldiers._ i am alone--'tis well! but, oh! this burning brow, the weight that's here! i'll to the dead--would i were dead also! but said they not that richemont too was near? i'll hang upon his steps, and breathe my vengeance on his head before i die. scene iii.--_baugenci._ charles. louvel. cha. oh! fickle hearts of men. three months ago, when the prompt aid of fifty men had been a boon worth warmest thanks, nor threats nor pray'rs could move a foot to join us. now, forsooth, when less we need it, we have aid abundant. towns that but lately would have closed their gates e'en in our face, if we had asked a refuge, fling now their portals wide, and sue our entrance. thou know'st the constable is on his way? louv. with what intent, my liege--a friend or foe? cha. it is not known. lou. to serve himself, no doubt. his ev'ry thought is self. cha. well do we know him. our fortune hath not forged a chain more galling than that which binds us to a man we hate. howe'er, his views will quickly now be known:-- the maid is sent to meet him. lou. was this prudent? should his intent be mischief, would he scruple, e'en by the nearest road, to blast our hopes? cha. she hath a chosen guard for her protection, with xaintrailles at their head. he dare not harm her! yet would they were returned: in honour's name, we rather would forego the crown she promised, than ought of evil should befall the maid. lou. that none will doubt: she has a double claim; to thee her sex's charms-- cha. we charge thee, louvel, breathe not a word like this: her simple grandeur checks all idle thought, and spreads around her the very purity which decks herself. _enter xaintrailles._ what tidings? say, have swords been interchanged, or comes he peacefully? xaint. affection leads him, such were his words, to greet your change of fortune. lou. true regard has never brought him; but wish the world should fancy he has set the crown upon your grace's head, his favoured presence needed. cha. then we will show him he mistakes. we owe him nothing but most cordial hatred, and come what may, that day's felicity shall not be marred by sight of him. lou. my liege, you surely will not dare refuse! cha. not dare! the prince too fearful to resent an insult, proves oft too mean to recompense a friend. relate what passed between the maid and him. xaint. rumour had told him, or his heart suggested, he might be deemed an enemy. awhile he gazed upon us with a fixed regard; but when he saw the maid, his black lip curled, and his sharp features grew still more contracted. few could have borne that look malign, and fewer not quailed beneath it. cha. but the maid,--she bore it? xaint. as one completely armed in innocence: the peace within shed lustre o'er her face, and sense of merit brightly tinged her cheek. alighting gracefully from her proud steed, she bent her knee, and made low reverence. cha. 'twas rev'rence ill bestowed--she's his superior, and all that ministers to feed his vanity were well to spare. proceed. xaint. your grace has seen how, when a storm arises, the dark cloud, pregnant with thunder, scowls upon the meadow placidly fair, where still the gay beam lingers, before its vengeance bursts. he deigned no courtesy. his chest swelled high, and thus he spake abruptly:-- "thou hast design, i see, to fight with me; i know not who thou art, nor who hath sent thee; or heav'n, or hell,--but of this be certain, i fear thee not, and bid thee do thy best, or worst, as pleases thee,--it matters not." lou. most insolent! the insult shown to her was meant for thee. cha. it is not lost. behold him! lou. smooth thy brow. we must not yet offend one who may injure us. _enter richemont._ riche. i forestall all messages, and come on duty's wings to tend my homage, with all expressions of my joy, to offer on this most happy turn of your affairs. cha. our thanks, as due, are thine. riche. rumour reports your highness means forthwith to pass to rheims, and there in state-- cha. then rumour speaks the truth. riche. and yet, i crave your grace, a better medium might surely have been found, intelligence of moment to convey to zealous friends. cha. no real friend would claim regard to forms, in times like these. riche. but yet without advice, a step of such importance meditate? cha. from whom should we or ask, or need advice? are we not master of ourself--our actions? riche. not from the sycophants that court the ear, of royalty abused, making their prince a puppet in their hands, merely to serve their selfish aims; but from the wise-- cha. the counsel needed was our own, nor wished we other. riche. counsel! the imposture's gross. this artful woman, this low-born tool of more expert deceivers-- cha. 'twere well to speak in more befitting terms of one who renders services so signal. it is the will of heav'n, by her declared, that we repair to rheims; and 'tis our duty, our pleasure also, to obey the mandate. riche. your grace is jesting: better far it were to punish, and severely, her presumption, than heed her guilty tales, or idle follies. what hath she done, this delegate of heaven, but what the meanest, youngest of your captains, had, in like case, done better? cha. ask the english, the bravest foe that walks this nether earth, this lion-hearted, great, and warlike race, whose very valour makes it honour to confront them; to them propose the question, they will answer-- shook to the centre of their inmost soul their stoutest men, their ablest captains beaten. ask france herself the same, and she will say-- restored her to her rank among the nations, and made it shame e'en to be thought disloyal. had other chieftains done but half as much, no need for aid like hers had then existed. riche. i boil with rage! cha. she claims thy gratitude, as well as mine, my lord. riche. but not the grant of royal dignity, i ween. 'tis said, the arms of france, by leave express from you, she partly wears upon her impious standard-- insult to royal blood. cha. what's nobly won she justly wears. the wanderer, charles, betrayed by his own kin, forsaken by false friends; scorned, hated, persecuted by his mother, chased through his own domains like hunted deer; unnatural compacts leagued 'gainst him and france, compelled to view the sacrifice of hearts, whose only crime was loyalty unshaken-- now, through that maiden, holds another state, and can reward his friends, chastise his foes. riche. but to a woman owe a crown! cha. why not? the prize is sweeter made as woman's gift: we strengthen ties by woman's aid with kings, then why not owe a crown? riche. for insult this? cha. if so received. riche. 'tis well: we met as friends, are we to part as foes? cha. as suits thy humour. we sought not to detach thee from our cause, nor care we for the loss of what has been so haughtily conceded. to be plain-- monarch acknowledged as we soon shall be, henceforth, my lord, we reign our own free master-- thou shalt retain the station justly thine; but not, as heretofore, forgetting ours, shalt thou exert undue authority. nor at our coronation shalt thou aid us-- our will is said. farewell. [_exit._ riche. what have i heard? dares he address such words as these to richemont? not at his coronation to appear! fling in my face defeat!--shake off control! shall i submit to such indignity? cringe to the man who thus has wounded me? no, never.--i will be revenged on her-- on him, though my own ruin be the issue. if there be strength on earth, or artifice in hell--thou shalt repent this outrage. scene iv.--_chapel._--_rouen._--_evening._ joan. joan. what means this tumult in my soul? restless, irresolute, or sad, i shun each eye, yet fly from solitude to fly from self. mysterious pow'rs! twelve times that full-orbed moon has scarce o'erspread these towers with silver light, and i have lived more years than weeks before. 'twould seem, indeed, i never lived till now, though now existence is beyond myself. how strange the knowledge thus of self obtained! astonished o'er the deep of my own heart, first to my startled view revealed i stand, and almost trembling ask--can this be so? _enter du nois._ du n. how ill in unison the sounds i fly with that which passes here! this calm may soothe me. ha! 'tis herself. shall i advance? she sees me. forgive, if inadvertently my steps have led me to intrude. joan. du nois! thou'rt welcome. intention like my own, no doubt, hath brought thee here to plead the peace of our loved country. we've fought for her, have bled for her together; meet then our prayers together should arise for her prosperity. du n. together, saidst? together! (word awakening strange delight in hearts where love has hidden him.) for thee, as her i would implore all heav'n can give; but ere my willing lips may frame such prayer, i must forgiveness ask of thee. joan. forgiveness! all that the noblest nature shows most nobly i owe to thee! du n. yet do i need thy pardon-- thou once, of all that bears my maker's impress, thou wert my scorn, aversion. canst forgive-- forget? joan. oh! sweeter far the kindness felt than injury atoned. i know thee but as thou hast seemed, nor wish to know thee other. now on yon altar's steps. du n. before the altar! knows't thou what thou sayest? joan. what place so meet? give me thy hand that thus--why dost thou tremble? du n. wilt thou indeed then plight, wilt vow with me, to share through danger's hour, through sunny days-- what mean those tears? joan. i know not more than thou. some pang inexplicable called them forth, waked, it may be, by some prophetic feeling. the soul hath intimations of the future, sep'rate from all corporeal impressions, and now, perhaps, some hov'ring spirit whispers that in my parting hour thou wilt be near me, and the unbidden drops that fill my eyes will then be welcomed in thine own. promise thou'lt lay me in a grave whose mould is free. du n. so heaven be true to me! i thought to pledge another, happier vow. my spirit's chill'd, and the bright hope just called to life is faded. footsteps approach. farewell. [_exit._ _enter bertha._ ber. why here alone? why, when thy hopes have nearly gained their height, is thus thy cheek so pale, thy look so pensive? joan. hast thou then never felt that bliss approached so near as just to meet the grasp, becomes extreme of pain? ber. may not a softer cause-- turn not thy cheek away--some noble knight-- joan. the dove of my desire may find no place on earth to rest her chilled and weary foot. i feel that heaven has marked me from my kind, from social life, from all endearing ties, and dare not harbour thought of tender bliss. ber. banish the fear, and with myself believe the treasures of thy heart shall be the prize of kindred worth. joan. my lot is cast, and lone i must pursue my path till it be ended. for common love too proud,--too mean, alas! to win such love as only could delight me. above e'en kindred ties, whose modest worth i prize, but no assimilation find, the gushing tide of fond affection checked, i boundless pour upon my native land; but no returning stream the waste supplies, to make me richer for the theft from self. ber. no common love is seeking thy acceptance-- look at yon banner, waving in the wind. ah, wherefore start? how at the sudden sight of ought connected with the form we love, the conscious heart stops in its full career! pale grows the cheek, but swift through ev'ry vein the blood with force accelerated speeds, and dyes with crimson blush the pallid skin. joan. fled from the precincts of my heart the secret which i had hoped e'en from myself to hide. o traitor heart! why hast thou failed me thus? ber. wherefore hath anguish thus o'erspread each feature? joan. condemn me not. would thou couldst read this breast! here no emotion dwells thou couldst reprove. as angels view the charge to them consigned, as o'er their forms with outstretched wings they lean, speechless with love, and only bent to serve the appointed object of their holy vigils, so i his form behold, such feeling share. ber. why should i censure thee, sweet friend, for that which is but honour to himself, as thee, and marks the worth of both? such love as thine-- joan. oh no! i dare not, cannot call it love. as well might the poor wren, that nestles there, become enamoured of the mountain bird, as i fond thought of him might entertain. ber. nay, say not so: 'tis no offence to love. doth not the woodbine climb the loftiest tree, with fond endearment clasp its stately trunk, smile midst its boughs, and shed her soft perfume in token of delight, and fear no frown, no censure for her daring? joan. soothing words fall like the dew upon the sterile soil, mocking the want it never can supply-- i am what i must be--he e'er the same. ber. thou art unjust to him as to thyself, bride of du nois. joan. du nois! thou art deceived. not he,--alas! i have betrayed myself. ber. i see it now. o'er his a prouder ensign waves wide its ampler folds--the staff of france,-- the royal charles has gained. joan. oh! do not frown. nought harbours in this breast that may provoke or scorn from him, or just rebuke from thee. yet have i shrunk from ev'ry eye, and now i shrink from thine--think not unkindly of me, and spare allusion to this painful hour. [_exit._ ber. no, no, it cannot be. she doth mistake. love is no passion in her breast. it is but sentiment refined, sustained and fed by her own heart; the offspring of events, wherein so strange a part she hath performed. her country is her idol, centre, hope: she knows no other passion but this one-- the love of her own land. scene v.--_interior of the cathedral of rheims._--_the coronation._ archbishop. charles. joan. arch. faithful the promise. 'twas spoke, 'tis done. france now demands her king; scion of ancient root, hope of her line: and here in sight of her assembled chiefs, 'tis mine to set this crown upon thy head, and with this oil, from heaven first brought, anoint thee. joan. stand i indeed on earth? is this no dream? arch. mark well the circle which must bind thy brow! emblem of ceaseless duty and reward. look on these gems--so be thy virtues bright. tears from thy people drawn, by ill-stretched power, will dim their lustre; while the grateful smiles, by kindness waked, will brilliancy impart, and show that heaven approves and dwells with thee-- a curse or blessing shall this circlet prove, fetters in hell, a fadeless crown in heaven. [_the crown is placed on the head of charles._ sound the loud trumpet! let the organ's swell re-echo through these walls! long life to charles! joy to the rightful, to the usurper shame! joan. i cannot pray: bliss hath engrossed my soul, and wrapt each sense in agony of joy. arch. approach, and pay your just allegiance. [_the nobles involuntarily draw back and make way for joan, who throws herself at the king's feet._ joan. my sovereign liege--my king--accept--these tears. cha. here to my heart i clasp thee, friend, preserver. this chain shall bind thee to thy king, thy country-- [_takes the chain from his neck and places it on joan's._ wear it in token of this hour-- joan. my liege! when it shall be restored, 'twill tell that life and i are parted. (_to the archbishop._) now complete my mission. here at thy feet, sword, banner, i depose, and consecrate his own to him who armed at first my hand. arch. the lofty strains repeat! and with the monarch's name, beloved, now join the holy maiden's. [_joan sinks on her knee._ end of act the third. act iv. scene i.--_council._ charles, &c. joan. cha. a monarch now confirmed by holy rite, our earliest duty is to recompense all those who in our cause have been most zealous. thee above all, (_to joan,_) to thee our realm we owe. we would thy merit mark as may become ourself and thee: but pause to name award as to thyself shall be most pleasing. louvel, 'tis thine to learn her wish, our joy to grant it. lou. such gracious speech may well embolden thee. name freely thy desire. is wealth thy wish? cha. how her eye kindles! joan. sell my heart's blood for gold! hazard each desperate chance, die ev'ry hour, deprive poor nature of her due, food--rest, make the vile flesh lord of the daring mind, for sordid heaps of dross! perish the thought! i am not to be bought e'en by my country-- toil, hardship, life, all she approved in me, a free gift was bestowed, and must remain-- if she the present scorn, i scorn them too. lou. then, wherefore, peril life? hope of reward, the state's high honours, riches, rank, and greatness, justly make spirits bold, and wake brave action. joan. the voice of heaven first drew me from obscurity, and no reward i seek but its approval. oh! never, for the hope of gain, could i have served my country. claims she not by right, all love, disinterested faith, all service? not hers the debt to recompense her sons, though, like fond mother, she delights to grant it; but theirs the debt of gratitude first due to her, which only thus can be discharged. then mark eternal shame upon his brow, though brave his deeds, though prodigal of toil, who honour, glory, high renown, or wealth, seeks for himself alone, and sheds the blood she justly claims for selfish hope or aim. lou. ambition is the offspring of all hearts in which a germ of noble passion dwells. none who in secret feel themselves above the sphere of those with whom they move, but sighed for greatness--rank. joan. what is it to be great? to live in tapestried halls, beneath gay domes, to sleep on beds of down, eat costly food, midst trembling slaves, who watch the stern command; to call those friends who bow and cringe and fawn, and flatter loud the vice they should condemn? this is dependence, nought but servile pomp, and this i scorn. to rise above the wants of this low state, to hold each appetite in justest bounds, in native freedom both of mind and frame to dare all ills but vice, and fear no danger but a tainted name; glory's own self to love, and not th' applause which follows open-mouthed amongst her train; to walk the earth as one whose home is heaven, and prizing life, yet view in death a friend, or clothed in frowns, or robed in smiles,--this, this alone is to be great:--then needs there rank to make me such? alen. the brave lives not for to-day. he thinks of generations yet to come, and trusts his ashes e'en will speak his praise, and bid his memory live. joan. no eye must read, on tablet proud, what recompense were mine, lest it mistake the cause which prompted me. in history's living page let me appear, simply as joan of arc, the maid of orleans. cha. and wilt thou have it seen in that same page thy king ungrateful proved? joan. stain thy fair name! cha. then be our will obeyed, and this day's grant, in rank, as erst in deed, shall make thee noble. countess of lys, with fair demesnes and wide, assume thy proper seat, and grace a court which yet upon thyself confers no lustre-- to night a splendid fête we give, and there thy king, and all who honour him, shall show their just respect. [_rises. joan throws herself at his feet._ joan. my leige. cha. what wouldst thou? speak. joan. forgive my suit. oh! deem me not ungrateful:-- cancel the word, and let me sink again into obscurity. cha. it cannot be. still with our host remain, and lead us forth to victory. of this anon. pleasure now claims the hours. all here must join the fête. scene ii.--_palace._ alenÇon. du nois. alen. met in good time! if i may augur right, the maid, our nation's pride, will need, ere long, support from her best friends. du n. what hath she done? alen. awoke the bitter malice of the base, who dare not emulate a noble deed, and feel its just reward their own reproach. du n. that she is envied can provoke no wonder; nothing may shine without attendant shade: but that she yielded to receive such honour, this indeed surprises me. alen. it need not. hardly the point was gained, if gained at all: still she entreats permission to depart, lowly as when she left her native vale. du n. and what is there in this to waken malice? whose heart is large enough to envy it? alen. you do forget, no words give more offence than those which mark the speaker's higher worth. her noble sentiments this day expressed, have wrought her many foes; nor does the fête, proposed this eve, yield greater satisfaction. du n. the news i bring must break upon these joys: i seek the king, and must not pause a moment! [_exeunt._ _enter valancour._ val. he here! and wherefore come? to own his love, no doubt, since now in rank she equals him. there's madness in the thought! accursed chance! why did i slight the counsel richemont gave, withheld by paltry fears of blighted honour! shall i turn villain? disappoint his hopes? i want the resolution to be base, yet have not courage to be just. scene iii.--_gardens illuminated._ xaintrailles. lords. first lord. what vain extravagance! none may deny that she hath served the state; but truest service, suppose hers such, may yet be overpaid. second lord. others have nobly planned, and nobly fought; but all their glory is eclipsed in hers. i sicken of the name! xaint. for shame! true glory never can be eclipsed. is not yon planet distinct in its own splendour, though the moon sheds more and brighter beams? well hath she earned the honour she receives: a soul like hers has nature's patent, fairer than a monarch's. first lord. soon will she feel she hath uneasy place among the nobles of the land, and find wide difference between a court and camp. xaint. away with such surmise! let us not mar the gay festivities by churlish murmurs. many our toils to come, and if we slight the present, pleasure in despite may shun us. _enter valancour and bertha._ ber. urge me no more. val. nay, hear what i would say. such is the madness of my passion for her, she must, and shall be mine! and thou must aid me! this night decides my fate! ber. oh! ask me not! val. in tears! and why? loves she then another? ber. look not so wildly! val. speaks she of du nois! ber. who does not speak of him! the brave! the noble! val. she loves him, then? ber. i said not so! val. what trifling! has then du nois declared? ber. i may not break the confidence reposed in me. val. most cruel! wilt thou do nought for me? hast thou forgot a brother, once my friend? ber. alas! that name, i may not dare withstand!--begone! oh! spare me! val. thou wilt comply then? go--i'll wait thee yonder. [_exit bertha._ _enter richemont and attendant._ riche. thou knowst the wretch who followed us when late we passed to baugenci? att. but now i saw her. riche. lead her hither. [_exit attendant._ val. earl richemont here! riche. he is! but would be known by none. thou hast my secret: silence i demand! val. it is thine, but much i marvel to behold-- riche. the sovereign's scorn infects thee, then? val. none owns respect more deep than i; my wonder only rose to see thee here, whom i believed in normandy;-- so the maid besought! riche. the maid besought! is insult then annexed to gross injustice? the charge was mean enough, without such aid. where will the folly end? but well it suits with that which now so speedily will follow. thou hast companion been in arms, and fought with orleans' bastard son, and knowst, no doubt, that he, forsooth, must shortly play the fool, and wed, to please the royal will, the maid. the prospect charms thee, sure! val. (the royal will, it is his own request! _aside._) the proud du nois? it cannot be. not so. (has hell worse torture? _aside._) riche. du nois! the proud, unbending, stern du nois! he with alençon now is with the king, on weighty news from compeigne, which he brings: the governor beseeches instant aid, and who but the redoubted maid must lead it? val. she has resigned her arms, and has declared her mission closed. riche. what then? she may be gained, and will be gained. who trusts a woman's word, which varies with her varying mood? the hand of count du nois will be the recompense of her consent; and is not this a prize to tempt the breaking of a word she ne'er intended to observe? if this concern thee, meet me at midnight by yon temple. (fool! he yet shall prove a useful instrument. _aside._) [_exit._ val. some fiend, but just escaped his doom, hath cast his brand into my heart. whom do i see? herself and bertha! in this shade i'll hide me, and there from her own lips the truth discover. _enter joan and bertha._ joan. forbear! ber. hear me. where native worth exists, esteem will surely kindle into love, and gently ripen into purest bliss! joan. beware that fallacy. the solemn vow, before the altar pledged, but sanctifies the love which first was gendered in the heart, but ne'er creates; a golden link to bind the fonder heart--a chain that galls the cold! ber. but thou wert born to bless! ay, to be blessed! a heart like thine must find-- joan. i do believe that nought on earth may hold fond thought from me. the love which in another would have nourished what most it prized, has but in me proved fatal, and wrought its ruin. ber. thou dost chase a shade, to wither ev'ry flower within thy path. no bliss can rise through him, while valancour-- joan. i cannot love, and therefore will not wed him. what noise was that? val. cursed be the ear that heard, the tongue that uttered such determination. i'll hear no more! now, hate, revenge befriend me. [_exit._ ber. 'twas but the rustling of the scattered leaves, or bird disturbed. ah! tears are in those eyes, and i perhaps the cause. come, chase past thought by sweet enjoyment of this lovely scene. sound, fragrance, air, celestial seems, and wakes a gentle bliss. joan. i'm sick at heart: the bird hath lost its melody, the flower its scent, creation's self to me is now a blank. ber. that tone! those words! say, what has caused this change? joan. the agony the firmest e'en must feel, who having crushed, with desperate hand, his bliss, stands o'er the wreck, and in destruction reads what he has lost. i leave for domremie to-morrow. ber. leave the court! refined society? joan. society has charms alone for one whose heart's at ease. all converse to the sad is as the pressure of the felon's fetter, pricking the deadened sense to active pain. the glare of lights, gay sounds, and voice of men, mock misery's sense, and shock as knell of death. ber. can lonely woods and dells restore then peace? joan. alas! i may not so deceive myself. too well i know what i must soon endure. my charm of life is gone. my full, bold pulse has learnt to swell with mighty hopes, my mind on food of such excitement has been fed, that common, quiet life will be a load too heavy for endurance. mem'ry too will goad with bitter thoughts! ber. oh! say not so; joy is the rainbow of this weeping life, from deepest gloom of sorrow first awoke: but mem'ry is that secondary arch where each bright shade is seen distinct and clear, though softened and subdued, and dear to sight, as faithful copy of the dearer truth. be but thyself--forget but him! joan. forget! as clings the woodbine to the new-felled tree, i cling to him, though not a hope remains. but how shall i forget? my very prayers are holy thoughts of him. leave me awhile. ber. i obey thee. ah, why should this be so? alas! the heart is e'er a wayward thing, loving too oft that most which loves it not. [_exit._ joan. for the last time i see you, beauteous scenes! the last! oh, word of heaviest sense, where all that's lovely finds one common grave. light footsteps soon shall tread these gay parterres, and sighs, but not like these, shall mingle bliss with bliss. none will regret me here; the proud who envied, or the brave who shared my fame, alone will recollect that i have lived. and he!--he'll never give one thought on me when i am gone:--the great, the beautiful will share his smiles, or soothe his cares, while tears shall stagnate in these eyes; and lovely forms shall charm his gaze, when the pale eye of night alone shall view the spot where i am laid, and weep for me. _enter widow._ wid. where dost thou speed so fast? shall not the net be spread in vain before the simple bird, and wilt thou rush to peril? seest thou yon star? observe how dim it shines, how its wan disk is overspread with spots. those spots are blood!--that fading star thine own! fainter and fainter still it quivers.--now 'tis gone! i've cast thy horoscope, and read thy fate is linked with mine! beware thee, maiden! if e'er on earth we meet again, 'twill be-- to meet the spectre king. [_exit._ joan. what may this mean? awe steals upon my mind, and my faint heart beats heavily! _enter attendant._ att. haste! the king calls thee! the council is assembling--danger presses. joan. hath then the unchanging voice of destiny indeed been heard, and i and death in league? he hath bade farewell--shall i refuse?--no!-- protect me, heaven!--lead on! scene iv.--_gardens._ richemont. attendant. riche. hast found the wretch? att. she stands hard by. riche. summon her! i must be rid of thee, maid of orleans! the cup or poniard were an easy way! but this were simple vengeance--poor revenge! disgrace! yes infamy must stain her glory, shame, public hate. but much i fear her firmness, high belief of heaven's consenting will. yet shall she yield! to compeigne, not to domremie must she depart. the hag must aid me then. persuade her to depart--their meeting known, shall stamp suspicion first of foulest crime; and in the event of victory or defeat shall work her ruin! _enter widow._ wid. am i then so near him? lie still, my heart, lest these convulsive throbbings mar my last wish. riche. time wears--dares she delay? (_perceives her,_) i sent for thee. wid. and i, at risk of life, am come. what wouldst thou have from me? riche. respect. wid. i give it where 'tis due: never where not. riche. wretch! knowst of what thou art accused?--of arts which make obedient slaves and friends of devils. wid. and thou of hell's worst crimes--of pride, of murder. richemont, i know thee, who thou art and what! put up thy ready dagger; i despise it-- ay, mock thy wrath! my misery is my safeguard; none care, not even thou, to murder one who would most gladly die! riche. what thus unnerves my arm and chains my tongue? wid. thy wishes too, thy aim i know. the maid has roused thy hate, and thou wouldst work her fall:--'tis worthy thee. there is no need of aiding hand of thine-- her lamp burns dim, to utter darkness dim. riche. (_aside._ ha! that were worth belief! but true or false they must be seen together, and report be spread the fiend himself had tempted her.) not hate, mine is good will. france needs her arm, yet doth she hesitate. go, seek her quick! (i will secure thee,) win her to comply, and richly paint the glory which awaits her. wid. thinkst thou that she will heed what i might say? she cannot if she would; none may avoid their fated hour!--thine too is fixed, and mine! and, oh, that it were come! riche. dost thou refuse? wid. i neither do refuse nor promise thee; my inclination is my law, and mark! none else will i obey. riche. dost seek a bribe? if hunger pinch, or thirst provoke desire, this purse-- wid. perish thy gold! back with thy dross! nor dare again insult the misery that thou and thine have wrought. i called thee murderer! and such thou art! will gold redeem the dead? bribe the cold grave? have these poor weeds so changed me, has frenzy so deformed what once was fair, that recollection of me has escaped thee? then thus i'll shriek into thy ears--i was camouse's wife--was mother of his sons; those sleepers in the bloody grave thou gav'st them. what am i now?--suspected and a wanderer! am mad--and worse than all,--i know i'm mad! look not on me--thy glance inflames my brain, and dries the curses on my parched tongue i long have sought to utter to thy face. blasted of heaven! i will not meet thee more till i shall meet thee _there_. (_pointing to heaven._) [_exit widow._ riche. ho! seize the wretch! and let fierce tortures--gone!--still do i hear her-- still i shudder. is conscience then no tale to frighten coward hearts, and is there truth in retribution? _enter valancour._ ha! what has delayed thee? val. but now i've left the council. riche. the result! the maid! has she then consented? val. she has! riche. 'twas sure she would; and yet i guess not easily. val. compliance was most hardly wrung from her. remonstrance, argument, entreaty failed: her constant answer was--"what heaven gave charge to do, is done--i may no more essay in warrant of his will." in vain du nois appealed to love of martial fame: she heard, though not unmoved, yet resolutely firm: but when the king, half angered, turned away half sorrowful, and thus reproachful said, "then thou too wilt desert me in my need," sudden she stayed her step, (for she was passing,) one look inexplicable cast on him, then springing to his feet she sobbed convulsed, "though all the world desert thee will not i!"-- she leaves at dawn. riche. du nois? val. will follow us. xaintrailles, myself, are ordered to attend her. riche. fortune doth smile on thee! the friend of both, sharer of their toils!--needs of their felicity: the foe dispersed, the nuptial feast succeeds, and grateful to thy heart the thought, thy arm, thy blood their fondest, gentlest wishes aided. val. forbear, my lord! the subject is no jest. riche. what envy thou wilt raise! friendship's just claims must too be thine--to aid in his espousals. val. (_aside._) he racks my heart. riche. first in his train appear with smiling face, yielding alone to him in bliss. val. no more. riche. what joy to hear the vow that makes her his, and read the rapt'rous look returned. val. hold! hold! she never shall be his! riche. then heed the counsel i have given thee. val. it is too late. riche. a better chance awaits thee; she meets the foe!--meets!--when shall she return? val. dip my hand in blood of her! i cannot. riche. nor hast thou need. du nois must be detained: my former counsel take. thou knowst the plan. urge the attack--lead where escape is none! val. my soul recoils at such a damned deed! riche. then play the gentler part--attune the lyre, forthwith prepare thy gayest suit--be first to hail her bride of count du nois! i leave thee, fully to enjoy the blissful prospect. [_exit richemont._ val. fierce madness fires my brain! assist me, heaven, or, better still, ye fiercest spirits aid me, bride of du nois! myself despised, or worse, pitied perhaps by both! held in contempt by richemont too, and taunted for my weakness! sooner shall earth engulph, or lightnings blast me! farewell remorse!--farewell to pity! [_exit._ _widow at the back._ wid. no! not by such villainy shall her career be ended. i'll follow her, and save her! scene v.--_compeigne in the distance._ _troops pass. a distant storm._ widow. wid. the city's walls are distant yet, and weary with the way i sink exhausted. how black the sky! a fearful storm is near. that flash! hark! the low thunder threat'ning growls! the trumpet's call i hear: and now bright swords gleam in the darkness! i must not tarry. [_exit._ _field of battle._ joan, xaintrailles, french officers. xaint. the tide is fiercely set against our squadrons. thy presence only can restore the day. joan. a cloud is on my mind, a dreadful weight bears down my soul. du nois! _enter valancour._ val. (_aside,_) nought but dunois. that name decides thy fate. xaint. far distant yet. joan. alas! and valancour? val. here by thy side! joan. how goes the fight with thine? val. all is reversed! a thousand furies arm the english bands, while ours, so late extravagantly brave, appear irresolute, and struck with dread! joan. (_aside,_) they falter for my sin. the righteous one, in wakened wrath, has turned away his face, since 'gainst conviction's voice i weakly yielded. val. clouds have obscured the sun, and veiled the sky. the omen is an evil one! xaint. to whom? what greater fury rent the vaulted sky at orlean's fight, or patay's gallant field? let him his sentence read in signs who wills; brave men no omen fear but lukewarm hearts. val. that ill-timed taunt thou shalt repent ere long. i'll lead where few shall dare to follow. joan. cease! waste not the time in words! renew the attack! these guard our rear--xaintrailles must lead with me. val. shall i then be forgot? e'en on this field must i receive fresh proof of hate? joan. forbear! love is not ours, but hate thee, valancour! oh! wrong me not so sorely. val. no matter, loved or despised i will be first in danger! and if i meet with death i'll welcome him, as sent from thee. [_exit._ joan. we must not lose such friend, nor let his gallant bearing shame ourselves! xaint. none here dispute thy wish: lead on! [_exeunt._ _enter du nois_, &c. &c. du n. she's lost if but a single step she venture further. tenfold the force the enemy assembles. a rescue! [_exit du nois._ _enter valancour._ val. to the trench! mark well the signal;-- let the enemy approach--then retreat-- the gates that ope to us will close to her. _enter widow._ wid. back! ye proceed no further! val. who art thou? wid. one who will be obeyed! val. what chains your feet? pass on! wid. ye pass not here, unless ye force a passage through my heart. val. then take thy fate. so perish all hell's crew! forward! secure her! wid. and thou art come at last, o lovely death! and i shall die as died my lord, my boys, by bloody sword! there's joy in that. strength fails, yet must i see her. _enter joan_, &c. stay! joan. thou on this field! release thy hold! one moment lost we lose a friend! wid. a foe! tool of a baser villain! he seeks thy death. a weary way i've sped to gain thy speech, and now life ebbs so fast-- see! they have pierced my side--that scarce the tale-- richemont has sold thy life, and valancour-- i told thee, if we met---- [_dies._ joan. man, man abandons me, not heaven! we are betrayed, but not by thee! and see! the beauteous bow his hand hath bent, and token made of peace, where mercy sits to smile away despair. my spirit's free, and my heart beats as formerly 'twas wont. forward, ye brave! remember orlean's walls, and let us pluck, if not the conqueror's crown, a wreath to deck the grave our land shall hallow. for the last time, xaintrailles, wilt follow me? xaint. wherever thou shalt lead--be it to death! [_exeunt._ _enter english officers and soldiers._ make prisoner of the maid! touch not her life unless compelled. ne'er quail and look aghast! she waves no consecrated banner now! see valancour retreats!--now hem her round. [_exeunt._ _enter xaintrailles and joan._ xaint. thou'rt wounded! joan. heed it not! tarry no longer; 'tis of slight moment. du nois!--this faintness-- leave me here. cut through thy way to join him, and all may yet be well! xaint. 'tis our last chance. joan. save him, heaven! never more shall i behold him! oh! i am faint almost to death! [_leans on a tree._ _enter english officers and soldiers._ off. 'tis she! yield thee our prisoner! joan. never whilst strength remains. (_shields herself._) off. seize her! joan. stand off! nor dare to touch me! my life, if heaven have so decreed, be yours; free have i lived! free will i die! [_as she is beaten on her knees valancour enters._ val. forbear! joan. it is too late! deserved i this? i pardon-- [_faints--the soldiers bear her off._ _enter du nois._ du n. turn, traitor! villain! stand on thy guard! val. seekst thou revenge!--'tis thine! here in the shout that rings upon my ear, here in the glance that curst me with forgiveness. i will not fight with thee, du nois! nor will i face an honourable man again. [_exit._ du nois. go to thy fate! while i will never sheathe this sword till i have rescued or avenged her! end of the fourth act. act v. scene i. charles. louvel. bertha. cha. we need no supplication from a friend: thine own desire to pluck her from such fate is not more strong than ours. but what devise? lou. in truth, your grace, i know not what to urge. ber. thou wilt not leave her! make not one attempt! lou. pardon, my liege, the vehemence of grief: terror will oft, unconscious of offence, start forth before respect. ber. oh! forgive me. cha. shame on the heart that needs excuse for words drawn forth by sudden anguish. banish fear. if aught within our power can rescue her, no matter what the cost, she shall be freed! ourself will write to bedford. lou. but in vain. cha. that shall be proved. the offer we will make, e'en policy like his may scorn the slighting. retire;--rely upon thy monarch's word:-- doth this not comfort thee? ber. alas! the hope such promise brings burns bright, but quickly dies! cha. and is our honour doubted? ber. no, my liege, the fault lies here. i would, but cannot smile, yet bless thee for the hope which finds no home. [_exit._ cha. prepare a faithful messenger, and charge he give the packet into bedford's hands. lose not a moment--this concerns us much. if by her loss or death our crown we buy, would that our brow had never felt its pressure. [_exit._ lou. no; never here must she return. my own disgrace or death would be the consequence. i dread her growing influence with the king, the evil will of disappointed minds, who now exult in her captivity. yet hath she borne the glory she has won with such humility--so well hath won it. so little love of self hath ever shown; and with such noble heart distinctions waved, which others would have sold a soul to purchase. no matter--when ambition wakes, then justice and pity too must sleep. no packet leaves these walls, nor intercessions reach thee. scene ii.--_an apartment in the keep at rouen._ bedford. beauvais. beau. but good, my lord, the interest of the state-- justice demands. bed. i question not the policy-- no, nor justice of the step: be it so; it is enough for me, my word is pledged. beau. but pledged to whom? a guilty, low-born woman. bed. whether to monarch or to slave, all one, 'tis pledged, and i'll not break it. honour fled from common breasts, must shelter in the noblest. beau. (_aside._ proud, haughty prince!) why generous by halves? why not then grant her all,--ease, liberty, with means again to lord it over those whose path 'tis outrage she should dare to cross? richemont hath offered well, and reasoned wisely. bed. and wouldst thou move me to a coward's deed to soothe his wounded vanity? shame on 't! talk of ambition, love of fame, revenge, aye, e'en of avarice, and call them selfish, prodigal of life, cruel; why vanity, that vice of little minds, out-tops them all! cold, selfish, marble-hearted vanity! whose god is self, whose greedy appetite, fed still on self, is gorged but never full. never again shall she behold the light of sun. i promised life on one condition-- that she be never clad in armour more. that condition honoured--she shall live. beau. broken? bed. she shall die. [_exit._ beau. then hast thou sealed her doom. richemont i thank thee for the hint. scene iii.--_an apartment in the same._--_two soldiers bearing armour._ first sol. what does it mean? second sol. what mean!--that she must die, and some new charge too must be found against her, let her but wear this once again, and-- first sol. folly! how's this to tempt her? second sol. how! do we not hang the captive linnet who denies to sing, in sight of his own fields and native woods, to cheat him into song? first sol. a cursed deed is this, and 'tis the curse of villany to be a villain's tool--an honest man had ne'er received such charge. second sol. fool--lay it down. see what dents are in this breastplate!--observe how bloody 'tis within: a foul wound.-- first sol. peace! a choking's in my throat, a swelling here i might mistake for pity, if, damned thought, pity and i had not too long been strangers. the prey comes!--see, the tiger's to his lair! _enter beauvais._ beau. begone. (_exit_ sol.) she hath withstood all former trials. all fails to move her. weary hours i've passed within her dungeon, urging all arguments, painting all horrors, sundry deaths to fright her. confession she denies--all ghostly aid, (sold though to hell,) and all reproof rejects. baffled as yet in each attempt to snare her, this shall succeed, or be she fiend or woman. _enter joan._ [_beauvais conceals himself._ joan. what may this mean? hath pity touched their breast? why has the dungeon's gloom been changed for light that cheers, for air that wakens life, not chills? oh, beauteous light! oh, sweet and balmy breeze! thy maker's smile, thy maker's breath art thou, and i am in his presence. tears! the dungeon scarce forced one drop, one sigh of sorrow; but now for very happiness i weep. surely i never felt till now the luxury that conscious being can confer. oh, death! i've looked upon thee till thy form's familiar; e'en till thy ugliness had almost vanished, so well hath darkness and thyself agreed; but now this gentle gale, these sunny beams, this perfumed scent of flowers do tell a tale of home--of loved companions, and i sigh to be, as i was once, a joyous child; although i would not live my life again for all that sight or smell or hope could offer. and, hark! the sound of trumpet clanging shrill-- i hear the tramp of martial feet--of horse! my spirit bursts these walls! my country's voice is echoed in that swell, and my full heart heaves with tumultuous force to answer her. hours of past glory, are ye gone for ever? crowd ye upon my mind alone to torture me, or are ye pledge of wonders yet to come? ha!--armour here!--would that--it is my own! welcome, thrice welcome!--but how dimmed its brightness! [_beauvais advances._ and the vile spider's cast her web across it. off, off, and let me wipe this rust away. i gaze, and the whole field is now before me-- proud steeds and gallant forms, war's panoply! oh! happy hours, when thus i clasped thee on me-- thus kneeling, prayed for thee, my king, my country, thus rising bade--defiance to the foe! beau. offspring of hell, accursed, shame of thy sex! incorrigible wretch! guards, to the council, thus arrayed, conduct her. hence! joan. oh! hear me! beau. not if thou wert to plead. joan. i plead for nought. think not, howe'er, i cannot now decipher what thy malice had suggested. i see it; see it and pity thee. scene iv. council. bedford. beauvais, &c. &c. joan. bed. advance! thou knowest the conditions upon which thy life was spared--thou hast presumed to break them-- thine are the consequences. found in arms, a rebel's doom deferred now justly waits thee. joan. that i have erred, i own with deepest sorrow; but 'twas through weakness: with like justice might the poor, fond bird, unwitting of deceit, be blamed because it fell into the snare the cunning fowler laid for its destruction. it was a cruel deed--but let it pass: not so thy charge of rebel--i repel it. here silence would be guilty fear--not innocence. who rears his country's standard 'gainst the foe-- 'gainst the usurper, claims a nobler epithet. the god of heaven approves the patriot's aim, and sanctifies the deed. not mine, not mine the traitor's guilt, the traitor's doom: i die, as i have wish'd to die,--in proof, in seal of my fidelity. beau. think'st thus to die? more weighty crimes deserve more weighty punishment. whence this boldness, unnat'ral to thy sex? whence but in strength of some infernal spell, of the foul prompting of some lying fiend? remember thy connexion with the hag who fell on compeigne's field, men's awe of thee-- confess the truth--declare what witchery used. joan. what witchery used! the witchery which a mind, bent on one single project, can exert, when fitting opportunity doth meet the master-passion which has fed its fires: that witchery, harsh man and most unjust, by which insulted virtue makes thee crouch, as now thou dost, beneath a prisoner's eye, though deemed forsaken and alone. bed. no more! thou dost but aggravate the guilt too clear. hear thy dread sentence, and prepare to meet it-- convicted of the cursed crime of witchcraft, thou diest at noon to-morrow. beau. this subdues her. the blood has left her cheek, and as a statue, transfixed, she stands. one might dispute she breathed but for her quivering lip. see! she would speak, but the words die. joan. the bitter cup is full! believed a reprobate and leagued with hell, my name, my memory held in destestation! die as accursed of heaven! (_to_ beau.) 'tis false! most false! and on thy head a deeper crime shall rest, than this so foul thou lay'st to me--the weight of guiltless blood. thou mays't condemn me here; but think, once more before the judgment-seat of him who all shall judge, we must again each other meet. how wilt thou meet me there? this charge unjust shall scathe thy shudd'ring soul, and sight of me shall blast thy hopes of heaven. prince, thou'rt of gallant race. bed. i'll hear no more. joan. oh! there are those who on this hour will think with bitterness, when princely honour goads, and noblest blood proves no defence. beau. (_to bed._) she threatens! beware lest some malign, some fatal influence-- joan. blind man! the dumb e'en now have found a voice to curb injustice. the poor worm itself will, by its very writhings, plead its wrongs, and show the cruelty of him that crushed it. oh! not for life i plead--death hath no terror, existence scarce one charm to cheat my eyes. grant me the doom thou threat'st--nor passing sigh, nor murmur shall escape me; but to die on this most monstrous charge! i kneel to thee and thus would stir the soldier in thy breast, the patriot, the upright man, if not the judge. [_kneels to bedford._ bed. we owe the act in justice to ourselves and to our veterans' arms. joan. welcome that thought. [_rises._ i have no more to ask: rightly thou sayst. a woman's hand hath dimmed thy splendid name, and writ upon thy soldier's brow--defeat, and in a woman's blood wash out the stain. but oh! injurious prince, of this be sure-- thou never wilt regain what thou hast lost. the land is free, her chain for ever broken; nor force of arms nor policy shall wrest the sceptre from the hand that wields it now. but hark! what means that agonizing shout, that wail of lamentation, noise confused, the braying of the battle? a frantic matricide the mother is become, and drunk with blood of sons of france, now slakes unnat'ral thirst in the red fountain of her children's veins-- showing in all her cruelty and rage, from whom she took the cup of retribution. (_to bedford._) and thou, thou art disgraced--this unjust deed shall sully thy fair name to latest time-- shall wrest from england's son a blush for thee-- a proud acquittal for myself. scene v. warwick. countess. count. hail, lovely may! thou month of flowers, sweet hopes and rapt'rous song; young zephyrs kiss thy steps and scatter bliss. but how! thou dost not answer, dost not heed me. war. this cheerful sky ill suits this day's proceedings. the maid this morning is condemned to die. count. canst thou not save her? if my warwick plead, none may resist him. war. bedford, burgundy, have not, my gentle alice, hearts like thine. as well might i essay to win, by words, the ravening tiger to relax his hold, when the first taste of blood is on his tongue, as these to mitigate the maiden's doom. count. she must not die--so young, and, i could say, although it scents of war, so brave; and, ah! perhaps some gallant knight has won her heart. it must be so! woman was born to love-- the mean, some mean companion to divide her joys; the noble, one than self more noble-- that heavy sigh! war. a hateful task is mine. the barbarous sentence i must see enforced. oh! would we were upon the banks of avon!-- count. would that we were! my arm fast lock'd in thine, not clad in steel, but-- war. hark! the bell has struck that calls me to my duty. count. i did not hear it. the wind, more kind than thou, has shook its wings, and the unwelcome sound dispersed in pity. nay, thou mayst linger yet. _enter attendant, followed by du nois._ war. whence this intrusion? du n. bid him retire. (_raises his vizor._) war. du nois! what madness brings thee? du n. that which hath turned the fate of empires, kings-- mine now is in thy hands. war. explain. (i tremble.) du n. this is no time for words--less for concealment. this day--a deed-- war. oh, heaven! du n. what wouldst venture for sake of yon sweet form should ill assail her? war. my life were worthless in such cause. du n. couldst see her dragged from thy arms to meet a horrid death? war. earth's potentates combined should fail to part us. du n. warwick! there was a time when ice had bound these lips, and easier 'twere to die than speak. i felt ashamed it should be thought i loved; but now, with equal agony and pride, i own--i love.-- war. the maid! unhappy friend! du n. thou hast not, then, forgot thy former pledge-- the pledge thou gav'st, when from my hands redeemed, "should ever need be thine--remember warwick." i claim it now. war. name ought i can concede, but spare, oh, spare what honour must forbid du nois to ask, or warwick grant. [_going,_ du n. stay! hear me! give but the word, the countersign agreed, and by the holy fount of truth i swear no blood of thine shall flow this day through me. nay, more, if ought of blame attach to thee, i swear to place myself in bedford's power. let me not plead in vain. by all that justice, by all that mercy, all that pity wakes, by all that thou hast sworn of love to woman, grant my request! war. cease! cease! a cruel strife thou raisest in my breast. [_countess kneels to warwick._ du n. ah! see who pleads! canst thou resist that look? by this joint act-- war. du nois, my alice, rise--spare me this trial. du n. end this suspense. war. it must not, cannot be. witness, o heaven! what this denial costs. but honour's laws forbid what feeling prompts-- the friend would grant--the soldier must deny. [_going, he returns._ wouldst see her once again--here is my signet-- thou needst not pity less than i. farewell. [_exeunt._ du n. cut off from ev'ry hope!--friend, foe alike-- has heaven itself forgotten to be just? oh, curse of courage, impotence of strength, panting to dare the worst, denied the means. but i shall see her once again--oh, joy! oh, agony! can ye indeed thus meet? scene vi.--_prison._ joan. joan. how in its terrors hath the tempest raged! 'tis misery's privilege alone to hear the crash of warring elements unmoved, and coldly tranquil press the iron couch. these drops are but the remnant of the storm, cast by the pitying spirit as he fled, his work of vengeance done, his fury quenched. so fall the tears of fond regret, that bathe the mourner's cheek, when time hath partly soothed her; large but not frequent, sad but not acute, sure proof of anguish past, not sorrow nigh. and see, the young dawn from the sable couch of her more ancient spouse, now softly steals, all bright and lovely, though in tears bedewed, silent to watch the rising beams of him beneath whose glance she melts, but must not wed. her love is set too high, and night, all foul, as he appears in her averted eyes, again shall clasp her in his chilly arms, and loathing claim her his. her fate is mine, and death, cold death, the bridegroom by whose side i soon shall rest. _enter du nois._ du n. this then is thy abode! this iron bed thy couch, this straw thy pillow! joan. whose voice---- du n. knowst me not, joan? joan. du nois! thou here? oh say, what brings thee to this sad abode? alas! has evil too befallen thee? du n. the anguish of a mind that ne'er has learnt to bear a load exertion may not soothe. my life was set to see thee once again, though in the gloom, the horrors of a prison. joan. thou dost not deem me then accursed, forsaken, stained with foulest crime? du n. thee cursed, forsaken! oh, yes! thou'rt cursed indeed with too much merit, and greater crime is none. joan. by thee acquitted! oh! happiness! oh! unexpected bliss! i yet possess a friend! du n. (burst, heart, thy bonds!) doth friendship's sacred garb clothe friendship only? recall the past, remember orleans' walls, the battles fought, the warring perils shared, the blessings joined--how have i wounded thee? joan. i stand upon the confines of the grave, and must not, dare not think upon the past. the reed hath bounds, and by the tempest spared, may sink beneath an insect. i've borne much, and this unlooked-for kindness overpowers me. but one request. du n. name it--give me some share in thee, though in the giving it must cease. joan. the seal of death is on me now. this chain, the king-- 'twill tell its own sad tale--but say to him-- no--down throbbing heart--farewell. oh! leave me! yet let me gaze once more upon a friend, ere i and earthly comfort part for ever. thou'lt sometimes think of me when i am gone, and midst the shouts of victory, perhaps, will hear the voice, will see the form of her who often shared those triumphs by thy side,-- wilt mark the vacant place with kindly sorrow? once more i'll press this valiant hand--and then-- farewell, for ever. _enter countess._ count. du nois. du n. ha! who calls? count. behold this scroll: here read what you would know. haste! haste! from warwick i have stol'n unseen, and trait'rous been to him whom most i love, in love's own cause. du n. and thou, for this disloyalty, shall be absolved--this pure and holy act shall win approval e'en from heaven itself, and plead for thee when other deeds may fail thee. count. blame not my warwick for his stern resolve:-- firm as he is, he has a tender heart. had not his face been buried in his arm, to hide the tears he shed, i had not thus escaped him unperceived. du n. yet is there hope. ah! say, couldst thou be plucked from this dread fate. joan. delude me not with erring thought of bliss, nor yet deceive thyself--ere morrow's dawn the dews will bathe the spot where earthly suff'ring hath found an end. no hand, though brave as thine, can pluck me from it. du n. never has it failed me, nor shall it fail me now--nay, doubt me not; i swore to lay thee in a grave that's free-- rouen is cursed by the usurper's foot, and here thou shalt not die, so hear me heaven!-- but not another moment may i linger. when next we meet--'twill be in bliss. [_exit._ joan. when next we meet 'twill be, i trust, in bliss, but bliss that waits in heaven. count. may i not speak to thee? i would not give thee pain, no, not in thought. i knew thee brave, so brave i feared thy name, and never had i dared to venture near thee; but now to see thee thus, so sweet, so gentle, i feel as if some silver chord had linked our hearts together, and would claim thee sister. and thou canst weep! joan. tears are woman's birthright, starting to her relief in joy or sorrow. i thought myself abhorred, cast off by all, and i have found a friend, midst all unchanged, and sweeter still--compassion in my sex. count. thou must not, shall not die. i'll to my warwick. joan. it is in vain, and the swift moments fly. lady, leave me. i must be calm in death, lest nature's weakness make my foes to triumph. the blessing of a spirit thou hast soothed gild thy bright path and cheer thy parting hour. farewell, for ever. count. no; du nois, warwick, shall save thee yet. [_exit._ joan. alas! hope cheats me not. my hour is come, and i content to die. it was a trying hour; for hard it is to measure back our steps to life, when we have almost knocked at death's grim portals. one tear for thee, du nois, the last i shed. one prayer for thee, my country and my king. my king! a princely diadem is his, and mine this murky dungeon and these chains: yet have i placed him there--and mine the hand that stemmed his fortune's tide, and broke the fetters that enslaved the land. enough. the bitterness of death, is past. that thought has robbed the flames of all their terrors. farewell to earth! farewell to earthly ties! when next i think of him, of thee, my country, then will eternity have set its impress upon remembrance. scene vii.--_street in rouen._ officer. soldiers. off. place upon every gate a double guard. let none have egress: line the leading streets, and death to him who dares to quit his post. [_exit._ _enter du nois, xaintrailles_, &c. du n. now mark me! that we may escape detection, we must divide our fifty into tens, and mingle in the train. xaint. where rendezvous? du n. by yonder church. the narrow turn must break in part the line. upon the signal given rush through the guards, promptly secure the maid, and whilst confusion reigns we'll force a passage to the eastern gate. i have already gained it. xaint. the time? du n. the first deep toll of yonder bell. xaint. enough! all hearts are in the cause. [_exeunt._ _another part of the street in front of the prison._ _enter spectators._ first spectator. what crowds collect! each avenue is filled, and every street appears a solid mass: e'en to the topmost ridge each house is crammed with earnest gazers; not an eye but turns towards the black prison-walls; yet 'tis an hour ere the gates open for the sad procession. are scenes of death and agony so pleasant that such a throng of eager witnesses should press to view them? second spec. such a death is new, and thoughts of men are differently moved. some deem the maid condemned a tool of hell, and some a chosen instrument of heaven. fain would they see which will assert its claim; whether the fiend will leave her to her fate, or some great miracle be worked to save her. _enter several of du nois' friends._ first voice. what sound is that? second voice. it is the abbey bell. none can mistake its toll. third voice. it cannot be; 'tis not the hour. _enter xaintrailles._ xaint. the governor suspecting treason perchance, or some attempt at rescue, has changed both hour and route. the walls are manned, and every part is thronged with bristling spears. [_the procession partly seen in the distance._ _enter du nois._ du n. lose not an instant, or the maid is lost! hurry down yonder avenue: by this we meet you at the church. [_exeunt._ scene viii. _enter du nois._ du n. the guards, it seems, suspected me, and made access impossible. _enter xaintrailles and others._ xaint. turn, turn du nois! make for the eastern gate! du n. is she then safe? xaint. it is no time for words: we must be gone. du n. is the maid safe? i ask. du nois doth ask. xaint. canst thou be ignorant? du n. say on, or deep within thy breast--speak! xaint. thy grasp doth choke me. release thy hold! du n. now answer me, and quickly. where is the maid? xaint. look on yon rising cloud: safe in its breast her spirit mounts to heaven, that mercy to implore which man denied her. [_du nois sinks on his knee, and continues to watch the cloud._ officer _to_ xaint. how calm he is become! du n. one speck alone-- now not a trace remains. (_rises._) how died the maid? suppress no circumstance, no word, no look. xaint. thou hast beheld her in the shock of battle, midst dangers calm, when stoutest bosoms shook. hast often seen, how in such fearful times, she would upraise her speaking eyes to heaven, and stand in silence, while her countenance reflected beams she thence appeared to catch; such was her bearing then. her step was firm, yet modest, as might properly become one, who in presence of her mighty judge must quickly stand. nor had her wonted smile forsook her lip, but lingered, loath to part, its former sweetness mixed with heavenly hope. nor scowling eye, (for savage looks were there,) nor piercing gaze, nor pity's tender glance, nor urgent priest's dire threats to fright or force confession from her lips, she heeded once: save when to the accursed pile fast bound, he pointed to the smoking heap around her, and bade her timely think what hotter flames awaited one who had been leagued with devils. then passed a sudden flash o'er her pale cheek, and in those tones so often proved resistless, "blessed," she said, "is he who hath reserved all judgment to himself. may thy injustice be forgotten when thou most needest mercy." a hideous shout was raised--my blood with horror-- du n. thou couldst not longer look? xaint. i shuddering fled. the sound of crackling blaze, the trumpet's wail, the groan of thousands ringing in my ear, in dread of what to thee-- du n. and she is gone, in ignorance of all i felt for her, or could have done! and nought remains of her that i might see how lovely even death can show himself, when to the lovely joined; might cheat my soul awhile she did but sleep, and seal a last, first kiss upon her brow! earth not a particle now holds of her, o'er which these stranger drops might fall! xaint. du nois! can this be so? du n. i do not hide my face ashamed thou shouldst behold du nois can weep; or show how grief can bend e'en his stern spirit: but when in after days you speak of this, and i perchance have found a bloody grave, say, nought in life he dared, so awful seemed, as sight of agony which wrung his heart, and sank the soldier in the man. xaint. assist me. let's bear him hence. the end. joseph rickerby, printer, sherbourn, lanc. a heroine of france the story of joan of arc by evelyn everett-green contents chapter i. how i first heard of the maid. chapter ii. how i first saw the maid. chapter iii. how the maid came to vaucouleurs. chapter iv. how the maid was tried and tested. chapter v. how the maid journeyed to chinon. chapter vi. how the maid came to the king. chapter vii. how the maid was hindered; yet made preparation. chapter viii. how the maid marched for orleans. chapter ix. how the maid assumed command at orleans. chapter x. how the maid led us into battle. chapter xi. how the maid bore triumph and trouble. chapter xii. how the maid raised the siege. chapter xiii. how the maid won a new name. chapter xiv. how the maid cleared the king's way. chapter xv. how the maid rode with the king. chapter xvi. how the maid accomplished her mission. chapter xvii. how the maid was persuaded. chapter xviii. how i last saw the maid. chapter i. how i first heard of the maid. "the age of chivalry--alas!--is dead. the days of miracles are past and gone! what future is there for hapless france? she lies in the dust. how can she hope to rise?" sir guy de laval looked full in our faces as he spoke these words, and what could one reply? ah me!--those were sad and sorrowful days for france--and for those who thought upon the bygone glories of the past, when she was mistress of herself, held high her head, and was a power with hostile nations. what would the great charlemagne say, could he see us now? what would even st. louis of blessed memory feel, could he witness the changes wrought by only a century and a half? surely it were enough to cause them to turn in their graves! the north lying supine at the feet of the english conqueror; licking his hand, as a dog licks that of his master, lost to all sense of shame that an english infant in his cradle (so to speak) should rule through a regent the fair realm of france, whilst its own lawful king, banished from his capital and from half his kingdom, should keep his court at bourges or chinon, passing his days in idle revelry, heedless of the eclipse of former greatness, careless of the further aggressions threatened by the ever-encroaching foe. was orleans to fall next into the greedy maw of the english adventurers? was it not already threatened? and how could it be saved if nothing could rouse the king from his slothful indifference? o for the days of chivalry!--the days so long gone by! whilst i, jean de novelpont, was musing thus, a curious look overshadowed the face of bertrand de poulengy, our comrade and friend, with whom, when we had said adieu to sir guy a few miles farther on, i was to return to vaucouleurs, to pay a long-promised visit there. i had been journeying awhile with sir guy in germany, and he was on his way to the court at chinon; for we were all of the armagnac party, loyal to our rightful monarch, whether king or only dauphin still, since he had not been crowned, and had adopted no truly regal state or authority; and we were earnestly desirous of seeing him awaken from his lethargy and put himself at the head of an army, resolved to drive out the invaders from the land, and be king of france in truth as well as in name. but so far it seemed as though nothing short of a miracle would effect this, and the days of miracles, as sir guy had said, were now past and gone. then came the voice of bertrand, speaking in low tones, as a man speaks who communes with himself; but we heard him, for we were riding over the thick moss of the forest glade, and the horses' feet sank deep and noiseless in the sod, and our fellows had fallen far behind, so that their laughter and talk no longer broke upon our ears. the dreamy stillness of the autumn woodlands was about us, when the songs of the birds are hushed, and the light falls golden through the yellowing leaves, and a glory more solemn than that of springtide lies upon the land. methinks there is something in the gradual death of the year which attunes our hearts to a certain gentle melancholy; and perchance this was why sir guy's words had lacked the ring of hopeful bravery that was natural to one of his temperament, and why bertrand's eyes were so grave and dreamy, and his voice seemed to come from far away. "and yet i do bethink me that six months agone i did behold a scene which seems to me to hold within its scope something of miracle and of mystery. i have thought of it by day, and dreamed of it by night, and the memory of it will not leave me, i trow, so long as breath and being remain!" we turned and looked at him--the pair of us--with eyes which questioned better than our tongues. bertrand and i had been comrades and friends in boyhood; but of late years we had been much sundered. i had not seen him for above a year, till he joined us the previous wednesday at nancy, having received a letter i did send to him from thence. he came to beg of me to visit him at his kinsman's house, the seigneur robert de baudricourt of vaucouleurs; and since my thirst for travel was assuaged, and my purse something over light to go to court, i was glad to end my wanderings for the nonce, in the company of one whom i still loved as a brother. from the first i had noted that bertrand was something graver and more thoughtful than had been his wont. now i did look at him with wonder in my eyes. what could he be speaking of? he answered as though the question had passed my lips. "it was may of this present year of grace," he said, "i mind it the better that it was the feast of the ascension, and i had kept fast and vigil, had made my confession and received the holy sacrament early in the day. i was in my lodging overlooking the market place, and hard by the castle which as you know hangs, as it were, over the town, guarding or threatening it, as the case may be, when a messenger arrived from my kinsman, de baudricourt, bidding me to a council which he was holding at noon that day. i went to him without delay; and he did tell me a strange tale. "not long since, so he said, an honest prud'homme of the neighbouring village of burey le petit, durand laxart by name, had asked speech with him, and had then told him that a young niece of his, dwelling in the village of domremy, had come to him a few days since, saying it had been revealed to her how that she was to be used by the god of heaven as an instrument in his hands for the redemption of france; and she had been told in a vision to go first to the seigneur de baudricourt, who would then find means whereby she should be sent to the dauphin (as she called him), whom she was to cause to be made king of france." "mort de dieu!" cried sir guy, as he gazed at bertrand with a look betwixt laughter and amaze, "and what said your worshipful uncle to that same message?" "at the first, he told me, he broke into a great laugh, and bid the honest fellow box the girl's ears well, and send her back to her mother. but he added that the man had been to him once again, and had pleaded that at least he would see his niece before sending her away; and since by this time he was himself somewhat curious to see and to question this village maiden, who came with so strange a tale, he had told laxart to bring her at noon that very day, and he desired that i and certain others should be there in the hall with him, to hear her story, and perhaps suggest some shrewd question which might help to test her good faith." "a good thought," spoke sir guy, "for it is hard to believe in these dreamers of dreams. i have met such myself--they talk great swelling words, but the world wags on its way in spite of them. they are no prophets; they are bags of wind. they make a stir and a commotion for a brief while, and then they vanish to be heard of no more." "it may be so," answered bertrand, whose face was grave, and whose steadfast dark-blue eyes had taken a strange shining, "i can only speak of that which i did see and hear. what the future may hold none can say. god alone doth know that." "then you saw this maid--and heard her speech. what looked she like?--and what said she?" "i will tell you all the tale. we were gathered there in the great hall. there were perhaps a score of us; the seigneur at the head of the council table, the abbe perigord on his right, and the count of la roche on his left. there were two priests also present, and the chiefest knights and gentlemen of the town. we had all been laughing gaily at the thought of what a village maid of but seventeen summers--or thereabouts--would feel on being introduced into the presence of such a company. we surmised that she would shrink into the very ground for shame. one gentleman declared that it was cruel to ask her to face so many strangers of condition so much more exalted than her own; but de baudricourt cried out, 'why man, the wench is clamouring to be taken to the king at his court! if she cannot face a score of simple country nobles here, how can she present herself at chinon? let her learn her place by a sharp lesson here; so may she understand that she had best return to her distaff and spindle and leave the crowning of kings to other hands!' and it was in the midst of the roar of laughter which greeted this speech that the door opened slowly--and we saw the maid of whom we had been talking." "and she doubtless heard your mirth," spoke i, and he bent his head in assent. "i trow she did," he answered, "but think you that the ribald jests of mortal men can touch one of the angels of god? she stood for a moment framed in the doorway, and i tell you i lie not when i declare that it seemed to all present as though a halo of pure white light encircled her. where the light came from i know not; but many there were, like myself, who noted it. the far end of the hall was dim and dark; but yet we saw her clear as she moved forward. upon her face was a shining such as i have seen upon none other. she wore the simple peasant dress of her class, with the coif upon her head; yet it seemed to me--ay, and to others too--as though she was habited in rich apparel. perchance it was that when one had seen her face, one could no longer think upon her raiment. if a queen--if an angel--if a saint from heaven stood in stately calm and dignity before one's eyes, how could we think of the raiment worn? we should see nothing but the grandeur and beauty of the face and form!" "mort de dieu!" cried sir guy with his favourite oath, "but you look, good bertrand, as though you had gazed upon some vision from the unseen world!" "nay," he answered gravely, "but i have looked upon the face of one whom god has visited through his saints. i have seen the reflection of his glory in human eyes; and so i can never say with others that the days of miracles are past." bertrand spoke with a solemnity and earnestness which could not but impress us deeply. our eyes begged him to continue, and he told the rest of his tale very simply. "she came forward with this strange shining in her eyes. she bent before us with simple reverence; but then lifted herself up to her full height and looked straight at de baudricourt without boldness and without fear, as though she saw in him a tool in the hand of god, and had no other thought for him besides. "'seigneur,' she said, 'my lord has bidden me come to you, that you may send me to the dauphin; for he has given me a message to him which none else may bear; and he has told me that you will do it, therefore i know that you will not fail him, and your laughter troubles me not.' "'who is your lord, my child?' asked de baudricourt, not laughing now, but pulling at his beard and frowning in perplexity. "'even the lord of heaven, sire,' she answered, and her hands clasped themselves loosely together whilst her eyes looked upward with a smile such as i have seen on none other face before. 'he that is my lord and your lord and the lord of this realm of france. but it is his holy will that the dauphin shall be its king, and that he shall drive back the english, and that the crown shall be set upon his head. and this, with other matters which are for his ear alone i am sent to tell him; and you, good my lord, are he who shall send me to my king.' "thus she spoke, and looked at us all with those shining eyes of hers; yet it seemed to me she scarce saw us. her glance did go beyond, as though she were gazing in vision upon the things which were to be." "she was beautiful, you say?" asked sir guy, whose interest was keenly aroused; but who, i saw, was doubtful whether bertrand had not been deceived by some witchery of fair face and graceful form; for bertrand, albeit a man of thews and sinews and bold as a lion in fight, was something of the dreamer too, as warriors in all ages have sometimes been. "yes--as an angel of god is beautiful," he answered, "ask me not of that; for i can tell you nothing. i know not the hue of her hair or of her eyes, nor what her face was like, nor her form, save that she was tall and very slender; but beautiful--ah yes!--with the beauty which this world cannot give; a beauty which silenced every flippant jest, shamed every scoffing thought, turned ridicule into wonder, contempt into reverence. whether this wonderful maiden came in truth as a messenger of god or no, at least not one present but saw well that she herself believed heart and soul in her divine commission." "and what answer did the seigneur de baudricourt make to her?" "he gazed upon her full for awhile, and then he suddenly asked of her, 'and when shall all these wonders come to pass?' "she, with her gaze fixed still a little upwards, answered, 'before mid-lent next year shall succour reach him; then will the city of orleans be in sore straight; but help shall come, and the english shall fly before the sword of the lord. afterwards shall the dauphin receive consecration at rheims, and the crown of france shall be set upon his head, in token that he is the anointed of the lord.' "'and who has told you all this, my child?' asked de baudricourt then, answering gently, as one speaks within a church. "'mes voix,' she answered, speaking as one who dreams, and in dreaming listens. "'what voices?' asked de baudricourt, 'and have you naught but voices to instruct you in such great matters?' "'yes, sire,' she answered softly, 'i have seen the great archangel michael, his sword drawn in his hand; and i know that he has drawn it for the deliverance of france, and that though he has chosen so humble an instrument as myself, yet that to him and to the lord of heaven will he the victory and the glory.' "when she had thus spoken there was a great silence in the hall, in which might have been heard the fall of a pin, and i vow that whether it were trick of summer sunshine or no, the light about the maiden seemed to grow brighter and brighter. her face was just slightly uplifted as one who listens, and upon her lips there was a smile. "'and i know that you will send me to the dauphin, robert de baudricourt,' she suddenly said, 'because my voices tell me so.' "we all looked at de baudricourt, who sat chin on hand, gazing at the maiden as though he would read her very soul. we waited, wondering, for him to speak at last he did. "'well, my girl, i will think of all this. we have till next year, by your own showing, ere these great things shall come to pass. so get you home, and see what your father and mother say to all this, and whether the archangel michael comes again or no. go home--be a good girl, and we will see what we will see.'" "was that all he promised?" spoke sir guy with a short laugh. "i trow the maiden dreamer would not thank him for that word! a deliverer of princes to be bidden to go home and be a good girl! what said she to that counsel?" "ay, well you may ask," spoke bertrand with subdued emotion. "just such a question sprang to my lips as i heard my kinsman's answer. i looked to see her face fall, to see sparks of anger flash from her eyes, or a great disappointment cloud the serene beauty of her countenance. but instead of this a wonderful smile lighted it, and her sweet and resonant voice sounded clear through the hall. "'ah, now seigneur, i know you for a good and true man! you speak as did my voices when first i heard them. "jeanne, sois bonne et sage enfant; va souvent a l'eglise"; that was their first message to me, when i was but a child; and now you say the same to me--be a good girl. thus i know that your heart is right, and that when my lord's time is come you will send me with his message to the dauphin.' "and so saying she bent again in a modest reverence before us. yet let me tell you that as she did so, every man of us sprang to his feet by an impulse which each one felt, yet none could explain. as one man we rose, and bowed before her, as she retired from the hail with the simple, stately grace of a young queen. not till the door had closed behind her did we bethink us that it was to a humble peasant girl we had paid unconscious homage. we who had thought she would well-nigh sink to the dust at sight of us, had been made to feel that we were in the presence of royalty!" "tu dieu! but that is a strange story!" quoth sir guy with knitted brows. "for many a long day i have heard nought so strange! what think you of it yourself, good bertrand? for by my troth you speak like a man convinced that a miracle may even yet be wrought for france at the hand of this maid." "and if i do, is that so strange? cannot it be that the good god may still speak through his saints to the sons of men, and may raise up a deliverer for us, even as he did in the days of old for his chosen people? is his arm shortened at all? and is it meet that we christian knights should trust him less than did the jews of old?" sir guy made no reply, but fell into thought, and then asked a sudden question: "who is this peasant maid of whom you speak? and where is she now? is she still abiding content at home, awaiting the time appointed by her visions?" "i trow that she is," answered bertrand. "i did hear that she went home without delay, as quietly as she had come. her name is jeanne d'arc. she dwells in the village of domremy over yonder. her father is an honest prud'homme of the place. she has brothers and a sister. she is known in the village as a pious and gentle maid, ever ready to tend the sick, hold vigil for the dead, take charge of an ailing child, or do any such simple service for the neighbours. she is beloved of all, full of piety and good works, constant in attendance at church, regular in her confession and at mass. so much have i heard from her kinsman laxart, though for mine own part i have not seen her again." "and what thinks de baudricourt of her mission? does he ever speak of it?" "not often; and yet i know that he has not forgotten it. for ofttimes he does sink into a deep reverie; and disjointed words break from him, which tell me whither his thoughts have flown. "at the first he did say to me, 'let the girl go home; let us see if we hear more of her. if this be but a phantasy on her part; if she has been fasting and praying and dreaming, till she knows not what is true and what is her own imagining, why, time will cure her of her fancies and follies. if otherwise--well, we will see when the time comes. to act in haste were to act with folly.' "and so he dismissed the matter, though, as i say, he doth not forget it, and i think never a day comes but he thinks on it." "and while the lord waits, the english are active!" cried sir guy with a note of impatience in his voice. "they are already threatening orleans. soon they will march in strength upon it. and if that city once fall, why what hope is there even for such remnants of his kingdom as still remain faithful south of the loire? the english will have them all. already they call our king in mockery 'the king of bourges;' soon even that small domain will be reft away, and then what will remain for him or for us? if the visions of the maiden had been true, why doth not the lord strike now, before salisbury of england can invest the city? if orleans fall, all is lost!" "but jeanne says that orleans shall be saved," spoke bertrand in a low voice, "and if she speaks sooth, must not she and we alike leave the times and seasons in the hand of the lord?" sir guy shrugged his shoulders, and gave me a shrewd glance, the meaning of which i was at no loss to understand. he thought that bertrand's head had been something turned, and that he had become a visionary, looking rather for a miracle from heaven than for deliverance from the foe through hard fighting by loyal men marching under the banner of their king. truth we all knew well that little short of a miracle would arouse the indolent and discouraged charles, cowed by the english foe, doubtful of his own right to call himself dauphin, distrustful of his friends, despairing of winning the love or trust of his subjects. but could it indeed be possible that such a miracle could be wrought, and by an instrument so humble as a village maid--this jeanne d'arc? but the time had come when we must say adieu to our comrade, and turn ourselves back to vaucouleurs, if we were not to be benighted in the forest ere we could reach that place. we halted for our serving men to come up; and as we did so bertrand said in a low voice to sir guy: "i pray you, seigneur de laval, speak no word to his majesty of this maid and her mission, until such time as news may reach him of her from other sources." "i will say no word," answered the other, smiling, and so with many friendly words we parted, and bertrand and i, with one servant behind us, turned our horses' heads back along the road by which we had come. "bertrand," i said, as the shadows lengthened, the soft dusk fell in the forest, and the witchery of the evening hour fell upon my heart, "i would that i could see this maiden of whom you speak, this jeanne d'arc of the village of domremy." he turned and looked me full in the face; i saw his eyes glow and the colour deepen in his cheeks. "you would not go to mock, friend jean de metz?" he said, for so i am generally named amongst my friends. "nay," i answered truthfully, "there is no thought of mockery in my heart; yet i fain would see the maid." he paused awhile in thought and then made answer: "at least we may ride together one day to domremy; but whether or no we see the maid will be according to the will of heaven." chapter ii. how i first saw the maid. i did not forget my desire to see this maiden of domremy, nor did bertrand, i trow, forget the promise, albeit some days passed by ere we put our plan into action. bad news kept coming in to the little loyal township of vaucouleurs. there was no manner of doubt but that the english regent, bedford, was resolved to lose no more time, but seek to put beneath his iron heel the whole of the realm of france. gascony had been english so long that the people could remember nothing different than the rule of the roy outremer--as of old they called him. now all france north of the loire owned the same sway, and as all men know, the duke of burgundy was ally to the english, and hated the dauphin with a deadly hatred, for the murder of his father--for which no man can justly blame him. true, his love for the english had cooled manifestly since that affair of duke humphrey of gloucester and jacquelaine of brabant, in which as was natural, he took the part of his brother; but although the duke of bedford was highly indignant with duke humphrey, and gave him no manner of support in his rash expedition, yet the duke of burgundy resented upon the english what had been done, and although it did not drive him into the arms of the dauphin, whom he hated worse, it loosened the bond between him and our foes, and we had hoped it might bring about a better state of things for our party. yet alas!--this seemed as far as ever from being so; and the burgundian soldiers still ravaged along our borders, and it seemed ofttimes as though we little loyal community of the duchy of bar would be swallowed up altogether betwixt the two encroaching foes. so our hearts were often heavy and our faces grave with fear. i noted in the manner of the governor, whose guest i had now become, a great gravity, which in old days had not been there; for robert de baudricourt, as i remembered him, had ever been a man of merry mood, with a great laugh, a ready jest, and that sort of rough, bluff courage that makes light of trouble and peril. now, however, we often saw him sunk in some deep reverie, his chin upon his hand, his eyes gazing full into the blaze of the leaping fire of logs, which always flamed upon the hearth in the great hall, where the most part of his time was spent. he would go hunting or hawking by day, or ride hither and thither through the town, looking into matters there, or sit to listen to the affairs of the citizens or soldiers as they were brought before him; and at such times his manner would be much as it had ever been of yore--quick, almost rough, yet not unkindly--whilst the shrewd justice he always meted out won the respect of the people, and made him a favourite in the town. but when the evening fell, and the day's work was done, and after supper we sat in the hall, with the dogs slumbering around us, talking of any news which might have come in, either of raids by the roving burgundians, or the advance of the english towards orleans, then these darker moods would fall upon him; and once when he had sat for well-nigh an hour without moving, his brow drawn and furrowed, and his eyes seemingly sunk deeper in his head, bertrand leaned towards me and whispered in mine ear: "he is thinking of the maid of domremy!" de baudricourt could not have heard the words, yet when he spoke a brief while later, it almost seemed as though he might have done so. "nephew," he said, lifting his head abruptly and gazing across at us, "tell me again the words of that prophecy of merlin's, spoken long, long ago, of which men whisper in these days, and of which you did speak to me awhile back." "marry, good mine uncle, the prophecy runs thus," answered bertrand, rising and crossing over towards the great fire before which his kinsman sat, "'that france should be destroyed by the wiles of a woman, and saved and redeemed by a maiden.'" the bushy brows met in a fierce scowl over the burning eyes; his words came in a great burst of indignation and scorn. "ay, truly--he spake truly--the wise man--the wizard! a woman to be the ruin of the kingdom! ay, verily, and has it not been so? who but that wicked queen isabeau is at the bottom of the disgraceful treaty of troyes, wherein france sold herself into the hands of the english? did she not repudiate her own son? did not her hatred burn so fiercely against him that she was ready to tarnish her own good fame and declare him illegitimate, rather than that he should succeed his father as king of france? did she not give her daughter to the english king in wedlock, that their child might reign over this fair realm? truly has the kingdom been destroyed by the wiles of a woman! but i vow it will take more than the strength of any maiden to save and redeem it from the woes beneath which it lies crushed!" "in sooth it doth seem so," answered bertrand with grave and earnest countenance, "but yet with the good god nothing is impossible. hath he not said before this that he doth take of the mean and humble to confound the great of the earth? did not the three hundred with gideon overcome the hosts of the moabites? did not the cake of barley bread overturn the tent and the camp of the foe?" "ay, if the good god will arise to work miracles again, such things might be; but how can we look for him to do so? what manner of man is the dauphin of france that he should look for divine deliverance? 'god helps those who help themselves,' so says the proverb; but what of those who lie sunk in lethargy or despair, and seek to drown thought or care in folly and riotous living--heedless of the ruin of the realm?" "there is another proverb, good mine uncle, that tells how man's extremity is god's opportunity," quoth bertrand thoughtfully; "if we did judge of god's mercy by man's worthiness to receive the same, we might well sink in despair. but his power and his goodness are not limited by our infirmities, and therein alone lies our hope." de baudricourt uttered a sound between a snort and a grunt. i knew not what he thought of bertrand's answer; but that brief dialogue aroused within me afresh the desire i had before expressed to see the maid, jeanne of domremy; and as the sun upon the morrow shone out bright and clear, after a week of heavy rain storms, we agreed that no better opportunity could we hope for to ride across to the little village, and try whether it were possible to obtain speech with the young girl about whom such interest had been aroused in some breasts. we spoke no word to de baudricourt of our intention. bertrand knew from his manner that he was thinking more and more earnestly of that declaration on the part of the village maiden that her lord--the king of heaven--had revealed to her that she must be sent to the dauphin, to help him to drive out the english from his country, and to place the crown of france upon his head, and that he, robert de baudricourt, was the instrument who would be used to speed her on her way. bertrand knew that this thought was weighing upon the mind of his kinsman, and the more so as the time for the fulfilment of the prophecy drew nearer. autumn had come. winter was hard at hand; and before mid-lent the promised succour to france was to arrive through the means of this maiden--this jeanne d'arc. "he is waiting and watching," spoke bertrand, as we rode through the forest, the thinning leaves of which allowed the sunlight to play merrily upon our path. "he says in his heart that if this thing be of god, the maid will come again when the time draws near; but that if it is phantasy, or if she be deluded of the devil, perchance his backwardness will put a check upon her ardour, and we shall hear no more of it. the abbe perigord, his confessor, has bidden him beware lest it be a snare of the evil one"--and as he spoke these words bertrand crossed himself, and i did the like, for the forest is an ill place in which to talk of the devil, as all men know. "but for my part, when i think upon her words, and see again the look of her young face, i cannot believe that she has been thus deceived; albeit we are told that the devil can make himself appear as an angel of light." this was the puzzle, of course. but surely the church had power to discern betwixt the wiles of the evil one and the finger of god. there were words and signs which any possessed of the devil must needs fly before. i could not think that the church need fear deception, even though a village maid might be deceived. the forest was very beautiful that day, albeit travelling was something slow, owing to the softness of the ground, and the swollen condition of the brooks, which often forced us to go round by the bridges instead of taking the fords; so that we halted a few miles from domremy to bait our horses and to appease our own hunger, for by that time our appetite was sharp set. it was there, as we sat at table, and talked with mine host, that we heard somewhat more of this maid, whom we had started forth in hopes to see. bertrand was known for the kinsman of de baudricourt and all the countryside knew well the tale, how that jeanne d'arc had gone to him in the springtide of the year, demanding an escort to the dauphin king of france, for whom she had a message from the king of heaven, and whom she was to set upon his throne. "when she came home again, having accomplished nothing," spoke the innkeeper, leaning his hands upon the table and greatly enjoying the sound of his own voice, "all the village made great mock of her! they called her the king's marshal, the little queen, jeanne the prophetess, and i know not what beside. her father was right wroth with her. long ago he had a dream about her, which troubled him somewhat, as he seemed to see his daughter in the midst of fighting men, leading them on to battle." "did he dream that? surely that is something strange for the vision of a village prud'homme anent his little daughter." "ay truly, though at the time he thought little of it, but when all this came to pass he recalled it again; and he smote jeanne upon the ear with his open hand, and bid her return to her needle and her household tasks, and think no more of matters too great for her. moreover, he declared that if ever she were to disgrace herself by mingling with men-at-arms, he would call upon her brothers to drown her, and if they disobeyed him, he would take and do it with his own hands!" "a spartan father, truly!" murmured bertrand. "o ay--but he is a very honest man, is jacques d'arc; and he was very wroth at all the talk about his daughter, and he vowed she should wed an honest man, as she is now of age to do, and so forget her dreams and her visions, and take care of her house and her husband and the children the good god should send them--like other wedded wives." "then has she indeed wedded?" asked bertrand earnestly. "ah, that is another story!" answered our host, wagging his head and spreading out his hands. "it would take too long were i to tell you all, messires; but so much will i tell. they did find a man who had long desired the pretty jeanne for his wife, and he did forswear himself and vow that he had been betrothed to jeanne with her own free will and consent, and that now he claimed her as his wife. jeanne, whose courage is high, though she be so quiet and modest in her daily life, did vehemently deny the charge, whereupon the angry father and his friend, the claimant of her hand, did bring it into the court, and the maid had to defend herself there from the accusation of broken faith. but by st. michael and all his angels!--how she did confound them all! she asked no help from lawyers, though one did offer himself to her. she called no witnesses herself; but she questioned the witnesses brought against her, and also the man who would fain have become her lord, and out of their own mouths did she convict them of lying and hypocrisy and conspiracy, so that she was triumphantly acquitted, and her judges called her a most wonderful child, and told her mother to be proud of such a daughter!" i saw a flush rise to bertrand's cheek, a flush as of pride and joy. and indeed, i myself rejoiced to hear the end of the tale; for it did seem as though this maiden had been persecuted with rancour and injustice, and that is a thing which no man can quietly endure to hear or see. "and how have they of domremy behaved themselves to her since?" i asked; and bertrand listened eagerly for the answer. "oh, they have taken her to favour once more; her father has been kind again; her mother ever loved jeanne much, for her gentleness and beauty and helpfulness at home. all the people love her, when not stirred to mockery by such fine pretensions. if she will remain quietly at home like a wise and discreet maiden, no one will long remember against her her foolish words and dreams." as we rode through the fields and woodlands towards domremy, the light began to take the golden hue which it does upon the autumn afternoon, and upon that day it shone with a wonderful radiance such as is not uncommon after rain. we were later than we had meant, but there would be a moon to light us when the sun sank, and both we and our horses knew the roads well; or we could even sleep, if we were so minded, at the auberge where we had dined. so we were in no haste or hurry. we picked our way leisurely towards the village, and bertrand told me of the fairy well and the fairy tree in the forest hard by, so beloved of the children of domremy, and of which so much has been heard of late, though at that time i knew nothing of any such things. but fairy lore has ever a charm for me, and i bid him show me these same things. so we turned a little aside into the forest, and found ourselves in a lovely glade, where the light shone so soft and golden, and where the songs of the birds sounded so sweet and melodious, that i felt as though we were stepping through an enchanted world, and well could i believe that the fairies danced around the well, sunk deep in its mossy dell, and fringed about with ferns and flowers and the shade of drooping trees. but fairies there were none visible to our eyes, and we moved softly onwards towards the spreading tree hard by. but ere we reached it, we both drew rein as by a common impulse, for we had seen a sight which arrested and held us spellbound, ay, and more than that, for the wonder and amaze of it fell also upon the horses we bestrode. for scarcely had we drawn rein, before they both began to tremble and to sweat, and stood with their forefeet planted, their necks outstretched, their nostrils distended; uttering short, gasping, snorting sounds, as a horse will do when overcome by some terror. but for all this they were as rigid as if they had been carved in stone. and now, what did we see? let me try and tell, so far as my poor words may avail. beneath a spreading tree just a stone's throw to the right of where we stood, and with nothing between to hinder our view of her, a peasant maiden, dressed in the white coif, red skirt, and jacket and kerchief of her class, had been bending over some fine embroidery which she held in her hands. we just caught a glimpse of her thus before the strange thing happened which caused us to stop short, as though some power from without restrained us. hard by, as i know now, stood the village, shut out from view by the trees, with its little church, and the homestead of jacques d'arc nestling almost within its shadow. at the moment of which i speak the bell rang forth for the angelus, with a full, sweet tone of silvery melody; and at the very same instant the work dropped from the girl's hands, and she sank upon her knees. at the first moment, although instinctively, we reined back our horses and uncovered our heads, i had no thought but that she was a devout maiden following the office of the church out here in the wood. but as she turned her upraised face a little towards us, i saw upon it such a look as i have never seen on human countenance before, nor have ever seen (save upon hers) since. a light seemed to shine either from it or upon it--how can i tell which?--a light so pure and heavenly that no words can fully describe it, but which seemed like the radiance of heaven itself. her eyes were raised towards the sky, her lips parted, and through the breathless hush of silence which had fallen upon the wood, we heard the soft, sweet tones of her voice. "speak, my lord--thy servant heareth!" it was then that our horses showed the signs of terror of which i have before spoken. for myself, i saw nothing save the shining face of the maid--i knew who it was--there was no need for bertrand's breathless whisper--"it is she--herself!"--i knew it in my heart before. she knelt there amid the fallen leaves, her face raised, her lips parted, her eyes shining as surely never human eyes have shone before. a deep strange hush had fallen over all nature, broken only by the gentle music of the bell. the ruddy gold light of approaching sunset bathed all the wood in glory, and the rays fell upon the kneeling figure, forming a halo of glory round it. but she did not heed, she did not see. she was as one in a trance, insensible to outward vision. once and again her lips moved, but we heard no word proceed from them, only the rapt look upon her face increased in intensity, and once i thought (for i could not turn my gaze away) that i saw the gleam of tears in her eyes. the bell ceased as we stood thus motionless, and as the last note vibrated through the still air, a change came over the maid. her head drooped, she hid her face in her hands, and thus she knelt as one absorbed in an intensity of prayer. even as this happened, the peculiar glory of the sunlight seemed to change. it shone still, but without such wonderful glow, and our horses at the same time ceased their trembling and their rigid stillness of pose. they shook their heads and jingled their bits, as though striving to throw off some terrifying impression. "let us withdraw from her sight," whispered bertrand touching my arm, and very willingly i acceded to this suggestion, and we silently pressed into the shadow of some great oaks, which stood hard by, the trunks of which hid us well from view. it seemed almost like a species of sacrilege to stand there watching the maid at her prayers, and yet i vow, that until the bell ceased we had no more power to move than our horses. why we were holden by this strange spell i know not. i can only speak the truth. we saw nothing and we heard nothing of any miraculous kind, and yet we were like men in a dream, bound hand and foot by invisible bonds, a witness of something unseen to ourselves, which we saw was visible to another. beneath the deep shadow of the oaks we looked back. the maid had risen to her feet by this, and was stooping to pick up her fallen work. that done, she stood awhile in deep thought, her face turned towards the little church, whence the bell had only just ceased to sound. i saw her clearly then--a maiden slim and tall, so slender that the rather clumsy peasant dress she wore could not give breadth or awkwardness to her lithe figure. the coif had slipped a little out of place, and some tresses of waving hair had escaped from beneath it, tresses that looked dark till the sun touched them, and then glowed like burnished gold. her face was pale, with features in no way marked, but so sweet and serene was the expression of the face, so wonderful was the depth of the great dark eyes, that one was lost in admiration of her beauty, albeit unable to define wherein that beauty lay. when we started forth, i had meant to try and seek speech with this jeanne--this maid of domremy--and to ask her of her mission, and whether she were still believing that she would have power to carry it out; but this purpose now died within me. how could i dare question such a being as to her visions? had i not seen how she was visited by sound or sight not sensible to those around her? had i not in some sort been witness to a miracle? was it for us to approach and ask of her what had been thus revealed? no!--a thousand times no! if the good god had given her a message, she would know when and where to deliver it. she had spoken before of her voices. let them instruct her. let not men seek to interfere. and so we remained where we were, hidden in the deep shadows, whilst jeanne, with bent head and lingering, graceful steps, utterly unconscious of the eyes that watched her, went slowly out of sight along the glade leading towards the village and her home. only when she had disappeared did we venture to move on in her wake, and so passed by the low-browed house, set in its well-tended little garden, where the d'arc family lived. it lay close to the church, and bore a look of pleasant homelike comfort. we saw jeanne bending tenderly over a chair, in which reclined the bent form of a little crippled sister. we even heard the soft, sweet voice of the maid, as she answered some question asked her from within the open door. then she lifted the bent form in her arms, and i did note how strong that slim frame must be, for the burden seemed as nothing to her as she bore it within the house; and then she disappeared from view, and we rode onwards together. "there, my friend," spoke bertrand at last, "i have kept my promise, you have seen the maid." "yes," i answered gravely, "i have seen the maid," and after that we spoke no word for many a mile. chapter iii. how the maid came to vaucouleurs. it may yet be remembered by some how early the snow came that year, to the eastern portion of france at least. i think scarce a week had passed since our journey to domremy, before a wild gale from the northeast brought heavy snow, which lay white upon the ground for many long weeks, and grew deeper and deeper as more fell, till the wolves ravaged right up to the very walls of vaucouleurs, and some of the country villages were quite cut off from intercourse with the world. thus it came about that i was shut up in vaucouleurs with my good comrade and friend bertrand, in the castle of which robert de baudricourt was governor, and for awhile little news reached us from the outside world, though such news as did penetrate to our solitude was all of disaster for the arms of france. we never spoke to de baudricourt of our expedition to domremy, nor told him that we had seen the maid again. yet methinks not a day passed without our thinking of her, recalling something of that wonderful look we had seen upon her face, and asking in our hearts whether indeed she were truly visited by heavenly visions sent by god, and whether she indeed heard voices which could reach no ears but hers. i observed that bertrand was more regular in attendance at the services of the church, and especially at mass, than was usual with young knights in those days, and for my part, i felt a stronger desire after such spiritual aids than i ever remember to have done in my life before. it became a regular thing with us to attend the early mass in the little chapel of the castle; and, instead of growing lax (as i had done before many times in my roving life), as to attending confession and receiving the holy sacrament, i now began to feel the need for both, as though i were preparing me for some great and solemn undertaking. i cannot well express in words the feeling which possessed me--ay, and bertrand too--for we began to speak of the matter one with another--but it seemed to us both as though a high and holy task lay before us, for which we must needs prepare ourselves with fasting and prayer; i wondered if, perhaps, it was thus that knights and men in days of old felt when they had taken the red cross, and had pledged themselves to some crusade in the east. well, thus matters went on, quietly enough outwardly, till the feast of the nativity had come and gone, and with that feast came a wonderful change in the weather. the frost yielded, the south wind blew soft, the snow melted away one scarce knew how, and a breath of spring seemed already in the air, though we did not dare to hope that winter was gone for good and all. it was just when the year had turned that we heard a rumour in the town, and it was in this wise that it reached our ears. de baudricourt had been out with his dogs, chasing away the wolves back into their forest lairs. he had left us some business to attend to for him within the castle, else should we doubtless have been of the party. but he was the most sagacious huntsman of the district, and a rare day's sport they did have, killing more than a score of wolves, to the great joy of the townsfolk and of the country people without the walls. it was dark ere he got home, and he came in covered with mud from head to foot; the dogs, too, were so plastered over, that they had to be given to the servants to clean ere they could take their wonted places beside the fire; and some of the poor beasts had ugly wounds which needed to be washed and dressed. but what struck us most was that de baudricourt, albeit so successful in his hunt, seemed little pleased with his day's work. his face was dark, as though a thunder cloud lay athwart it, and he gave but curt answers to our questions, as he stood steaming before the fire and quaffing a great tankard of spiced wine which was brought to him. then he betook himself to his own chamber to get him dry garments, and when he came down supper was already served. he sat him down at the head of the table, still silent and morose; and though he fell with right good will upon the viands, he scarce opened his lips the while, and we in our turn grew silent, for we feared that he had heard the news of some disaster to the french arms, which he was brooding over in silent gloom. but when the retainers and men-at-arms had disappeared, and we had gathered round the fire at the far end of the hall, as was our wont, then he suddenly began to speak. "went ye into the town today?" he suddenly asked of us. we answered him, nay, that we had been occupied all day within the castle over the services there he had left us to perform. "and have you heard nought of the commotion going on there?" "we have heard nought. pray what hath befallen, good sir? is it some disaster? hath orleans fallen into the hands of the english?" for that was the great fear possessing all loyal minds at this period. "nay, it is nought so bad as that," answered de baudricourt, "and yet it is bad enough, i trow. that mad girl from domremy is now in the town, telling all men that robert de baudricourt hath been appointed of god to send her to the dauphin at chinon, and that she must needs start thither soon, to do the work appointed her of heaven. "dents de dieu!--the folly of it is enough to raise the hair on one's head! send a little paysanne to the king with a wild story like hers! 'tis enough to make the name of de baudricourt the laughingstock of the whole country!" i felt a great throb at heart when i heard these words. then the maid had not forgot! this time of waiting had not bred either indifference or doubt. the time appointed was drawing near, and she had come to vaucouleurs once more, to do that which was required of her! o, was it not wonderful? must not it be of heaven, this thing? and should we seek to put the message aside as a thing of nought? bertrand was already speaking eagerly with his kinsman; but it seemed as though his words did only serve to irritate the governor the more. in my heart i was sure that had he been certain the maid was an impostor, he would have been in no wise troubled or disturbed, but would have contented himself by sharply ordering her to leave the town and return home and trouble him no more. it was because he was torn by doubts as to her mission that he was thus perturbed in spirit. he dared not treat her in this summary fashion, lest haply he should be found to be fighting against god; and yet he found it hard to believe that any deliverance for hapless france could come through the hands of a simple, unlettered peasant girl; and he shrank with a strong man's dislike from making himself in any sort an object of ridicule, or of seeming to give credence to a wild tale of visions and voices, such as the world would laugh to scorn. so he was filled with doubt and perplexity, and this betrayed itself in gloomy looks and in harsh speech. "tush, boy! you are but an idle dreamer. i saw before that you were fooled by a pretty face and a silvery voice. go to!--your words are but phantasy! who believes in miracles now?" "if we believe in the power of the good god, shall we not also believe that he can work even miracles at his holy will?" "poof--miracles!--the dreams of a vain and silly girl!" scoffed de baudricourt, "i am sick of her name already!" then he suddenly turned upon me and spoke. "jean de metz, you are a knight of parts. you have sense and discretion above your years, and are no featherhead like bertrand here. will you undertake a mission from me to this maiden? ask of her the story of her pretended mission. seek to discover from her whether she be speaking truth, or whether she be seeking to deceive. catch her in her speech if it may be. see whether the tale she tells hang together, and then come and report to me. if she be a mad woman, why should i be troubled with her? she cannot go to the dauphin yet, come what may. the melting snows have laid the valleys under water, the roads are impassable; horses would stick fast in the mire, and we are not at the end of winter yet. she must needs wait awhile, whatever her message may be, but i would have you get speech of her, and straightly question her from me. then if it seem well, i can see her again; but if you be willing, you shall do so first." i was more than willing. i was rejoiced to have this occasion for getting speech with the maid. i spoke no word of having had sight of her already, but fell in with de baudricourt's wish that i should go to her as if a mere passing stranger, and only afterwards reveal myself as his emissary. i slept but little all that night, making plans as to all that i should speak when i saw her on the morrow, and, rising early, i betook myself to mass, not to the private chapel of the castle, but to one of the churches in the town, though i could not have said why it was that i was moved to do this. yet as i knelt in my place i knew, for there amongst the worshippers, her face upraised and full of holy joy, her eyes alight with the depth of her devotion, her hands clasped in an ecstasy of prayer, was the maid herself; and i found it hard to turn my eyes from her wonderful face, to think upon the office as it was recited by the priest. i did not seek speech of her then, for she tarried long in the church over her prayers. i felt at last like one espying on another, and so i came away. but after breakfast, as the sun shone forth and began to light up the narrow streets of the little town, i sallied forth again alone, and asked of the first citizen i met where could be found the dwelling place of one jeanne d'arc, from domremy, who was paying a visit to the town. i had scarce need to say so much as this. it seemed that all the people in the town had heard of the arrival of the maid. i know not whether they believed in her mission, or whether they scoffed at it; but at least it was the talk of the place how she had come before, and fearlessly faced the governor and his council, and had made her great demand from him, and how she had come once again, now that the year was born and lent approaching, in the which she had said she must seek and find the dauphin. thus the man was able at once to give me the information i asked, and told me that the girl was lodging with henri leroyer the saddler, and catherine his wife, naming the street where they dwelt, but adding that i should have no trouble in finding the house, for the people flocked to it to get a sight of the maid, and to ask her questions concerning her mission hither, and what she thought she was about to accomplish. and truly i did find that this honest citizen had spoken the truth, for as i turned into the narrow street where leroyer lived, i saw quite a concourse of people gathered about the house, and though they made way for me to approach, knowing that i was from the castle, i saw that they were very eager to get sight or speech of the maid, who was standing at the open door of the shop, and speaking in an earnest fashion to those nearest her. i made as though i were a passing stranger, who had just heard somewhat of her matter from the bystanders, and i addressed her in friendly fashion, rather as one who laughs. "what are you doing here, ma mie? and what is this i hear? is it not written in the book of fate that the king or dauphin of france must be overcome of england's king, and that we must all become english, or else be driven into the sea, or banished from the realm?" then for the first time her wonderful eyes fastened themselves on my face, and i felt as though my very soul were being read. "nay, sire," she answered, and there was something so flute-like and penetrating in her tones that they seemed to sink into my very soul, "but the lord of heaven himself is about to fight for france, and he has sent me to the governor here, who will direct me to the dauphin, who knows nothing of me as yet. but i am to bring him help, and that by mid-lent. so i pray you, gentle knight, go tell robert de baudricourt that he must needs bestir himself in this business, for my voices tell me that the hour is at hand when, come what may, i must to chinon, even though i wear my legs to the knees in going thither." "why should i tell this to the seigneur de baudricourt?" i asked, marvelling at her words and the fashion of her speech. "because he has sent you to me," she answered, her eyes still on my face, "and i thank him for having chosen so gracious a messenger; for you have a good heart, and you are no mocker of the things my lord has revealed to me; and you will be one of those to do his will, and to bring me safely to the dauphin." half confounded by her words i asked: "who is your lord?" "it is god," she answered, and bent her head in lowly reverence. and then i did a strange thing; but it seemed to be forced upon me from above by a power which i could not withstand. i fell suddenly to my knees before her, and put up my clasped hands, as we do when we pay homage for our lands and honours to our liege lord. and, i speak truth, and nought else, the maid put her hands over mine just as our lord or sovereign should do, and though i dare swear she had never heard my name before, she said: "jean de novelpont de metz, my lord receives you as his faithful knight and servant. he will be with us now and to the end." and the people all uncovered and stood bareheaded round us, whilst i felt as though i had received a mandate from heaven. then i went into the house with jeanne, and asked her of herself, and of her visions and voices. she told me of them with the gentle frankness of a child, but with a reverence and humility that was beautiful to see, and which was in strange contrast to some of the things she spoke, wherein she told how that she herself was to be used of heaven for the salvation of france. i cannot give her words as she spoke them, sitting there in the window, the light upon her face, her eyes fixed more often upon the sunny sky than upon her interlocutor, though now and again she swept me with one of her wonderful glances. she told me how from a child she had heard voices, which she knew to be from above, speaking to her, bidding her to be good, to go to the church, to attend to her simple duties at home. but as she grew older there came a change. she remembered the day when first she saw a wonderful white light hovering above her; and this light came again, and yet again; and the third time she saw in it the figure of an angel--more than that--of the archangel michael himself--the warrior of heaven; and from him she first received the message that she was to be used for the deliverance of her people. she was long in understanding what this meant. st. michael told her she should receive other angelic visitors, and often after this st. catherine and st. margaret appeared to her, and told her what was required of her, and what she must do. at first she was greatly affrighted, and wept, and besought them to find some other for the task, since she was but a humble country maid, and knew nothing of the art of warfare, and shuddered at the sight of blood. but they told her to be brave, to trust in the lord, to think only of him and of his holy will towards her. and so, by degrees, she lost all her fears, knowing that it was not of herself she would do this thing, and that her angels would be with her, her saints would watch over her, and her voices direct her in all that she should speak or do. "and now," she added, clasping her hands, and looking full into my face, "now do they tell me that the time is at hand. since last ascensiontide they have bid me wait in quietness for the appointed hour; but of late my voices have spoken words which may not be set aside. i must be sent to the dauphin. orleans must be saved from the hosts of the english which encompass it. i am appointed for this task, and i shall accomplish it by the grace of my lord and his holy saints. then the crown must be set upon the head of the dauphin, and he must be anointed as the king. after that my task will be done; but not till then. and now i must needs set forth upon the appointed way. to the dauphin i must go, to speak to him of things i may tell to none other; and the sieur robert de baudricourt is appointed of heaven to send me to chinon. wherefore, i pray you, gentle knight, bid him no longer delay; for i am straitened in spirit till i may be about my lord's business, and he would not have me tarry longer." i talked with her long and earnestly. not that i doubted her. i could not do so. although no voices came to me, yet my heart was penetrated by a conviction so deep and poignant that to doubt would have been impossible. france had been sold and betrayed by one bad woman; but here was the maid who should arise to save! i knew it in my heart; yet i still spoke on and asked questions, for i must needs satisfy de baudricourt, i must needs be able to answer all that he would certainly ask. "how old are you, fair maiden?" i asked, as at length i rose to depart, and she stood, tall and slim, before me, straight as a young poplar, graceful, despite her coarse raiment, her feet and hands well fashioned, her limbs shapely and supple. "i was seventeen last week," she answered simply, "the fifth of january is my jour de fete." "and your parents, what think they of this? what said they when you bid them farewell for such an errand?" the tears gathered slowly in her beautiful eyes; but they did not fall. she answered in a low voice: "in sooth they know not for what i did leave them. they believed i went but to visit a sick friend. i did not dare to tell them all, lest my father should hold me back: he is very slow to believe my mission; he chides me bitterly if ever word be spoken anent it. is it not always so when the lord uses one of his children? even our lord's brethren and sisters believed not on him. how can the servant be greater than his lord?" "you fear not, then, to disobey your parents?" i had need to put this question; for it was one that de baudricourt had insisted upon; for he knew something of jacques d'arc's opposition to his daughter's proposed campaign. "i must obey my lord even above my earthly parents," was her steadfast reply; "his word must stand the first. he knows all, and he will pardon. he knows that i love my father and my mother, and that if i only pleased myself i should never leave their side." then suddenly as she spoke a strange look of awe fell upon her; i think she had forgotten my presence, for when she spoke, her words were so low that i could scarce hear them. "i go to my death!" she whispered, the colour ebbing from her face, "but i am in the hands of my lord; his will alone can be done." i went out from her presence with bent head. what did those last words signify--when hitherto all she had spoken was of deliverance, of victory? she spoke them without knowing it. of that i was assured; and therefore i vowed to keep them locked in my heart. but i knew that i should never forget them. i found robert de baudricourt awaiting my coming in the great hall, pacing restlessly to and fro. bertrand was with him, and i saw by the tense expression upon his face that he was eager for my report. i gave him one quick glance upon entering, which i trow he read and understood; but to de baudricourt i spoke with caution and with measured words, for he was a man whose scorn and ridicule were easily aroused, and i knew that bertrand had fallen into a kind of contempt with him, in that he had so quickly believed in the mission of the maid. "well, and what make you of the girl? is she witch, or mad, or possessed by some spirit of vainglory and ambition? what has she said to you, and what think you of her?" "in all truth, my lord, i believe her to be honest; and more than this, i believe her to be directed of god. strange as it may seem, yet such things have been before, and who are we to say that god's arm is shortened, or that he is not the same as in the days of old? i have closely questioned the maid as to her visions and voices, and i cannot believe them delusions of the senses. you may ask, are they of the devil? then would i say, if there be doubt, let the abbe perigord approach her with holy water, with exorcisms, or with such sacred words and signs as devils must needs flee before. then if it be established that the thing is not of the evil one, we may the better regard it as from the lord of whom she speaks. at least, if she can stand this test, i would do this much for her--give her a small escort to chinon, with a letter to the dauphin. after that your responsibility will cease. the matter will be in the hands of the king and his advisers." "ay, after i have made myself the laughingstock of the realm!" burst out de baudricourt grimly; yet after he had questioned me again, and yet again, and had even held one interview himself with the maid, who came of her own accord to the castle to ask for him one day, he seemed to come to some decision, after much thought and wavering. bringing out one of his rattling oaths, he cried: "then if she can bear the touch of holy water, and the sign of book and taper and bell--and i know not what beside--then shall she be sent to the king at chinon, and i, robert de baudricourt, will send her--come what may of the mission!" chapter iv. how the maid was tried and tested. i had myself proposed the test, and yet when the moment came i was ashamed of myself. the abbe had put on his robes and his stole; a vessel containing holy water stood before him on the table; the book of the blessed gospels was in his hands, a boy with a taper stood at his side. the place was the hall of the castle, and the governor with a few of those most in his confidence stood by to see what would follow. i was at his right hand. bertrand brought in the maid. i know not what he had said to her, or whether he had prepared her for what was about to take place; but however that may have been, her face wore that calm and lofty serenity of expression which seemed to belong to her. as she approached she made a lowly reverence to the priest, and stood before him where bertrand placed her, looking at him with earnest, shining eyes. "my daughter," spoke the abbe gravely, "have you security in your heart that the visions and voices sent to you come of good and not of evil? many men and women have, ere this, been deceived--yea, even the holy saints themselves have been tempted of the devil, that old serpent, who is the great deceiver of the hearts and spirits of men. are you well assured in your heart that you are not thus deceived and led away by whispers and suggestions from the father of lies?" there was no anger in her face, but a beautiful look of reverent, yet joyful, confidence and peace. "i am well assured, my father, that it is my lord who speaks to me through his most holy and blessed saints, and through the ever-glorious archangel michael." "and yet, my daughter, you know that it is written in the holy scriptures that the devil can transform himself into an angel of light." "truly that is so, my father; but is it not also written that those who put their trust in the lord shall never be confounded?" "yes, my daughter; and i pray god you may not be confounded. but it is my duty to try and test the spirits, so as to be a rock of defence to those beneath my care. yet if things be with you as you say, you will have no fear." "i have no fear, my father," she answered, and stood with folded hands and serene and smiling face whilst he went through those forms of exorcism and adjuration which, it is said, no evil spirit can endure without crying aloud, or causing that the person possessed should roll and grovel in agony upon the ground, or rush frantically forth out of sight and hearing. but the maid never moved, save to bend her head in reverence as the thrice holy name was proclaimed, and as the drops of holy water fell upon her brow. to me it seemed almost like sacrilege, in face of that pure and holy calm, to entertain for one moment a doubt of the origin of her mission. yet it may be that the test was a wise one; for de baudricourt and those about him watched it with close and breathless wonder, and one and another whispered behind his hand: "of a surety she is no witch. she could never stand thus if there was aught of evil in her. truly she is a marvellous maid. if this thing be of the lord, let us not fight against him." the trial was over. the maid received the blessing of the abbe, who, if not convinced of the sacredness of her mission, was yet impotent to prove aught against her. it is strange to me, looking back at those days, how far less ready of heart the ecclesiastics were to receive her testimony and recognise in her the messenger of the most high than were the soldiers, whether the generals whom she afterwards came to know, or the men who crowded to fight beneath her banner. one would have thought that to priests and clergy a greater grace and power of understanding would have been vouchsafed; but so far from this, they always held her in doubt and suspicion, and were her secret foes from first to last. i made it my task to see her safely home; and as we went, i asked: "was it an offence to you, fair maid, that he should thus seek to test and try you?" "not an offence to me, seigneur," she answered gently, "but he should not have had need to do it. for he did hear my confession on friday. therefore he should have known better. it is no offence to me, save inasmuch as it doth seem a slighting of my lord." the people flocked around her as she passed through the streets. it was wonderful how the common townsfolk believed in her. already she was spoken of as a deliverer and a saviour of her country. nay, more, her gentleness and sweetness so won upon the hearts of those who came in contact with her, that mothers prayed of her to come and visit their sick children, or to speak words of comfort to those in pain and suffering; and such was the comfort and strength she brought with her, that there were whispers of miraculous cures being performed by her. in truth, i have no knowledge myself of any miracle performed by her, and the maid denied that she possessed such gifts of healing. but that she brought comfort and joy and peace with her i can well believe, and she had some skill with the sick whom she tended in her own village, so that it is likely that some may have begun to mend from the time she began to visit them. as for de baudricourt, his mind was made up. there was something about this girl which was past his understanding. just at present it was not possible to send her to the king, for the rains, sometimes mingled with blinding snow storms, were almost incessant, the country lay partially under water, and though such a journey might be possible to a seasoned soldier, he declared it would be rank murder to send a young girl, who, perchance, had never mounted a horse before, all that great distance. she must needs wait till the waters had somewhat subsided, and till the cold had abated, and the days were somewhat longer. the maid heard these words with grave regret, and even disapproval. "my lord would take care of me. i have no fear," she said; but de baudricourt, although he now faithfully promised to send her to chinon, would not be moved from his resolution to wait. for my part, i have always suspected that he sent a private messenger to chinon to ask advice what he should do, and desired to await his return ere acting. but of that i cannot speak certainly, since he never admitted it himself. if the delay fretted the maid's spirit, she never spoke with anger or impatience; much of her time was spent in a little chapel in the crypt of the church at vaucouleurs, where stood an image of our lady, before which she would kneel sometimes for hours together in rapt devotion. i myself went thither sometimes to pray; and often have i seen her there, so absorbed in her devotions that she knew nothing of who came or went. by this time bertrand and i had steadfastly resolved to accompany the maid not only to chinon, but upon whatsoever campaign her voices should afterwards send her. although we were knights, we neither of us possessed great wealth; indeed, we had only small estates, and these were much diminished in value from the wasting war and misfortunes of the country. still we resolved to muster each a few men-at-arms, and form for her a small train; for de baudricourt, albeit willing to send her with a small escort to chinon, had neither the wish nor the power to equip any sort of force to accompany her, though there would be no small danger on the journey, both from the proximity of the english in some parts, and the greater danger from roving bands of burgundians, whose sole object was spoil and plunder, and their pastime the slaughter of all who opposed them. and now we began to ask one another in what guise the maid should travel; for it was obvious that her cumbrous peasant garb was little suited for the work she had in hand, and we made many fanciful plans of robing her after the fashion of some old-time queen, such as boadicea or semiramis, and wondered whether we could afford to purchase some rich clothing and a noble charger, and so convey her to the king in something of regal state and pomp. but when, one day, we spoke something of this to the maid herself, she shook her head with a smile, and said: "gentle knights, i give you humble and hearty thanks; but such rich robes and gay trappings are not for me. my voices have bidden me what to do. i am to assume the dress of a boy, since i must needs live for a while amongst soldiers and men. i am sent to do a man's work, therefore in the garb of a man must i set forth. our good citizens of vaucouleurs are already busy with the dress i must shortly assume. there is none other in which my work can be so well accomplished." and in truth we saw at once the sense of her words. she had before her a toilsome journey in the companionship of men. she must needs ride, since there was no other way of travelling possible; and why should the frailest and tenderest of the party be burdened by a dress that would incommode her at every turn? and when upon the very next day she appeared in the castle yard in the hose and doublet and breeches of a boy, and asked of us to give her her first lesson in horsemanship, all our doubts and misgivings fled away. she wore her dress with such grace, such ease, such simplicity, that it seemed at once the right and fitting thing; and not one of the soldiers in the courtyard who watched her feats that day, passed so much as a rude jest upon her, far less offered her any insult. in truth, they were speedily falling beneath the spell which she was soon to exercise upon a whole army, and it is no marvel to me that this was so; for every day i felt the charm of her presence deepening its hold upon my heart. never have i witnessed such quickness of mastery as the maid showed, both in her acquirement of horsemanship and in the use of arms, in both of which arts we instructed her day by day. i had noted her strength and suppleness of limb the very first day i had seen her; and she gave marvellous proof of it now. she possessed also that power over her horse which she exercised over men, and each charger that she rode in turn answered almost at once to her voice and hand, with a docility he never showed to other riders. yet she never smote or spurred them; the sound of her voice, or the light pressure of knee or hand was enough. she had never any fear from the first, and was never unhorsed. very soon she acquired such skill and ease that we had no fears for her with regard to the journey she soon must take. although filling the time up thus usefully, her heart was ever set upon her plan, and daily she would wistfully ask: "may we not yet sally forth to the dauphin?" still she bore the delay well, never losing opportunities for learning such things as might be useful to her; and towards the end of the month there came a peremptory summons to her from the duke of lorraine, who was lying very ill at nancy. "they tell me," he wrote to de baudricourt, "that you have at vaucouleurs a woman who may be in sooth that maid of lorraine who, it has been prophesied, is to arise and save france. i have a great curiosity to see her; wherefore, i pray you, send her to me without delay. it may be that she will recover me of my sickness. in any case, i would fain have speech of her; so do not fail to send her forthwith." de baudricourt had no desire to offend his powerful neighbour, and he forthwith went down to the house of leroyer, taking bertrand and me with him, to ask of the maid whether she would go to see the duke at his court, since the journey thither was but short, and would be a fitting preparation for the longer one. we found her sitting in the saddler's shop, with one of his children on her lap, watching whilst he fashioned for her a saddle, which the citizens of vaucouleurs were to give her. bertrand and i were to present the horse she was to ride, and i had also sent to my home for a certain holiday suit and light armour made for a brother of mine who had died young. i had noted that the maid had just such a slim, tall figure as he, and was certain that this suit, laid away by our mother in a cedar chest, would fit her as though made for her. but it had not come yet, and she was habited in the tunic and hose she now wore at all times. her beautiful hair still hung in heavy masses round her shoulders, giving to her something of the look of a saintly warrior on painted window. later on, when she had to wear a headpiece, she cut off her long curling locks, and then her hair just framed her face like a nimbus; but today it was still hanging loose upon her shoulders, and the laughing child had got his little hands well twisted in the waving mass, upon which the midday sun was shining clear and strong. she had risen, and was looking earnestly at de baudricourt; yet all the while she seemed to be, as it were, listening for other sounds than those of his voice. when he ceased she was silent for a brief while, and then spoke. "i would fain it had been to the dauphin you would send me, seigneur; but since that may not be yet, i will gladly go to the duke, if i may but turn aside to make my pilgrimage to the shrine of st nicholas, where i would say some prayers, and ask help." "visit as many shrines as you like, so as you visit the duke as well," answered de baudricourt, who always spoke with a sort of rough bluffness to the maid, not unkindly, though it lacked gentleness. but she never evinced fear of him, and for that he respected her. she showed plenty of good sense whilst the details of the journey were being arranged, and was in no wise abashed at the prospect of appearing at a court. how should she be, indeed, who was looking forward with impatience to her appearance at the court of an uncrowned king? bertrand and i, with some half-dozen men-at-arms, were to form her escort, and upon the very next day, the sun shining bright, and the wind blowing fresh from the north over the wet lands, drying them somewhat after the long rains, we set forth. the maid rode the horse which afterwards was to carry her so many long, weary miles. he was a tall chestnut, deep in the chest, strong in the flank, with a proudly arching neck, a great mane of flowing hair, a haughty fashion of lifting his shapely feet, and an eye that could be either mild or fierce, according to the fashion in which he was treated. on his brow was a curious mark, something like a cross in shape, and the colour of it was something deeper than the chestnut of his coat. the maid marked this sign at the first glance, and she called the horse her crusader. methinks she was cheered and pleased by the red cross she thus carried before her, and she and her good steed formed one of those friendships which are good to see betwixt man and beast. our journey was not adventurous; nor will i waste time in telling overmuch about it. we visited the shrine, where the maid passed a night in fasting and vigil, and laid thereon a little simple offering, such as her humble state permitted. the next day she was presented to the duke of lorraine, as he lay wrapped in costly silken coverlets upon his great bed in one of the most sumptuous apartments of his castle. he gazed long and earnestly at the maid, who stood beside him, flinching neither from his hollow gaze, nor from the more open curiosity or admiration bestowed upon her by the lords and ladies assembled out of desire to see her. i doubt me if she gave them a thought. she had come to see the sick duke, and her thoughts were for him alone. there was something very strange and beautiful in her aspect as she stood there. her face was pale from her vigil and fast; her hair hung round it in a dark waving mass, that lighted up at the edges with gold where the light touched it. her simple boy's dress was splashed and travel stained; but her wonderful serene composure was as marked here as it had been throughout. no fears or tremors shook her, nor did any sort of consciousness of self or of the strangeness of her position come to mar the gentle dignity of her mien or the calm loveliness of her face. the duke raised himself on his elbow the better to look at her. "is this true what i have heard of you, that you are the maid of lorraine, raised up, according to the word of the wizard merlin, to save france in the hour of her extremity?" "i am come to save france from the english," she answered at once; "to drive them from the city of orleans, to bring the dauphin to rheims, and there see the crown set upon his head. this i know, for my lord has said it. who i am matters nothing, save only as i accomplish the purpose for which i am sent." her sweet ringing voice sounded like a silver trumpet through the room, and the lords and ladies pressed nearer to hear and see. "in sooth, the maid herself--the maid who comes to save france!" such was the whisper which went round; and i marvelled not; for the look upon that face, the glorious shining in those eyes, was enough to convince the most sceptical that the beatific vision had indeed been vouchsafed to them. the duke fell back on his pillows, regarding her attentively. "if then, maiden, you can thus read the future, tell me, shall i recover me of this sickness?" he gasped. "of that, sire, i have no knowledge," she answered. "that lies with god alone; but if you would be his servant, flee from the wrath to come, which your sins have drawn upon you. turn to the lord in penitence. do his will. be reconciled to your wife; for such is the commandment of god. perchance then you will find healing for body and soul. but seek not that which is hidden. do only the will of the lord, and trust all to him." she was hustled from the room by the frightened attendants, who feared for her very life at the hands of their irate lord. he had done many a man to death for less than such counsel. but the maid felt not fear. "he cannot touch me," she said, "i have my lord's work yet to accomplish." and in truth the duke wished her no ill, though he asked not to see her more. perhaps--who knows--these words may have aroused in him some gleams of penitence for his past life. i have heard he made a better end than was expected of him when his time came. and before the maid left the castle he sent her a present of money, and said he might even send his son to help the dauphin, if once orleans were relieved, and her words began to fulfil themselves. so then we journeyed home again, and we reached vaucouleurs on the afternoon of the twelfth day of february. the maid had been smiling and happy up till that time, and, since the weather was improving, we had great hopes of soon starting forth upon the journey for chinon. nevertheless, the streams were still much swollen, and in some places the ground was so soft that it quaked beneath our horses' feet. we travelled without misadventure, however, and i wondered what it was that brought the cloud to the brow of the maid as we drew nearer and nearer to vaucouleurs. but i was to know ere long; for as we rode into the courtyard of the castle the maid slipped from her horse ere any could help her, and went straight into the room where the governor was sitting, with her fearless air of mastery. "my lord of baudricourt, you do great ill to your master the dauphin in thus keeping me from him in the time of his great need. today a battle has been fought hard by the city of orleans, and the arms of the french have suffered disaster and disgrace. if this go on, the hearts of the soldiers will be as water, the purpose of the lord will be hindered, and you, seigneur, will be the cause, in that you have not hearkened unto me, nor believed that i am sent of him." "how know you the thing of which you speak, girl?" asked de baudricourt, startled at the firmness of her speech. "my voices have told me," she answered; "voices that cannot lie. the french have met with disaster. the english have triumphed, and i still waste my time in idleness here! how long is this to continue, robert de baudricourt?" a new note had come into her voice--the note of the general who commands. we heard it often enough later; but this was the first time i had noted it. how would de baudricourt take it? "girl," he said, "i will send forth a courier at once to ride with all speed to the westward. if this thing be so, he will quickly meet some messenger with the news. if it be as you have said, if this battle has been fought and lost, then will i send you forth without a day's delay to join the king at chinon." "so be it," answered the maid; and turned herself to the chapel, where she spent the night in prayer. it was bertrand who rode forth in search of tidings, his heart burning within him. it was he who nine days later entered vaucouleurs again, weary and jaded, but with a great triumph light in his eyes. he stood before de baudricourt and spoke. "it is even as the maid hath said. upon the very day when we returned to vaucouleurs, the english--a small handful of men--overthrew at rouvray a large squadron of the french, utterly routing and well-nigh destroying them. the english were but a small party, convoying herrings to the besiegers of orleans. the ground was strewn with herrings after the fight, which men call the battle of the herrings. consternation reigns in the hearts of the french--an army flies before a handful! the maid spake truly; the need is desperate. if help reach not the dauphin soon, all will be lost!" "then let the maid go!" thundered the old man, roused at last like an angry lion; "and may the god she trusts in guard and keep her, and give to her the victory!" chapter v. how the maid journeyed to chinon. so the thing had come to pass at last--as she had always said it must. robert de baudricourt was about to send her to the court of the dauphin at chinon. the weary days of waiting were at an end. she was to start forthwith; she and her escort were alike ready, willing, and eager. her strange mystic faith and lofty courage seemed to have spread through the ranks of the chosen few who were to attend her. i trow, had she asked it, half the men of vaucouleurs would have gladly followed in her train; for the whole town was moved to its core by the presence of the maid in its midst. almost were the townsfolk ready to worship her, only that there was something in her own simplicity and earnest piety which forbade such demonstration. all knew that the maid herself would be first to rebuke any person offering to her homage other than true man can and ought to offer to true woman. and now let me speak here, once and for all, of the love and reverence and devotion which the maid had power to kindle in the hearts of those with whom she came in contact. i can indeed speak of this, for i am proud to this day to call myself her true knight. from the first i felt towards her as i have felt to none since--not even to the wife of my manhood's tried affections. it was such a love as may be inspired by some almost angelic, presence--there was no passion in it. i believe i speak truly when i say that not one of the maid's true followers and knights and comrades-in-arms, ever thought of her as possible wife--ever even dreamed of her as lover. she moved amongst us as a being from another sphere. she inspired us with a courage, a power, and a confidence in her and in our cause, which nothing could shake or daunt. she was like a star, set in the firmament of heaven. our eyes, our hearts turned towards her, but she was never as one of us. still less was she as other women are, fashioned for soft flatteries, ready to be wooed and won. ah, no! with the maid it was far otherwise. truly do i think that of herself she had no thought, save as she was the instrument appointed of her lord to do the appointed work. to that task her whole soul was bent. it filled her to the full with an ecstasy of devotion which required no words in which to express itself. and i can faithfully say that it was not the beauty of her face, the sweetness of her ringing voice, nor the grace and strength of her supple form which made of men her willing followers and servants. no, it was a power stronger and more sacred than any such carnal admiration. it came from the conviction, which none could fail to reach, that this maid was indeed chosen and set apart of heaven for a great and mighty work, and that in obeying her, one was obeying the will of god, and working out some purpose determined in the counsels of the heavenlies. with her man's garb and light armour, the maid had assumed an air of unconscious command which sat with curious graceful dignity upon the serene calm of her ordinary demeanour. towards her followers of the humbler sort she ever showed herself full of consideration and kindliness. she felt for their fatigues or privations in marching, was tenderly solicitous later on for the wounded. above all, she was insistent that the dying should receive the consolations of religion, and it was a terrible thought to her that either friend or foe should perish unshriven and unassoiled. her last act at vaucouleurs, ere we started off in the early dawn of a late february day, was to attend mass with all her following. an hour later, after a hasty meal provided by de baudricourt, we were all in the saddle, equipped and eager for the start. the maid sat her chestnut charger as to the manner born. the pawings of the impatient animal caused her no anxiety. she was looking with a keen eye over her little band of followers, taking in, as a practised leader of men might do, their equipment and general readiness for the road. she pointed out to me several small defects which required adjusting and rectifying. already she seemed to have assumed without effort, and as a matter of course, the position of leader and general. there was no abatement of her gentle sweetness of voice or aspect, but the air of command combined with it as though it came direct and without effort as a gift from heaven. none resented it; all submitted to it, and submitted with a sense of lofty joy and satisfaction which i have never experienced since, and which is beyond my power to describe. there was one change in the outward aspect of the maid, for her beautiful hair had been cut off, and now her head was crowned only by its cluster of short curling locks, upon which today she wore a cloth cap, though soon she was to adopt the headpiece which belonged to the light armour provided. she had been pleased by the dress of white and blue cut-cloth which i had humbly offered her, and right well did it become her. the other suit provided by the townsfolk was carried by one of the squires, that she might have change of garment if (as was but too probable) we should encounter drenching rains or blustering snow storms. so far she had no sword of her own, nor had she spoken of the need of such a weapon for herself. but as we assembled in the courtyard of the castle, getting ourselves into the order of the march, de baudricourt himself appeared upon the steps leading into the building, bearing in his hands a sword in a velvet scabbard, which he gravely presented to the maid. "a soldier, lady, has need of a weapon," were his words, as he placed it in her hands; "take this sword, then. i trow it will do you faithful service; and may the lord in whom you trust lead you to victory, and save this distracted realm of france from the perils which threaten to overwhelm her!" "i thank you, seigneur de baudricourt," she answered, as she took the weapon, and permitted me to sling it for her in the belt for the purpose which she already wore, "i will keep your gift, and remember your good words, and how that you have been chosen of heaven to send me forth thus, and have done the bidding of the lord, as i knew that so true a man must needs do at the appointed time. for the rest, have no fear. the lord will accomplish that which he has promised. before the season now beginning so tardily has reached its height, the dauphin will be the anointed king of france, the english will have suffered defeat and orleans will be free!" "heaven send you speak sooth, fair maid," answered the rugged old soldier, as he eyed the slim figure before him with something of mingled doubt, wonder, and reverence in his eyes. then as though some strange impulse possessed him, he took her hand and kissed it, and bending the knee before her, said: "give me, i pray you, a blessing, ere you depart!" a wonderful light sprang into her eyes. she laid her hand upon the grizzled head, and lifted her own face, as was her wont, to the sunny sky. "the blessing of the king of heaven be upon you, robert de baudricourt, in that you have been an instrument chosen of him. the grace and love of our blessed lady be yours, in that you have shown kindness and favour to a simple maid of the people, set apart by heaven for a certain task. the favour and protection of the saints be yours, in that you have believed the words of one who spake of them, and have been obedient to the command sent to you from them!" she ceased speaking; but still continued to gaze upward with rapt and earnest eyes. every head was bared, and we all gazed upon her, as upon one who looks through the open gate of heaven, and to whom is vouchsafed a glimpse of the beatific vision. then clear and sweet her voice rose once more. her face was transfigured; a great light seemed to shine either upon or from it, no man could say which. "o lord god, father of the heavenlies, o sweet jesu, saviour of mankind, o blessed mother, queen of heaven, o holy michael, archangel of the shining sword, o blessed saints--catherine and margaret, beloved of heaven--give to these, your children, your blessing, your help, your protection, your counsel! be with us in our journeyings--in our uprising and down lying, in our going out and coming in--in all we put our hands unto! be with us and uphold us, and bring us in safety to our journey's end; for we go forth in the strength which is from above, and which can never fail us till the work appointed be accomplished!" then we rode forth, out of the courtyard, and into the streets of the town, which were thronged and lined with townsfolk, and with people from the surrounding villages, who had crowded in to see the wonderful maid, and witness the outgoing of the little band which was to accompany her to chinon. two of the maid's brothers had sought to be of her train, and one went with us upon that day. the second she sent back with a letter (written at her dictation by my fingers, for she herself knew not letters, though of so quick an understanding in other matters) to her parents, praying earnestly for their forgiveness for what must seem to them like disobedience, and imploring their blessing. and this letter she dispatched by jean, permitting pierre to accompany us on the march. her mother and two younger brothers, at least, believed in her mission by this time; but her father was doubtful and displeased, fearful for her safety, and suspicious of her credentials; and the eldest son remained of necessity at home to help his father, and whether or no he believed in his sister's call, i have never truly heard. but i know it pleased her that pierre should be in her escort, though she was careful not to show him any marked favour above others; and as in days to come she was more and more thrown with the great ones of the land, she of necessity was much parted from him, though the bond of sisterly love was never slackened; and both pierre, and afterwards jean, followed her through all the earlier parts of her victorious career. leaving vaucouleurs, we had need to march with circumspection, for the country was in no settled state, and it was probable that rumours of our march might have got abroad, and that roving bands of english or burgundian soldiers might be on the look out for us; for already it was being noised abroad that a miraculous maid had appeared to the aid of france, and though, no doubt, men jeered, and professed incredulity, still it was likely that she would be regarded in the light of a valuable prize if she could be carried off, and taken either to duke philip or to the regent bedford in paris. we had with us a king's archer from chinon, who had been sent with news of the disaster at rouvray. he was to conduct us back to chinon by the best and safest routes. but he told us that the country was beset by roving bands of hostile soldiers, that his comrades had been slain, and that he himself only escaped as by a miracle; and his advice was urgent that after the first day we should travel by night, and lie in hiding during the hours of daylight--a piece of advice which we were fain to follow, being no strong force, able to fight our way through a disturbed country, and being very solicitous for the safety of the precious maid who was at once our chiefest hope and chiefest care. this, then, we did, after that first day's travel in the bright springtide sunshine. we were attended for many a mile by a following of mounted men from the district round, and when, as the sun began to wester in the sky, they took their leave of us, the maid thanked them with gracious words for their company and good wishes, though she would not suffer them to kiss her hand or pay her homage; and after that they had departed, we did halt for many hours, eating and resting ourselves; for we meant to march again when the moon was up, and not lose a single night, so eager was the maid to press on towards chinon. of our journey i will not speak too particularly. ofttimes we were in peril from the close proximity of armed bands, as we lay in woods and thickets by day, avoiding towns and villages, lest we should draw too much notice upon ourselves. ofttimes we suffered from cold, from hunger, from drenching rains and bitter winds. once our way was barred by snow drifts, and often the swollen rivers and streams forced us to wander for miles seeking a ford that was practicable. but whatever were the hardships encountered, no word of murmuring ever escaped the lips of the maid; rather her courage and sweet serenity upheld us all, and her example of patience and unselfishness inspired even the roughest of the men-at-arms with a desire to emulate it. never, methinks, on such a toilsome march was so little grumbling, so little discouragement, and, above all, so little swearing. and this, in particular, was the doing of the maid. for habit is strong with us all, and when things went amiss the oath would rise to the lips of the men about her, and be uttered without a thought. but that was a thing she could not bear. her sweet pained face would be turned upon the speaker. her clear, ringing tones would ask the question: "shall we, who go forward in the name of the lord, dare to take his holy name lightly upon our lips? what are his own words? swear not at all. shall we not seek to obey him? are we not vowed to his service? and must not the soldier be obedient above all others? shall we mock him by calling ourselves his followers, and yet doing that without a thought which he hath forbidden?" not once nor twice, but many times the maid had to speak such words as these; but she never feared to speak them, and her courage and her purity of heart and life threw its spell over the rough men she had led, and they became docile in her hands like children, ready to worship the very ground she trod on. long afterwards it was told me by one of mine own men-at-arms that there had been a regular plot amongst the rougher of the soldiers at the outset to do her a mischief, and to sell her into the hands of the burgundians or the english. but even before leaving vaucouleurs the men had wavered, half ashamed of their own doubts and thoughts, and before we had proceeded two days' journey forward, all, to a man, would have laid down their lives in her service. the only matter that troubled the maid was that we were unable to hear mass, as she longed to do daily. the risk of showing ourselves in town or village was too great. but there came a night, when, as we journeyed, we approached the town of fierbois, a place very well known to me; and when we halted in a wood with the first light of day, and the wearied soldiers made themselves beds amid the dried fern and fallen leaves, i approached the maid, who was gazing wistfully towards the tapering spire of a church, visible at some distance away, and i said to her: "gentle maid, yonder is the church of sainte catherine at fierbois, and there will be, without doubt, early mass celebrated within its walls. if you will trust yourself with bertrand and myself, i trow we could safely convey you thither, and bring you back again, ere the day be so far advanced that the world will be astir to wonder at us." her face brightened as though a sunbeam had touched it. she needed not to reply in words. a few minutes later, and we were walking together through the wood, and had quickly reached the church, where the chiming of the bell told us that we should not be disappointed of our hope. we knelt at the back of the church, and there were few worshippers there that morning. i could not but watch the face of the maid, and suddenly i felt a curious thrill run through me, as though i had been touched by an unseen hand. i looked at her, and upon her face had come a look which told me that she was listening to some voice unheard by me. she clasped her hands, her eyes travelled toward the altar, and remained fixed upon it, as though she saw a vision. her lips moved, and i thought i heard the murmured words: "blessed sainte catherine, i hear. i will remember. when the time comes i shall know what to do." when the priest had finished his office we slipped out before any one else moved, and reached the shelter of the woods again without encountering any other person. i almost hoped that the maid would speak to us of what had been revealed to her in that church, but she kept the matter in her own heart. yet, methinks, she pondered it long and earnestly; for although she laid her down as if to sleep, her eyes were generally wide open, looking upwards through the leafless budding boughs of the trees as though they beheld things not of this earth. it was upon this day that i wrote, at the maid's request, a letter to the uncrowned king at chinon, asking of him an audience on behalf of jeanne d'arc, the maiden from domremy, of whom he had probably heard. this letter i dispatched to sir guy de laval, asking him to deliver it to the king with his own hands, and to bring us an answer ere we reached chinon, which we hoped now to do in a short while. the missive was carried by the king's archer, who knew his road right well, and was acquainted with the person of sir guy. he was to ride forward in all haste, whilst we were to follow in slower and more cautious fashion. i think it was about the fifth day of march when the great towers of chinon first broke upon our gaze. we had been travelling all the night, and it was just as the dawn was breaking that we espied the huge round turrets rising, as it were, from amid the mists which clung about the river and its banks. there we halted, for no message had yet come from the king; but upon the maid's face was a look of awe and radiant joy as she stood a little apart, gazing upon the goal of her toilsome journey. no fear beset her as to her reception, just as no fears had troubled her with regard to perils by the way. "god clears the road for me," she said, when news had been brought from time to time of bands of soldiers whom we had narrowly escaped; and now, as she looked upon the towers of chinon, growing more and more distinct as the daylight strengthened, her face wore a smile of serene confidence in which natural fear and shrinking had no part. "the dauphin will receive me. fear nothing. the work which is begun will go forward to its completion. god hath spoken in his power. he hath spoken, and his word cannot fail." so after we had fed she lay down, wrapped in a cloak, and fell asleep like a child; whilst i rode forward a little way along the plain, for i had seen a handful of horsemen sallying forth, as it seemed from the castle, and i hoped that it was sir guy bearing letter or message from the king. nor was i mistaken in this hope. soon i was certain of my man, and sir guy in turn recognising me, spurred forward in advance of his followers, and we met alone in the plain, bertrand, my companion, being with me. "so there really is to be a miracle worked, and by a maid!" cried sir guy, as we rode with him towards our camp; "mort de dieu--but it is passing strange! all the court is in a fever of wonder about this angelic maid, as some call her; whilst others vow she is either impostor or witch. is it the same, bertrand, of whom you did speak upon the day we parted company?" "the same; and yet in one way not the same, for since then she hath grown apace in power and wonder, so that all who see her marvel at her, and some be ready to worship her. but we will say no more. you shall see for yourself, and the king also shall see, if he refuse not to receive one who comes to him as the messenger of god." "i am sent to conduct the maid presently to the castle," answered sir guy. "there is now great desire to see her and hear her, and to try and test the truth of her mission. the generals scoff aloud at the thought of going to battle with a maid for leader. the churchmen look grave, and talk of witchcraft and delusion. the ladies of the court are in a fever to see her. as for the king and his ministers, they are divided in mind 'twixt hope and fear; but truly matters are come to such desperate pass with us that, if some help come not quickly, the king will flee him away from his distracted realm, and leave the english and burgundians to ravage and subdue at will!" "god forbid!" said i, and crossed myself. scarce had i spoken the words before i saw approaching us on her chestnut charger the maid herself, who rode forward to meet us at a foot's pace, and reined back a few yards from us, her eyes fixed full upon the face of sir guy, who uncovered, i scarce know why, for how should he know that this youthful soldier was indeed the maid herself? "you come from the dauphin," she said; "go tell him that the darkest hour but heralds the dawn. he must not flee away. he must stay to face his foes. i will lead his armies to victory, and he shall yet be crowned king of france. let him never speak more of deserting his realm. that shall not--that must not be!" sir guy was off his horse by now; he bent his knee to the maid. "i will tell the king that the deliverer hath truly come," he said; and taking her hand, ere she could prevent it, he reverently kissed it. chapter vi. how the maid came to the king. so guy de laval had fallen beneath the spell of the maid, even as we had done. he spoke of it to me afterwards. it was not because of her words, albeit she had plainly shown knowledge of that which he had been saying before her approach. it was not the beauty of her serene face, or the dignity of her mien. it was as though some power outside of himself urged him to some act of submission. an overshadowing presence seemed to rest upon him as with the touch of a hand, and he who had laughed at the idea of the restoration of miracles suddenly felt all his doubts and misgivings fall away. we rode together back to our camp, and there we talked long and earnestly of many things. the maid had much to ask of sir guy, but her questions were not such as one would have guessed. she never inquired how the dauphin (as she always called him) had first heard of her, how he regarded her, what his ministers and the court thought of her mission, whether they would receive her in good part, what treatment she might expect when she should appear at chinon. no; such thoughts as these seemed never to enter her head. she was in no wise troubled as to the things which appertained to herself. not once did a natural curiosity on this ground suggest such inquiries; and though we, her followers, would fain have asked many of these questions, something in her own absence of interest, her own earnestness as to other matters, restrained us from putting them. it was of the city of orleans she desired to know. what was the condition of the garrison? what were the armies of england doing? what was the disposition of the beleaguering force? was any project of relief on foot amongst the dauphin's soldiers? did they understand how much depended upon the rescue of the devoted town? guy de laval was able to answer these questions, for he had himself ridden from chinon to orleans with messages to the generals in the beleaguered city. he reported that the blockade was not perfected; that provisions could still find their way--though with risk, and danger of loss--into the town, and that messengers with letters could pass to and fro by exercising great caution, and by the grace of heaven. he told her of the great fortresses the english had built, where they dwelt in safety, and menaced the town and battered its walls with their engines of war. the garrison and the city were yet holding bravely out, and the generals dunois and la hire were men of courage and capacity. but when the maid asked how it came about that the english--who could not be so numerous as the french forces in the town--had been suffered to make these great works unmolested, he could only reply with a shake of the head, and with words of evil omen. "it is the terror of the english which has fallen upon them. since the victory of agincourt, none have ever been able to see english soldiers drawn up in battle array without feeling their blood turn to water, and their knees quake under them. i know not what the power is; but at rouvray it was shown forth again. a small force of soldiers--but a convoy with provisions for the english lines--overcame and chased to destruction a french army ten times its own strength. it is as though the english had woven some spell about us. we cannot face them--to our shame be it spoken! the glorious days of old are past. if heaven come not to our aid, the cause of france is lost!" "heaven has come to the aid of france," spoke the maid, with that calm certainty which never deserted her; "have no fear, gentle knight. let the dauphin but send me to orleans, and the english will speedily be chased away." "it will need a great army to achieve that, fair maid," spoke sir guy; "and alas, the king has but a small force at his disposal, and the men are faint hearted and fearful." "it is no matter," answered the maid, with shining eyes; "is it anything to my lord whether he overcomes by many or by few? is his arm shortened at all, that he should not fulfil that which he has promised? france shall see ere long that the lord of hosts fights for her. will not that be enough?" "i trow it will," answered de laval, baring his head. it was not until the evening was drawing on that we entered the fortress of chinon, where the king held his court. a very splendid castle it was, and when, later in my life, i once visited the realm of england, and looked upon the castle of windsor there, it did bring back greatly to my mind that castle of chinon, with its towers and battlements overhanging, as it were, the river, and the town clustered at its foot. we had delayed our approach that our wearied and way-worn men might rest and give a little care to their clothes and arms, so that we presented not too travel-stained and forlorn an appearance. we desired to do honour to the maid we escorted, and to assume an air of martial pomp, so far as it was possible to us. sir guy had ridden on in front to announce our coming. he told me that the king was full of curiosity about the maid, and that the ladies of the court were consumed with wonder and amaze; but that the prime minister, de la tremouille, was strenuously set against having aught to do with that "dreamer of dreams," as he slightingly called her, whilst the king's confessor was much of the same mind, in spite of what was reported about her from the priests who had seen and examined her. there was no mistaking the sensation which our approach occasioned when at last we reached the walls of the castle. soldiers and townspeople, gentlemen and servants, were assembled at every coign of vantage to watch us ride in; and every eye was fixed upon the maid, who rode as one in a dream, her face slightly raised, her eyes shining with the great joy of an object at last achieved, and who seemed unconscious of the scrutiny to which she was subjected, and unaware of the excitement which her presence occasioned. for the most part deep silence reigned as we passed by. no acclamation of welcome greeted us, nor did any murmurs of distrust smite upon our ears. there was whispering and a rustling of garments, and the clank of arms; but no articulate words, either friendly or hostile, till, as we passed the drawbridge, one of the sentries, a great, brawny fellow, half french half scottish, uttered an insult to the maid, accompanying his words by a horrible blasphemy. my hand was upon my sword hilt. i could have slain the man where he stood; but i felt the maid's touch on my shoulder, and my hand sank to my side. she paused before the sentry, gazing at him with earnest eyes, full of mournful reproach and sorrow. "o lord jesu, forgive him!" she breathed softly, and as the fellow, half ashamed, but truculent still, and defiant, turned upon her as though he would have repeated either his insult or his blasphemy, she held up her hand and spoke aloud, so that all who stood by might hear her words: "o, my friend, speak not so rashly, but seek to make your peace with god. know you not how near you stand to death this night? may god pardon and receive your soul!" the man shrank back as one affrighted. it was scarce two hours later that as he was crossing a narrow bridge-like parapet, leading from one part of the castle to another, he fell into the swollen and rapid stream beneath, and was heard of no more. some called it witchcraft, and said that the maid had overlooked him; but the more part regarded it as a sign that she could read the future, and that things unknown to others were open to her eyes; and this, indeed, none could doubt who were with her at this time, as i shall presently show. i had expected that sir guy would come to lead us into the chamber of audience, where we were told the king would receive us. but he did not come, and we were handed on from corridor to corridor, from room to room, first by one richly-apparelled servant of the court, then by another. our men-at-arms, of course, had been detained in one of the courtyards, where their lodgings were provided. only bertrand and i were suffered, by virtue of our knighthood, to accompany the maid into the presence of royalty; and neither of us had ever seen the king, or knew what his outward man was like. but she asked no questions of us as to that, nor how she was to comport herself when she reached the audience chamber. neither had she desired to change her travel-stained suit for any other, though, in truth, there was little to choose betwixt them now; only methinks most in her case would have provided some sort of gay raiment wherewith to appear before the king. but the maid thought nought of herself, but all of her mission, and she held that this was a matter which could be touched by no outward adorning or bravery of apparel. none who passed through the galleries and corridors of the castle of chinon in these days would have guessed to what a desperate pass the young king's affairs had come. music and laughter resounded there. courtiers fluttered about in gorgeous array, and fine ladies like painted butterflies bore them company. feasting and revelry swallowed up the days and nights. no clang of arms disturbed the gaieties of the careless young monarch. if despair and desperation were in his heart, he pushed them back with a strong hand. he desired only to live in the present. he would not look beyond. so long as he could keep his court about him, he would live after this fashion; and when the english had swept away the last barriers, and were at the very gates, then he would decide whether to surrender himself upon terms, or to fly to some foreign land. but to face the foe in gallant fight was an alternative which had never been entertained by him, until such time as he had received the message from the maid; and then it was rather with wonder and curiosity than any belief in her mission that he had consented to receive her. a pair of great double doors was flung open before us. we stood upon the threshold of a vast room, lighted by some fifty torches, and by the blaze of a gigantic fire which roared halfway up the vast chimney. this great audience chamber seemed full of dazzling jewels and gorgeous raiment. one could scarce see the faces and figures in the shifting throng for the wonder of this blaze of colour. but there was no dais on which the king was seated in state, as i had expected. no figure stood out conspicuous in the throng as that of royalty. i gazed at one and another, as we stood in the doorway, our eyes still half dazzled by the glare of light and by the brilliance of the assembled company, but i could by no means distinguish the king from any of the rest. many men, by their gorgeous raiment, might well be the greatest one present; but how to tell? all were quiet now. they had fallen a little back, as though to gaze upon the newcomer. smiling faces were turned upon us. eager eyes were fastened upon the maid's face. she stood there, with the glare of the torches shining over her, looking upon the scene with her calm, direct gaze, without tremor of fear or thought of shame. one of the great seigneurs--i know not which--came forward with a smile and a bow, and gave her his hand to lead her forward. "i will present you to the king," he said; and made in a certain direction, as though he would lead her to a very kingly-looking personage in white and crimson velvet, blazing with diamonds; but ere he had taken many steps, the maid drew her hand from his, and turning herself in a different direction, went forward without the least wavering, and knelt down before a young man in whose attire there was nothing in any way gorgeous or notable. "gentle dauphin," she said, in that clear voice of hers which always made itself heard above other sounds, though at this moment a great hush prevailed throughout the audience chamber, and wondering eyes were fixed full upon the maid, "god give you good life, and victory over your enemies!" astonishment was in the young man's face; but he took the maid by the hand, and said: "you mistake, fair damsel; it is not i that am the king. see, he is there; let me take you to him." but she would not be raised; she knelt still at his feet, and the hand which he had given her she held to her lips. "gentle dauphin, think not to deceive me. i know you, who you are. you are he to whom i am sent, to win you the victory first, and then to place the crown of france upon your head. it is you, and none other, who shall rule in france!" the young man's face had changed greatly now. a deep agitation replaced the former smile of mockery and amusement. several of the courtiers were exchanging meaning glances; in the hush of the hall every spoken word could be heard. "child, how dost thou know me?" asked the king, and his voice shook with emotion. her answer was not strange to us, though it might have been so to others. "i am jeanne the maid," she replied, as if in so saying she was saying enough to explain all; "i am sent to you by the king of heaven; and it is his word that i have spoken. you shall be crowned and consecrated at rheims, and shall be lieutenant of the king of heaven, who is king of france, but who wills that you shall reign over that fair realm!" "have you a message from him to me?" asked the king, speaking like a man in a dream. "ay, verily i have," answered the maid, "a message which none but you must hear; for it is to you alone that i may tell it." then the king took her by the hand, and raised her up, gazing at her with a great wonder and curiosity; and he led her behind a curtain into a deep recess of the window, where prying eyes could not see them, nor inquisitive ears overhear her words. and so soon as they had disappeared there, a great hum and buzz of wonder ran throughout the hall, and we saw sir guy detach himself from a knot of gay courtiers, and come hastily towards us. "is it not wonderful!" he cried. "and i had feared that she would be deceived, and that the mockers would have the laugh against her in the first moment. though how they looked for her to have knowledge of the king's person i know not. surely none can doubt but that she is taught by the spirit of god." "it was done to prove her!" "ay, it was the thought of de la tremouille, who has ridiculed her pretensions (the word is his) from first to last. but it was a thought welcomed by all, as a passing merry jest. thus was it that i was not permitted to come and lead you in. they did fear lest i should tell what was intended, and describe to the maid the person or the dress of the king. and now none can doubt; and, in sooth, it may be a wondrous thing for his majesty himself, and take from him for ever that hateful fear which i always do declare has helped to paralyse him, and hold him back from action." i lowered my voice to a whisper as i said: "you mean the fear lest he was not the true son of the king?" "yes; his wicked mother hinted away her own honour in her desire to rob him of his crown. he has known her for an evil woman. was it not likely he would fear she might speak truth? those who know him best know that he has often doubted his right to style himself dauphin or king; but methinks after today that doubt must needs be set at rest. if the maid who comes from the king of heaven puts that name upon him, need he fear to take it for his own?" as we were thus speaking the sieur de boisi joined us. he was perchance more fully in the king's confidence than any other person at court, and he was kinsman to de laval, with whom he had plainly already had much talk upon this subject. he drew us aside, and whispered a story in our ears. "his majesty did tell it me himself," he said, "for there be nights when he cannot sleep, and he calls me from my couch at his bed's foot, and makes me lie beside him, that we may talk at ease; and he told me, not long since, how that this trouble and doubt were so growing upon him, that once he had fasted for a whole day, and had passed the night upon his knees in the oratory, praying for a sign whereby he might truly know whether he were the real heir, and the kingdom justly his. for that were it not so, he would sooner escape to spain or scotland to pass his days in peace; but that if the lord would send him a sign, then he would seek to do his duty by the realm." with awe we looked into each other's faces. "the sign has come!" whispered bertrand. "truly i do think it," answered de boisi. "surely his majesty will recognise it as such!" said sir guy. "i see not how it can be otherwise; and it will be like a great load lifted from his heart." "and he will surely hesitate no more," i said, "but will forthwith give her a band of armed men, that she may sally forth to the aid of the beleaguered orleans!" but de boisi and de laval looked doubtful. "i know not how that will be. for there are many who will even now seek to dissuade the king, and will talk of witchcraft, and i know not what beside. the abbes and the bishops and the priests are alike distrustful and hostile. the generals of the army openly scoff and jeer. some say that if the maid be sent to orleans, both la hire and dunois will forthwith retire, and refuse all further office there. what can a peasant maid know of the art of war? they ask, and how can she command troops and lead them on to victory, where veterans have failed again and again? and then the king knows not what to reply--" "but she hath given him wherewith to reply!" broke out bertrand, with indignation in his tones. "she comes not in her own strength, but as the envoy of the king of heaven. is that not enough?" "enough for us who have seen and heard her," answered sir guy; "but will it prove enough for those who only hear of her from others, and who call her a witch, and say that she works by evil spells, and has been sent of the devil for our deception and destruction and undoing?" "then let them send for one of the generals from orleans, and let him judge for himself!" cried bertrand hotly; "you say the city is not so closely blockaded but that with care and caution men may get in or out? then let some one send and fetch one of these commanders; and if he be not convinced when he sees her, then he will be of very different stuff from all else who have doubted, but whose doubts have been dispelled." "in faith, that is no bad thought," spoke de boisi thoughtfully, "and i trow it might be possible of accomplishment. i will certainly speak with the king of it. he is young; he is not firm of purpose; his own heart has never before been set upon his kingdom. one cannot expect a man's nature to change in a day, even though his eyes may have been opened, and his misgivings set at rest. if one of the generals were won to her side, the troubles that beset us would be well-nigh overcome." a great clamour of sound from the larger audience chamber, from which we had retired to talk at ease, warned us now that the king and the maid had appeared from their private conference. his face was very grave, and there was more of earnestness and nobility in his expression than i had thought that countenance capable of expressing. the maid was pale, as though with deep emotion; but a glorious light shone in her eyes, and when the court ladies and gallants crowded round her, asking her questions, and gazing upon her as though she were a being from another sphere, she seemed lifted up above them into another region, and though she answered them without fear, she put aside, in some wonderful way, all those questions which were intrusions into holy things, speaking so fearlessly and so simply that all were amazed at her. she came to us at last, weary, yet glad at heart; and her first question was for her followers, and whether they had been lodged and fed. we supped with her at her request, and in private, and her face was very calm and glad, though she spoke nothing of what had passed between her and the king. only when bertrand said: "you have done a great work today," did she look at him with a smile as she replied: "my work hath but just begun, and may yet be hindered; but have no fear. the lord has spoken, and he will bring it to pass. he will not fail us till all be accomplished." chapter vii. how the maid was hindered; yet made preparation. i have no patience to write of the things which followed. i blush for the king, for his council, yea, even for the church itself! here was a messenger sent from god, sent to france in the hour of her direst need. this messenger had been tried and tested by a score of different methods already, and had in every case come forth from the trial like gold submitted to the fire. priests had examined and found nothing evil in her. again and again had she spoken of that which must follow--and so it had been. if her voices were not from god, then must they be from the devil; yet it had been proved again, and yet again, that this was impossible, since she feared nought that was holy or good, but clave unto such, and was never so joyful and glad at heart as when she was able to receive the holy sacrament, or kneel before the altar of god whilst mass was being said. she had proved her claim to be called god's messenger. she had justified herself as such in the eyes of the king and in the judgment of the two queens and of half the court. and yet, forsooth, he must waver and doubt, and let himself be led by the counsels of those who had ever set themselves against the maid and her mission; and to the shame of the church be it spoken, the archbishop of rheims was one of those who most zealously sought to persuade him of the folly of entrusting great matters to the hands of a simple peasant girl, and warned the whole court of the perils of witchcraft and sorcery which were like to be the undoing of all who meddled therein. i could have wrung the neck of the wily old fox, whom i did more blame than i did his friend and advocate, de la tremouille; for the latter only professed carnal wisdom and prudence, but the archbishop spoke as one who has a mandate from god, and he at least should have known better. and so they must needs send her to poictiers, to a gathering of ecclesiastics, assembled by her enemy, the archbishop himself, to examine into her claims to be that which she professed, and also into her past life, and what it had been. i scarce have patience to write of all the wearisome weeks which were wasted thus, whilst this assembly sat; and the maid--all alone in her innocence, her purity, her sweetness, and gentle reverence--stood before them, day after day, to answer subtle questions, face a casuistry which sought to entrap her into contradiction or confusion, or to wring from her a confession that she was no heaven-sent messenger, but was led away by her own imaginations and ambitions. it was an ordeal which made even her devoutest adherents tremble; for we knew the astuteness of the churchmen, and how that they would seek to win admissions which they would pervert to their own uses afterwards. yet we need not have feared; for the maid's simplicity and perfectly fearless faith in her mission carried her triumphant through all; or perhaps, indeed, her voices whispered to her what answers she should make, for some of them were remembered long, and evoked great wonder in the hearts of those who heard them. one dominican monk sought to perplex her by asking why, since god had willed that france should be delivered through her, she had need of armed men? full fearlessly and sweetly she looked at him as she made answer: "it is my lord's will that i ask for soldiers, and that the dauphin shall give me them. the men shall fight; it is god who gives the victory." another rough questioner amongst her judges sought to confuse her by asking what language her voices spoke. they say that a flash flew from her eyes, though her sweet voice was as gentle as ever as she made answer: "a better language than yours, my father." and again, when the same man sought to know more of her faith and her love of god, having shown himself very sceptical of her voices and visions, she answered him, with grave dignity and an earnest, steadfast gaze: "i trow i have a better faith than yours, my father." and so, through all, her courage never failed, her faith never faltered, her hope shone undimmed. "they must give me that which i ask; they cannot withstand god. they cannot hurt me. for this work was i born, and until it be accomplished i am safe. i have no fear." only once did she show anger, and then it was with a quiet dignity of displeasure, far removed from petulance or impatience. they asked of her a sign that she was what she professed to be. "i have not come to poictiers to give a sign," she answered, holding her head high, and looking fearlessly into the faces of those who sat to judge her. "send me to orleans, with as small a band as you will. but send me there, and you shall see signs and to spare that i come in the power of the king of heaven." and so in the end her faith and courage triumphed. the verdict ran somewhat thus: "we have found in her nothing but what is good. to deny or hinder her intentions to serve the king would be to show ourselves unworthy of the assistance of god." yes, they had to come to it; and i trust that there were many sitting there whose hearts smote them for ever having doubted, or sought to baffle or entrap her. i cannot tell how far the judges were moved by the growing feeling in the town and throughout the district. but the people crowded to see the maid pass by, and all were ready to fall at her feet and worship her. in the evenings they visited her at the house of jean ratabeau, the advocate general, whose wife formed for her (as did every good and true woman with whom she came into contact during her life) an ardent admiration and affection. and to their earnest questions she gave ready answer, sitting in the midst of an eager crowd, and telling them in her sweet and simple way the story of her life in domremy, and how she had first heard these voices from heaven, or seen wondrous visions of unspeakable glories; and how she had learnt, by slow degrees, that which her lord had for her to do, and had lost, by little and little, the fear which first possessed her, till now she knew not of the name of the word. she had but to follow where her voices guided. and the people believed in her, heart and soul. her fame spread far and wide, and had she lifted but a finger, she might have been at the head of an armed band of citizens and soldiers, yea, and many gentlemen and knights as well, all vowed to live and die in her service. but this was not what was her destiny. "i thank you, my friends," she would say, if such a step were proposed by any ardent soul, impatient of this long delay; "but thus it may not be. my lord has decreed that the dauphin shall send me forth at the head of his armies, and with a troop of his soldiers; and he will do this ere long. be not afraid. we must needs have patience, as did our lord himself, and be obedient, as he was. for only as we look to him for grace and guidance can we hope to do his perfect will." thus spoke the maid, who, being without letters, and knowing, as she said, no prayers save the pater noster, ave maria, and credo, yet could speak in such fashion to those who sought her. was it wonder that the people believed in her? that they would have been ready to tear in pieces any who durst contemn her mission, or declare her possessed of evil spirits? yet i will not say that it was fear which possessed the hearts of her judges, and decided their ruling in this matter. i trow they could not look upon her, or hear her, without conviction of heart. nevertheless it is possible that the respect for popular enthusiasm led them to speak in such high praise of the maid, and to add that she was in the right in assuming the dress which she wore. for she had been sent to do man's work, and for this a man's garb was the only fitting one to wear. and this ruling was heard with great acclamation of satisfaction; for her dress had been almost more commented upon than any other matter by some, and that the church had set its sanction upon that which common sense deemed most right and fitting, robbed the most doubtful of all scruple, and gave to the maid herself no small pleasure. "i do in this, as in all other things, that which i have been bidden," she said. "but i would not willingly act unseemly in the eyes of good men and virtuous women; wherefore i am glad that my judges have spoken thus, and i thank them from my heart for their gentle treatment of me." it was ever thus with the maid. no anger or impatience overset her sweet serenity and humility. she would not let herself take offence, or resent these ordeals to which, time after time, she was subjected. nay, it was she who defended the proceedings when we attacked them, saying that it behoved men to act with care and caution in these great matters, and that her only trouble in the delay was the sufferings and sorrows of the poor beleaguered garrison and citizens in orleans, to whose help and relief she longed to fly. so certain was she that before long she would be upon her way, that at poictiers she composed that letter to the english king, his regent, and his generals which has been so much talked of since. it was a truly wonderful document to be penned by a village maiden; for in it she adjured them to cease from warring with the rightful king of france, whom god would have to rule the realm for him, to go back to their own country, leaving peace behind them instead of war, and imploring them then to join with the king of france in a crusade against the saracens. she speaks of herself as one who has power to drive them from the kingdom if they will not go in peace as adjured. calling herself throughout "the maid," she tells them plainly that they will not be able to stand against her; that she will come against them in the power of the king of heaven, who will give to her more strength than ever can be brought against her; and in particular she begs of them to retire from the city of orleans; else, if they do not, they shall come to great misfortune there. this letter took some time in the composition, and was written for her by sir guy de laval, though we were all in her counsel as she dictated it. by this i do not mean that we advised her. on the contrary, we gazed at her amazed, knowing how fruitless such an injunction must be to the haughty victorious nation, who had us, so to speak, in the dust at her feet. but the maid saw with other eyes than ours. "it may be that there will be some holy man of god in their camp to whom my lord will reveal his will, as he hath done to me, and will show the things which must come to pass. i would so willingly spare all the bloodshed and misery which war will bring. it is so terrible a thing for christian men to war one with another!" so this letter, with its superscription "jhesus maria," was written and dispatched to the english, and the maid turned her attention to other matters near her heart, such as the design and execution of those banners which were to be carried before her armies in battle, and lead them on to victory. and these same words, "jhesus maria," she decreed should appear upon each of the three standards, in token that she went not forth in her own strength, nor even in that of the king of france; but in the power which was from above, and in the strength given by those who sent her. now there came to poictiers to see the maid at this time many persons from other places, and amongst these was a scotchman called hauves polnoir, who brought with him his daughter, a fair girl, between whom and the maid a great love speedily sprang up. these polnoirs were the most skilful workers in embroideries and such like of all the country round, and to them was entrusted the making of the three banners, according to the instructions of the maid. there was first the great white silken standard, with the golden fleur-de-lys of france, and a representation on the reverse of the almighty god between two adoring angels; then a smaller banner, with a device representing the annunciation, which she always gave to one of her immediate attendants or squires to carry into battle; and for herself she had a little triangular banneret of white, with an image of the crucified christ upon it, and this she carried herself, and it was destined to be the rallying point of innumerable engagements, for the sight of that little fluttering pennon showed the soldiers where the maid was leading them, and though this was in the thickest and sorest of the strife, they would press towards it with shouts of joy and triumph, knowing that, where the maid led, there victory was won. all these matters were arranged whilst we were kept in waiting at poictiers; and the polnoirs returned to tours to execute the orders there in their own workshop. the maid promised to visit them on her way from chinon to orleans, and so bid them a kindly farewell. perhaps i may here add that when the dauphin, upon his coronation, insisted upon presenting the maid with a sum of money, the use she made of it, after offering at various shrines, was to provide a marriage dowry for janet polnoir. never did she think of herself; never did she desire this world's goods. this was shown very plainly upon her triumphant return to chinon, with the blessing and sanction of the church upon her mission, with the enthusiasm of the people growing and increasing every day, and her fame flying throughout the length and breadth of the realm. by this time the king and all his court knew that a deliverer had been raised up in our midst, and instead of lowly lodgings being allotted to the maid and her train, the whole tower of coudray was set apart for the use of herself and her suite. the custodian de belier and his wife had charge of her, and to her were now appointed a staff, of which the brave jean d'aulon was the chief, and to which bertrand and sir guy de laval and myself belonged, together with many more knights and gentlemen, all anxious to do service under her banner. also she had in her train some persons of lowlier degree, such as her brothers, for whom she always had tender care, and who believed devoutly in her mission, although they saw of necessity less and less of one another as the maid's mission progressed, and took her into a different world. but all this grandeur was no delight to her, save inasmuch as it showed that at last her mission was recognised and honoured. when asked what she would have for herself in the matter of dress and armour, her answer was that she had already all she required, although she only possessed at this time one suit more than she had started forth with from vaucouleurs. although she saw the courtiers fluttering about like butterflies, and noted how men, as well as women, decked themselves in choice stuffs and flashing jewels, she asked none of these things for herself; and when the queen of sicily, always her best and kindest friend, sent to her some clothing of her own designing--all white, and beautifully worked, some with silver, and some with gold thread and cord, and a mantle of white velvet, lined with cloth of silver--she looked at the beautiful garments with something between a smile and a sigh; then turning towards the great lady who stood by to watch her, she first kissed her hand, and then, with a sudden impulse of affection, put her arms about her neck, and was drawn into a close embrace. "are you not pleased with them, my child?" spoke queen yolande gently; "they would have decked you in all the colours of the rainbow, and made you to blaze with jewels; but i would not have it the virgin maid, i told them, should be clad all in white, and my word prevailed, and thus you see your snowy raiment. i had thought you would be pleased with it, ma mie." "madame, it is beautiful; i have never dreamed of such. it is too fine, too costly for such as i. i am but a peasant maid--" "you are the chosen of the king of heaven, my child. you must think also of that. you are now the leader of the king's armies. you have to do honour alike to a heavenly and an earthly monarch; and shall we let our champion go forth without such raiment as is fitting to her mission?" then the maid bent her head, and answered with sweet gladness: "if it is thus that the world regards me, i will wear these trappings with a glad and thankful heart; for in sooth i would seek to do honour to his majesty. as for my lord in the heavens, i trow that he doth look beneath such matters of gay adornment; yet even so, i would have his mission honoured in the sight of all men, and his messenger fitly arrayed." so the maid put on her spotless apparel, and looked more than ever like a youthful warrior, going forth with stainless shield, in the quest of chivalrous adventure. the whole court was entranced by her beauty, her lofty dignity, her strange air of aloofness from the world, which made her move amongst them as a thing apart, and seemed to set a seal upon her every word and act. when she spoke of the coming strife, and her plans for the relief of the beleaguered city, her eyes would shine, a ringing note of authority would be heard in her voice, she would fearlessly enter into debate with the king and his ministers, and tell them that which she was resolved to do, whether they counselled it or no. at such moments she appeared gifted with a power impossible rightly to describe. without setting herself up in haughtiness, she yet overbore all opposition by her serene composure and calm serenity in the result. men of war said that she spoke like a soldier and a strategist; they listened to her in amaze, and wondered what the great la hire would say when he should arrive, to find that a country maiden had been set over his head. in other matters, too, the maid knew her mind, and spoke it with calm decision. the queen of sicily had not been content with ordering the maid's dress alone, she had also given orders to the first armourer in tours to fashion her a suit of light armour for the coming strife. this armour was of white metal, and richly inlaid with silver, so that when the sun glinted upon it, it shone with a dazzling white radiance, almost blinding to behold. the king, also, resolved to do his share, had ordered for her a light sword, with a blade of toledo steel; but though the maid gratefully accepted the gift of the white armour, and appeared before all the court attired therein, and with her headpiece, with its floating white plumes crowning it all, yet, as she made her reverence before the king, she gently put aside his gift of the sword. "gentle dauphin," she said, "i thank you from my heart; but for me there is another sword which i must needs carry with me into battle; and i pray you give me leave to send and fetch it from where it lies unknown and forgotten." "why, maiden, of what speak you?" he answered; "is not this jewelled weapon good enough? you will find its temper of the best. i know not where you will find a better!" "no better a sword, sire," she answered; "and yet the one which i must use; for so it hath been told me of my lord. in the church of fierbois, six leagues from hence, beneath the high altar, there lies a sword, and this sword must i use. suffer me, i pray you, to send and fetch it thence. then shall i be ready and equipped to sally forth against the foes of my country." "but who has told you of this sword, my maiden?" "my lord did tell me of it, as i knelt before the altar, ere i came to chinon. it is in the church of st. catherine; and suffer only my good knight, jean de metz, to go and make search for it, and he will surely bring it hither to me." now i did well remember how, as we knelt in the church at fierbois in the dimness of the early morn, the maid had received some message, unheard by those beside her; and gladly did i set forth upon mine errand to seek and bring to her this sword. when i reached fierbois, which was in the forenoon of the day following, the good priests of the church knew nothing of any such sword; but the fame of the maid having reached their ears, they were proud and glad that their church of st. catherine should be honoured thus, and calling together some workmen, they made careful search, and sure enough, before we had dug deep, the spade struck and clinked against metal, and forth from beneath the altar we drew a sword, once a strong and well-tempered weapon, doubtless, but now covered with rust, so that the good priests looked askance at it, and begged to have it to cleanse and polish. it was then too late for my return the same day, so i left it to them, and lodged me in the town, where all the people flocked to hear news of the maid and of the coming campaign. then in the morning, with the first of the light, the sword was brought to me; and surely many persons in fierbois must have sat up all the night, for every speck of rust had been cleansed away, and a velvet scabbard made or found for the weapon, which the priests begged of me to take with it to the maid as their gift, and with their benediction upon it and her. my return was awaited with some stir of interest, and before i had well dismounted i was hurried, all travel stained as i was, into the presence of the king. there was the maid waiting also, calm and serene, and when she saw the thing which i carried in my hands, her face lighted; she took several steps forward, and bent her knee as she reverently took the sword, as though she received it from some higher power. "it was even as she said?" questioned the king, quickly. "even so, sire; the sword of which no man knew aught, was lying buried beneath the high altar of st. catherine's church, in fierbois." a murmur of surprise and gratification ran through the assembly. but there was no surprise upon the maid's face. "did you doubt, sire?" she asked, and he could not meet the glance of her clear eyes. chapter viii. how the maid marched for orleans. methinks the maid loved that ancient sword better than all her shining armour of silver! strange to say, the jewelled sheath of the king's toledo blade fitted the weapon from fierbois, and he supplemented the priests' gift of a scabbard by this second rich one. the maid accepted it with graceful thanks; yet both the gorgeous cases were laid away, and a simple sheath of leather made; for the sword was to be carried at her side into battle, and neither white nor crimson velvet was suited to such a purpose. nor would the maid let us have her sword sharpened for her. a curious look came upon her face as bertrand pointed out that although now clean and shining, its edges were too blunt for real use. she looked round upon us as we stood before her, and passed her fingers lovingly down the edges of the weapon. "i will keep it as it is," she answered; "for though i must needs carry it into battle with me, i pray my lord that it may never be my duty to shed christian blood. and if the english king will but listen to the words of counsel which i have sent to him, perchance it may even now be that bloodshed will be spared." in sooth, i believe that she would far rather have seen the enemy disperse of their own accord, than win the honour and glory of the campaign, which she knew beforehand would bring to her renown, the like of which no woman in the world's history has ever won. she would have gone back gladly, i truly believe, to her home in domremy, and uttered no plaint, even though men ceased after the event to give her the praise and glory; for herself she never desired such. but we, who knew the temper of the english, were well aware that this would never be. even though they might by this time have heard somewhat of the strange thing which had happened, and how the french were rallying round the standard of the angelic maid, yet would they not readily believe that their crushed and beaten foes would have power to stand against them. more ready would they be to scoff than to fear. now, at last, after all these many hindrances and delays, all was in readiness for the start. april had well nigh run its course, and nature was looking her gayest and loveliest when the day came that we marched forth out of the castle of chinon, a gallant little army, with the maid in her shining white armour and her fluttering white pennon at our head, and took the road to tours, where the great and redoubtable la hire was to meet us, and where we were to find a great band of recruits and soldiers, all eager now to be led against the foe. much did we wonder how the generals of the french army would receive the maid, set, in a sense, over them as commander-in-chief of this expedition, with a mandate from the king that she was to be obeyed, and that her counsels and directions were to be followed. we heard conflicting rumours on this score. there were those who declared that so desperate was the condition of the city, and so disheartened the garrison and citizens that they welcomed with joy the thought of this deliverer, and believed already that she was sent of god for their succour and salvation. others, on the contrary, averred that the officers of the army laughed to scorn the thought of being aided or led by a woman--a peasant--une peronelle de bas lieu, as they scornfully called her--and that they would never permit themselves to be led or guided by one who could have no knowledge of war, even though she might be able to read the secrets of the future. in spite of what had been now ruled by the church concerning her, there were always those, both in the french and english camps, who called her a witch; and we, who heard so many flying rumours, wondered greatly what view the redoubtable la hire took of this matter, and dunois, the bastard of orleans, as he was often called. for these two men, with xaintrailles, were the ruling generals in orleans, and their voice would be paramount with the army there, and would carry much weight with those reinforcements for the relieving force which we were to find awaiting us at tours and at blois. now la hire, as all men know, was a man of great renown, and of immense personal weight and influence. he was a giant in stature, with a voice like a trumpet, and thews of steel; a mighty man in battle, a daring leader, yet cautious and sagacious withal; a man feared and beloved by those whom he led in warfare; a gay roysterer at other times, with as many strange oaths upon his lips as there are saints in the calendar; what the english call a swashbuckler and daredevil; a man whom one would little look to be led or guided by a woman, for he was impatient of counsel, and headstrong alike in thought and action. and this was the man who was to meet us at tours, form his impression of the maid, and throw the great weight of his personal influence either into one scale or the other. truth to tell, i was something nervous of this ordeal, and there were many who shared my doubts and fears. but the maid rode onward, serene and calm, the light of joy and hope in her eyes, untroubled by any doubts. at last she was on her way to the relief of the beleaguered city; there was no room for misgiving in her faithful heart. we entered tours amid the clashing of joy bells, the plaudits of the soldiers, and the laughter, the weeping, the blessings of an excited populace, who regarded the maid as the saviour of the realm. they crowded to their windows and waved flags and kerchiefs. they thronged upon her in the streets to gaze at her fair face and greet her as a deliverer. it was indeed a moving scene; but she rode through it, calm and tranquil, pausing in the press to speak a few words of thanks and greeting, but preserving always her gentle maidenly air of dignity and reserve. and so we came to the house which had been set apart for her use on her stay, and there we saw, standing at the foot of the steps which led from the courtyard into the house, a mighty, mailed figure, the headpiece alone lacking of his full armour, a carven warrior, as it seemed, with folded arms and bent brows, gazing upon us as we filed in under the archway, but making no move to approach us. i did not need the whisper which ran through the ranks of our escort to know that this man was the great and valiant la hire. as the maid's charger paused at the foot of the steps, this man strode forward with his hand upraised as in a salute, and giving her his arm, he assisted her to alight, and for a few moments the two stood looking into each other's eyes with mutual recognition, taking, as it were, each the measure of the other. the maid was the first to speak, her eyes lighting with that deep down, indescribable smile, which she kept for her friends alone. when i saw that smile in her eyes, as they were upraised to la hire's face, all my fears vanished in a moment. "you are the dauphin's brave general la hire, from orleans," she said; "i thank you, monsieur, for your courtesy in coming thus to meet me. for so can we take counsel together how best the enemies of our country may be overthrown." "you are the maid, sent of god and the king for the deliverance of the realm," answered la hire, as he lifted her hand to his lips, "i bid you welcome in the name of orleans, its soldiers, and its citizens. for we have been like men beneath a spell--a spell too strong for us to break. you come to snap the spell, to break the yoke, and therefore i bid you great welcome on the part of myself and the citizens and soldiers of orleans. without your counsels to his majesty, and the aid you have persuaded him to send, the city must assuredly have fallen ere this. only the knowledge that help was surely coming has kept us from surrender." "i would the help had come sooner, my general," spoke the maid; "but soon or late it is one with my lord, who will give us the promised victory." from that moment friendship, warm and true, was established betwixt the bronzed warrior and the gentle maid, who took up, as by natural right, her position of equal--indeed, of superior--in command, not with any haughty assumption, not with any arrogant words or looks, but sweetly and simply, as though there were no question but that the place was hers; that to her belonged the ordering of the forces, the overlooking of all. again and again, even we, who had come to believe so truly in her divine commission, were astonished at the insight she showed, the sagacity of her counsels, the wonderful authority she was able to exert over the soldiers brought together, a rude, untrained, insubordinate mass of men, collected from all ranks and classes of the people, some being little better than bands of marauders, living on prey and plunder, since of regular fighting there had been little of late; others, mercenaries hired by the nobles to swell their own retinues; many raw recruits, fired by ardour at the thought of the promised deliverance; a few regular trained bands, with their own officers in command, but forming altogether a heterogeneous company, by no means easy to drill into order, and swelled by another contingent at blois, of very much the same material. but the maid assembled the army together, and thus addressed them. at least, this was the substance of her words; nothing can reproduce the wonderful earnestness and power of her voice and look, for her face kindled as she spoke, and the sunshine playing upon her as she sat her charger in the glory of her silver armour, seemed to encompass her with a pure white light, so that men's eyes were dazzled as they looked upon her, and they whispered one to the other: "the angelic maid! the angelic maid! surely it is an angel of god come straight down from heaven to aid and lead us." "my friends," she spoke, and her voice carried easily to every corner of the great square, packed with a human mass, motionless, hanging upon her words; "my friends, we are about to start forth upon a crusade as holy as it is possible for men to be concerned in, for it is as saviours and deliverers of your brethren and our country that we go; and the lord of hosts is with us. he has bidden us march, and he has promised to go with us, even as he was with the israelites of old. and if we do not see his presence in pillar of cloud by day, and pillar of fire by night, we yet do know and feel him near us; and he will give abundant proof that he fights upon our side!" she lifted her face for a moment to the sky. she was bareheaded, and every head was bared in that vast crowd as she uttered the name of the most high. it seemed as though a light from heaven fell upon her as she spoke, and a deep murmur ran through the throng. it was as if they answered that they needed no other vision than that of the maid herself. "if then the lord be with us, must we not show ourselves worthy of his holy presence in our midst? o my friends, since i have been with you these few days, my heart has been pained and grieved by that which i have heard and seen. oaths and blasphemies fall from your lips, and you scarce know it yourselves. drunkenness and vice prevail. o my friends, let this no longer be amongst us! let us cleanse ourselves from all impurities; let our conversation be yea, yea, nay, nay. let none take the name of the lord in vain, nor soil his holy cause by vice and uncleanness. o let us all, day by day, as the sun rises anew each morning, assemble to hear mass, and to receive the holy sacrament. let every man make his confession. holy priests are with us to hear all, and to give absolution. let us start forth upon the morrow purified and blessed of god, and let us day by day renew that holy cleansing and blessing, that the lord may indeed be with us and rest amongst us, and that his heart be not grieved and burdened by that which he shall see and hear amongst those to whom he has promised his help and blessing!" thus she spoke; and a deep silence fell upon all, in the which it seemed to me the fall of a pin might have been heard. the maid sat quite still for a moment, her own head bent as though in prayer. then she lifted it, and a radiant smile passed over her face, a smile as of assurance and thankful joy. she raised her hand and waved it, almost as though she blessed, whilst she greeted her soldiers, and then she turned her horse, the crowd making way for her in deep reverential silence, and rode towards her own lodging, where she remained shut up in her own room for the rest of the day. but upon the following morning a strange thing had happened. every single camp follower--all the women and all the disorderly rabble that hangs upon the march of an army--had disappeared. they had slunk off in the night, and were utterly gone. the soldiers were gathered in the churches to hear mass. all that could do so attended where it was known the maid would be, and when she had received the sacrament herself, hundreds crowded to do the like; and i suppose there were thousands in the city that day, who, having confessed and received absolution, received the pledge of the lord's death, though perhaps some of them had not thought of such a duty for years and years. and here i may say that this was not an act for once and all. day by day in the camp mass was celebrated, and the holy sacrament given to all who asked and came. the maid ever sought to begin the day thus, and we of her personal household generally followed her example. even la hire would come and kneel beside her, a little behind, though it was some while before he desired to partake of the sacrament himself. but to be near her in this act of devotion seemed to give him joy and confidence and for her sake, because he saw it pained her, he sought to break off his habit of profane swearing, and the use of those strange oaths before which men had been wont to quake. and she, seeing how sorely tried he was to keep from his accustomed habit, did come to his aid with one of her frank and almost boy-like smiles, and told him that he might swear by his baton if he needs must use some expletive; but that no holy name must lightly pass his lips. strange indeed was it to see the friendship which had so quickly sprung up between that rough warrior and the maid, whom he could almost have crushed to death between his mighty hands. if all the generals in the army were as noble minded as he, and as ready to receive her whom god had sent them, we should have little to fear; but there was dunois yet to reckon with, who had promised to come forth and meet her outside the town (for the blockade, as i have before said, was not perfect; and on the south side men could still come and go with caution and care), and to lead her in triumph within its walls, if the english showed not too great resistance. but even now we were to find how that they did not yet trust the maid's authority as it should be trusted; and even la hire was in fault here, as afterwards he freely owned. for the maid had told them to lead her to the city on the north side, as her plan was to strike straight through the english lines, and scatter the besieging force ere ever she entered the town at all. but since the city lies to the north of the river, and the english had built around it twelve great bastilles, as they called them, and lay in all their strength on this side, it seemed too venturesome to attack in such a manner; and in this la hire and dunois were both agreed. but la hire did not tell the maid of any disagreements, but knowing the country to be strange to her, he led her and the army by a route which she believed the right one, till suddenly we beheld the towers of orleans and the great surrounding fortifications rising up before our eyes; and, behold! the wide river with its bridge more than half destroyed, lay between us and our goal! at this sight the eyes of the maid flashed fire, and she turned them upon la hire, but spoke never a word. his face flushed a dull crimson with a sudden, unexpected shame. to do him justice be it said, that (as we later heard) he had been against this deception after having seen the maid; but there were now many notable generals and marshals and officers with the army, all of whom were resolved upon this course of action, which had been agreed upon beforehand with dunois, and they had overborne his objections, which were something faint-hearted perhaps, for with his love and admiration for the maid, he trembled, as he now explained to her, to lead her by so perilous a route, and declared that she could well be conducted into the city through the burgundy gate, by water, without striking a blow, instead of having to fight her way in past the english bastions. "i thank you for your care for me, my friend," she answered, "but it were better to have obeyed my voice. the english arrows could not have touched me. we should have entered unopposed. now much precious time must needs be lost, for how can this great army be transported across yonder river?--and the bridge, even if we could dislodge the english from the tower of les tourelles, is broken down and useless." indeed it seemed plain to all that the generals had made a great blunder; for though we marched on to checy, where dunois met us, and whence some of the provisions brought for the starving city could be dispatched in the boats assembled there, it was plain that there was no transport sufficient for the bulk of the army; and the maid, as she and dunois stood face to face, at last regarded him with a look of grave and searching scrutiny. "are you he whom men call the bastard of orleans?" "lady, i am; and i come to welcome you with gladness, for we are sore beset by our foes; yet all within the city are taking heart of grace, believing that a deliverer from heaven has been sent to them." "they think well," answered the maid, "and right glad am i to come. but wherefore have i been led hither by this bank, instead of the one upon which talbot and his english lie?" "lady, the wisest of our leaders held that this would be the safest way." "the counsel of god and our lord is more sure and more powerful than that of generals and soldiers," she answered gravely. "you have made an error in this. see to it that such error be not repeated. i will that in all things my lord be obeyed." the generals stood dumb and discomfited before her; a thrill ran through the army when her words were repeated there; but, indeed, we all quickly saw the wisdom of her counsel and the folly of her adversaries; for the bulk of the army had perforce to march back to blois to cross the river there, whilst only a thousand picked men with the chiefest of the generals and the convoys of provisions prepared to enter the city by water and pass through the burgundy gate. at the first it seemed as though even this would be a dangerous task, for the wind blew hard in a contrary direction, and the deeply-laden boats began to be in peril of foundering. but as we stood watching them from the bank, and saw their jeopardy, and some were for recalling them and waiting, the maid's voice suddenly rang forth in command: "leave them alone, and hasten forward with the others. the wind will change, and a favouring breeze shall carry us all safe into the city. the english shall not fire a shot to hinder us, for the fear of the maid has fallen upon them!" we gazed at her in wonder as she stood a little apart, her face full of power and calm certainty. and indeed, it was but a very few minutes later that the wind dropped to a dead calm, and a light air sprang up from a contrary direction, and the laden boats gladly spreading sail, floated quietly onwards with their precious load towards the suffering city. then we embarked, somewhat silently, for the awe which fell upon those who had never seen the maid before, extended even to us. moreover, with those frowning towers of the english so close upon us, crowded with soldiers who seemed to know what was happening, and who were coming into orleans, it was scarce possible not to look for resistance and hostile attack. but curious as it may seem, not a shot was fired as we passed along. a silence strange and sinister seemed to hang over the lines of the enemy; but when we reached the city how all was changed! it was about eight o'clock in the evening when at last we finished our journey by water and land, and entered the devoted town. there the chiefest citizens came hurrying to meet us, leading a white charger for their deliverer to ride upon. and when she was mounted, the people thronged about her weeping and shouting, blessing and hailing her as their champion and saviour. the streets were thronged with pale-faced men; women and children hung from the windows, showering flowers at our feet. torches lit up the darkening scene, and shone from the breastplates and headpieces of the mailed men. but the maid in her white armour seemed like a being from another sphere; and the cry of "st. michael! st. michael himself!" resounded on all sides, and one did not wonder. nothing would serve the maid but to go straight to the cathedral first, and offer thanksgiving for her arrival here, and the people flocked with her, till the great building was filled to overflowing with her retinue of soldiers and her self-constituted followers. some begged of her to address them from the steps at the conclusion of the brief service, but she shook her head. "i have no words for them--only i love them all," she answered, with a little natural quiver of emotion in her voice. "tell them so, and that i have come to save them. and then let me go home." so la hire stood forth and gave the maid's message in his trumpet tones, and the maid was escorted by the whole of the joyful and loving crowd to the house of the treasurer boucher, where were her quarters, and where she was received with acclamation and joy. and thus the maid entered the beleaguered city of orleans. chapter ix. how the maid assumed command at orleans. the house of the treasurer was a beautiful building in the gothic style, and weary as was the maid with the toils and excitements through which she had passed, i saw her eyes kindle with pleasure and admiration as she was ceremoniously led into the great banqueting hall, where the tables were spread with abundant good cheer (despite the reduced condition of the city), to do honour to her who came as its deliverer. there was something solemn and church-like in these surroundings which appealed at once to the maid. she had a keen eye for beauty, whether of nature or in the handiwork of man, and her quick penetrating glances missed nothing of the stately grandeur of the house, the ceremonious and courtly welcome of the treasurer, its master, or the earnest, wistful gaze of his little daughter charlotte, who stood holding fast to her mother's hand in the background, but feasting her great dark eyes upon the wonderful shining figure of the maid, from whose white armour the lights of the great hall flashed back in a hundred points of fire. the greeting of the master of the house being over, the maid threw off for a moment the grave dignity of her bearing throughout this trying day, and became a simple girl again. with a quick grace of movement she crossed the space which divided her from the little child, and kneeling suddenly down, took the wondering little one in her arms, and held her in a close embrace. "ma petite, ma mie, ma tres chere," those nearest heard her murmur. "love me, darling, love me! i have a little sister at home who loves me, but i had to go away and leave her. perhaps i may never see her again. try to love me instead, and comfort my heart, for sometimes i am very, very weary, and hungry for the love that i have lost!" now, one might have thought that so young a child--for she was not more than eight years old, and small for her years--would have been affrighted at the sudden approach of the shining warrior, about whom so many stories had been told, and who looked more like the archangel michael, as many thought, than a creature of human flesh and blood. but instead of showing any fear, the child flung her arms about the neck of the maid, and pressed kisses upon her face--her headpiece she had removed at her entrance--and when the mother would have loosened her hold, and sent the child away with her attendant, little charlotte resisted, clinging to her new friend with all her baby strength, and the maid looked pleadingly up into the kindly face of the lady, and said: "ah, madame, i pray you let her remain with me. it is so long since i felt the arms of a child about my neck!" and so the little one stayed to the banquet, and was given the place of honour beside the maid. but neither of these twain had any relish for the dainty meats and rich dishes served for us. as on the march, so now in the walls of the city, the maid fared as simply as the rudest of her soldiers. she mixed water with her wine, took little save a slice or two of bread, and though to please her hosts she just touched one or two specially prepared dishes, it was without any real relish for them, and she was evidently glad when she was able to make excuse to leave the table and go to the room prepared for her. but here again she showed her simple tastes, for when the great guest chamber was shown her she shrank a little at its size and luxury, and, still holding the child's hand in hers, she turned to the mother who was in attendance and said: "i pray you, sweet lady, let me whilst i am your guest share the room of this little daughter of yours. i am but a simple country girl, all this grandeur weighs me down. if i might but sleep with this little one in my arms--as the little sister at home loved to lie--i should sleep so peacefully and have such happy dreams! ah, madame!--let me have my will in this!" and madame boucher, being a mother and a true woman, understood; and answered by taking the maid in her arms and kissing her. and so, as long as the maid remained in orleans, she shared the little white bedroom of the child of the house, which opened from that of the mother, and the bond which grew up between the three was so close and tender a one, that i trow the good treasurer and his wife would fain have regarded this wonderful maid as their own daughter, and kept her ever with them, had duty and her voices not called her elsewhere when the first part of her task was done. now bertrand and i, together with pierre, her brother, and the chevalier d'aulon and sir guy de laval, were lodged in the same house, and entertained most hospitably by the treasurer, who sat up with us far into the night after our arrival, listening with earnest attention to all we could tell him respecting the maid, and telling us on his part of the feeling in orleans anent her and her mission, and what we might expect to follow her arrival here. "the townsfolk seem well-nigh wild for joy at sight of her," spoke de laval, "and the more they see of her, the more they will love her and reverence her mission. i was one who did openly scoff, or at least had no faith in any miracle, until that i saw her with mine own eyes; and then some voice in my heart--i know not how to speak more plainly of it--or some wonderful power in her glance or in her voice, overcame me. and i knew that she had in very truth come from god, and i have never doubted of her divine commission from that day to this. it will be the same here in orleans, if, indeed, there be any that doubt." "alas! there are--too many!" spoke the treasurer, shaking his head, "i am rejoiced that our two greatest generals, dunois and la hire, have become her adherents, for i myself believe that she has been sent of god for our deliverance, and so do the townsfolk almost to a man. but there are numbers of the lesser officers--bold men and true--who have fought valiantly throughout the siege, and who have great influence with the soldiers they lead, and these men are full of disgust at the thought of being led by a woman--a girl--and one of low degree. they would be willing for her to stand aloft and prophesy victory for their arms, but that she should arm herself and lead them in battle, and direct operations herself, fills them with disgust and contempt. there is like to be trouble, i fear, with some of these. there is bold de gamache, for example, who declares he would sooner fold up his banner and serve as a simple soldier in the ranks, than hold a command subservient to that of a low-born woman!" that name as applied to the angelic maid set our teeth on edge; yet was it wonderful that some should so regard her? "let them but see her--and they will change their tune!" spake bertrand quickly. "a low-born woman! would they speak thus of the blessed virgin? and yet according to the wisdom of the flesh it would be as true of one as of the other." the treasurer spoke with grave thoughtfulness: "truly do i think that any person honoured by the lord with a direct mission from himself becomes something different by virtue of that mission from what he or she was before. yet we may not confound this mission of the maid here in orleans with that one which came to the blessed mary." "nor had i any thought," answered bertrand, "of likening one to the other, save inasmuch as both have been maidens, born in lowly surroundings, yet chosen for purity of heart and life, and for childlike faith and obedience, for the honour of receiving a divine commission. there the parallel stops; for there can be no comparison regarding the work appointed to each. yet even as this maid shall fulfil her appointed task in obedience to the injunctions received, she is worthy to be called the handmaid of the lord." "to that i have nought to say but yea," answered the treasurer heartily, "and i pray our lord and the blessed virgin to be with her and strengthen her, for i fear me she will have foes to contend with from within as well as from without the city; and as all men know, it is the distrust and contradiction of so-called friends which is harder to bear than the open enmity of the foe." it was difficult for us, vowed heart and soul to the cause of the maid, and honoured by her friendship and confidence, to believe that any could be so blind as not to recognise in her a god-sent messenger, whom they would delight to follow and to honour. yet when i walked out upon the following morning--a sunny first of may--to have a good look round at the position of the fortifications, the ring of english bastilles to the north, the blockading towers upon the southern bank, i was quickly aware of a great deal of talk going on amongst the soldiers and the officers which was by no means favourable to the cause of the maid. voices were hushed somewhat at my approach, for though none knew me, i was of course a stranger, and therefore likely to have entered the town in the train of the maid, who had yesterday made her appearance there. but i heard enough to be sure that what the treasurer had said last evening was likely to be true. the soldiers were disposed to scoff at being led by a woman, and the officers to grumble at having had to bear all the burden of the long siege, and then when the king did send an army for the relief, to send it under the command of this maid, who would bear away the honour and glory which otherwise all might have shared. from their point of view, perhaps, this discontent was not unreasonable; but as i looked upon the works around me, i marvelled how it had been possible for the english, unprotected as they must have originally been, to erect these great towers for their own shelter, and from which to batter the town with their cannon and great stone balls, when the french in great numbers and protected by strong walls, ought to have been able to sally forth continually and so to harass them that the construction of such buildings should have been impossible. the great dunois had shown considerable acumen. he had himself destroyed all the suburbs of the town which lay without the walls, so that the english might find no shelter there, and when they had effected a lodgment on the south side of the river, he had destroyed the greater part of the bridge, thus making it impossible for the enemy to cross and take possession of the town. but he had not stopped the erection of those threatening towers circling round the city to the north, nor the construction of those still stronger blockading fortresses on the south side, les tourelles guarding the fragment of the broken bridge, and les augustins not far away. when i spoke to one grizzled old soldier about it, he shrugged his shoulders and made reply: "what would you? those english are helped of the devil himself. we have tried to stand against them, but it is all to no purpose. some demon of fighting enters into them, and they know that we shall fly--and fly we do. at last there were none who would face them. our generals sought in vain to lead them. you should have heard la hire swearing at them. o-he, o-he, he is a master of the art! some of us would have followed him; but the rest--one might as well have asked a flock of sheep to go against the wolf, telling them they were fifty to one! not they! it was witchcraft, or something like it. they sat still on these ramparts and watched the english working like moles or like ants, and never lifted a finger. pouf! when men get to that they are not fit to fight they had better go home and ply the distaff with the women." "and let a woman come and lead their comrades to battle!" i said, laughing. "have you seen the wonderful maid of whom all the world is talking?" "no; at least, i only caught a gleam of light upon her white armour last night; but as i said to the boys in the guardroom, i care not whether she be woman, witch, or angel; if she will bring back heart and courage, and make men again of all these chicken-hearted poltroons, i will follow her to the death wherever she may lead. i am sick with shame for the arms of france!" "bravely spoken, my friend!" i cried, giving him my hand; "and if that be the spirit of the army, i doubt not but that a few days will see such a turn in the tide of warfare as shall make the whole world stand aghast!" "then you believe in her?" quoth the old soldier, looking me shrewdly up and down. "with my whole heart!" i answered, as i turned and took my way back to my quarters. that same day the maid held a council of war, at which all the officers of any importance were permitted to attend; and here it was that she received the first real check since she had received the king's commission and royal command. "let us attack the foe at once, and without delay, messires!" she said, sitting at the head of the council table, fully armed, save for her headpiece, and speaking in her clear, sweet, full tones, wherein power and confidence were blended; "the lord of hosts is on our side. let us go forth in his strength, and the victory will be ours." but they listened to her in silent consternation and amaze. here was this inexperienced girl, blind with enthusiasm, drunk with success, her head completely turned by her reception last night, actually advising an assault upon the enemy before the arrival of the army of relief, which had been forced to return to blois to cross the river, and which could not arrive for a few more days. what madness would she next propose? well, at least la hire and dunois were there to curb her folly and impetuosity. a chit of a girl like that to sit and tell them all to go forth to certain death at her command! as though they would not want all their strength to aid the relieving army to enter when it should appear! as though they were going to weaken themselves beforehand by any mad scheme of hers! thus the storm arose. even la hire, dunois, and the treasurer himself, were against her. as for the lesser officers, when they began to speak, they scarce knew how to contain themselves, and restrain their anger and scorn from showing itself too markedly towards one who held the king's mandate of command. and of late the maid had always been listened to with such honour and respect! how would she bear this contradiction and veiled contempt, she who had come to assume the command of the city and its armies at the king's desire? she sat very still and quiet at the table, as the storm hummed about her. her clear gaze travelled from face to face as one or another of the officers rose and spoke. sometimes a slight flush of red dyed her cheek for a moment; but never once did anger cloud her brow, or impatience or contempt mar the wonderful serenity of her beautiful eyes. only once did she speak during the whole of the debate, after her opening words had been delivered, and that was after a very fiery oration on the part of a youthful officer, whose words contained more veiled scorn of her and her mission than any other had dared to show. instead of looking at him either in anger or in reproach, the maid's own wonderful smile shone suddenly upon him as he concluded. then she spoke: "captain de gamache, you think yourself my foe now; but that will soon be changed, and i thank you beforehand for the brave, true service which you shall presently render me. but meantime, beware of rashness; for victory shall not come to the city without the maid." he gazed at her--we all gazed at her--in amaze, not knowing what her words portended. but she gave no explanation. she only rose to her feet and said: "then, gentlemen, since the attack is not to be yet--not till the arrival of the relieving force, let me make the tour of the battlements, and examine the defences of the city. i would that you had faith to let me lead you forth today; but the time will come when i shall not have to plead with you--you will follow gladly in my wake. for the rest, it would perchance be a sorrow to my brave men, who have marched so far with me, not to partake in the victory which the lord is about to send us; wherefore i will the more readily consent to delay, though, let me tell you, you are in the wrong to withstand the wishes of the commander of the king's armies, and the messenger of the king of kings." i verily believe that she shamed them by her gentle friendliness more than she would have done by any outburst of wrath. had she urged them now, i am not sure but what they would have given her her way; but she did not. she put her white velvet cap, with its nodding plumes, upon her head, and taking with her the chiefest of the generals and her own immediate retinue, she made the tour of the walls and defences of the city, showing such a marvellous insight into the tactics of war that she astonished all by her remarks and by her injunctions. suddenly, as we were walking onwards, she paused and lifted her face with a wonderful rapt expression upon it. then she turned to dunois, and said with quiet authority: "mon general, i must ask of you to take a small body of picked men, and ride forth towards blois, and see what bechances there. i trow there is trouble among the men. traitors are at work to daunt their hearts. go and say that the maid bids them fear nothing, and that they shall enter orleans in safety. the english shall not be suffered to touch them. go at once!" "in broad daylight, lady, and before the very eyes of the foe?" "yes, yes," she answered instantly; "i will stand here and watch you. no hurt shall be done to you or to your company." so dunois went at her command, and we saw him and his little band ride fearlessly through the english lines; and scarce could we believe our eyes when we noted that no weapon was raised against them; not even an arrow was shot off as they passed. "she speaks the words of god. she is his messenger!" whispered the men who stood by; and her fame flew from mouth to mouth, till a strange awe fell upon all. she was never idle during those days of waiting. she asked news of the letter she had sent to the english, and heard it had been delivered duly, though the herald had not returned. she gave commission to la hire to demand his instant release, and this was accomplished speedily; for the bold captain, of his own initiative, vowed he would behead every prisoner they had in the city if the man were not given up at the command of the maid. i am very sure no such act of summary vengeance would have been permitted, but the man was instantly released and came and told us how that the letter had been read with shouts of insulting laughter, and many derisive answers suggested; none of which, however, had been dispatched, as talbot, the chief in command of the english armies, had finally decreed that it became not his dignity to hold any parley with a witch. and yet she could scarce believe that they should none of them understand how that she was indeed come from god, and that they must be lamentably overthrown if they would not hear her words. on the third day of her stay in the city she caused her great white banner to be carried forth before her, and riding a white horse, clad in her silver armour, and clasping her banneret in her hand she rode slowly out upon the broken fragment of the bridge opposite to the tower of les tourelles, and begged a parley from the english general in command. it was not lord talbot who came forth and stood upon his own end of the bridge, gazing haughtily across the space which divided them; but it was a notable soldier, whom the french called classidas, though i have been told that his real name was sir william glassdale. to him the maid addressed herself in her clear mellow voice, which could be heard across the flowing river: "retournez de la part dieu a l'angleterre!" was the burden of her charge, imploring him to have mercy upon himself and his soldiers, as else many hundreds of them, and himself also, must perish miserably, and perchance even without the offices of the church. but she was answered by roars of mocking laughter from the soldiers of the fort, and worse still, by gross insults from classidas himself, hurled across at her from a biting tongue, which carried like the note of a trumpet. silently she stood and gazed at him; mournfully she turned and rode back to the town. "may god have mercy upon their souls!" she prayed; and for the rest of the day she was sorrowful and sad. "if it could have been done without bloodshed!" she murmured again and yet again. ah, and then the day when the news came that the relieving army was in sight! was she sad or pensive then? no! she sprang to her feet; she set down the little charlotte, who was playing in her arms; she seized her weapons, her page flew to bring her full armour. her horse was already in waiting; she swung upon his back. she waved her hand and called to us to rally about her. "the english are preparing to fight!" she cried (how did she know? none had told her), "but follow me, and they will strike no blow." already la hire was at her side, seeking to dissuade her from leaving the shelter of the town. she smiled at him, and rode through the gate, her white banner floating in the wind. "see yonder; that is the point of danger. we will station ourselves there, and watch our brave army march past. they shall not be hurt nor dismayed. all shall be well!" so we rode, wondering and amazed, behind and around her, and at the appointed spot, in the very midst of the english lines, we halted, and made a great avenue for the army from blois to pass through. all gazed in wonder at the maid. all saluted deeply. the english in their towers gazed in amaze, but fired no shot. we all passed into the city in safety. great god, but how would it be with our maid when the real battle and bloodshed should begin? chapter x. how the maid led us into battle. "it was well indeed that you sent me forth on that mission, my chieftainess," spoke dunois, as we sat at the long table in the treasurer's house, refreshing ourselves after the fatigues of the march to and from the city, and the anxiety of awaiting an attack, which had not come. he bowed towards the maid in speaking, calling her by a playful title in vogue amongst the officers and generals who were her friends. "though what prompted you to that act of sagacity is more than i know. i had no misgivings that there would be trouble with the army." "my voices warned me," answered the maid gently. "it was not much; yet a little leaven often leavens the whole lump. they needed just the leader's eye and voice to recall them to their duty." "truly that is just how the matter stood," spoke sir guy in low tones to us twain, bertram and i, who sat on either side of him at the other end of the board. he had been one to depart and return with dunois, and we looked eagerly to him for explanation. "there are ever timid spirits in all ranks, and traitors or faint-hearted friends are never far away in such times as these. the army which would have followed the maid to the death with joy, felt depression and disappointment at being parted from her. had they been able to ford the river and march straight into the city, there would have been no trouble, no tremors or doubts; but the turning back was a discouragement, and alas! the french have had too much of this of late. there were whisperers at work seeking to undermine faith in the maid and her mission. as she says, no great hurt was done; it was but the work of a few--and some of these priests, who should better have understood the counsels of god--but a little leaven will work mightily in the lump, as she herself did justly remark; and ere we reached blois, we had heard rumours that the army was talking of disbanding itself and dispersing hither and thither. the truth was not so bad as that; but there was wavering and doubt in the ranks. "our appearance with the message from the maid worked like a charm. the soldiers, when they knew that she had been told of their hesitation, were instantly horribly ashamed. they clamoured to be led back to her, to show the mettle of which they were made. i trow they will not waver again, now that she hath them beneath her eye." "it is marvellous how she doth hold them by the power of her glance, by her gentleness and devotion. and, look you, what hath she done to the english? it was rumoured through the city that so soon as the relief army approached the english lines, there would be an attack in force, and our comrades would be driven back at the sword's point, and have to fight every inch of the way. yet what has been the truth? the maid led us to the spot which commanded the road--well in the heart of the english lines. their fortresses were humming like hives of bees disturbed. the english knew what was being done, and watched it all; yet not a gun was fired, not an archer launched his shaft, not a man moved out to oppose the entrance of the relief force nor even the convoy of provisions for the garrison. they watched it all as men in a dream, not a dog moved his tongue against us." "she told us it would be so," spoke i, leaning towards sir guy, "there will be fighting anon; but it was not to be then. surely their arms were holden by a power they wot not of. if she herself had not gone forth to guard the way--standing like the flaming cherubim with the sword which turned every way--i misdoubt me but that a heavy action must have been fought, ere the army was suffered to enter the gates." there was much talk all down the table of these matters; but the maid took little part in this. her eyes were heavy, and she looked weary and pale. i doubt not she had spent the night previous in vigil and prayer, as was so often her wont. when we rose from our repast, she retired into a small inner room reserved for her use, and the little charlotte went with her. a curtain, partly drawn, shut off this room from the outer one in which we knights and some of her pages and gentlemen sat talking; and i was just able to see from where i sat that the maid had laid herself down upon a couch, the little one nestled beside her, and i felt sure by her stillness and immobility that she was soon soundly asleep, taking the rest she sorely needed after the exertions and excitements of the early hours of the day. our conversation languished somewhat, for the warmth of the may afternoon made us all drowsy. we, like the maid herself, had laid aside our coats of mail, and were enjoying a spell of rest and leisure; and there was silence in both the rooms, when suddenly we--if indeed we slept--were awakened by the voice of the maid speaking in the tones of one who dreams. "i must up and against the english!" she cried, and at the first word i started broad awake and was on my feet at the door of communication, looking towards her. she still lay upon the couch, but her eyes were wide open and fixed; her lips moved. "i hear! i hear!" she went on, yet still as one who dreams, "i am ready--i will obey. only tell me what i must do. is it against the towers i must go, to assail them? or is it that fastolffe comes against us with yet another host?" little charlotte here pulled the maid by the hand, crying out: "what are you saying? to whom do you speak? there is nobody here but you and me!" the maid sprang to her feet, wide awake now in an instant. she bent for one moment over the wondering child, and kissed her tenderly, as though to soothe the alarm in the baby eyes. "run to your mother, ma mie, for i must off and away on the instant," then wheeling round with her air of martial command, she called to me and said, "to arms at once! i must to the front! french blood is flowing. they are seeking to act without me. o my poor soldiers, they are falling and dying! to horse! to horse! i come to save them!" was she dreaming? what did it mean? the town seemed as quiet as the still summer afternoon! not a sound of tumult broke the silence of the streets. yet the maid was having us arm her with lightning speed, and bertrand had rushed off at the first word for her horse and ours. "i know not what they are doing," spoke the maid, "but my voices tell me to fly to their succour! ah! why could they not have told me before! have i not ever been ready and longing to lead them against the foe?" she was ready now. we were all ready, and the echoes of the quiet house awoke beneath our feet as we clattered down the staircase to the courtyard below, where already the horses were standing pawing the ground with impatience, seeming to scent the battle from afar. the maid swung herself lightly to the saddle with scarce a touch from me. "my banner! my banner!" she suddenly cried; and looking upwards we saw a pretty sight. the little charlotte, her mother beside her, was hanging out of the window, the light staff of the maid's white banneret clasped in her chubby hands; and she was leaning out of the window, holding it towards the white mailed figure, of whom (in armour) she always spoke, in hushed tone, as mon ange. the maid looked upwards, kissed her gauntletted hand to the little one, seized the staff of her banner, and then, calling upon her followers in clear tones of command, dashed out through the gateway into the street beyond, and without an instant's hesitation turned towards that gate of the city nearest to the english bastille named st. loup. and though we all spurred after her, so that the sparks flew from under our horses' feet, and the chevalier d'aulon brought up the rear bearing the great white standard, which was to lead the armies into battle, we none of us knew wherefore we had come forth nor whither we were going; and the city being yet still and quiet, the citizens rushed to doors and windows to watch us pass by, and shouted questions to us which we were not able to answer. now, the house of the treasurer is hard by the renart gate, and we were making for the burgundy gate; so you who know orleans will understand that we had the whole distance of the city to traverse ere we cleared the walls. and sure enough, as we approached the fortifications upon the eastern side, a change came over the spirit of the scene; signs of excitement and fear and wonder began to show themselves; the walls were alive with men at arms, gazing fixedly out eastward, shouting, gesticulating, wild with a tumult of emotion. soldiers buckling on their arms, citizens with pale, yet resolute, faces, and swords or axes in their hands, were hurrying forth, and at sight of the maid on her chestnut charger (for the crusader was ever her favourite horse, and she had declared that he must carry her into her first battle whenever that should be) they shouted aloud with joy, and vowed themselves her servants and followers, wherever she should lead them. a young blacksmith, armed with a great club, was hanging upon my stirrup, and bounding along beside my horse with a swiftness and strength which excited my admiration. from him i heard first of the thing which had taken place. "it was de gamache and some of the other lesser officers who designed it," he cried. "they declared that the power of the english was already broken; that they would not leave their walls or show fight today; that already they had grown faint hearted, and were ready to fly before the french. "my captain, i tell you the truth, these men are jealous of the angelic maid whom heaven has sent us. they say that she will take from them all the honour and glory; that they will fight and risk their lives, but that she alone will have the praise. so they were full of bitterness and anger; and some, methinks, may have thought to shame her by showing that they could act without her aid, and do the work she has come to do, whilst she takes her rest and holds her councils. so, gathering a band of soldiers together, these officers have sallied forth to try and storm and take the fortress of st. loup, which lies some two thousand english yards from the walls along the river banks. but the soldiers on the walls are shouting out that the english have swarmed forth like angry bees, and are beating back our soldiers and slaying them by the score." "they should have known better than to go forth without the knowledge and command of the maid," i said sternly, and the young man at my side nodded vehemently, his face alight. "that is what we said--we others--we citizens, who have seen how powerless the soldiers are against the english. have they not fought again and again, and what has come of it but loss and defeat? and now that the good god has sent a deliverer, it is like flying in his face to seek and do without her. i said as much again and again. i knew no good would come of it. but when we saw the maid herself flying to the rescue, then did i vow that i, too, would fight under her banner. for now i know that god will give us the victory!" we were at the burgundy gate by this time and, dashing through, we saw a terrible sight. the whole open plain between the walls of the town and the fortress of st. loup was covered with soldiers, strewn with dying and dead. a horrible sort of fight was going on, horrible to us, because the french were in full retreat before our foe, going down like sheep before the butcher's knife, rushing panic stricken hither and thither as men demented, whilst the english soldiers, as though ashamed of their recent inaction and paralysis, were fiercely pursuing, shouting "kill! kill! kill!" as they went about their work of slaughter, driving back their enemies, and striking at them remorselessly. here and there a brave officer, with his band of chosen followers, would be presenting a bold face to the foe, making a stand and seeking to rally the flying ranks. i was certain that i saw de gamache himself, hewing his way like a very paladin through the ranks of the english, and dealing death and destruction wherever he went. but the valour of a few had no power to turn the fortunes of the field; and the rout had already begun, when the maid and her attendants, closely followed by an enthusiastic band of soldiers and citizens, dashed forth from the burgundy gate, and mingled with the flying french hastening towards the city for safety. "courage, my children, courage!" cried the maid, waving her white pennon. "be not dismayed. the lord has heard your cries. he has sent me to your aid. take courage! fear nothing, for the victory shall be ours!" she did not even pause to note the effect of her words upon them, but sped onwards, fearless of danger, right into the very heart of the battle. we followed and closed up round her; but that shining white figure could not be hidden. the english saw it bearing down upon them, and instantly there was wavering in their ranks. before our swords had had time to strike at them, something touched them as with an icy hand. "the maid! the maid! the white witch!" they cried, and they paused in their pursuit to gaze upon that dazzling figure, and methinks their hearts melted like wax within them. from behind now arose a mighty tumult, and shouts and cries as of triumph thundered from the city walls. dunois and la hire, more tardily advised of what was happening, but prompt and decisive in action, were galloping out of the gate at the head of the picked soldiers under their command. rank behind rank we could see them flashing through the shadow into the sunshine, and dashing forward in compact order, their gaze fixed full upon the maid in the centre of the plain, who stood with uplifted sword and fluttering pennon, a veritable angel of the battle. but we saw other sights, too; for lord talbot was not idle on his side, but sent forth from other of the bastilles bodies of men to the aid of the defenders of st. loup. the whole plain was filled with surging masses of soldiers, rushing one upon the other in the fury of the fray. how would the maid bear it? she whose tender heart ached at the thought of human suffering, and whose soul was filled with yearning sorrow for men struck down in their sins. i pressed up towards her and saw her pitiful eyes fixed upon a convoy of wounded men, whom we had sent to rescue from their peril, lying as they did in the very heart of the plain. the eyes which had been flashing fire a moment before, were suffused with tears, as the melancholy procession passed her by. she turned to her page and said, "ride quickly into the city, and bid the priests come forth to hear the confessions and give absolution to the dying. lose not a moment! tell them that souls are every moment being hurried to their last account. bid them make haste and come, and let them give equal care to friend and foe; for in death all men are equal in the sight of god, and i would not that any english soldier or prisoner should fall without the consolations of religion." then, having thus done all that she could for the wounded and the dying, the maid was once again the resolute soldier. her keen eyes swept the plain; she saw with lightning speed where the need was the greatest, where the peril to the french cause was direst, and sweeping into the midst of the press, her sword and her banner flashing in the sunshine, she ever brought succour and victory in her wake. no foe could stand before her. not that she struck blows with her own hand. there seemed no need for that, and when at the close of the day i relieved her of her arms, there was no spot of blood upon her shining blade, though her coat of silver mail had received stains from the fray. she was like the angel of victory, flashing through the ranks of the combatants. wherever she appeared, the flying french turned back to face the foe, and the pursuing english wavered, paused, and finally broke rank and fled backwards to the shelter of their walls and forts. our men fought gallantly--let me not deny them their due--soldiers and citizens alike, who had come forth with and after the maid, all were inspired by confidence and courage. but it was her presence in the ranks which gave assurance of victory. wherever french soldiers wavered it was when she was far away and her back towards them. yet so soon as she turned in their direction--and some power seemed to whisper to her whenever her soldiers were dismayed--and galloped to their assistance, all was well again; and ere an hour had passed the english were driven back within their towers, and the victory was ours. dunois and la hire rode up to the maid and saluted. from the city in our rear we could already hear the pealing of the joy bells, the triumphant acclamation of the populace. "let us lead you back thither to receive the plaudits you have so well deserved," spoke dunois, who was man enough to give all the credit of the victory to the maid. "right valiantly have you accomplished your task. now let us take you to receive the gratitude of the town." "accomplished!" repeated the maid with a glance of surprise. "why, my friends, the task is scarcely yet begun!" they gazed at her in amazement; but she calmly pointed towards the frowning walls and battlements of st. loup. "we must take yonder tower," she said quietly, "that is what our brave, but rash young officers set themselves to do. they shall not be disappointed. it shall be ours ere night fall upon us. call to me the bold de gamache; i would have speech with him and his comrades." the greater generals looked at her and at one another, speaking no word. the walls and battlements of st. loup were strong and well defended. the tower could spout fire and smoke like a living monster. already the troops had marched far and fought hotly. surely if assault were to be made it should wait for another day. thus they communed together a stone's throw from the maid; but she only looked upon them with her deep inward smile, and softly i heard her speak the words: "no, it must be done today." de gamache rode up, and some half dozen other officers with him. his face was stained with blood and blackened by smoke. he had a scarf bound about his left arm; but his bearing was bold and resolute, and though his cheek flushed at the clear, direct gaze of the maid's eyes, he neither faltered nor trembled as he stood before her. "you did desire a good thing, my captain," she said, "and had you told me of your brave wish, i would have put myself at your head and led you to victory forthwith. yet this victory has not been forfeited, only delayed by your eager rashness. say, if i lead you myself, this very hour, against yon frowning tower, will you follow me like brave soldiers of the cross, and not turn back till my lord has given us the victory? for he will deliver yon place into our hands, albeit not without bloodshed, not without stress or strife. many must be slain ere we can call it ours, but will you follow and take it?" the shout which arose from a thousand throats rang to the welkin, and methinks must have smote with dread import upon the english ears. the maid's voice seemed to float through the air, and penetrate to the extreme limits of the crowd, or else her words were taken up and repeated by a score of eager tongues, and so ran through the mighty muster with thrilling import. the eyes were dazzled by the flashing blades as men swung them above their heads. "lead us, o maid, lead us! we follow to death or victory! we fear nothing so that you are our leader and our guide!" there was no withstanding a spirit like that! la hire's voice was one of the foremost in the cry; his great blade the first to leap from its scabbard. sage counsels of war, prompted by experience, had to give way before a power different from anything which the veterans had known before. with a dash, the elan of which was a marvellous sight to see, the soldiers poured themselves like a living stream against the walls of st. loup. the english behind the fortifications rained upon them missiles of every description. the air was darkened by a cloud of arrows. the cannon from the walls belched forth smoke and flame, and great stone and iron balls came hurtling down into our midst, dealing death and destruction. the english soldiers with their characteristic daring sallied forth sword in hand to beat us back and yet we pressed on and ever on; driven backwards here and there by stress of fighting; but never giving great way, and always rallied by the sight of that gleaming white armour, and by the clear, sweet voice ringing out through all the tumult of arms. "courage, my children, courage. the fight is fierce; but my lord gives you the victory. a little more courage, a little more patience, and the day is ours!" she stood unscathed amid the hail of stones and arrows. her clear glance never quailed; her sweet voice never faltered; she had thought for everyone but herself. again and again with her own hands she snatched some follower from a danger unseen by him, but which a moment later would have been his death. she herself stood unmoved in the awful tumult. she even smiled when dunois and la hire would have drawn her from the hottest of the fighting. "no, no, my friends, my place is here. have no fear. i shall not suffer. i have guardians watching over me that you wot not of." and so she stood unmoved at the foot of the tower, till the english, overcome with amaze, gave up the defence, and fled from a place they believed must surely be bewitched. and as the last of the sunlight faded from the sky, the fortress of st. loup was ours. the maid had fought her first battle, and had triumphed. chapter xi. how the maid bore triumph and trouble. the people of orleans, and we her knights and followers, were well-nigh wild with joy. i do not think i had ever doubted how she would bear herself in battle; and yet my heart had sometimes trembled at the thought of it. for, after all, speaking humanly, she was but a girl, a gentle maid, loving and tender-hearted, to whom the sight of suffering was always a sorrow and a pain. and to picture a young girl, who had perhaps never seen blows struck in anger in her life--save perchance in some village brawl--suddenly set in the midst of a battle, arms clashing, blood flowing, all the hideous din of warfare around her, exposed to all its fearful risks and perils--was it strange we should ask ourselves how she would bear it? was it wonderful that her confidence and calmness and steadfast courage under the trial should convince us, as never perhaps we had been convinced before, of the nearness of those supernatural beings who guarded her so closely, who warned her of danger, who inspired her with courage, and yet never robbed her for one moment of the grace and beauty and crown of her pure womanhood? and so, whilst we were well-nigh mad with joy and triumph, whilst joy bells pealed from the city, and the soldiers and citizens were ready to do her homage as a veritable saint from heaven, she was just her own quiet, thoughtful, retiring self. she put aside the plaudits of the generals; she hushed the excited shouting of the soldiers. she exercised her authority to check and stop the carnage, to insist that quarter should be given to all who asked it, to see that the wounded upon both sides were carried into the city to receive attention and care, and in particular that the prisoners--amongst whom were several priests--should receive humane treatment, and escape any sort of insult or reprisal. these matters occupied her time and thought to the exclusion of any personal pride or triumph. it was with difficulty that the generals could persuade her to ride at their head into the city, to receive the applause and joyful gratitude of the people; and as soon as she could without discourtesy extricate herself from the crowd pressing round to kiss her hands or her feet, or even the horse upon which she rode, she slipped away to give orders that certain badly wounded english prisoners were to be carried to the treasurer's house, and laid in the spacious guest chamber, which, having been prepared for her own reception, had been permitted to no one else. here she begged of madame boucher permission to lodge them, that she might tend their hurts herself, and assure herself that all was well with them. no one could deny the maid those things she asked, knowing well that others in her place would have issued commands without stooping to petition. but with the maid it was never so. her gentle courtesy never deserted her. no association with men, no military dignity of command, which she could so well assume, ever tarnished the lustre of her sweet humility. a gentle maiden, full of tenderness and compassion, she showed herself now. instead of resting after the sore strife of the battle, which had exhausted even strong men, nothing would serve her but that she must herself dress the wounds of these english prisoners; and so deft was her touch, and so soft and tender her methods with them, that not a groan passed the lips of any of them; they only watched her with wondering eyes of gratitude; and when she had left the room they looked at each other and asked: "who is it? is it boy, or angel, or what? the voice is as the voice of a woman, and the touch is as soft; but the dress is the dress of a man. who can it be?" i understood them, for i knew something of the english tongue, and i saw that they were in great amazement; for all who had seen the maid bore her image stamped upon their hearts; and yet it was impossible for these prisoners of war to believe that the triumphant, angelic commander of the forces could stoop to tend the hurts of wounded prisoners with her own hands. "gentlemen," i said, "that is the angelic maid herself--she who has been sent of heaven for the deliverance of france. i trow that you soldiers and knights of england have called her witch, and threatened to burn her if you can lay hands upon her. perchance now that you have seen her thus face to face, your thoughts towards her will somewhat change." they gazed at me and at one another in amaze. they broke into questions, eager and full of curiosity. when i had answered them they were ready to tell me what was spoken of her in the english ranks; all averred that some strange power seemed to fall upon them with the advent of the maid into the city--a power that withheld them from sallying forth to hinder her coming, or that of the relieving army. "we had meant to fight her to the death," spoke one english knight. "i was in counsel with the generals when it was so proposed; and yet more resolved were we to keep out the army from blois, which we heard must needs pass straight through our lines--an easy prey, we said, to our gunners, archers and swordsmen. all was in readiness for the attack--and yet no word was ever given. no trumpet sounded, though the men were drawn up ready. we all stood to arms; but the sight of that dazzling white figure seemed to close the lips of our commanders, to numb the limbs of our soldiers. i can say no more. when the chance was gone--the hour passed--we gazed into each other's face as men awaking from a dream. we cursed ourselves. we cursed the witch who had bound us by her spells. we vowed to redeem and revenge ourselves another day. and when we saw the french issuing forward to the attack scarce two hours after the entry of the relieving army, and there was no white figure with them, then indeed did we tell ourselves that our time was come; and we thought to win a speedy victory over the men who had so often fled before us. yet you know how the day did end. the maid came--victory rode beside her! nought we could do availed when she appeared. i had thought to be left to die upon the battlefield, but behold i am here, and she has dressed my wounds with her own hands! it is wonderful! past belief! tell me who and what is she? a creature of earth or of heaven?" i had already told him all i knew; but they were never tired of hearing the story of the maid; and as i, at her request, watched beside them during the night, ministering to their wants, and doing what i was able to relieve their pain, i found that nothing so helped them to forget the smart of their wounds as the narration of all the wonderful words and deeds of this heavenly deliverer of france. they were frank enough on their side also, and told me much of the disposition of their forces, and how that they were expecting a strong army to join them quickly, headed by sir john fastolffe, a notable knight, whose name we well knew, and had trembled before ere this. they admitted that their ranks were somewhat thinned by disease and death, and that they had scarce sufficient force both to maintain all the bastilles erected on the north side of the river and also to hold the great forts of les tourelles and les augustins on the south; but that when the reinforcements should arrive all would be well, and but for the marvellous power of the maid, they would have felt no doubt whatever as to the speedy reduction of the city either by assault or blockade. with the first golden shafts of sunlight came the maid once more, little charlotte beside her, both bearing in their hands such cooling drinks and light sustenance as the condition of the wounded men required. the maid wore the white, silver embroidered tunic and silken hose which queen yolande had provided for her indoor dress; she carried no arms, and her clustering curls framed her lovely face like a nimbus. all eyes were fixed upon her as upon a vision, and as she bent over each wounded man in turn, asking him of his welfare and holding a cup to his lips, i could see the amazement deepening in their eyes; and i am sure that they were well-nigh ready to worship the ground upon which she trod, so deep was the impression made upon them by her beauty and her gentle treatment. when she left the room i followed her at her sign, and asked: "then you go not forth to battle today, general?" "nay," she replied, "for today the church keeps the blessed feast of the ascension; which should be to all a day of peace and thanksgiving and holy joy. i am going forthwith to hear mass and receive the holy sacrament; and i would have my faithful knights about me. let us forget warfare and strife for this day." her own face was transfigured as she spoke. the light shone upon it all the time that she knelt before the high altar in the cathedral, rapt in a mystery of thanksgiving and heavenly joy. o how real it all was to her--those things which were to us articles of faith, grounds of hope, yet matters which seemed too far above us to arouse that personal rapture which was shining from the eyes and irradiating the whole face of the maid. it was a beautiful beginning to the day; and all the early hours were spent by the maid in meditation and prayer within the walls of the cathedral, where the people flocked, as perhaps they had never done before, to give thanks for the mercies received with the advent of the maid, and to gaze upon her, as she knelt in a trance of rapture and devotion in her appointed place not far from the altar. we, her knights, went to and fro, some of us always near to her, that the crowd might not too curiously press upon her when she went forth, or disturb her devotions by too close an approach. i noted that none of the generals appeared or took part in the acts of devotion that day. and as i issued forth into the sunny street at the close of the high mass, bertrand met me with a look of trouble and anger on his face. "they are all sitting in council of war together," he said, "and they have not even told her of it, nor suffered her to join them! how can they treat her so--even dunois and la hire--when they have seen again and yet again how futile are all plans made by their skill without the sanction of her voice? it makes my gorge rise! do they think her a mere beautiful image, to ride before them and carry a white banner to affright the foe? it is a shame, a shame, that they should treat her so, after all that they have seen and heard!" i was as wroth as bertrand, and as full of surprise. even now, looking back after all these years, the blindness of these men of war astonishes and exasperates me. they had seen with their own eyes what the maid could accomplish; again and again she had proved herself the abler in counsel as in fight; and yet they now deliberately desired to set her aside from their councils, and only inform her of their decisions when made, and permit her to take a share in the fighting they had planned. bertrand was furiously angry. he led me up into a lofty turret which commanded a bird's-eye view of the whole city and its environs, and he pointed out that which the maid had declared she would straightway do, so soon as the feast of the ascension was over, and how the generals were about to follow a quite different course. orleans, as all men know, lies upon the right--the north--bank of the loire, and the country to the north was then altogether in the power of the english; wherefore they had built their great bastilles around the city upon that side without molestation, and were able to receive supplies from their countrymen without let or hindrance. but these bastilles were not the chiefest danger to the city, or rather i should say, it was not these which were the chiefest cause of peril, since no help could reach the garrison from that side. they looked to the country to the south to help them, and it was to stop supplies from reaching them by water or from the south that the english had long since crossed the river and had established themselves in certain forts along the south bank. of these, st. jean le blanc was one; but by far the most important and dangerous to the city were the two great towers commanding the bridge, whose names i have given before. let me explain how these great fortifications stood. les augustins had once been a convent, and it stood on the south bank, very near to the end of the bridge, guarding it securely from attack, and commanding the waterway and the approach to the city. les tourelles was an even stronger tower, constructed upon the very bridge itself, and menacing the town in formidable fashion. dunois had broken down the main portion of the bridge on the north side to prevent the advance into the city of the english from their tower; so it stood grimly isolated from either bank; for the permanent bridge at the south end had been destroyed to be replaced by a drawbridge which could rise or fall at will. and it was these towers of les augustins and les tourelles which had reduced the city to such straits by hindering the entrance of food supplies. moreover, from les tourelles great stone cannon balls had been hurled into the city in vast numbers, battering down walls and doing untold damage to buildings and their inhabitants. now it was evident to all that these fortresses must be taken if the city were to be relieved and the siege raised. but the maid, with her far-seeing eyes, had decreed that first the bastilles upon the north bank should be attacked and destroyed; and it was easy to follow her reasoning; "for," she said, "when the english are fiercely attacked there, they will, without doubt, yield up these lesser fortresses without a great struggle, concentrating themselves in force upon the left bank, where they think to do us most hurt. we shall then destroy their bastilles, so that they will have no place of shelter to fly back to; and then we shall fall upon them hip and thigh on the south side, and drive them before us as chaff before the wind. they must needs then disperse themselves altogether, having no more cover to hide themselves in; so will the enemies of the lord be dispersed, and the siege of orleans be raised." this was the plan she had confided to her own immediate attendants and staff the previous evening, and which bertrand repeated to me, gazing over the ramparts, and pointing out each fortress and bastion as it was named. but now the generals in council, without reference to the maid, had decreed something altogether different. what they desired to do was not to make any real or vigorous attack upon any of the english forts, but to feign an assault upon the towers on the south bank, and whilst the attention of the foe was thus engaged, get great quantifies of stores--all lying in readiness at hand--into the city, enough to last for a long while, and then quietly sit down behind the strong walls, and tire out the english, forcing them thus to retreat of their own accord! think of it! after all that had been promised, all that had been performed! to be content to shut ourselves in a well-provisioned town, and just weary out the patience of the foe! and, moreover, of a foe who expected daily reinforcements from the north, and who would be quite capable of exercising as much patience, and perhaps more daring than ourselves. even now my blood boils at the thought, and i find it hard to conceive how such men as dunois and la hire let themselves be led from their allegiance and confidence in the maid to listen to such counsel as this from her detractors, and those many lesser commanders who were sorely jealous of her success and influence. but so it was, not once nor twice, but again and again; though in action they were staunch to her, would follow her everywhere, rally round her standard, fly to her defence when danger threatened, and show themselves gallant soldiers and generous-hearted men, never denying her all her share of praise and honour. but when sitting in the council room, surrounded by officers and men of experience in war disposed to scorn the counsels of an unlettered girl, and scoff at her pretensions to military rule, they were invariably led away and overborne, agreeing to act without her sanction, or even contrary to her advice, notwithstanding their belief in her mission, and their trust in her power as a leader. the shades of evening had fallen in the treasurer's house before word was brought to the maid of the decision of the generals in council. we were sitting around her after supper; and she had fallen into a very thoughtful mood. the chevalier d'aulon had been called away, and now returned with a troubled face. he stood just within the doorway, as though half afraid to advance. the maid lifted her eyes to his and smiled. "do not fear to tell me your news, my kind friend. i know that your faithful heart is sore at the dishonour done to me; but let us not judge harshly. it is hard for men full of courage and fleshly power to understand how the lord works with such humble instruments. perchance, in their place, we should not be greatly different. "so they have refused my plan, and made one of their own. we are to attack the foe upon the south? is that agreed? and even so not with all our heart and strength?" d'aulon recoiled a step in amaze. "madame, that is indeed so--a feint upon the south bank has been decreed, whilst provisions are thrown into the city--" "yes, yes, i know. well, so be it. we will attack on the south bank. it must have come sooner or later, and if we fight with a will, the lord will be with us and uphold our cause. but, my friends, understand this, and let the men likewise understand it. there shall be no mockery of fighting. it shall be true and desperate warfare. let the generals decree what they will, the maid will lead her soldiers to victory! tomorrow les augustins shall be ours; upon the next day les tourelles shall fall--" she paused suddenly and turned towards bertrand. "what day will that be--the day after to-morrow?" "the seventh day of may," he answered at once. "ah!" she said, "then it will be on that day--the day which shall see orleans relieved--the power of the english broken." she spoke dreamily, and only madame boucher, who sat in the shadows with her child upon her lap, ventured to ask of her: "what will be on that day, gentle jeanne?" "that i shall be wounded," she answered quietly. "did i not tell you long since," turning to bertrand and me, "that i should not come unscathed through the assault; but that on a certain day i should receive a wound?" i pulled out my tablets, upon which i often recorded the sayings of the maid, and sure enough there it was written down as she said. we felt a great burning revolt at the thought of any hurt befalling her, and somebody spoke vehemently, saying that the holy saints would surely protect her from harm. but she lifted her hand with her gentle authority of gesture, and spoke: "nay, my kind friends, but thus it must needs be; nor would i have it otherwise. listen, and i will tell you all. i often had my days and hours of fear because this great work was put upon one so weak and ignorant as i, and it was long before i clearly understood that i was but the instrument in a mighty hand, and that power for all would be given me. then my fear left and great joy came; perhaps even some pride and haughtiness of spirit in that i had been chosen for such a task. "and then it was that my voices asked of me: 'jeanne, hast thou no fear?' "and i answered without pause, 'i fear nothing now.' "then st. catherine herself suddenly appeared to me in a great white light and said: 'child, thou art highly favoured of heaven; but the flesh is easily puffed up. and for this cause, and because it may be well that thou thyself and all men shall know that thou art but human flesh and blood, thou shalt not escape unscathed in warfare; but thou too shalt feel the sting of fiery dart, and know the scald of flowing blood.' "i bowed my head and made answer i would bear whatever my lord thought fit to lay upon me; and i asked if i might know when this thing would happen. it was not told me then; but later it was revealed to me; and i know that upon the seventh day of may i shall be wounded--" and she touched her right shoulder as she spoke, just below the neck. "but what matter will that be, when the siege of orleans shall be raised?" her face was aglow; nothing could touch her joy, not the insults of the proud generals, nor the knowledge of coming pain for herself. her thought was all of the mission entrusted to her; and so, though thwarted and set aside, she showed no petty anger, dreamed not of any paltry vengeance such as others might have dealt the soldiers, by refusing to march with them on the morrow. oh, no; hurt she might be--indeed we knew she was--her pain being for the dishonour done her lord in this disrespect of his messenger; but no thought of reprisal entered her head. she rose from her seat, and lifted the little charlotte in her strong young arms. "gentlemen, let us early to rest," she said, holding her head proudly, "for tomorrow a great work shall be done, and we must all have our share in it." chapter xii. how the maid raised the siege. to tell the tale of how les augustins was taken is but to tell again the tale of st loup. i know not precisely what instructions the lesser officers received, nor what they told their men. but whether from preconcerted arrangement that the attack was only to be a feint, or whether from the dash and energy of the english, it appeared at first as though the tide of war was rolling back in its old track, and that the prowess of the english as destined to win the day. for one thing the assault was commenced before the maid had crossed the river and could put herself at the head of the men. a large body of troops had been transported to the south side in boats during the night, under cover of darkness; and this was all very well; but they should have waited hen daylight came for the maid to march at their head, instead of which they sought to rush the fortress before ever she had appeared at all; and when we arrived at the river's bank, it was to see a furious battle raging round the base of les augustins, and ere we were half across the river, we saw only too plainly that the french were being badly beaten, were fleeing in all directions from the pursuing foe, and were making for the river bank once more as fast as their legs could carry them. the maid watched it all, with that strange, inscrutable look upon her face, and that battle light in her eyes which we were all learning to know. she was sitting upon her horse; for though a number of animals had been taken across in the night, no horse of hers had been so conducted, and we had led the creature with its rider into the great flat-bottomed boat; so that she was on a higher level than the rest of us, and could better see what was passing, though it was plain to all that our soldiers were getting badly beaten. "o foolish children, silly sheep!" murmured the maid as she watched, "and yet you are not to blame, but those who lead you. when will they understand? when will they believe?" we reached the shore, and the maid, without waiting for any of us to mount or form a bodyguard round her, leaped her horse to the bank, and charged up it, her pennon flying, her eyes alight with the greatness of her purpose. but even as she climbed the slippery bank, a great rush of flying soldiers met her, and by their sheer weight forced back horse and rider almost to the river's brink before they were aware who or what it was. then her silver trumpet voice rang out. she called upon them to reform, to follow her. she cried that her lord would give them the victory, and almost before we who had accompanied her had formed into rank for the charge, the flying, panic-stricken men from the front, ashamed and filled with fresh ardour, had turned themselves about, closed up their scattered ranks, and were ready to follow her whithersoever she might lead them. yet it was to no speedy victory she urged them. no angel with a flaming sword came forth to fight and overcome as by a miracle. but it was enough for that white-clad figure to stand revealed in the thickest of the carnage to animate the men to heroic effort. as i say, it was the story of st. loup over again; but if anything the fighting was more severe. what the generals had meant for a mere feint, the maid turned into a desperate battle. the english were reinforced many times; it seemed as though we had a hopeless task before us. but confidence and assurance of victory were in our hearts as we saw our deliverer stand in the thick of the fight and heard her clarion voice ringing over the field. ere the shades of night fell, not only was les augustins ours, but its stores of food and ammunition had been safely transported into the city, and the place so destroyed and dismantled that never again could it be a source of peril to the town. and now the maid's eyes were fixed full upon the frowning bulk of les tourelles, rising grim and black against the darkening sky, with its little "tower of the boulevard," on this side the drawbridge. thither had the whole english force retired--all who were not lying dead or desperately wounded on the plain or round the gutted tower of les augustins--we saw their threatening faces looking down fiercely upon us, and heard the angry voices from the walls, heaping abuse and curses upon the "white witch," who had wrought them this evil. "would that we could attack at once!" spoke the maid. "would that the sun would stay his course! truly i do believe that we should carry all before us!" the leaders came up to praise and glorify her prowess. they heard her words, but answered how that the men must needs have a night's rest ere they tried this second great feat of arms. but, they added, there should be no going back into the city, no delay on the morrow in crossing the river. it was a warm summer-like night. provisions were abundant, shelter could be obtained beneath the walls of the captured citadel. they, with the bulk of the army, would remain on the south bank for the nonce, and the maid should return to the city with the convoys of wounded, to spend a quiet night there, returning with the dawn of the morrow to renew the attack and take les tourelles. thus they spoke, and spoke suavely and courteously. but i did note a strange look in the eyes of the maid; and i wondered why it was that dunois, the speaker, grew red and stumbled over his words, whilst that la hire, who had done a giant's work in the fighting that day, ground his teeth and looked both ashamed and disturbed. the maid stood a brief while as though in doubt. but then she made quiet reply: "then, gentlemen, it shall be as you will. i will return to the city for the night. but with the dawn of day i will be here, and les tourelles shall be ours. the siege of orleans shall be raised!" they bowed low to her; every one of them made obeisance. yet was there something ironical in the very humility of some? i could not tell; yet my heart burned within me as i followed our mistress; and never had i known her so silent as she was upon our journey back, or as we sat at supper, the rest of us telling of the day's doings, but the maid speechless, save when she bent her head to answer some eager question of little charlotte's, or to smile at her childish prattle. suddenly the door was flung open, and sir guy strode in with a face like a thundercloud. behind him came a messenger sent by the generals to the maid, and this was the news he brought: there had been a council held after dark, and it was then unanimously agreed that all now had been done that was necessary. the city was provisioned, the power of the english had been greatly weakened and broken. the army would now be content with the triumphs already won, and would quietly await further reinforcements before taking any fresh step. the man who brought this message faltered as he delivered it. the maid sat very still and quiet, her head lifted in a dignified but most expressive disdain. "monsieur," she replied, when the envoy ceased speaking, "go back to those who sent you. tell them that they have had their council and i have had mine. i leave the city at dawn as i have said. i return not to it till the siege has been raised." the man bowed and retired confusedly. the maid lifted the little child in her arms, as was her wont, to carry her to bed. she turned to her chaplain as she did so: "come to me at dawn, my father, to hear my confession; and i pray you accompany me upon the morrow; for my blood will be shed. but do not weep or fear for me, my friends, nor spread any banquet for me ere i start forth upon the morrow; but keep all for my return in the evening, when i will come to you by the bridge." she was gone as she spoke, and we gazed at her and each other in amaze; for how could she come back by a bridge which had been destroyed, and how did she brook such slights as were heaped upon her without showing anger and hurt pride? "and there is worse yet to come!" cried sir guy in a fury of rage, "for i lingered behind to hear and see. if you will believe it, there are numbers and numbers of the lesser officers who would desire that the maid should now be told that her work is done, and that she can retire to her home in domremy; that the king will come himself with another reinforcing army to raise the siege, so that they may get rid of her, and take the glory to themselves whenever the place shall be truly relieved. could you believe such folly, such treachery?" we could not; we could scarce believe our ears, and right glad was i to hear how that la hire had had no part in this shameful council; and i hope that dunois had not either, though i fear me he was less staunch. la hire had returned to the city to seek to infuse into the citizens some of the spirit of the maid. he was always for bold attack, and would be ready on the morrow, we did not doubt, for whatever might betide. it was little after dawn when we rode forth, the maid in her white armour at our head, carrying her small pennon, whilst d'aulon bore the great white standard close behind. her face was pale and rapt. none of us spoke to her, and pasquerel, her good chaplain, rode behind telling his beads as he went. we reached the burgundy gate; and behold it was fast shut. at the portal stood de gaucourt, a notable warrior, with a grim look about his mouth. the maid saluted him courteously, and quietly bid him open the gate. but he budged not an inch. "madam," he said, "i have my commands from the generals of the army. the gate is to remain shut. no one is to be suffered to pass forth today." we understood in a moment. this was a ruse to trap the maid within the city walls. our hands were upon the hilts of our swords. at a word from her, they would have flashed forth, and de gaucourt would have been a dead man had he sought to hinder us in the opening of the gate. but the maid read our purpose in our eyes and in our gestures, and she stayed us by her lifted hand. "not so, my friends," she answered gravely, "but the chevalier de gaucourt will himself order the opening of the gate. i have to ride through it and at once. my lord bids it!" her eyes flashed full and suddenly upon him. we saw him quiver from head to foot. with his own hands he unlocked the gate, and it seemed to swing of its own accord wide open before us. the maid bent her head in gracious acknowledgment, swept through and was off to the river like a flash of white lightning. the river lay golden in the glory of the morning. the boats which had transported us across last night bore us bravely over now. i know not how the generals felt when they saw the maid, a dazzling vision of brightness, her great white standard close behind, her phalanx of knights and gentlemen in attendance, gallop up to the scene of action, from which they thought they had successfully banished her. i only know that from the throats of the soldiers there arose a deafening shout of welcome. they at least believed in her. they looked to her as to none else. they would follow her unwaveringly, when no other commander could make them budge. a yell that rent the very firmament went up at sight of her, and every man seized his arms and sprang to his post, as though inspired by the very genius of victory. "courage, my children, forward! the day shall be ours!" she cried, as she took her place at the head of the formidable charge against the walls which frowned and bristled with the pikes and arrows of the english. her voice, like a silver clarion, rang clear through the din of the furious battle which followed: "bon coeur, bonne esperance, mes enfants, the hour of victory is at hand! de la part de dieu! de la part de dieu!" that was her favourite battle cry! it was god who should give the victory. but it was no easy victory we were to win that day. the english fought with the energy of despair. they knew as well as we that when les tourelles fell the siege would be raised. true they had their bastilles upon the north side of the river to fall back upon, since the maid's counsel of destruction had not been followed. but once dislodged from the south bank, and orleans would lie open to the support of her friends in the south, and the position of the english army would be one of dire peril. for now the french were no more cowed by craven fear of the power of their enemies. they had found them capable of defeat and overthrow; the spell was broken. and it was the maid who had done it! oh, how we fought around her that day! she was on foot now, for the banks of the moat were slippery, and the press around the walls was too great to admit easily of the tactics of horsemen. i never saw her strike at any foe. it was her pennon rather than her sword in which she trusted. here was the rallying point for the bravest and most desperate of the assailants, ever in the thickest of the strife, ever pointing the way to victory. it was the tower of the boulevard against which we were directing our attack. if that fell, les tourelles itself must needs follow, isolated as it would then be in the midst of the river. we did not know it then, but we were to learn later, that la hire in the city with a great band of citizens and soldiers to help him, was already hard at work constructing a bridge which should carry him and his men across to les tourelles, to take the english in the rear, whilst their attention was concentrated upon our work on the other side. no wonder that the clash and din was something deafening, that the boom of the great cannon ceased not; smoke and fire seemed to envelop the walls of the towers; the air was darkened by clouds of arrows; great stones came crashing into our midst. men fell on every side; we had much ado to press on without treading under foot the dead and dying; but the white pennon fluttered before us, and foot by foot we crept up towards the base of the tower. victory! victory! was the cry of our hearts. we were close to the walls now--the maid had seized a ladder, and with her own hands was setting it in position, when--o woe! woe!--a great cloth-yard shaft from an english bow, tipped with iron and winged with an eagle's plume, struck upon that white armour with such crashing force that a rent was made in its shining surface, and the maid was borne to the ground. oh, the terrible fear of that moment! the yell of triumph and joy which arose from the walls of the fortress seemed to turn my blood into liquid fire. the english had seen the fall of our champion. they shouted like men drunk with victory! they knew well enough that were she dead, they would drive back the french as sheep are driven by wolves. i had been close beside the maid for hours; for i never forgot what she had spoken about being wounded that day; yet when she fell i had been parted from her a brief space, by one of those battle waves too strong for resistance. but now i fought my way to her side with irresistible fury, though there was such a struggling press all about her that i had much ado to force my way through it. but i was known as one of her especial personal attendants, and way was made for me somehow; yet it was not i who was the first to render her assistance. when i arrived, de gamache was holding her in his arms; someone had removed her headpiece, and though her face was as white as the snowy plumes, her eyes were open, and there was a faint brave smile upon her lips. de gamache had his horse beside him, his arm slipped through the reins. "my brave general," he said, as the maid looked in his face, "let me lift you to my saddle and convey you to a place of safety. i have done you wrong before; but i pray you forgive me, and bear no malice; for i am yours till death. never was woman so brave." "i should be wrong indeed to bear malice against any, my good friend," spoke the maid, in her gentle tones, "above all against one so courteous, so brave." we lifted her upon the horse. we formed a bodyguard round her. we drew her out of the thick of the press, for once unresisting; and we laid her down in a little adjacent vineyard, where the good pasquerel came instantly, and knelt beside her offering prayers for her recovery. but the great arrow had pierced right through her shoulder, and stood out a handbreadth upon the other side. we had sent for a surgeon; but we dreaded to think of the pain she must suffer; must be suffering even now. her face was white; her brow was furrowed. but suddenly, as we stood looking at her in dismay, she sat up, took firm hold of the cruel barb with her own hands, and drew it steadily from the wound. was ever courage like hers? as the blood came gushing forth, staining her white armour red, she uttered a little cry and her lips grew pale. yet i think the cry was less from pain than to see the marring of her shining breastplate; and the tears started to her eyes. never before had this suffered hurt; the sight of the envious rent hurt her, i trow, as much as did the smart of her wound. the surgeon came hurrying up, and dressed the wound with a pledget of linen steeped in oil; and the maid lay very white and still, almost like one dying or dead, so that we all held our breath in fear. in sooth, the faintness was deathlike for awhile, and she did beckon to her priest to come close to her and receive her confession, whilst we formed round her in a circle, keeping off all idle gazers, and standing facing away from her, with bent, uncovered heads. was it possible that her lord was about to take her from us, her task yet unfulfilled? it was hard to believe it, and yet we could not but fear; wherefore our hearts were heavy within us during that long hour which followed. and the battle? it was raging still, but the heart of it seemed to be lacking. the english were crying out that the white witch was dead, taunting their foes with being led by a woman, and asking them where she was gone to now. dunois came hurrying up for news of her. the maid roused herself and beckoned to him to come to her where she lay, and asked him of the battle. dunois told her that the courage of the men seemed failing, that he thought of sounding the retreat. for a few moments she lay still; her eyes bent full upon the blinding blue of the sunny sky. then she spoke: "sound no retreat, my general," she spoke, "but give the men a breathing space. let them draw off for a brief moment. let them eat and drink and refresh themselves. tell them that i will come to them again; and when you and they see my standard floating against the wall, then know by that token that the place is yours." dunois went his way, and soon the sound of the struggle ceased. there came a strange hush in the heat of the noontide hours. the maid lay still a while longer; then raising herself, asked that water should be brought to cleanse away all stains from her hands and face and her white armour. that being done she called to d'aulon and said to him: "take the great standard; plant it again upon the edge of the moat; and when the silken folds touch the tower wall, call and tell me; and you, my knights and gentlemen, be ready to follow me to victory!" did we doubt her ability, wounded as she was, to lead us? not one whit. we looked to our arms; we stood silently beside her. we watched d'aulon move quietly forward to the appointed place, and unfold the great white banner, which hung down limply in the sultry heat of the may afternoon. he stood there, and we stood beside the maid a great while; she lay upon the heap of cloaks which had been spread to form a couch for her; her hands were clasped and her eyes closed as though in prayer. then a little puff of wind arose, followed by another, and yet another--soft, warm wind, but we saw the folds of the banner begin to unfurl. little by little the breeze strengthened; breathlessly we watched the gradual lifting of the silken standard, till, with an indescribably proud motion--as though some spirit was infused into the lifeless silk--it launched itself like a living thing against the tower wall. "it touches! it touches!" cried d'aulon. "it touches! it touches!" we shouted in response. "it touches! it touches!" came an echoing wave sound from the soldiers watching from their resting places. the maid was on her feet in a moment. where was the weakness, the feebleness, the faintness of the wounded girl? all gone--all swallowed up in the triumph of the victorious warrior. "onward! onward, my children. onward, de la part de dieu! he has given you the victory! onwards and take the tower! nothing can resist you now!" her voice was heard all over the field. the white folds of the banner still fluttered against the wall, the white armour of the maid shone dazzling in the sunshine as she dashed forward. the army to a man sprang forward in her wake with that rush, with that power of confidence against which nothing can stand. the english shrieked in their astonishment and affright. the dead had come to life! the white witch, struck down as they thought by mortal wound, was charging at the head of her armies. the french were swarming up the scaling ladders, pouring into their tower, carrying all before them. fighting was useless. nothing remained but flight. helter skelter, like rabbits or rats, they fled this way and that before us. not an englishman remained upon the south side of the river. the french flag waved from the top of the tower. the seven months' siege was raised by the maid eight days after her entrance into the city. chapter xiii. how the maid won a new name. "entrez, entrez--de la part de dieu--all is yours!" thus spoke the maid, as we rushed the tower of the boulevard, the english flying this way and that before us. the maid found herself face to face with the commander--that sir william glasdale, who had called her vile names a few days before, and had promised to burn her for a witch if once she fell into his hands. but she had no ill words for him, as she saw him, sword in hand, seeking to make a last stand upon the drawbridge leading to les tourelles. "now yield you, classidas," she said; "i bear you no ill will. i have great pity for your soul. yield you, and all shall be well." but he would not listen; his face was black like a thundercloud, and with his picked bodyguard of men, he retreated backwards, sword in hand, upon the bridge, seeking to gain the other tower, not knowing its desperate condition, and hoping there to make a last stand. but he was not destined to achieve his end. suddenly the bridge gave way beneath his feet, and he and his men were all precipitated into the water. it looked to us as though a miracle had been wrought before our eyes; as though the gaze of the maid had done it. but the truth was afterwards told us, that a fire ship from the city had been sent across and had burned the bridge, cutting off the retreat of the english that way. and now we heard the din of battle going on within les tourelles; for la hire had crossed the repaired bridge with a gallant band of soldiers, and our men, hearing the shouts of their comrades, and the cries of the trapped english, flung themselves into boats, or swam over, sword in mouth, anything to get to the scene of the fray; whilst others set to work with planks, and whatever they could lay hands upon, to mend the broken drawbridge that they might swarm across into les tourelles and join in the final act of victory, that should free orleans from the iron grip in which she had been held so long. but the face of the maid was troubled, as she looked into the dark water which had closed over the head of glasdale and his men. she had seized upon a coil of rope; she stood ready to fling it towards them when they rose; but encased as they were in their heavy mail, there was no rising for them. long did she gaze into the black, bloodstained water; but she gazed in vain; and when she raised her eyes, i saw that they were swimming in tears. "i would we might have saved them," she spoke, with a little catch in her voice, "i have such great pity for their souls!" these were the first words i heard the maid speak after her wonderful victory had been won; and whilst others went hither and thither, mad or drunk with joy, she busied herself about the wounded, making no distinction betwixt friend or foe, sending urgent message into the city for priests to come forth and bring the last sacraments with them, and so long as there were any dying to be confessed or consoled, or wounded to be cared for and transported into the city, she seemed to have no thought for aught beside. thankful joy was indeed in her heart, but her tender woman's pity was so stirred by sights of suffering and death that for the moment she could think of nothing else. thus the daylight faded, and we began to think of return. how shall i describe the sight which greeted our eyes in the gathering dusk, as we looked towards the city? one might have thought that the english had fired it, so bright was the glare in which it was enveloped; but we knew better. bonfires were blazing in every square, in every open place. nay, more, from the very roofs of tower and church great pillars of flame were ascending to the heavens. joy bells had rung before this, but never with such a wild jubilation, such a clamour of palpitating triumph. the city had gone mad in its joy--and it was no marvel--and all were awaiting the return of the maid, to whom this miraculous deliverance was due. eight days--eight days of the maid--and the seven-months' siege was raised! was it wonderful they should hunger for her presence amongst them? was it wonderful that every house should seek to hang out a white banner in honour of the angelic maid, and her pure whiteness of soul and body? "i will come to you by the bridge," had been her own word; and now, behold, the bridge was there! like trojans had the men worked beneath the eagle eyes of la hire. an army had already crossed from the city; now that their task was done, the maid's white charger had been led across, and the cry was all for her, for her; that she should let the people see her alive and well, now that her task was accomplished and orleans was free! she let us mount her upon her horse, and d'aulon marched in front with the great white standard. weary and white and wan was she, with the stress of the fight, with the pain and loss of blood from her wound, above all, with her deep, unfailing pity for the sufferings she had been forced to witness, for the souls gone to their last account without the sacred offices of the church. all this weighed upon her young spirit, and gave a strange, ethereal loveliness to her pale face and shining eyes. methought she seemed almost more like some angelic presence in our midst than a creature of human flesh and blood. the generals formed an advance guard before her. the soldiers followed, rank behind rank, in the rear. we of her household rode immediately in her wake, ready to protect her, if need be, from the too great pressure of the crowd. and so we crossed the hastily-repaired bridge, and entered by the bride gate--or st. catherine's gate, as it was equally called; for a figure of st. catherine stands carved in a niche above the porch, and i saw the maid glance upwards at it as she passed through, a smile upon her lips. shall i ever forget the thunder of applause which fell upon our ears as we passed into the city through the bridge? it was like the "sound of many waters"--deafening in volume and intensity. and was it wonder? had not something very like a miracle been wrought? for had not rumours reached the city many times that day of the death of the deliverer in the hour of victory? none well knew what to believe till they saw her in their midst, and then the cry which rent the heavens was such as methinks is heard but once in a lifetime. i know not who first spoke the words; but once spoken, they were caught up by ten thousand lips, and the blazing heavens echoed them back in great waves of rolling sound: "the maid of orleans! the maid of orleans! welcome, honour, glory, praise to the maid of orleans!" the people were well-nigh mad with joy; they rushed upon her to kiss her hands, her knees, the folds of her banner, the neck or the flanks of her horse. in the red glare of the hundred bonfires the whiteness of her armour seemed to take a new lustre. the rent upon the shoulder could be plainly seen, showing where the arrow had torn its way. women sobbed aloud as they looked; men cursed the hand which had shot the bolt; all joined in frantic cheers of joy to see her riding alone, erect and smiling, though with a dreamy stillness of countenance which physical lassitude in part accounted for. "i thank you, my friends, i thank you," she kept saying, as though no other words would come, save when now and again she would add, "but to god must you give your thanks and blessings. it is he who has delivered you." it was not far to the house of the treasurer, and there in the threshold stood the little charlotte, a great wreath of bay and laurel in her tiny hands. she was lifted up in her father's strong arms, and ere the maid was able to dismount from her horse the little one had placed the triumphal wreath upon her fair head. o, what a shout arose! it was like the mighty burst of some great thunderstorm. the maid, blushing now at the tumult of applause, stretched out her arms, took the little one into them, and held her in a close embrace whilst she bowed her last graceful thanks to the joy-maddened crowd. then she slipped from her horse, and holding the little one fast by the hand, disappeared into the house, whilst the people reluctantly dispersed to hear the story all over again from the soldiers pouring in, each with some tale of his own to tell of the prowess of the maid of orleans. yes, that was the name by which she was henceforth to be known. the city was wild with joy and pride thus to christen her. and she, having crossed by the bridge, as she had said, sat down for a brief while to that festal board which had been spread for her. but fatigue soon over-mastering her, she retired to her room, only pausing to look at us all and say: "tomorrow is the lord's own day of rest. remember that, my friends. let there be no fighting, no pursuit, no martial exercise, whatever the foe may threaten or do. tomorrow must be a day of thanksgiving and praise. look to it that my words are obeyed." they said she slept like a child that night; yet with the early light of day she was up, kneeling in the cathedral with her household beside her, listening to the sound of chant and prayer, receiving the holy sacrament, the pledge of her lord's love. not until we had returned from that first duty did she listen to what was told her anent the movements of the english. they were drawn up in battle array upon the north side of the river, spoke those who had gone to the battlements to look. thinned as were their ranks, they were still a formidable host, and from the menace of their attitude it might be that they expected the arrival of reinforcements. would it not be well, spoke la hire, to go forth against them at once, whilst the soldiers' hearts were flushed with victory, whilst the memory of yesterday's triumphs was green within them? but the maid, hitherto all in favour of the most dashing and daring policy, answered now, with a shake of the head: "it is sunday, my generals," she replied; "the day of my lord. the day he has hallowed to his service." she paused a moment, and added, quite gently, and without reproach, "had you acted as i did counsel, the english would now have had no footing on the north side of the river; they must needs have fled altogether from the neighbourhood of the city. nevertheless, my lord is merciful. he helps, though men hinder his designs. let no man stir forth with carnal weapons against the foe this day. we will use other means to vanquish them." then turning to me, she bid me go to the bishop, and ask him to give her audience; and shortly she was ushered into his presence, and we waited long for her to reappear. how shall i tell of the wonderful scene which the sun looked down upon that bright may morning, when the purpose of the maid became fully revealed to us? even now it seems rather as a dream, than as an incident in a terrible war. out upon the level plain, in full sight of the city, in full view of the serried ranks of the english army, a great white altar was set up. the army from orleans marched out and stood bareheaded beneath the walls, unarmed by order of the maid, save for the small weapon every man habitually carried at his belt, citizen as well as soldier. the townspeople flocked to the walls, or out into the plain, as pleased them best; and from the renart gate there issued forth a grave and sumptuous procession; the bishop in his vestments, accompanied by all the ecclesiastics within the city walls, each of them robed, attended by acolytes swinging censers, the incense cloud ascending through the sunny air, tapers swaying in the breeze, their light extinguished by the brilliance of the sunshine. the maid in her white tunic, with a white mantle over her shoulders, followed with bent head, leading the little charlotte by the hand succeeded by her household. and there, in the sight of the rival armies, high mass was celebrated by the bishop, both armies kneeling devoutly, and turning towards the altar as one man. never have i witnessed such a scene. never shall i witness such another. the mass over, the procession filed back through the gate, both armies kneeling motionless till it had disappeared. then the maid rose, and we with her, and followed her in its wake, and the french army, in perfect order, re-entered the city by the appointed gates, as had been ordered. one hour later and the maid sent d'aulon up to the battlements to look what the english army was doing. he returned to say that they were still drawn up in rank as before. "which way are their faces?" she asked. "their faces are turned away from the city," was the reply. the countenance of the maid brightened with a great light. "then let them go, a part de dieu!" she answered. "my god, i thank thee for this great grace!" and so, without further battle or bloodshed, the english army marched away from orleans; and upon the next morning not a man of the foe was left; and the citizens pouring out from the town, destroyed, with acclamations of joy, those great bastilles, which had so long sheltered the foe and threatened the safety of the city. it was a day ever to be remembered. the bells pealed ceaselessly, the houses were decked with garlands, white banners or silken pennons floated everywhere, the townsfolk arrayed themselves in holiday garb, and poured out through the gates to wander at will over the plain, so lately held by the english. gladness and the wonder of a great relief was stamped upon every face, and constantly songs of triumph arose or thunders of applause, of which the burden always was--the maid of orleans! the maid of orleans! they would have kept her with them for ever, if it might so have been. they talked wildly, yet earnestly, of building her a palace, where she should live at ease all the rest of her days, the object of universal admiration and homage. but the maid listened to such words, when repeated to her, with a dreamy smile. her wound required rest; and for two days she consented to remain quiet in the house of the treasurer, lying for the most part upon a couch in a great cool chamber, with the little charlotte for her companion and playfellow. she sometimes rose and showed herself at a window in answer to the tumultuous shoutings of the crowd without; and she received with pleasure some great baskets and bouquets of flowers which the wives and children of the citizens had culled for her. but she gently put aside all suggestions of rewards for herself, which some would fain have bestowed upon the deliverer, and which men of all ranks were but too ready to claim and receive for service rendered. "i have all that i want, myself--and more," she said; "if any would offer gifts, let them be thank offerings to the lord. let the poor receive alms, let masses be sung for the souls of those killed in the war; but for me--i want nothing but the love of the people of france. i am come to do the will of my lord. i ask only his approving smile." and all the while she was eagerly desirous to return to the king, and urge upon him the need to repair instantly to rheims, and there receive his crown. to her he was not truly king till he had been anointed as such. she knew that the blow to the english arms just struck must have a paralysing effect upon their forces, and that a rapid march with even a small army would be accomplished without resistance, if only it were quickly made. i need not say that the city of rheims lay in the very heart of territory owning the english sway. to reach that city we must perforce march right through a hostile country, garrisoned by the enemy. but of that the maid made light. "the hearts of the people will turn towards us," she said. "they have submitted to the english yoke; but they are frenchmen still. once let them see that the power of the enemy is broken, and they will rally to our standard. but precious time should not be lost. the dauphin should place himself at the head of such an army as he can spare for the march, and journey forthwith to rheims. there shall the crown be set upon his head--the pledge and earnest that one day he shall rule the whole realm of france, as his fathers did before him!" and so, before a week had passed, we set forth with the maid to go to the king, who had by this time moved his court from chinon to loches, another fortress upon the loire, where there was space for his train, and which could, if necessary, be fortified against a siege. it was a strange journey--more like a triumphal progress than anything we had yet met with. the fame of the maid and her miraculous exploit in the matter of the siege of orleans had gone before her, and from every town or village through which she passed the people flocked out to see her, bearing garlands and banners, crowding about her, asking her blessing, seeking to touch her, pouring out blessings and praises, so that the heart of anyone less filled with the humility which comes from above must needs have been altogether puffed up and filled with pride. but it was never so with the maid. her gentle courtesy and devout humility never failed her. lovingly and gratefully she received love and affection, but praise and honour she set aside, bidding all remember that to god alone belonged the issues from death, and that she was but an instrument in his mighty hands. we wondered how she would be received at the court, and whether la tremouille and her other adversaries had been convinced of her divine mission, and would now remove all opposition. as we approached the fortress we saw that flags were floating from every tower; that the place wore a festive aspect, and that the town was pouring out to welcome us and gaze upon the maid. then, with a great fanfare of trumpets, the gates of the fortress were flung wide open, and forth came a gay procession, in the midst of which, we could not doubt, rode the king himself. yes, there was no doubt of it. the crowd parted this way and that, and we saw how the young king himself was marching towards us, and at the sight of the maid, not only did every courtier in the train uncover, but the king himself bared his head, and bowed low to the maid of orleans. she was off her horse in a moment, kneeling at his feet; but he raised her instantly, held her hands in his, gave her thanks with true emotion in face and voice, and, turning to her brothers, who rode amongst us of her household, he cried to them in loud tones, saying how he had decreed that the family of the d'arcs should henceforth have the right to quarter the hues of france on their arms! an empty honour, perhaps, to simple peasants; and yet an honour that the proudest families in the land might envy! they carried her into the fortress. the two queens and the ladies of the court knew not how to make enough of her. they seemed to think that our coming must be regarded as the signal for an outburst of merrymaking and carousing, such as the king found so much to his liking. it amazed us to find him still wrapped in idle luxury, joyful, it is true, over the relief of orleans, over the discomfiture of the english; but as indisposed as ever to take the field himself, or to put himself at the head of an army and march to his coronation as the maid instantly urged him. "gentle dauphin, the lord would have you king of your realm; he would set the crown upon your head. he has smitten your enemies and scattered them. then wherefore not do his will and march to the appointed spot? all will be well if you but follow his counsels." "but, maiden, i have so few troops; and i have no money; and the way lies through a hostile land," the king would urge, when day after day she pleaded with him. "all my counsellors advise delay. is it not right that i should listen to them as well as to you? wherefore such haste? is it not wiser to act with deliberation and prudence?" "it is right to follow the voice of the lord," spoke the maid with grave and forceful earnestness, "and to put your trust in him rather than in any child of man." but the king could not be persuaded; indolence and fear held him captive, whilst his traitorous advisers sought by every means to undermine the influence of the maid. and although in this they were not successful, for he believed in her mission, admired her prowess, and looked to her for guidance and help, he must needs listen also to these others who were of contrary mind, and so the weary days dragged on, and nothing was done. "noble dauphin," pleaded the maid at last, "hold not such long or so many councils; or if, indeed, these be needful to you, let me, i pray you, go forth again with a small army and clear the way. and when all the country betwixt this place and rheims has submitted to your power, then follow yourself, and take your kingdom!" ah me!--to think that he, a king, could consent again to let her go thus, whilst he remained in ease and indolence surrounded by his court! but so it was. what she could not persuade him to do himself, she at last obtained leave to do for him, and with a joyful face she came to us with the news: "gentlemen and my good comrades, be ready for a speedy march; we will go forward and clear the way; and afterwards the dauphin shall follow and be made king!" chapter xiv. how the maid cleared the king's way. we started forth from selles, where the army which was to do this work had assembled. it was not so great a force as it would have been but for the hesitations of the king, and the delays imposed by his council. for the men who had marched from orleans, flushed with victory, eager to rush headlong upon the foe and drive them back to their own shores, had grown weary of the long waiting, and had been infected by the timidity or the treachery of those about the court. they had melted away by little and little, carrying with them the booty they had found in the english bastilles round orleans, glad to return to their homes and their families without further fighting, though had the maid been permitted to place herself at their head at once, as she did desire, they would have followed her to the death. still, when all was said and done, it was a gallant troop that responded to her call and mustered at her summons. the magic of her name still thrilled all hearts, and throughout the march of events which followed, it was always the common soldiers who trusted implicitly in the maid; they left doubts and disputings and unworthy jealousies to the officers and the statesmen. the maid went forth with a greater glory and honour than has, methinks, ever been bestowed upon woman before--certainly upon no humbly-born maiden of seventeen years. some said that she was actually ennobled in her own person by the grant to quarter the lilies of france, and that her brothers ranked now amongst the knights and nobles. others declared that she had refused all personal honours, and that she still remained a humble peasant, though so high in the favour of the king, and so great a personage in the realm. as for me, i cared nothing for all this. to me she was always the angelic maid, heaven sent, miraculous, apart from the earth, though living amongst us and leading us on to victory. to the army she was--and that was enough. she was the companion and friend of princes, nobles, and knights; but she was never as others were. an atmosphere of sanctity seemed ever to encompass her. all who approached her did her unconscious homage. none could be with her long without being conscious that she was visited by sounds unheard by them, that her eyes saw sights to which theirs were closed. we were to have added witness to this in the days which followed. so here we were gathered at selles upon that bright june morning, just one month after the relief of orleans. the king had presented to the maid a great black charger; a mighty creature of immense strength and spirit, but with something of a wicked look in his rolling eyes which made me anxious as he was led forward. the maid in her white armour--its rent deftly mended, its silver brilliance fully restored--with her velvet white-plumed cap upon her head and a little axe in her hand, stood waiting to mount. but perhaps it was the gleaming whiteness of this slender figure that startled the horse, or else the cries and shouts of the populace at sight of the maid excited him to the verge of terror; for he reared and plunged so madly as his rider approached that it was with difficulty he was held by two stalwart troopers, and we all begged of the maid not to trust herself upon his back. she looked at us with a smile, and made a little courteous gesture with her hand; then turning to the attendants she said: "lead him yonder to the cross at the entrance to the church; i will mount him there." snorting and struggling, casting foam flakes from his lips, and fighting every inch of the way, the great charger was led whither the maid had said. but once arrived at the foot of the cross, he suddenly became perfectly quiet. he stood like a statue whilst the maid approached, caressed him gently with the hand from which she had drawn her mailed gauntlet, and, after speaking kindly words to him, vaulted lightly on his back. from that moment her conquest of the fierce creature was complete. he carried her throughout that wonderful week with a gentleness and docility, and an untiring strength which was beautiful to see. the brute creation owned her sway as well as did men of understanding, who could watch and weigh her acts and deeds. so, amid the plaudits of the people, the fanfare of trumpets, the rolling of drums, the rhythmical tread of thousands of mailed feet, we rode forth from selles, led by the maid, beside whom rode the king's cousin, the duc d'alencon, now resolved to join us, despite his former hesitancy and the fears of his wife. he had marched with us to orleans, but had then turned back, perhaps with the not unnatural fear of again falling into the hands of the english. this had happened to him at agincourt, and only lately had he been released. perhaps his fears were pardonable, and those of his wife more so. she had sought earnestly to hold him hack from this new campaign; and, when she could not prevail with him, she had addressed herself to the maid with tears in her eyes, telling her how long had been his captivity in england, and with how great a sum he had been ransomed. why must he adventure himself again into danger? the maid had listened to all with gentle sympathy. though so fearless herself she was never harsh to those who feared, and the appeal of the duchesse touched her. "fear nothing, madame," she answered, "i will bring him back to you safe and sound. only pray for him always--pray for us day and night. i will make his safety my special care. he shall return to you unharmed; but i pray you hinder him not from serving his country in this great hour of need." so the maid prevailed, and the duc was entrusted with the command of the army, second only to the maid herself, who was distinctly placed at the head of all--whose word was to be supreme; whilst the king's fiat went forth that no council should be held without her, and that she was to be obeyed as the head in all things! and men like dunois, la hire, and the chevalier gaucourt heard this without a murmur! think of it!--a campaign conducted by a girl of seventeen, who, until a few weeks before, had never seen a shot fired in her life! ah; but all men remembered orleans, and were not surprised at the king's decree. as we marched along in close array, we gathered many recruits by the way, notwithstanding that we were in the territory which had submitted to the english rule. knights and gentlemen flocked forth from many a chateau to join themselves to the army of the miraculous maid, whilst humble peasants, fired by patriotism and zeal, came nightly into our camp seeking to be enrolled amid those who followed and fought beneath her banner. and so for three days we marched, our ranks swelling, our hearts full of zeal and confidence, till news was brought us that the duke of suffolk, one of the bravest and most chivalrous of english knights and soldiers, had thrown himself and his followers into jargeau, and was hastily fortifying it for a siege. this news reached us at orleans itself, whither we had returned in the course of our march, to be received with wild acclamations by the people there. so loving were the citizens, that they were loth indeed to see the maid set forth upon any mission which threatened danger to herself or her army; and their protestations and arguments so wrought upon many of the generals and officers, that they united to beg her to remain inactive awhile, and send to the king for fresh reinforcements before attempting any such arduous task. the maid listened with her grave eyes wide in amazement. "you say this to me--here in orleans! you who have seen what my lord accomplished for us before! shame upon you for your lack of faith--for your unworthy thoughts. we march for jargeau at dawn tomorrow!" never before had we heard the maid speak with quite such severity of tone and word. her glorious eyes flashed with a strange lambent light. she looked every inch the ruler of men. all heads were bent before her. none dared speak a word to hinder her in her purpose. the morrow saw us before jargeau. its walls were strong, it was well supplied with those great guns that belched forth fire and smoke, and scattered huge stone balls against any attacking force. but we had brought guns with us--great pieces of ordnance, to set against the city walls, and the maid ordered these to be brought and placed in certain positions, never asking counsel, always acting on her own initiative, without hesitation and without haste, calm and serene; with that deep, farseeing gaze of hers turned from her own position to the city and back again, as though she saw in some miraculous vision what must be the end of all this toil. "mort de dieu!" cried la hire, forgetting in his wonder the loyally kept promise to swear only by his baton, "but the maid has nothing to learn in the art of gunnery! where hath she learnt such skill, such wisdom! we never had guns to place at orleans! where has the child seen warfare, that she places her artillery with the skill of a tried general of forces!" ah!--where had the maid learned her skill in any kind of warfare? had we not been asking this from the first? this was but another development of the same miracle. for my part i had ceased now to wonder at anything which she said or did. at daybreak on the morrow the roar of battle began. the air was shaken by the crash and thunder of the guns from both sides. but it was plain to all eyes how that the cunning disposition of our pieces, set just where they could deal most effectively with a weak point in the fortifications, or a gateway less capable than others of defence, were doing far more hurt to the enemy than their fire did to us. for the most part their balls passed harmlessly over our heads, and the clouds of arrows were for us the greater danger, though our armour protected us from over-much damage. but it was before jargeau that the incident happened, which so many writers have told of the maid and the duc d'alencon; how that she did suddenly call to him, nay more, drew him with her own hand out of the place where he had stood for some time near to her, saying in a voice of warning, "have a care, my lord, there is death at hand!" another young knight boldly stepped into that very position from which she had snatched alencon, and an instant afterwards his head was struck off by a cannon ball. the maid saw and covered her eyes for a moment with her mailed hand. "lord have mercy on that brave soul!" she whispered, "but why did he not heed the warning?" well, the fighting round jargeau was fierce and long; but the maid with her standard held stubbornly to the place beside the wall which she had taken up, and at sight of her, and at the sound of her clear, silvery voice, encouraging and commanding, the men came ever on and on, regardless of peril, till the scaling ladders were set, and through the breaches torn in the walls by the guns, our soldiers swarmed over into the town, shouting with the shout of those with whom is the victory. again the maid triumphed. again the hearts of the english melted within them at the sight of the white witch, as they would tauntingly call her, even whilst they cowered and fled before her. the french were swarming into the city; the great gates were flung open with acclamations of triumph; and the maid marched in to take possession, her white banner floating proudly before her, her eyes alight, her cheeks flushed. one of the young gentlemen not long since added to her household, guillame regnault by name, from auvergne, a very knightly youth, a favourite with us all, came striding up to the maid, and saluting with deep reverence, begged speech with her. she was never too much occupied to receive those who came to her, and instantly he had her ear. "my general," he said, "the duke of suffolk is close at hand. we pressed him hard, and it seemed as though he would die sword in hand, ere he would yield. but i did beg of him in his own tongues with which i am acquainted, not to throw away his noble life; whereupon he did look hard at me, pausing the while in thrust and parry, as all others did pause, for us to parley; and he said that he would give up his sword to the maid of orleans, and to none other. wherefore i did tell him that i would run and fetch her to receive his submission, or take him to her myself. but then his mind did change, and he said to me, 'are you noble?' so i told him that my family was noble, but that i had not yet won my knighthood's spurs. then forthwith did he uplift his sword, and i read his meaning in his eyes. i bent my knee, and there and then he dubbed me knight, and afterwards would have tendered me his sword, but i said, 'not so, gentle duke, but i hear by the sound of the silver trumpet that the maid, our general, is close at hand. suffer me to tell her of what has passed, and i trow that she will herself receive your sword at her hands.'" "you did well, sir guillame," spoke the maid, using the new title for the first time, whereat the youth's face kindled and glowed with pleasure. "bring the duke at once to me here. i will receive his surrender in person." truly it was a pretty sight to watch--the dignified approach of the stalwart soldier; tall, upright, a knightly figure in battered coat of mail; bleeding from several wounds, but undaunted and undauntable; and the slim, youthful white figure, with uncovered head, and a face regal in its dignity; and yet so full of sweet courtesy and honourable admiration for a beaten, yet noble foe. he gazed upon her with a great wonder in his eyes, and then, dropping upon one knee, tendered his sword to her, which the maid took, held in her hands awhile, deep in thought, and then, with one of her wonderfully sweet smiles, held out to him again. "gentle duke," she said, "it hath been told me that you are known in france as the english roland; and if so, i would be loth to deprive so noble a foe of his knightly weapon. keep it, then, and all i ask of you is that you use it no more against the soldiers of france. and now, if you will let my gentlemen lead you to my tent, your hurts shall be dressed, and you shall receive such tendance as your condition requires." but i may not linger over every incident of that march, nor all the achievements of the maid in the arts both of peace and of war. towns and castles surrendered at her summons, or flung wide their gates at the news of her approach. sometimes we fought, but more often the very sound of her name, or the sight of the white figure upon the great black horse was sufficient, and fortress after fortress upon the loire fell before her, the english garrisons melting away or marching out, unable or unwilling to try conclusions with so notable a warrior, who came, as it were, in the power of the king of heaven. and not only did she achieve triumphs in war's domains; she was equally victorious as a promoter of peace. for when the news was brought to us that the comte de richemont, constable of france, but hitherto inimical to the king, desired to join us with a body of men, the duc d'alencon would have sent him away with insult and refused his proffer of help; but the maid, with her gentle authority and reasonable counsel, brought him to a different frame of mind, and the constable was received with a fair show of graciousness. and although in the days which immediately followed his aid was not of great importance (for when france had the maid to fight for her she wanted none beside), yet in the time to come, when she was no longer there to battle for the salvation of her country, de richemont's loyal service to the king was of inestimable value, and had it not been for the maid at this juncture, he might have been lost for ever to the french cause. her generosity shone out the more in that de richemont was no friend to her; indeed, he had regarded her as little better than a witch before he came under the magic of her personality. his greeting to her was rough and blunt. "maiden," he said, "they tell me that you are against me, and that you are a witch. i know not whether you are from god or not. if you are from him, i do not fear you. if you are from the devil, i fear you still less." she looked him full in the face, gravely at first, but with a smile kindling deep down in her eyes. then she held out her hand in token of amity. "brave constable, this is well spoken. you have no cause to fear me. you are not here by my will, it is true; for i have enough men with me to do the will of my lord; but since you have come for love of the dauphin, who soon must be crowned king, you are welcome indeed; and i know that you will live to serve him faithfully, though in the present you have foes at court who turn his heart from you." so again she saw what lay beyond our ken, and which the future has brought to light. alas, that she never saw the day when the king threw off his supine fear and idleness, and played the man in the conquest of his kingdom, and when de richemont fought like a lion at his side! yet who dare say that she did not see and did not rejoice even then? if the light came only in gleams and flashes, surely it came to her charged with an infinite joy! and now i must tell of the last exploit of this wonderful eight days' triumphal march through a hostile country--that battle of patay, where, for the first time, the maid met the foe in the open, and directed operations not against stone walls, as in every case before, but against an army drawn up in a plain. there had been marching and counter-marching which only a map could make clear. what matters it the route we pursued, so long only as our progress had been attended by victory, and the fortresses cleared of foes, so that the journey of the king could now be taken in safety? yet there was one more peril to face; for the army so long expected, under sir john fastolffe, was now heard of somewhere close at hand. he had joined himself to talbot, so it was rumoured, and now a great host was somewhere in our neighbourhood, ready to fall upon us if they could find us, and cut us to pieces, as they had done so often before--witness the fields of crecy, poictiers, and agincourt! for the first time there was uneasiness and fear in the ranks of the soldiers. they had infinite confidence in the maid as a leader against stone walls, for had they not seen her take tower after tower, city after city? but she had never led them in the open field; and how could they expect to meet and triumph over the english, who had always vanquished them heretofore? we knew not where the foe lay; all we knew was that it was somewhere close at hand; and so strong grew the fear in the hearts of alencon and many others, that they begged the maid to fall back upon the camp at beaugency, and to wait there for further reinforcements. but she shook her head with decision. "let us find them first, and then ride boldly at them. be not afraid; they will not stand. my lord will give us the victory!" and how did we come upon them at last? verily, by a mere accident. we were marching in good order towards the great plain of beauce, which at this time of the year was so thickly overgrown with vineyards and cornfields that we saw nothing of any lurking foe; and i trow that we were not seen of them, although a great host was lying at ease in the noontide heat, watching for our coming, i doubt not; but not yet drawn up in battle array. a stag, frightened by our approach, broke from the thicket, and went thundering across the plain. all at once a shower of arrows let loose from english bows followed the creature's flight, together with eager shouts and laughter, betraying the presence of the unsuspecting foe. with a lightning swiftness the maid grasped the whole situation. here was an army, waiting to fight, it is true, but for the moment off its guard. here were we, in order of march. one word from her, and our whole force would charge straight upon the foe! and was that word lacking? was there an instant's hesitation? need such a question be asked of the maid? clear and sweet rose her wonderful voice, thrilling through the hot summer air. "forward, my children, forward, and fear not. fly boldly upon them, and the day shall be yours!" she charged, herself, at the head of one column; but la hire, in the vanguard, was before her. with shouts of triumph and joy the old veteran and his followers thundered into the very midst of the startled english, and we followed in their wake. the duc d'alencon rode beside the maid. his face was pale with excitement--perhaps with a touch of fear. he remembered the fight at agincourt, and the wound received there, the captivity and weary waiting for release. "how will it end, my general, how will it end?" he said, and i heard his words and her reply, for i was riding close behind. "have you good spurs, m. de duc?" she asked, with one flashing smile showing the gleam of white teeth. "ah ciel!" he cried in dismay; "then shall we fly before them?" "not so," she answered; "but they will fly so fast before us that we shall need good spurs to keep up with them!" and so, indeed, it was. perhaps it was the sight of the elan of the french troops, perhaps the fear of the white witch, perhaps because taken at unawares and in confusion, but the english for once made no stand. fastolffe and his men, on the outer skirts of the force, rode off at once in some order, heading straight for paris, but the braver and less prudent talbot sought, again and again, to rally his men, and bring them to face the foe. but it was useless. the rout was utter and complete. they could not stand before the maid; and when talbot himself had fallen a prisoner into our hands, the army melted away and ran for its life, so that this engagement is called the "chasse de patay" to this day. chapter xv. how the maid rode with the king. thus the english were routed with great loss, their leading generals prisoners in the hands of the maid, and the road for the king open, not to rheims alone, but to the very walls of paris, had he so chosen. indeed, there were those amongst us who would gladly and joyfully have marched under our great white banner right to the capital of the kingdom, and driven forth from it the english regent and all the soldiers with him, whether burgundians or those of his own nation. for fastolffe was flying along the road which led him thither, and it would have been a joy to many of us to pursue and overtake, to rout him and his army, or put them to the sword, and to march up beneath the walls of paris itself, and demand its surrender in the name of the maid! those there were amongst us who even came and petitioned of her to lead us thither, and strike a death blow, once and for all, against the power of the alien foe who had ruled our fair realm too long; but though her eyes brightened as we spoke, and though all that was martial in her nature responded to the appeal thus made to her--for by this time she was a soldier through every fibre of her being, and albeit ever extraordinarily tender towards the wounded, the suffering, the dying--be they friends or foes--the soldier spirit within her burned ever higher and higher, and she knew in her clear head that humanly speaking, we could embark upon such a victorious march as perchance the world has never seen before--certainly not beneath such a leader. and yet she shook her head, even whilst her cheek flushed and her eyes sparkled. little as the king had done to merit the deep devotion of such a nature as hers, the maid's loving loyalty towards, and faith in him never wavered. although we all saw in him the idle, pleasure loving, indolent weakling, which in those days he was, she could, or would, find no fault with him. often as he disappointed her, she never ceased to love and honour him. perchance it was given to her to see something of that manlier nature which must have underlaid even then that which we saw and grieved over. for she would hear no word against him. he was the centre and sun of her purpose, and her answer to us was spoken without hesitation. "nay, my friends, we have other work to do ere we may stand before the walls of paris. the dauphin must be brought to rheims, and the crown set upon his head; for thus hath my lord decreed, and i may not act other than as my voices direct." and when the maid spoke thus, there was no contradicting or gainsaying her. we had such confidence in her by this, that whatever she did was right in our eyes the soldiers would have followed her eagerly to the very walls of paris; but at her command they turned back and marched, with pennons flying and music sounding, to the court of the king, where news of the chasse of patay had already preceded us, and where a joyous welcome awaited our return, though even now there were sour and jealous faces amongst the nearest advisers of the king. if you would believe it, they still opposed the journey of the king to rheims, working on his fears, his irresolution, his indolence, and seeking to undermine the influence of the maid, when she went personally to see him, that she might speak with him face to face. he himself had many excuses to offer. "sweet chevaliere," he would say, calling her by one of the names which circulated through the court, "why such haste? is it not time that you should rest and take your ease after your many and arduous toils? think what you have accomplished in these few days! flesh and blood cannot continue at such a strain. let us now enjoy the fruits of these wonderful victories; let us feast and rejoice and enjoy a period of repose. surely that is prudent counsel; for we must have care for our precious maid, whom none can replace in our army, if she, by too arduous toil, should do herself an injury!" but the maid looked at him with her grave eyes full of earnest pleading and searching questioning. "gentle dauphin, i beseech you speak not thus, nor reason after such carnal fashion. think of what your lord and my lord has done for you! think of what hath been accomplished by him since first it was given to me to look upon your face. think what he hath decreed and what he hath already wrought for the furtherance of his purpose towards your majesty and this realm! and shall his will be set aside? shall we, his children, hang back and thwart him, just in the hour when he has put the victory in our hands? ah, sweet dauphin, that would be shame, indeed! that would be pain and grief to him. cast away all such unworthy thought! press on to the goal, now in sight! when you stand, crowned and anointed, king of france, you shall know the power wherewith you have been upheld, and lifted from the very mire of humiliation and disgrace!" and at these words the duc d'alencon, who was by this an ardent believer in the maid, and devotedly attached to her service, prostrated himself before the king, and cried: "sire, this maid speaks words of wisdom. i pray your majesty to give full heed to what she says. had you watched her as i have done, had you marched with her and seen her in battle as well as in scenes of peace, you would know well that the power of god is with her. fear not to do her bidding! go forth as she bids. let us hail you king of your fair realm, and then let the maid lead us on to other and greater victories!" we all joined our entreaties to that of the duke. we marvelled how the king could be so blind. but whilst others spoke and urged him, whilst we saw the light kindle in the monarch's eyes, and knew that her words had prevailed with him, she stood apart as one who dreams; and over her face there stole a strange, pale shadow, unlike anything i had seen there before. she saw nothing of the scene about her; heard no word of what passed. i think she did not even know what was meant by the great shout which suddenly went up when the king arose and declared, once and for all, that his mind was made up, that he would march with the maid to rheims; that he would not be daunted by the fact that in troyes and in chalons english garrisons yet remained, which might give him trouble in passing. what the maid had done before she could do again. all that hitherto she had promised had been fulfilled; the fear of her had fallen upon the english, and the terror of the english no longer weighed upon the spirits of the french. he would go, come what might. he would trust in the power of the maid to finish that which she had begun. the shouts and plaudits of the courtiers within the castle, and of the soldiers without, when this thing was known, was evidence enough of the confidence and enthusiasm which the exploits of the maid had awakened. not a soldier who had followed her heretofore but would follow her now, wherever she should lead them. surely her heart must have swelled with joy and pride as she heard the clamour of frantic applause ringing through the place. but when she was back in her own apartments, and i was able to approach her alone, i ventured to ask her something concerning her silence of a short time back. i always think with a great pride and tender joy of the trust and friendship which the maid reposed in me, thereby doing me a vast honour. i had often ridden beside her on our marches, especially in the earlier days, when she had not so many to claim her words and counsels. methinks she had spoken to bertrand, to me, and to sir guy de laval with more freedom respecting her voices and her visions than to any others, save, perhaps, the king himself, of whom she had ever said she had revelations for his ear alone. she would talk to us of things which for the most part she kept locked away in her own breast; and now when i did ask her what it was that had robbed her cheek of its colour, and wrapped her in a strange trance of grave musing, she passed her hand across her eyes, and then looked at me full, with a strange intensity of gaze. "if i only knew! if i only knew myself!" she murmured. "did your voices speak to you, mistress mine? i have seen you fall into such musing fits before this, when something has been revealed; but then your eyes have been bright with joy--this time they were clouded as with trouble." "it was when the duke spoke of other victories," she said, dreamily; "i seemed to see before me a great confusion as of men fighting and struggling. i saw my white banner fluttering, as it were, victoriously; and yet there was a darkness upon my spirit. i saw blackness--darkness--confusion; there was battle and strife--garments rolled in blood. my own white pennon was the centre of some furious struggle. i could not see what it was, waves of black vapour rose and obscured my view. then, in the midst of the smoke and vapour, i saw a great pillar of fire, rising up as to the very sky itself, and out of the fire flew a white dove. then a voice spoke--one of my own voices; but in tones different from any i have heard before--'have courage, even to death, jeanne,' it said, 'for we will still be with you.' then everything faded once more, and i heard only the shouting of the people, and knew that the king had made his decision, and that he had promised to receive his crown, which has waited for him so long." as she spoke these last words, the cloud seemed to lift. her own wonderful smile shone forth again. "if this be so; if, indeed, the dauphin shall be made king, what matters that i be taken away? my work will end when the crown shall be set upon his head. then, indeed, my soul shall say: 'lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.'" her face was suddenly transfigured--radiant--with some great and glorious thought. i was glad at heart to see that the shadow had passed entirely away. only for a moment could any presage of personal fear cloud the sweet serenity of the maid's nature. and yet i went from her something troubled myself; for had i not reason to know what strange power she possessed of reading the future, and what did it mean, that confusion of battle, that intermingling of victory and defeat, that darkness of smoke and blaze of fire, and the white dove flying forth unscathed? i had heard too often the shouts of the infuriated english--"we will take you and burn you, you white witch! you shall perish in the flames from whence the devil, your father, has sent you forth!"--not to hear with a shudder any vision of smoke and of fire. but again, had not the maid ever prevailed in battle over her foes? might she not laugh to scorn all such threats? ah me! it is well that we may not read the future, else how could we bear the burden of life? joyous and triumphant was the day upon which, after some inevitable delays, we started forth--a goodly company in sooth--an army at our back, swelling with pride and triumph--to take our young king to the appointed place, and see the crown of france there set upon his head. from all quarters news was pouring in of the hopeless disruption of the power of the english after the chasse de patay. towns and villages which had submitted in sullen acquiescence before, now sent messages of loyalty and love to the king. men flocked daily to join our standard as we marched. it was a sight to see the villagers come forth, clad in their holiday dress, eager to see and pay homage to the king, but yet more eager to look upon the white mailed figure at his side and shout aloud the name of the maid of orleans! for the place of honour at the king's right hand was reserved for the maid, and she rode beside him without fear, without protest, without shame. gentle, humble, and simple as she always was, she knew herself the messenger of a greater king than that of france, and the honour done to her she accepted as done to her lord, and never faltered beneath it, as she was never puffed up or made haughty or arrogant thereby. nor did she ever lose her tenderness of heart, nor her quick observation of trivial detail in the absorbing interests of her greatness. she was the first to note signs of distress upon the part of the soldiers, during this march in the midsummer heat. it was she who would suggest a halt in the noontide, in some wooded spot, that "her children" might rest and refresh themselves, and it was she who, never tired herself, would go amongst them, asking them of their well being, and bringing with her own hands some luscious fruit or some cooling draught to any soldier who might be suffering from the effects of the sun. she who rode beside a king, who was the greatest and most renowned of that great company, would minister with her own hands to the humblest of her followers; and if ever king or duke or courtier jested or remonstrated with her on the matter, her answer was always something like this: "they are my own people. i am one of them. at home when any was sick in the village, i was always sent for. and wherefore not now? i am the same as i was then. soon i shall be going back to them, my task accomplished. wherefore should i not be their friend and sister still?" then all would laugh to think of the maid of orleans going back to take up the life of a peasant again at domremy; but the maid's face grew grave and earnest as she would make reply: "indeed, if my work for my king is accomplished, i would fain do so. i was so happy, so happy in my sweet home." but now our triumphal march was suddenly brought to a halt; for we were approaching the town of troyes--a place of ill omen to france, and to the young king in particular, for there the shameful treaty was signed which robbed him of his crown; and great was the dissension amongst the king's counsellors as to what should be done. the place was strong, the english garrison there large. a summons to surrender sent on in advance had been ignored, and now came the question--should the army pass on its way to rheims leaving this place in the rear unattacked and untaken, or should it run the risk of a long delay, and perhaps some peril and loss in attempting to reduce it? la hire and dunois spoke out insistently. at all costs the town must be taken. it would be folly and madness to leave such a stronghold of the enemy in the rear. other places had fallen before the victorious maid, and why not this? the army would go anywhere with her. the soldiers only desired to be told what she counselled, and to a man they would support her. they had lost all fear of the foe, if only the maid led them into battle, whether in the open or against massive walls. but as usual the king's nearest counsellors were all for delay, for avoiding battle, for retreat rather than risk. the archbishop of rheims, instead of being eager to push on to the place which so far was only his in name, for he had never been aught but titular archbishop as yet, was always one with la tremouille in advising caution and a timid policy. both were the enemies of the maid, jealous of her gifts and of her influence with the king, and fearful lest her power over him should grow and increase. they even plotted that she should be excluded from the council now sitting anent this very matter, and it was only when the king and the duc d'alencon, growing restless and impatient at her absence, desired her presence instantly, that she was sent for. there was a grave dignity about her as she entered, which sat impressively upon her young face, so fair and sweet and gentle. she knew that timid counsels were being held, and that she, the commander-in-chief of the army, was being set aside--the messenger from the lord was being ignored. not for herself, but for him was her spirit moved. the archbishop with much circumlocution told her of the difficulty in which the king's council was placed, and would have discoursed for long upon the situation, only that in his first pause the maid spoke, addressing herself to the king: "shall i be believed if i speak my counsel?" she asked. "you will be believed according as you speak," answered the king, thoroughly uneasy, as he ever was, when torn in twain by the multitude of counsellors with whom he must needs surround himself, though his heart ever inclined towards the maid. "i speak that which my lord gives me to speak," she answered, her wonderful eyes full upon the king. "shall i be believed?" "if you speak that which is reasonable and profitable, i will certainly believe you," he answered, still uneasy beneath her look. "shall i be believed?" she questioned a third time, and there was a fire in her eyes which seemed to leap out and scathe the pusillanimous monarch as he sat quaking in his council. "speak, maiden," he cried out then, "i at least will believe!" "then, noble dauphin," she cried, "order your army to assault this city of troyes, where such despite has been done you, and hold no more councils; for my lord has told me that within three days i shall lead you into the town, and false burgundy and proud england shall there be overthrown!" "pouf!" cried the chancellor, one of the maid's worst foes, "if there was a chance of doing such a thing in six days we would willingly wait; but--" he stopped suddenly--none knew why, save that the maid's eyes were fixed full upon him, and in those eyes was that strange shining light which some of us knew so well. she did not speak to him, but when his voice suddenly wavered and broke, she addressed herself to the king, speaking as one who repeats a message. "you shall be master of the city of troyes, noble dauphin, not in six days--but tomorrow." and even as she spoke, without waiting for any response, she turned and went forth, walking with her head well up, and her eyes fixed straight before her, yet as one who walks in sleep, and pays no heed to what lies before him. she called for her horse; and leaping into the saddle, rode out bareheaded in the summer sun to the camp where the soldiers lay, in doubt and wonderment at this delay; and as they sprang up to a man at sight of her, and broke into the acclamations which always greeted her appearance amongst them, she lifted up her clear ringing voice and cried: "be ready, my children, against the morrow, confess your sins, make your peace with god and man. for tomorrow he will lead you victorious into yonder frowning city, and not a hair of your heads shall suffer!" they crowded about her, filling the air with shouts of triumph; they clamoured to be led at once against the grim frowning walls. i verily believe, had she put herself at their head then and there, that nothing could have withstood the elan of their attack; but the maid received her orders from a source we knew not of, and fleshly pride never tempted her to swerve from the appointed path. she smiled at the enthusiasm of the men, but she shook her head gently and firmly. "do my bidding, my children, confess yourselves and pray till set of sun. then i will come to you and set you your appointed tasks, and tomorrow i will lead you into the city!" that night there was no sleep for the maid or for her soldiers. at no time was it dark, for midsummer was over the land, and the moon hung in the sky like a silver lamp when the sun had set. the maid came forth as she had said with the last of the daylight, and at her command a great mound was speedily raised, of earth, brushwood, faggots, stones--anything that the soldiers could lay hands upon; and when this hillock was of height sufficient to satisfy the young general, the great guns were brought and set upon it in such masterly fashion, and in such a commanding way, that la hire, dunois and xantrailles, who came to see, marvelled at it, and we could note from the top of this earthwork that within the city great commotion reigned, and that it was as busy as a hive that has been disturbed. as the first mystic glow of the summer's dawn kindled in the eastern sky, the maid stood, a white luminous figure in full armour, poised lightly on the top of one of our pieces of ordnance, her drawn sword in her hand, pointing full in the direction of the city. i have heard since from those within that the anxious garrison and citizens saw this motionless figure, and cried aloud in terror and awe. to them it seemed as though st. michael himself had come down to fight against them, and terror stricken they ran to the governors of the city and implored that surrender might be made, ere the heavens opened and rained lightnings down upon them. and thus it came about that ere the dawn had fairly come, an embassy was sent to the king and terms of surrender offered. the king, from motives of policy or fear, the maid, from pity and generosity, accepted the messengers graciously, and granted the garrison leave to depart with their horses and their arms, if the town were peacefully given up; and thus it came about that after the king had finished his night's slumber, and the maid had done her gracious part in redeeming and releasing the french prisoners, which, but for her, would have been carried away by the retiring english and burgundians, she rode beside the king, and at the head of the cheering and tumultuous army into the city of troyes, which had surrendered to the magic of her name without striking a blow. "o my chevaliere," cried the happy and triumphant monarch, as he turned to look into her grave serene face. "what a wonderful maid you are! stay always with me, jeanne, and be my friend and general to my life's end." she looked at him long and earnestly as she made answer: "alas, sire, it may not be! for a year--perhaps for a year. but i shall last no longer than that!" chapter xvi. how the maid accomplished her mission. shall i ever forget that evening? no, not if i live to be a hundred! june had well-nigh passed ere we began our march from gien--that triumphant march headed by the king and the maid--and july had run half its course since we had been upon the road. for we had had a great tract of country to traverse, and a large army must needs have time in which to move itself. and now upon a glorious golden evening in that month of sunshine and summertide, we saw before us--shining in a floating mist of reflected glory--the spires and towers, the walls and gates of the great city of rheims--the goal of our journeyings--the promised land of the maid's visions and voices! was it indeed a city of stone and wood which shone before us in the level rays of the sinking sun? i asked that question of myself; methinks that the maid was asking it in her heart; for when i turned my eyes upon her, i caught my breath in amaze at her aspect, and i know now what it is to say that i have looked upon the face of an angel! she had dropped her reins, and they hung loose upon her horse's neck; her hands were clasped together in a strange rapture of devotion. her head was bare; for she often gave her headpiece to her page to carry for her, and in the evenings did not always replace it by any other covering. her hair had grown a little longer during these months, and curled round her face in a loose halo, which in the strong and ruddy light of the setting sun, shone a glorious golden colour, as though a ray of heavenly light were enmeshed within it. but it was the extraordinary brightness of those great luminous eyes, the rapt and intense expression of her face which arrested my attention, and seemed for a moment to stop the triumphant beating of my heart. it was not triumph which i read there, though there was joy and rapture and peace, beyond all power of understanding. it was the face of one who sees heaven open, and in the wonder and awe of the beatific vision forgets all else, and feels not the fetters of the flesh, heeds not those things which must needs intervene ere the spirit can finally be loosed to enter upon blessedness and rest, but soars upwards at once into heavenly regions. the town of rheims lay before us. the inhabitants were pouring forth to meet us. we saw them coming over the plain, as we watched the walls and buildings, glowing in the mystic radiance of the summer's evening, loom up larger and grander and sharper before us. it was no dream! and yet who would have thought it possible three months ago? in mid-april the iron grip of the english lay all over the land north of the loire, and the south lay supine and helpless, stricken with the terror of the victorious conqueror. orleans was at its last gasp, and with its fall the last bulwark would be swept away; all france must own the sway of the conqueror. the king was powerless, indolent, ready to fly at the first approach of peril, with no hope and no desire for rule, doubtful even if he had the right to take upon himself the title of king, careless in his despair and his difficulties. the army was almost non-existent; the soldiers could scarce be brought to face the foe. one englishman could chase ten of ours. the horror as of a great darkness seemed to have fallen upon the land. and yet in three months' time what had not been accomplished! the king was riding into the ancient city of rheims, to be crowned king of france; orleans was relieved; a score of fortresses had been snatched from the hands of the english. these were fleeing from us in all directions back to paris; where they hoped to make a stand against us, but were in mortal fear of attack; and now it was our soldiers who clamoured to be led against the english--the english who fled helter-skelter before the rush and the dash of the men whom heretofore they had despised. and all this was the work of yonder marvellous maid--a girl of seventeen summers, who, clad in white armour, shining like an angelic vision, was riding at the king's side towards the city. he turned and looked at her at the moment my gaze was thus arrested, and i saw his face change. he put out his hand and touched hers gently; but he had to touch her twice and to speak twice ere she heard or knew. "jeanne--fairest maiden--what do you see?" she turned her gaze upon him--radiant, misty, marvellous. "i see the land of promise," she answered, speaking very low, yet so clearly that i heard every word. "the chosen of the lord will go forward to victory. he will drive out the enemy before the face of him upon whom he shall set the crown of pure gold. france shall prosper--her enemies shall be confounded. what matter whose the work, or whose the triumph? what matter who shall fall ere the task be accomplished--so that it be done according to the mind of the lord?" "and by the power of the maid--the deliverer!" spoke the king, a gush of gratitude filling his heart, as he looked first at the slight figure and inspired face of the maid, and then at the city towards which we were riding, the faint clash of joy bells borne softly to our ears. "for to you, o my general, i owe it all; and may the lord judge betwixt us twain if i share not every honour that i may yet win with her who has accomplished this miracle!" but her gaze was full of an inexplicable mystery. "nay, gentle dauphin, but that will not be," she said; "one shall increase, another shall decrease--hath it not ever been so? my task is accomplished. my work is done. let another take my place after tomorrow, for my mission will be accomplished." "never!" cried the king firmly and earnestly, and when i heard him thus speak my heart rejoiced; for i, no more than others, believed that success could attend the king's further efforts without her who was the inspiration of the army, and the worker of these great miracles which had been wrought. how often have i wondered since--but that is no part of my story. let me tell those things which did happen to us. how can i tell of our entry into rheims? have i not spoken in other places of other such scenes, often in the early dusk of evening, when whole cities flocked out to meet the maid, to gaze in awe and wonder upon her, to kiss her hands, her feet, her knees, the neck and flanks of the horse she rode, and even his very footprints in the road, as he moved along with his precious burden? as it was there, so was it here--the same joy, the same wonder, the same enthusiasm. the king was greeted with shouts and acclamations, it is true; but the greater admiration and wonder was reserved for the maid, and he knew it, and smiled, well pleased that it should be so; for at that time his heart was full of a great gratitude and affection, and never did he seek to belittle that which she had wrought on his behalf. thankfulness, peace, and happiness shone in the eyes of the maid as she rode; but there was a nearer and more personal joy in store for her; for as we passed through the town, with many pauses on account of the greatness of the throng, pouring in and out of the churches (for it was the vigil of the madelaine), or crowding about the king and the maid, she chanced to lift her eyes to the windows of an inn in the place, and behold her face kindled with a look different from any i had seen there before, and she looked around for me, and beckoning with her hand, she pointed upwards, and cried in tones of strange delight and exultation: "my father, fair knight, my father! i saw his face!" now, i knew that jacques d'arc had been greatly set against his daughter's mission, and it had been declared that he had disowned her, and would have withheld her from going forth, had such a thing been within his power. she had never received any message of love or forgiveness from him all these weeks, though her two younger brothers had joined the army, and were always included in her household. so that i was not surprised at the kindling of her glance, nor at the next words she spoke. "go to him, my friend; tell him that i must needs have speech with him. ah, say that i would fain return home with him when my task is done, if it be permitted me. go, find him speedily, ere he can betake himself away. my father! my father! i had scarce hoped to look upon his face again!" so whilst the king and the maid and their train rode on to the huge old palace of the archeveche, hard by the cathedral, i slipped out of my place in the ranks, and passed beneath the archway into the courtyard of the old inn, where the maid declared that she had seen the face of her father looking forth. i had not much trouble in finding him; for already a whisper had gone forth that certain friends and relatives of the wonderful maid had journeyed from domremy to witness her triumphant entry into rheims. indeed, some of these had followed us from chalons, all unknown to her, who would so gladly have welcomed them. chalons, though a fortified town, and with a hostile garrison, had opened its gates to us without resistance, feeling how hopeless it was to strive against the power of the maid. the wonder and awe inspired by her presence, and by her marvellous achievements, had sunk deeply into the spirits of these simple country folk, who had only heretofore known jeanne d'arc as a gentle village maiden, beloved of all, but seeming not in any way separated from her companions and friends. now they had seen her, white and glistening, in martial array, riding beside a king, an army at her back, acclaimed of the multitude, the idol of the hour, a victor in a three months' campaign, the like of which never was before, and methinks can never be again. so now, when i stood face to face with the rugged prud'homme, the father of this wonderful maid, and told him of her desire to speak with him upon the morrow, when the king should have received his crown, i saw that many emotions were struggling together in his breast; for his soul revolted yet, in some measure, at the thought of his girl a leader of men, the head of an army, the friend of kings and courtiers, whilst it was impossible but that some measure of pride and joy should be his at the thought of her achievements, and in the assurance that at last the king, whom loyal little domremy had ever served and loved, was to receive his crown, and be the anointed sovereign of the land. "she desires speech with me? she, whom i have seen riding beside the king? what have i to do with the friends of royalty? how can she consort with princes and with peasants?" "let her show you that herself, my friend," i answered. "we, who have companied with her through these wonderful weeks, know well how that she is no less a loving daughter, a friend of the people, for being the friend of a king and the idol of an army. give me some message for her. she longs for a kind word from you. let me only take her word that you will see her and receive her as a father should receive his child, and i trow that it will give her almost the same joy as the knowledge that by her miraculous call she has saved her country and crowned her king." i scarce know what answer jacques d'arc would have made, for he was a proud, unbending man, and his face was sternly set whilst i pleaded with him. but there were others from domremy, entirely filled with admiration of the maid, and with desire to see her again; and their voices prevailed, so that he gave the answer for which i waited. he would remain at the inn over the morrow of the great function of the coronation, and would receive his daughter there, and have speech with her. "tell her that i will take her home with me, if she will come," he spoke; "for she herself did say that her work would be accomplished when the crown was placed upon the king's head. let her be true to her word; let her return home, and become a modest maiden again beneath her mother's care, and all shall be well betwixt us. but if pride and haughtiness possess her soul, and she prefers the company of courtiers and soldiers to that of her own people, and the life of camps to the life of home, then i wash my hands of her. let her go her own way. she shall no longer be daughter of mine!" i did not tell those words to the maid. my lips refused to speak them. but i told her that her father would remain in the place till she had leisure to have speech with him; and her eyes kindled with joy at hearing such news, for it seemed to her as though this would be the pledge of his forgiveness, the forgiveness for which she had longed, and for the lack of which none of her triumphs could altogether compensate. there was no sleep for the city of rheims upon that hot summer's night. although the coming of the king had been rumoured for some time, it had never been fully believed possible till news had been brought of the fall of troyes, and the instant submission of chalons. then, and only then, did citizens and prelates truly realise that the talked-of ceremony could become an accomplished fact, and almost before they had recovered from their amazement at the rapidity of the march of events, courtiers brought in word that the king and his army were approaching. so all night long the people were hard at work decorating their city, their churches, above all their cathedral; and the priests and prelates were in close conference debating what vestments, what vessels, what rites and ceremonies should be employed, and how the lack of certain necessary articles, far away at st. denis, could be supplied out of the rich treasuries of the cathedral. as the dawn of the morning brightened in the east, the sun rose upon a scene of such splendour and magnificence as perhaps has seldom been witnessed at such short notice. the whole city seemed one blaze of triumphal arches, of summer flowers, of costly stuffs and rich decoration. every citizen had donned his best and brightest suit; the girls and children had clothed themselves in white, and crowned themselves with flowers. even the war-worn soldiers had polished their arms, furbished up their clothes, and borrowed or bought from the townsfolk such things as were most lacking; and now, drawn up in array in the great square, with tossing banners, and all the gay panoply of martial glory, they looked like some great victorious band--as, indeed, they were--celebrating the last act of a great and wonderful triumph. as for the knights, nobles, and courtiers, one need not speak of the outward glory of their aspect--the shining armour, the gay dresses, the magnificent trappings of the sleek horses--that can well be pictured by those who have ever witnessed a like brilliant scene. but for the first part of the day, with its many and varied ceremonies, there was lacking the shining figure of the maid; nor did the king himself appear. but forth from the palace of the archeveche rode four of the greatest and most notable peers of the realm, attended by a gorgeous retinue; and with banners waving, and trumpets blowing great martial blasts, they paced proudly through the streets, between the closely-packed ranks of soldiers and citizens, till they reached the ancient abbey of sainte remy, where the monks of sainte ampoule guard within their shrine the holy oil of consecration, in that most precious vial which, they said, was sent down from heaven itself for the consecration of king clovis and his successors. upon bended knees and with bared heads these great peers of france then took their solemn oath that the sacred vial should never leave their sight or care, night or day, till it was restored to the keeping of the shrine from which the abbot was about to take it. then, and only then, would the abbot, clothed in his most sumptuous vestments, and attended by his robed monks, take from its place that holy vessel, and place it in the hands of the messengers--knights hostages, as they were termed for the nonce--and as they carried it slowly and reverently forth, and retraced their steps to the cathedral, accompanied now by the abbot and monks, every knee was bent and every head bowed. but all the while that this ceremony was taking place, the maid was shut up in her room in the palace, dictating a letter of appeal to the duke of burgundy, and praying him in gentle, yet authoritative terms, to be reconciled to his king, join hands with him against the english foe, and then, if need there were to fight, to turn his arms against the saracens, instead of warring with his brethren and kinsmen. i trow that this thing was urged upon her at this time, in that she believed her mission so nearly accomplished, and that soon she would have no longer right to style herself "jeanne the maid," and to speak with authority to princes and nobles. as yet she was the appointed messenger of heaven. her words and acts all partook of that almost miraculous character which they had borne from the first. i will not quote the letter here; but it is writ in the page of history; and i ask of all scholars who peruse its words, whether any village maiden of but seventeen years, unlettered, and ignorant of statecraft, could of herself compose so lofty and dignified an appeal, or speak with such serene authority to one who ranked as well-nigh the equal of kings. it was her last act ere she donned her white armour, and passed forth from her chamber to take part in the ceremony of the coronation. in some sort it was the last of her acts performed whilst she was yet the deliverer of her people. when i looked upon those words, long after they had been penned, i felt the tears rising in mine eyes. i could have wept tears of blood to think of the fate which had befallen one whose thoughts were ever of peace and mercy, even in the hour of her supremest triumph. how can my poor pen describe the wonders of the great scene, of which i was a spectator upon that day? nay, rather will i only seek to speak of the maid, and how she bore herself upon that great occasion. she would have been content with a very humble place in the vast cathedral today; she had no desire to bear a part in the pageant which had filled the city and packed the great edifice from end to end. but the king and the people willed it otherwise. the thing which was about to be done was the work of the maid, and she must be there to see all, and the people should see her, too--see her close to the king himself, who owed to her dauntless courage and devotion the crown he was about to assume, the realm he had begun to conquer. so she stood near at hand to him all through that long, impressive ceremony--a still, almost solemn figure in her silver armour, a long white velvet mantle, embroidered in silver, flowing from her shoulders, her hand grasping the staff of her great white banner, which had been borne into the cathedral by d'aulon, and beside which she stood, her hand upon the staff. she was bareheaded, and the many-coloured lights streamed in upon her slim, motionless figure, and the face which she lifted in adoration and thanksgiving. i trow that none in that vast assembly, who could see her as she thus stood, doubted but that she stood there the accredited messenger of the most high. the light from heaven itself was shining on her upturned face, the reflection of an unearthly glory beamed in her eyes. from time to time her lips moved, as though words of thanksgiving broke silently forth; but save for that she scarcely moved all through the long and solemn ceremony. methinks that she saw it rather in the spirit than in the flesh; and the knights and nobles who had poured in from the surrounding country to witness this great function, and had not companied with the maid before, but had only heard of her fame from afar, these regarded her with looks of wonder and of awe, and whispering together, asked of each other whether in truth she were a creature of flesh and blood, or whether it were not some angelic presence, sent down direct from heaven. and so at last the king was anointed and crowned! the blare of the thousand trumpets, the acclamations of a vast multitude proclaimed the thing done! charles the seventh stood before his people, their king, in fact as well as in name. the work of the maid was indeed accomplished! chapter xvii. how the maid was persuaded. the ceremony was over. the dauphin stood in our midst a crowned and anointed king. we were back in the great hall of the archeveche, and the thunders of triumphant applause which had been restrained within the precincts of the sacred edifice now broke forth again, and yet again, in long bursts of cheering, which were echoed from without by the multitudes in the street and great square place, and came rolling through the open windows in waves of sound like the beating of the surf upon the shore. the king stood upon a raised dais; his chiefest nobles and peers around him. he was magnificently robed, as became so great an occasion, and for the first time that i had ever seen, he looked an imposing and a dignified figure. something there was of true kingliness in his aspect. it seemed as though the scene through which he had passed had not been without effect upon his nature, and that something regal had been conveyed to him through the solemnities which had just taken place. the maid was present also; but she had sought to efface herself in the crowd, and stood thoughtfully apart in an embrasure of the wall, half concealed by the arras, till the sound of her name, proclaimed aloud in a hundred different tones, warned her that something was required of her, and she stepped forward with a questioning look in her startled eyes, as though just roused from some dream. she had been one of the first to prostrate herself at the new-made king's feet when the coronation ceremony was over; and the tears streaming down her face had been eloquent testimony of her deep emotion. but she had only breathed a few broken words of devotion and of joy, and had added something in a choked whisper which none but he had been able to hear. "the king calls for the maid! the king desires speech with the maid!" such was the word ringing through the hall; and she came quietly forth from her nook, the crowd parting this way and that before her, till she was walking up through a living avenue to the place where the king was now seated upon a throne-like chair on the dais at the far end of the hall. as she came towards him the king extended his hand, as though he would meet her still rather as friend than as subject; but she kneeled down at his feet, and pressing her lips to the extended hand, she spoke in a voice full of emotion: "gentle king, now is the pleasure of god fulfilled towards you. now is the will of my lord accomplished. to him alone be the praise and glory! it was his will that i should be sent before you to raise the siege of orleans, to lead you to this city of rheims, there to receive your consecration. now has he shown to all the world that you are the true king--that it is his will you should reign over this fair realm, that this kingdom of france belongs to you and you alone. my task is now accomplished. his will in me is fulfilled. go forward, then, noble king--strong in the power of your kingly might and right, doubting not that he will aid you still; though he will work with other instruments, with other means, for my task in this is now accomplished!" there was a little stir and thrill throughout the hall as these words were spoken. dismay fell upon many, wonder upon all, triumph gleamed from the eyes of a few; but most men looked one at the other in consternation. what did she mean by these words?--this heaven-sent maid to whom we owed so much? surely she did not think to leave us just in the hour of her supreme triumph? how could we hope to lead on the armies to fresh victories, if the soldiers were told that the maid would no longer march with them? who would direct us with heavenly counsel, or with that marvellous clearness of vision which is given only to a few in this sinful world, and to those only whose hearts are consecrated by a great devotion, and a great love? she could not mean that! she loved france with an overwhelming fervour. she was devoted to the service of the king, in whom she had never been able or willing to see wrong. she knew her power with the army; she loved the rough soldiers who followed her unshrinkingly in the teeth of the very fiercest perils, and who would answer to her least command, when they would obey none other general. o no, she could not think of deserting france in this her hour of need! much had been done; but much yet remained to do. if she were to quit her post, there could be no telling what might not follow. the english, cowed and bewildered now, might well pluck up heart of grace, and sweep back through the country once owning their sway, driving all foes before them as in the days of old. the victories won in these last weeks might soon be swallowed up in fresh defeat and disaster. how could we expect it to be otherwise if the presence of the maid were withdrawn? these and a hundred other questions and conjectures were buzzing through the great hall. wonder and amaze was on every face. the king himself looked grave for a moment; but then his smile shone out carelessly gay and confident. he looked down at the maid, and there was tender friendliness in his glance. he spoke nothing to her at the first as to what she had said; he merely asked of her a question. "my chevaliere, my guardian angel, tell me this, i pray. you have done all these great things for me; what am i to do in return for you?" she raised her eyes towards him, and the light sprang into them--that beautiful, fearless light which shone there when she led her soldiers into battle. "go forward fearlessly, noble king. go forward in the power of your anointing; and fear nothing. that is all i ask of you. do that, and you will give to me my heart's desire." "we will talk of that later, jeanne," he answered, "i have many things to speak upon that matter yet. but today i would ask you of something different. you have done great things for me; it is not fitting that you should refuse to receive something at my hands. this day i sit a king upon my father's throne. ask of me some gift and grace for yourself--i your king and your friend demand it of you!" it was spoken in a right kingly and gracious fashion, and we all held our breath to listen for the answer the maid should give. we had known her so long and so well, and we had learned how little she desired for herself, how hard it was to induce her to express any wish for her own gratification. she was gentle and gracious in her acceptance of the gifts received from friends who had furnished her from the beginning with such things as were needful for her altered life; but she had ever retained her simplicity of thought and habit; and though often living in the midst of luxury and extravagance, she was never touched by those vices herself. and now she was bidden to ask a boon; and she must needs do it, or the displeasure of the king would light upon her. he had raised her to her feet by this time, and she stood before him, a slim boy-like figure in her white point-device dress, her cheeks a little flushed, her slender fingers tightly entwined, the breath coming and going through her parted lips. "gentle king," she answered, and her low full voice thrilled through the hall to its farthermost end in the deep hush which had fallen upon it, "there is one grace and gift that i would right gladly ask of you. here in this city of rheims are assembled a few of mine own people from domremy; my father, my uncle, and with them some others whom i have known and loved from childhood. i would ask this thing of you, noble king. give me at your royal pleasure a deed, duly signed and sealed by your royal hand, exempting the village of domremy, where i was born, from all taxes such as are levied elsewhere throughout the realm. let me have this deed to give to those who have come to see me here, and thus when i return with them to my beloved childhood's home, i shall be witness to the joy and gladness which such a kingly boon will convey. grant me this--only this, gentle king, and you will grant me all my heart desires!" the king spoke aside a few words to one of those who stood about him, and this person silently bowed and quitted the hail; then he turned once more to the maid, standing before him still with a happy and almost childlike smile playing over her lips. "the thing shall be done, jeanne," he said; "and it shall be done right soon. the first deed to which i set my hand as king shall be the one which shall for ever exempt domremy from all taxation. you shall give it to your father this very day, to take home with him when he goes. but as for those other words of yours--what did you mean by them? how can you witness the joy of a distant village, when you will be leading forward the armies of france to fresh victories?" he gazed searchingly into her face as he spoke; and she looked back at him with a sudden shrinking in her beautiful eyes. "sire," she faltered--and anything like uncertainty in that voice was something new to us--"of what victories do you speak? i have done my part. i have accomplished that which my lord has set me to do. my task ends here. my mission has been fulfilled. i have no command from him to go forward. i pray you let me return home to my mother and my friends." "nay, jeanne, your friends are here," spoke the king gravely, "and your country is your mother. would you neglect to hear her cry to you in the hour of her need? her voice it was that called you forth from your obscurity; she calls you yet. will you cease to hear and to obey?" the trouble and perplexity deepened in the eyes of the maid. "my voices have not bidden me to go forward," she faltered. "have they bidden you to go back--to do no more for france?" "no," she answered, throwing back her head, her eyes kindling once again with ardour; "they have not bidden me return, or i would have done it without wavering. they tell me nothing, save to be of a good heart and courage. they promise to be with me--my saints, whom i love. but they give me no commands. i see not the path before me, as i have seen it hitherto. that is why i say, let me go home. my work is done; i have no mission more. shall i take upon me that which my lord puts not upon me--whether it be honour or toil or pain?" "yes, jeanne, you shall take that upon you which your country calls upon you to take, which your king puts upon you, which even your saints demand of you, though perchance with no such insistence as before, since that is no longer needed. can you think that the mind of the lord has changed towards me and towards france? yet you must know as well as i and my generals do, that without you to lead them against the foe, the soldiers will waver and tremble, and perchance turn their backs upon our enemies once more. you they will follow to a man; but will they follow others when they know that you have deserted them? you tell me to go forward and be of good courage. how can i do this if you turn back, and take with you the hearts of my men?" "sire, i know not that such would be the case," spoke the maid gravely. "you stand amongst them now as their crowned and anointed king. what need have they of other leader? they have followed me heretofore, waiting for you; but now--" "now they will want you more than ever, since you have ever led them to victory!" cried the king; and raising his voice and looking about him, especially to those generals and officers of his staff who had seen so much of the recent events of the campaign, he cried out: "what say you, gentlemen? what is our chance to drive away the english and become masters of this realm if the maid of orleans take herself away from us, and the soldiers no longer see her standard floating before them, or hear her voice cheering them to the battle?" some of those present looked sullenly on the ground, unwilling to own that the maid was a power greater than any other which could be brought into the field; but there were numbers of other and greater men, who had never denied her her meed of praise, though they had thwarted her at times in the council room; and these with one accord declared that should the maid betake herself back to domremy, leaving the army to its fate, they would not answer for the effect which this desertion would have, but would, in fact, almost expect the melting away of the great body of the trained soldiers and recruits who had fought with her, and had come to regard her presence with them as the essential to a perfect victory. but we were destined to have a greater testimony than this, for a whisper of what was passing within the great hall had now filtered forth into the streets, and all in a moment we were aware of a mighty tumult and hubbub without, a clamour of voices louder and more insistent than those which had hailed the king a short time before, and the words which seemed to form themselves out of the clamour and gradually grow into the burden of the people's cry was the repeated and vehement shout, "the maid of orleans! the maid of orleans! we will fight if the maid goes with us--without her we be all dead men!" they came and told us what the crowd of soldiers in the street was shouting; they begged that the maid would show herself at some window, and promise that she would remain with the army. indeed, there was almost a danger of riot and disaster if something were not done to quell the excitement of the soldiery and the populace; and at this news the maid suddenly drew her slender, drooping figure to its full height, and looked long and steadfastly at the king. "sire," she said, "i give myself to you and to france. my lord knows that i seek in this to do his will, though differently from heretofore. you will be disappointed. many will misjudge me. there will be sorrow and anguish of heart as well as triumph and joy. but if my country calls, i go forth gladly to meet her cry--even though i go to my death!" i do not know how many heard her last words; for they were drowned in the roar of joyful applause which followed her declaration. the king gave her his hand, and led her forth upon a balcony, where the great concourse in the street below could see them; and by signs he made them understand that she would continue with him as one of his commanders-in-chief; and in hearing this the city well nigh went mad with joy; bonfires blazed and bells pealed madly; and the cry heard in the streets was less "long live the king!" than that other frantic shout, "the maid of orleans! the maid of orleans!" but the maid returned to her apartments with a strange look upon her face; and she held out her hand to me as one who would fain ask help and sympathy of a trusted comrade, as i am proud to think i was regarded at that time by her. "the king's word has prevailed, o my friend," she said, "but i would that i were sure it will be for the best!" "how can it be otherwise than for the best?" i answered as i held her hand in mine, and looked searchingly into her fair, grave face. "will not your lord help you yet? do not all men trust in you? will not the soldiers fight for and with you? and are you not sure in your heart that the cause of the french king will yet triumph?" her eyes were misty with unshed tears as she made reply: "i know that my lord will not desert me; and i trust i may serve him yet, and the king whom i love. i know that all will be well--at the last--for this fair realm of france. but i have no commission direct from my lord as i have had hitherto. my voices yet speak gentle and kindly words. i trow that my saints will watch over me, and that they will give me strength to strive and to overcome. for myself i fear not--i am ready to die for my king and my country if that be the will of god. only the shadow lies athwart my path, where until today all was brightness and sunshine. it would have been so sweet to go home to my mother, to see the fairy tree, and the old familiar faces, and listen once more to the angelus bell! i had thought that i should by this have earned my rest. i had not thought that with so many to serve him, the king would have had further use for me." "yet how could it be otherwise, my general, when the soldiers will follow you alone?--when all look to you as their champion and their friend?" "nay, but i have enemies too," she answered sadly, "and i know that they will work me ill--greater ill in the future than they have had power to do heretofore, when i was watched over and guarded for the task that was set me. that task is now accomplished. can i look to receive the same protection as before? the lord may have other instruments prepared to carry on his work of deliverance. i doubt not that he will use me yet, and that i shall never be forsaken; but my time will not be long. i shall only last a year. let the king use me for all that i am worth!--after that he must look for others to aid him!" i could not bear to hear her speak so. i would have broken in with protestations and denials; but something in the look upon her face silenced me. my heart sank strangely within me, for had i not learned to know how truly the maid did read that which the future hid from our eyes? i could only seek to believe that in this she might be mistaken, since she herself did say how that things were something different with her now. she seemed to read the thoughts that crowded my brain; for she looked into my face with her tender, far-seeing smile. "you are sad, my kind friend, my faithful knight, and sometimes mine own heart is sad also. but yet why should we fear? i know that i have enemies, and i know that they will have more power to hurt me in the times that are coming, than has been permitted hitherto, yet--" with an uncontrollable impulse i flung myself at her feet. "o my general--o my dear lady--speak not such things--it breaks my heart. or if, indeed, the peril be so great, then let all else go, and bid your father to take you back to domremy with him. there, at least, you will be safe and happy!" her eyes were deep with the intensity of her emotion. "it may not be," she said with grave gentleness and decision. "i had hoped it for myself, but it may not be. my word is pledged. my king has commanded. i, too, must learn, in my measure, the lesson of obedience, even unto death!" her hands were clasped; her eyes were lifted heavenwards. a shaft of light from the sinking sun struck in through the coloured window behind her, and fell across her face with an indescribable glory. i was still upon my knees and i could not rise, for it seemed to me as though at that moment another presence than that of the maid was with us in the room. my limbs shook. my heart seemed to melt within me; and yet it was not fear which possessed me, but a mysterious rapture the like of which i can in no wise fathom. how long it lasted i know not. the light had faded when i rose to my feet and met her wonderful gaze. she spoke just a few words. "now you know what help is given us in our hours of need. my faithful knight need never mourn or weep for me; for that help and comfort will never be withheld. of this i have the promise clear and steadfast!" i was with her when she went to see her father. it was dark, and the old man sat with his brother-in-law, durand laxart--he who had helped her to her first interview with de baudricourt--in one of the best rooms of the inn. since it had been known that these men were the kinsfolk of the maid, everything of the best had been put at their disposal by the desire of the citizens, and horses had been provided for them for their return to domremy. for the city of rheims was filled with joy at that which had been accomplished, and the maid was the hero of the hour. but i could see that there was a cloud upon the old man's face--the father's; and he did not rise as his daughter entered--she before whom nobles had learnt to bend, and who sat at the council of the king. his sombre eyes dwelt upon her with a strange expression in their depths. his rugged face was hard; his knotted hands were closely locked together. the maid gazed at him for a moment, a world of tender emotions in her eyes; and then she quickly crossed the room and threw herself at his feet. "my father! my father! my father!" the cry seemed to come from her heart, and i saw the old man's face quiver and twitch; but he did not touch or embrace her. "it is the dress he cannot bear," whispered laxart distressfully to me, "it is as gall and wormwood to him to see his daughter go about in the garb of a man." the maid's face was raised in tender entreaty; she had hold of her father's hands by now. she was covering them with kisses. "o my father, have you no word for me? have you not yet forgiven your little jeanne? i have but obeyed our blessed lord and his holy saints. and see how they have helped and blessed and guided me! o my father, can you doubt that i was sent of them for this work? how then could i refuse to do it?" then the stern face seemed to melt with a repressed tenderness, and the father bent and touched the girl's brow with his lips. she uttered a little cry of joy, and would have flung herself into his arms; but he held her a little off, his hands upon her shoulders, and he looked into her face searchingly. "that may have been well done, my daughter; i will not say, i will not judge. but your task is now accomplished--your own lips have said it; and yet you still are to march with the king's army, i am told. you love better the clash of arms, the glory of victory, the companionship of soldiers and courtiers to the simple duties which await you at home, and the protection of your mother's love. that is not well. that is what no modest maiden should choose. i had hoped and believed that i should take my daughter home with me. but she has chosen otherwise. do i not well to be angry?" the maid's face was buried in her hands. she would have buried it in her father's breast, but he would not have it so. i could have wept tears myself at the sight of her sorrow. i saw how utterly impossible it would be to make this sturdy peasant understand the difficulty of the maid's position, and the claims upon her great abilities, her mysterious influence upon the soldiers. the worthy prud'homme would look upon this as rather a dishonour and disgrace than a gift from heaven. the words i longed to speak died away upon my tongue. i felt that to speak them would be a waste of breath. moreover, i was here as a spectator, not as a partaker in this scene. i held the document, signed and sealed by the king, which i was prepared to read to the visitors from domremy. that was to be my share in this interview--not to interpose betwixt father and child. for a few moments there was deep silence in the room; then the maid took her hands from her face, and she was calm and tranquil once again. she possessed herself of one of her father's reluctant hands. "my father, i know that this thing is hard for you to understand. it may be that my brothers could explain it better than i, had you patience to hear them. but this i say, that i long with an unspeakable desire to return home with you, for i know that the path i must tread will darken about me, and that the end will be sad and bitter. and yet i may not choose for myself. my king commands. my country calls. i must needs listen to those voices. oh, forgive me that i may not follow yours, nor the yearnings of mine own heart!" the old man dropped her hand and turned away. he spoke no word; i think perchance his heart was touched by the tone of the maid's voice, by the appealing look in her beautiful eyes. but he would not betray any sign of weakness. he turned away and leant his brow upon the hand with which he had grasped the high-carved ledge of the panelled shelf beside him. the maid glanced at him, her lips quivering; and she spoke again in a brighter tone. "and yet, my father, though you may not take me back with you, you shall not go away empty-handed. i have that to send home with you which shall, i trust, rejoice the hearts of all domremy; and if you find it hard to forgive that which your child has been called upon to do, yet methinks there will be others to bless her name and pray for her, when they learn that which she has been able to accomplish." then she made a little sign to me, and i stepped forward with the parchment, signed and sealed, and held it towards the maid's father. he turned to look at me, and his eyes widened in wonder and some uneasiness; for the sight of so great a deed filled him and his kinsman with a vague alarm. "what is it?" he asked, turning full round, and i made answer: "a deed signed by the king, exempting domremy from all taxation, henceforward and for ever, by right of the great and notable services rendered to the realm by one born and brought up there--jeanne d'arc, now better known as the maid of orleans." the two men exchanged wondering glances, and over laxart's face there dawned a smile of intense joy and wonder. "nay, but this is a wonderful thing--a miracle--the like of which was never heard or known before! i pray you, noble knight, let me call hither those of our kinsfolk and acquaintance from domremy as have accompanied us hither, that they may hear and understand this marvellous grace which hath been done us!" i was glad enough that all should come and hear that which i read to them from the great document, explaining every phrase that was hard of comprehension. it was good to see how all faces glowed and kindled, and how the people crowded about the maid with words of gratitude and blessing. only the father stood a little apart, sorrowful and stern. and yet i am sure that his heart, though grieved, was not altogether hardened against his child; for when at the last, with tears in her eyes (all other farewells being said), she knelt at his feet begging his blessing and forgiveness, he laid his hand upon her head for a moment, and let her embrace his knees with her arms. "go your way, my girl, if needs must be. your mother will ever pray for you, and i trust the lord whom you serve will not leave you, though his ways are too hard of understanding for me." that was all she could win from him; but her heart was comforted, i think; for as she reached her lodging and turned at the door of her room to thank me in the gracious way she never forgot, for such poor services as i had rendered, she said in a soft and happy voice: "i think that in his heart my father hath forgiven me!" chapter xviii. how i last saw the maid. i had thought, when i started, to tell the whole tale of the angelic maid and all the things which she accomplished, and all that we who companied with her did and saw, both of success and of failure. but now my brain and my pen alike refuse the task. i must needs shorten it. i think my heart would well nigh break a second time, if i were to seek to tell all that terrible tale which the world knows so well by now. ah me! ah me!--what a world is this wherein we live, in which such things can be! i wake sometimes even yet in the night, a cold sweat upon my limbs, my heart beating to suffocation, a terror as of great darkness enfolding my spirit. and is it wonderful that it should be so? can any man pass through such experiences as mine, and not receive a wound which time can never wholly heal? and though great things have of late been done, and the pope and his court have swept away all such stain and taint as men sought to fasten upon the pure nature of the wonderful and miraculous maid, we who lived through those awful days, and heard and saw the things which happened at that time, can never forget them, and (god pardon me if i sin in this) never forgive. there are men, some living still, and some passed to their last account, whom i would doom to the nethermost hell for their deeds in the days of which i must now write--though my words will be so few. and (with horror and shame be it spoken) many of these men were consecrated servants of the holy church, whose very office made the evil of their deeds to stand out in blacker hues. it is easy for us to seek to fasten the blame of all upon the english, who in the end accomplished the hideous task; but at least the english were the foes against whom she had fought, and they had the right to hold her as an adversary whose death was necessary for their success; and had the english had their way she would have met her end quickly, and without all that long-drawn-out agony and mockery of a trial, every step and process of which was an outrage upon the laws of god and of man. no, it was frenchmen who doomed her to this--frenchmen and priests. the university of paris, the officers of the inquisition, the bishops of the realm. these it was who formed that hideous court, whose judgments have now been set aside with contumely and loathing. these it was who after endless formalities, against which even some of themselves were forced in honour to protest, played so base and infamous a part--culminating in that so-called "abjuration," as false as those who plotted for it--capped by their own infamous trick to render even that "abjuration" null and void, that she might be given up into the hands of those who were thirsting for her life! oh, how can i write of it? how can i think of it? there be times yet when bertrand, and guy de laval, and i, talking together of those days, feel our hearts swell, and the blood course wildly in our veins, and truly i do marvel sometimes how it was that we and others were held back from committing some desperate crime to revenge those horrid deeds, wrought by men who in blasphemous mockery called themselves the servants and consecrated priests of god. but hold! i must not let my pen run away too fast with me! i am leaping to the end, before the end has come. but, as i say, i have no heart to write of all those weary months of wearing inactivity, wherein the spirit of the maid chafed like that of a caged eagle, whilst the counsellors of the king--her bitter foes--had his ear, and held him back from following the course which her spirit and her knowledge alike advocated. and yet we made none so bad a start. "we must march upon paris next," spoke the maid at the first council of war held in rheims after the coronation of the king; and la hire and the soldiers applauded the bold resolve, whilst la tremouille and other timid and treacherous spirits sought ever to hold him back. i often thought of the words spoken by the maid to those friends of hers from domremy, when she bid them farewell on the evening of which i have just written. "are you not afraid, jeanne," they asked, "of going into battle, of living so strange a life, of being the companion of the great men of the earth?" and she, looking at them with those big grave eyes of hers, had made answer thus: "i fear nothing but treachery." i wondered when she spoke what treachery she was to meet with; but soon it became all too apparent. the king's ministers were treacherously negotiating with false burgundy, some say with the regent bedford himself. they cared not to save france. they cared only to keep out of harm's way--to avoid all peril and danger, and to thwart the maid, whose patriotism and lofty courage was such a foil to their pusillanimity and cowardice. so that though she led us to the very walls of paris, and would have taken the whole city without a doubt, had she been permitted, though the duc d'alencon, now her devoted adherent, went down upon his very knees to beg of the king to fear nothing, but trust all to her genius, her judgment; he could not prevail, and orders were sent forth to break down the bridge that she had built for the storming party to pass over, and that the army should fall back with their task undone! oh, the folly, the ingratitude, the baseness of it all! how well do i remember the face of the maid, as she said: "the king's word must be obeyed; but truly it will take him seven years--ah, and twenty years now--to accomplish that which i would do for him in less than twenty days!" think of it--you who have seen what followed. was paris in the king's hands in less than seven years? were the english driven from france in less than twenty? she was wounded, too; and had been forcibly carried away from the field of battle; but it was against her own will. she would have fought through thick and thin, had the king's commands not prevailed; and even then she begged to be left with a band of soldiers at st. denis. "my voices tell me to remain here," she said; but alas! her voices were regarded no longer by the king, whose foolish head and cowardly heart were under other influences than that of the maid, to whom he had promised so much such a short while since. and so his word prevailed, and we were perforce obliged to retreat from those walls we had so confidently desired to storm. and there in the church of st. denis, where she had knelt so many hours in prayer and supplication, the maid left her beautiful silver armour, which had so often flashed its radiant message of triumph to her soldiers, and with it that broken sword--broken outside the walls of paris, and which no skill had sufficed to mend--which had been taken from st catherine's church in fierbois. it was not altogether an unwonted act for knights to deposit their arms in churches, though the custom is dying away, with so many other relics of chivalry; but there was something very strange and solemn in this act of the maid. it was to us a significant sign of that which she saw before her. we dared not ask her wherefore she did it. something in her sad, gentle face forbade us. but i felt the tears rising to my eyes as i watched her kneel long in prayer when the deed was done, and i heard stifled sobs arising from that end of the building where some women and children knelt. for the maid was ever the friend of all such, and never a woman or child whom she approached, whether she were clad in peasant's homespun or in shining coat of mail, but gave her love and trust and friendship at sight. henceforth the maid went clothed in a light suit of mail, such as any youthful knight might wear. she never spoke again of her fair white armour, or of the sword which had shivered in her hand, none save herself knew how or when. alas! for the days of glory which had gone before! why did we keep her with the king's armies, when the monarch's ear was engrossed by adverse counsel, and his heart turned away from her who had been his deliverer in the hour of his greatest need? methinks she would even now have returned home, but for the devotion of the soldiers and the persuasions of the duc d'alencon, and of some of the other generals, amongst whom the foremost were dunois and la hire. these chafed equally with the maid at the supine attitude of the king; and the duke, his kinsman, spoke out boldly and fearlessly, warning him of the peril he was doing to his kingdom, and the wrong to the maid who had served him so faithfully and well, and to whom he had made such fair promises. but for the present all such entreaties or warnings fell upon deaf ears. the time for the king's awakening had not yet come. nevertheless, we had our days of glory still, under the banner of the maid, when, after many months of idleness, the springtide again awoke the world, and she sallied forth strong in the assurance of victory, whilst fortress after fortress fell before her, as in the days of yore. oh, how joyous were our hearts! now did we believe truly that the tide had turned, and that we were marching on to victory. but upon the maid's face a shadow might often be seen to rest; and once or twice when i would ask her of it, she replied in a low, sorrowful voice: "my year is well-nigh ended. something looms before me. my voices have told me to be ready for what is coming. i fear me it will be my fate to fall into the hands of the foe!" i would not believe it! almost i was resolved to plunge mine own dagger into her heart sooner than she should fall into the hand of the pitiless english. but woe is me! i was not at her side that dreadful evening at compiegne, when this terrible mishap befell. i had been stricken down in that horrid death trap, when, hemmed in between the ranks of the burgundians and english, we found our retreat into the city cut off. was it treachery? was it incapacity upon the part of the leaders of the garrison, or what was the reason that no rush from the city behind took the english in the rear, and effected the rescue of the maid? i know not--i have never known--all to me is black mystery. i was one of those to see the peril first, and with bertrand and guy de laval beside me, to charge furiously upon the advancing foe, crying aloud to others to close round the maid and bear her away into safety, whilst we engaged the enemy and gave them time. that is all i know. all the rest vanishes in the mists. when these mists cleared away, bertrand and i were in the home of sir guy, tended by his mother and grandmother--both of whom had seen and loved well the wonderful maid--and she was in a terrible prison, some said an iron cage, guarded by brutal english soldiers, and declared a witch or a sorceress, not fit to live, nor to die a soldier's death, but only to perish at the stake as an outcast from god and man. months had passed since the battle of compiegne. fever had had me fast in its grip all that while, and the news i heard on recovery brought it all back again. bertrand and guy were in little better case. we were like pale ghosts of our former selves during those winter months, when, hemmed in by snow, we could learn so little news from without, and could only eat out our hearts in rage and grief. with the spring came the news of the trial at rouen--the bitter hatred of bishop cauchon--the awful consummation he had vowed to bring about. i know not whether it were folly to hope such a thing, but we three knights made instantly for the coast and crossed to england, to seek the ear of the young king there, and plead the cause of the maid before him. i need not say how our mission failed. i care not to recall those sickening days of anxiety and hope deferred, and utter defeat at the last. heartbroken and desperate we returned; and made our way to rouen. the whole city was in confusion. need i say more? that very day, within an hour, the maid, the messenger from god, the deliverer of the king, the saviour of france, was to die by fire, to perish as a heretic. and the king whom she had saved had not lifted a hand to save her; the country she had delivered from a crushing disgrace, stood idly by to watch her perish thus! oh, the shame!--the treachery!--the horror! let me not try to write of it. the king has striven now to make amends; but i wonder how he feels sometimes when he sees the may sunshine streaming over the fair earth--over that realm which he now rules from sea to sea, when he thinks of the maid who was led forth in that blaze of glory to meet her fiery doom. o god of heaven look down and judge! how shall i tell of the sight i beheld? suddenly i came upon it--mad with my grief, desperate with horror and despair. i saw the face of the maid again! i saw her upraised eyes, and her hands clasped to her breast, holding thereto a rough wooden cross, whilst someone from below held high in the air a crucifix taken from some church and fastened upon a long wand. the pile on which she stood was so high--so high; they said it was done in mercy, that the rising clouds of smoke might choke her ere the flame touched her. she was clad in a long white garment from head to foot; her hair had grown and fell about and back from her face in a soft cloud gilded by the sun's rays. her face was rapt--smiling--yes, i will swear it--smiling, as a child smiles up into the face of its father. there was an awful hush throughout the wide place. everything reeled and swam before me; but i saw that face--that serene and smiling face, wan and pale, but tranquil and glad and triumphant. then came the rush of smoke, and the glare of ruddy fire. a stifled cry, like one immense groan rose from below--above in the reek and blaze all was silent. but from out that fire i saw--yes, and another saw it too (an english soldier, rushing to add a faggot to the pyre, a token of his hate to the maid), and it so wrought upon him that he dropped his burden, fell upon his knees and was like to die of the fear--i saw a white dove rise from the smoke wreaths of that ghastly pile, hover a moment, just touched by the glare of the fire, and then dart heavenwards as upon eagle's wings. yes, i saw it. to the day of my death will i swear it. i saw what she had seen in vision long ago; and upon my heart there fell a strange sense of peace and calm. it had not hurt her--it had been as she once said. her saints had been with her to the end. she had triumphed. all was well. called of her country, she had answered nobly to the call. her country had awarded her a fiery death; but in that fiery chariot she had ascended to the lord, in whom she trusted, hereafter to receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away. joan of arc the warrior maid by lucy foster madison author of "the peggy owen books" with illustrations & decorations by frank e schoonover the penn publishing company philadelphia copyright by the penn publishing company joan of arc [illustration: the warrior maid] introduction in presenting this story for the young the writer has endeavored to give a vivid and accurate life of jeanne d'arc (joan of arc) as simply told as possible. there has been no pretence toward keeping to the speech of the fifteenth century, which is too archaic to be rendered literally for young readers, although for the most part the words of the maid have been given verbatim. the name of this wonderful girl has been variously written. in the fifteenth century the name of the beloved disciple was preferred for children above all others; so we find numerous jeans and jeannes. to render these holy names more in keeping with the helplessness of little ones the diminutive forms of jeannot and jeannette were given them. so this girl was named jeannette, or jehannette in the old spelling, and so she was called in her native village. by her own account this was changed to jeanne when she came into france. the english translation of jeanne d'arc is joan of arc; more properly it should be joanna. because it seems more beautiful to her than the others the writer has retained the name of jeanne in her narrative. it is a mooted question which form of the name of jeanne's father is correct: d'arc or darc. it is the writer's belief that d'arc was the original writing, when it would follow that jacques d'arc would be james of the bow or james bowman, as he would have been called had he been an english peasant. for this reason the maid's surname has been given as d'arc; though there are many who claim that darc is the nearest the truth. acknowledgments are due to the following authorities into the fruit of whose labours the writer has entered: m. jules quicherat, "condamnation et réhabilitation de jeanne d'arc"; h. a. wallon, "jeanne d'arc"; m. siméon luce, "jeanne d'arc à domremy"; m. anatole france, "jeanne d'arc"; jules michelet, "jeanne d'arc"; monstrelet's "chronicles"; andrew lang, "the maid of france"; lord ronald gower, "joan of arc"; f. c. lowell, "joan of arc"; mark twain, "joan of arc"; mrs. oliphant, "jeanne d'arc"; mrs. m. r. bangs, "jeanne d'arc"; janet tuckey, "joan of arc, the maid," and many others. the thanks of the writer are also due to the librarians of new york city, albany and glens falls who kindly aided her in obtaining books and information. thanks are also due to the rev. matthew fortier, s. j., dean of fordham university, new york city, for information upon a point for which search had been vainly made. that this book may make a little niche for itself among other books upon the most marvellous girl the world has ever known, is the wish of the writer. contents chapter page i a children's festival ii the knight's story iii the waves of war reach domremy iv the aftermath v jeanne's vision vi jeanne's harsh words vii further visions viii jeanne receives a gift and an announcement ix the charge is accepted x the first step xi a trying time xii a worsted suitor xiii farewell to home xiv victory over doubting hearts xv starting the great adventure xvi jeanne comes to her king xvii the impossible happens xviii the warrior maid xix the hour and the girl xx jeanne shows her sign xxi a week of wonders xxii the culmination xxiii the turning of the tide xxiv jeanne's last field xxv in prison cells xxvi on trial xxvii for her country xxviii at domremy list of illustrations page the warrior maid frontispiece the gooseberry spring often they appeared in the little garden "the holy man has been to rome" there was no smile on his face far into the night they rode "france and st. denys!" "forward! they are ours!" joan of arc chapter i a children's festival "_there is a fountain in the forest called the fountain of the fairies. an ancient oak, the goodliest of the forest, grows beside._" southey. "_joan of arc,_" _book ii._ "who-oo-ee!" the gleeful shout came from the lips of a little girl who stood, with her hands cupped about her lips, on the edge of a streamlet which divided the village of domremy into two parts. she was a slight little maiden, of some twelve summers, and as she gave the call she danced about in the warm sunshine as though unable to keep still from the mere joy of being. her hair was very dark and very abundant. her eyes were wonderful for their blueness and the steadfastness of their gaze. her face, though comely, was remarkable not so much for its beauty as for the happiness of its expression. she stood still listening for a moment after sending forth her call, and then, as the sabbath quiet remained unbroken, she sent forth the cry again in a clear, sweet voice that penetrated into the farthest reaches of the village: "who-oo-ee!" this time the shout was caught up instantly, and answered by many voices. the village wakened suddenly into life, as there poured forth from the cottages a goodly number of boys and girls who came running toward the little maid eagerly. she shook a finger at them reprovingly. "oh, but you are late," she cried. "here it is ten of the clock, and we were to start at nine. the day will be half gone before we get to the tree. i was afraid that you had gone off without me." "gone without you, jeanne d'arc," exclaimed one of the girls. "why, we couldn't have any sport without you. i had to wait for my mother to fix my basket--that is the reason that i was late." "and i! and i!" chimed several other children in a chorus. "why didn't you pack them yourselves?" demanded jeanne, who seemed to be a leader among them. "i did mine, and jean's and pierrelot's too." "but where are the boys?" asked a lad. "they are not here." "they ran back to get more nuts," answered the little girl. "jean said that we must be sure to have plenty. there! they are coming now. let's get into line, and be ready to start as soon as they get here." gleefully the children formed a line, and then took up their march toward the great wood which stretched in primeval abundance half a league to the westward of domremy. in all france there was not a more delicate, tranquil landscape than that of this broad valley of the meuse, which extended in unbroken reaches between low hills, softly undulating, crowned with oaks, maples and birches. the trees were leafless now, and there were still ridges of snow to be seen among the hills, but already there were monitions of spring in the air. the buds were swelling, springing grass carpeted the fields, and there was no longer ice in the river, which rippled its apple-green waters in the sunshine. along the valley the banks of the meuse were dotted with many hamlets, villages and towns, and among them was domremy, which nestled upon its western side in the county of champagne. it was the greyest of the grey hamlets in this borderland. it consisted of a castle, a monastery, and a score of cottages which were grouped about a small church, but it was well favoured by nature in that the meadow lands which lay around it were rich and fertile beyond those of most villages, and the vineyards which covered the southern slopes of the hills were famous all over the countryside. it was the first fine day of march, , and "laetare sunday." "laetare sunday" the fourth sunday in lent was called, because during the mass of the day was chanted the passage beginning, "laetare, jerusalem"; but the children called it "the day of the fountains," for upon this day the annual "well dressing" of the spring which lay at the edge of the forest was observed, and the fairy tree was decorated. in short, upon this day the children of the valley held high festival. so, merrily they marched toward the wood; the boys carrying baskets of lunch, for they were to picnic, and the girls bearing garlands that were to be used for the decoration. it was a joyous party, for it was spring; and all young things rejoice in spring. there was a sweetness of leaf mold in the air that came to the senses with the penetrating quality of incense. a tender mist lay on the hills, and over all spread the radiant sky. the happy children laughed, and sang, and jested as they went, for the mild air animated them with a gentle intoxication. and the little maid called jeanne d'arc was the blithest of them all. hither and thither she darted, lightly as thistle down, seeming literally to bubble over with happiness. all at once she stooped, and plucked a long blade of grass, holding it up for inspection. "see, mengette," she cried addressing a girl near her. "how long the grass is! and how warm the sun is! oh, is not god good to give us so fine day for our pleasure?" "he is good; yes," assented the girl addressed as mengette. then as the little maid darted away she turned to the girl by her side: "jeanne is so religious," she commented with a shrug of her shoulders. "she cannot even play without speaking of god. i wish that she were not so good. and you wish it too, do you not, hauviette?" "wish that jeanne d'arc would not be so good?" exclaimed hauviette, who was a staunch friend of jeanne's. "why, she would not be jeanne d'arc if she were not good." "i do not mean for her not to be good exactly," demurred the first girl. "i meant that i wished she were not so pious." "mengette, if the curé should hear you," breathed the second girl in shocked tones. "he would make you say many ave maries." "and who is to tell him what i say?" demanded mengette, an expression of anxiety flitting across her face. "not i, mengette, but i fear some of the others hearing such words may speak of them to the good curé." "but the others speak as i do," protested mengette. "there is not one of them who does not think that jeanne d'arc is too pious." "attend," cried one of the lads at this moment using the peasant's expression to attract attention. "let's see who shall be first to reach the tree. he who does so shall hang the first wreath." a gleeful shout went up at the words, and there followed a quick dash for the tree, which began before the speaker had made an end of what he was saying. among the others jeanne d'arc threw up her head, laughing merrily, and darted forward. so fleet and light of foot was she that she soon distanced her companions. easily could she have gained the goal had there not come a cry from mengette, who at this instant stumbled and fell prone upon the grass. like a flash jeanne turned, and, seeing that mengette had risen, and was standing bent over as though in pain, ran back to her. "are you hurt, mengette?" she asked anxiously. "'tis pity that you fell. where is the pain?" "in my knee," sobbed mengette. "and now i shall have to lag behind; for walk fast i cannot. do you run on, jeanne. you were like to win the race, so fleet of foot were you. in truth, it seemed as though you were flying. myself, i will reach the tree when i can." "nenni," replied jeanne, using the strong peasant negative. "i will walk with you. 'tis not far now, but the way would seem long to you should you traverse it alone when in pain. there! lean on me." with a sigh of relief that she was not to be left by herself mengette leaned heavily on the arm of her friend, though the latter was younger and smaller than she. she thought naught of this. it seemed natural to her playmates to lean upon jeanne d'arc. so, slowly, with much groaning on mengette's part, the two friends came presently to the fairy tree, where the rest of the party were already assembled. on the border of the bois chesnu (the woods of oaks), stood an ancient beech tree overhanging the highroad. "in spring," said the peasants of the valley, "the tree is as fair as lily flowers, the leaves and branches sweep the ground." it had many names, but was usually spoken of as l'arbre-des-fées. once upon a time, when the lords and ladies of bourlemont dwelt at the castle which stood before the village, it had been called "the ladies' tree." for then the high born dames and their cavaliers feasted and danced about it with each renewal of spring. but the castle had long been deserted, so the children had come to claim the tree for their own. they called it the fairy tree, because it was believed that in the olden time the fairies used it for a trysting place. so now, with bursts of song and laughter, the girls hung their garlands upon its ancient branches, then joining hands the lads and the lassies formed a ring, and circled around the tree, singing gayly. it was a pretty sight: pastoral and innocent,--one that would have delighted the heart of a corot. the singing children dancing about the tree, the red homespun frocks of the girls and the blue smocks of the boys making pleasing bits of color against the dark forest stretching behind them, and the distant village nestled on the banks of the apple-green river. perhaps the festival was a survival of paganism; perchance a remnant of the tree worship of the ancient celts interwoven with a traditional holiday; but the church recognized it. on ascension eve the priest came there, and chanted the gospel of saint john to exorcise the spirits, so that neither fairies nor anything evil could harm the little ones of his flock. after the ceremony of hanging the wreaths was completed a cloth was spread upon the grass, and the contents of the lunch baskets placed thereon. there were nuts, hard boiled eggs, and little rolls of a curious form, which the housewives had kneaded on purpose. in the midst of the preparations there came the clamor of bells drifting from the linked villages of domremy and greux, chiming the midday angelus. instantly little jeanne, who was among the girls busied about the lunch arose and, turning toward the church of her own village, joined her palms, bending her forehead to them. mengette, who had taken no part in getting the lunch ready because of her lamed knee, and who sat in the shade of the beech upon the grass, leaned over and poked pierre, one of jeanne's brothers, in the side. "do as your sister does, pierrelot," she cried, pointing toward the reverent little maiden. "myself, i am not so devout," he made answer. "neither jean, jacquemin, nor i feel as jeanne does, but such things are to her liking. my mother grieves that i am so slack in the matter. but jeanne loves the church. she is a good sister." "and a good friend also, pierrelot," nodded the girl emphatically, remembering how jeanne had come back to her while the rest of the party had gone on. "she might have been first at the tree, and so have won the right to hang her wreath first. instead, she came back to help me." "jeanne," called hauviette suddenly, as the angelus ceased to chime, and the devout little maid turned again toward her companions, "do you not wish that we could have our 'well dressing' upon thursday instead of 'laetare sunday'? 'tis said that then the fairies hold their tryst." "pouf!" ejaculated pierre, or pierrelot, as he was usually called. "you would not find them an you did come. there are no fairies now. my godfather jean says that there have been no fairies at domremy for twenty or thirty years. so what would be the use of coming here thursday?" "but my godmother says that one of the lords of the castle became a fairy's knight, and kept his tryst with her here under this very tree at eventide; so there must be fairies," spoke hauviette with timid persistency. "what do you think, jeanne?" "they come no more," replied the little maid gravely. "godmother beatrix and the curé both say that they do not. they came in the olden time, but for their sins they come no longer." "perchance they hold their meetings further back in the wood," suggested another girl. "that may be the reason that they are not seen." "i shall see," cried one of the boys rising, and starting toward the forest that extended its dark reaches behind them. "if there be fairies there, i, colin, shall find them." "do not go, colin," exclaimed jeanne in alarm. "you know that there is danger both from wolves and wild boars." few dared enter the wood, so thick it was, and the wolves it harbored were the terror of the countryside. so greatly were they feared, and such was the desire to be rid of the menace, that there was a reward given by the mayors of the villages for every head of a wolf, or a wolf cub, brought to them. so now a protesting chorus arose from the children as colin, with a scornful "pouf!" threw his shoulders back, and swaggered into the wood. "'tis time for the 'well dressing,'" declared jean, another one of jeanne's brothers. "let colin look for the fairies if he will. let us go to the spring. 'tis what we came for." "and so say i," chimed in another boy. "and i. and i," came from others. as this seemed to be the desire of all there was an immediate stir and bustle. the remnants of the lunch were hastily gathered up, and put in baskets; some of the wreaths were taken from the tree, and then the line of march was formed. just as they were ready to start, however, there came a shrill shout from the forest: "a wolf! a wolf!" cried the voice of colin. "help! help!" stock still stood the frightened children. again the cry came. at once there was a stir in the line, and a babel of excited voices broke forth as jeanne d'arc was seen running pell-mell into the forest in the direction from which the voice of her playmate came. colin was standing in the midst of a blackthorn thicket when she reached him. there was no sign of wolf, or animal of any kind, and he burst into a peal of laughter as the little girl glanced about in amazement. as the sound of his mirth reached the waiting children they too, knowing from it that naught was amiss, ran into the wood. the mischievous boy doubled up, and rocked to and fro in glee. "oh, but you were well fooled," he cried. "look at jeanne's face. you were afraid. all but her, and what could she have done to help me an there had been a wolf?" "she could have done all that you deserve to have done, colin," retorted pierre, who was a manly little lad. "shame upon you for crying out when there was naught to cry for. 'twould serve you right should a real wolf set upon you. your mother shall know how you sought to frighten us." "'twas but in sport," muttered colin, somewhat crestfallen. he had thought that the jest would be treated as great fun, and now here they stood regarding him reproachfully. "'twas but in sport," he said again, but there was no answering smile on any of the faces around him. the matter was of too serious a nature to admit of jesting. [illustration: the gooseberry spring] for a brief time only did the children stand about the boy, and then with one accord, though no word was spoken, they formed their line again, and started for the spring. colin followed after shamedfacedly. at first the march was a silent one, for the incident had thrown a damper upon their spirits, but soon it was forgotten, and once more their voices rose in song and mirth. the boys and girls who were at the head of the party went rapidly, and suddenly caught sight of a streamlet of pure water springing from a wooded hole in a wooded hill, by the side of a wooden bench which formed a resting place about the middle of the slope. the streamlet at first spread into a basin which it had excavated for itself; and then, falling in a small cascade, flowed across the path where a carpet of cress had grown, and disappeared in the reeds and grasses. all about the margin of the spring were gooseberry bushes intertwining their branches of greyish green, and these gave it the name of gooseberry spring. it was believed that the water had miraculous healing powers, so the children in turn knelt by the side of the basin, and drank deeply of the limpid water. for one drink from this wonderful spring, it was said, was an insurance against fever for a whole year. the garlands which had been carried from the fairy tree were now spread around the "well," a ring was formed, and the children danced and sang as they had done about the tree. the sun was setting before the games were ended, and the rustic festival was over. then, tired but happy, the little folk set their faces toward home. on the outskirts of the village jeanne and her brothers met jacques d'arc, their father, who was driving his flocks and herds from the commune for the night. he was a peasant of sturdy appearance, an upright man, unusually strict and careful of the behaviour of his children. jeanne's firm chin and wistful mouth were inherited from this parent. now as they ran to help him in his task he greeted them briefly: "there is company," he told them. "your gossip[ ] beatrix has come, jeanne, and two soldiers of france who have escaped from the burgundians. by our lady, this being upon the highroad has its drawbacks! 'tis getting so that no day passes without some wayfarer stopping for bite and bed. the house is overrun." "but you like it, father," reminded jeanne, slipping her hand into his. "for do not the wayfarers bring you news of all that happens beyond the mountains?" "that is well enough," admitted jacques grumblingly. "but even so, no man likes his house always full. there! let the matter rest. we must hasten with the cattle. the night grows apace." "and mother will have need of me to help her," cried jeanne, quickening her steps. "with so much company there will be much work to be done." ------ [ ] gossip--a name usually given to godmothers. chapter ii the knight's story "_by a woman shall france be lost; by a maid shall it be redeemed._" _old prophecy._ merlin, the magician. the house where jeanne d'arc lived was a stone cottage with the roof sloping from a height on one side half way to the ground on the other. in front there were but two windows, admitting but a scanty light. close by the door, as was usual in that country, were piles of faggots and farm tools covered with mud and rust. the enclosure served also as kitchen garden and orchard. beyond the cottage, scarce a stone's throw distant, only separated from it by a small graveyard, stood the village church, and north of both buildings there was a square towered monastery. a streamlet that flowed down into the meuse trickled noisily by the cottage and church, dividing them from the other houses of the village. perhaps it was because of this fact that the church seemed to jeanne to belong more to her and to her family than it did to the other inhabitants of domremy. born under its very walls, she was lulled in her cradle by the chime of its bells, and cherished a passionate love for them in her heart. involuntarily the little girl paused with her hand on the latch to cast a lingering, tender glance at the church before opening the door of the cottage. before she had crossed the threshold a tall woman, who was stirring the contents of a large iron pot which hung on a tripod before the fire, turned quickly at the sound of her sabots, and seeing that it was jeanne hastily left her task and drew the maid once more without the door. it was isabeau romée,[ ] the wife of jacques d'arc. in marriage the wife always retained her maiden name, so jeanne's mother was always spoken of as isabeau romée of vauthon, her native village. she was mild in manner, but her usual serenity was at this moment disturbed by anxiety. "right glad am i that you have come, jeanne," she remarked. "your gossip beatrix has been asking for you. she came this afternoon. and but a short time since two men-at-arms came, asking for supper and bed. gentles they are, who have but escaped from the hands of the burgundians, having been prisoners for many months. sup them i will right gladly, but bed them i can not. the house is full. it galls your father that we must refuse them." "and why not bed them, mother? let little catherine sleep with you, and i can lie upon the floor before the hearth. then the gentles may have my bed." "but you are wearied from your play, my little one, and to-morrow we go to the river to wash the clothes. you will need a good rest." "fear not, mother; i shall sleep well," answered jeanne cheerily. "if the poor men have but escaped from prison perchance they have had naught but the cold stones of a dungeon to lie upon. do let it be as i say, mother." "as you will then, my little one. in truth it would have grieved me sorely to refuse the bed, but i knew not what to do. you have a good heart, child. go now, and carry in more faggots for the fire. the night grows chill, though the day was so warm. a bundle will not be too much for the chimney. then bring forth the drinking cups and the knife for cutting the bread and put them upon the table. i will go to the oven for another loaf." "the dear child," mused the mother as jeanne obediently gathered up a large bundle of the faggots and turned toward the cottage. "the dear child! ever ready is she to give up her own comfort for that of others. may our lady watch over her!" meantime jeanne had hastened into the house, and had thrown her bundle of faggots into the great chimney, over which hung a white stone mantel shaped somewhat like a pent house. on one side of the hearth flags sat an elderly woman who was amusing jeanne's sister, catherine, a child a few years younger than she. jeanne returned the woman's warm greeting affectionately, then drew the deal table before the hearth, glancing as she did so at the two men who sat at the far end of the hearth flags. one was a man of thirty-five or so; the other looked to be ten years his junior. that they were well born was apparent from their bearing and manner, but their armour and clothing were in sad condition. their hucques[ ] were in tatters, and only the closest inspection revealed that they had been of velvet. they wore no helmets, and many plates were missing from their rusty armour, leaving their bodies fair marks for arrows or cross bolts. noting all this jeanne was startled to observe that from the right arm of the younger knight a tiny stream of blood trickled through the steel sleeve. she was a timid girl with strangers, therefore it was a full minute before she could muster courage to approach the young man. "you bleed, messire," she said, touching him shyly on the shoulder. "eh? what?" the young man started quickly, for he had been dozing in his chair. "oh! the wound?" following her glance at his arm. "'tis naught. the scratch has but broken out anew." "it should be dressed," asserted the little girl with concern. "i like not to see french blood flow." "she speaks truth, bertrand," interjected the older man. "a green wound tingles and burns, and there may be many a fray before us ere we behold châlons. here! i will be your squire for the nonce, and unbuckle your armour. 'tis a good little maid!" the young man addressed as bertrand rose, and let his friend assist him to remove his armour, protesting against the need of it as he did so. jeanne meantime brought a basin of water, and when the knight had pushed back the sleeve of his doublet she washed the blood from the wound gently. then, with all the deftness that isabeau had taught her--for many were the wounded who had experienced their services--she applied a compress of oil, and bandaged the arm with bands of serge. "i thank you, my little maid," spoke the young man gratefully. "it does in truth feel better, and though but a scratch, was indeed painful. what is your name?" "jeanne, messire." "i will remember it, jeanne. who taught you to be so deft in such matters?" "my mother, messire." jeanne blushed at being so interrogated. "you have a gentle touch. if my arm does not heal quickly under such ministration it does not belong to bertrand de poulengy." jeanne blushed again and withdrew quickly, carrying the basin with her. after placing a tall flagon, the wooden drinking cups, and the knife for cutting the bread upon the table she went to her godmother's side, and sat down. as she did so her father and mother entered. upon her arm isabeau carried a large ring of black bread, while jacques brought another armful of faggots. they were a hard working, devout couple who strove to bring up their children,--of which there were five: three sons, jacquemin, jean, and pierre; and two daughters, jeanne and catherine,--to love work and religion. jacques d'arc was a doyen; that is, a village elder; the chief man in domremy after the mayor. he was of such substance that he was enabled to raise his family in comfort, and to give alms and hospitality to the poor wandering friars, and other needy wayfarers then so common in the land. "sit up, messires," cried jacques as his wife emptied the contents of the iron pot into a platter which she set on the table. "eat, for you must be hungry. ay! and thirsty too, i doubt not." "by our lady, but that hath a welcome sound, honest jacques," cried the elder knight, starting up eagerly. "we are both hungry and thirsty. neither of us has broken his fast since morning, and then the repast was but meagre. bertrand, man, does not the flavor of that stew assail your nostrils deliciously?" "it does indeed, louis. methinks that i shall do justice to it. the duke of lorraine does not regale his prisoners on such fare." "you were prisoners to the duke of lorraine?" questioned jacques as he and his guests drew up to the table. the women and children sat apart waiting to eat later. "ay! and have been for these many weary months, jacques. it seems like a miracle that we did at last escape, but so it has fallen out." "tell of the manner of your taking and escape, if it please you, messire," spoke jacques. "'twill enliven the hour, and we are of the king's party here." "right well do we know that, jacques d'arc, else we would not have tarried here. domremy is well known to be for the king." "ay! for the king and france. save for one man the entire village is against the burgundians and the english invaders." "'tis good to hear such report, jacques. and now if you wish to hear the tale it pleases me well to tell it. know then that in august last, i, louis de lude, and bertrand de poulengy here with six other men-at-arms did set forth from the town of châlons for that of tours, being sadly in need of armour. you must know that for armour there be none in all france that can compare with the smiths of tours. through fear of being set upon by either the enemy, or marauding bands, we travelled at night, avoiding the frequented roads and the towns known to be in possession of the hostile party. thus we went for ten days with no untoward event happening, and on the morning of the eleventh day we broke into gratulation, for then we came in sight of the walls of tours. "the sun was an hour high, and all the gates of the town were open. through them the country folk were passing with milk and fruit for the market. the sight was a welcome one to travellers weary of the road and road fare. with cries of pleasure we spurred our horses forward. when within a half league of the city the joyous exclamations died on our lips, for suddenly the gates were closed, leaving us and a few poor market people outside. the country people ran distractedly toward the town, uttering loud outcries as the watchman appeared on the ramparts, shouting something that we were not near enough to understand. wondering at the action of the town, and the apparent terror of the people we wheeled, and saw the cause. "the frequented road from the town wound a short distance away between two low hills, and over the green shoulder of one of these a dozen bright points caught and reflected the morning light. even as we looked the points lifted, and became spears. ten, twenty, thirty, still they came until we could no longer count them. we turned to make a dash back in the way we had come, and behold! springing up in front of us were other spears. we were caught; and, outnumbered though we were, there was nothing for it but to fight. and fight we did, for in a moment they were upon us. "'tis hard to know just what is happening when one is in the thick of combat. there were yells and wild cries as the two forces came together in a huddle of falling or rearing horses, of flickering weapons, of thrusting men, of grapples hand to hand. who it was fell, stabbed through and through, or who still fought single combat i could not tell. it was over presently, and as i yielded up my sword in surrender i glanced about me; and lo! of our little band but three remained: bertrand here, jean laval, and myself. we had fallen into the hands of sabbat, the freebooter, the terror of anjou and touraine. "he did not take us to his garrison at langeaís, but retreated to those same low hills by the road, and there cast us into a pit to be held for ransom. ransom? in sooth, he deserved none, for he took from us the livres we had for our armour. one hundred and twenty-five livres tournois did bertrand and i have each for that purpose, and he took them. ay! and likewise he robbed our comrades who were dead. but our armour they left us, because it was old. three months we stayed in that pit waiting for ransom, with bread and water for our daily fare. and truly it was the bread of sadness and the water of affliction. jean died of his wounds, but bertrand and i came through. "and then it fell upon a day that some of my lord duke, charles of lorraine's, retainers passed by the robbers' lair on their way from tours to lorraine. sabbat's men set upon them even as they had done upon us. but the duke's men worsted them, and carried away not only many freebooters as prisoners but those also who were held captive by the marauders. finding that bertrand and i were armagnacs, of the king's party, they took us to the ducal palace at nancy to be held for ransom. we were thrown into a dungeon there to await the return of the messenger to our friends, but whether money was ever sent either to duke charles or to sabbat we know not. all that we know is that we lay waiting, waiting in that vile dungeon for weary days. so the time went by; long months that sapped our vigour, but which whetted our appetites for vengeance. "we were not upon parole, though my lord charles had striven to put us there, so we watched for a chance to escape, as is the right of every prisoner. it came at length. two days ago the old man, who was our keeper, came to us at eventide bearing the black bread that formed our meals. he had not brought the water, and bertrand made a cry for it, grumbling loudly because it had not been fetched, saying that he was athirst. it confused the old man, because he had in very truth forgot the water, which he was loath to acknowledge. for this reason he neglected his usual caution of backing out of the dungeon with his face toward us, and turned his back upon us. instantly we sprang upon him, and easily overcame him. we bound him with his own garments, and then, possessing ourselves of his keys, went forth boldly. to our amazement we found our way into the courtyard without encountering any one. there were sounds of revelry from the palace, and creeping near we found that it was the anniversary of his birthnight, so duke charles held high carnival. it was the night of all nights favorable to an escape. "the guard was relaxed so, unchallenged, we succeeded in placing a scaling ladder against the ramparts, and up we went. when we had reached the top, however, we were seen, and a shower of arrows were shot at us, wounding bertrand. two lance lengths high were the walls, but we dropped from them to the outside, landing, by god's grace, on the edge of the moat. we crept close to the walls, and the fast falling darkness hid us from the view of the archers on the top. "doubtless they thought that we had fallen into the water, for presently the hue and cry died down, and we heard no sound that denoted that search was being made for us. then cautiously we crossed the moat, fearful of its waters, but saint catherine, the friend of escaping prisoners, was with us, and reaching the other side we went forth free men once more. how we obtained horses and the manner of coming here have nothing of mark to relate. we did obtain them, and we came. and that, honest jacques, is the tale. a common one in france." "ay, messire; but too common," agreed jacques, shaking his head mournfully. "truly, france has fallen upon evil days." "it has! it has! and to none other than isabella of bavaria do we owe them. by that infamous treaty of troyes by which charles, the dauphin, was disinherited in favor of henry fifth of england the queen lost us france." "she lost us france," acquiesced jacques. the younger knight spoke abruptly: "i was at troyes when that treaty was signed. 'twas four years ago, and of april the ninth day. well do i remember it; for at the same time the ceremony that betrothed our lady catherine to henry of england was celebrated. the king, our poor mad king, was brought from his retreat to be made to sign the treaty, and the streets and the ramparts of the town were filled with people desirous of seeing him. the dauphin was there, looking like death, and well he might; for the kingdom which was his by right, as well as his sister's, was to be given to the butcher of agincourt. his mother, queen isabella, was here, there, everywhere, flaunting a robe of blue silk damask and a coat of black velvet into the lining of which the skins of fifteen hundred minevers had gone. shamelessly she made a gala day of the matter, and after the ceremony caused her singing birds, goldfinches, siskins, and linnets to be brought for her entertainment. and now, the duke of bedford is regent of france, holding it for henry fifth's son; and the dauphin, who should be king since his father is dead, lies in retreat in bruges. isabella lost us france. the shameless woman!" "shameless indeed, bertrand, but take courage. have you never heard that though a woman should lose france, from the march of lorraine a virgin shall come for its redemption?" "'tis merlin's prophecy, louis. 'a maid who is to restore france, ruined by a woman, shall come from the bois chesnu in the march of lorraine,' is the reading. pouf! what could a maid do in such matters? i believe it not." "nor i," ejaculated jacques. he laughed outright suddenly. "why, the bois chesnu is our own wood out there," and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "messire, 'tis a prophecy that will fail." "scoff not, ye doubters," cried louis. "with god all things are possible. for my part, i would a maid would come to the healing of france. but there! 'tis long since i have slept on aught but stones, and fain would i lie upon a bed. good jacques, if you have such a thing, show me it, i pray you. i am weary." "then come, messires." jacques lighted a candle and led the way to an upper room, while isabeau opened the doors of the cupboard bed on the far side of the room, and made it ready. then she drew her children round her to hear their prayers and the credo. after which the family went to their beds. but jeanne lay down upon the floor before the hearth. ------ [ ] romée. so called by reason of a pilgrimage achieved either by her or some member of her family to rome. [ ] hucques--cloaks worn over the armour. chapter iii the waves of war reach domremy "_bright shone the sun, the birds sang cheerfully, and all the fields seemed joyous in the spring: but to domremy wretched was that day; for there was lamentation, and the voice of anguish, and the deeper agony that spake not._" southey. "_joan of arc._" _book i._ the condition of france in this year of grace, , was deplorable in the extreme. for more than one hundred years war had raged between england and france. the kingdom which had been strong and splendid under the great charlemagne had fallen into disintegration. unity had no existence. by the treaty of troyes, signed by the mad king, charles vi, influenced by his unscrupulous queen, isabella of bavaria, henry fifth of england was made regent of france during the lifetime of charles, and assured of the full possession of the french throne after the mad king's death, thus disinheriting the dauphin. of the fourteen provinces left by charles fifth to his successor only three remained in the power of the french crown. it was henry fifth's fond hope that by this treaty and by his marriage with a french princess the war would cease, and france would lie forever at the foot of england. for a time it seemed as though these hopes were to be justified. then, in both he and the french king died, and the war broke out again. the duke of bedford, henry fifth's brother, assumed the regency of france until the young son of henry fifth, henry sixth, was old enough to be crowned. charles, the dauphin, meantime declared himself king and rightful heir, and many upheld his claim. but there were some, among them the duke of burgundy, the most powerful of the princes of france, who because of private injuries suffered at the hands of the dauphin, sustained the claim of the english. thus the country presented the sad spectacle of french princes warring against each other and the king more furiously than they did against the invader. frenchmen were not frenchmen; they were burgundians, armagnacs, bretons, or provencaux. the country was torn in pieces with different causes and cries. bands of mercenaries and freebooters ravaged and pillaged the people with a cheerful disregard of the political party to which they belonged. under such conditions the distress of the country was great. many regions were depopulated; in many the wild wood had over run the cultivated soil; in others agriculture could be practised only near castles and walled towns. under the sound of the warning horn or church bell the cattle would run of themselves to places of refuge. when the country was so harried and devastated it behooved the villages and towns to keep a watchman ever on the lookout for the glitter of lances that the inhabitants might have time to gather their cattle and retreat to a place of safety. nor had the march of lorraine and champagne, as the valley of the river was called, been exempt from the common woe. it was long an object of contention between monarch and duke, but had finally passed into the hands of the crown, so that its people were directly subject to the king. the march was not only the highroad to germany, but it was, too, the frontier between the two great parties: near domremy was one of the last villages that held to the burgundians; all the rest were for charles, the dauphin. in all ages the valley had suffered cruelly from war: first, the war between duke and monarch for its possession; and now, the war between the burgundians and the armagnacs. at a time when the whole of christendom was given up to pillage the men-at-arms of the lorraine-marches were renowned as the greatest plunderers in the world. therefore, life at domremy was one perpetual alarm. all day and all night a watchman was stationed on the square tower of the monastery, and the inhabitants held themselves ready to fly at a moment's warning. and yet men sowed and reaped; women spun and wove; children romped and sang; and all the occupations of a rural people went on. in the midst of these anxieties life at the house of jacques d'arc seemed calm and serene. march passed, and dewy april too had been gathered into the book of months. it was may. the trees were masses of foliage, the meadows starry with wild flowers, and the greenish water of the winding river was almost hidden by the dense clumps of rushes that grew upon its banks. vallis colorum, the valley of colors, the romans had called it, and truly in this fair may it was so radiant, and fragrant, and flowery that it well deserved the designation. "jeanne," said jacques d'arc one morning as the little girl rose from the breakfast table and took her place before the spinning wheel, "you can not spin to-day. i need pierrelot in the field, so that you must mind the sheep. seedtime is short, and if we do not get the sowing done soon we can not reap a harvest." "very well, father," said jeanne, rising. taking her distaff, for the time spent in watching the flock was not to be passed in idleness, she went at once to the fold to lead out the sheep. usually the stock of the villagers was kept in sheds attached to the houses, but the d'arc family kept their animals in a separate building. it was still early, but the sheep were to be taken to the uplands, which lay beyond the common that could not now be used for pasturing because of the growing hay, so an early start was necessary. there were already several little shepherdesses on the upland, and jeanne waved her hand to hauviette and mengette, who were nearest. they too had their distaffs, and soon the three friends were seated together near the oak wood pulling the threads for spinning, chatting gaily, and ever and anon casting watchful glances at the browsing sheep. they were careful little maids, knowing well the value of the flocks they tended. it seemed as though all of the inhabitants of the village were out in the open, so many men, and boys, and women were there engaged in sowing the fields, or busied in the vineyards on the hill slopes. the morning was almost past when the quiet of the peaceful scene was broken by a hoarse shout from the watchman on the square tower of the monastery: "the burgundians! the burgundians are coming! to the fortress for your lives." as his voice died away the bells of the church sounded the alarm. noisily they pealed in a harsh and terrifying clamor, those bells which in turn celebrated the births, tolled for the dead, and summoned the people to prayer. instantly the fields and vineyards became scenes of commotion and confusion. hoarse shouts and cries rent the air. men, women, and children ran frantically toward the village, carrying their farm tools, and driving the cattle pell-mell before them. from the cottages there poured forth the aged, the old men and women who could no longer work in the fields and who therefore cared for the young children and the houses while their juniors did the outside work. both the old people and the children bore whatever of value they could carry from the cottages, and thus burdened all ran toward the castle. as the watchman gave his cry jeanne, mengette, and hauviette sprang excitedly to their feet. dropping their distaffs the two latter girls, leaving their flocks, ran toward the fields where their elders were, forgetful of everything but their own safety. but jeanne stood still, a little line of perplexity wrinkling her forehead. sheep are nervous animals, and these had lifted their heads as though startled, and were beginning to bleat piteously. once among the plunging, bellowing cattle nothing could be done with them. should they break and run into the forest they would be devoured by wolves. if they scattered in the meadows they would become the booty of the attacking party. in either case her father would be the loser. only a second did she remain inactive, and then, clear and sweet, she sounded the shepherd's call: "cudday! cudday! cudday!" bell-like her voice rose above the confusion. the old bell-wether of the flock recognized the tones of his shepherd, and started toward her. jeanne turned, and started toward the village, stopping frequently to sound the call: "cudday! cudday! cudday!" and quietly, confidently the old bell-wether followed her, bringing the flock with him. half way to the village she met pierre, who came running back to her. the lad was breathless and panting, but he managed to gasp: "father says, father says to leave the sheep, jeanne." "nenni, nenni," returned jeanne. "i can bring them in safely." at this moment there came a ringing shout from jacques d'arc: "leave the cattle and sheep, friends! make for the castle! the foe is upon us." the terrified people glanced down the highroad along which the raiding party was approaching. there was but scant time to reach the fortress, and, as jacques d'arc had seen, it could only be done without encumbrance. leaving the animals forthwith the villagers broke into a run, while jacques hastened to his children. "father, i know that i could--" began jeanne, but her father interrupted her vehemently, "talk not, but run, my little one. there is no time to lose." the castle stood on an island formed by two arms of the meuse. belonging to it was a courtyard provided with means of defense, and a large garden surrounded by a moat wide and deep. it was commonly called the fortress of the island. it had been the abode of those fair ladies and brave lords who were wont in the olden time to dance about the fairy tree. the last of the lords having died without children the property passed to his niece. the lady married a baron of lorraine with whom she went to reside at the ducal court of nancy, thus leaving it uninhabited. wishing to have a place of retreat from attacks of marauding parties jacques d'arc and another man, on behalf of the villagers, leased the castle from the lady for a term of nine years. the precaution had been useful on many occasions, but upon this bright, may morning it proved futile so far as the property of the villagers was concerned. the approach of the marauders was too rapid to permit the poor people to do more than to reach the castle in safety. jacques d'arc and his two children were the last to cross the drawbridge, which was instantly drawn up, and the gate was closed. they were safe, for it was a place that ten could hold against ten hundred. through the loop-holes the villagers beheld the scene that followed. with terrifying cries the raiders rode into the hamlet. some rounded up the cattle and sheep preparatory to driving them off; others hitched oxen to carts and drove them to the middle of the village, where still others piled the furniture from the cottages into the carts. silent and tearless the hapless inhabitants watched while the hearths of their homes were torn up, and mantels demolished in the search for hidden treasure. even the church was not exempt from the pillage. and then, that no part of misery might be spared to domremy, the plunderers applied the torch to the houses. women wrung their hands, some dry-eyed, others with sobs and cries at sight of their blazing homes, while men gnashed their teeth, enraged that they were powerless to prevent the disaster. at length the ruffian band departed, carrying their booty with them. scarcely had they passed from view before the men were out and across the drawbridge, and on to fight the flames. some of the cottages were too far consumed to be saved, but after the flames were extinguished a few were found that could be used with some thatching. among these was the house of jacques d'arc. chapter iv the aftermath "_sweet she is in words and deeds, fair and white as the white rose._" "_la mystère du siège d'orléans._" there was anguish in the eyes of isabeau romée as she crossed the drawbridge from the castle, and went slowly with her children to the ruined village. other women about her wept, or gave vent to their despair in loud outcries; hers was the deeper grief that knows not tears. and in what a state of desolation was the hamlet and its surroundings! the men-at-arms had plundered, ravaged, and burnt. unable to exact ransom from the inhabitants, because of their timely arrival at the castle, it was evidently the design of the marauders to destroy what they could not carry off. the newly sown fields were trampled; the blossoming orchards blasted; those houses that had been rescued from the flames were badly damaged, and the entire village and its neighbour, greux, had been sacked and pillaged. upon what were the people to live? that was the question that confronted them. jacques d'arc came to his wife as she stood in front of their cottage. "the house still remains to us, isabeau," he said comfortingly. "the roof can be thatched so that we can soon be in it again. we will send to our market town of neufchâteau for bread and grain. did you look well to the money?" "yes, jacques." isabeau took a bag from the folds of her gown, and handed it to him. it contained a small sum of money hoarded against just such an emergency as the present. her husband took it with brightening countenance. "come now, 'tis not so bad," he said. "we will send at once for the grain, that the fields may be resown without delay; and for bread that we may live. we shall do well." "yes," agreed his wife, but she looked at her children. and then, as though with that look her woe must forth, she turned upon him in a passionate outburst: "in all your life, jacques, in all my life we have known naught but war. must my children too live always in the midst of strife? must they too sow for soldiers to reap? build, for men-at-arms to burn? be hunted like wild beasts, and killed if they cannot pay ransom? must they too count on nothing; neither their goods, nor their lives? oh, jacques, must france always be torn by war?" "you are beside yourself with sorrow, isabeau," chided jacques but the gentleness of his tone took away the sting of the words. "'tis no time to give way now. there is much to be done. we can but take up our burden, and do the best we can. with god lies the issue." "true, jacques, true." isabeau pulled herself together sharply. "you are right; 'tis no time for grief. there is indeed much to be done. jeanne, do you take your little sister, and care for her while i see if aught of our stores has been overlooked. many will there be for whom provision must be made." with this the brave woman gave the little catherine into jeanne's keeping, while she went into the cottage. resolutely winking back her own tears jeanne took the weeping little girl to a tree, and sat down under it, drawing the child into her lap. pierre followed her, jacquemin and jean going with their father to help him. soon mengette and hauviette joined the d'arc children, and presently all the boys and girls of the village found their way there, comforting each other and the little ones in their charge in whispers. childhood is elastic, and soon under the familiar companionship fright wore away, and the young folks began to relate their experiences in subdued but excited tones. "i saw a black burgundian as big as a giant," declared colin. "had i had a crossbow and bolt i would have killed him." "pouf! you were afraid just as the rest of us were," uttered pierre scornfully. "why, even the men did not try to fight, so many were the enemy. and if they could do naught neither could you." "the men could not fight without weapons, pierre," spoke jeanne quickly. "they had none in the fields." "myself, i shall be a man-at-arms," went on colin boastingly. "i shall wear armour, and ride a horse; and i shall go into france to help drive the godons[ ] out of it." jeanne looked at him with sparkling eyes. "yes," she cried eagerly. "'tis what should be done. oh! i would like to go too. why do they not stay in their own country?" "you?" colin began to laugh. "you are a girl, jeanne d'arc, and girls go not to war. they can not fight." "i could." a resolute light came into the little maid's eyes, and her lips set in a firm line. "i know i could." at this the others joined colin in his laughter, and the boy cried gaily: "i should like to see you. oh, wouldn't the godons run when they saw you?" jeanne opened her lips to reply, but just then she heard the voice of her mother calling to her. so, shaking her finger at colin, she rose obediently and went toward the cottage. near the door stood her father gazing intently at a long rod that he held in his hand. so absorbed was he that he did not heed her approach. the little girl touched him lightly on the arm. "what is it, father?" she asked gently. "are you grieving over the cattle and the goods?" her father looked up with a start. "i grieve, yes, my little one. but 'tis not so much about present ills as a future burden which we must bear. i know not how it is to be met. this rod, as you know, is the taille stick, and in july comes the tax which i must collect from domremy and greux. i like not to think about it, so heavy will it seem after the misfortune that has come upon these two villages." there were many duties that fell to the village elder (doyen), especially in troubled times. it was for him to summon the mayor and the aldermen to the council meetings, to cry the decrees, to command the watch day and night, to guard the prisoners. it was for him also to collect taxes, rents, and feudal dues. an ungrateful office at any time, but one that would be doubly so in a ruined country. jeanne knew that it was her father's duty to collect the taxes, but she had not known that it might be a distasteful task. now she looked curiously at the stick. "why does it have the notches upon it, father?" she asked. "'tis to show the amount due, my little one. there are two tailles:[ ] la taille seigneuriale, which is paid serfs to their lord; and la taille royale, which is paid to the king. we, being directly subject to the king, pay la taille royale. the gentle dauphin has much need of money, sire robert de baudricourt of vaucouleurs has told me. but the impost will be hard to meet after what has befallen us." he sighed. at this moment jacques d'arc was not a prepossessing sight. his clothes were dusty and begrimed with soot; his face and hands were black; but through the soot and grime shone the light of compassion for the burden which the people would have to bear. jeanne saw naught of the soiled clothing or the blackened face and hands; she saw only that her father was troubled beyond the loss of his goods and cattle. quickly she threw her arms about his neck, and drew his face down to hers. "i would there were no tax, father," she said wistfully. "i would so too, my little one," sighed he. "but there! wishing will not make it so. you have comforted me, jeanne. but your mother is calling. let us go to her." with her hand in his they went into the house, where jacques deposited the stick in a corner. isabeau met them, a pleased expression illuminating her countenance. "see," she cried, holding up a great loaf of black bread. "'twas in the back part of the oven where it was not seen. take it to your playmates, jeanne, and give to each of them a piece of it. children bear fasting but ill, and it will be long ere we have bread from neufchâteau!" jeanne took the loaf gladly and hastened to her playmates. she knew that they were hungry, for none of them had eaten since early morning. her appearance with the bread was greeted with cries of joy. bread was a commonplace the day before; now it had become something precious. so little are blessings prized until they are gone. the loaf was large, but even a large loaf divided into many pieces makes small portions. these were eaten eagerly by the children, and the youngest began to cry for more. jeanne had foreseen that this would be the case, so had not eaten her share. quietly now she divided it among the smallest tots, giving each a morsel. shamefacedly pierre plucked her by the sleeve. "you have had none," he remonstrated. "and i--i have eaten all that you gave to me." "that is well, pierrelot." his sister smiled at him reassuringly. "i shall eat when the bread comes from the market town. we must go to the castle now. mother said that we were to go there after we had eaten. every one is to sleep there to-night." "but there are no beds," broke in colin in an aggrieved tone. "no, colin; there are no beds, but even so floors are better than the fields. there would be no safety outside the walls on account of the wolves." "wolves?" colin whitened perceptibly, and the children huddled closer together. "i did not think of wolves. is there in truth danger?" "the men fear so, because some of the cattle and sheep were trampled to death by the others, and their carcasses may draw them. we are to use the castle until the houses are thatched." the arrangements were as jeanne had said. the nights were to be spent in the safety of the castle's confines, while the days were to be devoted to the rebuilding of the village, and the resowing of the fields. thus did the peasants with brave resignation once more take up their lives. for, no matter how adverse fate may be, life must be lived; misfortune must be met and overcome. and the times that followed were such as to try the endurance of the unfortunate inhabitants of domremy to the utmost. it was the season of the year when there was a scarcity of provisions everywhere. from early spring until the reaping of the new crops the stock of food in a rural community is at its lowest; so, though many villages of the valley shared their stores with their unfortunate neighbors their own needs had to be taken into consideration, therefore it came about that famine reared his ugly head in the linked villages of greux and domremy. many of the cruelly despoiled peasants died of hunger. one day jacques d'arc gathered his family about him. they were in their own home by this time, but its furnishings were of the rudest. before jacques on the table lay a single loaf of bread, and by it stood a pail of water. he looked at them sadly. "'tis our last loaf," he said, "and, of provision we have naught else. so this is our last meal, for i know not where another can be forthcoming. we will eat to-day; to-morrow we must do as we can. take in thankfulness, therefore, what lies before us." with this he cut the loaf into seven parts, giving a portion to his wife first, then one to each of his children except jeanne. hers he kept beside his own. when all had been served he turned to her. "come here, my little one," he said. timidly, for there was something in his tone that she did not understand, the little maid went to his side. jacques encircled her with his arm. "have you broken your fast to-day, my child?" jeanne blushed, and hung her head as though guilty of wrong doing, but did not reply. "you have not," he asserted. "yesterday pierre saw you give all of your portion to your sister. the day before you kept but a small part for yourself, giving catherine the rest. is it not so?" "yes, father; but i go to the church and pray; then i do not need food." jeanne took courage as she told this, and raising her head looked at him bravely. "i do not feel very hungry." "fasting is good for the soul, my child, but too much of it is ill for the body. stay, therefore, beside me that your father may see you eat your share." "but, father," she began protestingly. he interrupted her: "eat," he commanded. when jacques spoke in that tone his children knew that resistance was useless, so silently jeanne ate her portion. nor would he permit her to leave his side until every crumb was swallowed. she did not sit again at table, but went to the open door and gazed down the highroad through tear-blinded eyes. her heart was very full. father and child were in close accordance, and she knew that he suffered because of his family's misery. so down the valley she gazed wishing that she might do something to help him. the valley had regained much of its loveliness. the trees had leaved again; the fields were green with the new crops, and the gardens gave promise of later abundance. there were still black gaps among the dwellings, however; significant reminders of the visit of the marauders. suddenly as the little maid stood leaning against the door, something down the road caused her to start violently, and lean forward eagerly. "father," she cried shrilly. "yes, jeanne," he answered apathetically. "there are cattle and sheep coming down the highroad. they look like ours. what does it mean?" instantly jacques sprang to his feet and hastened to the door. one look and he gave a great shout. "they are ours," he cried in ringing tones. "friends, neighbours, come and see! the cattle have come back." from out of the cottages ran the people, incredulity turning to joy as their sight verified jacques' cry. the wildest excitement prevailed as the flocks and herds in charge of a number of soldiers commanded by a young man-at-arms drew near. from him they learned what had happened. when the lady of the castle, she who had gone to live with her spouse at the ducal court of nancy, heard of the raid that had been made upon the villages, she protested to her kinsman, the count of vaudemont, against the wrong done to her, as she was the lady of domremy and greux. now the place to which the chief of the marauding band, henri d'orley, had taken the cattle and plunder was the château of doulevant, which was under the immediate suzerainty of the lady's kinsman. as soon, therefore, as he received her message he sent a man-at-arms with soldiers to recapture the animals and the booty. this was done; not, however, without a fight, in which the young commander was victorious; and so he had brought the cattle home. with tears and cries of joy the husbandmen welcomed them. there was food in plenty, too, so the village rejoiced, and life bade fair to be bright once more. only the wise ones shook their heads ominously. for were they not likely to lose the beasts forever on the morrow? thus the days passed in the valley; nights of terror; dreams of horror; with war everywhere around; but jeanne grew and blossomed as the lily grows from the muck of a swamp. ------ [ ] godons--a term applied to the english. [ ] from this word we have the english term "tally." chapter v jeanne's vision "_thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes._" st. matthew : . the summer gave place to winter; winter in turn was succeeded by spring, and again it was summer. though there were raids in distant parts of the valley, and wild rumors and false alarms, domremy was mercifully spared a second visitation. a strict watch was still kept, however, for glitter of lance along the highroad, or gleaming among the trees of the forest, but life resumed its tranquil aspect. the men toiled in the fields or the vineyards; women spun and wove, and looked after their households; children played or tended the herds and flocks on the common as of yore. one warm afternoon in late july jeanne, with others of her playmates, was on the uplands watching the flocks nibble the short green grass. the boys and girls were scattered over the uplands, but mengette and hauviette sat with jeanne under the shade of a tree. the three friends were never very far apart, and as usual their small fingers were busied with the threads of their distaffs. it was a delicious afternoon. the air, though warm, was soft and balmy, and fragrant with the perfume of wild mignonette and linden flowers. in the fields the ripened wheat rippled in the breeze like a yellow sea, and scarlet poppies made great splotches of color against the golden heads. the meuse flowed sluggishly through dense masses of reeds and bushes, almost hidden by their foliage. a lovely scene, for the valley of colors, always beautiful, was never more so than in summer. a busy scene, too; for men and boys were working in the fields and vineyards, either cradling the ripened grain, or tying up the vines, heavy with bunches of grapes. "the sheep grow restless," spoke jeanne suddenly, as she noticed that some of the animals were beginning to stray apart from their fellows. "they have nipped the grass clean here. 'tis time to move them." "and i grow sleepy," cried mengette, yawning. "we have been here since early morning, so 'tis no wonder. if i keep on pulling threads from this distaff i shall do like colin yonder: lie down on the grass and go to sleep." "he ought not to sleep while he has the sheep to attend to," declared hauviette, shaking her head. "they might stray into the vineyards, or the forest, and he would be none the wiser." "he knows that we would not let them if we saw them," said jeanne. "i think he depends on us to look after them, though his flock is the largest one here. he ought not to be sleeping if we move our sheep away." she arose as she spoke and went quickly over to where colin lay stretched out on the grass. jeanne had grown taller in the year that had passed. "she shot up like a weed," her mother commented as she lengthened the girl's red woolen frocks. there had come an expression of thoughtfulness into her face, and her eyes seemed larger and brighter, holding a look of wonderment as though she were puzzling over many things; but there was no change in her gayety and high spirits. the sleeping boy opened his eyes drowsily as she shook him. "wake, colin," she cried. "wake, and attend to what i tell you. we are going to take our sheep further afield. you must wake to look after yours." but colin pulled away from her grasp, and settled down for another nap. jeanne shook him again vigorously. "you must wake, you lazy boy," she cried. "what would your father say to you should aught happen to the sheep? and we are going to move ours." colin sat up reluctantly at this, rubbing his eyes, and muttering discontentedly. so drowsy did he appear that jeanne realized that some sort of expedient must be used to rouse him. "there stands a cluster of linden flowers yonder on the edge of the forest, colin. they are unusually pretty, and i want them. your mother wants some, too. i heard her tell you to bring her some from the fields. see if you can get to them before i do." "it's too hot to run," murmured the boy. "it's just like a girl to want a race when it's hot. i'd rather sit still." "but that is just what you must not do if you want to keep awake," persisted jeanne, who knew that colin would go to napping again if she left him as he was. "come on! you never have beaten me at a race, and you can't do it to-day." "aw! i've never tried very hard," grumbled colin, getting to his feet reluctantly. "i'll run, but i'd much rather stay here. i don't see why girls want to pester a fellow so, anyway. and why do you want to take the sheep elsewhere? they'll do well enough right here. where did you say the flowers were?" "yonder." jeanne indicated a large cluster of the yellow linden flowers growing near an oak thicket on the edge of the wood. these flowers grew in great abundance around the village. "girls," turning toward her friends, "colin thinks that he can beat me running to that bunch of linden blossoms." "the idea," laughed mengette teasingly. "why, he can't beat any of us; not even little martin yonder, who is half his size," indicating a small boy whose flock browsed just beyond colin's sheep. "we'll all run just to show him. besides, it's the very thing to keep us from getting sleepy. get in line, everybody. come on, martin. i'll be the starter. there! you will all start at three. attention! attention! one, two, three,--go!" and laughing merrily they were off. now jeanne often ran races with her playmates. it was a frequent diversion of the children when they attended the animals on the uplands, care being always exercised to run in a direction that would bring no alarm to the flocks. jeanne was very fleet of foot, as had been proven on more than one occasion. this afternoon she ran so swiftly, so easily, so without conscious effort on her part that it seemed as though she were upborne by wings. reaching the flowers quite a few moments ahead of her companions she bent over them, inhaling their perfume with a sense of rapture that she had never before experienced. hauviette was the first one after her to reach the goal. "oh, jeanne," she cried, gazing at her friend with wonder. "i never saw any one run as you did. why, your feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground." "jeanne always runs as though she were flying," spoke mengette now coming up. "anyway i'm glad that colin didn't beat us. he's 'way behind us all, for here is martin before him. for shame, colin," she cried, laughing, as the boy lumbered up to them. colin was not noted for fleetness of foot. "not only did jeanne outstrip you, but hauviette, martin and i did likewise. all of us got here before you. you didn't stand a chance for those flowers, even if jeanne had not run." "i wasn't waked up enough to run well," explained colin, rousing to the need of defending himself. "jeanne," broke in little martin suddenly, "go home. your mother wants you. i heard her calling." "mother wants me," exclaimed the girl in surprise. "why, that's strange! i never knew her to call me before when i was out with a flock. something must be the matter." "maybe there is," said the lad. "anyway i heard her calling, 'jeanne! jeanne!' just like that." "then i must go to her," cried jeanne. with this she turned and left them, hastening in some alarm to the cottage. her mother glanced up in surprise from her sewing as she came through the door. "why, child, what brings you home so early?" she cried. "has anything happened to the flocks?" "did you not call me, mother?" asked jeanne innocently. "i thought that something was wrong." "call you? no. what made you think that i called you?" questioned isabeau sharply. "you should never leave the sheep alone on the uplands. the other children have enough to do to mind their own animals without attending to yours. what made you think that i called you?" "martin said that he heard you," jeanne told her simply. "he must have tried to trick me, because i beat him and colin in a race. i will go back to the sheep." she started to leave the room as she spoke. "martin is a naughty lad," exclaimed isabeau with some irritation. "nay, jeanne; do not go back. pierre has just come from the fields, and i will send him. you can be of use here. i have let you tend the sheep because your father has been so busy that he could not spare the boys, and because of it your sewing has been neglected. do you, therefore, take this garment and finish the seam while i attend to catherine. she is fretful of late, and does not seem well. go into the garden, where it is cool. i will speak to pierrelot." obediently the little maid took the garment that her mother held out to her, and going into the garden sat down under an apple tree. she was quite skillful in sewing. her mother did exquisite needlework, and wished her daughter's ability to equal her own. jeanne wished it too, so took great pains to please isabeau. it was quiet in the garden. quieter than it had been on the uplands. there had been merry laughter there, and songs and jests from the children. here there were only the twitter of birds, the rustle of the leaves in the breeze, and the humming of gold belted bees for company. so quiet was it that presently some little birds, seeing that they had nothing to fear from the small maiden sewing so diligently, flew down from the apple tree and began to peck at the grass at her very feet. jeanne smiled as she saw them, and sat quite still so as not to frighten them. soon a skylark rose from the grass in the meadow lying beyond the orchard, and in a burst of song flew up, and up into the air, mounting higher and higher until he shone a mere black dot in the sky. still singing he began to descend, circling as he came earthward, dropping suddenly like an arrow straight into the grass, his song ceasing as he disappeared. jeanne had let her work fall into her lap as she watched the flight of the bird, now she took it up again and began to sew steadily. the air was still athrill with the skylark's melody, and the child sewed on and on, every pulse in harmony with her surroundings. all at once something caused her to look up. there was a change of some kind in the atmosphere. what it was she could not tell, but she was conscious of something that she did not understand. she glanced up at the sky, but not a cloud marred its azure. it was as serene, as dazzling as it had been all day. bewildered by she knew not what she picked up her sewing again, and tried to go on with it, but she could not. she laid down the garment, and once more glanced about her. as she did so she saw a light between her and the church. it was on her right side, and as it came nearer to her it grew in brightness. a brightness that was dazzling. she had never seen anything like it. presently it enveloped her. thrilled, trembling, awed, too frightened to move, the little maid closed her eyes to shut out the glory that surrounded her. and then, from the midst of the radiance there came a voice; sweeter than the song of the skylark, sweeter even than the chime of the bells she loved so well. it said: "be good, jeanne, be good! be obedient, and go frequently to church. i called thee on the uplands, but thou didst not hear. be good, jeanne, be good." that was all. the voice ceased. presently the light lessened; it faded gradually, and soon ceased to glow. the little girl drew a long breath, and fearfully lifted her eyes. there was naught to be seen. the garden looked the same as before. the little birds still pecked at her feet, the leaves still rustled in the breeze, the church wore its usual aspect. could she have fallen asleep and dreamed, she asked herself. at this moment isabeau called to her from the door of the cottage: "take catherine, jeanne," she said. "i do not know what ails the child. she frets so. i will brew a posset. do you attend to her a few moments. why, what ails you, my little one?" she broke off abruptly as jeanne came to her. "is aught amiss? you look distraught." jeanne opened her lips to reply. she thought to tell her mother of the wonderful thing that had happened, and then, something in isabeau's expression checked the words. perhaps the good woman was unduly worried. she was in truth overburdened with the cares of her household. little catherine was ailing, and an ailing child is always exacting. whatever it may have been, jeanne found the words checked on her lips, and was unable to relate what had occurred. a girl trembling on the brink of womanhood is always shy and timid about relating the thoughts and emotions that fill her. the unusual experience was such as needed a sympathetic and tender listener. the mother was too anxious over the younger child to be in a receptive mood for such confidences. so when she said again: "is anything amiss, jeanne?" the little girl only shook her head, and said in a low tone: "no, mother." "i dare say that the trick that martin played upon you has upset you," commented isabeau. "you ran the race, and then ran home thinking that something was wrong with us here. it was a mean trick, though done in sport. i shall speak to his mother about it. the boy goes too much with that naughty colin." jeanne started. the voice had said that it had called her on the uplands. could it be that that was what martin had heard? if so, then it could not have been a dream. it had really happened. she found voice to protest timidly: "perhaps he did not mean to trick me, mother. perhaps he really thought that he heard you calling me." "pouf, child! how could he, when i did not call? there! a truce to the talk while i brew the posset. i hope that catherine is not coming down with sickness." she hurried into the kitchen, while jeanne, wondering greatly at what had taken place, took her little sister into the garden, and sat down under another tree. chapter vi jeanne's harsh words "_the miracle of this girl's life is best honored by the simple truth._" sainte-beuve. so, half from shyness, half from fear of ridicule, the child told no one of her strange experience, but often did the thought of the happening come to her, and she wondered what it could mean. indeed so much did she dwell upon it that mengette rallied her upon her abstraction. "what has come over you, jeanne?" asked the latter one day when she and jeanne in company with other girls and women were at the river engaged in one of the periodical washings of the village. "twice have i spoken to you, yet you have not answered. has your mother been scolding you?" "mother scolding? why, no!" jeanne glanced up in surprise. "there is naught the matter, mengette. i was just thinking." "of what?" questioned her friend, but as jeanne made no reply she lowered her voice and said with some asperity: "you are thinking too much, jeanne d'arc. you are not a bit like yourself, and every one is noticing it. why, when you come to a washing you come to laugh, to sing, to talk, and to have a good time; but you do naught but mope." and mengette gave the garments she was washing a vicious thump with the clothes-beater. "well, i haven't moped so much but that my clothes are as clean as the ones you are washing," retorted jeanne, holding up some linens for inspection, and regarding her friend with a quizzical glance. "mengette, those poor garments will be beaten to a thread if you pound them much harder." mengette let her paddle drop, and pushed back her hair with her wet hands. "i'd willingly beat them to a thread to hear you laugh, jeanne. now come up closer, and i will tell you something that hauviette told me last night. i don't want any one else to hear it." so, wooed for the time being from her thoughts, jeanne moved her washing table closer to her friend's, and the two girls were soon deep in a low toned conversation, punctuated by many peals of merriment. all along the bank of river the village women and girls kneeled over their box-shaped washing tables, open at one side, set in the water's edge, talking as they worked, or sometimes singing roundels and catches. as mengette had said, the pleasure of washing lay in the meeting of many women and girls, and in the chatting, laughter and news-telling between the thump, thump of the clothes-beaters. the sound of the paddles could be heard along the valley as they beat and turned and dipped and turned again the coarse garments of their families. thus labor that would have proved irksome performed by two or three alone was lightened by the communion and fellowship of the many. it was pleasant by the river, despite the heat of the day. bluebells and tall white plumes of spiræa vied with the brownish-yellow of mignonette and the rose of meadow pink in embroidering a delicate tracery of color against the vivid green of the valley. the smell of new mown hay made the air fragrant, and hills and meadows smiled under a cloudless sky. the workers laughed, and sang, and chatted, plying always the paddles; but at length the washing was finished. the sun was getting low behind the domremy hills when the last snowy pieces were stretched upon the grass to bleach, and then, piling large panniers high with the garments that were dried the women lifted them to their backs, thrusting their arms into the plaited handles to steady them, and so started homeward. isabeau romée lingered to speak to her daughter. "leave the tables and paddles, little one," she said, as she saw jeanne preparing to take them from the water. "i will send the boys for them, and you have done enough for one day. know you where the lads are? i have seen naught of them since dinner." "father said that since the hay was cut, and there was no sign of rain, they might have the afternoon for themselves, mother. i think they went somewhere down the river to fish." "'tis most likely," said isabeau. "i hope that they will not meet the maxey boys anywhere. if they do, home will they come all bruised and bleeding, for never do boys from this side of the river meet those from the lorraine side that there is not a fight. i like it not." "'tis because the boys of domremy and greux are armagnacs, and those of maxey-sur-meuse are burgundians," explained jeanne, who did not know that ever since the world has stood boys of one village always have found a pretext to fight lads of another, be that pretext the difference between armagnacs and burgundians, or some other. "how can they help it, mother, when even grown people fight their enemies when they meet?" "true; 'tis no wonder that they fight when there is naught but fighting in the land." isabeau sighed. "would there were no war. but there, child, let's talk of it no more. i weary of strife, and tales of strife. since the boys are somewhere along the river they needs must pass the bridge to come home. do you, therefore, wait here for them, and tell them that they are to bring the tables and the paddles home. i will go on to get the supper." "very well, mother," assented jeanne. so while her mother went back to the cottage, the great pannier of clothes towering high above her head, the little girl rinsed the box-shaped washing tables carefully, then drew them high on the banks; after which she sat down near the bridge to watch for her brothers. she did not have long to wait. suddenly there came shouts and cries from the lorraine side of the river, and soon there came jean and pierre, her brothers, followed by other domremy lads running at full speed, and in their wake came many maxey boys, hurling insults and stones at their fleeing adversaries. on pierre's head was a long, deep gash that was bleeding freely, and at that sight jeanne burst into tears. she could not bear the sight of blood, and a fight made her cower and tremble. at this juncture there came from the fields gérardin d'Épinal, a burgundian, and the only man in domremy who was not of the king's party. he gave a great laugh as he saw the boys of his own village running from those of maxey. then knowing how loyal jeanne was to the dauphin, he cried teasingly: "that is the way that the burgundians and english are making the 'little king of bourges' run. (a term applied to the dauphin charles by his enemies.) soon he will be made to leave france, and flee into spain, or perhaps scotland, and then we will have for our sovereign lord, henry king of england and france." at that jeanne grew white. her tears ceased to flow, and she stood up very straight and looked at him with blazing eyes. "i would that i might see thy head struck from thy body," she said in low intense tones. then, after a moment, she crossed herself and added devoutly: "that is, if it were god's will, gérardin d'Épinal." the words were notable, for they were the only harsh words the girl used in her life. long afterward gérardin d'Épinal told of them. now he had the grace to blush, for he had not meant to rouse the little creature to such passion. with a light laugh he turned and went his way, saying: "don't take such things so much to heart, jeanne." the domremy boys had reached their own side of the river by this time, and therefore were safe from further attack from their rivals. now they gathered about jeanne, for they had heard what she had said to gérardin. "how did you come to speak so to him, jeanne?" cried jean. jeanne hung her head. "i don't know," she answered. "yes; it was because of what he said about the gentle dauphin; and too, i think, because of the cut in pierre's head." and with that she put her arm about her brother, and drew him to her. "does it hurt much?" she asked tenderly. "come! let me wash it off before we go home. mother likes not to see blood." "and neither do you," exclaimed pierre, noting her pale face. "don't bother about it, jeanne. it doesn't hurt very much." he shrugged his shoulders with assumed indifference. "mother will not like it because you have been fighting," went on the girl gravely. "we didn't mean to, jeanne," broke in jean quickly. "we came to the river to fish, but some of the burgundian boys came to the other side, and began to call us names, saying that we didn't dare to come over and fight. we ran back to the village, and told the other boys who came back with us to show the maxeys that we did dare, but not one of them was to be seen. so we crossed the bridge to the lorraine side anyway, and--" "they set upon us," interrupted pierre excitedly. "they had hidden in the bushes and behind trees, and as soon as we were fairly among them they threw themselves upon us. 'twas an ambuscade just like when roland was set upon at roncesvalles." "and did the domremy boys give a good account of themselves?" queried jeanne anxiously. "and how did you get the gash?" jean looked embarrassed. "i did it," he said at length. "it was like olivier did to roland. you see we were all so mixed up when the maxey boys fell upon us that we couldn't tell which were our boys, and which were not. so, in striking out with a stick that i carried, i thwacked pierrelot on the head instead of one of them as i intended. but i made up for it afterward; didn't i, pierre?" pierre laughed as he nodded affirmation. "so did i," he said. "i knew that jean would feel bad about hitting me, so we both made the burgundians pay for it. do we have to carry the tables and the paddles home, jeanne? or aren't you through washing yet?" "yes; we have finished, pierre. mother said for you boys to carry the tables home, but since you are hurt i will help jean with them." "pouf! why, 'tis nothing but a scratch," cried pierrelot. "and you have been washing, too. i'll carry my share, jeanne. now let's be getting home. i'm hungry as a wolf." "so am i," declared jean. the supper was waiting when they reached the cottage, and the boys' story of the ambuscade was related again to their father and mother, who listened sympathetically. in the midst of the recital jeanne slipped out, and went across the garden to the little church to vespers. there was no one in the church but the curé, and the good priest smiled as his little parishioner entered. he was always sure of one auditor, whatever the state of the weather, for jeanne attended all services. in one transept was an image of saint catherine, the patron saint of young girls, and before this the child knelt in prayer. it was deemed presumptuous for christians to address god directly in prayer at this period, so that prayers were made to the saints, who were asked to make intercession for the suppliant. so jeanne made her supplication to the saint, and then took her seat, for the people were coming in for the service. messire guillaume frontey, the priest, led them through a short benediction service, and comforted and refreshed,--jeanne had been much wearied by the day's work and religion was to her as the breath of life,--the child passed out into the garden. there was a sweet coolness in the evening air, and the darkness was soft and agreeable after the glare of the summer sun. so pleasant was the night that jeanne stopped under an apple tree, loath to enter the warm cottage. presently, through the darkness, there came the light that she had seen before. a light so bright, so glowing in its radiance that she sank to her knees awed by the luminosity. she was not so frightened as when it had come before, yet still she dared not lift her eyes to gaze upon its wonder. tremblingly she waited for the voice that she knew would follow. as it spake the bells of the church began to ring for compline. mingled with their chimes sounded tones so sweet that her eyes filled at their tenderness: "i come from god to help thee live a good and holy life," it said. "be good, jeanne, and god will aid thee." that was all. the light faded gradually, and when it was gone jeanne rose to her feet. "it was the voice of an angel," she whispered in awed tones. "the voice of an angel, and it spoke to me." and from that time forth jeanne d'arc had no doubt but that an angel had spoken to her. to children, especially religious little ones, heaven is always very near, and that one of its denizens should come to them does not seem so improbable as it does to mature minds. for some time she stood lost in wonderment at the miraculous happening, then slowly and thoughtfully she went into the cottage, going at once to her own little room. this room was on the side of the cottage toward the church where the eaves sloped low. from her tiny window she could see the sacred light on the altar, and with hands clasped, jeanne knelt before the open sash, gazing devoutly upon it. it seemed to her that the threshold of heaven was reached by that little church. chapter vii further visions "_angels are wont to come down to christians without being seen, but i see them._" jeanne d'arc's _own words._ j. e. j. quicherat, "_condamnation et réhabilitation de jeanne d'arc._" _vol. i._, p. . from this time forth the voice became frequent. again and again she heard it; chiefly out of doors, in the silence and freedom of the fields or garden. in time the heavenly radiance resolved itself into the semblance of a man, but with wings and a crown on his head: a great angel, surrounded by many smaller ones. the little maid knew him by his weapons and the courtly words that fell from his lips to be saint michael, the archangel who was provost of heaven and warden of paradise; at once the leader of the heavenly hosts and the angel of judgment. often had jeanne seen his image on the pillar of church or chapel, in the guise of a handsome knight, with a crown on his helmet, wearing a coat of mail and bearing a lance. sometimes he was represented as holding scales. in an old book it is written that "the true office of saint michael is to make great revelations to men below, by giving them holy counsels." in very remote times he had appeared to the bishop of avranches and commanded him to build a church on mount tombe, in such a place as he should find a bull hidden by thieves; and the site of the building was to include the whole area trodden by the bull. the abbey of mont-saint-michel-au-péril-de-la-mer was erected in obedience to this command. about the time that jeanne was having these visions the english were attacking mont-saint-michel, and the defenders of the fortress discomfited them. the french attributed the victory to the all-powerful intercession of the archangel. therefore, saint michael was in a fair way to become the patron saint of the french instead of saint denys, who had permitted his abbey to be taken by the english. but jeanne knew nothing of what had happened in normandy. the apparition was so noble, so majestic in its appearance that at first the little maid was sore afraid, but his counsels were so wise and tender that they overcame her fear. one day he said to her: "saint catherine and saint margaret will come to thee. act according to their advice; for they are appointed to guide thee and counsel thee in all that thou hast to do, and thou mayest believe what they shall say unto thee." jeanne was glad when she heard this promise, for she loved both these saints. saint marguerite was highly honoured in the kingdom of france, where she was a great benefactress. she was the patron saint of flax spinners, nurses, vellum-dressers, and of bleachers of wool. saint catherine had a church at maxey on the other side of the meuse, and jeanne's little sister bore her name. often had she repeated the rhymed prayer that was used in the saint's honour throughout the valley of colors: "hail, thou holy catherine, virgin maid so pure and fine." both the saints were martyrs. jeanne had heard their stories many times from her mother, so she awaited their coming eagerly. it was in the woods, near the fairy tree, that they first came to her. it was a saturday, the day held sacred to the holy virgin, and jeanne made a little pilgrimage through the forest up the hill path beyond greux to the oratory of our lady of belmont. with her tiny savings the child had bought a candle to burn on the altar, and also carried wild flowers to make the holy place as fragrant as the forest at its doors. she finished her orisons, placed her candle on the altar and laid her flowers on the shrine, then slowly started down the hill path. soon, finding herself near the gooseberry spring, she knelt upon its brink for a drink from its pellucid waters. it was very quiet in the clearing about the spring, and over the grassy space lay a grateful shade. the day was warm, and after her drink jeanne sat down on a natural seat formed by the gnarled roots of a tree. her hands lay loosely, one reposing in the other in her lap. her head drooped, and she lost herself in thought. all at once an odour, marvellously sweet, diffused itself on the air about her. it was a perfume the like of which she had never inhaled before. she lifted her head quickly, and drew a long deep breath, glancing around her for the blossoms that emitted such fragrance. as she did so there came a slight rustling of leaves among the trees, and from the heavens there seemed to shoot downward a splendid effulgence. an unearthly light that flooded the place with glory. a look of rapture came into jeanne's face. she rose, and crossed herself devoutly, then curtsied low as from the splendor there issued two shining figures, clad like queens, with golden crowns on their heads, wearing rich and precious jewels. the little maid could not look upon their faces by reason of the dazzling brightness that proceeded from them, but she knelt and kissed the hem of their garments. gravely the saints returned her salutations, then spoke, naming each other to her. so soft and sweet were their tones that the sound filled her with a vague happiness, causing her to weep. "daughter of god," they said, "rise, and listen. we come to teach thee to live well that thou mayest be prepared for thy mission." further they spoke to her, but soon the brilliancy began to dim, and jeanne caught at their garments. "oh, do not leave me," she cried entreatingly. "take me with you." "nay," came the answer. "thy time is not yet, daughter of god. thy work is yet to be done." [illustration: often they appeared in the little garden] with these words the gentle forms disappeared, and jeanne flung herself upon the place where they had stood, weeping in an anguish of tenderness and longing. the saints visited her nearly every day after this. she met them everywhere; sometimes in the woods, or near the spring; often they appeared in the little garden close to the precincts of the church, and especially did they come when the bells were ringing for matins or compline. it was then that she heard the sweet words that they spoke most distinctly. so she loved the sound of the bells with which the voices mingled. soon she grew to call the visions "my voices," for the appearance of her visitors was always more imperfect to her than the message. their outlines and their lovely faces might shine uncertain in the excess of light, but the words were always plain. the piety and devotion of the girl deepened into a fervid wonder of faith. she put aside the gayety of girlhood, and lived a simple, devout, tender life, helping her mother, obeying her father, and doing what she could for every one. it seemed to her that she was one set apart, subject to the divine guidance. nor did she tell any one of her experiences, but locked the divine secret in her heart, showing forth the tenderness and gravity of one who bears great tidings. she became so good that all the village wondered at her, and loved her. "jeanne confesses oftener than any of you," the curé told his parishioners reprovingly. "when i celebrate mass i am sure that she will be present whether the rest of you are or not. would that more of you were like her! had she money she would give it to me to say masses." the good man sighed. money was not plentiful in domremy. but if she had not money the child gave what she had: flowers for the altars, candles for the saints, and loving service to all about her. she was an apt pupil in the school of her saints, and learned well to be a good child before she conned the great lesson in store for her. "jeanne grows angelic," isabeau remarked complacently one day to jacques. "there never was her like. so good, so obedient, she never gives me a bit of trouble. and what care she takes of her little sister! catherine has been hard to attend this summer, so fretful and ailing as she is, but jeanne can always quiet her. i know not what i should do without her. i am the envy of all the women in the village; for, they say, there is not another girl so good in the valley." but jacques d'arc frowned. "too quiet and staid is she for her age," he remarked. "have you marked, isabeau, that she no longer dances with the other children? nor does she romp, or play games with them. and the praying, and the church-going! there is too much of it for the child's good." "jacques!" exclaimed his wife in shocked tones. "how can you say that? the good curé commends jeanne for her devoutness. that can only do her good." "then what is it?" demanded the father impatiently. "could it be that some one is teaching the girl letters, that she is so quiet? learning of that sort works harm to a lass." his wife shook her head emphatically. "she knows not a from b, jacques. everything she knows is what she has learned from me. i have taught her the credo, the paternoster, the ave marie, and have told her stories of the saints: things that every well-taught child should know. she is skilled, too, in housework. i have seen to that. and as for sewing and spinning, there is not her equal in this whole valley. there is naught amiss, jacques. if there is, 'tis more likely the harm that she has received from tales of bloodshed which every passerby brings of the war. often do i wish that we did not live on the highroad." the good dame shook her head as she glanced through the open door of the cottage to the great road where even at that moment creaking wains were passing laden with the cloths of ypres and ghent. often instead of wagons there were men-at-arms, and isabeau feared the glitter of lances. in war it is not assault and plundering that takes the heart and saps the courage, but the ever present dread that they will happen. fugitives from the wars stopped for bite and sup, and recounted their stories which were often of great suffering. such tales have effect, and isabeau herself being influenced by them did not doubt but that her children were moved in like manner. "the children hear too much of battles, and the state of france," she added. "nay; such things make no lasting impression upon children, isabeau. it is well that they should know something of what goes on beyond the valley. perchance the child is threatened with the falling sickness. she wears no charm against it." it was an age of superstition. that jacques d'arc should believe that a charm could ward off epilepsy was only what all men believed at the time. he was an austere man, but fond of his family, and his daughter's quietness and growing devoutness had aroused in him a feeling of uneasiness. "there is naught amiss with the child, jacques," spoke his wife, consolingly. "she would come to me with it if there were. she is becoming more thoughtful as she grows older; that is all." "i like it not," grumbled jacques, shaking his head as though but half convinced. "i much fear that something is wrong. it is not fitting that so young a girl should be so pious. is not that a friar turning in from the highway, isabeau?" chapter viii jeanne receives a gift and an announcement "_great hearts alone understand how much glory there is in being good._" _a saying of old france._ isabeau glanced toward the man who was nearing the cottage. he was clad in the frock of the order of saint francis, and was carrying a heavy staff. "'tis one of the grey friars," she exclaimed; "and supper is not yet started. i must hurry to get it upon the table, for he may be hungry." "if it is a grey friar let him get on to neufchâteau," grumbled jacques. "they have a house there, and 'tis but five miles further on." "jacques," ejaculated his wife reprovingly, "what are you saying? the poor father may be weary. if he were a man-at-arms you would give him welcome." "if he were a man-at-arms he would have something worth hearing to tell," retorted jacques. in spite of his words, however, he rose as the friar came to the door, and saluted him but with scant courtesy. "pax vobiscum, my son," said the friar humbly. "perchance for the love of god you will give a poor brother of the order of the blessed francis somewhat to eat, and a place to abide for the night. i have travelled far, and am aweary." "enter, father," spoke jacques shortly. "supper will soon be upon the table, and a bed shall be made for you." "thank you, my son. a benediction upon you, and upon your house," returned the priest so mildly that jacques' manner softened. he was not usually churlish to guests, unbidden though they might be; but he was anxious and uneasy over his daughter, and her fervid zeal for the church caused him to regard churchmen with temporary disfavor. at the monk's tone, however, he threw wide the door and gave him a seat with more show of cordiality. the friar had scarcely seated himself before jeanne entered, bearing a flagon of fresh water and a cup which she carried directly to him. bending low before him she said gently: "drink, good father. you must be thirsty." "i am, my child." the franciscan quaffed the water gratefully, saying, as he gave back the cup: "i have travelled many leagues, even from rome, where i have been upon a pilgrimage." "from rome?" ejaculated jacques d'arc, turning round with eagerness. "hear you that, isabeau? the holy man has been to rome. hasten with the supper; he must be hungry." with this he busied himself to make the priest more comfortable. to make a pilgrimage to rome cast a glamour of sanctity about him who made it, and exalted him in the eyes of all men. [illustration: "the holy man has been to rome"] jeanne smiled as her father and mother bustled about the friar, and quietly occupied herself with preparations for the supper. it was soon ready, and eaten with all the hearty relish of honest, human hunger. after it was over the best place by the fire was given the friar--already the evenings were beginning to grow chill--and the family gathered around him. as has been said before, in return for their entertainment travellers were expected to regale their hosts with whatsoever news they might be possessed of, or with tales of their travels or adventures. the franciscan proved to be most agreeable. he told of his pilgrimage, and described at length the appearance of the holy city. he spoke also of having seen and spoken with the holy colette of corbie, that famous nun whose miracles of healing were then the wonder of the christian world. at this they crossed themselves, and were silent for a little from very awe from having among them a man who had been so favored. then isabeau, who was devoted to sacred things and saintly legends, said timidly: "perchance, good father, you have about you a relic, or a ring that hath been touched by the blessed sister colette?" "would that i had," spoke the friar devoutly. "i would cherish it above all things, but i have not. it is true, however, that i have a ring. it hath not been blessed, nor does it possess power to perform miracles. nathless, it does have great virtue, having been made by a holy man, and by reason of herbs, which have been curiously intermingled with the metal under the influence of the planets, is a sovereign charm against the falling sickness." jacques looked up with quick interest. "let us see the ring, messire," he said. "that is, if it please you." "it pleases me right well," answered the friar, drawing a small ring from the bosom of his frock. it was of electrum, a kind of brass at this time called the gold of the poor. it was an ordinary trifle, but to the peasant and his family it was rich and wonderful. there was no stone or seal, but a broad central ridge, and two sloping sides engraved with three crosses, and the names jesus and maria. such rings were common; sometimes instead of the holy names there were figures of saints, the virgin mary, or a priest with the chalice. a ring, an amulet, a relic that was supposed to be blessed, or to have virtue against disease appealed to the marvel loving part of their natures, so that the people eagerly sought such articles. they desired above all else to possess the precious thing, or that they might touch it with some treasured possession that some of its virtues might pass into themselves. so now jacques' eyes met those of his wife's in a glance of understanding. isabeau voiced the thought that filled them. "would you sell this ring, good father?" she asked. "nay; it is not for sale. i but showed it in lieu of a precious relic. 'tis but a bauble compared to many holy relics that i have seen. nathless, the ring hath its properties." jacques handed the ring back to him with regret showing plainly on his honest face. "that i am sorry to hear," he said. "the little one here hath no charm against the falling sickness, and i am minded to buy it for her. she has been o'er quiet of late." the friar glanced at jeanne, who had sat listening attentively to his stories with shining eyes. then he smiled. "if it is for this little maid who waited not to be bidden to bring me drink when i was weary and thirsty, i will sell," he said. "nay, not sell; but if ye are so minded to give alms for a convent that is being builded by the sisters of saint claire, then may you have it. i know in very truth that it will prove efficacious against the falling sickness." again the priest smiled at jeanne. there was naught about the pale purity of her face that denoted ill health, and therefore the good priest might speak with authority. jacques drew the girl to him, and taking the ring from the franciscan fitted it to the third finger of her left hand. "do you like it, my little one?" he asked. jeanne's eyes glistened. like most girls she was fond of pretty things, and she had never had a ring. to her it was very precious. "are you in truth going to get it for me, father?" she cried. "yes." jacques nodded, pleased that she liked the trifle. "isabeau, give the father the alms he wishes so that we may have the ring for the little one. it is given to you by both your mother and myself, my child," he continued as isabeau brought forth the alms for the friar. "wear it as such, and may it protect you not only from the falling sickness but from other ills also." at this jeanne threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him, then running to her mother kissed her also. "it is so pretty," she cried. "and see! it hath the two most holy names upon it." her glance rested lovingly upon the engraved characters. "let us see it, jeanne," spoke pierre. "sometime," he whispered as she came to him to show it, "sometime i am going to give you a ring all by myself that shall be prettier than this." jeanne laughed. "just as though any ring could be prettier than this, pierrelot," she said. "there couldn't be one; could there, jean?" "nenni." jean shook his head emphatically as he examined the ring critically. "i like it better than the one mengette wears." "the blessed colette hath a ring which the beloved apostle gave to her in token of her marriage to the king of kings," now spoke the cordelier. "many are there who come to corbie to touch it, that they may be healed of their infirmities." thus the talk went on; sometimes of the saints and their miracles, then verging to the war, and the state of the kingdom. it was late when at length the family retired. jeanne was delighted with the gift. as a usual thing peasants did not bestow presents upon their families. life was too severe in the valley, and necessities too hard to come by in the ferment of the war to admit of it. when next her saints appeared, and saint catherine graciously touched the ring, jeanne's joy knew no bounds. thereafter she was wont to contemplate it adoringly. but, while the ring might be sovereign against epilepsy, it did not rouse her into her oldtime joyousness. she was very grave, very thoughtful, very earnest at this time. she went on thinking for others, planning for others, sacrificing herself for others, just as always before. she ministered to the sick and to the poor, and gave her bed to the wayfarer as always, performing all her duties with sweet exactness, but she was quiet and abstracted. for her saints came with greater frequency than ever now, and constantly they spoke to her of her mission. "what can they mean?" she asked herself. "what is it that i am to do?" but weeks passed before she was told. the smiling summer merged into autumn, the season of heavy rains. brooks rushed down from the hills, and the meuse was swollen into a torrent, deep and rapid, which overflowed its banks in shallow lagoons. the clouds grew lower, leaning sullenly against the vosges hills. fogs came down thick and clinging. the river was rimed with frost. snow and sleet drove along the marches, and it was winter. the valley of colors lay grave, austere, and sad; no longer brilliantly hued, but clothed in a garb of white which gleamed palely when the clouds were scattered by the rays of a red, cold sun. there was no travel along the highway, and the gray, red-roofed villages were forced to depend upon themselves for news and social intercourse. to all appearance life in the house of jacques d'arc went as peacefully, as serenely, as that of his neighbors, and in no wise differently. there was not one who suspected that jeanne visited with saints and angels; that she walked with ever listening ear for the voices to tell her what her divine mission was to be. no one suspected it, for even her youthful friendships continued, and she visited and was visited in turn by mengette and hauviette; often passing the night with one or the other of them as has been the fashion of girls since the beginning of time. both the girls rallied her on her changed spirits. "every one says that you are the best girl in the village, but that you are odd," hauviette confided to her one day in winter when she and mengette were spending the afternoon with jeanne. the latter glanced up from her spinning with a smile. "and what do you say, hauviette?" "i say that you are better than any of us," answered her friend quickly. "still," she hesitated, and then spoke abruptly, "there is a change though, jeanne. you are not so lively as you were. you never dance, or race with us, or play as you were wont to do. what is the matter?" "i know," cried mengette. "she goes to church too much. and she prays too often. my! how she does pray! perrin le drapier told me that when he forgot to ring the bells for compline she reproached him for not doing his duty, because she loved to pray then." "don't you, mengette?" asked jeanne quickly. "oh, yes. why, of course," answered mengette. "but i don't give the sexton cakes to ring the bells when he forgets them. you are getting ready to be a saint, aren't you?" jeanne blushed scarlet at this, and did not speak. "she is that already," broke in hauviette. "perhaps she does not feel like playing or dancing." "that's it," spoke jeanne suddenly, giving her friend a grateful glance. "i don't feel like it any more." "then we shan't ask you to do it any more," declared hauviette, who loved her dearly. "and you shan't be teased about it, either. so there now, mengette!" "oh, if she doesn't feel like it, that's different," exclaimed mengette, who was fond too of jeanne in her own fashion. "but i do wish you did, jeanne. there's not half the fun in the games now as there was when you played. but i won't say anything more about it. you'll feel better about it by and by." so the matter was not referred to again by the two girls, though the change in jeanne became more and more marked, as the days went by. winter was nearing its close when at last she was told what her mission was to be. it was saint michael who unfolded it to her. it was a cold morning, and the little maid had been to early mass. there had not been many present, and the house was cold, but the curé smiled tenderly when he saw the small figure in its accustomed place, and jeanne's heart glowed in the sunshine of his approval. so she did not mind the chill of the church, but started on her return home in an uplifted and exalted frame of mind. to the child, nourished on sacred things, religion was as bread and meat. and then, all at once, the light came. it was of unusual splendor, and glowed with hues that stained the snow covered earth with roseate tints like those of the roses of paradise. from the dazzling effulgence emerged the form of saint michael, clothed in grandeur ineffable. in his hand he held a flaming sword, and around him were myriads of angels, the hosts of heaven whose leader he was. the old fear fell upon jeanne at sight of his majesty, and she sank tremblingly upon her knees, covering her face with her hands. but when the tender, familiar: "be good, jeanne, and god will help thee," fell from his lips, she ceased a little to tremble. then with infinite gentleness the archangel began to speak to her of france, and the "pity there was for it." he told her the story of her suffering country: how the invader was master in the capital; how he was all powerful in the country north of the loire; how internally france was torn and bleeding by the blood feud between the duke of burgundy and the disinherited dauphin; how great nobles robbed the country which they should have defended, and how bands of mercenaries roved and plundered. the rightful king soon must go into exile, or beg his bread, and france would be no more. the young girl's heart already yearned over the woes of her distressed country, but now it swelled almost to bursting as she heard the recital from angelic lips. the "great pity that there was for france" communicated itself to her, and she felt it in every chord of her sensitive nature. the great angel concluded abruptly: "daughter of god, it is thou who must go to the help of the king of france, and it is thou who wilt give him back his kingdom." but at this jeanne sprang to her feet, astounded. "i, messire? i?" "even thou, jeanne. it is thou who must fare forth into france to do this. hast thou not heard that france ruined by a woman shall by a virgin be restored? thou art the maid." but terrified and weeping the girl fell prostrate before him. "not i, messire. oh, not i. it cannot be." "thou art the maid," was all he said. with this jeanne found herself alone. chapter ix the charge is accepted "_i, too, could be content to dwell in peace, resting my head upon the lap of love, but that my country calls._" southey. "_joan of arc_," _book i._ "thou art the maid." over and over the young girl repeated the words in a maze of incredulity and wonder. that she, jeanne d'arc, should be chosen for such a divine commission was unbelievable. she was poor, without learning, a peasant girl who had no powerful friends to take her to the court, and ignorant of all that pertained to war. her judgment and common sense told her that such a thing could not be. true, the ancient prophecy of merlin, the magician, said that a maiden from the bois chesnu in the march of lorraine should save france. true also was the fact that from her infancy she had played in that ancient wood; could even then behold its great extent from her father's door. yet, despite these actualities, it could not be that she was the delegated maid. so, while the archangel came again and again urging the high mission with insistency the girl protested shrinkingly. time after time he said: "daughter of god, thou shalt lead the dauphin to reims, that he may there receive worthily his anointing." again and again jeanne replied with tears: "i am but a poor girl, messire. i am too young to leave my father and my mother. i can not ride a horse, or couch a lance. how then could i lead men-at-arms?" "thou shalt be instructed in all that thou hast to do," she was told. as time passed, unconsciously jeanne became filled with two great principles which grew with her growth until they were interwoven with every fibre of her being: the love of god, and the desire to do some great thing for the benefit of her country. her heart ached with the longing. so it came about that the burden of france lay heavy upon her. she could think of nothing but its distress. she became distrait and troubled. gradually, as the voices of her heavenly visitants grew stronger and more ardent, the soul of the maiden became holier and more heroic. she was led to see how the miraculous suggestion was feasible; how everything pointed to just such a deliverance for france. her country needed her. from under the heel of the invader where it lay bruised and bleeding it was calling for redemption. and never since the morning stars sang together has there been sweeter song than the call of country. ever since the paladins of charlemagne, as the chanson de roland tells, wept in a foreign land at the thought of "sweet france," frenchmen had loved their native land and hated the foreigner. what wonder then, that when the divine call came, it was heard and heeded? she still resisted, but her protests were those of one who is weighing and considering how the task may be accomplished. months passed. there came a day in may, , when jeanne's indecision ended. she was sixteen now, shapely and graceful, and of extraordinary beauty. it was a saturday, the holy virgin's day, and the girl set forth on her weekly pilgrimage to the chapel of bermont, where there was a statue of the virgin mother with her divine child in her arms. jeanne passed through greux, then climbed the hill at the foot of which the village nestled. the path was overgrown with grass, vines, and fruit-trees, through which she could glimpse the green valley and the blue hills on the east. deeply embedded in the forest the chapel stood on the brow of the hill, and she found herself the only votary. she was glad of this, for to-day jeanne wished to be alone. prostrating herself before the statue, she continued long in prayer; then, comforted and strengthened, she went out of the chapel, and stood on the wooded plateau. to all appearance she was gazing thoughtfully off into the valley; in reality she waited with eager expectancy the coming of her celestial visitants. very much like a saint herself jeanne looked as she stood there with uplifted look. there was in her face a sweetness and serenity and purity that reflected her spiritual nature. her manner was at once winning, inspiriting and inspired. she did not have long to wait for the appearance of saint michael. long communing with her saints had robbed her of all fear in their presence, so now when the archangel stood before her jeanne knelt, and reverently kissed the ground upon which he stood. "daughter of god," he said, "thou must fare forth into france. thou must go. thou must." for a moment jeanne could utter no reply. she knew that the command must be obeyed. she had sought the retirement of the forest that she might inform her saints that she accepted the charge, and she most often met them in the silence and quiet of the fields, the forest, or garden. she had sought them to tell them of her decision, but at the thought of leaving her father, her mother, her friends, and the valley she loved so well, her courage faltered. faintly she made her last protest: "i am so young," she said. "so young to leave my father and my mother. i can sew; can use with skill either the needle or the distaff, but i can not lead men-at-arms. yet if it be so commanded, if god wills it, then i--" her voice broke, and she bent her head low in submission before him. at her words the wonderful light burst into marvellous brilliancy. it drenched the kneeling maiden in its dazzling radiance, pervading her being with a soft, warm glow. the faith that power would be given her to accomplish what was required of her was born at this instant; thereafter it never left her. when the archangel spoke, he addressed her as a sister: "rise, daughter of god," he said. "this now is what you must do: go at once to messire robert de baudricourt, captain of vaucouleurs, and he will take you to the king. saint margaret and saint catherine will come to aid you." and jeanne d'arc arose, no longer the timid, shrinking peasant girl, but jeanne, maid of france, consecrated heart and soul to her country. the time had come when she must go forth to fulfill her incredible destiny. henceforth she knew what great deeds she was to bring to pass. she knew that god had chosen her that through him she might win back france from the enemy, and set the crown on the head of the dauphin. it was late when at length she left the precincts of the chapel, and passed down the hill path, and on to the fields of domremy. pierre was at work in one of the upland meadows, and as he wielded the hoe he sang: "dread are the omens and fierce the storm, o'er france the signs and wonders swarm; from noonday on to the vesper hour, night and darkness alone have power; nor sun nor moon one ray doth shed, who sees it ranks him among the dead. behold our bravest lie dead on the fields; well may we weep for france the fair, of her noble barons despoiled and bare." it was the song of roland. the song that no french heart can hear unmoved. jeanne thrilled as she heard it. did pierre too feel for their suffering country? swiftly she went to him, and, throwing her arm across his shoulder, sang with him: "yet strike with your burnished brands--accursed who sells not his life right dearly first; in life or death be your thought the same, that gentle france be not brought to shame." pierre turned toward her with a smile. "how you sang that, jeanne. just as though you would like to go out and fight for france yourself." "i would," she replied quickly. "wouldn't you, pierrelot?" something in her tone made the boy look at her keenly. "how your eyes shine," he said. "and somehow you seem different. what is it, jeanne? the song?" "partly," she told him. "well, it does make a fellow's heart leap." the youth spoke thoughtfully. "it always makes me feel like dropping everything to go out to fight the english and burgundians." "we will go together, pierrelot," spoke his sister softly. "we--" "what's that about going to fighting?" demanded their father, who had drawn near without being perceived. "let me hear no more of that. pierre, that field must be finished by sundown. jeanne, your mother has need of you in the house. there is no time for dawdling, or singing. go to her." "yes, father." dutifully the maiden went at once to the cottage, while pierre resumed his hoeing. the conversation passed from the lad's mind, but it was otherwise with jacques d'arc. he had heard his daughter's words, "we will go together, pierrelot," and they troubled him. the following morning he appeared at the breakfast table scowling and taciturn, making but small pretence at eating. presently he pushed back from the table. his wife glanced at him with solicitude. "what ails you, jacques?" she queried. "naught have you eaten, which is not wise. you should not begin the day's work upon an empty stomach." "shall i get you some fresh water, father?" asked jeanne. jacques turned upon her quickly, and with such frowning brow that, involuntarily, she shrank from him. "hark you," he said. "i dreamed of you last night." "of me, father?" she faltered. "yes. i dreamed that i saw you riding in the midst of men-at-arms." at this both jean and pierre laughed. "just think of jeanne being with soldiers," exclaimed jean. "why, she would run at sight of a godon." but there was no answering smile on the face of their father. according to his belief there was but one interpretation to be put upon such a dream. many women rode with men-at-arms, but they were not good women. so now, bringing his fist down upon the table with a resounding thwack, he roared: "rather than have such a thing happen, i would have you boys drown her in the river. and if you would not do it, i would do it myself." jeanne turned pale. instantly it was borne in upon her that her father must not know of her mission. she knew that if now she were to tell of the wonderful task that had been assigned to her she would not be believed, but that he would think ill of her. at this juncture her mother spoke, chidingly: "how you talk, jacques. what a pother to make over a dream. come now! eat your breakfast, and think no more of it." but jacques only reiterated his words fiercely: "i would drown her rather than have a daughter of mine among soldiers." jeanne glanced at her brothers, but their countenances were grave enough now, for they comprehended their father's meaning. a sudden sense of aloofness, of being no longer part and parcel of her family, smote her. the tears came and overflowed her cheeks, for she was but a girl after all. to hide her grief she rose hastily, and ran to her own little room. chapter x the first step "_on the subject of jeanne's sincerity i have raised no doubts. it is impossible to suspect her of lying; she firmly believed that she received her mission from her voices._" anatole france. "_joan of arc._" from this time forth jeanne's family could not fail to notice the change that marked her bearing and appearance. her eyes glowed with the light of a steadfast purpose, and the serene thoughtfulness of her countenance was illumined by a brightness that was like the rosy flush of dawn stealing upon the pale coldness of the morning. she was still simple in manner, but her shrinking timidity had vanished, and in its stead had come decision and an air of authority. she bore herself nobly, as became one who had been vested with the leadership of a divine mission. yet of this outward expression of authority she was unconscious. the thought that filled her to the exclusion of all else was how she was to proceed to accomplish her task. for there were three things that she had to do for the saving of her country: first: she must go to robert de baudricourt at vaucouleurs. second: she must win back france from her enemies. third: she must lead the dauphin to his anointing at reims. how these things were to be brought to pass she did not know. the walled town of vaucouleurs lay some twelve miles to the northward of domremy, and was the chief place of the district. its captain, robert de baudricourt, was well known throughout the valley of colors. he was a blunt, practical man of the sword, who had married two rich widows in succession, and who had been fighting since he could bear arms, in the reckless wars of the lorraine marches. he was brave as a lion, coarse, rough, domineering, an ideal soldier of his time and country. jacques d'arc had had personal dealings with him in the spring of the previous year when he had appeared before him to plead the cause of domremy against one guiot poignant, and he had many tales to tell of the rough governor. how could she approach such a man? there was no hope of help at home. that she foresaw clearly as she recalled her father's words concerning his dream. she knew that he would oppose her bitterly. nor would her mother aid her, deeply as she loved her, to go contrary to her father's will. neither would they allow her to journey to vaucouleurs unattended. the maiden made a mental review of the villagers in search of one to whom she might appeal for assistance, but rejected them sadly as their images passed before her. clearly she must bide her time. "but i must go soon," she mused. "it is the will of god." just at this juncture, when she knew not to whom to go, durand lassois, a cousin by marriage whom she called uncle because he was so much older than she, came to domremy on a visit. jeanne hailed his advent with eagerness. he lived with his young wife, who was isabeau's niece, in bury le petit, a hamlet lying on the left bank of the meuse in the green valley, nine miles from domremy, but only three from vaucouleurs. here was the help that she needed, for durand was fond of jeanne, and would do her bidding as unquestioningly as a mastiff obeys the child whom he adores. so when jeanne, taking him aside, asked him to take her home with him for a visit to her cousin, his wife, he assented readily. "aveline will be glad for you to come, jeanne," he said. "she is not well, and a visit from you will cheer her up." jacques d'arc made some objections when the subject was broached, but isabeau was pleased and over-ruled them. "it is the very thing," she exclaimed. "the child has been in need of a change this long while. nay, now, jacques, say naught against it. she shall go. i wonder that we did not think of sending her there ourselves." "it must be for only a week, then," said jacques. "a week is better than nothing," spoke durand lassois. "have no fear for her, jacques. she shall be well looked after." so a few days later the uncle and niece started for bury le petit by way of the hill path beyond greux. as they walked through the forest, fragrant with the breath of spring, jeanne said abruptly: "uncle durand, while i am at your house i wish you to take me to vaucouleurs to see sire robert de baudricourt." "you wish me to do what, child?" he asked in open-mouthed amazement. "to take me to vaucouleurs to see sire robert de baudricourt." "what for?" demanded lassois, staring at her. "so that he may send me to the place where the dauphin is, uncle. i must go into france to lead the dauphin to reims, that he may be crowned king there." into the peasant's honest face there came a troubled expression. slowly he passed his hand across his brow, then stopped in the path and looked at her. "it may be that we are walking too fast, little one," he said gently. "your mother said that you had not been well, and 'tis known that the sun sometimes plays strange tricks with the wits." "i am not daft, uncle, nor hath the sun unsettled my wits." jeanne showed neither surprise nor vexation at his words. "have you not heard that a woman should lose france, and that a maid should save france?" "i have heard it," admitted durand slowly. "what then, jeanne?" "i am that maid, uncle durand. i shall save france." she spoke in a tone of quiet conviction. the man drew a long breath and stared at her. he had known the maid all her short life. knew of her good deeds, her purity and truthfulness; knew that all that could be urged against her was the fault of going to church too frequently. so now, as he noted the clearness of her eyes and the calmness of her manner, he told himself that she believed what she said, and that whatever might be the nature of her affliction it was not madness. "you must believe me, uncle," spoke the girl pleadingly, "have i not always been truthful?" he nodded. "i am so now. i am called of god to win back france from her enemies, and to lead the dauphin to be crowned king at reims. i go to the captain of vaucouleurs that he may grant men to me to take me to the gentle dauphin. will you take me to sire robert?" lassois did not reply. he could not. he stood for a long moment utterly incapable of speech. jeanne went on in her soft, clear accents to tell him of her mission and of its divine origin. she was so earnest, she spoke with such assurance of the charge that had been laid upon her that in spite of himself durand believed her. to the natural mind the wonder is not that angelic visitors come to the pure and good, but that they come so seldom. he leaned forward suddenly, and said: "i'll take you to vaucouleurs, ma mie, if you wish to go. jacques won't like it, though. have you thought of that?" "i know, uncle, but it is the will of god. i must go," she told him. involuntarily lassois crossed himself. there was such a look of exaltation about the maiden that he felt as though he were in church. "i'll take you, jeanne," he said again. "but hark ye, child! there must be no word of your voices at the house. neither aveline nor her parents would believe you." "there will be many who will not believe me, uncle," sighed she. she thought of the dear ones at domremy who would not, and sighed again. "even sire robert will not." "then why go to him?" he demanded bluntly. "it is commanded," she answered. "later he will believe." so the compact was made, and jeanne had found the way to make the first step toward the fulfilling of her mission, and the journey was finished without further incident. however, it proved not so easy to leave for vaucouleurs as she supposed it would be. lassois and his young wife lived with her parents, the wife's mother being isabeau's sister was therefore jeanne's aunt. both mother and daughter welcomed their young kinswoman with delight, and took such pleasure in her society that they were unwilling that she should leave them even for a day. thus four days went by before durand was able to fulfill his promise. it was managed at last, however, and the maiden's heart beat high as they left bury le petit behind them, and set their faces toward vaucouleurs. being but a three mile journey it was quickly made. though born and bred in the valley it was the first time that she had ever seen the grim little fighting town where robert de baudricourt upheld the standard of the lilies against that of the leopard. therefore she looked about her with natural curiosity. the width of the valley lessened here. the hills pressed so closely upon the river that the meadows lay at the very feet of the town. within the walls the buildings clustered round the base of a hill upon which stood the castle of the governor and the church, overlooking the vast extent of hills and dominating the valley. without difficulty they entered the town, and climbed one of the narrow streets leading to the castle. the gates were open, for the bluff captain was easy of access to his followers and townsmen. a number of soldiers were scattered about the courtyard burnishing armour, sharpening swords, and all as busy and merry as valiant men-at-arms should be. they cast curious glances at the pair, the rustic countryman and his fair companion, but on the whole were civil enough, permitting them to pass without hindrance into an ante-chamber of the castle. "shall i not speak to sire robert first, jeanne?" questioned lassois, who became all at once awkward and diffident. secretly he hoped that the governor would refuse to see his young kinswoman. he feared his ridicule. jeanne shook her head. "let us go together, uncle durand. go thou to thy master, the sire robert," she added, turning to the page who now approached to learn what they wanted, "and tell him that jeanne, the maid, who comes with her uncle, would speak with him." "ye must wait," spoke the page pertly. "my master sits at meat." "nathless thou wilt take the message," spoke the girl so firmly and with so much of command that the youth's insolent air became at once respectful. "my lord's business is of importance. it must be attended to." the lad bowed, and left them. soon he returned, saying: "the sire captain says that you are to come to him. this way." with this he conducted them through many a windy passage to the banqueting chamber. a long table extended its length down the centre of the room, and around it were gathered the officers of the garrison. at the far end of this table stood a smaller one elevated above the other by a dais. at this table with three companions sat a brawny, gray-haired man whom jeanne knew at once was the governor. lassois, shy and ill at ease among so many gentles, stopped short just inside the door, and stood awkwardly twirling his cap in his hand. but jeanne, who had been wont to tremble and blush before strangers, was in no wise abashed, but with noble and courteous bearing proceeded directly to the small table. an involuntary exclamation of admiration escaped the rough soldier's lips. the girl was clad in the ordinary red homespun frock of the peasant, and her abundant hair was entirely hidden under the coif worn by all women, but neither the poor dress nor the coif could conceal her beauty. so robert de baudricourt's tones were as soft as his harsh voice would permit as he said: "thou art welcome, child. what wouldst thou have with me?" "i am come to you, sire robert, sent by messire," she answered fearlessly, "that you may send word to the dauphin and tell him to hold himself in readiness, but not to give battle to his enemies." a gasp of amazement came from sire robert. he did not speak, but, leaning forward, he regarded the maiden keenly. with perfect calm and self-possession she continued: "before mid lent my lord will grant him aid. but in very deed the realm belongs not to the dauphin. nathless it is messire's will that the dauphin should be king, and receive the kingdom in trust. notwithstanding his enemies the dauphin shall be king; and it is i who shall lead him to his anointing." a moment of silence followed this startling announcement. across the faces of the men-at-arms stole expressions of pity, then a murmur of compassion ran through the room as sire robert asked: "who is messire?" and jeanne answered, "he is the king of heaven." now it happened that just before lassois and jeanne entered the hall the governor and his men had been discussing the state of affairs in the country. it was noised about that the english were preparing for a new attack in force on the dauphin's territories south of the loire. it was rumored also that the little wedge of loyal territory in which vaucouleurs lay was to be the object of special attack by the burgundians. that a young peasant girl, accompanied by a rustic, should calmly inform him that she should straighten out the difficulties of distressed france appealed to robert as a huge joke. so, at her answer, he gave way to a great shout of laughter in which his men, as in duty bound, joined. sire robert had no sentiment, but was possessed of a coarse humour. again and again the rafters rang with his merriment. when the hilarity had somewhat subsided he beckoned lassois to draw near. "come hither, rustic," he said. "is this thy daughter?" "no," replied durand tremblingly. "she is the daughter of jacques d'arc." "so?" sire robert scanned the maid with new interest. "see you, my man," he said. "the girl is daft; clean daft. as witless an innocent as ever it has been my lot to behold. whip her well, and send her home to her father." whip her? lassois turned a startled glance upon the governor as though he had not heard aright. whip jeanne, who was so good and sweet? the very idea was profanation. cowed and frightened he grasped the maiden's arm. "come," he whispered. "let's be going." but calmly, courageously jeanne faced the governor. "i go, sire robert, but i shall come again. for it is you who are appointed by the will of messire to send me with an escort of men-at-arms to the aid of the dauphin. my voices have said so." mad though they deemed the maiden, the men-at-arms and their captain were impressed by the girl's gravity and noble bearing as she spoke. in silence, therefore, they permitted the pair to pass from the room. chapter xi a trying time "_a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house._" st. matthew : . at the end of the week lassois took jeanne home. it was a return fraught with unpleasantness. the girl's visit to sire robert and her claim that she would lead the dauphin to his anointing had been discussed and made a matter of sport by the soldiers of the garrison. from them it passed to the townspeople; from the townspeople to the country, and thence to domremy. the whole valley buzzed with talk of it. jacques heard the gossip in a passion of shame and anger. therefore, when lassois and his daughter entered the cottage he met them with scowling brow. "what is this that i hear about your visiting sire robert de baudricourt?" he demanded of jeanne wrathfully. "why did you go there? what business had you with him?" jeanne faced him bravely. "i had to go," she told him calmly. "it was commanded. sire robert has been appointed to give me men-at-arms to take me to the dauphin that i may lead him to his anointing. i am to save france, father. it is so commanded by messire, the king of heaven." her father's jaw dropped. he stood staring at her for a long moment, then turned to his wife with a groan. "she is out of her senses, isabeau," he cried. "our daughter's wits are wandering. this comes of so much church going and prayer. i will have no more of it." "shame upon you, jacques, for speaking against the church," exclaimed isabeau. "say rather it hath come from the tales of bloodshed she hath heard. too many have been told about the fireside. 'tis talk, talk of the war all the time. i warned you of it." "whatever be the cause i will have no more of it," reiterated jacques with vehemence. "nay; nor will i have any more going to vaucouleurs, nor talk of seeking the dauphin. do you hear, jeanne?" "yes, father," she answered quietly. "i grieve to go against your will, but i must do the work the lord has appointed. let me tell you--" "naught! you shall tell me naught," cried jacques almost beside himself with rage. "go to your room, and stay there for the rest of the day. and hark ye all!" including his wife and sons in a wide sweeping gesture, "wherever jeanne goes one of you must be with her. see to it. at any time she may go off with some roaming band of free lances. rather than have that happen i would rather she were dead." he turned upon lassois fiercely as jeanne, weeping bitterly at his harsh words, obediently withdrew into her own little room. "and you, lassois! why did you not keep her from going to vaucouleurs? you knew that i would not like it. you knew also that it would cause talk. why, why did you permit it?" "aye, i knew all that, jacques," responded lassois, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. "but jeanne really believed that she had received a divine command to go to sire robert. so believing, she would have gone to him in spite of all that i could have done. therefore, was it not better that i should take her?" "durand speaks truly, jacques," spoke isabeau. "the child is clearly daft. i have heard that such are always set in their fancies. what is past, is past. she has been to vaucouleurs; therefore, it can not be undone. what remains to be done is to guard against any future wanderings." the mother was as greatly distressed as the father, but out of sympathy for his woe she forced herself to speak of the occurrence with calmness. "true," muttered jacques. "true. no doubt you could not do other than you did, durand; but i wonder that you did it." "jeanne does not seem out of her senses to me," observed lassois. "there is a saying, as you well know, that a maid from the bois chesnu shall redeem france. it might be she as well as another. she is holy enough." "pouf!" jacques snapped his fingers derisively. "it is as isabeau says: she has heard too much of the state of the realm, and of the wonderful maid who is to restore it. the country is full of the talk. it could not mean her. she is but a peasant girl, and when hath a villein's daughter ever ridden a horse, or couched a lance? let her keep to her station. don't let such wild talk addle your wits, too, durand. now tell me everything that occurred at vaucouleurs. the village rings with the affair. i want the whole truth." lassois did as requested, and told all of the happening. finding the girl's parents so incredulous concerning her mission had somewhat shaken his belief in his niece, but the germ that remained caused him to soften the narrative a little. jacques heard him through in silence. when durand had finished the telling he bowed his head upon his arms as though the recital were beyond his strength to bear. he was an upright man, just and honorable in his dealings with others. he stood well in the village, being esteemed next to the mayor himself. he was fond of his children, and had looked after their upbringing strictly. he wanted nothing out of the ordinary, nothing unusual, nothing but what was conventional and right to occur among them. he did not believe that his daughter had received a divine command. he did not know of her heavenly visitants, nor would he have believed in them had he known. he thought that someway, somehow, she had become imbued with a wild fancy to be among men-at-arms; that, in consequence, she might become a worthless creature. the mere idea was agony. after a time he raised his head to ask brokenly, "she told the sire captain that she would come again, durand?" "yes, jacques. she believes that she has been commanded so to do. she told you that; and whatever jeanne thinks is the will of god that she will do." "she deludes herself," spoke the father shortly, detecting the hint of faith underlying lassois' tone. "think you that the governor would listen to her if she were to go to him again?" lassois reflected. "no," he said presently. "i think he will not pay any attention to her." jacques brightened. "that is well," he nodded. "she shall not go if i can prevent it. she shall be guarded well. i shall see to it." thereafter a strict watch was kept upon jeanne's every movement. one of her brothers, or jacques d'arc himself, was always with her. instead of the tenderness that her father had always shown toward her there was now harshness and severity. her mother too, though far from being cruel, was querulous and often spoke sharply to her. isabeau knew her child's pure heart too well to believe that the girl was actuated by any but the highest motives. she did think, however, that the child's wits wandered, though the maiden performed her customary duties with care and exactness, and was worried and distressed in consequence. in the village jeanne found herself avoided. with the exception of mengette and hauviette her friends shunned her. the little hamlet was in a ferment of tattle. whenever she appeared in any of the narrow streets heads were bent together and fingers pointed mockingly. often the whispers reached her. "there goes she who is to save france." "jeanne d'arc says she is to lead the dauphin to his anointing." it was a trying time. jeanne often shed tears over the jeers and taunts, but she wept in secret. outwardly serene she submitted meekly to the espionage of her own people, and to the gibes of her neighbors. had it not been for the consolation received from "her voices," life would have been unendurable. "be patient, daughter of god," they said. "it will not be long. all will be well. thy time will come soon." "your father grieves over you, jeanne," spoke isabeau one day after jacques, stung beyond endurance by some remark he had heard against his daughter, was taking her severely to task. "he is cut to the heart that you should have gone to vaucouleurs, and by your talk of the dauphin. you must not be angry with him." "i am not, mother," said the maiden sadly. "i know that he does not understand. nor do you; but you will--in time." she loved her parents dearly, and excused their rigorousness because she knew that they did not believe in her inspiration. often had she tried to explain matters, but they would not listen. "we understand only too well, little one," responded isabeau. "jacques fears that you are bent upon seeking sire robert again. i have told him that you will not." she gave jeanne a questioning glance as she finished speaking. "i must, mother. it is commanded." "jeanne, give o'er such talk," exclaimed her mother sharply. "where did you get such notions? the neighbors say that you got your affliction at l'arbre-des-fées. that you have been seen there alone, bewreathing the tree with garlands, and that while so doing you met a wicked fairy who was your fate. is it true?" "if there be fairies, mother, i have never seen them, and not in years have i carried wreaths to l'arbre-des-fées. i used to go there on laetare sunday with the boys and girls, but i go no longer. as to flowers, mother; i carry them only to the altar of our lady of belmont, or offer them here to the saints." "there is naught but good in that, so what makes the people talk so?" ejaculated the mother fretfully. "if you would but give up your talk of helping the dauphin this tittle-tattle might be stopped. as it is, jacques is distressed that you are so obdurate. he spoke to the curé about exorcising you for the evil spirit." "mother, did my father do that?" exclaimed the girl, the tears springing to her eyes. "oh, it is not to be." the good dame herself had not approved this measure. she was in truth almost as much exercised over her husband as she was over her daughter. "messire guillaume frontey would not hear of it, saying, that whatever might be the state of your wits your soul was as pure as a lily, because he confessed you almost daily. i advised jacques--" isabeau paused and subjected her daughter to a keen scrutiny, scarcely knowing how to proceed. she was in truth puzzled and a little awed by jeanne's new attitude and demeanor. presently she continued abruptly: "i was married when i was your age, jeanne." "were you, mother?" a slight smile stirred the corners of the girl's mouth. she saw what was coming. "yes; and mengette hath been betrothed since eastertide. she is to be married after the harvest." "she told me, mother." "and of all of the girls of your age you and hauviette alone remain unplighted. hauviette hath the excuse of being a little young, but you--you are sixteen, and quite old enough for a home and a husband, jeanne." "mother!" there was such appeal in the maiden's voice that isabeau, deeming it caused by the suddenness of the announcement, turned quickly with outstretched hands. "you must not talk of marriage to me. i shall remain unwed until my task is finished. i have vowed it to 'my voices.'" "pouf, child! a home of your own, and a husband to look after will soon make you forget such notions, and so i told jacques. come now, be reasonable! i know some one who would gladly provide such a home. let--" "while france writhes in agony under the heel of the invader there shall be no marriage for me," spoke jeanne firmly, turning to leave the room. "nathless, whether you like it or not, you shall be married," cried isabeau, nettled by the girl's words. "your father has determined on it. your plighted husband comes this evening to see you." jeanne stood aghast. she had not dreamed that her parents would go so far. she stood for a moment without speaking, then she said quietly: "my faith is plighted to none but my lord. no man has it, nor shall have it until messire's mission is completed. 'tis useless to speak of it." again she started to leave the room. "nathless, colin de greux will be here this evening," exclaimed isabeau thoroughly out of patience. colin? the merry nature that lay under jeanne's gravity surged upward, and a twinkle came into her eyes. all at once she laughed outright. her mother glanced at her quickly, surprised and relieved. "there! that's better," she said. "he will be here after supper, jeanne." "it matters not, mother." isabeau's relief changed to perplexity at the words. there was something in the tone that did not satisfy her, but as it was nearer to an affirmative than she had hoped for she was fain to make the best of the matter; so made no further remark. colin de greux came with the evening. he had grown tall with the years, and was not ill looking. he was still the same easy-going, lumbering, dull sort of fellow whose good opinion of himself rendered him impervious to rebuffs or coldness. he was not the youth that ordinarily isabeau would have chosen for her child, but jeanne had never encouraged attentions from the village lads, who now fought shy of her because of her extreme piety. desperate diseases require desperate remedies. jacques and isabeau judged that marriage even with colin was better than the fancies that filled their daughter's mind. beside, where another might be easily repulsed colin could be induced to continue his wooing. jeanne saw through this reasoning. she determined to make short shrift of colin. when the evening came, therefore, she took a hoe and went into the garden. colin found her there industriously at work among the artichokes. "how do you do, jeanne?" he said sheepishly. "very well indeed, colin." jeanne wielded the hoe vigorously, and gave no indication of quitting her seemingly absorbing task. there came a silence. had they been with the sheep on the uplands colin would have been thoroughly at ease. as it was there was something about the maiden's manner that disturbed his assurance. he had not been wont to feel so in her presence. "it's warm out here," he ventured presently. "perchance you will find it cooler in the house," intimated the girl sweetly. "the family will be there," he objected, looking suggestively at a bench under an apple tree. the youths and the maidens of domremy always sat together when the suitor was approved by the parents. jeanne's cool, steadfast gaze disconcerted him. "why, yes, colin, they will be there. you will find them all, i think. jean and pierre are with mother. did you wish to see them?" this roused colin. "no; i don't wish to see them," he said angrily. "i wish to talk to you, jeanne d'arc." "i am listening, colin." jeanne quietly finished the hill which she was hoeing, then began on the next row, which was further removed from the youth, the tall heads of the artichokes nodding stiffly between them. "but i can't talk while you are hoeing," he exclaimed. "and your father told me that i might talk to you." jeanne laid down the hoe, and confronted him. "colin," she said gravely, "mother told me that you would come, and why; but it is of no use. there are other girls in the village who would gladly marry you. i am resolved not to wed." "i don't want any other girl for a wife but you, jeanne. i have always liked you, and you know it. besides, your father--" "you cannot wed a girl against her will, colin, and i shall not marry you. i am talking plainly, so that you will understand, and not waste your time." "but you shall," muttered the boy wrathfully. "your father tells me that you shall." without a word jeanne turned from him, and flitted swiftly into the church. it was her sanctuary, for isabeau would not allow her devotions to be interrupted. sulkily colin re-entered the cottage. urged on by the girl's parents, he was thereafter a frequent visitor, but his wooing did not speed. somehow all his pretty speeches, all his self-assurance shriveled into nothingness when he was face to face with jeanne. and serenely the maiden went her way, ignoring alike her father's mandates, and her mother's entreaties to marry the lad. so sped the days. chapter xii a worsted suitor "_whatsoever thing confronted her, whatsoever problem encountered her, whatsoever manners became her in novel situations, she understood in a moment. she solved the problem, she assumed the manners, she spoke and acted as the need of the moment required._" andrew lang, "_the maid of france._" so the days sped. presently rumours of another and more startling nature ran through the valley. interest in jeanne d'arc, her mission, and colin's wooing paled before the news. it was noised that antoine de vergy, governor of champagne, had received a commission from the duke of bedford, regent of france for henry vi, to furnish forth men-at-arms for the purpose of bringing the castellany of vaucouleurs into subjection to the english. the greatest alarm prevailed when the report was confirmed, that the governor had in truth set forth. on the march, as was his custom, antoine de vergy laid waste all the villages of the loyal little wedge of territory with fire and sword. domremy with its adjoining village of greux lay in the southern part of the castellany, between bar and champagne, and was therefore directly in the line of attack. threatened again with a disaster with which they were only too well acquainted the folk of the two villages met in solemn conclave to determine what was to be done. men, women and children were in the assembly that had gathered before the little church to discuss the situation; their pale faces showing plainly that they realized to the full the calamity that menaced them. life, liberty and property were all at stake, for everything would be swept away by the ravaging antoine. the very imminence of the danger rendered them calm, but it was the calmness of despair. resistance to the force that was with antoine was out of the question, so what could they do? "and why not retire to the castle of the island, my children?" queried messire guillaume frontey, curé of domremy. "surely, it hath proved a good refuge in other times of need. is it not a secure stronghold?" "we fear not, father," responded a peasant. "sire antoine boasts that we can not hold it against him, as he knows of a secret passage whereby he can obtain entrance when he so chooses. we have made search for the passageway, but we cannot find it; though it is known to exist, for there be some in the village who have heard of it. against others we can hold the castle; against him we fear to try." "then may our lady preserve ye, my children," exclaimed the priest solemnly. "what can be done?" "this," cried jacques d'arc, suddenly elbowing his way through the people until he stood by the curé's side in full view of every one. "this, father, and friends: let us, as we fear to try the castle, gather our furniture in carts; then, driving our cattle and sheep before us, go to neufchâteau which, being a town of lorraine, will not be attacked. as you know, though it be a burgundian belonging, its sympathies are with the armagnacs." "that's it, jacques!" "well said!" came from the villagers in a chorus of approval. "when shall we go?" "better to-day than to-morrow, friends," shouted jacques. "better now than later. we know not when they will be upon us." there were cries of, "right, jacques!" followed by a hasty dispersal of the people to gather up their goods and cattle. a scene of disorder and confusion ensued as men and boys ran to the fields for the flocks and herds, which were quickly driven into the highroad, and women and girls stripped their linen chests and cupboards, and hurriedly piled their furnishings into ox carts. isabeau was weeping as she worked, for she might find the cottage burned and the village devastated upon her return. she had always known war. her mother and her mother's mother had known it. for ninety-one years it had raged, and the end was not yet. france was a wreck, a ruin, a desolation. throughout the land there was nothing but pillage, robbery, murder, cruel tyranny, the burning of churches and abbeys, and the perpetration of horrible crimes. seeing her grief jeanne went to her mother, and put her arms about her. "be not so sorrowful, mother," she said. "before many years are sped the war will have come to an end. and this is the last time that you will have to flee from the cottage." isabeau brushed away her tears and looked at her daughter steadily. "why do you speak so, jeanne?" she asked. "it is as though you knew." "yes, mother; i know. it will be as i say. and now let's get the rest of the furniture in the cart. father grows impatient." curiously enough, isabeau was comforted. she dried her eyes and gave way to grief no more. jacques came in and seeing jeanne so helpful, bringing order out of the chaos about her, spoke gently to her in quite his old tender manner. so that jeanne's heart was lighter than it had been since her return from bury le petit. the animals were in the highroad, the ox carts were drawn up behind them laden with the belongings of the villagers, the women and children stood ready, waiting for the word of departure to be given, to take up the line of march to neufchâteau, when they were thrown into the greatest confusion by the advent of a man-at-arms who rode among them at speed, crying: "march! march while there is time. vaucouleurs is attacked, and sire antoine hath started a body of men this way." he was gone before the startled villagers had time to question him. for a time the greatest excitement prevailed, but something like order was restored at length, and with lingering, despairing looks at the homes they were abandoning the village folk started toward neufchâteau, their market town, lying five miles to the southward of domremy. the day was excessively warm, and wearily the village folk followed the road through fields of wheat and rye, up the vine clad hills to the town. there were many of them, and their chattels were numerous, but the citizens received them cordially and lodged them as best they could. jacques conducted his family at once to the inn kept by a worthy woman, la rousse by name, whom he knew. the move from domremy had been made none too soon, for antoine de vergy's men swept into the village but a few hours after the departure of its inhabitants, and both domremy and greux were laid waste. to jeanne the days that followed were tranquil and the happiest that she had known for a long time. as in domremy she drove her father's beasts to the fields, and kept his flocks. she also helped la rousse about the household duties, greatly to the good dame's satisfaction, and when she was not helping her hostess, or tending the cattle she passed all her time in church. during the first few days of the stay in the market town jeanne saw colin frequently, but greatly to her relief he forbore to press his attentions upon her. then she saw him no longer, and rejoiced thereat. her thanksgiving was of short duration. dinner was over in the common room of the inn one day, and the guests--not numerous as it chanced--had broken up into groups; some lingering at the board where they had eaten, others clustering at small tables scattered about the rush strewn room. the great chamber, with its dusky walls and blackened beams would have looked gloomy enough on a dark day, but the heat and bright sunshine of midsummer made it seem cool and restful. in the nook formed by the outer angle of the huge projecting chimney, and so somewhat in the shadow, sat jeanne waiting for the guests to leave the board that she might clear away the dinner. her father and a man with whom he was conversing were the last ones to rise, and at once the girl came forward to begin her task. as she did so there came the sound of a dagger hilt beating upon the outside door at the further end of the room. before jeanne could reach it to open it the heavy door swung open quickly as though thrust inward by a strong hasty hand, and there entered a man garbed in priest's raiment. reverent always in her attitude toward priests the maiden bowed low before him. "is it your pleasure to have dinner, messire?" she asked when she had risen from her obeisance. "in due time, my child," he replied. "but first, i would speak with a pucelle who is here. one jeanne, daughter of jacques d'arc." "i am she," spoke the maiden in astonishment. "what would you of me, messire?" at this juncture isabeau, accompanied by la rousse, entered the room. the latter hastened forward to welcome the newcomer when she paused, arrested by his words: "i come from the bishop of toul, judge of the ecclesiastical court having jurisdiction over domremy and greux. he cites thee, jeanne, daughter of jacques d'arc, to appear before him to show cause why thou dost not fulfill thy plighted troth to colin de greux." throughout the long chamber there was a stir and murmur at the words, for jeanne had become liked and esteemed by the guests, who had heard something of colin's wooing. la rousse went to her in quick sympathy, for the girl stood dumbfounded. so this was what colin had been about in his absence? and her parents? were they too concerned in the matter? she turned and looked at them searchingly. isabeau could not meet her daughter's eyes, but jacques met her glance steadily. long father and daughter gazed into each other's eyes; jeanne, with sorrowful reproach; jacques with grim determination. then slowly the girl turned again to the priest. "when does messire, the bishop, wish to see me?" she asked. "the second day from now, pucelle. if upon that day cause is not shown why thy pledge to colin should not be kept the judge will deem that the troth stands, and that thy faith will be redeemed at once." jeanne inclined her head deeply in acknowledgment, and started to leave the room. isabeau ran to her. "it is for thy good, little one. now will you be ever near us. and colin will make a kind husband." so spake isabeau, but jeanne made no reply. as she passed through the door she heard her mother say: "she is as good as married, jacques. she is too shy, too gentle to protest against it. she will do whatever the bishop decides without question." "be not too sure of that," spoke la rousse before jacques could reply. "these gentle maids have a way of turning at times, and jeanne doth not lack spirit." "she hath ever been obedient, and will be now," said jacques confidently. "save for this wild fancy of going to the dauphin she hath ever been most dutiful." "sometimes the gentlest maid will turn if pressed too hard," repeated la rousse. and this was exactly what was happening. jeanne was filled with sorrow that her parents should uphold colin in trying to force her into an unwelcome marriage. for a brief time despair gripped her, for it was foreign to her nature and training to protest against those in authority over her, and should the judge sustain colin it would mean the end of her mission. and then her soul rose up against it. "i will not be forced into this marriage," she decided suddenly. "i will go to toul, and tell messire, the bishop, the truth of the matter. i will go." "go, daughter of god, and fear naught," came the sweet tones of "her voices." "fear naught, for we will aid thee." before the morning broke jeanne rose to prepare for her journey. she knew that at this time the great gates of the archway leading into the courtyard of the inn would be closed, but there was a door, a small one used privately by la rousse, that opened directly into the street. it was at the back of the inn, and unobserved jeanne reached it, and passed out. it was ten leagues from neufchâteau to toul, and thirty miles was a long journey for a young girl to undertake alone and on foot. also the distance lay back through the district over which antoine de vergy's men had swept with fire and sword. roving bands of armed men might be encountered, but jeanne's gentle nature had attained the courage of desperation. she feared the marriage more than aught else, and were the action not protested there would be no evading it. so, upheld by the knowledge that her saints were with her, and an innocence that was heroic, she made the journey. in perfect safety she came at last in the dusk of the evening to toul in lorraine, footsore and weary, but with a heart serene and peaceful. there were many churches in the old town, and, as was her custom, she at once sought a chapel and prostrated herself before the image of the virgin mother. her orisons ended, she went forth in search of food and lodging. jeanne being a peasant girl had not the wherewithal to pay her way, and so could not go to an inn. but when the condition of the land was such that townspeople themselves might become refugees should their towns be overcome by an enemy its denizens welcomed wayfarers warmly. so jeanne soon found shelter with humble folk, and, as she was never idle wherever she might be, she gladdened the heart of the dame by helping about the house and spinning. and the next morning she went to the law courts. colin was already in the chapel, where the bishop was sitting. his self-satisfied expression gave place to one of surprise at sight of jeanne, for he had supposed that she would not appear to contest the action. there were many of the domremy people present also, brought hither as colin's witnesses. colin declared that jeanne had been betrothed to him since childhood, and the maiden was much amazed when the villagers affirmed after him that they knew such an engagement existed. after they had spoken the bishop turned to the girl kindly and said: "and where is thy counsel, my child?" "i have none, messire." jeanne raised her grave eyes to the kind ones bent upon her. eyes that were alight with purity and truthfulness. "i need none. i have but to speak the truth; have i not?" "that is all; but--" the judge paused and regarded the slender maiden attentively. she was unlike a peasant maid, both in bearing and appearance. winning and beautiful in the fresh bloom of young maidenhood, she had not the manner of a maiden who would plight her word, and then disregard it. "proceed, advocate," he said suddenly. "let her take the oath. swear, my child, with both hands upon the gospels, that you will answer true to the questions that will be asked you." and kneeling before him jeanne laid her small hands upon the missal, and said simply: "i swear, messire." then she answered concerning her name, her country, her parents, her godfathers and godmothers. "and now, my child, tell me about this promise of marriage to colin de greux," spoke the bishop. "messire, i never promised to marry him," she answered earnestly. "i have plighted my faith to no man." "have you witnesses to prove this?" "there are my friends and neighbors, messire. they will answer for this." the judge leaned forward quickly. "they have spoken against you, child. didst not hear them say that they knew of your engagement to colin?" "yes, messire; but i would question them." "say on," he said. "it is your right." so, one by one, they were recalled to the stand while jeanne asked of each three questions: had he seen her at any of the dances or merry-makings with colin? had he seen her at church, or any public place with colin? had he ever heard her, jeanne, speak of being engaged to colin? to these questions the witnesses were obliged to answer in the negative. "messire, would i not, were i betrothed to this man, go abroad with him to church, to dances, or to other public places?" "it would seem so, my child; but, unless there were cause why should he take this action?" "i have ever, messire, found my greatest happiness in going to church, and in prayer. for this reason i have received a command from my lord, the king of heaven, to perform a certain task. in pursuance of that command i went to sire robert de baudricourt of vaucouleurs to deliver to him a message. because of this journey my parents, who do not believe in my mission, thought that my senses were wandering, and conceived the idea that to cure my fancies a marriage would be a good thing. "therefore, with their encouragement colin came. messire, the first time that he did so i told him that it was of no use, for marry him i would not. neither him nor another. did i not, colin?" she turned to the youth so quickly, asking the question with such abruptness, gazing steadily at him the while, that colin, taken unawares, nodded affirmation unthinkingly. the bishop spoke instantly: "colin de greux," said he with sternness, "this maiden speaks with the sound of truth. it is our opinion that she hath given no promise. therefore, do you make oath again, and say whether it was from this maiden, or from her parents that you received her faith." "it was from her parents," confessed the youth sullenly. "and not from the maid at all?" "no, messire." "the girl hath then plighted no faith to you, and action against her is dismissed. you, young man, and her parents also would do well to let the marvellous child alone. the damsel is simple, good and pious. nor do i find that her wits wander, for without advocate, or witnesses she hath established her case. go in peace." jeanne thanked him with tears, and with full heart returned to her abiding place. she had worsted colin, and set at naught her parents' wishes by so doing. how would they receive her? filled with this thought she trudged the thirty miles back to neufchâteau. chapter xiii farewell to home "_i am by birth a shepherd's daughter, my wit untrained in any kind of art. heaven, and our lady gracious, hath it pleased to shine on my contemptible estate: ... god's mother deigned to appear to me; and, in a vision full of majesty, willed me to leave my base vocation, and free my country from calamity._" shakespeare, _first part_, "_henry sixth._" to jeanne's surprise she was welcomed warmly. certain of the domremy people who had been colin's witnesses preceded her into neufchâteau, and by the time she arrived all the village folk were cognizant of what had occurred. a reaction in her favor had set in; for, not only had she conducted her case without any aid whatsoever, but the bishop had commended her, and had spoken sharply to colin, who now became the laughing stock of his neighbors. all the world loves a lover, but it has only contempt for the suitor who brings ridicule upon either himself or his beloved. isabeau folded her daughter in her arms, holding her close to her heart and shuddering at the thought of the perilous journey the child had made rather than submit to an unwelcome marriage; while jacques, moved out of his usual taciturnity, spoke to her with something of pride in his tones. for the first time it occurred to these good people that their daughter differed from other village maidens, and therefore required dissimilar treatment. more than once jeanne found her parents regarding her with curious, puzzled looks, as though they wondered if she were in very truth their daughter. la rousse openly rejoiced at the outcome of the affair, and wished the maiden to remain with her indefinitely. but to this neither jeanne or her parents would consent. and, after a fortnight's stay, the family returned to domremy. antoine de vergy had done the work of despoliation thoroughly. incensed because the villeins had fled with their cattle and belongings, thereby depriving him of booty and ransom which he could not exact from the chief men of the village by reason of their flight, he had ravaged and burned with more than his usual fury. the crops were entirely destroyed; the monastery, once as proud as a fortress with its square watchman's tower, was now nothing but a heap of blackened ruins; the church also was burned, so that the domremy folk must needs go to the church at greux to hear mass; and but few cottages were left standing. but the people had their flocks and herds, and their house furnishings; then too it was summer; so, bravely, with the patience engendered by long suffering they set to work once more to rebuild, rethatch, and repair their homes. as before, they lived in the castle while the work went on. a veritable reign of terror was in all the region about. the misery and discomfort were inconceivable; yet somehow life went on. so the summer waned, and with the first days of autumn came the dire intelligence that orléans, the strong independent old city sometimes called the key of the loire, was besieged by the english. should it fall france could not be saved. the english acted badly in laying siege to the town of orléans, for it belonged to duke charles, who had been a prisoner in their hands since the battle of agincourt. having possession of his body they ought to have respected his property, as was the custom. this conduct was regarded as unprecedented treachery, and domremy buzzed with talk as pilgrims related tales of what was occurring. the english had built, it was said, fortified towers around the city, the very heart of france; and entrenched themselves there in great strength. the tourelles were taken already, and the city was so invested that its inhabitants were starving. "such a thing is unheard of," declared jacques in the privacy of the cottage. "it is a deed unknown among the very saracens. who could guess that lords and knights of the christian faith, holding captive the gentle duke of orléans, would besiege his own city? the leaguer is a great villainy." "the leaguer is a great villainy." jeanne repeated the words to herself, for the tidings of the siege were of the saddest to her. her attachment to all the royal house was strong, and especially so to the captive poet. sorrowfully she sought comfort from her "voices" who loved the land of the lilies. "have no fear, daughter of god," they said consolingly. "orléans shall be delivered, and by thee. thy time is at hand. go into france, and raise the siege which is being made before the city. go, daughter of god. go!" so they urged continually. but again the valley was shrouded in the cold white garb of winter, and still there seemed no way for her to leave the village. over her girl heart hung the dread of leaving home and friends, though never once did she falter in her purpose. she was steadfast to that. the yoke of obedience always strong in the mind of a french maiden would not permit her lightly to disobey her parents. jeanne was much troubled over it. they would never give consent. if she went she must go without it. no longer did they keep watch over her. jacques had been more considerate of his daughter since she had shown herself capable of such resistance as she had given against colin. then too the raid of de vergy's men-at-arms, the flight to neufchâteau with the after effects, and now the consternation felt by all loyal frenchmen over the news of orléans' plight; these things had driven all thought of jeanne's fancy from their minds. she had been so dutiful, had submitted so sweetly to the espionage, and had shown no disposition to return to vaucouleurs even though the journey to toul had provided opportunity for it had she been so minded, that the parents no longer regarded such a journey as a possibility. jeanne knew all this. but they knew that she still had her purpose in mind, for the maiden had talked freely about it. jeanne knew what she had to do, and longed to be about it. again and again she sought help from her "voices." they became peremptory in their commands, absolving her from the obedience due her parents. god's command was higher, and this she must obey. so, certain as to her mission, she was inaccessible either to remonstrance or appeal. now she looked about for means to accomplish her purpose. the old year glided into the vale of discarded years, and the new year ushered in january of , which brought jeanne's seventeenth birthday. the sixth was cold and stormy, but if it was bleak and wintry without, within the cottage it was cheery and comfortable. the family gathered around a great fire of faggots on the afternoon of that day, each one busied with homely, needful work. jacques and his eldest son, jacquemin, were mending harness; jean and pierre were shelling corn against the next feed of the cattle; little catherine, as she was still called, was polishing the copper and pewter on the dresser, while jeanne and her mother sewed and spun alternately. all at once the crunching of wheels on the frosty snow was heard, followed shortly by a loud "hallo!" as a vehicle stopped before the door. jacques laid down his work with an exclamation. "now who can it be that fares forth in such weather to go visiting?" he said. "open the door, pierre, and see who is there." but jeanne was already at the door before her father had finished speaking, and opened it wide to the visitor. she gave an ejaculation of joy as she saw who stood without. "come in, uncle durand," she said. "you look cold." "and feel also, ma mie." lassois made at once for the great fire. "jacques, man, you have cause to be thankful that you need not fare from the fireside on such a day as this. pierre, will you see to the oxen? the poor brutes are well nigh frozen, and so am i." "ye look it, durand," spoke jacques. "there! come nearer to the fire. isabeau, a hot drink will warm his vitals. welcome, lassois, welcome! 'tis a cold day." "it is," agreed durand, rubbing his hands before the blaze. "and how is aveline?" asked isabeau, as she placed a hot drink before him. "she is not well, isabeau, and the baby is peevish. it is that that brings me here to-day. her father hath been taken with a distemper, and her mother is all taken up in looking after him. so aveline wishes that jeanne might come to stay for a short time. will you let her go, jacques?" jeanne listened anxiously for her father's answer. she did not believe that he would give consent. indeed jacques was silent a long time before he made reply, but at length he said slowly: "i see no harm in her going, lassois. it hath been dreary here this winter, and the work heavy. she may go and stay with you three weeks, since aveline is ailing. that is, if her mother is willing." "why, yes," spoke isabeau quickly. "with a young baby aveline needs some one with her to look after things. and it will give jeanne a chance to hear the news. i doubt not but that aveline will have much to tell her that will be of interest." jeanne was amazed at the readiness with which the consent was given. she had not thought they would let her go, and it caused her wonder. but certainly they could not suppose that she would seek robert de baudricourt a second time, or perhaps jacques relied upon sire robert's good sense to send her home if she should seek him. so it was arranged that the maiden should return with lassois to bury le petit the next day. there was little sleep for the young girl that night. she knew that it was the last time that she would ever be in her own home, for she was resolved to go to vaucouleurs as soon as aveline was better. in this she would deliberately disobey her parents, but there was no other way. "i would rather be torn apart by wild horses than go against their wishes," she said to herself with tears. "but god commands it, and i must go." her destiny called, and she followed the summons. all earthly ties must be subservient to her great purpose. suffering france must be relieved, and it was her mission to give the aid. her time had come. therefore her good-byes to her parents, brothers, and little sister were very tender. she dared not speak of her mission, and if her loved ones noticed the tenderness of farewells that so short an absence did not seem to warrant they knew not the reason for them. so jeanne passed from her father's house, and climbed into the cart. mengette, whose home was near by, was at the window as lassois' cart passed. jeanne waved to her, crying: "good-by, mengette. god bless thee." all through the village she saw faces of friends and neighbors at the windows, or on their doorsteps, and bade them farewell. but as she drew near the home of hauviette, and lassois stopped for her to call to her friend, jeanne shook her head. "i can not speak to her, uncle," she said chokingly. "i dare not. my heart would fail me, for i love her too dearly to say good-by." at greux as they passed through she saw colin in one of the narrow streets. jeanne leaned out of the cart to call to him. "good-by, colin," she said. "god give you good fortune." "where are you going?" spoke the youth shamefacedly. he had avoided jeanne since the meeting at toul. "i go to vaucouleurs," she dared to say. "good-by." "to vaucouleurs?" repeated lassois, turning to look at her as they left colin behind. "but aveline, jeanne?" "did you think that i would leave her while she has need of me, uncle durand?" asked the maiden reproachfully. "no, jeanne; i knew that you would not. 'twas a second only that i doubted." durand swung his goad over the oxen's backs as he spoke, and the beasts swung into a trot. but jeanne turned for a last look at the valley she was leaving forever. long she gazed at the red roofs of the village; at the ice bound river with its rushes rimed with frost; at the forest, bare and leafless; at the snow covered hills, and white shrouded meadows; at all the familiar objects hallowed by association. gazed until her tear-blinded eyes would permit her to look no more. and so down the valley of colors for the last time passed jeanne d'arc. chapter xiv victory over doubting hearts "_yet the true poetry--herself, like thee, childlike; herself, like thee, a shepherd maid-- gives thee her birthright of divinity, and lifts unto the stars thy starry shade. thy brows receive the aureole of her sky; the heart created thee--thou canst not die._" schiller, "_the maid of orléans._" jeanne stayed at her uncle's house with aveline until the latter was quite well. then, there being nothing further to hinder, she asked lassois to take her to vaucouleurs. "jacques won't like it, jeanne," feebly remonstrated durand, knowing full well that notwithstanding the fact he would do as his niece wished. "he didn't before, you know; and neither did isabeau." "i must go, uncle durand. though i had a hundred fathers, or a hundred mothers, though i were the daughter of a king, i still should go. it is commanded." durand made no further objection, though he knew that both jacques and isabeau would censure him for yielding to her. he saw that jeanne was not to be turned from her purpose, so made ready for the journey. perhaps, like jacques, he relied on the common sense of the sire robert to send the girl home, for he was cheerful enough when presently they were on their way to vaucouleurs. "you will return with me, jeanne? this visit is for the day only, is it not?" "no, uncle. i shall stay in vaucouleurs until the sire captain gives me men-at-arms to take me to the dauphin." "and if he does not? what then?" "he will in time, uncle durand. my voices have said so," responded the maiden confidently. lassois sat for a time without speaking. there was as much awe as affection in the regard he bore his young kinswoman, and when she wore a look of exaltation as on this morning he felt as he did at the ringing of the angelus. but there was a practical side to the affair to be looked after as well as a spiritual, and he wished to be able to put the best face possible on the matter before jacques; so after a little he queried: "and where shall you bide at vaucouleurs? have you thought of that?" "why, yes, uncle. mother has a friend, one catherine le royer, who lives in the town. i shall go to her. i am sure that she will give me welcome for mother's sake." "now that is well," spoke lassois in relieved tones. "i know catherine, and her husband also. henri le royer, the wheelwright, he is. good people they are, and pious." by this time they had reached the little walled town nestling among the low hills of the valley, and again jeanne passed up the steep slopes of the hill upon which the castle stood. as before when she had gone to him robert de baudricourt sat at meat with his captains. there was no smile on his face this time, however, when, in answer to the request that they might speak with him jeanne and her uncle were ushered into the great dining hall. no smile, though lassois was awkward and ill at ease, and jeanne still wore the red homespun dress, and the village coif of the peasant. there was not the least flicker of amusement in his countenance as he said: "well, my little maid, what brings thee here this time?" jeanne courtesied low before she replied: "my lord captain, know that god has commanded me many times to go to the gentle dauphin, who must be and who is the true king of france, that he shall grant me men-at-arms with whom i shall raise the siege at orléans, and take him to his anointing at reims. and you, sire captain, must send or take me to him. it is commanded." for a long time robert de baudricourt sat silent, regarding the maiden with a troubled look. she was so earnest, was evidently so sincere in her demand, that he was perplexed. was she inspired, or possessed? that was what his expression said as he gazed at her. if inspired her aid was not to be despised. if possessed she ought to be dealt with forthwith. in truth he knew not what to say to her. his own situation was far from pleasant. when antoine de vergy had raged through the valley the previous summer he had infested the town of vaucouleurs, and de baudricourt had been obliged to yield it to him, though he had not yet given possession. [illustration: there was no smile on his face] it was one of those capitulations, common in those days, by which the commander of a garrison promised to surrender his fortress by the end of a given time. this promise, however, ceased to be valid should the fortress be relieved before the day fixed for its surrender. so sire robert's own condition was acute, and if the dauphin were not in a position to come to his relief he himself would be caught in the coils of the enemy. any promise of deliverance, however humble, was not to be treated lightly. therefore, if he did not believe in jeanne's announcement he at least listened to it readily. at length he said: "this matter should be given some thought, my little maid. where do you bide? i would speak with you further concerning this." there was a stir of surprise among his men, for they noted with amazement that the captain addressed the maiden as an equal. "with catherine le royer, the wheelwright's wife, messire," answered jeanne. "i will speak with you again," repeated sire robert. and jeanne and lassois, understanding that the interview was over for this time, withdrew. catherine and henri le royer were folk of jeanne's own humble station. the good dame welcomed the girl warmly, at first for her mother's sake and then for her own. jeanne had ever a way with women and girls, and but few days had elapsed ere she had completely won the heart of her hostess by her gentle ways, her skill in sewing and spinning, and her earnest faith. together they attended mass at the parish church, spun, sewed, or busied themselves about the house. sometimes jeanne climbed the hill to the royal chapel which adjoined the governor's castle, for there was a wonderful image of the virgin in the crypt of saint mary's before which she loved to pray. news of her mission, the tidings that a young girl was come, who was appointed by god to save france spread through the town and surrounding country. the people flocked to see her, and those who came believed, won by her earnestness and simple sincerity. they were in no uncertainty at all as to her mission. a little mob hung about the cottage door to see her come and go, chiefly to church. the saying, "france lost by a woman shall be restored by a maid from the marches of lorraine," was on every lip. and the excitement grew. again and again jeanne sought the governor, saying: "i must to the gentle dauphin. it is the will of messire, the king of heaven, that i should wend to the gentle dauphin. i am sent by the king of heaven. i must go even if i go on my knees. my lord captain, in god's name, send me to the gentle dauphin." but sire robert,--though he listened to her readily enough, and, impressed in spite of himself by her intense fervour, perceived a certain seriousness in the business,--remained deaf to her pleadings. he could not believe. what, a young girl fair and lovely as was this peasant maid to deliver france? the thing was absurd; and yet--he dared not send her home lest after all there might be truth in what she claimed. and so the matter rested. the days dawned and waned, and still the men-at-arms were not provided. jeanne shed bitter tears over the delay. she believed so implicitly in her voices that she could not understand why others did not have the same faith. and the fame of her grew and spread, going out into the country even beyond the valley. one day, as she was on her way to mass, a young man-at-arms pushed his way through the crowd which had gathered to see her to have a word with the wonderful peasant maid. "well, ma mie," he said banteringly, "what are you doing here? must the king be driven from his kingdom, and we all turn english?" "i came hither to the king's territory, messire, to speak with sire robert that he may take me, or cause me to be taken to the dauphin; but he heeds neither me nor my words. notwithstanding, ere mid-lent i must be before the dauphin, were i in going to wear my legs to my knees." the reply was given with such intent seriousness that the young knight was impressed, and he spoke more gently: "know you not, maiden, that louis, the little son of charles, hath just been betrothed to the infant daughter of the king of scotland? king james is to send madame margaret to france with an army of six thousand men before whitsunday, which, as you know, is in may. what need, therefore, is there for you, a young girl, to go to the dauphin?" "i must go to the dauphin, messire; for no one in the world, no king or duke or daughter of the king of scotland[ ] can restore the realm of france. in me alone is help, albeit for my part, i would far rather be spinning by my poor mother's side, for this life is not to my liking. but i must go, and so i will, for it is messire's command that i should go." "who is messire?" asked he. "he is god," she answered. the young man was moved. he stretched out his hands suddenly as though he believed in spite of himself, and laid his hands between hers. "there!" said he. "i, jean de novelonpont, commonly called jean de metz, pledge you my word, knightly fashion, my hands in your hands in token of fealty, that god helping me i will take you to the king." "you will, messire?" cried jeanne joyfully. "on my word of honour i promise it. when will you set forth?" "this hour is better than to-morrow; to-morrow is better than after to-morrow," she told him, her face illumined with smiles. it was the first gleam of hope that had lightened the weary days of waiting. "i will make preparations at once," he said, moved by her zeal and by her strong sense of the necessity of immediate operations. then as he started to leave her, he turned. "would you travel in that garb, pucelle?"[ ] he asked hesitatingly. jeanne smiled, divining the difficulties he foresaw were she to retain her woman's garb in travelling. she had already given the matter thought, and perceived that if she were to live among soldiers she must change the dress she wore. so she answered promptly: "i will willingly dress as a man. in truth, it would be more seemly." de metz nodded approval, and went his way. after this, because joys like sorrows come not singly, one after another began to believe in her. in a few days another man-at-arms came to her. he was an older man than de metz and a graver. at his salutation jeanne looked at him intently. "have i not seen you somewhere, messire?" she asked. "i think not," he answered lightly. "methinks i should not have forgotten it had we ever met. yet stay!" bending a keen glance upon her. "are not you the little maid who dressed my wounded arm at your father's house in domremy?" "it may be, messire." "it is," he affirmed. "the wound healed quickly, for the treatment was good. so you are that little maid? and now you have come here with a mission? tell me of it, pucelle. can you in very truth do as you say: raise the siege of orléans, and bring the king to his anointing?" "not i, messire; but my lord, the king of heaven, will do it through me. i am but his humble instrument." "tell me of it," he said again. "i have talked with jean de metz, but i would hear of it from you." there was no need for reserve concerning her mission, so jeanne talked of it freely to him. indeed she did so to whomsoever wished to hear about it. and when she had made an end of the telling bertrand de poulengy placed his hands in hers as de metz had done, and pledged her fealty, knightly fashion. but though the men-at-arms were willing to set forth at once there was still delay; for, being in service with sire robert, they could not leave without his consent. jeanne became impatient, knowing that orléans could not hold out forever. she was cast down, not through want of faith in her divine mission, but because of the obstacles which unbelieving men like baudricourt were putting in her way. "in god's name, gentle robert," she cried one day, meeting him at the foot of the hill where his castle stood, "you are too slow about sending me. this day hath a great disaster happened to the dauphin. send me quickly lest a worse befall him." "a disaster hath befallen the dauphin?" exclaimed sire robert. "how could you know that a disaster hath befallen him to-day?" "my voices have told me," she made answer. "a battle hath been lost near orléans. sire robert, i must be sent to him." "i will see, i will see," he said, looking troubled. "if this be true, as you have said, then shall you go to him. but is it by evil or by good spirits that you speak?" without waiting for a reply he left her abruptly. as jeanne sat spinning with catherine le royer the next morning she was greatly surprised when the door opened suddenly, and the governor himself, accompanied by jean fournier, the parish priest, entered. at a sign from sire robert, catherine quitted the room, and jeanne was left with the two men. the priest immediately put on his stole, and pronounced some latin words: "if thou be evil, away with thee; if thou be good, draw nigh." with this he sprinkled holy water about the room, and upon her. jeanne was hurt when she heard the words, for it was the formula used for exorcism. it was believed that if the village maiden were possessed of evil spirits they would be driven away. having recited the formula and sprinkled holy water the priest expected, if the girl were possessed, to see her struggle and writhe in the effort to take flight. but there was nothing suspicious in jeanne's attitude. there was no wild agitation or frenzy. she had fallen on her knees when the priest put on his stole, and now anxiously, entreatingly, she dragged herself to him. messire jean fournier stretched forth his hand in benediction over her. "whatever be the spirit with which she is filled, it is naught of evil," he said to robert de baudricourt. with this the two men left the cottage as abruptly as they had entered it. jeanne burst into tears, and so catherine found her. "messire jean should not have used me so," sobbed the maiden as she related the happening to her hostess. "i have confessed to him daily since i came to vaucouleurs, and he should have known what manner of girl i was." "there, there, little one," soothed catherine, tenderly. "he but did it to please the sire captain. perchance now that the gentle robert knows that evil spirits do not possess thee, he will give thee aid." the exorcism did in truth help jeanne's cause with the governor. if the young girl were not possessed of evil it followed naturally that the power in her must be good; therefore he was at last willing to aid her. secretly he had already sent a messenger to the king telling of the maiden, her mission, her saintly way of living, and asking that he might send her to him. he but waited the consent of charles before starting jeanne on her journey. this she did not learn until later. meantime she was restless. she longed to be about her work, and there seemed naught but hindrances. she felt that she must start, for she must be with the dauphin by mid-lent, and the time was short. one day lassois came to see how she was, and also to bring news of her parents; for jeanne had sent them a letter praying for their forgiveness and blessing. as she could neither read nor write the curé had written it for her, and he had added details of the life she was living, her good deeds, her saintly ways, and aught else that he thought would set their minds at rest concerning her. now she listened eagerly as durand told her how the letter had been received. "jacques has heard a great deal about you from the people, jeanne. know you not that the whole countryside is talking of you? he has known all along how you were living, and what you were doing. he is still not reconciled to your leaving home, but he said that so long as you lived a good life you had his blessing and forgiveness. isabeau wept when she heard the letter, but she sends love, and prays you to make short work of the matter that you may soon be home again." "would that i might, uncle durand," groaned the girl. "but there seems naught but hindrance and delay. i should like to be at home with mother; if my work were done i could be. the time is so short. i can not, i must not wait longer." she bowed her head and wept. presently she dashed away the tears and turned to durand as though an idea had come to her: "uncle durand," she cried, "will you take me into france?" "you mean to walk there, jeanne?" he asked amazed. "'tis said to be all of a hundred and fifty leagues to where the dauphin bides at chinon." "even so, i must go. if sire robert will not give me men-at-arms i must go without them. will you go with me?" "yes," he assented readily. had jeanne not been so preoccupied she would have seen the smile that lurked in his eyes. lassois was a hard-headed, practical man, and he knew that the plan was not feasible. he hoped that his niece would see it too, so he added: "i will get alain to go with us. 'tis a dangerous journey even with men-at-arms for escort. when do we start?" "at once," cried the maiden eagerly. "the sooner the better. when the siege is raised, and the dauphin crowned, i can go back home. and i will not leave them again. go! get alain, and let us start." lassois left her, and jeanne made her preparations quickly. procuring a man's jerkin, hose and doublet, she arrayed herself in them, and when lassois returned with alain, a friend of his who lived in vaucouleurs, the three set forth. they had proceeded a league on the road to france when they came to the shrine of saint nicholas, and this jeanne entered as was her wont, and prostrated herself in prayer. when she arose the impatience, the restlessness were gone. she faced her companions with contrition. "i was wrong," she said with deep humility. "it is not meet that i go to the dauphin in this manner. we must go back." durand's countenance expanded into a broad grin. "said i not so, alain?" he cried, nudging his friend. "i said that she would soon see that it was not fitting that she should go thus. i said that soon we would turn back." alain laughed also as jeanne gazed at her uncle in astonishment. "how did you know, uncle?" "why see, ma mie; the king would not receive you should you go to him thus humbly; but if you come from the sire captain with proper escort 'twill be easy to get his ear." "i see," sighed jeanne. "i was wrong. we will go back." she waited with more grace after this, and presently there came a day when her patience was rewarded. the messenger from the king rode into vaucouleurs bearing a letter to the governor which gave consent to send the young prophetess to him. sire robert sent at once for the maiden. "you were right," he said. "there was a disaster as you said near orléans. the battle of herrings was lost at rouvray. colet de vienne, the king's messenger, tells me that charles will receive you. therefore, get you ready, for now you shall start for chinon in a few days." overjoyed jeanne hastened back to her friends to tell the glad news. the impossible had happened. that which the peasant maid had demanded was granted. she was to be taken to the king, and in the time fixed by herself. the sweetness, the simplicity, the sturdy purpose of the maiden had won all hearts in the little walled town. knowledge of her mission had deepened the interest felt in her, so now, as she was in very truth to begin her journey, they took upon themselves the expense of her outfit. a complete suit of masculine apparel was bought, a jerkin, a cloth doublet, hose laced to the coat, gaiters, spurs, a whole equipment of war, while sire robert gave her a horse. and jeanne, with one girlish sigh at the sacrifice, took off her coif, let down her long dark locks, and gave a last look at them; then catherine cut them round, page fashion, the maiden set on a cap, and was ready. jean de metz and bertrand de poulengy were to accompany her, as well as the king's messenger, colet de vienne, and the bowman, richard, with two lancers, servants of the men-at-arms. these men proposed further waiting, as certain soldiers of lorraine were infesting the country, but the maiden was not afraid, and said: "in god's name, take me to the gentle dauphin, and fear not any hindrance or trouble we may meet. there hath been too much delay." at length, however, everything was in readiness, and on the twenty-third of february, the little company assembled before the gate, la porte de france, with friends to watch the departure. among them were the kind lassois, catherine and henri le royer, jean colin, canon of saint nicholas, to whom jeanne had confessed at times. the women trembled and wept as they looked at the girl, so fair in her young loveliness, and feared for her the perils of the journey. one of them cried: "how can you set forth on such a journey when there are men-at-arms on every hand?" but jeanne turned a happy face toward them, and answered out of the serene peace of her heart: "i do not fear men-at-arms. my way has been made plain before me. if there be men-at-arms my lord god will make a way for me to go to my lord dauphin. for this i was born." sire robert also was present, and as he gazed at the bright face of the maiden his grim old heart was touched. "swear," he said, making jean de metz kneel before him. "swear that you will deliver this maiden whom i have confided to your care safely and surely to the king." and de metz answered solemnly: "i swear." and so from each and every man the governor took the oath. then belting his own sword about the girl's slender waist, he said: "go! and come of it what may." and off into the mists that enveloped the meadows of the meuse rode the little company down the road into france. ------ [ ] "madame margaret did not come to france until seven years later. the six thousand men never did come. jeanne did."--andrew lang. [ ] pucelle--virgin, maid. chapter xv starting the great adventure "_the character of joan of arc is unique. it can be measured by the standards of all times without misgiving or apprehension as to the result. judged by any of them, judged by all of them, it is still flawless, it is still ideally perfect; it still occupies the loftiest place possible to human attainment, a loftier one than has been reached by any other mere mortal._" mark twain. _preface_--"_personal recollections of joan of arc._" and so began this strange ride; the strangest that was ever made. there were a thousand perils to be encountered: great rivers to be crossed; great forests infested by wolves to be traversed; trackless spaces of a country, half of which was hostile--full of every danger of war, to be covered. jeanne had been told many times of the risks of the journey; but, happy in the knowledge that she was at last on her way to the dauphin, no peril, no danger seemed formidable. she had no fear of marauding bands, nor did she feel anxiety concerning the conduct of her companions. a great peace filled her soul. she had begun her work. how it was all to end for her she neither foresaw nor asked; she only knew what she had to do. so light hearted did she appear that bertrand de poulengy wondered at it. jeanne noticed him regarding her curiously. "what is it, messire?" she asked. "it will be a hard, tiresome ride, pucelle." "i know, messire." "to sit in the saddle long hours is most fatiguing. have you been accustomed to riding?" "no, messire. i never rode at all until i came to vaucouleurs." "you did not? i can hardly believe that, pucelle." he gave a glance of frank admiration at the slight, erect figure sitting her horse so martially. "you ride as though born to the saddle, which is well, for the journey will tax your endurance to the utmost. we stop to-night at the abbey of saint urbain for rest and refreshment, but to-morrow and thereafter we shall be obliged to rest in the open fields. we must avoid the frequented roads and the cities held by the english, therefore we can not go to the inns. there will be many dangers." "what do you fear, messire?" "that we shall never reach chinon," he answered gloomily. "the hazards are too great. i thought that the captain would give us more of an escort, but we be but seven all told. of what avail would such a small number be against an attacking force of freebooters?" [illustration: far into the night they rode] but jeanne turned a smiling face toward him; a face as blithe and bright as that of a fair youth. "have no fear," she said, with calm confidence. "my brothers in paradise will watch over us." "will you really do what you say?" he questioned. "i will do what i am commanded to do, messire. my brethren in paradise tell me what i have to do. it is now four years since my brethren in paradise and messire told me that i must go forth to war to deliver the realm of france." but poulengy, de metz, and their companions had not the maiden's confidence. now that the irrevocable step was taken and they were actually embarked upon this wild adventure the chill of reflection was upon them. was the girl really an inspired prophetess, or a witch? if the former, all would be well with them should they reach chinon in safety; if the latter, they were liable to come to the gallows for bringing a witch to court. so many doubts and misgivings assailed them as they rode forward. far into the night they rode, stopping at length at the abbey of saint urbain on the right bank of the marne for rest. from time immemorial the abbey had been a place of refuge, and it gave them a cordial welcome. jeanne was glad to lay her wearied body upon the rude cot in the house set apart for the use of strangers, but she was up early next morning, and attended conventual mass; then she and her companions took horse again. crossing the marne by the bridge opposite saint urbain they pressed on towards france. they were in more dangerous ground now, so they proceeded more stealthily. bertrand de poulengy and jean de metz, being hardened campaigners and accustomed to such expeditions, knew the by-ways, and were acquainted with the means necessary to travel quietly. sometimes the days were sunlit, and the nights moonlit; at other times, there was rain, or sleet, or snow, but whatever the weather they rode and rode. jeanne was always cheerful, always confident, always good-humoured. the king's messenger, colet de vienne, sire bertrand and jean de metz were hot-headed, hot-hearted soldiers of fortune, neither over-scrupulous nor over-pious, but they learned to regard the young girl in their charge with reverence and awe. it was a feeling that strangely combined chivalry and religion. she was so devout, so clean-spirited, that there was nothing to be done but to believe in her goodness, her purity, and her faith. if they did not altogether believe in her visions they believed that she believed, and they came to think of her as nothing less than a saint. "truly, bertrand, she comes from god," declared de metz one day upon his return from a town where he had gone in search of food. the party dared not enter the place for fear of detection. the news was broadcast over the country that the inspired maid of vaucouleurs was proceeding to the king under escort, and the knights feared an encounter with some band of the enemy. "she has not much money; that i know, yet she gave me alms to give to the poor. and this she does whenever we draw near to a town." "she is a saint," avowed de poulengy. "i think she must be inspired in very truth, jean; else how is it that she stands the journey as she does? a little wearied she may be when we stop for rest, but do you note that she starts onward as blithely and gayly as though we had but just set forth?" "ay! i have noticed it. 'tis as though she received manna from heaven for her recuperation. through many wild marches i have been, yet this one hath been the most trying. i fear ambuscades, bertrand, and i would not have harm come to the maid. i would rather lose life itself than have aught befall her." "and i, jean. but i fear that all of our company do not agree with us. i overheard some words that richard the archer had with our two varlets this morning which shows their mind in manner most alarming. they also have noted the marvellous way in which the maid has withstood the fatigues of the journey, and they declare that a mere maiden could not bear them as she does. in truth, they deem her a witch. we must be on our guard against them lest they try some trick against her." "the vile caitiffs! can they not see that she is one of god's saints?" exclaimed de metz wrathfully. "i will go to them. i--" "nay, jean; restrain yourself," counselled the older man laying his hand lightly on the other's arm. "be not too severe in your judgment 'gainst the varlets. time was, and not so long since, when we too were in doubt concerning the maiden. they may intend no harm, but i deemed it the part of wisdom to put you on guard. let us say nothing, but watch and wait." "you are right, bertrand." de metz spoke more quietly. "they may intend no harm, but 'tis well to be on guard. if they should attempt anything--" he paused, touching his sword significantly. poulengy nodded, and the two returned to the camp. as they made night marches they rested by day. for this day they had selected for camp a cove that lay between two shoulders of the winding hills on the banks of a swollen stream. though a cold rain was falling there was no fire for fear of the enemy. the leafless boughs did little to ward off the rain, and there was not much comfort in the chill woods, so the party ate in silence the cold bread and meat which de metz had obtained in the town. they but waited for the darkness that they might take to horse again. richard the bowman was sentinel, and after the comfortless meal they all lay down on the wet ground to get what rest they could. they were aroused by a wild shout from the archer, who rushed among them, crying: "the english! the english are upon us!" instantly the two knights and the king's messenger were upon their feet, and drawing their swords, threw themselves quickly before jeanne. she alone was undisturbed, and merely rose to a sitting posture as the men breathlessly awaited the approach of the enemy. the knights' servants, jean de honecourt and julien, made as though about to flee when jeanne spoke in her grave, sweet voice: "do not flee. i tell you in god's name, they will not harm you." at this richard the bowman, seeing that she was not afraid, burst out laughing. with a bound jean de metz had reached him, and had him by the throat. "varlet," he cried, shaking the fellow angrily. "know you not that there are perils enough about us without giving a false alarm? that loud outcry of yours may bring the enemy upon us. i am minded to fling you into that water." "i but did it to scare the witch," muttered richard sullenly, eyeing the swollen stream with whitening face. the water was dismally cold, and very deep at this point. "i meant no harm." but de metz, enraged by the word "witch," lifted him bodily, preparatory to carrying out his threat, when jeanne's soft tones arrested him: "do not so, my friend," she said sweetly. "the jest was ill timed, 'tis true; but still it was but a jest. he could neither frighten nor harm me. none can do that until i have fulfilled my mission. let him go." "you hear?" de metz let the man slide slowly to his feet. "but that she pleads for thee thou shouldst drink deep of that water. see to it that thy acts are better, else it shall go hard with thee. ay! or whoever attempts tricks, be they jest or earnest." he glared at the retainers so fiercely that they shrank from his gaze. there was no further attempt to frighten the maiden during the rest of the journey, and it was noted that she had no more devoted servitor than richard the bowman. on they rode, and still on. through gloomy woods, by threatened highways, and over swollen rivers the seven made their way. the enemy's country was passed in time without mishap of any kind, and then on the morning of the tenth day out from vaucouleurs they came to gien on the river loire. it held for the dauphin, and jeanne rejoiced for now, being in friendly territory, she could go to mass. she had felt neither fear nor anxiety during the march, but she had been distressed that she could not attend mass, which she was accustomed to doing every day. being on god's errand she wished constantly to ask his help. "if we could, we should do well to hear mass," she had repeated wistfully each day; but when the knights told her that it was too dangerous she had not insisted. gien was about forty miles above orléans, and their danger was now almost over. both jeanne and the knights talked freely of her errand, and the news spread far and wide that a maid was come from the borders of lorraine to raise the siege of orléans and lead the dauphin to reims to be crowned. everywhere the people were excited over the tidings. in spite of the blockade men often slipped into orléans, and messengers from gien soon bore the story into the besieged city. it raised a great hope there, and its commander, the count of dunois, at once sent two of his officers to chinon, whither he knew that the maid was bound, to ask the king to send her to them soon. the news that jeanne learned concerning orléans was most disquieting. the battle of herrings, fought at rouvray, had been a most disastrous defeat for the garrison, and had brought both citizens and soldiers to despair. no time should be lost in going to the help of the leaguered city, so, after a short rest, jeanne rode forward across the sandy sologne and the flat country of touraine. the anxiety of poulengy and metz had taken a different turn. believe in the maiden as they might they could not but wonder what reception they would meet at court. charles and his counsellors might think it all a fool's errand, and the knights would be the laughing stock of their comrades. as they had become accustomed to doing they told these misgivings to jeanne. "do not be afraid. you will see how graciously the fair dauphin will look upon us when we get to chinon," she assured them confidently. they were now in a country holding for the dauphin, and naturally it would be supposed that it was friendly territory; this, however, was not the case. indeed, it was after the passage of the loire that they were exposed to the greatest danger. far and wide the tidings had flown that a girl was coming toward the king with wonderful proffers of aid from heaven and the holy saints. there were people about the king to whom such news was not welcome. here also in the king's country were freebooters who, when they pillaged travellers, asked not whether they were armagnacs or burgundians, and such men would not scruple to waylay the girl at a word from those about the king. so it happened that certain men-at-arms of the french party lay in ambush awaiting the appearance of jeanne's little company to surprise them. it was the intention to capture the maiden, cast her into a pit, and keep her there under a great stone trap door, in the hope that the king who had sent for her would give a large sum for her rescue. but of all this neither jeanne nor her escort knew until long afterward. being in the dauphin's territory jeanne rode fearlessly in front of the little company while the knights, who lacked her confidence, followed close behind, keeping a keen watch the while, for they were passing through a deep wood, and both bertrand and de metz were aware of the character of the miscreants who infested it. suddenly, from out of the inner wood, there burst a party of men who with wild yells dashed forward and surrounded them. there was a clash of steel as the knights met the onset, when high above the noise of swords sounded jeanne's voice, clear and bell-like: "hold! let not french blood be spilled by frenchmen while the english wait us at orléans. forbear, friends! 'tis not god's will that you should slay each other." involuntarily the men of both parties stayed their uplifted hands. the leader of the attacking band bent a searching, curious glance upon the maiden, which she met calmly and tranquilly. there was something winning and persuasive and convincing in her manner; something so pure and unearthly in her look that presently the man's eyes dropped, and he hastily crossed himself. "pass on," he said, and at a sign his fellows fell back, and the seven rode on in safety. sire bertrand leaned over to jean de metz and spoke in an awed tone: "saw you that, jean? those rascals could do naught after she cried out. truly the child is sent from god." "she is in very truth, bertrand, but it needed not this to prove it. witness how we have come these many leagues though threatened with dire perils without hap of any kind. 'tis nothing short of miraculous." but jeanne heard them wondering, and smiled at them. "marvel not," she said. "god clears the way for me. i was born for this." and so they came to the green slopes of fierbois, from which place they would proceed to chinon, where the king lay. chapter xvi jeanne comes to her king "_be not dismayed, for succor is at hand: a holy maid hither with me i bring, which, by a vision sent to her from heaven, ordained is to raise this tedious siege. and drive the english forth the bounds of france._" shakespeare. _henry sixth, first part._ the king lay at chinon, just six leagues from fierbois, and jeanne decided to write to him, asking permission to come to the town, for neither of the knights dared go further without his consent. accordingly sire bertrand procured a scribe, and the maiden dictated the following letter: "gentle dauphin,--i have ridden a hundred and fifty leagues to bring you aid from messire, the king of heaven. i have much good news for you, and would beg that out of your grace you will allow me to tell it to you in person. though i have never seen you, yet i should know you in any disguise among a thousand. may god give you long life. "jeanne the maid." colet de vienne, the king's messenger, took the missive, and at once set forth at speed for chinon. a day at least must pass before the answer could come back, so jeanne availed herself of the privilege of hearing mass in the village church dedicated to saint catherine, one of her daily visitors. it was the most famous sanctuary of the saint, for here she received multitudes of pilgrims and worked great miracles. her worship was warlike and national, and dated back to the beginning of french history. jeanne lingered lovingly in the chapel, hearing three masses, and listening with delight to the stories of the miracles. the next day, having received permission to proceed to chinon, they mounted and faced toward the town, and the maiden's heart beat fast. she was going to the king at last. that which she had dreamed for four years was being realized. she was going to the king, and her heart sang for joy. the nearer the company drew to chinon they saw with amazement that the country became poorer, for the court and the men-at-arms had stripped it bare. for this reason the dauphin could seldom abide long at one place, for he was so much better known than trusted that the very cord-wainer would not let him march off in a new pair of boots without seeing his money. there was a song which said that he even greased his old clouted shoon to make them last as long as he might. there were many stories told about his extravagance and consequent poverty. it was a poor prince to whom jeanne was going. it had been a long journey, as de poulengy had said it would be, so that it was the eleventh day after leaving vaucouleurs that they entered chinon. it was march sixth, the fourth sunday in lent, and therefore laetare sunday. in far off domremy the boys and the girls, the youths and the maidens would be going to the fairy tree and the gooseberry spring for the "well dressing." they would eat their hard boiled eggs with the rolls their mothers had kneaded. pierre would go and possibly jean, though he was older than she. the country would be grey and leafless there; here there were already monitions of spring. so jeanne mused, but she did not let her thoughts wander long to her far off home and friends, for she was at last in chinon, where the dauphin abode. the town was built upon a meadow beside the river vienne, and was compactly walled. behind it rose a high perpendicular ledge on which the castle stood, the finest in the realm of france. behind its proud walls there breathed that king to whom she had been impelled to come by a miraculous love. jeanne looked up at it with longing glance, but she must wait until permission was accorded before ascending the steeps which led to it, so, with a sigh, she turned her attention to the town. through narrow lanes of overhanging houses crowded to the hill beneath the castle buttresses they went, stopping at length at an inn near the castle kept by a woman of good repute. it was lent, so the spits were idle, for at that time no one in christendom neglected the church's injunction concerning the fasts and abstinences of holy lent. so fasting jeanne retired to the chamber assigned her, and spent the next two days in prayer while she waited to hear from the dauphin. then the messenger, colet de vienne, came with the command that the two knights should come to the castle so that they might be questioned concerning the maiden. he said that the king had read the letter of sire robert, but would know more before admitting her to audience. sire bertrand heard the command with anger. "colet, is this in truth the king's desire, or hath he been influenced to it by george la trémouille? there be those who say that the favorite cares for naught that is for the good of france, but is all for terms with burgundy." "'tis not for me to say that charles is not master of his court, sire bertrand," replied the messenger warily. "still, it might be admitted that la trémouille does not care to have an inspired maid appear who will arouse the king from his indolence. and the king hath other advisers of the royal council also who wish to know more of the damsel before she approaches him. 'tis on their advice that he has sent for you." "but he hath the letter vouching for her from the captain of vaucouleurs," exclaimed de poulengy, with heat. "there will be delay, and yonder lies orléans waiting the coming of the maid; for by my faith! i do believe that she can raise the siege. ay! and jean here believes likewise. 'tis our opinion that she hath been divinely commissioned so to do." "then why fret about telling the king what ye believe?" asked colet. "he questioned me, and i spoke freely concerning her goodness, and the safety with which we had made the journey." "you are right," uttered de poulengy. "why fret indeed? 'tis only because it seems to me that were i king i would seize upon anything that held a hope for so distressed a kingdom." "'tis what frets us all, bertrand," said jean de metz. "that is, all who care for the king and france. know you not that la hire, the fiercest soldier of the armagnacs, says, 'never was a king who lost his kingdom so gay as charles?' but lead on, colet. 'tis the king's command, and we must go to him. perchance good may come from it after all." "that it may. and know for your comfort, both, that deputies from orléans, having heard of the maid, are here in chinon praying that the king may not refuse the aid, but will send the maid to them at once." "now that is good," ejaculated sire bertrand. "i can go with better grace now. come, jean." seldom has a king lived who deserved greater contempt than charles seventh. lazy, idle, luxurious, and cowardly, he was the puppet of his worst courtiers. most of the money that he could raise was spent in voluptuous living or given to favorites. but at that time however contemptible a king might be, his personality was important to his kingdom. so that charles seventh was france to his people; the image and sacred symbol of france. in his favor it may be said that he was very devout, and his piety was sincere. he was generous to others,--and to himself. he was "well languaged and full of pity for the poor." from time to time he would seem to be moved by the thought that, despite his helplessness and inability to do anything, he was still the man who ought to do all. but he was weak, a slave to his favorites, blind to their defects; ready to suffer anything from them. it was small wonder then that de poulengy dreaded the king's advisers. he and de metz returned soon to the inn to report to jeanne the result of the interview. "'tis pity that the king is not the only person who governs the realm," spoke sire bertrand with disgusted weariness. "but no! the whole royal council must give consent ere he can admit you to an audience, pucelle. there are certain of the counsellors who advise against seeing you, declaring that your mission is a hoax. some say that you are a witch, and for charles to receive a witch into his presence would endanger his person, and greatly discredit his majesty. there are still others who favor seeing you; and yolande, queen of sicily and the king's mother-in-law, declares openly that since sire robert sent letters introducing you, which you carried through many leagues of hostile provinces, fording many rivers in manner most marvellous so that you might come to him, the king ought at least to hear you. by my faith, yolande is the best adviser and the best soldier that the king has. so there the matter rests; but he ought to see you." "which he will, messire. have no doubt of that. he will hear and see me soon." "yes; in time, pucelle. but ere that time comes certain priests and clerks, experts in discerning good spirits from bad, are to examine you. they follow us, do they not, jean?" de metz nodded. "if i mistake not they come now," he said. "in god's name, why do they not set me about my work?" exclaimed jeanne impatiently. almost immediately steps were heard without the chamber, and the hostess of the inn entered, bowing low before several imposing ecclesiastics and their clerks. jeanne rose, and courtesied; standing in reverent attitude during the entire interview. the visitors showed their astonishment plainly in finding that the renowned maid of vaucouleurs was such a mere girl. the senior bishop acted as spokesman for all. "are you the maid concerning whom letters have come to the king from vaucouleurs?" jeanne bowed her head in assent. "and you in truth made that long perilous journey to speak with the king?" "yes, messire." "you seem o'er young for such a fatiguing march. you are, i should judge, not over sixteen?" "seventeen, messire." "have you, as 'tis said, a message for the king?" "yes, messire," returned the maiden briefly. "tell it to us. we in turn will bear it to the king." jeanne drew herself up at this, and stood regarding them calmly. "i cannot, messire," she said at length. "it is for the gentle dauphin alone to hear. to him, and to none other, will i tell it." "maiden," said the senior bishop earnestly, "the king hath many counsellors who are wise and learned men. it is their opinion that he ought not to see you until he learns the nature of your mission. if you in truth have aught that is good for him to hear, it were best to tell it us. that is, if you desire admission to his presence." "is not the dauphin master of his presence? is it not his to say who shall, or who shall not be admitted to him?" demanded the maiden in such open eyed wonder that the prelate looked confused. "certainly," he said hastily. "but he sends certain of his friends to see if those who seek admission are worthy to enter his presence. be advised, my child, and tell us why you wish to see him." for a long moment jeanne stood looking at him as though she saw him not; then suddenly her face became transfigured with joy, for the light shone beside her, and she bowed her head. the voice that she waited for came instantly: "tell of thy mission, daughter of god," it said. "but of that which concerns the dauphin speak not. rise, and answer boldly. we will aid thee." the maiden raised her head, and said gently: "i have leave from 'my voices,' messire, to tell you that i have two commands laid upon me by the king of heaven. one, to raise the siege of orléans; the other, to lead the dauphin to reims that he may be crowned and anointed there." the bishops heard her with amazement. they had not seen the light, nor heard the voice, but they saw that the maiden had received a communication of some kind, either from inward communion, or some celestial visitor. the senior bishop's tones showed his wonder. "those are marvellous commands, my child. what sign can you give us that you can perform them?" "i have not come to give signs," cried jeanne, her impatience flaring forth at this. "give me men-at-arms, and let me show the work i am appointed to do." "then will you relate how the commands were given to you?" questioned the bishop. briefly, because jeanne never liked to talk much of her visions, the maiden told something concerning the matter. the whole of it she did not tell. then followed questions pertaining to her manner of life, her devotion, her habits about taking the sacraments of communion and confession, and so on. to all of these she made answer freely, with such modest mien that the ecclesiastics finally withdrew, charmed by her simplicity and earnestness. and now the delay was ended; for, as evening fell, there came the count de vendôme, a gracious nobleman richly attired, to escort her to the king. de poulengy and de metz rejoiced that there would be no further delay. being personal attendants of jeanne's they were to accompany her to the castle. count de vendôme eyed the simple page attire of the maiden soberly. she was clad like the varlet of some lord of no great estate, in black cap with a little silver brooch, a grey doublet, and black and grey hose, trussed up with many points; the sword that robert de baudricourt had given her hung by her side. at first sight she might well have passed for a boy, she was so slender and carried herself so erectly. there was admiration in the nobleman's glance as he surveyed her gracious figure, but his words were grave: "will you attend the audience in that garb, pucelle?" he asked. and jeanne, remembering how de metz with a like expression of countenance had asked a similar question when she wore her woman's dress, laughed cheerily. "this and none other, messire. for in this garb shall i do that which is commanded." so led by the nobleman and followed by the two knights the maiden started for the castle. up a broad winding path they wended their way to the rocky ridge of hill along which the great walls of the castle, interrupted and strengthened by huge towers, stretched. it was old and great and strong, having been builded when the romans were lords of the land, and was a favorite seat of english kings before it passed into the hands of the french. from the high drawbridge above the moat, which was twenty feet deep, there was a wide prospect over the town and the valley of the vienne. soldiers idled and diced just within the gate, though the dice were scarce discernible in the fast falling darkness. they ceased the play as jeanne and her attendants came upon the drawbridge, and a murmur ran from lip to lip, for by this time all in chinon knew of her. "la pucelle! la pucelle! the inspired maid from vaucouleurs comes to see the king." at this soldiers and sentinels turned to gaze curiously at the girl. suddenly one started from among his fellows, and came very close to her, peering impudently into her face. "by all the saints, 'tis a pretty wench!" he cried. "may god send more such witches to chinon. i--" but angrily jean de metz swept him out of the way. "jarnedieu!" cried the soldier wrathfully, using the common oath of his class. "oh, dost thou jarnedieu?" cried jeanne mournfully. "thou who art so near death?" like one turned to stone the man stood, and then, as some of his comrades began to gibe at him, he came to himself and turned upon them in a rage. "think you that i heed what a mad woman says?" he shouted. "nay; i defy her and her prophecies." with this he uttered a loud laugh, and leaned back heavily against the low wooden pales of the bridge's side, which were crazy and old. there was a crash; and down and down he whirled. the deep waters of the moat closed over him. the soldiers looked grave and affrighted, and turned awed looks upon the maiden and her companions, who were just ascending the broad steps which gave entrance to the great hall of the king's château, where the audience was to be held. jeanne, being ahead with the count de vendôme, had not seen what had occurred, but she turned as the crash of the wooden pales sounded. "what hath happened?" she questioned. "naught," cried de metz hastily, fearing that should he tell her it would disturb her calm, and he was timorous concerning the ordeal before the maid. "the king should keep his bridge in better repair, for but now some of its wooden palings snapped in two." so without knowing that her prophecy had been fulfilled so soon the maiden passed on into the great hall. the audience chamber was crowded with curious courtiers and the royal guard, and the place shone with the lustre of fifty flambeaux. at the end of the vaulted room was a chimney of white stone in which a noble fire blazed, reflected by the polished oak boards of the floor. veteran soldiers of the wars were there; counsellors, like the favorite la trémouille, prelates, like the archbishop of reims, and trains of fair ladies with fine raiment and gay manners; all gathered to see the sorceress. a throng of men and women in velvet and cloth of gold, in crimson and azure such as she had never seen. a brilliant mob of vivid colors; a company of the noblest lords and ladies of france, their finery glowing in the flaring flames of many torches. the fans of the ladies fluttered; their high head-dresses, or hennins, towered above the head coverings of the men; a thousand unfamiliar hues and forms combined to dazzle the eyes and disturb the composure of a peasant girl. but jeanne was neither disturbed nor dazzled. eagerly she looked to see the king. she did not care for the courtiers gazing so intently at her--some with amusement, some smiling, some sneering, the most of them sceptical, but all of them gazing at her with open curiosity; with surprise at her page's attire, her man-at-arms shoes, and above all at her hair which, cut round like a page's, flowed softly about her face. at this time no woman, of whatever rank, showed the hair. it was worn covered always in obedience to saint paul's command. jeanne saw the amusement, and wonder, and scepticism on the faces around her; saw but heeded them not; moving forward the while with her eyes fixed ever on the figure seated on the throne. suddenly she stopped short with a stifled exclamation. the count de vendôme touched her arm gently. "kneel," he whispered. "the king is before you." but jeanne did not respond. she looked at him who was seated upon the throne, but made no obeisance. instead she knitted her brows in thoughtful manner, then turned deliberately round and glanced searchingly about among the courtiers. a low murmur of astonishment ran through the room as all at once she moved quickly toward a group of courtiers, and pushing them aside knelt before a soberly clad young man hiding behind them. "god give you good life, gentle dauphin," she said. "but it is not i that am the king," said he with smiling lips. "yonder he sits upon the throne." "in god's name, gentle dauphin, say not so," she said. "it is you and no other." then rising from her knees she continued: "fair dauphin, i am jeanne the maid. i am sent to you by the king of heaven to tell you that you shall be anointed and crowned at reims, and shall be lieutenant of the king of heaven, who is king of france." charles's face grew grave as he heard the words. the little masquerade planned for the amusement of the courtiers had failed; the jest was over. solemnly he spoke: "how know you this, maid?" "my voices have told me. i have come to lead you to your anointing, but first i must raise the siege of orléans. this, fair dauphin, i can do if you will but give me men-at-arms. out of your grace, i beg you to send me at once to orléans." touched by her perfect sincerity, her intense earnestness, her good faith, the king gazed musingly at her, and then asked: "how shall i know that you can do this, maid? what sign can you give?" "my sign shall be the raising of the siege of orléans; but, gentle dauphin, i have another sign which is to be told to you alone." "then tell it to me," he said, drawing her into a window recess out of ear shot of the courtiers. "gentle dauphin, when you prayed this morning in your oratory there was a great pain in your heart." "true;" nodded charles. "and you made a prayer there. fair dauphin, did you tell to any one the prayer that you made?" "no," he answered gravely. "i did not. 'tis a prayer that concerns none but myself." then quickly, earnestly, passionately, jeanne spoke, addressing him familiarly as an inspired prophetess: "did you not pray that if you were the true heir of france, and that if justly the kingdom were yours, that god might be pleased to guard and defend you? but that if you were not descended from the royal house of france god would grant you escape from imprisonment or death by permitting you to go into the land of scotland or spain, that you might find refuge there?" charles's face grew blank with amazement. "i did pray that, exactly," he admitted. "in my heart alone, without pronouncing the words. speak on, maiden. is there aught from your heavenly visitors that would answer that prayer?" "there is, gentle dauphin. know then, to ease thy heart, that i tell thee from messire, that thou art the true heir of france, and son of the king." she made the strange statement so authoritatively, so impressively that the monarch's countenance grew radiant. those watching the pair wondered at the change, but none knew until long afterward what it was that the maiden had told him. now he took jeanne's hand and bowed over it. "i believe in you, maid," he said. "though all should doubt yet do i believe. you shall have your men-at-arms, and go to orléans." "now god be praised," exclaimed the maiden joyfully. "may he send you long life, oh fair and gentle dauphin. give me the men soon, i pray you, that i may be about my work." "you shall have your wish," he said gently; and with this he led her back to the gaping courtiers. chapter xvii the impossible happens "_to pray, we do not say with the lips, but to pray with the whole sincerity of the heart, is to win an inexhaustible source of moral strength. this we say simply from the point of view of a man of science who only concerns himself with the effects of a fact, and only considers truths of observation and experience._" m. simÉon luce. "_jeanne d'arc à domremy._" the next day, as jeanne sat with the two knights discussing the audience of the evening before, here came the sire de gaucourt, former commander of orléans. "pucelle," he said, bowing low before the maid, "i come to you by order of the king, whose desire it is that you should leave this mean place and come to dwell in the tower of coudray, which is more proper lodging for you, and nearer to him. the friends who are with you shall accompany you, if such be your desire." "it is in truth my desire," spoke the maiden quickly with an affectionate glance at poulengy and metz. "true and faithful friends have they proven themselves. without their aid i could not have come to the king. they believed in me even before sire robert did. and they shall go with me to orléans, if they wish." "we do wish," came from the knights simultaneously. "to orléans, or to any place that promises fighting for france." "would that we were now bound for orléans," sighed jeanne as the four set forth for the castle. up the steep approach to the castle they wended their way once more. and now, being daylight, it was seen that the long mass of embattled walls, of keeps, towers, turrets, curtains, ramparts, and watch-towers were three castles separated one from the other by dyke, barrier, postern, and portcullis. arriving on the ridge of hill sire de gaucourt led them past the long line of machicolated battlements of the middle château where the king dwelt, and across the bridge of the inner moat. a curtain of stone connected a high tower on the moat bank with another battlemented tower built into the buttressed cliff wall. there was an archway in the curtain at the end of the bridge, through which they passed to the tower of coudray. ascending a stairway they paused at its top, for here the lieutenant of the tower, guillaume bellier, the king's major domo, waited to greet them. "you are to lodge with my own family, pucelle," he said, making jeanne a deep obeisance. "my wife comes now to bear you to your chamber for rest and refreshment." as he spoke a pleasant faced woman came forward from an adjoining room, and greeted the maiden warmly. she showed plainly her surprise at jeanne's attire, but seemed charmed by her youth and beauty. sire bertrand gave a sigh of satisfaction as he saw the maiden depart in the lady's company, and remarked to de metz in a low tone: "glad am i to see the maid in such good hands as those of madame bellier. she is a devout woman, and the two will take much pleasure in each other's company. it hath gone to my heart to see such a mere girl without any of her own sex near her." "yes; but she hath angel visitors to bring her comfort and solace, bertrand, the like of which no other maid had ever before. i believe her in very truth to be a messenger from the blessed saints that love france. still, with you, i am glad that madame bellier hath her in her care." jeanne's chambers were in the upper story of the tower, and lieutenant bellier sent her for a servant one of his own pages, louis de coutes, sometimes called mugot, who came from an old warrior family which had been in service of the house of orléans for a century. her two knights with their servants had chambers just beneath hers. and now that the king had taken her under his charge people flocked to see her. churchmen came to test her orthodoxy; captains to ask her about her knowledge of war; and all the lords and ladies to question her concerning her mission, for it was dull at chinon, and a witch was worth looking at any day. jeanne was impatient to be about her work, but she answered them all so aptly, and was so gentle and simple, that all who met her grew to believe in her. many too were curious concerning the oak wood, asking if the bois chesnu were not in her country, for every one now recalled merlin's prophecy, and was impressed by it. every day the king had her brought to him. he was weak and timorous, but her simple faith impressed him, as it impressed all who saw her, and her entire trust in him gave him some courage and self-reliance. he wished to give the maid men-at-arms at once, as he had promised, but the royal council over-ruled him. the counsellors acknowledged that it was not unusual for princes to have the counsel of devout women; that women in whom was the voice of god were not to be scorned; that even the kings of england were no less ready than the kings of france to heed the words of saintly men and women; still, it behooved him to proceed carefully in the matter, lest he should be charged with helping himself by witchcraft. in the middle ages it was the custom for saints to speak with kings and for kings to listen to them, but sorcery was the unpardonable sin. therefore, it was the opinion of the royal council that, before giving the maiden the men-at-arms for which she asked, she should be subjected to a more searching examination than any that had yet been made. and while the talk waged pro and con the fame of jeanne grew and filled all mouths. she fired the zeal of the captains who came to see her, and shamed them into some hope of saving france; she charmed the ladies of the court by her modesty; while the common people told wonderful stories of her piety, exploits and adventures. to bring this about in the short time that she had been in chinon was no mean achievement for a girl of seventeen, but jeanne, believing god to be the author of the whole work, wondered only that any one should hesitate for a moment to trust his messenger. one day she attended mass in the royal chapel, as was her daily custom, and when her devotions were finished she rose to find the king and a young nobleman standing beside her. jeanne courtesied to the monarch, whereupon he said: "we have brought our cousin, the duke of alençon, to see you, jeanne. he hath great interest in the house of orléans, having married the daughter of duke charles." "he is welcome," spoke jeanne simply. "the more of the blood royal there are here the better." "so we believe," said the king, smiling. "it is our pleasure that you dine with us to-day, that our cousin may learn more of your mission." again jeanne bowed low, charming alençon by her courtly manners. then she and the duke followed the king to the dining hall. la trémouille, the king's favorite, was present also. barrel-like in appearance, a toper, and a usurer, loaning money to the king and the nobles at high interest, la trémouille was a most important personage at court. dismissing the rest of the courtiers the king sat down at the table with the other three, the peasant maid not at all disturbed by being the guest of royalty. yet but one short month agone she had been the guest of the humble catherine le royer, the wheelwright's wife. but jeanne did not think of this. her thoughts were for the dauphin, and she was filled with the desire that he should govern wisely and well the realm which he held in trust from god. so she talked seriously to him, asking him to amend his life, and live after god's will. he was to be clement, and to be a good lord to rich and poor, friend and enemy. if he would be all this the king of heaven would do for him what he had done for his ancestors, and would restore him to his former estate. and gazing into the bright, eager young face, flushed with courage and glowing with celestial ardor the king was thrilled, and longed to do kingly deeds and to be worthy of the blood of louis, his saintly ancestor. after the dinner the four went to the meadows by the river, where jeanne guided her horse and wielded her lance with so much skill that both the king and the duke marvelled. "'tis but an indifferent steed you ride, pucelle," spoke alençon, for jeanne was still using the horse that de baudricourt had bought for her. "i will send you another that shall bear you more worthily." the very next day he presented her with a magnificent black charger which jeanne rode thereafter. it was the beginning of a warm friendship between the two. he became one of the maiden's most enthusiastic supporters, and jeanne grew fond of him not only because he was son-in-law to the duke of orléans, but because the english had done him wrong, and he had a good will to fight. jeanne measured men by that standard. she had a wholesome, hearty contempt for men who skulked at court and spent their time in idle pleasure while france lay under the heel of the invader. alençon had but just returned to his home after being held captive by the english for three years. it was told of him that his captors had proposed to give him back his liberty and his goods if he would join their party, but he rejected the offer. he was young like her, and jeanne thought that like her he must be sincere and noble. in spite of her increasing influence over churchmen, and captains, and people, the king still wavered, influenced by the royal council and the favorite. la trémouille, though indifferent to jeanne, because he had not yet come to dread her power and to intrigue against her as he did a few months later, was disinclined to action, and had no intention of allowing charles to shake off his indolence. so there were further delays while the king's confessor and others examined the maiden daily. though she was aware that these men questioned her by orders from the king, jeanne did not talk freely, but answered discreetly concerning her mission. "in god's name, my fair duke, why do they ask so many questions instead of setting me about my work?" she asked piteously of alençon one day after a visit from some of the bishops. "perchance 'tis natural for them to doubt," replied the duke consolingly. "you will have to be patient, jeanne, though there is much to try you in delay." "patient, patient!" ejaculated jeanne, who was eating her heart out with the desire to engage the enemy immediately at orléans. "can orléans hold out forever? why do they not take messire's word as it comes to them? daily do i pray to be delivered from these churchmen." alençon laughed, but checked his mirth quickly at sight of the tears that were in jeanne's eyes. "endure a little longer, my friend," he said gently. "i believe that the end of these many queries is in sight, though before it comes it has been decided to send you to poictiers." "to poictiers?" exclaimed jeanne. "and why to poictiers?" "the royal council think it best for you to be examined by the learned doctors there," he explained. "they acknowledge that they can find no fault in you, but before giving you men-at-arms to go to orléans they wish that the church should pass upon your inspiration. when that is over i believe that there will be no further delay in sending you to orléans." "what is the use in having learned men ask me questions when i know neither a nor b?" queried jeanne, dashing the tears from her eyes. "but in god's name, let us be going, since we must go. much ado will be there, i know. but my lord will help me. now let us go, my bonny duke, in god's strength." the very next day she set forth for poictiers, attended by a large company, for many were eager to see how the peasant maid would acquit herself before the learned doctors. beside alençon and her own knights there were certain veteran men-at-arms among the company; men who laughed at the idea that a mere girl of seventeen could raise the siege of orléans. there were many courtiers, some who believed in the maid, and others who welcomed the diversion. the queen's mother, yolande, who wished to see her daughter seated firmly upon the throne of france, and who believed in the simple shepherd maid, went also. but her presence did not console jeanne, who fretted because so much valuable time was being wasted. there were learned doctors at poictiers, which was distant some fifty miles from chinon. men who, loyal to the king, had left the university of paris as soon as the capital had fallen into the hands of the english, and followed the fortunes of charles, choosing this town for their abiding place, and later founding a university there. it was the home of the bar also, the great legal center, and here, if anywhere in charles's dominions, it seemed probable that men might be found able to distinguish between good spirits and bad. on her arrival in the city jeanne was lodged in the house of maître jean robateau, the attorney general, a man of wealth and distinction, married to an excellent wife. the house was near the law courts, and had built into it a little chapel where jeanne went at once to pray. it proved a haven of refuge in the days that followed. the archbishop of reims presided over the council which was soon held. the council appointed a committee of investigation, and sent emissaries to domremy to inquire into her previous history. the committee included several professors of theology, an abbot, a canon of poictiers, and one or two friars. escorted by a squire this committee went to interview jeanne at robateau's house, for she was not formally examined before the whole board of doctors. she came to meet them as they entered, but the sight of the priests irritated her. she had been subjected to so much questioning at chinon that she was weary of it. it seemed so needless and futile. for working priests and for people in religion she held a sacred regard. for learned doctors she had no use. the squire, a young man of the sword named thibault, pleased her better than the priests, for he was in military dress. she acknowledged the presence of the committee with an obeisance, then went quickly to the squire and clapped him on the shoulder, comrade fashion. "would that i had many men of your way of thinking, friend," she said. "maid," spoke the abbot gravely, "attend now to what we shall say. we are sent to you from the king." "i know quite well that you are sent to question me," spoke the maiden with spirit, "but of what avail is it? i know neither a nor b." at this the committee began to ply her with questions. "why have you come to court?" asked the abbot. "i am come from the king of heaven to raise the siege of orléans, and to lead the dauphin to reims for his crowning and anointing," she made answer. "but what made you think of coming?" asked a professor of theology. "because of the great pity there was in heaven for the realm of france, my voices told me to come, nothing doubting," replied the maiden earnestly. "your voices? what voices?" jeanne saw that much as she disliked to talk of her visions,--it was always of her mission and her voices that she told,--there was need of some explanation. the grave doctors listened attentively while she told something of her revelations, but not all. she was a peasant maid, ignorant, simple, her hands hardened with toil, her way of life humble and obscure, yet as she related her ineffable experiences she seemed a thing divine. having much food for thought they questioned her no more that day, and jeanne retired to the chapel to seek comfort from her saints, who all this time continued to visit her daily, yet giving only the one constantly repeated command. the next day the committee returned. "you tell us," said a professor of theology, "that god wishes to free the people of france from their distress. if he wishes to free them there is no need for the soldiers you ask for." "in god's name," exclaimed jeanne with some irritation, "the men-at-arms will fight, and god will give the victory." there was a stir among the learned men at this answer. the professor who had asked the question smiled as though well pleased, while the king's advocate murmured: "no clerk of the court could have answered better." after the little flurry had subsided, one seguin, a carmelite friar of learning and repute, next took his turn. he was a native of limoges, and spoke the dialect of his district. "in what language, pucelle, do these voices speak to you?" now this query seemed frivolous to jeanne. she knew no language but french, so what other could the voices use? "in a better than yours," she flashed, and there followed a general laugh, for the patois of limoges was a common subject of ridicule. "do you believe in god?" continued the friar, nothing daunted by the mirth. "more firmly than you do," she replied seriously. "then you must know, pucelle, that god does not wish us to trust you without some sign that you can do what you say. gideon, for a sign, laid a fleece of wool upon the floor, and in the morning there was dew upon it so that he could wring a bowl of water from it, while all about the floor was dry; and the second night the fleece was dry and the floor was wet. so gideon showed to the children of israel, and it was his sign that he was from the lord. we can not advise the king to risk his soldiers just on the strength of your simple word. what is your sign, pucelle?" "in god's name," cried jeanne, now thoroughly worn out, "i did not come to show signs in poictiers; but lead me to orléans with few or many men-at-arms, and i will show you the sign for which i am sent. attend, and i will tell you also what is to happen in france: i will summon the english, and if they do not heed i will drive them from their siege. i will lead the dauphin to his crowning and anointing at reims; paris will come into its allegiance to the rightful king, and the duc d'orléans will return from his captivity; so my voices have told me." and of those who heard the words all lived to see the fulfillment of jeanne's prophecies save only the maiden herself. during her life but the first two came to pass. "why do you call the king the dauphin, even as the foreigners do who deny him the right to the throne?" asked another. "because he is not the king until he is anointed and crowned with the sacred oil," she answered. and so daily for three weeks the questioning continued. beside this formal and official examination of her faith and character, private inquests of all kinds were made concerning her claims. she was visited by every curious person, man or woman, in the town or its vicinity, and plied with endless questions, so that her simple personal story and that of her revelations became known to all the whole country round about. the two queens, yolande and her daughter marie, with their ladies, took her in hand, and subjected her to an inquiry more penetrating still than that of the graver tribunals. they inquired into her history in every subtle feminine way, testing her innocence and purity. the women were especially interested about the male attire, and pressed this query. to the queen's mother, yolande, she told the reasons. "in the first place, your majesty," said the maiden simply, "'tis the only dress for fighting, which, though far from my desires or from the habits of my life, is henceforth to be my work; this being the case, i am constrained to live among men-at-arms, and such dress is therefore more seemly." "true," said the queen thoughtfully; then presently she nodded an emphatic approval. "you are quite right, child. i see it. others shall see it too." "and too," spoke jeanne, smiling at the queen, "the habit matters nothing after all. i must wear it to do what i am commanded to do." yolande went away charmed by the maid, and reported the result not only to the waiting women, but also to the learned council. "it was her belief," she said, "that the child was sent from god." and so said all the women. jeanne had ever the women with her. so also said many of the members of the council who were growing more and more to believe in the girl. there were men who were disgusted with the cowardice and treachery of la trémouille, and not unwilling to fight for france; the energy of such men was aroused by jeanne's enthusiasm. meantime the friars who had been sent to domremy to investigate her former manner of living now returned to report that they had found no flaw in her character. at the end of the three weeks of daily examinations there came a day when jeanne was summoned before the whole board of doctors to hear the judgment of the council. the two faithful knights, alençon, and other of her true friends went with her to give comfort should the verdict be adverse. but jeanne was bright and smiling, never doubting for a moment that the result could be other than in her favor. the king and his adherents had come also, and yolande, the queen's mother, beside a great audience of the people of the town. after the formal opening, the archbishop of reims, who presided over the council, rose and read the judgment. "the case of the kingdom being desperate we, the members of the council, believe that the king should not reject the maid, nor should he lightly believe in her. but, in accordance with holy scripture, he ought to make trial of her by two ways, that is, first, by human wisdom, examining into her character, life, and intentions; and secondly, by devout prayer, asking a sign of some divine deed or ground of hope by which he may judge whether she is come by the will of god. "the maid's character has been studied; inquiry has been made into her birth, past life and intentions; for she has been examined by clerks, churchmen, men of the sword, matrons and widows. nothing has been found in her but honesty, simplicity, humility, maidenhood, and devotion. "after hearing all these reports, taking into consideration the great goodness of the maid, and that she declares herself to be sent by god, it is therefore determined by this council that from henceforward the king should make use of her for his wars, since it was for this she was sent. the king then, ought not to prevent her from going to orléans to show the sign of heavenly succor, and it is the opinion of this council that she may go with the army under honourable superintendence." there was dead silence as the archbishop concluded the reading. dead silence as the people grasped the full significance of the verdict. the incredible thing had happened. the peasant maid had triumphed over the learned doctors, even as her own saint catherine had triumphed. to the young girl, barely seventeen, was delivered the marvellous task of raising the siege of orléans. suddenly the silence was broken by a storm of applause. charles rose from his seat and beckoned the maid to come to him. as she arose to obey the command, the court and people rose and stood reverently as a mark of homage and respect. charles himself, moved by knightly impulse to do a kingly deed, descended from the throne, and himself escorted her to the throne where all might see, then bent low over her hand as though she were the royal creature and he but the humble servitor. but jeanne, the tears of gladness streaming from her eyes, fell upon her knees and kissed his hand fervently. for charles to her was france; france, represented, embodied, and made into a living thing--the france she was come to save. chapter xviii the warrior maid "_her helm was raised, and the fair face revealed, that upward gazed, intensely worshipping--a still, clear face, youthful, but brightly solemn!--woman's cheek and brow were there, in deep devotion meek, yet glorified with inspiration's trace on its pure paleness; while enthroned above, the pictured virgin with her smile of love seem'd bending o'er her votaress._" mrs. hemans. a wave of enthusiasm swept over the land as the news of the verdict of the doctors spread. cowed france threw off her cowardice and rose to courage and activity. men and arms were now forthcoming for the army that began to gather at blois, which was the nearest city to orléans that remained in charles's hands. alençon and other lords, yolande, the queen of sicily, loyal cities like la rochelle opened wide their coffers, and furnished money to finance the undertaking. an inspired maid, a virgin sent from god was to lead france to victory against the enemy. because god had taken pity on the distressed kingdom the invader was to be expelled by his maiden messenger. thus spoke the people, and men took heart of grace and prepared joyously to go to the succor of orléans. possession of this city was of the greatest importance to charles; for as it lay immediately between the provinces which had submitted to the english, and those which still acknowledged his authority, it served as a gathering point for his adherents, and a stronghold from whence they could with advantage sally out and annoy their enemies. unless this place was taken the english could not with safety pursue the king into the southern part of the kingdom, and the success of his cause depended upon its possession. if it were lost, there was no resource left the monarch but flight. thus upon the raising of the siege of the city depended the whole fate of france; its nationality, its very existence. a month must pass before the full number of men and sufficient provisions could be gathered for the expedition, but jeanne knew the need of both and was no longer impatient. from chinon the dauphin sent her to tours to be fitted with armour, whither she was accompanied by her knights. it was the most important city in that part of france, and no place excelled its smiths in the making of armour. yolande, the queen's mother, herself designed the armour for the warrior maiden, which was to be of steel inlaid with silver, burnished to a shining whiteness symbolic of the purity of the holy enterprise. by charles's desire jeanne was given a household as became a person of her importance. she dwelt with eleanor, wife of jean du puy, one of the queen's ladies, and her immediate attendants consisted of jean d'aulon, a veteran from orléans, who acted as her equerry, or squire; the two knights who had accompanied her from vaucouleurs, two pages, louis de coutes, and raimond, while later was added jean pasquerel, an augustinian friar who was her confessor. jeanne submitted to the household and to the splendor with which she was now clothed, because it proclaimed the favor of the dauphin, and was therefore best for her mission. but for her standard and her sword she herself gave directions, for concerning these she had received revelations from her voices. when charles would have presented her with a sword to replace the one robert de baudricourt had given her she told him of a weapon at fierbois which her voices had told her to use. "i have sent a letter to the priests there at saint catherine's asking if i may have it," she said. "i told them that it would be found buried in the earth behind the altar. the messenger should return with it to-day." "if it be there," he remarked, half laughing. "it will be, fair dauphin," returned the girl instantly, with the perfect faith in her revelations that was her strength. "but how will they know that it is the sword that you mean?" he questioned. "there will be five crosses on the handle," said jeanne. the king dropped the subject for the time being, but he resolved to watch to see if the sword were found where the maiden said that it would be. he had indorsed her, but he welcomed further proof of her inspiration. alençon, la trémouille and queen yolande were with him beside the peasant maiden, and these were listening with great interest to jeanne's words. and now the favorite spoke, voicing the thought that was in charles's mind: "i should like to see this mystic sword, your majesty," he said, his tones reflecting his scepticism. the monarch smiled at his favorite without replying, but alençon, detecting the underlying mockery, exclaimed with some heat: "by st. martin! if the pucelle says that the sword is under the altar at saint catherine's, it is there. and who denies it shall answer to me." "gently, my cousin, gently," spoke charles lazily. "there will be time enough for private quarrel after orléans. 'tis not doubt that made la trémouille so speak, but a natural desire to witness the marvel." at this moment there came one who spoke to one of the gentlemen in waiting, who instantly approached the king. "your majesty," he said, "a man waits without. an armourer of the city. he has but come from fierbois, and he bears a sword which he is to deliver to the maid whom he has been told is here." "let him present himself at once," said charles eagerly. amid a hush of expectancy the armourer whom jeanne had sent to fierbois entered, and advanced toward the king. at a sign from the monarch he handed to him the sword that he bore. charles drew the weapon from its sheath and examined it curiously. it was an ancient blade, and though it had been cleaned still showed traces of rust. upon the handle there were five crosses, as jeanne had said there would be. "did the priests know that the sword was there?" he asked of the man. "no, sire. they said at first that the maid must be mistaken, as they knew of no such sword; but, after much labor and search, 'twas found just where the maid said that it would be. it was very rusty when it was taken from the earth, but when the priests started to clean it the rust fell away of itself. so marvellous is the matter deemed that there is a great stir over it at fierbois, and the priests have had this scabbard of crimson velvet made for the maid to carry the sacred weapon in." "the matter is of a truth marvellous," commented charles, laying the sword in jeanne's eager, outstretched hands. "but good blade though it be, pucelle, it will need sharpening before it can be used." jeanne hung her head, blushing. "it shall never be used for the shedding of blood," she said reverently. "i love it already, fair dauphin, but it shall not be used to kill. i could not shed blood." charles smiled slightly at the shamefaced confession. here was the maiden anxiously awaiting the gathering of men-at-arms that she might lead them into battle, yet declaring that she could not shed blood. "and your standard?" he said gently. "did you not say that you had received divine direction regarding it also?" "yes; but--" jeanne paused reluctant to continue. she did not understand the reason for the design upon the standard, and was diffident about telling of it. after some urging, however, she told charles the exact design that was to be emblazoned upon it, and was dictated to her by her saints--margaret and catherine, and the monarch had it painted accordingly. it was made of white linen, a precious fabric at this time, and over its field were scattered golden lilies. in the midst of it god was painted holding the world and sitting upon the clouds; on either side an angel knelt; the motto was jesus marie. the standard was symbolic of her mission: the lilies of france, the country she had come to save; god, who had sent her; and jesus, the son of mary, her watchword. on the reverse side of the standard charles had fashioned the chosen blazon of the maid: a dove argent, upon a field azure. this was the great standard to be used for the rallying of all her host. she had also a banner and a pennon. on the banner was our lord crucified between the holy virgin and saint john. this was to be used for the gathering of the men for prayer and praise after they had confessed and made their consciences clean. on the pennon was wrought the annunciation, the angel with a lily kneeling to the blessed virgin. it was to be used as a signal to those who fought around her as guards to her body. the standard jeanne declared that she would carry herself, which was unusual for one who was to act as general. but such was the command of her heavenly guides. "take the standard on the part of god, and carry it boldly," they had told her. while all these preparations were being made jeanne made a visit of a few days to alençon's wife and mother at st. florent near saumur. jeanne of orléans made jeanne of d'arc warmly welcome. she was but a young girl herself, daughter of charles duke of orléans, then nearly fifteen years a prisoner in england, whose city the english were besieging, and therefore had a peculiar interest in the purpose of jeanne d'arc. she feared, though, for her husband's safety, remembering the three years that he too had been a prisoner to the english, and she told these fears to jeanne just as the latter was starting to return to tours. "fear nothing, madame," comforted jeanne. "i will bring him back to you as well as he is now, or even better." while jeanne was at st. florent the two knights, poulengy and metz, had gone with many others from tours on a pilgrimage to our lady of puy en velay; for this year of our lord, , was the year of jubilee, as any year was called when good friday and the annunciation fell upon the same day. the years in which this occurred were always marked by strange and great events, and crowds flocked to the church which was the oldest dedicated to our lady. the morning that the knights were to return jeanne sat in an upper room of the house of jean du puy, whose wife had charge of her. it was the room where she received people, and was connected with the portal by a flight of stairs. there were many in the chamber, for she was now the commissioned maid of war, with much to attend to. presently her attention was caught by a commotion in the street below, and there came shouts and cries, and then the sound of footsteps. wondering at the tumult, for,--though many people were always waiting in the street below to see her come and go; sometimes striving to get close enough to kiss her hands or any part of her garments and hailing her as a messenger of hope,--there was seldom any disturbance inside the portal. her amaze grew as footsteps were heard ascending the stairs. presently there came a quick rush of men in haste. as the door was flung wide a young voice cried: "jeanne, jeanne! where are you? we have come to you, jeanne." jeanne uttered a cry of joy as pierre and jean, her brothers, came into the room, followed by the two knights and father pasquerel, her confessor. "oh, boys!" she cried, trying to clasp both of them in her arms at once. "when did you come? how did you get here?" "we came with the knights and father pasquerel from puy en velay, where we went with mother on a pilgrimage. then we came on here," pierre told her, giving her a bearlike hug. "with mother?" exclaimed jeanne in surprise. "did mother go on a pilgrimage to puy en velay?" "yes; she sends her love and blessing to you. she made offerings for you there," spoke jean. "and father?" questioned she anxiously. "how is father?" "he grieves over your absence, jeanne, but he sends his blessing and love also." "now god be thanked," cried the maid, weeping for very joy. "oh, 'tis good to have you here, boys. now you two shall be members of my household, and be with me wherever i go." happy indeed was jeanne made by the coming of her brothers. it seemed like bringing her home to her. now with jean and pierre with her, and the love and blessing of her parents she could proceed on her appointed way with light heart. by the twenty-fifth of april everything was ready for the march to orléans. jeanne now left tours and went to blois to meet the captains and soldiers. she found a busy scene at the little town. the roads were full of oxen, cows, sheep and swine all gathered for the victualling of orléans. what with the lowing of the cattle, the bleating of the sheep, and the riotous noise of the soldiers in camp everything was in an uproar. jeanne established her household, and then sent for the captains to come to her. officers of wide renown were they: de gaucourt, the old commander of orléans, whom she had already met; rais and boussac, two marshals of france; culent, the lord admiral; and la hire, the gascon freebooter. they revered her as a saintly child, but left her declaring among themselves that the maid would inspire the army with courage, but as for war--when had there been a woman since the time of deborah who had known aught of its art? this jeanne found out afterwards. after this meeting jeanne sent by a herald to the english a letter which she had dictated at poictiers just after the decision of the doctors: "jhesus maria "king of england, and you, duke of bedford, calling yourself regent of france, you, william de la poule, comte de sulford, john, lord of talbot, and you, thomas, lord of scales, who call yourselves lieutenants of the said bedford, listen to the king of heaven: give back to the maid who is here sent on the part of god the king of heaven, the keys of all the good towns which you have taken by violence in his france. she is sent on the part of god to redeem the royal rights. she is ready to make peace if you will hear reason and be just towards france, and pay for what you have taken. and you archers, brothers-in-arms, gentiles, and others who are before the town of orléans, go into your own country, at god's command; but if you do not, look to hear news of the maid, who will shortly go to see you to your great hurt. king of england, if you will not do this, i am the head of the army, and wherever i meet your people in france i will make them flee, whether they will or no, and if they will not obey, i will kill them all. i am sent from god, king of heaven, body for body, to drive you all out of france; but if the soldiers obey, i will have mercy on them. be not obstinate, therefore, for you shall not hold the kingdom of france from god, the king of heaven, son of saint mary; from him shall charles hold it, the true heir, for god, the king of heaven, wills it so, and so has it been revealed by the maid. if you do not heed the word of god and the maid, in whatever place we find you, we will put you to a greater rout than has been known in france for a thousand years, if you will not hear reason. and be sure that the king of heaven will send greater strength to the maid and to her good soldiers than you can bring with all your might, and then we shall see who has the better right, the king of heaven or you. the maid begs you and bids you, duke of bedford, not to bring destruction on yourself. if you will heed her you may come in her company where the french shall do the greatest work that has ever been done for christianity. answer then if you will still continue against the city of orléans. if you do so you will soon recall it to yourself to your great misfortune. "jeanne the maid." then into every part of the camp this girl of seventeen penetrated. armies of the time were full of brutal license, and gambling, blasphemy, and other vices were prevalent. wickedness of all kinds was the rule. but rude, rough, and lawless though the soldiers were they had their adorations, and reverenced holy things. to them the fair young girl was a saint. they adored her, and talked freely among themselves about her habits of life. she was good to the poor, she confessed daily, oftentimes she heard mass three times a day; there was too a grace of purity about her such as one might bear who descended from heaven. so when jeanne declared that the war was a holy war, and that all who followed her must go clean of sin, gambling and dicing ceased, and men went to be shrived daily. la hire, too, fierce ruffian though he was, gave up swearing, though he begged so hard to leave him something to swear by that she, having a sense of humor, left him his baton. all now being in readiness on the morning of the twenty-eighth of april the army started on its march to orléans. the day was bright and beautiful, ideal for the beginning of such an enterprise. the brilliant sunlight flooded the fields and meadows gay with wild flowers. at the head of the army marched a long procession of priests bearing crosses, swinging censers, with holy banners as on a pilgrimage, and chanting the "veni creator"; the grave and solemn music of the church accompanied strangely by the fanfares and bugle notes of the army. following these came jeanne on a great white horse that the king had given her. she was clad in white armour inlaid with silver--all shining like her own saint michael himself. a radiance of whiteness and glory under the sun--her uncovered head rising in full relief from the dazzling breastplate and gorget. with her rode d'aulon, her squire, following immediately after were her own faithful knights, her brothers, confessor, and pages; while behind them stretched the main body of the army, a forest of glittering spears, the divisions commanded by the respective generals. then came the long train of carts and cattle to which the army formed an escort. god's maid indeed seemed jeanne as she rode, and with hearts beating high with hope the citizens of the town blessed her as she passed up the road on the way to orléans. blois was thirty miles from the besieged city, on the right bank of the river loire, on which side orléans was also situated. it was jeanne's plan, in accordance with directions from her voices, which told her to go forward boldly, nothing doubting, to go direct to orléans by the road on the right bank, entering the city by its western gate, past the english fortifications. but, knowing nothing of the country, she left the guidance of the army to her captains, who deceived her. the english had built a line of strong fortresses called bastilles around orléans--fortresses which closed all the gates of the city but one. to the french generals the idea of trying to fight their way past those strongholds and lead the army and supplies into orléans was preposterous; they believed the result would be the destruction of the army. jeanne's theory of the art of war was simple; she believed it to consist in attacking at once the principal body of the enemy, but after the recent experience at rouvray the generals hesitated to face their enemies in the field. the generals therefore decided to march to orléans by the left bank of the river. how they were to cross the river when they came opposite to the city they seem not to have considered. intending to use jeanne's trust in the divine favor to stir up the enthusiasm of their soldiers they did not tell her their plans, but made her believe that orléans was situated on the left, or south, bank of the loire. therefore, crossing the bridge at blois they marched up the south bank of the stream. as had been said, it was thirty miles from blois to orléans, and the army passed one night in the fields. for the first time jeanne slept in armour, and was in consequence bruised and chafed. when it is considered that this armour included a helmet (worn by her only at night); a neck-piece or gorget; a corselet; hip joints; a kind of skirt of steel, open in the centre for freedom in riding; strong shoulder plates; steel sleeve, gauntlets, thigh pieces, knee-joints, greaves, and shoes; every piece being of steel, the wonder is that a mere girl could have carried such a weight. about noon of the succeeding day the army came upon the heights of olivet, two miles south of orléans, from which the city and the position of the besieging army could be plainly seen. then jeanne saw how she had been deceived. between her and the town of orléans lay the wide river, the broken bridge, and the camps of the english. how the cattle and so great a company of men-at-arms were to be ferried across under the artillery of the english, who held the bridge and the strong keep of les tourelles which guarded passage at this point, was a problem. on the further shore the people swarmed the walls and quays of the city, laboring to launch boats with sails, and so purposing to ascend the stream and meet the relieving army. but a strong wind was blowing down stream and it was impossible to bring up the heavy barges needed to transport men and provisions, while the army and the convoy seemed open to attack by suffolk and talbot, who could cross the river safely under the guns of the fort on the island and the bridge. jeanne was bitterly indignant, and spoke her mind pretty plainly to the generals, to whom the absurdity of their plan was now apparent. she wished to attack the bastilles of the english on this side of the river at once, and the soldiers were eager to follow her, but the generals implored her not to think of it, as even though these were taken they would not have the strength to hold them. so again the army took up its march from olivet and wended its way up the river to a point six miles above the city. the march was watched anxiously from the leaguered city, and so flat was the country that every movement could be marked after the troops left olivet. when the expedition stopped, the count of dunois, natural half brother of the duke of orléans and commander of the city, took boat and rowed up stream and across to meet it. jeanne spurred forward to meet the hardy young man, brown of visage, who leaped from the boat. "are you the count of dunois?" she asked. "i am," said he, "and right glad of your coming." "was it you that gave counsel that i should come by this bank and not by the other side, and so straight against talbot and the english?" "i and wiser men than i gave that advice, believing it to be best and safest," he returned mildly. "in god's name, the counsel of messire is safer and wiser than yours." she pointed to the water running rough and strong, a great wind following it, so that no sailing boats could come from the town. "you thought to deceive me, and you rather deceived yourselves, for i bring you better help than ever came to any captain or city, the help of the king of heaven. it is not given for love of me, but comes from god himself, who at the prayer of saint louis and saint charlemagne has had pity on the city of orléans, and will not suffer that enemies shall have the body of the duke and his city also. but have patience. by the help of god all will go well." and in a moment, as it were, the wind, which was contrary and strong, shifted, and became favourable, so that each vessel could now tow two others. dunois was much impressed by this signal grace from god, and regarded the maid reverently. then taking advantage of the change he had the heavy barges towed up the river five miles, where the supplies were embarked without danger of attack, the army having marched along the river bank to the same place. as the loaded barges went down stream to the city, the garrison made a sortie against the english bastille of st. loup, to prevent its defenders from firing upon the flotilla, and thus secured the safe arrival of the supplies. this being accomplished the count of dunois wished jeanne to return with him to the city. the people were impatiently awaiting her coming, he said, and it would give them courage and hope merely to behold her. but jeanne was reluctant to leave the army. it had been determined that it should go back to blois, and make a new march, returning to orléans by the north or right bank, according to the maid's plan. later it was found that jeanne could have taken the army and supplies by the english forts just as she had designed; for the english soldiers were in a demoralized condition of superstitious terror. they too had heard of the coming of the divine maid, but they believed her to be a witch in league with satan. the french generals did not take this fact into account. jeanne feared now to leave her army. she had been deceived once; how could she know that the captains would keep the promise to return with the soldiers? then too she might lose her hold upon the men if they were without her presence. so she was reluctant to consent to enter the city. dunois implored the captains to promise to return, and to be content without her, and so save the disappointment of the people. the captains promised, and so, sending her own confessor, father pasquerel, and the great standard with the soldiers, jeanne crossed the river with dunois, taking with her her household and a force of two hundred lances. it had been noon when they reached the heights of olivet, but the march up the river, the transporting of the supplies, and the return march down the loire had taken much time, so that it was nearly eight o'clock in the evening when she rode into the city, by way of the burgundy gate. she was in full armour, mounted on the white horse, with her white pennon, on which was the annunciation with the two angels, each bearing a lily in his hand, carried before her. at her left side rode count dunois in armour, richly appointed, and behind her came her household and many noble and valiant lords and squires, captains and soldiers, with the burghers of orléans who had gone out to escort her. at the gate crowds of people were waiting; the rest of the soldiers and the men and women of orléans. all the bells of the city were ringing, and the people laughed, and wept, and shouted for joy. the maid, the god-sent maid had come; and they rejoiced greatly, not without cause. for they had endured much labour, and weariness and pain, and what is worse, great fear lest they should never be succored, but should lose both life and goods. now they felt greatly comforted through the divine virtue of which they had heard in this simple maid.[ ] through the glare of the torches jeanne saw the sea of faces turned adoringly toward her. she stretched out her mailed hands toward them lovingly: "be of good cheer," she cried. "messire hath taken pity on your distresses." there came a press to touch her, and to touch even the horse on which she rode. so closely did the people come that a torch bearer was pushed against the pennon and the fringe took fire. almost instantly jeanne spurred forward, leaned down, and put out the flame with her hand, and the people shouted with enthusiasm. to the cathedral of saint croix the procession wended, and entering it the maiden returned thanks. once more the line of march was taken up, the people accompanying her the whole length of the city to the house of jacques boucher, treasurer of the duke of orléans, where she was received with joy. she was to be the guest of madame boucher as long as she remained in the city. the squire d'aulon, her brothers, the two knights, and her pages were lodged in the same house. jeanne was in orléans at last, ready to show the sign for which she was sent. ------ [ ] journal du siège, upon which this description is founded. chapter xix the hour and the girl "_by esther, judith and deborah, women of high esteem, he delivered his oppressed people. and well i know there have been women of great worship. but jeanne is above all. through her god hath worked many miracles._" christine de pisan. _poem in honour of the maid._ _july st, ._ jeanne was eager to engage the enemy the next day, and the citizens would gladly have followed her, but dunois and the captains of the garrison did not wish it. their argument was that they ought to await the return of the army from blois. jeanne's influence in war had not yet begun to be felt, and so great was the fear of the french for the english that it was said that two hundred englishmen could put eight hundred or a thousand frenchmen to flight. forced into inactivity the maid sent a herald with a summons to the english, a procedure common at the time. there had been no reply to the letter that she had sent from blois, and neither had the herald been returned. in this later epistle she summoned the surrender of the enemy before the attack, demanding the return of her messenger. at the same time dunois wrote, warning them that any harm that came to the herald should be retaliated upon the persons of the english prisoners held by him. in compliance with dunois' request the last herald was sent back, but the english threatened to burn the other. while the person of a herald was regarded as sacred by all the usages of war this man from the armagnac witch could have no rights, they declared, and should be burned for his mistress. they laughed at the letter, and gave fierce defiances to the maid, calling her a dairy maid, bidding her go back to her cows, and threatening to burn her if they caught her. but in spite of these high words there was an undercurrent of fear in the defiance. the english as well as the french believed that the latter had supernatural aid, though the english held that the witch of the armagnacs was emissary of evil rather than of good. in the afternoon la hire and florent d'illiers, two of the captains who had entered the city with jeanne, with a force of men-at-arms and some citizens sallied forth from the city and attacked an english outpost between their fortress of paris and the city wall, and drove the men into the main work. they thought to have burned this, but before they could do so the english rallied and drove them back without much firing. jeanne was not present at this fray, but in the evening she rode forth, the townspeople crowding about her, and placing herself on the town end of the broken bridge--called out to the enemy, addressing them courteously, summoning them once more to withdraw while there was time. sweetly and clearly her voice rang across the water, so that the english who were in the fortress called les tourelles on the other side of the bridge could not fail to hear her. sir william glasdale,--whom the french called classidas,--the knight in charge, came out on the bridge and answered by hurling a volume of abuse upon her. jeanne was not prepared for the foul epithets that he called her, and for a brief time could not speak, so overwhelmed was she. then drawing her mystic sword she waved it above her head, crying: "dost thou so speak, classidas? thou who art to die in so short a time without stroke of sword!" but glasdale and his captains, who by this time had hurried to the walls to catch sight of the witch, retorted with such vile words that jeanne could not restrain her tears, and wept bitterly. and so weeping she returned to the city. there being no sign of the return of the army dunois, fearing that without the presence of the maid the favorite and the royal council might so work upon the captains that they would fail to bring the army back, determined to go to blois and bring it himself. on sunday, therefore, with jeanne's squire d'aulon, he set forth. the maid, with la hire and other captains, accompanied him to cover the departure, taking a position at the special point of danger between the expedition and the enemy. but in the towers not a man budged, not a shot was fired. so dunois went on his way unmolested, while jeanne returned to the town. the citizens had watched for her coming, and now walked by the side of her charger to the cathedral, where every progress ended. the press to see her was at all times great, and jacques boucher's door was almost broken in by the eagerness of the people. she could hardly move through the crowded streets when she went abroad, and it seemed that "they could not have enough of the sight of her." as an attack could not be made until the return of count dunois with the army jeanne rode out on monday to reconnoitre the position of the english, followed by the captains and soldiers and a great crowd of townsfolk who seemed to feel no fear in her company. on all sides of orléans the country was very flat. the city was built close to the northern bank of the loire in a parallelogram, slightly irregular on its western side, which curved outward and joined the northern line at an acute angle. it was protected by a strong wall from twenty to thirty feet high, having a parapet and machicolations, with twenty-four towers. outside the wall, except where it faced the river, was a ditch forty feet wide and twenty feet deep. there were four great gates in the walls that gave upon roads leading from orléans. on the north side were two, the bannier gate and the paris gate leading to the paris road; on the east was the burgundy gate and the old roman road leading to jargeau; and on the west, the regnart gate upon the road to blois. it was through this last named gate that jeanne went to make her reconnoissance. she found that the principal camp of the english was on this western side. from the river northward, guarding the road to blois, there were five great bastilles, joined by ditches and covered trenches whereby the enemy could easily prevent the going in of men and convoys of food. the massing of the greatest number here was necessary, as this road led to the royal provinces. to the northeast the great forest of orléans crept nearly to the city walls. about a mile and a half beyond the burgundy gate on the east side was the bastille of st. loup, which commanded the road to checy and on to jargeau, from which the english drew many of their supplies. this was one of their strongest fortresses, and was the only one on this side, for the reason that this road led to the possessions of the duke of burgundy, who was with the english, and therefore no enemy was expected from this direction. on the south, the walls of the city rose directly from the river. a great stone bridge with arches, buildings and fortifications spanned the water here, but three of the arches had been broken, for the english now held the bridge and its fortifications, having taken it from orléans early in the siege. on the last pier was built a strong fortress called les tourelles, connected with the shore of the south bank by a drawbridge, which in its turn was covered by a strong earthwork or boulevard. as they held les tourelles the english had but three posts on the left side of the river. one, champ st. privé, that guarded the road by the left bank from blois; les augustins, that was a short distance inland from the boulevard of les tourelles; and st. jean le blanc, that was higher up the river, and was a hold of no great strength. there had been faubourgs, or suburbs, "the finest in the kingdom," about the city, but their citizens destroyed them so that no englishmen could be sheltered among them. fifteen thousand people were thus rendered homeless, and crowded into orléans, nearly doubling its population, and threatening all with famine. as jeanne rode round the city at leisurely pace necks were craned over the breastworks of the enemy to catch a glimpse of the witch, but not a shot was fired from the forts. like a shining vision she seemed, clad in white armour, riding her white horse, her head covered by a little velvet cap ornamented with nodding plumes, her dark hair flying about her face, and though the english hurled words of abuse at her the lips that spoke them were pale with superstitious terror. unmolested jeanne completed her survey, then led her people back through the gate into the city, then to the cathedral to vespers. here doctor jean de mascon, a "very wise man," said to her: "my child, are you come to raise the siege?" "in god's name, yes." "my child, they are strong and well intrenched, and it will be a great feat to drive them out." the wise man spoke despondently. "there is nothing impossible to the power of god," jeanne made answer. the garrisons of montargis, gien, and château regnard came marching into the city the next day, bringing word that the army and convoy from blois had started on the march for orléans. at dawn of wednesday, therefore, jeanne with la hire and five hundred of the garrison rode out to meet them. dunois was coming by the route that jeanne had wished to take on her entry, and it was found to be no difficult matter to make a wide detour around the forts, skirt the forest at the back of the city where the english had no bastille, and enter by the paris gate. so, led by the priests, chanting the veni creator, as at blois, headed by father pasquerel bearing the great standard, jeanne entered the city as she had planned to do. right beneath the forts of the english they rode and marched, but not a shot was fired, not a sally was made from the forts. john, lord of talbot, was a brave man, but not even a brave general can control demoralized and terrified men; men to whom the slender figure in shining armour seemed like nothing mortal. by noon jeanne had her army safely housed in orléans. d'aulon dined with jeanne, and while they were seated at table, the count of dunois entered and told the maiden that there was news that sir john fastolf, he who had defeated the french at rourvay in the battle of the herrings, was coming from paris with reinforcements and supplies for the english, and that it was said that he was but a day's march distant. jeanne heard the tidings joyfully. "dunois, dunois," she cried, elated that at last action must come, "i command you, in god's name, to let me know as soon as he arrives. if you do not, i--will have your head." "for that i do not fear, jeanne," replied the count courteously. "i shall let you have the news as soon as it comes." then he took his leave. now there were some of the captains of the city who resented the enthusiasm with which the maiden had been received. this was quite natural among men who had been fighting unsuccessfully for months in defence of the beleaguered city. dunois, la hire, poton zaintrailles and a few others were exceptions to the men who felt jealousy of the maid, but the others were sore and wounded by her appearance and claims. a certain guillaume de gamache felt himself insulted above all by the suggestion that jeanne should arrange the plan of procedure against the enemy. "what," he cried, "is the advice of this girl of the fields to be taken against that of a knight and captain! i will fold up my banner, and become again a simple soldier. i would rather have a nobleman for my master than a woman whom nobody knows." dunois had tried to placate these men, but vainly. jeanne, of course, knew nothing about it. later she was to be greatly harassed by these jealousies. those captains who had not shared in the expeditions of the morning to meet dunois and the army took advantage of the enthusiasm aroused by the entrance of the men-at-arms under the very guns of the enemy to make a sortie, unknown to the new leaders. they wished to show how well they could do without the presence of the holy maid of vaucouleurs. jeanne was wearied by the early morning expedition, and so laid down in the afternoon by the side of her hostess, madame boucher, and was asleep. d'aulon too felt fatigued, and also stretched himself on a couch for rest. all at once jeanne awoke with a wild cry of agitation and alarm. "my council tell me to go against the english," she cried, springing out of bed. "but if to assail their towers, or to meet this fastolf i cannot tell." and then her trouble grew, and her eyes had the rapt look left in them by her visions. "my arms, d'aulon! my arms!" she cried. "quick! the blood of our soldiers is flowing. why did they not tell me?" all was quiet in the streets, and there came no sign of conflict on the tranquil air of the may afternoon. but d'aulon leaped to his feet at her cry, and without a word began to buckle on her armour, assisted by madame boucher and her little daughter. meantime jeanne was calling loudly to her page for her horse. hurriedly the youth saddled the charger and brought it to the door. as jeanne swung herself into the saddle she perceived that her standard was wanting. "my banner," she cried, and louis the page handed it to her from the upper chamber window. then with the heavy flag staff in hand she set spurs to her horse and dashed away at speed so that the fire flashed from the stones that paved the thoroughfare. one by one her attendants armed themselves and clattered after her. and now came shouts and cries, and all at once the streets were filled with people who cried loudly that the english were slaughtering the french. straight through the town jeanne galloped, riding toward the loudest noise, which proved to be at the burgundian gate on the east side of the city. the gate was open to let in a rabble of retreating french who were bringing some wounded men with them. overwhelmed with pity at the sight jeanne paled, and half drew rein. "i can never see french blood but my hair rises with horror," she said to d'aulon, who had now overtaken her. through the gate they passed, and met a disorganized band of men-at-arms, archers, and burghers flying before the english. for the coup which had been planned by the captains was a sortie against the strong bastille of st. loup, and it had proven disastrous to those who had undertaken it. there went up a great shout from the french as they caught sight of jeanne as she galloped through the gate. they rallied, turned, and swept onward after her. clear and sweet above the din of battle sounded her bell-like voice: "friends, friends, have good courage. on! on! they are ours." there never was anything like the response that followed. the french surged forward upon the english, who had sallied confidently out of the bastille to meet the first assault, and swept their foes before them, driving them back into their fortress. gallantly the english fought, but they were no match for men imbued with divine ardour by the maid. everywhere in the thick of battle the shining figure appeared, encouraging and urging the men to greater efforts. against the formidable walls of the bastille the french hurled themselves with irresistible fury. back and forth the tide of battle surged; back and forth, for the english made a desperate resistance. back and forth until the vesper hour when, with a mighty rush, the french carried the place by storm. st. loup was taken. before the english camp on the west side could hurry reinforcements around the walls the bastille was sacked, riddled, burned. the english were cut off from jargeau. dizzy with the first victory that had been theirs in years the soldiers and burghers re-entered the city with banners flying, proudly displaying the prisoners and captured munitions. and the city went wild over the maid who had wrought the miracle. la hire, dunois, poton zaintrailles, rais and boussac were ready to follow wherever she might lead. the citizens pressed upon her as she rode, adoring and worshipping. all the bells in the city rang joyfully, and in the churches soldiers and citizens alike "gave thanks to god by hymns and devout orisons." it was jeanne's first battle, and she wept as she prayed for those who had died unshriven. as she rose from her confession she said to father pasquerel: "in five days the city shall be delivered; but i shall be wounded on saturday, here." and she placed her hand upon a spot between her neck and shoulder. thursday being the feast of ascension and a holy day there was no fighting. to jeanne, whose mission was a holy one, it seemed right that the success of the day before should be followed up by an attack upon one of the english fortresses, but the captains pleaded the sanctity of the day, so none was made. but, while jeanne confessed and took the sacrament, exhorting the soldiers to do likewise, the captains held a council at the house of the chancellor of orléans, cousinot, taking care that news of it should not come to jeanne. they decided that a feigned attack should be made upon the strong bastille of st. laurent, which stood just beyond the regnart gate on the west side, which should draw off men from the forts beyond the river. when this was done the main body of the french would attack the weakened bastilles on the south bank and overcome them. the maid, at the head of the burghers, was to make the feint while the nobles and their levies were to make the real assault across the loire. but jeanne was to be told no word of their design lest she should reveal the intention to the enemy. when they had come to this conclusion ambroise de loré was sent to bring the maid to the council, and when she came in answer to the summons, chancellor cousinot himself told her they were to attack the great fortress of st. laurent, and that she was to lead the attack. but of their real purpose he said no word. jeanne's acuteness told her that something was being withheld, but she said nothing until he had made an end of the telling. then she spoke quietly. "what is it that you have really decided? why do you fear to tell me what it is? i can keep a greater secret than that." "jeanne, do not be angry," spoke dunois. "we cannot tell you everything at once. what the chancellor has told you is true, but if the men in the bastilles go to the aid of those in the great fort we intend to cross the river, and fall upon them." jeanne professed herself satisfied, and so the matter rested. but no part of the plan was carried out. that evening she made her last summons to the english. going to the end of the intact part of the bridge, where the people of orléans had erected a fort, she called across the water to the english in the tourelles, telling them that it was god's will that they should withdraw from france. "i shall write no more," she said as she fastened a letter to an arrow and directed an archer to shoot it into the fortress. "i would have sent this in more honourable fashion, but you keep my herald, guienne. return him and i will return my prisoners taken at st. loup." "news from the armagnac wench," shouted a soldier as he ran forward to pick up the missive. "cowgirl! witch! only let us catch you, and you shall burn." jeanne could not keep back her tears as she heard these insults, but calling the king of heaven to her aid, she was soon comforted, and smiled through her tears. "i have tidings from messire," she called back. "the english shall depart, but you, classidas, will not see it, for you will be dead. without stroke of sword shall you die." the english hooted and jeered at these words, and hurled taunts and foul epithets upon her, and having given her last summons jeanne returned to the city. she rose early the next morning and confessed to father pasquerel, who said mass for all the household; then she set forth followed by her personal attendants and a multitude of citizens who were in armed readiness. the secret that the true attack was to be made on the forts across the river had somehow leaked out, but not through jeanne. a number of burghers had been present at the council, and they had not approved of the plan. when jeanne appeared there was no word said about attacking the great fort of st. laurent, but with one accord all took a line of march toward the eastern side of the city to the burgundy gate, which the troops must pass through in order to cross to the south bank of the river. that the captains intended to carry out the design and make their assault without jeanne and the townspeople was evidenced when they reached the gate. it was closed and guarded by de gaucourt with some men-at-arms. angry murmurs arose as the people saw their former governor with his men drawn up in formidable array, and jeanne cried quickly: "gentle sir, in god's name, open the gate, and let us pass." "i cannot, jeanne," he said. "i have orders from the council to keep it closed, and closed it shall remain." at this a shout went up from the citizens, and they moved toward him threateningly. they were in no mood for interference. "you are an evil man to prevent these people from going," cried jeanne. "but whether you will or no, the men shall go, and they shall prevail as before." gaucourt hesitated. as he glanced at the stern faces of the citizens, who were determined to fight their way through, if necessary, he saw that he stood in peril of his life. with the ready wit of a soldier he threw wide the gate, crying: "come on, i will be your captain!" and the people rushed through. just above the bridge of orléans there was a broad island, called st. aignan, lying quite close to the south bank of the river, with a narrow swift passage of water between it and the shore. a little higher up the loire, on the left side, stood the small fort of st. jean le blanc, which the english had built to guard the road. the plan of the captains was to cross by boat to the island, and thence by a bridge of planks laid on boats to the southern shore, and so make an assault on st. jean le blanc. it would be a task of some hours to bring troops, horses, and artillery, so the townsfolk being lightly encumbered crossed first. when the english captain of the bastille saw the boats put out he abandoned the post, and retired to the bastille of st. augustins, opposite the tourelles. when the townspeople found the post undefended they were wild with enthusiasm, and, without waiting for jeanne, marched on at once to les augustins, and attacked it. they were no match for the disciplined english, who rushed out to fall on them. instantly the old dread fell upon the citizens, and they became panic-stricken, fleeing in a disorganized rabble before the enemy, while de gaucourt, their old governor, covered their retreat gallantly. slashing, slaying, and hurling taunts and gibes at the routed french the english came on a run. at this moment jeanne and la hire, who had been having difficulty with the horses in getting them across the improvised bridge, reached the shore. seeing the rout of the french they mounted hastily, and then these two, the maid with her banner, la hire with lance at rest, charged the english. the english turned and fled incontinently at sight of the white figure on the white horse. the fleeing townsfolk rallied, turned, and following the men-at-arms, who had succeeded in crossing by this time, went after the maid and the valiant la hire, and chased the english back into their works. swiftly following jeanne planted her standard under the fort of the augustins, in the moat, and the assault begun. the english fought bravely, and again the french were repulsed. and jeanne was everywhere, inciting the men to greater deeds by her inspiriting cry. at length the rest of the main body of troops came up with the artillery, and the assault redoubled in vigour. the enthusiasm was with the french. onset after onset was made. knights vied with each other in feats of valour. a giant englishman who gallantly defended the open gate was presently shot down by jean the lorraine gunner, and instantly jeanne's clear, girlish voice rang out: "enter! enter boldly! they are ours." in a terrible onslaught the french rushed in upon the defenders. a few of the english escaped to the boulevard of les tourelles, an earthwork connected by a drawbridge with the pier upon which the tourelles stood; the rest were slain or taken. great deeds at arms had been performed on both sides, and the victory was hard bought, but the bastille of st. augustins was taken. the sun was setting, and setting also was the glory of england in france. verily god was speaking through his maid. chapter xx jeanne shows her sign "_but never a son of adam, since the song of man was scrolled, has followed the golden lily, by wood or wave or wold, to triumph after triumph for which the people prayed in vain through years of anguish, as has the matchless maid, the girl with the soldier spirit shrined in the angel mould--_" justin huntly mccarthy. "_the flower of france._" for fear that the men would fall into disorder while plundering the fortress jeanne had the buildings of the augustins burned. on the morrow the tourelles must be attacked and taken, and the men must be in readiness for it. for this reason they were to encamp for the night on the hard won field. jeanne wished to remain with them so that she might be ready to push the assault in the early morning; then too, she feared that a night attack might be made by the english, which of course was the proper procedure for the enemy. jeanne always foresaw what an opposing force ought to do, and then tried to forestall it. but la hire and the captains besought her to return to the city and seek the services of a leech.[ ] she had been wounded in the foot by a chausse-trape (a small piece of iron, which, falling in any position, turned a foot-piercing point uppermost). both english and french lances carried them as part of their equipment. to be ready for the great work of the next day she must have proper rest, they told her. finally the maiden consented, and with most of the captains and squires crossed the river to the town. the archers with a body of citizens remained on the field. it was friday, and jeanne was wont to fast on that day, but on this night she broke her fast and ate a little meat, for she was worn and weary. while she was eating a knight came to tell her that the captains were in council, and that it had been decided that enough had already been done; that their forces were too much inferior to those of the english to hazard an attack upon the tourelles the next day; that god had greatly favored them already, and that now it seemed wisest to await reinforcements from the king. the town was now well victualled and could afford to wait. therefore, it did not seem best to the council to fight the next day. jeanne heard the announcement with quiet disdain. "you have been with your council," she said, "and i have been in mine, and you may believe that the counsel of my lord, the king of heaven, shall prevail, while councils of your sort shall come to naught. get up early to-morrow morning, fight your best, and you shall accomplish more than you have done to-day." as the knight left she turned to her confessor, and said: "rise to-morrow even earlier than to-day. do your best to keep near me, for to-morrow i shall have yet more to do, and much greater things. to-morrow also blood will flow from my body here." and again she placed her hand upon a spot above her right breast between her neck and shoulder. the maid was up early the next morning, but early as it was some of the burghers were waiting to see her. they had heard the decision of the captains not to fight, and had held a meeting of their own. they were not minded to wait for reinforcements from the king, they said. they had been in siege for seven months, and had nothing but broken promises from the king and his councillors. therefore, as god was with her, and had sent them succour through her it seemed madness not to avail themselves of the divine favour. and they besought her to go out against the enemy that day in spite of the captains, and so accomplish the mission with which she had been charged. jeanne needed no urging, but answered them with solemn intensity: "be of good cheer. in god's name i will go against the english to-day. and the captains will go also, and will fight with us." the delighted burghers departed to spread the tidings, while the maiden ran down to the courtyard to mount her charger, followed by her attendants. "stay, jeanne," spoke her host jacques boucher, coming into the yard with a large fish, a shad, in his hand. "this is for your breakfast. wait until it is cooked before you go. you need food before starting upon so great an enterprise." "keep it until supper, messire," cried the girl gaily. "i will back a godon to share it with me, and to-night, gentle sir, i will come back by the bridge." "to-night, pucelle? that may not be, for an arch of the bridge is broken." jeanne laughed again without replying, and was off. the decision of the captains not to fight had been far from unanimous. there were those who felt that the assault ought not to be postponed, and who were desirous of following the maid, for over some of them she had gained great influence. consequently when the great standard appeared in the streets, and the maid with her company was making for the burgundy gate these men gladly flocked to her. dunois, la hire, florent d'illiers, poton zaintrailles, gaucourt, and many others crossed the river with her; there were some who remained in the city to guard it against attack. "i will have much to do, more than ever i had," jeanne had said the night before. in truth it was no easy task that lay before the french. there was first a supporting work called a boulevard, on the south bank of the loire, on solid land, to be taken before the tourelles could be assailed. its rear communicated with the bastille by a drawbridge, under which ran a deep, swift strip of the river. it was strong, with high walls and surrounded by a deep fosse. should it be taken the garrison could retire by the drawbridge to the tourelles which, being shut off by the loire into an islanded position was considered impregnable. its six hundred men, the pick of the english army, were made a host by their captain, sir william glasdale, a brave and valorous knight. to drive such a man from such a position would be no light feat. the garrison was amply provided with cannon and small arms, and were full of determined courage. the french were as well equipped as the english with everything necessary for the attack: arrows and crossbolts, and all small arms, "pavoises," or strong wide screen shields, and movable wooden shelters to protect the advance of small advancing companies of assailants, cannon, ladders, beams for the ditches, and all the munitions of war. the french had the advantage in numbers over the english, but the latter were possessed of a seemingly unconquerable position. the french army, whom the men of orléans had been busy all night feeding and encouraging, lay in the morning sunlight waiting for the leaders. when jeanne and the captains appeared there was instantly the bustle of activity. with d'aulon carrying her standard, accompanied by her faithful knights, her brothers and pages, the maid passed through the ranks and took up her place on the border of the moat of the boulevard. about her the army was arranged in companies under its several captains, each flying its own standard. at six o'clock the assault began by a bombardment of the boulevard by the artillery, the stone balls of the cannons being thrown sometimes as far as the tourelles itself. from the town the guns kept up a constant fire against the fortress. with uncalculating valour the french made the assault, varying the bombardment by furious sorties against the walls. the noise of attack and repulse was terrific. from every side the onset was made. stooping forward with their shields slung over their backs for protection the french ran up the scaling ladders in swarms, attacking the men at the top with such hardihood that the english cried in amazement: "do they think that they are immortal?" [illustration: "france and st. denys!"] again and again the ladders were flung down, the climbers were shot, or smitten, or grappled with and dashed into the fosse. valiantly the english fought with bow-shot and gunshot, with axes, lances, bills, and leaden maces, and even with their fists, so that there were many killed and wounded. but like antaeus, of whom it was fabled that being a son of the goddess, tellus, or the earth, every fall he received from hercules gave him more strength, so the french returned to the charge after every repulse with such vigour that it was marvellous to behold. the air was filled with shouts and cries of the captains: "france and st. denys!" "st. george for england!" it whirled to the singing of arrows, the twang of bowstrings, the clang of axes on armour, and the roar of guns. exposed to all the dangers of the fray jeanne stood, her clear girlish voice sounding high above the din and confusion of battle: "be of good cheer. the hour is at hand!" but after many hours of desperate fighting the spirit of the assailants began to flag. seeing this the maid seized a scaling ladder, and placing it against the walls started to mount amid a rain of arrows and stones. as she did so she cried clearly: "on, on! be of good courage! they are ours." with a shout the french swarmed over the fosse with their ladders until there seemed a forest of ladders against the walls. up jeanne mounted, still crying out encouragements, and then--all in a moment a bolt whizzed, and uttering a cry of terror and pain the maiden reeled and fell. a great hurrah! went up from the english--a mighty shout of triumph and rejoicing. the witch had fallen, and with her went the mysterious force that had overwhelmed them. she was slain, or if not killed her blood was shed, which forever spoiled her witchcraft; for such was the superstition. therefore they rejoiced, and renewed the defence with confidence. it was de gamache, the captain who had said that he would not follow a girl of the fields whom nobody knew, who raised her, and carried her back. "take my horse, brave creature," he said. "bear no malice. i confess that i was in the wrong." "it is i that should be wrong if i bore malice," cried jeanne, "for never was knight so courteous." her own people had followed her when she was carried out of the fray. the bolt stood out a hand-breadth behind her shoulder, and the maiden wept with the pain. she was general-in-chief of the army, but she was seventeen, and after all but a girl, so she cried just as any girl would have done. some one of the soldiers proposed to charm the wound with a song of healing, but the maiden cried: "i would rather die than do so, for it would be sin." and then, because none of her attendants would drag the bolt from her shoulder for fear of hurting her, she herself pulled it out, and as the blood gushed out she swooned. father pasquerel, who was surgeon as well as priest, dressed the wound with a compress soaked in oil, and jeanne, recovering from her faint, made her confession to him, then lay quiet. meantime the battle languished. discouraged assailants were drawing back from the boulevard out of bow-shot, and dunois himself thought that there was no hope of victory, the day being nearly spent, and the men weary. so he had the recall sounded, and gave orders to retreat across the river. brave work had been done, and the captains had not hoped to take the place in a month. the bugle notes of the retreat were welcome music to the english, and to the wearied french who had fought without cessation for thirteen hours. but when they sounded on the ears of the wounded maid she heard them with amazement. she rose in haste, and somehow managed to mount her horse, and so rode to dunois. "doubt not," she said. "they are ours. rest a little. eat something. refresh yourselves, and wait for me a little." with that she withdrew into a little vineyard close by, and prayed for the half of a quarter of an hour. when she appeared again her eyes were shining, her whole appearance that of one inspired. "on," she cried, "the place is ours." and she spurred toward the fosse. now her standard had not been removed from the edge of the moat, for d'aulon had kept it there to be a terror to the english and an inspiration to the french. when the trumpets had sounded the retreat he, being weary and outworn, had handed it to a basque to be carried in the retirement. but after the order for the recall had been countermanded by dunois at the request of the maid, d'aulon, moved to do a feat of arms, said to the basque: "if i dismount and go forward to the foot of the wall, will you follow me?" "i will," said the basque. so d'aulon leaped into the fosse, his shield up, defying the english, but the basque did not follow; for jeanne, seeing her standard in the hands of a man whom she did not know, thought that it was lost, and seized hold of the floating end. "ha! my standard! my standard!" she cried, and as she and the basque struggled for it, the banner waved wildly like a signal for an immediate onset. the men-at-arms conceived it to be such and gathered for the attack. "ha, basque! is this what you promised me?" cried d'aulon, and the basque tore the banner from the maid, ran through the ditch and stood beside the emblem. by this time jeanne's company stood about her. "watch," said she to the knight at her side. "watch till the tail of the standard touches the wall." a few moments passed. the great standard fluttered with the movements of the maytime breeze. presently the knight cried: "jeanne, it touches!" "then enter," cried jeanne her voice thrilling through the air. "in god's name, enter! all is yours." the troops rose as one man, and flung themselves against the walls. up they swarmed, "as thick as a cloud of birds lighting on a bush," says the old chronicle.[ ] "never was assault so fierce and wonderful seen within the memory of living man." the english, amazed at the new onset, defended themselves valiantly, but the french were irresistible. the defenders became panic-stricken as the french swarmed over the top of the earthwork. panic-stricken, not by the enemy but by that white figure standing there beneath her standard, the rays of the setting sun striking a dazzling radiance from her shining armour. the witch was there. they had thought her dead, yet there she stood without sign of injury. "a crowd of butterflies hangs about her," a soldier cried in terror, throwing down his weapon and turning to flee into the tourelles. "no; it is a dove," gasped another who followed him. arrows flew on every side of the maiden, but never touched her, and on the french sped, incited to superhuman effort by the bell-like voice: "on, on! all is yours!" and the boulevard was taken. showering down blasphemies glasdale stood on the drawbridge making a desperate effort to save his men by covering their retreat over the bridge into the tourelles. suddenly a foul smoke rolled up from the river, suffocating all who stood with him. the citizens had loaded a barque with sulphur and all manner of evil smelling things, and floated it under the drawbridge. presently tongues of flames shot up from it, licking the rafters of the drawbridge, and darting through the planks, while all about them fell the stone bullets of the guns of orléans, lighting on the roofs and walls of the tourelles, and splashing in the waters of the loire. jeanne's quick eye saw the men's danger. "classidas! classidas!" she cried. "yield thee, yield thee to the king of heaven. i have great pity on thee and thy people." before the compassionate voice died away the bridge bent under the rush of armoured men, and broke. glasdale and his companions plunged downward into the great river and were seen no more, for the weight of their armour, the fire and the water all conspired against them. and at the sight jeanne broke down and wept, then kneeling began to pray for their souls. yet the greater part of the surviving english had succeeded in reaching the fortress, but here they found themselves assailed from another quarter--orléans. the gap whence the arches had been broken had been spanned by gutters and beams, and through the smoke and dusk came the knights from the city, assaulting the tourelles from that side. the struggle was soon over. of all the stout defenders of the fort not one escaped; all were slain, drowned, or taken and held to ransom. talbot with his english in the forts before the city had heard the french trumpets sound the recall, and had believed that the battle was over. now the flames of boulevard and bridge blazed out the story of a new defeat. the bells of orléans pealed forth joyously as jeanne re-entered the town by the bridge, as she had said she would do. the streets were crowded with people so that it was with difficulty that she could make her way through them. they pressed about her as closely as they could, to kiss her hand, her greaves, her mailed shoes, her charger, or the floating folds of her banner, while others went before her, crying: "room! room for the maid of orléans!" she was no longer the holy maid from vaucouleurs or domremy, she was their maid; the heaven-sent deliverer of their city; their maid whom god had raised from among his poor for their salvation; their maid, and so she has remained, and always will remain--the maid of orléans. through all the delirious joy jeanne rode in a maze of happiness, fatigue, languor, pain, and profound pity for the souls of those who had gone unshriven to their maker. she stopped only to return thanks in the church of st. paul, and then rode to her lodgings, and went to bed. on sunday morning she arose and, weak from her wound, put on a coat of armour lighter than she had worn, and with dunois and the captains marched out of the regnart gate, for the english had come out of their fortresses and were drawn up outside in battle array. the confident french soldiers were eager to attack them, but jeanne was reluctant to do so. "let us not attack them, for it is sunday," she said. "but if they attack you, fight bravely, and you will get the better of them." she then sent for an altar and a priest, and bade him celebrate mass in front of both armies. when one mass was done, she bade him celebrate another, both of which she and the french and english soldiers heard with devotion. "now look," she said, "and see if their faces are set toward us." "no," was the answer. "they have turned their backs and are retreating toward meung." "in god's name, let them go," she said. "our lord does not wish us to fight them to-day. you shall have them another time." la hire with a hundred lances followed the english and found that the retreat was genuine. they had collected their prisoners and all the property they could carry, leaving their sick, their heavy guns and ammunition, huge shields and provisions behind them. jeanne's first herald, guienne, was found bound to a stake preparatory to burning him. the english but waited for the decision of the university at paris before the execution. before it had time to arrive the siege was raised. the army of the french returned to the city and gave thanks, and made a procession; for they were delivered of the ancient enemies of the realm.[ ] that which had been declared impossible was done. the siege of orléans was raised. jeanne d'arc had shown her sign. ------ [ ] leech: surgeon. [ ] percéval de cagny. [ ] this was the foundation of the festival that has been held ever since at orléans on the eighth of may. it was suspended for a short time during the french revolution, but resumed afterward. since the day has been considered as belonging to the maid, and so throughout the centuries it has been observed. orléans does not forget jeanne d'arc. chapter xxi a week of wonders "_the goodness of her life proves that jeanne possesses the grace of god.... she goeth forth capturing towns and castles. she is the first captain of our host. such power had not hector or achilles. but god, who leads her, does all._" jacques gÉlu, _archbishop of embrun. _ after a few days' rest jeanne set forth for chinon, where the king still remained. to raise the siege of orléans and to lead the dauphin to his crowning and anointing were the two charges laid upon her. she had performed the first, and wished now to accomplish the latter. there was too a lack of provisions and money, the troops were dispersing, and the help of charles was needed if the army were to be kept together. after the fall of each bastille news had been sent to the king by the citizens, and he in turn forwarded the tidings to all the good towns that held for him. "the maid, who was always there in person at the doing of these things," is the only leader mentioned in the dispatches. consequently a royal welcome awaited jeanne at all the towns through which she and her company passed. as she drew near to tours she was amazed to see the king, accompanied by some of the courtiers, ride forth to meet her. as soon as she saw him the maiden set forth at speed to greet him, bowing low in her saddle. but charles reached forth his hand and lifted her, bowing in turn before her as though she were a queen. "rise, dear maid," he said, "and receive our welcome and our thanks for what you have done. it was a great deed, most gloriously performed. such prowess merits rich reward; therefore speak, and say what poor return charles may make for such services." jeanne looked at him eagerly with all her soul in her eyes. there was but one desire in her heart. "gentle dauphin, the only boon i crave is leave to lead you to your crowning and anointing at reims. out of your goodness i beg you to let us set forth at once; for now is the time." "at once?" the indolent monarch shrank from the suggestion, and there were murmurs among the courtiers, who did not wish anything to occur to interrupt their amusements. la trémouille, the favorite, interposed quickly: "it is impossible, my dear maid. his majesty's person should not be exposed to such risks. why, the road is filled with english and burgundian strongholds. an army strong enough to open the way should first be raised, and that would take six weeks to equip." "but now is the time," cried jeanne, dismayed that there should be delay. "we should strike now before the duke of bedford has time to send them reinforcements. if we wait our task will be but the harder." "patience, patience, jeanne," spoke the king soothingly. "we will go, we promise you, but not just now. you are wounded too, we hear, and sadly need the rest. so have patience for a little, we beseech you." so jeanne was forced to curb her eagerness while the king dawdled away the precious days in idle pleasure. she had spoken truly: the time was ripe for action. charles had but to mount and ride and all was his at a blow. had he but gone straight to reims, after orléans, and thence on to paris, every city would have opened its gates to him. so obviously was this the thing he ought to do that, supposing it would be done, the duke of bedford left paris and shut himself up in the strong castle of vincennes, dreading an uprising among the people. then next he wholly withdrew to rouen, for he had no force of men to guard the walls of paris. but through the influence of la trémouille, regnault de chartres, the archbishop of reims, and raoul de gaucourt, the former governor of orléans, the golden opportunity was lost. it was no part of the policy of these men to allow the king to shake off his indolence, and from this time forth they set themselves to thwart the peasant maid who so amazingly upset their plans and schemes. it was never english or burgundians whom jeanne had to fear the most. they were open enemies, and with a good company of men-at-arms she could overcome them. it was the constant efforts of these foes at court that undermined her influence and neutralized any advantage that she might gain. the campaign of orléans had been allowed. la trémouille was willing that the city should be relieved, if it could be done without danger to his power, but the completeness of the girl's victory had aroused his opponents, and there was a dangerous current of french patriotism awakening which, unless subdued, meant the overthrow of himself and his party. it was said of him truthfully that he had "a foot both in the burgundy and french camps," and the present state of france suited him admirably. so jeanne found herself opposed by these wretched politicians in her plans for the redemption of her country. her true friends were the gallant captains of the armed companies that accompanied her on the campaigns, and the simple people who believed that she had a mission from heaven, and was inspired by saints and angels. thus, longing for the dash of action that would drive the enemy from the land, jeanne was thrown into the frivolity of the court instead. a fortnight was spent by charles in lengthy debates with his counsellors, and in a round of pleasures; then he removed to loches, some thirty miles from tours, where there was a grim fortress better suited to his humours than a city. being a part of his household, jeanne went also. in every place that she entered the people crowded about her horse, and tried to kiss her shoes or her hands. the abbot, robert le macon, one of those who had examined her at poictiers, reproved her sharply for allowing these manifestations, and told her that it was making the people idolatrous. "in truth," answered jeanne, smiling at him, "i should not know how to guard myself from these things, unless god guarded me. they love me because i have never done them any unkindness, but helped them as i could." charles tried by means of rich gifts to make the maiden content to remain in idleness, and so to cease from importuning him to set forth for his anointing. but, though jeanne delighted in pretty clothes and presents, as was natural in a young girl, she never for one moment lost sight of her mission. nor did she abstain from entreating the dauphin to go to reims. and now alençon and dunois, her good friends, came to the court, and added their pleas to hers that he should set forth for the crowning, but charles did not discover the hurry to save his kingdom that they did. greatly distressed by the waiting, one day jeanne's patience reached its limit. knowing that the king was in council with sir christopher d'harcourt, gerard machet, his confessor, robert le macon and dunois, she went boldly to the door of the council chamber, and knocked. being admitted she went at once to the monarch, and threw herself at his feet, clasping his knees. "noble dauphin, you hold so many and such long councils," she cried. "rather come to reims and receive your worthy crown." "does your counsel tell you to say this?" asked d'harcourt, the bishop of castres. "yes," replied jeanne. "the voices urge this chiefly." "will you not tell us in the presence of the king the nature of this counsel?" jeanne blushed and hesitated before replying. then she said: "i understand what it is that you wish to know, and i will gladly satisfy you." "jeanne," said charles kindly, "it would be very good if you could do what they ask in the presence of those here; but are you sure that you are willing to speak about it?" "yes, sire," she answered simply. then she turned to them, and spoke with visible emotion. "when i am vexed to find myself disbelieved in the things i say from god, i retire by myself and pray to god, complaining and asking of him why i am not listened to. and when i have finished my prayer i hear a voice saying: 'daughter of god, on, on! i will help thee. on!' and when i hear the voice i have great joy. i would that i could always feel thus." the maiden's face shone as she spoke, "lifting her eyes to heaven, and she was in marvellous ecstasy," so that the men who heard her were dazzled, and sat speechless looking on. then all in a moment there came a change. jeanne's features worked, and she was overcome by emotion. she turned toward the king beseechingly, and cried brokenly: "the time is so short. oh, use it, use it, sire. i shall last such a little while: only a year and little more. oh, sire, 'tis such a little time to work for france." charles was deeply moved, as were also those with him. "dear maid," he said, "i will go whenever you--" robert le macon interposed softly: "when the roads are clear between here and reims. your majesty. it would not be wise to risk your person on an uncertainty." "let me clear the road, noble dauphin," exclaimed the maiden quickly. "i beseech you, out of your grace to grant me leave to do it." "there still remain the strong places on the loire which will have to be broken up," remarked the king dubiously. "they can be broken up. then you can march." "well, you have our permission to do it, jeanne," said the monarch, half laughing. "never was there such an indefatigable little soldier!" "when may i begin, sire?" jeanne's delight was plainly evident. the delay was over; action might begin. no wonder she rejoiced. "as soon as you please," charles told her graciously. joyously the girl left the room, and began immediately the task of gathering the army together; the army that had been forced to disband through the inertia of its king. a tide of popular enthusiasm arose as soon as it became known that the english towns on the loire were to be attacked, and from all quarters came men eager to fight, with or without pay; beginning again to hope for their country and aroused by the maid's exploits before orléans. selles, a town of berri, about fifteen miles from loches and about fifty miles south of orléans, was chosen for the recruiting camp. thither, among other nobles, came one day the two young counts de laval: guy and his brother andré, who could not rest until they had seen jeanne. their father had been slain at agincourt, and they had been brought up by their mother, who had defended their castles against the english, and by their grandmother, in her youth the wife of the great constable, bertrand du gueselin, who had done great deeds for france. full of boyish enthusiasm for the maid, they wrote home to their mothers, telling them of jeanne: "she seems a creature wholly divine, whether to see or hear. monday at vespers she left selles to go to romorantin, three leagues in advance of the army, the marshal of boussac and a great many soldiers and common people being with her. i saw her get on horseback, armed all in white, except her head, with a little battle-axe in her hand, riding a great black courser, which was very restive at the door of her lodgings, and would not let her mount. so she said, 'lead him to the cross,' which was in front of the church near by, in the road. there she mounted without his budging, just as if he had been tied. and she turned to the church door and called in her sweet woman's voice: 'you priests and churchmen, make processions and prayers to god.' she then set out on the road, calling, 'forward! forward!' with her little battle-axe in her hand, and her banner carried by a page. her brothers went with her, all armed in white." at romorantin jeanne and alençon, who had been given the command under the maid, were joined by dunois and other captains, and together they entered orléans on the ninth of june. the people received her with joy, and set about supplying her impoverished army with supplies and artillery, making their gifts directly to the maid whose courage and wisdom they had cause to know. they were grateful for their deliverance, but to make that deliverance secure the loire must be cleared of the strongholds that menaced it. the first point of attack was jargeau, which lay above orléans on the south bank of the loire, about ten miles. it was connected with the north bank by a bridge, which was the only bridge across the river between orléans and gien, and was held for the english by the earl of suffolk, one of the commanders before orléans, who had retreated into this place after the raising of the siege. ten miles below orléans lay meung, which also had a fortified bridge, and six miles below meung was beaugency, with a bridge also fortified. both these places were held by the english, talbot being in beaugency, and lord scales, his lieutenant, being in meung. the next bridge across the river was at blois, which was french, so that the english could cross either above or below orléans into the dauphin's provinces. by bringing large reinforcements into these places the siege of orléans could be renewed at any time by the english. it was the part of wisdom to clear them of the enemy. as has been said, the first point of attack was jargeau, for the reason that news was brought that sir john fastolf was proceeding toward it with reinforcements, and it was jeanne's plan to attack it before he could reach it. it was a strong place. after jeanne left orléans dunois had stormed it unsuccessfully for three hours, and suffolk had strengthened its defences. its garrison was experienced in all the arts of war. on the eleventh of june the advance was begun on the town, and on the way the associate commanders were seized with hesitation, using many arguments to get the maid to postpone the attack. to which she replied: "success is certain. if i were not assured of this from god, i would rather herd sheep than put myself in so great jeopardy." the men of orléans were in the van, and, encouraged by the marvellous success of the month before, rushed to the attack without waiting for the men-at-arms or the artillery, and tried to storm the place. the garrison easily beat them off, and charged upon them, driving them back to the main body. then jeanne rode forward, standard in hand, and led the men-at-arms to the rescue. the english in turn were driven back, the french occupied the environs to the very ditch, and passing the night there, after the maid had summoned suffolk to yield peaceably to the dauphin. the next morning the artillery was placed and alençon wondered audibly at jeanne's expertness in laying the guns. "where got you such skill in military matters, jeanne?" he exclaimed. "who taught you where to set those guns? you go to work as though you were a captain of twenty or thirty years' experience." "it is my lord who tells me," answered jeanne, regarding him with reverent look in her large grave eyes. "when i see a place i know at once where the artillery should be placed." at which the young duke's wonder grew; for he knew that she had never seen ordnance until at orléans the month before. while the captains were planning the mode of attack word came that the earl of suffolk was parleying with la hire, offering to surrender if not relieved within fifteen days, no doubt believing that fastolf would arrive with reinforcements before that time. "tell them that they may leave in their tunics, without arms or armour," cried jeanne. "otherwise the place will be stormed at once." the terms were refused by suffolk, and immediately the cannon began their work. one of the towers of the town was destroyed, and the sharpshooters of the french picked off some of the garrison with their culverins. the english too used their artillery with telling effect. as jeanne and alençon stood watching the bombardment, she cried out to him suddenly, recalling the promise she had made his wife to bring him back safe. "change your position. that gun will kill you!" pointing to a gun on the walls. alençon stepped aside quickly, and a few moments later a gentleman was killed on that very spot. soon jeanne urged an assault on the walls, which alençon believed to be premature. he thought that the artillery should continue the bombardment before the attack should be made, and was therefore reluctant to follow. as the trumpets sounded the assault, and he did not advance, jeanne turned upon him quickly: "why do you hesitate?" she asked. "doubt not! when it pleases god the hour is prepared. god helps those who help themselves." as he still hesitated she added: "ah, gentle duke, are you afraid? do you not know that i promised your wife to bring you back safe and sound?" thereupon they both rushed to the attack. as the body of the men rushed into the fosse to plant the scaling ladders suffolk tried to parley, but it was now too late. the english resistance was effective and stubborn, so that for several hours the struggle went on with jeanne in the thick of it. the ditch was bridged and, banner in hand, the maid started up one of the scaling ladders as at the tourelles and tried to mount the wall. one of the garrison threw down a stone which crashed through the banner, struck on the light helmet that she wore, and stretched her stunned to the ground. for a moment only she lay, and then springing to her feet unhurt, she cried: "friends, friends, on! on! our lord has condemned the english. they are ours! have good courage." the french had learned that cry. they knew that victory awaited them, and swarmed over the walls in a rush that carried all before them. suffolk retreated toward the bridge, hoping to escape across it into the beauce, but the french followed him too closely. one of his brothers and many of the garrison were slain, but he and all who were left alive were captured. as suffolk was surrounded a knight cried: "yield thee, suffolk! yield thee, rescue or no rescue!" "i will yield to none but the most valiant woman in the world," answered suffolk proudly. and he would give his sword to none other than jeanne herself. so jargeau was taken. the town even to the churches was sacked, and jeanne found herself powerless to prevent the sacrilege, but she profited by the experience. some of the prisoners had been butchered because their captors had quarreled over the right to ransom them, so that it was deemed best to send the other captives down to orléans by boat during the night. this was another lesson that jeanne took to heart. alençon and jeanne returned in triumph to orléans, where the burghers gave them a royal welcome, making them many presents. among jeanne's were a hucque and a rich robe of the orléans colors, green and crimson. in the old times the green had been bright and clear, but it had darkened after the murder of duke louis by jean sans peur of burgundy, and since agincourt was almost black. the hucque was of green, and the robe, or overcoat, was of crimson "cramoisy" lined with white satin and embroidered with the device of orléans, the nettle. with meung and beaugency still left to attack jeanne felt the necessity of immediate action. sir john fastolf was at that very time at janville, only twenty-five miles' distant from jargeau; since that town had fallen he would press forward to talbot's assistance. the maid permitted but one day of rest in orléans. "now we must go to see the english at meung," she told alençon. "we will march to-morrow after dinner. give orders to that effect." meung, as has been said, was the nearest fortified town to orléans down the river, being distant some ten miles. its bridge was a mile upstream from the town, and well fortified. it was attacked the afternoon of the next day, as jeanne had desired, and fell easily. placing a french garrison in the bridge towers the maid with her forces camped for the night in the fields and next morning passed on down the river to beaugency. these towns with their castles and towers were very conspicuous on the flat plain of the loire; and bodies of men were easily seen by the watchmen on the walls. as soon, therefore, as the english saw the french approaching they did not try to defend the town, but retired into the castle, leaving men ambushed in houses and sheds to surprise the french. they were under command of matthew gough, a brave welshman, for talbot, having no force sufficient to meet the enemy in the field, left beaugency and rode off with a small company to janville to hasten the coming of fastolf. as the french marched into the town the men hidden in the houses fell upon them, but with losses upon both sides were driven into the castle. jeanne placed the guns, and battered the castle until evening, when news came that was disturbing; for the constable of france was advancing with a force of men and wished to join her. the comte de richemont, constable of france, was a great nobleman and a famous leader, but at the present time was in disgrace with the king and exiled from court, largely through the machinations of la trémouille and his party. he had wished to assist in raising the siege of orléans, but the king had forbidden it, and consequently his approach caused both alençon and jeanne disquietude. he was no friend of jeanne's, believing it to be a disgrace to france that her armies should be led and victories gained by a woman, probably a witch, a creature unworthy to stand before armed men. the constable could hardly be blamed for holding this opinion of the maid; excepting those who came in personal contact with her such belief was general. the captains and soldiers reverenced her, holding that she was truly sent of god; the simple people had no doubt of it. the english believed firmly that she was a witch. the regent bedford in his report to england concerning the failure of the siege of orléans said that it was caused by "false enchantments and witchcraft of a maid." richemont was a sworn enemy to all such. the french generals were divided over the advisability of receiving him. he was own uncle to alençon, and the latter had no personal quarrel with him, but the king's command was that richemont should not be received should he come with his force. alençon, therefore, declared that he would withdraw should the constable's aid be accepted. it was an embarrassing moment. jeanne herself did not regard his coming with much pleasure, but it was not her way to reject any champion of france. so, as just at this time news was received of the advance of the english under talbot and fastolf, she persuaded alençon that they ought to accept the proffered aid gladly. "he is french, my gentle duke," she said. "and frenchmen ought to lay aside private quarrels for france. in god's name, then let us welcome him." in the end this wise counsel prevailed, and both jeanne and duc alençon rode forth to meet the constable. "jeanne," said richemont, as the maiden alighted from her horse to greet him, "they tell me that you are against me. i know not whether you come from god--or elsewhere. if from god, i do not fear you, for he knows my good will; if from the devil, i fear you still less." "brave constable," returned the maiden, smiling, "you are not here by any will of mine; but since you are here you are welcome." they then mounted and rode back to beaugency. immediately they were obliged to make ready for battle, for talbot and fastolf had come up with their forces, and rested at a spot between meung and beaugency, distant about a league from each town. the french army took up a strong position on a hill in front of beaugency, covering the siege of the castle and the town. night was coming on, but the english formed in line of battle, and waited for the french to begin the attack. from their excellent position the french watched the enemy's preparations, but made no move to fight. becoming impatient the english sent two heralds, saying that three english knights would fight any who would come down into the plain. jeanne declined the challenge. "go to your rest to-day," she sent back word. "it is late enough. to-morrow, if it please god and our lady, we shall see you at closer quarters." later, scouts reported to jeanne and the french captains that the english were withdrawing from their position in the plain, and were headed northward. "they are going to meung," cried the maid joyfully. "they will occupy the town, and try to take the bridge, thinking to come down on the other side of the river, and so relieve the garrison here at beaugency in that way. but beaugency will surrender as soon as it hears the news that talbot has gone." which proved to be the case. matthew gough, upon learning that the english army had retreated, felt that his case was hopeless. he had seen that alençon was reinforced by the constable, and believed that talbot had left him to his fate. therefore, at midnight he capitulated on easy terms. his men with their horses and armour, and goods to the value of a silver mark, were allowed to march away, on the condition that they were not to fight against the dauphin for ten days; he himself was held as hostage. at dawn the french were up and away to meung, where they found that talbot had indeed been battering the bridge held by the french all night long, but the bridge held. on receipt of the news that gough had surrendered talbot and fastolf with all the united forces of the english set off across the wooded plain of beauce, as the country north of the loire was called, for paris. the french were uncertain what to do. an encounter in the open field, an open hand-to-hand battle between the french and the english, had heretofore resulted in victory for the english. such a thing as the french holding their own and attaining victory over the enemy had never been known. they would rather avoid an engagement than risk such a disaster. to arrive at an understanding alençon assembled the captains for a council of war. he turned to jeanne first. "what shall be done now?" he asked. "have good spurs," she told him. "what?" he cried astonished. "are we to turn our backs?" "nenni," answered she, laughing. "the english will not defend themselves, and you will need good spurs to follow them." there was a murmur at these words; a murmur of confidence for the prophecy put heart into men who had been wont to fly instead of pursue. eagerly now they prepared to follow the retreating english. la hire and dunois with a company of eighty men, mounted on the best horses, rode in advance, and the main body of the army came more slowly. jeanne preferred going with the vanguard, but the leaders feared that they might run into an ambush, and would not permit the risk. jeanne was angry over this. she liked the thick of the fight, and chafed at following, but it was well that she remained with the main body, for the men needed encouragement. it was a long ride and a dangerous one. the wide plain was covered by a dense growth of underbrush and trees, and there was danger of an ambush. not an englishman was visible. cautiously the french made their way, and some of the captains began to show signs of uneasiness. jeanne encouraged them constantly. "in god's name we must fight them; if they were hung in the clouds we should have them, for god has sent them to us that we might punish them." and again: "fear naught. this day the gentle dauphin shall have the greatest victory he has ever won; my counsel have told me that they are ours." the pursuit continued until near patay, a town standing midway between meung and rouvray, where fastolf had won the battle of herrings in february. la hire and his scouts were scouring the country to get trace of the english, but without success. all at once they roused a stag as they rode, and, startled, the animal bounded away before them, disappearing into some bushes which grew as a hedge by the roadside. instantly there came a shout from english voices--a cheer of delight as the creature plunged among them, and, not suspecting that the french van was so near, they began to fire upon it. la hire drew rein, and sent back a messenger to the main army to hurry forward. then with a shout he and his company spurred forward, and charged the english before they had time to form, or to set up their usual defenses. now talbot had been marching in three bodies. first, the advance guard; then his artillery; then his battle corps a good way in the rear. when he was within a league of patay some of his scouts reported that a large body of the french was advancing toward him. seeing that he could not escape without some fighting he posted his advance guard with the wagons and artillery behind some strong hedges which would cover their front from the french cavalry. he himself with five hundred archers halted in a place where the road through which the french must pass was bordered on both sides by a hedge. here he stood waiting for the enemy, waiting too for his main body of troops under sir john fastolf to join the train, when the advent of the stag discovered his presence to the french. the english archers were thrown into wildest confusion and disorder by the suddenness of the onslaught. slashing and slaying, the french cut them down, pressing onward toward the advance guard of the english with the wagons and artillery. sir john began to gallop toward the advance guard, but to the latter he seemed to be fleeing before the enemy. panic seized them, and leaving the provisions and guns the troops broke and fled, utterly demoralized, on the road toward patay. talbot himself fought with desperation and rage, to be thus overcome a second time by a girl whom he believed to be a pernicious witch, but was finally taken prisoner by poton zaintrailles, while his men fled and were killed in their flight. fastolf turned back to the field, hoping to die there or be captured, but his escort dragged him off, and at length he too rode off toward paris. his men were cut down at the will of the victors. the battle of patay was won. but it was a bloody field, for slaughter of fugitives who were not valuable followed. jeanne had never seen such a massacre, and "she had great compassion on the victims." meeting a frenchman who was brutally using a prisoner she flung herself from her horse, indignant that he should be subjected to such treatment, and seating herself beside him lifted his bleeding head upon her lap. sending for a priest that he might have the last comforts of religion she comforted him with womanly tenderness until he died. jeanne wanted the english out of france. she fought them that she might achieve that end. she had steeled herself to the necessity of war, but pity was always enthroned in her heart. a wounded enemy appealed to her tenderness as much as one of her own countrymen would have done. and so ended a great week of wonders. between june eleventh and eighteenth the maid had delivered three strong towns from the english, and routed them in open field. all the loire and the waterway was now in the power of france. but it was not alençon, nor dunois, nor the french generals who had secured the victories. it was the dauntless girl, the peasant maid in whom was more of the divine than human--she who after a scarce month of war bore herself like the "most skilled captain in the world who all his life has been trained to war"[ ]--this girl of seventeen who bade fair to be the best soldier of them all. ------ [ ] de termes. chapter xxii the culmination "_along this square she moved, sweet joan of arc,-- with face more pallid than a day-lit star half-seen, half-doubted; while before her, dark stretched the array of war._" maria lowell. the next day, which was sunday, jeanne and her men returned to orléans in triumph, and were "nobly received." the streets were crowded with people who were wild with joy at sight of the maid, and who gave her a tempestuous welcome. they formed processions and went to the churches, where "they thanked god and the virgin mary and the blessed saints of paradise for the mercy and honor which our lord had shown to the king and to them all, and saying that without the maid such marvels could not have been done." to all parts of france the news of the victory of patay was carried with incredible quickness, and everywhere the loyal towns celebrated the event by singing te deums, by processions and prayers, by bonfires and by bell ringings. but the tidings that brought such rejoicing to the hearts of the french, caused consternation among the partisans of burgundy and england. on tuesday when sir john fastolf and other fugitives brought the story of the disaster of patay into paris, there was a riot, and many believed that the victorious french were coming at once to attack the city. had this been true the town must have fallen, for the english troops were thoroughly demoralized. rank and file were filled with superstitious terror of the armagnac witch, and the duke of bedford was at the end of his resources. in orléans the exultation was greatest, for jeanne was counted their maid, and the people expected that their king would come to greet her and start for his crowning from that city. consequently the burghers decorated the streets and prepared to give him royal welcome, but he did not come. he was at sully being entertained by la trémouille, frittering away his time in pleasure while a girl fought his battles for him. jeanne, therefore, after a few days of rest left orléans to join him and to urge his instant departure for reims. she met him at st. bénoit-sur-loire on his way to châteauneuf. charles was exceedingly gracious, showering her with praise. "wonderfully you have wrought, jeanne," he said. "greatly have you earned our gratitude. what guerdon shall be yours for these amazing labors?" "sire, that you will start at once for reims to be crowned is all that i desire." "we will go, dear maid. we promise you, but now you must rest. greatly have you endeared yourself to us, and above all we desire your welfare. therefore, rest from these labors to please your king." now jeanne had just taken three fortified towns, and had cut a great army to pieces. in smaller towns and fortresses the citizens had risen and driven their english garrisons out of the gates upon receipt of the news of patay, so the golden lilies floated over the cleared country of the beauce nearly to paris. she had done all this that the dauphin might safely march to reims. she had been told that if the loire were cleared the march would be begun, and now he wished further delay. it was too much for the girl, who longed so ardently to complete her mission, for she knew that her time was short, and she burst into tears. "jeanne, ma mie, what is it?" asked the monarch, disturbed by her emotion. "ah, gentle dauphin," she said brokenly, "you are not king until the sacred oil shall anoint you. doubt no longer, but come to your sacring. the whole realm shall be yours when you are consecrated." "we will go, beloved maid, and that right soon. but you? is there not some gift or boon that you wish other than this?" "sire, forgive the comte de richemont, and receive him again at court, i beseech you. great aid did he give us at beaugency, and at patay. for the sake of france, sire, grant this favor." but charles shook his head. at this moment alençon and dunois drew near and added their pleas to jeanne's that the constable should be forgiven, but the king was obdurate. so richemont, who had helped to administer the greatest blow to english domination that had ever been given, was rejected once more. he had remained at beaugency to await the result of the embassies, and had even sent two of his own gentlemen to la trémouille to plead that he might be allowed to serve the king in the state of the country. but all his overtures were refused, so he withdrew to his own estates, and charles lost a good soldier. and jeanne, to her amazement, for she had given every sign required of her, found herself opposed by almost incredible difficulties. the king was plainly reluctant to act, and seemed averse to taking a decided step of any kind. from every point of view the march to reims and the accomplishment of the great object of her mission was the wisest and most practicable thing to do. but there were delays and parleyings. had the maiden not been sustained by her voices and her duty to her country she would have been discouraged. but all france was rousing, and was beginning to call upon the king in no uncertain tones. it was said that the maid would lead the dauphin to his crowning if she were allowed; that after the deeds she had wrought she should be given the opportunity. la trémouille recognized a dangerous note in the general talk, and a council of war was held in which it was decided to risk an advance. gien was chosen as the base for the army, and jeanne went to orléans to bring up the troops and munitions that were left in that city. "sound the trumpet, and mount," she said to alençon on the twenty-fourth of june. "it is time to go to the noble charles and start him on his way to be consecrated." which was easier said than done. there were many of the councillors who wished to besiege la charité and other small towns on the upper loire, which would have profited nothing; still others were for a bold move into normandy to attack the english at rouen, where they were strongest. but jeanne insisted that the dauphin should march to reims. her voices had told her to take him there to be crowned that the people might know that he was the true king, and to the maiden, sublime in her faith, that was the thing to do. it was objected that there were many cities and walled towns and strongholds well guarded by english and burgundians in the way, but she answered: "i know it well, and all that i hold as naught." worn out finally by the futile arguments and the wasting of so much precious time, when all hope lay in a quick advance against the enemy before bedford could bring over new troops from england, jeanne left the court, and went to her army which lay in the fields near gien. there was comfort there, for the soldiers declared that they would go wherever she wished to lead them. there were princes of the blood among the men; great lords, and knights, and squires of high and low degree. they had come from all parts of loyal france bringing their companies, eager to serve, for the "great hope of the good that should come to the country through jeanne, and they earnestly desired to serve under her, and to learn her deeds, as if the matter were god's doings." there was little or no pay for the men, but enthusiasm took the place of money. jeanne's exploits had made her a personage, and not only france but all europe was rife with curiosity concerning her, and her deeds. many were attracted to the army by her fame, and it was said, though not openly, for no man was bold enough to speak against la trémouille at this time, that if the favorite would permit it an army large enough to drive every englishman out of france could be raised. on monday, the twenty-seventh of june, jeanne crossed the river loire with part of the army, and on wednesday the king and his councillors reluctantly followed her. the march upon reims had at last begun. fifty miles to the eastward of gien was the town of auxerre. it was under burgundian allegiance, and if it admitted the dauphin, had good reason to fear burgundy. so its gates were closed upon the approach of the king and his army. jeanne and the captains wished to attack it at once, but the town sold food to the troops and sent bribes to la trémouille to exempt it from assault. the bribes were accepted, though a mere military demonstration would have opened its gates, and the army passed on, the town giving some sort of a promise to submit if troyes, and châlons, and reims should acknowledge the king. other smaller strongholds on the road yielded upon being summoned, and presently charles and his army were before troyes. it was the capital of champagne, about forty miles to the northeast of auxerre. the whole province was greatly excited by the advance of the royal forces, and those who held for the english were much alarmed. the cities were not sure of each other, and each feared to be either the last or the first to open its gates to the king. so, during the march toward it, troyes sent letters to reims saying that it had heard that the latter would submit to the dauphin, but that its own citizens would do nothing of the sort, but would uphold the cause of king henry and the duke of bedford even to the death inclusive. now troyes had reasons for taking this bold stand. it was the place where the treaty which had given france to england had been signed; where the french princess, catherine, was married to henry fifth of england, and where the dauphin was disinherited by his mother. the burghers had arrayed themselves with the burgundians and the english after the treaty, and feared now that if charles were admitted to their city he would wreak vengeance upon them. charles stopped at saint phal, within fifteen miles of troyes, from which place both he and jeanne sent the burghers letters. the king demanded that they should render the obedience they owed him, and he would make no difficulty about things past for which they might fear that he should take vengeance; that was not his will, but that they should govern themselves toward their sovereign as they ought, and he would forget all and hold them in good grace. jeanne's letter was to the people, in which she summoned them to their allegiance in the name of the sovereign lord of all. they must recognize their rightful lord who was moving on paris by way of reims, with the aid of king jesus, she said. if they did not yield the dauphin none the less would enter the city. the letters were received at troyes on the morning of the fifth of july, and copies were at once sent to reims with assurances that the city would hold out to the death, and begging the men of reims to send at once to burgundy and bedford for assistance. the royal army meantime camped before the walls for several days, hoping that the town would surrender. there were a few sallies which resulted in nothing of importance. the burghers held off, expecting the same terms would be given them that were granted auxerre. after nearly a week the supplies of the besiegers began to get low. the dauphin could not provision his troops at troyes, and gien, his base of supplies, was thirty leagues away. he could not pass on to reims and leave the town in his rear, for so strongly garrisoned a place would be a menace, and the state of the army was becoming seriously grave. so charles called a council to consider what were best to be done, but jeanne was not asked to attend. regnault chartres, archbishop of reims, was for retreating, and a number of councillors were against assaulting the city. one after another they gave their opinions, some arguing that if they did not retreat it would be best to leave the hostile fortress in their rear and press on towards reims. when it came the turn of robert le macon, the old chancellor of charles vi, he said that the march had been undertaken in reliance neither upon the number of their troops nor upon the richness of their treasury, but because the maid advised them that such was the will of god. he suggested, therefore, that she be called to the council. at this moment jeanne, becoming impatient over the long debate, knocked at the door. she was at once admitted, and the archbishop of reims took it upon himself to explain: "jeanne," said he, "the king and his council are in great perplexity to know what they shall do." "shall i be believed if i speak?" asked the maiden, who was learning from experience that even messages from heaven may be set aside by the will of man. "i can not tell," replied the king, to whom she addressed herself; "though if you say things that are reasonable and profitable i shall certainly believe you." "shall i be believed?" she asked again. "yes," said the king, "according as you speak." "noble dauphin, order your people to assault the city of troyes, and hold no more of these councils; for in god's name, before three days i will bring you into troyes, by favor or force, and false burgundy shall be greatly amazed." "jeanne," said the chancellor, "we might well wait if you could do that in six days." "doubt it not," spoke jeanne, addressing the dauphin only. "you shall be master of the place, not in six days but to-morrow." the council broke up, and jeanne began at once to make preparations for storming the place. the whole army was set to work during the night, nobles and men-at-arms alike, to collect any kind of material, faggots, palings, tables, even doors and windows--anything that could be used to shelter the men, mount the guns, and fill up the fosse. she worked hard all night, and the unusual commotion gave notice to the townsfolk that something out of the ordinary was being done, and they retired to the churches to pray. in the morning they saw that arrangements had been made to assault the place, and heard the maid's voice order the attack to begin. at this great fear of her came upon them, and they had no heart to man battlement or tower. whereupon the bishop of the town and the citizens threw the gates open and made submission without firing a shot, sending a committee to charles to treat for terms of peace. the king received the envoys graciously, and guaranteed all the rights of troyes, promising that the garrison might depart with their arms and goods, providing the town were given up to him. jeanne of course was obliged to acquiesce in the terms that her king made, but she was suspicious of the good faith of the burgundian garrison, and so stationed herself at the gate to see them march out. she had been up all night "laboring with a diligence that not two or three most experienced and renowned captains could have shown,"[ ] and she was weary, but she would not retire to her tent until she knew how the garrison complied with the conditions. her suspicions proved to be well founded. after a time the english and burgundian soldiers came marching through the gates with their horses and armour, and their property,--property which proved to be french prisoners. there they walked, a band of men previously taken, each one representing so much money in ransom. the poor fellows cast appealing, piteous glances at their victorious fellow countrymen as they passed. jeanne uttered an exclamation, and stopped the march. "in god's name," she cried, "they shall not have them." but some of the captains explained to her that under the terms of the capitulation the prisoners were property, and the soldiers were justified in taking them away, though it had not occurred to the king or his councillors that any such thing would happen when the terms were given. but the maid would not hear of letting the frenchmen be carried away. "they shall not have them," she said again. "the thing would be monstrous. i will see the dauphin." which she did at once, and to such good purpose that the monarch was obliged to ransom the men from their captors, paying for each one a reasonable sum. french prisoners had been too plentiful in the wars to be worth much. troyes was full of doubt, terror and ill-will toward the maid, and jeanne felt it plainly when she entered the town to prepare for the reception of the king. at orléans, at blois, at tours, at gien, at all other places where she had been the people thronged about her with enthusiasm. here they regarded her as a sorceress, and sent a certain friar richard to confront her. friar richard was a franciscan who had created a great stir in paris and champagne by preaching fervid, emotional sermons, warning people of the coming of anti-christ, and urging them to forsake their sins, and to prepare for eternity. as he drew near to the maid, he crossed himself devoutly, making the sign of the cross in the air, and sprinkling holy water before him to exorcise the evil spirit in the girl. brother richard was devout, but he wasn't going to run any risk. jeanne laughed gayly. she had become accustomed to being thought possessed. "come on boldly," she cried. "i shall not fly away." upon this the good man fell upon his knees before her, and the maid, to show that she was no holier than he, knelt also. they had some conversation together, and thereafter the friar was one of her most devoted adherents. the day after the surrender charles entered the city in splendor, and went at once to the cathedral, where he received the oaths of loyalty of the burghers. the day following the troops marched on to châlons, but met with no resistance. all opposition to the king's advance had collapsed, and eagerly the towns opened their gates to him. after all, he was french, and it was natural for frenchmen to turn to their rightful king and believe in him in spite of the english. and so with ever increasing army charles marched in triumph towards reims. châlons, troyes, and other places that had made submission wrote to reims immediately advising that town to do likewise as charles was a "sweet, gracious, pitiful and compassionate prince, of noble demeanor and high understanding, and had shown clearly and prudently the reasons for which he had come to them." reims laughed the messages to scorn, and vowed to resist to the death. they had recalled the captain of their garrison, who was at château-thierry, but they limited his escort to fifty horsemen, for which reason the captain very properly declined to come, saying that he could not attempt to hold the city with fewer than three hundred men. so when charles reached sept-saulx, a fortress within four leagues of reims, it sent out representatives to him to offer its full and entire obedience, in token of which the envoys presented the king with the keys of the city. it was finished. the march to reims, which has been called "the bloodless march," was ended. the wonderful and victorious campaign with all its lists of towns taken had lasted but six weeks, almost every day of which was distinguished by some victory. the king and his councillors had been fearful of the result, but the maid had carried them through in triumph. every promise which she had made had been fulfilled. there was nothing now between charles, the discredited dauphin of three months agone, and the sacred ceremonial which drew with it every "tradition and assurance of an ancient and lawful throne." some time later when the regent wished to make the same march with young henry of england to crown him at reims the duke of burgundy advised against the attempt, stating that it was too difficult and perilous to imitate. on the morning of saturday, july sixteenth, the archbishop, regnault de chartres, who had been kept out of his city by the burgundians, entered it to make preparations to receive his royal master. in the afternoon the king, with jeanne riding by his side, his councillors, the princes and nobles, the captains, and a great train of soldiers, and citizens of neighboring places entered in state. the streets were thronged with people who cheered lustily at sight of the monarch, crying "noël! noël!"[ ] but who struggled and shouldered each other in the natural curiosity to catch glimpses of the wonderful maid with her shining armour and fair sweet face. the king, the maid, and the heads of the expedition were to be lodged in the palace of the archbishop, which was near the great cathedral, but as the procession made its way thither jeanne uttered a cry of joy; for, gazing at her half fearfully from the crowd were her father, jacques d'arc, and her uncle, durand lassois. the king turned to her. "what is it, ma mie?" he asked. "my father, my dear father, is standing there among the people," she cried, waving her hand at the two rustics. "and with him stands my uncle, durand lassois: he who took me to vaucouleurs, you remember?" "i remember, jeanne. we must see and speak with them both," said the monarch graciously. "bring them to us later." with another wave of her hand at the two the maiden passed on. in the evening charles was led to a platform which had been erected before the cathedral, and there, amid the red glare of bonfires, flaming torches, the ringing of bells and the acclaiming shouts of the assembled people he was shown to the multitude by the peers of france, with the traditional proclamation:[ ] "here is your king whom we, peers of france, crown as king and sovereign lord. and if there is a soul here who has any objection to make, let him speak and we will answer him. and to-morrow he shall be consecrated by the grace of the holy spirit if you have nothing to say against it." but the people shouted, "noël! noël! noël!" in a frenzy of delight, and so this preliminary ceremony was concluded. there was feasting in the palace of the archbishop that night. but jeanne slipped away from it all and made her way quickly to the little inn called the zebra, in front of the cathedral, which was kept by alice moreau, a widow, where she would find her father and uncle. to her delight her brothers had come hither also, and when jeanne entered jacques was standing with an arm around each, his usually undemonstrative face beaming with gladness, for they had been telling him of jeanne and her exploits. he started toward her as she came through the door, then stopped suddenly and stood gazing at her with doubt and hesitation, but jeanne flung herself upon him with the abandonment of a child. "father!" she cried. "dear, dear father! i did not hope for this. oh! how glad i am to see you." jacques could not utter a word for a moment, but held her close, close as though he would never let her go. when at last he spoke it was with choked and trembling accents. "and do you forgive me, my little one? all the harshness and severity that i showed you? my child, i did not know, i did not understand--" jeanne smiled at him through her tears. "how could you understand, father? i did not either for a long time. but it is over now. my mission will be ended to-morrow when the dauphin is crowned. and then i am going back home with you to mother. dear mother! how is she?" "well, jeanne; but longs for you always." "and i for her," said jeanne, tearfully. "i shall never leave you again, father. i shall be glad to get back." at this durand interposed: "you won't be contented there, jeanne. just think how set you were to get away. and now you have done everything you wanted to do. and it was i that helped you to do it." "yes, uncle durand; and the king wishes to see you to thank you for it." "the king?" exclaimed lassois, almost dumbfounded by this news. "why, jeanne, you don't mean that he wants to see me?" "yes, i do," said jeanne, laughing. "he says that by helping me to go to messire robert you have done more for the country than any other man in france." durand could scarcely contain himself at this, and beamed delightedly. presently he said, wistfully: "don't you ever get afraid in battle, jeanne? i heard that you were wounded once. i should think that you would be so afraid that you'd run away as soon as the guns began to shoot and the arrows to fly." "i do not fear wounds or battle," she told him. "i fear only--treachery;" and a shadow crossed her face. it was a happy family party there at the little inn. there was wonder and admiration in the regard which the simple peasants bestowed upon the maiden, but there was love also, and the weary girl, longing for home and rest since her mission was so nearly completed, gave herself up to its blessed consolation. far into the night she talked, and then she left them; for the morrow would bring the coronation, and there was much to be done. it was the tradition that coronations should take place on sunday, so that there was little sleep in reims that night. everything had to be prepared; decorations for the cathedral and town, and provisions for the ceremonial. many of the necessary articles were at saint denis, in the hands of the english, and the treasury of the cathedral had to be ransacked to find fitting vessels. all night the work of preparation went on. and all night long rejoicing crowds filled the streets and the great square before the cathedral, where the dauphin kept vigil, as was the custom of the sovereign the night before his coronation. at dawn of day the town began to fill with visitors, great personages and small ones, to attend the rites, and to render homage. all france seemed to pour into the place; for the people were to have their rightful king, and french hearts were joyful. it mattered not after this who should be crowned--henry of england, or another--there would be but one king of france, charles the seventh, he who was anointed with the sacred oil in the city of reims, where all kings of france had been crowned since the time of clovis. charles had been crowned after a fashion at bourges, but in the eyes of the nation he was not king until the oil from the mystic ampoule brought down from heaven by a dove to saint remi was poured upon his brow. jeanne, a daughter of the people, understood this better than the politicians who tried to thwart her design of leading charles to his sacring, deeming it a piece of childish folly. after the crowning, when the increased prestige and loyalty which it brought to charles was seen, its significance was understood not only by the politicians but by the regent bedford. it was a decided advantage which this girl of the people gained over the english claimant by her quickness in taking the dauphin to be crowned. the ceremonies were to begin at nine o'clock, sunday morning, july the seventeenth, and long before that hour the ancient cathedral was filled to overflowing with nobles and men-at-arms, and dignitaries both civic and ecclesiastic, richly and gayly attired in gorgeous stuffs: cloth of gold, cloth of silver, brocades of crimson and azure, and silks dyed in all the colors of the rainbow, mingled with sheen of glittering spears and shining armour: a brilliant gathering. charles the dauphin waited at the foot of the high altar, garbed in a robe of cerulean blue over which was scattered the golden fleur-de-lis. outside the cathedral the streets were thronged with people in holiday attire, wearing leaden medals which bore an effigy of jeanne. after the coronation the king too had thirteen gold medals struck in honour of the maid, which bore her device, a hand holding a sword, and the inscription, consilio firmata dei. (strong in the counsel of god.) these and a vase of silver were among the gifts which he bestowed on the chapter of reims. suddenly there was a blare of trumpets, and from the palace of the archbishop there issued a wonderful procession. four peers of france,--the maréchal de boussac, gravile, de rais, admiral de culent,--armed and accoutred, and a great company with banners floating rode through the streets to the old abbey of st. remi--which had been consecrated in the eleventh century--to bring from its shrine, where it was strictly guarded by the monks, the sainte ampoule, the holy and sacred vial which held the oil sent from heaven for the sacring of clovis. the noble messengers were the hostages of this sacred charge, and kneeling they bound themselves by an oath never to lose sight of it by day or night, till it was restored to its appointed guardians. this vow having been taken, the abbot of st. remi, in his richest robes, appeared surrounded by his monks, carrying the treasure in his hands; and under a splendid canopy, blazing in the sunshine with cloth of gold, marched toward the cathedral under escort of the noble hostages. into the cathedral rode the cavalcade through the great west door. their coming was proclaimed by chimes of bells, and blare of trumpets, and chanting of hymns until a mighty volume of sound rolled and swelled through the vaulted domes of the ancient building. straight up to the entrance of the choir they rode, and there the abbot gave over the sacred chrism to the archbishop. then began the long and imposing ceremonies of the coronation. there were prayers, and anthems, and sermons, but at length the king-at-arms, standing upon the steps of the altar, called upon the twelve peers of france to come and serve their king. there were vacant places to be supplied, both among the temporal and the spiritual peers, but alençon, clermont, vendôme, guy de laval, la trémouille and maillé filled them. among the clerical peers the archbishop of reims, the bishops of châlons and laon were present; the others were supplied. in the absence of richemont, the constable of france, d'albret held the sword of state. d'alençon, in place of "false burgundy," dubbed charles a knight; then the archbishop raised the holy flask and anointed the dauphin upon the brow, upon his shoulders, within the joints of his arms and the palms of his hands, slits being cut and embroidered in his robe to this use. all was done according to ancient custom, the dauphin kneeling the while. administering the oath the archbishop then took the crown and held it high above the monarch's head; the twelve peers of the realm, closing in, held it firm; then gently it was lowered upon the brows of the kneeling prince. "arise, charles, king of france," cried the prelate in a loud voice. and, as charles was lifted high in the throne chair by the peers that all might see, he cried again: "behold your king!" as charles the seventh, king of france, faced his people a mighty shout of "noël! noël! noël!" came from the assembly, while crash of chimes, chanting voices, and music of instruments rolled through the arches, until the vaulted heights answered again and again. throughout the ceremony, close to charles upon the steps of the altar stood jeanne with her standard in her hand. "it had borne the burden, it should share the glory," she said afterwards. "and a right fair thing it was to see the goodly manners of the king and the maid. she who was in truth the cause of the crowning of the king and of all the assembly."[ ] pale with emotion jeanne had stood watching every step of the ceremonial with intentness. when at last it was ended she could control herself no longer. stepping forward she fell at the feet of the newly crowned monarch, embracing his knees, and weeping for joy. "gentle king, now is the pleasure of god fulfilled--whose will it was that i should raise the siege of orléans, and lead you to this city of reims to receive your consecration. now has he shown that you are the true king, and that the kingdom of france belongs to you alone." soft, and low, and broken came the words. they pierced all hearts, and "right great pity came upon all those who saw her, and many wept."[ ] many wept. the girl was so young, so fair, so slight, yet what great deeds had she not wrought? in three months she had given france a king, and to the king, a country. in spite of obstacles that would seem incredible were they not a part of recorded history she had accomplished her mission. a great soul in which intense zeal was wedded to intense purpose had wrought marvels, and changed the destiny of a nation. many wept, and the king too was moved. perhaps at that moment he felt more gratitude towards the maiden than ever before or afterward. lifting her, he said: "you have brought us to our crowning, beloved maid. speak, and whatsoever grace you ask it shall be granted." again jeanne fell upon her knees. "most noble king, out of your grace i beseech you to grant that the taxes of my village be remitted. its people are poor, and it brings great hardship upon them to pay." "is that all, jeanne?" "yes, sire." "then in consideration of the great, high, notable, and profitable service which this, our beloved jeanne the maid, has rendered and daily renders us in the recovery of our kingdom, in her favour and at her request, we therefore decree that domremy, the native village of jeanne d'arc, deliverer of france, be forever exempt from taxation." again the people shouted fervently. they recognized the justice of the grant, and wondered only that she asked so little. "noël! noël! noël!"[ ] for centuries the privilege lasted, and against the names of domremy and greux, its adjoining village, in the tax gatherer's book was written: "domremy ... rien-la pucelle," "nothing--for the sake of the maid." she had gained a kingdom, yet all she asked in return was that the taxes of her poor oppressed village might be remitted. she wished for nothing for herself. not the least of the girl's great qualities was her unselfishness. ------ [ ] dunois. [ ] noël--an exclamation of joyful acclamation. [ ] m. blaze de bury. [ ] journal du siège. [ ] journal du siège. [ ] "noël"--a word of acclaim--"hurrah!" chapter xxiii the turning of the tide "_if france deserts her, and she fails, she is none the less inspired._" jean gerson. . there was feasting in reims after the coronation. in the archbishop's palace the king was served with the princes of the blood and the nobles. the tables stretched to the streets that the people might be served also; all reims ate, drank, and made merry. but jeanne, always exceedingly temperate in the matter of eating and drinking, soon slipped away from the festivities. she had other work on hand. there was a letter to be written to the duke of burgundy, the greatest peer of france. philip, because of the blood feud between him and charles, had cast his power and influence with regent bedford against his own countrymen. jeanne had written to him before in june at the beginning of the march to reims, summoning him to the crowning of the king, but had heard from neither letter nor herald. it was the maiden's belief that all frenchmen should unite against the common enemy, laying aside private griefs that france might be served. she had no party feeling, and was possessed of a fund of common sense which made her see what a powerful ally philip of burgundy would be. so now she wrote again, summoning him to renounce his feud with his cousin, the king, and thus to heal the breach which had divided the realm into two great parties. "jhesus maria "high and redoubtable prince, duke of burgundy. jeanne the maid requires on the part of the king of heaven, my most just sovereign and lord, that the king of france and you make peace between yourselves, firm, strong, and that will endure. pardon each other of good heart, entirely, as loyal christians ought to do, and if you desire to fight let it be against the saracens. prince of burgundy, i pray, supplicate, and require as humbly as may be, that you fight no longer against the holy kingdom of france: withdraw, at once and speedily, your people who are in any strongholds or fortresses of the said holy kingdom; and on the part of the gentle king of france, he is ready to make peace with you, having respect to his honor. all those who war against the said holy kingdom of france, war against king jesus, king of heaven, and of all the world and my just and sovereign lord. and i pray and require with clasped hands that you fight not, nor make any battle against us, neither your friends nor your subjects. for however great in numbers may be the men you lead against us, you will never win, and it would be great pity for the battle and the blood that would be shed of those who came against us. three weeks ago i sent you a letter by a herald that you should be present at the consecration of the king, which to-day, sunday, the seventeenth of the present month of july, is done in the city of reims: to which i have had no answer. to god i commend you, and may he be your guard if it pleases him, and i pray god to make good peace. "written at the aforesaid reims, the seventeenth day of july, . "jeanne the maid." so, her mission ended, the girl began to make preparations for her return home with her father. when she left vaucouleurs she had taken with her the red homespun dress that she had worn from home, and had always kept it with her. she brought it forth, and smoothed its folds tenderly. it was of coarse fabric unlike the brocades and satins of the knight's suits that she now wore, but jeanne's eyes grew misty, and soft, and wistful as she fondled it; the simple frock meant home and mother to her. presently the members of the household began to come in to take farewell, for all knew that she felt that her task was finished and that it was her intention to return to domremy. but it was not to be. the next day jeanne sought charles and asked him of his graciousness to let her depart. her mission was closed, she told him. she had done the two things that she was charged to do: the siege of orléans was raised, and she had led him to his crowning. she wished now to go back home with her father, and of his goodness she begged him to let her depart. the monarch heard her with surprise. "go back now, jeanne?" he exclaimed. "that cannot be. we need you." "nay, gentle king. there is no further need of me. you are crowned, and the towns will receive you joyfully. whatever of fighting there is to be done the men-at-arms can do." "dear maid, have you forgot paris? we are to march there from here, and who can lead the men-at-arms to the storming so well as you? you will inspire them, give them heart and courage, and frighten the enemy. we cannot do without you yet, jeanne. we need you; the country needs you. stay your departure for yet a little while we entreat--nay; we command it, jeanne." her king and her country needed her. that was enough for the girl whose every heart beat was for france. so sorrowfully she wended her way to the zebra, the little inn where jacques and durand were stopping. "father," she said sadly, as jacques came forward to meet her, "i can not go home. i must continue with the army. it is the king's command." "not go back, my little one?" exclaimed her father, his face clouding. "why, isabeau will be sore disappointed. she thought you would come after your work was done." "and i too, father, but the noble king commands me to stay. he hath need of me, he says. and france needs me." and, as she had done when she was a little child, jeanne laid her head on her father's shoulder and cried like the homesick girl that she was. her father comforted her tenderly. his own disappointment was great. "we went to see the king, jeanne," spoke durand suddenly. "he had us brought to him, and he was graciousness itself. i wonder not that you delight to serve him; so sweet and pitiful he is." "oh, he is," exclaimed the maiden. "for know, father, that he has exempted both domremy and greux from the taxes." "now that is good," cried jacques delightedly. "that will be news indeed to carry back!" "and we each have a horse," durand told her proudly. "and we are to have our keep for so long as we wish to stay in reims. the town will have it so. and all because we are of kin to jeanne d'arc." jeanne smiled at his pleasure. she too had gifts which she had bought to carry home herself. now she gave them to her father to deliver with many a loving message, and then took a lingering farewell of them. her heart was very full as she returned to the palace of the archbishop, and once more took up her position as a general in the royal army. she never saw either her father or her uncle again. jeanne supposed that it was the king's intention to march directly upon paris the day after the coronation. to the surprise of every one charles dallied at reims for four days, and did not set forth from the town until the twenty-first of july. then with banners flying the royal army rode from the gates with glad hearts and high hopes, jeanne with her standard riding in front of the king. with the maid leading them the troops believed themselves to be invincible. they were filled with confidence, for paris once taken, the power of the english in northern france would be entirely broken. both burgundy and bedford realized this fact to the full. "paris is the heart of the mystic body of the kingdom," wrote the former to the regent in the spring of . "only by liberating the heart can the body be made to flourish." what was true in was equally so in . the right policy, therefore, was to advance at once and storm paris. but the king stopped at the abbey of saint marcoul and "touched for the king's evil."[ ] nothing should have been allowed to waste time. it should have been paris first, and then saint marcoul; for bedford at this very time was marching from calais with newly landed troops under cardinal beaufort. after saint marcoul charles marched next to vailly, and having received the keys of soissons passed to that city. everywhere he was received with acclamations, town after town yielding to him and the maid. the army was now only sixty miles from paris. bedford had not reached the city, which had but a small garrison, and many of its citizens favored charles. only a vigorous advance was required to take it, and so end the war. at soissons the king received the submission of many towns, but there was nothing else done. when the army set forth again the king turned about and headed due south for château-thierry; after two days he proceeded to provins, which was reached on august second. this place was about sixty miles south of soissons, and fifty miles southeast of paris. with all his marching after ten days charles was but ten miles nearer his objective point. the enthusiasm of the troops was dwindling. jeanne and the captains viewed the effects of the vacillating manoeuvring of the king with despair; for no one seemed to know what it all meant. the maid at length sought charles for an explanation. to her surprise she learned that ambassadors from burgundy had come to reims on the very day of the coronation, desiring a truce between the king and the duke. the envoys had marched with them since then, for the belief was so strong that paris should be taken that the king and his councillors did not dare treat with them while feeling ran so high. now, however, the envoys had succeeded in establishing a sort of truce by the terms of which burgundy was to deliver up paris to charles at the end of a fortnight. "at the end of a fortnight," repeated jeanne in dismay. "in god's name, gentle king, the regent will have time to bring his new troops into the town before the two weeks are sped. all the duke of burgundy wants is to gain time for the english regent." "do you mean to reflect upon the honor of our cousin burgundy?" demanded charles haughtily. "his intentions toward us are most kind, we assure you, jeanne. it is our dearest wish to be at peace with him." "make peace, sire; but--" "but what, dear maid?" "make it at the point of the lance," she cried. "none other will be so lasting. a quick advance, sire, and paris is ours, and with it all france." "would it not be best to take it without bloodshed?" he asked. "by your way much christian blood must perforce be spilled. by this truce with our cousin the city will be ours peaceably. is not that best?" "it may be," she agreed sorrowfully. there was no more to be said, so with heavy heart she went from the presence to report to the captains. silently they heard her; for none of them believed that philip of burgundy would ever deliver paris to the king. so "turning first the flanks, then the rear of his army towards paris, dragging with him the despairing maid, the king headed for the loire." beyond that river lay pleasure and amusement; time could be taken for ease and enjoyment, and the unworthy king desired them more than honor. in this he was encouraged by la trémouille and his party. reims, soissons and other cities that had made submission were alarmed because the king was abandoning them to the mercy of burgundy, and the men of reims wrote to jeanne telling her their fears. to which she made answer: "dear good friends, good and loyal frenchmen, the maid sends you news of her.... never will i abandon you while i live. true it is that the king has made a fifteen days' truce with the duke of burgundy, who is to give up to him the town of paris peacefully on the fifteenth day. "although the truce is made, i am not content, and am not certain that i will keep it. if i do it will be merely for the sake of the king's honor, and in case they do not deceive the blood royal, for i will keep the king's army together and in readiness, at the end of the fifteen days, if peace is not made." at bray, where charles expected to cross the seine on his road to the loire, he found a strong anglo-burgundian force in possession, so facing about he started toward paris. jeanne and the captains rejoiced openly, for they had no desire to cross the river, but wished only to keep near the capital until the truce was ended. the erratic marching and indecision of the royal council and the king were ruining the spirit of the men-at-arms; but the country people who knew naught of the parleying with burgundy were wild with delight at the coming of charles, and crowded to gaze upon him as he passed by. jeanne was touched by their demonstrations of delight. "here is a good people," she remarked one day, as she rode between dunois and the archbishop of reims when the army was near crépy. "never have i seen any so glad of the coming of the noble king. i would that when i die i were so happy as to be buried in this country." "jeanne, in what place do you expect to die?" asked the archbishop, who had never been a friend of jeanne's, and wished to draw some expression of prophecy from her that might be used against her. "when it shall please god," she made answer; "for i know no more of the time and place than you do. would that it pleased god my creator to let me depart at this time, and lay down my arms, and go to serve my father and mother in keeping their sheep with my brothers, for they would be very glad to see me." there was a note of sadness in the words. even jeanne's brave spirit was feeling the strain of the fluctuating, futile marchings. on august eleventh charles lay at crépy-en-valois, where he received a letter from bedford, who by this time had brought his troops near to paris and now lay between that city and the french army. it was a brutally insulting letter, obviously written for the purpose of forcing the monarch to fight in the open field. it closed by challenging him to single combat, and with an appeal to the almighty. any man with an ounce of red blood in his veins would have accepted the challenge, and died gloriously, if needs be, in defense of his honor. charles merely ignored the letter. it is said of him that at a later date he discovered great valour, taking the field in person against his enemies, and fighting in knightly fashion. it seems a pity that such gallantry was not in evidence at this period. on august fourteenth the armies of charles and bedford came face to face at montépilloy. it was near evening, and after a skirmish they both encamped for the night. in the morning the royal army found bedford entrenched in a strong position. his flanks and front were carefully protected by earthworks and a stockade made of stout stakes carried by english archers for the purpose. thrust deep into the ground, they would break the charge of cavalry, and were very formidable. in the rear was a lake and a stream, so that no attack could be made from that quarter. over the host floated the banners of france and england. the french army formed in four divisions: the advance-guard, commanded by alençon; the centre, commanded by rené de bar; the rear, with which were the king himself and la trémouille, was under charles de bourbon, and a large body of skirmishers under jeanne, dunois and la hire. the position of bedford was too strong to admit of a direct attack. he also had the advantage of a superiority in numbers, so the french tried to draw his forces from behind their barricades in the same manner that talbot had tried to entice jeanne to forsake the strong position which she had occupied on the height above beaugency the night before patay. but, though several times french knights, both on foot and on horseback, rode up to the palisade and so taunted the english that some of them rushed out, the result was only skirmishing. the main body of the enemy stood firm. when jeanne saw that they would not come out she rode, standard in hand, up to the palisade and struck it a ringing blow hoping to excite the enemy into action. for answer the english called, "witch! milkmaid! go home to your cows. if we catch you we'll burn you." there were other names added, some of them vile and insulting. at the same time they waved in mocking defiance a standard copied from that of jeanne's, showing a distaff and spindle, and bearing the motto: "let the fair maid come. we'll give her wool to spin." this roused the rage of the french, and thereafter no quarter was asked or given in the skirmishes that ensued when parties of the english sallied out in answer to the jibes and taunts of the french. but with all their endeavors the english were not to be stung into leaving their strong position. later alençon and the maid sent a message that they would retire and give the english a fair field to deploy in, but they did not accept the offer. bedford was not anxious for a chivalrous engagement in a fair field. in the afternoon the english captured a few field pieces which the french had brought up to enfilade the english line. so the long summer day passed, and when it grew dusk so that friend and foe could not be distinguished from each other the french retired to their quarters. the king left them, and retired to crépy. early the next morning the french withdrew, hoping that the english would follow them. but the regent would not. as soon as he was clear of the french he retreated to senlis and from there went to paris. of course the royal army should have followed him, but the triumphant spirit that filled the troops at patay had been dissipated. the captains feared to move without the king's sanction, and, though jeanne counselled the pursuit, they deemed it best to join the king at crépy. compiègne, senlis, and beauvais now made their submission to the king and the maid. charles marched at once to compiègne, fifty miles from paris. at beauvais those persons who refused to recognize charles were driven out with their possessions. among these was pierre cauchon, its bishop. this man never forgave jeanne for being the cause of his losing his diocese and his revenues, and later took a dire revenge upon her. charles dallied at compiègne, greatly to the distress of jeanne, who knew the value of rapid movements. she saw too that the troops were losing heart. the king, however, was busy entangling himself with new truces with burgundy, but of this the maid at this time knew naught. she only knew that the fifteen days' truce was ended, and paris had not been delivered to her king; that august was almost spent, and that nothing had been accomplished. she grieved at the monarch's shilly-shallying, and suspected that he was content with the grace god had given him without undertaking any further enterprise. as the time passed without bringing action of any sort, or any promise of it, the girl's patience became thoroughly exhausted. she had only a year to work in, she had said, and france's king was wasting the time that should have been used for france. so one day she said to alençon: "my fair duke, make ready the men, for by my staff, i wish to see paris nearer than i have seen it yet." the words struck a responsive chord in alençon's breast, and the captains gladly made ready for the march; for all were weary of inaction, and discouraged by the irresolution of the king. on the twenty-third of august, therefore, the troops under jeanne and alençon set forth, making a short pause at senlis so that the forces under the count de vendôme might join them. it was hoped that, moved by their example, the king would be impelled to follow them with the main body of the army; the hope proved a futile one. after three days' march they rode into st. denys, a town six miles from paris, and the other sacred place of the realm. it was the city of the martyr saint whose name was the war cry of france. it was also the city of the tomb; for, as reims was the place where french kings were crowned, so st. denys was the town where french kings were buried. from antiquity they had lain here in the great abbey, where too was the crown of charlemagne. there were also many sacred relics of the saints here, among them a head said to be that of saint denys. it was a sacred place to all french hearts. at their approach those people who were of anglo-burgundian opinions retired to paris, terrified by the dark stories of vengeance with which the emissaries of burgundy had beguiled them, so that those who remained in the place were royalists. as she had often done of late jeanne became godmother for two little babies, holding them at the font. when the little ones were boys she gave them the name of the king; if they were girls, and the parents had no name for them, she called them jeanne. there was further vexatious delay here in waiting for the coming of the king. it was a supreme moment in the affairs of the realm. all that had been gained in the summer was now to be either entirely lost, or fully perfected by this attack on the capital. charles's presence was needed for the authority and approval that it gave, and, too, the main body of the army was necessary for the attack as the city was too strong to be assailed with what troops alençon and jeanne had with them. courier after courier was sent to the king to urge his coming, and at length alençon rode back to entreat his presence. reluctantly the monarch advanced to senlis, and there stopped. "it seemed that he was advised against the maid and the duc d'alençon and their company."[ ] meantime jeanne employed the time in skirmishing and reconnoissances, studying the city to find the best point for the onslaught. alençon also sent letters to the burghers, calling the dignitaries by name, and asking them to surrender to their true lord. the authorities in the city were not idle. they strengthened the fortifications, and frightened the people by spreading stories of the dire vengeance that charles had sworn to wreak against them. he would deliver the city and its people of all ages and conditions to the pleasure of his soldiers, it was said; and he had also sworn to raze it to its foundations so that the plough should break the ground where paris had stood. terrified by these tales the citizens feared to leave the gates to gather the grapes which grew on the slopes beyond the walls, or to get the vegetables from the great gardens which lay to the north of the city. finally, after a fortnight, charles arrived at saint denys, and his coming was hailed with delight. the army was wrought up to a high pitch of excitement, and was eager for assault. "there was no one of whatever condition who did not say, 'the maid will lead the king into paris if he will let her.'"[ ] charles himself was not so eager. in truth, the last thing in the world that he desired was this attack. in the afternoon of the day of his arrival jeanne and the captains started toward the city walls to make the usual demonstration. the king rode with them. now at blois, at orléans, on the march to reims the army of men was orderly, clean confessed and of holy life; but it was no longer what it had been. it is idleness that demoralizes and disorganizes men on the march or in camp. action keeps them in trim, and in a righteous way of living. the personnel of the troops was no longer what it had been before orléans. after the coronation men had flocked in from every quarter; soldiers of the robber companies, rude, foul, and disorderly. they revered the maid for her saintly manner of life, but continued to practice their own vices, greatly to her distress. so now as the king and the maid rode from the town toward the walls of the city one of the vile women who followed the camp thrust herself forward boldly from the crowd of people who had gathered to watch the passing of the monarch and the girl, and leered insolently at them. at this, all of jeanne's youthful purity was roused to a blaze of indignation, and she brought up her sword quickly, and smote the creature a smart blow with the flat side of the weapon. "get you gone," she cried sharply. instantly at the touch of the unclean thing the blade parted in two. one piece fell to the ground, and jeanne, stricken by the happening, sat gazing silently at what remained in her hand. "'tis the holy sword," exclaimed charles, aghast. "are there no cudgels to be had that you should use the sacred weapon? i like not the omen." jeanne made no reply. she could not. all about her ran whispers and outcries as news of the incident flew from lip to lip. soon the story was spread through the army. the maid had broken the miraculous sword. it was a bad portent, and men shook their heads, saying that it boded ill for future enterprise. the king sent the sword to his own armourers to be mended, "but they could not do it, nor put the pieces together again; which is great proof that the sword came to her divinely."[ ] at a council held later it was determined that an attack on paris should be made the next day, and thereupon the troops withdrew to la chapelle, a village midway between st. denys and paris, and encamped there for the night. but the king remained at st. denys. "i like not the day, gentle duke," said jeanne protestingly to alençon. "to-morrow is the feast of the nativity of the blessed mother of god. it is not meet to fight on such a day." "we must, jeanne. we have been insistent that the assault should be made; and if we decline now la trémouille will persuade the king that we are the cause of the delay." "true," agreed the maiden. "well, we will make the attack, fair duke. after all, it is the duty of frenchmen to fight the enemy whenever need arises, be the day what it may." yet in spite of her words it was with reluctance that jeanne prepared for the assault the next morning. it was the eighth of september, upon which day fell the nativity of the blessed virgin, a great festival of the church. the church bells of la chapelle were ringing as she rose, and faintly the bells of paris and st. denys tinkled an answer to the summons to the faithful. all the citizens of paris would be at church, for no one would expect an attack upon such a day, and jeanne would far rather have spent the time before the altar. she did not wish the assault, but yielded to alençon and the captains. the troops made a late start, it being eight o'clock before they marched out of la chapelle, and wended their way toward paris. the morning was bright and beautiful, though unusually warm for the season. in the sunshine the towers and battlements of the city gleamed and glistened. it was a great city; far greater than orléans, and a prize worth fighting for, but the chances of taking it had diminished by the dalliance of the king. the morning was entirely consumed in placing the ordnance, and getting ready for the assault. the point of attack was to be a place between the gates of st. honoré and st. denys, which jeanne was to lead with rais and gaucourt, while alençon, placing his guns in the swine market near the gate, stationed his force behind the windmill hill which sloped above the market. this was done to guard the rear from a possible attack from a sally of the english from the st. denys gate. the main body of the army was posted as a reserve out of range. the king did not leave st. denys. charles was the only prince in europe who did not lead his own army in the field. all was in readiness, when jeanne learned to her great surprise that no serious assault was intended. it was to be an effort to cause tumult and surrender in the city. the maid determined to force the fighting to an issue. at two o'clock in the afternoon the trumpet sounded the call, and the roar and rebound of cannon began, the artillery plying the boulevard or earthwork which protected the gate of st. honoré. the palisade weakened; presently the pales fell with a crash, and the earthen wall of the boulevard stood beyond. with a shout, "mont-joie st. denys!" the french rushed forward with scaling ladders, and began the escalade, their friends backing them by shooting of arbalests from behind the remnant of the palisade. by sheer impetuosity they carried the outpost, and poured over the walls pell-mell, driving its defenders before them back to the fortifications of the gate itself. all at once their furious advance was brought to a sudden check; for before them lay two wide deep ditches, one dry, the other full of water, which here guarded the walls of the gate. the archers and gunners on the ramparts above jeered mockingly at the halted french, and sent a rain of stones and arrows down at them, waving their banners, which mingled the leopards of england with the rampant two-tailed lion of burgundy. jeanne was of course at the head of her men, and only for a moment did she permit them to pause before the set-back. calling loudly for faggots and beams to bridge the moat she descended into the dry fosse, then climbed out again to the shelving ridge which divided the two trenches. some of the men ran for the bundles of wood and bridging material, while the others followed her to the ridge. dismay again seized them as the wide deep moat full to the brim with water stretched before them. but jeanne was not daunted. handing her standard to a man at her side, she took a lance and tested the water amid a shower of arrows and stones. "surrender," she called to the men on the walls. "surrender to the king of france." "witch! evil one!" they shouted in answer. by this time the soldiers had brought bundles of wood, faggots, and whatever would help to fill the moat, jeanne calling encouragingly to them the while. presently they were enabled to struggle across, and the charge began. at this instant, as had been arranged, a great commotion was heard in the city, the loyalists running through the streets and shouting: "all is lost! the enemy has entered." it was hoped that this would help the king's troops without the gates. the people in the churches, panic-stricken, rushed to their homes, shutting their doors behind them, but there was nothing gained. the garrison kept their heads, and their numbers at the gates and on the ramparts were increased. the firing now became very heavy; the artillery bellowed and the guns roared in answer. there were shouts of men, and words of order. and through the rattle of guns, the whizzing rush of stones, the smiting with axe or sword on wooden barrier and steel harness, the hundreds of war cries there sounded the wonderful, silvery tones of a girl's voice, clear as a clarion call: "on! on, friends! they are ours." on the shelving ridge between the two ditches stood the maid, her white armour gleaming in the sunshine, a shining figure, exposed to every shot and missile. hour after hour she stood, in the heat of the fire, shouting directions to her men, urging, cheering them while always the struggle raged around her, her banner floating over her head. suddenly a mighty shout of joy went up from the men on the walls. three times the roar rent the din of battle. for the witch had fallen, pierced through the thigh by a bolt from a crossbow. undismayed, jeanne struggled to her feet, when the man at her side who bore her standard was hit in the foot. lifting his visor to pull the arrow from the wound he was struck between the eyes, and fell dead at the maiden's feet. jeanne caught the standard as he fell, but for a moment her own strength failed her, and she sank beside the standard bearer. when her men would have borne her out of the battle she would not consent, but rallied them to the charge. then slowly, painfully, she crept behind a heap of stones, and soon the dauntless voice rang out: "friends! friends! be of good cheer. on! on!" and so, wounded, weak, unable to stand she lay, urging the soldiers on, and on. there never was anything like it. whence came that indomitable spirit and courage? "a daughter of god" her voices called her, and truly was she so named. for who that had not kinship with the divine could transcend the weakness of the flesh as did this girl of seventeen? fiercer grew the din, and fiercer. the heat became stifling. hours passed, and the day waxed old. the sun set; twilight fell, and the dusk came. the shots were fewer and more scattering, and then they stopped. the two french captains had had enough for one day, for the attack had been confined to the forces under jeanne, rais and de gaucourt, and the trumpet sounded the recall. but jeanne did not heed, but kept crying her men on to the charge. she herself could not move to lead them, the supporting army was out of range, and the men would not go further without her. gaucourt ordered his men to bring her out of the fire. jeanne protested, but weeping she was carried back, set in the saddle and conveyed back to la chapelle. over and over she cried: "it could have been taken! it could have been taken!" early the next morning in spite of her wound she went to alençon, begging him to sound the trumpets and mount for the return to paris. "never will i leave," she declared, "until the city is taken." alençon was of like mind, but some of the captains thought otherwise. some of the troops were reluctant to assault again; for there were whispers that the maid had failed. that she had promised them to enter the city, and paris had not been taken. they recalled the omen of the mystic sword, and shook their heads. they had forgotten that it took nearly a week to free orléans from the siege, and paris was a larger city. jeanne had had but part of one day for the attack. while the captains were debating the advisability of renewing the assault a cavalcade of fifty or sixty gentlemen under the baron de montmorency, who had been a burgundian for many years, rode up, and offered his services to the maid. it was a joyful augury, and it was so encouraging that an immediate assault was planned. just as they were setting forth two gentlemen arrived from st. denys. they were rené duc de bar, and charles de bourbon, and they bore the king's orders that no further attack upon paris should be made, and that the maid with the other leaders must return at once to st. denys. there was a storm of remonstrance and appeal, but the gentlemen were peremptory in their insistence. such a command could not be disregarded, so with heavy hearts the entire force obeyed the summons. as they had expected that the attack would be renewed the following day the siege material had been left on the field, and there was not time to return for it. the king made no explanation when they reached st. denys, and disconsolately the captains discussed the matter. now alençon had built a bridge across the seine above paris, expecting to make an onset upon the south as well as the north of the city, and jeanne and he decided secretly to make a new effort in that direction. accordingly they slipped away very early the next morning, which was september tenth, with a few chosen troops, and rode hastily to the place. the bridge was in ruins. it had been destroyed in the night; not by their enemies, but by the _king_. sadly the two with their men rode back to the "city of the tomb," which had become the grave of their hopes. jeanne's heart was hot with disappointment and the thwarting of all her plans, and leaving alençon she crept painfully to the chapel of the abbey, and knelt for a long time before the image of the virgin. after a time she rose, and slowly, awkwardly, for she was without her squire, unbuckled her armour, and laid it piece by piece upon the altar, until at length the complete suit lay there. with a gesture of infinite yearning she stretched her hands over it. "to saint denys," she said with quivering lips. turning she went slowly from the abbey. jeanne, the invincible maid, had met her first defeat at the hands of her king. ----- [ ] scrofula. it was believed it could be cured by the touch of a king. [ ] percéval de cagny. [ ] de cagny. [ ] jean chartier. chapter xxiv jeanne's last field "_i fear naught but treachery._" jeanne's _own words_. "_saith each to other, 'be near me still; we will die together, if god so will.'_" john o'hagan. "_the song of roland._" no longer buoyed up by hope jeanne began to feel her wound to faintness, and was compelled to seek her room for rest. as she lay on her bed, despondent and heavy-hearted, her saints came to her with words of comfort. daily they appeared, but since the crowning of charles at reims they had given the maiden no specific direction. there had been no further definite message. they had said, "raise the siege of orléans and lead the dauphin to his crowning"; and she had done both things. now they consoled the girl in her humiliation and sorrow, and uttered a message: "remain at st. denys, daughter of god," they said. "remain at st. denys." and jeanne resolved to do so, but this was not allowed. after a few days charles announced his intention of returning to the loire, and ordered the army to make ready for the march. and now the cause of the shameful treason at paris was learned. there was a new treaty with burgundy. charles had signed it just before coming to st. denys. la trémouille and his party had triumphed, and an inglorious armistice which was to last until christmas was the result. the position of the favorite was becoming precarious under the great national feeling that was beginning to sweep the land, and his only safety from his foes was to keep his hold upon charles. to this end the king was persuaded to consent to the abandonment of the campaign. charles was not difficult to win over, for by so doing he would be left in peace to pursue his pleasures, and la trémouille would be free to misrule france as he liked. the truce covered the whole of the country north of the seine from nogent, sixty miles above paris, to the sea. while it lasted charles might not receive the submission of any city or town, however desirous it might be to acknowledge him, although strangely enough he might attack paris, while equally as strange, burgundy might assist the regent to defend it against him. compiègne was to be given as hostage to burgundy. the french hoped by giving him this city that he might be drawn from the english alliance. compiègne, however, refused to be given, thereby showing more loyalty to the cause of france than did the poor stick of a king. burgundy entered into the truce for his own purposes, playing france against england to increase his power at french expense. philip was justified in seeking a truce, for many towns which had been burgundian had thrown off such allegiance, and turned to charles. he wished to prevent such desertions for the future. england might come into this peace at any time if she wished. this left england free to wage war against france, and the french could move against the english, but not if any stronghold was held for the english by the burgundians. it is difficult to see what france hoped to gain by such an armistice, though there were those among the councillors who sincerely believed that from the arrangement a lasting peace might result both with burgundy and the english. later it was learned how burgundy had beguiled them. alençon and the captains denounced the truce bitterly. "if the king had taken paris, he could have made his own terms with philip," the young duke told jeanne. "the noble king is deceived," said the girl sorrowfully. "there will be no peace with burgundy for six years, and not until seven are sped shall the king enter his capital." "jeanne, do you in truth know that?" questioned the young man quickly. "you speak as though you do." "i do know, gentle duke. my voices have told me. paris would have been ours had we but persisted in the attack, and in a few months northern france would have been clear of the english. now it will take twenty years to drive them out." "twenty years," repeated alençon aghast. "have your voices told you that also, jeanne?" "yes, fair duke. and the pity of it! oh, the pity of it!" "the pity of it," he echoed. "for now we must start for the loire, leaving all these cities and towns that have made submission to charles to the mercies of the regent. they have written piteous letters to the king, entreating him not to abandon them, but he consoles them by telling them that he is withdrawing because he does not wish to strip the country to feed the army; yet the english are left free to harry the towns, and their state will be worse than before they made submission. we should not leave." "i shall not go," returned jeanne quietly. "my voices have told me to remain at st. denys. i shall obey them." she reckoned without her host. when the king was ready to march he commanded her attendance. she refused to go. she had never disobeyed her heavenly guides, she told him, so she gave the king her duty, and begged of him to let her stay. charles was not minded to do this, so he ordered that she be brought along. jeanne's wound was not yet healed, and she was scarcely able to get about. so the helpless maiden was forced against her will to go with the king. it was a dreary march back to gien, but it was made quickly. so eager was the king to return to his amusements that the one hundred and fifty miles' distance from st. denys to gien was traversed in eight days. when the city was reached charles disbanded the army; so that of all the great number of men who had set forth from the place three months agone with banners flying nothing remained but the men of the king's body guard. some were free lances from many lands, but for the most part they were french gentlemen who had served without pay for the love of france and the maid. jeanne took farewell of them with sadness: the brave dunois, the bold la hire, poton zaintrailles, boussac, culent, and others. the great army was never mustered again. normandy, being an english possession, was exempt from the truce, so alençon prayed permission to lead troops against the english strongholds there, wishing also to take the maid with him. "for many," he said, "would come with them for her sake who would not budge without her." but neither the king nor la trémouille would grant the grace. they did not wish the ardent young prince to become a leader of the french against the enemy, and the maid had become too much of a power to be lost sight of. so firmly and decidedly the project was dismissed, and he was relieved of his command. in disgust the young duke retired to his estates. he and jeanne had grown to be great friends. he believed in her implicitly, and she was fond of him that he did so believe; and also because of his nobility of character, and his connection with the house of orléans. it was the last time that they ever met. "and thus was broken the spirit of the maid, and of the army."[ ] jeanne pined in the days that followed; for the court drifted from castle to castle and from town to town in search of amusement. its frivolity and idle merrymaking were not to her liking, but she was forced to follow in its train. she had her own household, to which were now added women and maidens of rank, and everything which could show that she was one whom the king delighted to honor. the queen came up from bourges, and gave her a warm welcome. rich apparel, gorgeous in coloring, was bestowed upon her, and, be it said to the credit of charles, she was not stinted for money. the king was not ungrateful. he knew that it was almost impossible to estimate the moral effects of jeanne's victories about orléans and upon the loire. all europe was filled with wonder, and sent eagerly to him for news of her. all this he knew, but he misjudged the girl, and tried to pay his debt to her by showering gifts upon her when she wanted only to fight for france. pretty clothes and a life of ease might satisfy other girls, but not jeanne d'arc, who lived only for the welfare of the country. had charles but availed himself of her influence, the splendid confidence of his soldiers, and the loyalty of the country people, treating with burgundy after taking paris, it is more than likely that the english power in france would have been broken in as quickly as it was twenty years later. there was one who recognized jeanne's services to the french to the full: the english regent, bedford. writing to england four years later he acknowledged that the gains france had made against england were due mainly to the "panic caused by the maid, and the encouragement given by her to the french." had bedford been king of france he would have known how to use such a power. the leaders did not mind if jeanne worked, but they were not desirous that there should be more individual triumphs. it threw their own treachery to the realm into strong relief, and made for their downfall. on the upper loire were several strongholds which did not come under the truce with burgundy, and these might be proceeded against with impunity. the strong town of la charité was held by perrinet gressart, who had begun life as a mason but, war being the best trade, made a fine living out of the rich district of the upper loire. he was in a measure under philip of burgundy, but when the duke pressed him too hard he threatened to sell out to the enemy, so that he was left in peace to pillage to his heart's content. early in his career this soldier of fortune had seized la trémouille as he was passing through the burgundian country, and the rich favorite was allowed to proceed on his journey only at the price of a month's captivity and a heavy ransom. the little town of st. pierre le moustier, which stood about thirty-five miles above la charité, was held by a spanish free lance who had married a niece of gressart. its garrison waged a war of wastry, pillaging the peasants and the country far and wide, and holding all whom they could take to ransom. it was decided to launch an expedition against these strongholds under jeanne. if they fell it would satisfy the grudge that la trémouille held for his captivity; if they did not fall there would be further loss of jeanne's influence, and the favorite would be rid of a danger that was threatening his control of france. jeanne preferred to go against paris, but the capital was at this time under the government of burgundy, who had been appointed lieutenant by bedford, and therefore was within the truce. so, glad of any sort of a dash against the enemy, jeanne went to bourges to muster the men. the force was to be under d'albret, a son-in-law of la trémouille, a man not inclined to be friendly to the maid. by the end of october all was in readiness, and it was decided to go against st. pierre le moustier before marching against la charité. it was a strong little town with fosses, towers, and high walls some two miles east of the river allier, overlooking the fields which lay between the walls and the river. the town was plied by the artillery for several days, and after a breach was made jeanne ordered an assault, herself leading with standard in hand. the men rushed to the walls, but were driven back; the retreat sounded, and the troops were retiring from the point of attack when jean d'aulon, jeanne's squire, being himself wounded in the heel and unable to stand or walk, saw the maid standing almost alone near the walls. he dragged himself up as well as he could upon his horse, and galloped up to her, crying: "what are you doing here alone, pucelle? why do you not retreat with the others?" "alone?" questioned jeanne, raising the visor of her helmet and gazing at him with glowing eyes. "i am not alone. fifty thousand of my people are about me. i will not leave until this town is mine." the squire looked about him in bewilderment, for there were not more than five men of her household near her, yet there she stood waving her standard while the arrows and bolts from the town rained and whistled about her. "you are mistaken, jeanne," he said. "i see not such a host. come away, i beseech you. the troops are in full retreat." "look after the screens and faggots," ordered the maid. mystified, the worthy man did as he was bid, while the clear voice rang out the command: "to the bridge, every man of you." back came the men on the run with planks and faggots, and so filling the moat returned to the assault, and the town was taken. d'aulon watched the onslaught in wonder. "the deed is divine," he exclaimed in amazement. "truly the will and the guidance of our lord are with her, else how could so young a maid accomplish such a marvel." the town was taken, and the soldiers would have pillaged even the churches, but jeanne, remembering jargeau, firmly forbade it, and nothing was stolen. then the maid and d'albret proceeded to moulins, an important town further up the river in the bourbonnais, whence they sent letters to the loyal towns requiring munitions for the attack on la charité. it was to the interest of the neighboring towns that this place should be cleared away, for the garrison was a plague to the surrounding country, but only a few of them responded to the appeal for money and supplies. orléans, generous as always, sent money, gunners, artillery and warm clothing, but the army was ill-equipped for the siege. jeanne moved her forces before the strong town and settled down for the siege, but the king neither forwarded money nor supplies. riom promised money, but that was the end of it. left without the munitions necessary, her army ill-fed, ill-clothed against the bitter november weather, jeanne wrote to the citizens of bourges an urgent appeal. "the troops must have help," she said, "else the siege must be abandoned, which would be a great misfortune to your city and to all the country of berri." bourges voted to send the money, but it was never received. vigorously the troops pummelled the strong town with what artillery they had, but a siege can not be prosecuted without provisions and other supplies, and the king left them to get along without any support. the men naturally became discontented. a month was wasted in artillery play, and an assault resulted only in loss of men. in great displeasure jeanne raised the siege. she could inspire men to fight as they never fought before, but she could not work miracles. god would give the victory to those who helped themselves. hungry, cold, disheartened troops could not fight without munitions and provisions. so they were disbanded, and retreated from the town, leaving some of their artillery on the field. thus ended the fighting for the year , and sadly the maid returned to the court. in spite of unbelief and opposition she had accomplished incredible deeds since her setting forth from vaucouleurs, and would have done them again had she not been hampered by the king and his council. charles was at his beautiful château at méhun-sur-yèvre, where jeanne joined him. she was overcast and sorrowful at the failure of the siege of la charité. she had wished to go into the isle of france to help the people of the loyal towns there, whose state was pitiful, but had been sent on the unsuccessful expedition instead. invaders and robbers alike were made bold by the withdrawal of charles from northern france; and the english were active, forcing exile or death on the defenseless people, who would not forswear their loyalty. many villages were forsaken, the inhabitants having been driven into other parts of france. there was pestilence and famine everywhere. in paris wolves prowled openly, and its citizens died by hundreds. paris, the beautiful city of covered bridges, orchards, and vineyards and towered fortresses, had been abandoned by the english and burgundians to its own protection; burgundy going to look after his personal concerns, while bedford swept the adjacent country with fire and sword. she had been needed in northern france, and jeanne's heart was heavy with tenderness for the suffering people of that region. many feasts were held in her honour, and both the king and the queen showered attentions upon her, trying by fine clothes and caresses to make her forget her mission and her despair. in december the king, in the presence of la trémouille, le macon, and other courtiers, conferred upon jeanne a patent of nobility, sealed with a great seal of green wax upon ribbons of green and crimson, the orléans colours. "in consideration of the praiseworthy and useful services which she has rendered to the realm and which she may still render, and to the end that the divine glory and the memory of such favors may endure and increase to all time, we bestow upon our beloved jehanne d'ay[ ] the name of du lys in acknowledgment of the blows which she had struck for the lilies of france. and all her kith and kin herewith, her father, mother, brothers and their descendants in the male and female line to the farthest generation are also ennobled with her, and shall also bear the name du lys, and shall have for their arms a shield azure with a sword supporting the crown and golden fleur-de-lis on either side." charles was a "well languaged prince," and he conferred the patent with fine and noble words, but jeanne would far rather have had a company of men to lead into the suffering country of northern france. she cared nothing for either the grant of nobility or the blazon, and never used them, preferring to be known simply as jeanne the maid. her brothers, however, pierre and jean, were delighted, and ever after bore the name of du lys. the winter passed, bringing with it jeanne's eighteenth birthday. the truce with burgundy had been extended until easter, and the maid waited the festival with what grace she could, determined that the end of the truce should find her near paris. march found her at sully, where the court was visiting at la trémouille. easter was early that year, falling on march twenty-seventh, and as soon as it was over jeanne left the court, and rode northward with her company. on her way north she heard of the disaffection of melun, a town some twenty-one miles south of paris, which had been in english hands for ten years. when the english took the place they had locked up its brave captain, barbazon, in louvier, from which place he had recently been released by la hire. in the autumn of bedford had turned the town over to burgundy; but during april on the return of barbazon the burghers rose, and turned out the captain and his burgundian garrison, and declared for france. it was a three days' ride from sully-sur-loire to melun across rough country and up the long ridge of fontainebleau forest, but jeanne arrived with her men in time to help the citizens resist the onset made against the town by a company of english which had been sent to restore the english allegiance. joyfully they welcomed her, giving over the defense into her charge. the first thing that jeanne did was to make a survey of the walls, that she might consider their strength and how best to fortify them against assault. one warm pleasant day in april she stood on the ramparts superintending some repairs that she had ordered when all at once her voices came to her. "daughter of god," they said, "you will be taken before the feast of st. jean. so it must be. fear not, but accept it with resignation. god will aid you." jeanne stood transfixed as she heard the words. the feast of st. jean was near the end of june. only two months more in which to fight for france. her face grew white as the words were repeated, and a great fear fell upon her. a prisoner? better, far better would it be to die than to be a prisoner in the hands of the english. all their taunts, their gibes, their threats came to her in a rush of memory. she knew what to expect; the stake and the fire had been held up as a menace often enough. terrified, the young girl fell on her knees, uttering a broken cry of appeal: "not that! not that! out of your grace i beseech you that i may die in that hour." "fear not; so it must be," came the reply. "be of good courage. god will aid you." "tell me the hour, and the day," she pleaded brokenly. "before the st. jean. before the st. jean," came the reply. and that was all. for a long moment jeanne knelt, her face bowed upon her hands; then she bent and kissed the ground before her. "god's will be done," she said. rising she went on with her work, as calmly, as serenely as though knowledge of her fate had not been vouchsafed her. she knew, but she did not falter. a braver deed was never done. who else has shown such courage and high heart since the beginning of the world? to know that she was to be taken, and yet to proceed with her task as though she knew it not! there is an ecstasy in the whirl of battle; a wild joy in the mad charge of cavalry and the clash of steel on steel. there is contagion in numbers filled with the thought that the enemy must be overcome, the fortress taken; a contagion that leads to deeds of valour. there is inspiration in the call of the bugle, or sound of the trumpet, in the waving of banners, in the war cries of the captains. but for the prisoner there is no ecstasy, no joy, no valorous contagion induced by numbers, no inspiration of music, or banners, or war cries. there are only the chill of the dungeon, the clank of the chain, the friendless loneliness, and at length the awful death. but with capture certain, with the consciousness of what was in store, this girl of eighteen went her way doing all that she could in the little time that was left her for france. the fighting of the spring was to be along the river oise. while charles and his council had rested serenely reliant upon the faith of burgundy, the duke and the regent had completed their plans for the spring campaign. an army, victualled in normandy and picardy, was to take the towns near paris and thereby relieve the city, which was to be well garrisoned. only by recovering these towns from the french could paris be made secure. the good town of compiègne was especially to be desired, for whosoever held compiègne would come in time to hold paris. it was thirty leagues to the north and west of the capital, lying on the river oise. it will be recalled that charles had offered the city as a bribe to burgundy to woo him from the english allegiance, but the city had refused to be lent. it had submitted to the king and the maid the august before, and its people remained loyal, declaring that they would die and see their wives and children dead before they would yield to england or burgundy; saying that they preferred death to dishonour. they had imbibed jeanne's spirit, and the maid loved them. it was further planned by the regent to clear the road to reims so that young henry of england might be crowned there. bedford was bringing him over from england for that purpose, believing that the french would be more inclined to support him if he were crowned at reims. this plan was given up, however, for burgundy warned bedford against attempting to imitate the feat of the maid, saying that it was too difficult. so the real objective of the spring campaign became compiègne, other movements being to relieve paris, and to distract the french on their rear. for the french were rising; rising without their king. all over northern france there were stir and activity as troops began to gather to go against the enemy. from melun jeanne journeyed to lagny, which was but a short distance away, but the road was through a country full of enemies, in which she was subject to attack from every direction. it was one of the towns recovered for france the august before, and was now held for ambrose de loré by foucault with a garrison of scots under kennedy, and a lombard soldier of fortune, baretta, with his company of men-at-arms, cross-bowmen and archers. it was making "good war on the english in paris," and "choking the heart of the kingdom." paris itself became greatly excited when it heard of the arrival of the maid at lagny, its ill-neighbor, and feared that she was coming to renew her attack on the city. among the english also there was consternation when the tidings spread that again jeanne had taken to the field. "the witch is out again," they declared to their captains when the officers sought to embark troops for france, and many refused to go. they deserted in crowds. beating and imprisonment had no effect upon them, and only those who could not escape were forced on board. jeanne had scarcely reached lagny when news came that a band of anglo-burgundians was traversing the isle of france, under one franquet d'arras, burning and pillaging the country, damaging it as much as they could. the maid, with foucault, kennedy and baretta, determined to go against the freebooters. they came up with the raiders when they were laying siege to a castle, and were laden with the spoils of a recently sacked village. the assault was made, and "hard work the french had of it," for the enemy was superior in numbers. but after a "bloody fight" they were all taken or slain, with losses also to the french in killed and wounded. for some reason the leader, franquet d'arras, was given to jeanne. there had been an armagnac plot in paris in march to deliver the city to the loyalists, but it had failed. the maid hoped to exchange the leader of the freebooters for one of the chief conspirators who had been imprisoned, but it was found that the man had died in prison, so the burghers demanded franquet of jeanne, claiming that he should be tried as a murderer and thief by the civil law. jeanne did as requested, saying as she released him to the bailly of senlis: "as my man is dead, do with the other what you should do for justice." franquet's trial lasted two weeks; he confessed to the charges against him, and was executed. the burgundians although accustomed to robbery, murder and treachery, charged jeanne with being guilty of his death, and later this was made a great point against her. there was another happening at lagny that was later made the basis of a charge against the maid. a babe about three days old died, and so short a time had it lived that it had not received the rites of baptism, and must needs therefore be buried in unconsecrated ground. in accordance with the custom in such cases the child was placed upon the altar in the hope of a miracle, and the parents came to jeanne requesting her to join with the maidens of the town who were assembled in the church praying god to restore life that the little one might be baptized. jeanne neither worked, nor professed to work miracles. she did not pretend to heal people by touching them with her ring, nor did the people attribute miracles to her. but she joined the praying girls in the church, and entreated heaven to restore the infant to life, if only for so brief a space of time as might allow it to be received into the church. now as they knelt and prayed the little one seemed suddenly to move. it gasped three times and its color began to come back. crying, "a miracle! a miracle!" the maidens ran for the priest, and brought him. when he came to the side of the child he saw that it was indeed alive, and straightway baptized it and received it into the church. and as soon as this had been done the little life that had flared up so suddenly went out, and the infant was buried in holy ground. if receiving an answer to earnest prayer be witchcraft were not the maidens of lagny equally guilty with jeanne? but this act was later included in the list of charges brought against her. from lagny jeanne went to various other places in danger, or that needed encouragement or help. she made two hurried visits to compiègne which was being menaced in more than one direction by both parties of the enemy, and was now at soissons, now at senlis, and presently in the latter part of may came to crépy-en-valois. and here came the news that compiègne was being invested on all sides, and that preparations to press the siege were being actively made. eager to go at once to the aid of the place jeanne ordered her men to get ready for the march. she had but few in her company, not more than two or three hundred, and some of them told her that they were too few to pass through the hosts of the enemy. a warning of this sort never had any effect upon jeanne. "by my staff, we are enough," she cried. "i will go to see my good friends at compiègne."[ ] at midnight of the twenty-second, therefore, she set forth from crépy, and by hard riding arrived at compiègne in the early dawn, to the great joy and surprise of the governor, guillaume de flavy, and the people who set the bells to ringing and the trumpets to sounding a glad welcome. the men-at-arms were weary with the night's ride, but jeanne, after going to mass, met with the governor to arrange a plan of action. now compiègne in situation was very like to orléans, in that it lay on a river, but it was on the south instead of the north bank. behind the city to the southward stretched the great forest of pierrefonds, and at its feet was the river oise. in front of the city across the river a broad meadow extended to the low hills of picardy. it was low land, subject to floods, so that there was a raised road or causeway from the bridge of compiègne to the foot of the hills, a mile distant. three villages lay on this bank: at the end of the causeway was the tower and village of margny, where was a camp of burgundians; on the left, a mile and a half below the causeway, was venette, where the english lay encamped; and to the right, a league distant above the causeway, stood clairoix, where the burgundians had another camp. the first defence of the city, facing the enemy, was a bridge fortified with a tower and boulevard, which were in turn guarded by a deep fosse. it was jeanne's plan to make a sally in the late afternoon when an attack would not be expected, against margny, which lay at the other end of the raised road. margny taken, she would turn to the right and strike at clairoix, the second burgundian camp, and so cut off the burgundians from their english allies at venette. de flavy agreed to the sortie, and proposed to line the ramparts of the boulevard with culverins, men, archers, and cross-bowmen to keep the english troops from coming up from below and seizing the causeway and cutting off retreat should jeanne have to make one; and to station a number of small boats filled with archers along the further bank of the river to shoot at the enemy if the troops should be driven back, and for the rescue of such as could not win back to the boulevard. [illustration: "forward! they are ours!"] the whole of the long may day was occupied in completing arrangements, and it was not until five o'clock in the afternoon that everything was in readiness. it had been a beautiful day, warm with may sunshine, but cooled by a breeze from the west, sweet with the scent of flowers and growing grass. the walls of the city, the windows and roofs of the houses, the buildings on the bridge, and the streets were lined with people waiting to see the maid and her companions set forth. presently jeanne appeared, standard in hand, mounted on a great grey horse, and clad in a rich hucque of crimson cramoisie over her armour. at sight of her the people went wild with joy, shouting: "noël! noël! noël!" while women and girls threw flowers before her. jeanne turned a happy face toward them, bowing and smiling, as she rode forth to her last field. with her rode d'aulon, his brother, pothon le bourgnignon, her brothers, jean and pierre, and her confessor, father pasquerel, and a company of five hundred men. across the bridge they clattered, then took at speed the long line of the causeway to margny. "forward! they are ours!" called jeanne's clear voice as the village was reached. with a shout the troops hurled themselves upon the burgundians, taking the enemy completely by surprise. a scene of confusion ensued. there were cries of triumph from the french as they chased the burgundians hither and thither, and cries of dismay and clashing of steel from the burgundians as they scattered before the french through the village. everything was going as the maid had planned; for the town was taken. just at this juncture jean de luxembourg, commander of the burgundian camp at clairoix, with several companions, was riding from clairoix on a visit to the commander at margny. they had drawn rein on the cliff above margny, and were discussing the defences of compiègne when, hearing the clash of arms, they looked over the bluff and saw the scrimmage. wheeling, they made for clairoix, and brought up their troops on a gallop. to render the post of margny untenable took time; so when, flushed with triumph, jeanne's men turned into the plain toward clairoix, luxembourg's men-at-arms set upon them, attacking their right flank. the french rolled back, overwhelmed by the onslaught. rallying her men, jeanne charged, and swept back the enemy. again the french were repulsed; again the maid drove back the burgundians; and thus the fray raged on the flat ground of the meadow, first in favor of the one, and then of the other. as they surged with this alternative of advance and retreat the french were pressed back to the causeway. and then, as reinforcements of the burgundians continued to arrive a panic suddenly seized the french, and they broke and ran for the bridge and the boats. in vain jeanne tried to rally them to the charge. for once they were deaf to her voice. caring only for the safety of her band jeanne covered the rear, charging the enemy with those who remained with her, with such effect that they were driven back full half the length of the causeway. "she that was the chief and most valiant of her band, doing deeds beyond the nature of woman."[ ] suddenly there sounded a loud hurrah, and from a little wood on the left there came galloping and running across the meadow land from venette the men-at-arms and the archers of england. assailed on all sides, for the burgundians at margny had rallied and re-entered the fray, the confusion of the french became extreme. a struggling, seething mass of fugitives crowded the causeway, running for their lives. men and foot soldiers, and behind them mounted men-at-arms, spurring hard, and all making for the boulevard. the gunners on the walls trained their cannon on the mass of men, but fugitives and enemy were so commingled that friend and foe could not be distinguished, and they dared not fire. and de flavy did nothing. roused to the danger of their position d'aulon entreated jeanne to make for the town. "the day is lost, pucelle," he cried. "all are in retreat. make for the town." but jeanne shook her head. "never," she cried. "to the charge!" d'aulon, jean and pierre, her brothers, all her own little company, closed around her, resolved to sell their lives dearly in her defence, and d'aulon and pierre, seizing hold of her bridle rein, forcibly turned her toward the town, carrying her back in spite of herself. but now they were assailed from all sides, the little company fighting, struggling, contesting every inch of ground, beating off their adversaries, and advancing little by little toward the boulevard. "we shall make it, jeanne," exulted pierre d'arc when they were within a stone's throw of the walls, but the words died on his lips, for at this moment came a ringing order from the gate: "up drawbridge: close gates: down portcullis!" instantly the drawbridge flew up, down came the portcullis, the gates were closed and barred. jeanne the maid was shut out. a groan came from pierre's lips, but his sister smiled at him bravely; as old d'aulon shouted: "treachery! in god's name, open for the maid." but the gates were closed, and the drawbridge remained up. there was a second's interchange of looks between the brothers and sister as the enemy with shouts of triumph closed around them in overwhelming numbers. only a second, but in that brief time they took a mute farewell of each other. man after man of the little company was cut down or made prisoner. d'aulon was seized, then jean, then pierre, and jeanne found herself struggling in the midst of a multitude of anglo-burgundians. one seized her wrists, while a picard archer tore her from the saddle by the long folds of her crimson hucque, and in a moment they were all upon her. "yield your faith to me," cried the picard archer, who had seized her hucque. "i have given my faith to another than you, and i will keep my oath," rang the undaunted girl's answer. at this moment there came a wild clamour of bells from the churches of compiègne in a turbulent call to arms to save the maid. their urgent pealing sounded too late. jeanne d'arc had fought on her last field. the inspired maid was a prisoner. ----- [ ] percéval de cagny. [ ] so spelled in the patent. a softening of the lorraine d'arc. [ ] these words are on the base of a statue of her that stands in the square of the town. [ ] monstrelet--a burgundian chronicler--so writes of her. chapter xxv in prison cells "_it was fit that the savior of france should be a woman. france herself is a woman. she has the fickleness of the sex, but also its amiable gentleness, its facile and charming pity, and the excellence of its first impulses._" michelet. "_joan of arc._" there were shouts of triumph and exultation as the maid was led back over the causeway to margny. the sun had long since set, and the dusk was dying down into darkness. all along the causeway the earth was stained with blood, and sown with broken swords, scraps of armour, and the dead of friend and foe united now in the peace of mortality. jeanne was too great a prize for a mere archer to claim, so jean de luxembourg bought her immediately from the man, allowing him to retain her hucque of crimson cramoisie, her saddle cloth, and horse with caparisons. then she was taken to his camp at clairoix. thither came also the great duke of burgundy from his camp at coudon, eager to see the girl who had almost uprooted the dominion of the english in france. thither also assembled the english and burgundians from the other camps in numbers, with cries and rejoicings over the taking of the maid. had a great victory been won the effect could not have been greater. it broke the spell. the maid was human, like other women. so they were "as joyous as if they had taken five hundred prisoners, for they feared her more than all the french captains put together." several times philip of burgundy had expressed a wish to see jeanne the maid, especially after receiving her letters summoning him to his rightful allegiance. now as he found her sitting calmly in the quarters to which she had been committed, he could not forbear an exclamation of surprise at her youth and loveliness. "so you are the pucelle?" he cried. "i am jeanne the maid, messire," she answered, regarding him with grave earnestness. "and you, i doubt not, are that burgundy who hath beguiled the gentle king with fair words and false promises?" "i am philip, duke of burgundy," he replied haughtily. "what i have done hath been for our royal master, henry, king of england and of france." "ay! and for your country's wreck and woe." "those are bold words, pucelle," ejaculated the duke, flushing. "have a care. neither man nor witch may so speak to burgundy." "my lord duke, if they be not true then most humbly do i entreat your pardon. if they be not true, why then do you besiege the good city of compiègne, bringing suffering upon your own people? they are french, as you are." "the city was promised me," he uttered angrily. "charles the dauphin gave it me. 'twas in the truce. he broke his faith." "and how kept you yours?" asked the girl dauntlessly. "i think, my lord, that paris once was promised charles. how was that faith kept?" but philip, without reply, turned upon his heel angrily, and left the room. forthwith he sent dispatches to the regent, to the dukes of brittany and savoy, to his city of st. quentin, and to the town of gand that all christendom might know that the witch of the armagnacs was taken. "by the pleasure of our blessed creator," he wrote, "such grace has come to pass that she whom they call the maid has been taken. the great news of this capture should be spread everywhere and brought to the knowledge of all, that they may see the error of those who could believe and lend themselves to the pretensions of such a woman. we write this in the hope of giving you joy, comfort, and consolation, and that you may thank god our creator." over france the tidings spread. from lip to lip it flew: the maid was taken. paris rejoiced, showing its delight by building bonfires and singing te deums in the cathedral of notre dame. in the loyal cities and in the hearts of the peasantry there was mourning. at tours the entire population appeared in the streets with bare feet, singing the miserere in penance and affliction. orléans and blois made public prayers for her safety, and reims had to be especially soothed by its archbishop. "she would not take counsel," wrote regnault de chartres, archbishop of reims, who had always been an enemy to jeanne, "but did everything according to her own will. but there has lately come to the king a young shepherd boy who says neither more nor less than jeanne the maid. he is commanded by god to go to the king, and defeat the english and burgundians. he says that god suffered her to be taken because she was puffed up with pride, loved fine clothes, and preferred her own pleasure to any guidance." the archbishop's letter silenced reims and other cities. silenced their outcries, that is, for they continued to send petitions to the king pleading that he would gather the money for her ransom, but he did nothing. another archbishop, jacques gélu, of embrun, who had written charles in favor of jeanne after orléans now addressed some bold words to the monarch on her behalf: "for the recovery of this girl, and for the ransom of her life, i bid you spare neither means nor money, howsoever great the price, unless you would incur the indelible shame of most disgraceful ingratitude." but the king preferred the "indelible shame of disgraceful ingratitude," for he made no effort of any sort for jeanne's ransom or rescue. he had been a poor discredited dauphin, with doubts as to his own claims to the throne, contemplating flight into scotland or spain when jeanne came to him at chinon. she had resolved his doubts, restored the realm, and made him king with the sacred oil upon his brow, yet he preferred to keep his money for his pleasures than to give it for the maiden who had done so much for him. charles the seventh of france has been called charles the well-served, charles the victorious, and he is rightly so called; for it was always others who did his work for him, and won his victories; but charles the dastard is the best appellation that can be given him. the ingratitude of princes is well known, but the heart sickens before such baseness as he showed toward the maid of orléans, and the mind revolts from the thought that human nature can sink to such depths. but if charles and the french were indifferent to the value of jeanne others were not. the university of paris upon receipt of the news of her capture sent at once to burgundy, demanding that jean de luxembourg send forthwith "this jeanne, violently suspected of many crimes touching heresy, to appear before the council of holy inquisition." a second letter followed this appeal, saying that it was "feared that the woman would be put out of their jurisdiction in some manner." the university feared without cause, for no attempt was ever made to redeem the girl whose only crime was to have defended, with matchless heroism, her country and her king. back of the university stood the english, who were eager to get possession of her person, and were willing to pay even princely rewards for her delivery into their hands. they had their vengeance to gratify. they had always threatened to burn her if they caught her, and could she be condemned and executed as a sorceress charles of valois would be dishonoured through her who had crowned him, and it would appear that his cause was not the true one; that henry of england was the true sovereign of france. most englishmen believed that jeanne was really a witch, for at this time no man believed that she could accomplish her deeds without supernatural aid. consequently, as the english did not wish to think that god was against them they pronounced her aid to be from the evil one. so pierre cauchon, the bishop of beauvais, was sent by bedford to jean de luxembourg to negotiate the purchase of the maid. he was an enemy of france; he had a personal grudge toward jeanne because through her success in arms he had been expelled from his diocese, and was just the right sort of man to send for dickering in such a trade. jean de luxembourg was needy, and already in the pay of the english, but he did not wish to let his prize go until he had his money, so jeanne was sent north to beaulieu in the vermandois, where he had a strong castle, until the arrangements were perfected for her sale. d'aulon, her squire, was sent with her, for during this period of imprisonment jeanne was treated honourably, and allowed attendance. she was cheerful and hopeful at beaulieu for a time, and one day d'aulon said to her: "that poor town of compiègne, which you loved so dearly, will now be placed in the hands of the enemies of france." "it shall not be," cried jeanne in a flash of inspiration, "for no place which the king of heaven has put in the hands of the gentle king charles by my aid, shall be retaken by his enemies while he does his best to keep them." but, in spite of these brave words, the fate of the town hung heavy upon her spirit. her guards told her tales of how the siege was progressing, and of the sufferings of the people. jeanne chafed under inaction while her friends needed her, and watched eagerly for a chance whereby she might escape and go to their aid. she had not given her faith to any man, and was not on parole. in one side of the chamber in which she was confined there was a window opening upon a dark corridor. across were nailed some narrow planks, the space between them being sufficient for a very slender person to slip through. jeanne resolved to risk an attempt. her guards were in an adjoining room, which also opened upon the dark corridor, but once past their room she believed that she might gain the grounds of the château and from thence reach the wooded country that lay beyond its immediate confines. the plan worked perfectly--to a certain point. she was slight enough to slip between the narrow planks, which she did, and found herself in the corridor, which was dark and musty from long disuse. there was a huge key in the lock of the door where the guards were, and this jeanne turned as noiselessly as possible, then darted away through the dim passageway. alas! the porter of the château, who had not the least business in that part of the castle, suddenly came out of another room opening upon the corridor, and confronted her. without ado the maiden was marched back to her chamber, like a naughty child, and the guards were doubled. "it did not please god that i should escape this time," she said plaintively to d'aulon when he came to attend her. jean de luxembourg was alarmed when he heard of the attempt. she was too rich a prize to lose, so he sent her post haste to his stronghold of beaurevoir, which was forty miles further north, beyond st. quentin in the plain of picardy, and was the residence of his wife, aunt, and step-daughter. she was shut up here at the top of a tower sixty feet high, but notwithstanding this fact her condition was much alleviated, for the ladies of the household visited her daily, becoming greatly attached to her. these good women tried to get her to lay aside her masculine attire, for it troubled and shamed them to see her in the costume of a man. jeanne explained courteously her reasons for wearing the garb when they brought a woman's frock to her, and besought her to put it on. "it is best to be so dressed while in the serious work of war," she told them. "when among men it is more seemly to wear the garb of a soldier; but," she added graciously, "were it time for me to change the fashion of my dress i would do it for you two ladies who have been so kind rather than for any one in france except my queen." many persons visited her while she was at this castle, but as jean de luxembourg, the master of the house, was himself in camp before compiègne there was the disadvantage of constant news, and the girl's anxiety became pitiable as the tidings from her "good friends" at compiègne daily became more unfavourable. d'aulon was no longer with her, and for the first time jeanne was entirely without a friend of the old life with her. there was no word that her king or her friends were doing anything for her, but only talk of the english and how they wished to buy her. both visitors and guards told her of the besieged city and that their sufferings were driving the citizens to desperation. there was joy and thanksgiving in the castle upon the coming of the heralds with dispatches that seemed to be always to the advantage of the burgundians. it preyed upon the maiden's mind; she lost confidence and hope, becoming very despondent. "when compiègne is taken all persons beyond the age of seven years are to be put to the sword," one of her visitors said one day. "i would rather die than live after the destruction of such good people," she said. "also i would rather die than be in the hands of my enemies of england." she paced the floor in great agitation after the visitor left her. "how can god leave those good people of compiègne, who have been and are so loyal to their king, to perish?" she cried. and the thought came to her that she must escape, that she must go to the rescue of compiègne. there were blows to be struck there that only she could strike. she must go to compiègne. jeanne was but a young girl. she could not realize that her allotted time was over. it is hard for one to accept the fact one is not needed; that everything can go on as usual without one, and jeanne was very young. all at once the desperate expedient came to her to leap from the tower. "do not leap," admonished her voices. "be patient. god will help you, and also compiègne." "then since god will aid the good people of compiègne i desire to be with them," said jeanne. "you must bear these things gladly," st. catherine told her. "delivered you will not be until you have seen the king of england." "verily," cried the maid like the child she was, "i have no wish to see him, and would rather die than be in english hands." "do not leap," came from st. catherine again. "be patient. all will be well." but jeanne was wrought up to too great a pitch to heed. for the first time since her saints had come to her she deliberately disobeyed their counsels. going to the top of the tower she commended herself to god and our lady and leaped. some time later she was found at the foot of the tower where she had fallen. she was insensible, and lay so long unconscious that the luxembourg ladies feared that she was dead. after a time she regained consciousness, but for three days could neither eat nor drink. the wonder is that she escaped destruction, but no bones were broken, and she was not even seriously injured. "i have sinned," confessed the girl humbly to her saints when next they visited her. "i have sinned." and of god she asked pardon for her impatience and disobedience. she was forgiven, and comforted. "fear naught," saint catherine said consolingly. "they of compiègne shall have succor before st. martin's day." and now having obtained forgiveness for her sin jeanne recovered and began to eat, and soon was well. as for compiègne, it was delivered, as was foretold a fortnight before st. martin's day. the men of the town worked bravely under de flavy, and their courageous endurance enabled them to hold out until the twenty-fifth of october, when they were rescued by a concerted movement of vendôme and zaintrailles, and a sortie of the citizens. the enemy was forced to make a shameful retreat, being completely routed, abandoning their artillery and supplies. many strong towns which adjoined compiègne made submission to the king, but it was the loyalty and courage of compiègne that really shattered the anglo-burgundian campaign of . meantime pierre cauchon, bishop of beauvais, was travelling from burgundy to luxembourg, and thence to bedford in the effort to complete the sale of the maiden. jeanne's price had been settled at ten thousand pounds in gold. it was the ransom of a prince, and jeanne was a peasant maid, but the english had no doubt of her importance. there was delay in raising the money, but when at last regent bedford received a large sum from normandy he set aside ten thousand pounds which he said "were to be devoted to the purchase of jehanne la pucelle, said to be a witch, and certainly a military personage, leader of the hosts of the dauphin." the demoiselle de luxembourg begged jean, her nephew, not to sell the maiden to the english. he knew, and she knew what fate lay in store for the girl, and she besought him with tears not to take the blood money. but, pleading poverty, de luxembourg would not listen, and the sale was made. jeanne now was removed to arras, where philip of burgundy held his court, and here the money passed hands. jean de luxembourg received his ten thousand pounds, and philip of burgundy was rewarded with political favors. jeanne was at last in the hands of the english, who immediately removed her to their strong fortress of crotoy, a castle by the sea, and now that they had her they "rejoiced as greatly as if they had received all the wealth of lombardy." but she was treated honourably here, like any prisoner of war. once too some ladies of abbeville, five leagues from crotoy, came down the river somme in a boat to see her. as were all women, they were much pleased with the gentle maiden, and wept when they took leave of her, kissing her affectionately, and wishing her all sorts of favours from heaven. jeanne thanked them warmly for their visit, and commended herself to their prayers. another comfort was vouchsafed her here: a fellow prisoner, a priest in a dungeon of crotoy, was allowed to visit her daily to say mass and to give her the holy communion. so that the month of her stay served to soothe and calm her mind, and give her fortitude for what was to come. the university of paris was becoming impatient for its prey. its offer to see her to a speedy condemnation had not been accepted, and a sharp letter was sent to pierre cauchon saying that if he had been more diligent the "cause of the woman would already have been before the ecclesiastical court." but it was not the fault of cauchon, but of the english, who had hesitated about taking the maid for trial to paris. it was unquiet in the ile de france, and all the northern country seemed turning again toward charles; therefore there might be danger of jeanne being captured by the french before paris could be reached. nor did they wish to take her to england. it was decided, in consequence, to hold the trial in rouen in normandy, where they were most strong, under the zealous pierre cauchon, and an officer of the holy inquisition to sit with him as co-judge. so again jeanne's prison was changed. at the end of the year she was taken from crotoy, and, travelling slowly along the coast, reached rouen by way of eu and dieppe, as far away as possible from any risk of rescue. it was in the beginning of the year that she arrived at rouen, and at once she was taken to the castle and lodged in its great tower. it was a gloomy edifice, and the room to which she was assigned was in the first story, up eight steps from the postern gate, where light and air struggled feebly through a narrow slit through the twelve foot wall. the severities inflicted upon her here were terrible. for the first time she was heavily fettered; even at night her ankles were ironed and fastened to a chain which passed under her bed and was locked to a heavy beam at the foot. hands, feet and throat were bound to a pillar, and she was kept in an iron cage, or huche. also, because it was their policy to degrade her as well as to keep her, five rude english soldiers from the lowest class were given her for guards. three of these were always to be in her room night and day, and two outside. the whole being sickens, and is filled with rage, and shame, and burning indignation at the cruelties that were inflicted upon this modest young girl. where were la hire, dunois, alençon, boussac, rais, and other captains that no sword was drawn for jeanne? oh, shame to england that so used her! and ten times shame to france who deserted her and sold her! a blot upon england? yes. and upon france that she had saved. a stain that can never be obliterated as long as the world stands. she was a woman in the age of chivalry, when women were supposed to be the objects of a kind of worship, every knight being sworn to succor and help them in need and trouble. and the "chivalry of england shamefully used and destroyed her; the chivalry of france deserted and sold her."[ ] she was to be tried by the church, yet she was placed in a military prison, instead of an ecclesiastical one guarded by women. there was but one solace; many times a day her saints came to her whispering words of comfort and consolation. "but i do not always understand," said the maiden afterward before her judges, "because of the disturbance in the prison, and the noise made by the guards." and thus, in chains, in an iron cage, jeanne d'arc passed her nineteenth birthday. ----- [ ] andrew lang. chapter xxvi on trial "_great in everything as she was we here see her at her greatest._" andrew lang. "_the maid of france._" the days passed drearily enough in the prison cell, but jeanne endured the chains, the irons, and the hideous company of the guards rather than give her parole not to attempt an escape. the monotony of her misery was varied by visitors who came to stare at her and to banter her. in the castle in which she was confined there were many people: bedford, the regent, beaufort, the cardinal of winchester, the child king, henry of england, the earl of warwick, the chief officers of both the royal and vice-royal court, and a host of guards and men-at-arms. there were many of these who were inquisitive and malicious concerning her. one of the visitors was pierre manuel, advocate of the king of england. "you would not have come here if you had not been brought," he accosted her jestingly. "did you know before you were taken that you would be captured?" "i feared it," jeanne answered sadly. "if you feared it, why were you not on your guard?" "i did not know the day nor the hour," she answered patiently. the earl of warwick himself took more than one occasion to show jeanne to his friends, and one day he brought the earl of stafford and jean de luxembourg to see her. de luxembourg was the same who had sold her to the english. "jeanne, i have come to ransom you," remarked the latter laughingly as the girl rose to a sitting posture from the bed where she was chained to give them courteous greeting. "that is, if you will promise never again to bear arms against us." "in god's name, you mock me," she cried with a flash of spirit. "i know that you have neither the will nor the power. i know that the english mean to kill me, believing, after i am dead, that they will be able to win the kingdom of france; but if there were a hundred thousand more godons than there are, they shall never win the kingdom." whereupon lord stafford was so goaded to rage that he half drew his dagger to slay her, but warwick stayed his hand. it was too merciful a death, and it was the english policy to have her executed ignominiously as a witch. after long, comfortless days of waiting jeanne was informed that she was to be tried for heresy, and piteously she asked that some of her own party should be placed among the judges; but this was refused. the charge of heresy against a girl to whom the ordinances of the church were as the breath of life seems strange. she who lived in an ecstasy of religious fervour, who spent her time in prayer and religious exercises; who confessed regularly, and partook of the sacraments of the church whenever she could receive them, was accused by the church of being a heretic and schismatic. her great crime in the eyes of the clergy lay in affirming that she obeyed voices that came from god. in her cell jeanne could know but little of the arrangements that were being made for the trial, which were on such a scale as to command the attention of all europe. no homage ever rendered her by her own party conveys such a sense of her importance as this trial which was instigated by a great nation to neutralize her influence. owing to the fact that the meadow land where she was captured lay in the diocese of beauvais pierre cauchon claimed jurisdiction over her. he had ever been a sympathizer with the english faction, and after jeanne's triumphs had swept him out of his city he had fled for a while to england, and had come back to france with the cardinal of winchester, eager for rewards and revenge. a few months previous winchester had recommended him to the pope for the vacant archbishopric of rouen, but his appointment was opposed by the clergy of that city, and the pope had not yet come to a decision. he was a man of much learning and more ambition, and he delighted in the opportunity now afforded him of pleasing his english patrons, and avenging his private grudge. as cauchon was presiding officer the trial should have been held, of course, in his diocese, but it was deemed expedient to hold it in rouen, on account of the disturbances near paris, and canonical permission was obtained from the cathedral chapter of rouen to hold the court in that city. bishops, abbés, priors, representatives of the university of paris, learned doctors, and noted priests, sixty of the greatest intellectuals of the church,--all of them frenchmen of the english faction,--were gathered together to bring to death a young, ignorant peasant girl. to arrange all the preliminaries that were necessary for the opening of the trial took time, so that it was not until toward the last of february that everything was in readiness. such cases are always preceded by an inquiry into the former life of the accused as had been done at poictiers, for this is according to french law. this examination was made but it was not of a nature to justify or strengthen any accusation. all that the examiners could discover was that jeanne d'arc was a good, honest maid who had left a spotless reputation behind her in her native village. one commissioner reported that he had learned nothing which he would not willingly know of his own sister, although he had made inquiries in five or six parishes. cauchon called him a traitor, and said that he would not pay for information that could be of no use to him. as this investigation had been productive of nothing that could be used against her an effort was made to trap jeanne into admissions against herself. accordingly one morning a man entered her cell who represented himself as a shoemaker coming from lorraine. he was a prisoner, he said, but had received permission to visit her. jeanne was delighted to see any one from the valley of the meuse, so gave him cordial greeting, and the two fell into conversation. during the talk the supposed cobbler said suddenly in a low tone: "pucelle, i am a priest. nay," as jeanne turned toward him with an exclamation of joy, "speak low. some of the guards may understand french, and i am come to help you." "a priest?" the maiden's thin, white face grew radiant. "a priest, messire? then you can hear me in confession?" "gladly, my child." and forthwith the girl innocently opened up her heart to him. the man was in reality a priest, one nicholas loyseleur, a representative of the university of paris, and full of treachery and hypocrisy. he served cauchon well, for jeanne trusted him wholly, never dreaming that every word she said to him was overheard and recorded by secret listeners. for there was provision made for espionage, openings being in the walls through which everything that took place in the room, every proceeding could be spied upon, and every word heard. although the long conversations that this man held with jeanne elicited nothing that she did not say publicly, he was always giving her advice which, when she followed it, she followed to her hurt. the preliminaries, as has been said, threatened to be endless, but at length, on wednesday, february twenty-first, the great trial began at eight o'clock in the morning in the royal chapel of the castle. jeanne gave a sigh of relief as the officer of the court, who was sent to conduct her to the chapel, released her from her fetters. "you are summoned to appear before the court, pucelle," he explained. "may i hear mass before entering the court?" asked she wistfully. "nay; it is not permitted," he answered. "come!" so, surrounded by a strong guard, the maid was led through the corridor to the royal chapel. it was but a short distance, but it was the first breath of fresh air that she had had in almost two months, and jeanne inhaled it eagerly. the chapel was a large room, but it was not large enough to accommodate those who sought admission. rouen was very full of people, and the leopards of england and the two-tailed lion of burgundy were to be seen on every side. there was a motley populace of soldiers, citizens, priests and lawyers; for the great trial had brought to the town any number of churchmen and men of the robe, each with his attendant train of clerics and secretaries. forty-four of the assessors, as the assistants of cauchon were called, were present in the chapel ranged in a semi-circle around the presiding bishop. doctors in theology, doctors in canonical and civil law, abbots and canons were there assembled in the solemnity of their priestly and professional robes; clerks, ready with their pens to record proceedings, lords, and notables of every degree of rank: all gathered to see how easily the witch would be undone. to none of these worthies did jeanne give attention as she was led through the spectators to a solitary bench which stood where all might see on a dais on one side of the room, near to the bishop's stand. but, raising her large, grave eyes, she gazed earnestly at the judge, pierre cauchon, bishop of beauvais, who this day presided alone. it was a cold cruel face upon which she looked; an intellectual face also, on which ambition sat. no man is so merciless toward an obstacle that stands in the way of his advancement as a cold intellectual man. involuntarily jeanne shuddered as she looked at him. after she was seated cauchon addressed her, summarizing the accusations, and all the public reports and suspicions upon which the trial was based, exhorting her sternly. then he required her to take the oath upon the scriptures, to speak the truth, and to answer all questions addressed to her. "i know not what things i may be asked," said jeanne clearly. "perhaps you may ask me questions which i cannot answer." as the sweet girlish voice rose in answer to the bishop's command there was a stir in the assembly and every eye was turned upon the maiden in the prisoner's seat. they saw a slender girl, just past nineteen, dressed in a page's suit of black, her dark hair, cut short man fashion, intensifying the pallor of her face, and the melancholy of her large eyes. she looked very young as she sat there, emaciated and fetter-worn from her irons. "swear to tell the truth upon whatever you may be asked concerning the faith, and facts within your knowledge," rejoined the bishop. "as to my father and mother," said jeanne, "and what i did after setting out for france, i will swear willingly; but the revelations which have come to me from god i will reveal to no man except only to charles, my king; i shall not reveal them to you though you cut off my head, because i have received them by vision and by secret communication, and am forbidden." after a moment's reflection she added: "before eight days i shall know if i may tell you of them." the bishop urged her again and again to take the oath without conditions. she refused, and they were at length obliged to offer a limited oath. then, kneeling, jeanne crossed her hands upon the missal and swore to answer truly whatever might be asked of her, so far as she could, concerning the common faith of christians, but no more. being then questioned concerning her name and early life she answered: "in my own country i was called jeannette; ever since coming into france[ ] i have been called jeanne. i have as surname d'arc or romée; in my country girls take the name of their mother." then she told the names of her father and mother, her godfather and godmothers, the priest who had baptized her, the place where she was born, her age, concluding with: "from my mother i learned my pater, my ave marie, and my credo. from my mother i learned all that i believe." "say your pater," commanded the bishop abruptly; for it was believed that no witch could repeat the lord's prayer except backwards. "hear me in confession, and i will say it for you willingly." several times she was asked to say the pater noster, but her reply was always the same: "no; i will not say my pater for you unless you hear me in confession." "we will willingly give you one or two worthy men who speak french; will you say your pater to them?" "i shall not say it unless in confession," was her answer, whereby there was an implied protest to this company of priests who had refused her all the exercises of the church. cauchon ignored the appeal, and as the session was about to close forbade her to leave the prison which had been assigned her in the castle under pain of being pronounced guilty of heresy; to this the maiden returned at once: "i do not accept such an injunction. if ever i escape, no one shall be able to reproach me with having broken my faith, as i have not given my word to any person whatever." then she complained that they bound her with chains and shackles. "you tried several times to escape from the prison where you were detained," cauchon reminded her, "and it was to keep you more surely that you were ordered to be put in irons." "it is true that i wished to get away," said jeanne, "and i wish it still. is not that a thing allowed to every prisoner?" thereupon cauchon called in john grey, the english gentleman who had charge of the prison, along with two of his soldiers, and enjoined them to guard the girl securely and not to permit her to talk with any one without the permission of the court. jeanne was then led back to her cell and her irons. now the assessors were not all agreed as to the legality of the trial, but they feared what might befall them if they opposed cauchon, who wielded a great influence with the english. one nicolas de houppeville of rouen had spoken his mind freely at the preliminary consultation, and now as he presented himself to take a seat among the assistant judges the bishop had him thrown into prison. this man had said: "i do not see how we can proceed against the prisoner, as we who are opposed to her are acting as judges. furthermore, she has already been examined by the clergy at poictiers under the archbishop of reims, who is the metropolitan of the bishop of beauvais." he stated the case with clearness: the church which had acquitted her at poictiers seemed now to be trying jeanne for the same offense. cauchon reprimanded the priest sharply, and it now took all the influence that could be brought to bear upon the matter to keep him from being exiled to england. but his misfortune had a salutary effect upon the other assessors. henceforth, cauchon found the majority of them pliant to his will. there had been so much confusion at the first session, the proceedings being much interrupted by shouts and noises from outside, that the next morning the sitting was held in a room at the end of the great hall of the castle. again the captive was unchained and brought before them--a young girl, alone and friendless, before a convocation of trained men, and without counsel, advocate, or attorney. during the day before she had been interrupted at almost every word, and secretaries of the english king recorded her replies as they pleased, distorting her answers as they saw fit. guillaume manchon of the cathedral chapter, chief clerk, threatened to throw up his task if this were further permitted, being desirous that the records should be correctly kept. again the bishop asked jeanne to take the oath without conditions. to which she replied: "i swore yesterday. that ought to suffice." "every person," said the bishop, "though he were a prince, being required to swear in any matter relating to the faith, cannot refuse." "i took the oath yesterday," said she, "that ought to be sufficient for you. you ask too much of me." the contest ended as on the day before by jeanne taking a limited oath. then jean beaupère, a distinguished professor in theology, resumed the examination. in all this trial jeanne was the only witness examined. he asked about her early life, her trade, her visions, her coming to the king, the sign she had shown him, the wearing of male attire, and about the fairies of the tree, and the healing properties of the gooseberry spring. the questions were purposely mixed and confused so as to entrap her into contradictions. again and again he returned to the sign she had shown to the king, and this jeanne could not in loyalty reveal. had it been known that charles had doubts concerning his own right to the throne, it would have been claimed that he held the crown on the strength of an assurance from a sorceress. this sign and the wearing of male attire were recurred to time after time. the whole judicial process was a succession of snares to catch an unsuspecting victim, a constant violation of justice and the most established rights. day after day the interrogations continued, and the maiden evinced a courage in facing the learned doctors and divines as great as she had ever shown in battle. the readiness and beauty of her answers often astonished the assembly. they asked her one day: "do you know that you are in the grace of god?" this was an unfair question. if she replied, "yes," she was presumptuous; if "no," she condemned herself. one of the assessors, maître jean lefèvre, spoke up quickly: "that is an unsuitable question for such a girl." "hold your peace," cried cauchon angrily. "it will be the better for you." and maître jean was silent. "answer," commanded the bishop, turning sternly to jeanne. the assembly awaited the reply in a silence so great that a pin might have been heard to fall. "if i am not in grace, may god bring me thither; if i am, god keep me there." the reply was sublime. the doctors were amazed, and murmurs were heard among them. "jeanne, you say well," came from several. cauchon was plainly chagrined. at another time she was asked if she had ever been present when english blood was shed. "in god's name, yes. how mildly you talk! why did they not leave france and go back to their own country?" thereupon a great english lord cried out: "she is a brave girl! if only she were english!" these public hearings lasted six days, through long weary hours, filled with tiresome repetitions, and hidden stratagems to catch her unawares. but there had been little progress made, so cauchon brought them to an abrupt close. it was high time. as at poictiers jeanne's compelling personality was beginning to make itself felt. there was a visible softening toward her, and one or two of the judges tried to give her warnings or to aid her by whispered suggestions. in the streets men were whispering that the judges were "persecuting her out of perverse vengeance, of which they gave every sign; that she was kept in a secular prison against the opinion of the court for fear of displeasing the english; that the english believed that they could have neither glory nor success while she lived." there was passing through rouen one jean de lohier, who boldly declared that the trial was not valid. ( ) it was held in a castle, where men were not at liberty to give their free and full opinions. ( ) the honour of the king of france was impeached; he was a party in the suit, yet he did not appear, and had no representative. ( ) the "libel," or accusation, had not been given to the maid, and she had no counsel; she was a simple girl, tried in deep matters of faith. to manchon, the clerk, he said: "you see how they are going on! they will catch her in her words, as when she says, 'i know for certain that i touched the apparitions.' if she said, 'so it seemed to me,' i think no man could condemn her." cauchon was very angry when these words came to him, and lohier had to fly the country. it was quite time proceedings were changed. the bishop, therefore, chose certain doctors, saying that he would not "fatigue all and each of the masters who at this moment assist us in such great numbers." he told the others that they should be kept informed of the evidence, which they might study at their leisure, and expressly forbade them to leave rouen before the end of the trial. then with his chosen henchmen he proceeded to make the inquiry a private one. so jeanne was deprived of even the brief respite which the change from cell to court afforded. the examinations were chiefly repetitions of the interrogations of the public ones, though both questions and answers were fuller and freer, but were in consequence fatiguing and more trying. asked one day what she meant when she said that monseigneur beauvais put himself in danger by bringing her to trial, she answered that what she had said to monseigneur beauvais was: "you say that you are my judge. i know not whether you are so; but take care that you judge well, or you will put yourself in great danger. i warn you, so that if our lord should chastise you for it, i may have done my duty in warning you." "what is the danger that may befall him?" "i know not. my voices have told me that i shall be delivered by a great victory." her thin face was filled with sudden radiance. "it may be that judgment may come upon him then. and they add: 'be resigned; have no care for your martyrdom; you will come in the end to the kingdom of paradise.' they have told me this simply, absolutely, and without fail. i do not know if i shall have greater suffering to bear; for that i refer me to god." it was very plain that the maiden expected to be rescued. "delivered by a great victory" could mean but one thing to one so young as she; so day after day she answered their questions in the manner of one who is waiting expectantly for some great good to happen. as the time passed without bringing either rescue, or help of any sort from her friends jeanne uttered no word that could discredit or reproach them. there was never such loyalty as hers to her king and her party. a monk, brother isambard, was moved one day to give her some advice about submitting to the general council of basle, the congregation of the universal church and of christendom, wherein were men of all parties. jeanne heard of it gladly. "oh! if in that place there are any of our side, i am quite willing to submit to the council of basle," she cried. "hold your tongue, in the devil's name," shouted cauchon to isambard. turning to manchon, the clerk, he continued angrily: "make no note of that answer." but jeanne protested: "you write what is against me, but not what is in my favor." manchon had already written, "and she appeals--" he dared write no more. in the afternoon isambard, brother guillaume duval and jean de la fontaine, three men who honestly wished to aid the maid, went to the prison to give her further advice, when warwick intercepted them. "if any of you take the trouble to deliver her and to advise her for her good, i will have you thrown into the seine," he told them. and brother isambard thereafter kept silence in fear of his life, while brother duval fled to his convent of st. jacques, and appeared no more. the private examinations came to an end the day before passion sunday, and cauchon called a meeting of the assessors to consider the evidence and decide upon further action. d'estivet, his secretary, was instructed to make a digest of the proceedings which should form an act of accusation to be submitted to the assessors. the bishop meantime visited jeanne, offering his ultimatum: if she consented to wear woman's dress, she might hear mass, as she had so often desired, but not otherwise. to which jeanne sorrowfully replied; that she would have done so before now if she could; but that it was not in her power to do so. it was for the sake of her womanhood that she retained man's attire. in holy week her troubles began again. early tuesday morning of that week massieu, the usher of the court, appeared in the cell, removed her fetters, and conducted her to the room at the end of the great hall where the court was held before. all the assessors were present, for cauchon had sent out a general summons for them. the case was opened, and cauchon made a prefatory speech in which he told her how merciful were her judges, who had no wish to punish, but rather to instruct and lead her in the right way. and now, at this late stage in the proceedings, he offered her the privilege of having as counsel one or more of the learned doctors present. jeanne answered him courteously: "in the first place, concerning my good and our faith, i thank you and all the company. as for the counsellor you offer me, i thank you also, but i have no need to depart from our lord as my counsellor." thomas de courcelles, a young doctor of the university, now began to read the charges against her. the accusations were mostly frivolous, and some were unjust. it was charged that she had received no religious training; that she had worn mandrakes; that she dressed in man's attire; that she had bewitched her banner and her ring (this was the poor little ring of base metal which her father and mother had given her so long before); that she believed her apparitions were saints and angels; that she had blasphemed; and other charges to the number of seventy. after each one the young doctor paused to ask? "what have you to say to this article?" and jeanne would reply as she could, referring all her acts to the judgment of god. it mattered little how she replied; she was foredoomed by these men. for jeanne d'arc was guilty of one thing: she had deeply wounded the english pride. that was her crime. she was a girl, but she had frightened them, had driven them half the length of france, taken them in their fortresses, and conquered them in the field. that was her crime, and it was intolerable. nothing but burning her alive could satisfy the vengeance of pride so mortified. this re-examination took several days, and then jeanne was sent back to her cell, but not to peace. while the seventy articles and the substance of her replies were being reduced to twelve articles by cauchon and a few picked men, she was admonished "gently and charitably" in her cell, in order to lead her back into the way of truth and to a sincere profession of the faith. jeanne fell ill under the strain. even her magnificent endurance broke under the burden. she was ill with nausea and fever, and warwick sent immediately for several medical men who were among the judges. "do your best for her," he urged. "my king would on no account have her die a natural death. he bought her dear, and holds her dear, and she shall die by the law, and be burned." thereupon d'estivet, cauchon's secretary, escorted the leeches to the prison where, weak and in chains, jeanne lay upon her bed. "i have eaten a fish that was sent me by the bishop of beauvais," she told them when the doctors inquired what caused the indisposition. "i doubt not that this is the cause of my illness." "you shameful woman," shouted d'estivet. "you have been eating herring, and other unwholesomeness."[ ] "i have not," answered jeanne, summoning all her strength to have it out with him. the doctors felt her pulse and found some fever. they reported to earl warwick that she should be bled. "away with your bleeding," cried he. "she is artful, and might kill herself." nevertheless, they bled her and she grew better. as soon as she was somewhat recovered cauchon proceeded with his "charitable admonitions." "we have come to bring you consolation in your suffering," he said. "wise and learned men have scrutinized your answers concerning the faith which have seemed to them perilous. but you are only a poor, illiterate woman, and we come to offer you learned and wise men, watchful and honest, who will give you, as is their duty, the knowledge which you have not. take heed to our words, for if you be obstinate, consulting only your own unschooled brain, we must abandon you. you see to what peril you expose yourself, and it is this we would avoid for you with all the power of our affection." "i thank you for what you say to me for my good," answered jeanne wearily. "it seems to me, seeing how ill i am, that i am in great danger of death. if it be that god do his pleasure on me, i ask of you that i may have my confession and my saviour also, and that i may be put in holy ground." "if you desire to have the rites and sacraments of the church," said cauchon, "you must do as good catholics ought to do, and submit to holy church." "i can say no other thing to you," she said, turning from them. then they exhorted her powerfully, citing chapter and verse from the scriptures, telling her finally that if she would not obey and submit to the church she would be abandoned as a "saracen." "i am a good christian," she told them. "i have been baptized; i shall die a good christian. i love god; i serve him. i wish to help and sustain the church with all my power." and that being all they could get from her they left her for the time being. the sittings in the room at the end of the great hall of the castle were resumed on may second, all the assessors being present. cauchon summed up all the trial, saying that in spite of the diligence and gentleness of the doctors their efforts had produced nothing. it seemed good, therefore, that the woman should be admonished before them all. maître jean chatillon, the lord archdeacon of evreux, was invited to make the address whereby he might "persuade her to leave the criminal path where she now is and return again to that of truth." jeanne listened dutifully to a long preamble by maître chatillon, and finally bade her admonisher to come to the point. "read your book, and then i will answer," she said. "i refer myself to god, my master in all things. i love him with all my heart." the trial was turning upon the point as to whether she was willing to submit all her words and deeds to the judgment of the holy mother church. "the church," she exclaimed. "i love it, and desire to sustain it with my whole power, for the sake of our christian faith. it is not i who should be hindered from going to church, and hearing mass." as to what she had done for her king and her country she submitted it all to god, who had sent her. the question of submission was again asked, and she replied that she submitted all to god, our lady, and the saints. "and my opinion is," she added, "that god and the church are one." to maître jean's specific exhortations, touching upon her submission to the church, her dress, her visions, and revelations, she gave her old answers. "i will say no more," she answered briefly with some impatience, when they urged her further, and threatened her with the sentence of fire. "and if i saw the fire, i should say all that i am saying to you, and naught else." a week later she was led forth from her cell again, but this time she was taken to the torture chamber of the great tower, where she found nine of her judges awaiting her, and was once more adjured to speak the truth, with the threat of torture if she remained obdurate. but with the rack and screws before her, and the executioner ready for his work, she said: "truly, if you were to tear me limb from limb, and separate soul from body, i will tell you nothing more; and if i were to say anything else, i should always declare that you had compelled me to do it by force." she told them that she had asked her voices if, hard pressed as she was, she should submit to the church. "if you would have god come to your aid, wait on him for all your doings," was their answer. "shall i burn?" she had asked them. "wait on our lord. he will help you." torture was spared that day, as being likely to profit her little, "considering her hardness of heart," and she was returned to her cell. cauchon afterward put the question of torture to fourteen of his assessors. two voted for it: courcelles, and the spy, loyseleur, who held that it might be "a salutary medicine for her soul." the majority, however, were in favor of mercy, considering that there was enough for her condemnation without it. a few days later the decision of the university of paris, to whom the twelve articles had been sent, arrived. after an explanation of the consideration which had been given to each article, that learned tribunal gave its verdict upon each indictment; concluding with: "if the beforesaid woman, charitably exhorted and admonished by competent judges, does not return spontaneously to the catholic faith, publicly abjure her errors, and give full satisfaction to her judges, she is hereby given up to the secular judge to receive the reward of her deeds." in accordance with this decision the final session of the court was held on the twenty-third of may in a small room near jeanne's cell to hear maître pierre maurice deliver their final admonition to the captive. jeanne listened as always with courtesy to the preacher, though he was expounding to her all her faults. all this to a girl who had lived with but one motive: the service of god, and the deliverance of her country. when he had finished she was again questioned personally. her answer was clear and undaunted: "what i have always said in the trial, and held, i wish still to say and maintain. if i were condemned, if i saw the torch lighted, the faggots prepared, and the executioner ready to kindle the fire, and if i myself were in the fire, i would not say otherwise, and would maintain to the death all that i have said." and manchon, the clerk, was so struck by this reply that he wrote on the margin of his paper: "responsio johannae superba." "have you nothing further to say?" asked cauchon of promoter and prisoner. "no;" was the reply, and he declared the trial concluded. "we summon you to-morrow to hear the law which will be laid down by us, to be carried out afterward and proceeded with according to law and right." jeanne was led back to her prison and the company of john grey's men. it was the twenty-third of may, and she had been a prisoner a year. a year, and for nearly five months of that time she had been chained and ironed like a wild beast. through almost four months of it she had been tortured, badgered, and bullied through the most cruel and unjust trial the world has ever known. and she had faced this daily torment with high spirit and undaunted mien. but she was weary, and worn, and the despondency that follows a period of high exaltation came upon her. her voices had promised "deliverance by a great victory," and deliverance had not come. the next day there would be the sentence, and death by fire. all night the girl lay in her chains striving to commune with her saintly visitors, but her guards were noisy, and she could catch but little of what they were saying: "answer boldly all that is said to you," they told her. "god will help you. fear naught." the morning came, and found her listless, sad, and inexpressibly weary. the false loyseleur was on hand early, urging her to submit to the church. "do all that you are told, and you may be saved," he said to her. "accept the woman's dress, and do as i tell you; then you will be given over to the church. otherwise you are in peril of death." came also jean beaupère, one of the assessors. "you will soon be led to the scaffold to be preached to," he said. "if you are a good christian place all your deeds and words in the ordering of our holy mother church, and especially of the ecclesiastical judges." so they talked to her. presently the cart came that was to carry her to the cemetery of st. ouen, which was to be the place of her sentence. loyseleur, massieu and a number of the priests rode with her, exhorting, explaining, and pleading with her to submit. they drove through the marketplace that she might see the preparations that had been made for the execution of the sentence should she persist in her obduracy. jeanne was not spared one pang. a lofty scaffold with a stake upon it, the logs all arranged ready for the lighting, stood in the midst of the marketplace waiting for its victim. it was a beautiful day in may. the blue sky had not one cloud to mar its cerulean depths. the streets were filled with crowds of excited people who pushed and struggled behind the rows of erect english soldiers who guarded the passage of the tumbril to the place of sentence: all speaking of life, life and liberty. and beside loyseleur was whispering, "submit! submit!" before the stately church of st. ouen there was an open space that afforded room for a large assemblage of people. here were erected two platforms, one facing the other. on one of these, in the midst of prelates and nobles, cardinal winchester sat with the bishop of beauvais and the earl of warwick; on the other was the preacher, maître guillaume erad, for it was usual to preach to a witch before burning her. here also stood jeanne, and the priests who had accompanied her. below and all around were a vast concourse of people, and many soldiers. when all were in their places the preacher arose, and began his sermon: "a branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine." it was long and eloquent. when it was half over he suddenly began to apostrophise france and her king: "ah, france! thou art much abused; thou hast always been the most christian of nations, and charles, who calls himself thy king and governor, hath joined himself, a heretic and schismatic, which he is, to the words and deeds of a worthless woman, defamed and full of dishonour; and not only he but all the clergy within his jurisdiction and lordship by whom she hath been examined and not reproved, as she hath said." then pointing at the maid, he cried: "it is to thee, jeanne, that i speak. i tell thee that thy king is a heretic and schismatic." jeanne could bear, and had borne much; but she could not stand an assault upon her king. clearly her voice rang out as it had been wont to do on field of battle: "by my faith, sire, saving your respect, i swear upon my life that my king is the most noble christian of all christians, that he is not what you say." so she spoke, defending the craven who had made no effort in her behalf. there was a sensation among the people as she made her cry; a stir as though moved in spite of themselves, and voices began to murmur excitedly. at this the english soldiers who surrounded the two platforms in a close ring drew closer, and made threatening gestures toward the crowd which silenced them. the preacher resumed his sermon, which he concluded with a last solemn exhortation to the prisoner to yield submission to the church. as her voices had bade her do, jeanne replied to the preacher's words boldly: "i have told you doctors that all my deeds and words should be sent to rome to our holy father, the pope, to whom, and to god first, i appeal. as for my deeds, i burden no man with them, neither my king nor any other. if fault there be, it is my own and no other's." three times she was asked if she was willing to renounce those of her acts and words which the court condemned. to which she replied only: "i appeal to god, and to our holy father, the pope." she was told that the pope was too far away, and that the ordinaries were judges each in his own diocese, and that it was necessary that she should confess that the clergy and officers of the church had a right to determine in her case. then the bishop began to read her sentence. he had prepared two: one in case she recanted; the other, the death by fire. it was this latter that he now began to pronounce. and all around the maiden there broke forth a tumult of voices urging her to submit. some among the crowd dared to call to her entreatingly: "submit, jeanne, submit. save yourself." almost distracted, the girl folded her hands, and raised her eyes. "st. michael, help," she called pleadingly. her voices were speaking, but in the confusion she could not hear, but about her sounded those others: "submit! submit! why will you burn?" there is a limit to human endurance. through months the girl had preserved a clear mind that had guided her through the tortuous intricacies of the snares that treacherous legality and perverted ingenuity could devise for her; she had been loyal, in despite of all perils, to her belief in her mission, to her faith in her voices, to her duty to her king: but now--the indomitable spirit broke under the strain. she could bear no more. "i submit," she cried in anguish. "i am willing to hold all that the church ordains, all that you judges shall say and pronounce. i will obey your orders in everything. since the men of the church decide that my apparitions and revelations are neither sustainable nor credible, i do not wish to believe or to sustain them. i yield in everything to you, and to our holy mother church." "then sign," cried a churchman, thrusting forward a paper. "sign, and so abjure." the girl looked at him, bewildered and confused by the commotion about her. "abjure?" she said. "what is abjure?" massieu, who had been among those who conducted her thither, now began to explain. "sign," he said, "sign." "sign," cried erad, the preacher. "sign, and you will be put in charge of the church." jeanne could not write, but she mechanically made her mark, placing it where they told her. then one of them guiding her hand, traced the name, jehanne, at the bottom of the page. jeanne gave one last cry as she permitted it: "all that i did was done for good, and it was well to do it." and manchon, the clerk, wrote on the margin of his record, "and jeanne in fear of the fire said that she would obey the church." this done cauchon substituted the other sentence: "seeing that thou hast returned to the bosom of the church by the grace of god, and hast revoked and denied all thy errors, we, the bishop aforesaid, commit thee to perpetual prison, with the bread of sorrow and water of anguish, to purge thy soul by solitary penitence." a tumult arose in the square at this, and stones were thrown amid cries of disappointment and rage; for the english feared that they were to be cheated of their prey, and many were angered that there was to be no burning. in the midst of it, jeanne called feverishly to the priests about her: "now, you people of the church, lead me to your prison; let me be no longer in the hands of the english." one of the priests left her side, and ran over to cauchon to ask where she was to be taken. "back whence she came," said cauchon grimly. dismayed, miserable beyond words, jeanne was taken back to the irons, and the unspeakable torment of her awful cell. ----- [ ] "into france." a phrase used frequently by people living on the borderland; also because all the country about domremy and adjacent villages was held by the enemy. this must be crossed to reach the king. where he dwelt was regarded as the real france. [ ] herring, sprats, shad--in warm countries acquire, probably from their food, highly poisonous properties so as to be dangerous to persons eating them. chapter xxvii for her country "_there was grandeur in that peasant girl,--in her exalted faith at domremy, in her heroism at orléans, in her triumph at reims, in her trial and martyrdom at rouen. but unless she had suffered, nothing would have remained of this grandeur in the eyes of posterity._" lord. "_great women" in "beacon lights of history._" in the afternoon the duchess of bedford sent a tailor to jeanne with a woman's dress. she put it on without a word, allowed her hair to be dressed in feminine fashion, and to be covered by a coif. courcelles, loyseleur, isambard and other priests also visited her, telling her of the great pity and mercy of the churchmen, and warning her that should she return to her errors the church must abandon her. and so at last they left her. left her to her thoughts and her conscience which now began to trouble her. for in that moment of recantation jeanne had been false to the highest that was in her: the voice of god speaking in her heart which was higher than the church. "i have sinned," she cried in anguish. "i have sinned grievously." and piteously she invoked her saints. in the meantime life in that cell was a horror of which it is well not to think. she was supposed now to be under the gentle ministrations of the church, but she was still a captive, shorn, degraded, hopeless, lacerated by fetters, and weighed down by heavy chains; for even at night when she lay on her bed her feet were in irons, with couples fastened to a chain, and attached by a log to a great beam of wood. cauchon had been given to understand that the english would not be content with "perpetual imprisonment on bread of anguish and water of affliction" for this captive. the girl must burn, but now this could not be done unless she relapsed. relapse she must, willingly or unwillingly. a word to john grey's varlets would help matters, and the word was given. it was on thursday, may twenty-fourth, that jeanne recanted, and took the woman's dress. on sunday following she awoke to find that her feminine attire had been taken from her while she slept, and on her bed lay the old page's suit of black. "sirs," she said protestingly in her gentle voice, "this dress is forbidden me. give me the woman's dress, i pray you." the guards refused, laughing. jeanne knew what the end would be now, but she accepted her fate calmly. the tidings flew that by this act she had revoked her abjuration. monday word was sent to cauchon and his acolytes, who flocked at once to the castle. they found the girl overborne with grief, her face tear-stained and disfigured; the hearts of some of them were moved to compassion. "why have you done this?" demanded cauchon. "it is more suitable for me to wear it, being among men," said the maid, taking the blame of the whole matter. "i have resumed it because the promise to me has not been kept; that is to say, that i should go to mass and should receive my saviour, and that i should be taken out of irons." "did you not promise and swear not to resume the dress of a man?" "no; i am not aware that i took any such oath. i would rather die than be in irons. but if you will release me from these irons, and let me go to mass, and lie in gentle prison, i will be good and do as the church desires." "since last thursday have you heard your voices?" asked the bishop, wishing to find some basis for the charge of "relapse." "yes;" jeanne's sad face brightened at once. "what did they say to you?" "god made known to me by saint catherine and saint margaret the great pity there was for the treason to which i consented by making revocation and abjuration in order to save my life. i have condemned myself that my life might be saved. on thursday my voices told me to answer that preacher boldly, and he was a false preacher, who preached. he accused me of many things that i never did. if i said that god did not send me, i should condemn myself, for god did send me. my voices have told me that i committed sin in declaring that what i had done was wrong. all that i said and revoked, i said for fear of the fire." and manchon, the clerk, wrote on the margin of his record: "responsio mortifera." "the answer that caused her death." "do you believe that your voices are st. margaret and st. catherine?" "yes, i do believe it," she cried gladly. "and i believe that they come from god. i would rather do penance once for all; that is to say, in dying, than endure any longer the misery of a prison. i have done nothing against god and the faith, in spite of all they have made me revoke. what was in the schedule of abjuration i did not understand. i did not intend to revoke anything except according to our lord's pleasure. if the judges will have me do so, i will resume woman's dress; for the rest, i can do no more." it was enough. she had relapsed, and the will of her enemies could now be accomplished. the next day cauchon assembled his assessors in the chapel of his house, the palace of the archbishop of rouen. they all agreed that jeanne must be handed over to the secular arm of the church, praying that it "might deal gently with her." if she showed signs of sincere penitence, she was to be allowed to receive the sacrament of confession so long denied to her. then the maid was cited to appear the next morning at eight o'clock in the old market place, "in order that she may be declared relapsed, excommunicate, and heretic, and that it may be done to her as is customary in such cases." very early on wednesday morning, may the thirtieth, brother martin ladvenu went to the cell to tell the maid of her approaching death, and "to lead her to true contrition and repentance, and also to hear her confession." terrified and trembling, jeanne received the announcement with bitter weeping; her heart failing before the imminence of the stake. she was but a girl, and it was a terrible ordeal that lay before her. what wonder that she wept? "alas!" she cried, "will they treat me so horribly and cruelly, and must my body, which has never been corrupted, be burned to ashes to-day! ah! i would far rather be beheaded seven times than burned. had i been in the prison of the church, to which i submitted, and been guarded by church-folk, and not by my enemies and adversaries, this would never have befallen me. oh, i appeal before god, the great judge, against these wrongs that they do me." in the midst of the girl's outburst, cauchon entered the cell. she turned upon him quickly. "bishop, i die through you." "ah, jeanne, be patient. you die because you have not kept your promise, but have returned to errors." "if you had put me in the church's prison, and given me women for keepers, this would not have happened. for this i summon you before god." "now then, jeanne, did not your voices promise you deliverance?" "yes;" she admitted sadly. "then you must perceive that they are evil and come not from god. had this not been true they would not have deceived you." "i see that i have been deceived," she said. they had said, "take all things peacefully: heed not this martyrdom. thou shalt come at last into the kingdom of paradise." they had spoken also of deliverance by a great victory, but jeanne misunderstood the message. so now she said sadly, "i see that i have been deceived. but," she added, "be they good spirits or bad spirits, they really appeared to me." and now she was allowed to receive the sacraments, for this would be proof that the maid had again recanted. the sacrament was brought irreverently, without stole or candles, so that ladvenu remonstrated indignantly, not being willing to administer a diminished rite. and at his request the host was sent with a train of priests chanting litanies as they went through the streets with torches burning. without the prison in the courtyard, in the streets, everywhere in the city the people gathered to pray for her, their hearts touched with pity at her sad fate. the maiden received the sacrament with tears and devotion, the churchmen expounding views and exhorting her during all the time that it was administered. pierre maurice spoke kindly to her at its close. "ah, sieur pierre," she said, "where shall i be to-night?" "have you not good faith in the lord?" he asked. "yes," she answered. "god helping me i shall be in paradise." dressed in the long black robe that the victims of the inquisition wore, with a mitre set on her head, bearing the inscription: "heretic, relapsed, apostate, idolater," she was led for the last time out through the corridor and down the steps to the cart which was waiting to carry her to the place of doom. isambard, massieu, the usher of the court, both her friends, accompanied her. as the cart, escorted by one hundred and twenty english men-at-arms, started, a man pushed his way through them, and flung himself weeping at jeanne's feet. it was loyseleur, the spy, who now implored her pardon. jeanne forgave him, and the guards, who would have killed him but for the intervention of warwick, drove him away. the streets, the windows and balconies of the houses, every place where a foothold could be had, were crowded with people who wished to get a good view of the maid on her last journey. many secretly sympathised with her, but dared not show it for fear of their english masters. three scaffolds had been erected in the old market place: one for the high ecclesiastics and the great english lords; one for the accused and her preacher,--for jeanne was not allowed to go to her doom without another exhortation; while in the middle of the square a wooden platform stood on a mass of plaster with a great beam rising perpendicularly from it. at the foot of this innumerable faggots of wood were piled. the pile was purposely built high so that the executioner could not shorten her sufferings, as was often done. a placard was set over the mass of plaster and faggots with the words, "jeanne, self-styled the maid, liar, mischief-maker, abuser of the people, diviner, superstitious, blasphemer of god, presumptuous, false to the faith of christ, boaster, idolater, cruel, dissolute, an invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic, heretic." a large number of soldiers ranged around the square keeping back the turbulent crowd who pressed upon them. openly these soldiers rejoiced as the cart that contained the warrior maid was driven into the square. soon the witch who had humbled the pride of england would be done to death. the victor of orléans and patay would ride no more. an humbled france would soon be prostrate before the might of england. jeanne looked on all that sea of faces, some sympathetic, others openly exultant, with brimming eyes. "rouen! rouen!" she cried wonderingly; "and am i to die here?" a silence fell upon the multitude as the maid took her place upon the platform with the preacher, nicholas midi, and he began his sermon from the text. "if any of the members suffer, all the other members suffer with it." jeanne sat quietly through the sermon, her hands folded in her lap, praying silently. after a flood of invective the preacher closed his sermon and bade her, "go in peace." when the words that flung her from the communion of the holy church ended pierre cauchon rose, and once more exhorted her, heaping a shower of abuse upon her helpless head, and so delivered her to the secular arm of the church, with the words: "we give you over to the secular power, entreating it to moderate its sentence and spare you pain of death and mutilation of limb." a great hush of awe fell upon the people that was broken presently by a sweet, girlish voice, broken by sobs, as jeanne knelt upon the platform, and offered up her last supplication. she invoked the blessed trinity, the blessed virgin mary, and all the saints of paradise. she called pleadingly upon her own st. michael for help and to aid her "in devotion, lamentation, and true confession of faith." very humbly she begged forgiveness of all men whether of her party or the other. she asked the priests present to say a mass for her soul, and all whom she might have offended to forgive her, and declared that what she had done, good or bad, she alone was to answer. and as she knelt, weeping and praying, the entire crowd, touched to the heart, broke into a burst of weeping and lamentation. winchester wept, and the judges wept. pierre cauchon was overwhelmed with emotion. here and there an english soldier laughed, and suddenly a hoarse voice cried: "you priests, are you going to keep us here all day?" without any formal sentence, the bailiff of rouen waved his hand, saying, "away with her." jeanne was seized roughly by the soldiers and dragged to the steps of the stake. there she asked for a cross. one of the english soldiers who kept the way took a piece of staff, broke it across his knees in unequal parts, and, binding them hurriedly together, handed to her. she thanked him brokenly, took it, and kissing it pressed it against her bosom. she then prayed massieu to bring a cross from the church that she might look upon it through the smoke. from the church of saint saviour a tall cross was brought, and brother isambard held it before her to the end; for she said: "hold it high before me until the moment of death, that the cross on which god is hanging may be continually before my eyes." then bravely as she had climbed the scaling ladders at orléans and jargeau the maid ascended the steps of the scaffold to the stake. the good priest, isambard, accompanied her with words of consolation. as she was being bound to the stake she looked her last upon the towers and hills of the fair city, and again the cry escaped her lips: "ah, rouen! i greatly fear that you shall suffer for my death." cauchon, hoping that now some word of denouncement against her king might be uttered, came to the foot of the scaffold; once again she cried to him: "bishop, i die through you." only once did her spirit falter. when the executioner applied the torch to the faggots, and a dense volume of smoke rolled up she gasped, "water, holy water!" then, in quick forgetfulness of self, for brother isambard still remained with her, though the pitiless flames had already begun to ascend--she bade him go down lest the fire should catch his robes. and so at last she was left alone. upward leaped the red flames, eager for their prey; upward curled the dense, suffocating smoke; the air quivered and whirled with red, stifling heat; and suddenly, from out of that fiery, awful furnace, there came the clarion tones of the maid, clear as on the battle field, exultant with the triumph of a great victory: "my voices were from god! they have not deceived me! jesus! jesus!" and so died the maid; a martyr, not for religion, but for her country. she died, but the lesson of her life lives on: faith and work; for by these two may marvels be wrought and the destiny of nations changed. "the men-at-arms will fight; god will give the victory." chapter xxviii at domremy "_to our holy father, the pope, to whom, and to god first, i appeal._" jeanne's _own words in the square of st. ouen_. there were many signs and wonders told of the execution after jeanne's death. it was said that a dove was seen to fly upward toward heaven at the moment that her spirit took its flight; that the executioner later in the day went weeping to friar isambard, confessing that he was lost, for he had burnt a saint; that an english soldier who had sworn to light a faggot on the pyre had fallen in a swoon as he threw the burning brand; that her heart, that great heart that beat only for france, was not consumed by the flame: these and many other things were told. the truth of the matter was that even her enemies were not easy in their minds about her death. there was more than a suspicion that what she had said might be true: that she was sent from god. the news of her death swept over france, bringing grief and consternation to those who loved her, and satisfaction to those that feared. in the afternoon of a gracious day in june, some two weeks after the tragedy at rouen, two young women might have been seen coming through the forest down the hill path beyond greux from the chapel of our lady of bermont. it was saturday, the holy virgin's day, and the two had been to make their orisons at the shrine. but though the valley of colours had never seemed so lovely, so flowery, so fragrant as it did on this golden afternoon, a young matron and her maiden companion, the two, walked in silence and with lagging steps through the tangle of vines and grasses that grew along the pathway. "it is more than two years since jeanne went away," spoke the younger one suddenly, voicing the name that was in both their hearts. "oh, mengette, it grieves me to think of her shut up in a gloomy dungeon when she loved the fields so." "yes, hauviette. and how strange it is that jeanne d'arc, who was always so good and pious, is up before the church charged with heresy. jeanne a heretic? pouf! the very idea of such a thing!" mengette laughed scornfully, then caught her breath with a sob. "to think of it, when she loves the church so. it's my belief that those who try her are the heretics." "mengette, if any one should hear you!" hauviette cast a fearful glance about her. "it would go hard with you." "i care not who hears me," declared mengette with a toss of her head. "have we not boldly told all who came to domremy to inquire concerning her of her goodness and purity? ay! even though they were burgundians or english they were told the truth though some of them would fain have heard otherwise. beside, should any chance to hear me, robert, my husband, would not let harm come to me." in spite of her sadness hauviette could not repress a smile. mengette had been married two years, and her belief in her husband's all powerfulness had become a proverb in the village. but the maiden only remarked: "i would that we could hear how it fares with jeanne. it is a long trial." she sighed. "yes." mengette sighed also, and silence fell once more between them. long before domremy had heard that jeanne was held in durance, and at length that she was on trial before the learned men of the university. all feared for the result, for what chance would a peasant maid stand with such wise men? down the hillside path, through greux, and on through the bois chesnu went the two friends, until presently they emerged into the clearing where stood the fairy tree in solitary grandeur. with one accord they paused under its spreading branches. "the commissioners from rouen were so curious about the tree," commented mengette, glancing up at it lovingly. "so many questions did they ask concerning it, and the gooseberry spring. and, hauviette, did isabeau tell you that they wanted to know whether jeanne ever carried a mandrake?" "yes, she told me," answered hauviette. "as though jeanne would do such a thing! look, mengette!" she broke off suddenly. "something has happened, for the people are running all about the streets of the village." "and the most of them are going toward the d'arc house," cried mengette excitedly. "there must be news of jeanne. let us hurry, hauviette." quickly the intervening space between the forest and the village was passed, and jeanne's two friends soon entered the dooryard of the cottage. colin de greux left the crowd of villagers who clustered about the yard talking in low tones, and came to meet them. "there is news," he told them in trembling accents. "it is all over. poor jeanne!" he paused abruptly, and covered his face with his hands. "what do you mean, colin?" cried mengette, while hauviette grew white, and clasping her hands over her heart stood waiting the answer with bated breath. "is she--is she dead?" colin nodded. "burned," he said briefly. "as a heretic and a sorceress. the curé has just received word." "oh," gasped mengette. "it can't be true; it can't be!" but hauviette could not speak. more than the others had she loved jeanne. "yes; it's true," affirmed colin with emotion. "and to think that i teased her so. and made her go to toul, and, and--" his voice broke. at this hauviette recovered herself a little, and laid her hand softly on his arm. "she forgave that, colin, i know," she said comfortingly. "jeanne would harbour naught against you." "i know," he said. "for when she left domremy for vaucouleurs she stopped as she passed through greux, and said: 'i go to vaucouleurs, colin. god give you good fortune.' and he has," continued the young man, "for i have prospered beyond any other in the village. 'tis as though her mere wish had brought it to pass." "perhaps it did," said the maiden gently, finding comfort for her own grief in consoling him. "but see! mengette has gone to jacques and isabeau. let us go also, that we may comfort them. jeanne would like us to do that." "you are like her," he said, looking up at her suddenly, and taking the little hand that lay so lightly upon his sleeve. "you think of others before yourself. yes; let us go to them." hand in hand they made their way through the sorrowing people into the cottage. jacques d'arc lay upon the open cupboard bed, completely prostrated by grief, and isabeau bent over him, ministering to him in woe too deep for tears. beside them stood the good curé, the tears flowing unrestrainedly down his cheeks. "grieve not," he said. "i believe that the child went straight into paradise. i confessed her too often not to know that she was pure as a lily flower. in paradise she dwells beyond all trouble. we who are left behind must not grieve. you have other children left you. jean and pierre are held to ransom, and they will soon return." and so he tried to comfort them, but for some griefs there is no consolation. jacques d'arc's was one for which there was no cure. his heart broke under its weight of anguish, and a few days thereafter he died. some time later pierre and jean returned to their mother, and took her with them to orléans, where she resided the rest of her long life, the recipient of many honours from the city that did not forget its maid. twenty years later there came a day when the long dormant manhood of charles seventh was stirred to action, and he was minded to make amends to the memory of her who had done so much for him. at his instigation isabeau carried her daughter's appeal to rome. "i have told your doctors that all my deeds and words should be sent to rome to our holy father, the pope, to whom, and to god first, i appeal," jeanne had cried on the platform at st. ouen on the day of her abjuration. she had been told then that the pope was too far off; so now isabeau carried that appeal to him, asking for justice to be done to her daughter's memory. the case was reopened, witnesses examined, even some of the assessors who had sat with cauchon testifying in her favour, and jeanne's name was cleared by the church of every charge against her. thankful that her child would no longer rest under the ban of the church she loved so well, isabeau returned to orléans, and spent the remainder of her days in peace. in peace, for at last the land was cleared of the english and only at calais had the invader a foothold, and charles dwelt in his own capitol at paris. all of jeanne's prophecies had come to pass. jean, her brother, was made captain of vaucouleurs when bluff old robert de baudricourt was gathered to his fathers. pierre married, and lived with his wife and mother at orléans. both brothers took the name of du lys, which the king had conferred upon them through jeanne, and were ranked among the nobility, honoured and revered for the sake of one who coveted no honour save that of serving her country--plain jeanne d'arc. the end transcriber notes: spelling and punctuation inaccuracies were silently corrected. accented and hyphenated words were standardized. the author's punctuation style has not been changed. archaic and variable spelling has been retained. footnotes and reference the same note and it has been duplicated. text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). provided by the internet archive the story of joan of arc the witch--saint by m. m. mangasarian lecturer of the independent religious society from "the rationalist," october, [illustration: ] past numbers of the rationalist. no. . st. francis, the second christ. no. . marcus aurelius. no. . ships that sink in the night; or, god and the titanic. no. . what has christ done for the world? no. . lyman abbott on immortality. no . voltaire in hades. no. . the gospel of sport--what shall i do to be saved? play! no. . a poet's philosophy of happiness--omar khayyam. no. . a rationalist in home. (a lecture in three parts.) part no. . a rationalist in rome. (a lecture in three parts.) part no. . a rationalist in rome. (a lecture in three parts,) part no. . jew and christian according to shakespeare. no. and . christian science and common sense. no. . a message from abroad. no. . the first modern man. no. . the monk and the woman in the garden of allah. no. . the high cost of living and the higher cost of superstition no. . the debate between three clergymen and a rationalist. no. . rationalism and crime. no. . women and crime. no. . was jesus a socialist? no. . the catholic church and the socialist party. no. . what is the trouble with the world? the above lectures will be sent to any address upon receipt of $ volume no. . who made the gods? no. . marriage and divorce, according to rationalism. no. . the american girl. no. . the catholic church in politics. no. . christian and turk. no. . the gospel according to bernard shaw. no. and . morality without god. no. . a letter to my flock. no. . a missionary's convert. no. . the ex-priest in paris. the rationalist is published by the independent religious society semi-monthly. each number is to consist of a lecture by m. m. mangasarian. price of subscription, per annum, $ . . orders should be sent to the independent religious society, lakeside place, chicago joan of arc this lecture on joan of arc, delivered some time ago, provoked a great deal of criticism in chicago. the people who protested against it and wanted to punish its author were, naturally enough, the roman catholics. what interests me in joan of arc is not the fact that the story of her martyrdom and subsequent canonization could be used as a weapon against the church of rome, but because the story in itself is so very compelling. it is quite true that the story also illustrates how far from infallible the catholic church has been in its dealings with the maid of orleans--first, burning her at the stake as a witch, and, five hundred years later, beatifying her as a saint. the statement in my lecture which caused the greatest displeasure was to the effect that the same church which had burnt joan of arc as a witch in fourteen hundred thirty-one had sainted her in nineteen hundred and nine. the catholics deny that they were at all responsible for the terrible death of the deliverer of france. this lecture will throw some light on that question. as related in a former lecture, it was at her shrine, in the church of the sacred heart, in paris, last summer, that i promised myself the task of presenting to the american people the truth about joan of arc. i shall speak very plainly in this lecture, but, i am sure, without any trace of bitterness in my heart toward anyone. i shall speak with feeling, of course, for it is impossible not to be moved to the depths by the events which brought a girl of nineteen to the stake--but my passion is free from anger or prejudice. i can weep for this young woman without gnashing my teeth on her fanatical persecutors. i am sure i can tell the truth without lying about the catholic church. but i do not wish to be sentimental, either. i have not forgiven the unrepentant destroyers of the innocent. to convert a heretic into a saint by trying to prove that she was not a heretic at all is not repentance; it is sophistry. to deny that joan suffered death at the hands of, and by the authority of, the vicar of christ on earth is not a sign of regret for the past, but a defiance of history. when the catholics shall admit that, through ignorance, and urged on by circumstances they could not control, they committed the act which they have since atoned for by offering her a heavenly crown--when, i say, the catholics shall shed over her body tears as genuine as those which black othello shed over the woman he had smothered--then we will forgive them. but the catholic church will have to choose between securing our forgiveness and retaining her infallibility. if she should repent of a single act ever committed by her officially, she would lose her claim to infallibility--for how can the infallible err? if, on the other hand, she should hold to her infallibility, how can she be sorry for anything she has ever done? if i had any influence with the catholics i would advise them to sacrifice infallibility for the respect of humanity. it is much more divine to say, "i am sorry," than to say, "i am infallible." but the catholic church will not take my advice. the shrine of joan in the paris church is almost as eloquent as her stake in rouen. i have seen them both--that is to say, i have seen the spot on which she was consumed, marked by a white slab; and i have seen the marble figure of joan, as a girl, in the attitude of prayer, now in the church of the sacred heart in paris. as i stood at her shrine in this great white church it seemed to me that, even though joan of arc has, at last been made a saint, there was still a prejudice against her on the part of the people, as well as of the priests. this is only an impression, and i hope i am mistaken. but let me present the evidence on which i base my misgivings: in the first place, joan is not given the preference in the shrine set apart for her. st. michael, whoever he might be, occupies the whole front of the altar, and only on the windows and the side walls do we find any mention of joan and the events of her heroic career. there is also, at one end of the enclosure, as intimated before, a small marble figure of joan on her knees. why does st. michael usurp the place of honor over the altar? who is he? what has he done for france? in the second place, there was not a single lighted candle at her shrine. st. mary's altar, a little distance off, was ablaze. st. joseph's, too, was honored by lighted candles. but no one was on her knees and no flame twinkled before the sainted joan of arc. they say that it is almost impossible to outlive the charge of heresy. in former times, quite frequently, even heretics who repented of their heresies were put to death, nevertheless. to have ever been accused, even, or suspected of heresy, is an unpardonable crime. joan was suspected, at least, of rebellion against rome, and it seemed to me, as i reflected upon what i observed in the church, that the catholics had canonized this village maid reluctantly, and only under pressure, and after five hundred years of dillydallying. but before i left the church of the sacred heart there was a lighted candle upon her altar. i lighted it. approaching one of the candle tables, of which there are half a dozen in the building, i purchased a long, tapering candle, white as the lily, and i touched it with fire--i kindled it and set it in one of the sockets to burn before the kneeling joan. i left my flaming candle in the church of the sacred heart! i, a non-catholic, offered my fire to joan, not because she had been canonized--for i never wait for the consent or the approval of the pope before paying homage to anybody--but because her sweet, sad story is one of the most moving of modern times, and her vindication one of the most stupendous conquests of modern thought. the church of the sacred heart is one of the most beautiful in paris. it is built on the highest point in the city and commands a wonderful view. as i have told you before, i have two friends who dwell on this summit--really, a superb location. it is approached by a long flight of stairs, or by a cog-wheel train. before it, and all around it, sweeps the paris of to-day, as did the paris of clovis and charlemagne, nearly fifteen hundred years ago; the paris of julian, emperor of rome, older still; the catholic paris, when kings and parlements bowed low to kiss the great toe of the italian christ, or his vicar; the paris of the medici--red and bloody; the paris of the huguenots, of henry of navarre, of conde and colligny--sad, desolate, and in the throes of a new faith; and the paris of the philosophers, whose smile softened its barbarities, lit up its darkness, and made it a city of light--_la ville lumiere!_ there, on that splendid elevation, live my two young friends. they are both at the age of nineteen. one of them a lad, the other a maid. the girl is housed; the boy is exposed. joan of arc lives in the church--the cathedral is her home. the chevalier de la barre stands on the edge of the hill, with sun and shower falling upon his head. the catholic church burnt them both at the stake--the boy and the girl; the one because he did not tip his hat to the priest at a street procession, the other because she believed in herself! but modern thought has vindicated both of these outcasts. joan now dwells in a white church, perfumed and lighted; and the chevalier crowns the brow of the hill with his youthful figure and appealing gesture. the chain which tied these children to the stake in a dark age has flowered! is not that wonderful? i believe in the forces, the ideas, the movement--the thought that can cause a chain to flower! i am not going to speak this morning of the chevalier de la barre, to commemorate whose memory the nationalists of france have erected this monument, close to the church of the sacred heart. he will be my theme on another occasion. in this lecture i shall confine myself to the story of joan of arc. and a strange story it is! a young girl of seventeen marches at the head of a dilapidated and demoralized army, and leads it on to victory against the best fighters of the world, the english, who, in the fifteenth century, were trying to annex france to england; she is captured by traitors, sold to the enemy for ten thousand pounds; and then she is handed over to the church to be tried for heresy. she is tried, convicted, and sentenced to be burned alive. this sentence, the most revolting on record, is carried out in all its literalness, and in broad daylight, and under the shadow of the christian cross, and at the very doors of a great cathedral. all this transpired in the city of rouen, on the thirtieth day of may, fourteen hundred thirty-one. in order that i may enter into the spirit of the thrilling events of which rouen was the stage, i repaired to that city, and reverently visited the scenes of the trial and the martyrdom of this latest saint of the catholic world. words cannot convey to you the emotions which, like a storm, burst upon me suddenly as the conductor on my train called out, "rouen!" it was then about a half hour to midnight, and, jumping into a carriage, i was quickly driven to my hotel. what thoughts, and how they crowded in upon me, as soon as i laid my head upon my pillow. my brain was too active to permit of sleep. i imagined i was living in _the year fourteen hundred thirty-one_, and that i had just reached this city on the eve of the martyrdom of joan. "to-morrow," i whispered to myself, "joan of arc will be led to the stake." again and again i repeated to my pillow this shuddering intelligence. "what," i exclaimed to myself, "a young woman who saved france by her courage is going to be committed to the flames in this very city _tomorrow!_" i could not believe it possible. i could not believe that there was folly enough, or hatred enough, or stupidity enough, in the world for so desperate a deed. but, alas, it was true. with my eyes closed, i fancied i saw the throngs marching through the streets--consisting of peasants, of merchants, of priests, of princes--to see a girl of nineteen burned in the fire, and in all that throng there was not one who had either a kind word or thought for her--her who had given them a country to live in. abandoned, hated and spat upon, she was left to suffer the cruelest punishment that human _inhumanity_ could devise, or the most perverse imagination invent. a girl of nineteen burned alive! "oh, god!" the words escaped my lips in spite of me. then i turned about and called upon _humanity_. but in the fifteenth century god and humanity were both hard of hearing. then i called upon _science_ and _reason_. but these were not yet born. "there is no help then," i whispered to myself, and my heart swelled within me with indignation, and i became desperate, realizing my helplessness. with my head upon my pillow during that first night i spent in rouen, i tried to penetrate into the motives for the persecution of joan. this brave girl was feared because she was superior to her age. she provoked the jealousy of her inferiors. her independence and originality alarmed both the church and the state. her ability to take the initiative, and her courage to disagree with her spiritual teachers was a menace to the authority of the priest with the keys, and the king with the sword. the english would not admit that a mere girl, a domremy peasant, tending her father's cows, could have the genius to whip them--the most powerful warriors of europe. the catholic church, on the other hand, would not forgive joan for distinguishing herself without their help. for a woman to eclipse the holy church and humiliate a powerful state, was a crime punishable by death. in less than two years' time joan had saved france, after the prayers of the church and the armies of the nation had failed ignominiously. in the opinion of the world of that day there was only one power, the devil's, that could outwit the church. it was not denied that joan had driven the victorious armies of the enemy out of france, and made a conquered people free again; but it was argued that she had achieved this triumph, not by the help of god, but by the instrumentality of the devil. in those days, anything, however praiseworthy, if accomplished without the permission and cooperation of the church, was the work of the devil. joan had consulted her own heart, instead of the village confessor. that was her heresy. joan had seen visions and heard voices on her own account. that is the independence which, if encouraged, or even recognized, would overthrow the catholic church. no one is allowed to receive revelations at first hand. even god is not permitted to speak except through his vicar on earth. in short, joan was a _protestant_, inasmuch as she not only had direct relations with heaven, but she refused to allow the church to be the judge as to whether her voices were from god or from satan. during all the agony of her long trial, every effort was made to induce her to allow the church to be the judge of the nature of her visions. joan refused the test. there was no doubt about her heresy. she believed herself capable of judging. that was her unpardonable sin. still imagining myself in rouen, in the year fourteen hundred thirty-one, i said to myself, "i must arise early in the morning and go to the old market place to catch a glimpse of the wonderful woman when she leaves the tower for the stake." as the picture of what i would see on the following day arose before my closed eyes, i trembled. "i will not let them burn her," i cried passionately. but, alas, what could one man do against king, pope, and the mob! and i tossed in my bed like one in a cage who is conscious of his helplessness against iron bars. suddenly, a thought struck me, as the lightning strikes a tree. "this is fourteen hundred thirty-one," i repeated to myself. "i must get up at once and repair to the palace of the bishop of beauvais, the priest who holds in the hollow of his hand the fate of the bravest maid in history. if i could only have a half hour with him," i said, "to pour into his ears my protest, my pleadings, my scorn, my prayers; or, if i could tell him of the time when joan will have a shrine in a catholic church!--he might relent and hearken unto reason?" with these thoughts in my mind i jumped out of my bed, i lit the candle, i put on my clothes. then, in haste, i walked out into the night, seeking my way in the streets of the strange city now deserted. by the help of the moon and the stars of that night in may, _fourteen hundred thirty-one_, i traced my way to the imposing cathedral of st. ouen, standing like a towering shadow in the cold light of the night, and close to which lived the bishop of beauvais. i knocked upon the bishop's door. "open, open," i cried, as in the dead of night i kept pounding upon the door. "i wish to come in," i cried. "i wish to save the church from an indelible stain, i wish to protect the honor of humanity." "open, open," i cried, again and again, and in the stillness of the night the noise of my blows reached far and wide. louder and louder still i cried to the bishop to open the door. "i wish to rescue france and england from committing an act of infamy; i wish to save history from an unspeakable shame. let me in, bishop! i come to protect you against the execration of posterity, against eternal damnation! open, open the door!" i shouted. i kept pounding upon the door, long and loud, on the eve of that foul day in fourteen hundred thirty-one. i grew impatient with waiting for the door to open, and my voice, which a moment before swept up and down the whole gamut of hope and despair--pleading, shouting, sobbing--now became faint and feeble. i could not arouse the bishop. he was fast asleep. then i was silent myself. suddenly i heard a far away whisper. it did not come from the episcopal palace, nor from the cathedral close by, yet i was sure i heard some one speaking. i listened again. i could now hear more clearly. "i am coming, i am coming," was repeated in caressing accents. "i am coming, to open the door, to awaken the bishop, to usher in a more joyous day for humanity. i will extinguish the fires of persecution, turn executioners into teachers, disarm superstition, and make the whole world sane. in that day joan will triumph over her foes and make their churches her mausoleum." it was the voice of reason! but it took five hundred years for that faint whisper to swell into a mighty chorus, swinging around the globe. that prophecy has been fulfilled, the bishop's door opened, and the church yielded to the clamor of civilization, and changed joan's stake into the shrine where i lit my candle in her honor, in the church of the sacred heart. she is no longer a heretic, she has become a saint. her tears have changed into pearls, her tomb into a cathedral, where she sleeps in pomp on the bosom that once stung her to death. but i was not in rouen in fourteen hundred thirty-one; i was there five hundred years too late. the day after i arrived in the city, i went to the market place, but, instead of a procession with candles and torches, with stakes and fagots, i found commerce, industry, labor, in full possession of the great square. prosperous looking men and women met and greeted one another pleasantly; farmers were selling fruit and vegetables; the women, flowers. even the priests one came across smiled as they saw the happy countenances of the people. what a change! common sense has sweetened human nature and flooded the mind with the light that destroys superstition and makes all men brothers. the guide pointed out to me the white marble slab marking the spot on which joan of arc met her death. "upon this place stood the stake of joan of arc. the ashes of the glorious virgin were thrown into the seine." this is the inscription on the slab which was placed there by the municipality in eighteen hundred ninety-one. close to this same spot the citizens of rouen have erected a fountain, in the form of a monument, to the same heroic maiden. i stood and watched the playful waters as they fell with a liquid plash into the marble basin below. presently, a woman came along with her pitcher. the stake at which joan of arc was burned to death has become a fountain, to which the people now come to slake their thirst. walking up to the woman, i said, "what fountain is this?" "ah, monsieur," she exclaimed, "behold the fountain of joan of arc." "but she was a heretic," i remarked. i can never forget her smile. the sun had arisen in her eyes. "we live in the twentieth century," she replied. and, unconsciously, we both heaved a sigh of relief. i rubbed my eyes to be sure we were not living in the middle ages, when rationalism was still a babe in swaddling clothes, and theology was lord of all. this is the twentieth century--for we are drinking at the fountain of joan of arc instead of carrying fagots to her stake! one of the sunniest spots in my memory will be my meeting with this peasant woman, with her pitcher, at the fountain of joan of arc. but my object in this lecture is to help clear some obscure questions in connection with the trial, martyrdom and subsequent canonization of this girl of nineteen. i wish to bring about a more intelligent appreciation of the story of a young shepherdess, beginning from the day she left her home in domremy, to the fiery scaffold; and thence to a place among the saints in the catholic calendar. this is the only instance in catholic history of a person once destroyed as a heretic who has afterwards received the highest honors within the gift of the church. in fourteen hundred thirty-one an infallible body of ecclesiastics pronounced this young woman to be "a child of perdition, a sorceress, a seducer, a harlot and a heretic." five hundred years after, another infallible body of ecclesiastics belonging to the same church pronounced the same "harlot" and "heretic" to be "angelic" and "divine." one infallible pope allowed her to be burned in fourteen hundred thirty-one; another infallible pope denounced her murderers as detestable criminals--which shows how fallible is infallibility. a great many untruths are being circulated to help clear this contradiction. the clergy are proclaiming from the housetops that it was not the church that tried and condemned joan of arc to torture and death in fourteen hundred thirty-one; on the contrary, it was the church, they say, which has just vindicated her memory and beatified her with superb ceremonies. history, however, gives a different version of the affair. before proceeding to describe the trial and condemnation of joan of arc, let me state the attitude of the rationalist toward joan of arc's claims to inspiration. we can do justice to a woman of her description without believing in miraculous predictions. joan of arc claimed to have seen visions and to have heard voices, which assured her of her divine mission. she was thirteen years of age, according to her testimony, when she felt her first thrill. the visions were repeated. one day, at about noon, in the summer time, and while working on her father's farm, close to the whispering trees, she saw a radiance out of which came a voice which she fancied was the voice of an angel or of a saint. it was not at all strange that she should hear voices. all her education had prepared her for them. she had been told how others had seen angels and heard voices. the literature of the church was full of the miraculous in those days. it was the ambition of every believer to receive visits from the other world, and to be told secrets. joan, the little domremy girl, shared these ambitions. in her case the wish was father to the vision. she heard the voices and saw the faces which her heart coveted. how do we explain her "voices" and her "visions"? the question is a very simple one, unless we have a leaning for theology. the voices that joan heard were those that came from her own heart. it was her own dreams she saw in the sunlight. the young woman had mused over the acts of brigandage of the invading army and their french allies; she had seen the smoke of the burning villages and had heard the wail of her peasant neighbors. the distress of her people had often melted her into tears and wrung many a sigh from her lips. she imagined the whole country summoning her to the rescue. so earnest was she that her thoughts assumed form and shape, and became vocal. thus, out of the substance of her own soul she fashioned the visions which she beheld. she felt herself set apart to be the saviour of france. the brilliance of that thought darkened every other object in life--home, parents, money, marriage! to those who will not be satisfied with this explanation, i beg to say that if the voices were really supernatural, then they should be held responsible for the cruel death to which they led or drove the young woman. why did her voices, if they were divine, desert her when she needed their help most? why did they not save her from prison and the stake? and which of us would like to be guided to the chambers of the inquisition, and the flames of the stake by "heavenly voices"? moreover, if these voices came from god, why did they not speak to the english king, or to the roman pope, in behalf of joan, when she called on them for help? why did they not assume the responsibility for the acts for which she was destroyed? voices and visions which induce a young girl to go to the help of a perishing country only to use her victories for the benefit of a depraved and imbecile prince like charles vii, and desert the young woman herself to be "done" to death! defend us against them! returning to the question of the responsibility of the catholic church for the fate of joan, there are these points to be touched upon. being a matter of history that on the last day of may, fourteen hundred thirty-one, this young woman was publicly burned in the city of rouen, in the square of the cathedral, the question arises: who put her to death? another important question is: why was she put to death? and when we have answered these questions we will be in a position to discuss the much more important question of: why joan of arc was recently translated into a saint by the pope. twenty-five years after the burning of joan, when the city of rouen was restored to the french king, and the english were finally driven across the channel, it was decided to review the evidence upon which the maid had been convicted and put to death. this was done; and with the result that she was acquitted of all the charges of heresy, insubordination to the church, adultery, witchcraft, etc. what do you think was the motive of this revision? the french king had begun to realize the disgrace to which he had been exposed by the condemnation of the maid as a witch. being exceedingly pious--piety and crime were united in him as in many others of that day--he was tormented by the thought that the young woman who had assisted him in his war against the english, and had been the means of securing for him the crown of france, and had also officiated at his coronation in the cathedral of rheims, was condemned as an agent of satan by the church; which, if true, it would make him not only the target for the ridicule and derision of the whole christian world, but, also, an illicit king of the french, who might refuse their allegiance to him because he was made king by a witch and not by an apostle of god. it is no wonder that a superstitious man like charles vii, in a superstitious age, trembled, not only for his crown, but, also, for his life. therefore, in order to make his succession legitimate it was necessary to prove that joan was not a witch, but a true messenger of god. for if joan was a witch, charles vii was not king "by the grace of god," but by a trick of the devil. in self-defense the king of france was not only compelled to reopen the case against joan, now that he was free from english dictation, but he also indicated in advance to the ecclesiastics the conclusion they would have to arrive at. the king could not have allowed, and he would not have allowed, the ecclesiastical council, convened at his request, to arrive at any other verdict than the one which would prove to france and christendom that he was made king at rheims, not by a witch who was excommunicated by the church and flung into the fire, but by a real and inspired apostle of god. of course, it is a matter of history that it was by the help of joan that charles vii became king of france. as already intimated, at the coronation ceremony joan was not only present, but she assisted the archbishop when the latter placed the crown upon the king's head. the inauguration was practically the work of joan. it was the fulfillment of a prediction she had repeatedly made, that she would conquer the english and crown the french king in the city of rheims. if she was a witch the coronation was invalid. the ceremony of the anointing of a king is one of the most solemn in the catholic church. the condemnation of joan as a witch had not only stripped this ceremony of its sacredness, but it had also made it null and void, nay, more, a blasphemy. how could a king, anointed by the help of a witch, be the king of a christian nation? to appreciate this argument we must remember how bigoted the people were in the middle ages. in self-defense, therefore, charles vii was compelled to prove to the french, and to the whole world, that the woman to whom he owed his elevation to the throne was not a heretic. let us recapitulate. the king of france ordered the church to make out a new certificate for joan. the church obeyed the french king, even as the same church twenty-five years earlier had obeyed the king of england and condemned joan to death. when the english were masters of france, the catholic church pleased them by delivering up the conqueror of england to be burned alive; when the english were driven out of the country and the french were again in control this sentence was reversed and joan was proven to have been a dutiful child of the church. thus it will be seen that the church swung with the english when the english ruled the land, and she swung with the french when the french had driven the english out of the country. the church was with england at one time, and she was with france at another--but never with joan. i am milder in my criticism than the facts warrant. i am making strenuous efforts to speak with immoderation of an "infallible institution." but why was it to the interest of the english to have joan declared a witch? their motives were as personal as those of the french king. the english felt humiliated to think that a mere woman had whipped them, and therefore they were determined to prove that she was more than a woman--an agent of the devil. there was no secret about this. their motive was very plain. it was to their interest to show that joan was the personification of satan, and that consequently the english should not be blamed for running away from her presence, because who could withstand the devil? the english army did not go down before a girl, but before a sorceress. even as the king of france did not wish it said that he owed his victory over the english to a witch, or that he was made king by an apostate, the english did not wish it said that they were conquered by a saint, for that would make god the enemy of the english. one king wanted joan damned, and the church accommodated him by damning her; another wanted joan beatified, and the church beatified her. it is admitted that the english could not have burned joan as a witch without the consent of the church. they could have burned her as a prisoner, but that would not have answered their purpose--she must be declared a witch in order to vindicate the amour propre of the english people. it is the exclusive prerogative of the church to decide questions of orthodoxy or heresy. no king has the right to admit or exclude any one from the communion of the church. whether or not joan was a witch was a theological question and could only be decided by the ecclesiastical court. neither could the king of france declare joan of arc innocent of heresy without the consent of the church. it follows then that the principal actor in the trial, the condemnation and the death of the young woman under the english, and her subsequent vindication and beatification, was the church of rome, since without its consent the english could not have made a heretic of her, nor the french a saviour and a saint. a secular government may declare who shall be its military heroes, or who shall be court-martialed and disgraced, but only the church enjoys the right to damn or to canonize. this point is so clinching that even the most zealous papist must admit that at one time, when all europe was catholic--england as much so as france--and the pope was as supreme in one country as in the other, a girl of nineteen, who had rendered heroic services to her oppressed country, could not have been declared a heretic and cast into the fire at the door of a cathedral, in the presence of bishops, priests, a cardinal and a representative of the holy inquisition, without the knowledge and consent of the holy roman catholic church. an attempt has been made to throw the entire blame of the proceedings against joan of arc upon the english. there is no doubt about the anxiety of the english to punish the maid who had robbed them of the spoils of their victory over the french and brought dishonor upon their arms. but a mere military punishment, as already intimated, would not have been sufficient to satisfy the english--she had to be excommunicated from christendom as one possessed of the devil. that was the only way to save the english of the disgrace of having been beaten by a woman, and the records show that the church, instead of reluctantly carrying out the wishes of the english, was more than pleased to bring joan to the stake. letters were written from the office of the inquisition to the english king, complaining against his lukewarmness in the matter of prosecuting the young woman. the catholic university of paris, also, sent a special communication to king henry of england to remind him of his duty to help the church to put down heresy. the english were urged to hand joan over to the bishop and the inquisition, that the ecclesiastics might proceed with her trial without delay. and when finally joan faced her judges, forty in number, every one of them was an ecclesiastic, and out of the forty, thirty-eight were frenchmen. moreover, the archbishop of rheims, who was also chancellor of france, wrote a letter which is still in existence, in which he congratulated the french upon the capture of joan of arc, whom he denounces as a heretic--"a proud and rebellious child who refuses to submit to the church." being the superior of the bishop of beauvais, who was in charge of the trial, the archbishop could have stopped the prosecution if he had the least sympathy or pity for the maid. but to try to save a heretic would be the worst kind of heresy. that explains the utter desertion of joan by all france--people, priest and king. in this connection a comparison should be made between the zeal of the clergy to bring joan to trial for heresy and the slowness and indifference with which the church proceeded to obey the summons of the king of france twenty-five years after to reinstate her into the fellowship of catholic christendom. the records show that it required considerable urging and manoeuvring on the part of the french government to bring about a revision of the ecclesiastical sentence against the maid. as long as nicholas v was pope nothing was accomplished. the case was reopened under pope calixtus. not until it was realized that further delay in the matter would greatly irritate, not only the french king, but also the populace, now freed from english dominion and seeking to live down the evil reputation of having harbored an apostate in their midst, did rome stir itself in the matter. it will be seen that it was not the pope nor the church that took the initiative in behalf of joan of arc. the church only yielded to the pressure from the state, that had now become powerful. had the english remained in control of france the maid of orleans would never have been remembered by the catholic church, much less restored to honor and immortality. "we do not deny," answer the defenders of the church, "that _some_ bishops and even cardinals persecuted joan of arc to death. but is it just to hold the whole church responsible for the crime of an insignificant minority?" this is the main defense of the catholics against the arguments of the rationalists and the facts of history. be it noted that i am not trying to abuse the catholics; i am only sorry that they should be unwilling, even at this date, to say, "we are sorry." to commit mistakes is human. but why should the church move heaven and earth to prove that it has never committed a mistake? the attempt is also made to prove that the ecclesiastics who are responsible for the death of joan were wicked men and have been repudiated by the church. to this is added the further defense that it was the gold of the english which corrupted these priests. but such a defense, i regret to say, does not reflect credit upon the intelligence or the honor of the church of rome. in this day of general information it is impossible for anyone to wrap up the facts of history in a napkin, as it were, and put them away where no one may have access to them. the judges of joan were all ordained ministers of the church. the presiding priest was a bishop--the bishop of beauvais. he was assisted by a cardinal, a vice-president of the inquisition, and a number of other ecclesiastics who were connected with the university of paris. is it reasonable to suppose that the inquisition and the catholic university of paris, and all the clergy of england and france represented only a discredited section of the church? it is the pride of the catholics that their church has never been divided or schismatic, and that it has been one and indivisible "always and everywhere." how is this claim to be reconciled with the excuse that a considerable portion of the catholic church in the fifteenth century openly ignored the authority of the pope and did as they pleased without incurring the displeasure of the hierarchy for their insubordination? furthermore, if only a part of the church persecuted the young woman, what did the rest of the church do to save her? we would like the names of the priests who interceded in her behalf. it does not give me a bit of pleasure to prove the catholic church responsible for this as for many other burnings at the stake, but it gives me pleasure to be able to show that any institution claiming infallibility, to defend that claim must persecute. and why do i take pleasure in proving this to be inevitable? it might open the eyes of the religious world to the danger of supernaturalism. if the christians no longer burn people they do not like, it is not because their bibles have been altered, but because they no longer believe in them as they used to. it is good news to report that supernaturalism is waning, for it means the progress of science and sanity. there is still another point to be touched upon: when all europe heard of the fate that had befallen a girl of nineteen through the machinations, let us say, of a few naughty catholic priests--what did rome do to these same priests who had so disgraced their "holy" profession, as well as brought lasting shame upon civilization? is not this a pertinent question? joan's trial lasted for four months. not only france and england, but all christendom was interested in the outcome. during all this time not only was there not a word of protest from rome, but what is more significant, shortly after the trial and condemnation of joan, the pope rewarded her accusers and persucutors with ecclesiastical promotion. again, i must hasten to explain that i am not interested in embarrassing the catholics; my point is to strike at _dogma_--which turns hearts into stone, and makes of the intellect a juggler's instrument. joan was sacrificed, nay,--the honor of france, of europe, of civilization, of humanity--was flung into the fire with joan, to save--what? dogma! not only did the church fail to punish a single one of the forty ecclesiastics who tried joan, not to mention hundreds of others who cooperated with them to bring about her destruction, but, as intended, gifts were conferred upon the principal actors in this awful drama. roussel, one of the ecclesiastics who figured prominently in the proceedings, was given the archepiscopacy of the city of rouen--the very city in which a girl not yet twenty, and who had served france on the battlefield, and brought victory to her flag, was beaten and burnt to death. pasquier, an ordinary priest when he was serving as one of the judges, was made a bishop after the execution of joan. two others, gilles and le fevre, were also advanced to upper ranks in the church. thomas courcelles, one of the most merciless judges of joan--who voted in favor of subjecting the prisoner to physical torture to compel her to admit she was a witch--this priest with the unenviable reputation was also promoted to a lucrative post in the famous church of notre dame, in paris. finally, the man who engineered the trial, who presided over the sessions, and to whom joan said, "you are the cause of my misfortunes"--the bishop of beauvais, the man whom all catholics justly execrate today--even he was rewarded by the "holy father"; he was given the episcopal seat of lisieux. does it look as though the crime against joan were the work of a discredited minority in the catholic church? i repeat, it was dogma, it was revelation, it was infallibility, it was supernaturalism, and not this or that priest--that should be held guilty. to meet these arguments the catholic apologists call attention to the fact that the church "has a horror of blood," and that it has never put anyone to death for any cause whatever. but this is true only in a pickwickian sense. it is like the head saying to the hands, "i have never committed the least violence against anyone." the hands, it is evident, commit the acts, but whose hands are they? the hands only obey the head, and for the head to blame the hands for carrying out its orders, realizing its thoughts and wishes, would not even be amusing, much less convincing. it is the judge, or the court, that takes the life of the culprit, for instance, and not the executioner. the catholic church demands the death of the heretic. is this denied? read thomas aquinas, the most honored saint and theologian of catholicism; read the decrees of the general councils of the church and the encyclicals of st. peter's successors, and a thousand, thousand proofs will be found in them to substantiate the statement. it is the bible that commands the death of the heretic. no church founded on the bible can afford to be tolerant. the theory of christianity as well as of mohammedanism is that the sword which the king carries has been blessed and put in his hands that he may put down the heretics. the civil authorities then, in bringing joan of arc to the fire were carrying out the instructions of the forty ecclesiastical judges who condemned her to death. had these judges found her innocent, the state could not have destroyed her life; it was the will of the priestly court that she should die, and the secular authorities fulfilled its wish. but was joan a heretic? strenuous efforts are made to show that she was not. this point is a vital one. the church, in self-defense, is bound to produce arguments to prove that joan of arc was an orthodox, obedient, and submissive child of the church. if she was not orthodox, then the church has sainted a heretic in the person of joan of arc. one of the questions they asked her at the trial was whether she would be willing to submit the question of her "visions" to the church; that is to say, would she consent to the findings of an ecclesiastical court concerning herself and her mission? to this the answer was that she held herself responsible only to god. this was considered a rebellious answer, and it was--from the church's point of view. according to catholic theology the church is divided into two branches,--the church militant, which is composed of the pope, the priests and their flock; and the church triumphant, which is presided over by god and the saints in glory. joan said she was prepared to submit to the church triumphant--the church on high, that is to say, to god, but to nobody else. this also was a heresy. her clerical judges insisted that to be a good catholic she must bow to the will of the church on earth--the pope and his representatives. her heresy then was both real and serious. she appealed from the pope to god. she placed her own conscience above the authority of the church. she believed in private judgment, the exercise of which is forbidden by the church. in refusing to let the pope act as the middleman between god and herself she was threatening the very existence of the papacy. there is then no doubt that both by her independent conduct and by her original answers joan attacked the very fundamentals of catholicism. it follows, then, that the pope a few years ago made a saint out of a heretic. although joan was an uncultivated girl, able neither to read nor write, she was gifted with good common sense. she saw at a glance that if she were to submit to the church she would thereby be casting doubts upon the genuineness of her "visions." she preferred to go to the stake rather than do that. she was really between two fires: the priests threatened her body; god in her conscience threatened her soul. she decided to obey the voice within. the decision cost her her life. some of the questions put to her and the answers which joan made are really remarkable. they show the craft of her judges, on the one hand, and the courage and common sense of the victim, on the other. "will you not submit to our holy father, the pope?" they asked her. "bring me before the pope, and i will answer," she replied. in other words, they were trying to have her admit that she had no right to think for herself or to exercise any independence at all. but she was too serious and earnest a person to subscribe to any such doctrine. she had never understood that to be a catholic meant to be a bondswoman. "take care," she said, turning her fiery glance upon her inquisitors, "take care that you do not put yourselves in the place of god." by such an answer, the young woman, still in her teens, had shot the catholic church in the heart. the nature of the charges against joan as formulated by her judges also goes to prove that she was considered a heretic and condemned to death for that offense. the eleventh charge against her reads: "she has adored her saints without taking clerical advice." charge twelfth reads: "she refuses to submit her conduct and revelation to the church." when asked if she would obey the church, her reply was, "god first being served." luther said no more than that--and the catholic church was split in two. everything goes to show that the domremy peasant girl was a private thinker, that is to say, a heretic. listen to this: "i will believe that our holy father, the pope of rome and the bishops and other churchmen are for the guarding of the christian faith and the punishment of heretics, _but as for me and my facts, i will only submit to the church of heaven_." to be sure that is insubordination; it is placing herself not only on an equality with the pope, but even above him. of course, joan was not a rationalist--far from it--but she was an independent catholic--that is to say--not subject to the church--and that is heresy. is it any wonder that her sentence read: "therefore we pronounce you a rotten limb, and as such to be lopped off from the church." and the reason this sentence gave satisfaction to the catholics all over the world was because such initiative and self-respect as joan had manifested, if tolerated, would bring about the collapse of the infallible authority of the church. the university of paris wrote to the pope, to the king of england and the bishops, lauding the priests who had purged the church of this dangerous girl with her "i think so," or "i believe so,"--with the emphasis on the "i." in this same letter the bishop of beauvais, the evil genius of joan, to whom she said, when she saw the stake awaiting her, "bishop, i die through you!" is commended for "his great gravity and holy way of proceeding, which ought to be most satisfactory to all." it took five hundred years for the catholic church to discover that the young woman burnt as a heretic was really a saint. but the church did not make this discovery until modern thought, benign and brave, had taken the outcast girl under its protection. the french nation had already made a national heroine of her, when the vatican decided to enroll her name among the hallowed ones in its calendar. the beatification of joan was brought about ostensibly by the report that certain sufferers from cancer, and other incurable maladies, had been completely cured by praying to joan of arc for help. the maid had become a miracle worker, and hence worthy to receive a medal, as it were, from the pope. joan is now a new income as well as a saint. joan owes her vindication to the rationalists of france. the man in recent years whose books, position and influence did more than anything else to bring about a new attitude toward joan of arc, was marcelin berthelot, who now sleeps in the pantheon as one of the glories of his country. a few years ago, i received an invitation to visit him at bellevue near paris. to give you an idea of the great man who did so much to rejuvenate europe and throw its whole weight on the side of justice to the martyr--woman of france. i shall reproduce in this connection what i said about him after my interview with him: "who are the rationalists?" is one of the questions frequently asked. well, they are the intellectual leaders of the world, as what i learned about berthelot clearly shows. he was the man upon whom two european sovereigns had conferred the highest decorations in their power for services rendered to human progress,--whom his own countrymen had honored by making him a senator for life; who twice had been appointed minister of foreign affairs; who had been elected an honorary member of all the scientific associations of the world; upon whom the royal scientific society of london has bestowed its most coveted honors; who is the perpetual secretary of the academy of science of paris; a member of the academy française, and, therefore, one of the immortals; and whose volumes, inventions, discoveries and contributions have placed modern civilization under inexpressible obligations to him. with all these dignities and titles, richly deserved, m. berthelot is as gracious in his manners, as unassuming, as childlike and modest, as one could desire. he displays all the charms of the real man of worth--the man of genius. though in his seventy-sixth year, the sage and diplomat still possessed the vigor of a man of fifty, pursuing his studies and interesting himself in the politics of his time, with the ardor and fervor of youth. the accumulation of his years and his indefatigable labors had by no means impaired the faculties of his mind, being still regarded by his countrymen as one of the most fertile brains and sanest intellects of modern europe. two years previously all france, one might say, had met in paris to celebrate at the sorbonne the completion of berthelot's fifty years of intellectual labor. it was on this occasion that the foreign potentates sent their delegates and decorations to him. every civilized country was represented at the festivities by its foremost men of letters and diplomats, while all the senators of france, the president of the republic, the members of his cabinet, and all the heads of the colleges were assembled to applaud the _master_ whose half a century of study and service had so greatly augmented the horizon of man and increased the light of the world. when this distinguished scientist was admitted into the french academy, jules lemaitre, in his address of welcome, declared that berthelot was the real creator of the modern industrial era, which had multiplied the resources of man a hundredfold. he called berthelot the discoverer of modern chemistry, which has in so short a time transformed the face of the earth, and which holds the secret of the solution of the social and economic problems of the day. "'chemistry" declares berthelot, "'is a new gospel, which brings tidings of great power to mankind.'" "it will put an end to the cruel struggle of classes, and make of warlike politics, now one of the scourges of nations, a lost art. it will do this by placing within the reach of all an inexhaustible wealth of food and raiment, thereby curing man forever of the disease of discontent." "there are only two things worth living for," said m. berthelot, in an address at the palais de trocadero before six thousand frenchmen--"the love of truth and the love of one's fellows." that _love of truth_ opened for joan the doors of the catholic church, shut against her five hundred years ago and it opened to berthelot the doors of the pantheon--the temple of the immortals! a final word. i have as much compassion and sympathy for the catholics as i have for the martyred girl--indeed more, since they need more. joan has been vindicated by the broader and more benign thought of this! age. the same serene and sweet power will transform the catholic church and make it one of the most progressive forces of our america. i have delivered this lecture to hasten that lovely day! [illustration: ] joan of arc books by laura e. richards joan of arc a daughter of jehu abigail adams and her times pippin elizabeth fry florence nightingale mrs. tree mrs. tree's will miss jimmy the wooing of calvin parks journal and letters of samuel gridley howe two noble lives captain january a happy little time when i was your age five minute stories in my nursery the golden windows the silver crown the joyous story of toto the life of julia ward howe _with maud howe elliott_, etc., etc. [illustration: joan of arc] joan of arc by laura e. richards author of "florence nightingale," "abigail adams and her times," "elizabeth fry," etc. [illustration: logo] d. appleton and company new york london copyright, , by d. appleton and company printed in the united states of america to the memory of theodore roosevelt "also a soldier" the extracts from "joan of arc," by francis c. lowell, are used by permission of houghton mifflin company. selections from "the maid of france," by andrew lang, are used by permission of messrs. longmans, green & co. theodosia garrison's poem, "the soul of jeanne d'arc," is reproduced by permission of chas. scribner's sons. contents chapter page i. france imperishable ii. the lion and the lilies iii. domrÉmy iv. grapes of wrath v. the voices vi. the empty throne vii. vaucouleurs and chinon viii. recognition ix. orleans x. the relief xi. the deliverance xii. the week of victories xiii. rheims xiv. paris xv. compiÈgne xvi. rouen chapter i france imperishable the soul of jeanne d'arc she came not into the presence as a martyred saint might come, crowned, white-robed and adoring, with very reverence dumb-- she stood as a straight young soldier, confident, gallant, strong, who asks a boon of his captain in the sudden hush of the drum. she said: "now have i stayed too long in this my place of bliss, with these glad dead that, comforted, forget what sorrow is upon that world whose stony stair they climbed to come to this. "but lo, a cry hath torn the peace wherein so long i stayed, like a trumpet's call at heaven's wall from a herald unafraid,-- a million voices in one cry, '_where is the maid, the maid?_' "i had forgot from too much joy that olden task of mine, but i have heard a certain word shatter the chant divine, have watched a banner glow and grow before mine eyes for sign. "i would return to that my land flung in the teeth of war, i would cast down my robe and crown that pleasure me no more, and don the armor that i knew, the valiant sword i bore. "and angels militant shall fling the gates of heaven wide, and souls new-dead whose lives were shed like leaves on war's red tide shall cross their swords above our heads and cheer us as we ride. "for with me goes that soldier saint, saint michael of the sword, and i shall ride on his right side, a page beside his lord, and men shall follow like swift blades to reap a sure reward. "grant that i answer this my call, yea, though the end may be the naked shame, the biting flame, the last, long agony; i would go singing down that road where fagots wait for me. "mine be the fire about my feet, the smoke above my head; so might i glow, a torch to show the path my heroes tread; _my captain! oh, my captain, let me go back!_" she said. --_theodosia garrison._ in the fourth year of the great war ( ), the sufferings of france, the immemorial battlefield of nations, were in all our hearts. we heard from time to time that france was "bled white"; that she had been injured past recovery; that she was dying. students of history know better than this. france does not die. she bleeds; yes! she has bled, and stanched her wounds and gone gloriously on, and bled again, since the days when gaul and iberian, kymrian and phoenician, hun and goth, raged and fought to and fro over the patient fields of the "pleasant land." ask caesar and vercingetorix, attila and theodoric, clovis and charles the hammer, if france can die, and hear their shadowy laughter! wave after wave, sea upon sea, of blood and carnage, sweep over her; she remains imperishable. the sun of her day of glory never sets. her darkest day, perhaps, was that against which her brightest flower shines white. in telling, however briefly, the story of joan the maid, it is necessary to call back that day, in some ways so like our own; to see what was the soil from which that flower sprang in all its radiant purity. the hundred years' war prepared the soil; ploughed and harrowed, burned and pulverized: that war which began in with edward iii. of england's assuming the title of king of france and quartering the french arms with those of england; which ended in with the departure of the english from france, which they had meantime (in some part) ruled and harried. their departure was due chiefly to the genius of a peasant girl of eighteen years. france in the fifteenth century: what was it like? king charles vi. of france (to go back no further) whose reign sully, "our own good maximilian," calls "the grave of good laws and good morals in france," was not yet twelve years old when (in ) his father, charles v., died. his majority had been fixed at fourteen, and for two years he was to remain under the guardianship of his four uncles, the dukes of anjou, berry, burgundy and bourbon. with the fourth, his mother's brother, we have no concern, for he made little trouble; the other three were instantly in dispute as to which should rule during the two years. the struggle was a brief one; philip of burgundy, surnamed the bold, was by far the ablest of the three. when the young king was crowned at rheims (october th, ), philip, without a word to anyone, sat him down at his nephew's side, thus asserting himself premier peer of france, a place which was to be held by him and his house for many a long day. at seventeen, charles was married (in the cathedral of amiens, the second jewel of france, where that of rheims was the first) to isabel of bavaria, of infamous memory; and the first shadows began to darken around him. the war with england was going on in a desultory fashion. forty years had passed since créçy. the dukes of lancaster and gloucester, uncles and regents of richard ii., the young english king, were not the men to press matters, and charles v. of france was wise enough to let well alone. the young king, however, and his uncle philip of burgundy, thought it would be a fine thing to land in england with a powerful army, and return the bitter compliments paid by edward iii. "across the channel!" was the cry, and preparations were made on a grand scale. in september, , thirteen hundred and eighty-seven vessels, large and small, were collected for the voyage; and olivier de clisson, constable of france, built a wooden town which was to be transported to england and rebuilt after landing, "in such sort," says froissart, "that the lords might lodge therein and retire at night, so as to be in safety from sudden awakenings, and sleep in security." along the flemish and dutch coasts, vessels were loaded by torchlight with "hay in casks, biscuits in sacks, onions, peas, beans, barley, oats, candles, gaiters, shoes, boots, spurs, iron, nails, culinary utensils, and all things that can be used for the service of man."[ ] the flemings and hollanders demanded instant payment and good prices. "if you want us and our service," they said, "pay us on the nail; otherwise we will be neutral."[ ] the king was all impatience to embark, and hung about his ship all day. "i am very eager to be off!" he would say. "i think i shall be a good sailor, for the sea does me no harm." one would have thought he was sailing round the world, instead of across the british channel. unfortunately for the would-be navigator, the duke of berry, for whom he was waiting, was not eager to be off: did not want to go at all, in fact; answered charles's urgent letters with advice "not to take any trouble, but to amuse himself, for the matter would probably terminate otherwise than was imagined."[ ] in mid-october, when the autumn storms were due, uncle berry appeared, and was met by reproaches. "but for you, uncle," exclaimed charles, "i should have been in england by this time. if anyone goes," he added, "i will." but no one went. "'one day when it was calm,' says the monk of st. denis, 'the king, completely armed, went with his uncles aboard of the royal vessel; but the wind did not permit them to get more than two miles out to sea, but drove them back to the shore they had just left in spite of the sailors' efforts. the king, who saw with deep displeasure his hopes thus frustrated, had orders given to his troops to go back, and at his departure, left, by the advice of his barons, some men-of-war to unload the fleet, and place it in a place of safety as soon as possible. but the enemy gave them no time to execute the order. as soon as the calm allowed the english to set sail, they bore down on the french, burned or took in tow to their own ports the most part of the fleet, carried off the supplies, and found two thousands casks full of wine, which sufficed a long while for the wants of england.'"[ ] charles decided to let england alone for a while, and turned his thoughts elsewhere. he would visit paris; he would make a royal progress through his dominions, would show himself king indeed, free from avuncular trammels. so said, so done. paris received him with open arms; the king was good and gentle; people liked to see him passing along the street. he abated certain taxes, restored certain liberties; hopes and gratulations were in the air. he lodged in his palace at st. paul, that home of luxury and tragedy, with "its great ordered library, its carved reading-desks, its carefully painted books, and the perfumed silence that turns reading into a feast of all the senses,"[ ] that palace "made for a time in which arms had passed from a game to a kind of cruel pageantry, and in which the search for beauty had ended in excess, and had made the decoration of life no longer ancillary to the main purpose of living, but an unconnected and insufficient end of itself."[ ] in this palace of his own building, charles v. had died. here his son grew up, handsome, amiable, flighty; here he brought his bride in the splendor of her then unsullied youth; here was born the prince for whom the maid of france was to recover a lost kingdom. after frolicking awhile with his good people of paris, charles started once more on his travels, and for six months wandered happily and expensively through his kingdom. "when the king stopped anywhere, there were wanted for his own table, and for the maintenance of his following, six oxen, eighty sheep, thirty calves, seven hundred chickens, two hundred pigeons, and many other things besides. the expenses for the king were set down at two hundred and thirty livres a day, without counting the presents which the large towns felt bound to make him."[ ] wherever he went, he heard tales of the bad government of his uncles; listened, promised amendment; those uncles remaining the while at home in much disquiet of mind. as the event turned out, their anxiety was needless. charles's tragic fate was even then closing about him, and the power was soon to be in their hands again. in june, , olivier de clisson was waylaid after banqueting with the king at st. paul, stabbed by peter de craon, a cousin of the duke of brittany, and left for dead. the news coming suddenly to the king threw him into great agitation; the sight of his servant and friend, bathed in blood, added to his discomposure. he vowed revenge and declared instant war on the duke of brittany. in vain the other uncles sought to quiet his fury; his only reply was to summon them and his troops to le mans, and start with them on the fatal march to brittany. it was in the great forest of le mans that the curse of the valois, long foreshadowed, if men had had eyes to see, came upon the unhappy king. the heat was excessive; he was clad in heavy, clinging velvets and satins. he was twice startled, first by the appearance of a white-clad madman, who, springing out of the woods, grasped his horse by the bridle, crying, "go no further! thou art betrayed!" then by a sudden clash of steel, lance on helmet of a page overcome by the heat. at this harsh sound, the king was seen to shudder and crouch for an instant; then, drawing his sword and rising in his stirrups, he set spurs to his horse, crying, "forward upon these traitors! they would deliver me up to the enemy!" he charged upon his terrified followers, who scattered in all directions. several were wounded, and more than one actually killed by the king in his frenzy. none dared approach him; he rode furiously hither and thither, shouting and slashing, till when utterly exhausted, his chamberlain, william de martel, was able to come up behind and throw his arms round the panting body. charles was disarmed, lifted from his horse, laid on the ground. his brother and uncles hastened to him, but he did not recognize them; his eyes were set, and he spoke no word. "'we must go back to le mans,' said the dukes of berry and burgundy; 'here is an end of the trip to brittany.' "on the way they fell in with a wagon drawn by oxen: in this they laid the king of france, having bound him for fear of a renewal of his frenzy, and so took him back, motionless and speechless, to the town."[ ] thus began the agony which was to endure for thirty long years. there were lucid intervals, in which the poor king would beg pardon of all he might have injured in his frenzy: would ask to have his hunting-knife taken away, and cry to those about him, "if any of you, by i know not what witchcraft, be guilty of my sufferings, i adjure him in the name of jesus christ, to torment me no more, and to put an end to me forthwith without making me linger so."[ ] he did not know his false, beautiful wife, but was in terror of her. "what woman is this?" he would say. "what does she want? save me from her!"[ ] at first every care was given him; but in , we find the poor soul being "fed like a dog, and allowed to fall ravenously upon his food. for five whole months he had not a change of clothes."[ ] finally someone was roused to shame and remorse at the piteous sight; he was washed, shaved, and decently clothed. it took twelve men to accomplish the task, but directly it was done, the poor soul became quiet, and even recognized some of those about him. seeing juvenal des ursins, the provost of paris, he said, "juvenal, let us not waste our time!"--surely one of the most piteous of recorded utterances. the gleams of reason were few and feeble. in one of them, the king (in ) put the government of the realm into the hands of his brother, louis, duke of orleans: burgundy took fire at once, and the fight was on, a fight which only our own day can parallel. we can but glance briefly at some of its principal features. in philip the bold of burgundy (to whom we might apply philip de comines' verdict on louis xi: "in fine, for a prince, not so bad!") died, and his son john the fearless ruled in his stead. his reign began auspiciously. he inclined to push the war with england; he went out of his way to visit his cousin of orleans. the two princes dined together with the duke of berry; took the holy communion together, parted with mutual vows of friendship. paris was edified, and hoped for days of joyful peace. a few nights after, as orleans was returning from dining with queen isabel, about eight in the evening, singing and playing with his glove, he was set upon by a band of armed men, emissaries of burgundy, and literally hacked to pieces. now all was confusion. the poor king was told to be angry, and was furious: sentenced burgundy to all manner of penances, and banished him for twenty years. unfortunately, burgundy was at the moment preparing to enter paris as a conqueror. learning this, king, queen, dauphin and court fled to tours, and burgundy found no one in paris to conquer. this was awkward; the king's suffering person was still a necessary adjunct toward ruling the kingdom. burgundy made overtures; begged pardon; prayed "my lord of orleans and my lords his brothers to banish from their hearts all hatred and vengeance." the king was bidden to forgive my lord of burgundy, and obeyed. a treaty was made; peace was declared; the king returned, and all paris went out to meet him, shouting, "_noël_!" this was in ; that same year, charles of orleans, son of the murdered duke, lost his wife, isabel of france, daughter of the king. a year later he married bonne d'armagnac, daughter of bernard of that name, a count of southern france, bold, ambitious, unscrupulous. count bernard instantly took command of the orleanist party, in the name of his son-in-law. he vowed revenge on burgundy for the murder of duke louis, and called upon all good and true men to join his standard; thenceforward the party took his name, and burgundian and armagnac arrayed themselves against each other. now indeed, the evil time came upon france. she was cut literally in twain by the opposing factions. the hatred between them was not only traditional, but racial. burgundy gathered under his banner all the northern people, those who spoke the _langue d'oil_; in the south, where the _langue d'oc_ was spoken, gascon and provençal flocked to the standard of armagnac. backward and forward over terrified france raged the ferocious soldiery. count bernard was a brutal savage, but he was a great captain. the albrets and many another proud clan were ready to fight under his banner; the cause did not specially matter, so long as fighting and plunder were to be had. among them, they formed the first infantry of france. wherever they marched, terror ran before them. they summoned the peasantry to bind on the white cross of armagnac; he who refused lost arm, leg, or life itself, on the spot. this method of recruiting proved eminently successful, and the count soon had a goodly army. john the fearless of burgundy ("who," says a french writer, "might better have been called john the pitiless, since the only fear he was without was that of god") was hardly less ferocious than his enemy. in one battle he slew some thousands of unarmed citizens: in another he massacred twenty-five thousand armagnacs at one stroke. one would really think it had been the twentieth century instead of the fifteenth. burgundy, cunning as well as ferocious, won over to his side first queen isabel, false as she was fair and frail; then the kings of sicily and spain. still seeking popularity, he besieged calais, but was driven off by the english; finally he took possession of paris and the king, and ruled both for a time with success and satisfaction. both parties did homage to henry iv. of england ( - ), who took the provinces they offered and kept his own counsel. by and by there was trouble in paris; the butchers, a devout body, who carried axe or cleaver in one hand and rosary in the other, were scandalized by the dissolute habits of louis the dauphin and his followers; took it upon themselves to mend matters. they turned axe and cleaver upon the young courtiers; slew, tortured, imprisoned, at their will, with psalms and canticles on their lips. moreover, encouraged by burgundy, their friend and patron, they preached daily to the dauphin, and a carmelite monk of their following reproved him by the hour together. bored and enraged, young louis wrote to the armagnacs, begging them to deliver him. they rushed with joyous ferocity to the rescue. the butchers were dispersed; burgundy was forced to flee from paris, leaving the jealously guarded person of the king in the hands of the enemy. the orleanist princes entered paris in triumph; everybody, everything, from the dauphin himself to the images of virgin and saints, was draped in the white scarf of the armagnacs. in a peace was patched up: it was agreed that neither the white scarf nor burgundy's cross should be worn. nothing special was said about the murdering, which seems to have gone on none the less, albeit less openly. in henry (iv.) of lancaster died, and henry (v.) of monmouth reigned in his stead. the day of desultory warfare was over. unhappy france, bleeding at every pore from the blows of her own children, must now face the might of england, led by one of the world's greatest captains. torn by factions, weakened by loss of blood, ridden first by one furious free-booter and then another, what chance had she? trembling, her people asked the question: the answer was agincourt. footnotes: [ ] guizot, "popular history of france," iii, p. . [ ] guizot, "popular history of france," iii, p. . [ ] guizot, "popular history of france," iii, p. . [ ] belloc, "paris," p. . [ ] guizot, iii, p. . [ ] guizot, iii, p. . [ ] guizot, iii, p. . [ ] guizot, iii, p. . chapter ii the lion and the lilies "fair stood the wind for france."--_michael drayton._ i yield to no one in my love and admiration for henry v. in his nobler aspects, but i am not writing his story now. he came to france, not as the debonair and joyous prince of our affections, but as a conqueror; came, he told the unhappy french, as the instrument of god, to punish them for their sins. the phrase may have sounded less mocking then than it does to-day. france knew all about the sins; she had suffered under them, almost to death; it seemed hard that she must bear the punishment too. neither john of burgundy nor bernard of armagnac was at agincourt. they hovered apart, two great eagles--or vultures, shall we say?--watching, ready to pounce when their moment struck. the battle lost and won, both chiefs made a dash for paris and the king. armagnac made the better speed; burgundy arrived to find his enemy, with six thousand fierce gascons, already in possession of the city, king and dauphin both in his hands, and the self-constituted constable of france, in lieu of charles d'albret, slain in the great battle. savage though he was, armagnac was a frenchman, and a great captain. for some months he kept not only burgundy but england at bay, holding the royal city against all comers. he even made a dash on harfleur (now, , in the hands of the english) which might have been successful but for the cowardice of some of his followers. he promptly hanged the cowards, but the moment was lost. returning to paris, he found the burgundians making headway; banished, hanged, drowned, beheaded, right and left, imposed tremendous taxes, and for a time fancied himself, and seemed almost to be, virtual king of france. it was only seeming; burgundy's hour was at hand. among those banished by armagnac was queen isabel, whom (after drowning one of her lovers in a sack) he had sent off to prison in the castle of tours. down swept john the fearless, carried her off, proclaimed her regent, and in her name annulled the recent tax edicts. this was a mortal blow to armagnac. his gascons held paris for him, but without money he could not hold them. furious, he laid hands on whatever he could find; "borrowed" church vessels of gold and silver and melted them down to pay his men. all would not do. paris now hated as much as it feared him and his gascons. a little while, and hate, aided by treachery, triumphed over fear. one night the keys of the st. germain gate were stolen from their keeper--some say by his own son. eight hundred burgundians crept in, headed by the sire de l'isle-adam: crept, pounced, first on that palace where tragedy and madness kept watch and watch; then, the king once in their hands, on the holders of the city. the dauphin fled to the bastille. armagnac and his chief followers were betrayed and imprisoned. the banished butchers returned, thirsting for blood. the hunt was up. what followed was a foreshadowing of st. bartholomew, of the terror, of the commune. paris went mad, mad as her king in the forest of le mans. all day long frenzied bands, citizens and burgundians together, roamed the streets, seizing and slaying; all night the tocsin rang, rousing the maddened people to still wilder delirium. on the night of june th, , they broke open the prisons and murdered their inmates without discrimination; armagnacs, debtors, bishops, state and political prisoners, even some of their own party; a slash across the throat was the kindest death they met. count bernard of armagnac was among the first victims: for days his naked body hung on view in the palace of justice, while in the streets the paris children played with the stripped corpses of his followers. private grudge or public grievance could be revenged by merely raising the cry of "armagnac." a sword swept, and the score was wiped out. between midnight of saturday the twelfth and monday the fourteenth of june ( ) sixteen hundred persons were massacred in the prisons and streets of paris. so fell the armagnacs: and in their fall dragged their opponents with them. paris streets were full of unburied corpses; paris gutters ran blood; paris larders were bare of food. the surviving armagnacs, assembled at melun, kept supplies from entering the city on one side, the english on the other. hunger and plague, hand in hand, stalked through the dreadful streets. soon fifty thousand bodies were lying there, with no sword in their vitals. men said that those who had hand in the recent massacres died first, with cries of despair on their lips. while the city crouched terror-stricken, certain priests arose, proclaiming the need of still more bloodshed; the sacrifice was not complete, they cried. two prisons still remained, the grand châtelet and the bastille, crammed with prisoners; among them might be, doubtless were, armagnacs held for ransom by the greedy burgundians. to arms, once more! frenzied paris responded, as--alas!--she has so often done. the public executioner, mounted on a great white horse, led the shouting mob first to one, then to the other great state prison. before the bastille, john of burgundy met them, imploring them to spare the prisoners; humbling himself even to take the hangman's bloody hand: in vain. all were slain, and the duke had only the poor satisfaction of killing the executioner himself a few days later. bernard of armagnac dead, charles of orleans safe, since agincourt, in an english prison (writing, for his consolation and our delight, the rondels and triolets which will keep his name bright and fresh while poesy endures), john the fearless was in very truth virtual king of france. being so, it behooved him to make some head against henry of england, who was now besieging rouen. this was awkward for john, as he had for some time been henry's secret ally, but rouen was in extremity, paris in danger; even his own faithful followers began to look askance and to demand active measures against perfidious and all-conquering albion. john temporized by sending four thousand horsemen to rouen, weakening by just so much his hold on the capital. he dared not declare himself openly on the side of england; dared only make a secret treaty with henry, recognizing his claim to the french crown. before setting out from england to besiege rouen, henry had paid friendly visits to his prisoner-kinsmen, the dukes of orleans and bourbon, and succeeded in alarming both thoroughly. "fair cousin," he said to the latter, "i am returning to the war, and this time i shall spare nothing: yes, this time france must pay the piper!" and again, perhaps to orleans this time, "fair cousin, soon i am going to paris. it is a great pity, for they are a brave people; but, _voyez vous_, they are so terribly divided that they can do nothing." ominous words for a young gentleman to hear who was just writing, perhaps, that he would no longer be the servant of melancholy. "serviteur plus de vous, merencolie, je ne serez car trop fort y travaille!" rondel and triolet were laid aside, and the two princes wrote urgent letters to their cousin charles, imploring him to make peace on henry's own conditions: poor charles, who did not know his own name or the names of his children, who still whispered, "who is that woman? save me from her!" meantime henry sent his own messengers, in the shape of some eight thousand famishing irishmen, whom he carried across the channel and--_dumped_ seems the fitting word--in normandy, bidding them forage for themselves. unarmed, but fearing nothing, and very hungry, the irish roamed the country mounted on ponies or cows, whichever was "handy by," seeking what they might devour. monstrelêt describes them; may have seen them with his own eyes. "one foot was shod, the other naked, and they had no breeches. they stole little children from the cradle, and rode off on cows, carrying the said children"; to hold them for ransom, be it said. my little measure will not hold the siege of rouen. it was one of the terrible sieges of history, and those who love henry of monmouth must read of it with heavy hearts. in january, , when fifty thousand people were dead of famine in and around the city, submission was made. henry entered the town, with no doubt in his own mind and little in those of others, as to who was actually king of france. he found the kingdom still rent in twain. the dauphin louis was dead, and charles, his younger brother, had succeeded to the title and to the leadership of the orleans party. the weak, irresolute, hot-headed boy of sixteen was surrounded by reckless gascons who lived by their swords and wits, caring little what they did, so money might be got, yet who were frenchmen and had red blood in their veins. the peace now openly concluded between henry and burgundy roused them to frenzy. english rule was not to their mind. they beset the dauphin with clamors for revenge to which he lent only too willing an ear. the affair was arranged, and as in the case of the murder of orleans twelve years before, began with a reconciliation. the dauphin longed to see his dear cousin of burgundy; begged that they might meet; suggested the bridge of montereau as a fitting place for the interview. with some misgivings, the duke consented, spite of the warnings of his friends. "remember louis of orleans!" they said. "remember bernard of armagnac! be sure that those others remember them well!" john the fearless answered as became his reputation. it was his duty, he said, to obtain peace, even at the risk of his own life. if they killed him, he would die a martyr: if not, peace being secured, he would take the dauphin's men and go fight the english. then they should see which was the better man, hannotin (jack) of flanders or henry of england. on the tenth of september ( ), he reached montereau, and the long crooked bridge spanning the broad seine. over the bridge the orleanists had built a roof, transforming it into a long gallery: in the centre, a lodge of rough planks, a narrow door on either side. this was the place of rendezvous, where the dauphin awaited his visitor. the burgundian retainers disliked the look of it, and besought their master not to set foot on the bridge. let the dauphin meet him on dry land, they said, not on a crazy bridge over deep water. the duke, partly of his own bold will, partly through the wiles of a treacherous woman set on by his enemies, laughed at their entreaties; entered the bridge as gayly as he had entered that paris street, hardly wider than this footway, where he had looked on at the murder of louis of orleans, twelve years before. "here is the man i trust!" he said, and clapped the shoulder of tanneguy duchâtel, who had come to lead him into the trap. ten minutes later, and he was lying as orleans had lain, hacked in pieces, while the orleanists exulted over his body as he had done over that of their leader. i do not know that there is much to choose between these two murders, or that we need greatly sorrow for either victim. probably neither gentleman would be at large, had he lived in our time. and now henry of monmouth was king indeed. a few months, and the treaty of troyes was signed, and henry entered paris in triumph, riding between king charles (who whispered and muttered and knew little about the matter) and the new duke of burgundy, philip the good, son of the murdered man. to that ill-omened palace of st. paul they rode, and there lodged together for a while. henry's banner bore the device of a fox's brush, "in which," says monstrelêt, the chronicler, "the wise noted many things." henry had long been a hunter of the fox; now he came to hunt the french. paris, still torn and bleeding from the wounds of opposing factions, welcomed anything that looked like peace with power; justice was not looked for in those days. yet it was in the name of justice that the two kings, sitting side by side on the same throne, heard the solemn appeal of philip of burgundy and his mother for judgment upon the murderers of john the fearless. they demanded that the _soi-disant_ dauphin, duchâtel and the other assassins of the duke, in garb of penance and torch in hand, should be dragged in tumbrils round the city, in token of their shame and their repentance. the estates of the realm, summoned in haste, and the university of paris, supported the demand; the two kings agreed to it. nothing was needed save the culprits themselves, but they were not forthcoming. appear before king and parliament to receive his just doom? the dauphin thanked them! if the king of england could play the hunter, charles of valois could play the fox; _et voilà tout_! "i appeal," said the dauphin, "to the sharp end of my sword!" thereupon he was denounced as a treacherous assassin, to be deprived of all rights to the crown and of all property. the confiscation extended to his followers, and to all the armagnac party, living or dead; and the good citizens of paris, fleeced to the bare skin, helped themselves as best they might from the possessions of the outlawed prince and his recreant nobles. the palace of st. paul saw in those days the soldier-wooing of henry v. and his wedding to catherine of valois, the daughter of charles vi.: saw, two years later, the death of charles himself, who faded out of life some two months after his great conqueror; later still, in one of its obscure chambers, neglected and despairing, the death of isabel of bavaria. after that it saw little of note, for people avoided it; it was an unlucky place, haunted forever by those twin shadows of madness and terror. gradually it crumbled, passed finally into the dimness of forgotten things. to-day no stone of it stands upon another. chapter iii domrÉmy "_quand j'étais chez mon père, petite jeanneton ..._" "i thought this was a life of joan of arc!" some bewildered reader may protest. "i don't want to read a history of france!" patience, gentle one! the maid and her france may not be separated. now, however, it is time to go back a little to the year , and make our way to the village of domrémy on the banks of the meuse, near the border of lorraine. domrémy is not an important place: it has to-day, as it had four hundred years ago, about forty or fifty houses. it lies pleasantly enough by the river side, amid green meadows; a straggling line of stone cottages, with roofs of thatch or tile; behind it rise low hills, now bare, once covered with forests of oak and beech. its people are, as they have always been, grave and god-fearing; there is a saying about them that they "seldom die and never lie." they have always been farming people, growing corn, planting vineyards, raising cattle. in old times, as to-day, the cattle fed on the rich pastures of the river valley; the village children tended them by day, and at nightfall drove them back to the little stone-walled farms. the houses were "small, of one or two or three rooms, and sometimes there was a low garret overhead. the furniture was simple: a few stools and benches, a table or a pair of trestles with a board to cover them, a few pots and pans of copper, and some pewter dishes. the housewife had in her chest two or three sheets for her feather-bed, two or three kerchiefs, a cloak, a piece of cloth ready to be made into whatever garment was most needed, and a few buttons and pins. often there was a sword in the corner, or a spear or an arblast, but the peasants were peaceful, seldom waged war, and often were unable even to resist attack."[ ] the people of domrémy were vassals of the lords of bourlemont, whose castle still overlooks the meuse valley. the relationship was a friendly one in the main. the dues were heavy, to be sure. "twice a year a tax must be paid on each animal drawing a cart; the lord's harvest must be gathered, his hay cut and stored, firewood drawn to his house, fowls and beef and bacon furnished to his table. those who had no carts must carry his letters."[ ] but this was the common lot of french peasants. in return, the lord of bourlemont recognized certain responsibilities for them in time of trouble. his own castle was four miles distant, but in the village itself he owned a little fortress called the castle of the island, which the villagers guarded for him in time of peace and where they could take refuge in time of danger. sometimes even, the seigneur seems to have had pangs of conscience concerning his villagers, as when, in , the then lord provided in his will that "if the people of domrémy can show that they have been unjustly compelled to give him two dozen goslings, restitution shall be made."[ ] in one of the stone cottages (standing still, though overmuch restored) lived, early in the fifteenth century, jacques d'arc and isabel his wife. jacques was a responsible man, liked and respected by his neighbors. as dean of the village, he inspected weights and measures, commanded the watch, collected the taxes. dame isabel had enough learning to teach her five children their _credo_, _pater_ and _ave_, but probably little more; she spun and wove, and was doubtless a good house-mother. with four of the children we have little concern; our affair is with the fifth, a daughter born (probably) in january, , and named jeanne or jehane. all her names are beautiful: "jeanne la pucelle," "the maid of orleans," "the maid of france"; most familiar of all to our anglo-saxon ears, "joan of arc." joan was three years old when agincourt was lost and won. it was a far cry from upper normandy to the province of bar where domrémy lay; the meuse flowed tranquilly by, but no echoes of the english war reached it at this time. life went peacefully on; the children, as i have said, drove the cattle to the river meadows, frolicked beside the clear stream, gathering flowers, singing the immemorial songs of france; and as evening closed, drove them home again to the farm: or they tended their sheep on the common, or followed their pigs through the oak forest that stretched behind and above it. in the forest lurked romance and adventure, possible danger. there were wolves there; no doubt about that. there were also, most people thought, fairies, both good and bad. near the village itself stood the great beech tree known as "the ladies' tree," or the "fairies' tree," with its fountain close by, the fountain of the gooseberry bushes, where people came to be healed of various diseases. another great tree was called "_le beau mai_," and was even more mystical. who knows from what far druid time came the custom of dancing around its huge trunk and hanging garlands on its gnarled boughs? they were pious garlands now, dedicated to our lady of domrémy; but it was whispered that the fairies still held their revels there. the lord of bourlemont and his lady sometimes joined the dancing; had not his ancestor loved a fairy when time was, and been loved of her? they never failed to join the rustic festival that was held under the fairy tree on the "sunday in lent called _laetere_, or _des fontaines_." one of joan's godmothers said she had seen the fairies: joan never did. she hung garlands, with the other little girls; danced with them hand in hand, singing. one would like to know the songs they sang. was one of them the quaint ditty whose opening lines head this chapter? "_quand j'étais chez mon père, petite jeanneton, la glin glon glon, m'envôit a la fontaine pour remplir mon cruchon!_" or was it the story of that _vigneron_ who had a daughter whom he would give to neither poor nor rich, _lon la_, and whom he finally saw carried off by a cavalier of hungary, "_la prit et l'importa, sur son cheval d'hongrie, lon la!_" a warning to selfish papas. or did there come to domrémy, wandering down the meuse as the wind wanders, some of those wild, melancholy sea-songs that the corsairs and the fishermen sang, as they sharpened their cutlasses or drew their nets in harbor? "_il était trois mâtelots de grois, embarqués sur le saint francois, tra la derida la la la!_" olivier basselin, of val-de-vire, died when joan was six years old, but his songs are alive to-day: gay little songs, called from the place of their origin "_vaux-de-vire_," whence the modern word _vaudeville_. perhaps joan and her playmates sang his songs; i do not know. in later, sadder years, joan's enemies made, as we shall see, all that could be made out of these simple woodland frolics. "_le beau mai_," which in spring was "fair as lily flowers, the leaves and branches sweeping the ground"[ ] became a tree of doom, a gathering-place of witches, of worse than witches. joan herself, hanging her pretty garlands to the virgin, as sweet a child-figure as lives in history, became a dark sorceress, ringed with flame, summoning to her aid the fiends of the pit. we need not yet turn that page; we may see her as her neighbors saw her, a grave, brown-eyed child, beloved by old and young: industrious, as all her people were; guiding the plough, watching the sheep or cattle, gathering flowers, acorns, fagots: or indoors, spinning, sewing, learning all household work under her mother's guidance. she loved to go to church, and hastened thither when the bell rang for mass; preferring it to dance or play. "there was not a better girl," the neighbors said, "in the two villages (domrémy and greux). for the love of god she gave alms; and if she had money would have given it to the _curé_ for masses to be said." the village beadle being a trifle lax in his ways, she would bribe him with little presents to ring the church bell punctually. the children did not always understand her, would laugh sometimes when she left the games and went to kneel in the little gray church; but the sick and the poor understood her well enough. she loved nursing, and had a light hand with the sick; they never forgot her care of them; it was her way, if any poor homeless body came wandering by (there were many such in france then, almost as many as to-day) to give up her bed to the vagrant and sleep on the hearth all night. joan was eight years old when the treaty of troyes was signed, by which france virtually passed into the hands of england. not long after, the miseries of war invaded the quiet valley of the meuse; burgundian and armagnac began to burn, harry and slay here as they had long been doing elsewhere. the latter were headed by stephen de vignolles, better known as la hire, a man as brave as he was brutal, and with a spark of humor which lights his name yet on the clouded page of the time. it is told how one day, starting out to relieve montargis, besieged by the english, he met a priest on the way, and thinking it might be well to add spiritual armor to "helm and hauberk's twisted mail," demanded absolution. the priest demurred; confession must come first. "i have no time for that!" said la hire, "i'm in a hurry; i have done in the way of sins all that men of war are in the habit of doing." "whereupon," says the chronicler, "the chaplain gave him absolution for what it was worth, and the knight, putting his hands together, prayed thus, 'god, i pray thee to do for la hire this day as much as thou wouldest have la hire do for thee if he were god and thou la hire!'" similar stories are told of many men in many lands; this may be as true as the rest of them. la hire's valiant doings by the side of joan and dunois at orleans and elsewhere, are on the credit side of his book of life; but in the years following , he and his like wrought dreadful havoc in the valley of the meuse. they pretended to seek redress for hostile acts; in reality, they wanted blood and plunder, and took both without stint. they drove off the cattle and burned the crops; this was the least of it. "these men," wrote juvenal des ursins, "under pretence of blackmail and so forth, seized men, women, and little children, regardless of age and sex; violated women and girls; killed husbands and fathers before their wives and daughters; carried off nurses, and left their children to die of hunger; seized priests and monks, put them to the torture, and beat them until they were maimed or driven mad. some they roasted, dashed out the teeth of others, and others they beat with great clubs. god knows what cruelty they wrought." jacques d'arc and another man of means (as means went in domrémy!) hired the castle of the island from the lady of bourlemont, at a considerable rent, for the safekeeping of their families and their flocks and herds in case of attack. a year or two later, the men of domrémy bound themselves to pay a hearth-tax to the lord of commercy, a highborn ruffian of the neighborhood, so long as he abstained from burning and pillaging their homes. the bond declares itself to be given "with good will, and without any force, constraint, or guile whatsoever." no need for an artemas ward to add, "this is rote sarkasticul!" the villagers knew well enough that if the blackmail were not paid, houses, church and all would go up in smoke and flame. joan, as she herself says, "helped well to drive the cattle and sheep to the island," when news came of raiders prowling up or down the valley. burgundian or armagnac, it mattered little which; neither boded any good to the village. the castle itself was uninhabited: its blank windows looked down on a garden, with great poplar trees here and there, and neglected flower-beds, once the delight of the lady and her children. bees hummed in the lilies, birds flitted from branch to branch, caring nothing for burgundian or armagnac; all was peace and tranquillity. here the dreamy child wandered, looking up at the silent walls, seeing in thought, it may be, shadowy figures of knight and lady gazing down on her, the child of france who was to be her country's saviour. doubtless she watched the boys playing at siege and battle in and around the little fortress: for aught we know, she may have joined their play, and so learned her first lessons in arms. in any case, tales of blood and rapine must have been daily in her ears; emphasized about this time by news of the death of a cousin, "struck by a ball or stone from a gun." other tales were doubtless in her ears. among the wanderers who sat by the kindly fireside of jacques d'arc would be mendicant friars, franciscan or cordelier, making their way from door to door, from village to village, giving in return for food and shelter what they had to give: a blessing for the hospitable house, a prayer for its inmates, and news of the countryside. the last raid discussed, the next prognosticated, the general state of country and world deplored, there might be talk of things spiritual. the d'arc family would naturally tell of their patron st. rémy, who, watching over the holy city of rheims, was so kind as to extend his protection over domrémy. what a learned, what a wonderful man! how bold in his admonition to king clovis at the latter's baptism! "bow thy head meekly, o sicambrian! adore what thou hast burnt, and burn what thou hast adored!" yes! yes! brave words! then the guest might ask, was not this the country of the oak wood, "_le bois chesnu_?" had they heard the prophecy that a maid should be born in the neighborhood, who should do great deeds? yes, truly, there was such a prophecy. it was made by merlin the wise. in latin he made it; _nemus canutum_, the place; surely an oak wood, on the borders of lorraine. that was long and long ago, and had been well-nigh forgotten; but a generation ago only--surely they had heard this?--a holy woman, marie of avignon, had made her way to his sacred majesty, then suffering cruelly under the dispensations of god and also under that wicked queen isabeau, on whom might his sufferings be avenged, amen! made her way to him, and told of a dream she had dreamed, a terrible dream, full of clashing of swords. she saw shining armor, and cried out, alas! she could not use it! but a voice said that it was for a maid who should restore france. yes, indeed, that would be a fine thing, if our fair country, ruined by a woman, should be restored by a woman from the marches of lorraine. _pax vobiscum!_ these things, and others like them, no doubt joan heard, sitting quietly by with her sewing or knitting while the elders talked. these things by and by were to be a sword in her hand, and--later still--a torch in the hands of her enemies. footnotes: [ ] lowell. "joan of arc," p. . [ ] lowell. "joan of arc," p. . [ ] luce. "jeanne d'arc à domrémy," p. . [ ] gerardin. chapter iv grapes of wrath "in rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning. rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not."--_jeremiah._ when the conqueror of agincourt lay dying at meaux, word was brought to him that his queen, catherine of france, had borne him a son at windsor castle. "alas!" he said; "henry of monmouth has reigned a short time and conquered much. henry of windsor will reign long and lose all." few prophecies, perhaps, have been so literally fulfilled. at the accession of henry vi., the "meek usurper,"[ ] france was as near her death-agony as she had ever been. since the first invasion of henry v., war, famine and pestilence had never ceased their ravages. whole districts, once peopled, had become solitary wastes. the peasants, tired of sowing that others might reap, threw down pick and hoe, left wife and children, in a despair that was near to madness, and took to the woods, there to worship satan in very truth. god and his saints having forsaken them, they would see what satan and his demons could do for them. things could not be worse, and at least in this service they would stand where their masters and tyrants stood. in paris, things were no better. in the year there died in the city of the plague alone, , persons. "they are buried in layers of thirty and forty corpses together, packed as bacon is."[ ] two years later, when the english entered paris, it was hoped that they would bring with them not only peace and order, but food. the hope was vain. "all through paris you could hear the pitiable lamentation of the little children. one saw upon one dungheap twenty, thirty children dying of hunger and cold. no heart was so hard but had great pity upon hearing their piteous cry throughout the night, 'i die of starvation!'"[ ] by day, when the dog-killer passed through the streets, he was followed by a throng of famished people, who fell upon each stray dog as it was killed, and devoured it, leaving the bare bones: by night the wolves, also hungry, the country being stripped, made their way into the city, where they found ample provender in the scarcely-covered corpses. a kind of death-madness sprang up and seized upon the people; a hideous carnival of corruption began. people danced, as in the fairy-tales, whether they would or no, sick and well, young and old, and their dancing-green was the graveyard. a grinning skeleton was enthroned as king death, and round him the frantic people danced hand in hand, shouting and singing, over the graves that held their friends and kinsfolk. soon there was no more room in the burial places; but still the people died. charnel houses were built, where corpses were stored, being taken up a short time after burial to make room for fresh ones. the soil of the cemetery of the innocents was piled eight feet high above the surrounding streets. such was life--and death--for the common people, whom no man regarded. we have already seen how it was with the noble in war; in private life they were no less fanatic. that strange and hideous phenomenon known as the blood-madness of tyrants, broke out like some frightful growth upon the unhappy country. the chronicles of the time read like records of nightmare. great princes, noble knights, robbed, tortured, slew their wives, fathers, brothers, no man saying them nay. the sieur de giac gave his wife poison, and made her gallop on horseback behind him till she dropped dead from the saddle. adolf de gueldres, "under the excuse that parricide was the rule in the family," dragged his father from his bed, compelled him to walk naked five miles, and then threw him down into a horrible dungeon to die.[ ] the time was past when the "_prudhommes_," the honest men of a village, might come before their lord and rebuke him with "messire, such and such a thing is not the custom of the good people of these parts!" in the fourteenth century, they were listened to; in the fifteenth, they would probably have their throats cut and be thrown on the dungheap. "of the same lump (as it is said) for honor and dishonor made, two sister vessels." say rather, of the same earth two flowers. from the same dreadful soil of carnage that gave birth to the lily of france springs up to enduring infamy a supreme flower of evil, the figure of gilles de rais, marshal of france. his story reads like a fairy tale gone bad. born in , grandnephew of bertrand du guesclin, neighbor and relative of olivier de clisson; comrade-in-arms of joan of arc. orphaned in his boyhood, he was left to the over-tender mercies of an adoring grandfather who refused him nothing. in after years, when horror closed round his once-shining name and men shrank from him as from a leper, he cried out in his agony: "fathers and mothers who hear me, beware, i implore you, of rearing your children in softness. for me, if i have committed such and such crimes, the cause of it is that in my youth i was always allowed to do as i pleased." ("_l'on m'a toujours laissé aller au gré de ma volonté._") from a child, he showed distinction in the arts of war; appeared for a time clad in all the warlike virtues. enormously rich, in his own right as well as by marriage, he was eagerly welcomed to the standard of charles the dauphin, who was correspondingly poor. we shall see him at orleans, riding beside the maid, one of her devoted admirers; through all the period of his youth, his public acts shone bright and gallant as his own sword. the second period of his life shows the artist, the seeker, the man of boundless ambitions. he aspired to be "_litterateur savant et artiste_."[ ] he had a passion for the beautiful, a passion for knowledge; for manuscripts, music, drama, science, especially that so-called science of the occult. when he traveled, he carried with him his valuable library, from which he would not be separated: carried also his two splendid organs, his chapel, his military household. he kept his own court of over two hundred mounted men, knights, squires, pages, all magnificently equipped and maintained at his expense. at two of his cities, machecoul and tiffanges, he maintained all the clergy of a cathedral and a collegiate church: dean, archdeacon, etc., etc., twenty-five to thirty persons, who (like the library) accompanied him on his travels, no less splendidly dressed than the knights and squires. many pages of a bulky memoir are devoted to the various ways in which gilles squandered his princely fortune. our concern is with his efforts to restore it, or rather to make another when it was gone. in the course of his studies, he had not neglected the then-still-popular one of alchemy, and to this he turned when no more money was to be had. gold, it appeared, could be made; if so, he was the man to make it. workshops were set up at tiffanges, perhaps in that gloomy donjon tower which alone remains to-day of all that arabian nights castle of splendor and luxury. alchemists were summoned and wrought night and day, spurred on by promises and threats. night and day they wrought; but no gold appeared. fearing for their lives, they hinted at other and darker things that might be necessary; at other agencies which might produce the desired result. if my lord would call in, for example, those who dealt in magic----? frantic in his quest, gilles stopped at nothing. necromancers were sent for, and came; they in turn summoned "spirits from the vasty deep" or elsewhere, who obediently appeared. trembling, yet exultant, gilles de rais spoke to the demons, asking for knowledge, power and riches ("_science, puissance, et richesse_"), promising in return anything and everything except his life and his soul. the demons, naturally enough, made no reply to this one-sided offer. it is curious to read of the midnight scenes in that summer of when gilles and his magician-friend prelati, with their three attendants, tried to strike this bargain with the infernal powers. torches, incense, pentacles, crucibles, etc., etc.; nothing was omitted. they adjured satan, belial, and beelzebub to appear and "speak up"; adjured them, singularly enough, in the name of the holy trinity, of the blessed virgin and all the saints. the demons remained mute; nor were they moved by sacrifices of dove, pigeon or kid. finally, a demon called "barron" made response: it appeared that what the fiends desired was human sacrifice: that without it no favors might be expected of them. about this time the western provinces of france became afflicted with a terrible scourge. a monster, it was whispered, a murderous beast, _bête d'extermination_, was hiding in the woods, none knew where. children began to disappear; youths and maidens too, all young and tender human creatures. they vanished, leaving no trace behind. at first the bereaved parents lamented as over some natural accident. the little one had strayed from home, had fallen into the river, had lost its way in the forest. the friends mourned with them, but were hardly surprised: it was not too strange for those wild days. but the thing spread. in the next village, two children had disappeared; in the next again, four. the creature, whatever it was, grew bolder, more ravenous. terror seized the people; the whole countryside was in an agony of fear and suspense. rumor spread far and wide; the beast took shape as a human monster; the _ogre_ was evolved, _croquemitaine_, who devoured children as we eat bread. a little while, and the monster was localized. it was within such a circle that the children were vanishing; near tiffanges, near machecoul, the two fairy castles of the great seigneur gilles de rais. slowly but surely the net of suspicion was drawn, closer, closer yet. the whispers spread, grew bolder, finally broke into open speech. "the beast of extermination" was none other than the marshal of france, the companion of dunois and la hire, and of the maid herself, the great lord and mighty prince, gilles de rais. search was made in the chambers of machecoul, in the gloomy vaults of tiffanges. the bones of the murdered children were found, here lying in heaps on the floor, there hidden in the depths of well or oubliette. it is not a tale to dwell upon; it is enough to know that in a few years over three hundred children and young people had been foully and cruelly done to death. in the matter reached the drowsy ear of public justice. gilles was formally arrested (making no resistance, secure in his own power), was tried, tortured, and after making full confession and expressing repentance for his crimes, was condemned to be burned; but, meeting more tender executioners than did the maid of france, was strangled instead, and his body piously buried by "certain noble ladies." every french child of education knows something of the "_jeune et beau dunois_"; every french child, educated or not, knows the story of joan of arc; anglo-saxon children may not invariably attain this knowledge, but they all know gilles de rais, though they never heard his name. soon after his death, he passed into the realm of legend, and under the title of bluebeard he lives, and will live as long as there are children. legend, that enchanting but inaccurate dame, gave him his seven wives; he had but one, and she survived him. his own name soon passed out of use. even in the town of nantes, where he met his death, the expiatory monument raised by marie de rais on the place of her father's torture was called "_le monument de barbe-bleue_." so, strangely enough, it is the children who keep alive the memory of their slayer. footnotes: [ ] "ye towers of julius, london's lasting shame, with many a foul and midnight murder fed, revere his consort's faith, his father's fame, and spare the meek usurper's holy head!" --_gray_, the bard. [ ] "journal of a citizen of paris." [ ] "journal of a citizen of paris." [ ] lt.-col. a. c. p. haggard, d. s. o. "the france of joan of arc." [ ] gilles de rais. chapter v the voices et eussiez-vous, dangier, cent yeulx assis et derrerière et devant, ja n'yrez si près regardant que vostre propos en soit mieulx. --_charles d'orléans._ in , when joan was in her fourteenth year, domrémy had its first taste of actual war. henry of orly, a robber captain of the neighborhood, pounced upon the village with his band, so suddenly and swiftly that the people could not reach their island refuge. the robbers, more greedy than bloodthirsty, did not wait to slay, merely stripped the houses of everything worth carrying off, and "lifted" the cattle, as the scots say, driving them some fifty miles to orly's castle of doulevant. the distressed villagers appealed to the lady of bourlemont, who in turn called upon her kinsman anthony of vaudemont, a powerful noble of lorraine. cousin anthony promptly sent men to recover the stolen cattle. orly, resisting, was beaten off, and the beasts were brought back in safety to domrémy, where the happy villagers received them with shouts of joy. the english were not directly responsible for this raid. orly was a free-lance, robbing and harrying on his own account; vaudemont was anglo-burgundian at heart. none the less, people, here as everywhere, were beginning to feel that war and trouble had come with the english, and that there could be no lasting peace or quiet while they trod the soil of france. not long after this raid, about noon of a summer day, joan of arc was in her father's garden, which lay between the house and the little gray church. we do not know just what the girl was doing, whether gathering flowers for her pleasure, or herbs for household use, or simply dreaming away a leisure hour, as girls love to do. suddenly "on her left hand, toward the church, she saw a great light, and had a vision of the archangel michael, surrounded by other angels."[ ] thus, briefly and simply, the marvelous story begins. indeed, the beginning must needs be brief, since only joan herself could tell of the vision, and she was always reticent about it. she would not, press her as they might, describe the appearance of the archangel. we must picture him for ourselves, and this, thanks to guido reni, we may easily do. the splendid young figure in the sky-blue corslet, his fair hair afloat about his lightning countenance as he raises his sword above the prostrate dragon, is familiar to us all. we may, if you please, fancy him similarly attired in the little garden at domrémy, but the lightning would be softened to a kindlier glow as he addressed the frightened child. michael, chief of the seven (some say eight) archangels, is mentioned five times in the scriptures, always as fighting: his festival (september th) should be kept, one might think, with clash of swords instead of chime of bells. we read that he was the special protector of the chosen people; that he was the messenger of peace and plenty, the leader of the heavenly host in war, the representative of the church triumphant; that his name means "god's power," or "who is like god." as late as , the red-velvet-covered buckler said to have been carried by him in his war with lucifer was shown in a church in normandy, till its exhibition was forbidden by the bishop of avranches. on the promontory of malea is a chapel built to him; when the wind blows from that quarter, the sailors call it the beating of st. michael's wings, and in sailing past they pray the saint to keep the great wings folded till they have rounded the cape. of st. michael's mount in cornwall, it is told that whatever woman sits in the rocky seat known as michael's chair, will rule her husband ever after. for further light on st. michael, see _paradise lost_. it remained for a poet of our own day, more lively than miltonic, to fix him in our minds with a new epithet: "when michael, the irish archangel, stands, the angel with the sword."[ ] little joan, trembling among her rose-bushes, knew, we may imagine, none of these things. she saw "messire saint michel" as a heavenly prince with his attending angels: "there was much light from every side," she said, "as was fitting." he spoke to her; bade her be a good girl, and go often to church. then the vision faded. seven years later, answering her judges, she speaks thus of the matter: "when i was thirteen years old (or about thirteen) i had a voice from god, to help me in my conduct. and the first time, i was in great fear." we may well believe it. we can fancy the child, her eyes still dazzled with the heavenly light, the heavenly voice still in her ears, stealing back into the house, pale and trembling. she said no word to mother isabel or sister catherine of what had come to her; for many a day the matter was locked in her own faithful heart. the vision came again. the archangel promised that st. catherine and st. margaret should come to give her further help and comfort, and soon after these heavenly visitants appeared. "their heads were crowned with fair crowns," says joan, "richly and preciously. to speak of this i have leave from the lord.... their voices were beautiful, gentle and sweet." we are not told which of the six st. catherines it was who came to joan; whether the alexandrian maiden martyred in , she of the wheel and the ring; or st. catherine of siena, who at joan's birth had been dead but thirty years, who had herself seen visions and heard voices, and who by her own voice swayed kings and popes and won the hearts of all men to her; or whether it was one of the lesser lights of that starry name. as to st. margaret, there can be no doubt; she was the royal atheling, queen and saint of scotland, one of the gracious and noble figures of history. we may read to-day how, sailing across the narrow sea, bound on a visit to her mother's father, the king of hungary (through whom she could claim kinship with st. ursula and with st. elizabeth of hungary) her vessel was storm-driven up the firth of forth, to find shelter in the little bay still known as st. margaret's hope. (close by was the queen's ferry, known to readers of scott and stevenson; to-day the monstrous forth bridge has buried both spots under tons of stone and iron.) visitors were rare on that coast in the time of malcolm iii., especially ladies "of incomparable beauty." word was hastily sent to the king hard by in his palace of dunfermline, and he as hastily came down to see for himself; saw, loved, wooed and won, all in short space. history makes strange bedfellows; it is curious to think that joan's saintly visitor was so early queen of scotland only by grace of macbeth's dagger, which slew the gentle duncan, her husband's father. joan knew st. margaret well; there was a statue of her in the church of domrémy. the gracious ladies spoke kindly to her: permitted her to embrace them; bade her, as st. michael had bidden her, to be good, to pray, to attend church punctually. the visions became more or less regular, appearing twice or thrice a week; joan was obedient to them, did all they asked, partly no doubt through awe and reverence, but also because she felt from the first that a great thing had come to her. "the first time that i heard the voice, i vowed to keep my maidenhood so long as god pleased." if a great thing had come to her, one was demanded of her in return. the heavenly ladies, when they had told her their names, bade her "help the king of france." this was a strange thing. she, a poor peasant maiden, humble and obscure, with no knowledge save of household matters and of tending sheep and cattle; what had she to do with kings? joan might well have asked herself this, but she did not ask the saints. she listened reverently and waited for further light upon her path. the light came very gradually; it was as if the ladies were gentling a wild bird, coming a little and still a little nearer, till they could touch, could caress it, could still the frightened panting of the tiny breast. soon the girl came to love them dearly, so that when they left her she wept and longed to go with them. this went on for three years, joan still keeping the matter wholly to herself. she did her work punctually and faithfully; drove the cattle, sewed, spun and wove. no one knew or guessed that anything strange had come into her life. it was seen that she grew graver, more inclined to religious exercises and to solitary musing, less and less ready to join the village frolics; but this was nothing specially remarkable in a pious french maiden of those days. it was a more serious matter that she should refuse an offer of marriage, a suitable offer from a responsible young man: her parents protested, but in vain. it was as if the suitor did not exist for her. in after years, when the folk of domrémy were besieged with questions about joan's childhood and girlhood, they racked their brains for significant memories, but found few or none. thereupon my lady legend came kindly to their aid, and in an astonishingly short space of time a host of supernatural matters transpired. some of the stories were very pretty; as that of the race in the river-meadows, the prize a nosegay, won by joan, who ran so lightly that her feet seemed hardly to touch the ground. "joan," cried one of the girls, "i see you flying close to the earth!" presently, the race over, and joan at the end of the meadow, "as it were rapt and distraught," she saw a youth beside her who said, "joan, go home; your mother needs you!" joan hastened home, only to be reproved by dame isabel for leaving her sheep. "did you not send for me?" asked the maid. assured of this, she turned meekly back, when there passed before her eyes a shining cloud, and from the cloud came a voice bidding her "change her course of life, and do marvelous deeds, for the king of heaven had chosen her to aid the king of france. she must wear man's dress, take up arms, be a captain in the war, and all would be ordered by her advice." some historians accept, others reject this story: "i tell the tale that i heard told." for several years--some say three, some five--the maid kept these things in her heart. but now the voices (she always called them so) became more explicit. she must "go into france." (here arise questions concerning the borders of bar and lorraine, which concern us little to-day, albeit volumes have been written about them. domrémy was actually in france, but not in that part of it held by the orleanists; burgundy lay between, and several broad provinces held by the english: yet the people of domrémy were french, every fibre of them, and not a heart in the village but was with charles of valois in his struggle to regain his father's crown.) she must go to france, said the voices, because of the "great pity" that was there. she must save france, must save the king. over and over again, this was repeated, till the words might have been found written on her heart, as "calais" on mary tudor's. it was the autumn of , and "orleans" was the word on all lips and in all hearts of frenchmen. the english were encamped around the city, had invested it; the siege had begun. if orleans fell, france fell with her. clearer and clearer came the voices. not only france, but orleans, joan was bidden to save. this done, she must seek the dauphin charles, must lead him to rheims and there see him crowned king. what she must do thereafter was not clear; the voices rang confusedly. something there was about driving the english from france. but now, now, _now_, she must be about the work in hand. she must go to robert of baudricourt at vaucouleurs, and ask him for an escort to the dauphin. "i am a poor girl!" cried the maid. "i have never sat a horse; how should i lead an army?" clearer and stronger day by day the voices reiterated their command. she must go, go, go to vaucouleurs. at last joan could resist no longer. "the time went heavily with me, as with a woman in travail." she resolved to go "into france," though, she said, unless at god's bidding, she would rather be torn by wild horses than leave domrémy. about this time jacques d'arc had a dream, wherein he saw his daughter riding in company with armed men. he was both frightened and angry. "if i knew of your sister's going," he said to his sons, peter and john, "i would bid you drown her; if you refused, i would drown her myself." while joan is standing on the threshold, looking out wide-eyed into that new, strange world of war and bloodshed for which she must leave forever the small safe ways of home, let us try to form some idea of what she was going out for to see. footnotes: [ ] lowell. "joan of arc," p. . n. b.--other authorities place the light on her _right_ hand. [ ] w. b. clarke. "the fighting race." chapter vi the empty throne alez-vous en, alez, alez, soussi, soing, et mérencolie, me cuidez-vous toute ma vie gouverner, comme fait avez. je vous promet que non ferez; raison aura sur vous maistrie: alez-vous en, alez, alez, soussi, soing et mérencolie. se jamais plus vous retournez avecques vostre compaignie. je pri à dieu qu'il vous maudie et ce par qui vous revendrez: alez-vous en, alez, alez. --_charles d'orléans._ at the funeral of charles vi. of france (november th, ) john, duke of bedford, was the solitary mourner. alone he walked, the sword of state borne before him as regent of france; alone he knelt at the requiem mass: an alien and a stranger. the people of paris looked on in silence; they had nothing to say. "they wept," we are told by a contemporary, "and not without cause, for they knew not whether for a long, long while they would have any king in france." a few days before this, on october thirtieth, charles the dauphin had assumed the title of king, and at a high mass in the cathedral of bourges had made his first royal communion. "the king of bourges," those of the anglo-burgundian party called him; none of them thought he would ever be anything else. he was twenty years old at this time. we shall make his personal acquaintance later; our business now is with the country over which he assumed sovereignty. philip the good, duke of burgundy, did not attend the funeral of his late master; he had no idea of yielding precedence to john of bedford. he sent chamberlains and excuses; was england's faithful ally, he protested, but was very busy at home. the war meantime was going on as best it might. there were various risings in charles's favor: in paris itself, in troyes, in rheims; all put down with a strong hand. at rheims, the superior of the carmelite friars was accused of favoring the banished prince; he did not deny it, and declared stoutly, "never was english king of france, and never shall be!" in paris, several citizens were beheaded, and one woman burned; with little effect save on the sufferers themselves. there was fighting in the field, too; here a skirmish, there an ambuscade, here again something that might pass for a battle. at crevent-sur-yonne, at verneuil, the french (as we must now call charles's followers) were defeated; at la gravelle they were victorious. a pretty thing happened in connection with this last battle. in a castle hard by the field lived anne de laval, granddaughter of bertrand du guesclin. hearing the clash of arms, seeing from her tower, it may be, french and english set in battle array, the lady sent for her twelve-year-old son, andrew de laval, and with trembling, yet eager hands, buckled round him the sword of the great breton captain. "god make thee as valiant," she said, "as he whose sword this was!" and sent him to the field. the boy did good service that day; was knighted on the field of battle, and lived to carry out, as marshal of france, the promise of his childhood. far north, perched like an eagle on a crag above the sea, stood _mont st. michel au peril de la mer_, the virgin fortress-abbey; a sacred spot even under the druids; these many hundred years now one of the holy places of france, under special patronage of st. michael, the archangel of joan's vision. england greatly desired this coign of vantage; made overtures thereanent to the abbot, robert jolivet, who listened and finally promised to surrender the place to them. he went to rouen to conclude the bargain. no sooner was he safely out of the abbey than the chapter of valiant monks elected one of their number, john enault, vicar-general, shut and barred the gate (there was but one), raised the portcullis, and bade defiance to abbot and english. the latter found that the friendly churchman had exaggerated his own powers, and theirs. surrounded by wide-spreading quicksands, its sheer walls buffeted day and night by the atlantic surges, mont st. michel could be taken only by treachery, and the one traitor was now safely barred out. aided by some valiant norman warriors who chanced to be in the abbey on pilgrimage or other business, the monks of st. michael, worthy of their warlike patron, held their fortress for eight long years against all assaults, preserving it inviolate for their rightful king. far to southward, la rochelle, "proud city of the waters," made like resistance to the invaders. the rochellais knew the english of old. john lackland had landed there when he came in to try to recover certain lands seized by philip augustus shortly before. it remained in english hands till , when it was captured by louis viii.; was restored by treaty to the english in ; finally shook off the foreign yoke in du guesclin's time. now it was one of the great maritime cities of france, its mariners sailing all seas, hardy and bold as drake or magellan. on august th, , an english fleet of one hundred and twenty sail appeared off the port, bringing troops for an invasion. la rochelle promptly strengthened her defences, laid a heavy tax on herself to meet expenses, and sent out a fleet of armed privateers to meet the invaders, who, after some deliberation, withdrew without attempting to land. tired of this war of wasps--a sting, a flight, a sting again--john of bedford resolved to strike a decisive blow, one which should bring the wasps' nest down once and for all. the blow fell upon orleans. royal orleans (several kings were consecrated in its cathedral and lodged in its palaces) lies on the right bank of the loire, one of the sacred cities of france. it had been besieged before, in , by attila, the hun of the period, who failed to gain entrance. forty-odd years later, clovis got possession of the city, and held there the first council of france. philip of valois made it a separate duchy; charles vi. gave it to his brother louis, and the house of orleans came into existence. the city stretched along the river bank some nine hundred yards, and back to a depth of six hundred yards; was protected by a wall from twenty to thirty feet high, with parapet, machicolations, and twenty-four towers; and on all sides--except that of the river--by a ditch forty feet wide and twenty feet deep. the river was spanned by a bridge three hundred and fifty yards long, the centre resting on an island, its further end protected by a small fortress called _les tourelles_, which in its turn was covered by a strong earthwork known as the _boulevard_. now, in the autumn of , all eyes were turned on the city, and on the ring of "bastilles" (palisaded earthworks) surrounding it, commanding every approach. in these bastilles and in the camps stretching beyond them on every side, the english commanders were gathered: salisbury, suffolk, talbot, scales, fastolf. inside the city walls were dunois, la hire, xaintrailles, la fayette--beside these the citizens fought with desperate courage. on both sides captains and soldiers girded themselves for a struggle which all felt must be a decisive one. assault on one side, sortie on the other, began and continued briskly. salisbury with his curious copper cannon (throwing stone balls of one hundred and fifty pounds' weight a distance of seven hundred yards) battered the walls and rained shot into the city: the besieged replied with boiling oil, lime, and the like, with which the women of orleans kept them supplied. the fight raged with greatest violence round the tourelles, which english and french were equally determined to take and to keep. after being battered almost to pieces, it was finally captured by the besiegers, but at terrible cost. on the eighth day of the siege (october) salisbury, standing by an embrasure in one of its towers, was struck on the head by a stone ball from a french cannon, and died soon after. this was a heavy loss to the english. on the other hand, sir john fastolf, convoying provisions for the english, completely routed a party of french, who sallied out to intercept him. lent was near, and prudent sir john had procured a large supply of salt herrings; these, scattered over the field in every direction, gave the skirmish its name, the battle of the herrings. most of the provender was brought safely into camp, rejoicing greatly the hearts of the english. but the city managed to get victualed too. one day six hundred pigs were driven in, spite of cannon and mortar; another day two hundred, and forty beeves; but the day after they lost five hundred head of cattle and "the famous light field-piece of that master gunner, jean the lorrainer."[ ] a merry wag, this john of lorraine: his jests flew as fast as his balls. now and then he would drop beside his gun, and be carried off apparently dead. shouts of joy would go up from the english: in the midst of which, john would "bob up serenely" bowing and smiling, and would go to work again. so, back and forth, the tide ebbed and flowed, while the winter dragged on. a leisurely, almost a cheerful siege; andrew lang thinks the fighting was "not much more serious than the combats with apples and cheeses, in the pleasant land of torelore, as described in the old romance of _aucassin and nicolete_."[ ] he quotes the monk of dunfermline, "a mysterious scots chronicler,"[ ] as saying that the english camp was like a great fair, with booths for the sale of all sorts of commodities, and with sunk ways leading from one fort to another. all this time, under cover of the desultory shooting, the english were drawing the ring of fortifications closer and closer yet about the city. in the gloomy days of february, the citizens began to lose heart. no more provisions came in. dunois, now their leader, a natural son of louis of orleans, and the bravest heart in france save one, was wounded. people began to leave the city, stealthily, under cover of night. the bishop left; clermont, who had lost the battle of the herrings, stole away, taking two thousand men with him: the admiral and chancellor of france "thought it would be a pity to have the great officers of the crown taken by the english, and went too."[ ] dunois sent la hire to the dauphin at chinon, begging for men, money, food. the receiver-general, he was told, had not four crowns in his chest. charles kept the messenger to dinner, and regaled him with a fowl and a sheep's tail. la hire returning empty-handed, dunois in desperation sent to philip of burgundy, begging him to take the city under his protection. philip of burgundy, always distracted between his hatred of the dauphin and his fear of the growing power of the english, sent a message asking the duke of bedford to raise the siege; but this john of bedford was in nowise minded to do. "we are not here to champ the morsels for burgundy to swallow!" said one of his advisers. "nay! nay!" assented duke john. "we will not beat the bushes for another to take the birds!" high words ensued, and philip withdrew his men from the siege. john cared little, had plenty without them. english and french, all thought the city was doomed: through all france men sighed and wept over its approaching fall; and across the channel, in the white tower, the captive lord of orleans wept with them, and tuned his harp to songs of grief. l'un ou l'autre desconfira de mon cueur et mérencolie; auquel que fortune s'alye, l'autre "je me rens" lui dira. d'estre juge me suffira pour mettre fin en leur folye; l'un ou l'autre desconfira de mon cueur et mérencolie. dieu scet comment mon cueur rira se gaigne, menant chière lye; contre ceste saison jolye, on verra comment en yra: l'un ou l'autre desconfira. --_charles d'orléans._ april was come, and the end seemed near, when whispers began to creep about. a bird of the air carried the matter, a wind of the forest breathed it. help was coming. a marvel had come to light: a holy maid (or an accursed witch: it depended on which camp you were in!) had arisen, had visited the dauphin at chinon: was coming to rescue orleans from its besiegers. like wildfire the rumor spread. brave dunois listened, and his heart beat faster, recalling the prophecy. "france lost by a woman shall be saved by a woman!" could it be? was heaven, after all, on the side of france? the english listened too; not the king, for he was, we will hope, sleeping comfortably in his cradle at windsor; but john of bedford in paris (not in that haunted palace of st. paul, but in the more cheerful one of les tourelles across the way); and before orleans, his lieutenants, suffolk, talbot, scales, and the rest. these gentlemen were amused. the dauphin must be fallen low indeed to avail himself of such aid. they made merry in the english camp, and laugh and jest went round at the expense of their sorry adversary, clinging to the red petticoat of a peasant girl (for so rumor described her) for succor and relief. suddenly, one april day, the laughter ceased. a letter was brought into the camp: a message brief and sharp as a sword-thrust greeted the astonished captains. "_jesu maria_," thus it began: "king of england, account to the king of heaven for his blood royal. give up to the maid the keys of all the good towns you have taken by force. she is come from god to avenge the blood royal, and quite ready to make peace, if you will render proper account. if you do not so, i am a war-chief; in whatsoever place i shall fall in with your folk in france, if they be not willing to obey, i shall make them get thence, whether they will or not; and if they be willing to obey, i will receive them to mercy.... the maid cometh from the king of heaven as his representative, to thrust you out of france; she doth promise and certify you that she will make therein such mighty _haha_ (great tumult), that for a thousand years hitherto in france was never the like.... duke of bedford, who call yourself regent of france, the maid doth pray you and request you not to bring destruction on yourself; if you do not justice towards her, she will do the finest deed ever done in christendom. "writ on tuesday in the great week" (easter week, march, ). subscribed: _"hearken to the news from god and the maid."_[ ] the hour was come, and the maid. let us go back a little, and see the manner of her coming. footnotes: [ ] a. lang, "maid of france," p. . [ ] andrew lang. "maid of france," p. . [ ] michelet. "histoire de france." [ ] guizot. "history of france." chapter vii vaucouleurs and chinon "go to vaucouleurs!" the voices had said: "go to robert of baudricourt, and bid him send thee to the dauphin!" again and yet again, "go!" vaucouleurs, the "valley of color," is a little walled town on the meuse, some thirteen miles from domrémy. its narrow streets climb a steep hill to the castle, perched on its rock like an eagle's nest. in this castle, holding the town partly for the dauphin, but chiefly for himself, lived robert of baudricourt; a robber captain, neither more nor less. a step beyond the highwayman, since he had married a rich and noble widow, and had lived handsomely in (and on) vaucouleurs for some twelve years; but still little more civilized than the band of rude and brutal soldiers under his command. it was from this man that the maid was bidden to seek aid in her mission. she bethought her of a kinsman, durand laxart (or lassois) living at little burey, a village near vaucouleurs; asked and obtained leave of her parents to visit him. this was in may, . she opened her mind to her "uncle" (by courtesy: he was really only a cousin by marriage) and impressed him so much that he consented to bring her before the lord of the castle. baudricourt looked at the comely peasant maid in her red stuff dress, probably with some interest at first; when she quietly informed him that god had bidden her to save france, and had sent her to him for help in the task, his interest changed to amused impatience. at first he laughed; but when he was called upon in god's name to send a message to the dauphin his mood changed. "let him guard himself well," the message ran, "and not offer battle to his foes, for the lord will give him succor by mid-lent." now lent was to fall in march of the coming year. "by god's will," the maid added, "i myself will lead the dauphin to be crowned." this was too much for the lord of vaucouleurs. turning to laxart, he said, "give the wench a sound whipping and send her home!" and so dismissed the pair. joan made no resistance; went back to domrémy and bided her time. we are to suppose that through the summer of she plied her faithful tasks at home, listening to her voices, strengthening her purpose steadily in the quiet of her resolute heart. in october came the news that orleans was besieged; and now once more the voices grew urgent, imperative; yet again she must go to vaucouleurs, yet again demand help of robert of baudricourt. this time the way was made easy for her. the wife of durand laxart was about to have a child, and needed help. there were no trained nurses then in the meuse valley or anywhere else; it was the simple and natural thing for joan to offer her services, and for the kinsfolk to accept them. january, , found her domiciled in the laxart household, caring for the mother and the newborn child in her own careful, competent way. one day she told her kinsman that she must see my lord of baudricourt once more, and besought him to bear her company. he demurred; they had got little good of the first visit, he reminded her. "do you not know," asked the girl, "the saying that france is to be made desolate by a woman and restored by a maid?" and added that she must go "into france" and lead the dauphin to rheims for his coronation. laxart had heard the prophecy; most people knew it, in the meuse valley and elsewhere. he yielded, and once more the peasant man and maid made their way up the climbing street and appeared before the lord of the castle. we do not know that the second interview prospered much better than the first. laxart says that baudricourt bade him "more than once" to box the girl's ears and send her home to her father; but this time joan did not go home. after spending several weeks with her cousin's family, she went to stay with a family named royer, where she helped in the housework, and "won the heart of her hostess by her gentle ways, her skill in sewing, and her earnest faith."[ ] this must have been a season of anguish for the maid. france was dying: they thought it then as they thought it in : she alone could save her country, and no man would give her aid, would even listen to her. perhaps at no time--save at the last--is the heroic quality of the maid more clearly shown than in the meagre record of these weeks of waiting. how should she sit to spin, with saints and angels calling in her ear? how should she ply her needle, when the sword was waiting for her hand? but the needle flew swiftly, the spindle whirled diligently, and day and night her prayers went up to god. people recalled afterward how often they had seen her in the church of st. mary on the hill above the town, kneeling in rapt devotion, her face now bowed in her hands, now lifted in passionate appeal. courage, joan! the time is near, and help is coming. it was in february, , that the first gleam of encouragement came to her. she met in the street a young man-at-arms named jean de metz, often called, from the name of his estate, jean de novelonpont. he had heard of her: probably by this time everyone in vaucouleurs knew of her and her mission. seeing her in her red peasant-dress, he stopped and said, "_ma mie_, what are you doing here? must the king be walked out of his kingdom, and must we all be english?" joan looked at him with her clear dark eyes. "i am come," she answered, "to a royal town to ask robert de baudricourt to lead me to the king. but baudricourt cares nothing for me and for what i say; none the less i must be with the king by mid-lent, if i wear my legs down to the knees. no man in the world--kings, nor dukes, nor the daughter of the scottish king--can recover the kingdom of france, nor hath our king any succor save from myself, though i would liefer be sewing beside my poor mother. for this deed is not convenient to my station. yet go i must; and this deed i must do, because my lord so wills it." "and who is your lord?" asked jean de metz: and the maid replied, "my lord is god!"[ ] our hearts thrill to-day as we read the words; think how they fell on the ear of the young soldier there in the village street that winter day! he needed no voice of saint or angel: this simple maiden's voice was enough. he held out his hand. "then i, jean, swear to you, maid, my hand in your hands, that i, god helping me, will lead you to the king, and i ask when you will go?" "better to-day than to-morrow: better to-morrow than later!"[ ] was the reply. from that day forth, jean de metz was joan's faithful friend and helper. what did she mean about help from scotland? why, a year before the dauphin had sent alain chartier the poet to scotland to beg help of the ancient ally of france. help was promised; six thousand men, to arrive before whitsuntide; to form moreover a body-guard for the little princess of scotland, another margaret, who was to marry little louis, son of the dauphin. joan had heard rumors of all this; but what was a baby princess three hundred leagues away? she, the maid, was on the spot. "go boldly on!" said the voices. "when you are with the king, he will have a sure sign to persuade him to believe and trust you." as it fell out, the little princess did not come till seven years later: the six thousand men never came at all. at last joan had a friend who could give real help. a few days more and she had two: bertrand of poulangy, another young soldier, heard and believed her story, and took his stand beside her and jean de metz. the three together renewed the attack on robert de baudricourt, this time with more success. apparently this was not so simple a case as had appeared: whipping, ear-boxing, no longer seemed adequate. what to do? puzzled and annoyed, baudricourt bethought him of the spiritual arm. after all, what more simple than to find out whether this counsel was of god or the devil? one evening, we are told, he entered the humble dwelling of the royers, accompanied by the parish priest. the latter, assuming his stole, addressed the maid in solemn tones. "if thou be a thing of evil," he said, "begone from us! if a thing of good, approach us!" joan had knelt when the good father put on his garb of office; now, still on her knees, slowly and painfully (but with head held high, we may fancy) she made her way forward to where the priest stood. she was not pleased. it was ill-done of father fournier, she said afterward; had he not heard her fully in confession? it may be--who knows?--that the _curé_ took this way to convince the lord of baudricourt of her truth and virtue: be it as it may, robert de baudricourt no longer laughed at the peasant girl in her red dress; but still he was not ready to help her, and she could wait no longer. she resolved to walk to chinon, where the dauphin was; she borrowed clothes from her cousin laxart, now for the first time assuming male attire; and so took her way to the shrine of st. nicholas, on the road to france. now it took a horseman eleven days to ride from vaucouleurs to chinon; joan soon realized that to make the journey on foot would be wasting precious time; she returned to vaucouleurs, saddened, but no whit discouraged. about this time the duke of lorraine heard of the maid who saw visions and heard voices. being old and infirm and more interested in his own ailments than in those of the kingdom, he sent for joan as we send for a new doctor who has cured our neighbor; sent moreover a letter of safe conduct, an important thing in those days. here was opportunity knocking at the door! a horse was bought--it is not clear by whom--and joan and the faithful "uncle," accompanied by jean de metz, rode off in high hopes to nancy, seventy miles away. alas! here again disappointment awaited her. the duke related his symptoms and asked for advice; hinted that perhaps a little miracle, even, might be performed? such things had been done by holy maids before now! joan told him briefly that she knew nought of these matters. let him lend her his son-in-law, and men to lead her into france, and she would pray for his health. the son-in-law was rené of anjou, later known as the patron of minstrels and poets; an interesting if a somewhat fantastic figure. at this time his duchy of bar was being so harried by french and english indiscriminately that he might well cry, "a plague of both your houses!" certainly he gave no help to joan. the old duke of lorraine gave her a black horse, some say, and a small sum of money; and so a second time, she returned to vaucouleurs. but now the town itself was roused. every one by this time knew the maid and had heard of her mission. since that visit of the _curé_ they held her in reverence; moreover, the news from orleans grew worse and worse. the fall of the city was looked for any day, and with it would fall the kingdom. since all else had failed, why not let the maid prove her voices to be of god? we know not what pressure, apart from joan's own burning words (for she never ceased her appeals), was brought to bear on robert de baudricourt. at last, and most reluctantly, he yielded; gave consent that joan should seek the dauphin at chinon; gave her even, it would seem, a letter to the prince, testifying some belief in her supernatural powers. the good people of vaucouleurs put together their pennies and bought a suit of clothes for her; man's clothes, befitting one who was undertaking a man's work. thus equipped, on the twelfth of february, , joan of arc rode out of vaucouleurs to save france. beside her, on either side, rode her two faithful squires, jean de metz and bertrand de poulangy, with their servants; two more men, "richard the archer," and colet de vienne, a king's messenger, joined the little band; in all six rode out of the gate of france. at the gate, robert de baudricourt, moved for once, we may hope, out of his boisterous sardonic humor, gave the maid a sword; and as the adventurers passed on, he cried after them: "_allez! et vienne que pourra!_" ("go! and come what come may!") what awaited the maid in "white chinon by the blue vienne?" let us see! pantagruel suggests that the city of the plantagenets was founded by cain, and named for him, but this theory is more literary than accurate. a strong little city, chinon, from the days when fulk nerra, the black falcon, rode on his wild raids and built his crescent line of fortresses from anjou to amboise, cutting the "monstrous cantle" of touraine from the domains of blois. a fierce little city, looking down on furious quarrels of angevin princes, french and so-called english. here died henry ii. of england, men said of a broken heart, muttering, "shame, shame, on a conquered king!" here came richard yea-and-nay to look on his father's body, which men said streamed blood as he approached it. here john lackland lived for a while with his french wife, no more beloved than he was elsewhere. here, on midsummer eve, , philip augustus entered victorious, and soon after english rule in france came to an end for the time. here, in , jacques de molay, grand master of the knights templar, was tried by a council of cardinals, set on by charles of valois, first of the name, who was in sore need of money and coveted the rich possessions of the great order. master and many knights were burned (in paris, not in the place of their trial) and the order was dissolved. more important, it may be, in the long sequence of human events, than any of these matters, here in , was born _maître_ françois rabelais, whose statue still looks kindly down on the city of his love. "_ville insigne, ville noble, ville antique, voire première du monde_,"[ ] he calls it. he remains king of it, however many crowned or uncrowned puppets may have flaunted it there by the blue vienne. in this year , charles the dauphin was holding in chinon his shadowy court. this deplorable prince, a king of shreds and patches, if ever one lived, was now twenty-seven years old, and had never done anything in particular except to pursue pleasure and to escape danger. accounts differ as to his personal appearance. monstrelêt, his contemporary, calls him "a handsome prince, and handsome in speech with all persons, and compassionate toward poor folk"; but is constrained to add "he did not readily put on his harness, and he had no heart for war if he could do without it." another chronicler gives a less favorable account of his appearance. "he was very ugly, with small gray wandering eyes; his nose was thick and bulbous, his legs bony and bandy; his thighs emaciated, with enormous knock-knees." yet another dwells on his physical advantages, and his kindness of manner, which won the favor of the people. it does not greatly matter now what he looked like. when a flame springs up and lights the sky, we do not scrutinize the match that struck out the spark. there he was at chinon, surrounded by courtiers and favorites (chief among them la trémoïlle, "the evil genius of king and country") amusing himself as best he might. "never a king lost his kingdom so gaily!" said la hire. one of joan's biographers[ ] says of him: "weak in body and mind, idle, lazy, luxurious, and cowardly, he was naturally the puppet of his worst courtiers, and the despair of those who hoped for reform"; and he quotes the burning words addressed by juvenal des ursins to his master, when king of france: "how many times have poor human creatures come to you to bewail the grievous extortion practiced upon them! alas, well might they cry, 'why sleepest thou, o lord!' but they could arouse neither you nor those about you." charles was not always gay: he was subject to fits of deep depression, when he despaired of crown and kingdom, questioning even his right to either. son of a mad father and a bad mother, was he indeed the rightful heir? in these moods he would leave his parasite court and weep and pray apart. a pitiable creature, altogether. word was brought to charles on a day that a young maid was at the gate, asking to see him; a maid in man's attire, riding astride a horse and five men-at-arms with her. here was a strange matter! charles had heard nothing of maids or missions. while he debated the matter with la trémoïlle (to whom, by the way, he had pledged chinon for whatever it would bring) and the rest, came a letter from the maid herself, dictated by her and sent on before, but delayed or neglected till now. she asked permission to enter his town of chinon, for she had ridden one hundred and fifty leagues to tell him "things useful to him and known to her."[ ] she would recognize him, she said, among all others. charles was puzzled: the courtiers shook their heads. suppose this were a witch! for the dauphin to receive a witch would be at once dangerous and discreditable. let the young woman be examined, to find out whether, if she were really inspired, her inspiration were of heaven or of hell. accordingly "certain clerks and priests, men expert in discerning good spirits from bad,"[ ] visited joan in the humble inn where she waited, and questioned her closely. she answered briefly; she could not speak freely save to the dauphin alone. she had been sent to relieve orleans and lead the prince to rheims, there to be crowned king. this was all she had to say: but her simple faith, her transparent purity, so impressed the examiners, that they made a favorable report. there was no harm in the maid, and since she professed to be the bearer of a divine message, it would be well for the dauphin to receive her. very reluctantly, charles consented, and finally, one evening, a message summoned joan to the castle. footnotes: [ ] lang. "maid of france," p. . [ ] trans. andrew lang. [ ] trans. andrew lang. [ ] famous city, noble city, ancient city, verily first of earth. [ ] lowell. "joan of arc," p. . [ ] lang. "maid of france," p. . [ ] lowell. "joan of arc," p. . chapter viii recognition sera-elle point jamais trouvée celle qui ayme louyaulté? eet qui a ferme voulenté sans avoir legière pensée. il convient qu'elle soi criée pour en savoir la verité. sera-elle point jamais trouvée celle qui ayme louyaulté? je croy bien qu'elle est deffiée des aliéz de faulceté, dont il y a si grant planté que de paour elle s'est mussiée. sera-elle point jamais trouvée? --_charles d'orleans._ it was morning of march th, , when joan rode out between her two faithful squires to seek the dauphin. gladly she rode, her eyes fixed on those white towers of chinon where her mission was to be accepted, where she was to consecrate herself anew to the redemption of france. she felt no shadow of doubt; she never felt any, till her true work was done; yet, the old chronicles say, danger threatened her here at the outset. a band of outlaws, hearing of her approach, prepared an ambuscade, thinking to take the maid and hold her for ransom. there they crouched in the woods hard by chinon town, waiting; there they saw the little cavalcade draw near; the dark slender girl in her man's dress, the men-at-arms on either side; there they remained motionless, never stirring hand or foot, till the riders passed out of sight. is it a true tale? if so, was it a miracle, as people thought then, the robbers held with invisible bonds, unable to stir hand or foot? or was it--still greater marvel, perhaps--just the power of that uplifted look, the white radiance of that face under the steel cap, which turned the men's hearts from evil thoughts to good? another tale is vouched for by eyewitnesses: how as the maid rode over the bridge toward the city, a certain man-at-arms spoke to her in coarse and insulting language. "alas!" said joan; "thou blasphemest thy god, and art so near thy death!" he was drowned shortly after, whether by accident or by his own act, seems uncertain. so the maid came to chinon, and after some further delay, was admitted, on the evening of march th, to the presence of the dauphin. chinon castle is in ruins to-day. of the great hall on the first story nothing remains save part of the wall and the great fireplace of carved stone; yet even these are hardly needed to call up the scene that march evening. we can see the fire crackling under the fine chimney-piece, the dozens of torches flinging their fitful glare about the great hall where some three hundred knights were gathered. they were standing in knots here and there, whispering together, waiting, some hopefully, some scornfully, for this importunate visitor, the peasant girl of domrémy. in one of these knots stood charles of valois, far less splendidly dressed than some of his followers. he made no sign when joan entered the hall, led by the high steward, louis of bourbon, count of vendôme: but his eyes, all eyes in that hall, were fixed curiously on the slender figure clad in black and gray, which advanced modestly yet boldly. joan of arc was now seventeen years old: tall and well made. guy de laval wrote of her to his mother: "she seems a thing all divine, _de son faict_, and to see her and hear her." others call her "beautiful in face and figure," her countenance glad and smiling. "elle est plaisante en faite et dite, belle et blanche comme la rose," says the old mystery play of the siege of orleans. andrew lang, the most sympathetic of her english biographers,[ ] writes thus of her appearance: "her hair was black, cut short like a soldier's; as to her eyes and features, having no information, we may conceive of them as we please. probably she had grey eyes, and a clear pale colour under the tan of sun and wind. she was so tall that she could wear a man's clothes, those, for example, of durand lassois." there is no authentic likeness of the maid; she never sat for her portrait; yet who is there that cannot picture to himself that slender figure, in the black _pourpoint_, with the short gray cloak thrown back over her shoulder, coming forward to meet and greet the prince to whom she was to give a kingdom, receiving in return a felon's grave? accounts vary as to the scene that followed. some chroniclers say that joan asked that "she should not be deceived, but be shown plainly him to whom she must speak"; others assert that charles turned aside at her approach, effacing himself, as it were, behind some of his followers. however it was, joan showed no hesitation, but went directly up to the prince and made obeisance humbly. "gentle dauphin," she said, "i am called joan the maid. the king of heaven sendeth you word by me that you shall be anointed and crowned in the city of rheims, and shall be lieutenant of the king of heaven, who is king of france. it is god's pleasure that our enemies, the english, should depart to their own country; if they depart not, evil will come to them, and the kingdom is sure to continue yours." charles listened, impressed but not yet convinced. he talked with her a little, and sent her back to her lodging (in a tower of the castle this time, in charge of "one william bellier, an officer of the castle, and his wife, a matron of character and piety"[ ]) without making any definite answer. this was hard for the maid to bear; she knew there was no time to lose; yet she went patiently; she was used to waiting, used to rebuffs. there in her tower lodging, many visitors came to her: churchmen, with searching questions as to her orthodoxy; captains, no less keen in inquiry as to her knowledge of arms: finally, "certain noble dames," deputed by the dauphin, to determine whether she were pure virgin or no. doubtless these many persons came in many moods; they all left in one; the maid was a good maid, gentle and simple: there was no harm in her. again and again she sought audience of the dauphin. she could do nothing with a printed page, but the heart of a man, especially of this man, was easy reading for her. "gentle dauphin," she said to him one day, "why do you not believe me? i say unto you that god hath compassion on you, your kingdom, and your people; st. louis and charlemagne are kneeling before him, making prayer for you, and i will say unto you, so please you, a thing which will give you to understand that you ought to believe me."[ ] one day, after mass, charles led her into a chamber apart, where were only la trémoïlle and one other. he was in one of his dark moods, his mind full of doubts and fears. was he after all the rightful heir? in his closet that morning, he had prayed that if the kingdom were justly his, god might be pleased to defend it for him; if not, that he might find refuge in scotland or in spain. joan, we may fancy, read all this in his face that day in the castle chamber. taking him aside, she spoke long and earnestly. "what she said to him there is none who knows," wrote alain chartier the poet soon after, "but it is quite certain that he was all radiant with joy thereat as at a revelation from the holy spirit." well he might be! on the authority of her voices, "on behalf of her lord," the maid declared him "true heir of france, and son of the king." from that moment we may perhaps date the belief of charles in her mission. one other, i said, besides charles and la trémoïlle, was present at the interview. this was the young duke of alençon, son-in-law of charles of orleans. he was then twenty years of age, as gallant and careless a lad as might be. at fifteen he had been taken prisoner in battle: was ransomed two years later, spite of his refusal to acknowledge henry vi. king of france; had since then been living on his estate, amusing himself and taking little thought of the distracted country. he was shooting quails one day when word came of a mysterious maid who had appeared before the king, claiming to be sent by god to drive out the english, and raise the siege of orleans. here, for once, was something interesting in these tiresome squabbles of burgundian and armagnac; something, it might be, more exciting than quail-shooting. he took horse and rode to chinon; sought his cousin charles, and found him deep in talk with the maid herself. "who is this?" asked joan. "it is the duke of alençon," replied the dauphin. she turned to alençon with her own simple grace. "you are very welcome," she said. "the more princes of the blood that are here together, the better." alençon, warm and chivalrous by nature, felt none of the doubts which beset the dauphin; he was charmed with the maid, and she with him: it was friendship at first sight, and "the gentle duke," as she called him, became her sworn brother in arms. charles was now inclined to take joan and her mission seriously, spite of the indifference (later to develop into bitter hostility) of la trémoïlle. she had fired the despondent captains with hope of saving orleans; had won the hearts of the court ladies, had satisfied the confessors of her orthodoxy; last and most important, she had performed what seemed to him a miracle in reading his thoughts. but nothing must be done hastily. in so important a matter, every authority must be consulted; it must be established beyond peradventure that this maid was of god and not of satan. paris was inaccessible, held by john of bedford for his baby king: but at poitiers was a university with many wise and holy men; was also a court or parliament of sorts, where law might be demonstrated if not enforced by learned lawyers and jurists. at poitiers, if anywhere in charles's pasteboard realm, the question might be decided: to poitiers joan should go. fifty miles: two days' ride, and orleans in the death-struggle! "to poitiers?" cried the maid. "in god's name i know i shall have trouble enough; but let us be going!" she had had already trouble enough, more than enough, with lawyers and priests. she saw no sense in them. they droned on and on, splitting hairs, piling question on argument, when all she asked was a small company of men-at-arms; when her time was so short; when the voices bade her go, go, go to save the city! small wonder if she lost patience now and then in the days that followed at poitiers. they compassed her about on every side, professors of theology and of law. "what brought you to the king?" asked one. she answered proudly, "a voice came to me while i was herding my flock, and told me that god had great pity on the people of france, and that i must go into france." "if god wishes to deliver france," said another, "he does not need men-at-arms." "in god's name," said the maid, "the men-at-arms will fight, and god will give the victory." "what language does the voice speak?" this questioner, a carmelite friar, spoke the dialect of limoges, his native province, and joan answered briefly: "a better one than yours!" "do you believe in god?" the friar persisted. "more firmly than you do!" joan then foretold the future as she saw it. she would summon the english and, they refusing to submit, would force them to raise the siege of orleans. after this the dauphin would be crowned at rheims; paris would rally to his standard; finally, the duke of orleans would return from england. all these things happened, but only the first two were seen by joan's mortal eyes. her time was short, indeed. for six weeks now she had been examined, by priest and clerk, jurist and soldier, noble ladies and village matrons: and like her great exemplar, no harm had been found in her. she had, it was true, given no "sign," but this she promised to do before orleans, for so god commanded her. in god's name, therefore, she was bidden to proceed on her mission; was sent to tours, thence to proceed, when suitably armed and equipped, to orleans. it is pleasant to read of a little interlude during this time of waiting: a visit made by joan at st. florent, the castle of the duke of alençon. the mother and wife of the duke received her with open arms, and "god knows," says the family chronicler, "the cheer they made her during the three or four days she spent in the place." the young duchess was joan of orleans, daughter of the captive poet-duke: it was her own city that this wondrous maid was come to save. a girl herself, generous, ardent, small wonder that she opened her arms. she confided to joan her fears for her soldier-husband. he had been taken once by the english, had been absent several years: it had been bitter hard to raise the money for his ransom. "have no fear, my lady!" said the maid. "i will bring him safe back to you, as well as he now is, or even better." one would fain linger a little over this visit. there were so few pleasures for joan, so little of all that girlhood commonly takes as its bright, unquestionable right. i like to think of the two girls together: the duchess probably in _huque_ and _hennin_ (whereof more anon), the maid in the page's dress which she wore when not in armor. she loved bright colors and pretty things, as well as the other girl. she was only seventeen, "fair and white as the white rose." god help thee, sweet maid! the days in tours were brief and happy for joan. she was accepted: she had started on her way; she could well wait, watching and praying, while her suit of white armor was made. andrew lang tells us that "the armour included a helmet, which covered the head to its junction with the neck, while a shallow cup of steel protected the chin, moving on the same hinge as the _salade_--a screen of steel which in battle was drawn down over the face to meet the chin-plate, and, when no danger was apprehended, was turned back, leaving the face visible. a neck-piece or gorget of five overlapping steel plates covered the chest as far as the breastbone, where it ended in a point, above the steel corslet, which itself apparently was clasped in front, down the centre, ending at the waist. the hip joints were guarded by a band, consisting of three overlapping plates of steel; below this, over each thigh, was a kind of skirt of steel, open in the centre for freedom in riding. there were strong thick shoulderplates; yet one of these was pierced through and through by an arrow or crossbow bolt, at close quarters, when jeanne was mounting a scaling ladder in the attack on the english fort at the bridge-head of orleans. the steel sleeves had plates with covered hinges to guard the elbows; there were steel gauntlets, thigh-pieces, knee-joints, greaves, and steel shoes. the horse, a heavy-weight-carrier, had his chamfron of steel, and the saddle rose high at the pommel and behind the back. a _hucque_, or cloak of cloth of gold, velvet, or other rich material, was worn over the armour. for six days continuously jeanne bore this weight of steel, it is said, probably in the campaign of jargeau and pathay. her exploits were wrought, and she received her wounds, while she was leading assaults on fortified places, standard in hand." no sword was made for joan at tours; her sword was elsewhere. hear her tell about it! "while i was at tours or chinon, i sent to seek for a sword in the church of st. catherine of fierbois, behind the altar; and presently it was found, all rusty." asked how she knew that the sword was there, she said: "it was a rusty sword in the earth, with five crosses on it, and i knew of it through my voices. i had never seen the men who went to look for it. i wrote to the churchmen of fierbois, and asked them to let me have it, and they sent it. it was not deep in the earth; it was behind the altar, as i think, but i am not certain whether it was in front of the altar or behind it. i think i wrote that it was behind it. when it was found, the clergy rubbed it, and the rust readily fell off. the man who brought it was a merchant of tours who sold armour. the clergy of fierbois gave me a sheath; the people of tours gave me two, one of red velvet, one of cloth of gold, but i had a strong leather sheath made for it."[ ] a household (_état_) was provided for joan by the dauphin's command. she was to have a confessor, an equerry, two pages: the faithful jean de metz was her treasurer. poulangy, the second (chronologically) of her knights, was also of the company. she asked for a standard: st. margaret and st. catherine, she told the dauphin, had commanded her to take a standard and bear it valiantly. the king of heaven was to be painted on it, said the crowned and gracious ladies. furthermore, "the world was painted on it" (which andrew lang takes to have been "the globe in the hand of our lord"), an angel on either side. the stuff was white linen dotted with lilies: the motto _jesus maria_. in action, the maid always carried this standard, that she might "strike no man with the sword; she never slew any man. the personal blazon of the maid was a shield azure with a white dove, bearing in its beak a scroll whereon was written, _de par le roy du ciel_."[ ] so, at long last, the word was "forward!" on march th, as we have seen, joan of arc left vaucouleurs, a humble figure in black and gray, between two faithful but obscure men-at-arms; now, nine weeks later, she rides out in radiant armor, silver-white from head to foot, in her hand the snowy standard with its sacred emblems, on either side nobles and dignitaries of the court of france. so she rides, and the hearts of men follow her. footnotes: [ ] n. b.--he was a scot! [ ] lowell. "joan of arc," p. . [ ] guizot, iii, . [ ] lang. "maid of france," p. . [ ] lang. "maid of france," p. . chapter ix orleans we do not know the precise numbers of the army that joan brought to the relief of orleans; it was probably under four thousand men. of the army already there, dunois said that two hundred englishmen could put to flight eight hundred or a thousand french. the latter were utterly discouraged and hardly attempted resistance. on the other hand the english, sure of their victory, had grown careless and lazy. true, they had pricked up their ears when word came of the maid and her mission; but weeks passed, and nothing happened. when they chased the french the latter ran away as usual: they were somewhat bored, and thought it about time to finish, and wind up the siege. inside the walls, people awaited the maid as those who look for the morning. she left tours, as we have seen, and came to blois, where she was joined by la hire, gilles de rais, and others. there was some delay here, owing to lack of money for the expenses of the journey. charles had before this been obliged to pawn the "_fleurons_" of his crown and the gold ornaments of his helmet to obtain ready money. by these means or others he now raised the needed sum, and the army, with its "great convoy of cattle and grain"[ ] moved on once more. a company of priests had joined them, and joan insisted that every man-at-arms must make confession before going into action. when they left blois the clergy went first, singing "come, holy spirit!" so, on april th, the maid and her army found themselves opposite orleans, on the other side of the river. dunois, who had been watching from the battlements, took boat and went across to greet the maid; he found her in angry mood. she had expected to find herself at the city gates, not with a broad and swift stream flowing between. moreover, she had been suffering much pain from the weight of her armor, which she had worn all day. she greeted the leader abruptly. "are you the bastard of orleans?" "i am, and right glad of your coming." "was it you who gave counsel to come by this bank of the river, so that i cannot go straight against talbot and the english?" "i, and others wiser than i, gave that counsel, and i think it the wiser way and the safer." "in god's name, the counsel of our lord is wiser and safer than yours. you think to deceive me, and you deceive yourself, for i bring you better rescue than ever came to knight or city; the succor of the king of heaven." dunois himself says that as she spoke the words, "in a moment the wind, which was contrary and strong, shifted and became favorable." this, to the soldier's mind, was a manifest miracle. he begged joan to cross with him. she demurred, not wishing to leave her army, which must return to blois for another convoy. without her they might go astray, might fall into sin, possibly might not return. dunois persisted, implored; the city was awaiting her; the need was desperate. let the captains go without her! joan yielded to his entreaties; the captains departed, promising to return in good time; the maid crossed the river with a force of two hundred lances, the wind so favoring them that every third vessel towed two others. seeing this, all the bystanders were of dunois' mind; "a miracle of god!" so, about eight o'clock on the evening of april th, joan of arc entered orleans. the "_journal du siège d'orléans_," kept by a citizen whose name is lost, thus describes the entry. the maid rode "in full armor, mounted on a white horse, with her pennon carried before her, which was white, also, and bore two angels, each holding a lily in his hand; on the pennon was painted an annunciation. at her left side rode the bastard of orleans in armor, richly appointed, and behind her came many other noble and valiant lords and squires, captains and soldiers, with the burghers of orleans who had gone out to escort her. at the gate there came to meet her the rest of the soldiers, with the men and women of orleans, carrying many torches, and rejoicing as if they had seen god descend among them; not without cause. for they had endured much weariness and labor and pain, and, what is worse, great fear lest they should never be succored, but should lose both life and goods. now all felt greatly comforted and, as it were, already unbesieged, through the divine virtue of which they had heard in this simple maid; whom they regarded right lovingly, both men and women, and likewise the little children. there was a marvelous press to touch her, and to touch even the horse on which she rode, while a torch-bearer came so near her pennon that it was set afire. thereupon she struck her horse with her spurs and put out the fire, turning the horse gently toward the pennon, just as if she had been long a warrior, which the soldiers thought a very wonderful thing, and the burghers also. these accompanied her the whole length of the city with right good cheer, and with great honor they all escorted her to the house of james boucher, treasurer of the duke of orleans, where she was received with great joy."[ ] in this honored and patriarchal household, joan, "venerated like an angel sent from heaven," passed the week of the deliverance. it was to this friendly hearth that she went whenever a breathing-space allowed her to return within the walls. at these times, the press of people about the house would almost break the doors in. the kindly household protected, cherished, revered their gentle guest. when jacques boucher died, some thirteen years later, the monument raised to his memory by his widow and children recorded, with his name and rank, the fact that he had received into his house, as a revered guest, "the maid, by god's help the saviour of the city." on the evening of her arrival she supped on a few slices of bread dipped in wine and water. she begged that her host's daughter charlotte, a child of ten years, might share her couch. every morning, crossing the garden to the neighboring church, she assisted at mass, prayed for the relief of the city, and received with tears the holy communion. on tuesday, may rd, a solemn procession, led by the maid, went to the cathedral to pray for the deliverance of the city. here she was met by a priest, "dr. john of mascon, a very wise man," who looked at her in pity and in wonder. "my child," he asked, "are you come hither to raise the siege?" "in god's name, yes, my father!" the good father shook his head sadly. "my child, they are strong, and strongly fenced; it would be a mighty feat of arms to dislodge them." "to the power of god," replied joan, "nothing is impossible!" this was her word, on this and on all days. "throughout the city," says the old chronicle, "she rendered honour to no one else!" the learned doctor bowed his head, and from that moment accepted her as a messenger of god. the maid's arrival was followed by a brief lull in hostilities. she would not raise her sword till she had duly summoned the enemy, and bidden him depart in peace. on april nd she despatched the letter already quoted. the english replied promptly that if they caught the so-called maid, they would burn her for a witch. in the evening of the same day, she went out on the bridge, and mounting on the barricades, called to glasdale and his garrison, bidding them obey god and surrender, and promising to spare their lives if they would do so. they replied with a torrent of abuse and ridicule. "milkmaid" was the gentlest term they had for her. they showed a bold front, glasdale, talbot, de la pole and the rest; but they were ill at ease. they knew that their men were full of superstitious forebodings. they themselves were strangely shaken at sight of the slender girlish figure in snow-white armor, at sound of the clear ringing voice calling on them to fear god and yield to his emissary. they could and did answer defiantly, but they attempted nothing more. on monday, may d, joan summoned them again, and again their only answer was gibes and insults. she rode out, a great multitude following her, to reconnoitre the enemy's position; rode about and about the various bastilles, noting every angle, every turret, every embrasure for cannon. the english watched her, but never stirred. talbot, the old lion, victor in a score of fights, must have ground his teeth at the sight; but either he dared not trust his men, or else knew them to be outnumbered. he lay still, while the gallant little cavalcade, priests chanting in front, white-robed maid in the midst, lifting her snowy standard, delirious people thronging to touch her stirrup, swept past their camp, and re-entered the city. a bitter hour for john talbot! joan was delaying her attack till the army should return from blois with the second convoy. on may d they appeared; at dawn on the fourth, joan rode out with five hundred men to meet them; by noon all were safe within the walls, and the maid sat down quietly to dinner with her faithful squire d'aulon. they were still sitting when dunois came in with news that sir john fastolf, the hero of the battle of the herrings, was but a day's march distant with provisions and reinforcements for the english. joan received the tidings joyfully. "in god's name, bastard," she said, "i charge you to let me know as soon as you hear of his arrival. should he pass without my knowledge--i will have your head!" "have no fear of that!" said dunois. "you shall have the news the instant it comes." weary with her ride, and her heavy armor, the maid lay down beside her hostess to rest. d'aulon curled up on a little couch in the corner of the room; both slept as tired people do. suddenly the maid sprang up, calling loudly to d'aulon. "in god's name," she cried, "i must go against the english. my voices call me; i know not whether it is against their forts, or fastolf comes." bewildered and full of sleep, d'aulon and good mme. boucher helped her into her armor; even as they did so, voices rose in the street, crying that the english were attacking with great slaughter. she ran downstairs and met her page, louis de coulet. "miserable boy," she cried; "the blood of france is shedding, and you do not call me? my horse on the instant!" the boy flew for the horse; the maid mounted, calling for her banner, which he handed to her from an upper window, and rode off at full speed, squire and page following as best they might. it was not fastolf. unknown to the maid, certain of the french had planned an attack on the fort of st. loup, about a mile and a half from the town. either ignorant or careless of dunois' promise to the maid, they rode merrily to the attack, and surrounded the fort with warlike shouts. out swarmed the english like angry bees; swords flashed; the struggle was sharp but brief. the french, with no adequate leader, gave back before the rush of the defenders; broke, turned, and were streaming pell-mell back toward the city, when they saw the maid galloping toward them. alone she rode; her snowy armor gleaming, her snowy standard fluttering. in the gateway she paused a moment at sight of a wounded man borne past by his comrades. she never could look on french blood without a pang: "my hair rises for horror," she would say. but only a moment; the next, she had met the retreating troops; rallied them, led them once more to the assault. they followed her shouting, every man eager to ride beside her, or at least within sight of her, within sound of her silver voice. on to the fort once more! this time with god and the messenger of god! the english saw and in their turn faltered; wavered; gave back before the furious onset; broke and fled in disorder. the french pursued them to the fort, which they captured and burned. the church of st. loup hard by had already been partly destroyed, but joan forbade the plundering of it, and spared the lives of certain english soldiers who had thought to escape by arraying themselves in priestly vestments which they had found in the church. "we must not rob the clergy," she said merrily. the french losses in this affair were insignificant; the english force, about one hundred and fifty men, were all either killed or captured. the victorious maid rode back to the city, to weep for those who had died unshriven, and to confess her sins to father pasquerel, her director. she told her followers that the siege would be raised in five days. the next day, thursday may th, was ascension day, and she would not fight. instead, she summoned the enemy once more. crossing to the end of the bridge, where a small fort had been erected, she called across the water to the english in the tourelles, bidding them depart in peace. it was god's will, she said simply, that they should go. they replied with the usual gibes and insults. on this, she dictated a formal summons, ending with these words: "this is the third and last time that i write to you. i would have sent my letter in more honorable fashion, but you keep my herald, guienne. return him, and i will return the prisoners taken at st. loup." the letter was bound round the shaft of an arrow, and shot from the bridge into the english camp. an englishman picked it up, crying, "news from the harlot of the armagnacs!" joan wept at these brutal words, and called on the king of heaven to comfort her; almost immediately thereupon she was of good cheer, "because she had tidings from her lord"; and without wasting time began to make ready for the morrow. early friday morning (may th) troops and citizens issued through the burgundy gate, crossed the river in boats, and advanced upon the tourelles. this little fort had been restored by the english, and was now a strong place, with its pierced walls and its boulevard, and the fortified convent of the augustines hard by. as the french advanced, the english sallied forth to meet them, in such numbers and with so bold a front that the assailants wavered, and began to fall back toward the island on which the central part of the bridge rested. this troop was commanded by de gaucourt, the governor of the city, an old man and timid. seeing his men and himself in danger, he would have withdrawn with them, but at the moment a cry was heard: "the maid! the maid!" joan and la hire had brought their horses over by boat, and now were galloping to the rescue, after them soldiers and townspeople in a rush. de gaucourt would have held his soldiers back, but in vain. "you are an evil man!" cried the maid. "will you nill you, the men-at-arms will follow me to victory!" on she swept, lance in rest, crying, "in god's name, forward! forward boldly!" on swept la hire and the rest, de gaucourt and his men with them, carried away body and soul of them by the impetuous rush. they charged the english and drove them back to their intrenchments. many of the defenders were slain, many taken; the rest took refuge in the boulevard, or outwork of the tourelles. many of the victorious french remained on the spot, to guard against a possible night assault. mounting guard in the captured augustine convent, they supped on provisions brought to them in boats from the city, and slept on their arms, tired but joyful men. the maid, however, had been wounded in the foot by a calthrop, and was besides mortally weary. she went back to orleans, to the kindly shelter of the boucher roof. it was friday; she usually fasted on that day, but this time she felt the absolute need of food. to-morrow was before her, when she must have her full strength; she must eat, must rest; for this reason she had come back, though her heart was full of anxiety, dreading the night attack which her keen military sense told her the enemy might and ought to make. but the enemy was tired, too, and discouraged to boot: no attack came. "rouse ye at daybreak to-morrow!" she charged her followers. "you shall do better still than to-day. keep by my side, for i have much to do more than ever i had, and blood will flow from my body, above my breast." then the good maid said her prayers, and lay down quietly to rest, and to such sleep as her wound and her anxious heart would allow. footnotes: [ ] lang. [ ] trans. f. c. lowell. chapter x the relief anxious indeed was this night for the maid. her unerring instinct told her that the english should make a counter attack, under cover of night, on the weary french, sleeping on their arms under the open sky or in the ruined augustines, the broad stream flowing between them and safety. this, all authorities agree, they ought to have done; exactly why they did not do it, perhaps john talbot alone knows. we know only that the night passed quietly, and that at sunrise on may seventh joan heard mass and set forth on her high errand. "there is much to do!" she said. "more than i ever had yet!" much indeed! the "boulevard" had high walls, and could be approached only by scaling-ladders; round it was a deep ditch or fosse. beyond stood the tourelles, still more strongly fortified. to take these two strongholds in the face of talbot and his bulldogs was a heavy task indeed; but joan was full of confidence and cheer. as she mounted her horse, a man brought her "_une alose_" a sea-trout or shad, for her breakfast. "keep it for supper!" said the maid merrily to good père boucher, her friendly host. "i will bring back a 'goddam' to eat it with me; and i shall bring him back across the bridge!" so she rode out, with her captains about her on either side, dunois, and la hire, de gaucourt, xaintrailles and the rest, a valiant company. one chronicler says that the captains went unwillingly, thinking the odds heavy against them. one would rather think that they shared their girl-leader's confidence; surely dunois and la hire did. they crossed the river in boats, and with them every man who could be spared from the city, which must be guarded from a possible attack by talbot. french men-at-arms, scottish and italian mercenaries, citizens and apprentices, flocked to the banner of the maid, armed with guns, crossbows, clubs, or whatever weapon came to hand; carrying great shields, too, and movable sheds to shelter their advance. inside the forts, six hundred english yeomen awaited them with confidence equal to their own. they were well armed; their great gun _passe volant_ could throw an eighty-pound stone ball across the river and into the city; moreover, they had possession, that necessary nine points of the law, and english hearts for the tenth part; small wonder they were confident. it was still early morning when the french rushed to the assault, planting their scaling ladders along the walls, wherever foothold could be found; swarming up them like bees, shouting, cutting, slashing, receiving cut and slash in return. "well the english fought," says the old chronicle, "for the french were scaling at once in various places, in thick swarms, attacking on the highest parts of their walls, with such hardihood and valor, that to see them you would have thought they deemed themselves immortal. but the english drove them back many times, and tumbled them from high to low; fighting with bowshot and gunshot, with axes, lances, bills, and leaden maces, and even with their fists, so that there was some loss in killed and wounded."[ ] smoke and flame, shouts and cries, hissing of bolts and whistling bullets, with now and then the crash of the great stone balls; a wild scene; and always in the front rank the maid, her white banner floating under the wall, her clear voice calling, directing, thrilling all who heard it. so through the morning the fight raged. about noon a bolt or arrow struck her, the point passing through steel and flesh, and standing out a handbreadth behind her shoulder. "she shrank and wept," says father pasquerel; but she would not have a charm sung over the wound to stay the bleeding. "i would rather die," she said, "than so sin against the will of god."[ ] she prayed, and feeling her strength returning, drew out the arrow with her own hand. dunois thinks she paid no further attention to the wound, and went on fighting till evening; but father pasquerel says she had it dressed with olive oil, and paused long enough to confess to him. the english, seeing the maid wounded, took heart even as the french lost it. the day was passing; "the place, to all men of the sword, seemed impregnable."[ ] "doubt not!" cried the maid; "the place is ours!" but even dunois held that "there was no hope of victory this day." he gave orders to sound the recall and withdraw the troops across the river. the day was lost? not so! "but then," he says, "the maid came to me, and asked me to wait yet a little while. then she mounted her horse, and went alone into the vineyard, some way from the throng of men, and in that vineyard she abode in prayer for about a quarter of an hour. then she came back, and straightway took her standard into her hands and planted it on the edge of the fosse." seeing her once more in her place, steel and iron having apparently no power upon her, the english "shuddered, and fear fell upon them." they too, remember, had had their prophecies. "a virgin would mount on the backs of their archers!" a month, a week ago, they had still laughed at this. now the "mysterious consolation" which seemed to radiate from the person of the maid on all faithful frenchmen, heartening and uplifting them, became for her adversaries a mysterious terror, striking cold on the stoutest heart. the french had already sounded the retreat; the banner of the maid, borne all day long by her faithful standard-bearer, d'aulon, had already been handed by him to a comrade for the withdrawal; when at joan's earnest prayer the recall was countermanded. d'aulon said to his friend, a basque whom he knew well, "if i dismount and go forward to the foot of the wall, will you follow me?" he sprang from his saddle, held up his shield against the shower of arrows, and leaped into the ditch, supposing that the basque was following him. the maid at this moment saw her standard in the hands of the basque, who also had gone down into the ditch. she seems not to have recognized his purpose. she thought that her standard was lost, or was being betrayed, and seized the end of the floating flag. "ha! my standard! my standard!" she cried, and she so shook the flag that it waved wildly like a signal for instant onset. the men-at-arms conceived it to be such a signal, and gathered for attack. "ha! basque, is this what you promised me?" cried d'aulon. thereon the basque tore the flag from the hands of the maid, ran through the ditch, and stood beside d'aulon, close to the enemy's wall. by this time the whole company of those who loved her had rallied and were round her. "watch!" said joan to a knight at her side, "watch till the tail of my standard touches the wall!" a few moments passed. "joan, the flag touches the wall!" "then enter, all is yours!"[ ] then, like a wave of the sea, the french flung themselves upon the ladders; scaled the wall, mounted the crest, leaped or fell down on the inside; cut, thrust, hacked, all with such irresistible fury that the english, after valiant resistance, finally turned and fled to the drawbridge that crossed to the tourelles. ah! the bridge was in flames! smoke rolled over it, tongues of flame shot out red between the planks. seeing this, joan's heart went out to the men who had wronged and insulted her, yet had fought so valiantly. "glasdale!" she cried; "glasdale! yield thee to the king of heaven! thou calledst me harlot, but i have great pity on thy soul and the souls of thy company!" glasdale, brave as he was brutal, made no answer, but turned to meet a new peril, dire indeed. the people of the city had made a fireship and loaded it with inflammable material, lighted the mass, and towed it all flaming under the wooden drawbridge. the bridge flared to heaven, yet with heroic courage glasdale and a handful of his knights shepherded the greater part of the defenders of the lost boulevard over the burning bridge, back into the stone enclosure of the tourelles, themselves meantime holding the bridge with axe and sword. the fugitives reached the fort only to find themselves assailed from a new quarter. those watching the fight saw with amazement and terror men crossing from the city to the tourelles, apparently through the air, over a gap where two arches were broken. a miracle? no, only quickness of wit and action. an old gutter had been found and laid across the gap, and over this frail support walked the prior of the knights of malta, followed by his men-at-arms. finding all lost but honor, glasdale and his faithful few turned and leaped on the burning drawbridge, hoping to make good their retreat into the fort. the charred beams broke under them, and borne down by their heavy armor, the brave english sank beneath the tide, while on the bank the "witch of the armagnacs" knelt weeping, and prayed for their souls. dunois, la hire, and the rest were more concerned at losing so much good ransom. for all was over; of all the valiant defenders of the two forts, not one man escaped death or captivity. the red flames lit up the ruined forts; in orleans the joy bells rang their wildest peal; and over the bridge, as she had promised, "crossing on ill-laid planks and half-broken arches," the maid of orleans rode back to the city she had saved. seventeen years old; a peasant maiden, who could not read or write; she had fought and won one of the "fifteen decisive battles of the world." footnotes: [ ] quoted by a. lang, p. . [ ] guizot. [ ] percival de cagny. [ ] a. lang, p. . chapter xi the deliverance it was eight o'clock on the evening of the eighth of may when the people of orleans gathered in dense masses at the bridgehead and along the riverside to greet their rescuer. dusk had fallen; they pressed forward with lanterns and torches held aloft, all striving for a sight of the maid. "by these flickering lights," says jules quicherat, "joan seemed to them beautiful as the angel conqueror of a demon." yet it was not the morning vision of snow and silver, fresh and dewy as her own youth, that had ridden out at daybreak to battle. weary now was the white charger, drooping his gallant neck; weary was the maid, faint with the pain of her wound, her white armor dinted and stained. but the people of orleans saw nothing save their angel of deliverance. they pressed round her, eager to touch her armor, her floating standard, the horse which had borne her so bravely through the day. weary and wounded as she was, she smiled on one and all, and "in the sweetest feminine voice, called them good christians, and assured them that god would save them." so she rode on to the cathedral, where she returned thanks humbly and devoutly to god who had given the victory; then, still surrounded by the shouting, rejoicing throng, home to the house of boucher, where they left her. "there was not a man who, going home after this evening, did not feel in him the strength of ten englishmen."[ ] she had fasted since dawn, but she was too tired to eat the _alose_, nor did she bring the promised "goddam" to share it with her. the goddams were all dead save a few, who were jealously guarded for ransom. she supped on a few bits of bread dipped in weak wine and water, and a surgeon came and dressed her wound. all night, we are told, the joy bells rang through the rescued city, while the good maid slept with the peace of heaven in her heart. it was not a long sleep. at daybreak came tidings that the english had issued from their tents and arrayed themselves in order of battle. instantly joan arose and dressed, putting on a light coat of chain mail, as her wounded shoulder could not bear the weight of the heavy plate armor. she rode out with dunois and the rest, and the french order of battle was formed, fronting the english; so the two armies remained for the space of an hour. the french, full of the strong wine of yesterday's victory, were eager to attack; but joan held them back. "if they attack us," she said, "fight bravely and we shall conquer them; but do not begin the battle!" then she did a strange thing. she sent for a priest, and bade him celebrate mass in front of the army; and that done, to celebrate it yet again. both services "she and all the soldiers heard with great devotion." "now," said the maid, "look well, and tell me; are their faces set toward us?" "no!" was the reply. "they have turned their backs on us, and their faces are set toward meung." "in god's name, they are gone!" said joan. "let them go, and let us go and praise god, and follow them no farther, since this is sunday." "whereupon," says the chronicle, "the maid with the other lords and soldiers returned to orleans with great joy, to the great triumph of all the clergy and people, who with one accord returned to our lord humble thanks and praises well deserved for the victory he had given them over the english, the ancient enemies of this realm."[ ] this service of thanksgiving ordered by joan of arc on the ninth of may, , was the virtual foundation of the great festival which orleans has now celebrated with hardly a break for five hundred years. after that first outbreak of thanksgiving, dunois himself laid down the rules for the annual keeping of the festival, which are given in the "chronicle of the establishment of the _fête_," written thirty years after the siege. "my lord the bishop of orleans, and my lord dunois (the bastard), brother of my lord the duke of orleans, with the duke's advice, as well as the burghers and inhabitants of the said orleans, ordered that on the eighth of may there should be a procession of people carrying candles, which procession should march as far as the augustines, and, wherever the fight had raged, there a halt should be made and a suitable service should be had in each place with prayer. we cannot give too much praise to god and the saints, since all that was done by god's grace, and so, with great devotion, we ought to take part in the said procession. even the men of bourges and of certain other cities celebrate the day, because if orleans had fallen into the hands of the english, the rest of the kingdom would have taken great harm. always remembering, therefore, the great mercy which god has shown to the said city of orleans, we ought always to maintain and never to abandon this holy procession, lest we fall into ingratitude, whereby much evil may come upon us. every one is obliged to join the said procession, carrying a lighted candle in his hand. it passes round about the town in front of the church of our lady of saint paul, at which place they sing praises to our lady; and it goes thence to the cathedral, where the sermon is preached, and thereafter a mass is sung. there are also vigils at saint aignan, and, on the morrow, a mass for the dead. all men, therefore, should be bidden to praise god and to thank him; for at the present time there are youths who can hardly believe that the thing came about in this wise; you, however, should believe that this is a true thing, and is verily the great grace of god."[ ] walls and boulevard have long since been outgrown by the city of the loire: dynasties have risen and fallen, wars have swept and harried france after their fashion. still, in the early may time, when nature is fair and young and sweet as the maid herself, orleans rises up to do reverence to her rescuer. the priests walk in holiday vestments, the bells ring out, the censers swing, the people throng the streets and fill the churches. during her brief stay in orleans after its deliverance, joan bore herself with her own quiet modesty. she loved solitude, and rather shunned than sought company. she took no credit to herself; the glory was god's and god's alone, she repeatedly told the people, who flocked about her in adoration. "never were seen such deeds as you have wrought!" they told her. "no book tells of such marvels!" "my lord," replied the maid, "has a book in which no clerk ever read, were he ever so clerkly."[ ] what next was for the maid to do? orleans was delivered, but france was still under english rule. john of bedford, "brave soldier, prudent captain, skilful diplomatist, having experience of camps and courts," was startled, but not discouraged by the rescue of orleans. he meant to rule france for his child-king, and to rule it well; as a matter of fact, he did rule it for thirteen years, striving always "in a degree superior to his century," to bring order out of chaos, to convert the bloodstained wilderness of the conquered country into a decent and well-ordered realm. nor was john talbot himself one whit disheartened. he had lost some of his best men on the bloody day of the tourelles, but he had plenty more. he had lost orleans, but the river towns on either side of it were still his, meung, beaugency, jargeau; all strongly fortified, all guarding river and high road so that no man might pass without their leave. he had retreated in excellent order from that field where his offered battle had been--strangely, he may have thought--refused by the maid and her victorious army; he now established himself at meung, with strong outposts at beaugency and jargeau, and awaited the next move on the enemy's part. bedford, meantime, assembled in all haste another army at paris, prepared to go to talbot's assistance whenever need should arise. joan knew better than to follow the orderly retreat of the english. her own men, with all their superb courage, even with the flame of victory in their hearts, had not the training necessary for a long campaign in the open; neither was there money for it, nor provisions. besides, her voices had but one message for her now; she was to go to the dauphin; he was to be crowned king, as soon as might be; then--to paris! leaving dunois in charge of orleans, joan, with several of her followers, rode out once more, this time to tours, whither charles came from chinon to meet her. it was a strange meeting. the conquering maid, she beside whom, as she and all her followers believed, the angels of god had fought for france, rode forward, bareheaded, her glorious banner drooping in her hand, and bent humbly to her saddle-bow in obeisance. charles bade her sit erect;[ ] an eyewitness thinks that in his joy he fain would have kissed her. he might better have alighted and held her stirrup, but this would naturally not occur to him; certainly not to the maid, who had but one thought in her loyal heart. "gentle dauphin," she said, "let us make haste and be gone to rheims, where you shall be crowned king!" now, she pleaded, was the time, while their enemies still "fled, so to speak, from themselves."[ ] she added some words which well had it been for charles if he had heeded. "i shall hardly last more than a year!" she said. "we must think about working right well this year, for there is much to do." from the beginning, she had known that her time was short. the how and why were mercifully hidden from her, but she knew right well that whatever she was to do must be done soon. but charles of valois would not willingly do anything one year that might be put off till the next. he hesitated; dawdled; consulted la trémoïlle, his favorite and master; consulted jean gerson, the _most christian doctor_, whom men called the wisest frenchman of his age. the latter gave full honor and credence to the maid. "even if (which god forbid) she should be mistaken," he wrote, "in her hopes and ours, it would not necessarily follow that what she does comes of the evil spirit and not of god, but that rather our ingratitude was to blame. let the party which hath a just cause take care how by incredulity or injustice it rendereth useless the divine succor so miraculously manifested, for god, without any change of counsel, changeth the upshot according to desert."[ ] thus gerson, the learned and saintly. la trémoïlle, the ignorant and unscrupulous, was of another mind, and la trémoïlle was master of the dauphin and of such part of france as the dauphin ruled. this greedy parasite had been willing that orleans should be rescued; that alone boded him no special danger. any general awakening of the country, however, any dawn of hope, freedom, tranquillity, for the unhappy people, might be disastrous for him. while the strength of the realm was expended on petty squabbles among charles's various adherents, while the splitting of hairs with burgundy filled the time safely and agreeably, la trémoïlle could rob and squeeze the people at his pleasure. but now affairs began to take on a new aspect. this maid, having saved orleans, might well have busied herself with matters of personal glory and profit. instead of this, she talked of nothing but a united france, a france at peace, with honor; of charles a king indeed, with all good and true men serving him honestly and joyfully. moreover, his, la trémoïlle's, chief rival and former patron, arthur of brittany, count of richemont, was an admirer of this troublesome young woman. altogether it seemed to la trémoïlle that the maid was not a person to be encouraged. fair and softly, though; no haste, no outward show of enmity; judicious procrastination could do much. procrastination suited charles admirably; he asked nothing better. he dawdled two precious weeks away at tours; then he went to loches, and dawdled there. (his son, louis xi. did _not_ dawdle at loches, though he spent much time there, making cages for unruly cardinals, worshipping our lady of embrun, hanging men like apples on his orchard trees, and otherwise disporting himself in his own fashion! but that was thirty years later.) poor joan, bewildered at this strange way of following up a great victory, followed charles to loches, and with dunois at her side sought the dauphin in his apartments, where he was talking with his confessor and two other members of his council, robert le maçon and christopher of harcourt. entering the room, with a modest but determined mien she knelt before charles and clasped his knees. "noble dauphin," she said, "do not hold so many and such lengthy councils, but come at once to rheims and take the crown that is yours!" upon this, harcourt asked her if this advice came from her "_conseil_," as she called her heavenly advisers. "yes!" she replied. "they greatly insist thereupon." "will you not tell us, in the presence of the king, what is the nature and manner of this counsel that you receive?" joan blushed; it was great pain to her to unveil things so sacred; but she answered bravely: "i understand well enough what it is you wish to know, and i will tell you freely. "when men do not believe in those things which come to me from god, it grieves me sore. then i go apart and pray, making my plaint to my lord for that they are so hard of belief: and after i have prayed i hear a voice saying to me, 'child of god, go, go, go! i will be thy helper; go![ ] when i hear that voice i am joyful, and wish it might always be thus with me." while she spoke, she raised her eyes to heaven, and seemed indeed in an ecstasy of joy. charles listened, was impressed, and doubtless went to tell la trémoïlle about it. but there were others, who cared nothing for la trémoïlle and much for the maid. the young duke of alençon was, we know, her sworn brother-in-arms. he had no mind to let the glory of orleans evaporate in trailing mists of negotiation and dispute. he got together a little army, and demanded the presence and help of the maid in a campaign against the english. la trémoïlle could not well prevent this; he could only so manage that a whole month was wasted before permission was given. this was a hard month for the maid. to her eyes it was clear as the sun in heaven that "when once the dauphin was crowned and consecrated, the power of his adversaries would continually dwindle." "all," says dunois, "came to share her opinion!" by which he meant all true and knightly persons like himself. finally the matter was decided. a rendezvous was appointed at selles, not far from loches; thither, in the first days of june, the maid repaired, and there gathered about her all the chivalry of france, eager to follow her to fresh conquests. alençon was in command; he was, we might say, the temporal chief; joan the spiritual one. dunois was there; la hire, vendôme, and the rest; among them guy de laval and his brother andrew. a letter from the former, written in his name and his brother's to his mother and grandmother, has been preserved, and gives us so clear and life-like a picture of the occasion and of joan herself that i cannot resist giving it in full. _mutatis mutandis_, it is not so unlike certain letters that come over the sea to-day.[ ] reading it, we can thrill with the two women, one of whom, remember, the grandmother, was the widow of bertrand du guesclin. my reverend ladies and mothers: after i wrote you on friday last from st. catherine of fierbois, i reached loches on saturday, and went to see my lord dauphin[ ] in the castle, after vespers in the collegiate church. he is a very fair and gracious lord, very well made and active, and ought to be about seven years old. sunday i came to st. aignan, where the king was, and i sent for my lord of treves to come to my quarters; and my uncle went up with him to the castle to tell the king i was come, and to find out when he would be pleased to have me wait on him. i got the answer that i should go as soon as i wished, and he greeted me kindly and said many pleasant things to me. on monday i left the king to go to selles, four leagues from st. aignan, and the king sent for the maid, who was then at selles. some people said that this was done for my sake, so that i could see her; at any rate she was very pleasant to my brother and me, being fully armed, except for her head, and holding her lance in her hand. afterwards, when we had dismounted at selles, i went to her quarters to see her, and she had wine brought, and told me she would soon serve it to me in paris; and what she did seemed at times quite divine, both to look at her and to hear her. monday at vespers she left selles to go to romorantin, three leagues in advance, the marshal of boussac and a great many soldiers and common people being with her. i saw her get on horseback, armed all in white, except her head, with a little battle-axe in her hand, riding a great black courser, which was very restive at the door of her lodgings, and would not let her mount. so she said, "lead him to the cross," which was in front of the church near by, in the road. there she mounted without his budging, just as if he had been tied, and then she turned toward the church door which was close by, and said, "you priests and churchmen, make a procession and pray to god." she then set out on the road, calling "forward, forward," with her little battle-axe in her hand, and her waving banner carried by a pretty page. on monday my lord duke of alençon came to selles with a great company, and to-day i won a match from him at tennis. i found here a gentleman sent from my brother chauvigny, because he had heard that i had reached st. catherine. the man said that he had summoned his vassals and expected soon to be here, and that he still loved my sister dearly, and that she was stouter than she used to be. it is said here that my lord constable is coming with six hundred men at arms and four hundred archers, and that the king never had so great a force as they hope to gather. but there is no money at court, or so little that for the present i can expect no help nor maintenance; so since you have my seal, my lady mother, do not hesitate to sell or mortgage my lands, or else make some other provision by which we may be saved; otherwise through our own fault we shall be dishonored, and perhaps come near perishing, since if we do not do something of the kind, as there is no pay, we shall be left quite alone. so far we have been, and we are still, much honored, and our coming has greatly pleased the king and all his people, and they make us better cheer than you could imagine. the maid told me in her lodgings, when i went there to see her, that three days before my coming she had sent to you, my grandmother, a little gold ring, but she said that it was a very little thing and that she would willingly have sent you something better considering your rank. to-day my lord of alençon, the bastard of orleans, and gaucourt should leave this place of selles, and go after the maid, and you have sent i don't know what letters to my cousin la trémoïlle and to my lord of treves, so that the king wants to keep me with him until the maid has been before the english places around orleans to which they are going to lay siege, and the artillery is already prepared, and the maid makes no doubt that she will soon be with the king, saying that when he starts to advance towards rheims i shall go with him; but god forbid that i should do this, and not go with her at once; and my brother says so, too, and so does my lord of alençon--such a good-for-nothing will a fellow be who stay behind. they think that the king will leave here to-day, to draw nearer to the army, and men are coming in from all directions every day. they hope that before ten days are out affairs will be nearly settled one way or the other, but all have so good hope in god that i believe he will help us. my very respected ladies and mothers, we send our remembrances, my brother and i, to you, as humbly as we can; and please also write us at once news of yourselves, and do you, my lady mother, tell me how you find yourself after the medicines you have taken, for i am much troubled about you. my very respected ladies and mothers, i pray the blessed son of god to give you a good life and a long one, and we both of us also send our remembrances to our brother louis. written at selles this wednesday the th of june. and this vespers there came here my lord of vendôme, my lord of boussac, and others, and la hire is close to the army, and soon they will get to work. god grant that we get our wish. your humble sons, guy and andrew of laval.[ ] on june th, alençon and the maid entered orleans with their army, about two thousand strong. the people flocked about her with joyous greetings and offers of provisions and munitions; they could not do enough to show their enduring gratitude to the saviour of their beloved city. beside this, it must be confessed that they felt the proverbial "lively sense of future favors." jargeau, meung, beaugency, were still in english hands; from these sentinel towns up and down the loire the enemy kept strict watch over orleans, and there could be no freedom of coming or going. these towns, it appeared, must be taken before the cry 'to paris!' could be raised in good earnest. very well! let them be taken, said the maid; jargeau first, then the others. on june th[ ] she and alençon set forth, with about three thousand troops and a large following of citizens and country people. all were eager to follow her banner, to share in her labors and her victory. before telling the story of the "week of victories," let us see what her brothers-in-arms, the knightly captains of france, thought of the maid of domrémy. they had fought at her side through an arduous campaign; they were entering, with joyful ardor, on another. andrew lang has carefully selected three passages from the mass of contemporaneous evidence; the judgment of three notable military experts, de termes, dunois, and alençon. de termes speaks first. "at the assaults before orleans, jeanne showed valor and conduct which no man could excel in war. all the captains were amazed by her courage and energy, and her endurance.... in leading and arraying, and in encouraging men, she bore herself like the most skilled captain in the world, who all his life had been trained to war." then comes alençon, her "gentle duke," with: "she was most expert in war, as much in carrying the lance as in mustering a force and ordering the ranks, and in laying the guns. all marveled how cautiously and with what foresight she went to work, as if she had been a captain with twenty or thirty years of experience." finally dunois says: "she displayed (at troyes) marvelous energy, doing more work than two or three of the most famous and practised men of the sword could have done." lang, summing these things up, concludes that[ ] "her skill is a marvel, like that of the untutored clive, but nobody knows the limits of the resources of nature." it is easier to begin upon quotations than to cease from them. i may fitly close this chapter with a passage from boucher de molandon: "all those to whom it has been given to kindle the nations, have cared much less to be in advance of their time than to make use of the exciting elements of the time itself. such is jeanne d'arc, whose merit and power alike it was not to innovate upon, but to draw from her epoch the best that it contained. skilful above all others in finding happy expressions, the ringing note that roused to action, when she speaks of the blood of france, it is because the word has a meaning for all; she wakes a great echo. she sounds the ancient trumpet blast, and the illustrious dead, from clovis to du guesclin, stir in their tombs, and cause the soil of france to tremble under their discouraged descendants." footnotes: [ ] quicherat. [ ] translated by f. c. lowell. [ ] translated by f. c. lowell. [ ] pasquerel, translated by f. c. lowell. [ ] guizot. [ ] guizot. [ ] _fille dé, va, va, va! je serai à ton aide; va!_ [ ] . [ ] afterward louis xi. [ ] lowell, pp. - . [ ] lowell. lang calls it june th. [ ] lang, pp. and . chapter xii the week of victories on june th, as we have seen, joan rode forth on her new errand. beside food and ammunition, grateful orleans furnished artillery for the expedition. five sloops, manned by forty boatmen, brought heavy guns and field pieces down the river, while "twenty-four horses were needed to drag the chariot of the huge gun of position, resembling mons meg, now in edinburgh castle."[ ] ropes and scaling-ladders, too, were provided; these were easily carried. thus equipped, the troop marched bravely on, halting only when a short march from the town of jargeau. the town apparently awaited them with little concern. its walls were strong, its fosse deep and filled with water. inside was the earl of suffolk with six hundred men, an ample number for defence. he was probably watching at this moment from the church tower, but he made no sign. a discussion rose among the leaders of the advancing troop. should they storm the fortress, or proceed by slower methods? joan was for the assault. "success is certain," she said. "if i had not assurance of this from god, i would rather herd sheep than put myself in so great jeopardy." she started on, and the others followed. now a gate opened in the wall: a band of english rode out, and attacking the french skirmishers, drove them back. thereupon the maid seized the standard, rallied her men, repulsed the sally, and took possession of the suburbs of the town. so far, so good! next morning the guns opened fire on both sides, and banged away merrily for some time, one of those from orleans, _la bergère_, demolishing one of the towers in the wall. here seemed to be a practicable breach ready for the storming. a council was hastily called. the maid, alençon, dunois, xaintrailles--where was la hire? someone had heard that la hire was at the moment holding a parley with the english commander. sent for in haste (and in some heat, be it said; "i and the other leaders were ill content with la hire!" says alençon), he appeared with the tidings that suffolk offered to surrender if no relief came within fifteen days. joan had summoned the enemy the night before, and was quite clear in her mind. if the english would depart in their tunics, without arms or armor, they might do so; otherwise the town should be stormed. the other leaders decided that the english might take their horses as well as doublets. sir john fastolf was coming from paris, and it would be well to be off with the old foe before they were on with the new. suffolk, naturally enough, refused these terms. the french heralds sounded the assault. "forward, gentle duke!" cried the maid. "to the assault!" alençon hesitated. was the breach definitely practicable? "doubt not!" cried the maid. "it is the hour that god has chosen. the good lord helps those who help themselves. ah! gentle duke," she added, with the pretty touch of raillery that was all her own; "are you afraid? do you not know that i promised your wife to bring you back safe and sound, better than when you left?" she had her way; the ladders were placed, the french swarmed to the assault, while on both sides the cannon thundered defiance. watching with alençon near the breach, joan suddenly cried, "stand aside! that gun--" and she pointed toward a certain cannon on the wall--"will slay you!" the duke stepped aside. a few minutes later the sieur de lude, standing on the same spot, was killed by a shot from the gun she had indicated. this time the maid could not give warning; she was rushing into the breach, the faithful duke at her side. seeing this, suffolk called out, begging to speak with alençon; but it was too late. alençon was already following his leader up a scaling-ladder. no easy task, climbing a long ladder (for jargeau walls were high), in plate armor, carrying a heavy standard; but so the maid went. part way up a stone struck her, tearing the standard and crushing in the light helmet she wore. she fell, but was up again in an instant. "on, friends, on! god has judged them. be of good courage; within an hour they are ours!" it did not need an hour. in an instant, it seemed to alençon, the city was taken, its commander captured, its defenders fleeing in disorder. over a thousand men were slain in the pursuit; joan and alençon returned in triumph to orleans, and once more the town went mad over its glorious pucelle. she might well have rested after this, one would think, but no! two days later, she said to d'alençon, "to-morrow, after dinner, i wish to pay a visit to the english at meung. give orders to the company to march at that hour!"[ ] they marched, came to meung, took the bridge-head (a strong fortification) by assault, and placed a garrison there, but made no attempt to enter the city. this was a visit, not a capture. they slept in the fields, and next morning were on the march again. beaugency, the next town, saw them coming, and the english garrison promptly evacuated the town, retiring into the castle, but leaving various parties in ambush here and there in sheds and outbuildings, to surprise the invaders. the invaders refused to be surprised; planted their cannon, and began a bombardment in regular form. but that evening a singular complication arose. word came to the two young commanders that arthur of richemont, constable of france, was close at hand, with a large body of troops. now charles, or rather la trémoïlle, was at daggers drawn with richemont, and alençon had received a royal mandate forbidding him to have any dealings with the constable, who happened to be his own uncle. here was a quandary! alençon was loyal to the core; how could he disobey his sovereign? on the other hand he had no quarrel with his uncle, and the latter's help would be invaluable. they slept on their doubts and fears, an anxious and foreboding sleep. in the morning word came that the english army was advancing under talbot and fastolf. this was the precipitating drop in the cup of trembling. "to arms!" cried the soldiers; and alençon and the maid mounted their horses and rode to meet de richemont. the constable also had received a royal mandate. he was forbidden to advance, on pain of high displeasure; if he did so, he would be attacked. neither the dauphin nor his followers would have anything to do with him. richemont, who knew that this message came in reality from la trémoïlle, about whom he cared nothing at all, continued to advance; and on the th day of june came upon alençon and the maid riding to meet him with dunois, la hire, and the rest. "joan," said the bluff constable, "i was told that you meant to attack me. i know not whether you come from god or not; if you are from god, i fear you not at all, for god knows my good will; if you are from the devil, i fear you still less." "ah, fair constable," said the maid. "you have not come for my sake, but you are welcome!" so all was well that ended well. the threatening breach was closed, and over it the allied forces rode on to meet the english. these too had had their troubles. talbot and fastolf had met at janville and held a council, but could not be of one mind. fastolf, a cautious man, was for delay. their men, he said, were disheartened by recent events; the french were in full flush of triumph with the send of victory behind them; best for themselves to stand fast, and keep such strongholds as were still theirs, leaving beaugency to its fate. this discreet plan little suited john talbot. give way, without battle, to a girl? not he! though he had only his proper escort and such as elected to follow him, yet, he vowed, with the aid of god and st. george he would fight the french. the weaker man yielded, albeit protesting to the last moment; the old lion marshaled his troops, and on june th at patay, between orleans and châteaudun, rode out to battle. it was evening of the th when the french, arrayed in order of battle on a little hill, "_une petite montagnette_," saw their enemy advancing across a wide plain. beholding them joan the maid cried to those beside her, "they are ours! if they were hung from the clouds above me, we must have them!" on came the valiant english, and ranged themselves in battle array at the foot of the little hill. talbot knew well that the others had the advantage of position. behoved him to break the line which stood so firm above him. he sent two heralds to say that "there were three knights who would fight the french if they would come down." the french replied, "the hour is late: go to your rest for this day. to-morrow, if it be the good pleasure of god and our lady, we shall meet at closer quarters!" the english did not follow this advice, but fell back on meung, and spent the night in battering the bridge-head towers which the french had taken and were holding. next morning they would assault and re-take the towers, then march to the relief of beaugency. morning found them collecting doors and other things to shelter them during the storming of the forts; when a pursuivant came in hot haste from beaugency, announcing that the french had taken town and fort and were now on their way to find the english generals. hereupon the said english generals dropped the doors and other things, departed from meung, and took the road to paris, marching in good order across the wide wooded plain of the beauce. behind them, but well out of sight, pricked the advancing french. what followed reads more like a child's game than a life and death struggle of brave men. the french were seeking the english, but had no idea of their whereabouts. the maid, being appealed to, said confidently, "ride boldly on! you will have good guidance." to alençon, who asked her privately what they should do, she replied, "have good spurs!" "how? are we then to turn our backs?" "not so! but there will be need to ride boldly; we shall give a good account of the english, and shall need good spurs to follow them." on the morning of june th joan said, "to-day the gentle king shall have the greatest victory he has yet had." for some reason--probably because they wished to keep her in a place of safety, fearing ambuscades in this unknown country--joan did not lead the advance this day. an enemy might lurk behind any clump of oak or beech; they would not risk their precious maid in so precarious an adventure. this was not to the maid's taste; she was very angry, we are told, for she loved to lead the vanguard: however it chanced, la hire was the fortunate gallant who rode forward, with eighty men of his company, "mounted on the flower of chargers," to find the english and report when found. briefly, a scouting party. "so they rode on and they rode on," till at last they saw on their right the spires of lignerolles, on their left those of patay, two little cities of the plain, thick set in woods. this was all they saw, for the english, though directly in front of them, were close hidden in thickets and behind hedges. talbot himself led the van. coming to a lane between two tall hedges he dismounted, and, mindful it may be of the moment at agincourt "when from the meadow by, like a storm suddenly, the english archery struck the french horses," selected five hundred skilled archers, and proceeded to instal them behind the hedges, declaring that he would hold the pass till his main and rear guard came up. "but another thing befell him!" says the old chronicle. on came la hire and his eighty cavaliers, dashing across the open, crashing through the woods, who so merry as they? now these woods held other living things beside english archers. at the sound of crackling and rending branches, up sprang a noble stag, startled from his noonday rest, and fled through the forest as if the hounds were at his heels. so fleeing, the frightened creature rushed full into the main body of the english, hurrying to join talbot. an englishman is an englishman, the world over. they did not know the french were near, but i am not sure that it would have made any difference if they had. clear, loud, and triumphant, every man of them raised the "view halloo," as good sportsmen should. la hire heard, and checked his horse instantly; sent back a message to alençon and the maid, the one word "_found!_" formed his eighty in order of battle, and charged with such fury down talbot's lane that the english archers were cut to pieces before they could loose a shaft. fastolf now came rushing up to join talbot, but finding himself too late, drew rein, and suffered himself to be led--somewhat ignominiously, it was thought--from the field; "making the greatest dole that ever man made." well might he lament. the battle of patay was followed by a massacre of the english, which the maid was powerless to prevent. the french had suffered too long; the iron had entered too deep into their souls. as the world stood then, they would have been more or less than human to have held their hand from the slaughter. it seemed probable that joan did not see all of the butchery, but she saw more than enough. "she was most pitiful," says the page d'aulon, "at the sight of so great a slaughter. a frenchman was leading some english prisoners; he struck one of them on the head; the man fell senseless. joan sprang from her saddle and held the englishman's head in her lap, comforting him; and he was shriven."[ ] talbot was taken by xaintrailles, and led by him before alençon, the maid and de richemont. "you did not look for this in the morning, lord talbot!" said alençon, who had been a prisoner in england. "it is the fortune of war!" said the old lion; and no other word of his is recorded. the week of victories was over, and once more joan returned to her orleans, to joy-bells and masses, adoring crowds and friendly hearthstones. this time she found a present awaiting her at the house of _père_ boucher, a present at once quaint and pathetic. fourteen years had passed since agincourt was lost and won, and charles of orleans was still a prisoner in england, still writing poetry like his fellow-prisoner and poet, james i. of scotland. he had heard of the grievous peril of his city, and of its glorious rescue by the wonder-working maid. he would fain show his gratitude in some seemly and appropriate way. therefore, "considering the good and agreeable service of the pucelle against the english, ancient enemies of the king and himself," he ordered the treasurer (of orleans) to offer in his name to the young heroine a suit--of armor?--by no means! a costume of state, "_vêtement d'apparat_," such as gentlewomen wore. the colors of his house were to be used; "a robe of fine scarlet cloth, with a tunic (_huque_) of dark green stuff." "a tailor of renown" was charged with the making of the costume; the items of expense have been preserved. two ells of scarlet cloth cost eight gold crowns; the lining, two crowns more. one ell of green stuff, two crowns. for making a robe and _huque_, with trimming of white satin, sendal, and other stuff, one crown. total, thirteen gold crowns, equal to about twenty dollars of our money. not an extravagant present, you say, in return for a royal city. but joan had looked for no reward, and charles gave what he could. be sure that the maid was well pleased with her costume of state; i cannot repeat too often that she was seventeen, and fair as a white rose. she may even have worn it--who knows? during those few days of rest, after patay, at père boucher's. she loved pretty clothes. one can fancy the astonishment of alençon, coming clanking in his armor to take counsel with his fellow-commander, to find her blushing rose-like in scarlet and green. it is a pretty picture. those were the days of the hennin, but i cannot think that the maid ever, even for a moment, crowned her short dark locks with that most hideous invention of fashion. we all know it in pictures; the single or double-horned headdress (i know not which is uglier!) often reaching monstrous proportions, with which the fashionable women of that day were infatuated. the single hennin was often two or three feet in height; the double one perhaps nearly as wide. in the first year of the siege of orleans one friar thomas preached a crusade against the extravagance of women's dress, and especially against the hennin. "he was so vehement against them," says monstrelêt, "that no woman thus dressed dared to appear in his presence, for he was accustomed when he saw any with such dresses, to excite the little boys to torment and plague them. he ordered the boys to shout after them, '_au hennin! au hennin!_' even when the ladies were departed from him, and from hearing his invectives; and the boys pursuing them endeavored to pull down these monstrous head-dresses, so that the ladies were forced to seek shelter in places of safety. these cries caused many tumults between those who raised them and the servants of the ladies. for a time the ladies were ashamed, and came to mass in close caps, 'such as those of nuns.' but this reform lasted not, for like as snails, when anyone passes them, draw in their horns, and when all danger seems over, put them forth again--so these ladies, shortly after the preacher had quitted their country, forgetful of his doctrine and abuse, began to resume their former colossal head-dresses, and wore them even higher than before." a terrible fellow, this friar thomas. monstrelêt further tells us that "at sermons he divided women from men by a cord, having observed some sly doings between them while he was preaching." sometimes, after an eloquent sermon on the pains of hell and damnation, he would summon his hearers to bring him all games and toys; all hennins and other abominations of dress; and having a fire ready burning, would throw these vanities in and make an end of them for that time. here is a long digression about hennins; as i say, i do not believe joan ever put one on her head; nor did friar thomas, so far as i know, ever come to orleans. footnotes: [ ] lang, p. . [ ] a. lang, p. . [ ] translated by andrew lang. chapter xiii rheims things began to look worse and worse for la trémoïlle. "by reason of joan the maid," says the old chronicle, "so many folks came from all parts unto the king for to serve him at their own charges, that la trémoïlle and others of the council were full wroth thereat, through anxiety for their own persons." that figure of a united france, which shone so bright and gracious before the eyes of the maid, was to la trémoïlle and his minions a spectre of doom. they put forth all their forces of inertia and procrastination--mighty forces indeed when skilfully handled--and spun their cobwebs of intrigue close and closer about the foolish dauphin. rejoicing orleans thought her prince would come to share her triumph, and through her gates would ride forth to that coronation which was to consummate and render stable the glorious victories of the past weeks. they adorned their streets, hung out their richest tapestries for the royal visitor; but charles was visiting la trémoïlle at the latter's castle of sully, and made no movement. joan waited a day or two, and then took horse and rode to sully. she had no time to waste, however it might be with others. earnestly and reverently she besought charles to make no more delay, but ride with her at once to rheims for his coronation. charles regretted the severity of the maid's labors; was very pleased at the victories; thought she ought to take a holiday; shortly, no one knows why, left sully and went to châteauneuf, fifteen miles down the river. joan followed him, and again made her prayer. she wept as she knelt before him. the cruel toil, the bloodshed and the glory--was all to be for naught? the days were flying, every day bringing her nearer the end. the dauphin, moved by her tears, bade her dry her eyes, all would be well. but while charles dawdled and la trémoïlle shuffled his cards and spun his webs, france was rising. the news of orleans and patay flew on the wings of the wind, birds of the air carried it. in la rochelle the bells were rung; te deum was sung; bonfires blazed, and every child was given a cake to run and shout "_noël!_" before the triumphal procession. the name of the maid was on every lip, every heart beat high for her. knowing this, as she must have known it, small wonder that she chafed and wept at the delay. she rode to gien, where long and weary councils were held, and ten more precious days wasted. here people came flocking from all parts of the realm, to join her standard, for love of her and of france. the royal treasury was empty; no matter for that! gentlemen who were too poor to equip themselves properly came armed with bows and arrows, with hunting knives, with anything that could cut or pierce. one gallant soldier, "bueil, one of the french leaders," stole linen from the drying-lines of a neighboring castle to make himself decent to appear at court. "each one of them," says the old chronicle, "had firm belief that through joan much good would come to the land of france, and so they longed greatly to serve her, and learned of her deeds as if they were god's own." miracle and portent sprang up to aid the cause. in poitou knights in blazing armor were seen riding down the sky, and it was clear that they threatened ruin to the duke of brittany, who still favored the english. the joints of the favorite were loosened, and his knees smote together; yet at this time none dared speak openly against him, though all knew that it was he who blocked the way. but for him, men said, the french might now be strong enough to sweep the english finally and completely from their soil. john of bedford, in paris, trying his best to rule france, since that was the task that had been set him, wrote to his young master in england: "all things here prospered for you till the time of the siege of orleans, undertaken by whose advice god only knows. since the death of my cousin of salisbury, whom god absolve, who fell by the hand of god, as it seemeth, your people, who were assembled in great number at this siege, have received a terrible check. this has been caused in part, as we trow, by the confidence our enemies have in a disciple and limb of the devil, called pucelle, that used false enchantments and sorcery. the which stroke and discomfiture has not only lessened the number of your people here, but also sunk the courage of the remainder in a wonderful manner, and encouraged your enemies to assemble themselves forthwith in great numbers."[ ] the enemies of england were not all encouraged. there were others besides la trémoïlle at the councils of gien who advised against the ride to rheims. the way was long, and thick set with strong places garrisoned by english and burgundians. there would be great danger for the dauphin and all concerned. "i know all that, and care nothing for it!" cried the maid; and in desperation she rode out of the town and bivouacked in the open fields, her faithful comrades about her. deep as was her distress, her determination never wavered. she wrote to the people of tournai, who had been faithful throughout to the dauphin's cause, "loyal frenchmen, i pray and require you to be ready to come to the coronation of the gentle king charles at rheims, where we shall shortly be, and to come and meet us so soon as ye shall learn of our approach." this was on june th; on the th, la trémoïlle and the dauphin yielded reluctantly enough to the irresistible force of public enthusiasm. the maid had already started. the stage was set for the coronation; there was really no help for it. so off they set for rheims, dauphin, favorite, court and all, following the maid of domrémy. it was no holiday procession. as had been foreseen, there were obstacles, and plenty of them. auxerre would not open its gates; sent, it was said, a bribe of two thousand crowns to save itself from assault; but sent also food (at a price!) to the advancing army. troyes, a little farther on, had sworn allegiance to england and burgundy. coronation at rheims? the trojans knew nothing about it. they had a garrison, english and burgundian, five or six thousand good stout men; they snapped their fingers at maid and dauphin; would not hear of admitting them. had not brother richard, the cordelier friar, warned them against this maid, saying that she was, or might be, a female antichrist? had he not bidden them sow beans in vast quantities in case of emergency? here were the beans, whole fields of them, in evidence! here was also brother richard himself, breathing forth fire and fury. presently the holy brother, who seems to have been a second edition of father thomas, preaching repentance and practicing the destruction of vanities, came forth to exorcise the maid; threw holy water at her, and made the sign of the cross. joan laughed her pleasant, merry laugh; bade him take courage and come forward. she would not fly away, she assured him. whereupon, at nearer view of the supposed sorceress and limb of evil, brother richard suffered a sudden change of heart; perceived that here was a thing divine; plumped down on his knees to do homage: but the good maid knelt too, humbly, in token that she was "of like passions" with himself. soon the pair were good friends, and the friar hurried back to the city and declared that the maid was of god, and could if she wished fly over the walls. troyes heard, but kept its gates shut. anxious council was held in the dauphin's camp; la trémoïlle advised retreat; had he not said all along, etc., etc. the archbishop of rheims, chancellor of france and a tool of la trémoïlle, drew lurid pictures of the strength of troyes and the contumaciousness of its people. they never would yield; the supplies of the army were running low. best retire while they could do so with safety. the councillors were called on in turn for their opinion; some advised retreating, some passing by the obstinate town in hope of faring better elsewhere; hardly one favored an attack on the city. when the turn came of robert de maçon, sometime chancellor (of charles vi.), he said bluntly, "this march was begun not because we were rich in money or strong in men, but because joan the maid said it was the will of god. let the maid be summoned, and let the council hear what she has to say on the matter!" joan was sent for, and was told the sense of the meeting; the lions in the path; the necessity of retreat. to the archbishop, who addressed her, she made no reply, but turned to her prince. "do you believe all this, gentle dauphin?" she asked. charles was not sure, perhaps, what la trémoïlle would allow him to believe. he made cautious answer; if the maid had anything profitable and reasonable to say, she would be trusted. "good dauphin," said the maid in her clear thrilling voice, "command your people to advance to the siege, and waste no more time in councils; in god's name, before three days pass i will bring you into troyes, by favor or force or valor, and false burgundy shall be greatly amazed." even the archbishop seems to have been impressed by these words. "joan," he said, "we could wait for six days were we sure of having the town, but can we be sure?" "have no doubt of it!" replied the maid. thereupon she mounted her horse and rode through the camp, banner in hand, exhorting, encouraging, ordering preparations for the assault. following the example of the english at meung, she collected doors, tables, screens, to shelter the advance, bundles of fagots to fill in the ditches. "immediately," says dunois (_quorum pars magna_, we may well believe), "she crossed the river with the royal army and pitched tents close by the wall, laboring with a diligence that not two or three most experienced and renowned captains could have shown." all night she worked, never pausing for an hour. when morning broke, the burgesses of troyes, looking over their battlements, saw an army in storming array; saw in the very front a slender figure in white armor, waving on her men. "to the assault!" cried the maid; and made a sign to fill the ditch with fagots. at the sight the hearts of the men of troyes turned to water. they sent their bishop to make terms, and the city opened its gates to the dauphin and the maid. four days later the bishop of chalôns appeared with the keys of his city, which the little army of triumph entered july th. at chalôns joan found several men of domrémy, who had come from the village to see the glory of their own maid. to one of them, her godfather, she gave a red cap--or some say a robe--that she had worn; she was full of kindly and neighborly words; told one of them who had been burgundian in his sympathies that she feared nothing but treachery. about this time she said to the king, in alençon's hearing, "make good use of my time! i shall hardly last longer than a year." two days after this, halting at sept-saule, the dauphin received a deputation from rheims. the holy city had been strongly anglo-burgundian till now; had vowed unshakable loyalty to john of bedford and philip of burgundy. but this was while troyes still held out; troyes, which had "sworn on the precious body of jesus christ to resist to the death." now, troyes had submitted, and her people wrote to those of rheims begging them to do likewise, assuring them that the dauphin was everything that was lovely and of good report; moreover, "_une belle personne!_" their own archbishop wrote too, charging them to make submission to their lawful prince. what was a holy city to do? "bow thy head meekly, o sicambrian! adore----" was st. remy speaking again in the person of this peasant maid? must the city of clovis bow like him, taking on new vows and forswearing old? there seemed no help for it. accordingly the deputation was sent, inviting charles to enter his loyal city of rheims; and people began to make ready for the coronation. rheims; durocortorum of the romans; an important town in the days of caesar, faithful to him and to his followers, and receiving special favors in recognition of its fidelity. the vandals captured it in , and slew st. nicasus; later, attila and his huns visited it with fire and sword. later still, as we know, it saw the baptism of clovis, and became the holy city of france, where all her kings would fain be crowned. did not men say that the phial of oil used in that kingly baptism by st. rémy, and still preserved in his abbey, was brought to him by a white dove, straight from heaven? accordingly the kings were crowned there, from philip augustus in to charles x. in . now, on the seventeenth day of july, , charles of valois, seventh of that name, was to receive his solemn sacring, and to become king of france _de jure_, if not yet _de facto_. the ceremony began at nine in the morning. "a right fair thing it was," wrote pierre de beauvais to the queen, "to see that fair mystery, for it was as solemn and as well adorned with all things thereto pertaining, as if it had been ordered a year before."[ ] first, a company of knights and nobles in full armor, headed by the maréchal de boursac, rode out to meet the abbot of st. rémy, who came from his abbey bringing the holy phial (_ampoule_). then they all rode into the cathedral, and alighted at the choir-gate. there met them charles the dauphin, and presently received his consecration at the hands of the archbishop, and was anointed and crowned king of france. the people shouted "_noël!_" and blessed god for the auspicious day. "and the trumpets sounded so that you might think the roofs would be rent. and always during that mystery the maid stood next the king, her standard in her hand. a right fair thing it was to see the goodly manners of the king and the maid."[ ] d'albert carried the sword of state; alençon gave the accolade. guy de laval was there, and la trémoïlle, and many others whose names we know; all in their brightest armor, we may be sure, with much clanking of swords and waving of banners. we hardly see them; all our eyes are for the maid (she also in full armor, as becomes a good soldier), as she kneels before the king she has made, embracing his knees and weeping for joy. "gentle king," she says, "now is accomplished the will of god, who decreed that i should raise the siege of orleans and bring you to this city of rheims to receive your solemn sacring, thereby showing that you are the true king, and that france shall be yours." the chronicle adds, "and right great pity came upon all who saw her, and many wept." if this might have been the end! if she might have turned now, in the hour of her triumph, her task accomplished, and the bidding of her voices done--have turned away from the warfare and the pomp, the cabals and the intrigues, and gone back to domrémy, to tend her sheep and mind her spinning-wheel, and dream over "the great days done!" tradition has long held that this was the wish of her heart, and that after the coronation she begged charles to let her depart in peace, now that her mission was ended. this legend seems to have no foundation in fact; it probably sprang from the universal feeling; "might it have been!" we shall see, however, that somewhat later she expressed to others her desire to depart. the relief of orleans and the coronation of the king were all, says dunois, that she actually claimed as her mission; beyond this all was vague. still, the voices said that the english must be driven from french soil, and joan was the last one to take her hand from the plough while work was still to do. forward then, in god's name, since thus it must be! i have never seen rheims cathedral, and now i shall never see it with my bodily eyes; yet to me, as to all of this day and generation, it is intimately familiar in both its aspects. first we see it the crown and glory of gothic architecture, the "frozen music," the "rugged lacework" whose praises men have sung for seven hundred years, yet whose beauty has never been expressed in words. next we see it--every child knows how. let us not dwell upon it. one thought brightens against the dark background of ruin and desolation. through all the four-years' agony of rheims, while this sacred heart of her was crashing and splintering under the deadly shell-fire; while the splendors of its great rose-window were tinkling in rainbow showers down on its uptorn pavements; while the very lead from its roofs was dripping down in those curious lengths and festoons of clinging particles which men now call "the tears of rheims," one thing remained untouched. before the cathedral (which with its ruined and dying body seemed to shelter her), quiet through the thunders of the bombardment, marble on her marble steed, still sat the maid of france. footnotes: [ ] "pictorial history of england," knight, p. . [ ] trans. a. lang. [ ] trans. a. lang. chapter xiv paris charles of valois was king of france. the first of joan's appointed tasks was fulfilled, and with clear faith and resolve she turned to the second. the english must be driven from the soil of france. to this end, the word was "paris!" and on paris, might the maid have her way, the king's conquering army should march forthwith. she and alençon had thought to set out the day after the coronation; but on the very day of the ceremony, july th, came to rheims an embassy from philip duke of burgundy, asking for a truce. joan greatly desired peace with burgundy, knowing that there could be no lasting victory without it. she had written to the duke a month before this, but had received no reply; now, on july th, she wrote again in her simple direct fashion. "high and mighty prince, duke of burgundy, i, joan the maid, in the name of the king of heaven, my rightful and sovereign lord, bid you and the king of france make a good, firm peace, which shall endure. do each of you pardon the other, heartily and wholly, as loyal christians should, and, if you like to fight, go against the saracens. prince of burgundy, i pray and beseech and beg you as humbly as i may, that you war no more on the holy kingdom of france, but at once cause your people who are in any places and fortresses of this holy kingdom to withdraw; and as for the gentle king of france, he is ready to make peace with you if you are willing, saving his honor; and i bid you know, in the name of the king of heaven, my rightful and sovereign lord, for your well-being and your honor and on your life, that you will never gain a battle against loyal frenchmen; and that all who war in the holy kingdom of france war against king jesus, king of heaven and all the earth, my rightful and sovereign lord. with folded hands i pray and beg you to fight no battle and wage no war against us, neither you, your soldiers, nor your people, for whatever number of soldiers you bring against us, know of a surety that they shall gain nothing, but it will be a great pity to see the great battle and the blood which will flow from those who come there against us. three weeks ago i wrote and sent you good letters by a herald, bidding you to the king's consecration, which takes place to-day, sunday, the seventeenth of this present month of july, in the city of rheims, but i have had no answer, and have heard no news of the herald. to god i commend you, and may he keep you, if it please him, and i pray god to bring about a good peace."[ ] the very day after came the burgundian envoys, with peace on their lips. joan could not know that a few days before, while she and charles were before troyes, philip of burgundy had entered paris in person, and standing beside john of bedford had proclaimed his wrongs, telling again the oft-told tale of his father's murder, and calling on the people of paris to swear allegiance to himself and bedford. having done this, he dispatched his embassy to beguile charles into a truce, which should give him and the english time to make further preparations. charles was always ready to be beguiled. for the moment, however, the tide of triumph and devotion was too strong for him. he was carried hither and thither by it; to the abbey of st. macoul, where he "touched" for the king's evil; to soissons, the keys of which had been sent him in due submission. everywhere he was received with joyful acclamations; everywhere the maid rode before him, in the knight's or page's dress which she affected when not in armor, trunks and short coat of rich materials, well furred. what had become of the scarlet and green orleans costume we do not know; in any case she could not have worn it on horseback. the way lay clear before them to paris, only sixty miles distant. one might think that even charles vii. might have heard the brazen head of the fable speak loud and clear: "_time is!_" but charles was listening to the men of burgundy, and dawdling, which after all was the occupation he loved best. he spent four or five precious days at soissons, then dawdled across the marne to château thierry, where six hundred years later yankee boys were to defend gloriously that soil of france which he betrayed and insulted. at château thierry he at least did one thing. on the last day of july "in favor and at the request of our beloved joan the maid, considering the great, high, notable and profitable service which she has rendered and doth daily render us in the recovery of our kingdom," the king declared the villages of domrémy and greux free from taxes forever. through nearly three hundred years the tax-gatherer's book bore these words, written against the names of these two villages: "_nothing; for the maid_." in the reign of louis xv. this freedom, with many others, came to an end. as charles loitered about the neighborhood, as contemptible a figure as history can show in all her ample page, the delighted people still flocked from neighboring towns and villages to do homage to him and the maid. joan loved these plain country folk with their joyous greetings. "what good devout people these are!" she exclaimed one day, as she rode between dunois and the archbishop of rheims. "never have i seen any people who so greatly rejoiced over the coming of a king so noble. when i come to die, i would well that it might be in these parts." "joan," said the archbishop, "is it known to you when you will die, and at what place?" dunois, who rode at her bridle rein, reports her answer. "where it shall please god! of the hour and the place i know no more than you. i have done that which my lord commanded me, to deliver orleans and have the gentle king crowned. would that it might please god my creator to suffer me to depart at this time and lay down my arms, and go to serve my father and mother in keeping their sheep, with my sisters and brothers, who would be right glad to see me." _and all the people shall say amen!_ was the good maid beginning to have glimpses of the clay feet of her idol? if so, she gave no sign. her loyalty never wavered for an instant, but she was bewildered--how should she not have been?--at the result of her shining deeds. she had laid a kingdom at charles's feet; he let it lie there, and drifted from place to place, dragging her with him. on august th she wrote a pathetic letter to the people of rheims, doing her poor best to reassure them, who saw their new crowned king apparently deserting them. "dear and good friends," she says, "good and loyal frenchmen, the maid sends you her greetings"; and goes on to assure them that she will never abandon them while she lives. "true it is that the king has made a fifteen days' truce with the duke of burgundy, who is to give up to him the town of paris on the fifteenth day. although the truce is made, i am not content, and am not certain that i will keep it. if i do, it will be merely for the sake of the king's honor, and in case they do not deceive the blood royal, for, i will keep the king's army together and in readiness, at the end of the fifteen days, if peace is not made."[ ] finally she bade the people trust her, and be of good heart--striving, poor soul, to lift their hearts, while her own was sinking daily--and to warn her if traitors should be found among them. john of bedford, one may think, was no less puzzled than the maid. he too saw the kingdom at those loitering, shambling feet; but he was not the man to wait the pleasure of the shambler. he sent to england for five thousand stout men-at-arms, and established them in paris. one division of this army bore a standard, in the centre of which appeared a distaff filled with cotton, with a half-filled spindle hanging to it. the field was set with empty spindles, and inscribed with the legend: "now, fair one, come!" at the same time bedford sent a letter to charles from montereau, beginning, "you formerly self-styled dauphin, and now calling yourself king," charging him with receiving help from an abandoned and dissolute woman, wearing men's apparel, and an apostate and seditious friar; "both, according to holy scripture, things abominable to god." the duke begged the king to have pity on the unhappy people of france, and to meet him at some convenient place, where terms of peace might be discussed. it should be a true peace, not like that once made by charles at this very montereau, just before he treacherously slew the duke of burgundy. finally, bedford challenged charles to single combat (for which probably no man in france, unless it were la trémoïlle, had less stomach) and appealed to the almighty, who then as now was claimed as bosom friend by all would-be autocrats. having dispatched this letter, which he hoped would sting charles into action of some sort, john of bedford went back to paris, and set his army in battle array before the closed gates of the city. ever since the relief of orleans, the english had not ceased to assure joan as occasion served, that whenever and wherever they could lay hands on her they would burn her. the maid was only too eager to give them their chance. "i cry, 'go against the english!'" she exclaimed. at last, after endless "to-ing and fro-ing," joan and alençon took matters into their own hands, and started for paris, leaving the king to follow as he might. on august th they encountered bedford at montépilloy, strongly intrenched, in an excellent position. the french advanced to within two bowshots, and boldly defied him to battle. but bedford had no idea of giving them battle; forbade any general sortie--but, on the french knights' advancing to the very walls, shouting defiance--allowed a little genteel skirmishing here and there. the maid herself, when she saw that the foe would not come out, "rode to the front, standard in hand and smote the english palisade." nothing came of it, except a few more skirmishes. next day the french retreated, thinking to draw their enemy out in pursuit; whereupon the wily bedford turned about and went back to paris, "having faced without disaster a superior french force, having encouraged his own troops, and shaken the popular faith in joan."[ ] finding the english gone, joan, alençon, and charles went to compiègne, which had recently sent in its submission, as had beauvais and senlis. compiègne received its precious king with apparent enthusiasm. with these three towns secure, joan's spirit rose again for a moment. now, at last, the way lay open. forward to paris, while time still was! charles found compiègne a pleasant place, and saw no hurry; was busy, moreover, coquetting again with burgundy. "the maid was in grief," says the chronicle, "for the king's long tarrying at compiègne; and it seemed he was content, as was his wont, with such grace as god had granted him, and would seek no further adventure." once more the maid set out with her faithful army, this time really for paris, halting not till she reached st. denis. no sooner was her back turned than charles and la trémoïlle concluded a general truce, to begin at once, august th, and to last till christmas. the english might benefit by it whenever they wished; while it lasted, no more cities might submit to charles, however much they might wish to do so. the peace party had triumphed for the moment. meanwhile the maid was at the gates of paris; with the king's permission, let us remember! he allowed her to attack the city, practically at the same moment when he agreed to recognize burgundy as holding it against her. who shall read this riddle? the "campaign of dupes," as it has been called, has puzzled historians from that day to this. for us, it is perhaps enough to remember the inheritance of this wretched mortal, child of a mad father and a bad mother. he had already signed the pact with burgundy when alençon, after repeated efforts, finally succeeded in dislodging him from his perch at senlis, and dragged him as far as st. denis. here he would be safe, and his near presence would hearten the troops. so thought joan and alençon, and so it proved for the moment. there was great rejoicing. "she will put the king in paris," people said, "if he will let her!" and the men of orleans and patay rode about and about the city, examining the fortifications, seeking the best place for an assault, and sending inflammatory messages to their friends inside the walls, those who had once thrilled to the cry of "armagnac!" and who were now ready to rally to the white standard of the maid. september th was the festival of the birth of st. mary the virgin. as a rule, joan did not like to fight on holy days; but the captains were eager to attack, her voices did not forbid, her military instinct bade her strike. at eight in the morning, she, with old de gaucourt and gilles de rais, advanced against the gate of st. honoré, while alençon with the reserve forces remained on guard in case of a possible sortie. there are many accounts of this attack. a curious one is that of the _bourgeois de paris_, whose _journal_ throws so vivid a light on these wild times. the bourgeois was an ardent burgundian, and had no good to say of anything connected with the armagnacs or their successors. "les armenalx," he still calls the royal army; and tells how it appeared before paris with "a creature in the form of a woman, whom they called the maid." "they came," he said, "about the hour of high mass, between eleven and twelve, their pucelle with them, and great store of chariots, carts, and horses, all loaded with huge fagots to fill the fosses of paris, and began to assault between the gate of st. honoré and the gate st. denis, and the assault was very cruel; and in attacking they said many ill words to those of paris. and there was their pucelle with her standard on the edge of the fosse crying to those of paris, 'yield you in the name of jesus, to us, and that quickly, for if you do not yield before night, we shall enter by force, will you nill you, and all shall be put to death without mercy.'" these last words do not ring true; we know that joan was always for sparing life when it was possible. another anglo-burgundian, clément de fauquembergen, describes how the people, at news of the attack, fled from the churches, where they were at prayers, and hid in their cellars; while the defenders of the city took their stations on the walls and made valiant defence, giving the assailants back shot for shot, bolt for bolt. the first ditch was deep but dry, the second filled with water. those watching from the walls saw a slender white-clad figure spring forward from the french ranks, lance in hand; saw it climb slowly and carefully down and up the steep sides of the dry ditch, and stand on the brink of the moat. "the maid! the witch of armagnac!" the murmur ran like flame along the walls, and archers and gunners sprang to their posts and took careful aim at the shining figure. serene, unmoved, amid a storm of bullets and arrows, the maid stood beside the water, probing its black depth with her lance; calling on her men to follow her. so she stands for all time, one of the imperishable pictures. another moment, and a bolt from an arblast struck her down. still, as she lay bleeding from a wound in the thigh, she ceased not to cheer the french on to the assault. let them only fill the ditch, she cried, and all would be well; the city would be theirs. it was not to be. the garrison, seeing her fall, redoubled their volleys of iron and stone; the assailants were weary, twilight was gathering, and no radiant armor shone through the dusk to light them on. now it was night, and all but the maid knew that the end had come. she, lying beside the ditch, refusing to be moved, still cried for the charge, still gave assurance of victory. at last, long after nightfall, alençon and de gaucourt, unable to prevail upon her otherwise, lifted her out of the fosse, set her on a horse, and rode back to the line. "_par mon martin_," she still cried, "the place would have been taken!" one at least of the burgundian chroniclers is of her mind. "had anyone in the king's command," he says, "been as manly as joan, paris would have been in danger of capture; but none of the others could agree upon the matter." next morning, friday the ninth, the maid sent for alençon and implored him to sound the trumpets and lead the assault. she would never leave the spot, she vowed, till the city was taken. alençon was willing enough, and some of the captains with him; others demurred. while they debated the matter, came messengers from the king, with orders for them to return at once to st. denis. la trémoïlle had won, and paris was lost. sick at heart, the wounded maid, with faithful alençon beside her, rode back, to find charles busy with plans for retreat. even joan must now, one would think, have realized that all was over; yet the two comrades made one last gallant effort. the south wall of paris might be less strong than that near the gate of st. honoré. alençon had already built a bridge across the seine near st. denis; how if they crossed this bridge with a chosen few and surprised the town? early next morning they rode forth on their perilous venture--to find the bridge destroyed by order of the king. now indeed joan tasted the bitterness of defeat. she spoke no word, but her action spoke for her. she hung up her armor before the statue of the virgin mother in the cathedral. her voices bade her stay in st. denis, but for once she must disobey them, obedience not being in her power. three days later charles left the place, dragging his followers with him. a hasty march back to the loire, and on september st the king dined at gien, well out of the way of english and burgundians. "and thus," says the chronicle, "were broken the will of the maid and the army of the king." footnotes: [ ] lowell, pp. and . [ ] translated by andrew lang. [ ] lowell, pp. and . chapter xv compiÈgne at gien, the little old town where charlemagne's castle frowned down upon the peaceful loire, was bitter wrangling in the days that followed. la trémoïlle had got his truce, and meant to enjoy it; alençon's lance was still in rest; he demanded another campaign, in normandy this time, and the maid to lead it with him. joan, with unerring glance, saw the thing that should be done. let her go to the isle of france, and from that spot of vantage cut off the supplies of paris as they came down the river, and so reduce the city! both these requests were put by. la trémoïlle did not mean that alençon and the maid should ever fight side by side again. he had his way; the fiery duke, deprived of his command, left the court in anger, and retired to his estate. no sooner was he gone, than charles disbanded the army, and fell to his dawdling again. once more the brazen head had spoken: "_time was!_" hither and yon he drifted, a dead leaf skipping before the wind; with him, would she or no, went the maid. her bright arms were dimmed now by defeat, but still she was valuable--and dangerous! charles was not yet ready to give her up; la trémoïlle did not dare to let her go; she drifted with the rest. at selles the queen met her precious spouse, and together they drifted to bourges. here joan was lodged in the house of marguerite la touroulde, a gentlewoman of the queen's train, and stayed there some weeks, praying often in the churches, giving to the poor, bearing herself, as ever, simply and modestly. girls brought her their rosaries, begging her to touch them. "touch them yourselves!" she said laughing. "they will get as much good from your touch as from mine." she talked much with her kindly hostess, as they sat together in the house, or went to and from mass and confession. dame margaret suggested that probably joan's courage in battle came from the knowledge that she would not be killed. "i have no such knowledge," said the maid; "no more than anybody else." this good woman testified later that joan gave freely to the poor and with a glad heart, saying, "i am sent for the comfort of the poor and needy." testified also that the maid was "very simple and innocent, knowing almost nothing except in affairs of war."[ ] meantime, charles and la trémoïlle were holding councils, after their manner. what to do, with affairs in general, with the maid in particular? they must not stir up burgundy; it would be well to let the english alone just now, while the truce held; yet here was this little saintly firebrand, demanding persistently to be allowed to save the kingdom! who wanted to save the kingdom? certainly not la trémoïlle. at last, after much cogitation, he hit on a project, at once safe and promising. here were two little river towns, la charité and st. pierre le moustier, conveniently near by, held for burgundy by two soldiers of fortune, perrinet grasset (who began life a mason), and francis of surienne, a spaniard, uncle of that rodrigo borgia who was later to disedify christendom as pope alexander vi. la trémoïlle had a grudge against grasset; had been captured by him once upon a time, and made to pay a large ransom, to his great inconvenience. why not get up an expedition against these two places, and send the maid in charge? if she succeeded, well; if not--still well enough! she would be discredited, and little harm done. they did not actually need la charité and st. pierre le moustier, though they would be handy possessions against possible breaking of the truce. la trémoïlle proposed, charles and the council assented. joan, poor child, welcomed any chance for action. late in october she left bourges, and with her, as titular commander, charles of albret, brother-in-law and follower of la trémoïlle, yet withal a good soldier, who had fought with her at patay. st. pierre le moustier stood high on its steep bluff over the river allier: a strong little town, well placed, well fortified, well garrisoned. albret and joan invested it in regular form, and after a week of bombardment, having made a practicable breach, orders were given for an assault. the french advanced gallantly, but could make no head against the fire of the defenders. they wavered, began to fall back. but they had to reckon with the maid, unwounded this time, and feeling her power come upon her. standing on the edge of the fosse, as she had stood at paris, she called upon her men to come forward to the assault. they hesitated; for a few moments she stood there almost alone, with only two or three lances about her, among them probably her two brothers, who never deserted her.[ ] d'aulon, her faithful squire, had been wounded, and stood at a little distance, leaning on his crutches and looking on. seeing, as he thought, all lost for the time being, he managed to get on his horse, and riding up to the maid, asked why she stood there in peril of her life, instead of retreating with the others. raising the visor of her helmet, joan looked him full in the face. "i am not alone!" she said quietly. "with me are fifty thousand of my own, and i will not leave this spot till the town is taken." a strange answer; d'aulon was a literal-minded youth. he looked about him, bewildered. "whatever she might say," he says in telling the story, "she had only four or five men with her, i know it for certain, and so do several others who looked on; so i urged her to go back with the rest. then she bade me tell them to bring fagots and fascines to bridge the moat, and she herself in a clear voice gave the same order." was it the sight of her? when they failed at paris, was it because the white-clad figure lay unseen in the fosse, though the brave piteous voice still rang like a trumpet through that twilight of despair? d'aulon thought it a miracle, as would most people of his time. all in a moment, it seemed, the thing was done; the moat bridged, the troops over it, the town stormed and taken "with no great resistance." yet once more, joan, before your year is over, before your bright day darkens into night! st. john's day is near. at la charité there were no shining deeds; no victory of any sort. for a month the french army lay before the place, and once an assault was attempted; but the weather was bad, the men weary, hungry, dispirited; briefly, it was november instead of october. charles, though he had given joan money for the poor of bourges, had none for feeding and clothing his army. the town must have yielded soon, men thought, since no one came to succor it; but the french could neither besiege nor assault on empty stomachs, and the siege was abandoned. charles, as a sugarplum to console the heartsick maid, conferred a patent of nobility on her and all her family; "that the memory of the divine glory and of so many favors may endure and increase forever." it was a pretty stone, to take the place of bread. a shining quartz pebble, shall we say? or that curious thing called iron pyrite, which has been taken for gold before now, in a good light and by the right kind of person. joan paid little heed to it; would never change her sacred devices, the annunciation, the crucifixion, the creator on his throne, for any other; but her brothers set up a shield, with two lilies on it, and between these a sword supporting a crown. yes, and they called themselves "du lys" instead of "d'arc." this was all they got; i have not heard that the king so much as offered to pay for painting the new shield. the city of orleans took a different view of matters, and endowed the mother of its own maid with a pension which made her comfortable for life. we know little of this winter of sorrow, the last in which joan of arc was to breathe free air. she spent part of it in orleans, where the faithful people made much of her as usual; part at mehun on the yevre, where charles kept his winter court. the truce with burgundy had been extended to easter . john of bedford had been kindly invited to share it, but declined, and kept up a lively guerilla warfare in normandy. there was more or less fighting around paris, too; but with that we have no special concern. at mehun there was nothing for joan to do. she was no courtier; she was not wanted at the councils over which the fatuous king and his fat favorite presided. since paris and la charité, the crowd did not flock so eagerly to see her. indeed, people began to talk about other wonderful women who appeared about this time. catherine of la rochelle, for example, had been visited by a lady in white and gold, who bade her ask the king for heralds and trumpeters and go about the country raising money. she had, it appeared, the secret of finding hidden treasure. how, people asked, if here were a new revelation? the maid's was an old story by this time. moreover, there were rumors of other pucelles here and there; and at monlieu, as was well known, lived a real saint, st. colette, who could make the sun rise three hours late, and play--in a saintly way--the mischief with the laws of nature generally. our maid was at monlieu that very november; she may have met st. colette, and talked with her of matters human and divine; who knows? we do know that she met catherine of la rochelle, who came to mehun that autumn or winter; and that she advised the lady to go home, see to her household (she was a married woman), and take care of her children. catherine in return advised joan not to go to la charité, "because it was much too cold." evidently, a lady who liked her little comforts. joan asked st. catherine about her namesake, and was told that her story was nonsense. still, the two women had much talk together. the rochellaise had high ambitions, was not in the least minded to go home to husband and children. she wanted to go in person to philip of burgundy and make peace; she wanted to prophesy for the king; like nick bottom, she would play the lion, too. joan seems to have been patient with her; sat up all one night in her company, to see the lady in white and gold, who failed to appear. we need not concern ourselves further with catherine of la rochelle, though brother richard, the franciscan, admired her greatly, and would fain have set her up on a pedestal beside joan. she faded away presently, and is visible to-day only by a little reflected light from the flare of the maid. winter came to an end at last, and with it the truce. philip of burgundy resumed hostilities, and joan burnished her white armor, and laid her lance in rest with right good will. the end was near; all the more would she fight the good fight, so long as she was permitted. about this time the people of rheims wrote to her in great alarm, begging for help. their captain had abandoned them, and gone no one knew whither. they had discovered a conspiracy, headed by pierre cauchon, bishop of beauvais and joan's inveterate enemy, to deliver them up to the english. the discovery was made in time, but who could tell what new dangers might await them? joan wrote from sully on march th, promising speedy help, and bidding them be of good heart, and man their walls in case of attack. "you should have other good news," she says, "whereat you would rejoice, but i fear lest this fall into other hands." a few days later she wrote again, assuring them that all brittany was french at heart, and that its duke would shortly send to the king three thousand soldiers, paid two months in advance. in late march or early april she took a new step. after months of waiting, after vigils of anguished prayer such as we can only feebly imagine, she decided to wait no longer for the king, but strike by herself one more blow for the country. she looked for no help of man; she had no encouragement from heaven. her voices were not silent, but they spoke vaguely, confusedly; prophesied ultimate deliverance of france, but said nothing of her being the deliverer; seemed dimly to hint at some forthcoming disaster. taking no leave of king or council (although it seems probable that charles knew of and consented to her departure), receiving no direction from saint or angel, she rode out from sully with her "military household," four or five lances, among them her brothers and the ever-faithful d'aulon. at lagny she found a little band of men-at-arms who were ready to fight for france; they joined forces, and rode on toward paris. there, the maid always knew, lay the key of the situation; there, at what philip of burgundy called "the heart of the mystical body of the kingdom," the final blow must be struck. the chronicles have little or nothing to say about this journey; we know that about easter, april th, she came to melun, and that the city, hearing of her approach, rose suddenly upon its anglo-burgundian garrison, drove them out of town, and opened wide its gates to the maid. here was good fortune indeed. joan crossed the seine, and entered the town amid general rejoicings. however it might be in royal councils, the heart of france still honored and loved its pucelle. after such deep and manifold humiliations, joan might well have been strengthened in spirit as she stood on the ramparts of melun on a certain day in easter week. among the many pictures of her, i like to conjure up this one; to see her standing there, leaning on her lance (she was on sentry duty), looking out toward that "isle of france" on whose edge she now stood; no "isle" in reality, but the quaintly-named province whose heart was paris. i can see her uplifted look, her kindling eyes, can almost hear the deep-drawn breath of high resolve and dedication. and then the blow fell. she had always known that her time was short, that she had been given little more than a year to fulfill her task; knew moreover, only too bitterly well, how much of the short time had been frittered away in spite of all her efforts; yet she had hoped against hope that she might be permitted to finish her allotted task. the voices, i have said, had been confused of late; hinting at coming danger, but specifying nothing. now, as she stood on the rampart of melun that april day, they suddenly broke the silence, speaking loud and clear. no one but herself may tell the story; hear her tell it to her judges, a year later: "as i was on the ramparts of melun, st. catherine and st. margaret warned me that i should be captured before midsummer day; that so it must needs be; nor must i be afraid and astounded; but take all things well, for god would help me. so they spoke, almost every day. and i prayed that when i was taken i might die in that hour, without wretchedness of long captivity; but the voices said that so it must be. often i asked the hour, which they told me not; had i known the hour i would not have gone into battle."[ ] these were the same voices that had called the peasant girl from her quiet home at domrémy; the same that with trumpet note had sent her on from victory to victory, through the burning days of orleans and patay; now, as clear and loud, they pronounced her doom. she heard, and bowed her head before the heavenly will in meek acceptance. is not this perhaps the most wonderful part of all the heroic story? she never thought of escape; it never occurred to her to lay down the sword. if it had been so willed, she would have held her hand for one hour, would have kept her chamber at the moment of fate, if haply it might pass and leave her free for further effort; since that was not to be, forward in god's name! there were still some good hours left. only one step higher, good maid! that final step in rouen old market, which shall take thee home to thy father's house. from melun she rode to lagny (whence the news of her presence spread to paris, causing great alarm), and in that neighborhood had several skirmishes with the english, with little advantage to either side; and so, by-and-by, in mid-may, she came to compiègne. i make no apology for dwelling a little on these french towns which might--reverently be it said--be called the stations of the maid. every rod of french ground is now and for all time sacred to us and to all lovers of liberty. originally a hunting-lodge of the frankish kings; the romans called it compendium. charles the bald built two castles there, and a benedictine abbey whose inmates received (and kept down to the th century), "the privilege of acting for three days as lords of compiègne, with full power to release prisoners, condemn the guilty, and even inflict sentence of death." the abbey church treasured the dust of three kings; possessed also a famous organ, the oldest in france, given by constantine copronymus (whoever he was!) to pepin the short. louis the debonair was deposed at compiègne. in its palace, louis xv. received marie antoinette as his daughter-in-law, napoleon i. received marie louise as his empress. in the nineteenth century it was for many years the favorite resort of napoleon iii. and his court during the hunting season. the memory pictures of this latter time are brilliant enough. lovely empresses, eugenie with her matchless shoulders, elizabeth, the "violet of austria" with her glorious hair, sweep through the famous forest in their long riding habits. hunting horns sound the _morte_ and the _hallali_; officers in scarlet and gold hold high counsel with others in gold and green. all very gay, very bright; but these pictures shift and change like a kaleidoscope. presently they vanish. half a century passes, as a watch in the night. compiègne looks from her girdling towers and sees a gray tide rush forward, seething and boiling, almost to her very walls; sees it met, stemmed, by a barrier of blue and brown, slender, but immovable; hears the words which shall ring through all centuries to come: "_on ne passe pas!_" burgundy greatly desired compiègne; would have had it before this, but for the stout hearts of its citizens. it was in compiègne that the truce was signed, and duke philip asked explicitly that the city be given up to him while the compact held. charles and la trémoïlle were willing; anything to oblige! the citizens were bidden to open their gates to the soldiers of burgundy. their first answer was to bar and double-bar the said gates; their second, to send respectful messages to their king. they were his true and loyal subjects; their bodies and their possessions were his for all faithful service; but the duke of burgundy hated them because of their loyalty to the king's majesty, and they would in nowise let him in; would destroy themselves sooner. the order was repeated; the gates remained closed. philip of burgundy stormed; charles was very sorry, but did not see what he could do about it; offered philip pont st. maxence instead. philip took the gift, fully intending to have compiègne too; and bided his time. he was busy that winter of - , marrying a new wife (his third, isabella of portugal), and founding the order of the golden fleece; all this with much pomp of tournament and procession. with spring came the end of the truce, and the duke took the field at once with a large army. now he would have compiègne, whether she would or no; would also overrun the isle de france, and relieve paris, which still went in fear of its life from the "armagnacs," as parisians still called the royalist party. before the middle of may philip was encamped before refractory compiègne, with only the oise between. matters now marched swiftly. the oise was deep, could not be forded; to take the city they must first take choisy-le-bac, on the opposite side of the river, and come at compiègne from the rear. as it happened, the french about this time were making a somewhat similar plan. they meant to take pont l'evêque, now in english hands, with its strong defences and its bridge across the oise. this secured, they too would make a flank movement, circumvent the enemy, and cut his line of communication across the river. on may th the maid entered compiègne from the south, and was cordially received. here she met for the last time the archbishop of rheims, her false friend, soon to become her declared enemy. on the th she attacked pont l'evêque, but the place was too strong for her little band. on the th, choisy-le-bac yielded to the burgundians, and joan returned to compiègne. no thoroughfare! her only way now, as burgundy had foreseen, was by the bridge of soissons over the aisne, thirty miles and more away. to soissons, then, in god's name! she set out without delay, the archbishop riding with her, and all her troop; reached soissons--to find the gates shut. the traitor who held the city for france, a picard, by name bournel, was even then making his arrangements with burgundy. he refused to open the gates to his master's troops, and shortly after sold his city for four thousand _salus d'or_. the bill of sale is extant, and should be curious reading. on meeting this check, the french army broke up into different parties. joan determined to return to compiègne; was already on her way thither when she heard that burgundy and the earl of arundel were encamped before it. her company was only two hundred men, commanded by one baretta, a soldier of no wide renown. alas! where was dunois? where la hire, xaintrailles? where her friend and brother-in-arms, the gentle duke of alençon? all gone! some of them before paris, keeping the bourgeois and his like in daily terror of their lives; some, it may be, with their precious king, who about this time made the discovery (and told the people of rheims, as an astounding piece of news!) that burgundy did not really mean to make peace, and was definitely on the side of their enemies. at midnight of may nd, the maid left crépy with her band, and rode rapidly through the forest. the soldiers themselves seem to have been disheartened at the prospect before them. "we are but a handful!" they told her. "how can we pass through the armies of england and burgundy?" "_par mon martin!_" cried joan; "we are enough. i am going to see my good friends at compiègne." that was a wild ride through the midnight forest. fancy, always at her tricks, tempts me to make it even wilder; to tamper with the shuttle, and set the loom astray. how if the centuries should in some way juggle themselves together, and the nineteenth come sweeping along with hound and horn before the eyes of the maid? what would she make, i wonder, of those two lovely ladies, her of the shoulders and her of the silken tresses? what in return would they make of the slim rider in battered armor, urging her horse to the gallop? they would probably give orders to have her arrested for disturbing the royal sport. but how if, instead of these, it might have been given her, as part of her reward from heaven, to come upon that other band, in armor not wholly unlike her own (seeing that our to-day must needs snatch from yesterday anything and everything that may still avail to help); that band in brown and blue, who hold the line against the onrushing waves of the gray tide? how then? she scans the line; her keen eyes lighten, then grow bewildered. france? yes; but--england beside her? friends then? allies? _À la bonne heure!_ the word? "_on ne passe pas!_" and the maid ranges herself beside those steadfast figures immovable; and "they" do not pass. shuttle and loom to their proper places once more; back to may nd, ! joan was right. her little troop was enough, for no one molested them, the enemy not having yet reached that neighborhood. they came to compiègne about sunrise of may rd, and once more were joyfully received. how joan spent that last fateful day we know not from any chronicle; we may be sure that she prayed, and heard mass if mass were to hear; we may hope she had some rest, for she needed it sorely. we may well believe, too, that she listened for her voices, hoping for counsel and--if it might be--cheer; but the voices were silent. she was alone now. nevertheless, she said afterward, had the heavenly counsellors bidden her go out, saying plainly that she would be captured, she would still have gone. in another mood, it is true, after imprisonment, and with death close upon her, she thought that had she known the hour, she might have kept her chamber during it; but the first is the true mood, for all who know her. at five in the afternoon she rode out to attack the nearest burgundian outpost, at the village of margny, opposite the bridge-head on the northern side of the river. boldly she rode her gray charger, in full armor, wearing a surcoat of scarlet and gold, followed by her four or five hundred men-at-arms, horse and foot. the enemy, taken by surprise, scattered in disorder. all might have gone well, had not john of luxembourg, commander of flemings at clairoix hard by, chosen this moment to visit the burgundian captain in charge of margny. seeing the skirmish, and his brother officer in difficulties, he dashed to the rescue, sending back meanwhile to his own camp for reinforcements. another moment and the tide had turned. the french were surrounded, set upon, cut down, routed. the maid tried desperately to rally them; cried her brave battle cry, waved her shining standard. what mortal could do, she did. "beyond the nature of woman," says chastellain, the burgundian chronicler, "she did great feats, and took great pains to save her company from loss, staying behind them like a captain, and like the bravest of the troop." twice she charged the men of luxembourg and drove them back. in vain! the hour was come. she was alone now, save for her brothers, d'aulon, and the faithful few, her bodyguard. these could not save her. round her, like hounds about a deer at bay, leaped and shouted the burgundian soldiers, all eager for the rich quarry. she was dragged from her horse, beaten to earth. d'aulon and the rest tried to help her up, but were overwhelmed by numbers and made prisoners, every man of them. "yield thee, pucelle!" cried a dozen voices, as a dozen brawny hands clutched the slight form and held it fast, fast. joan raised herself, and looked round on her exulting foes, conquered yet unafraid. "i have pledged my faith to another than you!" she said. "to him i will keep my oath." so to the will of god she surrendered, who had never yielded to man, and laid down at his feet her glorious sword. footnotes: [ ] lang, p. . [ ] they joined her probably at orleans; little more is known about them. [ ] a. lang, p. . chapter xvi rouen "bishop of beauvais! because the guilt-burthened man is in dreams haunted by the most frightful of his crimes ... you also, entering your final dream, saw domrémy.... my lord, have you no counsel? 'counsel i have none; in heaven above, or on earth beneath, counsellor there is none now that would take a brief from _me_; all are silent.' "is it, indeed, come to this? alas! the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, the crowd stretches away into infinity, but yet i will search in it for somebody to take your brief; i know of somebody that will be your counsel. who is this that cometh from domrémy? who is she that cometh in bloody coronation robes from rheims? who is she that cometh with blackened flesh from walking the furnaces of rouen? this is she, the shepherd girl, counsellor that had none for herself, whom i choose, bishop, for yours. she it is, i engage, that shall take my lord's brief. she it is, bishop, that would plead for you; yes, bishop, she--when heaven and earth are silent." _--de quincey._ we need not dwell upon the joy of english and burgundians, or of their french sympathizers: it was as rapturous as it was savage. john of luxembourg, a typical soldier of fortune, had but one idea, that of turning his prisoner to good account. who would pay most for her? while the matter was pending, joan was hurried from castle to castle, from prison to prison. clairoix, the headquarters of luxembourg, was not strong enough to hold her; she might escape, or there might be a rescue. she was sent to beaulieu, and thence to beaurevoir, where she stayed from june to september. here she was in the kind hands of three ladies, all bearing her own name; jeanne of luxembourg, aunt of her captor; jeanne of bethune, viscountess of meaux, his wife, and her daughter jeanne of bar. these good ladies befriended the captive maid: gave her the last womanly comfort and tendance she was to receive; begged her to put on woman's dress, and brought stuff to make it. joan was grateful, but shook her head. she had no leave yet from god to do this: the time was not come. she would have done it, she said later, had her duty permitted, for these ladies rather than for any soul in france except her queen. harmond de macy, a knight who saw the maid at beaurevoir and who offered her familiarities which she gravely repulsed, has left his impressions of her on record. "she was of honest conversation in word and deed," he says: and adds at the end of his testimony, given after her death, "i believe she is in paradise." joan would give no parole. she steadfastly maintained her right to escape if she might. here at beaurevoir she made her one attempt to do so, moved thereto largely by anxiety for the people of compiègne, now besieged. she was told that if the town were taken all the people over seven years of age would be put to death. this she could not bear. in vain her voices dissuaded her: in vain st. catherine almost daily forbade it. "i would rather die than live," said the maid, "after such a massacre of good people." evading her jailers one day, she leapt from the tower, a height of sixty feet. wonderful to relate, no bones were broken, but she was found insensible, and taken back to prison. for several days she could neither eat nor drink. then, she told her judges later, st. catherine comforted her, bidding her make confession and ask god's forgiveness for the leap. the saint told her that compiègne would be relieved before martinmas, as in fact came to pass. "then," she says, "i revived, and took food, and soon was well." she denied having expected death from the leap: she had hoped to escape, partly to help compiègne, partly because she was sold to the english. "i would rather die," she said, "than fall into the hands of my english enemies." she was to do both. english and french were of one mind. the former were headed (in this matter) by the earl of warwick, the latter by pierre cauchon, bishop of beauvais. this man had been disappointed, through joan's successes, in certain private ambitions. he pursued her from first to last with incredible fury and persistence; it was through his efforts that john of luxembourg was enabled to sell her (despite the earnest prayers of the aged jeanne de luxembourg) to england for ten thousand livres; it was he who conducted her trial and brought her to her death. from beaurevoir she was taken to arras; thence, after one night at the castle of drugy, to crotoy by the sea: and so, in november of , she came to rouen. they took her to the old castle built by philip augustus in ; used in the days of the english occupation as a prison for "prisoners of war and treasonable felons." of this structure, with its six towers, demi-tower and donjon, only one vestige remains, the "_tour jeanne d'arc_," a bulk of solid masonry one hundred feet high, forty feet in diameter, with walls twelve feet thick. you may visit it to-day; may stand in the dark cell, and see the iron cage in which, according to some authorities, the maid was at first confined. during most of the time she was chained to a log of wood, her fetters loosened only when she was taken into court. she was guarded day and night by english men-at-arms, most of them common and brutal soldiers. she had no moment of solitude, no shadow of privacy. her days were anguish, her nights terror; yet though her gaolers jeered, bullied, baited her with every foul jest and bitter insult, she kept the virgin treasure of her soul and of her body. one day the earls of stafford and warwick came to see her, and with them john of luxembourg who sold her, and haimond de macy. the latter tells of the interview, saying that luxembourg offered to ransom her if she would swear never to bear arms again. "in god's name, you mock me!" said the maid. "i know well that you have neither the will nor the power." luxembourg repeating his offer, she put him aside with: "i know these english will put me to death, thinking to win the kingdom of france when i am no more. but were they a hundred thousand more _godons_ than they are, they should not have the kingdom." at this stafford drew his dagger and would have stabbed her (she, poor soul, asking no better!), but warwick held his hand. this latter noble, son-in-law of warwick, the kingmaker, and called by some "the father of courtesy," was eager for the burning of joan; it was, in his opinion, the only fitting end for her. no clean stab of an honorable dagger for the witch of the armagnacs! so we come to the trial, about which so many books have been written; over which churchmen and statesmen, french and english, have wrangled through nigh upon six hundred years. i shall dwell on it so much as seems absolutely necessary, and no more. on january th, , pierre cauchon, bishop of beauvais, master of the bloodhounds in this glorious hunt, summoned his council. there were two judges, the bishop himself and le maître, vice inquisitor in the diocese of rouen. the latter, after the first month, sat unwillingly; his conscience was not clear; he would fain be rid of the whole matter. the orders of the chief inquisitor, however, were strict; he sat on, ill at ease. the rest of the council were clerks and "assessors"; all clerics of name and fame, canons of rouen, abbots, learned doctors. you may easily learn their names, yet methinks they are best forgotten. their number varied from day to day; sometimes there were forty, again there would be but six; most of them were french, but there were one or two englishmen among them. on february th, joan of arc, known as the maid, was summoned to appear before this council. she begged to be allowed to hear mass first, but was refused. on the st, she was brought before her judges in the chapel of the castle. we may fancy the scene. priests and prelates in goodly array of furred robes, episcopal crosses, and the like, sitting in half-circle, with bent brows and grim looks. before their scandalized eyes, a slim girl in page's dress of black, her dark hair cut short, her face worn with watching and fasting, white with prison pallor. she is accused of witchcraft, and dealings with familiar spirits; of wearing man's clothes (see them on the wench this moment!); of attacking paris; of attempting suicide; of allowing ignorant people to worship her as a saint or holy person; of stealing a bishop's horse; of pretending to work miracles. one or two other charges were added in the course of the trial to this heavy list. to begin with, the prisoner was commanded to give a full account of herself and her pretended mission. joan was prepared for this. the voices were with her in prison throughout the trial, counseling, warning, consoling. sometimes she merely felt the blessed presences about her; sometimes they spoke plainly, even dictating her answers; always bidding her "answer boldly and god would help her." called upon to be sworn, she refused to take an unqualified oath. she did not know on what subjects they might question her. "you may ask me things which i will not tell you. as to revelations to my king i will not speak though you should cut off my head." she finally took a qualified oath, agreeing to speak plainly on such subjects as her conscience allowed. she would not repeat the lord's prayer (a favorite test of witchcraft; a witch, as everyone knew, could only say it backward!), save in confession; she would in no wise swear or promise to refrain from trying to escape; she had given no _parole_, and it was the right of every prisoner. she answered readily enough the questions concerning her birth, parentage, and so on. she was interrupted every moment by some fresh question or rebuke. the notary manchon, who was reporting the meeting, refused to act if things were not better ordered; he was an honest man, and reported joan's words correctly, which was not the case with some other clerks present. on the second day she came fasting to her trial, for it was lent. she had eaten but once the day before. massieu, the doorkeeper, seems to have been, like the notary, a decent man, and was wont to let her stop and pray on her way from cell to chapel, before the door of the chapel. one estivet, a prison spy (_mouton_), and tool of cauchon's, rebuked him fiercely for this leniency. "rascal," he said, "how dare you let that excommunicate wretch come so near the church? if you persist, you shall be shut up yourself, in a tower where you shall not see sun or moon for a month." massieu, according to his own account, paid no heed to this threat, but continued to allow the maid to kneel before the closed door of the holy place. on the third day, after long and puerile questionings about the supposititious fairies of her childhood and the voices of her early girlhood, she was asked suddenly, "do you consider that you are in a state of grace?" here was a good strong trap, well laid and baited. if she answered "yes," she was guilty of presumption in holy matters; if "no," her own mouth spoke her condemnation. quietly the maid uttered what her historian calls her inspired reply. "if i am not in grace, may god bring me thither; if i am, god keep me there."[ ] considering her steadfast and valiant bearing throughout these days of trial, we may well believe that the god she adored gave her strength and constancy. she had no earthly friend. the only person who visited her in the guise of human kindness was a spy of the inquisition, one loiseleur, a canon of chartres and rouen, and a close friend and ally of cauchon. this base wretch, set on by his chief and the earl of warwick, did visit the maid in her cell, in accordance with a mandate of the inquisition which reads: "let no one approach the heretic, unless it be from time to time two faithful and skilful persons, who shall act as if they had pity on him, and shall warn him to save himself by confessing his errors, promising him, if he does so, that he shall not be burned." loiseleur came in layman's dress, telling joan that he was a man of lorraine, her friend and that of france. he was full of interest and solicitude. the voices gave no warning, and the lonely girl talked with him far more freely than with her judges. he would gently lead the subject to some point which was to be brought up the next day, and on his report the council would frame its questions. manchon, the notary, was asked to establish himself in a closet hard by, where he could hear and take down the words of the prisoner; this, to his lasting honor, he indignantly refused to do, saying he would report what was said in open court and nothing else. the days dragged on, and the weeks; weeks of prayer, of fasting, of torment. on march th she was interrogated concerning her leap from the tower of beaurevoir. was it true that after her fall she had blasphemed god and her saints? not of her consciousness, she replied. "god and good confession" knew; she had no knowledge of what she might have said in delirium. st. catherine had promised her help, how or when she knew not. "generally, the voices say that i shall be delivered through great victory; and furthermore they say, 'take all things peacefully; heed not thine affliction. thence thou shalt come at last into the kingdom of paradise.'" the judges took up this question delightedly; it was one after their own hearts. did she, they asked, feel assurance of salvation? "as firmly as if i were in heaven already." "do you believe that, _after this revelation_, you could not sin mortally?" "i know not. i leave it to god." "your answer (about her assurance of salvation) is very weighty." "i hold it for a very great treasure." "what with your attack on paris on a holy day, your behavior in the matter of the bishop's hackney, your leap at beaurevoir, and your consent to the death of franquet, do you really believe that you have wrought no mortal sin?" "i do not believe that i am in mortal sin; and if i have been it is for god to know it, and for confession to god and the priest."[ ] she begged to be allowed to go to church. if she might hear mass she would wear woman's dress, changing it on her return for the page's dress which was her protection against insult. if she must die, she asked for a woman's shift, and a cap to cover her head; she would rather die than depart from the work for which her lord had sent her. "but i do not believe," she added, "that my lord will let me be brought so low that i shall lack help of god and miracle." "if you dress as you do by god's command," they asked her, "why do you ask for a shift in the hour of death?" "it suffices me that it should be long!" said the girl. all this was but the preliminary inquiry. now followed a week of respite, while the evidence was sifted and arranged, and articles of indictment drawn up. on march th joan was summoned to hear her formal accusation, conveyed in seventy articles. the court was asked to declare her "a sorceress, a divineress, a false prophet, one who invoked evil spirits, a witch, a heretic, an apostate, a seditious blasphemer, rejoicing in blood, indecent," and i know not what else beside. these seventy articles were presently condensed into twelve. on april th the learned doctors were called to deliberate on these twelve, which constituted the real accusation, by which the captive must live or die. they met in the private chapel of the archbishop, which is still standing, in the courtyard hard by the cathedral. the articles were duly accepted, and the maid was summoned to hear the result. but she lay ill in her prison, worn out with fasting and misery. cauchon himself came to visit her, professing himself full of tender solicitude for her soul and body. he bade her note how kind they were to her. they desired only her welfare; the holy church was ever ready to receive its erring children, etc., etc. with her unfailing courtesy joan thanked him. she thought herself in danger of death; she begged for confession and the sacrament, and burial in holy ground. "if you desire the holy sacrament," said cauchon, "you must submit to holy church." the girl turned her head wearily on her pallet. "i can say no more than i have said!" was her only word. but the bishop pressed on relentless. the more she feared for her life, he told her, the more she would resolve to amend it, and submit to those above her. then she said: "if my body dies in prison i expect from you burial in holy ground; if you do not give it, i await upon my lord." and as they still tormented her: "come what may, i will do or say no other thing. i have answered to everything in my trial." five doctors in turn beset her with offers of favors if she would yield, with threats if she continued obdurate. in the latter case, they told her, she must be treated as a saracen. finally, since they might in no wise prevail over the dauntless soul, though the broken body lay helpless before them, they departed, leaving her to the tenderer mercies of the men-at-arms. the articles of accusation had been sent to the university of paris, with a request for the opinion of that learned and pious body. while waiting for the answer, the bishop of beauvais filled the time with various ingenious devices, all planned to break the girl's spirit. on may nd, being in some measure recovered from her illness, she was brought out for a public meeting before sixty clerics, cauchon at their head. the bishop addressed her in his customary strain, accusing, exhorting, admonishing. "read your book!" (i.e., the document containing her formal accusation), said joan scornfully. "i will answer as i may. my appeal is to god, my creator, whom i love with my whole heart." wearily, wearily she listened to the many-times-told tale; briefly and bravely she made reply. "if i were now at the judgment seat, and if i saw the torch burning, and the fagots laid, and the executioner ready to light the fire; if i were in the fire, i would say what i have said, and no other word; would do what i have done, and no other thing." "_superba responsio!_" writes manchon the clerk opposite this entry. since naught else might prevail against the obstinacy of this creature, how if they tried torture, or at the very least the threat of torture, the actual sight of its instruments? two days later (may th), she was brought out again, this time into a dismal vaulted chamber, the donjon of rouen castle. the usual place of her torment was too small for the things she now saw displayed before her; rack, screws, all the hideous paraphernalia of the holy inquisition; beside these, two executioners, ready to perform their office. joan was bidden to look upon these things, and told that if she did not avow the truth her body would be submitted to the torture. if we stood, as one may still stand, in that vaulted chamber, would not the answer ring out once more from those grim walls that received it? "truly, if you should destroy my limbs and cause my soul to leave my body, i will tell you no other thing (than she has already told); and if i should say anything (i.e., under torture), i would always tell you afterward that you had made me say it by force." she trod, indeed, the narrow edge of a knife-blade. question upon question was put; was answered briefly, clearly, and to the point. the clerics hesitated. perhaps the torture might not be necessary, since there seemed a chance that even this might not prevail against this girl's stubbornness. in any case it would be well to leave the fear of it hanging over her for a time. it was so left, for a week, while the doctors debated. one thought the use of torture might "impair the stately beauty of the trial as hitherto conducted." another thought they had sufficient evidence without it. three were in favor of it: morelli, courcelles, loiseleur. the last-named was the judas-spy who had visited her in prison; he thought torture would be salutary for her soul. after all, this particular depth of infamy was not sounded; the votes for mercy outnumbered those for torture. the executioner and his henchmen departed, the former testifying later that the maid "showed great prudence in her replies, so that those who heard were astonished; and their deponent retired with his assistant without touching her." still another week of fetters and darkness, of foul air and fouler speech; then came the reply from the university of paris. they rejoiced in the "elegance" with which the crime of this person had been communicated to them. it was clear to their minds that her pretended saints were in reality three well-known fiends, satan, belial, and behemoth. she was treacherous, cruel, bloodthirsty, a would-be suicide; a liar, heretic, schismatic and idolater. nevertheless, in the opinion of the university, it might be well to give her one more "tender admonition." it could do no harm; the english were safe to deal with her in any case. on may rd she received the admonition--it really seems to have been a kindly one this time--from pierre maurice, who appealed to her sense of honor and duty. "what," he asked her, "would you think of a knight in your king's land who refused to obey your king and his officers? yet you, a daughter of the church, disobey the officers of christ, the bishops of the church. be not ashamed of obedience, have no false shame; you will have high honor, which you think you will lose, if you act as i ask you to do. _the honor of god_ and your own life in this world, and your salvation in the next, are to be preferred before all things."[ ] joan made no answer to this appeal, but it may have had its effect none the less. the next day, may th, she was placed in a tumbril and brought to the market-place of st. ouen, where a great crowd was assembled; priests, nobles, soldiers, citizens, all agog to see and hear. would she abjure, or burn? it was customary to preach a final sermon to a witch before burning her; erard, the preacher, addressed joan this morning. in the course of his speech he spoke of the king as a "heretic and schismatic." "_speak boldly!_" said the holy voices in the ear of the maid. "by my faith," she cried, "full well dare i both say and swear that he is the noblest christian of all christians, and the truest lover of the faith and the church." charles, were i set to devise for you a fitting doom, i would have you loiter through some dim place of forgotten things--not forever, but as near it as divine mercy would allow--seeing always before you the pale maid in her fetters, hearing always from her lips those words of undying trust and love. enough; the matter was summed up. here was the executioner, here his cart, ready to carry her to the stake. would joan of arc submit to holy church, or would she burn, now, in an hour's time? you are to remember that this child was not yet nineteen years of age; that she had been in prison, enduring every torment except that of actual bodily torture, for a year. to remember, too, that even our supreme exemplar prayed once that the cup might pass from him. "i submit!" said the maid. instantly a paper was thrust into her hand, and she was bidden sign it. bystanders say there was a strange smile on her lips as she made her mark, a circle, as we know she could not write her name. she was hustled back to prison, leaving tumult and uproar behind her. the english were furious. they had come to see a burning, and there was no burning. warwick made complaint to cauchon; the king of england would be angry at the escape of this witch. "be not disturbed, my lord!" said the bishop of beauvais. "we shall soon have her again." back to prison! not, as she had hoped and prayed, to a prison of the church, where men whose profession at least was holy would be about her; where possibly she might even see and speak with a woman; where she might hear mass, and make confession. no! back to the old foul, hideous cell, to the brutal jeer and fleer of the english men-at-arms. back, under sentence of imprisonment for life. meekly the poor girl went; meekly she put off her page's costume, and assumed, as she was bidden, a woman's dress. on some aspects of the dark days that followed i cannot dwell; suffice it to say that they were the bitterest of all the bitter year; suffice it to say that when her judges came to her again they found her once more in her page's dress, which she refused to give up again until the end. this was not the only change they found, nor the greatest. back in the cell, the voices had spoken loud and clear in rebuke and reproach. st. margaret, st. catherine, both were there. both told her of the great pity of that betrayal to which she had consented, when she made that abjuration and revocation to save her life; told her that by so doing she had condemned herself. "if i were to say" (it is herself speaking now) "that god did not send me i would condemn myself, for true it is that god sent me. my voices have told me since that i greatly sinned in that deed, in confessing that i had done ill. what i said, i said in fear of fire."[ ] and the clerk wrote against these words, on the margin of his notes, "_responsio mortifera_." the maid now clearly and emphatically revoked her submission. what she had said, she repeated, was said in dread of fire. "do you believe," asked cauchon, "that your voices are those of st. catherine and st. margaret?" "yes!" replied the maid. "their voices and god's!" these words were spoken on may th, to cauchon, who had hastened to the prison, hearing that joan had resumed man's apparel. angrily he asked why she had done this. she answered that it was more convenient, among men, to wear men's dress. she had not understood that she had sworn never to wear it again; if she had broken a pledge in this, one had been broken with her, the promise that she should be released from fetters, and should receive the sacrament. "i would rather die," she said, "than remain in irons. if you will release me, and let me go to mass and lie in gentle prison, i will be good, and do what the church desires." there was only one thing that the church, as represented in the person of pierre cauchon, desired, and that was the end of her. she had "relapsed"; it was enough. he hurried joyfully away, passing in the courtyard warwick and his men, who were waiting for news. "farewell!" cried the bishop of beauvais. "be of good cheer, for it is done." he summoned his council in haste; they were all of his mind. holy church could have no further dealings with this impious and hardened prisoner. she must be given over to the secular arm, "with the prayer that there be no shedding of blood." most sinister of all speakable words! at the stake, no need of blood-shedding. early in the morning of may th martin ladvenu and jean toutmouillé came to the prison. the latter told the maid briefly that she was to be burned. she wept, poor child, and cried out piteously. "alas!" she said. "will they treat me so horribly and cruelly, that my pure and uncorrupted body ("_corps net et entier, qui ne fut jamais corrompu_") must to-day be burned to ashes?" she would rather, she cried in her agony, be seven times beheaded than burn. "i appeal to god, the supreme judge, against the wrongs that have been done me." at this moment cauchon entered the prison. he must see with his own eyes how his victim received her condemnation. she turned upon him, and uttered the words which, wherever his name is spoken, whenever his image is conjured up, are written in flame upon his forehead: "_bishop of beauvais, it is through you i die. i summon you before your god and mine!_" presently she composed herself; made confession to one of the monks, and asked for the sacrament. after some haggling among her persecutors the elements were brought to her, albeit in slovenly fashion, bare of the priestly pomp which was their due. so we come to the th day of may, of the year . at nine in the morning joan left her prison for the last time. she was in woman's dress. over her shoulders was the long black robe of the inquisition, on her head a paper cap or mitre, bearing the words: "heretic, relapsed, apostate, idolater." as the cart in which she stood rumbled through the streets, the maid of france lifted up her voice and wept over the city of her death. "_rouen, rouen, mourrai-je içi? seras-tu ma maison? ah, rouen, j'ai grand peur que tu n'aies à souffrir de ma mort._"[ ] hearing these words, the people around her, even the english soldiers, wept for pity. it is recorded that as the tumbril jolted its way over the stones, a man in priest's dress was seen pressing through the crowd, trying desperately to force a way to the cart. it was loiseleur, the spy, come in an agony of repentance, to fling himself before the saint he had helped to condemn and implore her pardon. the soldiers repulsed him brutally; would have slain him but for warwick's intervention. the crowd closed over him. there were three scaffolds in rouen old market that morning of may. on one of them the maid was set to hear her last sermon preached by nicholas midi, of rouen and paris; on another sat judges and spectators, a goodly company; cardinal beaufort, warwick, the "father of courtesy," cauchon and all his priestly bloodhounds, who yet could not see blood shed. the third scaffold was a heap of plaster, piled high with fagots, from which rose the stake. it bore the legend: "jeanne, self-styled the maid, liar, mischief-maker, abuser of the people, diviner, superstitious, blasphemer of god, presumptuous, false to the faith of christ, boaster, idolater, cruel, dissolute, an invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic, heretic." nicholas midi was long in speaking, and the english waxed impatient. dinner time was near. "how now, priest? are you going to make us dine here?" some of them cried. cauchon read the sentence. "then she invoked the blessed trinity, the glorious virgin mary, and all the blessed saints of paradise. she begged right humbly also the forgiveness of all sorts and conditions of men, both of her own party and of her enemies; asking for their prayers, forgiving them the evil that they had done her."[ ] the bailiff of rouen waved his hand, saying "away with her." quietly, patiently, the maid climbed the third scaffold. she was well used to climbing; witness the walls of les tourelles, of jargeau and compiègne. beside her climbed her confessor, martin ladvenu, and some say another dominican, isambart de la pierre, who had been kind to her throughout. she begged for a cross; an english soldier hastily bound two sticks together cross-fashion and handed her the emblem. she kissed it devoutly, and thrust it in her bosom. then, at her urgent prayer, they brought a crucifix from a church hard by; this she long embraced, holding it while they chained her to the stake. when the flames began to mount, she bade the friar leave her, but begged him to hold aloft the crucifix, that her eyes might rest on it to the last. this man testified that from the heart of the fire, she called steadfastly on her saints, catherine, margaret, michael, as if they were once more about her as in the garden of domrémy. "to the end she maintained that her voices were from god, and all she had done was by god's counsel; nor did she believe that her voices had deceived her." at the last she gave one great cry: "jesus!" and spoke no more. have you felt the touch of fire? put your finger in the candle flame for a moment! then, for another moment--not more, since that way madness lies--think of that white, tender body of the maid of france flaming like a torch to heaven! a torch indeed. fiercely its blaze beats upon rouen old market, throwing a dreadful light on those watching faces. pierre de cauchon, bishop of beauvais, on your face it glares most fiercely; on yours, henry beaufort, cardinal of winchester; earl of warwick, on yours. i think you will see that light while you live, however dark the night around you. i know that by it alone we see your faces to-day. a torch, indeed. its flame brightens the sacred fields of france, now in the hour of victory, when light has triumphed over darkness, as it brightened them in the hour of her agony, though god alone saw that radiance. in the white fire of that torch were fused all incoherent elements, all that turned the sword of brother against brother, frenchman against frenchman. from that white fire sprang, into enduring life and glory, france imperishable. finis footnotes: [ ] translation, a. lang. [ ] trans., a. lang. [ ] trans., a. lang. [ ] trans., a. lang. [ ] rouen, rouen, shall i die here? shalt thou be my (last) home? ah, rouen, i have great fear thou must suffer for my death. [ ] trans., a. lang. produced from scanned images of public domain material from the google print project.) the executioner's knife complete for the first time in english eugene sue's the mysteries of the people or _history of a proletarian family across the ages_ a fascinating work, thrilling as fiction, yet embracing a comprehensive history of the oppressing and oppressed classes from the commencement of the present era. these stories are nineteen in number, and their chronological order is the following: eugene sue wrote a romance which seems to have disappeared in a curious fashion, called "les mysteres du peuple". it is the story of a gallic family through the ages, told in successive episodes, and, so far as we have been able to read it, is fully as interesting as "the wandering jew", or "the mysteries of paris". the french edition is pretty hard to find, and only parts have been translated into english. we don't know the reason. one medieval episode, telling of the struggle of the communes for freedom, is now translated by mr. daniel de leon, under the title, "the pilgrim's shell" (new york labor news co.). we trust the success of his efforts may be such as to lead him to translate the rest of the romance. it will be the first time the feat has been done in english.--n. y. sun. the gold sickle c. the brass bell c. the iron collar c. the silver cross c. the casque's lark c. the poniard's hilt c. the branding needle c. the abbatial crosier c. carlovingian coins c. the iron arrow head c. the infant's skull c. the pilgrim's shell c. the iron pincers c. the iron trevet c. executioner's knife $ . pocket bible, vol. $ . pocket bible, vol. $ . blacksmith's hammer c. sword of honor, vol. $ . sword of honor, vol. $ . galley slave's ring c. new york labor news company city hall place:: new york the executioner's knife :: :: or :: :: joan of arc a tale of the inquisition by eugene sue translated from the original french by daniel de leon new york labor news company, copyright , by the new york labor news co. index translator's preface part i. domremy. chapter. i. jeannette ii. gillon the furtive iii. at the fountain of the fairies iv. the harp of merlin v. the prophecy of merlin vi. the legend of hena vii. germination viii. "the english" ix. the flight x. "burgundy!"--"france!" xi. the vision xii. returning visions xiii. wrestling with the angels xiv. "the time has arrived!" xv. captain robert of baudricourt xvi. at the castle of vaucouleurs xvii. john of novelpont xviii. "good luck, joan!" part ii. chinon. i. the council of charles vii ii. aloyse of castelnau iii. the test iv. the hall of rabateau part iii. orleans. chapter. i. friday, april th, ii. saturday, april th, iii. sunday, may st, iv. monday, may nd, v. tuesday, may rd, vi. wednesday, may th, vii. thursday, may th, viii. friday, may th, ix. saturday, may th, x. the king crowned part iv. rouen; or, the mystery of the passion of joan darc. i. bishop and canon ii. in the dungeon iii. the inquisition iv. the temptation v. the sentence vi. physical collapse vii. remorse viii. the relapse ix. the worm turns x. to the flames xi. the pyre epilogue translator's preface. whether one will be satisfied with nothing but a scientific diagnosis in psychology, or a less ponderous and infinitely more lyric presentation of certain mental phenomena will do for him; whether the student of history insist on strict chronology, or whether he prize at its true value the meat and coloring of history; whether a reader prefer in matters canonical the rigid presentation of dogma, or whether the tragic fruits of theocracy offer a more attractive starting point for his contemplation;--whichever the case might be, _the executioner's knife; or, joan of arc_ will gratify his intellectual cravings on all the three heads. this, the fifteenth story of the series of eugene sue's matchless historic novels entitled _the mysteries of the people; or, history of a proletarian family across the ages_, presents the picture of the fifteenth century--a historic elevation climbed up to from the hills of the era sketched in the preceding story, _the iron trevet; or jocelyn the champion_, and from which, in turn, the outlines become vaguely visible of the critically historic era that forms the subject of the next story, _the pocket bible; or, christian the printer_. as in all the stories of this stupendous series bestowed by the genius of sue upon posterity, the leading characters are historic, the leading events are historic, and the coloring is true to history. how true to the facts are the historic revelations made by the author in this series, and how historically true are the conclusions he draws, as they rise in relief on the canvas of these novels, appears with peculiar conspicuousness in _the executioner's knife; or, joan of arc_, above all in this century, when the science of history has remodeled its theory, and, instead of, as in former days, basing man's acts upon impulse, has learned to plant impulse upon material facts. in the pages of this story the central figure is the charming one generally known to history as the maid of orleans. if ever there was in the annals of man a figure that superstitious mysticism combined with grovelling interests to annihilate, it was the figure of the pure-minded, self-sacrificing, intrepid shepherdess of domremy. even the genius of a voltaire succumbed. in righteous revolt against man-degrading superstition, his satire "la pucelle" in fact contributed, by the slur it placed upon joan, to vindicate the very lay and prelatical interests he fought, and whose predecessors dragged her name through the ditch and had consigned her body to the flames. harried by the political interests whom her integrity of purpose menaced and actually thwarted; insulted and put to death by the allies of these, ambushed behind religion; the successors of both elements perpetuating the wrong with false history; and even the enlightened contributing their sneers out of just repugnance for supernaturalism;--all this notwithstanding, the figure of joan triumphed. even the head of the prelatic political machine, which had presumed to speak in the name of the deity with anathema over joan's head, has felt constrained to fall in line with the awakened popular knowledge. the papal beatification of joan of arc in this century is a public retraction and apology to the heroine born from the lowly. of the many works of art--poetic, dramatic, pictorial--that have contributed to this conspicuous "reversal of judgment" sue's _the executioner's knife; or, joan of arc_ has been the most powerful. the pathetic story cleanses joan of the miraculous, uncovers the grovelling influences she had to contend against, exposes the sordid ambitions she had to overcome and that finally slaked their vengeance in her blood. the master's hand weaves together and draws, in the garb of fiction, a picture that is monumental--at once as a work of science, of history and of art. daniel de leon. milford, conn., october, . part i. domremy chapter i. jeannette. domremy is a frontier village of lorraine that cosily nestles on the slope of a fertile valley whose pasture grounds are watered by the meuse. an oak forest, that still preserves some mementoes of druid tradition, reaches out almost to the village church. this church is the handsomest of all in the valley, which begins at vaucouleurs and ends at domremy. st. catherine and st. marguerite, superbly painted and gilded, ornament the sanctuary. st. michael, the archangel, with his sword in one hand and the scales in the other, glistens from the depths of a dark recess in the chapel. happy is the valley that begins at vaucouleurs and ends at domremy! a royal seigniory, lost on the confines of gaul, it has not yet suffered from the disasters of war that for more than a half century have been desolating the center of the country. its inhabitants, profiting by the civil broils of their sovereign and his distance from them, being separated from his main domains by champagne, which had fallen into the power of the english, had emancipated themselves from serfdom. james darc, a member of a family that had long been serfs of the abbey of st. remy, and subsequently of the sire of joinville before the fief of vaucouleurs was consolidated with the royal domain, an honest laborer, stern head of his household and rather rude of manners, lived by the cultivation of the fields. his wife was called isabelle romée; his eldest son, peter; the second, john; and his daughter, born on "the day of kings" in , was named jeannette. at the time when this narrative commences, jeannette was a little over thirteen years of age. she was of pleasant appearance, a sweet and pious child and endowed with precocious intelligence. her disposition was serious for her age. this notwithstanding, she joined in the games of other girls, her friends, and never gloried in her own superior agility when, as usually happened, she won in the races. she could neither read nor write. active and industrious, she helped her mother in the household, led the sheep to pasture and was skilful with the needle and at the distaff. often pensive, when alone in secluded spots of the woods she watched over her flock, she found an inexpressible delight in listening to the distant sound of the church bells, to the point that at times she made little presents of fruits or skeins of wool to the parish clerk of domremy, joining to the gifts the gentle request that he prolong a little the chimes of the vespers or of the angelus.[ ] jeannette also took delight in leading her sheep in the ancient forest of oaks, known as the "bois chesnu",[ ] towards a limpid spring shaded by a beech tree that was between two and three hundred years old and which was known in the region as the "fairies' tree". the legend had it that the priests of the old gods of gaul sometimes appeared, dressed in their long white robes, under the dark vaults of the oaks of this forest, and that often little fairies approached the fountain by moonlight to see their reflection in its waters. jeannette did not fear the fairies, knowing that a single sign of the cross would put any malignant sprite to flight. she entertained a special spirit of devotion for st. marguerite and st. catherine, the two beautiful saints of the parish. when, on feast days, she accompanied her venerated parents to divine service, she was never tired of contemplating and admiring the good saints, who were at once smiling and majestic under their golden crowns. likewise did st. michael attract her attention. but the severity of the archangel's face and his flaming sword somewhat intimidated the young shepherdess, while, on the contrary, her dear saints inspired her with ineffable confidence. jeannette's god-mother was sybille, an old woman, originally from brittany, and a washerwoman by occupation. sybille knew a mass of marvelous legends; and she spoke familiarly about the fairies, genii and other supernatural beings. some people took her for a witch;[ ] but her good heart, her piety and upright life in no way justified the suspicion. jeannette, of whom her god-mother was very fond, drank in with avidity the legends narrated by the latter when they met on the way to the "fountain of the fairies" whither the former frequently took her sheep to water while her god-mother spun her hemp on the banks of a nearby stream. the narratives of her god-mother of the miraculous doings of the fairies and genii impressed themselves profoundly on the imaginative spirit of jeannette, who grew ever more serious and pensive as she approached her fourteenth year. she was frequently subject to a vague sense of sadness. often, when alone in the woods or on the meadows, the distant sounds of the church bells, that she so much loved to hear, struck her ears, and she would weep without knowing why. the involuntary tears comforted her. but her nights grew restless. she no longer slept peacefully as is the wont of rustic children after their wholesome labors. she dreamed much; and her visions would raise before her the spirits of the legends of her god-mother or present to her st. marguerite and st. catherine smiling tenderly upon her. chapter ii. gillon the furtive. on a brilliant summer day the sun was westering behind the castle of ile, a small fortress raised between the two arms of the meuse at a considerable distance from domremy. james darc inhabited a house near the church, the garden of which bordered on that of his own habitation. the laborer's family, gathered before the door of their lodging, were enjoying the coolness of the evening; some were seated on a bench and others on the floor. james darc, a robust man of severe countenance, spare of face and grey of hair, was in the group resting from his day's labor; his wife, isabelle, spun; jeannette was sewing. large and strong for her age, lissom and well proportioned, her hair was black, as were also her large brilliant eyes. the ensemble of her features made promise of a virile and yet tender beauty.[ ] she wore, after the fashion of lorraine, a skirt of coarse scarlet fabric, with a corsage that, looped over her shoulders, allowed the short sleeves of her skirt to escape at her upper arms, the rest of which remained bare and were well built and slightly tanned by the sun. darc's family were listening to the account of a stranger dressed in a brown coat, shod in tall and spurred boots, holding a whip in his hands and carrying on his shoulder a tin box held by a leather strap. the stranger, gillon the furtive, was in the habit of traversing long distances on horseback in the capacity of "flying messenger", carrying the correspondence of important personages. he had just returned from one of these errands to the duke of lorraine and was going back to charles vii, who then resided at bourges. while crossing domremy, gillon the furtive had asked james darc to direct him to some inn where he could sup and feed his horse. "share my meal; my sons will take your horse to the stable," the hospitable laborer answered the messenger. the offer being accepted, supper was taken and the stranger, desirous to pay his reckoning in his own way by giving the latest news of france to the family of darc, reported how the english, masters of paris and of almost all the provinces, governed despotically, terrorizing the inhabitants by their continuous acts of violence and rapine; how the king of england, still a boy and under the guardianship of the duke of bedford, had inherited the crown of france; while poor charles vii, the king by right, deserted by almost all his seigneurs and relegated to touraine, the last shred of his domains, did not even entertain the hope of ever being able to redeem those provinces from the domination of the english. being a court messenger and therefore, naturally, a royalist of the armagnac party, gillon the furtive professed, after the fashion of inferior courtiers, a sort of stupid, false, blind and grovelling adoration for charles vii. that young prince, unnerved by his early debaucheries, selfish, greedy, envious and, above all, cowardly, never appeared at the head of the troops still left to him; and consoled himself for their defeats and his disgrace by drinking deep and singing with his mistresses. in his royalist fervor, however, gillon the furtive forgot his master's vices and saw only his misfortunes. "poor young king! it is a pity to see what he has to endure!" said the messenger at the close of his report. "his accursed mother, isabelle of bavaria, is the cause of it all. her misconduct with the duke of orleans and her hatred for the duke of burgundy have brought on the frightful feud between the burgundians and the armagnacs. the english, already masters of several of our provinces since the battle of poitiers, easily took possession of almost all france, torn in factions as the country was. they now impose upon the country an intolerable yoke, sack and burn it right and left and butcher its people. finally, the duke of bedford, tutor of a king in his cradle, reigns in the place of our gentle dauphin! a curse upon isabelle of bavaria! that woman was the ruin of the kingdom. we are no longer french. we are english!" "god be praised! we, at least," said james darc, "still remain french, all of us in this valley. we have not experienced the disasters that you describe, friend messenger. you say that charles vii, our young prince, is a worthy sire?" "just heaven!" cried gillon the furtive, a flatterer and liar, like all court valets, "charles vii is an angel! all who approach him admire him, revere and bless him! he has the meekness of a lamb, the beauty of a swan and the courage of a lion!" "the courage of a lion!" exclaimed james darc with admiration. "then our young sire has fought bravely?" "if he had had his will he would by this time have been killed at the head of the troops that have remained faithful," promptly answered gillon the furtive, puffing out his cheeks. "but the life of our august master is so precious that the seigneurs of his family and council were bound to oppose his risking his precious days in a fashion that i shall be bold to call--uselessly heroic. the soldiers who still follow the royal banners are completely discouraged by the defeats that they have sustained. the larger number of bishops and seigneurs have declared themselves for the party of the burgundians and the english; everybody is deserting our young sire; and soon perhaps, forced to abandon france, he will not find in the whole kingdom of his fathers a place to rest his head! oh, accursed, triply accursed be his wicked mother, isabella of bavaria!" with nightfall gillon the furtive thanked the laborer of domremy for his hospitality, mounted his horse and pursued his route. after mutually expressing their sorrow at the fate of the young king, the family of darc joined in evening prayer and its members retired to sleep. chapter iii. at the fountain of the fairies. that night jeannette slept late and little. silent and attentive during the messenger's narrative, she had then for the first time heard imprecations uttered at the ravages of the english, and about the misfortunes of the gentle dauphin of france. james darc, his wife and sons continued long after the departure of gillon the furtive to lament the public calamities. vassals of the king, they loved him; and they served him all the more seeing they knew him less and in no wise felt his feudal overlordship, having emancipated themselves with the aid of the distance that separated them from him and from the troubles that had fallen upon him. they were worthy but credulous people. children usually are the echoes of their parents. accordingly, following the example of her father and mother, jeannette, in her naïve and tender credulity, pitied with all her heart the young prince who was so beautiful, so brave and yet so unfortunate only through the fault of his wicked mother. "oh," thought she, "he is almost without a place to rest his head, deserted by everybody, and soon will be forced to flee from the kingdom of his ancestors!" so the messenger had said. jeannette, who lately was subject to causeless spells of weeping, now wept over the misfortunes of the king; and fell asleep praying to her dear saints marguerite and catherine and to the archangel michael to intercede with the lord in behalf of the poor young prince. these thoughts followed the little shepherdess even in her dreams, bizarre dreams, in which she now would see the dauphin of france, beautiful as an angel, smiling upon her with sadness and kindness; and then again hordes of armed englishmen, armed with torches and swords, marching, marching and leaving behind them a long trail of blood and flames. jeannette awoke, but her imagination being strongly affected by the remembrance of her dreams, she could not keep her mind from ever returning to the gentle dauphin and being greatly moved with pity for him. at early daylight she gathered her lambs, that every morning she took to pasture, and led them towards the oak forest where the shade was cool and the grass dotted with flowers. while her sheep were pasturing jeannette sat down near the fountain of the fairies, shaded by the centennarian beech tree; and mechanically she plied her distaff. jeannette had not been long absorbed in her revery when she was joined by her god-mother, sybille, who arrived carrying on her shoulder a large bundle of hemp that she wished to lay in the streamlet, formed by the overflow of the spring, in order to have it retted. although simple minded people took sybille for a witch, nothing in her features recalled those usually ascribed to old women possessed of the evil spirit--hooked nose and chin, cavernous eyes and an owlish aspect. no, far from it, nothing could be more venerable than sybille's pale face framed in her white hair. her eyes shone with concentrated fire when she narrated the legends of the olden times or recited the heroic chants of armorica, as her native brittany was once called. without at all believing in magic, sybille had a profound faith in certain prophecies made by the ancient gallic bards. faithful to the druidic creed of her fathers, jeannette's god-mother held that man never dies, but continues to live eternally, body and soul, in the stars, new and mysterious worlds. nevertheless, respecting her god-daughter's religious views, sybille never sought to throw doubt upon the faith of the child. she loved the child tenderly and was ever ready to tell her some legend that jeannette would listen to in rapt attention. thus there was developed in the young shepherdess a contemplative and reflecting spirit that was unusual in one of her years, and that was no less striking than the precociousness of her intellect. she was prepared for a mystic role. jeannette continued, mechanically, to ply her distaff while her eyes, with an absent minded look in them, followed her sheep. she neither saw nor heard sybille approach. the latter, after having laid her hemp in the streamlet and placed a stone on it to keep it in place, approached jeannette slowly and impressed a kiss upon the bowed neck of the young girl, who uttered a startled cry and said smilingly, "oh god-mother, you frightened me so!" "and yet you are not timid! you were braver the other day than i should have been when you stoned the large viper to death. what were you thinking about just now?" "oh, i was thinking that the dauphin, our dear sire, who is so gentle, so beautiful, so brave and yet so unfortunate through the fault of his mother, may, perhaps, be forced to leave france!" "who told you that?" "a messenger, who stopped yesterday at our house. he told us of the harm the english are doing the country whence he came; and also of the troubles of our young sire. oh, god-mother, i felt as grieved for him as if he were my own brother. i could not help crying before falling asleep. oh, the messenger repeated it over and over again that the mother of the young prince is to blame for all of his sufferings; and that that bad woman had lost gaul." "did the messenger say all that?" asked sybille, thrilling at a sudden recollection, "did he say that a woman had lost gaul?" "yes, he did. and he told how, through her fault, the english are heaping sorrows upon the country people. they pillage them, kill them and burn down their houses. they have no mercy for women or children. they drive away the peasants' cattle"--and jeannette cast an uneasy glance upon her woolly flock. "oh, god-mother, my heart bled at the messenger's report of our young king's sufferings and at the trials of the poor folks of those regions. to think that one bad woman could cause so much harm!" "a woman caused the harm," said sybille, raising her head with a faraway look in her eyes, "a woman will redress it." "how can that be?" "a woman lost gaul," resumed sybille, more and more dreamily, with her eyes resting on space, "a young girl shall save gaul. is the prophecy about to be fulfilled? praise be to god!" "what prophecy, god-mother?" "the prophecy of merlin, the famous enchanter. merlin, the bard of brittany." "and when did he make the prophecy?" "more than a thousand years ago." "more than a thousand years! was merlin then a saint, god-mother? he must have been a great saint!" absorbed in her own thoughts, sybille did not seem to hear the young shepherdess's question. with her eyes still gazing afar, she murmured slowly the old chant of armorica: "merlin, merlin, whither this morning with your black dog? 'i come here to look for the egg that is red and laid by the serpent that lives in the sea. i come here to look for the cress that is green and the herb that is golden which grow in the valley, and the branch of the oak that is stately, in the woods on the banks of the fountain.'"[ ] "the branch of the oak that is stately--in the woods--on the banks of the fountain?" repeated jeannette, questioningly, looking above and around her, as though struck both by the words and the significant expression on sybille's face. "it looks like this spot, god-mother, it looks like this spot!" but noticing that the old breton woman did not listen to her and was seemingly lost in contemplation, she laid her hand upon her arm and said, insistently, "god-mother, who is that merlin of whom you speak? answer me, dear god-mother!" "he was a gallic bard whose chants are still sung in my country," answered sybille, awaking from her revery; "he is spoken of in our oldest legends." "oh, god-mother, tell me one of them, if you please. i love so much to hear your beautiful legends. i often dream of them!" "very well, you shall be pleased, dear child. i shall tell you the legend of a peasant who wed the daughter of the king of brittany." "is it possible! a peasant wed a king's daughter?" "yes, and thanks to merlin's harp and ring." chapter iv. the harp of merlin. sybille seemed to be in a trance. "the legend," she said, "that i shall tell you is called _the harp of merlin_;" and she proceeded to recite in a rythmic cadence: "'my poor grandmother, oh, i wish to attend the feast that the king doth give.' 'no, alain, to this feast shall you not go: last night you wept in your dream.' 'dear little mother, if truly you love me, let me this feast attend.' 'no, you will sing when you go; when you come back you'll weep.' but despite his grandmother, alain did go." "it was wrong in him to disobey," jeannette could not help saying, while she listened with avidity to her god-mother's recital; "it was wrong in him to disobey!" sybille kissed jeannette on the forehead and proceeded: "alain equipped his black colt, shod it well with polished steel, placed a ring on its neck, a bow on its tail, and arrived at the feast. upon his arrival the trumpets were sounded: 'whoever shall clear at one bound, clear and free, the barrier around the fair grounds, his shall the king's daughter be.'" "the king's daughter! can it be!" repeated the little shepherdess wonderingly, and, dropping her distaff, she pressed her hands together in ecstasy. sybille proceeded: "hearing these words of the crier, the black colt of alain neighed loud and long; he leaped and ran, his nostrils shot fire, his eyes emitted flashes of lightning; he distanced all other horses, and cleared the barrier with a leap neat and clean. 'sire,' said alain, addressing the king, 'you swore it; your daughter, linor, must now be mine.' 'not thine, nor of such as you can ever she be-- yours is not our race.'" "the king had promised and sworn," cried jeannette, "did he fail in his word? oh, the lovely dauphin, our sire, he would never break his word! would he, god-mother?" sybille shook her head sadly and continued: '"an old man stood by the king, an old man with long white beard, whiter than is the wool on the bush of the heather; his robe was laced with gold from top to bottom. he spoke to the king in a low voice; and the latter, after he had heard what the old man said, struck three times on the ground with his scepter to order silence, and said to alain: "'if you bring me the harp of merlin, that hangs at the head of his bed from three chains of gold; yes, if you can loosen that harp and bring it to me, you shall have my daughter, perhaps.'" "and where was that harp, god-mother?" asked jeannette, more and more interested in the legend. "what must he do to get it?" "'my poor grandmother,' said alain when he returned to the house, 'if truly you love me you'll help and advise me. my heart is broken! my heart is broken!' 'bad boy, had you but listened to me, had you not gone to that feast, your heart would not be broken. but come, do not cry. the harp shall be loosened. here's a hammer of gold; now go.' "alain returned to the king's palace, saying: 'good luck and joy! here am i, and i bring the harp of merlin'--" "then he succeeded in getting the harp?" jeannette asked in amazement. "but where and how did he do it, god-mother?" sybille, with a mysterious look, placed her finger to her lips in token of silence: "'i bring here the harp of merlin,' said alain to the king; 'sire, your daughter, linor, must now be mine. you promised me so.' when the king's son heard this, he made a wry face and spoke to his father, the king, in a low voice. the king, having listened, then said to alain: 'if you fetch me the ring from the finger of merlin's right hand, then you shall have my daughter, linor.'" "oh, god-mother, twice to fail in his promise! oh, that was wrong on the part of the king! what is to become of poor alain?" "alain returns all in tears, and seeks his grandmother in great haste. 'oh, grandmother, the king had said-- and now he gainsays himself!' 'do not grieve so, dear child! take a twiglet you'll find in my chest, on which twelve leaves you'll see-- twelve leaves as yellow as gold, and that i looked for se'en nights in se'en woods, now se'en years agone.'" "what were those gold leaves, god-mother? did the angels or the saints give them to the grandmother?" sybille shook her head negatively and proceeded: "when at midnight the chanticleer crowed, the black colt of alain awaited his master just outside the door. 'fear not, my dear little grandson, merlin will not awake; you have my twelve leaves of gold. go quickly.' the chanticleer had not yet done with his chant when the black colt was galloping swiftly over the road. the chanticleer had not yet done with his chant when the ring of merlin was taken away--" "and this time alain married the king's daughter, did he not, god-mother?" "at break of dawn was alain at the king's palace, presenting him with merlin's ring. stupefied the king did stand; and all who stood near him declared: 'lo, how, after all, this young peasant won the daughter of our sire!' 'it is true,' the king to alain did say, 'but still there is one thing i now ask of you, and it will be the last. do you that, and my daughter you'll have, and with her the glorious kingdom of leon.' 'what must i do, sire?' 'to my court bring merlin, your wedding to sing with my daughter linor.'" "my god!" interrupted the little shepherdess, more and more carried away with the marvelousness of the story, "how will it end?" "while alain was at the king's palace, his grandmother saw merlin go by; merlin the enchanter went by her house. 'whence, merlin, come you with your clothes all in rags whither thus bare-headed and bare-footed go you? whither, old merlin, with your holly staff go you?' 'alack! alack! i'm looking for my harp, my heart's only solace in all this broad world. i'm looking for my harp and also for my ring, which both i lost, or they have been stolen from me.' "'merlin, merlin, do not grieve! your harp is not lost, and neither is your ring. walk in, merlin, walk in, take rest and food.' 'i shall neither eat nor rest in this world till i've recovered my harp and my ring. they have not been stolen, i've lost them, the two.' 'merlin, walk in, your harp will be found.-- merlin, walk in, your ring will be found.' so hard the grandmother begged that merlin entered her hut. "when in the evening alain returned to his house, he trembled with a great fear when, on casting his eyes towards the hearth, he there saw merlin the enchanter, who was seated, his head on his breast reclining. alain knew not whither to flee. "'fear not, my lad, fear not. merlin sleeps a slumber profound. he has eaten three apples, three red ones, which i in the embers have baked. now he'll follow wherever we go. we'll lead him towards the palace of our sire, the king!'" "and did merlin go, god-mother?" "'what has happened in town, that i hear such a noise?' said the next day the queen to the servant; 'what has happened at court, that the crowd are cheering so joyfully?' 'madam, the whole town is having a feast. merlin is entering the town with an old, a very old woman, dressed in white, the grandmother she of the lad who is your daughter to marry. aye, madam the queen.' "and the wedding took place. alain espoused linor. merlin chanted the nuptials. there were a hundred white robes for the priests, a hundred gold chains for the knights, a hundred festal blue mantles for the dames, and eight hundred hose for the poor. and all left satisfied. alain left for the country of leon with his wife, his grandmother, and a numerous suite.-- but merlin alone disappeared. merlin was lost. no one knows what of him is become. no one knows when merlin will return."[ ] chapter v. the prophecy of merlin. jeannette had listened to sybille in rapt attention, struck above all by the singular circumstance of a peasant marrying the daughter of a king. from that moment jeannette pardoned herself for having so often, since the previous evening, permitted her thoughts to turn to that young sire, so sweet, so beautiful, so brave and yet so unfortunate through his mother's misconduct and the cruelty of the english. when sybille's recital was ended, a short silence ensued which was broken by jeannette: "oh, god-mother, what a beautiful legend! it would be still more beautiful if, the sire of leon having to fight so cruel an enemy as the english, alain, the peasant, had saved the king before wedding his daughter! but what did become of merlin, the great enchanter merlin?" "it is said that he must sleep a thousand years. but before he fell asleep he prophesied that the harm a woman would do to gaul would be redressed by a young girl, a young girl of this region--" "this region in which we live, god-mother?" "yes, of the borders of lorraine; and that she would be born near a large oak forest." jeannette clasped her hands in astonishment and she looked at sybille in silence, revolving in her mind the prophecy of merlin that france was to be saved by a young girl of lorraine, perchance of domremy! was not the emancipatrix to come from an old oak forest? was not the village of domremy situated close to a forest of centennarian oaks?[ ] "what! god-mother," jeannette inquired, "can that be true--did merlin make that prophecy?" "yes," answered sybille, thinking that surely the time had come when the prophecy of the gallic bard was to be fulfilled, "yes, more than a thousand years ago merlin so prophesied." "how did he do it, god-mother?" sybille leaned her forehead on her hand, collected herself, and in a low voice, speaking slowly, she imparted to her god-daughter the mysterious prophecy in the following words, to which the child listened with religious absorption: "when down goes the sun and the moon shines, i sing. young, i sang--become old still i sing. people look for me, but they find me not. people will cease looking for, and then will they find me. it matters little what may happen-- what must be shall be! "i see gaul lost by a woman. i see gaul saved by a virgin from the borders of lorraine and a forest of oaks. i see at the borders of lorraine a thick forest of oaks where, near a clear fountain, grows the divine druid herb, which the druid cuts with a sickle of gold. i see an angel with wings of azure and dazzling with light. he holds in his hands a royal crown. i see a steed of battle as white as snow-- i see an armor of battle as brilliant as silver.-- for whom is that crown, that steed, that armor? gaul, lost by a woman, will be saved by a virgin from the borders of lorraine and a forest of oaks.-- for whom that crown, that steed, that armor? oh, how much blood! it spouts up, it flows in torrents! it steams; its vapor rises--rises like an autumn mist to heaven, where the thunder peals and where the lightning flashes. athwart those peals of thunder, those flashes of lightning, that crimson mist, i see a martial virgin. she battles, she battles--she battles still in a forest of lances! she seems to be riding on the backs of the archers.[ ] the white steed, as white as snow, was for the martial virgin! for her was the armor of battle as brilliant as silver. she is surrounded by an escort. but for whom the royal crown? gaul, lost by a woman, will be saved by a virgin from the borders of lorraine and a forest of oaks. for the martial maid the steed and the armor! but for whom the royal crown? the angel with wings of azure holds it in his hands. the blood has ceased to run in torrents, the thunder to peal, and the lightning to flash. the warriors are at rest. i see a serene sky. the banners float; the clarions sound; the bells ring. cries of joy! chants of victory! the martial virgin receives the crown from the hands of the angel of light. a man on his knees, wearing a long mantle of ermine, is crowned by the warrior virgin. who is the virgin's elect? "it matters little what may happen. what must be shall be! gaul, lost by a woman, is saved by a virgin from the borders of lorraine and a forest of oaks. the prophecy is in the book of destiny." hanging upon the lips of sybille, jeannette never once interrupted her as she listened to the mysterious prophecy with waxing emotion. her active, impressionable imagination pictured to her mind's eye the virgin of lorraine clad in her white armor, mounted on her white courser, battling in the midst of a forest of lances, and, in the words of the prophetic chant, "riding on the backs of the archers." and after that, the war being ended and the foreigner vanquished, the angel of light--no doubt st. michael, thought the little shepherdess--passed the crown to the warrior maid; who, amidst the blare of trumpets, the ringing of bells and the chants of victory, rendered his crown back to the king. and that king, who else could he be but the lovely dauphin whose mother had brought on the misfortunes of france? it never yet occurred to the little shepherdess that she, herself, might be the martial virgin prophesied of in the legend. but the heart of the naïve child beat with joy at the thought that the virgin who was to emancipate gaul was to be a lorrainian. "oh, thanks, god-mother, for having recited this beautiful legend to me!" said jeannette, throwing herself, with tears in her eyes, on the neck of sybille. "morning and noon shall i pray to god and st. michael soon to fulfil the prophecy of merlin. the english will then finally be driven from france and our young sire crowned, thanks to the courage of the young lorrainian maid from the forest of old oaks! may god grant our prayers!" "'it matters little what may happen. what must be shall be.' the prophecy will be fulfilled." "and yet," replied the little shepherdess, after reflecting a moment, "think of a young maid riding to battle and commanding armed men like a captain! is such a thing possible? but god will give her courage!" "my father knew one time, in my country of brittany, the wife of the count of montfort, who was vanquished and taken prisoner by the king of france. her name was jeannette, like yours. long did she fight valiantly, both on land and on sea, with casque and cuirass. she wished to save the heritage of her son, a three-year-old boy. the sword weighed no more to the arm of the countess jeannette than does the distaff to the hands of a girl that spins." "what a woman, god-mother! what a woman!" "and there were a good many other martial women, hundreds and hundreds of years ago! they came in vessels from the countries of the north; and they were daring enough to row up the seine as far even as paris. they were called the buckler maidens. they did not fear the bravest soldier. and who wished to wed them had first to overcome them by force of arms."[ ] "you do not say so! what furious women they must have been!" "and in still older days, the breton women of gaul followed their husbands, sons, fathers and brothers to battle. they assisted at the councils of war; and often fought unto death." "god-mother, is not the story of hena that you once told me, a legend of those days?"[ ] "yes, my child." "oh, god-mother," replied the enraptured little shepherdess, caressingly, "tell me that legend once more. hena proved herself as courageous as will be the young lorrainian maid whose advent merlin predicts." "very well," said sybille, smiling, "i shall tell you this legend also and shall then return home. my hemp is retting. i shall return for it before evening." chapter vi. the legend of hena. with the enchanted jeannette for her audience, sybille proceeded to recite the legend of hena: "she was young, she was fair, and holy was she. to hesus her blood gave for gaul to be free. hena her name! hena, the maid of the island of sen! "'blessed be the gods, my sweet daughter,' said her father joel, the brenn of the tribe of karnak. 'blessed be the gods, my sweet daughter, since you are home this night to celebrate the day of your birth!' "'blessed be the gods, my sweet girl,' said margarid, her mother. 'blessed be your coming! but why is your face so sad?' "'my face is sad, my good mother, my face is sad, my good father, because hena your daughter comes to bid you adieu, till we meet again.' "'and where are you going, my sweet daughter? will your journey, then, be long? whither thus are you going?' "'i go to those worlds so mysterious, above, that no one yet knows, but that all will yet know. where living ne'er traveled, where all will yet travel, to live there again with those we have loved.'" "and those worlds," asked jeannette, "are they the paradise where the angels and the saints of the good god are? are they, god-mother?" sybille shook her head doubtfully, without answering, and continued the recital of her legend: "hearing hena speak these words, sadly gazed upon her her father, and her mother, aye, all the family, even the little children, for hena loved them very dearly. "'but why, dear daughter, why now quit this world, and travel away beyond without the angel of death having called you?' "'good father, good mother, hesus is angry. the stranger now threatens our gaul, so beloved. the innocent blood of a virgin offered by her to the gods may their anger well soften. adieu then, till we meet again, good father, good mother. "'adieu till we meet again, all, my dear ones and friends. these collars preserve, and these rings, as mementoes of me. let me kiss for the last time your blonde heads, dear little ones. good-bye till we meet. remember your hena, she waits for you yonder, in the worlds yet unknown.' "bright is the moon, high is the pyre which rises near the sacred stones of karnak; vast is the gathering of the tribes which presses 'round the funeral pile. "behold her, it is she, it is hena! she mounts the pyre, her golden harp in hand, and singeth thus: "'take my blood, o hesus, and deliver my land from the stranger. take my blood, o hesus. pity for gaul! victory to our arms!' "so it flowed, the blood of hena. o, holy virgin, in vain 'twill not have been, the shedding of your innocent and generous blood. to arms! to arms! let us chase away the stranger! victory to our arms!" the eyes of jeannette filled anew with tears; and she said to sybille, when the latter had finished her recital: "oh, god-mother, if the good god, his saints and his archangels should ask me: 'jeannette, which would you prefer to be, hena or the martial maid of lorraine who is to drive the wicked english from france and restore his crown to our gentle dauphin?'--" "which would you prefer?" "i would prefer to be hena, who, in order to deliver her country, offered her blood to the good god without shedding the blood of any other people! to be obliged to kill so many people before vanquishing the enemy and before crowning our poor young sire! oh, god-mother," added jeannette, shivering, "merlin said that he saw blood flowing in torrents and steaming like a fog!" jeannette broke off and rose precipitately upon hearing, a few steps off in the copse, a great noise mixed with plaintive bleatings. just then one of her lambs leaped madly out of the bush pursued silently by a large black dog which was snapping viciously at its legs. to drop her distaff, pick up two stones that she armed herself with and throw herself upon the dog was the work of an instant for the child, thoroughly aroused by the danger to one of her pets, while sybille cried in frightened tones: "take care! take care! the dog that does not bark is mad!" but the little shepherdess, with eyes afire and face animated, and paying no heed to her god-mother's warning, instead of throwing her stones at the dog from a safe distance, attacked him with them in her hands, striking him with one and the other alternately until he dropped his prey and fled, howling with pain and with great tufts of wool hanging from his jaws, while jeannette pursued him, picking up more stones and throwing them with unerring aim until the dog had disappeared in the thicket. when jeannette returned to sybille the latter was struck by the intrepid mien of the child. the ribbons on her head having become untied, her hair was left free to tumble down upon her shoulders in long black tresses. still out of breath from running, she leaned for a moment against the moss-grown rocks near the fountain with her arms hanging down upon her scarlet skirt, when, noticing the lamb that lay bleeding on the ground, still palpitating with fear, the little shepherdess fell to crying. her anger gave place to intense pity. she dipped up some water at the spring in the hollow of her hands, knelt down beside the lamb, washed its wounds and said in a low voice: "our gentle dauphin is innocent as you, poor lambkin; and those wicked english dogs seek to tear him up." in the distance the bells of the church of domremy began their measured chimes. at the sound, of which she was so passionately fond, the little shepherdess cried delightedly: "oh, god-mother, the bells, the bells!" and in a sort of ecstasy, with her lamb pressed to her breast, jeannette listened to the sonorous vibrations that the morning breeze wafted to the forest of oaks. chapter vii. germination. several weeks went by. the prophecy of merlin, the remembrance of the king's misfortunes and of the disasters of france, ravaged by the english, obstinately crowded upon jeannette's mind, before whom her parents frequently conversed upon the sad plight of the country. thus, often during the hours she spent in solitary musings with her flock in the fields or the woods, she repeated in a low voice the passage from the prophecy of the gallic bard: "gaul, lost by a woman, shall be saved by a virgin from the borders of lorraine and a forest of old oaks." or that other: "oh, how much blood! it spouts up, it flows in torrents! it steams and, like a mist, it rises heavenward where the thunder peals, where the lightning flashes! athwart those peals of thunder, those flashes of lightning, i see a martial virgin. white is her steed, white is her armor; she battles, she battles still in the midst of a forest of lances, and seems to be riding on the backs of the archers." whereupon the angel of dazzling light would place the royal crown in the hands of the martial virgin, who crowned her king in the midst of shouts of joy and chants of victory! every day, looking with her mind's eyes towards the borders of lorraine and failing to see the emancipating virgin, jeannette beseeched her two good saints--st. marguerite and st. catherine--to intercede with the lord in behalf of the safety of the gentle dauphin, who had been deprived of his throne. vainly did she beseech them to obtain the deliverance of poor france, for so many years a prey to the english; and she also fervently implored heaven for the fulfilment of the prophecy of merlin, a prophecy that seemed plausible to jeannette's mind after sybille had told her of the exploits of the martial virgins who came in their ships from the distant seas of the north and besieged paris; or the prowess of jeannette of montfort, battling like a lioness defending her whelps; or, finally, the heroic deeds of the gallic women of olden days who accompanied their husbands, their brothers and their fathers to battle. jeannette was approaching her fourteenth year, an age at which robust and healthy natures, well developed by the invigorating labors of a rustic life, ordinarily enter their period of puberty. in that period of their lives, on the point, so grave for their sex, of becoming maids, they are assailed by unaccountable fears, by a vague sense of sadness, by an imperious demand for solitude where to give a loose rein to languorous reveries, novel sensations at which their chaste instincts take alarm, symptoms of the awakening of the virginal heart, first and shadowy aspirations of the maid for the sweet pleasures and austere duties of the wife and mother--the sacred destinies of woman. it was not thus with jeannette. she experienced these mysterious symptoms; but her simplicity misled her as to their cause. her imagination filled with the marvelous legends of her god-mother, whom she continued to meet almost daily at the fountain of the fairies, her spirit ever more impressed by the prophecies of merlin, although she never identified herself with them, jeannette imputed, in the chaste ignorance of her soul, the vague sense of sadness that assailed her, her involuntary tears, her confused aspirations--all precursory symptoms of puberty--to the painful and tender compassion that the misfortunes of gaul and of her young king inspired her with. jeannette darc was to know but one love, the sacred love of her mother-land. chapter viii. the english! "isabelle," one evening james darc said to his wife, with a severe air, she and he being left alone near the hearth, "i am not at all satisfied with jeannette. in a few months she will be fourteen; large and strong though she is for her age, she is becoming lazy. yesterday i ordered her to draw water from the well to water the vegetables in the garden and i saw her stop a score of times with her hands on the rope and her nose in the air gaping at the eaves of the house. i shall have to shake her rudely out of the sin of laziness." "james, listen to me. have you not noticed that for some time our jeannette is rather pale, has hardly any appetite, is often absent minded; and, moreover, she is more reserved than formerly?" "i do not complain of her talking little. i do not love gabblers. i complain of her laziness. i wish her to become again industrious as she once was, and active as of old." "the change that we notice in the girl does not, my friend, proceed from bad will." "whence then?" "only yesterday, feeling truly alarmed for her health, i questioned jeannette. she suffered, she said, with violent headaches for some time; her limbs grew stiff without her having done hardly any walking; she could hardly sleep and was at times so dizzy that everything turned around her. "this morning, as i went to neufchateau with butter and poultry, i consulted brother arsene, the surgeon, on jeannette's condition." "and what did brother arsene say?" "having been told what her ailments were, he asked her age. 'thirteen and a half, near fourteen,' i answered him. 'is she strong and otherwise of good health?' 'yes, brother, she is strong and was always well until these changes came that so much alarm me.' 'be easy,' was brother arsene's final remark, 'be easy, good woman, your "little" daughter will surely soon be a "big" daughter. in a word, she will have "developed." at the approach of that crisis, always grave, young girls grow languishing and dreamy. they experience aches. they become taciturn and seek solitude. even the most robust become feeble, the most industrious indolent, the gayest sad. that lasts a few months and then they become themselves again. but,' added brother arsene, 'you must be careful, under pain of provoking serious accidents, not to cross or scold your daughter at such a period of her life. strong emotions have been known to check and suppress forever the salutary crisis that nature brings on. in such cases serious, often irreparable harm may follow. there are young girls who, in that manner, have gone wholly insane.' so you see, james, how we shall have to humor jeannette." "you have done wisely in consulting brother arsene; and i would blame myself for having thought so severely of the child's laziness and absent mindedness were it not that this evening, when she embraced me as usual before retiring, she showed that she no longer minded my words." "oh, mercy! on the contrary, i noticed that she was as affectionate toward you as ever--" isabelle was suddenly interrupted by violent rapping at the street door. "who can that be, knocking at this hour of the night?" said james darc, rising, as much surprised as his wife at the interruption, to open the door. the door was hardly ajar when an aged man of venerable and mild appearance, but at that moment pale with fear, hastily dismounted from his horse and cried, breathlessly, "woe is us! friend, the english! the english! the country is about to be invaded!" "great god! what is it you say, uncle!" exclaimed isabelle, recognizing denis laxart, her mother's brother. "the french troops have just been routed at the battle of verneuil. the english, re-inforced in champagne, are now overflowing into our valley. look! look!" said denis laxart, drawing isabelle and james darc to the threshold of their street door and pointing to the horizon towards the north, where wide streaks of reddish light went up and accentuated the darkness of the night, "the village of st. pierre is in flames and the bulk of the troop of these brigands is now besieging vaucouleurs, whence i managed to flee. one of their bands is raiding the valley, burning and sacking in their passage! flee! flee! pick up whatever valuables you have. the village of st. pierre is only two leagues from here. the english may be this very night in domremy. i shall hasten to neufchateau to join my wife and children who have been there for the last few days visiting a relative. flee! there is still time. if you do not you may be slaughtered within two hours! flee!" uttering the last word, the distracted denis laxart threw himself upon his horse and disappeared at full gallop, leaving james darc and his wife stupefied and terror stricken. until now the english never had approached the peaceful valley of the meuse. james darc's sons, whom the violent raps given at the door by denis laxart had frightened out of their slumbers, hastily slipped on their clothes and rushed into the main room. "father, has any misfortune happened? what makes you look so frightened?" "the english!" answered isabelle, pale with fear; "we are lost, my dear children! it is done for us!" "the village of st. pierre is on fire," cried james darc. "look yonder, at the border of the meuse, towards the castle of ile. look at those tongues of flame! may god help us! our country is now to be ravaged like the rest of gaul! woe is us!" "children," said isabelle, "help to gather whatever is most valuable and let us flee." "let us drive our cattle before us," added james. "if the english seize or kill them we shall be ruined. woe is us!" "but whither shall we flee?" asked peter, the elder son. "in what direction shall we run without the risk of falling into the hands of the english?" "it is better to stay right here," observed john. "we cannot fare worse than if we flee. we shall try to defend ourselves." "try to defend ourselves! do you wish to see us all killed? alack! the lord has forsaken us!" weeping and moaning and scarcely knowing what she did, poor isabelle tugged at her trunks, all too heavy to be carried far, and threw about pell-mell on the floor the best clothes of herself and her husband. her wedding dress, carefully packed up; pieces of cloth and of wool woven by her during the long winter evenings; jeannette's christening gown, a pious maternal relic;--all lay strewn about. she put around her neck an old chain, inherited from her mother, which was her main ornament on holidays. she stowed away in her pocket a little silver cup, won long ago by her husband in a shooting contest. awakened, like her brothers, jeannette also had hurriedly put on her clothes, and now entered the room. her father and brothers, taking no notice of her, were arguing with increasing anxiety the point of fleeing or of waiting at all hazards the approach of the english. from time to time they stepped to the door and, with despair plainly depicted on their faces, pointed at the conflagration which, only two leagues away, was devouring the village of st. pierre. the flames now leaped up only by fits and starts; evidently the fire had little left to consume. "a curse upon the english! what shall we do?" so suddenly appraised of the enemy's invasion, seeing the distant conflagration, and near by her father and brothers distracted with fear and her mother nervously heaping up whatever she thought might be carried away, jeannette, overcome by terror, trembled in every limb; and a mortal pallor overcast her face. her eyes became suffused with tears and, her blood rushing to her head, she was, for a moment, seized with vertigo. a cloud passed before her eyes, she staggered and fell almost fainting on a stool. but her weakness was short. she soon became herself, and heard her mother calling: "come quick, jeannette, and help me to pack up these clothes! we shall have to flee for our lives! the english are coming and will pillage everything--and kill everything!" "where shall we flee for safety?" asked james. "we may run up against the english on the road and that would be running towards danger!" "let us stay here, father," john insisted, "and defend ourselves. i said so before. it is the best course to take." "but we have no arms!" cried peter, "and those brigands are armed to the teeth! they will slaughter us all!" "what shall we do?" cried in chorus james and his sons, "what shall we do? oh, lord, have pity on us!" isabelle did not listen; she heard neither her husband nor her sons. she thought only of fleeing; and she ran from one room to the other and hither and thither, to make sure that she had left nothing of value behind; and quite unable to resign herself to the giving up of her copper and tin utensils that she had so industriously polished and spread upon the dresser. after her temporary fright and feebleness, jeannette rose, dried her eyes and helped her mother to pack up the articles that lay about on the floor; occasionally rushing to the door, contemplating the distant and dying reflections of the conflagration that still fitfully reddened the horizon in the direction of the castle of ile and the village of st. pierre. she then turned to her father and, guided by her innate good sense, said in a calm voice: "father, there is but one place where we can take refuge--the castle of ile. the castellan is kind. we would have nothing to fear behind fortified walls; and his yard will hold twenty times more cattle than either we or all of our neighbors possess." "jeannette is right," cried her two brothers, "let us to the castle of ile. we and our cattle will cross over on the ferry. sister is right." "your sister is crazy!" replied james stamping on the ground. "the english are at st. pierre. they are burning and killing everything! to go in that direction is to run into the very jaws of the wolf." "father, your fear is unfounded," explained jeannette. "the english, after having burnt the village, will have abandoned it. it will take us more than two hours to reach the place. we shall take the old path through the forest. we are sure not to meet the enemy on that side. we shall cross the ferry and find refuge in the castle." "that is right," said the two boys; "their mischief is done and the brigands will have decamped and left the ruins behind them." james darc seemed convinced by his daughter's reasoning. suddenly one of the lads cried out, pointing to a new conflagration much nearer to domremy: "see, jeannette is not mistaken; the english have left st. pierre and are approaching by the open road. they burn down everything on their way. they must have just set fire to the hamlet of maxey!" "may god help us!" answered james. "let us flee to the castle of ile by the old forest road. jeannette, run to the stable and gather your sheep; you, boys, hitch up our two cows to the wagon. isabelle and myself will carry the bundles to the yard and put them in the wagon while you are hitching up the cows. quick, quick, children, the english will be here within two hours. alack! if we ever again come back to domremy we shall find only the ashes of our poor house!" chapter ix. the flight. the family of darc had not been the only ones to discover the nocturnal raid of the english. the whole parish was on foot, a prey to consternation and terror. the more frightened gathered a few eatables, and abandoning all else, fled to the forest. others, hoping that the english might not advance as far as domremy, took the chances of remaining in the village. finally, others there were who also decided to flee for safety to the castle of ile. the darc family soon left their house, jeannette calling her sheep, which obediently followed, james leading the cows that hauled the wagon on which his wife was seated in the midst of her bundles of goods, a few bags of wheat and the household utensils that she had managed to get together. the two lads carried on their shoulders the implements of husbandry that were portable. the flight of the inhabitants of domremy, in the darkness of the night, that was reddened only on the horizon by the reflection of the conflagrations, was heartrending. the imprecations uttered by the men, the moanings of the women, the cries of the children who clung weeping to their mothers' skirts, not a few of which latter held babies to their breasts; the mass of peasants, cattle and wagons promiscuously jumbled, striking against each other and getting in each others' way; all presented a distressing picture of that desperate flight for life. these poor people left behind them their only wealth--their granaries filled with the grain of the last harvest--expecting soon to see them devoured by the flames along with their humble homes. their distress escaped in sobs, in plaintive cries, and often in curses and expressions of hatred and rage against the english. the spectacle left a profound and indelible impression upon jeannette, now for the first time made acquainted with the horrors of war. soon was she to contemplate them at still closer range and in their most appalling forms. the fugitives arrived near the hamlet of st. pierre, situated on the meuse. there was nothing left but a heap of blackened debris, with here and there a wooden beam still burning--nothing else was left of the village. walking a little ahead of her herd, jeannette stood still, stupefied at the spectacle. a few steps from where she stood a column of smoke rose from the ruins of a cottage that had been sheltered under a large walnut tree, the leaves of which were now singed and its branches charred by the fire. from one of the branches of the tree hung, head down, a man suspended by his feet over a now nearly extinct brazier. his face, roasted by the fire, retained no human form. his arms, twisted and rigid, betokened the intensity of his dying agony. not far from him, two almost naked corpses, one of an old man and the other of a lad, lay in a pool of blood. they must have attempted to defend themselves against their assailants; a butcher's knife lay near the old man's corpse, while the lad still held in his clenched hands the handle of a pitchfork. finally, a young woman, whose face was wholly concealed under her thick blonde hair and who must have been dragged from her bed in her night clothes, lay disemboweled near a still smoking heap of faggots; while a baby, apparently forgotten in the midst of the carnage, crept toward its dead mother crying loudly. such had been the savage war waged in gaul for the last fifty years since the defeat of the french nobility at poitiers. the shocking spectacle unnerved jeannette and, seized again with vertigo, she tottered and fell to the ground; peter, her elder brother, coming close behind, raised her, and, with the help of his father, placed her on the wagon with her mother. the wife of the castellan of ile and her husband, a brave soldier, allowed the fugitives from domremy to camp with their cattle in the yard of the castle, a vast space within the fortifications that were situated between the arms of the meuse. unfortunately the inhabitants of st. pierre, who were taken by surprise at night, had not been able to reach this hospitable place of refuge. after ravaging the valley the english gathered near vaucouleurs and concentrated their forces before that place, the siege of which they pressed vigorously for a short time. a few nights later a few of the peasants who had taken refuge in the castle of ile, among them peter, jeannette's elder brother, went out on a reconnoitering expedition and on their return reported that the enemy had departed from that part of the country. tired of arson and carnage, the english had withdrawn from the neighborhood of domremy after pillaging only a few of the houses and killing some of its inhabitants. back again at their home in domremy the family of darc busied themselves in repairing the damage that their house had sustained. chapter x. "burgundy!"--"france!" during her sojourn in the castle of ile jeannette had been the prey of severe attacks of fever. at times during her delirium she invoked st. catherine and st. marguerite, her good saints, believing that she saw them near her, and beseeching them with her hands clasped to put an end to the atrocities of the english. at other times the shocking scene of the hamlet of st. pierre would rise in her troubled brain and she would cry out aloud or would sob at the sight of the victims that rose before her, livid and blood-bespattered. at still other times, her eyes shooting fire and her cheeks aflame she spoke of a martial virgin clad in white armor and mounted on a milk white steed whom, she said, she saw falling upon and exterminating the english. at such times jeannette repeated with a quivering voice the refrain of merlin's prophecy-- "gaul, lost by a woman, will be saved by a virgin from the borders of lorraine and a forest of old oaks." isabelle sat up night and day nursing her daughter, imputing the ravings of the poor child to the violence of the fever and to the recollections of the horrible spectacle at st. pierre. great dejection of spirit and extreme feebleness succeeded jeannette's malady. back in domremy, she was compelled to remain in bed several weeks; but her dreams reflected the identical pictures of her delirium. moreover a deep sorrow had fallen upon her, for, strangely, her god-mother was one of the few victims of the english raid into domremy. her corpse was found riddled with wounds; and jeannette wept for sybille as much on account of her tender affection for her god-mother as on account of her regret at being separated forever from her who told such marvelous legends. two months passed and jeannette was now nearly fourteen. she seemed to have regained her normal health, but the symptoms of puberty had disappeared and she frequently suffered from intolerable headaches followed by severe attacks of vertigo. feeling all the more uneasy as she remembered the words of the physician, isabelle once more consulted him and he answered that the violent emotion caused by the invasion of the english and the spectacle of their cruelty must have deeply disturbed the girl's organization and checked her sexual development; but that her ailments would cease and the laws of nature resume their course in her physical being as the mental effects of her deeply stirred emotion wore off. the physician's answer allayed isabelle's fears. moreover jeannette again busied herself with her wonted household and field labors and she redoubled her activity in the effort to conceal from public gaze the spells of sadness and absent mindedness that now no longer were wholly without cause since she had witnessed some of the disasters to which her country was subject. jeannette reflected to herself that the horrors she had seen at st. pierre stained with blood all other sections of the land and fell heaviest upon those of her own class, the peasants. in pitying them she pitied her own. since that fatal day jeannette felt perhaps sadder at and wept more over the ghastly ills, an example of which she had seen with her own eyes, than at or over the misfortunes of the young dauphin whom she did not know. the girl looked with increasing impatience for the advent of the warrior maid who was to bring deliverance to gaul by driving the stranger out of the country, and by restoring his crown to the king and peace and rest to france. these thoughts ever absorbed jeannette's mind when alone in the woods or the field grazing her herd. then would she yield unrestrained to revery and to the recollections of the legends that had had so much to do in forming her mind. the undefinable emotion produced in her by the chiming of the bells began to raise visions before her eyes. the distant tintinnabulations, expiring on her ears, seemed to her transformed into a murmur of celestial voices of inexpressible sweetness.[ ] at such moments jeannette felt the blood rush to her head; her eyes were covered as with a mist; the visible world disappeared from her sight and she fell into a kind of ecstasy from which she recovered worn out as if awakened from some painful dream. one day when jeannette was grazing her herd while plying the distaff under the old beech tree near the fountain of the fairies a singular incident occurred that had a decisive influence over the fate of the young shepherdess. reinforced by several bands of burgundians, furnished by marshall john of luxemburg, the english had persisted in the siege of vaucouleurs; which latter was defending itself heroically. the invasion by the english of that valley, otherwise so peaceful, incited a schism among its inhabitants. many of them, especially the people of st. pierre and of maxey, who had been so cruelly dealt with by the invaders, were inclined to pass over to the english in order to save their property and lives. these formed, in the valley, the "english" or "burgundian" party. others, on the contrary, more irritated than frightened, preferred to resist the english. these poor people counted upon the support of their sovereign, the king of france, who, they said, would not longer leave them exposed to such miseries. the latter comprised the "armagnac" or "royalist" party. the children, ever the imitators of their parents, likewise became "armagnacs" and "burgundians" when they played war. in these games the two parties ever finished by taking their roles seriously; when imprecations and actual blows with sticks and stones exchanged by the two "armies" gave these affairs the actual semblance of war. the people of domremy belonged mostly to the royalist, and those of st. pierre and maxey to the english party; and, of course, the children of these several localities shared, or rather aped, the political opinions of their respective families. it thus often happened that the lads of maxey, while guarding their cattle, came to the borders of the commune of domremy and flung insults at the little shepherds of the latter village. the dispute often became heated and hard words would be exchanged, when it would be decided to settle the difference of opinion by force of arms, that is with their fists and sticks accompanied by volleys of stones that figured as cross-bow bolts or cannon balls.[ ] guarding her sheep, jeannette spun her hemp under the trees of the forest of old oaks. in her revery she repeated in a low murmur the passage from merlin's prophecy: "for whom that royal crown? that steed? that armor? oh, how much blood! it spouts up, it flows in torrents! oh, how much blood i see! how much blood i see! it is a lake, a sea of blood. it steams--its vapor ascends-- it ascends like an autumn mist to the sky, to the sky where the thunder peals and the lightning flashes. athwart these peals of thunder, these flashes of lightning, that blood-red mist, i see a martial virgin. white is her armor, white her steed. she battles-- she battles and battles still in the midst of a forest of lances and seems to ride on the backs of the archers--" suddenly jeannette heard in the distance a noise, at first indistinct, but drawing nearer and nearer accompanied by clamorous cries of "burgundy! england!" uttered by infantile voices and answered by the counter cries of "france and armagnac!" almost immediately a crowd of domremy boys appeared at the turn of the forest's skirt, fleeing in disorder under a shower of stones fired at them by the boys of maxey. the engagement had been lively and the victory hotly contested, to judge by the torn clothes, the bruised eyes and the bleeding noses of the more heroic ones of the urchins. but yielding to a panic, they were now in full flight and rout. their adversaries, satisfied with their victory, out of breath with running, and no doubt afraid of drawing too close to domremy, the stronghold of the retreating army, prudently stopped near the forest which now hid them and repeated three times the cry: "burgundy and england!" the cry of victory caused jeannette to bound to her feet transported with anger and shame at the sight of the boys of her village who battled for gaul and the king fleeing before the partisans of burgundy and england. a lad of about fifteen years, named urbain, who captained the fleeing troop, and who was personally a brave soldier, seeing that his scalp was cut by a stone and his cap remained in the hands of the enemy, ran past jeannette. "are you running for safety, urbain?" "sure! that's what i'm doing," answered the mimic captain, raising his head and wiping the blood from his forehead with a handful of grass. "we fought as long as we could--but those of maxey are about twenty and we are only eleven!" jeannette stamped on the ground with her foot and replied: "you have strength to run--and yet you have no strength to fight!" "but they have sticks, and that is not fair--we are the weaker side." "fall upon them and capture their sticks!" "that is easy to say, jeannette!" "as easy to do as to say!" cried the shepherdess. "you will see--come! come back with me!" without noticing whether she was followed or not, but yielding to an involuntary prompting, jeannette walked toward the enemy, then masked by a clump of trees, and cried out in ringing tones, while brandishing her distaff in lieu of a banner: "france! france! off with you burgundians and english!" with her feet and arms bare, in her short white sleeves and scarlet skirt, her little straw hat on her long black hair, her cheeks aflame, her eyes sparkling, her poise heroic, jeannette was at that moment so inspiring that urbain and his followers felt themselves all at once strengthened and exalted. they picked up stones and rushed after the young shepherdess, who in her rapid course now barely seemed to touch the sward with her feet, crying, with her, "france! off with you burgundians and english!" in the security of their triumph, the soldiers of the hostile army, who never expected to see their adversaries rally, had stopped about a hundred yards away and were resting on their laurels; and stretching themselves on the flower-studded grass, picked wild strawberries and played with stones. presently some of them climbed up in the trees looking for birds' nests, and the others scattered among the bushes picking and eating berries. the unexpected resumption of hostilities, the sudden cries hurled at them by the royalist army and by jeannette, who now led it, greatly surprised the burgundians, who, nevertheless, did not show the white feather. their chief recalled his soldiers to arms. immediately the plunderers of birds' nests slid down the trees, the berry pickers rushed up with crimson lips and those who had begun to fall asleep on the grass jumped up and rubbed their eyes. but before the line of battle could be formed the soldiers of jeannette, anxious to avenge their former defeat, and carried away by the inspiring conduct of their present chief, fell valiantly upon the foe with redoubled cries of: "france! france!" our heroes seized the burgundians and english by the hair, boxed their ears and thumped them with such fury that the tables were completely turned; the erstwhile victors now became the vanquished, broke ranks and took to their heels. the triumph redoubled the ardor of the assailants, who were now animated with the desire to carry off a few bonnets as spoils and trophies. the french army rushed breathlessly upon the english, with jeannette ever in the lead. she fought intrepidly and made havoc with her distaff, which was garnished with a thick bunch of hemp--a terrible weapon, as many discovered that day. in the meantime, the english, stupefied by the sudden apparition of the young shepherdess in scarlet, who emerged so strangely from the neighborhood of the fountain of the fairies, the mystic reputation of which place extended far over the valley, took jeannette for a hobgoblin. fear lent them wings and the french were again vanquished--but only in running. the swiftest ones of the army pushed forward in pursuit of the enemy, but were obliged to desist for want of breath. urbain and two or three of the most resolute kept up the pursuit with jeannette, who, now seized with heroic exaltation, no longer thought of her own soldiers or took cognizance at all of her surroundings, but kept her flashing eyes fixed upon a number of fleeing english whom she wished to capture. could she accomplish this it seemed to her that her victory would be complete. but the runaways had so much the lead and ran so fast that she was almost despairing of being able to come to close quarters with them, when, still running, she perceived a donkey peacefully grazing on the meadow, totally unconcerned as to the battle or its outcome. agile and robust, as became a child of the field, she leaped with one bound upon the back of the ass, urged it with heels, distaff and voice, and forced it into a gallop. the animal yielded all the more readily to the desires of jeannette, seeing that the direction whither it was going was that of its own stable. it pricked up its ears and kicked up its heels with great joy, without, however, throwing jeannette, and ran toward the english, who, unfortunately for themselves, were also on the route to the ass's stable and who, still more unfortunately for themselves, in the heat of their flight had never thought to look behind. suddenly, however, hearing the hoof beats of the animal galloping at their heels and the victorious cries of the young shepherdess, they thought themselves pursued by devils; and fearing to see some horrible apparition, they threw themselves upon their knees with their eyes shut, their hands joined as if in prayer and begging for mercy. the enemy was decidedly vanquished. jumping off the ass, jeannette allowed it to continue its route; and threatening with her innocent distaff the soldiers, who surrendered at discretion, she shouted to them in a resonant voice: "wretches! why do you call yourselves burgundians and english, seeing that we are all of france? it is against the english that we must all take the field! oh, they do us so much harm!" saying this, the young shepherdess, a prey to an undefinable emotion, broke into tears, her knees trembled and she fell to the ground beside the vanquished foe, who, rising in inexpressible terror, incontinently resumed their headlong flight, leaving jeannette alone so confused in mind that she knew not whether she was awake or dreaming. nevertheless, her heart still palpitating from the effects of the recent struggle, vague but exhilarating aspirations began to ferment in her being. she had just experienced for the first time the martial ardor caused by a glorious victory, won to the orchestration of the cries of "france!" and "armagnac!" forgetting that this childish battle was but play, indignant at and aroused by the check suffered by her party, she had seen her boys cheered and re-encouraged by her voice and, carried away by her example, return to the fray and vanquish the hitherto victorious enemy. these aspirations were vaguely mixed with the recollections of the horrible butchery in the village of st. pierre and the prophecy of merlin, and caused the young shepherdess to raise her thoughts to st. catherine and st. marguerite, her two good saints, to whom she now prayed fervently to chase the english from france and to take pity on the gentle dauphin. the chaotic jangle of these apparently disconnected and aimless thoughts that clashed together in the burning brain of jeannette immediately brought on one of those painful spells of dizziness to which she had been ever more subject since the profound perturbation of her health. she relapsed into a sort of ecstasy; again a misty curtain was drawn before her eyes; and when she regained consciousness the sun had gone down and it was dusk. on arising jeannette hastened back to the fountain of the fairies, near which she had left her lambs browsing. the walk was long, she lost much time in getting her scattered flock together, and it was dark night ere she reached domremy, trembling at having incurred the anger of her father by her delay; and above all fearing the scolding that she expected for the part she had taken in the combat between the boys. urbain, full of pride at his victory, might, upon his return to the village, have boasted of the battle. thus the poor child felt her heart beat with dismay when, arriving near her house, she saw the uneasy and angry face of james darc. the moment he caught sight of his daughter he went toward her with a threatening look, saying: "by the savior, is it in the dark of night that you must gather the sheep?" and approaching her with increasing irritation and with his hand raised over her head, he continued: "bad and shameless child! have you not been battling with the boys of the village against the boys of maxey?" in his rage james was on the point of beating the guilty girl, when isabelle ran to him and caught his arm, crying, "james, i beg of you to pardon her this time!" "very well--i will be indulgent this time; but let her never again take a notion to romp with the boys. if she does it again, as sure as i am her father, i shall punish her severely; but for this time she can go to bed without supper." chapter xi. the vision. the fast to which jeannette's father had sentenced her was destined to lead to grave consequences. grieved at the reprovals he had heaped upon her, the young shepherdess led her sheep to the fold and retired to bed without sharing the family's evening meal. at jeannette's age hunger is peculiarly imperious. if the stomach is empty the brain is doubly active, as appears from the hallucinations of the anchorites who had long abstained from food. the poor child, overcome by her father's severity, sought solace in the recollections of the day's happenings and wept a great deal before she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. never had her sleep been so troubled by bizarre dreams, in which the marvelous legends that her god-mother sybille had told her reappeared in various grotesque shapes. in her dreams, hena, the virgin of the isle of sen, offered her blood as a sacrifice for the deliverance of gaul and, erect with her harp in her hand, expired amidst the flames on the pyre. but, oh, horror and surprise! jeannette recognized her own features in those of hena. another moment, merlin, followed by a black dog with flaming eyes, rose before her, holding his knotted staff in his hand and with his long white beard streaming in the wind, looking for the red egg of the sea-serpent upon a desert beach and chanting his prophecy: "gaul, lost by a woman, will be saved by a virgin from the borders of lorraine and a forest of old oaks." then, again, it was the infantile combat of the day that surged uppermost in her disordered mind and now assumed the gigantic proportions of an immense battle. thousands of cuirassed and casqued soldiers, armed with lances and swords, pressing hard, undulating, combing and breaking like the waves of the sea, were hurled against each other and were cut to pieces--opposing floods of iron in mutual clash. the clash of armors, the cries of the combatants, the neighing of horses, the fanfare of trumpets, the discharges of artillery resounded from afar. the red flag of england quartered with the gold fleur-de-lis floated over the blood-stained embattled ranks. a martial maid, cased in white armor and mounted on a white steed held the french flag--and once more jeannette recognized her own features in those of the martial maid. st. catherine and st. marguerite hovered over her in the azure sky and smiled down upon her while st. michael, the archangel, with his wide wings outspread and his face half turned toward her, pointed with his flaming sword to a brilliant star-like golden crown held by two angels in dazzling white. the long dream, now and then interrupted by periods of semi-wakefulness and feverish starts, during which it would melt into the realities of her surroundings in the disordered mind of jeannette, lasted until morning. when it was again day jeannette awoke exhausted, her face wet with the tears that had flowed during her sleep. she made her customary morning prayer and besought her two good saints to appease her father's anger. she found him in the stable, whither she went to take her flock to the field; but james darc informed her with austere severity that she was no longer to take the sheep to pasture, seeing that she paid so little attention to them. her younger brother was to lead them out and she was to remain at the house to sew or spin. this sentence was a severe punishment to jeannette. it was to her a grievous sorrow to renounce going every day to the clear fountain and the shady spot where she derived so much pleasure from listening to the chimes of the bells, the last vibrations of which had latterly reached her ears as a celestial whisper of silvery voices. she submitted to the paternal will, however, and occupied herself during the morning with household duties. more indulgent than her husband, isabelle said to her daughter shortly before noon, "go and play in the garden until the meal hour." the summer's sun darted its burning rays upon jeannette's head. enfeebled by the fast of the previous night[ ] and fatigued by her distressing dreams, she sat down upon a bench with her forehead resting on her hands and dropped into a revery, thinking of the prophecy of merlin. presently, as the bells of greux began to sound from afar, she listened to their chimes with rapture, wholly forgetful of the fact that the sun's rays beat down perpendicularly upon her head. as the sound of the bells was gradually dying away the child suddenly saw a light, so intense, so dazzling in its splendor, that the sunshine reflected from the white wall of the church opposite seemed darkness in comparison.[ ] at the same moment it seemed to her that the dying vibrations of the bells, instead of vanishing altogether, as usual, in an unintelligible murmur, were now changed into a voice of infinite sweetness that whispered to her: "joan, be wise and pious--god has a mission for you--you shall chase the strangers from gaul."[ ] the voice stopped and the dazzling splendor disappeared. distracted and seized with an uncontrollable fear, jeannette took a few steps in the garden and, falling upon her knees, joined her hands in prayer, invoking the aid of her good saints, st. marguerite and st. catherine, as she believed herself possessed of the devil.[ ] that july day of the year decided the future of joan darc. the brilliant light that had dazzled her eyes, the mysterious voice that had sounded in her ear, were the first communications of the spirits that protected joan, or of _her saints_, as she expressed herself in later years. differently from most other visionaries, whose hallucinations, disconnected and aimless, floated at the caprice of their disordered minds, the communications to joan from the invisible world were ever connected with their original cause--her horror of the english and her wish to drive them out of gaul. finally, her spirit, nursed by the mysterious legends of her god-mother; her imagination struck by the prophecy of merlin; her heart filled with ineffable compassion for the young king, whom she believed worthy of interest; above all deeply affected by the shocking ills to which the rustics of her condition were exposed by the acts of rapine and sanguinary violence of the english; and, finally, feeling against the invaders the dauntless hatred with which william of the swallows and grand-ferre--obscure heroes, sons of the jacquerie and precursors of the shepherdess of domremy--pursued them, joan was driven to look upon herself as called upon to thrust the strangers out of france and restore to the king his throne. chapter xii. returning visions. during the next three years, from july, , to february, , that is from joan's fourteenth to her seventeenth year, the communications from the spirit world became ever more and more frequent. joan saw st. marguerite and st. catherine approach her with smiles on their faces and tenderly embrace her.[ ] at other times it was the archangel st. michael who appeared before her, holding his flaming sword in one hand and in the other the crown of france. again, a multitude of angels played before her wondering eyes in the midst of an immense and dazzling ray of light that shot out from heaven, wherein they gamboled like the atoms that swarm before our eyes in a ray of sunlight across a dark space.[ ] hardly a day went by but that, especially after the ringing of the bells, joan heard the voice of her dear saints saying to her: "joan, run to the assistance of the king of france! you will drive away the english! you will restore the crown to the gentle sire!" "alack! i am but a poor girl, i would not know how to ride a horse nor to lead armed men,"[ ] the naïve shepherdess would answer. but the recollections of the prophetic legend of merlin at times dispelled these doubts, and she would then ask herself why she should not be called to fulfil the prediction. was not the lord urging her by the voices of her saints: go to the assistance of the king? was she not born and brought up on the borders of lorraine and near a forest of oaks? was she not a virgin? had she not voluntarily consecrated herself to eternal celibacy, yielding perhaps in that matter no less to the repugnance of an invincible chastity than to the desire of giving an additional pledge to the fulfilment of the prophecy of the gallic bard? did she not, when only sixteen years of age, in the presence of a large assemblage, confute and prove a liar, by the irresistible sincerity of her words, a lad of her village who pretended to have received from her a promise of marriage?[ ] the shy bashfulness of joan recoiled at the bare thought of marriage. finally, did she not remember how, on the occasion of the infantine battle between the urchins of maxey and those of domremy, her courage, her prompt decisiveness, her enthusiasm changed defeat into victory? with the aid of god and his saints, could she not be victorious in an actual battle, also? joan was a pious girl. she was instinct with that genuine piety that raises and connects all things to and with god, the creator of the universe. she thanked him effusively for manifesting himself to her through the intermediation of her saints, whom she ever continued to see and hear. at the same time, however, she did not feel for the priests the confidence that st. catherine and st. marguerite inspired her with. she piously fulfilled her catholic duties: she confessed, and often attended communion service, according to the common usage, without, nevertheless, ever speaking either with master minet, the curate, or with any other clergymen on the subject of her communications with the beings of the invisible world.[ ] she locked in the most secret recesses of her heart her vague aspirations after the deliverance of gaul, hiding them even from her little girl friend, mangeste, and from her grown female friend, hauguette, thus guarding her secret also from her father, her mother and her brothers. during three years she imposed upon herself an absolute silence regarding these mysteries. thanks to the powerful control that she exercised over herself, joan showed herself, the same as before, industrious, taking her part in the field and household labors, despite her being increasingly beset by her "voices," that, ever more imperiously, repeated to her almost daily: "go, daughter of god! the time has come! march to the rescue of the invaded fatherland! you will drive away the english, you will deliver your king, you will return to him his crown!" the communications of the spirits became more and more pressing in the measure that joan approached her seventeenth year. the great designs, that she felt driven to be the instrument of, took an ever stronger hold upon her. unremitting and painful the obsession pursued her everywhere. "i felt," said she later, "i felt in my spirit that which a woman must feel when about to be brought to bed of a child."[ ] st. marguerite and st. catherine appeared before the young girl, encouraged her, reassured her, promised her the help of god in the deeds that she was to achieve; when the vision vanished the poor child would break out in tears, regretting, as she later expressed it, that her good saints did not take her with them to the angels in the paradise of the good god.[ ] despite these alternations between faith and doubt concerning her mission, joan gradually familiarized herself with the thought at which her modesty and simplicity had at first recoiled, the thought of commanding armed men and of vanquishing the english at their head. in that wonderful organism a rare sagacity, an excellent judgment, an astonishing military aptitude were, without losing any of these qualities, without losing aught of virtue, blended with the exaltations of an inspired woman. often, recalling as she constantly did, the infantine battle in which victory remained with her, joan would say: "men and children, when known how to be handled, can not choose but obey the identical impulses, the identical generous sentiments; with the aid of heaven it will be with the men of the royal army as it was with the urchins of domremy; they will follow my example." or again: "to raise the courage of a discouraged and disheartened army, to exalt it, to lead it straight upon the enemy, whatever the number of these may be, to attack it daringly in the open field or behind its entrenchment, and to vanquish it, that is no impossible undertaking. if it succeeds, the consequences of a first victory, by rekindling the fire of an army demoralized by the habit of defeat, are incalculable." thoughts like these revealed in joan a profound intuition in matters of war. joan, moreover, was not of those puling visionaries, who expect from god alone the triumph of a good cause. one of her favorite sayings was: "help yourself, and heaven will help you."[ ] she ever put in practice that adage of rustic common sense. when on a later occasion a captain said to her disdainfully: "if god wished to drive the english out of gaul, he could do so by the sole power of his will; he would need neither you, joan, nor any men-at-arms," joan answered: "_the men-at-arms will battle--god will give the victory._" chapter xiii. wrestling with the angels. the three years of mysterious obsessions--between and --which preluded her glory were for joan a period of secret and distressing struggles. in order to obey her "voices," in order to carry out her divine mission and fulfil the prophecy of merlin she would have to battle--and her horror of blood was such that, as she one day said, her "hair stood on end at the sight of french blood flowing."[ ] she would have to live in the field with the soldiers--and one of her leading virtues was a delicate sense of modesty. she would have to leave the house in which she was born, renounce her humble, domestic occupations in which she excelled, "being afraid of none at her needle or her distaff," as she was wont to say in her naïve pride. she would, in short, be forced to bid adieu to her young friends, her brothers, her father and her mother, all of whom she tenderly loved, and move--she, a poor and unknown peasant from a corner of lorraine--to the court of charles vii, and say to him: "sire, i am sent to you by our lord god; confide to me the command of your troops; i shall drive the english out of france and shall restore your crown to you!" when these thoughts assailed joan during her intervals of doubt when, her ecstasy over, she fell back upon actual reality, the poor child recoiled before an abyss of difficulties and of impossibilities without number. she derided and pitied herself. the past would then seem a dream; she would ask herself whether she was not out of her mind; she would beseech "her voices" to speak, and her saints to appear before her, in order that her faith in her divine mission might be revived, and prove to her that she had not been the sport of some mental aberration. but joan's crisis had passed. even if on such occasions the mysterious voices remained silent and she began to look upon herself as a demented wretch, the next day, perhaps that very night, she again saw her beautiful saints approaching, adorned with their golden crowns draped in brocade, exhaling a celestial odor,[ ] and, smiling, say to her: "courage, joan, daughter of god! you will deliver gaul. your king will owe his crown to you! the time approaches! stand ready to fulfil your mission!" the young virgin would then again recover confidence in her predestination, until the day when fresh doubts would assail her, and again melt away. nevertheless, the doubts were on the decrease, and the moment came when, no longer faint-hearted, but invincibly penetrated with the divine source of her mission, joan decided to fulfil it at any price, and only awaited an opportune circumstance. from that moment on, above all, and realizing then more than ever the necessity of practicing her favorite adage, _help yourself, and heaven will help you_, joan turned the full bent of her mind upon quickly gathering information on the condition of gaul, and of acquiring the elementary knowledge of arms. public events, together with the geographic location of the valley, joined in meeting joan's wishes. the borders of lorraine were frequently crossed by the messengers to and from germany. anxious for news, as are all people living at a distance from the country's center, james darc often extended the hospitality of his house to these riders. they gossiped on the english war, the only concern of those sad days. always reserved before her parents, who were foreign to the vast designs fermenting within her brain, joan silently worked away at her distaff, losing not a single word of the reports that she heard. at times, however, she would venture one question or another to the travelers, suggested by her secret thoughts, and gradually enlightened herself. nor was that all. the heroic resistance of the inhabitants of vaucouleurs several times forced the english to raise the siege; towards the approach of the bad season these took up their winter quarters in champagne, always to return with the spring. during these marches and counter-marches the hostile army ravaged anew the valley of the meuse. james darc and other peasants were more than once obliged to resort to the castle of ile for refuge, which, on such occasions, was frequently attacked and valiantly defended. when the danger was over the peasants returned to the village. the frequent sojourns of the family of darc at the castle of ile, which was well fortified and garrisoned with experienced soldiers; the military alarms, the watches, the assaults that the garrison had to sustain--all this familiarized joan with the profession of arms. concentrated within herself, yielding to her martial vocation, attentively observing all that passed around her, explaining to herself the means and manoeuvres of defense, listening, meditating over the orders issued to the soldiers by their superiors, joan learned or guessed at the elementary principles of the military art. the ideas thus conceived germinated, budded, matured in the quick and penetrating mind of the young girl. she mistrusted herself less when her voices said to her: "the time approaches--you will drive the english out of gaul--you are the virgin prophesied by merlin." joan's grand uncle, denis laxart, lived in vaucouleurs; he had long known robert of baudricourt, a renowned captain of the country, who abhorred the english and was ardently devoted to the royalist party. joan often interrogated her uncle about captain robert of baudricourt, upon his nature, upon his affability, upon the manner in which he treated the poor. in his simplicity, the good denis had no suspicion of the purpose of his niece's interrogatories; he attributed them to girlish curiosity, and answered that robert of baudricourt, as brave a soldier as he was brutal and violent, usually sent everybody to the devil, was a terrible man, much feared by himself, and finally, that he never approached the captain but in trembling. "it is a pity that so good a captain should be of so intractable and so rough a nature," joan would say with a sigh, to her uncle, and sad and discouraged she would drop the subject only to return to it again. grown to a handsome maid, joan was approaching the end of her sixteenth year--the time predicted by her voices had arrived. chapter xiv. "the time has arrived." towards the end of february of , a small troop of soldiers, on their way back to their duke in lorraine, and belonging to the party of the armagnacs, halted at domremy. the hospitable villagers cordially quartered the strangers at their houses. a sergeant fell to james darc. the family gave him a friendly reception; they helped him to ease himself of his casque, his buckler, his lance and his sword, and the brilliant weapons were deposited in a corner of the apartment where joan and her mother were busy preparing the family meal. the sight of the arms that the soldier had laid aside caused the young girl to tremble. she could not resist the desire of secretly touching them, and profiting by a moment when she was left alone, she even put the iron casque upon her young head and took in her virile hand the heavy sword which she drew from its scabbard and brandished, thrusting and cutting. at seventeen joan was tall and strong. the superb contours of her virginal bosom[ ] filled and rounded her corsage, scarlet as her skirt. her large black eyes, pensive and mild, her ebony hair, her clear complexion, slightly tanned by the sun, her cherry lips, her white teeth, her chaste physiognomy, serious and candid, imparted an attractive aspect to her appearance; as she now donned the soldier's casque the young girl was resplendent with martial beauty. the sergeant and james darc entered the room. the latter frowned with severity; the soldier, however, charmed at seeing his casque on the head of the beautiful peasant girl, addressed to her some complimentary words. the anger of james redoubled, but he controlled himself. blushing at being thus surprised, joan quickly took off the casque and returned the sword to its scabbard. the family sat down to table. although the sergeant was still young, he claimed to have often been among the royal troops that had taken the field against the english. he dilated upon his own prowesses, caressed his moustache, and threw side glances at joan. to the great astonishment of her family, and despite the obviously increasing though still controlled anger of her father, joan came out of her ordinary reserve. she drew her stool near that of the soldier, seemed greatly to admire the hero, and overwhelmed him with questions concerning the royal army--its strength, its tactics, its present location, the number of its pieces of artillery, the names of the captains who inspired their soldiers with confidence. greatly flattered by the curiosity of the beautiful young girl concerning his military feats, even imagining that she was perhaps more interested in the warrior than in the war, the sergeant answered gallantly all the questions put by joan. on her part, she listened to him with such rapt attention, and seemed by the fire in her eyes and the animation on her face to take so profound an interest in the conversation, that james darc felt indignant thinking that the military carriage of the soldier was turning joan's head. the eyes of the indignant father shot daggers at the soldier. joan, too much preoccupied with her own thoughts, did not notice the rising anger of her parent, but plied her questions. with secret sorrow she learned then that, driven back beyond the loire after a recent battle called the "battle of the herrings," the royal army had fled in disorder; that the english were besieging orleans; and that, once the city was taken and touraine invaded, the fate of the king and of france would be sealed, all his domains would then be in the hands of the english. "is there then no help for gaul?" cried joan, a prey to inexpressible exaltation. "is all lost?" "if the siege of orleans is not raised within a month," answered the sergeant; "if the english are not driven back far from the loire, then france will cease to exist! and this is as true as you are the most beautiful maid of lorraine. blood of christ! when a little while ago you had my casque on your head, i thought i had before me the goddess of war. with a captain such as you, i would attack a whole army single-handed!" at these words james darc rose abruptly from the table; he told his guest that night was approaching, and country people, who rose with the sun, also retired with the sun. cross at being thus bade to go, the sergeant slowly picked up his arms and sought to catch joan's eyes. but the maid, wholly forgetful of the soldier, now sat on her stool steeped in painful meditations, thinking only of the fresh disasters of gaul, at which her tears flowed freely. "there can now be no doubt left," the peasant said to himself, "my daughter, so chaste and so pious until this day, has suddenly gone crazy over this braggart; she is weeping over his departure. shame upon her and us! a curse upon the hospitality that i have extended to this stranger! may the devil take him!" after the guest had gone, james darc's face assumed an expression of intense severity. barely repressing his indignation, he stepped up to his daughter, took her rudely by the arm, motioned her imperiously to the stairs, and cried: "go upstairs! there has been enough palavering to-day. i shall talk to you to-morrow!" still absorbed in her own racking thoughts, joan obeyed her father mechanically. when she regained her own room, the latter proceeded, addressing his sons, both of whom were surprised at their father's rudeness towards their sister: "may god help us! did you notice the manner in which joan looked at the sergeant? oh, if she ever fell in love with a soldier, it would be your duty to drown her with your own hands; or, i swear it, i would sooner strangle her myself."[ ] the peasant uttered the words with such an explosion of rage that joan heard him. she understood the mistake her father had fallen into, and wept. but soon "her voices" whispered to her: "the time has arrived. without you france and her king are lost--go, daughter of god!--save your king--save france!--the lord is with you--you are about to enter upon your mission." chapter xv. captain robert of baudricourt. robert of baudricourt, the commander-in-chief of vaucouleurs, a man in the prime of life, of military bearing and of a face whose harshness was relieved by intelligent and penetrating eyes, was walking in nervous excitement up and down a hall in the castle of the town. instructed by a recent despatch of the desperate position of charles vii and the danger orleans ran from the close siege of the english, the captain walked at a rapid pace, grumbling, blaspheming and shaking the floor under the impatient beat of his spurred heels. suddenly a leather curtain, that concealed the principal entrance to the hall, was pushed aside and revealed a part of the timid and frightened face of denis laxart, joan's grand uncle. robert of baudricourt did not notice the good man; he stamped with his feet on the floor, struck the table a violent blow with his fist near where lay the fatal despatch he had just received, and cried: "death and fury! it is done for france and the king! all is lost, even honor!" at this exclamation of exasperation, the courage of denis laxart failed him; he dared not approach the captain at such a moment, and he reclosed the curtain, behind which, however, he remained standing awaiting a more opportune moment. but the rage of robert of baudricourt redoubled. he again stamped on the floor and cried: "malediction! all is lost--all!" "no, sir! no, all is not lost!" said the good denis laxart, resolutely overcoming his fear, but still remaining behind the shelter of the curtain. a second later he pushed his head through the portiere and repeated: "no, sir; all is not lost!" hearing the timid voice, the captain turned around; he recognized the old man, whom he rather esteemed, and asked in a rough voice: "what are you doing at that door? walk in--why do you not walk in?" but seeing that denis hesitated, he added still more gruffly: "the devil take it! will you come in!" "here i am, sir--here i am," said denis stepping in; "but for the love of god, do not fly off in such a temper; i bring you good news--news--that is unexpected--miraculous news. all is not lost, sir--on the contrary--all is saved. both king and gaul!" "denis!" replied the captain, casting a threatening look at joan's uncle, "if your hair were not grey, i would have you whipped out of the castle with a sword's scabbard! dare you joke! to speak of the safety of king and france under such circumstances as we find ourselves in!" "sir, i beseech you, listen without anger to what i have to tell you, however incredible it may seem! i do not look like a clown, and you know me long. be good enough to listen to me patiently." "i know you, and know you for a good and wise man; hence your incongruous words shock me all the more. come on, speak!" "sir, as you see, my forehead is bathed in perspiration, my voice chokes me, i am trembling at every limb; and yet i have not even begun to inform you why i came here. if you interrupt me with outbursts of rage, i shall lose the thread of my thoughts--" "by the bowels of god! come on! what is it!" denis laxart made a great effort over himself, and after having collected his thoughts he said to the captain in a hurried voice: "i went yesterday to domremy to see my niece, who is married to james darc, an honest peasant from whom she has two sons and a daughter. the daughter is called jeannette and is seventeen years--" noticing that the captain's ill restrained impatience was on the point of exploding at the exordium, denis hastened to add: "i am coming to the point, sir, which will seem surprising, prodigious to you. last evening, my little niece jeannette said to me: 'good uncle, you know captain robert of baudricourt; you must take me to him.'" "what does your niece want of me?" "she wants, sir, to reveal to you what she told me yesterday evening without the knowledge of her parents, without the knowledge even of master minet, the curate--that mysterious voices have long been announcing to her that she would drive the english from gaul by placing herself at the head of the king's troops, and that she would restore to him his crown." struck dumb by the extravagance of these words, robert of baudricourt could now hardly contain himself; he was on the point of brutally driving poor denis out of the hall. nevertheless, controlling his rage out of consideration for the venerable old man, he retorted caustically: "is that the secret your niece wishes to confide to me? it is a singular revelation!" "yes, sir--and she then proposes to ask you for the means to reach the gentle dauphin, our sire, whom she is absolutely determined to inform of the mission that the lord has destined to her--the deliverance of gaul and the king. i must admit it to you, i was struck by the sincerity of jeannette's tone when she narrated to me her visions of saints and archangels, when she told me how she heard the mysterious voices that have pursued her for the last three years, telling her that she was the virgin whose advent merlin foretold for the deliverance of gaul." "so you have confidence in your niece's sincerity?" asked the captain with a mixture of contempt and compassion, interrupting the old man whom he considered either stupid or crazy. "so you attach credence to the words of the girl?" "never did anyone reproach my niece with falsehood. therefore, yielding to her entreaties, i yesterday evening obtained from her father, who seemed greatly irritated at his daughter, permission for her to accompany me, under the pretext of spending a few days in town with my wife. this morning i left domremy at dawn with my niece on the crupper of my horse. we arrived in town an hour ago. my niece is waiting for me at home, where i am to take her your answer." "well! this is my answer: that brazen and insane girl should have both her ears soundly cuffed, and she should be taken back to her parents for them to continue the punishment.[ ] master denis laxart, i took you for a level-headed man. you are either an old scamp or an old fool. are not you ashamed, at your age, to attach any faith to such imbecilities, and to have the impudence of coming here with such yarns to me? death and fury! off with you! by the five hundred devils of hell--get out, on the spot!" chapter xvi. at the castle of vaucouleurs. poor denis laxart tumbled out of the room and the castle of vaucouleurs at his wits' end; but he soon returned. he did not now come alone. he was accompanied by joan; his mind was troubled and he trembled at the bare thought of again bearding the bad humor of the sire of baudricourt. but so persistently had joan begged and beseeched her uncle to take her to the terrible captain that he had yielded. the plight of the good man's mind may be imagined when, now accompanied by the young girl, he again approached the leather curtain or portiere of the hall. the captain was just conversing with john of novelpont,[ ] a knight who lived at vaucouleurs, and was saying to him, evidently towards the end of a talk: "she is a crazy girl fit for a good cuffing. don't you think so too?" "what of it, if advantage could be drawn from her craziness!" answered john of novelpont. "imagine a man afflicted with some incurable disease and given up by his physicians; being by them condemned to die, someone proposes that he try _in extremis_ a philter of pretended virtue, concocted by some crazy person. should not our patient try that last chance of recovery? soldiers and the masses are credulous folks; the announcement of celestial, supernatural help might revive the hopes of the people and the army, raise their courage, and perchance bring victory to them after so many defeats. would not the consequence of a first success, of a victory over the english, be incalculable?" "if but one victory were won," answered robert of baudricourt somewhat less determined in his first views, "our soldiers would regain courage, and they might finally overpower the english." "why not consent to see the girl? you could question her yourself, and then form an opinion." "a visionary--a cowherd!" "in the desperate condition that france is in, what risk is run by resorting to empiricism? it would be sensible to hear the peasant girl. whether absurd or not, the prophecy of merlin that she invokes is popular in gaul. i remember to have heard it told in my infancy. moreover, everywhere, prophecies are just now afloat in our unhappy country. tired of looking for deliverance from human, our people are now expecting help from supernatural agencies. have not the learned clerks of the university of paris, and even the clergy, resorted to the clairvoyance of men versed in holy writ and habituated to a contemplative life? there are conditions when one must risk something--aye, risk everything." "by the death of christ! are you there again!" cried robert of baudricourt, interrupting his friend at seeing the timid face of denis laxart appearing at the slit of the leather curtain. "are you not afraid of exhausting my patience?" denis made no answer, but vanished behind joan, who pushed the curtain aside and resolutely stepped towards the two cavaliers. her uncle followed her with his eyes raised to heaven, his hat in his hands, and trembling at every limb. had joan been old or homely she would undoubtedly have been instantly driven out by robert of baudricourt with contumely. but he, as well as the sire of novelpont, was struck with the beauty of the young girl, with her firm yet sweet expression, with her modest and yet confident demeanor. seized with admiration, the two cavaliers looked at each other in silence. the sire of novelpont, shrugging his shoulders, seemed to say to his friend: "was i wrong when i advised you to see the poor visionary?" robert of baudricourt was still uncertain as to what reception he should bestow upon joan, when his friend, meaning to test her, interpellated her, saying: "well, my child, so the king is to be driven out of france and we are all to become english? is it to prevent all that that you have come here?[ ] speak up! we shall listen." "sir," said joan in a sweet yet firm voice that bore the stamp of unquestionable sincerity, "i have come to this royal city in order to request the sire robert of baudricourt to have me taken to the dauphin of france. my words have been disregarded. nevertheless, it is imperative that i be with the king within eight days. if i could not walk, i would creep thither on my knees. there is in the world no captain, duke or prince able to save the kingdom of france without the help that i bring with the assistance of god and his saints;"[ ] joan emitted a sigh, and, her eyes moist with tears, added naïvely: "i would much prefer to remain at our house and sew and spin near my poor mother--but god has assigned a task to me--and i must perform it!"[ ] "and in what manner will you perform your task?" put in robert of baudricourt, no less astonished than his friend at the mixture of assurance, of ingenuous sweetness and of conviction that pervaded the young girl's answer. "how will you, a plain shepherdess, go about it, in order to vanquish and drive away the english, when lahire, xaintrailles, dunois, gaucourt, and so many other captains have been beaten and failed?" "i shall boldly place myself at the head of the armed men, and, with the help of god, we will win." "my daughter," replied robert of baudricourt with a smile of incredulity, "if god wished to drive the english out of gaul, he could do so by the sole power of his will; he would need neither you, joan, nor men-at-arms."[ ] "the men-at-arms will battle--god will give the victory,"[ ] answered joan laconically. "help yourself--heaven will help you." again the two knights looked at each other, more and more astonished at the language and attitude of this daughter of the fields. denis laxart rubbed his hands triumphantly. "so, then, joan," put in john of novelpont, "you desire to go to the king?" "yes, sir; to-morrow rather than the day after; rather to-day than to-morrow. the siege of orleans must be raised within a month.[ ] god will give us victory." "and it is you, my pretty child, who will raise the siege of orleans?" "yes, with the pleasure of god." "have you any idea what the siege of a town means, and in what it consists?" "oh, sir! it consists of besieged and besiegers. that is very plain." "but the besieged must attempt sallies against the enemy who are entrenched at their gates." "sir, we are here four in this hall. if we were locked up in here, and we were determined to go out or die, would we not sally forth even if there were ten men at the door?" "how?" "fighting bravely--god will do the rest![ ] the besieged will sally forth." "at a siege, my daughter, sallies are not all there is of it. the besiegers surround the town with numerous redoubts or bastilles, furnished with machines for darting bolts and artillery pieces for bombarding, and all are defended with deep moats. how will you take possession of such formidable entrenchments?" "i shall be the first to descend into the moats and the first to climb the ladders, while crying to the armed men: 'follow me! let us bravely enter the place! the lord is with us!'"[ ] the two knights looked at each other amazed at joan's answers. john of novelpont especially experienced a rising sensation that verged on admiration for the beautiful girl of so naïve a valor. denis laxart was thinking apart: "my good god! whence does jeannette get all these things that she is saying! she talks like a captain! whence did she draw so much knowledge?" "joan," resumed robert of baudricourt, "if i grant your desire of having you taken to the king, you will have to cross stretches of territory that are in the power of the english. it is a long journey from here to touraine; you would run great risks." "the lord god and his good saints will not forsake us. we shall avoid the towns, and shall travel by night rather than by day. help yourself--and heaven will help you!" "that is not all," persisted robert of baudricourt, fixing upon joan a penetrating look; "you are a woman; you will have to travel the only woman in the company of the men that are to escort you; you will have to lodge pell-mell with them wherever you may stop for rest." denis scratched his ears and looked at his niece with embarrassment. joan blushed, dropped her eyes, and answered modestly: "sir, i shall put on man's clothes, if you can furnish me with any; i shall not take them off day or night;[ ] moreover, would the men of my escort be ready to cause annoyance to an honest girl who confides herself to them?" "well, would you know how to ride on horseback?" "i shall have to learn to ride. only see to it that the horse be gentle." "joan," said robert of baudricourt after a moment's silence, "you claim that you are inspired by god; that you are sent by him to raise the siege of orleans, vanquish the english and restore the king on his throne? who is to prove that you are telling the truth?" "my acts, sir."[ ] this answer, given in a sweet and confident voice, made a lively impression upon the officers. robert of baudricourt said: "my daughter, go back with your uncle to his house--i shall shortly notify you of my decision. i must think over your request." "i shall wait, sire. but in the name of god, i must depart to the dauphin, and let it be rather to-day than to-morrow; the siege of orleans must be raised before a month is over." "why do you place so much importance upon the raising of that siege?" "oh, sir!" answered joan, smiling, "i would place less importance upon delivering the good town if the english did not place so much importance upon taking it! the success of the war depends upon that with them; it also depends upon that with us!" "well, now, sir captain," said the radiant denis laxart in a low voice to robert of baudricourt, "should i cuff both the ears of the brazen and crazy girl? you advised me to do so." "no; although a visionary, she is a stout-hearted girl!" answered the knight, also in a low voice. "for the rest, i shall send the curate of vaucouleurs to examine her, and, if need be, to exorcise her in case there be some sorcery at the bottom of this. go back home." denis and joan left the hall; the two cavaliers remained in a brown study. chapter xvii. john of novelpont. shortly after joan left, robert of baudricourt hastened to the table and prepared to write, while saying to john of novelpont: "i now think like you; i shall forward the odd adventure to the king and submit to him the opinion that at the desperate pass of things it may not be amiss to try to profit by the influence which this young girl, who claims to be inspired and sent by god, might exercise upon the army, which is completely discouraged. i can see her, docile to the role that she will be put to play, passing before the troops, herself clad in armor and her handsome face under a casque of war! man is captivated through his eyes as well as through his mind." robert of baudricourt stopped upon noticing that the sire of novelpont was not listening, but was pacing the length of the hall. he cried: "john, what in the name of the devil are you thinking about?" "robert," gravely answered the cavalier, "that girl is not a poor visionary, to be used _in extremis_ like an instrument that one may break if it does not meet expectations." "what else is she?" "her looks, her voice, her attitude, her language--everything reveals an extraordinary woman--an inspired woman." "are you going to take her visions seriously?" "i am unable to penetrate such mysteries; i believe what i see, what i hear and what i feel. joan is or will be an illustrious warrior-maid, and not a passive instrument in the hands of the captains. she may save the country--" "if she is a sorceress the curate will play the holy-water sprinkler upon her, and report to us." "i am so much impressed by her answers, her candor, her daring, her good sense, her irresistible sincerity, that if the king sends word back with your messenger that he consents to see joan--i am resolved to accompany her on her journey." "ah, sir john," said robert of baudricourt, laughing; "that is a sudden resolve! are you smitten by the pretty eyes of the maid?" "may i die if i am yielding to any improper thought! such is the proud innocence of that young girl that however lustful i might be, her looks would instantly silence my lust.[ ] i am ready to stake my salvation upon it that joan is chaste. did you not see how she blushed to the roots of her hair at the idea of riding alone in the company of the horsemen of her escort? did you not hear her express her wish to assume man's clothes, which she would not take off day or night during her journey? robert, chastity ever proclaims a beautiful soul." "if, indeed, she is chaste, she could not be a sorceress; demons, it is said, can not possess the body of a virgin! but be on your guard, dear sire; without your knowing it, the maid's beauty is seducing you. you wish to be her cavalier during the long journey; lucky chances may offer themselves to your amorous courtesy. but," added robert of baudricourt in answer to an impatient gesture from his friend, "we shall drop joking. this is what i think concerning the young girl: if she is not a sorceress, her brain is disordered by visions, and she believes herself, in good faith, inspired of god. such as she is, or seems to be, the girl can become a valuable instrument in the hands of the king. soldiers and the people are ignorant and credulous. if they see in joan an emissary of god, if they believe she brings them supernatural aid, they will regain courage, and will make strenuous efforts to wipe out their defeats. her exaltation, if skilfully exploited by the chiefs of the army, may have happy results. and that is the important point with us." "the future will prove to you your error. joan is too sincere, and right or wrong, too deeply imbued with the divinity of her mission, to accept the role that you imagine for her, to resign herself to being a machine in the hands of the chiefs of the army. she will act upon her own impulse. i take her to be naturally endowed with military genius, as have been so many other captains who were at first unknown. whatever may happen, you must write to the king and inform him of what has happened." "i think so, too." "which king are you writing to?" "have we two masters?" "my dear robert, i accompanied to court the count of metz, under whom i commanded a company of a hundred lances. i have had a near look of things at chinon and at loches. i have formed my opinion of our sire." "from which it follows that there are two kings?" "there is a king of the name of charles vii, whose mind runs only upon ruling the hearts of easy-going women. unnerved by indulgence, ungrateful, selfish, regardless of his honor, that prince, hemmed in at chinon or loches by his favorites and his mistresses, allows his soldiers to fight and die in the defence of the fragments of his kingdom, but has never been seen at the head of his troops." "it is a disgrace to the royalty!" "there is another king. his name is george of la tremouille, a jealous despot, consumed with malice and vainglory, resentful. he rules supreme over the two or three provinces that the kingdom of france now consists of, and he dominates the royal council. he is the real master." "i knew that the steward of the palace of our do-nothing king was the sire of la tremouille; it is to him i meant to write." "do no such thing, robert; take my advice!" "you say yourself he is the master--the king in fact!" "yes; but anxious to remain master and king in fact, he will not tolerate that any other than himself find the means to save gaul. the sire of la tremouille will, you may rest assured, reject joan's intervention. write, on the contrary, direct to charles vii. he will be struck by the strangeness of the occurrence. if only out of curiosity he will want to see joan. he finds the day long in his retreat of loches or chinon. the blandishments even of his mistresses are often unavailing to draw him from his ennui. the arrival of joan will be a novelty to him; a pastime." "you are a good adviser. i shall write direct to the king and expedite a messenger to him on the spot. should the answer be favorable to joan, would you still think of accompanying her?" "then more than ever!" "the journey is long. you will have to traverse part of burgundy and of champagne, both of them occupied by the enemy." "i shall take with me my equerry bertrand of poulagny, a prudent and resolute man. i shall join to him four well armed valets. a small troop passes more easily unperceived. moreover, as joan wisely proposed, we shall avoid the towns all we can by traveling by night, and shall rest by day in isolated farm-houses." "do not forget that you will have to cross many rivers; since the war, the bridges are everywhere destroyed." "we will find ferries at all the rivers. from here we shall go to st. urbain, where we can stay without danger; we shall avoid troyes, st. florentin, and auxerre; arrived at gien, we shall be on friendly soil. we shall then proceed to loches or chinon, the royal residences." "admit it, sire of novelpont, are you not slightly smitten by the beauty of joan?" "sire robert of baudricourt, i feel proud of being the knight of the warrior-maid and heroine, who, perhaps, may yet save gaul." chapter xviii. "good luck, joan!" towards sun-down of february of the year , a large crowd consisting of men, women and children pressed around the castle of vaucouleurs. the crowd was impatient; it was enthusiastic. "are you sure the pretty joan will leave the castle by this gate?" asked one of the crowd, addressing at random his nearest neighbor. "i think so--she can not go out on horseback by the postern gate. she is to ride along the ramparts with the sire of novelpont, who is to escort her on her long journey. we shall be able to get a good view of her here on her fine white horse." "our hearts all go out to her," remarked a third. "the prophecy of merlin is fulfilled. well did he say--_gaul, lost by a woman, will be saved by a virgin from the borders of lorraine and a forest of old oaks!_" said a fourth. "she will deliver us from the english! the poor will again be able to breathe! peace and work for all!" "no more war alarms; no more conflagrations; no more pillaging; no more massacres! may her name be blessed!" "it is god who sent us joan the maid--glory to god!" "and yet a daughter of the field--a simple shepherdess!" "the lord god inspires her--she alone is worth a whole army. the archangels will fight on her side." "do you know that master tiphaine, the curate of the parish of st. euterpe, undertook to exorcise the maid in case she was a sorceress and was possessed of a demon? the clerk carried the cross, the choir-boy the holy-water, and master tiphaine carried the sprinkler. but he did not dare to approach the maid too near, fearing some trick of the spirit of evil. but joan smiled and said: 'come near, good father, i shall not fly away.'"[ ] "she felt quite sure that she was a daughter of god!" "evidently she is a virgin. after the exorcism no clawy demon leaped out of her mouth!" "everybody knows that the devil can not inhabit the body of a virgin. consequently joan can not be a sorceress, whatever people may have said of her god-mother sybille." "so far from suspecting that joan was an invoker of demons, master tiphaine was so edified with her mildness and modesty that the day after the exorcism he admitted her to holy communion--she ate the bread of the angels." "that was lucky! who, if not joan, could eat angels' bread?" "do you know, friends, that while the sire of baudricourt was waiting for the answer of the king, and, by god, it seems the answer was long in coming, the duke of lorraine, hearing the report that joan was the maid foretold by merlin, wished to see her?" "and did he?" "the sire of novelpont took joan to the duke. 'well, my young girl,' said the duke to her, 'you who are sent by god should be able to give me advice; i am sick, and, it looks to me, near my end--'" "so much the worse for him! who does not know that the duke is suffering from the consequences of his debaucheries, and that, in order to indulge them at his ease, he has bravely cast off his own wife?" "no doubt joan must have known all that, because she answered the duke: 'monseigneur, call the duchess back to your side, lead an honest life, god will not forsake you.[ ] help yourself and heaven will help you.'" "well answered, holy girl!" "it is said that those are her favorite words--'help yourself and heaven will help you!'" "well, may heaven and all its saints protect her during the long journey that she is to undertake!" "is it credible?--a poor child of seventeen years to command an army?" "myself and five other archers of the company of the sire of baudricourt," said a sturdy looking soldier, "requested him as a favor to allow us to escort joan the maid. he refused! by the bowels of the pope, i would have liked to have that beautiful girl for a captain! led by her, i would defy all the english put together! yes, by the navel of satan, i would!" "armed men commanded by a woman! that surely is odd!" observed an impressed cynic. "two beautiful eyes looking upon you and seeming to say: 'march upon the enemy!' are enough to set one's heart on fire! and if, besides, a sweet voice says to you: 'courage--forward!' that would be enough to turn the biggest coward into a hero!" "above all if the voice is inspired by god, my brave archer." "whether she be inspired by god, by the devil or by her own bravery, i care as little as for a broken arrow. if one were but alone against a thousand, he must have the cowardice of a hare not to follow a beautiful girl, who, sword in hand, rushes upon the enemy." "i can not help thinking of the pain it must give joan's family to have her depart, however glorious the maid's destiny may be. her mother must feel very sad." "i have it from dame laxart that james darc, a very strict and rough man, after having twice had his daughter written to, ordering her return home, and objecting to her riding away with men-at-arms, has invoked a curse upon her. furthermore, he forbade his wife and his two sons ever again to see joan. she wept all the tears in her poor body upon learning of her father's curse. 'my heart bleeds to leave my family,' said the poor child to dame laxart, 'but i must go whither god bids me.[ ] i have a glorious mission to fill.'" "the maid's father is a brute! he must have a bad heart! the idea of cursing his daughter--who is going to deliver gaul." "she will do so--merlin foretold it." "it will be a beautiful day for us all when the english are thrust out of our poor country which they have been ravaging for so many years!" "the fault lies with the knighthood," put in a civilian; "why did it prove so cowardly at poitiers? this nobility is a costly luxury." "and on top of all, oppressed and persecuted, jacques bonhomme has had to pay the ransom for the cowardly seigneurs with gilded spurs!" "but jacques bonhomme got tired and kicked in his desperation. oh, once at least did the scythe and fork get the better of the lance and sword! the jacquerie revenged the serfs! death to the nobles!" "but what a carnage was not thereupon made of the jacques! the day of reprisals will come!" "well, the jacques had their turn; that is some consolation!"[ ] "now it will be the turn of the english, thanks to joan the maid--the envoy of god! she will throw them out!" "aye, aye! let her alone--she promised that within a month there will not be one of these foreigners left in france."[ ] "glory to her! the shepherdess of domremy will have done what neither king, dukes, knights nor captains were capable of accomplishing!" "good luck to you, joan, born like ourselves of the common people! a blessing on her from all the poor serfs who have been suffering death and all the agonies of death at the hands of the english!" "they are letting down the drawbridge of the castle!" "there she is! that's she!" "how well shaped and beautiful she is in her man's clothes! prosperity to joan the maid!" "look at her! you would take her for a handsome young page with her black hair cut round, her scarlet cape, her green jacket, her leather hose and her spurred boots! long live our joan!" "by my soul, she has a sword on her side!" "although not a generous man, the sire of baudricourt presented her with it." "that's the least he could do! did not the rest of us in vaucouleurs go down in our pockets to purchase a horse for the warrior maid?" "master simon, the cloth merchant, answered for the palfrey as a patient animal and of a good disposition; a child could lead it; it served as the mount to a noble dame in the hunt with falcons." "upon the word of an archer," again put in the archer of the sire of baudricourt's company, "joan holds herself in the saddle like a captain! by the bowels of the pope! she is beautiful and well shaped! how sorry i am not to be among the armed men of her escort! i would go with her to the end of the world, if only for the pleasure of looking at her!" "indeed, if i were a soldier, i would prefer to obey orders given by a sweet voice and from pretty little lips, than given by a rough voice and from hairy and coarse lips." "look at the sire of novelpont with his iron armor! he rides at joan's right. do you see him? he is a worthy seigneur." "he looks as if he would guard her as his own daughter. may god guard them both!" "he is adjusting a strap on the bridle of the maid's palfrey." "at her left is the sire of baudricourt; he will probably accompany her part of the way." "there is the equerry bertrand of poulagny, carrying his master's lance and shield." "jesus! they have only four armed men with them! all told six persons to escort joan from here to touraine! and through such dangerous territories! what an imprudence!" "god will watch over the holy maid." "look--she is turning in her saddle and seems to wave good-bye to someone in the castle." "she is taking her handkerchief to her eyes; she is drying her tears." "she must have been waving good-bye to her uncle and aunt, the old laxarts." "yes; there they are, both of them, at the lower window of the tower; they are holding each other's hands and weep to see their niece depart, perhaps forever! war is so changeable a thing!" "poor, dear girl! her heart must bleed, as she said, to go all alone, far from her folks, and to battle at the mercy of god!" "she will now turn around the corner of the rampart--" "let her at least hear our hearty adieus--good luck, joan the maid! good luck to joan! good luck! good luck! death to the english!" "she hears us--she makes a sign--she is waving good-bye to us. victory to joan!" "mother! mother! take me up in your arms! put me on your shoulders. let me see her again." "come child! take a good look! always remember joan! thanks to her, no longer will desolate mothers weep for sons and husbands massacred by the english." "good luck to joan--good luck!" "she has turned the corner of the rampart--she is gone!" "good luck to joan the maid! may the good god go with her!" "may she deliver us from the english! good luck, joan!" part ii. chinon. chapter i. the council of charles vii. three of the principal members of the council of king charles vii--george of la tremouille, chamberlain and a despotic, avaricious and suspicious minister; the sire of gaucourt, an envious and cruel soldier; and regnault, bishop of chartres, a double-dealing and ambitious prelate--were assembled on the th of march of in a hall of the castle of chinon. "may the fever carry off that robert of baudricourt! the man's audacity of writing direct to the king inducing him to receive that female cowherd!" cried george of la tremouille. "and charles considers the affair a pleasant thing and wants to have a look at the crazy girl! the fools claim she is sent by god--i hold she has been sent by the devil to thwart my plans!" "there is but one way of eluding the formal orders of the king," observed the bishop of chartres. "that accursed john of novelpont has made so much noise that our sire is determined to see the vassal whom, since her arrival, we have kept confined in the tower of coudray to await the royal audience. the brazen and vagabond minx feels greatly elated at the imbecile enthusiasm that she has been made the object of by the clouts of lorraine, and is surprised at not having been presented to charles vii! blood of christ! our do-nothing king is quite capable, as a means both of ridding himself of us and of dropping all care on the score of the kingdom's safety, of tempting god by accepting the aid of this joan--in that event, my seigneurs, it will be all over with the influence of the royal council! all that will be left for us to do will be to quit our posts." "and i, raoul of gaucourt, who served under sancerre and under the constable of clisson, i who vanquished the turks at nicopolis, i am to take orders from a woman who tended cattle! death and massacre! i sooner would break my sword!" "these are hollow words, raoul of gaucourt," said the sire of la tremouille thoughtfully; "words are powerless against facts. our sire, indolent, fickle and cowardly, may, at the desperate pass his affairs are in, wish to try the supernatural influence of this female cowherd. let us not deceive ourselves. since the day that joan was at my orders relegated to the tower of coudray, half a league from here, the outcry raised by john of novelpont has had its effect upon a part of the court. his enthusiasm for the said joan, his reports of her beauty, her modesty, her military genius, have awakened a lively curiosity among a number of courtiers." "mercy!" cried raoul of gaucourt. "the idea of pretending that peasant possesses military genius! the man must be crazy enough for a strait-jacket." "raoul, collect yourself," replied the bishop of chartres; "my son in god george of la tremouille, has stated the facts. he is right. a part of the court, greedy after novelties, jealous of our power, and tired of seeing a portion of their domains in the hands of the english has given an ear to the excited reports of john of novelpont upon the visionary girl. a goodly number of these courtiers have beset the king. he wishes to see her. it would be absurd and impolitic to try to struggle against the current that has set in." "so, then, we are to yield, are we?" cried raoul of gaucourt, wrathfully striking the table at which they were seated. "yield before this sorceress who should be roasted on fagots!" "we may avail ourselves of the fagots later on, my brave raoul; but at present we must yield.--you know it better than i in your capacity of an experienced captain, sire of la tremouille; the position that can not be carried by a front attack, may yet be flanked." "your words are golden, dear tonsured companion. among friends agreed upon the same end and having identical interests, the full truth is due to each by all. i shall, accordingly, open my mind to you upon the present situation. i have for some time succeeded in removing the princes of the blood from the councils of the king. we reign. moreover, as regards myself, i am, just at present, far from desiring to see the war with the english and burgundians come to an end. i have need of its continuance. my brother, who is on familiar terms with the regent of england and the duke of burgundy, has obtained from both protection for my domains. only this year, when the enemy pushed forward as far as the walls of orleans, my lands and my seigniory of sully were spared.[ ] that is not all. thanks to the civil troubles and to the numerous partisans whom i keep in pay in poitou, that province is at my mercy. i do not lose the hope of annexing it to my possessions,[ ] provided the war is prolonged a little. you see, i have a powerful interest in thwarting the projects of this female envoy of god, should they ever be realized. i do not wish for the expulsion of the english, i do not wish for the end of the war, for the reason that the war serves my purposes. such, in all sincerity, are my personal motives. now, let us see whether your interests, regnault, bishop of chartres, and yours, raoul of gaucourt are not of the same nature as mine. as to you, bishop of chartres, should the war end suddenly by force of arms, what becomes of all the negotiations that for a long time you have been secretly conducting with the regent of england on one side, and the duke of burgundy on the other--negotiations that have cost so much toil and that, justly so, give the king so high an opinion of your importance? what becomes of the guarantees and the pecuniary advantages that, like a shrewd negotiator, you demand and know how to obtain from the princes that you negotiate with?" "all my hopes will be shattered if our troops, fanaticized by this girl, should gain but one victory in a single encounter with the english," cried the bishop of chartres. "the regent of england wrote to me only recently that _he was not disinclined to entertain my propositions for a treaty_, in which case, added the duke of bedford, _i could be sure of obtaining all that i have demanded of him_. but if the fires of war should flare up again under the inspiration of this bedeviled peasant girl, all negotiations will be broken off, and then good-bye to the profits that i sought to derive. so that you were right, george of la tremouille, when you said that our interests command us to join hands against joan." "and as to you, raoul of gaucourt," replied the sire of la tremouille, "i hope you are not ignorant of the fact that dunois, lahire, xaintrailles, the constable of richemont, the duke of alençon, and other leading commanders, are all jealous of your ability and of your seat in the royal council, and that they will rank themselves on the side of the girl, whom they will turn into a docile instrument to overthrow you. if the royal army wins but one victory, your influence and military prestige will be eclipsed by the success of your rivals. our king, fickle, ungrateful and irresolute as we know him to be, will sacrifice you at the first suspicion of treason or incompetence." "thunder and blood!" cried raoul of gaucourt, "i have a good mind to go straight to the tower of coudray and order the execution of the sorceress without the formality of a trial! we shall find priests enough to affirm that satan carried her off." "the method is violent and clumsy, dear captain!" replied george of la tremouille. "the same end can be reached by other methods. it is understood that i, you, and the bishop of chartres have common interests which bind us against the girl. what we must now do is to consider how to ruin her. let's begin with you, holy bishop of chartres, the spiritual director of our sire. however debauched he is, occasionally he is afraid of the devil. could you not insinuate to the good king that he would endanger the salvation of his soul if he were, precipitately and without a previous inquest, to attach faith to the creature that calls herself a deputy of the lord, but who is more likely a deputy of satan?" "an excellent idea!" exclaimed the bishop of chartres. "i shall convince charles vii that it is imperative to have joan examined by the clerks of theology, they being alone qualified to ascertain and solemnly declare whether she is obeying a divine inspiration, or whether, on the contrary, she is not a brazen impostor possessed of the evil spirit, in which case, by placing confidence in the girl, our sire would then render himself the accomplice in a sorcery. i shall then empanel a canonical college that shall be charged with pronouncing finally and infallibly upon the degree of faith that may be accorded to the alleged divine mission of joan. obedient to my secret instructions she shall be pronounced a heretic, a sorceress and possessed of the evil spirit. the fagots will soon be in full flare to receive her to the heart's content of our brave gaucourt. we shall have her burned alive." "blood of god!" cried the soldier. "i shall myself set fire to the pyre. there is the infamous female serf, who meant to command noble captains, burnt to a crisp!" "she is not yet roasted, dear gaucourt!" observed the sire of la tremouille. "let us suppose that the plan of our friend the bishop of chartres fails; let us suppose that by some fatal accident and contrary to the instructions issued to it by our worthy bishop, the canonical council declares the said joan truly and duly inspired by god--" "i answer for the clerks whom i shall choose for the examination! they will all be men entirely devoted to me." "dear bishop, it sometimes happens that the soldiers we think we can answer for man for man, slip us at the moment of action. it may happen that way with your clerks. let us proceed from the theory that king charles, finding himself _in extremis_, is inclined to take the risk of placing the said joan at the head of his armies. it will then rest with you, raoul of gaucourt, more than with anyone else, to ruin the insolent girl, who has but one fixed thought--to raise the siege of orleans. you must then demand of the king the command of the town of orleans, and you must consent to serve under her orders." "may hell confound me if ever, even for a single hour, i should consent to receive orders from that she-cowherd!" "be not all tempest and flame, brave gaucourt. remember that the bulk of the troops would then be under your immediate orders. joan will issue orders to you, but you can disregard them, you can cross and thwart all her plans of battle; you can cause well calculated delays in the movements of the troops; above all you could--well--manoeuvre in such a way as to have the crazy girl fall into the hands of the english. in short, it would lie with you, more than with us, to prevent her from winning her first battle." "at the first check that she meets," added the bishop of chartres insinuatingly to raoul of gaucourt, "the enthusiasm that she now excites will change into contempt. the people will feel ashamed of having allowed themselves to be duped by so clumsy an imposition. the revulsion against her will be immediate. if, contrary to all expectations--i should say certainty--the canonical council appointed by myself should declare joan truly inspired by god;--if the king then places her at the head of his troops--then, brave gaucourt, the loss of her first battle, brought on by your skilful manoeuvres, will deal a fatal blow to the adventuress! victorious, she would be the envoy of god; vanquished, she becomes the envoy of satan!--then we may proceed against her in regular form under the pretext of heresy and sorcery--then will the fagots that you are in such a hurry to set fire to soon be kindled to receive her. it depends upon you whether she shall be burned alive by us, or allowed to be taken by the english, who will execute her." "well," answered raoul of gaucourt meditatively, "let us suppose the she-cowherd orders a sally against the besiegers; the bridge is lowered; the bedeviled girl rushes out over it; a few of our men follow her;--i give the signal to retreat; my people hasten to re-enter the town; the bridge is raised--and the wench remains in the power of the enemy! is that it?" "yes; can we rely upon you?" "yes; i perceive the way, either by a false sally or some other manoeuvre, to settle the she-devil!" "and now," resumed the sire of la tremouille, "let us feel hopeful; our plot is well laid; our nets are skilfully spread. it will be impossible for the visionary to escape; either you, gaucourt, or you, worthy bishop, will prevent it. as to me, i shall not be idle. but first of all, holy bishop, is it not an established fact that a demon can not possess the body of a virgin?" "it is an unquestionable fact, according to the formula of exorcism--we shall attend to that." "now, then, joan claims to be a virgin. her fanatical and imbecile followers call her joan the maid. either the street-walker, indecently clad in man's clothes, is the concubine of john of novelpont, to judge by the interest he takes in her, or she is really chaste and a virgin. it shall be my part to prick the libertine curiosity of the king on the subject by proposing to him to assemble a council of matrons. such a council, presided over, let us suppose, by the king's mother-in-law, yolande of sicily, will be commissioned to ascertain whether joan is really a virgin. if she is none, the most violent suspicions of imposture and sorcery immediately rise against her. then she no longer is the alleged saint whom god has inspired, but an audacious cheat, a worthy companion of the easy wenches who follow the encampments. she will then be shamefully whipped, and then driven away, if not burned for a sorceress." "i am ready to accept your theory that she is a ribald," replied the bishop of chartres, "and, with you, i feel sure that john of novelpont, who is so fascinated with her, is her lover. nevertheless, if by accident she does not lie and is justified in allowing herself to be called the maid, and if it is solemnly established that she is still pure, would not that greatly redound to her advantage? would not then the presumption of her divine mission be strengthened? on the other hand, by not submitting joan to any such trial, the field remains free for suspicions, which it would then be an easy thing for us to fan; we could easily set calumny afloat." "your objection is serious," answered the sire of la tremouille. "nevertheless, just supposing the girl to be chaste, what must not be her shame at the thought of so humiliating an investigation! the more conscious she be of the chastity of her life, that they say has been irreproachable until now, all the more will the creature feel grieved and indignant at a suspicion that so outrages her honor! the chaster she is, all the more will she revolt at the shamefulness of the verification! she will scorn the proposition as an unbearable insult, and will refuse to appear before the council of matrons!--skilfully exploited, her refusal will turn against her." "upon the word of a soldier, the idea is ingenious and droll! i foresee that our wanton sire will himself want to preside over the council that is to do the examining!" "and yet, should joan submit to the trial, and come out triumphant, she will then have a great advantage over us." "no greater than if she is believed to be a maid upon her own word. the convocation of a council of matrons offers us two chances: if joan submits to the disgraceful examination she may be declared a strumpet; if she refuses, her refusal makes against her!" "there is nothing to answer to that," said raoul of gaucourt; "i adhere to the plan of a council of matrons to pass upon her virginity." "now, let us sum up and lay down our plan of conduct. first, to obtain from the king that a council of matrons be summoned to pass and publicly pronounce itself upon the maidenhood of our adventuress; secondly, in case she issues triumphant from that trial, to convoke a canonical council, instructed to put to the girl the most subtle, the hardest, the most perplexing theological questions, and to announce from her answers whether or not she is inspired by god; thirdly, and lastly, in the next to impossible event that this second examination also result in her favor, to manoeuvre in such manner that she lose her first battle and remain a prisoner in the hands of the english--one way or another she is bound to go down." at this moment the equerry of charles vii knocked at the door of the council hall, and entered to announce to the sire of la tremouille that the king demanded his minister's immediate presence. chapter ii. aloyse of castelnau. charles vii--the "gentle dauphin" of france and object of the fervent adoration of joan, who now for several days lay sequestered in the tower of coudray--soon tired of the interview to which he had summoned his minister, and sought recreation elsewhere. he found it in the company of his mistress, aloyse of castelnau. indolently stretched upon a cushion at her feet he chatted with her. frail and slight of stature, the prince, although barely twenty-three years of age, was pale, worn-out and unnerved by excesses. aloyse, on the other hand, in the full splendor of her beauty, soon found occasion to answer a joke of her royal lover on the subject of joan the maid. she said smiling: "fie, charles! fie, you libertine! to hold such language about an inspired virgin who wishes to restore to you the crown of france!" "if it is to be that way, the ways of the lord are strange and inscrutable, as our tonsured friends say. to have the crown and kingdom of france turn upon the maidenhood, upon the virginity of a cowherd!" "are you still at it?" responded aloyse, interrupting charles. "i guess your villainous thoughts regarding the poor girl." "i ask myself, how could the idea have germinated in the mind of that poor girl of restoring my crown to me!" "you display very little concern about your kingdom!" "on the contrary--i think a good deal of my crown. it is the cares of royalty that cause me to speak in that way, my beautiful mistress." "if the english take orleans, the key of touraine and poitou, and they then invade those provinces, what will then be left to you?" "you, my charmer! and if i must make the confession, it has often occurred to me that my great-grandfather, king john ii, of pious memory, must have recorded among the happy days of his life the one on which he lost the battle of poitiers--" "the day when your great-grandfather, taken prisoner by the english, was transported to their own country? you must be crazy, my dear charles!" "without any doubt, i am crazy; but crazy with love for you, my aloyse! but let us come back to king john, made prisoner at the battle of poitiers. he is taken to england. he is received with chivalrous courtesy and unheard-of magnificence. a sumptuous palace is assigned to him for prison, and he is invited out to exquisite banquets. the handsomest girls of england are charged to watch him. the forests that are at his disposal teem with game; the fields are vast; the rivers limpid. thus his time is divided between love, play, the table, fishing, hunting--until he dies of indigestion. while king john was thus peaceably enjoying life in england, what was his son doing, the unhappy charles v? driven out of paris by a vile populace that rose in rebellion at the voice of marcel, the unhappy charles the wise, as he was called, frightened out of his senses by the ferocities of the jacquerie, beset by the bustle of royalty, broken with the fatigues of war, ever on horseback, ever sleeping on the hard ground, and never sleeping with both eyes shut, living on poor fare and on poorer love, rushing hither and thither over hill and dale, was ever out of breath running after his crown! by the glories of easter! do you call that 'wisdom'?" "he at least had the glory of re-conquering his crown, and indulged the pleasure of executing his enemies." "oh, i well understand the happiness of revenge. i abominate those insolent parisians, those chasers of kings. if i had that accursed town in my power, i would order the most inveterate burgundians to be hanged. but i would be careful not to establish my residence there, out of fear of fresh seditions. charles v revenged himself; he reigned, but at the price of what anxieties, torments and incessant civil wars! while his father, king john, was all the while living happily in england, surrounded by abundance and love! to want this, to oppose that in matters of public concern, are intellectual labors that i leave to the sire of la tremouille and his fellows of the royal council to rack their brains over. without alarming myself over the future, my aloyse, i allow the current to carry me, rocked in your arms. whatever may happen, i laugh! long live love!" "oh, you do not speak like a king." "a plague upon royalty! a burning crown of thorns! i'd rather have your white hands weave me a chaplet of myrtle, and fill my cup. if they do, i would gladly see the debris of my throne crumble and vanish. when the english will have conquered the provinces that still are left to me, they will take care of me as they did of my predecessor, king john! so, then, long live wine, idleness and love! if, on the contrary, in his ill will towards me, the lord has stirred up this raging maid, who is obstinately set upon restoring to me the crown of my fathers with all its escort of uneasiness, bluster and troubles--let it be! let my fate be fulfilled! but, i swear to god, i shall budge not one step to insure the success of the warrior maid!" "then you have no faith in the inspiration of joan, the maid?" "i have faith in your pretty eyes, for the reason that they keep all their promises; and i have none in the shepherdess. were it not that i am daily beset with the outcry of people who have the royalty more at heart than i myself, i long ago would have sent her back to her muttons. but the sire of la tremouille himself inclines to yielding to these clamors. some insist on seeing in joan a divine instrument; others hold that in the desperate state of things we should try to profit by the influence that the maid may exert over the minds of the soldiers. i am, accordingly, compelled to receive her at court to-day. but the sire of la tremouille is of the opinion that a council of matrons should first decide whether the pretty girl really possesses the magic charm with the aid of which i am to reconquer my kingdom." "come, charles! a truce to your villainous jokes!" "if diana were your patron you could not be more intractable, my aloyse! i do not recognize you to-day." "ah, i have one more proof of how indolent you are, how cowardly and how neglectful of your own honor. how often have not i said to you: place yourself at the head of your troops, who are indignant at seeing the king refusing to share their hardships! take a bold resolve; don your cuirass and go to battle!" "a pest! my amazon, you speak at ease of the hardships and perils of war. i am no caesar--that much is certain!" "shameless heart! miserable coward!" "i wish to live to love you." "you make me blush with shame!" "you blush at being the mistress of the poor 'king of bourges' as i am called--at reigning over so sorry a kingdom! you would like to reign over the kingdom of all france!" "am i wrong in wishing that you should reign gloriously? i wish you were more ambitious." "oh, my beloved! would i, if i again were to become king of france, find the satin of your skin whiter and smoother? wine to taste better? or idleness more agreeable?" "but glory! glory!" "vanity! vanity! i never have envied any glory other than that of the great king solomon, of that valorous hero of six hundred concubines and more than four hundred legitimate wives! but unable to reach the heights of that amorous potentate, i content myself with aspiring after the destiny of king john, my great-grandfather." "shame upon you, charles! such sentiments are disgraceful, and will prevent a single captain from taking the field for you." "oh, those valiant captains who combat my enemies have no thought to my interests. they fight at the head of companies of mercenaries in order to pillage the populace and to recover their own seigniories that have fallen into the hands of the english." the belle aloyse was about to answer charles vii when george of la tremouille entered the royal apartment after repeatedly knocking at the door. the minister said: "sire, everything is ready for the reception of joan. we await your orders." "let us go and receive the maid! i greatly approve your idea of putting the inspired girl to the test, and finding out if she can pick me out among the courtiers, while trans will play the role of king. the comedy is to start." chapter iii. the test. animated by conflicting sentiments, the men and women of the court of charles vii, gathered in a gallery of the castle of chinon, awaited the arrival of joan the maid. some, and they were few, believed the girl inspired; most of the others regarded her either as a poor visionary, a docile instrument that might be turned to account by the heads of the state, or an adventuress whom her own audacity, coupled to the credulity of fools, was pushing forward. all, however, whatever their opinion concerning the mission that the peasant girl of domremy claimed for herself, saw in her a daughter of the rustic plebs, and asked themselves how the lord could have chosen his elect from such a low condition. splendidly dressed, the sire of trans sat on what looked like a throne--an elevated seat placed under a canopy at one end of the gallery. he was to simulate the king, while charles vii himself, mixing in the crowd of his favorite courtiers, was laughing in his sleeve, satisfied with the idea of the test that joan's sagacity was to be put to. joan presently entered, conducted by a chamberlain. she held her cap in her hand and was in man's attire--a short jacket, slashed hose and spurred boots. intimidated at first by the sight of the courtiers, joan quickly regained her self-possession; holding her head high and preserving a modest yet confident bearing, she stepped forward in the gallery. vaguely suspecting the ill-will of many of the seigneurs of the king's household, the girl scented a snare, and said to the chamberlain who escorted her: "do not deceive me, sir; take me to the dauphin of france."[ ] the chamberlain motioned toward the sire of trans, who lolled ostentatiously on the raised and canopied seat at the extremity of the gallery. the mimic king was a man of large size, corpulent and of middle age. on her journey, joan had often interrogated the knight of novelpont on charles vii, his external appearance, his features. being thus informed that the prince was of a frail physique, pale complexion and short stature, and finding no point of resemblance between that portrait and the robustious appearance of the sire of trans, joan readily perceived that she was being trifled with. wounded to the heart by the fraud, the sign of insulting mistrust or of a joke unworthy of royalty, if charles was an accomplice in the game, joan turned back toward the chamberlain, and said, with indignation mantling her cheek: "you deceive me--him that you point out to me is not the king."[ ] immediately noticing a few steps away from her a frail looking and pale young man of small stature, whose features accorded perfectly with the description that she preserved as a perpetual souvenir in her mind, joan walked straight towards the king and bent her knee before him, saying in a sweet and firm voice: "sir dauphin, the lord god sends me to you in his name to save you. place armed men at my command, and i shall raise the siege of orleans and drive the english from your kingdom. before a month is over i shall take you to rheims, where you will be crowned king of france."[ ] some of the bystanders, convinced as they were that the peasant girl of domremy obeyed an inspiration, considered supernatural the sagacity that she had just displayed in recognizing charles vii from among the courtiers; they were all the more impressed by the language that she held to the king. a large number of others, attributing joan's penetration to a freak of accident, saw in her words only a ridiculous and foolish boast, and they suppressed with difficulty their jeering disdain at this daughter of the fields daring so brazenly to promise the king that she would clear his kingdom of the english, until then the vanquishers of the most renowned captains. charles fixed upon joan a defiant and libertine look that brought the blush to her cheeks, ordered her to rise, and said to her with an air of nonchalance and sarcasm that revealed mistrust in every word: "my poor child, we are thankful for your good intentions towards us and our kingdom. you promise us miraculously to drive away the english and to restore to us our crown. that is all very well. finally, you claim to be inspired by god--and on top of all, that you are a maid. before placing any faith in your promises we must first make sure that you are not possessed of an evil spirit and that you are virgin. on the latter head, your pretty face at least justifies doubt. in order to remove it the venerable yolande, queen of sicily and mother of my wife, will preside over a council of matrons that will be commissioned by us duly, authentically and notarially to verify your virginity.[ ] after that, my pretty child, if you issue triumphant from the trial, we shall then have to establish whether you are really sent to us by god. to that end, an assembly of the most illustrious clerks in theology, convened in our town of poitiers, where our parliament is in session, will examine and interrogate you, and it will then declare, according to the answers that you make, whether you are inspired by god or possessed of the devil. you will admit, my little girl, that it would be insane to confide to you the command of our armed men before we have become convinced that god really inspires you--and, above all, that you are really a virgin." at these words, so full of indifference, of mistrust, and of insulting immodesty, which were received with lewd smiles by the surrounding courtiers, and that, moreover, were pronounced by the "gentle dauphin of france," whose misfortunes had so long been rending her heart, joan felt crushed, and her chastity and dignity revolted at the bare thought of the disgraceful and humiliating examination that her body was first to be submitted to by the orders of that very charles vii. a prey to bitter sorrow, for a moment, in accord with the expectations of the sire of la tremouille, who was the promotor of the unworthy plan, joan thought of renouncing her mission and abandoning the king to his fate. but it immediately occurred to the warm-hearted girl that not that indolent, ungrateful and debauched prince alone was concerned in her mission, but also gaul, for so many years the bleeding victim of the foreigners' rapacity. gaul's deliverance was at stake, gaul, that having drained the cup of suffering to the very dregs, had attracted the compassion of the lord! accordingly, strengthening her faith and her energy in the recollection of the mysterious voices that guided her, recalling the prophecies of merlin, confident in the military genius that she felt developing within her, and drawing from the consciousness of her own chastity and from the ardor of her love of country the necessary courage to resign herself to the ignominy that she was threatened with, yet anxious to make an effort to escape it, she raised to charles vii her eyes bathed in tears and said to him: "oh, sire! why not believe me and try me! i swear to you, i have come to you by the will of heaven!"[ ] chapter iv. the hall of rabateau. upon her arrival at poitiers, where the parliament was then in session and where she was to undergo the two examinations--on her virginity and her orthodoxy--joan was placed in the house of master john rabateau, in charge of the latter's wife, a good and worthy woman whom joan charmed with her piety, her innocence and the sweetness of her disposition. joan shared her hostess's bed, and spent the first night weeping at the thought of the indecorous examination that she was to be subjected to the next day. the examination took place in the presence of queen yolande of sicily and several other dames, among whom was the wife of raoul of gaucourt. being an agent of the perfidious projects of george of la tremouille, the soldier had succeeded in securing a place for his own wife on the commission that was to inquire into the chastity of joan. he thought thereby to promote the chances of joan's conviction. he failed. the infamous investigation was held, and joan emerged triumphant from the disgraceful ordeal that deeply wounded her chaste and maidenly heart. more serious and more arduous was the second examination; it lasted longer; and was unnecessarily prolonged. a large number of royal councilors and members of parliament, assisted by several clerks in theology, among the latter of whom was brother seguin of the carmelite order and brother aimery of the preachers' order, and among the former of whom were masters eraut and francois garivel, proceeded at noon to the house of john rabateau, in order to conduct the interrogatories that were to be put to joan, who, always in her man's attire, awaited them and stood ready to answer them. the inquisition took place in a spacious apartment. in the center of the hall stood a table, around which the men appointed to determine whether or not joan the maid was possessed of an evil spirit took their seats. some of the inquisitors wore brown or black robes with black capes, others had on red robes lined with ermine. their aspect was threatening, derisive and severe. they were all carefully picked by the bishop of chartres, who joined them after they arrived at rabateau's house, and who presided in his quality of chancellor of france. the holy man, whose very soul was sold to george of la tremouille, saw with secret annoyance the purity of joan established by the council of matrons. though defeated there, the bishop relied upon being able so to disconcert the poor peasant girl by the imposing appearance of the learned and redoubtable tribunal, and so to confuse her with subtle and insidious questions on the most arduous possible of theological points, that she would compromise and convict herself with her own answers. several of the courtiers who had faith in the mission of the inspired young woman, followed her to poitiers in order to witness the interrogatory. they stood at one end of the hall. joan was brought in. she stepped forward, pale, sad and with eyes cast down. so delicate and proud was the girl's susceptibility that at the sight of the councilors and priests, all of them men informed upon the humiliating examination that she had undergone shortly before, joan, although pronounced pure, now felt as confused as if she had been pronounced impure. to so chaste a soul, to a soul of such elevation as joan's, the shadow of a suspicion, even if removed, becomes an irreparable insult. this notwithstanding, the maid controlled her feelings, she invoked the support of her good saints, and it seemed to her that she heard their mysterious voices softly murmur at her ear: "go, daughter of god! fear naught; the lord is with you. answer in all sincerity and bravely. you will issue triumphant from this new trial." the bishop of chartres motioned to joan to approach nearer to the table, and said to her in a grave, almost threatening voice: "joan, we have been sent by the king to examine and interrogate you. do not hope to impose upon us with your lies and falsifications." the interrogatory, being thus opened, proceeded as follows: joan--"i have never lied! i shall answer you. but you are learned clerks, while i know not a from b. i can say nothing to you but that i have a mission from god to raise the siege of orleans." brother seguin (harshly)--"do you pretend that the lord god sends you to the king? you can not be believed. holy writ forbids faith being attached to the words of people who claim to be inspired from above, unless they give a positive sign of the divinity of their mission. now, then, what sign can you give of yours? we want to know." joan--"the signs i shall give will be my acts.[ ] you will then be able to judge whether they proceed from god." master eraut--"what acts do you mean?" joan--"those that i have to accomplish by the will of god." francois garivel--"well, tell us what acts those will be. you will have to give more definite answers." joan--"they are three." brother seguin--"which is the first?" joan--"the raising of the siege of orleans, after which i shall drive the english out of gaul." master eraut--"and the second?" joan--"i shall have the dauphin consecrated at rheims." brother seguin--"and the third?" joan--"i shall deliver paris to the king." despite their prejudice against joan and the ill will they entertained for the girl, whom they now saw for the first time, the members of the tribunal were struck no less by the maid's beauty and conduct than by the exactness of her answers, that bore an irresistible accent of conviction. the audience, composed mainly of france's partisans, among whom was john of novelpont, indicated by a murmur of approbation the increasingly favorable impression made upon them by the girl's answers. even some of the members of the tribunal seemed to begin to feel an interest in her. alarmed at these symptoms, the bishop of chartres addressed joan almost in a rage: "you promise to raise the siege of orleans, to drive the english out of gaul, to consecrate the king at rheims and to place paris in his hands? these are idle words! we refuse to believe you unless you give some sign to show that you are truly inspired by god, and chosen by him to accomplish these truly marvelous things." joan (impatiently)--"once more, i say to you, i have not come to poitiers to display signs! give me men-at-arms and take me to orleans. the siege will be speedily raised, and the english driven from the kingdom. that will be the sign of my mission. if you do not believe me, come and fight under me. you will then see whether, with the help of god, i fail to keep my promise. these will be my signs and my actions." master eraut--"your assurance is great! where do you get it from?" joan--"from my confidence in the voice of my dear saints. they advise and inspire me in the name of god." brother seguin (roughly)--"you speak of god. do you believe in him?" joan--"i believe in him more than you do, who can imagine such a thing possible as not to believe in him!" brother aimery (with a grotesque limousin accent)--"you say, joan, that voices advise you in the name of god? in what tongue do those voices speak to you?" joan (slightly smiling)--"in a better tongue than yours, sir."[ ] the humorous and keen retort caused joan's partisans to laugh aloud, a hilarity in which several members of the tribunal shared. they now began to think that despite the lowliness of her condition, the cowherdess, as they called her, was no ordinary being. some of the members of the tribunal began to look upon her as inspired; others, of a less credulous turn of mind, thought to themselves that, thanks to her beauty, her brightness and her valiant resolution, she might, at the desperate state of things, actually become a valuable instrument in the war. in short, it occurred to them that to declare joan possessed of a demon, and thus reject the unexpected help that she brought the king would be to expose themselves to serious reproaches from the partisans of joan who were witnesses to the interrogation, and that the reproaches would soon be taken up and repeated by public clamor. the bishop of chartres, the accomplice of the sire of la tremouille and of gaucourt, was not slow to scent the disposition of the tribunal. in a towering passion he cried to his fellow judges: "messires, the holy canons forbid us to attach faith to the words of this girl; and the holy canons are our guide!" joan (proudly raising her head)--"and i tell you that the book of the lord which inspires me is worth more than yours! in that book no priest, however learned he may be, is able to read!" master eraut--"religion forbids women to wear male attire under pain of mortal sin. why did you put it on? who authorized you to?" joan--"i am compelled to assume male attire, seeing i am to battle with men to the end of my mission. evil thoughts will thus be removed from their minds. that is the reason for my disguise." francois garivel--"and so you, a woman, are not afraid of shedding blood in battle?" joan (with angelic sweetness)--"may god preserve me from shedding blood! i have a horror of blood! i wish to kill nobody; i shall carry in battle only a staff or a standard, to guide the armed men. i shall leave my sword in its scabbard." master eraut--"suppose our assembly declares to the king our sire that, with a safe conscience, he may entrust you with armed men to enable you to undertake the raising of the siege of orleans, what means would you adopt to that end?" joan--"to the end of avoiding, if it is possible, any further shedding of blood, i shall first summon the english, in the name of god who sends me, to raise the siege of orleans and return to their country; if they refuse obedience to my letter, i shall march against them at the head of the royal army, and with the help of heaven, i shall drive them out of gaul!" bishop of chartres (disdainfully)--"you would write to the english, and you have just told us you do, not know a from b?" joan--"i do not know how to write, but i could dictate, seigneur bishop." bishop of chartres--"i take you at your word. here are pens and a parchment. i shall be your secretary. let us see! dictate to me the letter to the english. upon my faith, its style will be singular!" a deep silence ensued. triumphantly the bishop took up a pen, feeling sure he had laid a dangerous trap for the poor peasant girl, incapable, as he thought, of dictating a letter equal to the occasion. even the partisans of joan, although greatly incensed at the manifest ill will of the bishop towards her, feared to see her succumb at this new trial. the minds of all were on tenter-hooks. bishop of chartres (ironically)--"come, now, joan, here i am ready to write under your dictation." joan--"write, sir." and the maid dictated the following letter with a mild but firm voice: "in the name of jesus and mary. "king of england, submit to the kingdom of heaven, and place in the hands of joan the keys of all the towns that you have forced. she comes sent by god to reclaim those towns in the name of charles. she is ready to grant you peace if you are willing to leave france. "king of england, if you do not do as i request you, then i, joan, chief of war, will everywhere smite your men; i shall drive them out, whether they will or no. if they surrender at mercy, i shall grant them mercy; if not, i shall do them so much damage that nothing like it will have been seen in france for a thousand years back. what is here said will be done. "you, archers and other companions in arms who are before orleans, be gone, by the lord's command, back to england, your own country. if not, fear joan. you will remember your defeat! you shall not keep france! france will belong to the king to whom god gave the kingdom!" joan broke off her dictation, and addressing herself to the bishop of chartres, who was stupefied at the virile simplicity of the letter, that, despite himself, he had been compelled to write, she said: "sir, what are the names of the english captains?" bishop of chartres--"the count of suffolk, lord talbot and the knight thomas of escall, lieutenants of the duke of bedford, regent for the king of england." joan--"write, sir! "count of suffolk, lord talbot, knight thomas of escall, all of you lieutenants of the duke of bedford, who styles himself regent of the kingdom of france for the king of england, make answer! will you raise the siege of orleans? will you cease the great cruelty that you heap upon the poor people of the country of france? if you refuse the peace that joan demands of you, you will preserve a sad remembrance of your rout. the most brilliant feats of arms ever accomplished by the french in christendom will be seen. we shall then see who will prevail, you--or heaven! "written on tuesday of the great week of easter, of the year ."[ ] joan (addressing the bishop of chartres after having dictated)--"sir, sign for me, if you please, my name at the bottom of this letter. i shall make my cross in god beside the signature, seeing i cannot write, and write the following address on the parchment: 'to the duke of bedford who styles himself regent of the kingdom of france for the king of england." the partisans of joan, the members of the tribunal, even the bishop of chartres could hardly believe the evidence of their own senses: a poor rustic girl, only recently arrived from the heart of lorraine, to hold in that letter a language that was at once so courteous, so dignified and so sensible--it bordered on a miracle. aye, a miracle of courage! a miracle of sense! a miracle of patriotism!--readily accomplished by joan, thanks to her superior native intelligence and her confidence in her own military genius, of which she now began to be conscious; thanks to her faith in the heavenly support promised to her by her mysterious voices; finally, thanks to her firm resolve to act bravely obedient to the proverb that she delighted in repeating--_help yourself, and heaven will help you!_ much to the secret anger of the bishop of chartres, the declaration that the tribunal would make was no longer doubtful. joan's triumph in the hall of rabateau was complete. the tribunal declared that, joan's virginity having been established, a demon could possess neither her body nor her soul; that she seemed inspired of god; and that the enormity of the public misfortunes justified the king to avail himself with a clean conscience of the unexpected and seemingly providential help. despite his own shameful indolence, despite the opposition of the sire george of la tremouille, and fearing to exasperate public opinion, that was waxing ever more pronouncedly in favor of joan, charles vii found himself compelled to accept the aid of the peasant girl of domremy; whom, however, he cursed and swore at in secret. inclined now to believe joan inspired, the slothful king fretted at the thought of the trials and cares that the threatened vigorous renewal of hostilities against the english was to inflict upon him. he feared to see himself compelled by the force of circumstances to show himself at the head of his troops, to ride up hills and down dales, to endure fatigue, to face danger. but he was compelled to yield to the current of enthusiasm produced by the promises of deliverance made by joan the maid. it was decided that joan was to proceed to blois, and thence to orleans, where she was to confer with dunois, lahire, xaintrailles and other renowned captains upon the raising of the siege of orleans. an equerry named daulon was attached to the service of the maid, together with a young page of fifteen named imerguet. she was given battle horses, and servants to attend to her needs. a special suit of armor was ordered for her. in remembrance of the prediction of merlin, she demanded that the armor be white, as also one of her chargers, her pennon and her standard, on the latter of which she ordered two blue-winged angels to be painted, holding in their hands the stalk of a lily in blossom. furious at not being able to catch joan in the snares that they had spread for her, george of la tremouille and his two accomplices, the bishop of chartres and the sire of gaucourt, pursued their darksome plots with increased intensity. it was agreed among them, and in line with their previously laid plans, that gaucourt was to demand of charles vii the command of the town of orleans. the three intriguers expected by that means to block the maid's movements, ruin her military operations, and expose her to a first check that would forever confound her, or to allow her to be captured by the english in some sally when she was to be left in the lurch. on thursday the th of april, , joan darc left chinon for blois, where she was to join dunois and marshal retz, before proceeding to orleans. the peasant girl, now fast maturing into a warrior, started on the journey, her mind occupied with recollections of the child's combat between the urchins of maxey and of domremy, a battle where she had for the first time vaguely felt her vocation for war, and also recalling the passage in the prophecy where the gallic bard declared: "i see an angel with wings of azure and dazzling with light. he holds in his hands a royal crown. i see a steed of battle as white as snow-- i see an armor of battle as brilliant as silver.-- for whom is that crown, that steed, that armor? gaul, lost by a woman, will be saved by a virgin from the borders of lorraine and a forest of oaks.-- for whom that crown, that steed, that armor? oh, how much blood! it spouts up, it flows in torrents! oh, how much blood do i see! it is a lake, it is a sea of blood! it steams; its vapor rises--rises like an autumn mist to heaven, where the thunder peals and where the lightning flashes. athwart those peals of thunder, those flashes of lightning, that crimson mist, i see a martial virgin. white is her armor and white is her steed. she battles--she battles--she battles still in the midst of a forest of lances. and seems to be riding on the backs of the archers. the steed, as white as snow, was for the martial virgin. for her was the armor of battle as brilliant as silver. but for whom the royal crown? gaul, lost by a woman, will be saved by a virgin from the borders of lorraine and a forest of oaks." part iii. orleans. chapter i. friday, april , . in one week the martial maid, inspired by the love for her people and country, vanquished the english, triumphant since the battle of poitiers, more than seventy years before, when john ii and the coward nobility of france took to their heels. in one week the brave daughter of the people accomplished what for over seventy years had proved beyond the strength of the most illustrious captains. the week has been called the week of joan darc. night had set in, but it was a balmy night of spring, and anyone on the evening of april , , who stood on the street leading to the banier gate, one of the gates of the town of orleans, would have thought it was bright day. all the windows, at which the inhabitants crowded, were illuminated with lamps. to the light of these was joined that of torches with which a large number of armed bourgeois and artisans had furnished themselves and were ranged in a double row along the full length of the thoroughfare for the purpose of keeping back the crowd. the courage of these town soldiers had been severely tested by the perils of the siege which they had long sustained single handed, having at first refused to admit into the city the companies of soldiers that consisted of insolent, thievish and ferocious mercenaries. however, after many a brave attempt, and seeing their numbers reduced from day to day under the shot and fire of the besiegers, the townsmen of orleans had found themselves compelled to accept and support the mercenary bands of lahire, of dunois, of xaintrailles and of other professional captains, who hired themselves and their men for cash to whomsoever paid for their services. they were dangerous auxiliaries, ever drawing in their train a mob of dissolute women who were themselves no less thievish than the english. accordingly, often had the councilmen of orleans--resolute citizens, who bravely led their militia to the ramparts when these were assailed, or outside of the city when they made a sally--had lively disputes with the captains on the score of the misconduct of their men, or of their timidity in battle. these men, to whom arms was a trade, not having as the inhabitants themselves, families, property, their own hearths, to defend, were not particularly anxious about the speedy raising of the siege, well quartered and paid as they were by the town. it was, accordingly, with inexpressible impatience that the people of orleans awaited the arrival of joan darc. they relied upon her help to drive the english from their redoubts, and to free themselves from the heavy burden of the french captains. a compact crowd of men, women and children, held back by a military cordon, filled the two sides of the thoroughfare, at the end of which the residence of master james boucher, the treasurer, was situated, and was even more brilliantly illuminated than any other. presently the hum of the multitude was silenced by the loud and rapid peals from the belfry of the town hall, together with the roar of artillery, announcing the arrival of the maid. the faces of the citizens, until recently sad and somber, now breathed joy and hope. all shared and expressed the opinion that the virgin girl of lorraine, prophesied by merlin, was coming to deliver orleans. she was announced to be of divinely dazzling beauty, brave and instinct with a military genius that struck even dunois, lahire and xaintrailles, all of them renowned captains at the time defending the city for pay, when on the previous day they met her at blois. two of their equerries, who had ridden ahead into orleans during the day, reported the marvel, which spread from mouth to mouth, and they announced the entry of joan darc for that evening. everywhere on her passage from chinon to blois, the equerries added, her march had been a continuous ovation, in which she was greeted by the joyful cries of the peasants, who for so long a time had been exposed to the ravages of the enemy, and was acclaimed by them as their redeeming angel sent by god. these, and similar accounts that were rife, revived the confidence of the townsmen. the crowd was especially dense in the neighborhood of the residence of master james boucher, where the heroine was to lodge. nine o'clock struck from the tower of the church of st. croix. almost at the same instant the sound of trumpets was heard at a distance. the music approached slowly, and presently the brilliant light of the torches revealed a cavalcade riding in. the little page imerguet and the equerry daulon marched ahead, the one carrying the pennon, the other the white standard of the warrior maid, on which two azure-winged angels were painted holding in their hand a stalk of lilies in blossom. behind them followed joan darc, mounted on her white charger, caparisoned in blue, while she herself was cased in a light plate armor of iron that resembled pale silver--a complete suit, leg-pieces, thigh-pieces, and coat of mail, arm-pieces and a rounded breast-plate that protected her virginal bosom. the visor of her casque, wholly raised, exposed her sweet and handsome face, set off by her black hair cut round at the neck. profoundly moved by the acclamations that the good people of orleans greeted her with, and which she received as a homage to her saints, a tear was seen to roll down from her large black eyes, adding to their brilliancy. already familiarized with the handling of a horse, she elegantly guided her mount with one hand, while with the other she held a little white baton, the only weapon that, in her horror of blood, she wished to use in leading the soldiers to battle. behind her rode dunois, accoutered in a brilliant suit of armor, ornamented in gold; behind these came, mixed among the councilmen of orleans, marshal retz, lahire, xaintrailles and other captains. among the latter was the sire of gaucourt, leading a reinforcement of royal troops to orleans and invested with the command of the town. with a sinister look, and hatred in his heart, the sire meditated dark schemes. equerries and bourgeois deputations from the town brought up the rear of the train, which soon was pressed upon from all sides by so compact a mass that for a moment joan darc's steed could not move a step. enraptured at her beauty and at her carriage at once so modest and yet so martial, men, women and children contemplated her with delirious joy and covered her with blessings. some were even carried to the point of wishing to kiss her spurred boots half covered with the scales of her leg-pieces. as much touched as confused, she said naïvely to dunois, turning towards him: "indeed, i will not have the courage to protect myself against these demonstrations, if god does not himself protect me."[ ] at that moment one of the militiamen who held a torch approached the maid so closely in order to obtain a better view of her that he involuntarily set fire to the fringe of the standard borne by daulon. fearing the flag was in danger, joan uttered a cry of fright, clapped the spurs to her horse before which the crowd rolled back, and approaching the equerry at a bound seized the burning banner, smothered the flames between her gauntlets and then gracefully waved it over her casque,[ ] as if to reassure the people of orleans, who might construe the accident into an evil omen. such was the presence of mind and the horsemanship displayed by joan on the occasion that the enraptured crowd broke out into redoubled acclamations. even the mercenaries, who, not being on guard that night upon the ramparts, had been able to join the crowd, saw in the maid an angel of war and felt stronger; like the archer of vaucouleurs, it seemed to them that, led to battle by such a charming captain, they were bound to vanquish the enemy and avenge their previous defeats. dunois, lahire, xaintrailles, marshal retz, all of them experienced captains, noticed the exaltation of their mercenaries, who but the day before seemed wholly discouraged; while the sire of gaucourt, perceiving the to him unexpected influence that the maid exercised, not upon the orleans militiamen merely, but upon the rough soldiers themselves, grew ever somberer and more secretly enraged. joan was slowly advancing through a surging mass of admiring humanity towards the house of james boucher, when the cavalcade was arrested for a moment by a detachment of armed men that issued from one of the side streets. they were leading two english prisoners, and were headed by a large-sized man of jovial and resolute mien. the leader of the squad was a lorrainian by birth, who had long lived in orleans and was called master john. he had well earned the reputation of being the best culverin-cannonier of the town. his two enormous bomb-throwers, which he had christened "riflard" and "montargis," and which, planted on the near side of the bridge on the redoubt of belle-croix, ejected unerring shot, caused great damage to the english. he was feared and abhorred by them. our merry cannonier was not ignorant of their hatred, his cannons seemed to be the objective point for the best aimed bolts of the enemy's archers. he, accordingly, at times amused himself by feigning to be shot dead, suddenly dropping down beside one of his culverins. on such occasions his fellow townsmen engaged at the cannons would raise him and carry him away with demonstrations of great sorrow, that were echoed by the english with counter-demonstrations of joy. but regularly on the morrow they saw again master john, in happier trim than ever,[ ] and ever more accurate and telling with the shot from riflard and montargis. a few days later he would again repeat the comedy of death and the miracle of resurrection. it was this jolly customer who headed the squad that was leading the two prisoners to jail. at the sight of the warrior maid, he drew near her, contemplated her for a moment in rapt admiration, and reaching to her his heavy gloved hand said with considerable pride: "brave maid, here is a countryman of yours, born like yourself in lorraine; and he is at your service, together with riflard and montargis, his two heavy cannons." dunois leaned over towards joan and said to her in a low voice: "this worthy fellow is master john, the ablest and most daring cannonier in the place. he is, moreover, very expert in all things that concern the siege of a town." "i am happy to find here a countryman," said the maid, smiling and cordially stretching out her gauntleted hand to the cannonier. "i shall to-morrow morning see how you manoeuvre riflard and montargis. we shall together examine the entrenchments of the enemy, you shall be my chief of artillery, and we shall drive the english away with shot of cannon--and the help of god!" "countrywoman," cried master john in a transport of delight, "my cannons shall need but to look at you, and they will go off of themselves, and their balls will fly straight at the english." the cannonier was saying these words when joan heard a cry of pain, and from the back of her horse she saw one of the two english prisoners drop on his back, bleeding, with his scalp cut open by the blow of a pike that a mercenary had dealt upon his head, saying: "look well at joan the maid. look at her, you dog of an englishman.[ ] as sure as i have killed you, she will thrust your breed out of france!" at the sight of the flowing blood, that she had a horror of, the warrior maid grew pale; with a movement more rapid than thought, and pained at the soldier's brutality, she leaped from her horse, pressed her way to the englishman, knelt down beside him, and raising the unhappy man's head, called with tears in her eyes to the surrounding militiamen: "give him grace; the prisoner is unarmed--come to his help."[ a] at this compassionate appeal, several women, moved with pity, came to the wounded man, tore up their handkerchiefs and bound up his gash, while the warrior maid, still on her knees, held up the englishman's head. the wounded man recovered consciousness for a moment, and at the sight of the young girl's handsome face, instinct with pity, he joined his two hands in adoration and wept. "come, poor soldier; you need not fear. you shall not be hurt," said joan to him, rising, and she put her foot into the stirrup that her little page imerguet presented to her. "daughter of god, you are a saint!" cried a young woman with exaltation at the act of charity that she had just witnessed, and throwing herself upon her knees before the warrior maid at the moment that the latter was about to leap upon her horse she added: "i beseech you, deign to touch my ring!" saying which she raised her hand up to joan. "blessed by you, i shall preserve the jewel as a sacred relic." "i am no saint," answered the warrior maid with an ingenuous smile. "as for your ring, touch it yourself. you are no doubt a good and worthy woman; your touch will be as good as mine."[ ] so saying, joan remounted her horse, to be saluted anew by the acclamations of the throng; even the most hardened soldiers were touched by the sentiments of pity that she had displayed towards an unarmed enemy. so far from taxing her with weakness, they admired the goodness of her heart and her generosity. master john frantically cheered his countrywoman, and the cries of "good luck, joan!" "good luck to the liberator of orleans!" resounded like the roll of thunder. almost carried off its feet by the crowding mass of people, joan's horse finally arrived with its inspired rider before the house of master james boucher. standing at the threshold of his door with his wife and his daughter madeleine near him, master james boucher awaited his young guest, and led her, together with the councilmen and captains, into a large hall where a sumptuous supper was prepared for the brilliant train. timid and reserved, the maid said to master boucher: "i thank you, sir, but i shall not take supper. if your daughter will be kind enough to show me to the room where i am to sleep, and to help me take off my armor, i would be grateful to her. all i wish, sir, is a little bread moistened in water and wine--that is all i shall need; i shall immediately go to sleep. i wish to be awakened at early morning, to inspect the entrenchments with master john the cannonier."[ ] according to her wishes, the maid retired, master boucher's daughter madeleine showing her to her room. at first seized with fear of the inspired maid, madeleine was soon so completely captivated by her sweetness and the affability of her words, that she naïvely offered to share her room during her sojourn in orleans. joan accepted the offer with gladness, happy at finding a companion that pleased her so well madeleine gently helped her to disarm and brought her her refection. just before lying down to sleep joan said to her: "now that i have met you and your parents, madeleine, i feel all the happier that god has sent me to deliver the good town of orleans."[ ] the maid knelt down at the head of her bed, did her devotions for the night, invoked her two patron saints, implored them with a sigh to bestow their blessings upon her mother, her father and her brothers, and was soon plunged in peaceful sleep, while madeleine long remained awake, contemplating the sweet heroine in silent admiration. chapter ii. saturday, april , . just before daybreak, and punctual to his appointment made the previous evening, master john the cannonier was at james boucher's door. immediately afterwards, joan opened the window of her room, which was on the first floor, and looked out upon the street which still was dark. she called down: "oh, master john, are you there?" "yes, my brave countrywoman," answered the lorrainian, "i have been waiting for you." joan soon left the house and joined the cannonier. she had not resumed her full armor of battle, but had merely put on a light iron coat of mail which she wore under her coat. a hood took the place of her casque. her baton was in her hand, and on her shoulder was flung a short mantle in which she meant to wrap herself on her return, in order to prevent being recognized and thus becoming the object of popular ovations. she asked master john to make with her the rounds of the town outside the ramparts, in order to inform herself on the strength of the enemy's entrenchments. joan departed with her guide, traversed the still deserted streets, and issuing by the banier gate, started on her excursion. twelve formidable redoubts, called "bastilles," surrounded the town from the side of the beauce and the side of the sologne districts, and only slightly beyond range of the town's cannon. the most considerable of these hostile fortifications were the bastille of st. laurence to the west, of st. pouaire to the north, of st. loup to the east, and of st. privé, of the augustinians and of st. john-le-blanc to the south and on the other side of the loire. furthermore, and opposite to the head of the bridge, which, on the side of the besieged, was protected by a fortified earthwork, the english had raised a formidable castle, flanked with frame towers, called by them "tournelles." all these redoubts, manned with large garrisons, were surrounded with wide and deep moats, besides a belt of palisades planted at the foot of thick earthworks that were crowned with platforms on which were placed culverins and ballistas intended to hurl bolts into the town or upon its sallying forces. the bastilles, raised at distances of from two to three hundred fathoms from each other, completely encircled the town, and cut it off from the roads and the upper river. joan darc minutely questioned the cannonier upon the manner in which the english fought in the redoubts, which she frequently approached with tranquil audacity in order to be able to judge by herself of the besiegers' means of defence. during the examination, she came near being struck by a volley of bolts darted at her from the bastille of st. laurence. she was in no wise frightened, but only smiled at the sight of the projectiles that fell a few paces short of her. joan, astonished the cannonier no less by her calmness and bravery than by the relevancy of her observations. her every word revealed surprising military aptitude, and a quick and accurate eye. among other things, she said to the cannonier, after having inquired from him what were the tactics hitherto pursued by the besieged, that it seemed to her the better way was, not to attack all the redoubts at once in general sallies as had hitherto been done, but to concentrate all the troops upon one point, and in that manner attack the bastilles one after another with the certainty of carrying them, seeing that they could hold but a limited number of defenders, while in the open field nothing could limit the number of the assailants; their combined mass could be three and four times superior to the garrison of each redoubt taken separately. finally, by a number of other observations joan revealed the extraordinary intuition that has ever been the mark of great captains. more and more astonished at such a martial instinct, the cannonier cried: "well, countrywoman, in what book did you learn all that?" "in the book that our lord god inspires me to read. that book is ever open before me," naïvely answered joan.[ ] while the maid was thus examining the enemy's works and was meditating upon and maturing her plan of campaign, the sire of gaucourt, who had been appointed chief of the royal troops sent to orleans, was meditating upon and maturing the dark plot of treason long before hatched by him together with his two accomplices of the royal council, the sire of la tremouille and the bishop of chartres. early that morning gaucourt visited the most influential captains. envy and malice supplied the man's lack of acumen. moreover, carefully instructed by la tremouille, he appealed to the worst passions of these men of the sword. he reminded them of the frantic enthusiasm with which joan was received by the populace, by the town militia, even by their own mercenaries. did not they, celebrated warriors, feel humiliated by the triumph of the peasant girl, of that cowherdess? were not the insensate expectations pinned upon the visionary girl an insult to their fame? did they not feel wounded and angry at the thought that their companies until then dejected and discouraged, seemed inflamed with ardor at the bare sight of the seventeen-year-old girl, even before she had delivered her first battle? the insidious words found an echo in the perverse spirits of several of the captains. as has often been seen before and will be seen again in the future with people of the military trade, several of the captains gave a willing ear to the perfidious insinuations of gaucourt, and agreed, if not openly to refuse their co-operation with the maid, at least to thwart her designs, to prevent their successful execution, and ever to oppose her in the councils of war. dunois and lahire were the only ones who thought it would be "good policy" to profit by the exaltation that the maid inspired in the people and even in the mercenaries; they were of the opinion that she should be seconded if she actually gave evidence of military genius. these views notwithstanding, the majority of the captains adhered to their ill will for the young girl of domremy, of whom they were vilely jealous. gaucourt augured well for his black designs without, however, as yet daring fully to reveal to his ready accomplices his infamous machination--to cause the maid to fall into the hands of the english by leaving her in the lurch at a sally and raising the draw-bridge behind her--as, indeed, was one day to happen. back from her long excursion around the ramparts of orleans in the company of master john, joan said to gaucourt and other chiefs who called upon her, that she had consulted her voices and they advised a simultaneous attack on the next day, sunday, by all the combined forces of the army upon the bastille of the tournelles to the end of first of all freeing the head of the orleans bridge, opening the roads from the side of beauce for the entry of provisions, which the town began to run short of, and facilitating the entrance of the reinforcements that had been ordered from tours and blois. the captains crossed themselves at hearing the maid, a daughter of god, propose such an enormity--to fight on sunday! would that not, they remonstrated with joan, be to inaugurate her arms with a sacrilege? as to themselves, sooner should their hands shrivel than draw their swords on that day, a day devoted to rest and prayer! in vain did joan cry: "oh, sirs! he prays who fights for the welfare of gaul!" the captains remained unshakable in their orthodoxy on the pious observance of the dominical rest. much against her will joan saw herself compelled to postpone the plan for monday, but desirous of turning the postponement to account and avoiding all she could the effusion of blood that she had such a horror of, she requested her equerry daulon to write at her dictation another and short letter to the english, the first one having been forwarded to them from blois by a herald. the missive having been written and signed with her name, joan attached to it her "cross in god" in the fashion of a counter-sign, placed the parchment in her leathern girdle-pouch and invited the captains to accompany her to the ramparts on the loire that faced the bastille of the tournelles, occupied by the english. the warrior maid wished once more to examine the important position, preparatorily to the monday attack. the request was complied with, and several captains accompanied her, in the midst of a large concourse of people, of soldiers and of mercenaries, no less enthusiastic than the previous evening, to the gate of the little castle on the river. joan advanced to the edge of the boulevard of the bridge, so near to the bastille of the tournelles, that the voice of the besieged could be heard by the besiegers. a large number of the orleans militiamen were on guard upon the embattled platform of their own entrenchment which was equipped with ballistas and other engines of war used in hurling bolts and large stones. transported with joy at the sight of the maid in their midst, the good people surrounded her and inquired with martial ardor and impatience: "when will the assault be?" she promised it for monday, and ordered them to raise a white flag in order to propose a truce of an hour to the english at the tournelles, to whom she desired to speak. the flag of peace rose in the air, the besiegers answered with a like signal that they accepted a momentary suspension of hostilities, and several of them appeared at the embrasures of their bastille, not yet aware of joan's proximity. the maid picked out a large arrow from one of the quivers that hung from each of the ballistas, pushed the iron through the parchment on which the missive that she had brought with her was written, and having thus securely fastened it, she gave the arrow to one of the cannoniers with the request to hurl it into the tournelles. stepping upon the parapet, joan called out to the english: "stand aside that you may not be wounded by the arrow on which i have fastened the letter that i have written to you. read it!" the ballista was set in motion; the arrow whizzed through the air and carried into the enemy's encampment the missive of joan, which ran as follows: all of you, men of england, who have no rights over the kingdom of france:-- i, joan, call upon you by the order of god, to abandon your bastilles and to return to your own country. if not i shall do you such damage that you will eternally remember it. this is the second time that i write to you. i shall write no more.--joan.[ ] informed by their spies of the incredible and menacing enthusiasm created in orleans by the arrival of the maid, the english soldiers began to believe her inspired of the devil, nor could the dangerous superstition any longer be easily combated by their chiefs. learning from her missive that the maid was now so near them, the more timid grew pale, while others uttered furious imprecations. one of the most rabid among the latter, an english captain of wide repute named gladescal, a man of colossal size and armed cap-a-pie, still held the maid's letter in his hand, and shook his fist at her, while he foamed at the mouth with rage. "you and your men," cried out joan to them in her kind and serious voice, "surrender yourselves, every man, at mercy. your lives will be spared on condition that you agree to return to your own country."[ ] at these words of peace, gladescal and his men answered with a new explosion of vituperation. the stentorian voice of gladescal was heard above all the others: "i shall have you roasted, you bedeviled witch!" "if you catch me!" joan answered. "but i, if i overcome you, and i certainly shall, with the aid of god, i shall cast you far away from france, you and yours; i shall thump you out of the land, seeing that you refuse to surrender at mercy.[ ] god battles on our side." "go back to your cows, vile serf!" yelled gladescal. "get you gone, you ribald and triple fraud!" "yes, yes!" repeated the english amidst hisses and jeers. "go back and tend your cows! go back, infernal fraud and strumpet!"[ ] the unworthy and obscene insults hurled at her in the presence of so many of her people fell short of the warrior maid, whose conscience was free from any blot. but they deeply wounded her delicate sense of modesty, the most salient feature of her character; she wept.[ ] several of the captains who accompanied joan smiled maliciously, and hoped that the invectives of the english would smirch the girl's character in the opinion of the orleans militiamen and of the soldiers who had witnessed the insult. it was otherwise. moved by her virginal beauty, her celestial appearance, her touching tears, and above all, affected by the religious respect that her person inspired in all who approached her, they could not repress their indignation. inflamed with rage, they rushed to the battlements and in turn shook their fists at the english, returning insult for insult, and crying with fervor: "good luck! good luck to joan the maid!" "we shall cut you to pieces, you vagabonds and english swine!" "joan will throw you far from here!" some of the cannoniers even forgot the truce, and set the loaded ballistas in motion, to which the enemy replied with a volley of arrows. joan, unsuspecting of danger, did not budge from the parapet, and seemed to defy death with serenity. two men were wounded near her. covering her with their bodies, the militiamen forced her to descend from the parapet, and implored her to spare herself for the great assault on monday. on the other hand, most of the english attributed her escape from the murderous discharge of their arrows to a supernatural interposition, and their superstitious fears received fresh increment. they feared the devil and his sorceries. chapter iii. sunday, may , . unable to overcome the opposition of the captains to attacking the enemy on sunday morning, joan again proceeded at break of day and in the company of john the cannonier to examine the enemy's position. master john conceived a singular attachment for the martial maid, and he later accompanied her in almost all her engagements, being charged by her with the command of the artillery. due to his extensive experience at the siege of orleans, the cannonier had acquired profound skill in matters connected with the attack and defence of fortifications. on her part, endowed with unusual perspicacity in martial matters, joan derived in a short time great advantage from the practical knowledge of master john. back from her sunday morning excursion, the maid proceeded to the church of st. croix, where she attended high mass and took the communion in the presence of a vast concourse of people, upon all of whom the maid's modesty and piety left a profound impression. upon her return to the house of james boucher, joan entertained herself in the afternoon by joining in the family sewing, and she astonished not a little both madeleine and her mother, who were charmed to see the warrior maid, from whom the deliverance of the town and even the kingdom was expected, display so much skill, ingenuity and familiarity in the labors of her own sex. more than once was she obliged to interrupt the sewing at which she was engaged and show herself at one of the casements in response to the clamors of the admiring crowds that pressed before the treasurer's house. towards evening, the captains who were hostile to joan either from jealousy or any other cause, held a meeting and decided that the projected monday attack should not take place. it was absolutely necessary, they claimed, to await a reinforcement that marshal st. sever was bringing from blois and that was expected to attempt an entry during the night of tuesday. this further postponement, of which joan was notified by one of the captains, afflicted her profoundly. guided by her good judgment, joan considered the delays disastrous; they allowed the ardor of the troops to cool off after it had been rekindled by her presence, and gave the english time to recover from their dread, because, thrown into increasing consternation by the reports that they received concerning the maid, the english had not, since her arrival, dared to quit their bastilles to skirmish against the town. but compelled to yield to the will of the captains, whom to oppose had not yet occurred to her, joan could only weep at the further delay. but presently the scales began to drop from her eyes. reflection showed her that the delays were intentional, and her voices, the echoes of her sentiments and her thoughts, said to her: "they are deceiving you--the captains treasonably seek to oppose the will of heaven that you deliver orleans and set gaul free. courage. god protects you. rely only upon yourself for the fulfilment of the mission that he has entrusted to you." chapter iv. monday, may , . strengthened by her "voices," joan sent her equerry, daulon, early in the morning to convoke the captains for noon at the house of her host. most of them responded to the call. when they were assembled, the virgin warrior, nowise intimidated, declared to them with mildness but with firmness, that if on the next day, tuesday, they did not in concert with her definitely arrange a plan of attack for wednesday morning, she would then, without any further delay, mount her horse, raise her standard and, preceded by her equerry sounding the trumpet call and her page carrying her pennon, traverse the streets of the town and call to arms the good townsmen of orleans, and the soldiers also; and that she alone would lead them to battle, certain of victory with the aid of god. the maid's resolute language and the fear of seeing her carry out her threat had their effect upon the captains. several signs of popular dissatisfaction had manifested themselves on the inexplicable delay in using the unexpected help that joan had brought from heaven. pointing with becoming dignity to the numberless proofs that they had given of their bravery and of their devotion to the public cause, the councilmen complained bitterly of being ignored, in the councils where the fate of the town was decided upon; and no less than joan they condemned the fatal, perhaps irreparable, delays of the captains. yielding despite themselves to the pressure of public opinion, the captains promised the maid to meet the next day and decide jointly with her upon a plan of battle. without the consciousness of her military genius, that every day rose mightier within her; without her invincible patriotism; without her settled faith in divine help, joan would before now have renounced the painful and glorious task that she had set to herself. the indolence and craven egotism of charles vii, his insulting doubts concerning her character, the infamous physical examination that she was forced to undergo, the ill will of the captains towards her since her arrival in orleans, had profoundly grieved her simple and loyal spirit. but determined to deliver gaul from its age-long foes and to save the king despite himself, seeing that she considered the safety of the country bound up in his throne, the heroine thrust her personal sufferings aside and only thought of pursuing her task of deliverance to its consummation. chapter v. tuesday, may , . on tuesday the council of war assembled at the house of james boucher and in the presence of joan. the maid submitted briefly and spiritedly the plan of attack that she had matured and modified after the several reconnoitering tours which she had made during the last three days. instead of first attacking the tournelles, as she had at first contemplated, she proposed collecting all the disposable forces in an attack against the redoubt of st. loup, situated on the left bank of the loire and constituting one of the most important posts of the enemy, seeing that, as it commanded the road to berry and the sologne, it rendered difficult the revictualing of the town and the entry of reinforcements. that redoubt was to be carried, first; she was then to march successively against the others. the only forces that joan proposed to keep from the expedition was a body of reserve, that was to be held ready to sally from the town for the protection of the assailants of the bastille of st. loup, in case the english should issue from their other redoubts to the help of the attacked garrison and thus attempt a diversion. a few men placed in the belfry of the town hall were to watch the movements of the english, and if these were seen to sally in order to attempt either the junction of their forces or the diversion foreseen by joan, the signal was to be given to the reserve corps to fall upon the enemy, intercept their march to st. loup, drive them back, and keep them from taking the french in the rear. the plan, explained with a military precision that stupefied even the captains who envied joan, was unanimously adopted. it was agreed that the troops were to set off at daybreak. chapter vi. wednesday, may , . feeling certain of battling on the morrow, joan slept on tuesday night the peaceful sleep of a child, while madeleine, on the contrary, remained almost constantly awake, tossed about by painful uneasiness, and thinking with no little alarm that her companion was to deliver a murderous battle in the early morning. joan awoke at dawn, made her morning prayer, invoked her good saints, and was assisted by madeleine in putting on her armor. a touching and charming picture! one of the two girls, delicate and blonde, raising with difficulty the pieces of the iron armor that she helped her virile and dark complexioned friend to case herself in, and rendering the service with a degree of inexperience that caused herself to smile through the tears that she did her best to repress and that welled up at the thought of the near dangers that threatened the martial maid. "you must excuse me, joan, i am more in the habit of lacing my linen gorget than a gorget of iron," said madeleine, "but with time i shall be able, i hope, to arm you as quickly as could your equerry. to arm you! good god! i can not pronounce the dreadful word without weeping! is it quite certain that you are to lead an assault this morning?" "yes; and if it please god, madeleine, we shall drive hence these english who have caused so much damage to your good town of orleans and to the poor people of france!" the maid said this as she strapped the jambards over her buckskin hose whose waistband outlined her supple and robust shape. her shoulders and bosom were then almost exposed. she hastened to button up her chemise, while blushing with chaste embarrassment although she was in the presence of a girl of her own age; but such was joan's modesty, that on a similar occasion she would have blushed before her own mother! putting on a slightly padded skin jacket that the friction with her armor had already begun to blacken, she cased her breast in her iron corselet, that madeleine strapped on as well as she could. "may this cuirass protect you, joan, against the enemy's swords! alack! to have a young girl fight! to have her face such dangers!" "oh, dear madeleine, before leaving vaucouleurs, i said to the sire of baudricourt, the seigneur who helped me to reach the dauphin of france: 'i would prefer to remain and sew and spin near my mother; but i must fulfil the orders of the lord.'" "what dangers you have run, my dear joan, and still are to run in the fulfilment of your mission!" "danger troubles me little; i place myself in the hands of god. what troubles me is the slowness i encounter in having my services availed of. these delays are fatal to gaul--because it seems to me that my days are numbered."[ ] the martial maid pronounced these last words with so sweet a melancholy that madeleine's tears started to flow afresh. placing back upon a table the casque that she was about to place upon her friend's head, she threw herself into her arms without uttering a word, and embraced her, sobbing, as she would have embraced her sister at the supreme hour of an eternal farewell. dame boucher entered at that moment precipitately and said: "joan, joan, the sire of villars and jamet of tilloy, two councilmen, are downstairs in the hall. they wish to speak with you immediately. your page has just led up your horse. it seems that something unexpected has happened." "adieu, till we meet again, my dear madeleine," said joan to the weeping girl. "be comforted. my saints and the lord will protect me, if not against wounds, at least against death until i shall have carried out the mission that they have laid upon me;" and hastily taking up her casque, her sword and the small baton that she habitually carried in her hand, the maid descended quickly into the large hall. "joan," said the councilman jamet of tilloy, an honest and brave townsman, "everything was ready, agreeable to yesterday's decision, to attack the bastille of st. loup this morning. but before dawn a messenger ran in to announce to us the approach of a large convoy of provisions and munitions of war that the people of blois, tours and angers send us, under the command of marshal st. sever, by way of the sologne. the escort of the convoy is not strong enough to pass without danger under the bastille of st. loup, which commands the only available wagon road. the english may sally from their redoubt and attack the train which the town has been impatiently expecting. the captains, who are assembled in council at this hour, are debating the point whether it is better to attack the bastille of st. loup or to go forward to meet marshal st. sever, who is waiting for reinforcements before resuming his march." "how far is the convoy from here, sir?" asked joan. "about two leagues. it can not choose but pass under the bastille of st. loup. there is where the danger lies." after a moment's reflection, joan answered with composure: "let us first of all see to the provisions and munitions of war. we can not fight without victuals. let us help the convoy to enter the town this morning; we shall immediately after attack and take the bastille with the help of god." the maid's advice seemed wise. she mounted her horse, and accompanied by the sire of villars rode to the town hall, whither the councilman jamet of tilloy preceded her in haste while ordering the militia to be called to arms under its captains of tens and of forties and giving the bourgogne gate as the rendezvous. on this occasion the captains yielded without a contest to the will of joan, who was strongly seconded by the councilmen. she marched out of the bourgogne gate at the head of two thousand men, who, loudly clamoring for battle, and impatient to wipe out their previous defeats, were fired by the sight of the martial maid, who gracefully rode her white charger with her banner in her hand. at a little distance from the bastille of st. loup, a veritable fortress that held a garrison of over three thousand men, joan took the command of the vanguard which was to clear the path for the column. whether it was a superstitious terror caused by the presence of the maid, whom they recognized from a distance by her white armor and standard, or whether they were merely reserving their strength to sally forth and attack the convoy itself, the english remained behind their entrenchments and limited themselves to shooting a few almost inoffensive volleys of arrows and artillery balls at the orleans column. the obvious timidity of an enemy who was usually so daring increased the confidence of the french. they soon left the bastille behind them and met near st. laurent, an advance post that covered the convoy. at the sight of the reinforcement from orleans, that reached them without hindrance from the english in their bastille, the escort of the convoy attributed the successful operation to the influence of the maid, and felt in turn elated. himself struck by the successful move, that was due to the promptness of joan's manoeuvre, marshal st. sever still feared, and not without good reason, that the enemy's purpose was to allow the french to pass out freely in order all the more effectively to fall upon them on their return, hampered as they would then be by the large train of carts and cattle that the convoy had to escort. the marshal was undecided what to do. "forward and resolutely!" replied joan. "our bold front will impress the english; if they come out of their redoubt we shall fight them; if they do not come out, we shall soon be in orleans with the convoy. after that we shall immediately return and attack the bastille, and we shall conquer with the aid of god. have confidence, marshal!" these words, pronounced in a firm voice, overheard by some of the soldiers, repeated by them and carried from rank to rank raised the troop's enthusiasm. the march to orleans was struck with the carts and cattle in the center, and joan leading the van with a strong vanguard determined to sustain the first shock of the enemy. but the latter did not show himself. it was later learned from several english prisoners that their captains, aware of the decisive effect for good or evil that the first battle with the maid would have upon the temper of their troops, and realizing that their courage had begun to waver at the marvelous accounts that reached them about her, had determined not to be drawn into a battle until conditions should render triumph certain. hence their inaction at the passage of the convoy, which, without striking a blow, entered orleans to the unutterable delight of the people and the militiamen. the people were carried away with a fanatic zeal at the successful stroke of the maid. wishing to turn their enthusiasm to immediate account, joan proposed to turn about on the spot and attack the bastille of st. loup. the captains argued that their men should first have time to eat, and promised to notify her when they should be ready for the assault. joan yielded to these protestations, returned to the house of james boucher, fed, as was her custom, on a little bread dipped in wine and water, had her cuirass unbuckled, and threw herself upon her bed, where, thus, half armed, she fell asleep. her mind being full of the events of the morning, the maid dreamed that the troops were marching without her against the enemy. the painful impression of the dream woke her up, and no sooner awake than she bounded out of bed at the distant noise that reached her of detonating artillery. her dream had not deceived her.[ ] they had begun to attack the redoubt. the sire of gaucourt, who had been commissioned to notify the maid, had left her in ignorance. she ran to the window, saw her little page imerguet holding his own horse by the bridle and talking at the door with dame boucher and her daughter. neither the equerry nor the page of joan had been informed of the sally.[ ] but not aware of that, the martial maid leaned out of the window and addressed imerguet in a reproachful tone: "oh, bad boy! they are attacking the entrenchments without me, and you did not come to tell me that french blood was flowing![ ] madeleine, come quick, i beg you, to help me put on my cuirass! alack! we are losing time." madeleine and her mother quickly ascended to joan's room. she was helped on with her armor, descended to the street and leaped upon the horse of her page. at that moment it occurred to her that she had forgotten her banner near her bed where she always placed it. she said to imerguet: "run up quick for my standard! it is in the room. hand it to me through the window in order to lose less time."[ ] the page hastened to obey, while dame boucher and her daughter paid their adieus to the maid. the latter raised herself upon her stirrups, took the standard that imerguet lowered to her from the window above, and plunging her spurs into the flanks of her horse, the warrior maid waved with her hand a last good-bye to madeleine, and departed with such swiftness that the sparks flew from the pavement under the iron shoes of her steed.[ ] by concealing the hour of the assault from joan, the sire of gaucourt had planned to keep her away and thus to injure her in the opinion of the soldiers, who would impute to cowardice her absence at the hour of danger. planted at the bourgogne gate at the head of the reserves, gaucourt saw with surprise and anger joan approaching at a gallop, cased in her white armor and her white standard in her hand. she passed the traitor like an apparition, and soon disappeared from his sight in a cloud of dust raised by the rapid gait of her horse, that she drove with free reins down the sologne road, while with pangs of despair she heard the detonations of the artillery increase in frequency. in the measure that she drew near the field of battle, the cries of the soldiers, the clash of arms, the formidable noise of battle reached her ear more distinctly. finally the bastille of st. loup hove in sight. it intercepted the sologne road, dominating the loire river, and was built at the foot of an old church that in itself was a powerful fortification. the church formed a second redoubt within the first, whose parapets were at that moment half concealed by the smoke of the cannons. their fire redoubled, the last ranks of the french were descending almost perpendicularly into a deep moat, the first defense of the entrenchment, when, leaving her steaming horse, joan rushed forward, her banner in her hands, to join the combatants who at that moment, instead of proceeding forward down into the moat were turning about and climbing out again crying: "the bastille is impregnable!" "the english are full of the devil!" "the maid is not with us!" "god has forsaken us!" the captains had calculated upon the enthusiasm produced by the heroine to lead the troops to the assault with the promise that she was soon to join them. relying upon the promise the first rush of the assailants, who consisted mainly of orleans militiamen, bourgeois and artisans, was intrepid. but the english, not seeing the maid among the french, considered them deprived of a support that many of themselves looked upon as supernatural; the enemy's courage revived and they repelled the otherwise overpowering attack. the revulsion was instantaneous. a panic seized the front ranks of the assailants and the swiftest in the night were seeking to regain the home side of the moat when joan appeared running towards them, with eyes full of inspiration and her face glowing with martial ardor. the fleers stopped; they imagined themselves strengthened by a superhuman power; the shame of defeat mounted to their cheeks; they blushed at the thought of fleeing under the eyes of the beautiful young girl, who, waving her banner, rushed to the moat crying in a ringing voice: "stand firm! follow me! ours is the battle by order of god! victory to gaul!"[ ] carried away by the magic of the bravery and beauty of the heroine, the fleers fell in line behind her to the cry of: "good luck to joan!" "joan is with us!" these clamors, which announced the presence of the maid, redoubled the energy of the intrepid ones who still held the middle of the moat, although they were being decimated by the stones, the bullets and the arrows hurled at them from the top of the boulevard of the redoubt. joan, nimble, supple and strong, and supporting herself from time to time upon the shoulders of those who surrounded her, descended into the moat with them, crying: "to the assault! let's march bravely! god is with us! victory to gaul!" the ranks opened before the heroine and closed behind her. her bravery carried away the most timidly disposed. arrived at the foot of the slope that had to be climbed under a shower of projectiles in order to reach a palisaded trench that protected the boulevard, joan perceived master john. neither he nor the other sturdy cannoniers of orleans had retreated an inch since the assault began. they were just making ready to climb out of the ditch on the enemy's side. "helloa, my good countryman," joan called out cheerfully to the cannonier; "let us climb up there quick; the redoubt is ours!" and supporting herself upon the staff of her standard in order to scale the steep slope, the maid soon was several steps in the lead of the front ranks of the assailants. inspired by her example, these soon reached the summit of the slope. many fell dead or wounded by the shower of balls and bolts near the heroine. she was the first to set foot upon the narrow strip surrounding the moat and beyond which rose the palisaded entrenchment. turning to those who followed her, joan cried: "to the palisade! to the palisade! courage! the english are beaten! i tell you so by order of god!"[ ] master john and his men hewed down the posts with their axes; a breach was effected; the flood of the assailants rushed through the gap like a torrent through a sluice; and a furious hand-to-hand encounter was joined between the french and the english. "forward!" cried joan keeping her sword in its scabbard and merely waving her banner; "heaven protects us! forward!" "we shall see whether heaven protects you, accursed witch!" cried an english captain, whereat he dealt a furious blow with his sabre upon the head of the maid. her casque protected her. immediately another blow from a heavy iron mace fell upon her right shoulder. dazed by these repeated strokes, she staggered for a moment; master john supported her while two of his cannoniers threw themselves before her to protect her with their bodies. the shock was quickly overcome. joan recovered herself, stood daring and erect, and rushed into action with redoubled spirit. the enthusiasm of the warrior maiden was irresistible; the boulevard was soon heaped with the dead of both sides. driven back, the english again succumbed to the superstitious terror that the maid inspired them with and they sought safety behind the numerous frame buildings that served as barracks to the garrison of the bastille and as lodgings for the officers. the struggle continued with unabated fury, without mercy or pity, through the causeways that separated the vast frame structures. each lodging of the captains, each barrack, became a redoubt that had to be carried. fired by the presence of the maid, the french attacked and carried them one after the other. the english who survived the fury of the first assault defended the ground inch by inch and succeeded in retreating in good order into the church that crowned the boulevard--a church with thick walls, surmounted by a belfry. entrenched in this last fort, whose doors they barricaded from within, the english archers riddled their assailants with arrows, shot through the narrow windows, while other english soldiers, posted on the platform of the belfry, rolled down heavy stones, placed there in advance, upon the heads of the french. gathered in a mass near the portico of the church, and entirely exposed, the french were being crushed and decimated by the invisible enemy, not an arrow or stone of whom was lost. the maid noticed that her men began to waver. banner in hand she rushed forward: "victory to gaul! break in the door! let us boldly enter the church. it is ours by the order of god!" master john, together with several determined men, attacked with hatchets the iron studded door, while a shower of arrows, shot through a narrow slit in an adjoining building, rained upon the cannonier and his companions. their efforts were vain. many of master john's aides fell beside him, his own arm was pierced by a shaft. the english who entrenched themselves in the tower of the church, sawed off the framework of the roofing, and with the aid of levers, threw it down upon their assailants. the avalanche of stones, lead, slates and beams despatched all those upon whom it fell. a panic now threatened. "forward!" cried joan. "we needed beams to beat in the doors. the english now furnish us with them. take up the heaviest of them. ram the door. it will give. we shall have those englishmen even if they are hidden in the clouds."[ ] again reanimated by her words, the soldiers obeyed the orders of the maid. despite his wound, master john directed the operation. an enormous beam was taken from the debris, raised by twenty men, and plied like a ram against the door of the church. suddenly, the french soldiers, who, standing on the brow of the parapet, overlooked the plain, cried out: "we are lost! the enemy is coming in large numbers out of the bastille of st. pouaire!" "they are going to take us in the rear!" "we shall be between these fresh troops and the english entrenched in the church!" this move, skilfully foreseen and prepared for by joan, who had issued the necessary orders to meet it, was in fact made by the enemy. "fear not!" said the martial maid to those near her, who were petrified by the news, "a reserve troop will sally from the town and cut off the english. look not behind, but before you! fall to bravely! take the church!" hardly had joan uttered these words when the precipitate ringing of the town hall bell was heard, and it was immediately followed by a sally headed by a cavalry corps. the infantry marched out of the town at the double quick and in good order, and planted itself in battle array across the road that led from the bastille of st. pouaire to that of st. loup. intimidated by the resolute attitude of the reserve corps, which was commanded by marshal st. sever, the english halted, and, giving up their plan of marching to the assistance of their fellows at st. loup, returned to their own entrenchments. seeing joan's words thus verified, her soldiers placed implicit faith in her divine prescience. feeling perfectly safe in their rear and fired by their own success, they turned upon the church with redoubled determination to carry it. two enormous beams were now plied by twenty men apiece shattering the iron-studded door, despite all the arrows of the enemy. the dying and the wounded were quickly replaced by fresh forces. joan, intrepid, ever near the combatants and her banner on high, encouraged them with voice and gesture while escaping a thousand deaths, thanks to the excellent temper of her armor. the door finally broke down under the unceasing blows of the beams, and fell inside the church, but at the same moment, a cannon, placed within and opposite the door, ready for action, vomited with a terrible detonation a discharge of stones and scraps of iron upon the assailants at the gap. many fell mortally wounded, the rest rushed into the vast and dark basilica where a new hand-to-hand encounter, stubborn and murderous, took place. the struggle continued from step to step up the staircase of the tower to the platform, now stripped of its roof, and from the summit of which the english were finally hurled into space. just as the sun was tinting with its westering rays the placid waters of the loire, the standard of joan was seen floating from the summit of the church, and the cry of the vanquishers echoed and re-echoed a thousand times: "good luck! good luck to the maid!" the victory won and the intoxication of battle dissipated, the heroine became again a girl, full of tenderness for the vanquished. descending from the belfry of the church whither her bravery had carried her, the maid wept[ ] at the sight of the steps red with blood and almost concealed under the corpses. she implored her men to desist from carnage and to spare the prisoners. among these were three captains. hoping thereby to escape death they had put on some friars' robes that had been left in a corner of the sacristy and had there lain unnoticed since the english had taken possession of the church of st. loup. the three false prelates were found hidden in a dark chapel. the vanquishers wished to massacre them. joan saved them[ ] and, together with others, they were taken prisoners. the frame barracks and lodgings were put to the flame, and the vast conflagration, struggling against the first shadows of the thickening night, threw consternation into the other redoubts of the english, while it lighted the departure of the french. when, to the light of torches, joan re-entered orleans at the head of the troops, the belfry of the town hall and all the bells of the churches were ringing their loudest and merriest; cannon boomed; the whole town was in transports of joy, hope and enthusiasm. the maid had by her first triumph given the "sign" so oft demanded of her that she was truly the envoy of god. she was received as a liberator by the people, idolatrous with thankfulness. upon her return to the house of master james boucher, where she was whelmed with caresses by his wife and madeleine, joan convoked the captains and said to them: "god has so far supported us, sirs; but we are only at the beginning of our task; let us finish it quickly. help yourselves, and heaven will help you! we must to-morrow at daybreak profit by the discouragement into which our victory of to-day must have cast the english. we must bravely return to the attack of the other redoubts."[ ] the close of this day, so glorious to the martial maid, had a bitter sorrow in store for her. even lahire, dunois and xaintrailles, all of whom were animated with less ill will than the other captains towards joan, recoiled before her brave resolution, and taxed her with foolhardiness. promptly availing himself of the opportunity, gaucourt and the captains who were openly hostile to the maid caused the council of war to declare that "in view of the religious solemnity of the following day, thursday, the feast of the ascension, it would be outrageously impious to go to battle; the council would meet at noon only to consider what measures should be next taken."[ ] this deplorable decision afforded the english time to recover from the stupor of their defeat; it also ran the risk of losing the fruits of joan's first victory. the blindness, the perfidy or the cowardice of the captains filled her with indignation. steeped in sorrow she withdrew to her own room where, all in tears, she knelt down and implored the advice of her good saints; and with her eyes still wet with tears that her friend madeleine wiped in sadness and surprise, unable to understand the cause of her friend's grief after so glorious a day, joan fell asleep, evoking in thought as a means of solace the passage of the prophecy so miraculously fulfilled, in which merlin announced: "oh, how much blood do i see! how much blood do i see! it steams! its vapor rises, rises like an autumn mist to heaven, where the thunder peals and the lightning flashes!-- across that crimson mist, i see a martial virgin; white is her steed, white is her armor-- she battles, she battles, she battles still, in the midst of a forest of lances, and seems to be riding on the backs of the enemy's archers!" chapter vii. thursday, may , . despite the ingenuousness of her loyal nature, joan could no longer doubt the ill will or jealousy of the captains. they hypocritically invoked the sanctity of the feast of the ascension merely for the purpose of paralyzing her movements by calculated inertia. in this extremity she asked the advice of her mysterious "voices," and these were now more than ever the echo of her excellent judgment, of her patriotism and of her military genius. the mysterious "voices" answered: "these captains, like almost all the nobles who make of war a trade, are devoured with envy. their jealous hatred is irritated at you, poor child of the field, because your genius crushes them. they would prefer to see the english take possession of orleans rather than have the siege raised by your valor. they may perhaps not dare openly to refuse to second you, fearing to arouse the indignation of their own soldiers, above all of the bourgeois militiamen and of the people of orleans. but these captains will traitorously resist your plans until the day when the general exasperation will compel them to follow you with their bands of mercenaries. accordingly, you can rely for the accomplishment of your mission of liberation only upon yourself, and upon the councilmen and the town militia of orleans. these do not fight out of vainglory or as a trade; they fight in the defence of their hearths, their families, their town. these love and respect you. you are their redeeming angel. their confidence in you, increased by the victory of yesterday, is to-day boundless. lean boldly upon these loyal people; you will triumph over the envious and the enemy combined; and you will triumph with the aid of god." the advice, given to joan through the intermediary of her good saints, comforted her. furthermore she learned in the morning that the capture of the bastille of st. loup had an immense result. as that bastille commanded at once the roads to the sologne district and to berry, and the loire above orleans, it had rendered difficult the provisioning and reinforcing of the town. learning, however, of the destruction of the formidable redoubt, the surrounding peasants promptly began to pour into town with their products as on a market day. thanks to these fresh supplies, besides the convoy of the previous day, abundance succeeded scarcity, and the inhabitants glorified joan for the happy change of things. there was another precious result. numerous well armed bands, fanaticized by the accounts that they received of the maid, entered the town from the side of the sologne, and offered their help to march against the english with the urban militia. the heroine immediately realized that she had a powerful counterpoise to the ill will of the captains, and was not slow in putting it to use. accordingly, she ordered her equerry daulon to convoke the captains and councilmen for the hour of noon after high mass, at the house of master boucher, and she pressed upon her host to see that none of the magistrates be absent; the maid then requested madeleine to procure her a dress of one of the servants of the house and a hooded cloak, took off her male clothes, donned the attire of her sex, carefully wrapped herself so as to be discovered of none in the town, went to the banks of the loire, took a boat and ordered the boatman to cross the river and land at a good distance from the bastille of st. john-le-blanc situated on the opposite bank and face to face with the still smoldering debris of the bastille of st. loup. joan disembarked and proceeded, according to her custom, to examine the entrenchments that she contemplated assailing. not far from the bastille of st. john-le-blanc rose the augustinian convent, composed of massive buildings that were strongly fortified. beyond that, the bastille of the tournelles, a veritable citadel flanked with high wooden towers, spread its wings towards the beauce and touraine and faced the bridge of orleans that had long been cut off by the enemy. still another formidable redoubt, that of st. privé, situated to the left and not far from the tournelles completed the besieging works of the english to the south of the town. the martial maid proposed to carry the four formidable positions one after the other, after which the english would be compelled to abandon the other and less important bastilles which they had raised to the west, these being incapable of resistance after the destruction of the more important works. joan long and leisurely observed the approaches of these works and revolved her plan of attack. her woman's clothes aroused no suspicion with the english sentinels. after she had gathered full information with a quick and intelligent eye, she returned to her boat and re-entered the house of master boucher so well wrapped in her mantle that she actually escaped the observation of all eyes. she forthwith resumed her male attire to attend the high mass, where she again took the communion. the enthusiastic acclamations that broke out along her route to and from the church proved to her that she could count with the support of the people of orleans. she entered the house of master james boucher where the captains and councilmen were gathered. the council soon went into session, but joan was not summoned at the start. at this session there assisted the magistrates of the town as well as xaintrailles, dunois, marshals retz and st. sever, the sire of graville, ambroise of loré, lahire and other captains. the sire of gaucourt presided in his quality of royal captain.[ ] the recent victory of the maid, a victory in which several of the captains least hostile to her had played a secondary role, inspired them all with secret and bitter envy. they had expected to serve themselves with the young peasant girl as a passive instrument of their will, to utilize her influence to their own advantage and to issue their commands through her. it had turned out otherwise. forced, especially after the battle of the day before, to admit that joan excelled them all in the profession of war, irritated at the injury done to their military fame, and convinced that the military successes would be wholly placed to the credit of joan, the one time less hostile captains now went wholly though secretly over to her pronounced enemies, and the following plan of battle was unanimously adopted for the morrow: "a feint shall be made against the fortress of the tournelles in order to deceive the enemy and cause it to sally out of the redoubts that lie on the other side of the loire and hasten to bring help to the threatened position. the enemy will be readily duped. a few detachments shall continue skirmishing on the side of the tournelles. but the royal troops and the companies of mercenaries will move upon and easily capture the other bastilles where the english, in their hurry to hasten to the defence of an important post, will have left but feeble garrisons behind."[ ] this plan of battle, whether good or bad from the viewpoint of strategy, concealed an act of cowardly perfidy, an infamous, horrible snare spread for joan. speaking in the name of the councilmen, and answering the sire of gaucourt, who explained the plan that the captains had adopted, master james boucher observed that the maid should be summoned so as to submit to her the projects of the council. the sire of gaucourt hastened to object in the name of all the captains, on the ground that they were not sure the young girl would know how to keep so delicate a matter secret, and that, seeing the doubt existed, she should be informed only upon the plan of attack against the tournelles, but should not be apprised that the manoeuvre was only a feint, a ruse of war. accordingly, during a skirmish commanded by the maid in person, the bulk of the army was to carry out the real plan of battle, on which joan was to be kept in the dark.[ ] the infernal snare was skilfully planned. the captains relied upon the maid's intrepidity, certain that she would march without hesitation at the head of a small number of soldiers against the formidable tournelles, and they did not doubt that in such an assault, as murderous as it was unequal, she would be either killed or taken, while the captains, sallying from orleans at the opposite side and at the head of the bulk of the troops, would proceed against the other bastilles, that were expected to be found almost wholly deserted by the english, who would have hastened to the aid of the defenders of the tournelles. finally, joan having on the previous day taken an emphatic stand against the captains' opinion, and maintained that the raising of the siege of orleans depended almost wholly upon the capture of the tournelles, and that that important work should be forthwith attacked, it was expected she would imagine her views had been adopted by the council of war after mature reflection, and that, carried away by her courage, she was certain to march to her death. thus the plot concocted long before by the sire of la tremouille, gaucourt and the bishop of chartres was now to be put into execution. despite their mistrust of the captains, the councilmen failed to scent the trap laid for the maid. she was introduced, and gaucourt informed her of the decision of the council omitting, however, to say that the attack upon the tournelles was only to be a feint. gifted with rare good sense and sagacity, the maid had too many proofs of the constant opposition that until then all her plans had met from the captains not to be astonished at seeing them suddenly adopt a plan that they had so loudly condemned the day before. suspecting a snare, she listened silently to gaucourt while pensively pacing up and down the hall. when he ended she stopped walking, fixed her frank and beautiful eyes upon the traitor and said boldly: "seigneur gaucourt, do not hide from me anything of what has been decided. i have known and shall know how to keep other secrets than yours."[ ] these words, through which the maid's mistrust of the captains plainly peeped, confused them. they looked at each other dumbfounded and uneasy. dunois, the least depraved of all, felt the pangs of remorse and could not decide to remain an accomplice in the execrable scheme of betrayal. still, not wholly daring to uncover it, he answered: "joan, do not get angry. you can not be told everything at once. you have been made acquainted with the first part of our plan of battle. i must now add that the attack upon the tournelles is to be a feint, and while the english come to the help of their fellows and cross the loire, we shall attack in good earnest their bastilles over in the sologne, which they will have left almost empty of defenders." despite the belated explanation, the heroine no longer doubted the perfidy of the captains. she nevertheless concealed her indignation, and with the full power of her military superiority she declared to them point blank and with her rustic frankness that the council's plan of battle was detestable--worse yet, shameful. did not the plan resolve itself into a ruse of war that was not merely cowardly, but fatal in its consequences? was it not necessary, by keeping the soldiers continually on their mettle by daring, if need be vast exploits, to restore the confidence of the defenders of the town who had been so long beaten? was it not necessary to convince them that nothing could resist their daring? "now, then," the martial maid proceeded to argue, "granted that this pitiful feint succeeds, what a wretched victory! to march upon an enemy whom one knows is not there, and thanks to the excess of numbers crush a handful of men! to thus expose the vanquishers to a cowardly triumph, at a time when the hour has struck for heroic resolutions! a hundred times preferable would be a heroic defeat! and, finally, always granting the success of the ruse, what would have been destroyed? a few defenceless redoubts of no farther importance since the capture of the strong and large redoubt of st. loup, which alone cut off the town's communication with the sologne and berry. assuredly the plan is worthless, it is at all points bad and inopportune." after thus summarizing and disposing of the captains' plans, the maid continued: "on the contrary, we should not to-morrow _feign_, but really and boldly _attack_ the tournelles, by crossing the loire a little above st. john-le-blanc, the first redoubt to take, then marching against the fortified convent of the augustinians, and finally upon the tournelles. these positions being taken, the english, no longer in condition to keep themselves a single day longer in the other bastilles, will find themselves forced to raise the siege." this, joan declared, was her plan of battle, and nothing in the world could turn her from her resolution, her "voices" having inspired her by order of god. she was accordingly determined, she declared, in case the captains opposed her project, to carry it to a successful finish despite them, demanding only the aid of the councilmen and the militia of the good town of orleans, whom the lord would take under his protection, because they would indeed be defending the town, france and the king against the english. finally she would on that very day order the militia to stand ready for the next day at dawn, and, followed or not by the captains and their bands, she would march straight upon the enemy. laid down in a firm voice and fully approved by the councilmen, joan's project aroused the most violent objections on the part of the captains; they declared it to be as hazardous as impracticable. the sire of gaucourt summed up the views of his accomplices, crying with scornful haughtiness: "the council of captains having taken a decision, it will be upheld, and they will oppose _with force_, if necessary, any attempt on the part of the soldiers of orleans to make an attack on the morrow.[ ] such is the council's will." "_your_ council has decided, say you?" replied joan with serene assurance; "_my_ council has also decided--it is god's. i shall obey him despite you!"[ ] saying this, the maid left the room, wounded to the quick by the obvious perfidy of the captains. firmly resolved to put an end to so many fatal delays, and in accord with the councilmen to demand the safety of their town only from the bravery of her own citizens if need be, joan immediately turned her attention to the preparations for the morrow's attack, and commissioned the councilmen to gather a large number of barges for the transport of the soldiers, at whose head she was to attack the english at early dawn from the side of the tournelles. chapter viii. friday, may , . early in the morning the sire of gaucourt, with a squad of soldiers and mercenaries, took possession of the bourgogne gate, through which joan had to pass to reach the river bank and effect the embarkation of the troops. gaucourt ordered the soldiers, whom he planted under the arch, to allow none to leave the town, and to use their arms against anyone who tried to violate their orders. stepping back a few paces, wrapping himself closely in his cloak, and listening from time to time for what was happening in town, the traitor waited. dawn soon appeared; its early glimmer lighted the horizon and set off the outlines of the crenelated bourgogne gate. a distant noise presently attracted the attention of gaucourt; it increased and drew near; and soon he distinguished the muffled tread of many feet and the rattling of arms. he then repeated his orders to his soldiers and withdrew into the shadow of the vault that united the two towers at this entrance to the town. a few minutes later a compact column, marching in good order and composed of the urban militia and surrounding peasants, who had entered orleans after the capture of the bastille of st. loup, turned into the street that led to the bourgogne gate. master john and about twelve other citizen cannoniers marched in the front ranks, dragging a cart on which were two portable culverins, christened by master john "jeannette" and "jeanneton" in honor of his countrywoman; another cart, also hand-drawn, contained the munitions for the two pieces of artillery. the martial maid rode at the head of the column, escorted by several armed councilmen who had previously taken part in the defence of the town. one of these, intending to hasten the egress of the troops, quickened his horse's pace, and advanced toward the gate to have it opened. a sergeant in his cups seized the bridle of the councilman's horse and cried roughly: "there is no passage here. it is forbidden to leave the town! such are our orders!" "the town gates are opened or closed by orders of the councilmen. i am a councilman. you must obey." "i have my orders," replied the mercenary drawing his sword; "back, or i cut you to pieces!" "you miserable drunken fellow! do you dare to threaten a magistrate!" "i only know my captain, and since you are trying to pass despite my orders, here is for you!" saying which he made a thrust at the councilman. the sword glided over the magistrate's armor, and the soldier cried out: "this way, my men!" about twenty soldiers rushed to the spot from under the gate. the squad of drunken men had surrounded and were hooting at and threatening the magistrate when joan, her equerry daulon, her page, and the other councilmen who, together with her, formed the head of the column, reached the scene of the wrangle. at the same moment the sire of gaucourt appeared. he was in a towering rage, made a sign to his soldiers to draw back, and himself stepped towards the heroine whom he insolently addressed: "joan, the council of war pronounced itself yesterday against your proposed plan for to-day. you shall not leave the town--"[ ] "you are a bad man!" cried the maid indignantly. "i shall pass whether you will it or not. the men of orleans will follow me--and we shall vanquish the english again as we have done before."[ ] the maid's defiant answer to the impudent and imprudent words of the royal captain were heard by master john and his cannoniers, and were repeated down the column from rank to rank of the militiamen, producing such exasperation against gaucourt that from all parts the furious cries were heard: "death to the traitor! cut the captain to pieces!" "he dares to oppose the maid's passage!" "death to the traitor! death to his soldiers! they are worse than the english!" in the midst of these cries, master john and his cannoniers, together with a mass of armed citizens, fell upon gaucourt and his mercenaries and drubbed them soundly with the handles of their pikes; not content with having almost killed the captain and his band, the more enraged of the militiamen insisted upon hanging them. with much difficulty, joan and the councilmen obtained mercy for gaucourt and his crew. on a later occasion he admitted that he had never before been as near death as on that day. the bourgogne gate was opened, and the troops proceeded on their march towards the river whose waters began to glisten in the rays of the rising sun. joan had several times the day before insisted with the councilmen to see that about twenty barges, capable of containing each from fifty to sixty men be safely moored and ready at daybreak for the embarkation of the troops. never forgetful of any precautionary measure, fifty soldiers were to remain on guard during the night on board of the flotilla in order to defend it, if need be, against a "coup de main" of the english. the councilmen themselves superintended the execution of the maid's orders. nevertheless, seeing that her mistrust of the captains gained ground, especially after her last experience with gaucourt, joan wished to make sure that her transports were ready. she put the spurs to her horse and took the lead of the column toward the river bank which a high hill intercepted from her sight. what was the martial maid's stupor at the sight before her! only five or six barges and a few boats lay ready. she rode her horse almost to the saddle into the loire to question an old skipper who sat aft on one of the lighters. from him she learned that towards midnight a captain had requisitioned most of the lighters for the royal army. the wind being favorable, the captain said he had orders to ascend the loire with the flotilla as far as blois in order to take reinforcements. several master skippers, the one who spoke to joan among them, had answered that they would not budge from their anchorage without counter-orders from the councilmen; but the captain threatened the skippers with bodily injury if they refused to obey. the majority yielded to the intimidation in the belief that the purpose was really to bring reinforcements from blois, and spread their sails to the wind. there only remained six barges and a few boats. this new machination of the captains wounded the maid's heart without, however, abating her courage, or disturbing her presence of mind. with the number of barges that she had counted upon, her troops were to be landed in two or three trips; it would now require eight or ten. precious time would thus be lost. observing the movement from the tops of their redoubts, and taking cognizance of the small number of barges at her disposal, the english might attempt a sally and repel the descent upon them by hastening to the opposite river bank before all the troops had time to form in line of battle. joan appreciated the extreme peril of the situation; but so far from being discouraged thereby, only felt that a stronger demand was made upon her audacity, calmness and foresight. full of faith in her mission, she repeated her favorite saying--_help yourself and heaven will help you!_ the sun was rising behind the wooded banks of the loire and the curtain of poplars that shaded its shore when the first ranks of the militia arrived upon the scene. their disappointment was profound at the sight of the small number of barges that awaited them. but leaving them no time to reflect, joan said: "let the bravest follow me! the others will come after!" a race ensued as to who was to be the first upon the barges so as to be considered the bravest by the heroine. she left her horse with a valet, and threw herself into one of the boats accompanied only by her equerry, her page and an oarsman; she had herself rowed several times around the barges to see that they were not overloaded. the militiamen vied with one another to be ranked among the most intrepid. the barges being finally full, their sails were spread, and the wind being favorable, blowing in the direction of the left bank, they moved swiftly, preceded by several boats in which were the councilmen, master john and several of his cannoniers, the rest of whom were on board the barges with the two culverins jeannette and jeanneton. the first of the vanguard boats carried joan cased in her white armor that now glistened in the sun. standing erect and motionless in the prow of the light skiff, and leaning on the staff of her standard that fluttered in the morning breeze, the outlines of the martial maid stood off against the azure sky like the country's protecting angel. hardly had the boat reached the opposite bank when joan leaped ashore and drew up her men in order of battle as fast as they disembarked. master john and his cannoniers landed the two culverins from the barges, and these then returned and returned again bringing over the rest of the army from the right bank of the loire. the work of transportation consumed over an hour, an hour of indescribable impatience and anxiety to the heroine. she feared at every moment to see the english issue from their entrenchments to rush at the small number that she at first landed with. but her fears were idle. the heroic capture of the bastille of st. loup, that two days before had fallen into the hands of the french, spread consternation among the ranks of the english. imputing her prowess to witchcraft, they dared not assail her in the open, and tremblingly awaited her under shelter of their own works. this evidence of timidity augured well for the happy issue of joan's undertaking, nor was she slow to perceive and draw courage from it. when the last phalanx was successfully landed, joan, now at the head of two thousand militiamen and peasants, marched straight upon the bastille of st. john-le-blanc, that was similarly fortified to the bastille of st. loup. to the end of protecting the descent of the assailants in the enclosing moat, master john planted jeannette and jeanneton on the outer edge of the embankment and trained their muzzles at the parapet of the redoubt, whose own cannon and other engines began to pour their projectiles upon the french. thanks, however, to the cannonier's marksmanship most of the english engines were speedily silenced. the assault was accordingly less murderous to the assailants. the maid and her troop speedily crossed the moat, leaving a large number of their own dead and wounded behind; they rushed up and climbed the opposite escarpment, arrived at the palisade and forced it; and in an incredibly short time the white standard was seen floating from the boulevard of the entrenchment. the resistance of the english was at first desperate, but speedily yielding to a panic, they fled pell mell, crossed the loire at a ford and retreated in utter disorder to the little neighboring island of st. aignan. this rough and bloody attack consumed only two hours. without allowing her men a moment's rest, joan ordered the barracks of the bastille to be set on fire, to the end of utterly ruining the works, and also signaling her new victory to the good people of orleans. a short respite was taken, and the combatants, exalted and exhilarated with their triumph, followed the martial maid to the attack of the augustinian convent, still more strongly entrenched. this position had to be first carried, in order to undertake the siege of the tournelles, itself a veritable fortress raised at the entrance of the town bridge. thanks to the protection that her friends deemed divine, joan had not until then been wounded, although ever at the head of her forces. but to offset this, her losses were serious. despite the considerable reduction of her forces, she turned her back upon the burning redoubt of st. john-le-blanc and marched to the attack of the augustinians, which was defended by a garrison of over two thousand men, reinforced by about a thousand more from the tournelles. thanks to this reinforcement, instead of awaiting the enemy under shelter of the fortifications of the convent, the english decided to risk a decisive stroke and deliver battle in the open field, reliant upon the advantage of their own numbers and upon the aid afforded by the redoubt of st. privé, whose garrison sallied forth to take the french in the rear. joan had about fourteen hundred men under her command; before her stood over three thousand, and her right flank was threatened by another considerable force. at the sight of the numerical superiority of the enemy, who advanced in a compact mass, cased in iron, with the red standard of st. george floating in the air, the martial maid collected herself, crossed her arms over her cuirassed bosom, and raised her inspired eyes to heaven. suddenly she believed she heard the mysterious voice of her two good saints murmuring in her ear: "march, daughter of god! attack the enemy boldly! whatever their numbers, you shall vanquish!" for the first time the maid drew her sword, used it to point at the foe, turned towards her own troops and cried in tones that stirred their bosoms: "be brave! forward! god is with us!" the words, accompanied with a heroic gesture, the sublime expression of her beautiful countenance, all contributed to drag the soldiers at her heels. the hearts of all burned with the fires of intensest patriotism. her men were no longer themselves; they were she! the wills of all seemed concentrated in one single will! the souls of all were merged into one! at that supreme moment the militiamen attained that superb contempt for death that transported our ancestors the gauls when, half naked, they rushed upon the iron-cased and serried ranks of the roman legions, throwing these into a panic and breaking through them by the very force of their foolhardiness. thus it was with the intrepid attack of the gallic virgin on this day. so far from yielding to numbers, as the english had hoped she would, she fell upon them at the head of her troop. stupefied, terrified by such audacity, the english ranks wavered and opened despite all the orders, threats, imprecations and desperate efforts to the contrary by their captains. a large breach was opened in the center of the enemy's line. their success added fuel to the exaltation of the men of orleans, and raised them to a delirium of heroism. they made havoc with their swords, pikes and maces among the english ranks. the breach widened amid floods of blood. the white standard of the maid advanced--the red standard of st. george retreated. the arms of the english soldiers seemed paralyzed and struck but uncertain blows. only a few of the french were wounded or killed; on the side of the english, however, the blood ran in torrents. suffolk, who conducted himself gallantly, cried out, showing to his bewildered and panic stricken men his own sword dyed red: "look at this blood, you miserable cowards! do you still deem these varlets to be invulnerable? will you allow yourselves to be vanquished by a female cowherd? if she be a witch, let us capture her, by god, and burn her--the charm will end! but to capture her you must fight or die like soldiers of old england!" this energetic language, the example of their chiefs, the impression, slowly asserting itself, of the vast numerical inferiority of the french, and the bray of the trumpets of the garrison of st. privé that was hastening to the rescue, gradually revived the courage of the english. shame and rage at their threatened defeat presently changed their panic into a furious exaltation. they closed ranks and took the offensive. despite all the prodigies of valor on the part of their adversaries, they, in turn, now forced them to retreat in disorder. in the midst of the maddening struggle joan would certainly have been killed but for the devotion of master john and some twenty other determined men. with their bodies they made a rampart around her, determined to preserve her life that was so dear to them all. the ground was defended inch by inch. every moment the handful of men grew thinner. ten of them, fighting to her left, were scattered and crushed by the opposing numbers. during the movement of retreat joan was driven despite herself towards the loire, and already a few distracted men were heard crying: "to the barges! save himself who can! to the barges! the battle is lost!" the triumphant english pursued the maid with jeers and their accustomed insults. they pushed forward, crying: "strumpet!" "cowherd!" "thief!" "we shall now capture and burn you, witch!" the panic had now completely seized the ranks of the french. they no longer fought but fled wildly towards the loire. in vain did the maid seek to rally them. suddenly and obedient to an inspiration of her genius, instead of resisting the current that was carrying her away, she outran it and overtook the swiftest fleers, waving her standard. these followed and rallied around her and thus naturally and perforce order was gradually restored. during this move, the jeers, imprecations and insults of the english, hurled at the maid, redoubled in volume, especially when they saw the skippers, witnessing the french defeat, share the general panic, raise the sails of their barges, the only means of retreat for the french, and push off from the shore out of fear of being boarded by the vanquishers. the latter, now certain of the success of the day, even disdained to hasten the rout of the fleeing french, who, crowded against the loire, were sure to be drowned or taken--joan first of all. the bulk of the english troops halted to shout three cheers of triumph, a few companies advanced unsupported and with mocking slowness to make the assured capture. "come, now, joan! come!" cried the english captains from a distance. "come now, strumpet, surrender! you shall be burned! that's your fate!" the presumptuous confidence of the enemy afforded the heroine the necessary time to re-form her lines. "prisoners or drowned!" she said to them, pointing to the receding barges. "one more effort--and by the order of god we shall vanquish, as we have vanquished twice before! let us first attack this english vanguard that boasts to have us in its clutches! be brave! forward!" and turning about she rushed upon the enemy. "be brave! forward! forward!" repeated master john and the most determined townsmen of orleans, following the maid. "be brave! forward!" echoed all the others. "let us exterminate the english!" the scene that ensued was no longer one of courage, or of heroism; it was a superhuman frenzy that transported the handful of french and added tenfold strength to their arms. the enemy's companies, that had been detached from the main body and sent forward to make a capture deemed unquestionable, were stupefied at the offensive move, and unable to resist the superhuman shock of despair and patriotism. driven in disorder, the sword in their flanks, towards the main body, they overthrew its front ranks and spread disorder and confusion in the english army. the superstitious fears of the english, fears that they had once before succumbed to, now gained new empire over them that seemed justified by the unheard-of audacity of a body of men, once in full flight, suddenly returning to the attack with intrepidity. the front ranks of the english being broken through, the general panic spread all the quicker seeing that, in sharing it, those who stood away from the center of action were wholly in the dark as to the cause of the sudden rout. the english soldiers struck at and trampled one another; the orders of their captains were lost in the frightful tumult; their efforts were powerless to conjure away the defeat. the cry of the first soldiers to flee: "the witch has let loose her fiends upon us!" was carried from mouth to mouth. finally, and as if to overfill the measure, the english of the bastille of st. privé, upon arriving to the aid of their fellows, saw the barges, that had shortly left the near shore, now returning from the opposite side filled with fresh french soldiers. the french captains had been compelled by the exasperation of the inhabitants of orleans to decide to co-operate with the maid,[ ] and they had marched out and reached the river bank just as the barges arrived on that side. at the sight of the re-inforcements, the corps from st. privé hastened back to its own encampment, while the rest of the panic-stricken english ran to their respective bastilles for shelter behind the entrenchments of the redoubts of the augustinians and the tournelles. when the fresh french contingent brought by marshal st. sever and other captains disembarked, the martial maid was preparing to attack the convent of the augustinians, determined not to allow the enemy time to recover from their panic. now supported by the reinforcements, joan threw herself upon the convent, but at the moment when, in the lead of all she set foot upon a narrow passage leading to the palisade that she was to attack, she uttered a piercing cry. the teeth of a man trap had closed above her ankle; it penetrated her jambards and her skin and even reached the bone. it was an english "ruse of war," into which the maid had put her foot.[ ] the pain was so keen that joan, exhausted from the fatigues of the day, fainted away, and fell in the arms of her equerry daulon. when she recovered consciousness, the day was nearing its end; the bastille of the augustinians had been carried and its defenders were either dead or prisoners. the heroine had been transported to the lodgings of one of the english captains who had been killed in the combat. when joan returned to consciousness, her equerry wished to remove the armor from her wounded limb and bathe the wound, but blushing at the exposure of even her foot to the surrounding soldiers, joan obstinately refused all attention, and bestowed all her thought to the best use to be made of the capture of the augustinian convent. she forbade that it be set on fire, and ordered it to be held during the night by a strong garrison, that should lead the next day in a determined attack upon the tournelles. after issuing these and other necessary orders with remarkable military sagacity, the warrior maid had herself conveyed to orleans in a boat, feeling unable to walk by reason of the pain of her wound. the augustinian convent rose almost on the river's edge. daulon, master john and a few other cannoniers carried joan to the river on a stretcher improvised out of the shafts of lances and placed her in a boat. her page and equerry accompanied her, and she was rowed over to orleans where she arrived at night. modestly desiring to escape observation in her transit through the town to the house of her host, especially seeing that all the windows in the houses were illuminated, joan asked daulon to spread her cloak over her on the stretcher. thus, although unseen of all, joan was the witness of the delirious joy inspired by her last triumph. the town was in gala, hope radiated from all countenances. in two days, the maid had destroyed or carried three of the most redoubtable fortifications of the english, and set free a large number of prisoners. more than eight hundred of these were found in the augustinian convent. by virtue of the confidence that she inspired, there was no doubt entertained on the success of the morrow's assault--the tournelles would be taken, and, agreeable to the promise she had made in the name of god, the enemy would raise the siege. concealed under the cloak that covered her, the maid was transported to the house of james boucher. informed of the victory by the wild cheers of the people, but full of anxiety for the heroine, his wife and daughter were at first thrown into terror seeing her carried on a stretcher. but the maid soon calmed them, promising that with their help she would soon be restored. assisted by the two she went up to her room, and there submitted to the tender nursing at which her modesty could take no offence. madeleine and her mother, like most women of the time, were versed in the tending of wounds. they applied oil, balm and lint to the heroine's hurt after removing her armor, which, much to their alarm, they saw was indented in more than twenty places with sabre blows and lance thrusts. a large number of contusions, discolored and painful, the results of so many strokes, fortunately deadened by her cuirass and arm protectors, marked the body of joan, who now only felt the reaction of her exertion during the warmly contested battle. she took a little nourishment, performed her evening devotions, thanked god and her saints for having sustained her during the bloody struggle, and implored their aid for the battle of the morrow. the warrior maid was about to compose herself for recuperative sleep, when master boucher requested admission to joan upon an important and urgent matter. she quickly threw one of madeleine's robes over herself in order to receive her host's visit and was struck by the signs of indignation and anger depicted on his face as he entered. his first words on entering were: "what impudence! i can hardly believe it possible! whom do you think i come from this minute, joan? the sire of gaucourt," and answering an interrogating gesture of the heroine, her host proceeded: "would you believe the man has forgotten the rude lesson of this morning? would you believe that at his instigation the captains, assembled this evening after supper, decided that--_in view of the small number of the mercenary troops in town, the council opposes a battle for the morrow, and declares that the people should be satisfied with the successes they have so far won ... and until the arrival of reinforcements no further measures shall be taken against the english_.[ ] i was commissioned to inform you of this decision on the spot and demand your submission--" "it is nothing short of treason!" broke in dame boucher, who although ignorant of arms, nevertheless perceived the baseness of the act. "what, remain locked up within our walls, on the eve of the last triumph that is to free our town!" "i spoke in that sense to the sire of gaucourt," replied james boucher, "and i consented to communicate to joan the decision of the captains, but declared at the same time that i was positive she would refuse to obey, and that in that case she should not lack the support of the councilmen and the good people of orleans." "you have answered, sir, as i myself would have answered," said the warrior maid with a smile of deep sorrow at this further evidence of the captains' perfidy. "be at ease. your brave militiamen occupy to-night the augustinian convent. i shall join them to-morrow at daybreak to lead them to the assault, and with god's help and their courage we shall carry the tournelles. as to the captains' ill will, i have a sovereign means to thwart it. it is for that reason that i requested you to have me escorted to-morrow to the sound of the town's trumpets. good night, sir; have faith and courage. the good town of orleans will be set free. god so orders it." james boucher withdrew, followed by his wife. madeleine alone remained with the warrior maid. the latter, before taking to her bed, and yielding to a vague presentiment, requested her companion, to whom she frankly avowed her utter ignorance of reading and writing, to write to her mother, isabelle darc, a letter that she proceeded to dictate--a simple, touching, respectful letter that revealed at every word her love for her family and the tender recollection of the happy days that she spent in domremy. in that missive joan did not forget even her village girl friend, nor the good old sexton who, to oblige her, when she was still little and loved so passionately to listen to the sound of the bells, purposely prolonged the morning chimes or the chimes of the angelus. this missive, that bore the stamp of serious, religious and tender sentiment, breathed a vague presentiment concerning her chances of safety at the murderous battle contemplated for the morrow. madeleine, who more than once, while writing the letter, had dried her tears, was struck by these apprehensions and asked her with a trembling voice: "oh, joan, do you apprehend misfortune to yourself?" "the will of god be done, dear madeleine. i do not know why, but it seems to me i shall be wounded to-morrow again.[ ] oh, i was right! it was a mistake to delay employing me so long. i am not to live long!" joan then relapsed into silence and presently added: "may god protect you, dear friend; i am going to sleep. i feel very tired and i must be on my feet to-morrow before dawn." chapter ix. saturday, may , . before daybreak joan re-armed herself with the help of madeleine. the wound in her foot pained her severely. although the distance was short from orleans to the convent of the augustinians she asked for her horse. after tenderly embracing her companion, madeleine helped her descend to the ground floor. there they found james boucher, his wife and a female friend named colette, the wife of the registrar millet. all three had risen early to bid the warrior maid godspeed. sadness overspread the faces of all at the thought of the fresh dangers that the heroine was about to brave, but the latter reassured her friends as well as she could, and pressed upon james boucher the necessity of causing it to be proclaimed throughout the city that, in order to insure a successful issue to the assault on the tournelles the fort should be attacked by the captains from the side of the bridge the instant that she began the attack from the side of the augustinian convent. thus pressed upon by popular clamor, the captains would be forced to recede from their treasonable decision of the previous evening. will they, nill they, they would co-operate with her. joan had just given these last instructions to her host, when a fisherman stopped at the door to offer for sale to dame boucher an enormous river shad that he had just caught in the loire. in order not to leave her hosts under a sad impression, joan said mirthfully to james boucher: "do buy this shad and keep it for this evening. i shall return by the orleans bridge after we have carried the tournelles and i shall bring an english prisoner along to help us finish up the fish."[ ] saying this joan mounted her horse and preceded by her page, her equerry and the town trumpeters, who at her orders blew the reveille and the call to arms, she crossed the whole city and rode towards the bourgogne gate where she was to be joined by master john the cannonier, the representative of the carpenters named champeaux, and the representative of the fishermen, named poitevin, both of them intelligent and resolute men. by traversing the town from one end to the other to the sound of trumpets, it was the maid's purpose to call the townsmen up and out, and to announce to them that she was about to start on the assault; and thus to compel the captains to choose between seconding her in a combat upon which the final deliverance of orleans depended, or else covering themselves with overwhelming shame and exposing themselves to be killed by an indignant people. upon arriving at the bourgogne gate joan found master john together with champeaux and poitevin. she ordered the former to gather all the necessary workmen and quickly construct a drop-bridge to be thrown over the arches where the english had cut the bridge for the purpose of isolating the tournelles from the boulevard of the town and thus turning the loire into a natural moat for their fortification. the communication being thus re-established it would enable the captains who remained in town to advance with their men to the very foot of the fortress and assail it. the placing of the bridge and the eruption of the soldiers from that side were to be announced by the town belfry. at that signal joan was to commence the assault from her side. the carpenter promised that all would be ready in two hours. the equerry daulon was sent by joan to inform the captains of her dispositions. nevertheless, preparing against the contingency of the captains' failing to comply, she ordered poitevin to fill two large barges with tarred and pitched fagots, and in case no attack was made by way of the improvised bridge, poitevin, assisted by some other intrepid skippers, was to drive the burning barges against the tournelles and fasten them there against the lower framework of the english fortress. the english were thus to be hemmed in between a conflagration and the lances and pikes of the french. obedient to the instructions he had received from joan the previous evening, master john carried during the night a large number of scaling ladders to the augustinian convent for the attack from that side; moreover, assisted by his two sturdy friends, champeaux and poitevin, and their workmen, he had established two pontoon bridges, one from the right bank of the loire to the small island of st. aignan, the second from that island to a path on the left bank of the river and almost opposite the ruins of the bastille of st. john-le-blanc. by opening this path to the foot soldiers, to the cavalry and to the artillery, the maid facilitated the passage of the troops and cannons of master john, both of which could thus be easily brought to bear upon the tournelles; if occasion should arise, the bridge alone offered a safe means of retreat. joan was about to step upon the pontoon bridge when she was joined by dunois and lahire. yielding to the point of honor, no less than to the public outcry of the townspeople, who were notified of the departure of joan to the assault, the two captains came at the head of their companies of troops to take part in the battle. commander gireme, marshal st. sever and other captains were, according to the maid's orders, to attack the tournelles from the side of the bridge. at a signal from the belfry the attack of the fortress was to commence upon both sides. followed by lahire and dunois, the heroine arrived before the augustinian convent. formed in battle line since early morning, the militiamen awaited impatiently the order to march upon the enemy. loud were the cheers with which they received the maid. while waiting for the signal for the general assault, she desired to inspect more closely the outer fortifications of the tournelles, and she approached the fortress which she found protected by a wide moat on the other side of which rose a palisaded embankment, and beyond and above that a rampart equipped with artillery and flanked with frame turrets. the works presented a formidable appearance. already the pieces of artillery of longest range were showering their projectiles at master john and his cannoniers, who were training their cannons against the rampart to the end of knocking a breach through for the assault. unconcerned at the bullets that at times buried themselves in the ground at the feet of her horse, the warrior maid attentively watched the work of master john, and with a visual precision that threw the old cannonier into confusion and wonder, she pointed out to him more correct positions for several of his pieces. master john recognized the justice of her opinion and followed her instructions. suddenly the peals of the belfry reached the ears of joan's troops. it was to be the signal for the general attack, but it turned out otherwise. instead of beginning the action from their side, the captains wasted time with false manoeuvres, and left joan to engage the english alone, in the hope that the latter, not being compelled to divide their forces as joan had counted that they would, might easily crush her. ignorant of this fresh act of treason on the part of the captains, the maid gave master john orders to open fire upon the ramparts in order to protect the descent of the troops into the moat. the cannons roared. at their sound, and unable to support the idea of remaining nailed to her horse instead of taking an active part in this decisive combat, the warrior maid, despite the smarting wound of the previous day, jumped to the ground, and soon forgot the stinging pain in the effervescence of the struggle. her standard in her hand, she marched to the assault. the english were commanded by their most illustrious captains--lord talbot, the earl of suffolk, gladescal and many more. violent at their recent defeats, these warriors were bent upon wiping out the stain on their arms. this supreme day would decide the fate of orleans, perchance also of the english domination of gaul. it was necessary for the english to restore by a brilliant victory the drooping courage of their troops. the captains gathered their best men, veterans of scores of battles, reminded them of their past victories, pricked their national pride, fired their military ardor, and succeeded once more in overcoming the terror that the maid filled them with. the french met with a furious and dogged resistance. three times they mounted to the assault, here through the breach, yonder by means of their scaling ladders. three times they were repelled and their ladders thrown down with all who were climbing them. a hailstorm of balls, bolts and arrows showered down upon the french. the bottom of the moat was covered with the dead and dying. the breach having been opened, master john hastened to join the maid and reached her side at the moment when she rushed at a ladder that her intrepid followers raised for the fourth time at the foot of one of the turrets. master john followed the maid. she had mounted several rungs when she was struck at the juncture of her gorget and cuirass by a "vireton," a long and sharp steel arrow, that was ejected with such force from a ballista that, piercing her armor, it entered near her right breast and partly issued under her shoulder.[ ] thrown back by the force of the projectile, the maid fell into the arms of the cannonier who followed close behind her, and who, with the aid of a few militiamen, carried her fainting beyond the moat. there they laid her on the grass near a tree that protected her from the enemy's fire. she felt, she said, as if she were dying, but still retaining her full presence of mind she deplored the slowness of the captains, who, not having attacked the tournelles from the side of the town, endangered by their treason an otherwise certain victory. informed of the wound received by joan, her equerry daulon hastened to her and realizing the seriousness of her condition informed her that in order to avoid being choked by the flowing blood, her cuirass had to be instantly unfastened and the dart extracted. at these words, joan's pale face turned purple. her modesty revolted at the thought of exposing her shoulder and bosom to the eyes of the men who surrounded her; and so painful was the thought that her tears--touching tears, not drawn by the physical pain that she was suffering from, welled up to her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.[ ] master john, who also had considerable experience in wounds, confirmed the equerry's opinion--to allow the dart to remain longer in the wound was to expose the heroine's precious life. indeed, feeling more and more suffocated, joan believed her last hour had struck, still she did not wish as yet to die. her mission was not yet fulfilled. she invoked her saints, gathered strength from the mental prayer and mustered up the necessary resolution to submit to a necessity that cruelly wounded her modesty. before, however, allowing her wound to be attended, joan ordered the assault to be suspended in order to give the troops some rest. she ordered dunois, who ran to her, together with lahire and xaintrailles, to send one of their orderlies into orleans on the spot, in order to ascertain the cause of the fatal inaction of the other chiefs, and to enjoin them to commence the attack from the side of the town within an hour, or else to order the barges with combustibles to be set on fire and pushed against the tournelles. again the belfry was to give the signal for a general attack. the trumpets sounded a retreat amidst the triumphant cheers of the english, who were intoxicated with their first triumph. thanks, however, to the exaltation that the heroine had produced in her soldiers, they clamored to be allowed to return to the assault. a cordon of sentinels, placed at a little distance from the tree at whose base joan had been laid, kept back the alarmed, trembling and desolate crowd of soldiers. blushing with confusion, the warrior maid allowed her equerry to unfasten her cuirass, and with a steady hand herself extracted the dart from her breast, emitting, however, in doing so, a piercing cry of pain. dunois and the other captains wished to have her transported to orleans, where, said they, she would receive the best of care, and they proposed to adjourn the battle for the next day. joan opposed both propositions, and maintained that, even then, if the captains would support her from the side of orleans, success was certain. "let our people take some food," she said to dunois; "we shall return to the assault; the tournelles will be ours!"[ ] once the dart was extracted from the wound, the warrior maid allowed herself to be tended. the mental tortures that she underwent at the moment by far exceeded her physical pain. when, her cuirass and padded jacket having been taken off, she felt her linen shirt, wet with blood and the sole cover on her shoulder and breast, respectfully removed by her equerry, a shudder ran through joan's body and she involuntarily closed her eyes. she seemed to wish to close her eyes to the looks that she feared might be cast at her. but so sacred was the nation's virgin to all the troops that not even the shadow of an improper thought stained the purity of the pious offices of any of the men who saw the beautiful warrior maid thus semi-nude.[ ] like all other professional equerries, daulon was expert in surgery. he carried about him, in a leather case suspended from his shoulder, lint, bandages and a bottle of balm. with these he tended the wound which he pronounced so serious that he considered it highly imprudent for joan to return to the combat. but on that point she remained inflexible. so great was the relief she speedily experienced, that she said she hardly felt the wound. tightly laced, her armor would keep the bandage in position. all she wanted was a few mouthfuls of water to slake her burning thirst. master john ran to a nearby streamlet, filled up full a pouch that was half full of wine and returned with it to the maid. she drank and felt better, rose, put on her armor and took a few steps to test her strength. her celestial face, grown pale with the loss of blood, speedily recovered its serene and resolute expression. she requested those near her to step aside for a moment, whereupon she knelt down near the old oak tree, joined her hands, prayed, thanked her good saints for having delivered her from a mortal danger, and besought them further to sustain and protect her. immediately she heard the mysterious voices murmur in her ear: "go, daughter of god. courage! combat with your wonted audacity. heaven will give you victory. by you gaul will be delivered." inspired anew the heroine rose, put on her casque, seized her banner that had been placed against the tree, and cried out aloud: "now, to the assault! ours will the tournelles be, by the order of god! to arms! be brave! forward, victory to gaul!"[ ] the cry was repeated from mouth to mouth with a tremor of impatient bravery. the quick peals from the belfry rent the air. the detonations of the artillery resounded from the side of the town, announcing the execution of the maid's orders, however tardy. the tournelles was assailed by the captains from the bridge at the moment when the maid marched to the attack of the fortress in front. the happy plan redoubled the already exalted ardor of the assailants under the maid. led by her they resumed the assault with irresistible impetus. after a stubborn and bloody struggle that lasted until night the tournelles was carried. as on the previous day, the sinking rays of the sun cast the gleam of their ruddy aureola upon the folds of joan darc's standard, planted by herself upon the battlements of the fortress. the enemy was vanquished again. gladescal, who had so outrageously insulted joan, was killed during the combat, as also the seigneurs of moulin and pommiers and the bailiff of trente, together with a great number of english noblemen. almost all their men who were not killed were made prisoners, the rest were either burned or drowned in the attempt to flee when the assailants were upon them. they sought to escape by the improvised bridge under which poitevin let his burning barges float. the bridge took fire and broke under the feet of the fleeing soldiers who thus perished either in the flames or the river. as joan had calculated, the garrisons of the other bastilles, to the number of from eight to ten thousand men, decamped in haste during the very first night that followed the capture of the tournelles. they left in terror and consternation. at break of the next day, the warrior maid mounted her horse, assembled the town militiamen and a few companies of the captains' troops and marched out to offer battle to the english whom they supposed to be still there. but these were gone, they were beating a precipitate retreat towards meung and beaugency, fortified places held by the english. on that day, sunday, may , , joan re-entered orleans at the head of the troops, and attended noon mass at the church of st. croix in the midst of an immense concourse of people, delirious with joy and gratitude to the warrior maid--the redeeming angel of orleans. such was the "week of joan darc." in eight days and with three battles she caused the raising of the siege that had lasted nearly a year. the deed achieved by the peasant girl of domremy dealt a mortal blow to the rule of england in gaul. but not yet was joan's secret martyrdom at an end; it increased from day to day with her glory. charles vii, that poltroon and ingrate prince, unnerved and plunged in ignoble effeminacy, was yet to cause the shepherdess of domremy to undergo all the tortures and all the disappointments that a soul inflamed with patriotism can not choose but undergo when it has devoted itself to a prince whose baseness is equal to his selfishness and cowardice. chapter x. the king crowned. immediately upon the raising of the siege of orleans, joan hastened to the castle of loches. the fame of her triumphs ran ahead heralding her approach. the gates of the palace flew open before her. she was told the king was closeted in his private cabinet with his council. thither joan walked resolutely, knocked at the door and intrepidly addressed charles vii: "sire, pray do not hold such long conferences with these seigneurs. the siege of orleans is raised. the good town is now restored to you. you must now march boldly to rheims and be consecrated. the consecration will crown you king of france in the eyes of the french. the english will then be impotent against you." the sound sense and political acumen of joan traced to charles vii in these few words the only path that wisdom dictated. his consecration at rheims, a divine attestation of his contested rights, would impart in the eyes of the ignorant and credulous mass a powerful prestige to a royalty thus reconstituted, rehabilitated, rejuvenated and breaking forth in renewed splendor. the step was moreover a bold challenge flung at the english, whose king claimed also to be king of france, and the challenge had the proper threatening ring coming swiftly upon the victory of orleans. but joan had counted without the pusillanimity of a prince who doted on his idleness, who was jealous of his pleasures, who hated the bare thought of physical exertion, and who considered only his personal comfort. in order to be consecrated at rheims he would have to mount on horseback and place himself at the head of the army. it would be necessary to confront considerable danger seeing that from orleans to rheims the whole country still was in the hands of the english. "go to rheims! why, the project is insane, criminal!" cried la tremouille and the bishop of chartres. "does it not endanger the life, at least the health of the king?" and the sorry king joined his council: "i, risk myself out of my castles of loches and chinon! and do so when the english still are in possession of meung, beaugency, jargeau and other strongholds on the frontier of touraine! why, at the first step that i take out of my retreat they will gobble me up!" and to himself he cursed his luck and wished the possessed maid to the devil, seeing her more interested than himself in the honor of the crown. disappointed and grieved joan hardly repressed her indignation. the brave maid answered that if charles's departure for rheims only depended upon the capture of the strongholds held in touraine by the english, she would capture these fortresses and drive the enemy so far, so very far that they could not then inspire the king with the slightest fear.[ ] she then appointed gien for their rendezvous, implored the king to meet her there in a week, and promised him that he would then be able to undertake the journey to rheims without danger. the maid forthwith left the court and rejoined the army. on the th of june, , joan took the fortified town of meung; on the th of the same month she captured jargeau, and the next day beaugency. in all these assaults the maid displayed the same bravery, the same military genius that distinguished her at the siege of orleans. at the capture of jargeau she came near being killed. this second series of triumphs was crowned by the battle of patay, where all the english forces were assembled under the command of warwick and their most illustrious captains, most of whom were taken prisoner. at this bloody and hotly contested battle joan showed herself the peer of the most famous captains by the boldness of her manoeuvres, the quickness of her eye, the use that she put the artillery to, by the enthusiasm that she knew how to fire her soldiers with, and by her imperturbable good nature. just before the battle she said to the duke of alençon with a cheerfulness and terseness worthy of the best passages of antiquity: "gallant sir, are your spurs good?" "what?" asked the duke in surprise. "spurs? to flee?" "no, sir--to pursue!" was the answer.[ ] indeed, after their defeat, the enemy was pursued at the point of the lance for over three leagues. but these victories were won by the warrior maid not over the english merely, they were won also over the ill will of most of the french captains, whose envy of her increased in the same measure as her triumph. accordingly she no longer doubted their secret animosity, and a vague presentiment told her she would be eventually betrayed by them to the enemy. the foreboding did not affect her conduct. long before had she made a sacrifice of her life. considering that these last triumphs must have finally put an end to charles's hesitancy, joan returned to him, and said: "sire, meung, beaugency, jargeau have all been carried by assault, is that enough? the english have been defeated in pitched battle at patay, is that enough? talbot, warwick, suffolk, are either captured or forced to flee, is that enough? would you still hesitate to follow me to rheims and be consecrated king by the command of god?" the royal coward did not now hesitate, he declined point blank. the english had been driven out of touraine, but still they held the provinces that had to be crossed in order to reach rheims. joan was unable to overcome her disgust. no longer expecting anything from the coward, she was of a mind to give him up to his fate. in despair she took off her armor, left the court, and communicating her designs to none, she took to the woods where she wandered the whole day intending to return to domremy. towards evening, and noticing that she had lost her way, she asked for hospitality at a poor peasant house of touraine.[ ] unarmed and in her male attire, joan looked like a young page. she was received as such by the good people who gladly gave her shelter, treated her at their best and made room for her at their hearth. joan sat down. the peaceful aspect of the rustic home recalled to her mind the happy days of her childhood spent in domremy. the sweet recollections of the paternal home drew involuntary tears. struck by her sadness, her hosts questioned her with timid and respectful interest. "how can you cry in such happy days as these," they asked naïvely, "in these days of the deliverance of gaul? they are happy days, especially for us peasants! for us who are now at last delivered from the english by the grace of the lord and the bravery of joan the maid, our redeeming angel!" in the enthusiasm of their gratitude, the peasant hosts showed the tenderly touched warrior maid a bit of parchment fastened to the wall above the hearth. on the parchment the name of "joan" was inscribed, surmounted with a cross. in default of the image of their beloved liberatrix, these poor people had inscribed her name and thus gave token of the sincere reverence that they rendered the heroine. the questions were innumerable that they plied their young guest with regarding joan. perhaps he had seen her, seen that holy maid, the new our lady of the peasants who had suffered so grievously at the hands of the english before she drove them away. the questions were tantamount to a choir of benedictions mixed with passionate adoration of the maid. more and more touched by these words, joan began to reproach herself severely for her momentary weakness. to abandon charles vii to his fate was to abandon france; it was above all to expose these poor peasants, the humble and industrious race of which she was herself born, to fall back under the yoke of the stranger; it was to re-deliver the poor wretches to all the horrors of a war which it was her mission to put an end to. these thoughts re-invigorated her; they inspired her with the resolve to struggle onward for the accomplishment of her projects, to struggle doggedly even against the king, against his councilors, against the captains who pursued her with their hatred and whom she perhaps stood in greater fear of than of the english. the latter fought in arms in the open; the former labored in the dark, and plotted treason. absorbed in these meditations, joan threw herself upon a bed of fresh cut grass, the only couch that her hosts could offer her. she invoked the support and the advice of her saints, and their dear voices speedily whispered in her ear: "go, daughter of god; no weakness; fulfil your mission; heaven will not forsake you!" early the next morning, the heroine left her hosts, who remained in ignorance that their humble roof had sheltered the country's savior. resolved to conceal from the king the contempt she entertained for him and to see in him only an instrument for the welfare of gaul, joan returned to court. the maid's disappearance had caused alarm, alarm among those whose every wish was for the termination of the english domination. joan's project--the king's consecration at rheims--spread abroad by the councilors in the hope of giving the widest publicity to its absurdity, met, on the contrary, with a large number of supporters, all of whom were impressed with the political grandeur and the audacity, withal, of the idea. the maid's return was looked upon as providential, and so powerful did the popular outcry wax that the craven monarch finally resigned himself to the idea of departing at the head of his troops that were constantly swelling in numbers, thanks to the fame of the maid. the march to rheims was decided on and undertaken. the journey to the royal town displayed the genius of the heroine from a side not before dreamed of. matchlessly energetic and intrepid in her desperate combats with the foreign enemy of gaul, she now showed herself endowed with an inexpressible power of persuasion. she undertook and succeeded in inducing the towns of the english or burgundian party to become french again and to open their gates to charles vii, from whom she had obtained, not without much trouble, a written promise of absolute amnesty for the dissidents. without drawing her sword, joan reconquered for the king all the fortified places on the route to rheims. the heroine found in her soul, in her aversion to civil war, in her patriotism, such treasures of naïve eloquence that, coupled with her fame, her words penetrated the spirits of all, unarmed all hands, and won over all hearts to the cause of the miserable prince whom she protected, whom she covered with the splendor of her own plebeian glory, and whom she caused the people to love by speaking in his name. upon the arrival of the royal army before a fortified town, joan would approach the barriers alone, her standard in her hand. she swore to god she did not wish to shed french blood; she besought and implored those who heard her to renounce the english domination that was so disgraceful and so fatal to the country, to recognize the sovereignty of charles vii, if not out of loyalty to him at least out of hatred for the foreigner, out of love for the motherland that for so many years had bled and been dishonored by an atrocious yoke. the heroine's beauty, her emotion, her sweet and vibrant voice, the immense stir made by her victories, the irresistible charm of the virginal and martial being, all combined to operate prodigies. the old gallic blood, cold for so long a time, boiled again in the veins of even the least valorous at the cry of national deliverance uttered by the maid of seventeen, whose sword was fleshed in the victory of so many battles. the barriers of the towns fell down at her voice. amazed and above all delighted at not having to incur danger, the royal coward made his triumphant entry into the good towns that acclaimed the maid. one day, however, he had a great fright. a strong english garrison occupied the town of troyes, whose councilmen were bitter partisans of burgundy. the gates were barricaded, the ramparts manned, and the cannons opened fire upon the royal vanguard. charles already spoke of plying his spurs, but was with difficulty restrained by joan, who advanced unescorted towards the barrier and requested a parley with the councilmen. the english captains answered her with insults accompanied with a shower of missiles. the soldier who bore the heroine's banner was killed at her side. a few townsmen of troyes belonging to the french party, who happened to be on the ramparts and heard joan's request for a parley, spread the news among the townsmen, most of whom were tired and dissatisfied with the foreign rule, but were held under by the obstinate burgundian councilmen. a great and increasing agitation manifested itself in the town. a few english companies attempted a sally against the royal vanguard commanded by joan and were beaten back. encouraged by the defeat, the french party within the walls gathered courage and ran to arms. their numbers proved unexpectedly large. the burgundian councilmen were overthrown, a new set of municipal magistrates was set up and they immediately took measures against the english who entrenched themselves in a fort that dominated the town. frightened at the threatening attitude of the people, the english evacuated the citadel over night and drew away. the new councilmen asked for a parley with joan, and in their turn they experienced the irresistible charm of her beauty, her mildness and her eloquence. assured by her that none of the inhabitants would be troubled on the score of past acts, the magistrates placed the keys of the town in the hands of joan, who took them to the king, and he thus resumed possession of one of the most important towns of his empire. the king's march continued triumphal unto rheims, thanks to the marvelous influence of joan. at chalons a delightful surprise was in store for the heroine's heart. she there met four peasants of domremy. informed by public rumor that joan was to traverse champagne, they boldly started out to see her at her passage. among them was urbain, the one-time general of the boys' army, that owed its famous victory over the boys of maxey to jeannette's bravery. these and many other memories of the village were exchanged between the heroine and the companions of her youth. during the conversation that they had a few words of sinister augury escaped from joan's lips. urbain had ingenuously asked her how she had the strength and the courage to face all the dangers of battle. a painful smile played around her lips, she remained pensive for a moment, and then as if moved by the presentiment of the evil days that were approaching for her through the machinations of the captains, she answered urbain: "i fear nothing--except--treason!"[ ] poor girl of domremy! her apprehensions did not deceive her. but before climbing her calvary to its summit, and there experiencing her martyrdom, she was first to accomplish the sacred mission that she had assumed--deal a fatal blow to english rule in gaul by awakening the national spirit that had lain in a stupor for over fifty years, and having charles vii consecrated king at rheims. it was not the man, contemptible in her eyes, that joan wished to consecrate in the face of the world; it was the living incarnation of france in the person of the sovereign, an incarnation visible to the eyes of the people. the warrior maid fulfilled her promise. charles vii was led to rheims. he arrived there on july , , thirty-five days after the siege of orleans was raised--the signal for the long series of english routs that followed and that culminated with the breakdown of english rule. at rheims joan conceived the noble thought of putting an end to the civil strife--the furious strife that had raged between the burgundians and the armagnacs, and that for so many years had desolated and exhausted the land, and delivered it over to the foreigner. on the day of the consecration of charles vii she dictated the following beautiful and touching letter addressed to the duke of burgundy, the chief of the party that bore his name: high and redoubtable prince, duke of burgundy:--i, joan, call upon you, by orders of the king of heaven, my sovereign lord, to make a good, firm and sincere peace with the king of france, a peace that shall last long. pardon one another with a full heart and entirely, as all loyal christians should. if you take pleasure in war, war against the saracens. duke of burgundy, i pray you and implore you, as humbly as i can implore, do no longer wage war against the holy kingdom of france! do promptly order your men, who still hold several fortresses in the kingdom, to withdraw. the king of france is ready to accord you peace, without detriment to his honor! i notify you in the name of god that you will win no battle against the loyal french, none. so, then, do no longer wage war against us. believe me, whatever the number of soldiers may be that you take to field, they will accomplish nothing. and it would be a great pity still to shed so much blood in fresh battles. may god protect you and give us all peace! written at rheims, before the consecration of king charles, on the seventeenth day of july, . joan.[ ] this letter, to which, being unable to write, the warrior maid attached her "cross in god," as was her custom, was sent by a herald to philip of burgundy. thereupon, putting on her white armor, mounting her fine white charger, and with her casque on her head, her sword at her side and her standard in her hand, the maid rode on the right side of charles vii at the head of the captains and splendidly accoutred courtiers to the ancient cathedral of rheims. the procession marched through a vast concourse of people who saw in the consecration of the king the end of the foreigner's rule and the termination of the misfortunes of france. the ceremony was performed with all the pomp of the catholic church. by the light of thousands of wax candles, across the clouds from gold censers, in front of the high altar that was resplendent with candles and where charles vii knelt down, the bishop of rheims consecrated him king to the ringing of bells, the sounding of trumpets and the booming of cannon. a witness to the imposing spectacle, the young peasant girl of domremy stood in the choir of the basilica; pensively as she leaned on the staff of her standard, her recollections wandered four years back. a tear dropped from her eyes in memory of her god-mother sybille, and the passage of merlin's prophecy, now fulfilled, recurred to her mind: "for the martial maid the steed and the armor! but for whom the royal crown? the angel with wings of azure holds it in his hands. the blood has ceased to run in torrents, the thunder to peal, the lightning to flash.-- i see a serene sky; the banners float; the clarions sound; the bells ring. cries of joy! chants of victory! the martial virgin receives the royal crown from the hands of the angel of light; a man, wearing a long mantle of ermine is crowned by the warrior virgin.-- "it matters little what may happen-- what must be, shall be. gaul, lost by a woman, is saved by a virgin from the borders of lorraine and a forest of oaks!--" part iv. rouen; or, the mystery of the passion of joan darc chapter i. bishop and canon. in these my days, so-called "mysteries"--dialogued recitals between men and women who figure as historic personages--are frequently written and performed. these "mysteries" are imitations of the dramatic works of antiquity, such as were also the so-called "plays" of the thirteenth century, of which my ancestor mylio the trouvere left a sample behind. therefore, i, jocelyn the champion, who write this chronicle of joan darc, have decided to conclude it in the form of these "mysteries," now so much in vogue. i shall therein trace the "passion" of the plebeian heroine--for joan, like christ, also underwent her "passion," crowned with martyrdom. * * * * * the first scene is placed in a hall of the palace of the archbishop of rouen, an ancient building where, eight centuries and more ago, king charles the simple married his daughter ghisèle to old rolf, and relinquished one of his best provinces to the northman pirates. these bandits later invaded the country of england under william the conqueror and there raised the breed of english captains who for so many years have been ravaging and enslaving gaul. normandy thus became a province of england. the duke of bedford, regent, occupies rouen. the archbishop's palace of the town serves as the residence of peter cauchon, bishop of beauvais, sold, body and soul, mitre and crosier, to the english party. the month of february, , approaches its end. daintily wadded in a robe of violet silk, peter cauchon is seated in an arm-chair near an open fire-place whence both heat and light radiate into the sumptuously furnished apartment. cheerful reflections play upon the oriental rug on the floor and the painted and gilded roof-beams overhead. a table, covered with parchment scrolls, and placed near the sculptured chimney, is lighted by a candelabrum of massive silver furnished with burning wax candles. a chair, vacant at the moment, and on the back of which lies a black furred cloak, faces on the other side of the table the seat occupied by the bishop. peter cauchon's face, at once striking and repulsive, betokens a mixture of audacity, wile and extraordinary stubbornness. his small light blue eyes, that sparkle with craftiness and occasionally glisten with ferocity, almost disappear under the folds of his fat red cheeks and heavy eyebrows, grey like his hair that is almost wholly covered under his violet skull cap. his forehead is furrowed with purplish veins. his flat nose, bored with large and hairy nostrils, helps to set off the singular prominence of his chin and jaws. when he laughs, his cruel laughter exposes two broken rows of uneven and yellowish teeth. at times he leans over the table, reads a parchment covered with a fine and close writing and rubs his hirsute hands with manifest pleasure; other times he looks impatiently towards the door as if he would hasten with his wishes the return of some absent personage. the door finally opens and another prelate appears. he is a canon of the name of nicolas loyseleur. his face is long and worn; his eyes are covered like a reptile's. his red eyelids are stripped of their lashes. a colorless fissure barely indicates the location of his lips whose smile bears the imprint of hypocrisy. it is at once the face of a hypocrite and a gallows-bird. bishop peter cauchon (half rising and with deep interest)--"what news? what news? good or bad?" canon loyseleur--"the messenger sent by captain morris left the maid in the prison of breville." bishop cauchon--"what is the man's errand?" canon loyseleur--"he came by orders of captain morris to request the earl of warwick to have the dungeon of the old tower prepared to receive joan darc, who is to arrive at rouen under a strong escort to-morrow morning at the latest." bishop cauchon--"did captain morris follow my instructions accurately?" canon loyseleur--"from point to point, monseigneur. the captive travels in a closed litter, with irons on her feet and hands. when a town has to be crossed, the said joan is gagged. no one has been able to approach her. the guards of the escort informed all inquirers that they were taking to rouen an old witch who throttled little children to accomplish her evil deeds." bishop cauchon (laughing)--"and the good people forthwith crossed themselves and gave the litter a wide berth? stupid plebs!" canon loyseleur--"it was just as you say. that notwithstanding, at dieppe, the exasperation of the mob at what they really took for a witch became so violent that the people sought to tear her from our hands and trample her to death." bishop cauchon--"the idiots! what would have been left for us?" canon loyseleur--"this incident excepted, the journey went smooth. no one along the route thought for a moment that the prisoner was joan the maid." bishop cauchon--"that was of the highest importance. the girl's renown is such in gaul at present, even in the provinces that are subject to our english friends, that if it had been learned that she was being taken in chains, the town and country plebs would have been greatly agitated, they might even have taken the she-devil away from her keepers. well, at any rate, we got her now!" canon loyseleur (pointing to the parchments)--"shall we now proceed with the reading of the condensed acts of the maid?" bishop cauchon (taking up a parchment on which he has made a large number of notes)--"yes; these facts and acts are to be the basis of the process. while you, canon, read, i shall mark down the acts upon which the said joan is to be particularly interrogated. this report, which my brother in god the bishop of chartres secretly sent me by orders of the sire of la tremouille, is very full and accurate. it is attributed to one percival of cagny, equerry of the duke of alençon[ ] and a partisan of the maid, or to be more accurate, he does her justice. the justice done to her in the report does not trouble me. her acts have been witnessed by such a large number of people, that it would be tactless to deny or alter the truth on that head, all the more seeing that the very acts carry with them their own condemnation. where did we break off in our reading?" canon loyseleur--"at the departure from rheims after the consecration." bishop cauchon--"continue." (he dips his pen in the ink-horn and makes ready to take notes.) canon loyseleur (reading)--"'after being consecrated, the king remained at rheims until the following thursday. he left rheims bound for the abbey of st. marcoul where he took supper and slept over night. the keys of laon were there brought to him. on saturday, july , , the king went to dine and sleep at soissons. he was very well received, the maid having preceded him and harangued the people at the barrier of the town, conjuring them to renounce the english party and become again french. her words were received with enthusiasm. several women who were about to go to child bed, or whose children had not yet been baptized, prayed the maid to choose their baptismal names, which, said they, would be to them a pledge of divine protection--'" bishop cauchon (writing rapidly)--"this must be noted--very important--excellent! _excellentissime!_" canon loyseleur (continuing to read)--"'on friday, july , the king presented himself before chateau-thierry. the maid ordered the banners to be unfurled, spoke to the people, and the town opened its gates. the king remained there until the following monday, august . that day he slept at montmirail in brie. on tuesday, august , the king made his entry into provins, where he was received no less well than in the other towns. he remained there until friday the th. on sunday, the th of august, he slept at coulommiers; on wednesday, the th, at ferté-milon; on thursday at crespy in valois; on friday, the th, in lagny-le-sec. in this town a woman in tears pressed through the crowd that surrounded the maid and implored her to come to a little dying child, whom, the mother said, the maid could with one word recall to life. in her naïve admiration for the maid, the poor mother attributed to her divine powers comparable to those of jesus of nazareth--'" bishop cauchon (writing with ghoulish glee)--"i would not sell that fact for a hundred gold sous! (inflating his wide and hairy nostrils) oh! what a delectable smell of fagots and roast flesh i begin to scent. proceed, canon. the process is taking shape." canon loyseleur (reading)--"'on saturday, august , being instructed by her forerunners that the enemy was only at a little distance, the maid, with her wonted promptness, drew up the army in order of battle in the plain of dammartin-in-gouelle, assigned his post to each, and issued her orders with the consummate skill of a captain. but frightened at the attitude of the royal army the english did not dare to give battle, although much stronger in numbers--'" bishop cauchon (in a hollow voice)--"oh, in order to save the honor of our friends from the other side of the water, it will be absolutely necessary to attribute their cowardice to joan's witchery." canon loyseleur (reading)--"'sunday, august , , the maid, the duke of alençon, the count of vendome and other captains, accompanied by six or seven thousand soldiers, encamped near montepilloy, two leagues from senlis. the duke of bedford with eight or nine thousand soldiers defended the approaches of senlis. they were posted half a league in front of the town, having before them the little river of nonette and to their right a village of the name of notre dame de la victoire. both sides skirmished. when night fell both retired to their camps to the great displeasure of the maid, who, contrary to the opinion of the king and his captains, wished to enter into a general engagement. the english profited by the delay. they threw up earthworks during the night, dug moats and set up palisades, and utilized even their carts to cover themselves. at break of day, and despite the opposition of the captains, the maid marched at the head of a few determined companies that always obeyed her and pushed up to the foot of the enemy's entrenchments. arrived there she learned that the english had decamped over night, given up senlis, and withdrawn to paris, the earthworks they had thrown up being intended merely to delay their pursuit--'" bishop cauchon--"witchcraft! devil's work! the girl is possessed!" canon loyseleur (reading)--"'on wednesday, august , the keys of compiegne were brought to the king, and on thursday he made his entry into the town amidst the acclamations of the people who cried frantically: "blessings on the daughter of god!"--'" bishop cauchon (writing)--"'daughter of god!' you have rather imprudent fanatics among your admirers, my little girl!" canon loyseleur (reading)--"'when the king left crespy, he ordered marshals boussac and retz to summon the inhabitants of senlis to surrender. they answered that they would surrender, not to the king, but to the maid, whom they considered sent by god and to be a sister of the angels-'" bishop cauchon (writing)--"'sister of the angels!' 'sent by god!' well, the scamps will have contributed their fagots to the pyre." canon loyseleur (reading)--"'much to the annoyance of the maid, the king wished to stop at senlis instead of pushing forward. he seemed satisfied with the success he had so far had, and to wish for nothing more. his council was of his opinion; the maid, however, held that it would be enough for the king to show himself before paris for the town to open its gates to its sovereign. "fear not," joan said to the king; "i shall speak so sweetly to the parisians that they will prefer to become french again rather than to remain english"--'" bishop cauchon--"what an impudence on the part of the she cowherd. she is certain of everything. well, she shall pay dearly for her infernal vanity!" canon loyseleur (reading)--"'on tuesday, august , despite the opposition of the king and his council, the maid left compiegne together with the duke of alençon, leaving the prince behind with the bulk of the army. the following friday, august , without striking a blow, the maid entered st denis, which declared itself royalist. at this news, the king decided, not without considerable hesitation to proceed to that town, where he arrived in safety. the king's council now opposed the maid more doggedly than ever before. joan, however, affirmed that if she was listened to she would render the parisians to the king by the command of god, and without shedding a drop of blood--'" bishop cauchon (in a rage)--"the execrable hypocrite! to hear her speak she is all honey--and yet at her homicidal voice the french have been turned into the butchers of the english! (writing) we must not forget above all to designate her as a furious monster of carnage." canon loyseleur (reading)--"'learning of the capture of senlis and of the maid's march upon paris, the duke of bedford reinforced his garrison, and took vigorous measures against those of the armagnac or royalist party who wished to surrender the town. the duke picked out only englishmen and bitter burgundians to guard the gates, men who were expected to be able to resist the charm of the maid's sweet words. several times she advanced alone on horseback near the barriers of the town, imploring all those who were french like herself no longer to tolerate the rule of the english, who had inflicted so much damage upon the poor people of france. but the men of the burgundian party and the english answered her with insults and threatened to fire at her although she came for a parley. she would then return weeping over the hard-heartedness or the blindness of men, who, although french, wished to remain english. this notwithstanding, she every day heard "her voices" assure her that gaul would not be saved until all the english were driven from her soil, or were exterminated--'" bishop cauchon (writing)--"again 'her voices.' let us note that important fact. it is capital in the framing of the process." canon loyseleur (reading)--"'seeing that the king continued to refuse to draw nearer to paris and to present himself before the gates, as the maid desired, she declared to the duke of alençon, who placed great confidence in her, that st. marguerite and st. catherine, having again appeared before her, ordered her to demand of the king that he put forth all his efforts to regain the good town of paris by coming in person and by promises of his clemency and a general amnesty--'" bishop cauchon (writing)--"again st. marguerite and st. catherine. let us jot down the fact. it is no less capital than the one about the 'voices.' ah, you double-dyed witch! you see visions! apparitions! (laughing) you will have to roast for it, my daughter!" canon loyseleur (reading)--"'yielding to the wishes of the maid, the duke of alençon returned to the king, who promised him that on august he would proceed to chapelle-st. denis and march from there to paris. but he did not keep his promise. the duke of alençon returned to him on monday, september . thanks to the pressure that he exercised, after long hesitating and against the advice of his council, the king came to chapelle-st. denis on september to the great joy of the maid. everybody in the army said: "the maid will restore paris to the king, if he but consents to show himself before the gates." on thursday, the th of september, the duke of alençon together with a few captains whom the maid carried away with her persuasion, started from chapelle-st. denis towards eight in the morning with flying colors but leaving behind the king, who did not wish to accompany them. the maid advanced toward the st. honoré gate, which was defended by a body of english soldiers, because, said she, she had a horror of seeing frenchmen fighting frenchmen. she took her standard in her hand and boldly leaped at the head of all into the moat, near the swine market. the assault was long and bloody; the english defended themselves bravely; the maid was wounded by an arrow that ran through her thigh; she fell, but in falling cried out that the attack had to be kept up with all the greater vigor. but despite her feeble efforts, the sire of gaucourt and others carried her to a place of safety seeing that she was losing much blood. she was placed on a cart and taken back to chapelle-st denis--'" bishop cauchon (writing)--"let us underscore once more the bloodthirsty nature of the she-devil, who against the advice of all insists upon fighting. we must emphasize her thirst for carnage. she recommends the extermination of the english." canon loyseleur (reading)--"'on monday, september , and still hardly able to keep herself in the saddle, the maid wished to ride out towards st. denis in order to assure herself that a bridge over the seine, the construction of which she had ordered in order to facilitate the passage of the troops, had been properly built. the bridge had been built, but was afterwards cut by orders of the king, who had decided to make no further attempts against paris. on tuesday, the th of september, , and with the advice of his council, the king left st. denis after dinner, intending to retreat towards the loire. in despair at the king's departure the maid wept bitterly, and carried away by the first impulse of her grief she decided to renounce his service. she took off her armor and deposited it _ex voto_ before the statue of our lady in the basilica of st. denis--'" bishop cauchon (rubs his hands and writes)--"excellent! very excellent! idolatry! sacrilege! in her infernal pride, she offers her armor to the adoration of the simple-minded!" canon loyseleur (reading)--"'in her despair, the maid wished to return to her own country of lorraine, to her family, and forever renounce war. but the king ordered her to follow him to gien, where, said he, he would need her services. they arrived in that town on september . the maid offered the duke of alençon to aid him in reconquering his duchy of normandy. the duke communicated the project to the king. he refused his consent. he wished to keep the maid near him in touraine to defend the province in case the english should return to attack it. the maid took several fortified towns in the neighborhood of charité-on-the-loire and then laid siege to that place. but as the royal council sent neither provisions nor money to the maid for the soldiers, she was, much to her sorrow, forced to give up the attack, and on march , , she went to the castle of sully, the property of the sire of la tremouille, where the king was sojourning. the maid expressed in the presence of the prince her unqualified indignation against the royal councilors and the captains, and bitterly reproached them with traitorously putting obstacles in the way of the complete recovery of the realm. fully aware of the uselessness of her further services to the king, but still hoping to serve france, she left charles vii forever, and without taking leave of him she departed under the pretext of exercising outside of the castle a company of determined men attached to her fortunes. she went with them to crespy in valois. there she was soon called for by the sire of flavy who wished her aid in compiegne, a town that the duke of burgundy and the count of arundel had jointly besieged. the maid was not a little perplexed what to do in the matter. she was not ignorant of the proverbial perfidy and ferocity of the sire of flavy. but the inhabitants of the place that he commanded had, at the time of her first visit to the town, received joan with so much affection, that, overcoming her apprehensions, she decided to go to the aid of the good people. on the rd of may, , joan departed from crespy at the head of her company, two or three hundred men strong. thanks to the darkness and to the skilful precautions in which she wrapped her nocturnal march, her troops passed unperceived between the burgundian and english camps and entered compiegne with her before daylight. she immediately went to mass in the parish church of st. james. it was barely day, but a large number of the inhabitants had learned of the arrival of their emancipatrix and went to church to see her. after mass, joan retired near one of the pillars of the nave, and addressing herself to several of the people who were gathered there together with their children, all anxious to see her, she said to them in sad accents: "my friends, i have been sold and betrayed, i shall soon be taken and put to death--my voices have for some time been warning me of the contemplated treason"--'" bishop cauchon--"what a lucky thing it was for us that joan did not hearken to these presentiments! the she-devil so often escaped the snares vainly laid for her by the captains, whose vindictive jealousy so well served our purposes and the purposes of the sires of la tremouille and of gaucourt and of my companion in god, the bishop of chartres!" canon loyseleur--"indeed, the emissary whom monseigneur the bishop of chartres sent here secretly and whom i visited in your name, informed me that it was in concert with the sire of la tremouille that the sire of flavy invited the maid to compiegne, meaning to deliver her to the english." bishop cauchon (laughing)--"i shall give flavy, whenever he wishes it, full absolution for all his crimes in return for the capture of joan. proceed, canon. i shall presently tell you more fully what my projects are." canon loyseleur (reading)--"'when it was full daylight the maid made preparations for a vigorous sally. the town of compiegne is situated on the left bank of the oise. on the right bank is a wide meadow about a quarter of a league in length and bounded by crags on the side of picardy. this low meadow, which often is under water, is crossed by a road that starts at compiegne and ends at the foot of the hill that bounds the horizon on that side of the town. three villages border on the meadow: margny, at the extreme end of the road; clairoy about three-fourths of a league up the river at the confluence of the aronde and the oise; and venette about half a league below on the road to pont st. maxence. the burgundians had a camp at margny and one at clairoy. the english occupied venette. the defences of compiegne consisted of a redoubt raised at the head of the bridge and the boulevards. the redoubt was zigzagged and strongly palisaded. the maid's plan of attack was first to carry the village of margny, then that of clairoy, and, mistress of the two positions, to await in the valley of the aronde the troops of the duke of burgundy, who, so soon as he heard the noise of the action, would not fail to hasten to the help of the english. foreseeing the movement and wishing to keep her retreat free, the maid demanded of the sire of flavy to charge himself with keeping the duke of burgundy in check, should he turn into the valley before the capture of margny and clairoy, and also to keep a reserve of troops on the front and the flanks of the redoubt, ready to cover her retreat. furthermore, covered barges, placed on the oise, were to stand ready to receive the footmen in case of a reverse. having given these orders, the maid, despite her sinister forebodings, hastened to mount her horse, and, at the head of her company, marched straight upon the village of margny, which, although vigorously defended, she swiftly carried. the english encamped at clairoy rushed to the defence of their allies and were thrown back; but they thrice returned to the attack with maddening fury. this battle was fought in the low meadow and was dragging along. the duke of burgundy was not long in entering the valley of the aronde with his men and he reached the jetty. it was in order to guard against such a move that joan had charged flavy to keep the burgundians in check. her order was not executed. the burgundians entered the valley by the road. at the sight of these hostile reinforcements, some cowards or traitors cried: "run for your lives! run to the barges!" the maid's auxiliary troops, commanded by flavy's lieutenants, broke ranks and rushed to the barges that lay at the river's bank, leaving joan and her small band to sustain alone the shock of the combined english and burgundian forces. she sustained it bravely, and assailed by fresh presentiments at the sight of the rout of her auxiliaries, whose captains had failed to execute her orders, she decided to die rather than fall alive into the hands of the english. she drew her sword and rushed temerariously upon an enemy a hundred times more numerous than the handful of heroes who stood by her. after prodigies of valor, and seeing the battle lost, the latter wished to save the maid's life at the cost of their own. two of them seized her horse by the bit, and despite her prayers, despite even her resistance, sought to force her back to the city while their companions were to allow themselves to be cut down to the last man in order to cover her retreat. already were they near a drawbridge, thrown over a moat that separated the redoubt from the road, when the bridge was raised by orders of the sire of flavy. thus vilely betrayed and delivered to the enemy, the maid and her soldiers fell upon the surging foe with the fury of despair. struck by several simultaneous blows, joan was thrown from her horse and was immediately surrounded by a mass of english and burgundians who disputed with each other the possession of the glorious capture. joan remained in the power of an archer, who was a banneret of the bastard of vendome, an equerry, a native of the county of artois and lieutenant of sire john of luxembourg of the burgundian party. pinioned on the field of battle, the maid was tied fast to a horse and taken to the castle of beaurevoir, belonging to the sire of luxembourg, the sovereign of the bastard of vendome, whose archer had made the capture. after remaining some time a prisoner in the castle, joan learned that the sire of luxembourg had sold her as a prisoner of war to the english regent for the sum of ten thousand gold sous. despair seized her at the thought of being delivered to the english, and whether she hoped to escape, or whether she meant to put an end to her life, she threw herself out of one of the towers of the castle of beaurevoir. but the fall did not prove fatal. picked up unconscious and severely hurt, joan was thrown into a dungeon and soon thereupon was surrendered to the english captain who was commissioned to deliver to the sire of luxembourg the ten thousand gold sous--the price agreed upon for the blood of the maid. she was taken under a strong escort to the castle of dugy near st. riquier. thus was joan the maid betrayed and sold, to the deep sorrow of the loyal french.'" (the canon lays down on the table the chronicle that he has just read to the end.) bishop cauchon (with ferocious joy)--"and i shall add what that royalist chronicler could not know, to wit, that taken from the castle of dugy to that of crotoy, the maid was there embarked upon the somme, on which she sailed as far as st. valery. she was thence conveyed to the castle of eu, thence to dieppe, and from dieppe hither to rouen, where she is to arrive this very night or to-morrow morning. so, then, the she-devil is in our hands! and, now, canon, i must make a very serious revelation to you. it is in your power to render a signal service to our friends from across the water, to the cardinal of winchester, to the duke of bedford the regent, and to the whole english government. the remuneration will exceed your hopes, i swear that to you! as true as the archbishopric of rouen has been promised to me by the regent of england if joan is duly brought to the pyre and burned, you will be royally rewarded." canon loyseleur--"what must i do, monseigneur? i am ready to obey you." bishop cauchon--"before answering you, and although i am from experience acquainted with the keenness of your mind and the subtlety of your resources, i must succinctly and clearly inform you of the reason and object of the process that we are to start to-morrow against the said joan." canon loyseleur (impassively)--"i listen attentively." bishop cauchon--"first of all let us sum up the situation in a few words and _ab ovo_.[ ] two years ago the whole of france was on the point of falling into the hands of the english and would have so fallen but for the help that the maid brought charles vii. in the teeth of that prince, in the teeth of the sire of la tremouille, in the teeth of the captains, the she-devil forced the siege of orleans to be raised, won a number of other and no less brilliant victories, and finally had the king consecrated at rheims--an act of incalculable importance in the eyes of the people, with whom the divine consecration is tantamount to sovereign power. thus a large number of towns, that until then remained in the hands of the english, opened their gates to charles vii upon his return from rheims. everywhere the national spirit awoke at the voice of the maid, and the foreign rule, that had been accepted for over half a century, suddenly seemed unsupportable. on the other hand, and parallel with all this, the prodigious successes of joan have spread consternation and terror in the ranks of the english army. matters have reached such a pass in this line that the government in london has seen itself compelled to issue two decrees, whose titles are (the bishop takes up two parchments from the table and reads:) 'a decree against the captains and soldiers who refuse to pass into france out of fear of the witcheries of the maid,'[ ] and, 'a decree against fugitives from the army out of fear of the witcheries of the maid.'[ ] i shall do even better. i shall confidentially read to you a significant passage from a letter addressed by our regent the duke of bedford, to the council of the king of england, henry vi. now listen, canon, and ponder. (the bishop reads:) 'we succeeded in everything until the siege of orleans. since then the hand of god has struck our army with severe blows. the principal cause of the unfortunate turn of affairs is, as i think, the fatal opinion and fatal fear that our soldiers entertain for a disciple of the devil, a hound from hell, named "the maid," who has used enchantments and witchery, and thereby caused us discomfitures that have not only greatly diminished the number of our soldiers, but have wondrously depressed the courage of those that are left us.'[ ] (the bishop places the parchment back upon the table, and turns again to the other prelate who continues impassive.) the charm of half a century of victories is broken, and the enthusiasm of the masses is now on the ascendant. if charles vii were not the incarnation of indolence and cowardice; if by promising to the sire of la tremouille the sovereignty of poitou and other great advantages to the bishop of chartres and to gaucourt, the regent had not secured for his side the secret support of these powerful dignitaries; finally, if the maid had not been captured at compiegne--france would have become french again! the labors of more than fifty years' struggles would be lost, and henry vi would no longer hold the two most beautiful crowns in the world! but we must not indulge in delusions. henry vi is king of france in name only. the provinces that he still holds in the heart of gaul are about to slip from his hands. the victories of the she-devil, have awakened the sense of patriotism, that slumbered so long. everywhere hope springs up. the people feel ashamed of what they call the foreign yoke, and they curse it. the continued rule of england in this country is gravely compromised. now, then, to those of us who have become english, such a thing spells ruin, exile or the gallows, the moment the french party has vanquished. such is the true state of things. if charles vii triumphs we are all lost." canon loyseleur--"indeed, monseigneur, i was convinced myself of the truth of what you say when i had my last secret interview with the emissary of the sire of la tremouille. the seigneur, although he is the supreme councilor of charles vii, is in the secret recesses of his soul as english as ourselves, and as desirous as we of seeing his master vanquished. he indulges in no illusions on the progress of the malady." bishop cauchon--"as the malady exists, we must endeavor to cure it by ascertaining its cause. now, then, what is the cause?" canon loyseleur--"joan! the bedeviled maid--a veritable limb of satan." bishop cauchon--"we then understand each other. now, then, the sire of flavy, having at the instigation of the sire of la tremouille drawn the maid to compiegne under the pretext of requesting her assistance in behalf of the good people of the town, pushed the fighting maid forward and then had the drawbridge raised behind her, so that, to make a long story short, she is taken. it is now for us to draw the largest possible advantage from our capture, for which we paid ten thousand shining gold sous to john of luxembourg. now let us sum up. the english soldiers are convinced that as long as joan lives they will be beaten by the french. if this continues, the rule of england in gaul will crumble down to nothing, and we will be buried under the ruins. in order to protect ourselves against such a misfortune, what is to be done? restore confidence to the english by freeing them from their bogie--joan! accordingly, joan must die. the maid must be burned alive." canon loyseleur--"logic so orders. she must be tried, sentenced and burned." bishop cauchon--"certes. _logice_, she must be roasted; but right there a serious difficulty arises. it is this: the english captains, proud and imbued with the principles of chivalry, would have considered it an act of cowardice simply and merely to kill a prisoner who had vanquished them by the force of military genius. they feared that if they had joan killed in her prison they would incur the contempt of all who carry spurs and swords. in view of that, the cardinal of winchester and myself held to them the following language: 'you, captains, can not order the death of a warrior who has fallen into your hands by the accidents of war. but the church can. more than that, the church must, at the first call of the holy inquisition, proceed against a witch, an invoker of demons, must convict her of sorcery and heresy, and deliver her to the secular arm, which will then burn her, roast her to the greater glory of god.'" canon loyseleur--"it is the right of the church, our holy mother." bishop cauchon--"and she will exercise the right. then, as soon as the maid shall be delivered to the executioner as a witch, the terror of the english soldiers will vanish, they will pick up courage, and the power of the english rule in gaul, now tottering to its fall, will be reaffirmed. the sire of la tremouille continues to serve us in the hope of obtaining poitou for his domain; the english army will reconquer all that it has recently lost, and will invade the remaining provinces; completely dispossessed and although consecrated at rheims, charles vii will go to live in london, like the good king john ii, his great grandfather did; he will forget all about his kingdom of france; we will have nothing more to fear; and the archepiscopal see of rouen will be mine. the question being thus clearly understood, the point now is, to have joan roasted, in other words to have her convicted of heresy." canon loyseleur--"it all depends upon that, monseigneur. we shall conduct the matter according to your wishes." bishop cauchon--"yes, all, absolutely everything, depends upon that. now, let us look into the chances of the process that we are to institute against her. the first obstacle is this: a direct appeal of charles vii to the pope. that prince may possibly request the holy father to use his omnipotent influence against the inquisition's pursuing its trial of the maid for heresy. it is to her that charles owes his crown. before the consecration at rheims he was quasi uncrowned. the most common gratitude, the least human regard would dictate the measure to him, even if he were certain of failing. but we know what the gratitude of kings amounts to." canon loyseleur--"i received a formal assurance at my interview with the emissary of the sire of la tremouille and the bishop of chartres that such an application on the part of charles vii will not be made. the process of heresy will be allowed to take its course peacefully. besides, the bishop of chartres is commissioned to notify the notables of rheims of the capture of the maid, and to foreshadow the fate that awaits her. he expressed himself in the following terms which his emissary transmitted to me and which i wrote down. they are these: (he reads) 'the bishop of chartres hereby notifies the people of rheims that the maid has been captured before compiegne, as a result of her disinclination to listen to any counsel, and wishing to act only at her own pleasure.' the bishop adds: 'as to the rumor that is rife that the english will put the maid to death, god has so willed it because she set herself up in pride, wore male attire, and did not obey the orders of god.'[ ] so you see, monseigneur, after such a letter, written by a bishop, a member of the royal council, we may rest assured that charles vii will neither directly nor indirectly attempt anything with the holy father in the matter of the process. she is dropped and renounced by the king." bishop cauchon--"furthermore, we have the certainty that charles vii and his council are secretly as desirous as ourselves of having joan burned. accordingly, they will not intervene with the secular, seeing that they will not do so with the clerical, power. for the last six months the maid has been dragged from prison to prison, and have charles vii or his council made a shadow of a move with the king of england in favor of the prisoner? could he not demand her either under bail or in exchange for english prisoners? idle attempts, perhaps; but they would at least have been a sign of that self-respect that ingrates always feel it necessary to display." canon loyseleur--"nevertheless, monseigneur, allow me to put you a question. joan was taken on may of last year, . since then she has been a prisoner. why this delay in starting the process? why not taken, sentenced and executed?" bishop cauchon--"i shall answer your question, and you will see that i was not to blame. the news of joan's capture reached us on the morning of may . the very next day, the registrar of paris, acting under my orders, addressed in the name and under the seal of the inquisitor of france a summons to monseigneur the duke of burgundy, who is the suzerain of john of luxembourg, one of whose equerries was the captor of the maid. the summons was to the effect that the said joan be surrendered to the jurisdiction of the said inquisitor, to the end that she may answer, in the words of the good formula 'to the good council, favor and aid of the good doctors and masters of the university of paris.'" canon loyseleur--"but, monseigneur, four or five months passed before the summons of the inquisitor received an answer. the preliminaries of the process might have been shortened, and the maid delivered to the executioner before this." bishop cauchon--"do you not know that the decisions of the university of paris--an ecclesiastical body, that, however, has a hand in politics--have a powerful influence not only upon the majority of the higher clergy which upholds the english rule, but also upon the bishops who have remained faithful to the royalist party? now, then, did not the latter, yielding to popular clamor, declare through the medium of the clerics gathered at poitiers two years ago for the purpose of interrogating joan, that 'she is neither a heretic nor a witch, and charles vii may without endangering his salvation, avail himself of the aid that she brought him'? very well, then. that opinion found partisans, even in the bosom of the university of paris, which is an enlightened body and little inclined to believe in witches. the university was at first recalcitrant to my project of itself undertaking the process of heresy against joan. it took me a long time, many negotiations and not a little money, to convince the objectors that from a political point of view it was of the highest importance to seem to believe in the witchery of joan, and thus to deliver her to the flames, without which her influence would continue to assert itself, despite her captivity, and that such an influence, disastrous to the english, beneficent to the french, might, as it came very near doing, make charles vii master of paris. what would then happen? the university would be shorn of its power, its members would be proscribed and stripped of their privileges. in order to escape such a danger, it was imperative to break the instrument that threatened it, in other words, have joan burned as a witch. (laughing) it is a fact, we must always go back to the fagot. the pyre is our supreme argument." canon loyseleur--"and finally, monseigneur, did the university start the process?" bishop cauchon--"yes; but that was only a slight success. the opposition that i had to overcome with many of the members of the university caused me to fear for the issue if it depended wholly upon them. i wished to have the process started by the university, and then continued before an ecclesiastical tribunal devoted to myself. after sedulous endeavors to reach the desired end i hit upon the right means. it is quite ingenious and worthy of us, whose mission it is to lead men by the nose. you may judge for yourself. where was the maid captured?" canon loyseleur--"in compiegne." bishop cauchon--"to what diocese does compiegne belong? follow my reasoning closely." canon loyseleur--"to the diocese of beauvais." bishop cauchon--"who is bishop of beauvais by the grace of intrigues, the intervention of pretty courtesans and divine consent?" canon loyseleur--"you, monseigneur; you are in possession of the bishopric." bishop cauchon (rubbing his hands)--"so, there you have it! the maid, taken on the territory of my diocese, falls within my jurisdiction. i am her judge. the university started the process, but will conduct it before an ecclesiastical tribunal chosen by myself. i have appointed to that tribunal the canons of the chapter of rouen and the priests of the university of paris who are faithful to me. i have above all placed in the tribunal a number of norman beneficiaries whose interests place body and soul on the side of the english. i have also convoked a few young laureates of the college, but only such as are little versed in affairs. my choice of them flatters their pride and assures me their blind support. among these i may name william erard, nicole midi, thomas of courcelles, rising luminaries of theology and canon law. the tribunal is entirely my creature. it can begin operations to-morrow, according to inquisitorial laws. that subject, dear canon, brings me to the matter that concerns you personally. i mean the great service that you can render england. the duke will not show his gratitude to you in the manner that charles vii did to joan. you will have honors and wealth." canon loyseleur--"what must i do, monseigneur?" bishop cauchon--"you are acquainted with the inquisitorial law. its proceedings are simple, and go straight to the point. the sixteenth decretal formally sets forth: 'the judges of heretics have the faculty to proceed in a simplified manner, direct, without the noise of advocates, or form of judgment.'" canon loyseleur--"_simpliciter et de plano, absque advocatorum ac judiciorum strepitu et figura_--the text is formal." bishop cauchon--"whence it follows that myself and the inquisitor john lemaitre will constitute a sufficient authority to apply to joan the law against heretics. but in order to do that she must give us proofs of her heresy. there is where we run up against a grave difficulty, which it will be for you to remove." canon loyseleur--"how, monseigneur? what must i do?" bishop cauchon--"however devoted to me the judges of the tribunal may be, they will require some proofs in order to condemn joan and protect the dignity of the church. now, then, the she-devil has a reputation for craftiness. i have read her answers to the interrogatories at poitiers. she more than once astounded and embarrassed the judges by her quick wit or by the loftiness of her answers. it must not go at rouen as it did at poitiers. this is the summary course that i would stamp upon the process, to the end that joan may not escape. to obtain from herself condemnatory admissions, and pronounce her guilty upon them. and then after her sentence to find means of causing her to make a public recantation and to admit her to penitence." canon loyseleur (stupefied)--"but if she renounces her errors, then she is not condemned, monseigneur! if she is admitted to penitence, then she can not be burned!" bishop cauchon--"patience, listen. if joan abjures her errors, she is admitted to penitence. we shall have given a proof of our gentleness and indulgence. at any rate the fools will think so." canon loyseleur--"if joan escapes the fagot your end is not reached." bishop cauchon--"for one day. immediately after she must be led by some skilful method to relapse into her previous heretical conduct. we may even get her to maintain that her abjuration was the result of a snare, a surprise. we can thus lead her to persevere in her damnable errors. the criminal relapse then gives us the right to condemn the penitent as 'relapsed.' we abandon her to the secular arm, and by it she is delivered to the executioner. thus, the appearances of ecclesiastical charity being saved, the full burden will fall upon joan herself." canon loyseleur--"the proposal is excellent. but how to carry it out?" bishop cauchon--"i shall come to that presently. let us first consider what flagrant proofs of heresy we must find in joan's answers. one example will explain my thoughts to you. the girl pretends to have seen saints and angels and to have heard supernatural voices. now, then, in the eye of the church and its holy canons joan has not the _sufficient and recognized, quality to converse and hold commerce with the blessed beings of paradise_. in the eye of the canon law, the visions and apparitions of the said joan, so far from proceeding from god, and emanating from celestial beings--" canon loyseleur--"proceed directly from satan. a flagrant proof that joan is an invoker of devils, hence a witch, hence deserving of the fagot." bishop cauchon--"one moment--a stone lies there in our way. it will have to be removed." canon loyseleur--"what stone, monseigneur? i do not see the said stone." bishop cauchon--"our canon law admits a qualification in avowals concerning supernatural matters. thus the tribunal would find itself prevented from passing sentence upon the maid, if by some mishap, instead of her declaring affirmatively: 'i have heard the voices,' she were to say: 'i believe i heard the voices.' the doubtful form would cause the principal charge to fall. now, then, i fear that whether guided by the instinct of self-preservation, or whether properly indoctrinated in advance, joan may give her answers such a form as to perfidiously raise an unsurmountable obstacle in our way. do you understand me?" canon loyseleur--"perfectly, monseigneur. but how shall we manage it that instead of saying: 'i believe i heard the voices,' joan shall say: 'i have heard the voices'?" bishop cauchon--"nothing is simpler. all we need is to have a councilor, in whom joan may have full confidence, dictate to her certain answers that will be certain to lead to her condemnation." canon loyseleur--"monseigneur, the girl is of extraordinary intelligence and is gifted with exceptional sound judgment. that is her reputation. how can we expect her to repose blind confidence in an unknown adviser?" bishop cauchon--"my son in christ, what is your name?" canon loyseleur--"my name is nicolas loyseleur."[ ] bishop cauchon--"i believe the name is truly predestined." canon loyseleur--"predestined?" bishop cauchon (laughing)--"without a doubt. what is the way that the skilful fowler practices the piping of birds in order to attract the mistrusting partridge? he skilfully imitates the bird's chirping, and the latter believing one of his kind near, flies in the direction of the deceitful voice and falls into the snare. now, then, my worthy canon, the apostle st. peter was a fisher of men, you shall be a decoyer of women--to the greater glory of our order." canon loyseleur (after a moment's reflection)--"i vaguely perceive your thought, monseigneur." bishop cauchon--"the maid will arrive towards morning in rouen. her cell, her irons are ready. well, then, it is necessary that when she enters her cell in the morning, she find you there. you must be a companion in her misery, and presently her confidant." canon loyseleur--"i, monseigneur! such a mission for me!" bishop cauchon--"you--in chains, hands and feet. you will moan. you will sigh at the cruelty of the english, at the severity with which i, a bishop, allow a poor priest to be treated whose only crime is that he remained faithful to the king of france. that is the outline of your role." canon loyseleur (smiling)--"our divine master said: 'render unto caesar what is caesar's, and unto god what is god's.'" bishop cauchon--"what is the application of that quotation! it is out of all connection." canon loyseleur--"let us render to the inquisition what belongs to the inquisition. the method that you propose is skilful, i admit. but it has been practiced before upon the great albigensian heretics as is attested by the following seventh decretal of the inquisitorial law: 'let none approach the heretic, except, from time to time, one or two faithful persons, who cautiously, and as if greatly moved by pity for him, shall give him advice,' etc., etc."[ ] bishop cauchon--"well! just because the method has often been successfully put in practice by the inquisition it is sure to succeed again! i do not mean to plume myself upon having invented it. it goes without saying that being joan's fowler you are also to be among her judges. to the end that you may enjoy the results of your skilful chirping, i reserved a place for you on the tribunal. you will sit in your robes with your cowl wholly over your head; it will conceal your face. joan will not be able to recognize you. informer and judge--it is agreed." canon loyseleur--"it will be all the more necessary, seeing that, thanks to my quality of priest, it will be easy for me to induce the girl to confess. in that case, you realize the tremendous advantage that may be gained over her, through her sincerely made avowals before the sacred tribunal of penitence." bishop cauchon (transported with joy)--"canon! canon! the regent of england and the cardinal of winchester will worthily reward your zeal. you shall be bishop; i, archbishop." canon loyseleur--"my reward is in myself, monseigneur. what i do, i do, as you said, to the greater glory of our church, and above all to its great profit. i feel outraged at the sight of a stupid mob attributing supernatural powers and divine relations to this peasant girl, who, according to canonical law, has none of the qualities for such celestial commerce. i feel for joan the hatred, vigorous and legitimate, that the captains, her rivals, pursue her with. 'what is the use,' they justly said, 'of being born noble? what is the use of growing old in the harness, if it is enough for a cowherdess to come and our illustrious houses are eclipsed?' you tax charles vii with ingratitude, monseigneur. you are wrong. by showing himself ungrateful, he asserts his royal dignity. his conduct is politic when he repudiates the services of the maid. charles vii could not intervene in joan's behalf without thereby making the admission, disgraceful to his majesty--'a vassal has rendered the crown to a descendant of the frankish kings.' england, the church, the knighthood of france, charles vii and his council--all are interested in having the maid burned alive. and she shall be roasted, even if i should myself have to light the pyre!" bishop cauchon (laughing)--"that is too much zeal, canon! in her infinite mercy, our holy mother the church sends people to the pyre but never herself burns them with her maternal hands. execution is the province of the secular arm. thanks to your spiritual aid, it will be done that way with joan. she shall be roasted as a relapsed heretic, and the church will have shown herself full of clemency to the very end. our triumph will have results of an importance that you do not dream of. joan will become even in the eyes of her partisans the most despicable of creatures. we shall burn her body and we shall stain her name and fame for now and evermore." canon loyseleur--"how, monseigneur? i do not quite grasp your meaning." bishop cauchon--"i shall prove to you to-morrow what i am now saying. in the meantime we must also see what advantage we can draw from the otherwise annoying chastity of the she-devil. because, may god pardon me, she is still a virgin. but it is growing late. go and take a few hours of rest. to-morrow early you must be all sorrow, moans and sighs, with irons to your hands and feet and lying upon straw in the cell of joan." the canon departs; the bishop remains alone. he busies himself with the preparation of the process and the drawing up of a series of questions based upon the actions and words of joan the maid. chapter ii. in the dungeon. it is still night. a lamp feebly lights a dark subterraneous cell in the old donjon of the castle of rouen. the cell is a semi-circular cave. its greenish walls ooze with the moisture of winter. a narrow window, furnished with an enormous iron bar is cut in a stone wall six feet thick. opposite the airhole and under a vaulted passage is a massive door studded with iron and pierced with a grated wicket always kept open. a wooden box filled with straw lies to the left of the door; a long chain that is soldered in the wall and the other end of which is fastened to a heavy iron belt, now open, lies on the straw. at one end of the box, that is to serve as a bed, rises a beam so contrived as to hold fast the feet of the girl prisoner that is soon to be conveyed thither. a trunk, a stool, a table, the sorrowful furniture of a prisoner's cell, are barely distinguishable by the light of the lamp. opposite this straw bed is another, furnished exactly like the first. on it lies canon loyseleur, in chains. he has just said a few words to the jailer john, an english soldier in burly middle age, who wears an old fur coat, and whose low and savage face is bloated by excessive indulgence in wine and strong liquors. his thick long beard, unkempt like his hair, falls down upon his chest. a cutlass hangs at his side. presently another man of hang-dog looks pushes open the door and says to john: "come, quick. here is the witch!" the jailer goes out precipitately, makes a sign of intelligence to the canon and carries the lamp out. the canon stretches himself on the straw and pretends to sleep. the door is double locked on the outside. the weak light of approaching dawn, so pale in those winter days, filters through the airhole of the cell, yet leaves the interior in substantial darkness. the bed occupied by the canon lies completely in the shadow. the scene is about to begin. again the heavy door grates on its hinges. joan darc enters preceded by john. he casts a savage look upon her. two other jailers, also armed, follow their chief. one of them has a hammer and shears in his hands, the other carries on his shoulder a small box containing some clothes that belong to the prisoner. joan is hardly recognizable. since her prolonged sojourn in a succession of prisons, the fresh color of the child of the fields or of the martial maid always living in the open has disappeared. her beautiful face, now furrowed with suffering and worn with sorrow, is of a sickly hue. a bitter smile contracts her lips. her appearance is sad yet proud. her black eyes seem enlarged through the hollowness of her cheeks. she wears a woman's felt hat, a brown tunic and tight hose fastened with hooks to her shirt. the laces of her leather shoes are hidden under two large iron rings held together by a chain that is hardly long enough to allow her to walk. close manacles hold her hands together. her clothes, worn out and tattered by her journey, are ripped at the elbows and allow glimpses of a coarse shirt. the english soldiers charged to guard the heroine have received orders not to lose sight of her night or day, and to sleep in her room during the few halts that were made. as her chastity would not allow her to undress in their presence, she has not removed her clothes for a whole month. john orders his aides to unchain the prisoner and to fasten her firmly to the straw bed. they approach her with an insolence that is not unmixed with fear. in their eyes she is a witch. they are always in fear of some sorcery. nevertheless they first place around her waist the heavy iron belt, lock it, and give the key to john. the length of the chain, that is fastened at the other end to the wall, barely allows her to sit down or stretch herself out upon the litter. being thus secured to her new fastenings, one of the jailers begins to remove her traveling irons. with a hammer he strikes a chisel which he applied to the jointure of the manacles and these drop from joan's sore wrists. with a sigh of relief she stretches out her aching and swollen arms. her feet are then unchained, to be immediately secured in the rings at the end of the chain that is fastened to the beam at the foot of the litter, on which, worn out with fatigue and broken with sadness, the martial maid drops in a sitting posture and covers her face with her hands. john orders his men out and casts a knowing look at canon loyseleur. the latter has not yet been noticed by the prisoner, as he crouches in a corner that lies wholly in the dark. the jailer goes out and locks the door. through the wicket the iron casques of the two sentinels, posted on the outside, are seen passing and repassing. invisible in the thick darkness, which the feeble light that filters through the airhole is unable to dispel, the canon holds his breath and observes joan. with her face in her hands, she remains profoundly absorbed in her own thoughts--painful, heartrending thoughts. she indulges in no false hopes. charles vii has abandoned her to her executioners. for some time she had known the egotism, cowardice and ingratitude of the prince. twice she had wished to leave him to his fate, indignant and shocked at his cowardice. but out of patriotism she had resigned herself to cover him with her glory, knowing that in the eyes of the people france was personified in the king. this notwithstanding, the heroine at first expected that the prince would endeavor to save her. he owed everything to her, only from him could she expect some degree of pity. enlightened by so many evidences on the envy and hatred that the captains pursued her with, she in no way counted with help from that quarter; after so many attempts at infamous treason, they had finally succeeded in delivering her to the english before compiegne. for a moment, in the innocence of her heart, she expected aid from the charity of the clergy, the bishops who at poitiers declared that charles vii could with a safe conscience accept the unexpected aid that she brought him in the name of god. she hoped for the intervention of the ecclesiastics who were so anxious to admit her, to communion and to confession, who sang her praises, and who, with all the pomp of the church, celebrated the feast of the th of may, a commemorative anniversary of the raising of the siege of orleans, a religious solemnity ordered by the bishop of the diocese, which comprised an imposing procession of the clergy, who marched at the head of the councilmen, holding wax candles in their hands, and made its pious stations at the several spots that had been the theater of the glorious deeds of the maid. but joan now no longer indulged in false hopes. the clergy, like the king, abandoned her to her executioners. other priests of christ would judge and condemn her. the english who brought her in chains often told her on the route: "you are going to be burned, witch! we have priests in rouen who will send you to the pyre!" convinced by these words that she need expect neither mercy nor justice from the ecclesiastical tribunal before which she was about to be arraigned, and overpowered by the bitter disillusionment, the recollections of which stabbed her heart without souring her angelic spirit, joan asked herself in a perplexity of doubt, why did the lord forsake her, her the instrument of his divine will? her who was ever obedient to the saintly voices that she heard so distinctly, and that since her captivity still repeated to her: "go, daughter of god! fear not--submit meekly to your martyrdom. you have fulfilled your duty--heaven is with you!" and yet heaven delivered her to the english, her implacable enemies! and yet the priests of the lord were impatient, it was told her on all hands, to sentence her to the flames! these contradictions profoundly troubled the prisoner. often she was overcome with sadness, whenever she thought of her uncompleted mission--the soil of gaul was not yet completely delivered from the foreign rule! such are the thoughts of joan at this hour when, with her face hidden in her hands, she sits on the straw of her cell, and is yet ignorant of the presence of canon loyseleur. suddenly the girl trembles with surprise, almost fright. from the midst of the darkness at the opposite side she hears a compassionate voice addressing her, and the following dialogue ensues: canon loyseleur--"raise your head, virgin! the lord will not forsake you! he watches over you!" joan darc--"who is speaking to me?" canon loyseleur (rising on the straw)--"who speaks to you? a poor old priest--a good christian and royalist--a victim to his loyalty, to his faith, and to his king--crimes that the english do not pardon. for more than a year have i lived chained in this dungeon, and have asked but one favor of my creator--to be recalled to him! alack! i have suffered so much! but i forget my sufferings since i am permitted to behold the holy maid, the virgin inspired by heaven, vanquisher of the english, deliverer of gaul! may her name be glorified!" joan darc (tenderly)--"not so loud, my father! you might be heard. i fear not for myself, but i fear for your sake the anger of the jailers." canon loyseleur (with exaltation and a ringing voice)--"what can the english, whom i abhor, these enemies of our beloved country, do to me? i pray god to send me martyrdom, if he thinks me worthy of such a glorious aureola!" john (appearing at the wicket and affecting rage)--"if you keep on screaming like that, i shall have you whipped till you bleed!" canon loyseleur (with greater exaltation)--"hack my limbs to pieces! tear my scalp from my skull, ferocious beast! unto death shall i cry: 'glory to god--long live king charles vii! anathema upon the english!'" john (still at the wicket)--"the captain of the tower will soon be here. i shall notify him of the danger there is in leaving you in the same cell with that witch, with whom you might enter into wicked machinations, you tonsured devil! but if you continue to scream, your flesh will be flayed!" (he withdraws from the wicket.) canon loyseleur (shaking his chains)--"heathen! criminal! idolater! you will burn in hell!" joan darc (beseechingly)--"good father, calm yourself; do not irritate that man. he will remove you from me, if you do. oh, in my distress, it would be a great consolation to me to hear the word of a priest of our lord. do not withdraw your support from me." canon loyseleur (contritely)--"may god pardon me for having yielded to an impulse of anger! i would regret the act doubly if it were to cause these wicked men to separate me from you. (in a low voice and feigning to look toward the wicket with fear of being overheard) i have hoped to be useful to you--perhaps to save you--by my advice--" joan darc--"what say you, good father?" canon loyseleur (still in a low voice)--"i have hoped to be able to give you useful advice in the matter of the process that is to be instituted against you, and keep you from falling into the snares that those unworthy priests will surely spread before you. those judges are simoniacal, they have been sold to the english. i hoped to be able to admit you to confession and to the ineffable happiness of communion, that you have probably been long deprived of." joan darc (sighing)--"since my captivity i have not been able to approach the sacred table!" canon loyseleur--"i have succeeded in concealing from the jailers some consecrated wafers. but so far from reserving the bread of the angels for myself alone, i wished to invite you to the celestial feast!" joan darc (clasping her hands in pious delight)--"oh, father! good father! how thankful i shall be to you!" canon loyseleur (hurriedly, but in a still lower voice, and casting furtive glances hither and thither)--"our moments are precious. i may be taken away from here any time. i know not whether i shall ever again see you, holy maid. give me your full attention. remember my advice. it may save you. you must know that to-morrow, perhaps to-day, you will be arraigned before an ecclesiastical tribunal on the charges of heresy and witchcraft." joan darc--"the english who brought me hither a prisoner have announced the tribunal to me. i am to be condemned." canon loyseleur--"the threat is not idle. yesterday my jailer said to me: 'you will soon have joan the witch as your cell-mate; she is to be tried, sentenced and burned as a magician who sold herself to satan, and as a heretic'!" joan darc (trembling)--"my god!" canon loyseleur--"what is the matter, my dear daughter? you seem to tremble!" joan darc (with a shiver)--"oh, father! may god stand by me! thanks to him, i never knew fear! (she covers her face with her hands in terror.) i, burned! oh, lord god! burned! what a frightful death!" canon loyseleur--"you are well justified in your fears. the purpose of the tribunal is to send you to the pyre." joan darc (in a smothered voice)--"and yet they are priests! what harm have i done them? why do they persecute me?" canon loyseleur--"oh, my daughter, do not blaspheme that sacred name of priest by applying it to those tigers who thirst for blood." joan darc--"pardon me, father!" canon loyseleur (in a voice of tender commiseration)--"sweet and dear child, need you fear a word of blame from my mouth? no, no. it was but a generous impulse of indignation that carried me away against those new pharisees who conspire to kill you, as their predecessors years ago conspired to kill jesus our redeemer! i am a clerk of theology. i know the manner in which such tribunals as you are about to face are wont to proceed. i know your life; the glorious voice of your fame has informed me of your noble deeds." joan darc (dejectedly)--"oh, if i had only remained home sewing and spinning. i would not now be in imminent danger of death!" canon loyseleur--"come, daughter of god, no weakness! did not the lord tell you by the voice of two of his saints and of his archangel: 'go, daughter of god! go to the aid of the king. you will deliver gaul'?" joan darc--"yes, father." canon loyseleur--"as to those voices, did you hear them?" joan darc--"yes, father." canon loyseleur (pressingly)--"you heard them, the sacred voices? with your bodily ears?" joan darc--"as clearly as i hear your voice at this moment." canon loyseleur--"and you saw your saints? you saw them with your own eyes?" joan darc--"as i see you." canon loyseleur (delighted)--"oh, dear daughter! hold that language before the ecclesiastical tribunal, and you are saved! you will then escape the snare that they will spread before you." joan darc--"please explain what you mean, dear father and protector." canon loyseleur--"however perverse, however iniquitous these tribunals of blood may be, they are nevertheless composed of men who are clothed with a sacred character. these priests must save appearances towards one another and the public. your judges will tell you with a confidential and benign air: 'joan, you claim to have seen st. marguerite, st. catherine and st. michael, the archangel; you claim to have heard their voices. can it not have been an illusion of your senses? if so, the senses, due to their grossness, are liable to error. the church will be slow to impute to you as a crime what may be only a carnal error.' now, then, my poor child (the canon's features are screwed into an expression of anxious concern) if, misled by such insidious language, and thinking to see in it a means of escape, you were to answer: 'indeed, i do not affirm that i saw the saints and the archangel, i do not affirm that i heard their voices, but i believe to have seen, i believe to have heard,' if you should say that, dear and holy child, you will be lost! (joan makes a motion of terror) this is why: to recoil before the affirmation that you have actually seen and heard, to present the fact in the form of a doubt, would be to draw upon your head the charge of falsehood, blasphemy, and heresy in the highest degree. you would be charged (in an increasingly threatening voice) with having made sport of the most sacred things! you would be charged with having, thanks to such diabolical jugglery, deceived the people by holding yourself out as inspired by god, whom you would be outraging in a most infamous, abominable, impious manner! (in a frightful hollow voice) they would then pronounce upon you a terrible excommunication cutting you off from the church as a gangrened, rotten, infected limb! you would thereupon be delivered to the secular arm, you would be taken to the pyre and burned alive for a heretic, an apostate, an idolater! the ashes of your body will be cast to the winds!" joan darc, pale with fear, utters a piercing cry. she is terrified. canon loyseleur (aside)--"the pyre frightens her. she is ours! (he joins his hands imploringly and points to the wicket where the face of john reappears.) silence! joan, my dear daughter, you will ruin us both!" john (roughly, through the wicket)--"you are still making a noise and screaming! must i come in and make you behave?" canon loyseleur (brusquely)--"the irons of my poor mate have wounded her. pain drew from her an involuntary cry." john--"she has not yet reached the end! she will scream much louder on the pyre that awaits her, the miserable witch!" canon loyseleur (seeming hardly able to contain his indignation)--"jailer, have at least the charity of not insulting our distress. have pity for the poor girl!" john withdraws grumbling. joan darc, overwhelmed with terror, has fallen back upon the straw and represses her sobs. after the jailer's withdrawal she slightly regains courage, rises partly and the dialogue proceeds: joan darc--"pardon my weakness, father. oh, the mere thought of such a horrible death--the thought of mounting a pyre!" (she does not finish the sentence, and sobs violently.) canon loyseleur--"by placing before you the frightful fate reserved to you, in case you are snared, i wished to put you upon your guard against your enemies." joan darc (wiping her tears, and in an accent of profound gratitude)--"god will reward you, good father, for the great pity you show me, a stranger to you." canon loyseleur--"you are no stranger to me, joan. i know you are one of the glories of france! the elect of the lord! now listen to the rest of what i have to say to you. i am in a hurry to complete my advice before i am dragged away from here. if, deceived by their perfidious suggestions, you should answer your judges that you believe you saw your saints appear before you, that you believe you heard their voices, instead of resolutely affirming that you saw them with your eyes and heard them with your ears, st. catherine, st. marguerite and the archangel st. michael, sent to you by the lord--" joan darc--"it is the truth, father. i shall tell what i saw and heard. i have never lied." canon loyseleur--"the truth must be boldly confessed, in the face of the judges. you must answer them: 'yes, i have seen these supernatural beings with my eyes; yes, i have heard their marvelous voices with my ears.' then, dear child, despite all its ill will, the tribunal, unable to catch the slightest hesitation in your words, will be forced to recognize that you are a sacred virgin, the elect, the inspired of heaven. and however perverse, however devoted to the english your judges may be, they will find themselves forced to absolve you and set you free." joan darc (yielding to hope)--"if all that is needed to be saved is to tell the truth, then my deliverance is certain. thanks to god and to you, good father. thanks for your friendly advice!" canon loyseleur--"if circumstantial details are asked for upon the form and shape of your apparitions, refuse to answer. they might be able to draw from your words some improper meaning. limit yourself to the pure and simple affirmation of the reality of your visions and revelations." outside of the cell the noise of numerous steps is heard, together with the rattle of arms and the words: "to your posts! to your posts! here is the captain of the tower!" canon loyseleur (listens and says to joan in great hurry)--"it is the captain. perhaps the jailer will carry out his threat, and take me away from you, dear daughter. there is but one means for us to meet again. demand of the captain permission to have me as your confessor. he will not dare to decline. i shall then be able to hold to your lips the sacred wafer, the bread of the angels." the door opens with a great noise. a captain enters, followed by john and other keepers. the captain (pointing to the canon)--"take that tonsured old scamp to another cell, and keep him on a fast." canon loyseleur--"sir captain, i pray you, allow me to remain near joan, my daughter in god." the captain--"if the witch is your daughter, then you must be satan in person." canon loyseleur--"for pity's sake, do not separate us!" the captain (to john)--"take away this priest of beelzebub!" john (brutally to the canon)--"come, get up! be quick about it!" canon loyseleur rises painfully from his couch of straw, clanking his chains all he can and uttering lamentable sighs. joan advances toward the captain as far as her chain will allow her, and says in a sweet and imploring voice: joan darc--"sir, grant me a favor that never is denied to a prisoner. allow me to take this holy man for my confessor." the captain--"your confessor shall be the executioner, strumpet!" canon loyseleur (carrying his chained hands to his eyes)--"oh, sir captain, you are merciless." john (rudely pushing the canon)--"march! march! you will have time enough to cry in your cell." joan darc--"sir captain, do not spurn my prayer--allow the good priest to visit me occasionally as my confessor." the captain (feigns to be mollified)--"i shall consult the duke of warwick upon that. for the present (to john), take the priest of satan away and thrust him into some other cell." canon loyseleur (following the jailer)--"courage, noble joan! courage, my daughter! remember what i told you! may the holy name of god be ever glorified." (he goes out.) joan darc (with tears in her eyes)--"may god guard me from forgetting your advice. may the lord preserve you, good father!" (she drops exhausted upon the straw.) the captain (to john)--"remove the irons from the prisoner. she is to be taken upstairs. the tribunal is in session." joan darc (rises and shivers involuntarily)--"so soon!" the captain (with a savage laugh)--"at last i see you tremble, witch! your bravery came from the devil!" joan darc smiles disdainfully. john and another jailer approach her to remove the irons that hold her by the feet and by the waist. she trembles with disgust and becomes purple with shame at the touch of these men's hands while they remove the irons from her limbs and body. wounded not in her vanity but in her dignity at the thought of appearing before her judges in torn garments she says to the captain: joan darc--"sir, i have in that little trunk some linen and other clothes. please order your men out for a few minutes in order that i may dress myself." the captain (bursting out laughing)--"by the devil, your patron! if you want to change your clothes, change them before us, and instead of a few minutes, i shall let you have all the time that you may want for your toilet. i would even help you, if you wish it, my pretty witch!" joan darc (blushing with confusion, and with a firm voice)--"let us be gone to the tribunal. may god help me. you are truly severe in refusing so slight a favor to a prisoner." chapter iii. the inquisition. the ecclesiastical tribunal before which joan darc is to appear is assembled in the ancient chapel of the old castle of rouen. the vaults overhead, the walls, the pillars, are blackened with age. it is eight in the morning. the pale light of this winter morn, chilly and foggy, penetrates to the vast nave through a single ogive window, cut into the thick wall behind the platform where the clerical judges are seated under the presidency of bishop peter cauchon. to the left of the tribunal is a table at which the registrars are placed. their duty is to keep the minutes of the questions and answers. facing this table is the seat of peter of estivet, the institutor of the process. nothing could be more sinister than the aspect of these men. in order to keep out the cold, they are clad in long furred robes with hoods down and almost completely covering their faces. their backs are turned to the solitary window from which the only light, and that a weak one, enters the place. thus they are wholly in the shade. a slight reflection of greyish light fringes the top of their black hoods and glides over their shoulders. the judges have numerous substitutes to take their places when needed. the priests of the university of paris are partly reserved for the other sessions. here are the names of the infamous priests present at this first session. their names should be inscribed in letters of blood and consigned to eternal execration: peter of longueville, abbot of the holy trinity of fecamp; john hulot of chatillon, archdeacon of evreux; james guesdon of the order of minor friars; john lefevre, augustinian monk; maurice of quesnay, priest and professor of theology; william leboucher, priest and doctor of canon law; william of conti, abbot of the trinity of mount st. catherine; bonnel, abbot of cormeilles; john garin, archdeacon of french vexin; richard of gronchet, canon of the collegiate of saussaye; peter minier, priest and bachelor of theology; raoul sauvage, of the order of st. dominic; robert barbier, canon of rouen; denis gastinel, canon of notre dame-la-ronde; john ledoux, canon of rouen; john basset, canon of rouen; john brouillot, chanter of the cathedral of rouen; aubert morel, canon of rouen; john colombelle, canon of rouen; laurent dubust, priest and licentiate of canon law; raoul auguy, canon of rouen; andre marguerie, archdeacon of petit-coux; john alespee, canon of rouen; geoffroy of crotoy, canon of rouen; gilles of les champs, canon of rouen; john lemaitre, vicar and inquisitor of the faith; finally, nicolas loyseleur, canon of rouen, who completely hides his face under his hood. the registrars, thomas of courcelles, manchon and taquel bois-guillaume, are at their table ready to take down the proceedings. canon peter of estivet, the institutor of the process, is in his seat. the other members of the ecclesiastical tribunal have taken their places. bishop peter cauchon (rising)--"my very dear brothers: peter of estivet, institutor of the process against joan the maid, will concisely state our petition. listen attentively." canon peter of estivet (rises, takes a parchment from the table and reads)--"'we, peter cauchon, bishop of beauvais by the grace of god, metropolitan of the town and diocese of rouen, have convoked you, our very dear brothers, in the name of the venerable and very reverend chapter of the cathedral to examine and judge the facts hereinafter set forth. "'to the author and consummator of the faith, our lord jesus christ, greeting. "'a certain woman, commonly named joan the maid, has been taken and made a prisoner at compiegne, within the jurisdiction of our diocese of beauvais, by the soldiers of our very christian and serene master henry vi, king of england and of the french. "'the said woman being strongly suspected by us of heresy, and our duty in the premises being to investigate her on her faith, we have requisitioned and demanded that the said woman be delivered and sent to us. we, bishop, being informed by public rumor of the acts and deeds of the said joan, acts and deeds that assail not only our faith but the faith of france and of all christendom, and wishing to proceed in this matter with all speed yet deliberately, have decreed that the said joan shall be summoned to appear before us and be interrogated concerning her acts and deeds, as well as upon matters that concern the faith, and we have cited her to appear before us in the chapel of the castle of rouen, on this twentieth day of february, , at eight o'clock in the morning, in order that she may answer the charges brought against her.'" (the institutor resumes his seat.) bishop peter cauchon--"introduce the accused before the tribunal." two beadles in black gowns leave the chapel and speedily re-enter leading joan. once so resolute, so serene in those days of battle when, cased in her white armor and riding her charger, she dashed upon the enemy, her standard in her hand, the martial maid now shivers with fear at the sight of this tribunal of priests half hidden in the shadow of the chapel and their faces barely visible under their hoods--silent, motionless, like black phantoms. she recalls the words and the advice of canon loyseleur, whose presence among her judges she does not remotely suspect. the recollection of his words and advice at once give her heart and fill her with fear. by pretending to give her the means of escaping the snare spread for her, the canon had also informed her that the tribunal was predetermined to deliver her to the pyre. this thought upsets and frightens the prisoner, already weakened by so many sorrows and trials. she feels her knees shake at the first steps that she takes into the chapel, and forced to lean upon the arm of one of the beadles, she halts for a moment. at the sight of the young girl, now hardly nineteen, still so beautiful despite her pallor, thinness and tattered clothes, the ecclesiastical judges contemplate her with somber curiosity, but experience neither concern nor pity for the heroine of so many battles. from the political and religious viewpoint, she is to them an enemy. their animosity towards her smothers all human sentiment in their breasts. her great deeds, her genius, her glory irritate them all the more seeing they are conscious of the abominable crime in which they are about to share through ambition, orthodox fanaticism, cupidity and partisan hatred. presently controlling her emotions, joan darc takes courage and advances between the two beadles. they lead her to the foot of the tribunal, and withdraw. she dares not raise her eyes to her judges, respectfully takes off her hat which she keeps in her hand, inclines herself slightly forward, and remains standing before the platform. bishop cauchon (rising)--"joan, approach (she draws nearer). our duty as protectors and upholders of the christian faith, with the aid of our lord jesus christ, compels us to warn you in all charity that, in order to hasten your trial and the peace of your soul, you must tell the truth, the whole truth. in short, answer without subterfuge to our interrogatories. you are to swear on the holy scriptures to tell the truth. (to one of the beadles) bring a missal." the beadle brings a missal and presents it to joan. bishop cauchon--"joan, down on your knees. swear on that missal to tell the truth." joan darc (mistrustful)--"i know not what you mean to interrogate me upon, sir. you may put such questions to me that i may be unable to answer." bishop cauchon--"you shall swear that you will sincerely answer the questions that we shall put to you concerning your faith--and other things." joan darc (kneels down and puts both her hands on the missal)--"i swear to tell the truth." bishop cauchon--"what are your given names?" joan darc--"in lorraine i was called jeannette. since my arrival in france i have been called joan. that is my name." bishop cauchon--"where were you born?" joan darc--"in the village of domremy, in the valley of vaucouleurs." bishop cauchon--"what are the names of your father and your mother?" joan darc (with deep emotion)--"my father is named james darc, my mother isabelle romée. these are the names of my dear parents." bishop cauchon--"in what place were you baptized?" joan darc--"in the church of domremy." bishop cauchon--"who were your god-father and god-mother?" joan darc--"my god-father's name was john linguet, my god-mother's sybille." (at the recollections invoked by this name a tear rolls down her cheek.) bishop cauchon--"this woman claimed to have seen fairies. did she not pass in the region for a soothsayer and sorceress?" joan darc (with a firmer voice)--"my god-mother was a good and wise woman." bishop cauchon--"what priest baptized you at your birth?" joan darc--"master john minet, our curate, a holy man." bishop cauchon--"how old are you?" joan darc--"nearly nineteen." bishop cauchon--"do you know your pater noster?" joan darc--"my mother taught it to me, and i recite it mornings and evenings." (she sighs.) bishop cauchon--"will you pledge yourself not to flee from the castle of rouen, under pain of passing for a heretic?" joan darc (remains silent for a moment and reflects; by degrees she regains her self-assurance; she answers in a firm voice)--"i shall not take that pledge. i will not promise not to seek to flee, if the opportunity offers." raoul sauvage (threateningly)--"your chains will then be doubled, to keep you from escaping." joan darc--"it is allowed to all prisoners to escape from their prison." bishop cauchon (with severity, after consulting in a low voice with several of the judges sitting near him)--"the rebellious words of the said joan having been heard, we shall particularly commit her to the keeping of the noble john le gris, a guardsman of our sire, the king of england and france, and join to john le gris the equerries berwick and talbot, english men-at-arms. all the three are hereby charged to keep the prisoner, and we recommend to them not to allow anyone to approach her or to speak with her without our permission. (addressing himself to the tribunal) those of our very dear brothers who have any question to put to the accused, are now free to do so." a judge--"joan, do you swear to tell the whole truth? i await your answer." joan darc (with dignity)--"i have sworn; that is enough. i never lie." the same judge--"did you in your infancy learn to work like the other girls of the fields?" joan darc--"my mother taught me to sew and to spin, and also the labors of the field." another judge--"did you have a confessor?" joan darc--"yes, the curate of our parish is my confessor and spiritual guide." the same judge--"did you confess your revelations to your curate or to any other man of the church?" joan darc--"no, i said nothing upon that." the priests exchange meaning glances and a few words in a low voice. the same judge--"why that secrecy towards your curate?" joan darc--"had i spoken about my apparitions my father and mother would have opposed my undertaking." another judge--"do you think you committed a sin in leaving your father and your mother, contrary to the precept of the scriptures--'thou shalt honor thy father and mother'?" joan darc--"i never disobeyed them before i left them. but i wrote to them; they pardoned me." the same judge--"accordingly, you think you can violate without sin the commandments of the church?" joan darc--"god commanded me to go to the aid of orleans. i would not have been the king's servant had i not departed." bishop cauchon (with a significant look at the judges)--"you claim, joan, to have had revelations, visions--at what age did that happen to you?" joan darc--"i was then thirteen and a half years old. it was noon, in summer. i had fasted the previous day. i heard the voice, that seemed to proceed from the church. at the same time i saw a great light that dazzled me." bishop cauchon (slowly and weighing every word)--"you say you heard voices--are you quite certain?" joan darc (to herself: here is the snare that the good priest warned me against--i shall escape it by telling the truth)--"i heard the voices as clearly as i hear yours, sir bishop." bishop cauchon--"do you affirm that?" joan darc--"yes, sir; because it is the truth." bishop cauchon (lets his eyes travel triumphantly over the tribunal; his gesture is understood; a momentary silence ensues; then to the registrars)--"have you taken down textually the prisoner's answer?" a registrar--"yes, monseigneur." a judge--"and in france, joan, did you there also hear those voices?" joan darc--"yes, sir." another judge--"whence do you suppose came those voices?" joan darc (with an accent of profound conviction)--"the voices came from god." another judge--"what do you know about that?" another judge--"what were the circumstances under which you were captured at compiegne?" another judge--"who dictated the letter that you addressed to the english?" these unrelated and cross questions followed close upon one another for the purpose of confusing joan. joan darc (after a moment's silence)--"if you all question me at once, sirs, i shall be unable to answer any of you." bishop cauchon--"well, what makes you believe that the voices you speak about were divine?" joan darc--"they told me to behave like an honest girl, and that with the aid of god i would save france." a judge--"was it revealed to you that if you lost your virginity you would forfeit your luck in war?" joan darc (blushing)--"that was not revealed to me." the same judge--"was it to the archangel st. michael that you promised to remain a virgin?" joan darc (with chaste impatience)--"i made my vow to my good saints, st. marguerite and st. catherine." another judge--"and so the voices of your saints ordered you to come to france?" joan darc--"yes, for my own and the king's safety, and to deliver gaul from the foreign yoke." bishop cauchon--"did you not at that epoch see the apparition of st. marguerite and st. catherine, to whom you attribute the voices, those divine voices according to you?" joan darc--"yes, sir." bishop cauchon (deliberately)--"you are certain of having seen the apparition?" joan darc--"i saw my dear saints as clearly as i see you, sir." bishop cauchon--"you affirm that?" joan darc--"i affirm it upon my salvation." renewed and profound silence among the judges; several of them take notes; others exchange a few words in a low voice. a judge--"by what sign did you recognize those whom you call st. catherine and st. marguerite to have been saints?" joan darc--"by their saintliness." bishop cauchon--"and the archangel st. michael appeared before you?" joan darc--"yes, sir; several times." a judge--"how is he clad?" joan darc (recollecting the advice of canon loyseleur)--"i do not know." the same judge--"you refuse to answer? was the angel perhaps quite nude?" joan darc (blushing)--"do you imagine god has not the wherewithal to clothe him?" bishop cauchon--"your language is quite bold. do you consider yourself under the protection of god?" joan darc--"if i am not, may god place me there. if i am, may he keep me there. (in a loud and strong voice:) but remember this: you are my judges, you assume a grave responsibility in accusing me. as to myself, the burden is light." these noble words, pronounced by the martial maid in the conviction of her innocence, and indicative of her mistrust of her judges, announce a change in her spirit, a fortitude not there when the interrogatory commenced. she had secretly invoked her "voices" and they had answered--"go on; fear not; answer the wicked priests boldly; you have nothing to reproach yourself with; god is with you; he will not forsake you." strengthened by these thoughts and hope, the heroine raises her head; her pale and handsome face is now slightly colored; her large black eyes fix themselves boldly upon the bishop; she realizes that he is her mortal enemy. the ecclesiastical judges remark the increasing assurance of the accused, who but a moment before was so timid and so dejected. the transformation augurs well for their projects. in the pride of her exaltation, joan darc may, and is bound to, drop admissions that she would have kept secret had she remained reserved, timid and mistrustful. despite his wickedness, the bishop feels rebuked by the eyes of joan. he drops his hypocritical face, turns away his eyes and continues the interrogatory in a faltering voice. bishop cauchon--"so, then, joan, it was by order of your voices that you went to vaucouleurs in search of a certain captain named robert of baudricourt, who furnished you with an escort to take you to the king, to whom you promised to raise the siege of orleans?" joan darc--"yes, sir, you speak truly." bishop cauchon--"do you admit having dictated a letter addressed to the duke of bedford, regent of england, and other illustrious captains?" joan darc--"i dictated the letter at poitiers, sir." bishop cauchon--"in that letter you threatened the english with death?" joan darc--"yes; if they did not return to their own country, and if they persisted in heaping trials upon trials on the poor people of france, in ravaging the country, in burning the villages." bishop cauchon--"was not that letter written by you under the invocation of our lord jesus christ and of his immaculate mother, the holy virgin?" joan darc--"i ordered the words 'jesus and mary' to be placed in the form of a prayer at the head of the letters that i dictated. was that wrong?" bishop cauchon (does not answer; looks askance at the judges; several of these enter on their tablets the last answer of the accused, an answer that seems to be of extreme gravity judging from their hurry to note it)--"how did you sign the letters that you dictated?" joan darc--"i do not know how to write. i placed my cross in god as a signature at the foot of the parchment." this second answer, no less dangerous than the first, is likewise noted down with great zest by the priests. a profound silence follows. the bishop seems to interrogate the registrars with his looks, and to ask them whether they have finished writing down the words of the accused. bishop cauchon--"after several battles you forced the english to raise the siege of orleans?" joan darc--"my voices advised me. i fought--and god gave us the victory." a judge--"if those voices are of st. marguerite and st. catherine, these saints must hate the english." joan darc--"what god hates they hate; what he loves they love." another judge--"come, now; god loves the english, seeing he has so long rendered them victorious and they conquered a part of france." joan darc--"he undoubtedly left them to the punishment of their cruelty." another judge--"why should god have chosen a girl of your station rather than some other person to vanquish them?" joan darc--"because it pleased the lord to have the english routed by a poor girl like myself." the same judge--"how much money did your king pay you to serve him?" joan darc (proudly)--"i never asked aught of the king but good arms, good horses, and the payment of my soldiers." bishop cauchon--"when your king put you to the work of war, you ordered a standard to be made for you. what was its material?" joan darc--"it was of white satin." (she drops her head sadly at the recollection of the past glories of her banner, that was so terrible a device to the english, whose prisoner she now is. she smothers a sob.) bishop cauchon--"what figures were painted on it?" joan darc--"two angels holding a lily stalk. two symbols; god and the king." these words are likewise noted down with great zest by the members of the tribunal. a judge--"was your standard frequently renewed?" joan darc--"it was renewed as often as its staff was broken in battle. that happened frequently." another judge--"did not some of those who followed you have standards made similar to yours?" joan darc--"some did; others did not." the same judge--"were those who bore a standard similar to yours lucky in war? did they rout the english?" joan darc--"yes, if they were brave, they then triumphed over the english." another judge--"did your people follow you to battle because they considered you inspired?" joan darc--"i said to them: 'let us fall bravely upon the english!' i was the first to fall to--they followed me." the judge--"in short, your people took you to be inspired of god?" joan darc--"whether they believed me to be inspired or not, they trusted in my courage." bishop cauchon--"did you not, when your king was consecrated at rheims, proudly wave your banner over the prince's head?" joan darc--"no; but alone of all the captains, i accompanied the king into the cathedral with my standard in my hand." a judge (angrily)--"accordingly, while the other captains did not bring their standards to the solemnity, you brought yours!" joan darc--"it had been at the pain--it was entitled to be at the honor." this sublime answer, of such legitimate and touching pride and bearing the stamp of antique simplicity, strikes the assembled ecclesiastical executioners with admiration. they pause despite their bitter malice towards their victim. these were heroic and scathing words. they told of the price of perils and above all of disenchantment that joan had paid for her triumph. aye, she and her glorious standard had been cruelly in pain, poor martyr that she was. her virginal body was broken by the rude trials of war. she had shed her generous blood on the fields of battle. she had struggled with admirable stubbornness, with mortal anxieties born of the most sacred patriotism, against the treasonable plots of the captains who finally brought on her downfall. she had struggled against the sloth of charles vii, the poltroon whom with so much pain she dragged from victory to victory as far as rheims, where she had him consecrated king. her only recompense was to see her standard "at the honor" of that solemn consecration, from which she expected the salvation of gaul. her standard had been at the pain--it was entitled to be at the honor. the astonishment of the ecclesiastics at these sublime words is profound. deep silence ensues. bishop cauchon is the first to break it. addressing himself to the accused in measured words, an ordinary symptom with him of some lurking perfidy, he asks: bishop cauchon--"joan, when you entered a town, did not the inhabitants kiss your hands, your feet, your clothes?" joan darc--"many wished to; and when poor people, women and children, came to me, i feared to grieve them if i repelled them." this answer is to be used against her; several of the judges note it down, while a sinister smile plays around the lips of bishop cauchon; he proceeds: bishop cauchon--"did you ever hold a child at the baptismal font?" joan darc--"yes; i held a child at the holy font of soissons, and two others at st. denis. these are the only ones to whom i have been god-mother." bishop cauchon--"what names did you give them?" joan darc--"to the boy the name of charles, in honor of the king of france; to the girls the name of joan, because the mothers so wished it." these words, that charmingly depict the enthusiasm which the martial maid inspired among the people, and the generosity that she showed towards charles, are to be a further charge against her. several judges note them down. bishop cauchon--"a mother at lagny asked you to visit her dying child, did she not?" joan darc--"yes, but the child had been brought to the church of notre-dame. young girls of the town were on their knees at the door and prayed for the child. i knelt down among them, and i also prayed to god for his blessing upon the child." canon loyseleur (from under his completely lowered hood and disguising his voice)--"which of the two popes is the real pope?" joan darc (stupefied)--"are there, then, two popes, sir? i did not know that." bishop cauchon--"you claim to be inspired by god. he must have instructed you as to which of the two popes you should render obedience to." joan darc--"i know nothing about that. it is for the pope to know whether he obeys god, and for me to obey him who submits to god." bishop cauchon (to canon loyseleur with a significant accent)--"my very dear brother, we shall reserve for another session the grave question that you have broached touching the church triumphant and the church militant. let us now proceed with other matters. (turning to joan with an inflection of his voice that announces the gravity of the question.) when you left vaucouleurs you put on male attire. was that done at the request of robert of baudricourt, or of your own free will? answer categorically." joan darc--"of my own free will." a judge--"did your voices order you to give up the garb of your sex?" joan darc--"whatever good i have done i did by the advice of my voices. whenever i understood them well, my saints and the archangel have guided me well." another judge--"so, then, you do not think you are committing a sin in wearing the man's clothes that you are covered with?" joan darc (with a sigh of regret)--"oh, for the happiness of france and the misfortune of england, why am i not free in man's clothes with my horse and my armor! i would still vanquish our enemies." another judge--"would you like to hear mass?" joan darc (thrilling with hope)--"oh, with all my heart!" the same judge--"you can not hear it in those clothes that are not of your sex." joan darc (reflects a moment; she recalls the obscene language of her jailers and fears to be outraged by them; in man's clothes she feels greater protection than in the habits of her sex; she answers)--"do you promise me that if i resume my woman's clothes i shall be allowed to attend mass?" the same judge--"yes, joan, i promise you that." the bishop makes a gesture of impatience and withers the judge who had last spoken with a look of condemnation. joan darc--"let me, then, be provided with a long dress; i shall put it on to go to chapel. but when i return to my prison i shall resume my man's clothes." the judge consults the bishop with his eye to ascertain whether the request of the accused shall be granted; the prelate answers with a negative sign of his head, and turns to joan. bishop cauchon--"so, then, you persist in keeping your masculine dress?" joan darc--"i am guarded by men; such dress is safer." the inquisitor of the faith--"do you now wear and have you worn masculine garb voluntarily, absolutely of your own free will?" joan darc--"yes; and i shall continue to do so." again silence ensues. the ecclesiastical judges feel triumphant over the answer made so categorically by the accused, a grave answer seeing that bishop cauchon says to the registrars: bishop cauchon--"have you entered the words of the said joan?" a registrar--"yes, monseigneur." bishop cauchon (to the accused)--"you have often spoken of st. michael. in what did you recognize that the form that appeared before you was that of the blessed archangel? could not satan assume the form of a good angel to lead you to evil?" joan darc--"i recognized st. michael by the advice he gave me. it was the advice of an angel and not of satan; it came from heaven, not from hell." a judge--"what advice did he give?" joan darc--"his advice was that i conduct myself as a pious and honest girl; he said to me god would then inspire me, and would aid me to deliver france." the inquisitor of the faith--"so that you claim not only to have seen a supernatural apparition under the form of st. michael with your bodily eyes, but you furthermore claim that the figure was actually that of that holy personage?" joan darc--"i affirm it, seeing that i heard it with my ears, seeing that i saw it with my eyes. there is no doubt in my mind concerning the archangel." bishop cauchon (to the registrars)--"enter that answer without omitting a syllable." a registrar--"yes, monseigneur." canon loyseleur, whose face is carefully concealed under his hood, and who for greater security holds a handkerchief to the lower part of his countenance, rises and whispers in the ear of the bishop; the latter strikes his forehead as if reminded by his accomplice that he had overlooked a matter of grave importance; the canon returns to his seat in the rear. bishop cauchon--"joan, when, after you were captured at compiegne, you were taken to the castle of beaurevoir, you threw yourself out of one of the lower towers, did you not?" joan darc--"it is true." bishop cauchon--"what was the reason of your action?" joan darc--"i heard it said in my prison that i had been sold to the english. i preferred the risk of killing myself to falling into their hands. i endeavored to escape by jumping down from the tower." the inquisitor--"did you act by the advice of your voices?" joan darc--"no. they advised me to the contrary, saying: 'take courage; god will come to your help; it is cowardly to flee danger.' but my fear of the english was stronger than the advice of my saints." a judge--"when you jumped out of the tower, had you the intention of killing yourself?" joan darc--"i wished to escape. when i jumped i commended my soul to god, hoping with his help to escape from the english." the inquisitor--"after your fall, did you renounce the lord and his saints?" joan darc--"i never renounced either god or his saints." a judge--"did you, at the moment of jumping down from the tower, invoke your saints?" joan darc--"yes, i invoked them. despite their having advised me against the move, i invoked through them the protection of god for gaul, my own deliverance, and the salvation of my soul." the inquisitor--"since you have been a prisoner in rouen, have your voices promised you your deliverance?" joan darc--"only an instant ago, they said to me: 'accept everything meekly, bravely undergo your martyrdom. have courage and patience. you will gain paradise!'" the inquisitor--"and do you expect to gain paradise?" joan darc (radiantly)--"i believe it as firmly as if i were there now. god keeps my place." bishop cauchon (excitedly, and looking at the judges)--"here is an answer of much weight. pride! presumption!" joan darc (with a celestial smile)--"indeed, i hold my belief in paradise as a great treasure. hence my strength." the radiancy of joan's face illumines her beautiful features and imparts to them a divine expression. her black eyes, shining with the spark of inspiration, are raised heavenward. she looks through the window, contemplates the sky whose azure is for a moment visible through a rift in the clouds, and in the expansion of her celestial ravishment she seems detached from earth. but, alack! a puerile incident speedily recalls the poor prisoner to reality. a little bird flutters cheerily by the window and lightly touches the glass with its wing. at the sight of the little creature, free in space, the heroine, instantaneously yielding to the painful feeling of awakened reality, drops headlong from the height of her radiantly towering hopes. she sighs, lowers her head, and tears roll from her eyes. these rapidly succeeding emotions prevent joan from observing the joy of the ecclesiastical judges, busily entering on their tablets the last two enormities, which, coupled with so many others, are certain to take her to the pyre. the entries were: "the said joan voluntarily risked suicide by throwing herself down from the tower of beaurevoir"; "the said joan has the sacrilegious audacity of saying and believing that she is as sure of paradise as if she were there now." but the task of the criminal ecclesiastics is not yet complete. the heroine is suddenly drawn from her own painful thoughts by the voice of the bishop. bishop cauchon--"do you believe you are in mortal sin?" joan darc--"i refer all my actions to god." the inquisitor--"you, then, think it useless to confess, even if you are in a state of mortal sin?" joan darc--"i never have committed a mortal sin, at least not that i know of." a judge--"what do you know about it?" joan darc--"my voices would have reproached me for the sin. my saints would have abandoned me. still, if i could, i would confess. one's conscience can not be too clear." bishop cauchon--"and is it not a mortal sin to accept ransom for a man and yet have him executed?" joan darc (stupefied)--"who has done that?" bishop cauchon--"you!" joan darc (indignantly)--"never!" the inquisitor--"what about franquet of arras?" joan darc (consults her memory for a moment)--"franquet of arras was a captain of burgundian marauders. i took him prisoner in battle. he confessed to being a traitor, a thief and a murderer. his trial consumed fifteen days before the judges of senlis. i asked mercy for the man, hoping to exchange him for a worthy bourgeois of paris who was a prisoner of the english. but learning that the bourgeois died in prison, i said to the bailiff of senlis: 'the prisoner whose exchange i wished to obtain has died. you may, if you think fit, execute justice upon franquet of arras, traitor, thief and murderer.'" a judge--"did you give money to the one who helped you capture franquet of arras?" joan darc (shrugging her shoulders)--"i am neither minister nor treasurer of france, to order money to be paid out." bishop cauchon--"you placed your arms _ex voto_ in the basilica of st. denis. what did you mean by that?" joan darc (remains silent for an instant, absorbed in painful recollections. seriously wounded under the walls of paris, she had upon recovery offered her armor to the virgin mary as a pious homage, and did so also through an impulse of indignation, that was provoked by the cowardice of charles vii, who, after the prodigies of the maid's victorious campaign, had returned to touraine to join his mistresses. vainly had joan said to him: "face the english, who almost alone defend the walls of paris; present yourself bravely at the gates of the town promising to the parisians oblivion for the past and harmony for the future; it is almost certain that you will thus conquer your capital!" but the royal poltroon had recoiled before the danger connected with such a step. in utter despair, joan had decided to renounce war, she gave up her armor, and offered it up _ex voto_. joan can not make such an admission to the priests. guided by the generosity of her soul and instructed by her sound judgment, she would prefer to die rather than accuse charles vii and cover him with ignominy in the eyes of his enemies. she sees france in the royalty. the king's shame would fall indelibly upon the country itself. her answer is accordingly so framed as to save the honor of charles vii)--"i was wounded under the walls of poitiers; i offered my armor at the altar of the holy virgin in thankfulness that my wound was not mortal." the inquisitor (seeming to remember something that he had forgotten)--"did you, during the time that you were making war in battle harness and man's attire, take the eucharist?" the stir among the priests and the silence that falls upon the tribunal indicates the gravity of the question put to the accused. joan darc--"i partook of communion as often as i could, and not as often as i would have wished." bishop cauchon (excitedly)--"registrars, did you enter that?" a registrar--"yes, monseigneur." bishop cauchon--"whence did you come the last time you went to compiegne?" joan darc (shivers at the painful recollection)--"i came from crespy, in valois." bishop cauchon--"did your voices order the sally at which you were taken?" joan darc--"during the last week of the easter holidays my voices often warned me that i was soon to be betrayed and delivered--but that it was so decreed--not to be surprised, and to accept everything meekly, and that god would come to my aid." a judge--"thus your voices, the voices of your saints, told you you would be captured?" joan darc (sighing)--"yes, they told me so a long time. i requested my saints to let me die the moment i was taken so as not to prolong my sufferings--" the inquisitor--"did your voices tell you exactly the day on which you would be captured?" joan darc--"no, not exactly; they only announced to me that i was soon to be betrayed and delivered. i said so to the good people of compiegne on the day of the sally." a judge--"if your voices had ordered you to deliver battle before compiegne while warning you that you would be taken prisoner on that day, would you still have obeyed them?" joan darc--"i would have obeyed with regrets; but i would have obeyed, whatever was to happen." a judge--"did you cross the bridge in order to make the sally from compiegne?" joan darc (more and more cruelly affected by these remembrances)--"does that belong to the process?" bishop cauchon--"answer." joan darc (rapidly in short sentences)--"i crossed the bridge. i attacked with my company the burgundians of the sire of luxembourg. i threw them back twice as far as their own trenches, the third time only half way. the english then came up. they cut off my retreat. several of my soldiers wished to force me back into compiegne. but the bridge had been raised. we were betrayed. i was captured." (she shudders.) bishop cauchon--"joan, your interrogatory is closed for to-day. pray to the lord that he may enlighten your soul and guide you to the path of eternal salvation. may god help you, and come to your assistance." (he makes the sign of the cross.) all the other priests (rising)--"amen." bishop cauchon--"conduct joan the maid back to her prison." the two beadles approach joan. each takes her by an arm; they lead her out of the chapel and deliver her to a platoon of english soldiers, who conduct her back to her dungeon. chapter iv. the temptation. livid, haggard, broken with exhaustion after her final interrogatory, joan darc reclines upon the straw of her cell; her male attire is still more dilapidated than when she first appeared before her judges. she is chained by the waist and feet as before. she has wound some rags around the heavy iron rings at her ankles. their pressure made her flesh sore, and in spots broke it to the quick, creating painful wounds. besides, one of the wounds received in battle opened anew and added to her physical suffering. but the look of profound distress upon the martial maid's face proceeds from other than these causes. one of the jailers, noticing that the prisoner barely touched the gross food furnished to her, had said that in order to restore her appetite bishop cauchon was to send her a dish prepared in his own palace. the following day she partook of a fish that the prelate sent her. almost immediately after she was seized with convulsive retchings and had fallen into a swoon. the jailers thought she was upon the point of death and ran for a physician. the latter immediately discovered the symptoms of poison and succeeded in recalling her to life, but not to health. since then the prisoner remained in a languishing state, downcast and weak. joan darc is not alone in her cell. canon loyseleur is seated on a stool near the kind of coffin filled with straw on which she lies. believing herself in danger of death, she has just confessed to loyseleur, a solemnity at which she opened her soul to him and narrated her whole life. so far from remotely suspecting the infamous treason of the prelate, she drew vague hopes and religious consolation from the tokens of kindness which he seemed to bestow upon her. the canon had frequently visited the prisoner since their first interview. he obtained, said he, with much difficulty permission to leave his cell in order to offer her spiritual consolation. she reported to him what happened at her first and subsequent interrogatories. the canon congratulated her upon having asserted the reality of her apparitions and revelations, and warned her against another snare, a more dangerous one that he claimed to perceive. one of the judges having asked her which of the then two popes should be obeyed, he advised her that, if further pressed for an answer thereon, and asked whether she would accept absolutely and blindly the opinion of her judges, she should refuse and appeal from them to god alone. a stranger to theological subtleties, joan darc placed confidence in loyseleur's words. the snare thereby spread by the bishop and his accomplice was extremely adroit. on this day the canon had gone to joan's cell under the pretext of fortifying her in her good resolutions, and after having taken joan's general confession, and bestowed paternal and consoling words upon her, he went to the wicket to call john to let him out. the jailer quickly appeared, grumbled a few words in affected anger, opened the door, hurled the canon out with a great display of force and locked the door after him. joan was left alone. in making her general confession to the canon, in narrating to him her whole, life, joan had yielded not merely to a religious habit, but also to the desire of once more evoking the memories of her whole past existence, and of scrupulously interrogating herself upon all her actions. the threatening present induced the desire. she wished to ascertain with inexorable severity towards herself whether any of her actions were blameworthy. the mere thought of the threatened punishment, to be burned alive, prostrated her mind. the reasons for her terror were various. first of all she shrank before the shame of being publicly dragged to death like a criminal; the atrocious torment of feeling the flames devouring her flesh threw her into further agonies; finally the chaste girl was distracted by the fear of being taken half naked to the pyre. she had questioned the canon several times upon that head, and had learned from him that "heretics, male and female, are taken to death without any other clothing than a shirt, and on their heads a large pasteboard mitre inscribed with the heretic's special crimes." at the thought of appearing in public in an almost nude condition the maid's dignity and modesty revolted. the despair that such thoughts threw her into made her ready to submit to any declaration that her judges might demand of her, if it only could save her from such ignominy. in vain did her voices whisper to her: "submit bravely to your martyrdom, not the shadow of a wrongful act stains the luster of your life. yield not to vain shame, the shamefulness of it must fall upon your murderers. face without a blush the looks of men--glory covers you with a celestial aureola--be strong of heart!" in these moments of despair, the heroine became again the timid young girl whose intense modesty had caused her even to renounce the sacred joys of wifehood, and who had taken the vow of virginity to her saints. thus, despite the encouragement of her voices, her strength failed her, especially at the thought of being led to the pyre in a mere shirt. after her recent spell of sickness that, snapping the springs of her energetic and tender nature, slowly undermined her will power, joan fell with increasing frequency under the dominion of weakness. at intervals her wonted courage and resoluteness resumed the ascendancy. her voices said to her: "do not yield to those false priests, who pretend to judge you and are but your butchers. uphold truth bravely! pride yourself in having saved france with the aid of heaven. defy death! they may burn your body, but your fame will live imperishable as your immortal soul, that will radiantly rejoin its creator! noble victim of priests' hypocrisy and of the wickedness of man, quit this sad world and enter paradise!" such were, after her last interrogatory and the suffering produced by her illness, the spells of resoluteness and faint-heartedness that wrestled with each other and alternately exalted and again cast the heroine down. on this day, however, joan darc feels herself so exhausted that she feels certain she will speedily expire in her cell and escape the ordeal of the pyre. suddenly the noise of approaching steps is heard outside and she recognizes the voice of the bishop saying to the jailers: "open to us the door of joan's prison; open it to the justice of god!" the door is opened, and the prelate appears, accompanied by seven of the ecclesiastical judges--william boucher, jacob of tours, maurice of quesnay, nicolas midi, william adelin, gerard feuillet, and haiton--and the inquisitor john lemaitre. the members of the holy tribunal are accompanied by two registrars. one of these carries a large lighted wax taper, the other a book of parchments and other writing material. the bishop is clad in his sacerdotal robes, his accomplices wear their priestly or their monastic gowns. they silently range themselves in a semi-circle near the straw couch on which the chained prisoner is lying. the bishop steps towards her; one of the registrars sits down at the table he has carried in, on which he lays his parchments; the other remains standing near his companion lighting the desk with his candle, whose reddish glamor falls upon the faces of the ecclesiastics, motionless as specters, and, rather than illuminating, imparts a somber aspect to the scene. surprised at the unexpected visit, the object of which she is ignorant of, joan darc rises painfully and casts a frightened and wondering look around her. bishop cauchon (in accents of hypocritic compassion)--"these reverend priests, doctors of theology, and myself, have come to visit you in your prison, out of which you are at present unable to move. we come to bring you words of consolation. you have been questioned by the most learned clerks of canonical law. your answers, i must tell you paternally, have so far borne the stamp of most damnable error, and if you persist in these errors, errors so prejudicial to the salvation of your soul and the safety of your body, we shall see ourselves compelled to give you over to the secular arm." joan darc (in a feeble voice)--"i feel so ill and so weak, that it seems to me i am about to die. if it must be so by the will of god i request communion before death, and sacred soil for my body after death." a judge--"submit yourself to the church. the more you stand in fear of death, all the more should you mend your ways." joan darc--"if my body dies in prison, i request of you a sacred sepulchre for it. if you refuse that to me, i shall appeal to god. may his will be done." bishop cauchon--"these are grave words. you appeal to god. but between you and god stands his church." joan darc--"is it not all one--god and his church?" bishop cauchon--"learn, my dear daughter, that there is a _church triumphant_ where god is with his saints, his angels and the saved souls; there is, besides, the _church militant_ composed of our holy father the pope, vicar of god on earth, the cardinals, the prelates, the priests and all good catholics, the which church is infallible, in other words, can never err, can never be mistaken, guided as it is by the divine light. that, joan, is the church militant. will you submit to its judgment? will you, yes or no, acknowledge us as your judges, us, members of the church militant?" joan darc (recalls the advice of the canon; there can be no doubt, she thinks, that a snare is being laid for her; her mistrust being in accord with her naïve faith, she answers with all the firmness that her weakness allows)--"i went to the king for the sake of the salvation of france, sent to him by god and his saints. to that church (making a sublime gesture), to that church on high, do i submit in all my acts and words!" bishop cauchon (with difficulty restraining his joy)--"you will not, then, accept the judgment of the church militant upon your acts and words?" joan darc--"i shall submit to this church if it does not demand the impossible from me." the inquisitor--"what do you understand by that?" joan darc--"to deny or repudiate the visions that i have had from god. for nothing in the world shall i deny or repudiate them. i shall not consent to save my life by a falsehood." bishop cauchon (in a blandishing voice)--"if the church militant were to declare those visions and apparitions illusory and diabolical, would you still refuse to submit to its judgment?" joan darc--"i submit only to god, who has ever inspired me. i neither accept nor shall i accept the judgment of any man, all men being liable to error." bishop cauchon (addressing the registrar)--"write down that answer, registrar; write it down without any omission." the registrar--"yes, monseigneur." the inquisitor--"you do not, then, hold yourself subject to the church militant, that is to say to our pope, our seigneurs the cardinals, archbishops, bishops and other holy ministers of god?" joan darc (interrupting him)--"i recognize myself their subject--god being first served." the admirable answer disconcerts the prelates. the ingenuous and pure soul that they expected to entangle in the perfidious net of their theological subtleties, slipped from them with one stroke of its wings. bishop cauchon (is the first to recover, he addresses joan with severity)--"you answer us like an idolater. you are exposing your body and your soul to a grave peril." joan darc--"i could not answer otherwise, monseigneur." a judge (harshly)--"you will then have to die an apostate." joan darc (with touching pride)--"i received baptism; i am a good christian; i shall die a christian." bishop cauchon--"do you desire to receive the body of the savior?" joan darc--"oh, i wish it with all my soul!" bishop cauchon--"you will then have to submit to the church militant." joan darc--"i serve god to the best of my ability--from him i expect everything--nothing from the bishops, nothing from the priests, nothing from anybody." the inquisitor--"if you refuse submission to the holy roman catholic and apostolic church you will be given up for a heretic, and condemned to be burned." joan darc (in a high degree of exaltation springing from her convictions and the disgust that the ecclesiastics inspire her)--"even if the pyre stood ready i would answer no otherwise!" bishop cauchon--"joan, my dear daughter, your stiff-neckedness is execrable. do you mean to say that if you stood before a council composed of our holy father, the cardinals and bishops, and they called upon you to submit to their decision--" joan darc (interrupting him with pained impatience)--"neither pope, nor cardinals, nor bishops will draw from me other statements than those that i have made. pray have mercy upon a poor creature! i am dying!" (she drops back upon the straw in a swoon.) bishop cauchon--"will you submit to the successor of st. peter, our holy father? answer categorically." joan darc (after a long pause and recovering)--"have me taken to him, i shall ask him for his blessing." bishop cauchon--"what you say is insensate. do you persist in keeping your male attire, a most blameworthy conduct?" joan darc--"i would put on female clothes to go to church, if i could, in order to receive the body of my savior. but back in my prison, i shall resume my male attire out of fear of being outraged by your people, as they have tried before now." the inquisitor--"once more and for the last time, and be careful: if you persist in your damnable error our holy mother the church will be forced, despite her infinite mercy, to deliver you over to the secular arm, and it will then be all over with your body and soul." joan darc--"it would then be all over with your own souls--with the souls of yourselves who will have condemned me unjustly. reflect upon that." bishop cauchon--"joan, i must charitably declare to you that if you stubbornly persist in your ways, there are torturers near who will put you to the rack.(he points to the door, joan shivers.) there are torturers near--they are waiting--they will put you to cruel torments, for the sole purpose of drawing less damnable answers from you." joan darc (yields at first to the terror of the thought of being tortured; the momentary weakness is, however, speedily overcome; she draws superhuman strength from the conviction of her innocence; sits up; casts a withering look upon the prelates and cries in an accent of indomitable resolution) --"have my limbs torn one from the other! have my soul leap out of my body! you shall be no further! and if the pain of the torture should draw from my distracted body aught that is contrary to what i have so far said, i take god for my witness, it will be pain alone that will have made me speak contrary to the truth!"[ ] bishop cauchon--"joan, your transport singularly aggravates your position." joan darc--"listen, oh, ye priests of christ; listen, oh, ye seigneurs of the church; you are bent upon my death. if in order to make me die, if in order to execute me my clothes are to be taken off, i ask of you but a woman's shirt to march in to the pyre." bishop cauchon (affecting astonishment)--"you pretend that you wear a man's shirt and clothes by the command of god; why should you want a woman's shirt to go to death in? this is a singular inconsistency." joan darc--"because it is longer." the infamous ecclesiastics are determined to inflict upon the wretched young woman of hardly nineteen years all the tortures, from the rack to the pyre. a tremor, nevertheless, runs through them at the sublime modesty of the virgin, who requests of her butchers as a supreme act of mercy that she be allowed a woman's shirt to go to death in because such a shirt was longer, because it could better conceal her figure from the public gaze. bishop cauchon alone remains unaffected. bishop cauchon (harshly addressing his accomplices)--"my very dear brothers, we shall assemble in a room of the tower in order to deliberate upon the torture that should be inflicted upon joan." the bishop and his fellows depart from the cell, followed by the registrars. chapter v. the sentence. the full ecclesiastical tribunal is assembled in a low, somber and vaulted apartment. the registrar reads to the ecclesiastical judges the last interrogatory, at which they had not all been present. they are to consider whether the accused shall be put to the torture. bishop cauchon--"my very dear brothers, you are again assembled in the name of our holy church." all the judges--"amen." bishop cauchon--"my very dear brothers, we peter, bishop of beauvais by divine grace do, in view of the stubbornness of the said joan, and in view of the pestilent heresy that her answers are poisoned with, consult with you, our very dear brothers, whether it is deemed expedient and urgent to submit the said joan to the torture, to the end of obtaining from her answers and avowals that may save her poor soul from the eternal and her body from the temporal flames. please give your opinion in the order of precedence." nicolas of venderesse--"it does not seem to me, at present, opportune to put the said joan to the torture." andre marguerie--"i consider the torture superfluous. the answers of the accused are sufficient to condemn her upon. i am against the torture." william erard--"it is, indeed, unnecessary to obtain new avowals from the said joan. those that she has made call for the chastisement of the temporal arm. let us not go beyond that." robert barbier--"i share the views of my very dear brother." denis gastinel--"i am of the opinion that we should forego the torture. it is useless in the case at bar." aubert morel--"i am of the opinion that the torture should be forthwith applied to the said joan in order to ascertain whether the errors that she persists in are sincere or fraudulent." thomas of courcelles--"i hold that it would be well to put the said joan to the torture." nicolas of coupequesne--"i do not think it expedient to submit joan to bodily torture. but she should be admonished once more, in order to compel her to submit to the church militant." john ledoux--"i think so, too. no torture." isambard of la pierre--"that is my opinion." nicolas loyseleur--"i think it is necessary as a medicine to the soul of the said joan that she be put to the torture.[ ] for the rest i shall adhere to the opinion of my very dear brothers. the question must be decided." william haiton--"i consider the torture useless. i pronounce against its application." the result of the deliberation is that a majority of the ecclesiastics is against applying the torture to joan darc, not so much through a sentiment of humanity as because the admissions made by the accused sufficiently justify her condemnation, as canon andre marguerie naïvely put it. nevertheless, bishop cauchon, who panted for the torture like a wolf at the smell of blood, seems greatly displeased with the evangelical mildness of his very dear brothers in jesus christ, who seem so charitably disposed as to think that the burning of joan darc would be glory enough to the church of rome, without previously lacerating her flesh or cracking her bones. moreover, these more clement ecclesiastics consider that, weak and ailing as joan is, the girl may expire under the torture. they aim at a striking death for their victim. bishop cauchon (ill disguising his displeasure)--"the majority of our very dear brothers have pronounced against submitting the said joan to the torture. that means of obtaining her sincere avowals being discarded, i demand that before we now adjourn she be brought hither to the end that she may hear the verdict that is pronounced against her by our very dear brother maurice, canon of the very reverend chapter of the cathedral of rouen." the ecclesiastical judges bow approval. nicolas loyseleur goes out to issue the orders for the carrying in of joan before the tribunal. he, however, does not resume his seat at the session, fearing to be recognized by the prisoner. the traitor trembles before his victim. too feeble to walk, joan darc is brought in upon a chair by two jailers with her feet chained. they deposit the chair a few paces before the ecclesiastical judges. resolved to uphold the truth until death, joan asks herself what crimes she could have committed. she has maintained the reality of the visions that she had; she has conscientiously submitted all the acts of her life to the judgment of her sovereign master--god. convinced though she is of the bias and perfidy of the ecclesiastical tribunal, she is still unable to believe her condemnation possible, or rather she racks her mind to fathom its motive. a feverish hue has slightly colored her pale face. she partially rises from her seat, supporting herself on its arms. her large black eyes are anxiously fixed upon her judges. she waits in the midst of the profound silence that falls upon the assembly at her entrance. dressed in his canonical robes, canon maurice holds in his hands a parchment on which the sentence that he is about to read is written. the virgin warrior, defending her country's soil, had proved herself the peer of the most illustrious captains. the christian maid had usually kept her sword in its scabbard, and even in the heat of the most stubbornly contested battles never used it against men. she contented herself with guiding her soldiers with it and with her standard. every day, when at all possible, she knelt in the temple and held communion with the angels. in the letters that she addressed to the foreign captains and the chiefs of the civil factions, she conjured the english in the name of the god of charity, of concord and of justice to abandon a country that they held contrary to right and that they ruled with violence, and she promised to them mercy and peace if they renounced the iniquitous conquest that rapine and massacre had rendered still more odious. when she addressed herself to the frenchmen in arms against the french she ever reminded them that they were of france, and conjured them to join against the common enemy. as a woman, joan darc ever gave the example of the most generous and most angelic virtues. her chastity inspired her with sublime words that will remain the admiration of the centuries. how could the ecclesiastical judges formulate against the warrior, the christian and the virgin a single accusation that does not cause common judgment to revolt? an accusation that is not a heinous outrage, a despicable insult, a sacrilegious challenge cast at all that ever has been and ever will be the object of man's admiration? these infamous ecclesiastics, these bishops sold to the english, ransacked the canons of the church and the decretals of the inquisition, and with the aid of these found twelve capital charges against the warrior, the christian and the virgin. twelve capital charges! and what is still more abominable, in the eyes of the orthodox judges, the charges are well founded and legitimate. they are the "complete, absolute, irrevocable and infallible" expression of the roman church. they flow in point of right, from the legal application of the jurisdiction of a church that is infallible, eternal and divine--one as god; infallible as god; divine as god; eternal as god!--according to the claims of the ecclesiastics! the sentence of joan is supposed to be the summary of the life of the maid, now present before her judges, and though broken and feverish, yet with a soul full of faith and of energy. the session is re-opened. bishop cauchon (addressing the accused in a grave voice)--"joan, our very dear brother maurice will read to you the sentence that has been pronounced upon you." (the bishop devoutly crosses himself.) all the judges (crossing themselves)--"amen." canon maurice (reading in a sepulchral and threatening voice)--"'first: you said, joan, that at thirteen years you had revelations and apparitions of angels and saints to whom you give the name of st. michael, of st. marguerite and of st. catherine. you said you frequently saw them with the eyes of your body. you said that you frequently conversed with them. "'upon this point, and considering the aim and final object of these revelations and apparitions, the nature of the matters revealed, and the quality of your person, the church pronounces your revelations and visions to be fraudulent, seductive, pernicious, and proceeding from the evil spirit of the devil.'" canon maurice stops for a moment in order that the gravity of the first charge be properly weighed and appreciated by joan darc. but the words that she has just heard carry her back to the days of her childhood, days of peace that flowed in the midst of the sweet enjoyments of her family. she forgets the present and becomes absorbed in the recollection of her infancy, a recollection at once sweet and bitter to her. canon maurice (proceeds to read)--"'secondly: joan, you said that your king, having recognized you by your signs as truly sent by god, gave you men of arms to do battle with. you said that st. marguerite and st. catherine accompanied you to chinon and other places, where they guided you with their advice. "'the church pronounces this declaration mendacious and derogatory to the dignity of the saints and the angels. "'thirdly: joan, you said that you recognized the angels and the saints by the advice that they gave you. you said that you believed the apparitions to be good, and that you believe that as firmly as you do in the faith of our lord jesus christ. this is an outrage to the divinity. "'the church declares that those are not determining signs to recognize the saints by; that your belief is temerarious, your claim braggard, and that you err in the faith. you are outside of the pale of the communion of the faithful.'" recalled from her revery, joan darc listens to this new accusation without understanding it. in what did she brag? in what was she temerarious? in what did she lie? she recognized the saints by the wisdom of their counsel when they said to her: "joan, be pious, behave as a wise girl; heaven will support you in driving the foreigners from gaul." the promise of her saints is verified. she has won brilliant victories over the enemy of france. where is the lie, the temerariousness, the bragging? canon maurice (reads)--"'fourthly: joan, you said you were endowed with the faculty of knowing certain things that lay in the future, and that you recognized your king without ever having seen him before. "'the church pronounces you convicted of presumption, arrogance and witchcraft.'" without concerning herself about the imputation of witchcraft, that seems to her senseless, joan darc sighs at the recollection of her first interview at chinon with "the gentle dauphin of france," when, drawn towards him out of commiseration for his misfortunes and devoted to the royalty, charles vii received her with a miserable buffoonery, thereupon imposed upon her, upon so chaste a girl, an infamous examination, and then sent her to a council of ecclesiastics assembled in poitiers, who, struck by the sincerity of her responses, declared her divinely inspired. and, now, here is another set of priests, speaking in the name of the same church, and treating her as a witch! canon maurice (reads)--"'fifthly: joan, you said that by the advice of god you wore and continue to wear male attire--a short jacket, hose fastened with hooks, cap, and hair cut short down to your ears--preserving nothing that denotes your sex except what nature itself betrays. before being taken prisoner, you frequently partook of the holy eucharist in manly costume; and despite all our efforts to induce you to renounce such a costume, you obstinately persevere in keeping it, pretending to act by the advice of god. "'the church pronounces you upon that head a blasphemer of god, a contemner of its sacraments, a transgressor of divine law, of holy writ and of canonical sanction. the church pronounces you astray and errant in the faith, and idolatrous after the fashion of the gentiles.'" with her mind upon the chaste motives that had decided her to assume male attire so long as her divine mission compelled her to live in camps near soldiers; remembering also with what zeal priests had admitted her to communion when, clad in her martial outfit, she came to thank god for having granted her victory, joan darc asks herself by what mental aberration another set of priests of christ can see in her a blasphemer and an idolatress after the fashion of the gentiles! canon maurice (reads)--"'sixthly: joan, you said that often you caused the divine names of jesus and mary to be placed at the head of the letters, which you addressed to captains and others, and that afterwards, at the bottom of the said letters, you drew the revered sign of the cross. in those homicidal letters, you boasted that you would cause the death of those who should dare resist your insolent orders. you affirmed that you spoke and acted thus by divine inspiration and suggestion. "'the church pronounces you a traitor, mendacious, cruel, desirous of shedding human blood, seditious, a provoker of tyranny and a blasphemer of god in his holy commandments and revelations.'" at this stupid and iniquitous accusation, joan darc is unable to resist a tremor of indignation. they accuse her of cruelty, of causing the shedding of human blood--her who on the very day of her triumphal entry into orleans, seeing an english prisoner fall under the blows of a brutal mercenary, was so moved with pity that she precipitated herself from her horse and knelt down beside the wounded soldier, whose head she raised, and for whom she implored help! she, desirous of the effusion of human blood! she who on many occasions saved english prisoners from massacre and set them free! she who, under the invocation of christ, wrote so many letters making ardent pleas for peace! she who dictated the touching missive to the duke of burgundy imploring him to put an end to the disasters of civil war! she who ever marched into battle, confronting death with no weapon in her hand other than her banner of white satin! she whose own blood ran on the field of battle and who never shed the blood of any! canon maurice (reads)--"'seventhly: joan, you said that, as a result of your revelations, you left the paternal roof at the age of seventeen years, against the will of your parents, who were plunged by your departure into a sorrow that verged upon distraction; that you then went to a captain named robert of baudricourt, who had you escorted to chinon to your king, to whom you said that you came in the name of god to drive away the english and restore him his crown. "'the church pronounces you impious towards your parents; a transgressor of the commandment of god--"thou shalt honor thy father and mother;" a blasphemer of the lord; erring in your faith; and the maker of presumptuous and temerarious promises in defiance of our mother the church.'" this accusation is as unjust as the preceding ones. what heartrending agonies did not joan undergo when, beset by her voices that daily said to her: "march to the deliverance of france!" she felt compelled to resign herself to the idea of leaving her dearly beloved and revered parents! how many times, overcoming the intoxication of her victories, has she not felt and declared: "i would prefer to be sewing and spinning near my dear mother!" and when, become the arbiter of the destiny of france, she received a letter from her father who whelmed her with blessings and pardoned her departure, did she not cry out, less delighted at her triumphs than at the paternal clemency, "my father has pardoned me!" and yet, despite the saintly absolution, these ecclesiastics accuse her of trampling under foot the commandments of god! canon maurice (reads)--"'eighthly: joan, you said that you jumped down out of the tower of the castle of beaurevoir because you preferred death to falling into the hands of the english; and that, despite the advice of the archangel st. michael and your saints, who ordered you not to attempt to escape or kill yourself, you persevered in your project. "'the church pronounces you guilty of yielding to despair, of having contemplated homicide upon yourself, and of having criminally interpreted the law of human freedom of action.'" joan darc smiles disdainfully at hearing these ecclesiastics condemn her for having endeavored to escape her enemies who sold her for ten thousand gold sous to the english. canon maurice (reads)--"'ninthly: joan, you said your saints promised paradise to you if you preserved your virginity and devoted yourself to god, and that you were as certain of paradise as if you were now in the enjoyment of the bliss of the blessed. you said you did not consider yourself in mortal sin because you ever heard the voice of your saints. "'the church pronounces you presumptuous and headstrong in assertions that are mendacious and pernicious, and that exhale a pestilential odor.'" joan raises to the vaulted roof of the apartment her face beaming with faith and hope, and she hears her voices whisper to her: "courage, holy daughter, what need you care for the vain words of these men? god has adjudged you worthy of his paradise." canon maurice (reads)--"'tenthly: joan, you said that the archangel st. michael and your saints, speaking to you in the language of gaul, informed you that they were enemies of the english and friends of your king. "'the church pronounces you superstitious, a sorceress, a blasphemer of the archangel st. michael and of saints marguerite and catherine, and a contemner of love for your neighbor. "'eleventhly: joan, you said that if the evil spirit had appeared under the form of st. michael you would have been able to discover and discern the fact. "'the church pronounces you idolatrous, an invoker of devils and guilty of illicit judgment.'" joan darc believes she is dreaming when she hears the accusation of sorcery and demoniacal invocations. a sorceress because she affirmed she saw what she did see! a sorceress because she affirmed she heard what she did hear! a sorceress and invoker of demons because those visions appeared before her, visions that she neither invoked nor desired, and that, frightening her at first, she prayed god to keep away from her! canon maurice (reads)--"'twelfthly: joan, you said that if the church would demand from you an admission contrary to the inspirations that you pretend to have received from god, you would absolutely refuse obedience, and that in all such matters you do recognize neither the judgment of the church nor of any man on earth. you said the answer proceeded not from yourself but from god, and you persisted, although frequently reminded of the article of faith, _unam ecclesiam catholicam_, and although it was proven to you that every catholic must submit his actions and words to the church militant, represented by the pope and his ministers. "'the church pronounces you a schismatic, an enemy of its unity and authority. it pronounces you, besides, stiff-necked in the errors of your apostate faith.--amen!'" all the judges (in chorus, and crossing themselves)--"amen!" if in her loyalty, in the habitual meekness of her spirit joan darc admitted some of the accusations against her, she would bow before the judgment of these ecclesiastics. but after hearing the charges, the maid remains all the more convinced of their iniquity, and resolves more strongly than ever to spurn such judges and to appeal from them to god. the reading of the indictment being ended, bishop peter cauchon approaches the maid's seat. bishop cauchon--"and now, joan, you know what terrible accusations weigh upon you. the trial is hereby ended. it is now time to reflect well upon what you have heard. if after having been so often admonished by me, as well as by my other very dear brothers, the vicar of the inquisition and other learned prelates, you should, alack! in contumely of god, in defiance of the faith and the law of our lord jesus christ, and in contempt of the safety and security of catholic conscience, still persist in your errors; should you persist in standing out as an object of horrible scandal, of infectious and disgusting pestilence, it will be, dear daughter, a great injury to your soul and your body. in the name of your soul that is imperishable, but that may be damned, in the name of your perishable body, i exhort you once more and for the last time, to re-enter the bosom of our sacred mother the roman catholic and apostolic church, and to submit yourself to her judgment. if not, and i charitably warn you now a last time, your soul will be damned, damned to all eternity and delivered to satan, and your body will be destroyed by fire--a thing that with my joined hands (he prostrates and crosses himself, and clasps his hands) i fervently pray our lord to preserve you from." joan darc (makes a superhuman effort to rise and keep her feet; she succeeds by steadying her chained and shaking limbs against her seat. she then raises her right hand and cries in a firm voice and an accent of profound and heroic conviction)--"i take heaven for my witness! i shall be condemned, i shall see the fagots, the executioner ready to set them on fire; and yet i shall unto death repeat: yes, i have said the truth. yes, god has inspired me. yes, from him i expect everything, nothing from anybody else. yes, god is my sole judge, my sole master." exhausted by this last effort, joan darc falls back upon her seat in the midst of profound silence. the ecclesiastics gather in a group with bishop cauchon in the center. they consult in a low voice. the prelate then approaches joan darc. bishop cauchon (in a ringing voice and a gesture of malediction)--"the sentence is pronounced: we, peter, bishop of beauvais by the grace of god, pronounce you a blasphemer and sacrilegious woman, an invoker of demons, an apostate and a heretic! we smite you with the sentence of the major and minor excommunication; we pronounce you forever cut off from the body of our holy mother the church; and we leave you to the secular arm which will to-morrow burn your body and cast your ashes to the wind! amen." all the ecclesiastical judges (in chorus and making the sign of the cross)--"amen." joan darc (sublimely inspired)--"that is your judgment. i confidently await the judgment of god!" the jailers carry the prisoner back to her cell. chapter vi. physical collapse. on the th of may, , a great mass of people is crowding at about eight in the morning and under a brilliant springtide sun towards the cemetery of st. audoin at rouen. a low wall surrounds the place of burial. within, and near the entrance of the cemetery, there rises on this morning a high scaffold with a wide platform on which a number of seats decked with violet coverings are placed. english soldiers, casqued and cuirassed, and lance in hand, form a cordon that keeps the crowd at a distance. all seem to expect a great event. the people are waiting to see joan darc, who is to mount the scaffold, kneel down at the feet of bishop cauchon and with her arms crossed on her breast abjure her past errors, deny her visions and renounce her revelations, her faith, her glory and her patriotism; in short, to make her humble, contrite and repentful submission to the sovereign judgment of the bishop and the ecclesiastics. only yesterday, despite the feebleness of her body, so proud and so resolute in her answers to her accusers, joan had cried: "let the fagots be there, let the executioner stand ready, and yet i shall repeat unto death: yes, god has inspired me. yes, god is my sole judge, my sole master!" what inconceivable change has taken place in this soul, once so firm and so full of conviction? human weakness! after the sentence pronounced upon her the day before by bishop cauchon, the heroine was transported back to her cell. the feverish exaltation that upheld her in the presence of her judges was followed by a reaction of profound dejectment. still she was resigned to suffer death. under these circumstances, and pretending to have obtained from the captain of the tower permission to administer to her the last consolations, canon loyseleur visited joan. she received the priest with thankful joy. instructed by joan on the last events, the canon broke down in tears, moans and laments, and dwelled with affected horror upon the frightful details of joan's pending execution--shocking details: joan was to be taken in a shirt, not a woman's shirt as she had begged for on the ground of its being longer, but in a man's shirt; nor was that all. the english chiefs had decided that before delivering joan to the flames, she was to be stripped wholly naked, and fastened in that state to the stake. from the moment joan learned that she was to be taken to the pyre in a man's shirt, and was then to be bound by the executioner in full view wholly naked to the stake, joan's mind began to wander. she collected whatever strength was left her, and although chained by the feet, hands and waist, she stood upon her straw bed and flinging herself forward, violently struck her head twice against the wall of the dungeon in a frantic attempt to break her skull and die. but the impact of the poor creature, weak, exhausted and fainting as she was, was not strong enough to produce mortal, or even dangerous results. she fell down backward upon her couch where the canon charitably held her down. he sobbed; he implored his dear daughter in christ not to yield to blind despair. true enough, it was an abominable ordeal for so pure a soul, so chaste a body, to be exposed at first half naked, and then wholly so, absolutely naked, to the lascivious looks and obscene jeers of the soldiery and mob! no doubt the ordeal would last an hour, perhaps longer; the english would take a delight in prolonging the period of the maid's nudity. but, alack! how was the abomination to be avoided! there was only one way, and no doubtful one, a sure way of escaping, not the shame only, but even the pyre, aye, of escaping from the hands of the english. thanks to that means, joan might regain her freedom, return to her family at domremy, and enjoy a restoring rest after so many trials. and then, when she should have recovered her health, the martial maid could again don her armor, call her valiant followers to arms, and marching at their head, complete her work of driving the english out of france. joan darc believed herself in a dream as she listened to the canon. his age, his tears, his moaning, the constant interest that he had taken in her since she was brought to her present dungeon--everything contributed to remove from her spirit all thought of suspicion. in a semi-stupor she questioned the canon on the means that he had in mind, from which he promised such certain deliverance. the tempter pursued his dark scheme with infernal skill. he began by asking the heroine whether in her soul and conscience she did not look upon her judges as monsters of iniquity? she readily assented. could she, consequently, feel herself bound by any promises that she might make to the butchers, she a prisoner, under duress? she, sold for the price of gold? no, concluded the canon, a promise made to these butchers for the purpose of escaping abominable ignominy and the horrors of burning, could never be binding upon an innocent victim. such engagements were null. joan asked what the promises would be. the canon answered that it was merely a matter of renouncing _in appearance_ the errors that the tribunal charged her with; in short, to submit _in appearance_ to the judgment of the church. joan's conscience revolted at the lie; to renounce the truth was to renounce god. "yes, but with your lips, with your lips only, and not with your heart!" pursued the tempter. "it is simply yielding to force; it is speaking for a moment the language of the butchers, a fallacious and perfidious language, true enough; but, thanks to such a legitimate fraud, to escape from them, thus to preserve his elect to god, and to france her liberator! it is simply a mouth-renunciation, while the soul will continue to glorify all the acts inspired by heaven." "but to promise to abjure under condition of being set free, is to bind oneself to abjure," answered joan, disconcerted by the canon's sophism. "and what would that matter?" argued the tempter. "what would it matter to make even a public abjuration, even kneeling at the bishop's feet, saying to him with the lips: 'my apparitions and my visions were illusions; i have sinned in assuming man's habits; i have sinned in waging war; i have sinned in refusing to submit to the judgment of the church. i now make my submission and regret my sins.' what would such vain words matter? did they proceed from the interior tribunal, the sacred refuge of truth with the oppressed? would perchance, the lord, who reads our secret thoughts, fail to read in your soul, at the very moment when you would be pretending to abjure: 'my god, you before whom nothing is hidden, i internally glorify these visions and apparitions, the revered signs of your omnipotence! i proclaim you my only judge, oh, my divine master! and in your infinite mercy you will pardon me these few idle words, drawn from me by the desire of continuing to be the instrument of your supreme will, and by the desire of, with your aid, driving the stranger from the sacred soil of the fatherland.' would god fail to read these sentiments?" joan succumbed before the infernal tempter. vainly did she hear her voices warn her: "to deny the truth is to deny god! you are about to lie in the face of heaven and of men, more out of a chaste shame than out of fear to burn. you are about to lie in the hope of regaining your freedom to finish your divine mission. such a fraud is cowardly and criminal." but weakened by her sufferings, exhausted in the physical and mental struggle that she had undergone, above all frightened out of her wits at the thought of her virginal body being exposed naked by the executioner to the eyes of men, and finally tempted by the prospect of freedom, of again seeing her family and perchance achieving her work of liberation, joan shut her ears to the inflexible voice of her honor, of her faith, of her conscience, and promised canon loyseleur to make a public abjuration and submission to the church, under the condition of a pledge from the bishop that she would be set at liberty immediately after her abjuration. the canon charitably offered his services to the prisoner; he expressed his certainty of successfully conducting the negotiation, and of being able to overcome the resistance of the savage captain of the tower and secure permission to call upon the bishop without delay. as may be believed, loyseleur readily obtained the permission. towards midnight he returned with the institutor of the process and a physician. the latter induced the captive to take a mixture that was to serve at once as a tonic and a soporific. the mixture would enable her to sleep restfully until morning, and would give her strength for the expiatory ceremony. joan darc submitted to everything, saying to herself: "i shall be free to-morrow, and shall have escaped an ignominy that is worse than death." the scaffold raised within the precincts of the cemetery of the abbey of st. audoin is the immediate result of canon loyseleur's machinations in joan's cell. on the scaffold's spacious platform joan is to appear, surrounded by the ecclesiastics, and make a public abjuration. the impatient crowd awaits the arrival of the cortege. more than half a century under the yoke of english rule, most of the people of rouen are of the burgundian party, and see in joan darc only an enemy. nevertheless, the astounding renown of the martial maid, her youth, her beauty, her misfortune, her glory, awaken a profound sentiment of pity for her among all, and the feeling is strongest among those who have remained french at heart and are of the armagnac party. the purpose of joan's public and solemn appearance is still unknown to the mass. some say that a public exposure is to precede the death penalty, to which she is doubtlessly condemned; others, ignorant of the course of the trial, believe she is to be publicly interrogated. william poole, the earl of warwick, and other english captains and prominent personages are grouped in a reserved space inside the cemetery and near the scaffold. presently a distant and increasing noise announces the approach of the train. the crowd presses and becomes more compact outside the cemetery. the procession draws near, escorted by english archers. at its head march the cardinal of winchester in the roman purple, and the bishop of beauvais with a gold mitre on his head, a gold crosier in his hand and over his shoulders the chasuble of violet silk, resplendent in embroidery. behind them and in his monk's frock comes the inquisitor john lemaitre, together with peter of estivet, the official institutor of the process, william erard and two registrars, carrying parchments and writing portfolios. a few steps behind them, and sustained by two penitents whose grey robes, covering them from head to foot, are pierced with two holes at the elevation of their eyes, joan advances slowly. her weakness is extreme, and although her eyes are wide open she does not seem to be wholly awake; she still seems under the effect of the soporific and tonic of the night before. she seems to look without seeing, and to hear with indifference the hisses of the mob that, incited by the example of the english soldiers, makes hostile demonstrations against the victim. on joan's head is a high mitre of black pasteboard which bears in large letters the following words: "heretic," "idolater," "apostate." a long robe of coarse black wool envelops her from the neck down to her bare feet. she halts for a moment before the scaffold, while the cardinal, the bishop and other prelates take their seats upon it. at a signal from one of the registrars, the two penitents, holding joan under the arms, help her to ascend the stairs of the scaffold. the sky is this day of an admirable clearness; the sun shines brilliantly; the pleasant warmth of its rays penetrates and gradually warms joan darc, who still shivers from the dampness of the subterraneous dungeon in which she has so long lain buried night and day. she inhales the bracing and pure air with delight, and in full draughts. the atmosphere of her cell was so heavy, so fetid! she seems to revive; her chilled and clogged blood courses anew with the delight of life; she experiences an indescribable sense of happiness at the contemplation of that azure sky bathed in light, and at the sight of the green grass of the cemetery, studded here and there with spring flowers. at a little distance stands a clump of trees, near the abbey. the birds chirp in their foliage, the insects hum--everything seems to sing and express delight on that sweet may morning. the sight of nature that joan has so long been deprived of--she who was from early infancy accustomed to live on the meadows and in the woods--transports her into a sort of ecstasy. she forgets her sufferings, her martyrdom, her sentence and even the abjuration that she is about to pronounce. if her thoughts at all fall upon these topics, the only effect is the pleasurable reminder that she is soon to be free. oh, free! to be free! to see her village again! the oak forest, the fountain of the fairies, the smiling and shady banks of the meuse! to see again her family, her friends, and, renouncing the bitter illusions of glory, escaping the royal ingratitude, the hypocrisy, the hatred and the envy of men, quietly spend her days in domremy at her rustic labors as in the happy days of yore! and that, all that at the price of a few words pronounced before her butcher-judges, those monsters of iniquity! oh, at this moment of physical exaltation joan would sign her abjuration with her own blood. her heart-beats, pulsating with hope, smother within her the austere voices of her honor and her faith. in vain do these whisper to her: "be not faint-hearted! bravely uphold the truth in the teeth of those false priests, and you will be delivered from your trials, not for a day, but for all eternity!" these voices are not now listened to; her physical delight is too vast. suddenly she is recalled to her condition by the voice of bishop cauchon who severely says to her: "joan, down on your knees; bow your head!" joan darc kneels down without removing her eyes from the beautiful blue of the sky, from the radiant light of the sun from which she seeks to draw the strength necessary to persevere in her resolution of abjuring. a profound silence falls upon the crowd, the front ranks of which can hear the words uttered on the scaffold, and bishop cauchon, crossing himself, proceeds: "my very dear brothers, the lord said it to his apostle st. john, the palm tree cannot of itself produce fruit if it does not live. thus, my very dear brothers, you must persevere in the true life of our holy mother the roman catholic and apostolic church, which our lord jesus christ built with his right hand. but, alack! there are perverse souls, abominable and idolatrous (he points at joan darc) filled with heretical crimes, who rise with an audacity that is truly infernal against the unity of our holy church, to the great scandal and to the painful horror of all good believers. (to joan darc with a menacing voice:) there you are now upon a scaffold, in the face of heaven and of men. is the light to enter at last your haughty and diabolical soul? will you at last submit in all humbleness your words and acts to the church militant, the enormities of your acts! your monstrous words! according to the infallible judgment of the priests of the lord? reflect and answer! if not, the church will abandon you to the secular arm and your body will go up in the flames of the pyre." these words produce a deep commotion among the crowd. the majority of those present are hostile to joan darc. a small number feel sincere pity for her. these various sentiments find expression in cries, imprecations and charitable utterances: "she has not yet been condemned, the witch! death to the abominable idolater!" "a door of safety is being held open to her. death to the heretic!" "by st. george! upon the word of an english archer, i shall set the bishop's house on fire if the strumpet is not brought to the pyre at once!" "mercy will be extended to her! and yet with her sorceries she has exterminated our invincible army!" "her partisans want to save her!" "i hope they may succeed! poor girl! she has suffered so much! mercy for her!" "how pale and thin she is! she looks like a ghost! take pity upon the poor creature!" "she fought for france. and after all, we are french!" "speak not so loud, my friend, the english soldiers may overhear you!" "jesus! my god! to burn her! her who was so brave and so pious! it would be an act of barbarism!" "is it her fault that god inspired her?" "if saints appeared before her, and spoke to her, all the greater the honor!" "how can a bishop of the good god dare to pronounce her a sorceress!" "death! death to the witch!" "death! death to the she-devil!" "to the pyre with the strumpet of the armagnacs!" at these ferocious cries and infamous insults joan darc's terror redoubles. the ignominy that awaits her if she does not abjure rises before her. to abjure means to escape mortal shame; to abjure means to regain freedom! joan darc resigns herself. still her loyalty and conscience revolt at that supreme moment, and instead of completely renouncing her errors, she mutters on her knees: "i have sincerely stated all my actions to my judges; i believed i acted under the command of god. i do not wish to accuse either my god or anybody. if i have sinned i alone am guilty. i rely upon god. i implore his mercy." "subterfuges!" cried bishop cauchon. "subterfuges! yes, or no; do you consider true what the priests, your only judges in matters of faith, declare concerning your actions and words--words and acts that have been pronounced fallacious, homicidal, sacrilegious, idolatrous, heretical and diabolical? answer! (joan is silent) i call upon you a second time to answer! (joan is still silent) i ask you a third time to answer! you are silent? you are an abominable criminal!" yes, the heroine remains silent, racked by a supreme internal struggle. "abjure!" whispered to her the instinct of self-preservation. "do not abjure! do not lie! courage! courage!" cries her conscience; "maintain the truth unto shame and death!" the wretched girl wrings her hands, and remains silent, a prey to distracting agonies. "alack!" exclaims bishop cauchon, addressing the people. "my very dear brothers! you see the stiff-neckedness of this unhappy woman! she spurns her tender mother the church, that extends her arms to her with love and pardon! alack! alack! the evil spirit has taken a firm hold of her who might now have been joan. her, whose body shall have to be delivered to the burning flames of the pyre! her, whose ashes will be cast to the winds! her, who, deprived of the holy eucharist at the moment of death, and loaded down with the decree of excommunication, is about to be cast into the bottom of hell for all eternity! alack! alack! joan, you willed it so. we believed in your repentance, we consented not to deliver you to the secular arm. but you persist in your heresy. then listen to your sentence!" while the bishop is recalling the formula of the sentence several english soldiers brandish their lances and cry: "let an end be made of this!" "throw the witch quickly into the fire!" "death to the magician!" at the same time other voices from the crowd cry: "poor, brave girl! mercy for her!" "lord god! how can she deny her visions! mercy! mercy!" "it would be a lie and cowardice on her part! courage! courage!" bishop cauchon rises, terrible, and with his hands extended to heaven makes ready to utter the final curse upon the accused. "joan!" he cries, "listen to your sentence. in the name of the church, we, peter, bishop of beauvais by the mercy of god, declare you--" joan darc interrupts the approaching imprecation with a shriek of terror, clasps her hands, and collapses upon the scaffold, crying: "mercy! mercy!" "do you submit yourself to the judgment of the church?" again asks bishop cauchon. livid and her teeth chattering with terror, joan darc answers: "yes, i submit myself!" "do you renounce your apparitions and visions as false, sacrilegious, and diabolical?" the bishop asks. wholly broken down, and in a gasping voice, joan makes answer: "yes--yes--i renounce them--seeing the priests consider them wicked things. i submit to their opinion--i shall submit to everything that the church may order--mercy! have pity upon me!" and cowering upon herself, she hides her face in her hands amidst convulsive sobs. "oh, my very dear brothers!" exclaims bishop cauchon with an affectation of charity. "what a beautiful day! what a holy day! what a glorious day! that on which the church in her maternal joy opens her arms to one of her children, repentful after having long wandered from the fold! joan, your submission saves your body and your soul! repeat after me the formula of abjuration." the bishop beckons to one of the registrars, who brings to him a parchment containing the formula of abjuration. violent outcries break out from the crowd. the english soldiers and the people of the burgundian party feel irritated at the prospect of the maid's escaping death, and break out into imprecations against the judges. they charge the bishop and the cardinal with treason and threaten to burn down their houses. the english captains share the indignation of their men. one of the former, the earl of warwick, steps out of the group in which he stands, rushes up the stairs of the scaffold, and approaching the prelate says to him angrily, in a low voice: "bishop, bishop, is that what you promised us?" "be patient!" answers the prelate, also in a low voice; "i shall keep my promise; but calm your men; they are quite capable of massacring us!" sufficiently acquainted with peter cauchon to know he can trust him, the earl of warwick again descends from the platform, joins his companions in arms, and communicates the bishop's answer to them. the latter hasten to distribute themselves among the ranks of the soldiers, whose anger they appease with assurances that the witch will be burned despite her abjuration. but while one part of the mob is enraged at the maid's abjuration and the bishop's pardon, another, consisting of the people who pity joan, is thrown into consternation. this feeling soon makes way for indignation. she denies her visions; then they were false pretences; she lied when she claimed to be sent by god. and if her visions were true, she is now disgracing herself by a shameful act of cowardice. coward or liar--such is the judgment they now pass upon joan darc. the infernal ecclesiastical plot is skilfully hatched; through it the sympathy once felt for the heroine is extinguished in the hearts of her partisans themselves. on her knees upon the scaffold, cowering down, and her face covered by her hands, joan darc seems a stranger to what passes around her. overcome by so many conflicting emotions, her mind again begins to wander, she seems to have but one fixed idea--to escape the disgrace of the stake. silence being finally restored, peter cauchon rises with the parchment in his hands and says: "joan, you shall now repeat with your heart and your lips, the following formula of abjuration, in the measure that i pronounce it. listen!" and he proceeds to read in a voice that is heard by the remotest ranks of the pressing crowd: "'any person who has erred in the catholic faith, and who thereafter by the grace of god has returned to the light of truth and to the bosom of our holy mother the church, must be careful not to allow himself to be provoked by the evil spirit into a relapse. for this reason, i, joan, commonly named the maid, a miserable sinner, recognizing that i was fettered by the chains of error, and wishing to return to the bosom of our holy mother the roman catholic and apostolic church, i, joan, to the end of proving that i have returned to my tender mother, not in false appearance, but with my heart, do hereby confess, first, that i gravely sinned by falsely causing others to believe that i had apparitions and revelations of god in the forms of st. marguerite and st. catherine and of st. michael the archangel.'" turning to joan, the bishop asks: "do you confess having wickedly sinned in that, and of having been impious and sacrilegious?" "i confess it!" comes from joan darc in a broken voice. an outburst of cries from the indignant mob greets the confession of the penitent. those now most furious are the ones who were before moved with tender pity for her. "so, then, you lied!" "you imposed upon the poor people, miserable hypocrite!" "and i, who felt pity for her!" "the church is too indulgent!" "think of accepting the penitence of so infamous a cheat!" "upon my word, comrades, she is quite capable of being possessed of the devil as the english claimed! the strumpet and liar!" "and yet her victories were none the less brilliant for all that!" "aye! through witchcraft! are you going to show pity for the liar?" "fear of the fagot makes one admit many a thing!" "then she is a coward! she has not the courage to uphold the truth in the face of death! what faint-heartedness!" silence is restored only by degrees. joan darc hears the frightful accusations hurled at her. to return to her first declarations would be an admission of fear. her mind wanders again. continuing to read from the formula of abjuration, bishop cauchon says: "'secondly, i, joan, confess to have grievously sinned by seducing people with superstitious divinations, by blaspheming the angels and the saints, and by despising the divine law of holy writ and the canonical laws.'" addressing joan the bishop asks: "do you confess it?' "i confess it!" murmurs joan. bishop cauchon proceeds to read: "'thirdly, i, joan confess having grievously sinned by wearing a dissolute garb, deformed and dishonest, in violation of decency and nature; and by wearing my hair cut round, after the fashion of men, and contrary to modesty'--do you confess that sin?" "i confess it!" "'fourthly, i, joan, confess having grievously sinned by boastfully carrying armor of war, and by cruelly desiring the shedding of human blood.'--do you confess it?" joan darc wrings her hands and exclaims: "my god! can i affirm such things?" "what! you hesitate!" exclaims bishop cauchon, and he adds, addressing her in a low voice: "be careful, the fagots await you!" "i confess it, father," stammers joan. "joan, do you confess having cruelly desired the effusion of human blood?" asks bishop cauchon in a thundering voice. "i confess it!" loud cries of horror go up from the mob, while the english soldiers brandish their weapons at joan. some men pick up stones to stone the heroine to death. the imprecations against her redouble threateningly. "the harpy waged war out of pure cruelty!" "she merely wished to soak herself in blood!" "and the church pardons her!" "at one time i felt great pity for the wretch. now i say with the english, death to the tigress who lived on blood!" "you fools! do you believe these priests? do you think joan went after battle to drink the blood of the slain?" "you defend her?" "yes! oh, why am i alone?" "you are a traitor!" "he is an armagnac!" "death to the armagnac!" the mob beats joan's defender to death. as to herself, her condition is now such that she no longer is aware of aught she hears or says. she has practically lost consciousness. she barely has enough strength to respond mechanically, "i confess it," each time she hears bishop cauchon ask her, "do you confess it?" in the midst, however, of her weakness and the wandering of her mind, one thought she is fully conscious of, the thought that her agony cannot last long; within a short time she would be dead or free! poor martyr! bishop cauchon continues to read: "'fifthly, i, joan, confess that i grievously sinned in claiming that all my acts and all my words were inspired to me by god, his saints and his angels, while in truth i despised god and his sacraments and i constantly invoked evil spirits.'--do you confess it?" "i confess it!" "she confesses that she is a witch!" cries a voice from the mob. "by st. george, she has exterminated thousands of my countrymen by her sorceries! and shall she escape the fagots!" "she will be burned later! our captains have promised us!" "they deceive us! we shall burn her ourselves, now!" bishop cauchon reads: "'sixthly, i, joan, confess that i grievously sinned by being a schismatic.'--do you confess it?" "i confess it!" bishop cauchon continues reading: "'all of which crimes and errors, i, joan, having returned to the truth, by the grace of our lord, and also by the grace of our holy and infallible doctrine, my good and reverend fathers, i now renounce and abjure.'--do you renounce, do you abjure these crimes and errors?" "i renounce! i abjure!" bishop cauchon reads on: "'in the faith and the belief of all of which, i declare that i shall submit to the punishment that the church may inflict upon me, and i promise and swear to st. peter, the prince of the apostles, and to our holy father the pope of rome, his vicar, and to his successors, and to you, my seigneurs, and to you, my reverend father in god, monseigneur the bishop of beauvais, and to you religious person, brother john lemaitre, vicar of the inquisition of the faith, i, joan, swear to you, to all of you my judges, never again to relapse into the criminal errors that it has pleased the lord to deliver me from! i swear ever to remain in the union of our holy mother the church, and in obedience to our holy father the pope!'--do you swear?" "i swear--and i am dying!" bishop cauchon beckons to one of the registrars. the latter takes a pen out of his portfolio, dips it in ink, hands it to the prelate, and holds up his square cap for a desk. the prelate places the parchment on the cap, and continues to read from it in a loud voice: "'i, joan, affirm and confirm all that is said above; i swear to it and affirm it in the name of the living and all-powerful god and of the sacred gospels, in proof whereof, and not knowing how to write, i have signed this document with my mark,'" saying which he presents the pen to the kneeling joan and pointing to the parchment on the registrar's cap, adds: "now place your cross here, below, seeing you do not know how to write." in an almost expiring condition joan darc endeavors to trace a cross at the bottom of the parchment. her strength fails her. the registrar kneels down beside the maid, and guiding her inert and icy hand, aids her to make her mark at the bottom of the document. this being done, he calls the two penitents dressed in long grey gowns who have remained at the foot of the scaffold, and delivers to them the almost insensible joan darc. they place themselves on either side of her and take her under the arms. her head drops upon her shoulder; from between her half-closed eyelids her eyes appear fixed and glassy. the only sign that life has not yet fled is a slight tremor that from time to time runs over her frame. stepping forward, bishop cauchon addresses the crowd in a tremendous voice: "all pastors charged with the duty of lovingly guarding the flock of christ must endeavor to keep far from their dear flock all causes of pestilence, infection and corruption, and must seek to lead back the sheep that has wandered off among the brambles. wherefore, we, peter, bishop of beauvais by the grace of god, assisted by john lemaitre, inquisitor of the faith, and other learned and reverend priests, all competent judges, having heard and considered your assertions and your admissions, do now declare to you, joan the maid: we pronounce you guilty of having falsely maintained that you have had divine visions and revelations; guilty of having seduced weak people and having stiff-neckedly held to your opinions; guilty of having despised the sacraments and the holy canons; guilty of having favored sedition against our sovereign and serene master the king of england and france; guilty of having cruelly shed human blood; guilty of having apostatized, schismatized, blasphemed, idolatrized and invoked the evil spirit. but seeing that by the grace of the all-powerful you have at last returned to the pale of our holy and sweet mother the church, and that, filled with sincere contrition and genuine faith, you have publicly and in a loud voice made abjuration of your criminal and heretical errors, we now suspend the punishment of excommunication and its consequences, upon the express condition that you sincerely return to our holy and merciful church. and charitably wishing to aid you in accomplishing your salvation, we condemn you, joan the maid, to perpetual imprisonment where your food shall be the bread of pain, your drink the water of agony, to the end that, weeping throughout the rest of your life over your monstrous sins, you may never again incur them. this is your final and definite condemnation. you now see how the church of our lord shows herself a tender mother towards you. do then forevermore abandon and deplore your culpable error! renounce your male attire forever, a shame to your sex! and should you relapse into that or any other mortal and idolatrous sin, then will the church with profound and maternal pain be forced to cut you off forever from her body, she will then deliver you to the secular arm, and you will be cast into the flames like a gangrened member, seized with incurable rottenness. glory to god on high, amen." the mob, especially the english soldiers, receive the "merciful" sentence with a threatening clamor. the people make a move to force the gate of the cemetery, which is guarded by a platoon of archers. the latter, being no less exasperated, seem ready to join the discontented and attack the platform. the earl of warwick quickly ascends the scaffold and again angrily addresses the bishop: "bishop! has not this comedy lasted long enough? we can no longer answer for our soldiers in their present state of exasperation if, despite her abjuration, the witch is not burned!" bishop cauchon suppresses with difficulty a gesture of impatience. he whispers into the english captain's ear. the latter, seeming to be convinced by what he hears, answers with a gesture of approval. the prelate adds: "rest assured of what i promise you. at present see to it that the gate of the cemetery is well guarded, and that the mob is not allowed to break in. we shall make our exit by the garden of the abbey, and the maid will be taken the same way. she would otherwise be massacred by the good people. and that must not be. she has only fainted. she will be seen to in her prison." the earl of warwick again descends from the platform. the bishop issues his orders to the penitents who are supporting the wholly unconscious joan in their arms. they raise her--one under the arms, the other by the feet, descend the stairs of the platform, and, bearing their burden, walk rapidly across the cemetery to the garden of the abbey, while the english soldiers, obedient to the orders of their captains, who promise to them the speedy execution of joan, close their ranks before the gate of the cemetery and keep back the mob, that shouts for the death of the witch. chapter vii. remorse. after her formal abjuration joan darc is taken in an almost dying condition, not to her cell but to a room in the castle of rouen. by orders of the bishop, two old women are appointed to nurse her. she is laid in a soft bed; her jaws, locked in convulsions, are forced open, and a calming beverage poured down her throat. every day and night the physician visits her. on the second day after the abjuration, the patient is out of danger. when joan darc recovers consciousness, she finds herself in a spacious and neatly furnished room. the warm rays of the sun play upon the glass of the barred casement. the two old women, who have her in charge, are seated at the head of the patient's bed seeming to contemplate her with tender interest. joan darc first thinks that she dreams, but her next belief is that, agreeable to the promise made to her by the institutor in the name of the bishop, she has secretly been set free. she believes that some charitable people have obtained from the bishop permission to transport her to their own house. the first impression felt by joan at these surmises is one of joy at being free, and no remorse assails her at having denied the truth. the bliss of having escaped the dreaded shame of exposure, the hope of soon recovering her health, the prospect of returning to domremy and seeing her parents--all these pleasurable sentiments smother the reproaches of her voices. she asks the two old women where she is. they smile in answer, and mysteriously place their fingers on their lips. from these tokens joan conjectures that they are not free to answer, but that she is in a safe and hospitable asylum. preserving on this head the silence that seems to be recommended to her, joan gives herself over without reserve to the joy of living, of looking through the window panels at the blue sky, at feeling her limbs, so long sore and even wounded by the weight of her chains, finally free from their cruel grip; above all she congratulates herself on being delivered from the presence of her jailers, whose revolting utterances and licentious looks have been a cause of unremitting torture to her. she accepts nourishment and even some generous wine mixed with water. her strength returns. on the third day she is able to rise. her nurses offer her a long woman's dress and a hat. no longer assailed by the chaste apprehension that her jailers inspired her with in her cell, joan resumes without hesitation the garb of her sex. the door of the room that she occupies opens upon a terrace on which her nurses induce her to promenade. a board fence high enough to shut off the view surrounds the terrace. joan remains a long time upon the terrace, inhaling the spring air with delight. when night approaches, feeling herself slightly fatigued by her walk, she undresses, lies down upon her bed, and sleeps profoundly. subject to human weakness, and transported by the joy of being free after such a long, painful and rigid confinement, the poor martyr is not assailed by remorse until towards evening. vague sentiments, the forerunners of the approaching awakening of her conscience having cast a shadow over her spirit, she seeks in sleep both further rest and oblivion. her expectations prove false. st. marguerite and st. catherine appear in the heroine's dream; they do not now smile and look down tenderly upon her. they are sad and threatening, and reproach her for having denied the truth out of fear and shame. profoundly impressed by her dream, joan wakes up, her face covered with tears, when, lo, she sees the two saints with their gold crowns on their heads and robed in white and blue, luminously, almost transparently floating in the darkness of the room, and calling her by her name. with beating heart and clasped hands, joan kneels down on her bed, sobs, and implores their forgiveness. without answering her, the two saints point to heaven with a significant gesture. the apparition then gradually fades away, and darkness again reigns supreme. thus rudely awakened to a sense of her actual condition, the heroine forthwith feels the promptings of her own conscience, that has lain torpid since the abjuration. she traces back the solemnity in all its horrid details; she recalls the maledictions with which she was whelmed by those who just before commiserated her. the terrible, yet legitimate accusation pounds upon her ears: "if joan's visions are inventions and a fraud, she has deceived simple people--she has lied--she only deserves contempt." "if her visions were genuine, if god inspired her, she covers herself with shame by abjuring out of fear of death!" "_coward_ or _liar_" her inexorable voices repeat to her; "coward, or liar!--such is the name that you will leave behind you!" indescribable are the tortures that the poor creature undergoes on that night of desperate remorse. the full lucidity of her mind, of her energy, of her character, have returned to her, but only to curse her. her keen judgment points out to her the fatal consequences of her abjuration; the soldiers and the peoples who rose at her voice against the foreigner will soon learn of the perjury committed by her whom they believed inspired! mistrust of themselves, dejectment, even defeat may follow the victorious exaltation of the soldiers and the people. on the other hand, the memory of the martial maid, surviving her martyrdom, would have added fuel to their courage, it would have aroused an avenging hatred for the english, and the great work of the complete emancipation of gaul would have been achieved in the name of the victim, and in execration of her butchers. finally, could joan continue the war even after she regained her freedom? what confidence could she inspire in the masses, she who had been convicted of falsehood or cowardice? the plot of the ecclesiastics was planned with diabolical craft. they foresaw and calculated the consequences of the heroine's apostasy; they realized that, taken to the pyre after she had confessed the divinity of her mission, joan would have become a saint; if, however, she renounced her past actions, she was dishonored. "idle remorse!" thinks joan. "how retract a public abjuration. impossible! who could believe in the sincerity of a creature who had once before renounced her faith and her honor!" these mind and heartrending thoughts are tearing joan darc to pieces when morning dawns and a rap is heard at the door of her chamber. the old women rise and go to inquire who is there. it is their reverend father in god, canon loyseleur. he wishes to speak to joan without delay. she hastily puts on her woman's clothes and prepares to receive the priest, towards whom she now experiences a secret aversion, seeing that she accuses him in her heart for having led her to abjure by superexciting her dread of the shame and fear of the fagots. she reflects, however, that after all, the priest might have actually believed in the wisdom of his advice, and that she alone is responsible for the cowardly apostasy. joan receives the canon with her habitual sweetness of manners. she learns from him that she is still a prisoner in the castle of rouen, but that the bishop will set her free. the prelate, adds the canon, has no interest in retaining her a prisoner, and is to allow her to escape at night in a day or two. loyseleur pretends that, thanks to his own personal intercession with the captain of the tower, she has been transferred to that room; but the captain demands that, the prisoner being now almost well again, she be returned to her cell. his orders are to be carried out that very morning. joan darc believes the priest's words and easily reconciles herself to the idea of returning to her cell, but she asks as a supreme favor that male attire be provided to her for the sake of protection against her jailers. canon loyseleur promises to carry her wishes to the captain of the tower. suddenly one of the old women rushes into the room saying that the jailer and an escort of soldiers are coming to claim the prisoner. the canon assures joan she is soon to be set free, and leaves the room at the moment that john enters, carrying manacles which he fastens on the wrists of the heroine, and then conducts her back to her cell. upon entering, joan notices that the male clothes which she left there have disappeared. she expects to see herself chained by the waist and feet as she was before; but, freeing her even of the manacles, john informs her that she is no longer to be chained, saying which he leaves, casting a strange look upon her. hardly concerned at this leniency, joan sits down upon her straw couch and remains motionless, occupied with her own thoughts. chapter viii. the relapse. it has long been night. the little iron lamp lights the dungeon of joan darc, who lies upon her straw couch broken with remorse at the continuous reproaches of her voices, and racking her brain for the means to expiate her weakness. the captive bitterly regrets the disappearance of her masculine clothes. agitated by vague presentiments, and apprehensive of dangers on which she hardly dares dwell, she has wrapped herself as closely as she can in her clothes, and fearing to yield to the sleepiness that is gaining upon her, she rises from her straw bed and sits down upon the floor with her back leaning against the wall. but pressed down by sleep, her eyelids close despite herself, by degrees her head droops forward, and finally drops upon her knees which she holds within her arms. she falls asleep. a few minutes later the pale face of canon loyseleur appears at the wicket. he notices that joan is asleep, and withdraws. shortly afterwards the heavy door of the dungeon turns noiselessly upon its hinges. it opens and recloses so silently that joan darc's slumber, is not interrupted either by the slight noise of the door or the steps of two men who creep into the cavernous precinct. the two men are talbot and berwick, the english captains, who are appointed by bishop cauchon as the additional keepers of joan darc. both are men in the prime of life. they wear rich slashed jackets after the fashion of the time. the two noble officers have sought in the stimulus of wine the requisite courage to commit the unheard-of atrocity, the nameless crime that they are bent upon. their cheeks are inflamed, their eyes glisten, a lewd smile contracts their vinous lips. at the sight of joan asleep they stop a moment and take council. presently the two rush upon their victim. awakened with a start, joan darc leaps up and struggles to free herself from the grasp of her assailants. berwick seizes her by the waist, while talbot, sliding behind, seizes her arms and approaches his mouth to the lips of joan, who turns her head away and utters a piercing shriek. the two noblemen drag her to the straw couch. the heroine draws superhuman strength from her despair. a violent struggle ensues, horrible, nameless. the tipsy talbot and berwick, exasperated at the heroine's resistance, give a loose to the fury of unsatisfied lechery. they smite joan darc with their fists. her face bleeds. yet she resists, and calls for help. at last the door opens and canon loyseleur appears at the entrance. he feigns indignation. he brings with him a little trunk containing joan's male clothes, and addressing the captain of the tower who enters with him, says: "you see it with your own eyes! an infamous attempt is contemplated upon the unfortunate woman!" perhaps not wholly dead to conscience, berwick and talbot allow joan darc to escape from their grasp, and leave the cell, followed by the captain. distracted, her face black and blue and covered with blood, joan darc falls almost senseless upon her couch, near which the canon has deposited her man's attire. before he has time to speak with the victim, he is called away by the jailer, who, shaking his fist at him, says roughly: "get out of here, you tonsured dotard, canon of satan! the devil take the marplot!" "poor child!" cries the priest, walking out, "i brought you your clothes. put them on despite the oath you took. you may perhaps be sentenced as a relapsed heretic. but death is preferable to outrage!" the door of the cell closes behind the canon. silence and darkness resume their empire in joan's dungeon. the plot to cause joan's condemnation, induce her abjuration and then provoke her relapse so as to justify her being publicly burned to death is being carried out to the letter. chapter ix. the worm turns. it is eight o'clock of the following morning. joan darc is again clad in her male attire. she is again chained. her handsome face is bruised from the blows that she received in the nocturnal struggle. one thought only absorbs her mind--can she manage to confess aloud the truth of what she has denied? the heroine's expectations are met by the event. instructed by his accomplice of the happenings of the day before, the bishop has commissioned several judges to visit joan in her cell. they are seven. here are their names: nicolas of venderesse, william haiton, thomas of courcelles, isambard of la pierre, james camus, nicolas bertin, julien floquet. considering her crime flagrant, joan darc feels a bitter joy at the sight of the priests. her head erect, calm, resolute, she seems to challenge their questions. out of modesty and dignity, however, and unwilling to run the risk of blushing before these men, she decides to be silent upon the attempt of the previous night. the judges range themselves around the couch of the enchained captive. thomas of courcelles (affecting astonishment)--"what, joan, again in man's attire? and despite your oath to renounce such idolatrous garb forever?" joan darc (tersely)--"i have resumed these clothes because i was forced to." nicolas of venderesse--"you have violated your oath." joan darc (indignant)--"it is you who have violated yours! have the promises made to me been kept? have i been allowed to attend mass? have i been restored to freedom after my abjuration? you are knaves and hypocrites!" james camus--"we had to conform to the ecclesiastical sentence which condemns you to perpetual imprisonment." joan darc--"i prefer to die rather than remain in this prison. (she shivers with horror at the thought of the previous night's attempt upon her.) had i been allowed to attend mass, had i been left in a decent place, free from my chains, and kept by women, i would have continued to clothe myself in the garb of my sex. if there is any fault, it lies with you." isambard of la pierre--"have you heard your voices since your condemnation?" joan darc (with bitterness)--"yes; i have heard them." the priests look at one another and exchange meaning looks. william haiton--"what did your voices say to you? we want to know." joan darc (with a firm voice)--"they told me i committed an act of cowardice by denying the truth." james camus--"and before the abjuration, what did your voices say?" joan darc (intrepidly looking at her judges)--"my voices said to me it would be criminal to deny the divine inspiration that ever guided me. (commotion among the judges.) upon the scaffold my voices said to me: 'answer that preacher boldly--he is a false priest!' woe is me, i did not obey my voices!" the judges remain silent for a moment, and exchange expressive looks. thomas of courcelles--"these words are as rash as they are criminal. after having abjured, you relapse into your damnable errors!" joan darc (in a ringing voice)--"the error lies in lying--by abjuring i lied! what is damnable is to damn one's soul, and i damned it by not maintaining that i obeyed the will of heaven! my voices have reproached me for having abjured." james camus--"thus, after resuming male attire, a capital crime, an unpardonable crime which makes you a relapsed one, _revolvistis ad vestrum vomitum_--you have returned to your vomit, you dare maintain that those alleged voices--" joan darc--"the voices of my saints--come from god." thomas of courcelles--"on the scaffold you confessed." joan darc--"on the scaffold i was a coward! i lied! i yielded to the feeling of terror!" james camus--"at this hour, thinking you no longer need to fear death, you come back to your former declarations." joan darc--"at this hour i maintain that only fear forced me to abjure, to confess the contrary of the truth. i prefer to die, rather than remain in this prison. i have spoken. you shall have not another word from me." james camus--"be it so!" the priests file out slowly and silently. joan darc remains alone, on her knees upon the straw. she raises her eyes to the vault of her prison with a radiant, inspired face, and with her hands joined, she thanks her saints for the courage they have given her to expiate and annul her apostasy by resolutely marching to death. chapter x. to the flames! the scene changes. after the last interrogatory of joan the priests proceed to bishop cauchon in order to inform him of the issue of their visit to the prisoner--a result that the prelate expects, so much so that he has convoked a sufficient number of judges to meet in the chapel of the archbishop's palace at rouen in order to proceed with the final sentence of the relapsed sinner. all the summoned prelates are assembled and in their seats in the chapel. bishop cauchon, seated in the center of the choir, presides, and orders silence with a gesture. bishop cauchon--"my very dear brothers, joan has fallen back into her damnable errors, and in contempt of her solemn abjuration, pronounced in the face of god and his holy writ, not only has she resumed her male attire, but she again stubbornly maintains that all that she has done and said was said and done by divine inspiration! i now call for your views, in the order of precedence, upon the fate of the said joan who is now charged with having relapsed, reserving to myself the right of convoking you again, should i deem it necessary." archdeacon nicolas of venderesse--"the said joan should be given over to the secular arm, to be burned alive as a relapsed sinner." abbot agidie--"joan is a relapsed heretic, no doubt about it. nevertheless, i am of the opinion that a second abjuration should be proposed to her, under pain of being delivered to the secular arm." canon john pinchon--"joan has relapsed; i shall adhere to whatever plan of punishment my very dear brothers may decide upon." canon william erard--"i pronounce the said joan a relapsed sinner and deserving of the pyre." chaplain robert gilbert--"joan should be burned as a relapsed sinner and heretic." abbot of st. audoin--"the woman is a relapsed sinner. let her abjure a second time or be condemned." archdeacon john of castillone--"let the relapsed sinner be delivered to the secular arm." canon ermangard--"i demand the exemplary death of joan." deacon boucher--"joan should be sentenced as a relapsed one." prior of longueville--"that is my opinion. she should be burned alive." father giffard--"i think the relapsed sinner should be sentenced without delay." father haiton--"i pronounce the said joan a relapsed sinner. i am for her speedy punishment, provided, however, she refuses to abjure a second time." canon marguerie--"joan is a relapsed sinner. let her be delivered up to secular justice." canon john of l'epee--"i am of my brother's opinion. she should be burned to death." canon garin--"i think so, too." canon gastinel--"let us give up the relapsed sinner to the pyre." canon pascal--"that is my opinion. let her be burned to death." father houdenc--"the ridiculous explanations of the woman are to me an ample proof that she has always been an idolatress and a heretic. besides that, she is a relapsed sinner. i demand that she be delivered to the secular arm without delay." master john of nibat--"the said joan is impenitent and a relapsed sinner. let her undergo her punishment." father fabre--"a heretic by habit, hardened in her errors, a rebel to the church, the body of the said joan should be delivered to the flames, and her ashes cast to the winds." abbot of montemart--"i hold as my brother. only i am of the opinion that she should be given a second chance to abjure." father guelon--"that is my opinion." canon coupequesne--"mine also." canon guillaume--"let the said joan be offered a second chance to retract. if she refuses, then death." canon maurice--"i favor such a second summons, although i do not expect good results from it." doctor william of bandibosc--"i side with my very dear brother." deacon nicolas caval--"the relapsed sinner should be treated without pity, according to her deserts. she should be burned to death." canon loyseleur--"the said joan should be delivered to the temporal flames." thomas of courcelles--"the woman is a heretic and relapsed sinner. she may be summoned a second time, and told that if she persists in her errors, she has nothing to expect in this world." father john ledoux--"although such a second attempt seems to me idle, it might be tried so as to demonstrate the inexhaustible kindness of our mother the church." master john tiphaine--"i favor this second, though idle, attempt." deacon colombelle--"i am of the same opinion." isambard of la pierre--"secular justice will take its course if the said joan refuses to abjure a second time." from these opinions it transpires that some of the judges demand immediate death, while others, and these are a small majority, favor a second abjuration, although the opinion is general that the attempt is vain. the judges have learned from their accomplices that the heroine is now determined to seek in death the expiation of the confessions which only fear drew from her. more straightforward and frank in his projects, moreover, convinced of the success of his plan, the bishop sums up the deliberation and absolutely opposes the idea of attempting a second abjuration. do not most of those who favor the measure consider it idle? why, then, try it? and even if it were certain that the relapsed sinner would abjure again, the performance would have a deplorable effect. did not the soldiers and the people, exasperated at the clemency of the church, cry "treason!" and seem ready to riot at the time of the first abjuration? is it wise to incur and provoke a terrible turmoil in the town? has not the church given evidence of her maternal charity by admitting joan to penitence, despite her perverse heresy? how was this act of benevolence rewarded by her? it was rewarded with renewed and redoubled boastfulness, audacity and impiety! bishop cauchon closes, conjuring his very dear brothers in the name of the dignity of the church, in the name of the peace of the town, in the name of their conscience, to declare without superfluous verbiage that the said joan is a relapsed sinner, and, as such, is given over to the secular arm, in order to be led to death the next day, after being publicly excommunicated by the church. the judges yield to the views of the prelate. the registrar enters the sentence of death, and the session rises. peter cauchon is the first to leave the chapel. outside he meets several english captains who are waiting for the issue of the deliberations. one of them, the earl of warwick, says to the prelate: "well, what has been decided shall be done with the witch?" "_farewell!_ it is done!" answers the bishop with glee. "the maid--". "shall be burned to-morrow--burned to death in public," interrupts bishop cauchon. chapter xi. the pyre. during the evening of may , , the rumor spreads through rouen that the relapsed sinner is to be burned to death on the following day. that same night carpenters raise the necessary scaffoldings while others build the pyre and plant the stake. early the next morning companies of english archers form a cordon around the market-place, where joan darc is to be executed, and a double file extends into one of the streets that runs into the place. the two files of soldiers leave a wide space between them, connecting the street with the vacant area left around the scaffoldings. these are three in number, the highest of the three being at a little distance from the other two. on one of these, the one to the right, which is covered with purple cloth, rises a daised seat of crimson, ornamented with tufts of white feathers and fringed with gold. a row of seats equally decked extends on both sides of the central and daised throne, which is reached by several steps covered with rich tapestry. the scaffold to the left is of the same dimensions as the first, but it, as well as the benches thereon, is draped in black. the last of the three scaffolds consists of solid masonry about ten feet high, broad at the bottom, and ending in a narrow platform in the middle of which stands a stake furnished with iron chains and clamps. the platform is reached by a narrow set of stairs that is lost to sight in the midst of an enormous pile of fagots mixed with straw and saturated with bitumen and sulphur. the executioners have just heaped up the combustibles on the four sides of the pile of masonry. tall poles, fastened in the ground close to the pyre bear banners on which the following legends are to be read in large white letters on a black ground: "joan, who had herself called the maid, condemned to be burned alive." "falsifier, misleader, and deceiver of the people." "soothsayer, superstitious, blasphemer of god." "presumptuous, apostate from the faith of jesus christ, idolatress, cruel, dissolute." "invoker of devils." "schismatic, relapsed."[ ] at eight all the bells of rouen begin tolling the funeral knell. poor joan, she loved the bells so well in her childhood! the may sun, that same sun that shone upon the first defeat of the english before orleans, pure and luminous, floods the three scaffolds with its light. the crowd grows thicker around the space kept vacant by the archers; other spectators are grouped at the windows and on the balconies of the old frame houses with pointed gables that enclose the market place. presently flags and plumes are seen waving, the steel of the casques, the gold and precious stones of the mitres and crosiers are seen shining between the two files of archers. the casqued and mitred gentry are the english captains and the prelates. prominent among them is the cardinal of winchester, clad in the roman purple and followed by the bishop of boulogne and the bishop of beauvais, peter cauchon. behind them come the earl of warwick and other noble captains. slowly and majestically they ascend the stairs of the platform to the right of the pyre. the cardinal takes his seat upon the dais, while the other dignitaries distribute themselves to his right and left. the other scaffold, that is draped in black, is occupied by the judges of the process, its institutor, its assessors and its registrars. the appearance and arrival of these illustrious, learned or holy personages does not satisfy the gaping crowd; the condemned girl has not yet appeared. menacing clamors begin to circulate. these are loudest among the soldiers and the burgundian partisans, who say: "will the bishop keep his promise this time? woe to him if he trifles with us." "will the witch be burned at last?" "the fagots are ready; the executioners are holding the lighted wicks." "she ought to be burned twice over, the infamous relapsed sinner!" "she had the brazenness to declare that she abjured under the pressure of force! she persists in declaring herself inspired!" "what an insolent liar! by st. george! could she ever have vanquished us without the assistance of the devil, us the best archers in the world? i was at the battle of patay, where the best men of england were mowed down. i saw whole legions of demons rush upon us at her command. we could be vanquished only by such witchery." "those demons, sir archer, were french soldiers!" "blood and death! do you imagine plain soldiers are able to beat us? they were demons, by st. george! real horned and clawed demons, armed with flaming swords--they plunged over our heads and pelted us with stones and balls!" "it might have been the furious projectiles from some artillery pieces that were masked behind some hedge, sir archer." "artillery pieces of satan, yes; but of france, no!" "as true as our cardinal has his red hat on his head, if the strumpet of the armagnacs is not burned this time, myself and the other archers of my company will roast bishop cauchon together with all his tonsured brethren." "ha, ha, ha, ha! that is well said, my hercules! to roast bishop cauchon like a pig! that would be a funny spectacle!" "they are taking long! death to the witch!" "do they expect us to sleep here to-night?" "to the fagots with the heretic!" "death to the relapsed sinner!" "to the pyre with the invoker of demons! the strumpet! death to joan!" "she cheated the people!" "she denies the religion of jesus christ!" "to the pyre with the idolatress! the apostate! to the pyre with her, quick and soon!" such are the clamors of the english and the partisans of burgundy. the royalists or armagnacs are much less numerous. a few of them, especially women, experience a return of pity for joan darc, whose abjuration incensed all those who believed her inspired. with some this indignation still is uppermost and in full force. as these sentiments are indicative of sympathy, they are not uttered aloud but whispered out of fear of the english. "well, though the maid's strength once failed her, it will not fail her to-day." "it would seem that she had not lied to us. she will now maintain until death that she is inspired of god. poor child." "and yet she abjured!" "whoever lied once may lie again." "if she abjured it was out of fear of the flames--that can be easily understood." "she proved herself a coward! and she was thought so brave!" "well, in the face of the pyre one may well tremble! just look at those fagots soaked in pitch." "when one thinks that the whole pile will be in flames all around joan like so much straw on fire, singeing and consuming her flesh!" "my hair stands on end at the bare thought." "poor child! what a torture!" "what else can you expect? our seigneurs and the doctors of canon law condemn her. she must be guilty!" "such learned men could not be mistaken. we must believe them." "when the church has uttered herself we must bow down in silence. a body has religion, or has none." "well, i have no suspicions. i am an armagnac and a royalist, and i detest the english rule. i looked upon joan as upon a saint before her condemnation. now i cannot even take pity upon her. it would be throwing discredit upon her judges. my religion as a good catholic shuts my mouth. we must believe without reasoning." "did not the ecclesiastical tribunal show how merciful the church is by accepting joan's repentance?" "but why did she relapse!" "so much the worse for her if she is now burned. it will be her own doing." "you must admit that by voluntarily going to the pyre she proves her courage. she is an intrepid girl!" "she is simply displaying her rebellion and idolatrous boastfulness." "did not joan darc defeat the english in a score of battles? did she not have the king consecrated at rheims? answer!" "what you say is true. but our seigneurs the bishops judge such matters differently, and better than we could. this is the way i reason, and it is as simple as correct: the church is infallible; the church condemns joan; consequently joan is guilty." this method of reasoning, which sways the minds of the more orthodox, prevails over the timid and rare utterances that betoken interest in and sympathy for joan; she is destined to behold even those who had remained french under english rule led astray by the recent pharisees, and impassibly assist at her execution, the same as her master jesus, who, sentenced to a malefactor's death, saw the poor and suffering people whom he loved so well, look gapingly on at the execution of a sentence of death that was also pronounced by the holy doctors of the law and by the priests of his time. suddenly a deep commotion is seen swaying the mob. it announces the approach of the condemned woman. standing on a cart drawn by a horse, joan darc is clad in a "san benito," a long black gown painted over with tongues of flame, and bearing on her head a pasteboard mitre on which are printed the words: "idolatress," "heretic," "relapsed sinner." the monk isambard of la pierre, one of her judges, stands near her on the wagon and imparts to her the last consolations. she seems to listen to him, but his tokens of compassion reach her ear only as a confused sound. she no longer expects aught from man. her face, raised to heaven, looks into infinite space. she feels detached from earth, she has shaken off her last human terrors. for a moment she is overcome with fear. "oh!" cries she, sobbing, "must my body, so clean of all stain, be destroyed by fire! i would prefer to be beheaded!" but after this last cry, drawn from her by the dread of bodily pain, her soul resumes its mastery, and the virgin of gaul proceeds resolutely to the pyre. the wagon stops at the foot of the platform on which the cardinal of winchester, the two bishops and the captains are enthroned, in their mitres and their casques. the monk isambard of la pierre alights from the cart and motions joan darc to follow him. he assists her with his arm, seeing that the length of her robe impedes her movements. the unhappy girl walks with difficulty. arrived before the main platform, the monk addresses the victim: "joan, kneel down, to receive in a humble posture the excommunication and sentence that monseigneur the bishop of beauvais is to pronounce upon you." joan darc kneels down in the dust at the foot of the platform that is covered with purple. bishop peter cauchon rises, bows to the cardinal of winchester, and advances to the edge of the platform. from the ranks of the english soldiers the cries are heard: "the devil take any further prayers!" "on with the execution!" "is it a new scheme to keep the strumpet from roasting? we have had enough dilly-dallying!" "look out, bishop! you shall not cheat us this time!" "to the pyre, without further ado! to the pyre with the sorceress! death to the girl or to the bishop!" bishop cauchon silences the growing tumult with a significant gesture and says in a sonorous voice: "my very dear brothers, if a member suffers, the apostle said to the corinthians, the whole body suffers. thus when heresy infects one member of our holy church, it is urgent to separate it from all others, lest its rottenness contaminate the mystical body of our lord. the sacred institutions have decided, my very dear brothers, that, in order to free the faithful from the poison of the heretics, these vipers may not be allowed to devour the bosom of our mother the church. wherefore we, bishop of beauvais, by divine grace, assisted by the learned and very reverend john lemaitre and john graverant, inquisitors of the faith, say to you joan, commonly styled the maid:--we justly pronounced you idolatrous, a soothsayer, an invoker of devils, bloodthirsty, dissolute, schismatic and heretic. you abjured your crimes and voluntarily signed this abjuration with your own hand. but you quickly returned to your damnable errors, like the dog returns to his vomit. on account of this do we now excommunicate you and pronounce you a relapsed heretic. we sentence you to be extirpated from the midst of the faithful like a rotten, leprous member, and we deliver you, and abandon you, and cast you off into the hands of secular justice, and request it that, apart from your death and the mutilation of your members, it treat you with moderation!" the sentence is received with an explosion of shouts of ferocious joy. the english soldiers signify their satisfaction. the mob looks at joan darc with horror. one of the assessors descends from the platform and speaks to isambard in a low voice, whereupon the latter turns to joan: "you have heard your sentence, rise, my daughter." joan darc rises, and pointing to heaven as if taking the spheres for her witness, says in a loud voice and with an accent of crushing reproach to bishop cauchon, who remains standing near the edge of the platform above her: "bishop! bishop! i die at your hands!" despite his audacity, peter cauchon trembles, grows pale, bows his head before the girl's anathema, and hastens to resume his seat near the cardinal. two executioners draw near at the words of the prelate consigning joan darc to the secular powers. each seizes her by an arm and they lead her to the pyre, isambard following. "father," says joan to the latter, "i wish to have a cross, so as to die contemplating it." the request being overheard by several english soldiers, they answer: "you need no cross, relapsed sinner!" "witch! to the fagots with you!" "you only want to gain time!" "we have had enough delays--death to the heretic!" "to the fagots! to the fagots!" the monk isambard says a few words in the ear of the assessor; the latter leaves hurriedly in the direction of a neighboring church. one of the two executioners, a fellow with a blood-stained apron and a hardened face, who also overhears joan's request, feels deeply affected. tears are seen to gather in his eyes. he pulls his knife from his belt, and cuts in two a stick that he holds in his hand; in his hurry he drops his knife to the ground, takes a string from his pocket, ties the two pieces of wood in the shape of a rude cross, roughly thrusts aside two english soldiers who stand in his way, and then, handing the cross to the monk, falls back a few steps, contemplating the victim with something akin to adoration. the monk passes the cross to joan darc, who, seizing it with transport and taking it to her lips, says: "thank you, father!" "i have sent to the church of st. ouen for a large crucifix bearing the image of our savior. it will be held at a distance before your eyes as long as possible. address your prayers to jesus christ," the monk answered in a low voice. "tell them to hold it high so that i may see the image of the savior to the very end." again cries break out from the ranks of the english soldiers: "will there ever be an end of this?" "what is the tonsured fellow whispering to the witch?" "let him travel to the devil in her company!" "to the fagots with the witch, and quickly, too!" "to the flames, both the monk and the maid!" led to the foot of the pyre, joan darc measures its height with her eyes and is unable to suppress a shudder; the executioners wave their torches in the air in order to enliven their flames; two of them precede the victim to the masonry platform within the pile of fagots; they cover it up with straw and twigs, the top layer of the heaped-up combustibles; they then hold up the iron clamps that are fastened to the stake. "climb up this way," says one of the executioners to joan darc, pointing to the stairs, "you will not come down again, witch!" "i shall accompany you, my dear daughter, to the top of the pyre," says the monk. joan darc slowly ascends the steps, greatly embarrassed in her movements by the folds of her gown, and reaches the top of the pyre. a tremendous shout breaks forth from the mob. when the noise subsides, joan cries out aloud: "god alone inspired my actions!" hisses and furious imprecations drown her voice. the cardinal of winchester, the bishops, judges, and captains rise simultaneously so as to obtain a better view of the execution. after placing joan standing with her back against the stake, one of the executioners fastens her to it by the waist and neck with iron carcans; a chain holds her feet; only her hands remain free, and with them she clasps the rough wooden cross that one of the english executioners has just fashioned for her, and that she holds close to her lips. a priest in a surplice, carrying one of those large silver crucifixes usually borne at the head of processions, arrives in a hurry; he places himself at a distance opposite the pyre and holds up the crucifix as high as his arms allow him. it is the crucifix that the monk isambard has sent for. he points it out to joan darc. she turns her head towards it and keeps her eyes fastened upon the image of christ. "come, reverend father," says one of the executioners to the monk isambard, "do not stay here. the flames are about to shoot up." "in a moment," answers the monk; "i shall follow you. i only wish to finish the prayer that i began." "i shall make you come down faster than you would like, my reverend mumbler of prayers," observes the executioner in a low voice. the two executioners descend from the platform of the pyre; the monk administers to joan darc the supreme consolations. suddenly a dry and lively crackling is heard from the base of the pyre, followed by puffs of smoke and thin tongues of flame. "father!" cries joan darc anxiously, "descend! descend quickly! the pyre is on fire!" such is the sublime adieu of the victim to one of her judges! the monk descends precipitately, casting an angry look at the executioners. these light the pyre at several places. volumes of black smoke rise upward, and envelop joan darc from the public gaze. the fire glistens; it runs and twines itself through the lower layers of the fagots; presently the pile is all on fire; the flames rise; they are fanned by the breeze that blows away the cloud of smoke, and joan darc is again exposed to view. the fire reaches the straw and twigs on top of the platform on which her feet rest. her gown begins to smoke. firmly held by the triple iron bands that clasp her neck, waist and feet, she writhes and utters a piercing cry: "water! water!" a second later, as if regretting the vain appeal for mercy that pain drew from her, she exclaims: "it is god who inspired me!" at that moment joan darc's gown takes fire and the flames that flare up from it join the hundred other lambent tongues that shoot upward. from the midst of the tall furnace a voice in a weird accent is heard to exclaim: "jesus!" * * * * * the virgin of gaul has expiated her immortal glory. the flames subside, and finally go out. a smoldering brasier surrounds the base of the masonry pile that served as the center for the pyre. at its top, and held fast by the iron clamps fastened to the charred and smoking stake, is seen a blackened, shapeless, nameless something--all that is left of the maid. the two executioners place a ladder on the side of the stone pile; they climb up, strike down with their axes the members of her who was joan darc, and with the help of long iron forks hurl them all down into the brasier. other executioners lay fresh fagots on the heap. tall flames re-rise. when the second fire is wholly extinguished nothing remains but reddish ashes interspersed with charred human bones, a skull among them. the ashes and bones are gathered by the executioners and thrown into a wooden box, which they lay on a hand-barrow, and, followed by a large and howling mob, the executioners proceed to the banks of the seine, into which they throw the remains of the redeeming angel of france. finally, the cardinal, the bishops, the captains and the ecclesiastical judges leave the market place of rouen in procession, in the same order that they had entered. they have gloated over the death of joan darc. the justice of the courtiers, of the warriors and of the infallible clergy is satisfied. epilogue. i, jocelyn the champion, now a centennarian as was my ancestor amael who fought under charles martel and who later knew charlemagne, wrote the above narrative, a part of which, the tragedy of joan darc's execution, i witnessed with my own eyes. on the eve of her execution i arrived in rouen from vaucouleurs. communication was difficult in those days between distantly located provinces. it thus happened that the tidings of joan's captivity at rouen and her trial did not for some time reach her family. finally apprized thereof by public rumor, her family was anxious to learn of her fate, but, despite their desolation, they neither were able nor did they dare to undertake the long journey. i called upon denis laxart, the worthy relative of joan whom i had long known intimately, and offered him to go to rouen myself. my fervent admiration for the plebeian heroine inspired me with the resolution. despite my advanced age, i was not frightened by the perils of the journey. but i was poor. this difficulty was overcome by denis laxart and several good people of vaucouleurs. the necessary funds were scraped together, a horse was bought, and i started with my grandson at the crupper. arrived at rouen on may , , after encountering no end of difficulties, i learned of the solemn abjuration of joan darc and saw how her enemies pronounced her a fraud and her former friends, a coward. i was not then aware of the black plot that had brought about the apostasy; nevertheless, my own instinct and reasoning, the recollection of my frequent conversations with denis laxart, who had often recounted to me the details of joan's childhood, and finally the reports of her glorious deeds that penetrated as far as lorraine--everything combined to point out to me that an abjuration that so utterly belied the courage and loyalty of the martial maid concealed some sinister mystery. the following day i appeared early at the market place, taking my grandson with me. we managed to stand in the front ranks of the mass that witnessed the execution and that crowded us forward. we were pushed so far forward that we stood near the benign executioner who volunteered to fashion a cross for the unhappy victim, and who in his haste dropped his knife. it fell at my grandson's feet. i took it up and shall preserve it as the emblem that is to accompany this narrative. immediately after the execution of joan darc i was the witness of a strange incident. near myself and my grandson was a priest wrapped up in his gown and cowl. he mumbled to himself. he had watched with seeming indifference the preparations for joan darc's execution, until when, writhing with pain, she cried out: "water! water!" at these words the priest trembled. he raised his hands to heaven and murmured: "mercy! oh, mercy!" finally, when with her last breath joan darc made the supreme invocation--"jesus!" the priest cried out in a suffocated voice: "i am damned!" he immediately dropped to the ground, a prey to violent convulsions. he still lay there in a tremor when the mob left the market place to follow the executioners who were to throw the remains of joan darc into the seine. moved with pity for the man whom all others took no notice of, or considered possessed of an evil spirit, my grandson and myself raised him and took him to our inn that faced the market place. we carried him to our room and tended him. by degrees he came to himself and looked upon us with distracted eyes that seemed to reveal deep repentance and also terror, as he cried: "i am damned! i am the accomplice and instrument of the bishop of beauvais in the killing of joan! god will punish me!" that priest was the canon loyseleur.[ ] the gowned monster did taste repentance--strange, incredible revulsion, that i never would have believed had i not myself witnessed its unquestionable evidence. the wretch was devoured with remorse; he admitted his guilt to us, and when he noticed the horror that his admissions filled us with he cried: "a curse upon the help i rendered to you, bishop of beauvais, assassin!" with quavering voice he asked me whether i pitied joan. my tears answered him. he then wished to know who i was, and learning of my passionate admiration for the virgin of gaul and my desire for the sake of her desolate family, to be informed upon what had happened, canon loyseleur seemed struck by a sudden thought, and asked me to wait for him at the inn that very evening. "never," said he, "shall i be able to make amends for or expiate my crime; but i wish to place in your hands the means to smite the butchers of the victim." that same evening canon loyseleur brought to me a bundle of parchments. it contained: .--the general confession of joan darc transcribed by himself on the very day when he received it, and when that great soul unveiled itself to him in all its heroic simplicity. .--notes which he had taken and preserved after his interviews with the emissary of george of la tremouille, and which revealed the plot that was concocted against joan by the people of the court, the captains and the ecclesiastics, before the first meeting of the heroine and charles vii. .--a copy of a contemporaneous chronicle entitled "journal of the siege of orleans," and another memoir written by percival of cagny, equerry to the duke of alençon, who did not leave joan's side from the time of the raising of the siege of orleans down to the siege of paris. these two manuscripts were a part of the documents that bishop peter cauchon had gathered to draw up the indictment. .--one of the minutes of the process, containing the questions put to joan, and her answers. .--a complete admission and detailed account of the machinations of loyseleur and bishop cauchon to capture joan's confidence in her prison, as also of the plans they had laid during a long conversation before the trial. these materials were given to me by the canon in the hope of enabling me some day to rehabilitate the memory of joan darc. as to himself, he realized that, pursued by inexorable remorse, he would soon die, or lose his senses. on that very morning he did not dare to take his seat on the platform among joan's judges, fearing she might recognize him. the spectacle of her martyrdom and agony finally overthrew him. after depositing these manuscripts in my hands, the canon left me precipitately and with a wild look. i know not what became of him. the next morning i left rouen with my grandson, and once again in vaucouleurs i proceeded to write the story of joan darc. thanks to the information i received from denis laxart and the documents of canon loyseleur, i have been able to draw up the above truthful narrative. to it i have attached the executioner's knife, as an additional relic of our family. until now and in this country of lorraine, the cradle of the virgin of gaul, i have vainly sought to rehabilitate joan in the eyes of her friends and even of her parents. all have given me the same answer that i received so often in rouen and so many other towns: "despite her glory, despite her immense services rendered to france, joan is guilty, joan is criminal, joan will burn in the everlasting flames of hell--the infallible church condemned her!" but the judgment of men passes--true glory is imperishable. some day the maid will be exalted and her murderers spat upon. the end. footnotes: [ ] _trial and condemnation, and proceedings of the rehabilitation of joan of arc, known as the maid_, by jules quicherat, after the manuscripts in the royal library; vol. i, p. . [ ] the same. [ ] _trial of joan of arc_, vol. i, p. . [ ] _trial of joan of arc_, vol. i, p. . [ ] _song of merlin the enchanter_, in villemarqué, _popular songs of brittany_, vol. i, p. . [ ] villemarqué, _popular songs of brittany_, vol. i, p. . [ ] the citation is literal. denis laxart, uncle to jeannette, testified to having heard her say: "has it not been long prophesied that france, desolated by a woman, would be restored by a woman?" (_proceedings of the rehabilitation of joan of arc_, edited by jules quicherat, vol. ii, p. .) the wife of henry rolhaire also deposed and said: "jeannette asked: 'have you not heard it said that france, lost by a woman, would be saved by a virgin of the marches (borders) of lorraine, born near an oak forest?'" (the same, p. .) [ ] "_descendet virgo dorsum sagitarii._ among other writings was found a prophecy of merlin, speaking in this manner."--testimony of matthew thomassin, given by quicherat in the _rehabilitation_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] see "the iron arrow head," the tenth of this series. [ ] volume one of this series, "the gold sickle." [ ] _trial and condemnation of joan of arc_, vol. i, p. . [ ] _trial and condemnation of joan of arc_, vol. i, p. . [ ] _trial and condemnation of joan of arc_, vol. i, p. . [ ] _trial and condemnation of joan of arc_, vol. i, p. . [ ] the same, p. . [ ] the same, p. . [ ] _trial and condemnation of joan of arc_, vol. i, p. . [ ] the same, p. . [ ] the same, pp. , . [ ] _trial and condemnation of joan of arc_, vol. i, p. . [ ] _trial and condemnation of joan of arc_, vol. i, p. . [ ] the same, p. . [ ] _trial and condemnation_, vol. i, p. . [ ] _trial and condemnation_, vol. i, p. . [ ] _trial and condemnation_, vol. i, p. . [ ] _trial and condemnation_, vol. i, p. . [ ] _"mammae ejas erant pulcherimas"_--testimony of the duke of alençon (_proceedings of the rehabilitation of joan of arc_, vol. iii, p. ). [ ] _trial and condemnation of joan of arc_, vol. i, p. . [ ] _trial and condemnation_, vol. i, p. . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] this, and the succeeding answers of joan in this interview which are authenticated by references to the _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, are all, with the exception of two otherwise designated, taken from that portion of vol. ii between pp. and . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation._ [ ] the same. [ ] the same. [ ] the same. [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation._ [ ] the same, vol. ii, p. . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation._ [ ] the same, vol. ii, p. . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] see the preceding volume of this series, "the iron trevet." [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] godefroid, _chronicle of the maid_, p. ; godefroid, _chronicle of berry_, p. ; _memoirs of argus and richemont_. [ ] godefroid, p. . quoted by jules quicherat, in the introduction to the _trial and condemnation of joan of arc_, p. . [ ] _chronicle of percival of cagny_, vol. iv. p. . [ ] _chronicle of percival of cagny_, vol. iv. p. . [ ] _chronicle of percival of cagny_, vol. iv. p. . [ ] it is useless to cite the chroniclers severally on the subject of this shameless and abominable examination. they are all agreed on the fact. [ ] _chronicle of percival of cagny_, cited by quicherat, vol. iii, p. . [ ] the interrogations and the replies thereto by joan are here taken in the main literally from _the chronicle of the maid_, a manuscript now in the possession of the institute at paris, no. , cited by quicherat in his _trial and condemnation of joan of arc_, vol. iv, p. ; also in the _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. iii, pp. - . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. ii, p. . this remarkable reply is quoted literally, like the rest of the inquisition. [ ] _trial and condemnation of joan of arc_, vol. i, p. . even english authors have been wont to quote with praise this virile letter of the maid. [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] _journal of the siege of orleans_, vol. iv, p. . [ ] _trial and condemnation of joan of arc_, vol. iii, p. . [ a] _trial and condemnation of joan of arc_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] _trial and condemnation of joan of arc_, vol. iii, p. , the testimony of louis leconte. [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. iii, pp. - . [ ] the same. [ ] the same. [ ] the same, p. . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. iii, pp. - . [ ] _trial and condemnation_, vol. i, p. . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. iii, pp. - . [ ] the same. [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] the same. [ ] the same. [ ] _journal of the siege of orleans_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] _journal of the siege of orleans_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] _trial and condemnation_, vol. i, p. . [ ] _chronicle of the maid_, pp. - , cited by quicherat, vol. iv. also the _journal of the siege of orleans_. [ ] _chronicle of the maid_, p. . [ ] _chronicle of the maid_, p. . [ ] the same. [ ] john chartier, vol. iv, p. . given by quicherat. [ ] john chartier, vol. iv, p. , cited by quicherat. the decision of the council is here given literally from the records. there can be no doubt on this abominable attempt at treason. [ ] john chartier, vol. iv, p. . [ ] john chartier, vol. iv, p. . [ ] john chartier, vol. iv, p, . [ ] the same. [ ] deposition of simon charles, master of petitions. _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. iii, p. ; _chronicle of the maid_, p. ; john chartier, vol. iv, p. . all the chronicles are in accord on this so capital fact. [ ] testimony of simon charles. [ ] _chronicle of percival of cagny_, vol. iv, p. . [ ] _journal of the siege of orleans_, vol. iv, p. . [ ] literally the testimony of john pasquerel, joan's confessor, who confessed her that very day. (_proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. iii, pp. - .) [ ] _trial and condemnation_, vol. i, p. . [ ] testimony of colette, wife of millet, _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] _journal of the siege of orleans_, vol. iv, p. . [ ] _journal of the siege of orleans_, vol. iv, p. . [ ] _journal of the siege of orleans_, vol. iv, p. . [ ] the same. [ ] _journal of the siege of orleans_, vol. iv, p. . [ ] _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] testimony of the duke of alençon, _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] _chronicle of the maid_, vol. iii, p. . [ ] testimony of gerardin of epinal, _proceedings of the rehabilitation_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] this letter is taken literally from the archives of lille. see also quicherat, vol. v, p. . [ ] with some abridgment, the text of this chronicle is cited almost literally. [ ] latin, _from the egg_, i.e., the beginning. [ ] rymer, cited by quicherat, vol. x, p. . [ ] the same. [ ] rymer, cited by quicherat, vol. x, p. . [ ] rogier, cited by quicherat, vol. v, pp. - . [ ] fowler, bird-catcher. [ ] _tractatus de haersi pauperum de lugduno_, cited by marten in his _thesaurus of anecdotes_, vol. v, collected . [ ] this answer of joan, together with all the others, and all the questions and decrees of the judges throughout the trial, are taken literally from the records. [ ] _"medicina animae dictae joannae"_, literally, _trial and condemnation_, vol. i, p. . [ ] these inscriptions are all recorded by an eye-witness, clement of franquenberg; see quicherat, vol. iv, p. . [ ] for the repentance of canon loyseleur, see _the proceedings of the rehabilitation of joan of arc_, vol. ii, p. . provided by the internet archive the story of joan of arc by andrew lang pictures by j. jellicoe [illustration: ] [illustration: ] to angela cottrell-dormer dear angela, may i dedicate this little book to you, who are already a friend of the maid? as you grow up you will meet certain wise people who will tell you that there was never any such person as joan of arc, or that, if she ever lived, she was mad, or an impostor. if you ask them how they know that, they will probably reply that science is the source of their information. you can then answer that you prefer to begin with history, and ask these wise people if they have read even so much as monsieur quicheratâ��s five volumes containing the trial of joan, and the evidence of her friends and enemies who knew her in her lifetime? as the books are in latin and old french, the people who speak about joan disrespectfully have not read them, and do not know what they are talking about. â��_they say: what say they? let them say!_â�� affectionately yours, a. lang. the story of joan of arc chapter i. the childhood of joan of arc |joan of arc was perhaps the most wonderful person who ever lived in the world. the story of her life is so strange that we could scarcely believe it to be true, if ali that happened to her had not been told by people in a court of law, and written down by her deadly enemies, while she was still alive. she was burned to deach when she was only nineteen: she was not seventeen when she first led the armies of france to victory, and delivered her country from the english. joan was the daughter of a poor man, in a little country village. she had never learned to read, or write, or mount a horse. yet she was so wise that many learned men could not puzzle her by questions: she was one of the best riders in france; one of the most skilled in aiming cannons, and so great a general that she defeated the english again and again, and her army was never beaten till her king deserted her. she was so brave that severe wounds could not stop her from leading on her soldiers, and so tender-hearted that she would comfort the wounded english on the field of battle, and protect them from cruelty. she was so good that her enemies could not find one true story to tell against her in the least thing; and she was so modest that in the height of her glory she was wishing to be at home in her fatherâ��s cottage, sewing or spinning beside her mother. joan, who was born at domremy, in the east of france, on january , , lived in a very unhappy time. for nearly a hundred years the kings of england had been trying to make themselves kings of france, just as they had been trying to make themselves kings of scotland. perhaps they might have succeeded, if they had confined themselves to one conquest at a time. but they left scotland alone while they were attacking france, and then scotland sent armies to help the french, as at other times the french sent armies to help scotland. eight years before joan was born a sad thing happened to her country. henry v. of england had married the princess katherine of france, and the french, or some of them, tired of being beaten in war, consented to let the child of henry and the princess katherine be their king, instead of the son of their old king. the old kingâ��s son was called â��the dauphinâ��; that was the title of the eldest son of the french kings. this dauphin was named charles. his friends went on fighting the english for his sake, but he was not crowned king. the coronations of french kings were always done in the cathedral at rheims, where they were anointed with sacred oil. the oil was kept in a very old flask, which was said to have been brought from heaven, to a saint, by an angel. no eldest sen of the king was thought really king of france, after his fatherâ��s death, till he had been anointed with this heavenly oil at rheims by the archbishop. it is important to remember this; you will see the reason afterwards. now, rheims was in the power of the english, so the dauphin, charles, could not go there and be made king in earnest. the english said that he was not the son of his father, the late king, which made him very unhappy. we shall hear how joan comforted him and made him king for good and all. what scots and frenchmen could not do, she did. in the meantime the french were divided into two parties. some sided with the dauphin, prince charles; more, and especially all the people of burgundy, and the duke of burgundy, a great and rich country, were on the side of the english. so they fought very cruelly, for the land was full of companies of ill-paid soldiers, who plundered the poor, so that towns fell into decay, many fields were empty of sheep and cows, and the roads became covered with grass. in the villages a boy used to watch all day, from the spire of the church, to see whether any soldiers were riding up. if they came, the cattle were driven into the woods, and men, women, and children ran to hide themselves, carrying such things away as they could. the soldiers of all sorts robbed equally, for they had often no regular pay, and the scots were not behindhand in helping themselves wherever they went. even gentlemen and knights became chiefs of troops of robbers, so that, whoever won in the wars, the country people were always being plundered. in the middle of these miseries joan was born, in a village where almost everybody was on the side of the dauphin: the right side. in the village nearest to hers, maxey, the people took the english side, and the boys of the two places had pitched battles with sticks and stones. it is true that they would have found some other reason for fighting, even if the english had not been in france. joan used to see her brothers, peter and john, come home from these battles with their noses bleeding, and with black eyes, but she did not take part herself in these wars. her village was near a strong-walled town called vaucouleurs, which was on the side of the dauphin. when joan was a little girl she did not see very much of the cruelty of the soldiers; the village was only visited once or twice by enemies. but she heard of what was going on in the rest of france: â��there was great pity in france,â�� she said. she did, once or twice, see some of the â��pity.â�� there was a man called henry dâ��orly, living in a castle named doulevant, who, like many other gentlemen in these days, was a captain of robbers. one day several spearmen of his rode into domremy, joanâ��s village, and seized joanâ��s fatherâ��s cows, with all the other cows that they could find, just as the scotts, elliots, and armstrongs used to ride across the border and drive the cattle of the english farmers. but a lady lived in a strong castle rear domremy, and when she heard how the village people had been plundered she sent the news to a gentleman in the neighbourhood, who gathered his spearmen and rode after the robbers. the thieves, of course, could not ride faster than the stolen cows could trot; they pricked the poor beasts with their spears, and made them lumber along, but a cow is slow at best. the pursuers galloped and came on the cattle in a little town, while the thieves were drinking in the wine shops. when they heard the horses of the pursuers gallop down the street, they mounted their horses and spurred for their lives; but now came their master, henry dâ��orly, with more spearmen, who followed after the cattle and the gentlemen who were driving them home. they turned and charged henry dâ��orly, and cleared the road, and the cows came home to domremy, all safe. another time all the people in domremy had to fly from home, and go to a town called neufchâteau, where they were safe behind strong walls. they only stayed there for a few days, but, later, the english said that joan had been a servant in an inn at this town, and had learned to ride there, which was quite untrue. [illustration: ] there were beautiful woods near the village, and in one oak wood an oak called the fairy tree. there was a story that a beautiful fairy used to meet her lover at that tree, just as under the eildon hill, the queen of fairyland met thomas the rhymer. the children used to take cakes, and make feasts, and hang garlands of flowers on the boughs of that oak; but joan did not care much about fairies, and preferred to lay her wild flowers beneath the statues of saints in the village church, especially st. catharine and st. margaret. of course, all this was long before the reformation in which the protestants broke the images of saints in the churches, and smashed their pictures on the glass windows with stones, and destroyed a beautiful statue of joan on the bridge at orleans. these things were done more than a hundred years after joan was dead. though joan could run faster than the other girls and boys, and beat them when they ran races, she liked to be quiet. nobody could sew and spin better than she did, and she was very fond of praying alone in church. she would even go away from the other children into lonely places, and implore god to have pity on france. the services in church, the singing and music, made her very happy, and when she heard the church bells across the fields, she would say her prayer. she was very kind, and would give up her bed to any poor traveller whom her father took in for a night, and would sleep beside the hearth she took care of the sick, and, if ever she had any money, she would spend it on masses to be said in honour of god, and for the sake of menâ��s souls. so joan lived till she was thirteen. she was a strong, handsome girl, beautifully made, with black hair. we do not know the colour of her eyes, probably brown or dark grey. a young knight wrote to his mother, when he first saw joan, that she was â��a creature all divine.â�� jean never sat to a painter for her portrait, though once she saw a kind of fancy picture of herself in the hands of a scottish archer. young men do not say so much about a girl who is not beautiful, and indeed, armies do not rush together to follow a maiden with no good looks. but though jean, when she came to command armies, liked to be well dressed, and to have fine armour, that was partly because she was a natural, healthy girl, and partly because she was a kind of banner for men to follow into fight, and banners ought to be splendid. she took, no thought of her own beauty, and the young knights and squires who fought, later, under her flag, said that they looked on her as a sacred thing, and never dreamed of making love to her she let it be known that she would never marry any one, while the english were still in france. she was not a nun, and had not made a vow never to marry at all, but while her country was in danger she never thought of marriage; she had other things to do. chapter ii. how the voices came to the maid |when joan was about thirteen a very wonderful thing happened to her. one day she and the other girls and boys were running a race for a crown of flowers. joan was easily the winner, and as she was running, a child who was looking on cried, â��joan. i see you flying along without touching the ground.â�� after the race joan had a curious feeling as if she did not know where she was and then heard a young manâ��s voice near her bidding her go home, for her mother needed her. she did not know who spoke; she thought it might be her brother, or one of her neighbours, so she ran home. she found that her mother had not sent for her, and she was going back to her friends, when a bright light like a shining cloud appeared to her, and a voice told her to go and save france from the english. till that hour she had been sorry for the sorrows in france, but as she was only a little girl, she had never thought that she could lead an army against the english. this is the first account that people heard of the coming of the mysterious voices to jeanne: it was written down about four years after the voices first came, and six weeks after jeanâ��s first great defeat of the english (in may ). two years later, after joan was a prisoner of the english, the french priests and lawyers who took the english side asked her thousands of questions about everything that she had done in her life, and the answers were written down in a hook, word for word. they asked her about these wonderful voices. there were things that she refused to tell these priests and lawyers, but she did say this:-- â��when i was about thirteen there came to me a voice from god, teaching me how i was to behave and what i was to do. and the first time that voice came, i was afraid. i was standing about the middle of the day, in summer, in my fatherâ��s garden. the voice came from the right hand, from where the church stands, and when it came i usually saw a great light on the side from which it spoke. the voice told me to be a good girl and go to church, and go to save france. i said that i was only a poor girl, who could not ride or lead the soldiers in the wars,â�� but the voice kept on for years, telling her that she must go. she not only heard voices, but she saw shining figures of the saints in heaven. she never would tell the lawyers much about how the saints appeared to her, but said, â��i saw them as clearly as i see you, and i used to cry when they went away. and i wished that they would take me with them where they went.â�� these saints were st. margaret, st. catherine, and the archangel st. michael. when joan spoke to her own friends about what she saw and heard they say that â��she seemed marvelously happy, lifting her eyes to heaven.â�� this is all that we know about these wonderful things which kept joan company from the time when she was thirteen to the day of her death, when she was nineteen, advising her about what she was to do for the saving of france. if the voices had not spoken to her often, she would never have gone to the wars, and for some years she told nobody about the voices, and stayed at home in her village. even when she went to the wars, her friends could not persuade her to say more than i have told you about these strange things. she said that she had a â��councilâ�� which advised her in everything. if there was much noise in a room where she might be, she could not hear the voices distinctly. only one person said that he saw angelsâ�� faces in her company; none of her friends who knew her best saw or heard anything extraordinary. she very much disliked to speak about the saints and voices. chapter iii. how the maid obeyed the voices |time went on, and the dauphin, the rightful prince of france, was more and more unfortunate. it is true that henry v., the king of england, died. he was a great soldier, and his son was only a baby, but the war was carried on by the brother of the late king, the duke of bedford; by the earl of salisbury; by the famous talbot; by sir john fastolf, and many other english generals. the scots won a great victory over the english at baugé bridge, where the duke of clarence, the brother of henry v., was killed. but the french and scots were beaten at verneuil, where most of the scots fell fighting bravely. however, a new army came from scotland, under stewart of dam-ley, and still the war went on. by that time the dauphin only held france south of the great river loire. the strongest place which was true to the dauphin was the town of orleans. if the english could once take that city, and fill it with previsions, and guns, and other weapons, the french could not hope to win it back again, and the english would overrun the whole of the centre and south of france, and drive the dauphin out of his own country. he was very poor and very unhappy. he could scarcely pay his bootmaker, and as he was not a good fighting man, he lived here and there idly, at towns south of orleans, such as blois and poitiers. he used to wonder whether he had not better give up the war and go to spain or scotland. another thing made him miserable. he did not know for certain whether he had really the right to be king or not, as many people said that he was not truly the son of the last king of france. in his distress he prayed, privately and in silence, that he might know whether or not he was the rightful prince, and ought to be crowned and anointed as king. but he told nobody about this, and lived as he best could, wandering from one town to another. then he heard that his great city of orleans was being besieged by the english, in the autumn of the year . orleans lies on the right bank of the river loire, which here is deep, broad, and swift, with several islands in the middle of the current. the bridge was fortified, on the farther side, by two strong towers, called les tourelles, but the english took this fortification, and so the people of orleans could not cross the river by the bridge, and they broke down an arch, that the english might not cross to them. one day the english general came to this fort, at the time when the soldiers of both sides dined, to look our of a narrow window, and watch what was going on in the besieged town. now it happened that a cannon lay, ready loaded, in a niche of the gate tower of orleans that looked straight along the bridge to the tourelles. the english general, the earl of salisbury, was peeping through the narrow window, thinking himself quite safe, as the french soldiers in orleans had gone to dinner. but a small french boy went into the gate-tower of orleans, and seeing a cannon ready loaded, he thought it would be amusing to set a light to the touch-hole. so he got a linstock, as it was called, lighted it, put it to the touch-hole, and fired off the cannon. the bullet went straight into the narrow window out of which the english general was peeping, and he fell back, mortally wounded. this was a piece of good fortune for the french, but there were plenty of other english generals to take the place of salisbury. the english built strong fortresses here and there, outside the walls and gates of the town, to prevent help and food and wine and powder from being brought to the besieged french. but the people of orleans were brave, and were commanded by good officers, such as dunois, young xaintrailles. la hire, a rough, swearing knight, and others who became true friends of joan of arc, and food was brought in easily enough. the english had won so many battles that they despised the french, and so they did not take pains, and besides, they had not men enough to surround orleans and prevent cattle being driven in from the country. the english seem to have had no more than four thousand soldiers. they were neither strong enough to take the town by storm, nor many enough to surround it and starve the french into showing the white flag, and giving up the place. in fact, the english had been beating the french just because they believed they could beat them, and thought that one englishman was as good as three frenchmen at least. this was nonsense but, under henry v., at agincourt, a few english had beaten a great french army, because the french fought foolishly, trying to gallop to the charge over wet, heavy ploughed land, while the english arches shot them down in hundreds. but the french, you will see had learned the english way of fighting on foot, and could have held their own, if they had not lost confidence. chapter iv. how joan heard news strangely |joan, far away in domremy, would hear of the danger in which orleans lay, now and then, and her voices kept insisting that she _must_ go and drive away the english. she used to cry, and say that she would be quite useless, as she could not ride or fight, and people would think her mad, or bad, and laugh at her. the voices told her to go to the nearest strong-walled french town, vaucouleurs, and ask the commander there, robert de baudricourt, to send her to the dauphin, who was then far away, at chinon, a castle on the loire, south of orleans. when she saw the king, she was to tell him that she had come to save france. this seemed quite a mad proposal. baudricourt was a greet, rough, sensible soldier, and how could joan go to him with a message of this kind? he would merely laugh at the sunburned girl in her short red kirtle--a girl who, probably, had never spoken to a gentleman before. perhaps this was the hardest part of joanâ��s duty, for she was modest, and she was very quick to notice anything absurd and ridiculous. now nothing could seem more laughable than the notion that a little country wench of sixteen could teach the french to defeat the english. but there was no help for it. the voices, and the shining cloud, and the faces of saints and angels came, several times every week, and a voice said, â��daughter of god, go on! i will be with you.â�� joan had an uncle who lived near vaucouleurs, and she went to stay with him. it seems that she told him she must go to the dauphin, and the first thing needful was to get robert de baudricourt to lend her a few men-at-arms, who would protect her on her long journey to chinon. the uncle must have been very much astonished, but it seems that he believed in her, for he took her to robert. of course robert laughed, and told joanâ��s uncle to take her away, and box her ears. but she came again, and then a priest wanted to exorcise her, that is to frighten the devil out of her, with religious services and holy water, as if she had been â��possessed,â�� like people in the new testament. but joan was not possessed, and the priest, after trying the holy water, could only say so. by this time the month of february had come round. the besieged french in orleans had now a great misfortune. the season of lent was coming; that is, a time when they were not allowed to eat beef and mutton, but only fish, and eggs, and vegetables. now a great number of waggons loaded with herrings were being sent to feed the english who were besieging orleans. the general of the french in orleans knew that, and he determined to send out soldiers to attack the english who would be guarding the long line of waggons full of herrings. they would wait for the english on the road, cut them up, and carry the fish into the town for their own use. so a great many of the scots and some french slipped out of orleans by night, and went to a place called rouvray, on the road by which the herrings were to pass. here they were to be joined by another small french army, under a general named clermont. so they reached rouvray, where they did not find clermont and his men, but did see the english soldiers far away, marching by the side of the long line of waggons. instead of waiting hidden under cover till the english passed, by, and then rushing among them unexpectedly, stewart of damley cried, â��charge!â�� and rode, with his lance in rest at the english front. the scots were always in too great a hurry to fight. the english saw them, coming, arranged the heavy waggons in a square, and went inside the square, so that the scots could not get at them. safe behind their carts, the english archers shot down the scots, who thought bows and arrows rather mean weapons, and wanted to cut down their enemies with the sword. but they could not reach the english; they fell in piles of slain men round the square, and clermont, the french general who was to have joined them, would not fight, and took away his army. so very many brave scots were killed, with stewart of darnley at their head, and the rest retreated sadly to orleans, where they heard the english hurrahing in their camp. this was called the battle of rouvray, or the battle of the herrings. it was fought on february , . now, on february , joan went to baudricourt, and told him that a terrible misfortune had happened that day to the army of the dauphin, near orleans. the news could not possibly reach vaucouleurs for several days, for the distance between vaucouleurs and orleans is great, and the roads were dangerous, and might be beset by english soldiers and by robbers, who would stop messengers. joan had been told of the defeat by her voices. at last, however, the bad news did come. joan had been right, the french and scots had been defeated on the day when she told baudricourt of it, february . so baudricourt saw there was something uncommon in this country girl, who knew what was happening far away, and he lent her two young: gentlemen and a few men-at-arms to guide her and guard her on her way to the dauphin. somebody gave her a horse, which, to the surprise of all men, she rode very well. she had her long black hair cut short and close, as soldiers wore it; she dressed in a grey doublet and black hose, like a boy (she wore this kind of dress till the end of her life); and then she rode through the gate of vaucouleurs which is still standing, and away to seek the dauphin. this was on february , . after riding for several days, joan and her company reached a little town called fierbois, near chinon. here was the chapel dedicated to st. catherine of fierbois, who was a favourite saint of the french and scots soldiers, and of joan. in the chapel was a book in which the miracles of the saint were written down. at this very time a scottish archer, michael hamilton, from shotts, was caught by some country people, and was hanged by them. during the night a voice came to the priest of the village, saying, â��go and cut down that scot who was hanged, for he is not dead.â�� however, the priest was sleepy, and he did not go. next day was easter day, and the priest went to church and did the services. after that, he thought he might as well see about the scot who was hanging from a tree, and seemed quite dead. to make certain, the priest took his penknife, and cut the dead manâ��s toe. on this the man gave a kick, so the priest cut the rope, and took good care of michael hamilton. when he was able to ride, michael went to this chapel of fierbois, and took his oath that he had prayed to st. catherine before he was hanged up, and now he came to thank her for his escape at her chapel. the book of the chapel is full of these strange stories, and probably some of them were read aloud to joan, who could not read, and said that she â��did not know a from b.â�� she attended three masses at fierbois, and get some learned clerk to write a letter to the king, to say that she was coming. she also had a letter written to her father and mother, asking them to pardon her for going away without their permission. her father she was to see once more, her mother she never saw again. as to michael hamilton, you may believe his story or not, as you like. many of the other stories told in the chapel book by scots soldiers, and french men and women, are just as curious. i only know that the people made long journeys to thank madame saint catherine in her church at fierbois, and that their stories were written down in the book there. chapter v. how the maid saw the dauphin |when joan reached chinon, she was lodged with a lady who was very kind, and she waited to see the dauphin. his advisers were not sure that he ought to see the maid at all; but probably he was curious, and at last she was brought to the castle, and led up the stairs to a great hall, where were many men in splendid dresses. the castle is in ruins now, and the hall has no roof over it, but you can still go in and see the walls, and empty windows, and the great fireplace. a man plainly dressed was in the crowd of magnificent courtiers in silk and gold embroidery. joan went straight up, and kneeling on one knee, said, â��fair sir, you are the dauphin to whom i am come.â�� but the man pointed to a knight, very richly dressed, and said, â��that is the king.â�� â��no, fair sir,â�� said joan; â��it is to you that i am sent.â�� [illustration: ] the dauphin, for the man was the dauphin, was surprised at this, for she had never seen him before. he allowed jean to come to the castle and talk to him, but he was not sure that she was not an impostor, or a silly girl. one day, however, she took him aside, into a corner where nobody could hear what they were talking about. when their conversation was ended, the dauphin looked very grave, and jeanne looked very glad. she had told him something that made him believe in her. what had joan told to the king? it was known at the time that she had told him something that amazed him, for it is mentioned in a letter written a few weeks later by alan chartier, a famous poet. but nobody knew the secret: joan would never let any one know. when she was a prisoner among the english, the french-priests and lawyers tried to make her speak, but she would not. it was her kingâ��s secret. eight yearâ��s after joan was dead, a very strange thing happened. a woman who said that joan had not died, and that she was joan, came to orleans with joanâ��s brothers. the people of orleans, who had known the maid very well, believed that this woman was joan come again, and feasted her and gave her presents. then she was taken to the king. he himself was puzzled, and said, â��maid, my dear, i am glad to see you again. do you remember the secret between you and me?â�� then this false pretender to be the maid confessed that she knew nothing. when the king was old, he revealed the secret to a friend. on that day when they went apart together at chinon. joan reminded him of the secret prayer which, as i told you, the dauphin had made when alone, asking that he might know whether he really was the son of the late king, and himself the rightful king of france. â��you _are_ the rightful king,â�� joan said. when the dauphin heard her words, he made things go on quicker. priests were sent to joanâ��s village to find out if she had been a good girl when she was at home. then she was taken to poitiers, to be examined by many learned men, priests and lawyers. they tried to perplex her by their questions, but she was straightforward, and told them how the voices had come to her. one man asked her to give a sign by working a miracle. â��i have not come to poitiers to give signs.â�� said joan; â��but let me go to orleans, and you shall see what i will do.â�� she never professed to work miracles. she wanted to lead an army to orleans, and the sign to be given was the defeat of the english, and the rescue of the besieged town. for six weary weeks the learned men and priests examined joan, and tried in every way to find some fault in her answers. at last they drew up a report and signed it, saying that â��to doubt the maid would be to resist the holy spirit.â�� what they were afraid of all the time was that joan might be advised by spirits, to be sure, but evil spirits or devils. the english and the french lawyers on the english side, declared that joan was possessed by devils. they thought that, because they could not deny her powers; but, as she was not on their side, her powers could not come from god, but from satan. to think in that way is common: people always believe that their own side is the right side. but nobody ever heard of evil spirits taking possession of any one who was really good; and no man could ever find any single bad thing in joan the maid. so now the dauphin began to collect an army to march with joan to orleans. of course he ought to have done that before, even if there had been no joan. it was a shameful thing that a strong town, full of brave men, should be taken by four thousand englishmen, without an effort by the french to drive the english away. but the french had lost all heart and courage: the brave danois himself said that a large force of french would run away from a little company of english. all that the french of the dauphinâ��s party needed was courage and confidence. as soon as they believed in joan they were full of confidence. they could not turn their backs as long as a girl of sixteen ran forward in front of them, through the rain of arrows, and bullets, and cannon balls, waving her banner, and crying â��come on!â�� at this time joan prophesied that she would be wounded by an arrow at orleans, but not to death. so a flemish ambassador at chinon wrote to the magistrates of his town at hone, and his letter was copied into the town councilâ��s book, before the maid went to the war. white armour was made for joan to wear, and a scottish painter made a banner with sacred pictures for her to carry: his daughter was a great friend of joan. the maid said that, as for a sword, if they dug in the ground behind the altar at the chapel of st. catherine, in fierbois, they would find a buried sword, which she wished to carry; and it was found, old and rusty, with five crosses on the blade. the duke of alençon, a young cousin of the kingâ��s, who had been a prisoner of the english, saw joan riding one day, and was so pleased with her grace and good horsemanship, that he gave her a very good horse, and became one of her best friends. â��my fair dukeâ�� was what she used to call him. every one said that joanâ��s manners were as gentle and courteous as those of the greatest ladies, though she had been brought up in a poor cottage. everything that she did was done in the best way and the noblest. chapter vi. how the maid rode to orleans |when joanâ��s army was gathered, with plenty of good things, and powder and shot, in waggons, for the people of orleans, she gave orders that no loose people should follow them. the soldiers must not drink and play dice and cards. they must pray, and must never swear. one of the generals, the brave la hire, asked that he might be allowed one little oath, so she said he might swear â��by his baton,â�� the short staff which he carried as a leader. then joan mounted, and rode at the head of the amy out of the gate of blois. the french commander at orleans, danois, had sent to say that they must march up the bank of the loire opposite to that on which orleans stands, for the english were very strong, with many fortifications, on the road on the orleans side, and would stop them. dunois seems to have thought that joanâ��s army should go above the town, and be ferried across with the supplies for the city-for the english held the bridge--but that they could not cut their way through the main body cf the english army on the other side of the river. but to go straight through the english where they were strongest was what joan had intended. therefore she was angry when she arrived at the place where dunois was waiting for her, and saw that the river lay between her and the town of orleans. you may think that her voices should have told her that she was marching on the wrong bank of the river: however, they did not. she asked dunois why he had ordered them to come by the road they took. she said, â��i bring you better help than has ever come to any town or captain, the help of the king of heaven.â�� dunois himself has left this account of what joan said, and, as she was speaking, the wind changed. it had been blowing in such a way as to make it hard for the boats to carry joan and the provisions across the river, but now it went about, and they crossed easily, some way above the town. as for the army, joan ordered them back to blois, to cross by the bridge there, and march to orleans again, past the forts and through the midst of the english. once across the river, joan mounted again, with her banner of our lord and the lilies in her hand, and with dunois at her side, and rode to the town. they passed an english fortress, the church of st loup, in safety, and the people came out to meet them. night had fallen, and the people who crowded round the maid were carrying torches. ore of these set fire to the fringe of her banner and made her horse plunge; but she crushed out the flame with her left hand in its steel glove, and reined in her horse easily, while the people cheered, and the women wished to kiss her hand, which she did not like, thinking the honour too great. it was a beautiful sight to see the maid ride into orleans town. from that hour there was no more fear among the french. [illustration: ] dunois said, â��till that day, two hundred english could scatter eight hundred or a thousand cf our men, but now they skulked in their forts and dared not come out against us.â�� this is an extraordinary thing, for talbot, who led the english, was the bravest of men, and was thought the greatest captain living. jeanne sent to him a letter to bid him break up his camp and go away. the english laughed, and one day, when joan went out to speak to them, they called her ill names, so that she wept for shame. but, somehow, the english had certainly lost heart, or they had some reason which we do not know, for merely defending their strong fortresses. on the day after joan entered orleans she wanted dunois to sally out of the town with his men and assail the english. he did not think it wise to do so and joan went up to her own room. suddenly she rushed down and asked her page why he had not told her that the french were fighting, she did not know where. it was at the fort and church of st. loup, which joan had passed on her way into orleans. on this side, namely, farther up the river, above the town, the english were weakest, as they did not expect to be attacked on that side. the french were victorious: when they saw joan ride up they were filled with courage. joan saw a frenchman strike down an english prisoner: she dismounted; laid the poor prisonerâ��s head in her lap, and did her best to comfort him. chapter vii. how the maid saved orleans |the dauphin had given joan a gentle-man of good character to be with her always, and take care of her. this gentleman was named jean dâ��aulon, and, as he has left an account of what joan did at orleans, we give what he said. on the day after joan took the fortress of st. loup from the english, she led her men to attack another english work on the farther side of the river. they could not cross by the bridge, of course, for the english held the strong building, les tourelles, at the bridge end, the place where the earl of salisbury was killed by the cannon shot; moreover an arch of the bridge had been broken, lest the english should cross. so they went in boats to an island in the middle of the river, and then made a bridge of boats across the other branch of the loire. but they found that the english had left the place which they meant to attack, and were in a much stronger fortress. the french, therefore, were returning to their boats, when the english rushed out of the second fortress to attack them when off their guard. but joan and her friend la hire, who had crossed the river with their horses, saw the english coming on, and put their lances in rest (a kind of support for the level spear), and spurred their horses at their enemies. the rest of the french followed joan, and drove the english back into their fortress. meanwhile dâ��aulon, and a spanish gentleman on the french side, took each other by the hand, and ran as fast as they could till they struck their swords against the outer fence, or strong wooden palisade of the english. but in the narrow gateway stood a tall and very strong englishman, who drove back the french. so dâ��aulon asked a frenchman, a good shot, to aim at the englishman, whom he killed, and then dâ��aulon and the spaniard ran into the gateway, and held it, while joan and the rest of the french rushed in, and all the english were killed or gave themselves up as prisoners. by this time the french army which went down to blois to cross the bridge, had returned to orleans, and gone past the english fortresses without being attacked. so there were now many fighting men in orleans. next day, therefore, joan insisted that they should attack the strongest of all the english forts, les tourelles, at the end of the bridge farthest from the town. the generals thought this plan too dangerous, as the fortress was so strong; but no doubt joan was right, because the english on the town side of the river could not cross over to help their countrymen. if they crossed in boats, they would be shot, and cut down as they landed. if the french generals did not understand that. joan did. she was full of confidence. a man asked her to wait for breakfast, and offered her a big trout caught in the loire. she said, â��keen it for supper. i will bring back an english prisoner to help to eat it. and i will come back _by the bridge_,â�� now the bridge, we saw, was _broken_. [illustration: ] dâ��aulon heard her say this, and no doubt he wondered what she meant. he understood her, at night. so joan caused the gate to be thrown open, and the townâ��s people, who were very eager, rushed to the river bank, and crossed in boats. the regular soldiers followed, and all day long they attacked the walls, carrying ladders to climb then? with, while joan stood under the wall, waving her banner, and crying â��forward!â�� but from behind the battlement, the english kept shooting with arrows and muskets, so that many of the french were killed, and a strong englishman threw down the ladders as they were pushed to the top of the walls. there were five or six hundred of the best of the english in this castle, under two leaders whom the french call â��bumusâ�� and â��glasidas.â�� the name of â��glasidasâ�� was glasdaie; we do not know who â��bumusâ�� was! so all day companies of the french and scots, carrying ladders, and with banners flying, went down into the deep ditch below the wall, and were shot or driven out. now the great dunois, the most famous of the french leaders, tells us what joan did. it was about one oâ��clock in the afternoon, when the thing that she had prophesied happened to her. a bolt from an english cross-bow passed through her armour between the collar-bone and the shoulder-blade, and stood out six inches behind her shoulder. she was carried out of range, and the arrow was drawn out. another witness says that a soldier wished to sing a magical song over the wound, to heal it, but she would not allow this to be done, and went back into the battle, hurt as she was. she cried a little. they fought on: they had begun in the early morning, and it was eight oâ��clock, and past sunset, when dunois said that they could not take the fort that day, and wished to call off the soldiers from the ditch. but joan came to him, and asked him to wait a little while. she mounted her horse, and rode to a vineyard, and there she prayed, â��for half a quarter of an hour.â�� then she rode back, and went through the hail of shot and arrows to the edge of the ditch, while dâ��aulon covered her, he says, with his shield. she saw that a soldier had taken her standard into the ditch. she seized the standard, and it waved so that all her men saw it, and rushed up; â��we shall take the fort,â�� said joan, â��when my standard touches the wall.â�� the wind blew the banner fringe against the wall, and the french made one more rush, they climbed the ladders, they tumbled into the fort, and the english were slain or taken, and glasdale, their leader, who tried to cross to another tower by a plank, fell into the river and was drowned. then joan crossed back to orleans by the bridge, as dâ��aulon heard her say that she would, when she set out in the morning. for the townâ��s people laid a beam across the broken arch, and on this she walked over, after winning so great a victory by her own courage. for dunois says that the english were terrified when they saw her under the wall again, in the growing darkness, and that they had no more heart to fight. joan was very tired: she had her wound dressed by a surgeon, and, for supper, she had four or five little pieces of toast, dipped in weak wine and water: that was all she ate, dunois says, all that long day. early next morning the english left their forts, and drew up in line of battle. joan had put on a very light shirt of mail, made of steel rings, because her wound did not permit her to wear the usual armour made of heavy steel plates. she said that the english must be allowed to go away, and must not be attacked. thus the town of orleans was delivered on th may, and ever since, to this day, they keep a festival on th may in every year, ard rejoice in honour of the maid. all the expense and labour of the english in the seven monthsâ�� siege had been turned to waste by joan in four days, france was free, south of the loire, and joan had kept her word, she had shown a sign at orleans. it sounds like a fairy-tale, but it certainly happened. joan made the french able to do what they did merely by giving them courage. her army would not have come together if she had not given them something to believe in-herself. she thought that she led about , men; but it is not easy to be sure of the numbers. the english, if they were only , could not resist the new army and the old garrison of orleans, if the french had faith in themselves; and joan gave them faith. at the same time the english seem to have arranged their army in a very foolish way. about were or the farther side of a river which the on the right bank could not, or did not try to cross, to help their friends. the larger part of the english army might have attacked one of the gates of orleans, and frightened joanâ��s army, who would have come back across the river to defend the town. the english in the fortress at the farther end of the bridge would then have been safe. but the english on the right bank did nothing at all, for some reason which we do not understand. chapter viii. how the maid took the town of jargeau |after orleans was quite safe, and when talbot had led the english army to the town of meun, joan wanted to take the dauphin to rheims, to be crowned and anointed with the holy oil, and made king in earnest. but the way was long, and the road passed through towns which were held by friends of the english. so the dauphin loitered about in pleasant castles near the loire, in the bright may weather, and held councils, and wondered what he ought to do. then joan rode with the brave dunois to loches where the dauphin was. some lords and priests were in the room with him, but joan went straight in, and knelt before him, saying, â��fair dauphin, do not hold so many weary councils, but come to rheims, and take your crown.â�� so they said that they would think about it, but was it safe to leave english armies behind them, at meun, where talbot was, and at jargeau, where the earl of suffolk was the english captain? joan said that she and the young duke of alençon would make their minds easy on that point, and would begin by taking jargeau, where the french, without joan, had fought already and been beaten. the duke was newly married to a young wife, who was anxious about him, but joan said, â��madam, i will bring back the duke to you, safe and well!â�� so they rode away, six hundred lances, with some infantry, and slept in a wood. the duke of alençon has left an account of all that they did. next day dunois and other captains joined them with another six hundred lances, so that, with the infantry, they would be about five thousand men. some of the captains thought they were not strong enough, as jargeau had thick walls and rowers, and cannon. but joan insisted on fighting and first she led her men to drive the english from the houses lying under the walls on the outside, which is dangerous fighting, as all the garden walls would protect english cross-bowmen, and men with muskets, who could shoot in safety, many of them from windows of houses, at the french in the open. the french, however, drove the english from the houses and gardens, and brought up their cannon, and fired at the town. in these days cannon were small, and shot small balls, which did not carry far, and could do no damage to thick stone walls. there were no shells, which explode, but there were a few very large iron guns, like mons meg in edinburgh castle. out of these they shot huge, heavy stone balls, and if one of them fell into a street, and broke, the splinters flew about dangerously. but, somehow, they seldom did much harm, besides joanâ��s army had none of these great guns, which are not easily dragged about. so for days the french fired at the town, and it is to be supposed that they broke a hole, or breach, in a part of the wall, for they decided to rush in and take the place sword in hand. â��forward, fair duke!â�� said joan to the duke of alençon, who rather thought that they had not made a good enough breach in the wall. â��you know that i told the duchess i would bring you back safe? but do not stand _there_,â�� she said, â��or that english cannon on the wall will kill you.â�� the duke moved from the place where he was, and a gentleman named da luce went to it, and was killed. so joan saved the duke, as she had promised. then they ran together to the wall, and jean was climbing up a ladder, when a heavy stone thrown by the english struck her helmet, and she fell. she rose again at once, crying, â��forward, we shall take them all,â�� and the english ran through the streets to the bridges, the french following and cutting them down, or taking them prisoners. it is said that the earl of suffolk surrendered to joan, as â��the bravest woman in the world.â�� if this is true, she might have made a great deal of money out of his ransom, that is, the price which a prisoner paid for his freedom. there is another story that suffolk was taken by a squire, and that he dubbed him knight before he surrendered as it was more honourable to yield to a knight. this is more likely to be true, for the english thought that joan was a witch. now, as suffolk was general of all the english forces on the loire he would not choose to surrender to a lass of sixteen, whether he believed in witches or not besides, he could not dub joan a knight. chapter ix. how joan defeated the english in fairfield |the maid had now driven the english away from orleans, and had taken a strong town which they held, a thing the french, without her, had failed to do. she was next to beat their army in the open country and in fair field. we know most about this battle from a book written by a gentleman named pierre de cagny, who rode with the duke of alencon and knew what happened, and wrote all down very soon afterwards. he says that the maid placed a garrison of soldiers to keep jargeau, and then rode to orleans with the duke, where the townspeople gave a great feast to her and her friends. but she did not stay long to be petted and praised at orleans. in the evening she said to the duke, â��i am going, after dinner tomorrow, to see the english at meun. have the men ready to march.â�� she easily made meun surrender, and then her guns fired at the town of beaugency. then news came to joan that the whole english army, under talbot and sir john fastolf (who cannot be sir john falstaff in shakespeare, for the fat knight was dead), were marching against her. now sir john fastolf, though a very brave captain, thought, like the fat knight, that â��discretion was the better part of valour.â�� he wished to be cautious, and to avoid a battle, for he saw that the french were in high spirits, while the english soldiers had lost heart. this is told in the book written by a knight named jean de wavrin, a burgundian. he was, like all of them of burgundy, on the english side, and he rode under the banner of sir john fastolf. i tell you generally how we come to know the things done by the maid, to show that the story is true, as the people who described it were present, and saw what happened. the other english captains thought sir john rather too cautious, and talbot said. â��by st george. i will fight if i have only my own few men with me!â�� next morning the english rode out with banners flying, and again sir john said that they were too few, and that they were risking all that henry v. had gained in france. but talbot and the rest would not listen to him, so the trumpets blew, and the horsemen rode on towards meun, which joan had taken. when they came to a place about three miles from meun, and three from beaugency, they saw the banner of the maid, with our lord and the lilies of france, and the banners of the duke of alençon, and dunois, and la hire, and young pothon de xaintrailles, a very gallant boy, waving over the ranks of men. the english then did what henry v. had taught them to do. they dismounted from their horses to fight on foot, and made each bowman plant his sharp stake in front of him, to stop a cavalry charge. this plan usually succeeded. the french were fond of charging with their cavalry at full speed, and then were usually shot down in heaps by the english bowmen, whom they could not reach, as they were safe behind their fence of pikes. then the dismounted english would rush out, sword in hard, among the disordered french cavalry. you see this was much like part of the battle of waterloo, when the french cavalry many times rode at the english squares, and could not break through the bayonets, while the english were shooting at them not very straight! by this plan of fighting the english had often defeated the french, and usually defeated the scots, who generally made a wild rush at them. at the battle of dupplin, soon after robert bruce died, the english archers shot from each flank till the scots, as they charged, fell dead in heaps as high as a tall spear. but dunois, and the fair duke, and the maid knew this plan. they sent a herald to bid the english go home to bed; it was late; â��tomorrow we shall have a nearer view of each other.â�� the english, therefore, went off to meun, where nobody resisted them except the french soldiers who guarded the bridge over the loire. the english meant to beat the french from the bridge with their cannons, cross the river, and march to help their friends in beaugency, which had not yet yielded to joan. the english would thus take joanâ��s army between two fires, that of beaugency, and that of talbotâ��s army. but that very night the english in beaugency lost heart, and yielded to the maid, being allowed to march away with their arms and horses. jean now bade the french captains go with her army, and look for talbotâ��s and fastolfs force, who would hear of the surrender of beaugency, and retreat to paris through the country called la beauce. â��but how are we to find the english?â�� the french leaders asked joan: for they would be in a wild, empty country covered with forests. â��ride forth,â�� she said; â��we shall take them all. as to finding them, _you shall have a good guide!_â�� they had a strange guide, as you shall hear. the english were marching along, in front was their advanced guard, under a knight who carried a white banner. next came the guns, with the waggons full of provisions. third was the main body of the army, under talbot and fastolf; and last rode the rear-guard. when they were near a place called pathay, their scouts galloped in, with news that they had seen the french army. the english halted, and sent out more scouts, who rode back with the same news. so talbot sent his advanced guard, the guns, and the waggons behind some tall hedges. the main body of the english army was being placed at the end of a long lane between two thick hedges, and talbot set five hundred of his best archers to lurk behind these hedges, between which the french would have to pass before they could attack the centre of his forces. if the french once entered this long lane, they would be shot down, and fall into such confusion among their own fallen men and wounded horses, that they would neither be able to go forward nor back, and would all be killed or taken prisoners. the french of joanâ��s army could not see what talbot was doing, and the trap he had set, nor where his army was, the country being covered with wood and bracken, and the english being concealed by the swelling of the ground. however, they rode forward fast, and would bare been between the fire of the two hidden lines of english bowmen in a minute, when, lo and behold! they had â��the good guideâ�� that joan had promised them! as they rode they roused a stag from the bracken where he was lying: the stag rushed forward into the concealed lines of english archers, and they, being hunters like robin hoodâ��s men, forgot to lie still, and raised a view halloo, and shot at the stag. then the foremost riders of the french heard them, and knew where the english were lying in ambush. when talbot saw that his ambush was found out, he hurried the main body of hie army up to the hedges. sir john fastolfâ��s men were spurring their horses on to join their advanced guard, but the english knight of the white banner who led thought that fastolfâ��s cavalry were french, and that the french were attacking: his men both in front and rear, so he and his company ran away leaving: the lane unguarded. thus, when the battle began, talbot was defeated by joanâ��s cavalry, and taken prisoner, and of the english were killed or taken before fastolf came up. he and his horsemen then rode away as fast as they could, to save their lives, and for this behaviour sir john got into very deep disgrace, though, according to wavrin, who was with him, he really could have done nothing else, as talbot was beaten before he could arrive. as wavrin had taken part in the flight, he had to make as good a defence of sir john as he could. at all events, joan and her party won a very great victory, the battle of pathay. now look what joan had done. she drove the english from orleans on th may. then the dauphin took to holding long and weary councils, and she did not get another chance to fight the english till about th june, so nearly a month of her one year of time was wasted. on th june she took jargeau, on th june she took meun, on th june she took beaugency, and on th june she destroyed talbotâ��s chief army at pathay! the duke of alencon tells us that he himself heard joan tell the dauphin, again and again, that â��she would only last for a year, or not much longer, and that he must make haste.â�� she had four things to do, she said: to drive the english in flight, to crown the king at rheims, to deliver orleans, and to set free the duke of orleans, who was a prisoner in england. she did drive the english in flight, she did save orleans, she did have the dauphin crowned. but the french would not make haste. the dauphin was always slow, and the stupid political advisers who never fought but only talked, made him more slow, and, when joanâ��s year was over, for her prophecy was true, she was taken prisoner by the english. therefore they were not driven quite out of france till about twenty years or more after the end of the year of joan the maid. it was not her fault. she knew that her time was short, and she told them to make haste. when she was asked how she knew things that were to happen, she said that her voices told her, â��my council,â�� she called them. but there was a french noble, la tremoïlle, the kingâ��s favourite, and he was jealous of jean and dunois and the constable of brittany, an enemy of his, who had now come to ride under joanâ��s flag. this tremoille, and others, did not want to fight, and hoped to make friends with the duke of burgundy, whose array, though really french, fought on the side of the english. now the one chance was to keep hitting the english hard and often, while they were shaken by their defeats, and before they had time to bring a new host from home. in england there was an army ready, which had been collected by cardinal beaufort, to fight the hussites, a kind of warlike protestants who were active in germany. as soon as joan had beaten the english at orleans, they made up their minds to send this new army of theirs to protect paris, where most of the people, and the university, were on the english side. they also made an arrangement with james i. of scotland, so that they had nothing to fear from the scots coming over the border to attack them. the english were able to do all this because la tremoïlle and his friends advised the dauphin to loiter about, instead of making haste, as joan desired, to keep on beating the english. chapter x. how joan led the dauphin to be crowned |we may think that joanâ��s best plan would have been to attack the english in paris at once, while they were still in a fright, after their great defeat at pathay. but she thought that if the dauphin was once crowned, and anointed with the holy oil, at rheims, the french who were of the english party would join him more readily. robert the bruce, in the same way, had himself crowned at scone, which, in scotland, was the usual place for coronations, when he had only very few followers, and very little chance of beating the english. rheims, as you can sec on the map, is a long way farther from orleans than paris, on the north-east. but joan had made up her mind to drag the dauphin to rheims to be crowned. the dauphin was lingering at gien, which is some distance south of orleans, instead of being at the head of his army, and in the front of the fighting, where he should have been. his lazy and cowardly favourites told him that it was a long way to rheims, and on the road there were several towns with strong walls, and castles full of englishmen and burgundians, who would not let him pass. joan answered that she knew this very well, and cared nothing about it: all the towns and castles would yield and open their gates. so she left the dauphin to do as he pleased, and went away with her company into the country. the dauphin had no money to pay his troops, but men-at-arms came in, hundreds of them, saying that they would fight for the love of the maid and of chivalry. no doubt they would have been very glad to crown _her_, in place of the stupid dauphin, but the french law did not allow it; and joan wanted nothing for herself, only to make france free, and go back to her mother, as she said. however, the dauphin, who was grateful in his lazy way, made her and her brothers, peter and john, nobles, and gave her a coat-of-arms, a sword supporting the crown, with the lilies of france on each side, and changed their name to du lys. but joan never used her coat-of-arms, but bore a dove, silver, on a blue shield. her brothers were with her, and seem to have fought very well, though in most ways they were quite ordinary young men. when joan went away, the dauphin made up his mind at last to march to rheims, going first to troyes, a strong town on the road. all the castles and fortresses on the way, instead of resisting him, submitted to him, as joan had said that they would. at troyes, where he came on th july, the english garrison, and the people of the town who were on the english and burgundian side, wanted to oppose him. they fought on the th and th of jury. the dauphinâ��s advisers did not want to fight, the brave dunois tells us, but jean said, â��gentle dauphin, bid your army besiege the town, and do net hold these long councils, for in three days i will bring you into the town.â�� then down she went to the great ditch or fosse round the town, and worked harder, says dunois, than two or three of the most famous knights could have done. the people of troyes then yielded to joan, and they had a great feast in the city, which they needed, for the army had been living on soup made from the beans in the fields. then they went on to rheims, and the archbishop and all the people came out to meet them, with shouts of joy. on th july the dauphin, with joan and all his nobles, went to the cathedral, and there he was crowned and anointed, and made king in earnest, joan standing beside him with her banner in her hand. this was her happiest day, perhaps, and the last of her great days. she had done so much! in the beginning of may there was every chance that the english would take orleans, and sweep across the loire, and seize all france, and drive the dauphin into spain, or across the sea to scotland, and france would have been under the english for who knows how long. but in two months joan had driven the english behind the walls of paris, and her dauphin was king in deed. then the maid knelt at the kingâ��s feet and wept for joy, in the great cathedral, among the splendid nobles, and the lights, and the bright-coloured coats-of-arms, and the sweet smoke of incense. â��gentle king,â�� she said, calling him â��kingâ�� for the first time, â��now is the will of god fulfilled!â�� and the knights themselves wept for joy. somewhere in the crowd was an elderly countryman in his best clothes. joanâ��s father, whom now she saw for the first time since she left her village, and for the last time in her life. the king asked her to choose a gift and reward, and she asked that the people of her village, domremy, should be free from paying taxes, and they were made free, and never paid taxes again, for three hundred years. on the books of the accounts of money paid by every town and village of france is written, after the names of domremy and the village nearest it, greux, _nothing. for the sake of the maid._ the paper in which the king ordered that they should pay nothing may still be seen, dated the last of july . how glad the people at domremy must have been when joanâ��s father came home with the good news! this was the last glad day of the maid. as she rode to rheims, some people from domremy met her and asked her if she was afraid of nothing. â��of nothing but treachery,â�� she said, and, from this day, she met treachery among the kingâ��s advisers, who held long councils, and did not fight. as she rode from rheims towards paris, the people shouted round her, and she said that they were kind people, and she would like to be buried in their cathedral--she, who was never to be buried in the earth. â��joan,â�� said the archbishop, â��in what place do you expect to die?â�� â��where god pleases, for of that hour and that place i know nothing more than you do. but would to god that now i might take off my armour, and go home to my father and mother,â�� for, as she had seen her father, she was longing for her mother more than ever. after this, the people about the king-, and the king himself, did not obey joan, and all went wrong. chapter xi. how the maid was betrayed at paris |the french should have followed the maid straight to paris, as she bade them do. but they went here and went there, and one day their army and that of the duke of bedford met, but did not fight; and another day there were skirmishes between the english and the scots, â��who fought very bravely,â�� says the burgundian knight, enguerrand de manstrelet, who wrote a history of those times. the strong town of compiègne, which had often been taken and retaken, yielded to joanâ��s army, and the king stayed there, doing nothing, which was what he liked, and the duke of burgundy gave him excuses for loitering by sending ambassadors, and pretending that he would give up paris, for at this time there was no english garrison there. the poor people of the town were on the side of joan and the king, and now, when the english were out of the great city, was the time to take it. but the king kept hoping to make peace with the duke of burgundy, so joan, with her friend the duke of alençon, went to saint denis, quite close to paris, where the kings of france used to be buried: saint denis was the saint of france, as saint george was the saint of england, and saint andrew of scotland. there fought the duke and the maid, but the king came on very slowly, while joan was in the front of battle every day, at one gate of paris or another. at last, by often going to him, and urging him to come, alençon brought the king to saint denis, but not before a strong new english army had arrived in the town, of which the walls and towers were very high and thick, and the fosses broad and deep, and full of water. then joan led on her men and the dukeâ��s, with her banner in her hand, and cried them on to break down a gate called the porte st. honoré. percival de cagny, who rode under the standard of alençon, was in the battle, and he says, â��the fight was long: and fierce, and it was wonderful to hear the noise of guns and culverins from the walls, and to see the arrows fly like clouds. few of those who went down into the dry ditch with the maid were hurt, though many others were wounded with arrows and stone cannon balls, but, by godâ��s grace and the maidâ��s favour, there were none but could return without help. we fought from noon till darkness began. after the sun set, the maid was wounded by a bolt from a cross-how in the thigh, but she only shouted louder to â��come on and the place was ours.â�� but when it was dark and all were weary, men came from the king and brought her up out of the ditch against her will.â�� [illustration: ] next day the maid rose early, and went to the duke of alençon, who never failed her. the trumpets blew, and a new ally came, the baron de montmorency, with sixty gentlemen and their men-at-arms, and they were riding to attack paris again when the king sent messengers to forbid them to do as their hearts desired. so they had to go to see him at saint denis. but the duke of alencon was having a bridge of wood thrown across the river seine, at a new place, and they meant to cross by that bridge next day, and attack paris again. shameful to say, the king had that bridge taken to pieces during the night, and when joan and the duke led their men there next day, they found only the river, which they could not ford. so the king of france saved paris from dâ��alençon and the maid. richard i. of england would have battered down the paris gate with his own battle-axe; henry v. or james iv. of scotland, or prince charlie, would have been, foremost in the fight; but this king of france, charies vii., unworthy of his country and his ancestors, sneaked off to his pretty little town of gien, on the loire. â��and thus was the will of the maid broken, and the army of the king,â�� says percival de cagny. the duke of alencon kept his men together, and told the king that, if he would let the maid ride with him, they would march into normandy, and attack the english where they were strongest. but the king would not hear of it, and the maid, with almost a broken heart, hung up her armour at the altar of saint denis, in his cathedral. half of her year was spent, and the king made her stay with him in the towns on the loire, when he might have been in paris, his capital, if he had only trusted joan. in the meantime the english retook some of the french towns that joan had given to the king, and seized her sacred armour in the church of saint denis, and punished and plundered the people, who were worse off than before, while the maid was only allowed now and then to attack the english, and defeat them in the old way. chapter xii. how the maid took certain towns |the wise king had arranged with the duke of burgundy that they two should be at peace till easter, ; while he might fight the english as much as he liked, which was, not at all. now the english let the duke of burgundy be governor of paris. it was always paris that the maid wished to take for her king, as it was the greatest city and the capital of france. but the king said she must not attack paris, for it was now under the duke of burgundy, not under the english. all this was mere pretence, to avoid fighting. jeanâ��s aim was to turn the english and their child king, henry vi., out of her country; and the english were not likely to go out till they were driven out. the english still held towns on the river loire, such as st. pierre-le-moustier and la charité. joan went to bourges and gathered an army, with a gentleman named dâ��elbret to help her, and besieged the town of st. pierre-le-moustier. when they had battered the walls for some time with their guns, and made a breach, the french tried to rash through it; but the english were too strong and too many, and drove them out at this time joanâ��s master cf the household, dâ��aulon, who had been with her at orleans, was wounded in the heel by an arrow, and he could not walk without crutches. he saw that while the rest of the french had retired out of shot from the breach, joan was there almost alone, with a very small company. dâ��aulon therefore got a horse, and rode to her to ask her to come out of danger. â��what are you doing here alone?â�� he asked her. she took off her helmet and said, â��i am not alone; here i have with me fifty thousand of my ownâ�� (by which she seems to have meant an invisible army of angels); â��and will not leave this place till i take the town.â�� dâ��aulon told her that she had but four or five men with her, to which she only answered by bidding him make her army bring faggots of wood to fill up the ditch with, that they might cross to the town. then she shouted in a loud voice:-- â��bring up faggots, all of you!â�� and they obeyed, filled up the ditch, attacked the breach in the wall again, rushed through, beat the english, and took the town. this was just like what joan had done when her army was on the point cf retreating from the attack on les tourelles, at orleans. â��one charge moreâ�� was what she called for, and her men were inspired with courage, while the english were terrified by their refusal to be beaten. this was the last time that joan led the french to such a victory. she besieged another town, la charité, which was held by burgundians, but the king did mot send food enough for her men, and she had to go away unsuccessful. about this time she was troubled by a woman called catherine of la rochelle, a married woman, who declared that a lovely lady came to her at night, dressed all in doth of gold, and told her where treasures of money were hidden, which were much needed for the wars. jean said that she must see this wonderful lady before she could believe in her, and she sat up all night with catherine; but the lady never came. joan told catherine to go back to her husband and her children, and mind her own affairs. there were several people who went about saying that they had visions; but they were of no use, for, visions or none, they had not joanâ��s courage and wisdom. it is true that catherine might have said to joan, â��you canâ��t see my golden lady, but i canâ��t see your saints, nor hear your voices.â�� the difference was that joanâ��s saints and voices had enabled her to do a great many wonderful things, while catherineâ��s golden lady never led to the finding of treasures or anything else that was of any use. chapter xiii. how the voices prophesied evil |the end of the year of the maid was at hand. she had often said that she would last but a year, or little more, counting from may . perhaps you remember that the king had made a truce with the burgundians--an useless truce, for the burgundians went on fighting, not under their own flag, but under the leopards of england. the king, as usual, was loitering about, doing nothing. joan heard, in spring , that three or four hundred english were crossing the isle of france, which is not a real island, but a district of that name. she was then at lagny, on the river marne, not far from paris. so she rode out from lagny to meet them, with a gentleman whom the french called â��quenede.â�� can you guess what â��quenedeâ�� means? he was sir hugh kennedy, of the great kennedy clan in callaway and ayrshire. he had fought at the battle of the herrings and at orleans, and he made a good deal of money in france, so that, when he went back to scotland, he was called â��hugh come wiâ�� the penny.â�� when joan, with her french and scots, came in sight of the enemy, the english drew themselves up on foot, along the side of a hedge, and joan and the rest charged them, some on foot, some on horse, and there was hard fighting, for the numbers were about equal but at last all the english were kilâ��ed or taken prisoners. there was also taken a robber knight, franquet dâ��arras, who was tried for his crimes and put to death, and the english party among the french thought it very wicked in jean to allow the rogue to be punished. in easter week joan was at melun one day, examining the ditch round the walls to see that it was in good order. then suddenly the voices of st. catherine and st. margaret spoke to her, and said that she should be taken prisoner before midsummer day, â��and thus it needs must be,â�� and that she was to be resigned to this, and god would help her. often after this terrible day the voices made the same prophecy, but they would never tell her the time and the hour. she prayed that she might die in that hour, for the english had often threatened her that they would burn her as a witch, if they caught her. often she asked the voices to warn her of the hour of her capture, for she would not have gone into battle on that day. but they would not tell her, and, after that, she did what the captains of her party thought best, and it seems that, as to where or when she was to fight, she had no advice from the voices. but she fought on as bravely as ever, and this was the bravest thing that ever was done by any one. for it was not as if the voices had said that she should be killed in battle, of which she had no fear. but they said she was to be captured, and she knew that meant she was to be burned alive. nobody but joan would have gone on risking herself every day, not to danger of war, which is the duty of every soldier, but to the death by fire. if any one says that the voices were only her fancy, and her fear taking a fanciful shape, we must reply that, whatever they really were, she believed all that they said, and thought that they were the voices of her sisters, the saints. thus the end of joan was the most glorious thing in her glorious life, for many could be brave enough when the saints prophesied victory, but only she could give her body to be burned for her country. chapter xiv. how the maid was taken |we have heard how the town of compiègne came over to joan and the king, after the coronation at rheims. the city had often been taken and retaken, and hold by both sides. but now they made up their minds that, come what might, they would be true to france, and now, in may, the english and burgundians besieged compiègne with a very large army. joan, who was at lagny, heard of this, and she made up her mind to help the good and loyal town, or perish with it. she first tried to cut the roads that the duke of burgundy used for his soldiers and supplies of food, but she failed to take soissons and pent lâ��Ã�vêque, and so shut the duke off from his bridges over the rivers. so she rode into compiègne under cloud of night, with her brother pierre, and two or three hundred men. this was before dawn, on may . the town of compiègne is on the left bank of the river oise. behind the town was a forest, through which joan rode, and got into the town, to the great joy of the people. from compiègne to the right bank of the oise, where the english and burgundians had their camps, there was a long bridge, fortified, that led into a great level meadow, about a mile broad. in wet weather the meadow was often under water from the flooded river, so a causeway, or raised road, was built across it, high and dry. at the end of the causeway, farthest from compiègne was the village of margny, with the steeple of its church, and here a part of the burgundian army was encamped. two miles and a half farther on was the village of clairoix, where lay another part of the burgundian force. about a mile and a half to the left of the causeway was the village of venette, which was held by the english, and, about three miles off, was coudun, where the duke of burgundy himself had his quarters. there were very large forces in front, and on the side, of the only road by which joan could get at them, with her own men, only three hundred, probably, and any of the townspeople who liked to follow her on foot, with clubs and scythes, and such weapons. thus it was really a very rash thing of joan to lead so few men, by such a narrow road, to attack the nearest burgundians, those at margny, at the end of the causeway. the other burgundians, farther off, and the english from venette, quite near, and on joanâ��s left flank, would certainly come up to attack her, and help their friends at margny. she would be surrounded on all sides and cut off, for the garrison of compiègne stayed in the town, under their general, de flavy, who was a great ruffian, but a brave man, and loyal to france. why joan, about five oâ��clock in the evening of may . rode out with her little force, crossed the bridge, galloped down the causeway, and rode through and through the burgundians at margny, we do not know. her voices seem to have ceased to give her advice, only saying that she would certainly be captured. perhaps she only meant to take margny; though it is not easy to understand how she expected to hold it, when the whole burgundian and english armies came up to recover it, as they would certainly do. if she aimed at more, her charge was very brave but very ill-judged. joan said that her voices did not tell her to make her desperate sally; it was her own idea. nearly seventy years afterwards, two very old men said that, when they were young at compiègne, they heard joan tell a crowd of children, before she rode out, that â��i am betrayed, and soon will be delivered to death. pray god for me, for i shall never again be able to help france and the king.â�� one of the men was ninety-eight, so he would be quite twenty-eight when he heard joan say this; if he really did hear her but, long before men are ninety-eight, or even eighty-six, line the other man, they are apt to remember things that never happened. but joan may have told children, of whom she was very fond, that she knew she was soon to be taken. her enemies declared that she said she would take the duke of burgundy himself, but as he was several miles away, in the middle of a large army, while she had only three hundred of her own men, this cannot be true. probably she only meant to break up the burgundians at margny, and show that she was there, to encourage the people at compiègne. her own account is that she charged the burgundians at margny, the nearest village, and drove them twice back to clairoix, where they were reinforced by the great burgundian army there, and thrust her back to the middle of the causeway, where she turned again, charged them, and made them retreat. but then the english came up from venette, on her flank, and came between her and the bridge of compiègne, and she leaped her horse off the raised causeway into the meadow, where she was surrounded, and pulled off her horse and taken, though she would not surrender. no doubt she hoped that, as she refused to surrender, she would be killed on the spot. when they cried to her to yield she said, â��i have given my faith to another than you, and i will keep my oath to him,â�� meaning our lord. [illustration: ] but she was too valuable to be killed. the captors might either get a great ransom, a kingâ��s ransom, or sell her to the english to burn. the french would not pay the ransom, and jean de luxembourg, who got possession of her, sold her to the english. the burgundian historian, who was with the duke, and did not see the battle, says, â��the english feared not any captain, nor any chief in war, as they feared the maid.â�� â��she had done great deeds, passing the nature of woman.â�� says another burgundian writer: â��she remained in the rear of her men as their captain, and the bravest of all, there, where fortune granted it, for the end of her glory, and for that last time of her bearing arms.â�� but, indeed, her glory never ceased, for in her long, cruel imprisonment and martyrdom, she showed mere courage than any man-at-arms can display, where blows are given and taken. chapter xv. the captivity of the maid |we might suppose that there was not a rich man in france, or even a poor man, who would not have given what he could, much or little, to help to pay the ransom of the maid. jean de luxembourg only wanted the money, and, as she was a prisoner of war, she might expect to be ransomed like other prisoners. it was the more needful to get the money and buy her freedom, as the priests of the university of paris, who were on the english side, at once wrote to jean de luxembourg (july ), and asked him to give joan up to the inquisition, to be tried by the laws of the inquisition for the crimes of witchcraft, idolatry, and wrong doctrines about religion. the inquisitor was the head of a kind of religious court, which tried people for not holding the right belief, or for witchcraft, or other religious offences. the rules of the court, and the way of managing the trials, were what we think very unfair. but they were not more unfair than the methods used in scotland after the reformation. with us old women were tortured till they confessed that they were witches, and then were burned alive, sometimes seven or eight of them at once, for crimes which nobody could possibly commit. that went on in scotland till the country was united to england, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the laws against witchcraft were not abolished till . many of the presbyterian ministers, who were active in hunting for witches and having them put to horrid tortures, were very angry that the witchcraft laws were abolished. the inquisition was better than the ministers and magistrates in one way: if a witch confessed, and promised not to do it again, she was not put to death, but kept in prison. in scotland the people accused of witchcraft had not even this chance, which did not help joan, as we shall see. all this is told here, to show that the french were not more stupid and cruel four hundred years ago, than we were in scotland, two hundred years ago. but it was a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the inquisition, and therefore the french king and his subjects should have paid joanâ��s ransom at once or rescued her by force of arms. but not a coin was paid, and not a sword was drawn to ransom or to rescue her. the people who advised the king had never liked her, and now the king left her to her fate. she could have taken a bitter revenge on him, if she had chosen to tell tales; but she was loyal to the last, like montrose to charles ii. of course joan was not a witch, and was a most religious girl, but she did not deny that she had talked with spirits, the spirits of the saints; and her judges, who hated her, could say, and did say, that these spirits were devils, in disguise, and that therefore she was a witch. she always had known that they would do this, if they got the chance. jean de luxembourg did not hand joan over to the priests at once: probably he was waiting to see if he could not get a better price from her french friends than from her english enemies. the bishop of beauvais was joanâ��s worst enemy: his odious name was pierre cauchon, and in july he kept pressing the duke of burgundy, then still besieging compiègne, to make jean give up the maid. jean kept the maid in a castle called beaulieu till august, and then sent her to another castle, beaurevoir, near cambrai, far to the north, where it would be more difficult for her friends like dunois and dâ��alencon to come and rescue her by force, which we do not hear that they ever tried to do, though perhaps they did. the brave xaintrailles was doing a thing that joan longed for even more than for her freedom. she was taken in fighting to help the town of compiègne, of which she was very fond, and her great grief at beaulieu and beaurevoir was that compiègne was likely to be taken by the burgundians and english, who threatened to put the people to death. all this while xaintrailles was preparing a small army to deliver compiègne. at beaurevoir the ladies of the castle were kinsfolk of jean de luxembourg. they were good women, and very kind to joan, and they knelt to jean, weeping, and asking him to give her back to her friends. but he wanted his money, like the men who sold sir william wallace to the english, and the great montrose to the preachers and parliament. so jean sold the maid to the english. joan knew this, and knew what she had to expect. she was allowed to take the air on the flat roof of the great tower at leaurevoir, which was feet high. she was not thinking so much of herself as of compiègne. if she could escape she would try to make her way to compiègne, and help the people to fight for their liberty and their lives. but how could she escape? she hoped that, if she leaped from the top of the tower, her saints would bear her up in their arms, and not let her be hurt by the fall. so she asked them if she might leap down, but st. catherine said, no; she must not leap. god would help her and the people of compiègne. but jean would not listen, this time, to the voice. she said that, if the leap was wrong, she would rather trust her soul to the mercy of god, than her body to the english. and she _must_ go to compiègne, for she heard that, when the town was taken, all the people, old and young, were to be put to the sword. [illustration: ] then she leaped, and there she lay. she was not hurt, not a bone of her was broken, which is an extraordinary thing, but she could not move a limb. the people of the castle came and took her back to her prison room. she did not know what had happened, and for three days she ate nothing. then her memory came back to her and to her sorrows. why was she not allowed to die! st. catherine told her that she had sinned, and must confess, and ask the divine mercy. but she was to go through with her appointed task. â��take no care for thy torment,â�� said the voice; â��thence shalt thou come into paradise.â�� moreover, st. catherine promised that compiègne should be rescued before martinmas. that was the last good news, and the last happy thing that came to joan in the days of her life; for, just before martinmas, her friend, pothon de xaintrailles, rode with his men-at-arms through the forest of compiègne, whilst others of the french attacked the english and burgundians on the farther side of the oise, and so the saint kept her promise, and compiègne was saved. chapter xvi. the trial of the maid |as joan was a woman, and a prisoner of the church, when the english had handed her over to the priests, she ought to have been kept in gentle prison, and with only women about her. but the english were very cruel. they had a kind of cage made, called a _huche_, and put in a strong room in the castle of rouen. in this cage they kept joan, with chains on. her legs, which were fastened to a strong post or beam of the bed. five common soldiers kept watch in the room, day and night; the eyes of men were always on the most modest of girls. we see how much they feared her. they wished to have her proved a witch, and one who dealt with devils, to take away the shame of having been defeated by a girl, and also to disgrace the french king by making the world believe that he had been helped by a sorceress and her evil spirits. in truth, if you read _henry vi_., part l, by shakespeare, you will see just what the english thought about the maid. shakespeare, of course, did not know the true story of joan, and he makes her say abominable things, which not even her enemies brought up against her at her trial. if shakespeare wrote the play, he did not care a penny for the truth of the story. he sends joan to bordeaux, where she never was in her life, and makes â��fiendsâ�� (that is, her saints) appear to her, and show that they will help her no longer. so she offers her very soul as a sacrifice for the sake of france: â��then take my soul, my body, soul and all, before that england give the french the foil.â�� later she turns on the english, and says what she might have said with truth: â��i never had to do with wicked spirits: but you, that are polluted with your lusts, stained with the guiltless blood of innocents, corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices, because you want the grace that others have, you judge it straight a thing impossible to compass wonders but by help of devils.â�� the english had devils on their own side, the cruel priests and bishop cauchon, whom they had promised to make archbishop of rouen. but he never got it. for three months these people examined joan every day, sometimes all shouting at her at once, so that she said, â��gentlemen, if you please, one at a time.â�� she had no advocate, who knew the law, to help her to defend herself. but once, when she appealed to the council of basle, a council cf the church which was then sitting, they bade her be silent, and told the clerk who took down everything in writing, in french, not to write down her appeal. there is nothing about this in the latin book of the trial, translated from the french, but in the french copy, mode in court, you see the place where the clerkâ��s pen has stepped at the words, â��and she appealsâ�� (_et requiert_, in french). he was going to write the rest. now she had a right to appeal, and as the clergy at the council of basle were of many countries, they would not have taken the english side, but pronounced joan innocent. the bishops and clergy of the loyal french party at poitiers, before she went to the war, had declared her innocent and a thing of god, after a long examination of her life up till april . joan often asked her judges to send for â��the poitiers book,â�� where they would find answers to their questions about her early days; but they vexed her about everything, even about the fairy tree, on which the children used to hang their garlands. their notion seems to have been that the fairies were her helpers, not the saints, and that the fairies were evil spirits. joan had shown that, in war and politics, she was wiser than the soldiers and statesmen. she went straight at the work to be done--to beat the english, and to keep attacking them before they got back their confidence. at her trial she showed that she was far wiser than the learned priests. they tried to prove that she was helped by fairies. she said that she did not believe there were any fairies: and though i would not say that there are _none_, there certainly are not so many, or so busy and powerful, as the priests supposed. they kept asking her about the prophecies of merlin the wizard: she thought nothing of merlin the wizard. she vowed to speak truth in answer to questions, but she would not answer questions about her saints and voices, except when they gave her permission. the judges troubled her most about the secret of the king, and what she told him about that, before she went to the wars. you remember that the king had secretly prayed to know whether he really was the son of the late king or not, and that joan told him of his prayer, and told him that he was the son of the late king, and had the right to be king himself. but she would tell the judges nothing about all this matter. if she had, the english would have cried everywhere, â��you see he is not certain himself that he is what he pretends to be. _our_ king of england is the only king of france.â�� [illustration: ] joan would not betray her kingâ��s doubts. she never would tell what happened. at last she cold a simple parable: an angel came with a rich crown for the king. but, later, she explained that by the angel she meant herself, and that by the crown, she meant her having him crowned at rheims. they never could get the kingâ��s secret out of her. at last they said they would put her to the torture. they took her to a horrible vault, full of abominable instruments for pinching, and tearing, and roasting, and screwing the bodies of men. there stood the executioner, with his arms bare, and his fire lit, and all his pincers, and ropes, and pulleys ready. â��now will you tell us?â�� they said. brave men had turned faint with terror in that vault, and had said anything that they were asked to say, rather than face the pain. there was a marshal of france, gilles de rais, a nobleman who fought beside joan at orleans, at les tourelles, at jargeau, at pathay, and at paris, and who carried the sacred vessel which the angel brought, long ago, with holy oil, at the kingâ��s coronation. later this man was accused by the inquisition of the most horrible crimes. among other things, he was said to have sacrificed children to the devil, and to have killed hundreds of little boys for his own amusement. but hundreds of little boys were not proved to be missing, and none of their remains were ever found. gilles de rais denied these horrible charges; he said he was innocent, and, for all that we know, he was. but they took him to the torture vault, and showed him the engines of torment, and he confessed everything, so that he might be put to death without torture, which was done. joan did not fear and turn faint. she said, â��torture me if you please. tear my body to pieces. whatever i say in my pains will not be true, and as soon as i am released i will deny that it was true. now, go on!â�� many priests wished to go on, but more, even of these cruel enemies, said, â��no!â�� they would not torture the girl. â��what a brave lass. pity she is not english!â�� one of the english lords said, when he saw joan standing up against the crowd of priests and lawyers. remember that, for six weeks, during lent, joan took no food all day. there she stood, starving, and answering everybody, always bravely, always courteously, always wisely, and sometimes even merrily. they kept asking her the same questions on different days, to try to make her vary in her answers. all the answers were written down. once they said she had answered differently before, and, when the book was examined, it proved that there was some mistake in the thing, and that jean was in the right. she was much pleased, and said to the clerk, â��if you make mistakes again, i will pull your ears.â�� they troubled her very much about wearing boyâ��s dress. she said that, when among men in war, it was better and more proper. she was still among men, with soldiers in her room, day and night, which was quite unlawful; she should have had only women about her. she would not put on womenâ��s dress while she was among men, and was quite in the right. she could hear her voices in court, but not clearly on account of the noise. once, i suppose, she heard them, for she suddenly said, in the middle of an answer to a question about the letters which were written for her when she was in the wars: â��before seven years are passed the english will lose a greater stake than they have lost at orleans; they will lose everything in france.â�� before the seven years were out they lost paris, a much greater stake than orleans, as paris was the chief town and the largest they went on losing till they lost everything in france, even all that they had held for hundreds of years. the judges insisted that she should submit to the church. joan asked nothing better. â��take me to the pope, and i will answer him, for i know and believe that we should obey our holy father, the pope, who is in rome.â�� or she would answer the council of the whole church at basle, but, as i said, the bishop cauchon stopped the clerk when he was writing down the words. the judges said â��_we_ are the church; answer us and obey us.â�� but, of course, they were not the church; they were only a set of disloyal french priests who sided against their own country, and helped the english. chapter xvii. how the priests betrayed the maid |at last, on may , , they determined to force her to acknowledge herself in the wrong, and to deny her saints. on that day they took her to the graveyard of the church of st. ouen. two platforms had been built; on one stood the wretched cauchon with his gang; joan was placed on the other. there was also a stake with faggots, for burning joan. they had ready two written papers: on one it was written that joan would submit to them, and wear womanâ��s dress. on the other was a long statement that her saints were evil spirits, and that she had done all sorts of wrong things. she was told that if she would sign the short paper, and wear womans dress, she would be put in gentle prison, with women about her instead of english soldiers. seeing the fire ready, jean repeated the _short_ form of words, and made her mark, smiling, on the piece of paper that they gave her, but it was the paper with the long speech, accusing herself of crimes and denying her saints. this is what we are told, but, later, she showed that she thought she had denied her saints, so it is not easy to be quite sure of what happened. it is certain that cauchon broke his word. she was not taken away from her cruel prison and the english soldiers, as was promised. she was given womanâ��s dress; but, as they were determined to make her â��relapse,â�� that is, return to the sin of wearing manâ��s dress, for then they could burn her, they put her boyâ��s dress in her room, and so acted that she was obliged to put it on. it is a horrid story, not fit to be told, of cruelty and falseness. â��now we have her!â�� said cauchon to an englishman. they went to her, and asked her if the voices had come to her again? â��yes!â�� â��what did they say?â�� â��st. catherine and st. margaret told me that i had done very wrong, when i said what i did to save my life, and that i was damning myself to save my life.â�� â��then you believe that the voices were the voices of the saints.â�� â��yes, i believe that, and that the voices come from god;â�� and she said that she did not mean ever to have denied it. on the day of her burning, the bishop and the rest went to joan again, and wrote out a statement that she left it to the church to say whether her voices were good or bad. the church has decided that they were good, and has given joan the title of â��venerable,â�� which is the first step toward proclaiming her to be one of the saints. whatever the voices were, she said they were _real_, not fancied things. but this paper does not count, for the clerk who took all the notes refused to go with the bishop to see joan, that time, saying that it was no part of the law, and that they went as private men, not as judges, and he had the courage not to sign the paper. he was an honest man, and thought joan a good girl, unlawfully treated, and was very sorry for her. â��he never wept so much for any sorrow in all his life, and for a month he could not be quiet for sorrow: and he bought a book of prayers and prayed for the soul of the maid.â�� this honest manâ��s name was gilbert manchon. chapter xviii. the end of the maid |they burned her cruelly to death in the market-place of rouen, with eight hundred soldiers round the stake, lest any should attempt to save her. they had put a false accusation on a paper cap, and set it on her head: it was written that she was â��heretic, relapsed, apostate, idolatress.â�� this was her reward for the bravest and best life that was ever lived. _she came to her own and her own received her not_. there was with her a priest who pitied her, not one of her judges--brother isambert de la pierre, of the order of st. augustine. joan asked him to bring her a cross, and to hold it up before her eyes while she was burning. â��saith moreover that while she was in the fire she ceased never to call loudly on the holy name of jesus; always, too, imploring: ceaselessly the help of the saints in paradise; and more, when the end was now come, she bowed her head, and gave up her spirit, calling on the name of jesus.â�� the saints had said to her, long before: â��bear your torment lightly: thence shall you come into the kingdom of paradise.â�� so died joan the maid. it is said by some who were present, that even the english cardinal, beaufort, wept when he saw the maid die: â��crocodilesâ�� tears!â�� one of the secretaries of henry vi. (who himself was only a little boy) said, â��we are all lost. we have burned a saint!â�� they were all lost. the curse of their cruelty did not depart from them. driven by the french and scots from province to province, and from town to town, the english returned home, tore and rent each other; murdering their princes and nobles on the scaffold, and slaying them as prisoners of war on the field; and stabbing and smothering them in chambers of the tower; york and lancaster devouring each other; the man henry vi. was driven from home to wander by the waves at st. andrews, before he wandered back to england and the dagger stroke-these things were the reward the english won, after they had burned a saint, they ate the bread and drank the cup of their own greed and cruelty all through the wars of the roses. they brought shame upon their name which time can never wash away; they did the devilâ��s work, and took the devilâ��s wages. soon henry viii. was butchering his wives and burning catholics and protestants, now one, now the other, as the humour seized him. joan had said to the archbishop, at rheims, that she knew not where she would die, or where she would be buried. her ashes were never laid in the earth; she had no grave. the english, that men might forget her, threw her ashes into the sea. there remains no relic of joan of arc; no portrait, nothing she ever wore, no cup or sword or jewel that she ever touched. but she is not forgotten; she never will be forgotten. on every eighth of may, the day when she turned the tide of english conquest, a procession in her honour goes through the streets of orleans, the city that she saved; and though the protestants, at the reformation, destroyed her statue that knelt before the fair cross on the bridge, she has statues in many of the towns in france. she was driven from the gate of paris, but near the place where she lay wounded in the ditch, is her statue, showing her on horseback, in armour. chapter xix. the second trial of the maid |the rich and the strong had not paid a franc, or drawn a sword to ransom or to rescue joan. the poor had prayed for her, and the written prayers which they used may still be seen. probably the others would have been glad to let joanâ��s memory perish, but to do this was not convenient. if joan had been a witch, a heretic, an impostor, an apostate, as was declared in her condemnation, then the king had won his battles by the help of a heretic and a witch. twenty years after joanâ��s martyrdom, when the king had recovered normandy and rouen, he thought it time to take care of his own character, and to inquire into the charges on which she was found guilty. it is fair to say that he could not do this properly till he was master of rouen, the place at which she was tried. some of the people concerned were asked questions, such as the good clerk, manchon, and deaupèrc, one of the judges. he was a man of some sense: he did not think that joan was a witch, but that she was a fanciful girl, who thought that she saw saints and heard voices, when she neither saw nor heard anything. many mad people hear voices which are also mad; joanâ��s voices were perfectly sane and wise, and told her things that she could not have known of herself. not much came of this examination, but, two years later, joanâ��s mother and brothers prayed for a new trial to clear the character of the family. it is the most extraordinary thing that, up to this year, , joanâ��s brothers and cousins seem to have been living, on the best terms, with the woman who pretended to be joan, and said that she had not been burned, but had escaped. this was a jolly kind of woman, fond of eating and drinking and playing tennis. why joanâ��s brothers and cousins continued to be friendly with her after the king found her out, because she did not know his secret, is the greatest of puzzles, for she was a detected impostor, and no money could be got from the connection with her. another very amazing thing is that, in , an aunt of the duke of burgundy, madame de luxembourg, entertained the impostor, while the whole town of orleans welcomed her, and made her presents, and ceased holding a religious service on the day of joanâ��s death, for here, they said, she was, quite well and merry! moreover the townâ��s books of accounts, at orleans, show that they paid a pension to joanâ��s mother as â��mother of the maid,â�� till , when they say â��mother of the _late_ maid.â�� for now, as joanâ��s family were trying to have her character cleared, they admitted that she was dead, burned to death in , as, of course, she really was. there are not many things more curious than this story of the false maid. however, at last joanâ��s family gave up the impostor, and, five years later, she was imprisoned, and let out again, and that is the last we hear of her. the new trial lingered on, was begun, and put off, and begun again in . cauchon was dead by this time; nothing could be done to him. scores of witnesses came and told the stories given at the beginning of this book, showing how joan was the best and most religious of girls, and very kind to people even more poor than herself, and very industrious in knitting and sewing and helping her mother. every one who was still alive, that had known her in the wars, came, like dâ��alençon, and dunois, and dâ��aulon, and her confessor: and many others came, and told about joan in the wars, how brave she was and modest, and the stories of what she had suffered in prison, and about the unfairness of her trial, were repeated. the end was that the court of inquiry-declared her trial to have been full of unlawfulness and cruelty, and they abolished the sentence against her and took off all the shameful reproaches, and ordered a beautiful cross to be erected to her memory in the place where she was burned to death. so here ends the story of the life and death of joan the maid. the end