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JO AN THE MAID.
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JO A N T H E M AID:
Peliperer of &nglanè amo Srance. -
A Story of the Fifteenth Century
DONE INTO MODERN ENGLISH.
By the Author of
“CHAEONICLES OF THE SCA@NBAERG-COTZA FAMILY.”
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“There is nothing fruitful but sacrifice.”
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W. ELAINE'S STORY, ... tº º º tº º ſº gº º e
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X. PETER THE WRIGHT'S STORY,
XI. PERCIVAL’s STORY, ... * * * tº gº tº tº ſº tº
XII. PEROTVAL’s STORY CONTINUED, tº ſº º tº $ tº
XIII, ELAINE’s STORY, ... ... tº º tº tº E tº
XIV. PERCIVAL’s STORY, ...
XV. PERCIVAL’s STORY continued, gº ºn º vº º tº
XVI. PERCIVAL’s STORY CONTINUED, * * *
XVII. PERCIVAL’s STORY CONTINUED, * * * § º º
*
37
45
56
61
80
98
109
130
141
172
1S1
191
201
209
vi CONTENT'S.
XVIII. PERCIVAL’s story CONTINUED, 2 * tº 4 tº tº h is wº tº a s 243
XIX. PERCIVAL'S STORY CONTINUED, tº s e tº º º * = & tº g tº 252
xx. PERCIVAL'S STORY CONTINUED, g is tº tº tº º * * * * * * 260
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XXII. PERCIVAL'S STORY CONTINUED, tº e tº Q tº º tº ſº º sº a # 294
XXIII. PERCIVAL'S STORY CONTINUED, e & sº tº e tº tº tº gº tº & 309
J O A N T H E M AID.
I.
#lettibal’s Storp.
WITCH ! Joan the Maid a witch No
more a witch than St. Catharine and all the
$º blessed saints who talked with her as with
a fellow-citizen of the Golden City, whither men sent
her long ago.
Deluded ! No more deluded than all the goodly
fellowship of the martyrs who were counted mad by the
deluded earth-seekers of their own day.
I have seen her flashing, like Michael the Archangel,
in her white array, before Orleans. I have seen her
shed tears when she was wounded, like any other tender
girl, yet through all the pain lead the army on. Some
of us have seen her weep over the English wounded,
and sustain the dying in her arms. Afterwards, be-
trayed and delivered to her enemies, I have seen her

8 JOAN OF ARC.
shrink from suffering, and yet vanquish torture, succour-
ing and saving others even in the flames.
And I am as sure she was sent of God as that I
breathe. Sent to rescue torn and bleeding France, sent
to turn our England back from pillage and rapine, from
the false quest she was on, to her true work and war-
fare among the nations.
I am as certain as that the sun is in the heavens that
she was given to these poor bewildered, barren days of
ours, to be to us as an image of the Christ; King,
Deliverer, Sufferer, Saviour of men; Saviour, not of
England or of France, but of all men; to lift up before
us once more the likeness of what He was and is, who
gave not His substance only, but Himself for us; the
likeness of what each of us in high or humble place is
called to be.
Is it strange that I call this warrior-maiden a like-
ness of Christ, of Him who would neither strive nor cry,
who said, “Agenstonde not an evil man, but if ony man
Smyte thee on the ryte cheek, turn to him the tother;
to hym that will strive with thee in doom, and take
away thi coote, leve thou to hym also thi mantle”?
Yet, I say it with full purpose, from the depths of
my soul. The longer I live, the more I learn that there
is but one likeness of the Christ in human hearts; the
love to God and man which leads us to lay down life
for the brethren, for the world.
Jeanne the Maid laid down her life for her land in
living, and laid it down in dying. And it is this, in
JOAN OF ARC. 9
mother, maid, monk, father, priest, or king, which is like
the King—her King and ours.
Not enjoyment of His blessed sacraments, not raptures
of prayer; these may be little more than the body's
delight in its dainties, in a fresh air on the cheek, or a
sweet Smell in the gardens; but love, the life which
lives in others, and if death comes in such service, takes
it as naturally and unhesitatingly as any other step
of the Way of the Cross; this is the true imitation
of Christ, this is the Christ Himself living in men.
It is good to go over again the story of the Maid,
the glorious, Sorrowful, Sacred story, as it was inter-
woven with my own, and as I searched it out from
friend and foe.
I go back to the old days, the childhood by the
Western sea, the sea whose shore no man knows, nor
even if it has a shore.
The salt of its spray seems on my old withered
cheeks as I speak, the sound of its waves is in my
ears, waves that begin no one knows where, and break
on the white shingles and the pitiless rocks like an echo
of eternity.
It was no friendly lapping water to be played with,
that sea by the old seat of Arthur the King, along the
thundering shores of Tintagel.
Death was in it, and peril and power to destroy
lurked in every one of those breakers which dashed
like war-horses against the rocks, or leaped like reined-
in chargers on the sands.
10 JOAN OF ARO.
We knew it even when we bathed in them as boys,
my brother Owen and I.
They seethed up through bottomless holes to the top
of the wild cliffs, they sent their spray miles inland;
and the winds that lashed and enraged them levelled
the tops of the mighty oaks as even as a meadow of
cropped grass. *
As a battle-field sea and land seemed to me then ; as
a battle-field life has been to me.
And I had liever it were so, though I may be twisted
and gnarled and cropped like those aged wrestling oaks,
than grow up smooth and even in some inland valley of
the world,
For the fighting has to be done by some one, and I
had liever it should be by me for all I can, than for me
by amy.
The stirring of the blood in the battles is better than
any joys of sloth. And in all the battles of the Christ
some evil ones are slain, and some oppressed ones of the
devil are rescued and set free.
Not by blowing trumpets, in these days, and march-
ing round walls ever so many times do the strongholds
of the enemy fall, within or without, but by blows and
wounds, and shedding of life-blood.
Wherefore it is good, I deem, to begin the training .
early, for none can win the field for another, alas ! nor
can any lose the battle for us but ourselves.
Alas, yes alas ! for all do not win; and it is hard to
stand by and see the day lost by those we would give
JO.A.N OF ARC. II
life to make conquerors, and to know why they lose,
and even to tell them how to win, and yet be able to
succour them no whit, save in some poor feminine after-
work of binding up wounds; and often not even that,
Yes, harder than anything in the world.
Does the Lord Christ know how hard 2
Ah, indeed does He not ? He who said in words
which weep through the ages, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
how often would I, and thou wouldst not l”
Yet, in that old stronghold of ours, of the Trevelyans
by the Western Sea, rugged outside as the rocks it
seemed part of, there was for a while a warm nest
tapestried as with down from a mother-bird's wing.
It is good to think that the rudest stronghold that
bristles defiance from its heights, and the poorest cabin
that crouches defenceless below, have all been that to
some little human creatures in their day, a fortress,
and a nest.
The tiniest wren’s wings seem a mighty shield to her
nestlings: the fiercest lioness's roar is as a tender cooing
to her whelps. -
And in our old castle by the sea, we had lion-hearted
courage to defend us, and wings as soft as any dove's to
nestle under, we three ; I Percival the eldest, Owen the
Second, and our little sister Elaine.
Our mother was French, and our father won her on
this wise. -
In the early days of this century no English coast
was safe. The French landed at Falmouth, and at
12 JOAN OF ARO.
Haverford-West in Wales, summoned to his aid by the
Welsh Prince, Owen Glendower. The Flemings and
Easterlings were ever cruising round our shores, and
pouncing on some undefended village or town. And we
were not behind-hand in reprisals, we to whom the sea
was no accident, but the very element and safeguard of
our existence. Sometimes we had letters of marque
from the king. Sometimes we had none, and did as
well without. *
Close to our castle was a little harbour, approached
by a winding creek, between precipitous rocks. Once
reached, this creek was secure from all winds; but woe
worth the hapless foreigner who thought to penetrate
it unpiloted. This little fishing-port, bristling to our
foes with fortifications such as no human hands could
rear, determined in a measure the character of our family
history.
It was the only harbour along all that range of
rugged coast which breasts the sea without a shore.
Without, absolutely inaccessible, and, indeed, invisible to
any stranger; within, land-locked as a natural dock and
basin. Beyond it stretched a curve of wild rocky coast
and if any hapless vessel were seen in certain winds
within the arc of that curve, within a line which was as
the string to that fatal bow, every man and woman on
the land knew she was hopelessly doomed; the wreckers
made ready for their prey, and pious Souls began their
prayers, as for Souls already in purgatory.
The protection of this haven made our forefathers
JOAN OF ARO. 13
masters of two elements. The elder sons lords of the
little wooded valley, the miles of mountain pasture, and
the few fields of thin corn, sprinkled with peasants' huts;
the younger ploughing the sea, and reaping their harvests
in other men's sowing, finding the salt waters themselves
no barren waste, and oftentimes making raids on Our
neighbours' coasts.
In one of these expeditions our father, combining with
some larger craft from Falmouth (then Smarting from a
recent plundering expedition equipped by the Duke of
Orleans), descended on the shores of Brittany, and sacked
and burned the little town on the coast where my mother
dwelt.
My father came up to the threshold of her house just
as an old man fell down on it, slain by the men-at-arms
and sailors from his own ship. They rushed into the
house to plunder. It was a fair house. To us, from
Our mother's descriptions, it stood as an image of all the
princely dwellings in the Round Table histories, which
were the romances of our childhood, or of the palaces in
the tales of Chaucer.
There were carven chests and tables and chairs, and
Venice glasses, and tapestries and embroideries, and goodly
furnishings and paintings; different, indeed, from the bare
Stone walls and rude benches and boards of our castle.
But tapestries and carvings were little to our seamen;
they wanted silver and gold and jewels, and such obvious
treasures as can be carried away swiftly in small vessels
from a burned and ruined town.
14 JO AN OF A RO.
Through room after room they hurried, seeking the
owners, who might tell them where their treasures were
hidden, or buy their lives off with a ransom. But room
after room was empty, until, in a closet in a small tower,
inside the great bed-chamber, they found a young maid
alone, clad in broidered silk and Samite, my father said,
like Queen Guinevere, and kneeling before a great wooden
crucifix as large as life, cunningly carved in wood, with
the arms stretched wide to embrace the world, and the
head bowed, not so much as if in weakness as if majesti-,
cally yielding up the ghost to God for man.
She was kneeling there. She did not rise when they
burst open the door, but drew close to the crucifix and
clasped the nailed feet in her arms, appealing with her
eyes, not to the soldiers, but to the Love imaged there.
The men drew back, and some crossed themselves.
The image was sacred to them as to her. And some of
them doubtless had in their hearts some memory which
made the hapless suppliant maid Sacred to them, at least
for the moment, as if she had been the Blessed Maiden
Mother herself.
My father was a knight sworn to defend women and
children; and she, in her Orphaned youth, was both.
His purpose was formed, according to his wont, in a
moment. Turning to his men he said,
“You know me; you can trust me. I claim this
house, and all in it, as my share of the booty. I will
arrange the ransom, and see that each of you has his
share. Go ye elsewhere, and take what booty ye can,
JOAN OF ARC. 15
Lose no more time here, for whatever time ye spend
here is lost. Ye know well none of you ever fell short
of his due by trusting me. And,” he added, with a flash
of the eyes his men knew, “none ever lost his due for
disobeying me.”
One or two of the seamen, new men, hired from
Falmouth, made a little demur. But the old men-at-
arms, retainers among our own tenantry, and the fisher-
men from our port, who formed the majority of the
little crew, made no hesitation.
And as they turned away my father added,
“I choose to defend this maiden by my knightly duty
as my own sister.”
Whereon Peter the Wright, who told us, cried,
“What our lord defends, we defend l’’
And with a ringing Cornish cheer which blanched our
mother's cheek, the marauding party made off, leaving
my father alone with the maiden.
Then, as he often told us, the most difficult part of his
task began. For, alone with her, a sudden abashment
and awe came over him, and his French, moreover, not
being fluent, he knew not what to say. Besides, the
thought of the old man he believed to be her father
lying dead on the threshold struck him dumb.
At length, after a few moments' pause, he knelt down
before the crucifix and crossed himself, and said,
“Fair dame, thou art in sanctuary here. Is there any
refuge to which I could take thee ? By St. Mary, I
will do it at the peril of my life. Hast thou kindred at
16 JOAN OF ARO.
hand 2* For he still thought the blood of the slain lay
for ever as a great gulf, never to be bridged over, between
her and him.
She rose, and casting down her eyes, said, in a tone of
hopeless resignation,--
“I have no kindred. I have been fatherless and
motherless from childhood. My uncle rode off from the
house this morning, when your ships appeared in the
offing, to get succour.”
“Who was it then whom our men slew at your
door 2 ° *.
“It must have been the Sieur Trisserot, my uncle's
partner. He wanted me to fly with him, and I chose
rather to remain here and die, if so it pleased the Saints.”
“The Sieur Trisserot was not thy friend, then 2° said
my father, infinitely relieved, and venturing to raise his
eyes to the maiden's face.
“My uncle would have had me be his betrothed,” she
said frankly, “and I willed it not.”
“Then, perchance, thou art vowed to a more sacred
bridal 2’ he replied.
“I have vowed nothing,” she replied, the pallid hue
natural to her slightly changing. “Father Gregory said
it was not a vocation to the religious life to hate any one
man as, Heaven forgive me, I hated the Sieur Trisserot.”
“Thou wouldst not, then, that I took thee to a
convent 2 ”
’ she said. “Take me rather to
good Mother Margot's, in the street by the church.”
(611)
“There is none near,
JOA N OF ARC. 17
“The street by the church is in flames,” he said.
At that moment a tumult of rough voices reached
them ; rough and uncertain voices, as in drunken reve).
Unconsciously she crept nearer him for protection. There
was no time for hesitation.
“Maiden,” he said, “we know nothing of each other
but our voices and our faces; but I would trust thine to
the end of the world. If thou canst trust me, I will
seek the priest who is with our ships, and we will be
wed. So only can I have right and might to guard
thee. And if on reaching our coast thou willest other-
wise, I swear by St. Mary thou shalt have refuge and
welcome in the fairest nunnery I can find in England or
France.”
She did not refuse; and in that wild way our father
won his bride, as true and gentle a lady as any who ever
trod the halls of Camelot or Tintagel when the Round
Table was at its best."
There was little time to spare.
The wedding-mass was hastily said.
Our mother scrupulously refused to carry off any of
her uncle's property. The men-at-arms, therefore, made
free with whatever costly stuffs and silver equipage they
could find; but to our share came only the few jewels
she wore, the wooden crucifix at the foot of which she
had knelt, and an Italian picture of the Holy Family by
a Florentine painter whom our mother used to call the
Angelical Brother, of colour delicate and dainty as young
leaves and flowers in spring, and with faces innocent and
(611) 2
18 JOAN OF ARO.
glad as those which shine on happy children in their
dreams.
And these remained the great teachers and treasures
of our childhood.
Whatever they might have been among the rich
marbles and mosaics of crowded Italian churches, they
were more, I think, on the bare walls of our rude old
Cornish castle, binding three young Souls to the sacred
facts of the gospel story, and letting in on them the
day-spring of beauty which had dawned on the Sunny
south.
Our old stronghold must have seemed little better
than a robber's den to our mother.
Carpet and tapestry were unknown in it when she
came. Silk and Samite there were none, save in the
drapery of the old Oaken state bed which our grand-
mother had brought at her bridal; and of fine linen
there was little, save such as had been stored in our
grandmother's great wedding chest, the finest whereof
Soon went into small garments to wrap her first-born in,
me, Percival Trevelyan, the eldest of her three children.
But our mother had little liking for luxury, and withal
a love of all beauty, which made every sunbeam a jewel
for her, and every wild flower or sea-shell precious as a
broidered tapestry or chased chalice. Is it the glamour
of an old man's memory, or was it the actual world she
created by her presence 2 I always think of the rooms
in which she dwelt as enriched with purple and broidered
work, and fragrant with fresh flower scents; and of every
JOAN OF ARC. 19
ramble with her on cliff or beach as if it had been shone
on by the sun of the south.
She had doubtless a fine skill with her needle, which
she taught to our little sister Elaine; and, in her hands,
unbleached linen, or flannel woven from the wool of our
own sheep, and broidered with such dyes as we could
make, seemed, to our eyes, to drape the walls and win-
dows as with creamy velvets.
Till I die, the picture of the chamber which was her
own, with the crimson draperies of our grandmother's
bed, and the broidered hangings by door and window ;
the logs blazing on the hearth, and reflected on the
Oaken floor she taught the maids to polish ; the sheep-
skin and wolf-skin mats strewed here and there ; and in
the deep recess of the window the solemn crucifix and
the tender painting of “The Mother and the Child,” will
always be to me a heart's nest of rest and warmth, furry
and feathery, and warm and soft, just as I suppose down,
and plumelets, and tufts of dry grass, and bits of straw
seem to other nestlings.
She was indeed a song-bird and a nest-builder, her
lissom fingers always busy working out some plan of her
loving heart and active brain.
There, as we sate on the wolf-skin at her feet, she
embroidered, and span, and sang French lays, or lisped
any English song she had caught from Our people, inter-
rupting song and work now and then to lavish caresses
On One or another of us; or, later, to inspect and help
the mimic tasks we set ourselves in imitation of hers.
20 JOAN OF ARO,
And morning, noon, and evening there were the
prayers beside the crucifix and the Holy Family.
These were the measure and picture of divine love she
gave us: Almighty Power becoming as a child to be
near the little ones; Divine life bowing to death to suc-
cour the suffering and to save the dying; these—and
herself, the Divine Image in the Tabernacle not made
with hands, enshrined in the mother's heart ; love and
authority, Divine right to rule, authority only felt when
we rebelled or strayed, and then only felt as a power
driving back to love. For she could be stern; the heart
of the ruler was in her. There was a dignity in that
gentle presence which guarded court within court of her
being from any intrusion.
When she was present at any revel in the hall, the
voices grew softer, and everywhere under her gentle
sway, joyous and childlike as she was, and little bent on
ruling, Order came and diligence and thankfulness; and
sloth and sadness fled away.
Moreover, dear as order and beauty were to her, the
highest order and beauty were dearest. I mean goodness
and justice; and I well remember how this was stamped
On Our hearts by something that happened one winter
evening.
The winds had been very wild for days, and my
father had been much away, when one evening he came
up the stone steps leading to my mother's room, with the
tramp of many feet behind him. Coming up to her and
kissing her, he said, -
JOAN OF ARO. 2]
“I bring thee fair feathers, my lady, to line thy nest.”
And the men who followed brought in a cedarn chest,
carved and inlaid with other foreign woods, and laid it
before her and left.
One beautiful robe after another of rich Oriental stuffs
my father drew out of it, and unrolled before her, and
at the bottom a gorgeous Arabian carpet, which he
unfolded with fond pride before her feet.
“My lady's dainty feet will have something at last
worthy for them to tread on,” he said.
But she, instead of welcoming his gifts, hid her face in
her hands and burst into tears.
“Beloved,” she sobbed, “these are bridal dresses, and
where is the bride 2°
“How can I tell ?” he said; “the ship was dashed to
pieces before we saw it. They say she was from France,
but none of the crew or passengers have been found;
only this chest dashed and jammed into a cranny of the
rocks. We scaled them and saved it for thee, at some
toil and peril of more lives than one.”
She laid her head on his breast, still weeping.
“Forgive me,” she said, “but how could I forget the
poor face that Smiled from these splendours last 2 She
may have kindred, mother, husband, weeping for her.
Let us find them, beloved, and send it all to them. It
does not belong to us.”
For reply, he took the rejected robe in his arms,
Squeezed it passionately together, went to the oratory
window by the crucifix, opened it, and threw it into the
22 JOAN OF ARO.
foaming caldron which seethed up against the perpen-
dicular rocks beneath.
“It was won for thee at peril of lives nearer to thee
than this poor young Frenchwoman,” he said; “but it
matters not, let it go to those to whom it belongs.”
And he strode out of the room, leaving her weeping,
and us children Sore amazed and dismayed.
He did not reappear for many hours, and when he
came back it was dusk; but all the anger had gone out
of his voice, as he went up to her, bent fondly over her
and laid her hand on his cheek.
“Dear,” he said, “I bring thee another kind of offering
to-night.”
And there was a mingled sorrow and tenderness in the
broken tones of his deep voice which echoes in my ear
to-day.
“Come down,” he said; “they are laid in the chapel
before the altar. There is nothing to shock thee.”
“They 2” she said.
“They ; the bodies of the mother and the babe,” he
could trust his voice to no more. And so we went down
to the castle chapel, our father carrying Elaine on one
arm, and leading my mother with the other hand, while
Owen and I crept on awe-stricken behind.
And as we went he murmured in a hoarse voice—
“We found them lying quite peacefully on the white
sands in a nook of the rocks, the babe clasped in the
mother's arms.”
And there they lay, still, on the bier before the altar,
JOAN OF ARC. 23
with a white drapery shrouding the limbs, locked in an
embrace stronger than death.
“Give them rest, give them rest,” wailed from the
aged priest's voice, in the Requiem Mass. As to the
body, it had been given.
Indeed, the wild waves seemed to have borne them to
that resting-place, where they were found, to all seeming,
unhurt, like some delicate unbroken shell, unwounded
and unmarred; only dead.
We never forgot it, any of us.
And afterwards a change came over my father as to
wrecks.
Before, he, and we too, had shared the common feeling
of the coast, taking them as “God-sends,” committing
the poor souls indeed Christianly to God, but heeding
little the poor bodies; reaping as a sea-harvest the
treasures they had been snatched from by the wild sea,
which was to us as a defensive army and a fisher of
treasure.
But from that time, it seemed stamped indelibly on
his heart that the human creatures were worth un-
speakably more than the treasures.
And when a ship in danger loomed on us within the
fatal string of our rocky bow, he never failed to call all
his men together to save perishing lives, let the goods be
rescued or not.
Henceforth, moreover, though he distributed a portion
of the wrecked goods among his men as a reward for the
toil and danger they encountered, his own portion he
24 JOAN OF ARC.
never more touched, but gave it to the nearest religious
house, to make provision for the shipwrecked.
Such reaping was there from the sowing of our
mother's tears.
Yet happy as she seemed, and was, I suppose the rough
life and climate told on her more delicate nature. For,
after that, I remember less and less her sharing our
rambles and plays, partly perhaps because they became
more boyish, and it was a pride to Owen and me to go
with the fishermen and huntsmen where the women
could not follow. I remember her more at home in her
own room, not so much as a voice and a power, but as a
kind of silent presence of Sunshine, a smile welcoming, a
love embracing us. I think she must have ceased to
sing, for the warbling of French lays and English ballads
dies away unexplained from my recollection. Yet frag-
ments of story float back to me on the tide of that
far-off sea; legends of the Round Table, and more
especially of the Quest of the Sangreal.
I remember a dim splendour as of a far-off opened
heaven, and the Sacred Chalice floating down to mortal
men, life-blood of agony and wine of joy, seen only by
the pure, or if seen by the impure, seen but as fire
piercing to the bones and marrow with keen, purifying
anguish; of the Round Table with all its inspiriting
adventures, its rescues of the oppressed, its joyous
triumphings, and jousts, and feasts, scattered for this
mysterious Quest, the knights wandering hither and
thither, and all the noble company smitten once more
JOAN OF ARC. 25
apart, each on his separate way, all seeking and so few
finding, and the king broken-hearted, and the kingdom
broken.
And yet through all the ruin, glimpses of a deeper
love and a higher life, and a wonderful shining through
of the sacred name of Jesus, like a key-note to which all
the discords had to come at last.
The sister of Sir Percival giving the life-blood from
her arm to rescue the dying lady; her fair corpse floating
alone to its burial on the solitary sea; Sir Lancelot led
into that mysterious ship, and sailing with the dead
maiden to the wondrous castle; Galahad entering the
heavenly land as calmly as he had entered the hall of
the knights.
Strangely that Quest of the Sangreal is mingled with
the last months of our mother's life.
Seas which were familiar to us as our own, yet bor-
dered by lands no mortal feet have trodden; lands whose
names were household words, suddenly opening straight
On heaven; chambers which angels entered, and no one
was surprised; stories with no beginning breaking off
unfinished; death and life mystically intermingled, with
unnamable horror and unspeakable joy, as they were in
that death-chamber of my mother's, which had been
such a warm, furry, feathery nest to us.
For she was fading from us slowly, surely; the body
vanquishing the spirit, silencing its utterance, and nar-
rowing its outward working day by day; the body van-
Quished by the spirit, which shone clearer and clearer
26 JO AN OF ARO.
through. She was passing from us, the spirit of order
and love and beauty of our home; and everything
seemed breaking up with her.
Our father refused to see danger, and Owen was like
him, and never would see what he did not wish to see.
They went more eagerly than ever to the chase and the
fishing, and when they came home the story of their
adventures stirred our mother's heart and coloured her
cheek for the time, and they deemed her recovering, and
went forth again to the sea and the forest, and smiled
at the croakings of those who stayed at home.
But I could not leave. There must be some station-
ary creature to be leant upon in trouble, and in this
trouble it happened to be me.
My mother in her sure vision of the coming sorrow,
our little sister in her horror of childish ignorance of life
and death, both needed me, and looked for me. To me
alone our mother would often speak of the things she
dreaded in the life around—the wild revels, the reckless
adventure; yet her joyous spirit seldom failed. She
made a bright place of her sick-room; and many a gay
moment we had by her bedside, we three, over the cook-
ing and nursing she taught us. f
Until the night came when I was lying on my little
bed in a corner awake, while Elaine was asleep, and
suddenly the dear familiar voice came to me with a tone
that seemed new, and strange, and solemn, and sent a
shudder through me.
“Come near,” she said, “quite near.”
JO.A.N OF ARC. 27
And I rose and crept near.
It was a wild night. The spray dashed against the
window, the wind howled through the clefts of the rocks,
and the waves dashed against the foundations of the
castle. And there was a sound like the pecking of a
bird's beak against the pane, which had a terror for us
because some one had told us it was a call for a soul to
come home. But somehow the terror seemed gone out
of all these things for me. The terror was so much
more terrible in the change in that dear familiar voice.
It seemed far off, like a voice from the higher air,
belonging to us and our world no more.
“My darling,” she said, “I am going home. Take
care of them all ! take care of them all for me !”
And then came a violent fit of coughing, and our
foster-mother came in from the next chamber, and I was
sent for Father Adam, and there were terror and hurry
around her; all the household rushing together to join
in the last prayers, and be present at the last sacred
rites.
Terror and tempest within and without : winds and
waves howling wildly outside, battering the walls and
rattling the windows; within, voices hushed to whispers
more fearful than any shrieks. But she, meanwhile, lay
quiet ; with a depth of prayer and peace in her eyes, as
they turned from us towards heaven, with our father's
name sighing on her lips, and then clear and full the
name of “Jesus,” as I never heard it again until it rose
from the lips of the Maid amidst the fires at Rouen.
28 JOAN OF ARC.
And there she lay, at last, for the first time, with no
answer in her eyes to mine; and yet, boy as I was, in-
spiration came to me with her last words. I seemed not
so much to have lost her, as to have to succeed her.
Not to be cared for any more, but to care for others,
that was the dying charge. And Elaine, though she had
not heard it (none heard those words but me), seemed to
feel it, for she clung to me, and looked to me to decide,
to will, to think, almost it seemed, to live and breathe
for her. But with my father and Owen it was different.
What, indeed, could a child like me do for them 2
From some of those mysterious spells that seal the
lips of children, I never could tell him or any one, then,
of those last words.
He came to me, like a child, for me to tell him again
and again every detail of the last days, and never
wearied of my saying how his name had been on her lips
to the last. But the misery mastered him, as it must
do all who do not master it. And after a time he
seemed to shrink from all that recalled her, even from
Elaine and me.
The Almighty knows the way. He takes, but, to all
seeming, the world, little or great, is not better, but
lower and worse for the blanks the good leave in it.
Gradually the old wild life, which had reigned in the
castle before our mother came to it, was resumed.
There were days of the chase, followed by drinking
bouts deep into the night, and the wrecking customs
stealing in again unreproved, and Owen at all the revels;
JO AN OF ARC. 29
the oaths, for which we English were too famous every-
where, seeming to amuse the revellers like a lady's jest
from the boyish lips of Owen, the wit and darling of
those wild revels; and all, my mother's lessons, it
seemed, buried with her.
Her charge lay heavy on me, and I had to work it
out all alone. How was I to “care’ for Owen, or any
one What did “taking care’ mean * Certainly it did
not mean scolding or even advising. What had it meant
with our mother ? Chiefly, it seemed to me, being good
and loving. First of all, loving. g
This became clear to me one night, when the mirth
in the hall had been especially wild, and Owen especially
brilliant, flashing at last into impertinence, impertinence
which angered my father, who forthwith despatched us
both to bed.
As usual, I turned to go into our mother's empty
chamber, before I slept, to say the old prayers before the
crucifix. I asked Owen to come with me ; but he dashed
impatiently away. “I am no priest,” he said pettishly,
“ though I am not the eldest son. Pity thou wert the
eldest ; I heard old Sir Bors say to my father, thou
wouldst have made a grave and gentle abbot.”
“And what did our father answer ?”
“He only laughed, and said it was as well his Jacob
had the birthright, the Esaus too often only threw it
away.”
“Did my father call me Jacob Z * I said; and a
sudden passion of resentment seized me. For Father
30 JOAAW OF ARO.
Adam had been telling this history of Esau and Jacob
lately to Elaine and me, and we agreed in thinking
Jacob a mean traitor and supplanter.
“Jacob robbed and cheated his brother. What but
good have I ever done to thee ?”
“Good enough,” he laughed lightly—“enough and too
much. Sermons on swearing, as good as Father Adam's.
Go to thy prayers; but don't, I beg, say them double
for me. I had liever be preached to, than prayed for,
like a soul in purgatory.”
His words stung me to the heart, and I went alone to
our mother's oratory, not so much to pray as to complain
to God how unjust my brother was. But I did not find
the oratory empty. Little Elaine was there.
“I have been waiting for thee, brother,” she said (she
always called me only “brother”). “I thought you
would bring Owen.”
“I have been trying to bring Owen,” I said, “and he
will not come.”
“Then we two must pray for him,” she said.
“He told me not,” I said, my heart still a caldron
black and foaming, like that sea outside.
“That shows he wants it all the more,” she said, a
little sleepily, leaning her fair head on my shoulder.
“But he has said cruel things to me!” I mur-
mured.
“Hush | " she whispered, “we must not tell God that.
It might make him displeased with Owen l’
And she began, and I had to join, and to put off my
JOAN OF ARC. 31
complainings. The little one had saved me from one of
those terrible prayers which are so like curses.
“Dear brother Owen,” we said; and “let us say
another Our Father for him,” she added. And as I said
it, the caldron in my heart subsided into a soft ripple
On a Sunny beach.
“Forgive us our trespasses,” I said, “ours, ours.” And
when I came back to lie down by Owen's side, he made
a sleepy movement, and said, “Never mind, old man—
you are not at all like Jacob, nor I like Esau. You
would give me your birthright if I wanted it, I know,
and the mess of pottage into the bargain. And you may
pray for me as much as you will; only come and fish
and hunt with me too !” And he went to sleep quite
composed by his concession; for in all our little differ-
ences, whatever he had done, or left undone, Owen had
a wonderful way of always being in the end the one, not
to be forgiven, but to forgive.
That night I lay awake a long time, feeling penitent,
but happy, because forgiven I hoped by every one, by
Owen, by God, and by myself. For I had been having
a bitter taste of the very caldron of hell, which is help-
less resentment and hate; and I had come into a vision
of heaven, which is the victory of love.
For some months I had been living chiefly for and
with Elaine, trying to make her life less lonely, scaling
rocks to get wild birds' eggs for her, taking her out in
a boat when it was safe for her, training a little moor-
land pony for her to ride, and teaching her to ride it.
32 JOAN OF ARO.
Unconsciously I had been making a selfish little
Paradise apart for us two, such as I thought our mother
would smile on, and judging from this serene height the
poor struggling ones below. And waking up I found
my Paradise a prison in which, while shutting others out,
I had shut myself in. But yet it puzzled me, that try-
ing to fulfil my mother's command should have brought
me to the verge of hating my brother; and I resolved,
the next day, to tell Father Adam what she had said,
and to ask him how I could fulfil it.
Father Adam had been taking care of people so many
years, he ought to know. In general he never seemed
to have much to say ; but where trouble and perplexity
were he was always wanted, and always at hand. And
a few days before he had spoken of preparing us for our
first communion next Easter. I sought him, therefore,
in the chapel, after his morning mass, and told him all.
“To take care l’ he sighed. “To be a shepherd,
when thou art but a poor helpless lamb l’
“Was it a mistake 7" I said, feeling the question
almost blasphemy.
“It was the yearning of the mother's heart, longing
to leave something motherly behind,” he said after a
pause. “God forbid I should say such sacred, last
words were a mistake. But there is the devil within
and around us, the proud discontented spirit; and he is
content enough to have any of us shepherds, or any-
thing, if only he can hinder our being humble sheep
following the Good Shepherd.” *
JOAN OF ARC. 33
“And lambs, of course,” I said, “cannot be shepherds.”
“All the sheep, and lambs too, are shepherds, or
shepherd helpers,” he replied, “as far as they are true
sheep. The lambs may shepherd the lambs, but chiefly
by being good lambs.”
“Was I not trying to be a good lamb 2 " I said.
“A little too good, perhaps,” he said, with a little dry,
kind smile; “as good as a sheep-dog. A lamb that
keeps bleating and moaning over the straying ones is,
after all, not a shepherd, but only a troublesome lamb.”
“But, father, surely I did not bark or bite l’I said.
“No ; only growled a little softly,” he replied, “and
wert a little too near calling in the dogs to bark and
bite.”
I hung my head, feeling not sure whether Father
Adam misunderstood me, or understood me better than
I understood myself.
“Can thy father teach thee nothing, and give thee no
share of his work 2' he resumed.
“He has Owen,” I said.
“But thou hast thy father,” he replied, “to honour
and obey. And hast thou nothing to learn of Owen 2"
he continued, laying his hand a moment on my bowed
head. “Is there nothing thy brother does better than
thou ?” ;
“Many things,” I said. And by my humiliation in
saying so I knew that the thorn which had fretted the
sore in my heart was being pulled out. “He rides and
manages a boat better than I can.”
(611) 3
34 JOAN OF ARC.
“Then tell him so, and let him teach and help thee,”
Father Adam replied. “Keep beside him and thy father
at sea, at the chase, at the feast.”
“At the drinking bouts,” I said; “with the oaths
and the drunken songs 3"
“Other people's evil words need not hurt thee,” said
the old man thoughtfully.
“But if I should grow used to them, and cease to
hate them 2’
“If we love good, that is God, enough, we shall
never cease to hate evil. If we love our brothers
enough, we shall never cease to grieve at what hurts
them. We may scorn the sin, and hate the sinner.
But if we love the sinner enough, we must hate
the sin.”
“But the wrecking,” I resumed, “which my mother
hated and stopped. Should I be there 2°
“There, above all,” he said, his dry, slow speech
kindling up. “There, to do what she would ; save men
instead of cargoes.”
“It is hard,” I said. *
“The sea is harder than the shore,” he replied; “but
thou art a man, not a woman. Though indeed women,
poor things in their way, have as good a share as any
of the waves and storms.”
His words seemed stern and sharp to me at first.
My mother had seemed to lift me to be a sharer with
herself. And Father Adam seemed to put me below
my brother. Was this just? The old man probably
JOAN OF ARC. 35
saw this in my face, for he came back, and said to me
very gently—
“Thy mother made no mistake, my boy. With God's
help thou shalt yet take care of them all. But an old
shepherd who has made many mistakes may save thee
from some. There is but one holiness for all, for we
are all children, and for children, above all—to learn
and to love. Those who learn are sure to teach. Those
who love are sure to serve.”
And so with his own hands the old priest pushed my
little boat off through the breakers, and kept me from
fancying I was helping those in peril on the sea by
wailing and wringing hands upon the shore.
I linger so long on these early days, because in
them lie the roots of my life, the double parentage
which linked us with France as well as England; the
words of my mother, which have been the spring of my
life, inspiring me to such humble bits of care-taking and
shepherding as made me understand a little more Joan
the Maid, and those to whom the feeding of the great
flocks is given.
The next months I spent beside my brother and my
father, learning what I could of the craft of the hunts-
man and the seaman, and all knightly exercises. For
none of these things were play to us. The wild
boars and wolves had not been driven out of the neigh-
bouring forests, and in winter often made inroads on the
peasants' fields.
On the sea, perilous as it was, much of our actual
36 JOAN OF ARO.
livelihood depended. And on land or at sea war has
been no rare outbreak, but the continual state of
Christendom during the whole of my life.
For seventy years the war with France had lasted,
from a time before we were born, without symptom of
close or decision. The hero of our boyhood was the
valiant young King Henry W. Agincourt echoed across
to us in the autumn of 1415. I remember it by the
bónfires signalling the victory from point to point along
our coast, and by my mother having a requiem mass said
daily for all the slain, French and English; for all, she
said, met at one gate on the other side of death, and
were no more separated into French and English there,
but into the wicked and the just. And into her dying
chamber, four years afterwards, the news of our king's
marriage at Troyes with the French Princess Katharine,
brought hope and gladness. She thought it might
bring peace and amity, knowing less of politics than of
pity; and in that hope she went where, with the larger
vision, it must be easier to wait. And soon after she died
came the birth, at Windsor, of the little prince, Henry
WI. of England and France; and then the death of the
valiant King Henry W., and the division of power among
his brothers, Bedford, Gloucester, Beaufort. But never
peace.
II.
(Élaine'g Storp.
rºy HEN my brother Percival left me to go on his
'ºl true Quest, to lead the boy's beginning of
*AAA); the knightly life with Owen, hunting the
wild animals through moor and forest, and cleaving the
wild waves in the fishing craft, he went forth to a world
of life and stir, of living voices and living deeds. But
I was left in a land of echoes out of a dead world.
I sat trying to finish my mother's embroideries, or I
climbed alone to the old places where we used to go to
bring her flowers and sea-treasures, or I murmured over
the old prayers. But all, work and wanderings and
prayers, seemed like dying echoes of what had been.
Of course I did not say this to myself then; but I under-
stand it now, in looking back.
It seemed to me as if all life were as the Morte
d’Arthur our mother told us of. I wandered alone, like
the king by “the waters wap and the waves wan,” on
the shore of ghosts and echoes, and everything in this
life seemed like a heap of broken stories without mean-
ing, friendship deceived, and love loving wrong, and

38 JOAN OF ARC.
highest hopes ending in failure; and there lay no hope
save in death, and not much in that, lest it should prove
we had entered the next world at the wrong gate, and
find it as bewildered and inexplicable as this.
I was but a child, but I was feeble and dwarfed, and
not as other children; and when I looked at my own
face in my mother's steel mirror sometimes, it seemed to
me as fair as hers, and when I saw and felt my own
misshapen limbs, they seemed to me a picture of all this
twisted and puzzled world; as if an enemy, a wicked
elf, had broken into some sculptor's carving-chamber, and
had misplaced all the work, putting heads of angels on
bodies of Satyrs, and crowning a beautiful arrow-pierced
Sebastian with the face of a grinning fool.
Then I tried to comfort myself by thinking of the
Sangreal, of Galahad always victor, and Percival victor,
though all but vanquished, and, above all, of the sister
of Percival, who shed the blood from her arm to give
life to the dying lady, and thereof herself died.
That seemed to me the loveliest story of all, the only
glimpse of hope in all the dark and tangled web of the
world. Living blood of sacrifice like that might come
even from a maid like me, from a shrivelled arm like
mine.
The sister of Sir Percival became to me like a sister
of my own. She was my solace, she and the crucifix,
my mother's great wooden crucifix with the bowed head
and the tender patience of the brows and lips, and the
mercy in the outstretched arms.
JOAN OF ARO. 39
But that also was death ; failure and defeat and
death. How many must have been cruel beyond
thought, how many more must have been ungrateful
and forgetful exceedingly, ere that Healer and Lover of
men could have been stretched on that cross |
It was not defeat, it was victory, Father Adam said.
It was redemption.
But when I thought of our mother dying, and the
evil things she hated living on, and the people she
grieved over growing worse, of the drinking bouts and
the wreckings, who and what, I kept asking, were
redeemed ?
Mother Margery, our foster-mother, saw, I suppose,
that I was growing unnaturally thin and pale and grave.
For one day she took me to her cottage in the sheltered
nook under the cliff, and she said, “It is not good for
little ones to be alone.” And there all that day I
watched Margery spinning and then weaving at her
loom. And it was a rest and delight to me to see some-
thing growing, coming into being, instead of fading,
though it was only a ball of yarn and a web of coarse
wool. And close at hand, in a shed outside, was her
husband Peter's workshop, where he made yokes and
ploughs and benches. It was like a breath of spring to
me to see this weaving and making. The work at the
castle seemed so much to be mere hunting and driving
the creatures to death on sea and land, or reaping dead
men's harvests, or at best mending or using or decorating
other people's work. But on this lower level of the
40 JOAN OF ARO.
world 1 seemed to touch higher work, more like God's,
shaping, making, and causing new things to be.
Margery let me come as often and stay as long as I
liked. She taught me to spin and weave, and Peter
made me little tools, and taught me to shape platters
and boxes, for I could not bear to make anything not
real—that could not be used. And to see things grow
into being out of shapelessness—out of nothing—was a
delight. Also it took me from the weary copying of
the embroidery full of the traces of my mother's fingers,
without her smile.
Peter and I became great friends.
“Why do not the nobles and knights choose to be
carpenters,” I said to him one day, “instead of hunts-
men and fishers ? It seems to me as if they chose the
work of beasts instead of the work of men.”
A flash came across Peter's face. It was not a great
ruddy blunted face like many of those I saw, but a
sharp, pallid, eager face, such as might have suited my
little body better than his, muscular and compact as it
was, though not tall.
“A Great Prince, the Noble of nobles, did once choose
to be a carpenter,” he said.
“You mean God,” I said, “our Father Christ. But
He came from so very high, I suppose all here below
seemed just the same to Him.”
“I don’t think it all seemed the same,” was Peter's
answer. “I think He knew, and chose the best.”
That was quite a new light to me.
JOAN OF ARC. 41
Of course I knew Jesus our Lord, and the blessed
apostles and disciples, had been poor, but I always
thought they were knights and dames all the time, like
Sir Joseph of Arimathea, and St. Mary Magdalene, who
lived in her own castle, and only put poverty on as a
disguise, like knights at a joust.
I knew also that holy men, hermits, and friars had
chosen to be poor and to wear wretched clothes; but
every one knew that was because they were holy, not
because they could not help it.
That our heavenly King should have been really a
carpenter, and worked at a real bench, like Peter's,
for real bread, was a new thought to me; and at first I
did not like it at all. I had thought, if I thought at
all, that the distinction between knights and churls was
practically inward and eternal, and that our servants
would naturally be delighted to serve us for ever in the
next world. In the Arthur legends there were no poor
at all, save serving-men, and people to fight and be killed
in the great battles.
But if the Lord Christ had chosen to be a carpenter,
everything seemed turned upside down; and who could
say if it might not continue so in that other world 2
I suppose Margery saw I was displeased, for she said
to Peter, “Keep thy levelling notions to thyself. They
have cost us enough already.”
For some days I did not go back to the cottage. But
the seed Peter had dropped was living, and it grew.
The more displeased I was the more I wanted to see
42 JOA N OF ARO.
Peter again, and tell him. And after all, when I came
to think of it, the poor being so many, if indeed they
were more in the place of the Master, the world might,
after all, be less of a tangle than it looked in the legends
and from the castle.
When I went back, for some time Peter was dumb.
But the ice soon melted; and slowly, day by day, a
new world all around and beneath us, but as unknown
as Ind or Cathay, opened before me; the great world of
toiling men and women—the masons who built our
churches and castles, the carpenters who made our beds
and tables, the Smiths who forged our knightly arms.
And this world here in England, I found, had a history
of its own graven in the hearts of men—a history of
toil, and of wrong, of struggles for what they deemed
Divine rights through what we deemed rebellion. There
were names honoured as heroic in this world, which we
considered infamous, which I had hitherto heard spoken
with a curse, like Judas; John Ball, the priest; Jack
Straw, Wat Tyler, or one of our own class, a traitor to
the Church and the State, hanged and slowly burned not
many years before at St. Giles's Fields, near London,
called in this new world “the good Lord Cobham.”
And through this under world, at this moment, and
for forty years, were sounding the words of a Book, an
English Book (the Book all Christians held sacred, but
no other Christians seemed to possess, save in Latin),
plain, homely, mighty, Divine words done into English
fifty years ago by a learned priest called Wycliffe. And
JOAN OF ARO. 43
this Book Peter seemed to know by heart, at least the
part of it about our Lord; for I learned it all from his
lips. The Book itself was a hidden treasure I did not
see for years afterwards.
And wonderful was the hope that story gave to me.
It quietly adjusted everything, pieced the broken world,
and our little broken lives—gave meaning to the inex-
plicable; and yet not by trying to explain things, but
simply by bringing in the Light. It made me even
learn to give thanks for my poor misshapen body. It
was a link with the misshapen, twisted world below ;
and it was a link with the healing Lord, who lived so
much among the sick.
In that carpenter's cottage two things were set open
to me, which have made the joy and the work of all my
life: the great world of the poor, of the people; and the
life of the Master. I escaped out of the prison of the
rich, the luxurious, the few. I learned to love the wide
world of the toiling, the poor, who earn daily bread by
daily work.
And there, walking with them along the dusty high-
ways, sailing with them in their fishing-boats, asking a
drink of water from one of them at the village well,
toiling beside them at the carpenter's bench, resting with
them on the grass, clothed like them, eating of their
common food, paying tax and tribute among them ; not
living in the castle and visiting them thence, but living
in the fisherman's cottage, and letting the rich and great
if also weary and heavy-laden, come to Him—deeper,
44 JOAN OF ARC.
lower than that, dying the death of a bondman, I found
my Lord. I found Him in the field, by the sea-shore,
by the poor sick-bed; and wherever He came I found
Him healing the sick, blessing the children, forgiving
(which is the highest healing), bringing patience and
hope, and joy unspeakable, and light and love.
Then, going back to the castle, I found Him there
also. Going back to our mother's crucifix, I found—
ah! I found that the head so patiently bowed there was
the face I knew best and loved best in all the world.
And He, not dead, but living. -
Not a soft silvery feather in a sea-gull's breast, not a
curve or a fold in a pinion or a shell, but His living
touch was there. Not a sick child or a worn-out
labourer in the fields but through the parched or lisping
lips murmured His, “Me—wnto Me!” Jesus and the
poor. Ah, what a world to live—to die for What a
life to live with, to live in, to live by
And all the while, though we knew it not, He was
training in the quiet valley by the river Meuse, in a
peasant's cottage, helping her father in the fields and
her mother by the hearth, a child, a little peasant
maiden, obeying the voice of her parents, and with
heart open to hear the voice of her King, Joan the
Maid, “Daughter of God,” deliverer of France from ruin
and England from crime, renewing the world, as of old,
from the lowly places, whither go the roots and whence
spring the wells of life.
III.
£eter the Üüright’g Storp.
Wºź HEN first she came to us—the child, the maid,
º) the little Dame Elaine,—came to my Mar-
*AAA)'ſ gery's cottage in her dainty raiment, her fine
linen and purple, her golden net around her brown hair,
her mother's jewels clasping her white throat—I hated
the sight of her. She seemed to me, she and hers, like
evil, fair, fat ghouls that had lived on the blood of our
lost little ones. I was sullen and sour to her in my
heart, however Margery might constrain me to be
courteous. We had suffered so much from her like,
since the days when, after the rising under Wat Tyler,
the people had trusted themselves like loyal brothers,
like guileless children, to the royal word of the boy-king,
Richard, and had then by him and his forty thousand
been hung like snared vermin, or tortured like hunted-
down beasts of prey. My father was a yeoman with his
own good freehold then, hardly earned and thriftily kept.
But the men of law working for the barons disputed his
title, and robbed us of our land, and then, being landless,
brought us under the Statute of Labourers, and forbade

46 JO.A.N OF ARO.
us to leave the land they had robbed us of, constraining
us to till it for the lord, or to live on what he chose to
give.
They dragged us down into bondage again, and broke
my father's heart. There was no way left out of our
misery but through the Church ; and my father, who
had learned much of Wycliffe and his poor priests,
seeing I loved learning, strove to get me made a clerk.
He hoped I would also have been a priest, either “poor.”
to teach the poor, which he thought “divine,” or rising
on the ladder of the priesthood as many before had
done, to be a parson, an abbot, or even a bishop, remem-
bering in the palace the heart of the poor, and so bind-
ing poor to rich.
But, woe to us ! the Church herself had grown
worldly, the abbots were landowners as proud as the
barons, the bishops were courtiers of England or Rome,
the friars were pardon-sellers and plunderers of the poor,
and none wanted landless men.
And, moreover, the lords did their utmost to shut out
the old way to freedom from us; they sought to make
a law that no son of a bondman or bondwoman should
be suffered to take orders in the Church, lest by that
means they might be advanced in the world.
Thus, the end of my learning and reading was only
that I could read. And so, while my feet were as
fettered as ever, my mind was set free to think, and my
eyes were opened to see; which only made the bonds
chafe harder.
JOAN OF ARO. 47
We had but two books (I never learned Latin), two
English books, Piers Plowman and Wycliffe's Bible.
These we kept carefully hidden in the straw of a
mattress, and on winter nights, when labour was done,
by the light of a candle, I used to read.
Both of the books seemed to deepen the gloom. Piers
the Plowman sang dolefully how money, meed, and
greed ruled all, only checked by hunger, which assailed
both rich and poor.
For the ravages of the Black Death were scarcely
over when he wrote, when half the people in our parts
died within a few months, and the fields were left un-
tilled, and half of many a stricken flock lay dead, with
no priest to bury them, and the other half strayed,
helpless and hopeless, with no shepherd to care for them;
and the cattle wandered through the unreaped corn,
with none to hinder or to herd them. That book was a
doleful picture of a doleful world.
But the other Book, as all may know, dark as its
pictures of the world are, being true, is nevertheless a
book of hope and a gospel. Yet to me in those days
it brought no hope. I thought of it as the book for-
bidden by the worldly priests, the Lollard book, for
which men had been content to be burnt, which had taught
the sheep to know and to hate the hireling shepherds,
which had inspired the generation of my father to hope
in a just Christ, King of rich and poor, and to rise for
their divine and human rights, cost what it might.
And there I stood amidst the ruins of our father's
48 JOAN OF ARO.
rights and hopes, old wrongs riveted down on our necks,
as it seemed, for ever, with fresh chains. And there was
a bitter comfort in seeing that the Book condemned the
robbery of the poor, and said that their blood cried out
unto God from the ground. The blood of the multi-
tudes which had cried out so long, and no answer had
come, save that old promise that there would come a
day of Doom
Not a little bit here and there was wrong, the Book
said to me (as I deemed). All was wrong; popes, and
kings, and barons, and priests, and friars. War was
wicked, and riches were a curse, and Law only forged
chains to fix on the wrongs; and the burden of all the
wrongs rolled ever down and down upon us, the
peasants.
The lord of our village was a hard man; he went to
the wars in France, and he must have horses, and cap-
arisons, and arms, and men-at-arms, and archers to go
with him—will they, mill they. And they went ; and
there was some cruel Solace in the thought that our good
bowmen made the noblest blood of France flow like
rivers.
But my lot was to stay at home, and see hunger lay
siege to my own little homestead, and strive to keep
him off and fail, and see my children pule, and pine, and
die, until at last some scattered sufferers among us took
courage and rose against the lords. But, though despair
may give courage, it gives scant wisdom; the leaders
and teachers, the few nobles and priests, who had led us
JO AN OF ARC. 49
once, were soon gone, on the gibbet, the scaffold, or
stake. And we had to flee, and Margery and I came to
the wild Western sea, and there her last babe was born
and died, and the peasant's sorrow went, as was wont,
to supply the lady's lack. Margery became foster-
mother to the boy Percival, and the boy lived and
flourished, and we were left bereaved and destitute, to
toil at the old toil for the masters, loathsomely lightened
now of the maintenance of our beloved.
And Margery, being but a mother, and finding it more
needful to love than even to live, grew to love the
mother and the children. But I sate apart, a foreigner
among the Western men, bitter in heart and hopeless,
until Elaine the maiden came and crept into my heart.
It was the dwarfed and suffering body, it was the
wistful look of pain and helplessness in the child's eyes
that began to melt the ice. And then her tears for our
SOTY'OWS. -
Margery would never let me talk bitter talk to the
child, which at first made me sullen and silent, and then
constrained me to tell her what I knew, leaving the
bitterness out ; and in telling her the story, the wrongs
grew sweetened into sorrows.
For had not she also sorrows, the innocent babe 7
sorrows that looked like wrongs, but which, if wrongs,
could be traced to no hand but Almighty God's; which
made a break in the cry of revolt and bitter complain-
ing. And then she wrung out of me, I scarce know
bow, the story of the Gospels. And as I told it to the
(611) 4
50 JOAN OF ARC.
child, and saw her dear face glow and shine at the words
and works of Christ, the form of the Son of man seemed
to change to me, and instead of the avenging judge
scourging the traffickers from the Temple, and thunder-
ing woe after woe on the rich (though that also is true),
I saw the Healer touching the outcast leper none would
touch, letting the sinner no righteous man would look
at touch Him, the young man in peasant's clothes (He
was but thirty) take the little children in His arms; the
innocent sufferer answering to the blows which knocked
the nails into the torn hands with “Father, forgive
them.”
Alas, alas ! I saw that poor and rich alike had for-
saken Him, and had loved Him ; that the rich man had
stooped to bury the poor mangled body; that He was
so poor that the poorest were rich compared with Him,
and so rich that the richest had to come as beggars to
Him : that from the throne to the dungeon every corner
of this earth was sacred with His presence, for He was
not conquered but the conqueror, not dead but living,
and loving all—all, rich and poor, noble and villain,
bond and free. And so meaning and hope came into
all things slowly, very slowly. For I began to see that
to grow more like this Son of God, by ever so little steps
—patient, loving, obedient—was joy, and conquest, and
wealth, and royalty; and that this was a kind of shaping
that came not as a child's Snow image, by easy mould-
ing of soft hands, but as with iron and gold, by fiery
fusing and much hammering. Wherefore, it was no won-
JOAN OF ARC. 51
der that so much of the world should be more like a
forge than a hall of feasting.
Also, the child led me back again, I scarce know how,
to religion, which I had grown to hate as the hollowest
of all the hollownesses of the false and hollow world;
the cruelest deception, because breaking the highest
promise.
To her it was not hollow. To her the story of the
one True Life linked itself to the crucifix, to her
mother's lessons of Creed and Paternoster, and Sacra-
ment and Altar.
She made me say the Our Father again morning and
night as when I was a child, taking it for granted I had
never left it out. And she made me come to Mass again
with her on Sunday, if only to hear the praises of the
Agnus Dei, who takes away the sins of the world—the
Lamb of God of whom my Book spoke, by the old river,
and on the throne of God.
And more, she made me and old Father Adam friends;
me who had grown to hate the priests and the friars like
poison—not without reason; for I found that he and I,
and others, perchance many of his order, had been all
the time soldiers in one army, though often fighting in
the dark against each other.
Our first acquaintance came about on this wise.
Our little lady expected me to receive the Sacrament
at Easter. It was many years since I had. There had
been much angry discussion amongst us as to how the
body and blood of the Lord could or did nourish, or
52 JOAN OF ARO.
whether heavenly treasures could come unsullied through
corrupt human hands; whether the wicked unabsolved
priest could absolve; whether unholy hands could con-
secrate.
But of all this I could not speak to the child. I
remember once stammering an excuse that I did not
like to do what I did not understand. But the dark
wistful eyes looked wonderingly into mine as she
Said—
“It is not you, who have to do it, is it 2 I thought
God did it all, and gave it all. If He understands and
knows how, is not that enough 2 I thought we had
only to believe and receive.”
And the child's words went deep, and I had to go,
as she said.
Should I starve myself from bread, because wise men
could not agree how the seed grew into the ear, or be-
cause the miller was not honest ?
Accordingly I went to Father Adam to receive absolu-
tion. I suppose my manner was proud and sullen
enough, for the old man said—
“Have you absolved me 3’
I thought he was mocking, and answered angrily—
“Little enough do the parsons and friars care what
the flock has to say of them.”
“But I am one who do care,” he replied quite seri-
ously and gently. “I mean what I say. You have
been at Mass to-day. Have you absolved me !”
And then he read to me out of his book, and showed
JOAN OF ARO. 53
to me how every day, before the people confess to the
priest, the priest confesses to the people and says, “I
confess to you, my brothers, that I have sinned much by
thought, word, and deed; by my fault, by my fault, by
my very great fault ; and I beseech you, my brethren,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.” “And you,”
said Father Adam, “by the mouth of the child or man
who answers, say, ‘May the Almighty God have mercy
On you, and, having forgiven your sins, lead you to ever-
lasting life.' Every day I have been saying this to you,
and you to me.”
“It is a pity it was in Latin,” I said.
“Perhaps it is,” he replied. “The words were written
hundreds of years before there was anything but Latin
to say it in. But henceforth say it in English, brother,
for me. You will know when I ask you by my striking
my hand on my breast.”
There could be no suspicion that he was jesting now ;
the dry, quiet voice had broken down, tears were run-
ning over the old withered face.
“It is a pity it is all in Latin,” I murmured. “How
was I to know 2 ”
“Forgive us, brother, forgive me,” he said, “let us all
forgive each other, priest and layman, prince and peasant.
There is much to forgive.” And then restraining him-
self, and his voice gathering strength and firmness as he
spoke, he said, “Only, do not think no one ever wanted
to set the wrongs of the world right before you.” And
then he told me how every monastery, or at least every
54 JOAN OF ARO.
ancient one, however it might now seem a mere society
of serf-holders and landowners, feasting on the toil of
others, had begun in an apostolic twelve of hard-working
men, living on the toil of their own hands, renouncing
the joys of the world for joy in God, dwelling as labour-
ing men among the labouring, as poor among the poor,
ennobling toil for all, by joining it with priestly sacrifice.
And friar, he said, meant brother.
If the monks had meant to consecrate labour, the
friars had meant to glorify poverty, to glorify the lot of
the multitudes by making it the choice of the elect—
poverty and brotherhood. Poor as the poorest, to enrich
the poor with heavenly riches, and brothers of all men,
prince and peasant were to become among them alike
poor and alike brother.
“If the friars had kept to their first estate,” he said,
“the rich would have learned there is no title for Chris-
tian men, brethren of Christ, higher than brother: the
poor would have learned there is no lot higher than
labour. There would have been no peasant revolt, and
no Statute of Labourers, no Wat Tyler or Jack Straw.
The church would have gathered all the world into a
divinely equal brotherhood, and ordered all men in a
divinely differing kingdom.” And then with bitter
anguish he lamented things as they are.
“We live we live,” he said, “like the demoniac of
Gadara, among the tombs. It is an age of tombs, and a
world of tombs. The monasteries are whited sepulchres;
the friaries are open graves; the Crusades are robberies.
JOAN OF ARC. 55
No man now builds great churches; no man sings great
songs, or does great deeds. We can but copy and con-
clude, and spoil. Not this or that religious foundation
only—all Christendom is a tomb.”
“But Christ is risen l’ I said, “and we pray, Thy
kingdom come. Is He then a king like Arthur in the
legends, slumbering in some far-off valley 2 His king-
dom broken up, and His work ruined ? Is that the
end ?”
“That is not the end,” he replied. “One earthquake
and one angel rolled the stone from His Holy Sepulchre.
The heavens shall be moved, and shall roll up as a scroll,
when the stone is rolled away from this unholy sepul-
chre in which we live.”
“What shall we do then 2° I said. “Hate the world 2
Lie down and die 2 °
“Nay,” Father Adam replied; “love the world the
Lord loved, and rise up and live, and serve and succour
every shipwrecked wretch we find. Only, brother, never
think again you were the first to try and set the wrongs
of the world right, or that you will be the last ; and
remember to pray God to forgive w8, and me.”
So I went and received the blessed Sacrament, and
forgave, and prayed to be forgiven.
And meantime, in one far-off valley, though we knew
it not, the King was filling one peasant child with His
love, and moulding her into His likeness, and training
her to help forward His kingdom among men.
TV.
33ertibal’s Storp.
sºT was a terrible day when our father was
S}/º: E: brought home from the chase, bleeding and
Kºś stunned, and all the household gathered wail-
ing around him, thinking him Smitten to death, if not
dead.
From the blow on the head, which made him uncon-
scious, he soon recovered; but his horse, in leaping the
fence over which he fell, had fallen on him, and his
thigh was broken, and there were no leeches with us
skilful enough to set the broken bone fairly, and from
the first he said he should not live, and but for his sins
and his children, was content to die.
“To you, my children,” he said, “the loss may be
gain. My sister Griselda and Sir Richard will be better
friends for lads than I. And as to my sins, they would
scarce have grown less by living.”
From the time he was stricken, my father—the father
of our mother's days—seemed to come back to us. It
seemed as if that blow smote away a mask of ice which had
been forming over him, and his true self came out again.

JOAN OF ARO. 57
He spoke little of himself, unless indeed in shrift to
Father Adam ; and Father Adam said never man made
a clearer shrift with a more broken heart.
He spoke much of our mother. He had his couch
moved where he could see her crucifix, and the picture,
and the far-off line of the sea.
“They wanted me to say it was good she should be
taken away,” he said, “and I never would or could.
She was taken from me by heaven in judgment, not in
mercy. But this is in mercy, the severe mercy of love,
and I am content. For, ever since she left, I have been
like a lost spirit in hell—in fires that were destroying,
destroying not the evil in me, but me. And any fire
would be sunshine compared with that.”
And so he seemed to have a kind of pleasure in his
pains, in the torture of the broken bones and the rough
remedies. The hasty irritability which had terrified us
since our mother's death passed away. His old Smile
came back. He made little jests about his pains, and
the blunders of the bewildered leech, and his boys'
awkward nursing, and was pleased with all we did, and
never murmured, and seemed to rest on his bed of pain
as on a couch of roses.
Which Father Adam said (knowing his shrift) was
quite natural.
For it meant simply that his whole being had ceased
to fight against the Almighty, and had sunk down to
rest on the will of God.
Wherefore, in looking back on those dying hours of
58 JO A.N OF A RO.
our father, we look back on them, not as on a time of
darkness and confusion, but of returning life and peace,
as of his coming back to us for a while to cheer and
strengthen us, before he left us on a long and not
sorrowful journey.
And the last night, before his mind began to wander,
he called me to him and said, unconsciously almost
echoing her words—
“Percival, take care of them.”
And then he added words of fond father's pride, as if
he felt that I had, more than anything, continued to
him our mother's presence upon earth, and kept the gate
open for him to come back, as now he said he had.
I could not see how. I had blundered in so many
ways, and had feared I was often like a feeble jet of cold
water, rather kindling up the fires I could not check.
But he said it was not so. He said I had kept the
sense of what she loved and hated ever before his
reluctant eyes, so that when the mighty hand of God
Smote away the evil, he was left, not in a blank horror of
great darkness, but with her dear face and the holy
thorn-crowned Face shining on him, and the hope of
being made One day, at any cost, like her and like Him.
For saying nothing, for doing so little, only for loving
and trying, God, who giveth freely, gave this imperishable
joy to me!
Not quite, then, had he suffered me to fail or betray
her last behest And so it was sealed to me once more
from Sacred dying lips.
JOA N OF AFC. 59
Not to be taken care of, to take care; not to be
ministered wnto, but to minister. And then our father
died, and we passed on to other stages.
It was our father's will that we should leave his castle
and go to live with his sister Griselda and her husband,
Sir Richard de Danescombe, in the neighbouring county.
The partings were hard to me, having in my soul so
much of the slow nature of plants and vegetating creatures
that take root, and strike down deep, and cannot be up-
rooted from anything without being torn in their living
fibres. And yet the castle had to me been a place of
much combat and pain.
Whereas to Owen, having more of the bird that
migrates than of the plant that roots, in him, although
the castle had been to him a place of delight and triumph,
hero as he was of the chase and the coast, the parting
seemed nothing to the hope of striking into the new
fields of adventure and pleasure and companionship.
He met the tears and lamentations of those who
grieved to lose him, not with coldness and apathy, but
with an overpowering sunshine of promise and hope, as
if he would carry them with him, going on a quest
whence, in some unexplained way, he would come back
to enrich and glorify them all; whereas Elaine, being a
girl, could only weep, leaving a fragment of her heart
with the familiar people, and even things; and I, being
a boy, and not choosing to weep, could only be silent or
give some mute sign of regret and affection, like a dumb
beast.
60 JOAN OF ARO.
We two went as exiles from all the world we loved
and knew ; Owen as a conqueror promising new king-
doms, and a discoverer looking for new worlds.
And yet I think our grief cheered those we parted
from more than Owen's promises.
W.
(Blaime's Storp.
sº T was indeed a new world we went to when
ºf we left the castle for the manor, though a
ºš day's riding brought us to it. For the first
time we saw towns, fair manors, and lordly abbeys.
And in seeing this new world it seemed as if for the
first time I learned to see the old.
The places familiar to us from childhood seem scarcely
known to us, any more than our own faces, until we see
them in the mirror of contrast.
It seemed coming into another age as well as into
another world. The very language of the common
people was different. Most on our coast spoke a tongue
akin to the Welsh ; the wild fishers' chants were the
music of another race.
Owen was delighted with everything. It was coming
from a barbarous land, he said, to see the large, well-
caparisoned horses, instead of our wild mountain ponies,
the gay dresses of the burghers, the games they played
at. Whilst, on the other hand, we two young bar-
barians, Percival and I, deemed it a point of loyalty

62 JOAN OF ARO.
to prefer the old familiar things and ways and men
to the new.
I remember, as we rode through Abbot's Weir, seeing
the men of the town, old and young, playing on the
green at a game with balls; and Owen stopped and
watched eagerly, and my uncle's ancient serving-man
who guided us said—
“You do not play that in your country 2”
And Percival made answer—
“No ; in our country we have winds and waves to
play with, and do not need toys. And if men need
play, they wrestle with each other.”
“Then what do the boys play at 2" said the old man,
somewhat nettled.
“The boys learn to be men,” said Percival.
At which the old servant smiled and said—
“Learn as fast as thou canst, my master; but thou
hast also to grow.”
Whereupon Percival, fearing he had spoken boastingly,
and as becomes not youth, with that rare smile of his
which is worth more than all the lavish Smiles on gay
faces, made answer—
“Thou wilt help us to learn, and God will help us to
grow.”
Such a strange weight of care lay on Percival in those
early days
We must have been strange, grave children in those
days, we two. Percival had borne such a load of care
since our mother died, and he began to stand between
JOA N OF ARO. 63
us and the world. And I had heard so much of the
wrongs of the common people from Peter, and so much of
the failure and death of good things and men from him
and Father Adam, who had taught me two hymns in
Latin which he said were the dirges of the world; and I
myself had also known so terribly near what death and
dirges meant, that it seemed to me we were living on
the side of one of those burning mountains the Crusaders
told of ; as if life were behind us, and a world melting
into ashes in the Day of Wrath before us, and we living
in a world of tombs between the two.
“Dies irae, dies illa, ’’ lay before us; the evil world in
these latest days around us. The King indeed was
living, but the Kingdom was broken and the world
dying.
But when we came to Danescombe Manor all these
questionings and wonderings for the time vanished from
IQ.62.
Danescombe was a fair and pleasant manor-house
little more than a century old. There were wainscotted
chambers in it, with Oaken sides, and floors that shone
like a mirror. And inside I had to sit still under the
rule of my aunt Griselda, and broider and spin among
her maidens with our sweet cousin Cecilie. And Outside
the boys had to follow my uncle and be trained in all
knightly exercises, and to ride daily to the Benedictine
abbey at Abbot's Weir to learn Latin and music; and we
all were chidden and snibben like any other lads and
lasses, and had no leisure for thinking about the Ages.
64 JO AN OF ARO.
And Cecilie and I had our bed-chamber, with two
little beds covered with snow-white linen, fragrant from
being folded in lavender. And roses and jessamine grew
outside our two small windows and looked in.
And when once I told Cecilie about this dreadful
thought of our living in a world of tombs, she laughed,
and said—
“I do not, nor do the swallows, or the thrushes. Is
not there a May every year for every one 2 And for
me it seems always, always May; and now I have you
three to sing with, the world seems running over with
life, like the little spring under our windows, where the
birds come to drink. The world is so glad, and all the
fair things in it are so dear and near, I used to long just
to take it all to my heart, close, close. I used, so foolish
was I, to kneel down and kiss the snow-drops and the
lilies, though I scarcely needed to stoop to the dear
Queen lilies. And I used to throw my arms around the
great, rough old trees and kiss them ; they made such
merriment with their baby leaves, and I had such a
quantity of love to give. But now I have you to hug
and kiss; you, you,” she said, “dear, grave Princess
Elaine, and the trees and flowers will not be jealous: for
they knew all the time what I wanted, and they are
laughing and whispering to each other all day, ‘We are
so glad our little lady has found her sister | We are
glad we are glad l’”
And so, for the first time since our mother's death, I
became altogether a child.
JOAN OF A RO. 65
And the Ages and the Nations went and stood afar
off, while I clasped the present moment and Cecilie, and
loved.
The present moment, and God.
For Cecilie never seemed to feel I was different
from other children. She wrapped me round in such
folds of love, and she expected me to laugh and be
glad, as she was ; and I loved her and was glad without
trying.
Her beauty was sunshine to me, and seemed some-
thing of my own.
And I also had one treasure to give Cecilie which was
new to her. She had a book, and could read, and taught
me; an English book just like herself, all life, and open
air, and joy, and movement, and May; the book of the
Canterbury Pilgrims, by Chaucer. And I had a Book,
though I had never seen it and could not read, written
on my mind by Peter's telling, a Book also of the fields
and the open air, about stars, and lilies, and boats, and
wild winds, and seas made quiet as tame lambs by the
Voice they knew.
And dark and sorrowful as were many of the stories
in my Book, they did not make us sad. They were
only dark as winter and night, and seeds buried in the
earth, are dark. The summer and the day and the har-
vest were only hidden in that winter and night and
SOTI’OW.
For the Sun of that Story had really risen, we knew,
never more to set, and was shining on us, in flowers, and
(611) 5
66 JOAN OF ARC.
trees, and mornings, and stars, and home, and father,
and mother, and brothers, and everything that made
us glad.
And I often felt as if underneath all the mirth of her
Chaucer there was a sigh; and underneath all the sad-
ness of my Book a song.
VI.
33ertibal's Storp.
fºLS, it was a new world and a new life we came
§§§ into at Danescombe; to me, perhaps, more
tº than to any one.
The weight of care dropped off from me. I had to
be a boy among boys, to learn, to obey, to submit, to be
ruled, and for the first time since my mother's death I
felt what it was to be young, almost what it was to live.
For I had grown scarcely to have a life of my own, so
hard had that charge of caring for the others proved as a
yoke on my neck.
And light indeed was the yoke of obedience compared
with that yoke of care.
Was this a step upward 2
Perhaps not ; but a needful downward step into the
common paths on the way upward it certainly was.
And, for ever, I thank God for those few following
natural years which made me as other men.
I can think of them now with calm and joy, in the
far-off past, and with the light of the near future of the
new youth upon them.

68 JO AN OF A RC.
For looking back, even more than I knew at the time,
I see how one thought, one presence, one hope filled
them, and made them one May and spring-tide to me.
That presence was Cecilie, our cousin Cecilie.
And to have loved such a being as she was and for
ever is, to have seen her in all her grace and truth as
only love can see, is a gift which will enrich the heart
for ever. --
I can scarcely think of her apart from the world she
made new to me, for the vision and the music of her
presence are blended with everything.
Partly because she did not dwell apart in a regal
separation from common life, waited on and adored, like
the damsels in the Arthur legends, but stirred about the
house and gardens, bringing freshness and beauty every-
where; not by magic, but by quiet touches of dainty
fingers, as busy as a wren about her nest; not as a star,
on high, apart, -as a pervading Sunbeam everywhere
she shines to me.
The old manor was no fairy palace, though at first it
seemed so to us. The linen of the household was not
spun, or woven, or washed by magic; nor was it by a
word that the currants turned into conserves, or the flour
into bread, or the venison into pasties. The maids had
to be shown their work by Aunt Griselda, and helped in
it by Cecilie.
And thus she comes back to me not only dreaming
over her Chaucer or singing to her lute: though also
thus I see her, with parted lips and that far-off look in
JO.A.N OF A RO. 69
her eyes, sitting beside Elaine, silent, with the story of
fair Constance or of Saint Cecilie before them, a slight
flush - on her face, gazing into her lovely, pure dream-
world, on the turf under the old thorn they loved, its
white blossoms falling on her green kirtle, and Elaine
gazing on her face as if all the beauty of all dreams were
gathered there—as it was, for Elaine and me.
And then I hear the Angelus bell from the little
chapel in the hollow, and I see her kneel with downcast
eyelids and bowed head, veiled in the waves of her soft
brown hair.
And then again I see her rise and sit beside Elaine.
and make Elaine tell her stories from the Story which
is no dream.
And almost I can read the words, as I watch Cecilie's
face. The listener's lips quiver now and then as some-
thing moves her, and then close as with deep and holy
purpose, the eyes no more vague with pure and delicious
dreams, but deep and fixed, as if with the vision of the
Face which, as I look on her, I almost seem to see, feel-
ing what she sees. -
But for the most part I think of her in movement,
making a pastime among the maidens of the work she
shared, telling them stories as she moved to and fro with
her distaff, or teaching them choruses to her songs;
humming like a happy bee as she gathered herbs in the
garden or spread them to dry in the parlour-chamber.
And so, like all the beauty of the natural things she
lived among, she came into my heart, and took possession,
70' JOAN OF ARC.
and reigned. At first, as a sister, unsuspected and wel-
comed as a child. She was scarce sixteen, a year older
than Elaine, a year younger than Owen, and three years
younger than I.
It grew worth while to excel in all manly exercises
and games, not so much to please as to protect her.
To guard her from word or look that could grieve her
became second nature. q
So she came into my heart, as a helpless child, and
before I was aware, she was reigning as a queen.
I never had a purpose in life but her quiet pleasure
in it was the reward.
She was so easy and yet so hard to please; pleased with
the least gift of the humblest, yet never to be pleased,
in herself, or in any, but with their best.
The Smallest act of habitual service from a servant
never became a dull matter of course to her. The
inspiration of her thanks and her smile pervaded all the
common household toil, not from policy, but because she
always felt herself naturally every one's servant, and
every service to her as a free gift.
And yet, for a work to please her, to give her plea-
Sure, it must be as near perfection as possible. Every
blundering step upward won her sympathy; but to
satisfy her you must scale the height.
And so, unconsciously, she drew us on, in horseman-
ship, in feats of arms, even in clothes, and carriage, and
tones, and words; not so much that she might be pleased
With us, as that we might give her pleasure.
JO A.N OF A RO. 71
At least, so it was with me.
With Owen she found little fault, and of all the little
circle he seemed to care least about her pleasure. Graceful
and courteous he was by nature, with an instinct for
finding out what pleased every one in little things. But
with Cecilie it seemed that he was more intent on
demanding than on pleasing or serving her.
Once I remember bringing home antlers of the red
deer as a trophy of the chase to her. She received the
gift graciously, as always, but instantly her eyes glanced
past me to Owen.
“How could you let him be wounded ?” she said
indignantly.
His hand was bleeding, and darting into the house,
in a minute she returned with a soft kerchief, and bound
up his wound.
I felt rebuked. The old sacred charge, “Take care of
them all !” came back to me. Yet I was not grieved.
I thought she was only demanding that she should share
the care which was my sacred commission.
I never contemplated life or duty or delight except as
doubled and shared by her.
Then we went, by my uncle's will, Owen and I, to
complete our knightly training in a nobleman's house
not far away.
To me it was banishment, but to Owen the new life
was unmixed delight, and he took no pains to feign that
it was otherwise.
Yet when we parted, Cecilie gave me a cousinly kiss
72 JOAN OF ARG.
and a smile, and seemed not to know how hard it was
to me to keep back tears. But when she parted from
Owen, he smiled, even laughed, and looked back to her
with a gay gesture; yet when I looked back she had
turned pale and the tears filled her eyes. w
Owen rode gaily on, humming a French lay, but an
irresistible impulse drew me back to her.
And with quivering lips she only said—
“Take care of him.”
Still I thought she meant to make my mother's words
her own, and was only saying—
“We will take care of him together, thou and I; of
Owen, and Elaine, and every one around us whom we
can serve and succour, together, thou and I.”
We were away many months, and I learned to write
like a clerk to send her messages, to herself, or through
Elaine.
And Elaine said she watched for these words and
treasured them and read them over and over
It was true they were mostly about Owen, and the
care I thought she was sharing with me. And of
course I only told her the good about him, the charm
he had for every one, from the lady of the castle to the
little maid at the porter's lodge. I did not tell her of
the Orphan niece of the chatelaine, gentle and grave and
Sweet, to whom he could not help devoting himself with
that devotion of the moment which had such a perilous
charm for such as did not know the moment before.
How could he help it if all his heart went into his
JO.A.N OF APO. 73
eyes, those southern eyes of our mother's, with their
long lashes and their intensity, and their sudden flashes
as from fire-depths within Ż
Nor did I tell her how I saw the young maiden grow
pale and wan when another damsel, bright as morning
and gay as a French chanson, drew Owen away into her
world of laughter and song and life.
Taking care of Owen was not such an easy task, but
taking care of the wounded in his tournaments was
certainly beyond any mortal power.
But when we came home again, the veil had soon
to be torn from my heart.
Me she welcomed as a comrade who shared a thou-
sand interests with her. She remembered every detail
of the life we had been leading, had forgotten no hint
or syllable of my letters. She took me to see all her
cherished treasures: the hare I had tamed for her, the
birds I had caught for her, the garden we had dug
together, the Chaucer we had read together. º
And the great bloodhound I had trained for her had
become her constant companion and guide.
And Owen brought her nothing, and seemed even to
have forgotten the familiar ways and places; and they
seemed to have little to say to each other, and scarcely
evèn looked at each other.
It was the family purpose that we two should wed,
and it was my uncle's determination that Owen and I
should go for a while to the French wars, to see a little
74 JO AN OF ARC.
of the real game, he said, before we settled into our
quiet corner of the world, to take the place of the elders,
I began to think the day was coming when I might
speak to Cecilie of this, if further speech were needed.
And at last I became sure the moment had come.
It was a fair evening in early spring, the hour she
was wont to spend with Elaine, after the work of the
day (for hers were working days), under the thicket of
old thorns on the slope.
The sunset lingered there, and the leaves were already
full enough to make a shelter. Elaine was still busy at
some task of my aunt's, but she told me she thought
Cecilie was waiting for her under the thorn thicket.
I went with a beating heart, certainly, yet with a
joyous calm ; more as if I were going to the sacrament
of marriage, the perpetual Sacrament she was, I trusted,
to make all common life to me.
There were voices under the thorns as I drew near,
low and clear.
One was Cecilie's.
“I will do what my father and mother will, and I
will never grieve him, if my heart were to break.”
“But he only cares for you as he cares for me and
for Elaine, and for all of us. It is his charge from my
mother and my father. He was always as good as a
priest. He does not seek anything or any one for himself.”
“You think so?” she said, and a joyous accent of con-
viction came into her voice. “Yes, it must be so
Truest brother and truest friend | *
JOAN OF A RO. 75
“True as heaven l’’ was the reply, “and wanting
nothing. But I am Selfish and poor, and want thee.
And none will rejoice over us more than Percival.”
“If I could be quite sure l’ she said.
“We will be quite sure to-morrow, my beloved,” he
said, “for I will tell him.”
“Not a word,” she said, “until I give thee leave.”
And then, numb and deaf and blind, I turned away,
and heard no more.
“Traitor l’ I thought. “He knew he must have
known. Shall I yield her to a heart whose love is as a
baby's fancy compared with mine ! I who could and
would shield her from all the world !”
But before I reached the little garden at the bottom
of the slope, Cecilie's little flower-border by the garden
of herbs, the irrevocable certainty became clear to me.
“She loves him; she is his.” And then, as in my
mother's voice, the old charge, “Take care of Owen.”
My mother would be satisfied for him, I thought. “For
me it is over; life is over. All is over but the charge
from which I should never have strayed. And Cecilie
shall never know.” ---
As I crossed the garden, the light footsteps I should
have known in my sleep, in madness, in death, if they
had trodden on my grave, came along the path to me,
and the soft hand was laid on my arm.
“Percival,” she said, “Owen has been saying some-
thing to me, and you are our—my best friend.”
And, thank God, I had courage to look down straight
76 JOANT OF ARO.
into the frank, childlike eyes, and to take her hands, and
lay them for a moment. On my lips and Say—
“Sister Cecilie, you and Owen shall always, so help
me God, find me your true brother and friend.”
We said no more, only by a sudden movement she
took my two hands and pressed them on her cheek, and
said, with a ring of joy and gratitude in her voice,
always to me like a lark's Song—
“Brother | Yes, really brother; my very own
brother. That doubles the happiness.”
And from that day to this she never guessed. Thank
God she has never guessed.
And so the anguish was all entirely my own, and I
was able to be a true brother to them.
My uncle made some demur. He said he had thought
Cecilie and me made for each other. Also he did not
See how the younger son would fit in as well for the
inheritance.
I could make no promises. For one reason, I dared
not tell the truth, that my life secured the whole inheri-
tance to them as much as that of a vowed priest; and,
for another, I thought Jacob might take better care of
the birthright for Esau, than Esau for himself.
Yet I said enough to make the old man easy. And
my aunt made no difficulty; she said she had liever
it had been me, but she had read her daughter's heart.
And thus Owen and Cecilie solemnly pledged their
troth, and we went to the French wars with a small
band of retainers, and Peter the Wright as armourer,
JO AN OF ARC. 77
reluctant enough to go, and declaring he went only to
save English lives, not to slay French peasants.
One thing, I remember, woke me up with a pang of
remorse before we left, and that was the pale, careworn
face of our little sister Elaine.
The week before we left I found her weeping alone
in the chapel by the river. She, usually so patient,
sobbed like an unreasonable child.
“Brother brother Percival l’ she cried. “Could not
the good God take my life? What is life without thee?”
And looking, I saw that the sorrow in her face was
not as the sudden overflow of a tempest, but as the
furrows worn by a winter's rains. “Brother,” she said,
“you will care for every one but yourself, and they will
let you die. And in all the world there is no one like
you, for me or for any one, if they only knew it as I
know—as I know.” And she sobbed passionately. And
I, buried in my own loss—God forgive me !—did not
guess that she, having guessed it, was grieving, not for
her sorrow, but for mine.
And I remember a fearful feeling of perverse recoil
from her affection seized me, like a demoniacal possession,
as if she had in some dim, half-conscious way felt my
secret, felt that the heart which had gone so wholly to
Cecilie was rejected and thrown back again on itself,
and might be hers again, hers more than ever, to bind
up and solace. Poor, solitary child, whose beauty and
whose sorrow it was that she must always be as a
child!
78 JOAN OF ARO.
And, with the irritable perversity of new grief, I re-
coiled from imagining that she imagined she or any one
could ever fill the blank or heal the wound.
I should have loved Elaine and every one a hundred-
fold more if Cecilie had loved me. The few scattered
embers of that hearth-fire had been warmer than the
whole fire could ever be now. It was my heart itself,
not a dream of delight, that had died in losing her.
And the child’s tenderness was a jar and a pain to me,
until I saw that the poor crumbs I had left for her
made her glad; and then the timid, silent affection,
almost like a dog's, crept slowly into my heart and shed
a little autumnal warmth there.
And the joy of giving happiness woke once more, and
I began to live again; and I promised her, when we went
to the wars, to try hard to live, which I had not hitherto
meant.
But as I promised it, I did mean it, and almost began
to wish it once more. For else, what would the poor
little sister do 2
So the battle was won; but the land was not yet
conquered.
I had accepted my fate and resigned my life.
I was driven back into my place, to take care of the
rest.
I made no vows, but I knew as well as if I had
spoken them that love and the joy of marriage were for
ever behind me. Behind me, not below me. I never
deluded myself with that dream. Above all I could
JOAN OF A RC. 79
vow or dream would have been that double life of love
and care, feeding the sacred flocks together.
Above all I could aspire to, but also surely as far
above the life Owen could give her.
If she had rejected him, he would have solaced him-
self so easily, would have entered so gaily, without a
pang, into my joy, would have won, and perhaps broken,
so many hearts, and at last been won by one whom he
(with full conviction) would have charmed into the
persuasion she was the first he had ever truly loved
And Cecilie, would the heart she had won be true to
her, true from its lightest surface ripple to its deepest
depths, with a constancy such as a heart like hers de-
served and needed ?
And if not, if such a dire possibility of change, so
probable, came to be, would it not be something for her
to have a heart that could not change to her, that would
find its bliss in binding up the wounds of hers ? Folly!
—folly and treachery even in the momentary thought !
Because her heart was of that unchangeable slow kind,
like mine,there was no solace, no second love possible to her.
And therefore the only way to serve Cecilie was to
serve Owen, to love and guard and watch over him, and
help him to be his best, to be the Owen she dreamed
and loved, who must be the true, possible Owen, since she
so loved him, for she was too true to love anything but
truth; and therefore her dream of him was the truth, a
divine dream, a vision of the Owen who was to be—
whom, so help me God, I would help him to be.
VII.
33ertibal’s Storp (lontinueb.
fºLND so we went forth, Owen and I, and our
little band of retainers, men-at-arms, and
ºš archers, to join the armies of England, to
ell the tide which for nearly a hundred years had
been dashing on the shores of France.
It is something to be swept out from our little rills
and our rivers into such a tide, to feel the thrill of
national life, even though it be through the shock of
encounter with a foe.
SW
We did not question much for whom or what we
fought. We went as Englishmen against the French.
Three centuries before, a few thousand Frenchmen from
Normandy had conquered England. We went back to
conquer France, partly as descendants of Normans and
Angevins, to possess our fathers’ lands, partly as descend-
ants of the Saxons, to avenge our fathers’ wrongs; but
chiefly, as a matter of course, because England was at
war with France, because our great king Henry the
Fifth, a few years since, dying in the full flood of

JOAN OF ARO. 81
conquest, had left on England a necessity of continuing
his victories.
To fight the French was as natural and necessary to
us as to fight the weeds that struggled with our crops,
the winds that battled with our ships; as to fight
heresy or rebellion, or the world, the flesh, and the
devil, or any foe which endangered our life.
We went to mass before we sailed; we went to mass
the first possible moment after we landed. We were as
sure we were fighting with God on our side as if we
had been defending Cecilie and Elaine from pirates in
the old castle by the Western sea.
And, moreover, had not the God of Battles plainly
declared Himself on our side 2
Since the great battle of Agincourt, where our brave
archers, under Henry the King, had broken down the
chivalry of France, there had been the great battle of
Werneuil, and countless other small skirmishes, so that the
terror of us was on all the land, and ten thousand would
flee at the rebuke of one. Besides, was not France our
own 2 our dead king's, by right of conquest and marriage
with Katharine? our child-king's by right of inheritance?
We were but deliverers (of France herself, if she
could see it); deliverers from weak and wicked princes
and queens, who assassinated each other, and left the
people to perish.
What indeed was France but a name One portion
of it was Burgundian; more than half was already
English: Normandy, and Paris, and Guienne, and Aqui-
(611) 6 *
82 JOAN OF ARC.
taine. A few more blows, and the work would be done,
and that distracted land would be ruled from West-
minster.
We landed in Normandy full of hope and courage.
It was meet we should have our share in our country's
conflict.
And yet a misgiving came on me for a moment the
first day we landed. We were marching through a
ruined village. There was silence in the fields, as if it
had been Sunday and all the people at mass; but the
little church was burned, and the cottages black and
charred, and we saw no one but a little boy drawing
water at the village well.
And he tried to fly, but was detained by our thirsty
men, and made to fill his pitcher again and again.
He answered nothing to their rough but not unkindly
jests, only stared, with eyes starting out of his head
with terror.
But when I said a few words to him in French the
strained features relaxed, and he burst into tears and
caught hold of my clothes and entreated me to save
him, in my mother's tongue, in accents which I had
heard last from her lips.
While the men were halting for a brief rest, I went
off with the little lad and saw him safe to a little
wooded hollow, quiet and pleasant, like the valley of
Danescombe. And there I saw him welcomed and em-
braced and wept over by an old man and two frightened
women, who took him into the shelter of a little half-
JOA:N OF ARC. 83
burned shed, which was all that remained of a large
range of farm-buildings.
One tame old goat, the only remnant of the flocks
and herds, was wandering about the ruins, and ran
helplessly up to me, like a creature used to be caressed.
It was nothing compared to the horrors we saw day
by day afterwards, but those were in the heat of combat,
when our blood was up, and Once more it became a duel
between England and France; and that little lad, the
old man, the frightened women, the solitary goat, broke
up the picture from nations into individual men and
women and little children of the same flesh and blood
with ourselves.
And then, for me, there was the instinctive tenderness
for the old mother-tongue.
It was a proud thing, nevertheless, to ride through
the country whence the old conquerors had come, as
conquerors and possessors, in our turn.
The cities were all ours, at all events, and English
watchwords opened us all the gates and found us
welcome in every garrisoned place.
Stately old cities, with churches like our own, built,
many of them, by our forefathers.
We felt at home in these. Yet in truth we could not
stir outside them without feeling we were in a land of
strangers and foes, and that to us the cities were mere
camps.
When the whole was ours, I thought, no doubt it
would be different. Then the French would submit as
84 JO AN OF ARO.
we had submitted, and we should be one nation. I said
so one day to Peter the Wright, but he was very grim
and not very hopeful.
“One nation,” said he, “like the English ! A nation
of whom ? Where are those old Normans and their
language now 2 We are all English. Shall the end of
all this waste of English blood be that we become
Frenchmen, and talk through Our noses, and Scream at
the top of our voices, like these poor ignorant creatures
here 2 And meantime, what will England be 2"
“The same as now,” he added mournfully, answering
himself. “Perhaps only the same as now. Yow see
English and French everywhere, young master. Some
of us see peasant and noble everywhere, and everywhere
the nobles reaping the spoils and the peasants shedding
their blood. For the nobles, jousts and feastings,
ransoms taken or given. For the peasants, toil and
sweat, and blood and fire, and no ransom and no quarter,
and no pay. Little difference between France and
England for us, little difference between peace and war.
In peace we till your lands with the sweat of our brow ;
in war we feed your lands with our unheeded blood.
But it cries to God from the dust,” he concluded, “it
cries to God!”
Thus it happened that many a misgiving came to me.
It was so clear, moreover, that most of the men of
gentle blood, such as ourselves, had come, not for Eng-
land or for the King, but for plunder and for pelf.
Many a time the fruits of a battle won with precious
JOAN OF ARO. 85
life-blood were lost, because the victors chose to disperse
for plunder, sacking towns, or lading themselves with
the poor treasures of the peasants—“murdered peasants,”
as Peter called them. It was hard to answer him.
But the war went on till scarce one province was left
to the weak Dauphin, amusing himself all the while, we
heard, among his courtiers in the Loire country, near
Bourges.
If only this foolish France would wake and see the
facts, and let us and our king have our rights, it might
soon be over, I tried to think, and she at least be better
ruled than now !
So the autumn and winter passed. Owen and I had
won our spurs; and he at least was torn asunder by no
scruples.
He went into battle as gay as if he rode to a tourna-
ment, and seemed to care as little about peril or death,
or slaying, as if it had been a chase of wild boars by
Tintagel.
It was fencing with a meaning, gambling for the
highest stakes of life and death ; it was a chase of the
noblest game man can hunt.
In the battle itself, it was the same with me ; and
besides, there was always Owen to stand by, and many
a time to rescue from some desperate peril. And between
Owen and a thousand Frenchmen, of course there was
no choice for me. There is, moreover, a fearful joy in
the battle-field. The highest and the deepest, as well as
the lowest and worst, are stirred within us. We were
86 JOAN OF ARC.
meant to be warriors, if only it could be in the great
knightly warfare for all the weak against all wrongs.
And surely, I thought, this war must be drawing to
its close. The land could scarce bear much more wasting
and depopulating.
Many of our marches lay through deserts, deserts
which a few months before had been fruitful fields. We
had to bring our food from afar, through the wasted
corn-fields, and the meadows stripped of cattle, and the
vineyards burned black.
And at length it seemed as if there were but one
more stronghold to overcome.
Only Orleans ! Only let Orleans be ours, and all was
ours. The son of the French princess would be crowned
at Rheims, the court of the Dauphin (so-called) would
vanish like the spell-bound hall of idle enchantments it
was, the war would be over, and France and England
free.
Already our little besieging army of ten thousand
were keeping the besieged within the walls of the city.
Our forts and bastilles were encircling it. Already, of
the three Furies whom Henry the Fifth called the three
hand-maidens of war—fire, blood, and famine—famine,
which he called the meekest, was threatening the
citizens.
Already the citizens themselves had levelled the
pleasant homesteads in the environs, laid waste the fields,
burned the orchards, made a defensive girdle of ruin
around thern.
JOAN OF A PC. 87
Who could say how soon, as at Rouen, the garrison
might be driven to turn the women and children and old
men outside the gates to perish under the walls between
the two armies 2
Willingly we obeyed the summons to join a company
of sixteen hundred men-at-arms and archers who were to
convoy some hundred carts of provisions (bread and
wine, and also salt herrings, for it was Lent) to supply
the besieging force.
We were but sixteen hundred. At a short distance
from Orleans an army of six thousand came against us,
Scots and Frenchmen. In those days (at least, so we
boasted) one Englishman never thought of fleeing from
four Frenchmen, and these traitor Scots only put us
more on our mettle.
Sir John Fastolfe made a fortification of his carts, and
filled up the openings with archers.
The Scots came bravely against us, and fell by hun-
dreds, Smitten by the old English aim which won us
Agincourt and so many a field.
Six hundred of them lay dead on the field around the
Waggons. th
And as they lay dead, we felt a kind of pride in the
old island which had brought forth these also.
And the Frenchmen fled. What were six thousand
of these to as many hundreds of ours ? And so the
“Battle of the Herrings” was won, and our countrymen
were provisioned, the little band of our countrymen.
For when we came, the ten thousand besiegers were
88 JOAN OF ARC.
reduced to three or four thousand; those of Burgundy
had withdrawn, and none but Englishmen remained
investing the place.
Better so, we thought in our confidence. The glory
would be all ours, and the prize.
For already the town, hopeless of aid from her dauphin,
who remained shut up in his castle at Chinon, had made
offers of surrender.
The end seemed indeed drawing nigh;-when, Sud-
denly, in the distance there began to be a low stirring of
rumours, as when, under the summer sky, the leaves
rustle before a thunderstorm.
A peasant-girl, a maid from the borders of Burgundy,
had come clad in armour to the dauphin, to him they
called the king, at Chinon, and had promised to save
Orleans from the English, and to have him crowned in
the great minster at Rheims.
We laughed in our forts and by the camp-fires over
the childish dream. There had indeed been some pro-
phecy, it was said, about France being lost by a wicked
woman (such as Isabel the queen) and saved by a pure
maiden.
Yet there was a secret terror underneath the laughter.
For that there were sorcerers and sorceresses, every one
knew.
Had not Eleanor Cobham, wife of the Duke of
Gloucester, been condemned and compelled to do public
penance in the streets of London for attempting magic
against the young king's life 2
JOAN OF A RC. 89
Whatever was doubtful (and the Lollards and the evil
lives of monk and friar had made much doubtful to
many of us), no one had any doubt of witchcraft. And
who could say what the devil (who must naturally hate
England) might attempt, in the last resort against Our
arms, now that all honest means had failed !
There was not much leisure, however, for listening to
rumours. The departure of the Burgundian allies had
left double work on our men in guarding the forts and
the bulwarks of earth which connected them. All the
roads had to be guarded night and day, and also the
river, lest provisions should be introduced into the city.
And, moreover, new forts and bulwarks were being
raised to make the encircling line of the siege complete.
And those already erected near the river had also to be
watched and defended against the rising of the water;
for it was late in April, the spring rains had flooded the
hill torrents at the sources of the river, and the Loire
swept down in full stream, undermining her banks.
Gentle and simple, noble and peasant, man-at-arms
and archer, had to work hard at the trenches and forts.
Skill of hand and strength of arm, and the eye of the
trained workman, such as Peter the Wright, came to be
counted at their true value. The poverty which had
compelled men to be powers themselves, and use their
own hands and eyes, many a time had the lead of the
riches which had enabled men to use the hands and eyes
of others. Pride had many a blow, and the brotherhood
of toil and peril brought us close to many we should
90 JOAN OF ARO.
have known but afar off in days of peace. For, surely,
something there is, in truth, in this terrible scourge of
war, which Smites nations into unity and compels prince
and peer to remember they are first of all men.
We were resting together after a hard day's toil, Peter
and Owen and I, when the first messenger came from
the Maid—from Joan of Arc, the Maid.
The bearer was not recognized by our commander as
an honourable envoy. He was received with insult,
kept prisoner, and threatened to be burned as a sorcerer
as soon as the decree could be obtained from the Uni-
versity of Paris.
But the words of the message speedily oozed out
among the men in the forts and bulwarks.
It was meant as a message of peace, and was quite
simply addressed to the King of England, the Earl of
Suffolk, and all the lords and commanders, from “the
Maid, sent hither from the King of Heaven.” “She
was ready to make peace,” said the letter, “if we, lords,
archers, and men-at-arms, would go home in God's name
to our own country. If we would not go, will we, mill
we, She would make us go, for she came from God, to
drive out all those who did harm to the kingdom of
France. If we did not obey, she and her men-at-arms
would Smite, and wound, and slay us, so that we should
See who had the right to France, the God of heaven or
we.” “Not we,” she said, “but Charles, the true heir,
held the kingdom from the King of Heaven, son of St.
Mary. She prayed us not to suffer ourselves to be de-
JOAN OF ARC. 9]
stroyed, but to listen and yield, and then to come in her
company: French and English Christians together, to
do the noblest deeds for Christendom that had ever yet
been dome.”
Together, all Christendom, all the Church, reconciled,
repentant, rejoicing, Father Adam, Peter the Wright,
the Popes, the Hussites, Lollards, friars, monks, princes,
peasants, all together, to victory in some glorious war !
The captains swore at her and called her evil names,
cowherd and harlot. The bearer of the message, as I
Said, was menaced with the stake.
But none the less the words of her message Smote on
many a conscience among us, kindling up the memory of
deeds such as paralyze men to think of ; setting many
thinking fearfully of the homes they had left, and the
homes they had ruined, and questioning why they had
COIſlē. *
There was much rough railing and jesting, as the men
gathered around the fires to cook their rations. But the
rudest words were not spoken by the commonalty.
“Cowherd, tavern-servant, peasant-wench,” might be
taunts from the lips of the nobles. They were no re-
proaches to the peasant-archers who had won so many
a field, and remembered their wives and daughters at
home.
And underneath all, like the rumble of an earthquake,
kept recurring the old prophecy, “A virgin from Bwr-
gundy shall trample the archers wºnder foot.”
I remember well one evening late in April, when
92 JOAN OF ARC.
Owen and Peter and I were keeping guard, while the
moon threw the long shadows of our forts, mingled with
those of the towers and churches of Orleans, across the
river and over the burnt-up and desolated plain
Owen had been scornfully echoing the scornful words
of the men of our rank.
“She speaks like a queen,” he said, “the peasant-
wench. But madness, they say, in women, commonly
takes the shape of vanity. No doubt she struts and
preens herself like poor crazy Guinevere of Boscastle,
who thought herself Queen Philippa, and made herself
crowns of crows' feathers. They say she rides well,
having learned by taking her master the innkeeper's
horses to water. A merry jest she must make in the
dauphin's court. But doubtless they are glad enough to
take the help of any mad woman who will make their
men fight. They say none of their own nobles believe
in her, only those of the baser sort.”
“Nothing new in that,” growled Peter, “for apostle or
prophet. And to me she seems more like a prophetess
than a queen; a good maid She is nothing but Joan
the Maid, quoth she, a poor, good peasant-maid sent with
a message from God to men. And not the first, Master
Owen, not the first.”
“A good maid ' " laughed Owen. “Nay, either a
crazy fool, or worse, a witch and a sorceress.”
“They do say the young French queen, and the
queen's mother, and all the noble ladies who have seen
her, declare her to be a good maid,” replied Peter stub-
JOAN OF ARO. 93
bornly, as if he had been defending the good name of
his own child. “And the priests and doctors say she
is a good Christian; and she will not have any light
woman in the army she leads. And on a pure maid and
a good Christian the devil has no hold.”
Owen turned fiercely on Peter.
“If she can bring mutiny and hesitation among us,”
he said, “ Christian or not, she will do the devil's work
well. She would not leave an Englishman in France.
* Get away to your little island,’ says the insolent
wench !”
“No bad fate for Englishmen to be sent back to Eng-
land,” retorted Peter, “to till our own fields instead of
wasting these. And if it might be, if she spoke from
Him she calls the King of Heaven,” he added with a
kindling eye, “what better message could she bring 2
“Cease killing one another, and come and let us help
each other to save Christendom together.’”
“Another crusade l’’ said Owen musingly. “There
were some meaning in that.”
“There are more crusades than that to Jerusalem, and
other sepulchres besides the Holy Sepulchre,” sighed
Peter. “And a peasant-maid might well lead us on all
to such a holy war.”
Owen laughed sleepily, and wrapping himself in his
cloak, said he would trust the watch to Peter and me.
We said no more, but I wondered if the talk between
us were echoed elsewhere through the armies, English
and French.
94 JO AN OF ARC.
A deliverer whom the great ones laughed at, yet who
gathered to herself the faith of the common people on
both sides, on One side as a Saint and Saviour, on the
other as a terrible sorceress or a mighty avenger, might
do us more harm than all Burgundy and Spain turned
against us.
For after all it was the common people, the English
bowmen, who had won our French battles.
The next morning awoke us all to strange tidings.
The Maid was actually on her way.
Some thousands of Frenchmen, with a convoy of pro-
visions, had marched with her from Blois.
Before mid-day they reached Orleans, but on the
opposite side to the city.
It was said the Maid had counselled the route on the
Same side of the Loire as the city, and was indignant
at having been deceived and her message disobeyed.
We heard afterwards the whole story.
One of their greatest captains, Dunois, the Bastard of
Orleans, came forth from the besiegéd city to meet her.
“Are you the Bastard of Orleans ?” she said.
“Yes; and I rejoice at your coming.”
She paid no heed to the greeting.
“Is it you,” she said, “who gave counsel to make me
come hither by this side of the river, and not straight,
where Talbot and the English are 2°
Dunois replied that he, and those wiser than he, had
given this counsel, believing thus to do better and more
safely.
JOAN OF ARC. 95
“In the name of God,” she said, “the cowmsel of my
King (God, ‘messire’) is Safer and wiser than yours.
You thought to deceive me, and you have been deceived
yourselves. For I bring you better succour than any
knight, town, or city whatever. And that is, the good
pleasure of God, and the succour of the King of the
Heavens. Not in any way for my sake. It proceeds
purely from God, who, at the request of St. Louis and
St. Charles the Great, has had pity on the town of
Orleans, and willed not that the enemy should have the
body of the Duke of Orleans and his town.”
At that moment, as she spoke, it seemed as if a sign
from heaven confirmed her words. The wind changed,
so that the Orleans boats were able to convey the pro-
visions she had brought across the river.
A new inspiration came at Once over the city, and a
new hesitation and caution seemed to creep over us. The
city garrison made a sortie that evening and successfully
kept at bay the only one of our forts which threatened
the point of the river where the provisions were to cross.
Our own men were at once drawn in from an out-
lying fort, which was abandoned.
The French army had at once to retrace their steps to
Blois, to return by the route the Maid had first coun-
selled, which the captains had avoided. This grieved
her much. The men of that little army had confessed
and prayed, and with them, she said, she would have
dared anything. “She had come, not to provision
Orleans, but to save it.” She sent her almoner and the
96 JOAN OF ARC.
priests with the banner of the Crucifix back with them,
while she herself remained.
But the winds and waters seemed to fight for her.
The waters rose, the wind bore the provision boats safe
across, and late in the evening the Maid herself, with two
hundred lances, crossed the Loire.
At eight o'clock, in the dusk of the April evening,
there was a great sound of rejoicing from the city—
shouting, and singing, and glad pealing of bells, as around
a victorious king. We saw also the flickering glare of
the torches with which they welcomed her, reddening
the sky above.
We knew well it was the Maid making her joyous
entry. They welcomed her with rapture, “as if God
Himself had descended amongst them,” men, women, and
children thronging and pressing around her to touch her
clothes or the trappings of her white horse.
She led the multitude at once straight to the cathe-
dral to give thanks to God, and then went with her own
two young brothers, and the knights who had protected
her from Vaucouleurs, and slept in the house of Jacques
Bouchier, treasurer of the Duke of Orleans.
And then silence fell on the besieged city, a peaceful
silence, as on a home to which the father and mother
have come back.
“The whole people felt themselves,” it was said,
“altogether heartened afresh, as if the siege were already
raised (désassièges) by the Divine power that was felt to
be in that simple maid.”
JOAN OF ARC. 97
We had none of us seen the Maid herself. But some
of us felt as if a presence had come into the city which
made it sacred and solemn as a cathedral; as if some
supernatural influence had descended from sun or moon,
or the heavenly places whence the seas are moved. And
the tide had already turned.
(611) 7
VIII.
£ertibal’s Storp (lontinueb.
§§§ Maid. t
I saw her first as a messenger of peace, risking life
and insult for a work of charity.
And from that day to this nothing could ever make
me doubt that she was sent of God.
It was the last day of April.
I woke with a dim sense of being in the old garden
of Danescombe Manor, as if the songs of blackbirds and
thrushes were in the air, and the scent of spring in the
thorn thicket, from the herb and flower borders in Cecilie's
garden.
There was little enough to bear witness of spring in
the wasted land around me then. Here and there a for-
lorn clipped tree, throwing out a little innocent touch of
green amidst the charred vineyards, or some poor green
twigs budding with fresh leaves on a felled trunk, like
infants clasping a dead mother.
In our forts there was little stir.

JOAN OF ARC. 99
Let our commanders scorn and rage as they would,
the deadly life and movement of victorious war was pass-
ing from us.
There was no talk any more of fresh enterprises, only
of defence and holding our own. No one spoke of
defeat, but the whole attitude had changed. The people
of Orleans were right. The mere entry of the Maid had
raised the siege, and thenceforth it was they who were
the besiegers, and we the besieged.
Once more the Maid sent us a summons of surrender,
or rather an entreaty to yield to her King, her King and
OUITS.
The assumption naturally made the English leaders,
and all who disbelieved or wished to disbelieve in her
furious.
The captains replied as before, with threats and insults.
They would burn her, make her burn and perish in
the flames, the death of witches and heretics, they said.
They would have detained her envoys, refusing to
treat with her as with an honourable enemy, save for
Dunois' menace to repay any ill-treatment of these on
the English prisoners taken the night before.
And they added scornfully that she was a low and
worthless wench, and had best go back and herd her
COWS.
She felt these insults keenly.
She, the simple village-maiden, sheltered until a few
weeks before at her father and mother's fireside, beloved
and honoured by all the village, passing her time between
100 JOAN OF ARO.
her prayers and the church, or in the field, and working
by her mother's side, shrank from rude words even more
than a great lady. For while pure in heart as a child,
she had lived too close to the horrors of war and the
rough, unveiled peasant-life, not to know what they meant.
Her father was a man to whom the honour of his
child was as sacred as it could have been to any knightly
house.
“Rather,” he had said when first he had heard of her
call to go to the king, “would he drown her with his
own hand than let her go away unsheltered among the
soldiers.”
And the too-well understood words of public insult in
face of hundreds of men who probably believed them,
stung her like a poisoned barb.
But not for that would she lose one possible hope of
reconciling and saving the foes who launched the insults.
The attack was prepared, but she would not suffer it to
begin before once more she had come in person to pre-
sent the summons to surrender.
And thus it was that I first saw her. She came for-
ward to the most advanced post of Orleans, on the
bridge, near enough to our fort of Les Tourelles, on the
opposite side, for us to hear her voice, and for her to
hear the insults of the soldiers.
A young girl, little more than sixteen, younger than
our Elaine or Cecilie.
I cannot explain the strange sense of strength and
majesty that surrounded her.
JOAN OF ARO. 10]
In trying to recall that first vision of her, I find my-
self thinking of the armies of heaven that followed the
King, “her King,” on white horses, clothed with fine
linen, white and clean, and of the “ young men’’ (who
were angels) “at the sepulchre in shining clothes.” And
I observe that others, in describing her, speak of her as
arrayed all in white, which could not be literally true.
I suppose her steel armour glittered in the Sun, and
her white lily-bordered banner waved like a bright
cloud above her, and the white horse she often rode made
her as a bit of Sunshine amidst the dark ranks around.
|But it was chiefly, I think, that she flashed on heart and
conscience as something pure and heavenly, and through
these on the sense.
There was no suggestion of weakness or feminine
appeal about her.
The mercy in her was majestic, as the pity not of
sympathetic weakness, but of succouring power.
She rode her charger with the quiet ease and power
those noble, sympathetic creatures recognize. Joan and
her horse were always of one mind.
And there she sate, as near as might be to our forts;
and I heard her voice, deep and penetrating, but soft and
feminine.
In simple words she summoned the commander, Glas-
dale, to surrender, offering safety of life and limb if he
would abandon the fort; terms as from a conqueror to foes
already vanquished, or rather as of a merciful sovereign,
such as He from whom she believed herself sent, to rebels,
102 JOAN OF ARO.
It was no wonder that to our captains and our army
this demand seemed the insolence of madness.
We were victors, habituated to victory for years. A
few days before, sixteen hundred of us had put six
thousand to flight.
Our king had been accepted as his rightful heir by
their king.
Their dauphin we believed not so much to be a dis-
possessed sovereign as the disowned son of a justly dis-
honoured mother, the wicked, adulterous, and murderous
Queen Isabella. Nothing had happened to change the
state of the war since our “victory of the Herrings” but
the arrival of this one peasant-maid.
Glasdale replied with scorn and insults, calling her
evil names, bidding her return to her cattle, and crying
aloud that if he captured her he would have her burned
alive.
She took these insults patiently, and made no reply
but by telling us once more that “we should have to go.”
To Glasdale, indeed, she added, “Ye will go, but thow
^wilt not see it.”
And so, for that time, she returned to the city. She left
a tumult of angry and mocking voices amongst us, rag-
ing at her insolence, her low birth, the ignorance and
folly of her demands.
And yet, underneath all these angry words, something
was left in the hearts and consciences of us all, that kept
us, as if spell-bound, within our forts.
Panic, I know, has seized the bravest troops on the
JOAAW OF ARC. 103
battle-field, and shorn them of strength as Samson when
Delilah cut off his locks.
But we were behind fortifications, we were used to
victory. But yesterday we had pressed forth confidently
to battle, as if it were but to take spoils already won.
And yet, when on the morrow morning Dunois and a
few nobles whose ransoms had been worth us much,
marched close under our forts on their way to bring
back the army from Blois, it was enough that the Maid
had come out with them and was between us and the
city, to keep our commanders from making an attempt
at injuring or capturing one of those Frenchmen as they
rode haughtily past close under our guns. Having thus
guarded the exit of the Bastard of Orleans and his little
company by her mere presence, she returned to the city.
And there the people thronged around the house she
sojourned in, so as well nigh to break the strong oaken
doors.
She came forth, we were told, and rode through the
streets, and there the crowds were so great she could
scarcely pass on. “The people could not feast their eyes
enough on the sight of her.” Her gentle speech, her
masterly management of her horse, her maidenly yet
military carriage, delighted them. And she in simple
words kept repeating, with the joyous ring of faith in
her voice—
“My King has sent me to succour the good town of
Orleans.”
She led them to the churches to give thanks—to the
104 JOAN OF ARC.
Church which from childhood had been the natural home
of her heart and steps, from the childhood she had
scarcely left behind.
But still her purpose of reconciliation and mercy
towards the foes of France, who were yet children of
Christendom, was uppermost in her heart.
Once more that Sunday afternoon she went to the
Croix Morin, near the city, on the opposite side from the
fort of Les Tourelles, and near enough once more for
her womanly voice to be heard, and for her to hear the
insults sure to be showered on her in reply, and en-
treated the English captains to listen and surrender, and
return to England.
There was still hope in her attitude and in the appeal
of her tones.
We were all Christians. Might we not all yet, ere it
was too late, turn from the malicious accuser who hates
us all to the merciful King who loves us all, and join in
a great work and warfare such as the Church has never
yet seen 2 *
But the old insults and defiances were, naturally
enough, hurled against her again.
Scarcely deigning to address her, the Bastard of
Granville cried to the soldiers with her, from our battle-
ments— ,
“Would you have us, then, surrender to a woman 2°
And amidst another storm of railing and mockery, she
turned mournfully back to the city.
The gates were closed behind her, and from within
JO.A.N OF ARC. 105
came solemnly on our ears the vesper-bells of the cathe-
dral and the many churches, where she loved best to be.
It was May-day and Sunday, and I remember thinking
how the bells were sounding from the little chapel in the
hollow by the river across the valley of Danescombe, to
the thorn thickets on the green slopes, where the white
blossoms of the May were perhaps falling around Cecilie
or Elaine, and breathing around them sweet airs of
spring. Or perhaps, having more need of prayer and
the shelter of Sacred places since the brothers were away,
they and old Margery had gone away to the village
church, and were silently praying before the altar there.
Praying for us, that God would preserve our lives and
give England victory and all the world peace.
Were Joan and the good sisters at home then praying
against each other ?
And was Our Lord listening to one set of prayers and
deaf to the other ?
Or was he listening to all, and answering all in a way
none of us expected or understood 2
The great Father, with His children hating and mis-
understanding each other, and He loving all !
The pitying Saviour, lifted up on the cross for us all,
and drawing us all by ten thousand intertangled ways
to Him
Solemnly from the beleaguered city that Sunday
night, that May-day, boomed the deep tones of the
church bells across the blackened and wasted land, from
106 - JOAN OF ARO.
which breathed no sweet perfumes of spring, over which
hovered no pleasant sounds of songs and twitterings of
birds. The bells of prayer echoed back from the hostile
walls of our forts.
Below, between the intervals of the bells, was the
sound of the river sweeping over its sand-banks and
around its islands, or dashing against the walls and forts
which resisted its course.
And from time to time the challenges of the sentinels
on the city walls and from our forts rang sharp through
the quiet.
There seemed to me a dispirited listlessness among
our hosts. The rage of angry defiance was over, and on
Sunday evening the thoughts of the homes we had left,
and the homes we had ruined, would steal over us.
As we walked round the ramparts, Owen and I, we
came on Peter the Wright leaning against a parapet.
He did not see us, and went on muttering to himself—
“‘What doest thou here?” saith the Lord God; ‘what
doest thou here 2° Lord, I know not. How can I tell ?
I came for the young men. I am not as the wind that
moves, but as a drop of the helpless waves, the people
who are moved whither the rulers will. The Maid is a
good maid, I know, and if thou hast sent her, forgive us
for fighting against her. For what can I do º Thou
knowest I had liever be making benches beside my good
wife and the sweet child Elaine. But the young men,
my masters, are here. But if, indeed, the Maid is as
an angel of thine, and yet we are, nevertheless, not to do
JOAN OF ARC. 107
her bidding and go home, but to stay here and die, let
us die into something better, and not worse; let us do
good, and not harm to thy Kingdom by dying ! For
since I have seen this peasant-maid pleading for peace
from thee, I begin to hope thy Kingdom may yet come.”
Owen was very angry.
“It is as bad as a traitorous mine under our feet, an
old grumbler like that,” he said.
But I would not let him assail Peter, and we passed
on without his heeding us.
That night I had a strange dream.
I saw the Maid in white raiment and shining armour,
the moonlight shimmering on it, with a face that kept
changing, yet was the same through all its changes,
tender and pale as our mother's, beautiful and majestic
as her Italian picture of the Mother of God, young and
radiant and childlike as Cecilie's, and yet with a pain
and pity underneath such as that on the brow of Elaine;
her white banner in her hand—no weapon. But wher-
ever its silvery light fell, bulwarks and forts melted like
ice beneath it, and armies faded away like ghosts at
dawn. And all our English host seemed turned into one
long funeral procession.
And there were wailing and gnashing of teeth in our
ranks, and among the foe Te Deums, and the Veni
Creator, and Church canticles, and solemn pealing of
bells, and joyous clangour of trumpets, though only in
faint echoes, borne through the silent land of dreams.
Until, all at once, the white vision seemed to rise
108 JOAN OF ARO.
higher, from an earthly height to a throne in the clouds
and the glorious warrior-maiden and her banner were
mysteriously blended and lost in the vision of One as in
our mother's crucifix, with arms outstretched to bless the
world.
And from the bowed Head seemed to come not so
much words, as a mighty attractive breath of invitation.
And the retreating funeral procession of the mourners
and the dead turned towards Him, and the victorious
hosts fell down before Him, and there were reconciling
tears, and embraces, and confessions, before the cross.
And then, once again, the cross itself changed into
the likeness of a crowned King, encircled by a glorious
multitude of heavenly beings, reaching from heaven
down to earth, and blending with dear, homely, and
familiar faces, including not only Elaine and Cecilie, but
Peter, and Margery, and the little frightened child we
found at the well in the burned village; but all in one
army, in One triumphal procession, moving onward and
upward to some great conquest, perhaps of the Holy
Sepulchre, perhaps of some lost sacred things nearer
home.
What, I never knew, because the silence of the dream
was broken by the sound of a clarion.
And when I woke, the last notes of the reveille were
echoing across the river and the desolated plain.
IX.
#ertibal’s Storp (lontinued.
ºHE next day the wonderful week (it was but
one week) which lost us Orleans and France
ºš began.
That Monday was a day of pause and of leisure, a
holiday leisure in the city, as of a family joined after
separation; amongst us, leisure dispirited and dumb, like
that of a ship becalmed at Sea.
The gates of Orleans were thrown open, as if the
siege were already raised, and the Maid rode forth on
her white horse surrounded by an eager crowd of citizens,
armed and unarmed, feeling themselves secured, it
seemed, by her mere presence, like children around a
mother. They followed her through the fields by the
river, under our forts, and all round the city, observing
us fearlessly, as if we had been spell-bound inside our
walls; which, indeed, it seemed as if we were.
For no shot from culverin, no dart slung from an
arbalest, no arrow from an English bow was launched
from our bulwarks.
It seemed as if the whole of the English force crouched,

110 JO AN OF ARO.
powerless though observant, like some cowed beast under
the spell they say there is in human eyes.
Angry and mocking, but immovable and grimly silent,
our troops watched from earthwork, bastille, and parapet
the grave yet eager troop on their long procession round
the city.
In looking back, our inaction on that Monday is more
marvellous to me than even what followed.
We were awaiting reinforcements, it is true; but so
was Orleans. Except the two hundred who entered the
city on Friday night with the Maid, many of whom had
left again with Dunois on Sunday, no fresh troops were
in the city.
Our habit of victory had not been broken.
Our commanders, Lord Talbot, the Earl of Salisbury,
and the Earl of Suffolk, were brave and skilled as any
we had ever known.
The Maid captured, or struck down by the unerring
aim of our English bowmen, all was as before ; we were
On Our unchecked path to the conquest of all France for
England and our king.
And yet that day not a bow was drawn, not a hand
was lifted ; scarcely was a voice raised in insult against
her.
Quietly and fearlessly as she and the crowd had left
the city, they re-entered, the gates were closed, and the
Vesper bells from all the churches told us how the multi-
tude were gathered in the dim aisles at prayer, around
the Maid, as children around a mother's knee.
JOAN OF ARC. I 11
The next day, Tuesday, was again a day of absolute
repose.
The city remained that day shut up in itself. It was
the Festival of the Holy Cross, the Fête of the Cathe-
dral, and all the bells pealed and clashed, and the streets
were joyous, we knew, with processions.
The city was still besieged, no succour had come ; but
the Maid had come !
God, they felt, had sent the help. He was amongst
them. There was no need for haste, no need to under-
value the powers banded against them. Certainly, the
English were strong, brave, victorious, and well fortified.
But there was no need to measure the forces, when on
one side were right and God.
“It is like a miracle, that we are kept here doing
nothing,” I said to Owen and Peter.
And Owen said, chafing fiercely—
“If it is a miracle, it is a miracle of black magic.
And such wicked spells must sooner or later be broken.
But I see no miracle. The French have taken a little
courage at last, and see how few we are. And we are
few, and Our commanders know it. No miracle if they
wait for Sir John Fastolfe and his men
But Peter said—
“It is the miracle of miracles, I think, to make men
see things as they are. And if the Maid has done this,
she has done wonders indeed. To open men's eyes to
see the fountains in the wilderness, is as divine a work
as to Smite the fountains from the rock. To see things
112 JOAN OF ARC.
as they are is the gift of seers; to make other men see
them as they are is the work of prophets.”
Before that evening closed reinforcements had come
to Orleans from Gien, Chateau-Réynard, and Montargis—
Montargis, which had resisted our assault two years before.
And Once more a tumult of welcome echoed to us
from within the city.
For to us, what did this mean, but that not only
Orleans, but all the cities of France felt themselves
désassièges 3 that the land was once more theirs, not
ours ? that they were free to go and send hither and
thither, whilst we were but a little band of aliens in a
foreign land 2 *
Yet, still, the army which had first accompanied the
Maid up the wrong side of the Loire, and, in consequence
of disobeying her lead, had been compelled to return to
Blois, and cross by the bridge there, had not returned.
The Bastard of Orleans had gone to lead it back, but
as yet there were no signs of its reappearance.
It was reported that the Maid was detested by the
selfish, indolent courtiers who led the dauphin, and that
the favourite La Trémouille and all who had been ruling
the dauphin by what was meanest in him, were in-
triguing against the peasant-girl, and putting all pos-
sible delays and hindrances in her way.
If the French rejected Jeanne, Surely it would be a
sign that the Almighty abandoned France, and our con-
quest might yet be, whether for scourge or restoration,
the will of God.
JOAN OF ARC. 113
Up to that Tuesday night this hope still remained.
But on the Wednesday that hope passed away.
Tidings came at last that Dunois and the little army,
though reduced already by the intrigues of the courtiers
to half its numbers, was on its way, by the route Jeanne
had ordered on the Friday before, through the Beauce,
on the right side of the Loire, under our forts.
When she heard of their approach, the Maid came forth
from the gates of Orleans, followed by La Hire and many
others, and rode a league along the river to meet them.
Strange as it was, it was the simple fact that this
peasant-girl, only a few months since spinning by her
mother's hearth at Domremy, went forth to guard the
army of succour past our forts. And she did it.
Our commanders suffered her to go forth with her
little company, unchallenged, under our battlements, with
her white standard in her hand.
And a short time afterwards she returned with the
whole army, close beneath our forts, not so much in a
military march as in a religious procession : the Maid
with her lily banner, the banner of the Crucifix, and
the priests in their white vestments, chanting the
Veni Creator, and other Church canticles.
That day it was said there was an innocent exulta-
tion, like that of a happy child, about the Maid.
We were expecting Sir John Fastolfe with reinforce-
ments. She playfully threatened Dunois that if he
suffered them to arrive without letting her know he
should lose his head.
(611) 8
ll4 JO AN OF ARC.
Nevertheless, with a petty feeling of jealousy of seem-
ing to let her rule, the French captains began the attack
on our bastille of St. Loup, without telling the Maid.
Our three hundred men, though surprised without their
captain, held the post gallantly. It commanded the
road to Burgundy and the passage of the Loire, and was
strongly fortified.
The Frenchmen were beaten back, many of them fell,
and their wounded were being borne back to Orleans,
when suddenly the Maid appeared riding swiftly.
She stopped as she met her wounded countrymen.
“Never could she see blood of a Frenchman shed.”
she said, “without her hair standing up on her head.”
She had been resting, unarmed, on her bed, when
“her heavenly counsel,” she said, “told her to go against
the English.”
As she rose, the cry sounded through the streets
that the French were being beaten back.
Indignant, she sent for her horse, was armed by the
lady of the house and her daughter, mounted, had her
standard handed to her through the window, galloped
through the streets, so that “her horse's hoofs struck
fire on the stones,” and in a few minutes was on the
edge of the fosse of our bastion.
Dunois and others followed her to sustain the attack,
But she desired them rather to keep back and watch,
lest the English should send succour from the other forts.
And so by her presence and their absence she gained
the day.
JOAN OF ARC. 115
For twice Lord Talbot sent reinforcements from the
neighbouring forts.
And twice the besieged saw it from the great belfry,
and gave warning in time to repulse the English succours
by a sortie.
And so at last our gallant three hundred were dis-
lodged, and killed or captured.
Among them were some Churchmen, who pleaded to
be spared.
The Maid would not have any of the prisoners harmed.
“Enough blood had been shed,” she said, “that day.”
“She wept over the slain,” her chaplain said, “think-
ing they had died without confession.”
With her own people she felt the bond of flesh and
blood, and her flesh quivered in sympathy. But with
all men she felt the imperishable bond of soul and faith,
of the Redeeming Blood shed for all.
She trembled to see the blood of a Frenchman. She
wept over the unshriven souls of all.
And so once more the gates of Orleans shut in the
Maid.
And from within, from every church tower, fell for
the first time on our ears the triumphant peals of a
French victory.
Te Deums were being sung there by rescued multi-
tudes, kneeling with the Maid, their deliverer, before the
altars.
And we were left defeated outside, with our brave
three hundred dead and gone, and the fort so carefully
116 JOAN OF ARO.
raised throwing the glare of its burning ruins on the
river it had guarded.
The next day, Thursday, the Festival of the Ascen-
sion, dawned sadly enough for us.
In the city, still supposed to be besieged, the bells of
all the churches called to mass, to joyous processions, to
thanksgiving and prayer.
And yet, as we learned afterwards, that day was
dedicated, by the Maid's entreaties, not only to thanks-
giving and adoration, but to penitence and confession
and amendment of life.
Their own vices, she said, and their own disorders,
were their worst enemies, not the English.
She commanded that not a soldier should be suffered
to fight on the morrow who had not confessed.
She insisted that no dissolute women should be
tolerated among them, or God would suffer them to be
defeated.
They were sad enough at all times, to me, in that
war, the festivals of our religion; that common religion,
which, nevertheless, did not keep us from burning each
other's churches, and wasting and ruining life and more
than life.
But that Ascension Day was a solemnity never to be
forgotten.
“What does it all mean 2° I remember saying to
Peter, as he came from mass at an altar raised in the
fields. “Is He ascended out of sight, out of hearing,
whither we cannot come 2"
JOAN OF ARC. II?
“So I had thought,” replied Peter, “too long, too
long ! But I begin to think once more, it is only our
eyes that are holden and our ears that are dull of
hearing, and that He is, indeed, still truly Messire and
King.”
“Messire and King of whom 7” I said. “To the Maid
and the French, King of loyal subjects 2 to us King of
doomed rebels 2 Nay, that cannot be What are
Charles and Isabella and their sinful court that the
King of Heaven should fight for them and against us?”
“I know not, Master Percival, that He is fighting
against us,” said Peter with a strange gentleness. “His
rod as well as His staff may be for us. My eyes are
very dazed still, but I think I begin to see men as trees
walking.”
And Peter relapsed into his habitual silence, and
would say no more.
But to me that night of Ascension Day was a night
of agony.
And Once more before nightfall I saw the Maid as an
angel of reconciliation and mercy.
This time she bound her summons to surrender round
an arrow, and launched it amongst us, saying only—
“Read | These are tidings to you, men of England,
who have no right in this kingdom of France. The
King of Heaven orders by me that ye abandon your
forts and go home to your own country. Otherwise I
will cause you such a crash of ruin as shall be held in
118 JOAN OF ARO.
perpetual remembrance. This I write to you for the
third and last time, and I will never write to you again.
“JESUS MARIA, JEANNE LA PUCELLE,
“I would have sent you my letters more honourably
but you retain my heralds. You detain my herald
Guyenne. Send him back to me, and I will send back
to you some of your people taken in St. Loup, for they
are not all dead.”
The words were more peremptory than before, with
less of hope in them. But still she meant them as a
royal and Divine offer of mercy.
To our troops, however, they naturally seemed in-
solent beyond endurance, and they cried as they took up
their arms—
“Here are news from the harlot of the Armagnacs.”
. She heard the dreadful word, her head drooped, and
she wept bitterly, appealing for succour to the King of
Heaven.
And that was the last we heard of peace from the
Maid.
After that, we were ordered, Owen and I and Peter,
into the Fort of Les Tourelles, on the opposite side of
the river, where it was believed the brunt of to-morrow's
battle would be.
It was sure to be the last night on earth for many in
our ranks and theirs.
But that must be in all battles, and hope is mostly
JOAN OF ARO. | 19
stronger than fear; and hitherto our cause, to me, had
seemed, if not the noblest one could fight for, still with
so much right on our side, and so much wrong on the
other, that I had trusted that the Almighty, who had
willed we should be born English, would be content
with our fighting as Englishmen.
Now, however, if in truth this peasant-girl, whom
good women reverenced, whom captains and armies had
to obey, whose presence was a wall of fire to those she
came to succour and as a cloud of darkness to us; who
fought against profanity and sin with Divine severity,
and wept over suffering with Divine pity; if she was
indeed inspired and sent of God, not only must our
armies be defeated, but every blow we struck was
against good and for evil, and each departing soul must
enter as a rebel into the presence of the King.
So killing, and so dying, we might be exiled, not only
from England, but from heaven, from God, and all good
souls here or departed, for ever.
Yet, what escape was there for any of us?
The simple peasant-wit of Peter helped him.
“What it is right to do to-morrow, Master Percival?”
in answer to me, he said. “To do what I have been
doing ever since I came to this poor wasted, foolish
country; to save as many lives of our own people as we
can, and trust the Lord will forgive me if I have
stumbled on the wrong side. To-morrow's work is
clearer to me than most. For it will be a tug for life
and death, and what I can do to take you and Master
120 JOAN OF ARO.
Owen and myself back safe to the old home, to Mistress
Elaine, and Cecilie, and my Margery, I will.”
The attack did not begin that Friday until the
morning was already advanced.
It was directed against Les Tourelles and the two
other forts which commanded the bridge.
We knew afterwards that there had been hesitation
in the enemy's councils, and attempts to deceive the
Maid.
She crossed by the Isle St. Aignan, and the two boats
moored together which joined it to the left shore.
The first attack on the Bastille des Augustins, which
was farther from the river than Les Tourelles, was
repulsed. *
Once more, for the last time, we saw the familiar
sight of a flying foe.
But our pursuit was checked by the Maid herself,
who rallied the fugitives, and drove our people back.
That evening the Augustins was captured, and all of
the little garrison who could not reach our fort of Les
Tourelles were slain.
The Maid returned to pass the night in the city, not
so much for shelter for herself, as we learned afterwards,
as to defend Orleans against the half-hearted cowards
who were for ever undermining her plans.
The next morning, early at dawn, she was at the
gates, having heard mass, and ready for the combat.
The governor of the city, by the orders of the captains,
endeavoured to prevent her leaving.
JOAN OF ARG. 121
“You are a wicked man,” she said; “and whether it
please you or not, the men-at-arms will pass, and win as
they won yesterday.”
The people and the soldiers stood by her, and she
forced her way through the gates.
Yet all the time she knew, for she had predicted it
to many who afterwards remembered, that she herself
would be wounded severely in that day's battle.
All day, from six o'clock in the morning, the terrible
assault went on, the French swarming up the walls and
ladders, and our Englishmen defending with cannon and
arrows, or beating them back one by one as they scaled
the parapets, with axes and lances and leaden mallets.
The slaughter was great.
The Maid was in the thick of the danger with her
banner.
In battle she always bore her banner, not her sword,
for she never herself shed blood.
“Fear not,” she kept saying, “the place is yours.”
Still we held our own, when, at midday, the Maid
herself descended into the fosse, and planted a ladder
against the parapet.
Then she was struck by a dart from an arbalest.
It pierced through her neck and came out on the
other side.
We saw her wounded, we heard her cry out with
fear and pain, and burst into tears.
She minded the pain as Cecilie might, or Elaine, and
she wept, not so much like a woman, as like a hurt
122 JOAN OF ARO.
child unused to pain, or to concealment of what she
felt.
So it seemed to me; and it touched me to the heart.
But, at once, with her own hands, she drew out the
dart.
There was a moment of hope and triumph on our side,
and of discouragement among the enemy.
They crowded around her. Some of the soldiers I
heard counselling her to have the wound charmed.
But she refused, saying—
“I would rather die than do anything I knew to be
sim, and contrary to the will of God.”
Then they bound up the wound with a compress of
olive oil.
Afterwards I heard how she made one of her frequent
shrifts (brief, and like a good child's, for the most part,
I trow), and wept, and was comforted.
But we, seeing her go aside, and the chiefs crowding
around her, and the pause and discouragement, began to
take hope.
We breathed once more, for we thought the Maid was
killed.
In truth, the day was all but lost for the French, and
would have been lost from that moment, but for the
heroism and faith of the simple weeping peasant-girl, the
peasant-girl whose child-like hand touched the hand of
God.
The chiefs insisted on abandoning the assault for the
day, and retreating to the city.
JO AN OF ARO. 123
But she went apart into a neighbouring vineyard to
pray, and in a few minutes she reappeared on horseback,
wounded as she was, with her banner in her hand, and
Said to a gentleman near her—
“Take heed when my banner touches the bulwark.”
“Jeanne,” he said in a few moments, “the end
touches.”
Then she exclaimed, “Enter all is yours!”
And at once followed the rush and deadly confusion
of the last assault, blood and fire and vapour of smoke,
desperate grappling hand-to-hand, Oaths and cries and
curses and prayers.
The very sight of the Maid we had thought wounded
to death, with her white banner, and the sound of her
quiet, assured voice, struck a panic into our bravest.
Surely either heaven or hell was fighting visibly for
France. *
And against either what availed human force 2
Still we held our own; there was no thought of
surrender.
The last incident of the battle I remember was the
death of our commander Glasdale.
He, with a number of English driven from the out-
lying bulwark, was crossing the end of the bridge to
reach the Fort of Les Tourelles, when a boat full of com-
bustibles dashed against the bridge and set it on fire, so
that all our countrymen were plunged into the river.
The horror of the sudden catastrophe made a minute
of silence.
124 JO AN OF A.R.C.
And through the silence I heard once more the voice
of the Maid, broken by tears, calling on all to save the
drowning men.
“Glasdale, Glasdale,” she said, “ yield thee, yield thee
to the King of Heaven. You called me harlot. I have
great pity for your souls.”
But there was no salvation out of that fire and
blood.
And that night, of all the gallant company who fought
through those two days of death, not one Englishman
remained on the left bank of the river who was not
killed or captured.
That Saturday night, for the agony of inward conflict
of the previous night I had the anguish of wounds and
thirst, of doubt as to my brother's fate, and of hearing
in my few Snatches of feverish sleep, as it were, my
mother's voice and Cecilie's murmuring, “Take care of
Owen,” and “Why did you let him be wownded?”
At last the darkness passed, and the dreadful dawn
arose over the scene of ruin and slaughter.
Straining to listen if I could distinguish any familiar
Sound among the moans around, I caught at last a faint
murmur of my own name.
It was the voice of my brother, and I thanked God.
Then I contrived to drag myself, before our captors
were awake, to the place where Owen lay.
And so it came about that we had the mercy of being
thrown into one prison, when, on the next day, we were
driven across the roughly repaired bridge into Orleans.
JOAN OF ARC. 125
But that Sunday evening, before we left the ruined
fort, the fate of the city was finally decided, and the
siege was raised.
Across the river, through one of the many breaches in
the walls, we saw the whole English army ranged before
the city, as if for an assault.
And between them and the gates came forth the
garrison.
For a whole hour the French and English hosts faced
each other.
The Maid was there.
An altar was raised, and two masses were celebrated
before the troops.
The enemy, flushed with yesterday's success, were
eager to attack.
Talbot and our countrymen stood ready for the fight.
But when the mass was finished, the Maid asked which
way the English were facing.
It was replied, “Away from the city, towards Mehun.”
“Then, in God’s name,” she said, “let them go. My
King wills not that we fight them to-day.”
And so, slowly and in perfect order, our little army
went its way. We were but few, after all, and the first
wonder was not that we had to raise the siege, but that
we had ever maintained it.
Owen's wounds were more disabling than mine, and
they let me carry him on my back across the broken
bridge into the city.
As we stumbled along our melancholy journey, we
126 JOAN OF ARC.
saw the citizens pouring out of every gate, pillaging and
destroying the deserted forts and bulwarks which had
cost us so many weary nights and days to build.
And from the dark cell where they had the mercy to
leave me and Owen together alone, we heard the pealing
of the bells and the feet of the crowds in the street over-
head, as they went from church to church in solemn
procession.
It was a strange time that May Sunday in the dark
at Orleans, our first day of captivity.
It was like being in a tomb, buried, yet living; “free
among the dead, as those that are wounded and lie in
the grave.”
Yet there was a strange sense of rest and calm.
The conflict of duties was over, and I was left once
more to the simple, unperplexed charge which was so
natural to me, the care of Owen, and that in its simplest
form.
His chief wound was from a ball which had torn his
right foot. There was nothing to be done but to bathe
and cleanse the wound from splinters, and to leave it to
heal itself with rest and time.
The danger was fever, aggravated by the bitter chafing
of his spirit against what seemed to him the diabolical
wrong of the English defeat.
At first he was very desponding, and sure he should
never see England again, and gave me many pathetic
messages.
But when the last bells had ceased to sound, and the
JOAN OF ARC. 127
noises died away in the street above our cell, he said
half shyly—
“Have you given up saying the evening prayers our
mother used to say with us? I refused to say them
with you once at the old home.”
I knelt beside him, and he followed me like a penitent
child in the familiar sacred words.
“I hope God will forgive me,” he said at the end. “I
cannot think of any trespasses against me to forgive.
People have been very good to me. And, above all,
thou, old man l’ he added.
This was new from Owen, and made me feel some
fear for his life. His own innocence in any contention
was usually so clear to him.
And then, as I lay down beside him, this strange sense
of rest and even of freedom came over me.
“Free among the dead.”
It seemed as if I were not so much in the grave as in
purgatory. Life all behind me, irrevocable, with its
opportunities lost or used, and I, in the hand of God, in
the fires of God, which are many, to be corrected and
tried as He willed.
In this world no hope any more ; ambition, love, all
for ever behind me.
Yet nothing lost. The love denied, the love
given, and, above all, the love loved, all working and
burning on for ever; nothing to hope or fear for
myself, yet thence deriving not despair, but an un-
speakable solemn joy of liberty, as a creature that
12S JO AN OF ARC.
has suddenly found wings and can soar into an infinite
world.
The wings were only feeble beginnings as yet, and I
certainly could not soar; but they were there, and the
great world of God was there. He Himself was there,
and the freedom and the wings, and all, were simply this
new joy of helpless and entire abandonment to His will,
as when after a conflict with breakers a boat is all at once
launched with a steady wind on a calm and open Sea.
Every person I had loved seemed nearer and dearer
to me than ever, Elaine, Cecilie, England. All restless
desire to change and remould had gone. I was in the
current of the will that was swaying all; in the fire of
the will that was trying and fusing and purifying all.
And through all shone that vision of the likeness of
the Master in that peasant-maid—like a strong angel of
mercy, entreating us to be reconciled; like a merciful
angel of judgment with a flaming sword, Smiting us back
into the true path; like a trustful child bemoaning her
wound to a father; like a virgin-martyr, refusing all
relief at cost of right—“I had rather die than do any-
thing I knew to be sin, or contrary to the will of God;”
like a tender mother weeping over wounded Frenchmen
and dead Englishmen, trying to save from death the foe
whose insults had so Smitten her.
I thanked God for the sight of her face and the sound
of her voice. It made me able to lie still under His
hand and in His fires. For in her I had seen a little
nearer the likeness of the eternal Son.
JOAN OF ARO. 129
For what she felt for France He felt for the world.
It was a rest to be there, though as in a sepulchre, and
feel, with the whole city, under the wings of a mother
bird, or borne on the mighty wings of a strong angel;
though to us the passage to mercy lay through the flames.
It was but for a night.
Triumph was nothing to the Maid, save as a sign of
victory of the cause she served; victory was little, save
as a step to conquering the whole field, and saving the
whole lost country.
And so, after her work of deliverance, which made
her for ever the Maid of Orleans, she left the grateful
crowds of simple, rescued people at once, and went back
to the intriguing court, to encounter the half-hearted
coldness, the jealous opposition, the treacherous flatterers
there, and to vanquish all for France.
Only for that one night I lay, as it seemed, under the
shelter of her presence, while she, doubtless, was sleeping
the healthy peasant sleep, the sleep of a child whose last
waking consciousness has been the Father's smile, the
sleep of a mother with all her brood safe under her wings.
I also had the one of the flock given me to care for,
close and safe beside me; and there was rest also in that.
Some shepherds have nations to guard and feed, some
have a few sheep in the wilderness, one we believe has
all those on earth; One, we know, has all the flocks in
earth and heaven, and some have but one ewe lamb.
Yet the habit and the heart of the shepherd are in their
measure common to all.
(611) 9
X.
43 eter the Člright’g Storp.
*HE fort of Les Tourelles lay smouldering in
tº ashes, deserted by English and French, when
#º I began to wake up from the stun of the fall
on the edge of the fosse where I had lain in the death-
grapple with the Orleans soldier whose sword I had
turned from the throat of my young master Owen.
All the living were gone, and I stumbled feebly with
my benumbed limbs among the dead.
The first sound that roused me to the sense that I
was still in the land of the living were the church bells
from Orleans, all together, or at intervals, for vespers.
I knelt down and crossed myself, and said the Lord's
Prayer, and thought of Margery and the little lady
Elaine.
And next I thought of my young masters, and made
up my mind that I must find them, slain or spared.
To this end I turned up one and another of the white,
drawn faces, but no familiar face was among them, and
the conviction grew on me that Sir Percival and Sir
Owen were alive,

JOAN OF ARC. 131
I crept slowly to the river, bathed the dreadful stains
from hands and face, took some bread from my wallet,
and sat down a minute to think.
It was so unusual to have no one but myself to serve.
The church bells still rang at intervals across the river.
How hateful those bells, and all the signs of what so
many of us had felt that false and desecrated worship
had been to me !
All we are meant to hate, pride and covetousness and
lust and injustice and wrong, associated through the
wicked lives of priest and friar with all we are meant
to adore and love
Lie and truth inextricably intertwined, and God far
off on a judgment-seat in heaven, seeming to care for
none of those things |
For it was not to have a mere pardon as a pass into
Some unknown country where things might be better
which we peasants wanted; it was to have this world
better, to have justice for wife and child, to have a king-
dom of God here and now.
And now through a peasant-girl it seemed the King
had Once more appeared to set the world right.
The Book, the glorious Book of the good tidings was .
no more for me a dead record of things done in the be-
ginning, but a living revelation of what is now and ever
shall be ; and this had come to me through a peasant-
maid.
Kings and armies had to obey her. They could not.
protect her. She protected them.
132 JOAN OF ARO.
They tried to deceive her, and were themselves de-
ceived.
She cared for no honour from men. They had none
to give her of the kind she prized. i
She cared no more for glory or splendour than a child
or an angel.
She cared only to succour and to save. tº
And this she wanted to do, and she would do, if men
would let her, for England as well as France.
And this Maid, this messenger of God, they said, loved
the sound of church bells, and delighted in prayer, and
in the blessed sacraments.
She saw everywhere, not the soiled human hands, but
the gifts they brought from God.
She sought Him, and she found Him.
From the cathedral, as I sate and listened, came the
repeated strokes of the bell which told of the raising of
the Host.
The Maid was there, in the city she had saved,
among the soldiers she had taught to repent, joyfully
adoring in the presence of God.
Weeping and wounded, but yesterday I heard her say,
refusing to have her wound relieved by a mere charm—
“I had rather die than, Sim.”
Dreading sin more than death, this pure and strong
child of God found a way to Him where I had seen only
stumbling-blocks.
I knelt once more, and confessed my pride beside the
humble gladness of this blessed one.
JOAN OF ARC. 133
Then I rose and went to look for a little spring I
knew in a vineyard near at hand. It was the vine-
yard, I believe, where the Maid had gone apart during
the fight to pray, and whence she returned like an angel
of victory.
When I reached the little arched well in the vineyard
wall, and had stooped to drink, a faint moan came to me
from the other side of the wall.
Rising and looking over, I saw a crouching human
figure, or rather a heap of rags, against the opposite
bank, half covered by a stream of hair, tangled and
dishevelled, but fair as the lady Cecilie's, or as Margery's
last babe who died when Master Percival was born.
The attitude was not so much of suffering as of for-
lorn despair.
On the arms, in which the face was hidden, were
jewelled bracelets, and the soiled head-dress was of silk.
It was too plain what she was.
“Are you English, poor child 2* I said.
There was no answer, and I repeated the question in
such poor French as I had learned in the war.
“If you are French don't fear an old man.”
“I am neither English nor French,” was the moaning
reply. “I am dust, to be trampled under foot. Let me
be trampled into my dust. Let me die.”
I had never many words when I most wanted them;
but the girl's fair hair made me think of our lost babe,
for whose death I had scarce yet been able to forgive
God.
134 JOAN OF ARO.
It flashed on me, some mothers' babes do more than
die, they live to become such as this.
I could not leave her to perish.
I moved one hand gently from her face, and broke
into it some of the crust of bread.
She looked up half-bewildered, not meeting my eyes;
but something of command in my voice seemed to sub-
due her, and she ate a few bits, but with no human re-
cognition, no pleased response, even such as a dog's, rather
as water might swallow or fire burn what you laid on it.
Then she let her hand fall listlessly, and the rest of
the bread drop from it crumbling.
I picked it up.
“Bread is precious,” I said. “We may not soon find
another crust.”
I thought she might understand by the “we” she
had a friend.
But she merely knelt down quite submissively, and
gently gathered up all the crumbs and laid them in my
hand.
The hands were capable brown peasant-hands used to
work.
Clearly she would not accept the “we.”
“Yow are not dust,” she said; “you are a human
creature. You must live.”
“Child,” I said, “you are a creature of God; you are a
French peasant-girl, like Jeanne la Pucelle; yow must live.”
. She rose with a great cry of anguish, and looked me
full in the face, as if to repel scorn with indignation.
JOAN OF ARC. 135
But I suppose the tears in my eyes touched her—
they were stealing over my old cheeks—and she sank
down at my feet, not now with a dry cry of despair, but
sobbing like a child.
“Like Jeanne la Pucelle ! la Pucelle ! I played with
her under the Ladies' Tree at Domremy. I saw her last
Sunday like an angel, like the blessed Mary, and she
drove me from the camp, from the town, she cast me
out to be trodden under foot and perish.”
“The blessed Lord would not have driven you away,
I said. “He loved and pitied sinful women.”
She rose on her knees, and, with her soiled, tear-
2
stained face, she looked straight up in my eyes.
“He would,” she said passionately,–"He would—for
she did. And she is like Him. Whatever I may be, I
know by something in me, she is like Him. I will
never lose that. Even in hell I will not cease to feel
that, and be glad of it. She did it because she pitied
she had pity on France. She would die for France.
And therefore she casts out such as me. For I am not
only dust, I am poison. I am the pestilence. She did
right. It was love that made her hate me.”
The unveiled depth of her humiliation drew me down
underneath her, and made me, old man as I was, kneel
down beside and hide my face in my hands.
I prayed in English in my heart—
“Lord Christ, thou hast no outcasts. Thou sufferest
such to be driven away, not to be trodden under foot, but
to hide beside thine own feet, and bathe them with tears.”
136 JOAN OF ARC.
And then I rose, and said in a grave, quiet tone—
“Thou hast to do something harder than to be trodden
under foot and die. Thou hast to turn back and live,
and be good. And the Lord Christ and Jeanne la
Pucelle will help thee.”
“Be good 2’ she moaned.
“Yes,” I said. “I will take thee back to thy father
and mother, if they are in Barbary or in Germany or
with the Grand Turk. And thou must let them chasten
thee as they will.”
“I have no father or mother,” she said. “They died
when I was a child—a good little child.”
And with these words an accent of pity for herself
came in place of the scorn. And she was beginning to
weep again.
“Thou must not weep,” I said. “There is no time.
I must escape and hide myself and thee. Rise and wash
thy face in the well, and bind up thy hair, and throw
away these silken rags, and we will go. Thou must help
me. I have no child, and thou hast no father, and I
will take thee to my old wife Margery, and thou wilt be
good. But now thou must wash thy face and help me,
or they will kill me.”
She gave one searching look in my face, then some-
thing like a smile like a faint gray dawn of hope came
into her eyes, which were blue, like our dead babe's, and
she went and knelt beside the well and drank and
bathed her face and hands, and bound up her long fair
hair in a great coil around her head; and among the
JOAN OF ARC. 137
slain I found a dark cloak, which she threw around her
head and shoulders, and without another word she followed
me across the fields, crouching under the walls and in
the trenches, so as not to be observed.
That night we found an old ruined barn, about a
league from Orleans, and in it some stray ears of corn.
And the child made a fire on the ground and parched
the ears of corn, and then she took my leathern bottle
and brought water from a spring, and we ate and
drank; and she made up a bed of dried straw and leaves
for me. But I would not take it. I was used to camp-
ing out, and some one, I thought, should watch that
night, and it were safest to be me. I was not yet sure
if the despair might not come over her again if I let her
out of sight, and she flee away to be trodden under foot
and die.
So I bade her lie down on the bed of dead leaves.
And I knelt down to my prayers outside.
But in the silence I heard again the sound of Sup-
pressed sobs. *
I went to her to wrap her up, as Margery and I used
our babes.
“Good night,” I said; “the Lord Christ sent La
Pucelle to bring thee back to Him and make thee good.”
But she would not be comforted.
“You are right,” she murmured at last. “You think
me too bad to pray.”
If I had asked her I felt sure she would have felt her-
self too bad.
138 JOAN OF ARO.
“Cannot you pray, my poor child 2 " I said.
“I never prayed by myself,” she moaned. “I used
to pray by my mother. And since, I forgot, or I didn't
dare. But I thought, perhaps, if you would take me I
might try and come back, I might say the old words
with you.”
My heart came into my throat for thankfulness.
Child that she was, she had taken me into her father
and mother's place. She wanted to pray as in her child-
hood, in the old words, beside me.
“What were thy old words 2 " I said.
“Do not all Christians say the same 2" she said.
And she said the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the
Hail Mary.
She said them in French, kneeling beside me.
“Do you understand 2* I said. “‘Forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive.’”
“I forgive 2 What is my forgiveness worth 7" she
Said.
“Much,” I said. “The world has been hard to you.
You have much to forgive. Do you forgive 2"
“All but one,” she said in a low voice.
“You must forgive that one,” I said.
No answer.
“Do you wish harm to that one 2" I said.
“My wish could be nothing to him,” she said; “he has
forgotten me long ago, as a boy forgets a bird whose nest
he has robbed, or whose wing he has broken with a stone.
Ought I to wish him to be happy in cruel wrong 2*
JOAN OF ARO. 139
“No,” I said; “you ought only to forgive as God for-
gives. He forgives, to make us good. You would wish
no more nests to be robbed, no more helpless wings
broken. Then pray for that. That he may be forgiven
and good, as you wish to be.”
“I will try,” she said.
“And do you know what the Creed means by being
crucified ?” I said.
“Of course I have seen the Crucifix,” she said. “La
Pucelle has it on her banner. And around that she only
suffers the soldiers to rally who have confessed and cast
away their sins.”
“It is worse than being trodden under foot,” I said.
“The Son of God bore that from us, and for us, to save
us. That is what He means by loving, nothing short of
that, by loving you, and wanting you to be good. Do
you think He will give it up 2"
“I almost begin to hope not,” she said,
And Once more she lay down, wrapped up in the
soldier's cloak.
As I left the barn to keep watch outside once more
she recalled me.
“I was called Claudette at home, when there was a
home,” she said. “Will you say, Good night, Claudette?”
“Good night, Claudette,” I said.
And when I looked in again she was breathing with
the soft even breath of a child asleep.
And I, sitting down on a stone at the threshold, made
my own prayer. g-
140 JOAN OF ARO.
“O Mighty and Merciful and Wise,” I said, “what
sin has been like mine Z For I have been angry with
Thee. I have not forgiven Thee, not all these years, for
taking away the babe, and for letting the world go
wrong. And Thou didst but take the babe to Thy
heaven, and sufferest me to lead this lost child back to
Thee. And Thou hast sent the Maid to drive back this
lost one to Thee, and to drive us straying Englishmen
back to England, and Thy bewildered Christendom home
to Thee”
XL
£ertibaſ's Storp.
ºn Monday, the 8th of May 1429, in the
iº chill and darkness of our prison we saw,
*Sº through a little breathing slit in the wall, the
reflection of the glittering armour and the white banners,
we heard the sound of the trumpets, and from a church
near at hand came the music of the canticles, and above,
the eager trampling of many feet, and the joyous tumult
of many voices, all gathered around the deliverer, the
Maid.
“The Maid,” that was her name. She was seldom
called anything else
It was strange to hear all this exulting movement,
and to see the flashing of the reflected sunshine on the
wall of the cell, and we captive in the darkness, know-
ing it was May and Sunshine outside.
To lie there a bound and fettered captive, and yet to
find the captivity a liberation from the more galling
fetters which had bound me to what seemed a duty, and
yet a revolt against the will of God!
Easier, indeed, to have all His billows and waves go

142 JOAN OF ARC.
over me bound thus to the rock of His will, than to
have to swim vainly yet inevitably against the current
of His will.
With Owen it was far otherwise.
And then, besides, for him, it was May in the world
of his life.
Love and hope and Cecilie were in that world of sun-
shine outside.
And to him this defeat, with all its pain and humilia-
tion and woe, made the earth seem like a kingdom of
order confused into a chaos.
Rudely turned from his creed of England and success,
Providence and magic and prayer and patriotism all
seemed to him inextricably entangled.
“Listen to their screams,” he said. “There is not
One among them that can give a real cheer. Their very
bells cannot ring out an honest peal like English bells.
It is all clash and crash, and jar of separate, dissonant
voices, and all, no doubt, like so many heathen idolaters
worshipping that sorceress, kissing her bridle, pressing
their sick to touch the hem of her garment. And she
three months since keeping a few sheep, and spinning her
poor peasant clothes in her father's hut ! That is what
the devil can give if only one gives oneself heartily to
him.”
“There is no degradation in keeping sheep,” I said.
“King David began with that, and with a few.”
“For heaven's sake do not be moderate, Percival. It
shoots through every fibre of my foot. If one cannot
JOAN OF ARC. 143
swear a little, what is there left 2 They say this Jeanne
like the rest calls us godoms, because we swear pretty
freely—that she will not suffer her soldiers to swear by
anything more spiritual than their bâtons, the hypo-
crites At all events, we English are no hypocrites.
Neither the saints nor the devil can accuse us of that.”
The tumult in the streets died away, and the long
hours wore slowly on in the chill and the dusk.
Then we fell into talk about old times, and the boyish
recollections roused him.
But it was naturally much more wearisome for him
than for me.
He had so much more to be impatient for.
And he had no work or occupation; whereas he
himself, his wound, his well-being, his fretting, his
happiness, were full occupation for me.
And in this isolation it was a happiness to feel the
ties of the old memories and the bond of brotherhood
press closer.
He talked now and then of Cecilie; and that was
hardest to me, because he spoke of her oftenest with a
kind of playful protective fondness, as of a creature
whose happiness was necessarily secured by having won
him ; as of a jewel, indeed, but one that was enriched
by its setting; whereas to me, pagan idolater that I
was, all the sky seemed but the setting to that one
star.
He even compared her with other ladies, always to
her advantage, it is true. If she was less brilliant than
144 JOAN OF ARO.
such an One, she was more restful; if she was less
courtly than another, she was fairer. Whereas, to me,
to compare her with any besides was like taking a
Madonna down from the altar to place it beside a Diana,
or a dog. Diana or dog mattered little as to the irrev-
erence of the comparison
Cecilie was sacred. To displace her from her shrine
was sacrilege.
He spoke even of the colour of her eyes and hair.
He thought them more beautiful than any he had
See]],
But Cecilie was Cecilie to me; and thus to detach
one part of her from another seemed like turning her
into tapestry and cataloguing the stitches.
Yet he loved her truly; and his love and his char-
acter, himself, were what she has chosen.
If love, then, for him meant rather gathering her life
into his, than giving himself to her, such giving was
what she chose. And in the end, love being true, must
for her and for him have its own double life, must,
sooner or later, attain to its own essential life of
sacrifice.
As we sate together there, my chief thought was how
I could best help them.
The sense of having been lifted, or plunged, to a life
beyond wants and fears, sometimes filled me with a
strange glow of exultation.
But there was not much time for such thinking.
On the evening of that Monday we were roughly
JOAN OF A RO. 145
summoned from our dungeon, to be taken to our final
destination.
We had been captured by Sir Tanneguy du Châtel, a
gentleman whose castle was on the borders of Lorraine,
and there we were to be held in durance until we could
be exchanged or ransomed.
It was humiliating to be driven past our own
smouldering forts and bastions; but Owen's lameness
and the difficulty of supporting him gave me little time
for observation.
That night, when all was still, no enemy near, and
therefore no watch, I heard a creeping and stirring, as
of some wild animal in the long grass on the edge of
the camp, near which we happened to be.
In another minute the familiar gray head of Peter
appeared quite close at hand.
Owen, happily, was asleep.
Our colloquy was very brief.
I told him the name of the seigneur whose prisoners
we were, and of his castle.
He said he felt sure of being able to reach the country
still in English hands, and so, to get to the English
Coast.
I told him to spare no gold for Owen's ransom, and
then, first I told to any human being, the purpose which
had rapidly ripened in my own mind during our days
in the cell in Orleans, that I meant to become either a
monk or a priest, that all lands were henceforth the
Same to me, and that, therefore, I needed no ransom.
(611) 10
146 JOAN OF ARC.
“All lands might be the same to Master Owen "
growled Peter; “but to yow every stone and tree of the
old place, every face in the old home, is dear.”
“And will be etermally,” I said. “And therefore I
mean what I say. Owen is wounded, and will chafe
himself to death if not soon set free.”
A French soldier near us made an uneasy movement
and murmur in his sleep, and Peter took warning and
disappeared.
The next morning, when Owen awoke, he was greatly
rejoiced to hear of Peter's projected journey home.
His spirits rose at once. He was sure Peter's will, so
provokingly stubborn when it crossed one's own, would
by the slow weight of it carry him through all opposi-
tion.
In a few weeks we should be free, this wretched net
of sorcerers would be broken, the interrupted conquest
would be resumed, and we should, after a brief final
struggle, return with victorious spoils to Danescombe.
These fluttering transient hopes, which lure us on
from bush to bush, hopping and chirping out of sight of
difficulties, I suppose have their share in our training.
But the great immortal hope, which dares to look
down into the darkness and evil and fathom it, because
of the dawn which it sees from its mountain-height, is
IQ Olſe.
And so we went to the castle on the edge of the
forests and mountains of the Vosges, which was to be
our prison.
JOAN OF ARO. 147
It stood on a rocky height, and consisted of a heavy
solid old keep, with a range of new buildings in a more
modern style.
The keep was to be our prison. The newer buildings
were the mansion of the châtelain and the fair young
châtelaine.
Our first lodging was a cell with a slit for a window,
which, nevertheless, was luxurious compared with our
dungeon at Orleans, or, indeed, with many a monastic
cell, because it let in Sunshine and fresh air from the
wide range of forest below. When we lay on the floor
on the prisoners' straw beds, beautiful visions of stars
crossed it, and of gold and crimson clouds at sunrise.
And by climbing on the bench, which was our table, we
could see the foldings of the wooded hills.
Our first solace there was a little child of seven years
who came to see us, a child like the angel in the corner
of our mother's Italian picture. Her eyes were of a
limpid brown, such as I have seen in our moorland
streams when they were perfectly clear and the sun
struck them as they fell in heavy curves into a dark
pool. How can any one call such eyes black 2
Black is the death of every colour, while such eyes
have in them the birth or possibility of every colour. The
child's were not brilliant or sparkling, they were lumin-
ous, as with light from within ; very grave, yet with a
wonderful capability of gladness in them, something
which was more than a smile, rather like the music of a
child's laugh, sudden and spontaneous. Yet the usual
148 JOAN OF ARO.
expression was of sadness, or rather of forlornness, of a
sorrow which must, in some way, have belonged to
humanity rather than to this little one, being far too
ripe for the heart of a child.
At first she said scarcely anything, only brought us
flowers in heaps, not in her hands, but in her arms.
Owen sang songs to her and made garlands for her,
and she let him laugh and play with her, in her grave
way. But it was curious that she always brought the
flowers to me.
She spoke French, but with an accent which seemed
foreign, though not English.
I was afraid to question her. The creature seemed
so spiritual and grave, such a blending of child and
angel, and withal of something which made me think of
legends of water-sprites who yearn wistfully for human
love and a human soul, that I had a vague fear she
might vanish like a questioned ghost, if her nature were
peered into.
To Owen, who plied her at first with many a merry
riddle, she vouchsafed no information.
At last, one day she came without her flowers, looking
strangely pale and languid, and seemed to yearn for some
motherly arms to rest on. She let me take her on my
knee, and soon the eyelids drooped, and the languid head
sank on my shoulder, and she fell into an uneasy sleep.
An hour or two passed, and the dusk was falling, and
I began to fear she would be missed, when the vesper
bell woke her.
JOAN OF ARO. 149
“You will be missed, little one,” I said.
“There is no one to miss me,” she said; “my grand-
father is at the chase.”
Just then the sound of horns and of the baying of
dogs came echoing up the valley, and she sprang up
hastily and crept away.
But at the door she turned, with a strange wistful
look in her dark eyes.
“I shall come again,” she said, Smiling a strange little
smile at me. “Never ask for me, but be sure I shall
come again.”
But, after that, day after day passed, and she never
came. And all that time nothing varied the monotony
of our days, and very weary they seemed.
“I had begun to think this cell might be a good
novitiate for a monk’s life,” I said to Owen one day;
“but I had not thought the monk’s cell would be with-
out the child.”
We spent much time in speculating who our mysteri-
ous little guest could be, when, one morning early, when
our morning portion was brought, with the old warder,
who was the only member of the household we had
seen, appeared a lady dressed in rich velvet and lace
and jewels, but with her black hair falling loosely
around her, a tall stately woman, with eyes like our little
angel’s in colour, and at first, I thought, in expression.
With a sweet graciousness, not, however, without a
loftiness which marked the condescension she felt her
visit to be, she said—
150 JOAN OF ARC.
“My little daughter is ill, and moans for you; at
least, for one of you. How shall I know which Z *
“It must be my brother,” I said; “he played and
sang with her.”
She hesitated a little.
“Excuse a sick child's illusions,” she replied: “the
little One said, “L’infelice—the unhappy one ; the one
whose eyes understand mine.’ Poor little one !” she
Smiled, “who has never known a care or a sorrow. You
had better both come,” she concluded.
And we followed her up the dark winding staircase
of the keep across the halls of the newer mansion,
through richly furnished room after room, which, to our
eyes, so long used to bare stone walls, seemed sumptuous
as a palace, until on a large bed, draped with crimson
damask, we saw once more the lovely child's face.
She smiled sweetly, and stretched out her hands to
us both ; but she would not be content without my
sitting on a chair by the bedside while she held my hand.
“I shall bring you flowers again, one day,” she said.
“I have told them, and they say I may, and now I shall
get well.” *
She seemed quite content whilst I sate beside her, just
as our mother used to be. A rest came into the wistful
eyes. But I, who thought she was sealed for death and
heaven, found it hard to keep back my tears So as to be
calm—the very condition, I felt, of my remaining.
But the little maid was right. The flush and anxiety
passed from her face, and she did get well.
JOAN OF ARC. 151
It was a great mystery to me at first, how a child
with a mother, and a mother so beautiful and gracious,
could have that forlorn, orphaned look in her eyes.
It was only by slow degrees that the riddle read
itself to me.
We were left much alone, we two.
Gracious and Sweet as she appeared, the Lady Blanche
du Châtel seemed to find an insupportable weariness in
the slow monotonous hours by the sick-bed. She was
always coming and going, at first on errands for the
child, but, before long, going more than coming, so that
the little one ceased to look for her.
Movement and change and homage were essential to
her.
And so it came about that the child and I were left
to each other, whilst Owen and the lady, with old Sir
Tanneguy and the retainers and gentlemen who con-
stituted the little court, were in the hall, or at the chase,
or in the gardens. Everywhere to the Lady Blanche
the world must be a little court, of which she was the
centre. And so the child came to have the forlorn un-
mothered look, and the grave life apart.
The external likeness between the child and the
mother was so great that it was some time before I un-
ravelled the deep inward dissimilarity it veiled.
It is perplexing when kindred is thus in the outer
shell and not at all in the inward organization.
For the outer shell of manner as well as of form were
alike—the interest in those around, the love of beauty.
152 JOAN OF ARO.
But in the child all these were the true end; in the
mother they were the instruments to the one end of her
own personal reign.
Not that she deliberately designed conquests, but she
required subjects as instinctively as all human beings
require bread.
In the child’s eyes there was the wistful look as of a
forlorn fairy creature yearning for human love and a
human soul. In the Lady Blanche's eyes, of the same
limpid luminous brown, there was at times a wild elfish
spell, as of a being of another race set on exciting an
affection she could not return.
The lady and Owen drew as naturally to each other
as the child and I. Our captivity was virtually over,
and, bound by our knightly word, we simply waited to
be ransomed. At first I feared little for Owen in the
matter. Knowing of old his own instinct of charming,
I felt the combatants equally matched. At the bottom
of his heart I felt sure there was the true loyal love to
Cecilie, the inconstancy was merely on the surface.
Inconstancy in the depths was a thing I did not fear.
It was inconceivable to me; like a doubt of immortality.
To be the same being, and not love the old love, was, I
thought, simply impossible.
And inconstancy to Cecilie was a double impossibility.
The lady needed a court. Owen needed an interest,
and for the moment they suited each other.
But the combat was more unequal than I thought.
The Lady Blanche was of a culture and a beauty rare
JOAN OF ARC. 153
anywhere; and, to us northern islanders, doubly perilous
because of its novelty. Pallid, with a rich brown glow,
for colour to compare with her you went, unconsciously,
not to lilies and rosebuds, but to marbles and ivories
and velvets, and all gorgeous things in king's palaces.
Slow and languid in her ordinary movements, from the
slow droop and lifting of the veined eyelids and dark
lashes, to the gliding noiseless walk which scarcely made
her silken robe rustle, there were yet in her eyes sur-
prises of sudden fire, as if a hill covered with dovelike
woods had for an instant poured from its heart a volume
of flame; and at instants she had a Swiftness of motion
like a river falling with a smooth sudden flash from
pool to pool.
And then the world she knew was so much larger
and older than ours, that, although of the same age as
ourselves, beside her we were like boys at school.
Florence and our western coasts were some centuries
apart in those days, and the Lady Blanche was a
Florentine.
Pictures such as made the one treasure of our child-
hood were familiar to her in palace and church as haw-
thorns or primroses to us.
Her own castle, which to us seemed so regal, to her
was but as a salvage of a few fragments of the splen-
dours she had lived amongst.
And as to books, though she did not care to read, the
perfume of the Italian literature was on her.
She had lived familiarly by the sources of which our
154 JOAN OF ARO.
poets had drawn. Dante and the primeval fountains
were already voices out of the past to her, and Petrarch,
with his smooth broad streams of classical eloquence,
had reflected the life of her girlhood.
The insensible perfume of an ancient civilization was
around her, and beside her we and ours seemed like
children of the moors and forests.
She spoke with a condescending tolerance of France
and Sir Tanneguy's château. What would she have
thought of our old castle and the fishing-village, or even
the manor and the abbey of Abbot's Weir
So, at first unperceived by me, the silken fetters and
the spells were woven around Owen, which made Eng-
land seem to him as a foreign land.
My life also at this time led me somewhat apart from
his.
Two things occupied me, the study for holy orders,
and the companionship of the child Beatrice.
For at length I had communicated to Owen my in-
tention to enter the priesthood, and the curé of Domremy
helped me with my little beginnings of Latin.
And the child Beatrice and I had one great sympathy
among the many things that made us friends.
She had conceived a great love and worship for
Jeanne la Pucelle.
She alone of all in the castle.
And, indeed, with the Maid (is it not so with all the
saints º one of the most remarkable things was the way
in which, like a touchstone, she tested the true and
JOAN OF ARO. 155
simple from the false and artificial, the pure in purpose
from those sunk in the illusions of self.
Old Sir Tanneguy had a certain chivalrous loyalty
for her; he would suffer no light word to be spoken
of her. Yet a certain aristocratic impatience of her
peasant origin, with a masculine distrust of her military
judgment, kept him cool.
But the Lady Blanche barely deigned to recognize
her. It was too late, she thought, for Deborah or the
Amazons, or, indeed, for St. Catherines or St. Ursulas,
to be born, or probably for St. Catherine or St. Michael
to interest themselves very vividly in terrestrial affairs.
Visions came in the night, or, at best, in the dusk of
dawn.
No doubt the poor girl believed herself inspired.
Such visionaries were not uncommon in convents, and
Domremy was an ignorant and superstitious region,
under the shadow of ancient forests.
And no doubt the court were glad enough to have any
fancy or any standard round which France would rally
to her king.
Also, no doubt, the stars had great influence. She
believed learned astrologers had prophesied from remark-
able conjunctions or appositions of the planets, that some-
thing marvellous might be looked for.
And thus, all these things working together, the in-
fluences of the stars, the weakness and the straits of the
court, the misery and ignorance of the people, the vision-
ary exaltations of the poor peasant-girl, the Superstition
156 JOAN OF ARO.
of the soldiery, French and English, this remarkable
good fortune at the siege of Orleans, and also, probably,
a certain fascination and ability in the Maid, who, she
believed, was quite blameless and virtuous, there was
nothing to be surprised at in the turn things had taken.
But, for her own part, she would certainly lend no
countenance to such illusions.
She thought such fantastic fervours always led to re-
actions of cold.
And, moreover, she had no idea of people being lifted
out of their places—a girl into a man's armour, a peasant
to an establishment and attire fit for a countess.
At Owen's theory of magic or witchcraft she laughed.
She did not deny that magic was possible to those
who had a profound knowledge of the occult powers of
nature and of the stars. But there was plenty of range
to explain everything connected with Jeanne on the
ordinary human level, without bringing in either the
Saints or the devil.
She knew that the Bastard of Orleans and the young
Duke d’Alençon thought much of her. But that proved
little. Old captains and young princes of the blood, if
you found the clue, could often be led as easily as
children.
She also knew that Gerson, Chancellor of the Univer-
sity of Paris, and other theologians had sanctioned her
mission. But she thought little of that. They were
not men of the world. La Trémouille and the courtiers
hated her; and she believed the Archbishop of Rheims,
JOAN OF ARC. 157
Chancellor of the kingdom, and an astute politician, only
half liked the whole thing, and would withdraw his
support at the first seemly opportunity. Not that she
blamed the Maid for that. Each must play his own
game, and she had better look to hers.
The Maid had better be content with her fame, and
retire on the royal gifts. She might become quite a
person of importance at Domremy.
And by venturing more she risked all.
Risked all ! What was the Lady Blanche’s “all” to
the Maid 2
Jeanne’s “all” was all God's will, the saving of all
France.
But to explain this to the lady I should have needed
a language far more incomprehensible to her than her
sweet and smooth Italian was to me.
So the child and I kept our own counsel, and together,
in our rambles through field and forest, gleaned what
we could about the childhood and the home of the
Maid.
YII.
#ertibal’s Storp (lontinueb.
:*::::HE little homestead of Jeanne la Pucelle was
& # standing unchanged in the village street of
§§§ Domremy. Only last midsummer she had
been going in and out of the cottage-door, no dreamer,
always busy, chiefly near her mother, for she was the
eldest daughter.
It was a marvellous interest for me—who had seen
her as an Angel of Peace and an Angel of War, a whole
city flocking around her feet as the sheep used to do
in the village-pasture, secure in her mere presence, a
victorious army spell-bound into inaction before her, a
defeated nation enkindled into fearless valour by her—to
come among these simple people who loved her, and to
the homely places where she had lived as a child, where
La Pucelle d’Orleans was known by a pet name as
Jeannette Darc, or Romée.
The first time I saw her village it was evening, and
the river was winding like a silver cord among the
meadows. In “that valley of colours” the countless
flowers of spring had not yet faded. From the meadows

JOAN OF ARO. 159
the hill sloped up softly to the edge of the forest, divided
into patches of corn and hemp-land or vineyard. Beyond,
the forest of oak stretched to the hill-tops, ancient
oaks, such as ours in England.
The cottage was at the end of the village; the little
farm of thirty acres was her mother's inheritance. It
sloped from the quiet river up the hill to the edge of the
forest.
The meadows by the river-side were common pasture.
Sometimes Jeanne had taken her turn in guarding the
village flocks and herds there. Sometimes she had
helped her father with the plough or cart in the hemp-
fields. Most of her time, as the eldest daughter, she had
spent with her mother, preparing the family meals,
washing, and often spinning, late into the night, to make
the wool of their own flocks into clothing for her
brothers and sisters.
Simple as the life was, it was full of the fountains of
all poetry. And Jeanne had the opened eyes which see
all the fountains.
God was in all things, to her, and therefore nothing
was commonplace to her.
Love was in her heart to all creatures, therefore no
creature was common or unclean to her. Moreover,
having opened eyes, the range of the world open to her
was not narrow.
War was there, with its terrible revelations of other
lands and races, and its opening up of human life from its
heights of sacrifice to its depths of humiliation and horror.
160 JOAAW OF ARO.
Once her family had had to fly from Domremy for
some days to escape the soldiery; and often fugitives
from ruined homes passed through the village.
Many a time the Maid, gave up her bed in her
sleeping-chamber with the one little square window
which looked across her father's garden to the church, to
some destitute wanderers, and passed the night by the
chimney-corner of the dwelling-room outside.
And the dear animals were there to serve and be
served, the poor mysterious creatures, so like us and so
unlike us! She fed the calves, and milked the cows,
and was recognized by the kind eyes of the gentle tame
beasts, and even as a child felt herself a power to guard
and guide the silly sheep and lambs.
There is wonderful teaching in all these things to
those who can ſearn; not teaching they can utter in
words, but which goes down into the inmost being and
grows in spiritual bone and marrow.
And to her, her own peasant garments were no mere
prosaic manufacture sold in stalls or streets at so much
an ell. She had seen the wool shorn from the sheep
and lambs,--the sheep dumb before her shearers; she
had gathered the flax, when its blue flowering time had
passed, and spun it by her mother's side. The symbols
of this wonderful world were hidden from her by no
vulgar artificial life. It is the factitious splendours that
hide the beauty and the depths from us, not the lowly
labours.
It was little to her that she could not read or write.
JoAN OF ARC. 16]
As she said to some divines who were catechizing her,
“Messire, my King has other books than those you wot of.”
And then, quiet and peaceful as her little native
valley of the Meuse was, her father's little farm of
thirty acres touched on two worlds of mystery.
Their hemp-fields sloped up to the edge of the primeval
Oak-forest, to the Bois Chesnu, whose origin no man
knew. And their little garden bordered on the cemetery
close under the church.
As they say it is at Nazareth, the home of the
Holy Childhood, and by the Sea of Galilee, the wilder-
ness and the solitary place came close to the dwellings
of men.
The peace of the flowery meadows, flooded and fed by
the river every early spring, and the busy life of the
tilled fields, touched close on the mystery of ancient
forests, where a few minutes brought you into dusk and
loneliness, out of the thought and sight of men, Moun-
tains, and the sea, and forests, it seems to me, bring the
unity and grandeur of God close to the little divided
life of man.
And close to the little garden where she grew and
gathered the herbs or flowers for festivals, lay the
resting-place of the dead.
Not that I ever heard that this was much to Jeanne.
She had not lost any dear to her. None had gone from
her home to be laid under that turf.
And to her the departed were not there. They were
in “the land of the living.”
(611) 11
162 JOAN OF ARO.
They were nearer to her in the church than in the
churchyard; by the altar than by the grave.
The forest also brought to her the ghosts of the old
Pagan Creed. The elves were believed still to dance
under the Ladies' Tree (though Jeanne said she had
never seen them). The sacred well of the ancient
heathen tribes was still exorcised and blessed every
Spring.
And the curé taught her the legends of the Saints.
Antioch and Syria and Alexandria and Egypt were
household words to her through her own especial saints,
Catherine of Alexandria and Margaret of Antioch. Even
the names of Socrates and Plato came into her world,
through the Virgin Egyptian Princess who learned that
there was more wisdom in the Child Jesus than in all
the grand old Sages she had been taught to revere. The
shadow of the old Roman Empire also fell on Jeanne
through the Roman governor of Antioch who sentenced
sweet St. Margaret to die. And the curé who taught
her about the Saints taught her also the history of
France.
To her, France was no mere piecing together of states
and lordships. It was one Sacred kingdom, it was one
violated Fatherland, the heart of the holy kingdom of
God. The king was the type of all royalty, the elect
representative of “Messire” the King of the Heavens.
From first to last, though she could bear in silence any
insult uttered against herself, she would kindle and rise
against any insult to her king.
JOAN OF ARC. 163
She was beloved in her village as no egotist absorbed
in his own dream was ever loved. Not a trace of the
envy which besets small communities, when one rises
above the hereditary level, seemed to cling about Jeanne,
among her kindred and companions, so entirely unpre-
tending had she been, never wanting anything for her-
self, always ready to succour all. To them she was, as
they said, a “very good girl, simple, and pleasant, and
sweet.” She delighted, indeed, greatly to go to church,
and sometimes they used to Smile at her for being so
very pious.
“She could spin,” she said (almost her only boast at
her trial), “as well as any woman in Rouen.”
Flocks, and herds, and household cares could be in-
trusted to her. She would not let the creatures stray
while she dreamed, or let the bread overbake, or the fire
go out.
She was beautiful, and strong, and tall, with dark
expressive eyes, a high forehead, small hands and feet;
and she could run and dance as well as any, and weave
garlands under the “Fair May ’’ tree. As she grew
older she did not care very much for games. But little
was known in the village about her visions.
One boy remembered how, when he was a little child
and sick, Jeanne had nursed him patiently and tenderly
till he got well.
The bell-ringer could tell how she gave him once some
little cakes (lwmes) because he had forgotten to ring the
church-bells which made her know the sacred hours
I64 JOAN OF AFC.
when to kneel and pray with other Christians, in the
fields, and she wanted him never to forget again.
Church-bells were always a peculiar delight to her.
And it was well for her. For the time came when for
terrible months they were all the religious rites left to
her, the only signs that linked her solitude to the Church
Universal.
Another could remember her giving up her bed to
some poor fugitive, and spending the night by the fire-
side in the outer room.
All could recall her spinning and working by her
mother's side, skilful at the distaff, no dreamer, busy and
capable and strong. But the memories were chiefly of
her love of prayer, and her readiness to help, of little
gifts and kindnesses and services, for Jeanne was one of
those who, however poor, had always something to give.
Yet dearly as she loved the young girls her com-
panions, and dearly as they loved her—Hauviette, who
sometimes shared her bed in her little chamber, and
wept so bitterly when she went away; Guillemette, and
especially little Mengette, her pet and darling—they
could none of them tell much about her visions and
voices. She never prattled about her plans. She had
the gift of silence. Her companions knew she delighted
to be at church, and would often kneel in the fields “as
if before God,” and they had seen her often in tears at
her devotions. Sometimes, boys and girls as they all
were, they would laugh at her for being devout beyond
her years. But she never justified herself by speaking
JOAN OF ARC. 165
of her revelations; not even in confession, or to her
parents.
Perhaps her reticence was inherited from her father,
who loved her with that tender sternness of paternal
love which would have made him drown her with his
own hands rather than let her go forth unsheltered
among the soldiers, and which afterwards, it is said,
broke his heart, when she was put to death, so that he
scarcely survived her. Whilst from her mother, Isabelle
Romée, the peasant-heiress, perhaps came the fire, steady
and glowing, which kept the mother's heart warm
through twenty-five years of wrong and widowhood to
right her daughter's memory at last.
It was from her mother she learned the Creed, the
Lord's Prayer, and the Hail Mary, besides all the un-
spoken sermons good daughters learn from good mothers.
It was afterwards, from the confessions wrung from
her in the interrogations of the prosecution, that I
learned how her “voices” came to her, and how, in the
silence, her vocation deepened. It was afterwards that
I learned the story of her visions and her voices.
It was drawn from her by the interrogations of the
divines at Poitiers, and of her enemies at Rouen, and
never varied.
She was thirteen years of age when she first heard a
voice of God which called her. It was on a summer
day, at noon, in the garden of her father, beside the
church, on her right hand. “A great light came with
it ;” she “seldom heard the voice without the light.”
166 JOAN OF ARO.
The first time, she was “amazed and sore afraid."
But she took courage and found the voice was “worthy.”
The third time, she knew it was the voice of an angel.
Before long she found it was the Archangel Michael,
mighty in battle, and guardian of France.
At first the only command was to be a good child
and go often to church. Then he told her of the piteous
state of the kingdom of France, and that one day she
would have to go thither.
A multitude of angels were around him, and when
they vanished she wept, and longed that they would take
her with them. St. Michael told her that St. Catherine
and St. Margaret would come and tell her what she
should do. And they came : the virgin-martyrs whose
stories, brought by the Crusaders from the mystic East,
the curé had told her.
The light unfolded into glorious crowned faces and
forms, the voices into a clear command. She was to go
to France and save the kingdom.
The voices were very beautiful and sweet, “moult
douces et belles.” She oftenest spoke of them as “her
voices.” And thenceforth she dedicated herself in per-
petual maidenhood to God. But still she told no one,
until the hour had come.
But the misery of France deepened. The divisions
spread; the Burgundians and English overran the land.
Her king Charles was called in mockery “the king of
Bourges.”
The voices became clearer and more frequent, two or
JOAN OF ARO. I67
three times a week, until at last they told her distinctly
to go to Waucouleurs, the nearest town in the valley, to
the Captain Robert de Baudricourt, who would give her
men to escort her to the king.
With the definite call came the terror. The joyful
heavenly light and the beautiful sweet voices were
driving her into the wilderness. The desert, in all its
dearth and ruggedness, exile from mother, father, home,
friends, lay before her; so that, “had it not been the
will of God, she had rather have been torn by four
horses than have gone forth to France.”
But there was no doubt and no lingering. “She
could no longer stay where she was.”
The hour had come; and, as her first step, she went
from home to stay with her uncle Durand Laxart, at the
village of Burey-en-Vaux.
Perhaps she felt some inward sympathy with him.
He was the first who believed in her visions.
After staying a week with him she told him the com-
mands under which she believed she lay.
He was amazed ; but she reminded him of the pro-
phecy current in the district, that a young maiden from
the Marches of Lorraine was to undo the mischief
another woman (Isabella, the wicked queen-mother) had
wrought.
He was moved by her conviction. He consented to
take her to the Sieur de Baudricourt. This was in
May: one of the Maid's four historic Mays—at Waucou-
leurs, at Orleans, at Compiègne and at Rouen.
168 JOAN OF ARC.
The peasant-uncle led the peasant-girl, in her woven
red woollen jacket, into the presence of the governor.
She knew the governor from others “by her voices.”
She “came from the Lord,” she said. “The kingdom
belonged not to the dauphin but to the Lord, from
whom the dauphin held it ‘en commande ;’ that by mid-
Lent deliverance would be brought to him, that the
kingdom would be his, and that she herself would lead
him to his consecration and crowning.”
“Who is thy lord 7" said the Sieur de Baudricourt.
“The King of Heaven,” she said.
The governor considered her mad, and recommended
her uncle to box her ears and take her back to her
father.
Yet it is probable that even in that first interview
she won, among the knights and soldiers who stood near,
the first believers in her mission.
She returned to her parents, and from that time her
father grew anxious and watched her, preferring her
death to such dishonour as her going forth unsheltered
to the army.
They tried to persuade her to marry.
But they dealt gently with her. Perhaps, all the time,
her mother, who survived to clear her name to all the
world, believed in her; perhaps even her father, whom
afterwards her death brought to the grave, believed her,
and therefore shrank and held her back. At last they
suffered her to go and stay again with her Uncle Laxart,
to take care of her aunt, who was ill.
JOAN OF ARO. 169
She felt too surely that this was a farewell to her
home. But she said so to no one.
Only afterwards she sent to beg her parents' pardon
for departing without their leave.
Yet, she said, “ had I had a hundred fathers and
mothers, and been a king's daughter, I must have gone.”
Her uncle took her again to Waucouleurs. There she
lived with the wife of a cartwright, called Henri le
Royer. “A simple, good, gentle girl,” he said; “helping
his wife with the spinning and housework,” and spend-
ing what time she could on her knees in prayer, espe-
cially at early mass and before the image of the Virgin
and Child in the crypt under the church.
She was bound to a hard combat, she knew, and in
the death-like shadows and silence of the crypt she
gathered strength. What is all this earth but a crypt
to those who have heard the heavenly voices and seen
thé glorious forms of the victors crowned ?
Her mission was no secret now.
A young man-at-arms, Jean de Metz, who had no
doubt seen her before the governor, came to speak with
her,
“Ma mie,” he said, “what are you doing here ? Must
the king be driven from the kingdom and we all become
English 2*
“I am come hither,” she said, “to bid Robert de
Baudricourt take me to the king. But he takes no
heed of me or my words; and, nevertheless, before mid-
Lent I must needs be before the king, though I should
J70 JOAN OF ARC.
wear out my legs to the knee. For none else in the
world—kings, nor dukes, nor daughter of the King of
Scots,” can recover the kingdom, and there is no help
but in me. And certes, I had far rather spin beside my
poor mother, for this is not my state of life; but I must
needs go and do it, because my Lord wills it.”
“Who is thy lord 7" said Jean de Metz.
“He is God,” she replied.
And he, brave and true, believed her, and placed his
hands in hers, reverently as in a priest's or a feudal
lord's, and swore that, God helping, he would take her
to the king, “ and when would she go 2°
“Better now than to-morrow,” she said. “Better
to-morrow than the day after.”
And thus the Maid enlisted the first soldier of the
army wherewith she was to recover France. The second
was Bertrand de Boulangy. Both revered her as a saint
to the end, and said that an evil thought was impossible
beside her.
The belief in her spread and deepened.
The Duke of Lorraine, who was ill, sent to seek her
advice, as one endowed with Supernatural power, and
consulted her about his sickness. It is said she coun-
selled him to amend his life, and to return to his good
wife, from whom he was separated.
At length the governor, the Sieur de Baudricourt, had
to listen. But, first, he brought a priest to exorcise her.
Jeanne was quite ready for the test; but she gently
* Charles had thought of flight to Scotland.
JOAN OF ARO. 171
blamed, not the governor, but the curé, “He had con-
fessed her,” she said, “and he ought to have known
better.” To confess her, no doubt, was to justify her.
The cause of the Maid was won.
The whole of the little town contributed to her equip-
ment, when she went forth, uniting their narrow means
to buy her armour, helmet, hauberk, tunic, and all the
military equipment it was thought right for her to wear.
One citizen joined with her uncle to buy her a horse.
The governor still delayed, but on the day when we
English won our last victory, the “Battle of the Her-
rings,” it is said she went to him once more, and said
that the dauphin had sustained a great injury, and that
in the name of God she must go.
“Go, then,” he said at last, “ and let what may come
Of it.”
And so, with six men-at-arms, she went forth on her
perilous way through the disordered land; and many of
the people wept and followed her with supplications and
benedictions, and with anxious care.
But she had no care. Her escort, she felt, was more
than those six who were in sight. “Her brothers of
Paradise were caring for her.” And as she went she
said, “It is for this that I was born.”
XIII.
(Élaine’g Storp.
sº T was late in June when Peter the Wright
ă şi came back to us.
* * * * * sº sº a tº a º He brought with him a young Orphan girl
from the north-eastern borders of France, near Burgundy,
to be a daughter to his good wife Margery: a quiet,
silent, helpful creature, with a grave sadness in the dark
eyes and the pale face, and a hopeless yearning, as of a
life in some way closed before it had opened.
At first Margery's welcome was not very cordial.
But the gentle, broken-spirited creature by degrees stole
into her place in the foster-mother's home and heart.
She seemed to have a thirst for work, as other young
creatures for play. No threshold was so clean and no
hearth so bright as Margery's. And into the church at
all spare hours she used to creep, as a dog into the Sun-
shine, or a sick child to its mother's knee.
From amusements she shrank. At first we sought to
win her to join the young maidens of the manor and the
village in dance and song, thinking it would, in time,
make her feel less an orphan and an exile.

JOAN OF ARO. 173
But though she would not seldom smile, and even
now and then laugh amidst her work, an irrepressible
sadness made her eyes fill and her lips quiver at any
merry-making. Father Adam also, who confessed her,
generally a friend to all healthful play for young crea-
tures, said she were better left to herself.
Peter brought us sad tidings enough. My brothers in
captivity, Owen wounded, the siege of Orleans raised,
the armies of England, so long accustomed to victory,
beaten back, our leaders captive and slain, and all
...through the magical arts of a young peasant-girl, whom
rumour declared to be a sorceress, an unmaidenly crea-
ture going about with the soldiers, clothed in manly
armour, in deadly league with Satan and all his hosts
How else, every one said, could the soldiers of Henry V.,
the victors of Agincourt and Werneuil, the conquerors
of Normandy and the better part of France, suddenly be
checked, and baffled, and beaten, without an addition to
the enemies' force save this one peasant-maid 2
But sad as Peter's tidings were, he himself was not
sad. A strange and unaccountable change had come
Over him. He was grave and silent indeed, as usual—
more than usual; but all the restlessness and irritability
had gone from his face and bearing, and at times there
was an upward glance as of one who was not so much
yearning as seeing. It was as if he had seen a vision
of angels.
Peter went far oftener to the church, and his bearing
towards Father Adam had greatly changed. Altogether,
174 JOAN OF ARO.
there was a softness, and a peace, and a humbleness
about him, as of one who abode under the shadow of
Some great presence.
Peter was never a man to be questioned. But to me
his secret soon came out.
His Book, the Book, the English New Testament, was
dearer to him than ever.
And from time to time he asked me to translate it for
the orphan girl Claudette, to whom in his broken French
he had told many stories from it.
In old days he used to make me choose the “woes”
to the Pharisees and hypocrites, “Depart from me, ye
cursed, in that ye did it not,” and his dark eyes would
kindle under his bushy white eyebrows, as he said, “Yes,
He shall judge the world in righteousness. Only it is
long in coming.”
But now he chose the invitations—the “Come unto
Me,” the “Learn of Me,” the “Follow Me.”
At first I thought it was for the sake of the orphan
girl who was wont to sit at my feet as I read, drinking
in every syllable as if she feared to let fall a sacred drop
of Sacramental wine.
But one evening, as we sate under the old oak of his
cottage-door, I saw such a look of adoration and joy
come over the rugged face that I could not but speak.
“The Old Book is dearer than ever to thee,” I said.
“The same as ever,” he replied, “and yet altogether
different, as the world is different if at sunrise you turn
to the west or to the east.
JOAN OF ARO. I75
“I used to have great pride in the woes to the Phari-
sees; for they, thought I, were the worldly priests and g
friars, and the covetous rich men.
“But I have found that the Pharisees were me, setting
myself above others, and saying, ‘I thank Thee I am not
as these.’
“But chiefly it is because of this:
“The Book has ceased to be to me only a record of
things that are past. It is a revelation of the things
that always are.
“I thought it was a picture-book of olden times, and
I find it a lifting up here and there of a veil over all
times, from the beginning till to-day and for ever.
“It is as if you went into a great church full of what
you thought were paintings on the windows, and all at
Once you found they were not paintings, but openings
through glass, crystal-clear, into bits of a real world
outside.
“Think of the difference.
“I see a picture of David, and the sheepfolds, and his
Smiting Goliath.
“I read of Moses bringing water from the rock.
“I read of the waves of the Red Sea standing up as a
crystal wall for the passage of Israel.
“I read of the Apostles changed from trembling
fugitives into men without fear, rejoicing to be beaten
and suffer shame for Christ.
“I read of women turning to flight armies of the
aliens.
176 JOAN OF ARO.
“And all at Once, looking out of one of these windows,
I see David there, fresh from the sheepfolds, with the
giant at his feet and the hosts fleeing.
“I see Moses there, the waves smitten back, the rock
smitten into fountains.
“I see victorious armies kept back as by walls of sea,
or of fire; hunted hares turned into heroes, by the pres-
ence of one poor weak woman.
“More, unspeakably more | I see the Image of the
Lord Christ there, not in stone or wood, or dead on a
cross, but pleading for reconciliation at the risk of death,
driving away sinful women and Smiting sinful men into
virtue by a purity their consciences acknowledge, pro-
tecting a whole city by a ‘fear not,’ and all in the like-
ness of a humble peasant-girl, who confesses her sins
like any of us, and says always, “I am nothing, but I
come from Messire, my King.’
“My King; yes, her King and ours.
“No more a King far off in Galilee, or far up in the
clouds, but here.
“I have seen—I have seen the burned villages, the
wasted fields, the murdered women and children. For
we did evil in France; we wrought ruin. But now, it
is no more only God in Judea, Christ in Galilee, or in
Heaven; but Christ in France, at Orleans, this May
day, and we all im. His kingdom, as much those of
us He rebukes and repels as those He sustains and
succours.”
“You speak in parables, Peter,” I said.
JOAN OF ABC. 177
“No parables, mistress,” he said. “I speak of Joan
the Maid.”
And then he told me all the wonderful story, and I
could not but wonder and believe.
“But,” I said, “what joy for us in this 2 If the Maid
is from God, God is against England, and we are lost
rebels, enemies of Heaven.”
“God is against us,” he said, “as a man against the
son whom he loveth and chasteneth. He chasteneth.
That means, His own hand is on us, and that being true,
what does the pain matter, or the blows It is His
hand, the Father's And I had thought, I had moaned,
that He had left the world alone.”
“What does Percival think 2 " I asked.
“Sir Percival does not so much think,” Peter replied.
“He has opened his eyes and he sees.”
“And Owen 2° I said.
“Sir Owen thinks as the majority do,” Peter replied.
“If this be so,” I said, “the French prison is more
freedom to Percival than the English camp.”
And then the old man told me what Percival had told
him that night near Orleans.
And I was sad: not so much that Percival should be
a priest, as for that he had said that to him all lands were
alike. Whilst to me all lands would indeed have been
alike, but only with him—or, alas ! without him.
Were we, was Cecilie, was I nothing to him
But Peter, answering, I suppose, the quiver of pain on
my face, said,
(611) 12
178 JOAN OF ARC.
“He did but mean to make his ransoming seem of no
moment, that all might be spent on Sir Owen.”
And when, that night, as Cecilie and I in our little
chamber looked out for a last sight of the starry sky
through the window, round which the honeysuckle
Percival had planted was climbing, and I told her all,
she also said—
“He did but mean we should spend all we could
gather for Owen.”
“Ransom Owen,” I said, “and let Percival be a
prisoner and an exile 2"
She looked up as if quite surprised at my objec-
tion.
“Percival would think it quite natural and necessary,”
she said.
To her also, then, it seemed quite natural that Per-
cival’s life, or mine, or the whole world's should be
poured out in ransom for Owen's, melted like One pearl
to enrich the wine-cup of his festive life
But what if Percival were, as he was to me, the One
precious pearl, and Owen's life the lavish wine to dis-
solve it, and be no better for the waste 2
Yet in one sense she was right, this sacrifice was
natural in the heavenly kingdom.
In the lower kingdom the lower feeds the higher.
In the higher, the higher is sacrificed to the lower.
The mother for the child, the Christ for the lost, God
for man.
Not by any paradox, but by high necessity, because
JOAN OF ARC. 179
in the true life, which is love, gain is not in getting, but
in giving.
Breathing is burning. Growing is expending. Dying
is the seed bursting the prison of the husk.
Selfishness being death, losing self is life.
Sacrifice is not a purchase of immunity from sacrifice;
—it is fire, it is liberty, it is life; it is all natural in
the life of love.
And every day I had prayed beside our mother's
crucifix; and every day I was present at the feast which
is a sacrifice, at the perpetual sacrifice which is the per-
petual feast.
And yet I had been so slow to learn this, especially
for Percival |
I chafed and grudged that he, the eldest and the best,
should be sacrificed to the youngest and the least worthy;
that the fullest love, the richest cup, should be Owen's;
the old lands, Cecilie's love, the future of the family;
while Percival, impoverished, exiled, contentedly aban-
doned to his sacrifice, should have nothing left to give
but himself.
So little did I know what riches and poverty were, or
what love means.
But every one acquiesced, easily enough. Our aunt
and Sir Richard also thought it quite natural that their
future son-in-law should be considered before Percival;
and if Percival had indeed a vocation to the priesthood,
what could be more convenient and fortunate, and make
everything fit in better for every one 2 *
180 JOAN OF ARC.
And so we all gave up what we could; Cecilie every
one of her girlish trinkets and jewels; all of us lands in
mortgage, and whatever luxuries could be spared.
And by degrees the ransom was being raised; and in
a few weeks, every one trusted, Peter would go back to
France, find out the castle where my brothers were in
captivity; and Owen, no doubt, with the stipulation he
was not to fight against the French, would be restored
to home and Cecilie—his home, his castle, his lands, his
bride.
And Percival 2
He might live for God in some foreign monastery.
And I?
I might die. And before long every one would die,
and then all things would, no doubt, be set right.
XIV
#ertibal’s Storp.
jº'ſ last a cold fear began to creep over me that
# the spell of the Lady Blanche's beauty and
#3A%3A& grace was wrapping Owen, like the knights
in the legends, in an enchantment which would make all
common life and dear familiar home delights tame and
cold to him.
The lady taught him Italian. She said he was too
gentle and courteous for those northern island deserts. He
should go and take service in Italy, where foreign soldiers
of valour and conduct would always make their mark.
It was long since we had spoken much of home; the
present brought such a bewildering dazzle of changing
pleasures and contrasts; the gay parties at the chase, or
the more perilous fascination of the lessons in the castle.
At length one day a pedlar came to the castle, with a
pack of draperies and luxuries for the ladies. His atten-
tion seemed fixed in a peculiar manner on Owen and me.
At first he seemed to waver between us. But at last,
unable to attract Owen, who was occupied in assisting
the Lady Blanche to some momentous decision between

1S2 JOAN OF ARO.
gold and silver embroidery, he directed his efforts to me,
and slipped a packet into my hand, saying in broken
English, “It is for the brother with the dark eyes—no
One but him. Give me a token to say to those who
sent me I have been faithful to my trust.”
A ring of Owen's lay on the table; he had been
thinking of exchanging it. I took it hastily, having not
a moment for thought, and gave it to the man.
In a short time the pedlar departed, declaring he had
a long journey before him and could not delay.
When Owen and I were alone, I gave him the packet.
He changed colour; not flushing, but growing for a
moment, it seemed to me, gray and old, as he read the
letter.
“It is to say they will soon send the ransom by Peter,”
he said, and then he fell into a muse.
“It is perplexing,” he said at last, tossing back his
hair. “I had thought ransom was impossible, and I
was half thinking of abandoning the war and going to
serve in Italy, which I may do, I believe, when I like,
without ransom.”
I was dumb.
“You could not but be glad I should abandon this
war,” he resumed, almost fretfully, “believing as you
and Peter seem to do, that this peasant-maid is as an angel
of God.”
“To abandon the war is one thing,” I replied; “but
to abandon England, and home, and—”
“I abandon nothing and no one,” he interrupted me
JOAN OF ARO. 183
hastily. “Of course, Italy was only to be on the way
home; a little way round.” And he would say no more.
That night I had my last inward conflict, on that
ground, concerning Cecilie.
He had her dear writing; she was no great scholar;
and I had seen the precious half-childish letters I knew
so well.
And to him they seemed not as the blessed, inspiring,
liberating touch of her kind hand, but as a fetter.
Could it be possible that for his sake and Cecilie's,
still to “take care of him " and of her, I might yet have
to put away the knife and the fire from my own heart,
to find that the offering had been accepted, and that
from the heavens came a voice bidding me not to take
the knife or kindle the fire, but to let things be; to wait
and watch; and that the best for Cecilie—even for Owen
—might even yet be a rapture of fulfilled joy for me !
To pour out all the oil of our lamp of life to feed the
flame of another life may be worth while ; but to pour
it into a broken vessel simply to be wasted
In loving, we can only really love what really exists.
If what Cecilie loved proved a dream, then she must
have been dreaming in so loving, and any waking,
though it might be through anguish, was better than
dreaming.
Might not the true life for her, as for me, yet be,
“together to take care of him " ?
There is no mating for creatures really of different
race. Were not Owen and Cecilie really creatures of
184 JOAN OF ARC.
different spiritual race, and might not this lady and
Owen, charming, delighting, deceiving, undeceiving,
trying, tormenting each other as they surely would, be
really a truer whole, fitting in as broken fragments into
each other's characters ?
But, thank God, weak as I was, I had lived too much
in truth for that lie to live long in me.
Owen was Owen, and no dream ; Cecilie was Cecilie,
and her love was her very self, no dream ; and to take
care of Owen meant no love of a dream-Owen, however
beautiful; no letting go of the real Owen into false and
fairy enchantments, however sweet; but to save him, to
rescue him, to win him to his true self for himself and
Cecilie.
And rising from vain tossing on my bed, once more
that night I took in spirit my mother's hand, and prom-
ised to do her bidding. -
And another mightier Hand held mine.
And so, the next morning I rose early and prayed for
Owen as if he had been in a magician's cave, as he was.
There was nothing else to be done.
And the next day a company of guests arrived, fresh
from the battle of La Pataye, the first in which our
England was defeated in the open field. And the Lady
Blanche gleamed forth in all her charm and graciousness,
shining equally on all. And for the moment the
magician's cave was open to the daylight, and that
evening Owen read those few precious lines of Cecilie's,
which I never Saw, again and again, and said—
JOAN OF ARC. 185
“She is sweet and fresh as an English spring-flower
—violet, primrose, hyacinth. When shall we breathe
the dear familiar wholesome air again 2 °
These new guests were the three young Seigneurs de
Mailly from the dauphin's court at Chinon, and they
had much to say about the Maid.
Of these three young seigneurs two were brothers,
and the third was a cousin. They varied in their esti-
mate of the Maid.
Sir Bertrand, the eldest, was a languid and polished
courtier, well acquainted with the favourite, La Tré-
mouille.
He saw of Jeanne about as much as the Lady Blanche
could see, and greatly admired her insight and discrim-
ination. He considered the Maid to be a half-mad
enthusiast, of whom it might be expedient, for political
reasons, to make use, because the common people believed
in her, and would fight for her. But the less she could
be listened to the better, and so much the sooner she
could be thrown aside when the work was done. Beside
her, there was no repose to be had. A victory, with
her, meant not a resting-place for feasting and congratu-
lations, but a step towards further battle and conquest;
and if life were to be one series of enterprises and sacri-
fices, conquest and life itself he deemed were scarce
worth having at the price.
The second brother was an active and able captain,
and he asserted that whatever might be the source of
her wisdom, the Maid had a marvellous capacity for war
186 JOAN OF ARO.
—seizing the enemy's weak points, seeing at once the
best routes to take, and the right moments for action or
repose, with an insight which made her advice at the
council as efficacious as her presence in the field; quick-
sighted and keen-witted, with a calm courage and self-
possession never disturbed.
The third seigneur was a simple and loyal young
soldier, whose face lighted up whenever he spoke of the
Maid. The general chill and carping criticism about her,
in the castle, kept him usually silent; but one day I found
the child Beatrice questioning him, with her searching
eyes drinking in his words, and his eyes kindling and
his voice deepening whilst he told her all he knew of
Jeanne. 3.
Like the young Seigneur Gui de Laval, in writing to
his mother, he said it was “heavenly to be near her—so
simple, so pious, so noble and gracious was she.” “Her
festivity was to go to church; and she made the camp
as sacred as a church to some of us,” he said, turning to
me. “To fight under her banner was like fighting
beside my own mother, and that means something, in a
camp. It meant the difference between heaven and hell
to me. Her goodness was not a bondage; she made us
feel it freedom. She could be as playful as a good child.
She would not suffer an oath in her hearing, but she
permitted the veteran La Hire to soften the breaking of
his inveterate habit by swearing ‘by his bâton.’”
From this young soldier I first began fully to under-
stand what a ceaseless conflict her life was, and how
JOAN OF ARO. 187
tangled and thorny were the ways, to her, which from
outside looked like a triumphal procession.
The first stage in her journey into “the wilderness”
was the journey from Waucouleurs to Chinon. By the
end of the eleven days which this occupied, the six men-at-
arms who escorted her had ceased to have any doubts as
to her mission. Their way lay through a hostile country;
she had no fear, and her only trouble was that it was
not considered safe for her to attend mass daily in the
churches.
At the end of those eleven days she arrived outside
Chinon, and then began her ceaseless warfare with the
selfishness and sloth which were the real ruin of France,
—the ceaseless hostility which, though put down again
and again, was never overcome, the jealousy and hatred
of the worthless favourite La Trémouille, the cold-
hearted Archbishop of Rheims, and all who loved their
own ease, or their success at court, more than their
country or duty. &
The conflict began with their endeavouring to
prevent her seeing the king. It ended by their pre-
venting his lifting a finger to save her from the death
of fire.
Their first point was to hinder her entering the castle.
But the city of Orleans, which in its sore distress had
heard of the succour promised through her, sent a depu-
tation to entreat the king to listen.
And her two first knightly friends, Jean de Metz
and Bertrand de Boulangy, who had escorted her from
188 JOAN OF ARO.
Waucouleurs, bore such witness to her that this objection
WaS OVer CODO €.
At her first interview, King Charles, to test her, pre-
tended he was not the king. But she was not to be
misled, and at Once paid him royal honours.
Gradually the faith in her spread and deepened.
The monks who had been sent to inquire into her
life at Domremy came back with a favourable report.
Nothing but good was to be heard of her in her native
valley.
Grave theologians questioned her, and great ladies
came to see her. She met every one with the dignity
and ease, the gaiety and Sweetness natural to her. But
in Secret she wept and prayed much.
One thing at last greatly moved the king. He had
doubts about his own birth and his right to the kingdom.
These he had breathed to no one, but had laid especially
in One solemn secret prayer before God.
This secret doubt and silent prayer the Maid met and
answered by saying to him one day with an authority
she never otherwise used in speaking to him, having the
profoundest reverence for royalty. This once she used
the unwonted “thou’ to her sovereign. “Je te dis,”
she said, “ de la part de Messire"—“I say to thee from
my King, thou art the true heir of France and son of the
king.”
This was her Secret Sigm to the king, as revealed
afterwards, though never to be wrung from her by
months of torturing cross-questioning.
JO.A.N OF ARO. 189
After this he consented to her being subjected for
three weeks to a sifting examination by various bishops
and divines at Poitiers.
She told them of her visions and her voices; how
they commanded her to go and help France, and in spite
of her tears she had to obey and had come.
“Jeanne,” said Guillaume Aymeri, at this examina-
tion, “you ask for men-at-arms, but if God wills that the
English depart, there is no need for men-at-arms, since
the will of God alone can discomfit them.”
“In the name of God,” she said, “the men-at-arms
will do battle, and God will give the victory.”
Then Séguin, a Dominican friar, who spoke the
Limousin patois, “a very sour man,” wanted her to tell
what language her voices spoke.
“Better than yours,” she replied.
He was aggrieved at this attack upon his language,
and in retaliation questioned her faith.
“Do you believe in God?” he asked.
“More than you do,” she said.
Then he retorted that he would give her no soldiers
until she gave some sign of her mission.
“In the name of God,” she replied, “I am not come
to Poitiers to give a sign. But take me to Orleans, and
I will show you the signs wherefore I was sent.”
“There is more in the books of our Lord than in your
books,” she said.
The nobleness of Séguin triumphed over his temper,
and he himself reported this against himself.
190 JO AN OF ARO,
The examination at Poitiers lasted three weeks, and
all the time her conduct was continually watched.
The result was that the divines pronounced decidedly
for her; the captains marvelled at her aptitude for war;
the good Queen Yolande, and all noble matrons and
maidens who learned to know her, delighted in her
simplicity, modesty, and goodness; and the people de-
clared she was a messenger of God, many who went to
see her, doubtful and suspicious, leaving her with tears
of homage and sympathy.
The young Duke d'Alençon, a prince of the blood,
was so won by her simplicity and dignity, that seeing
the grace and ease with which she rode beside the king,
he presented her with a charger,
And all the time she continued “simple as ever,” as
at Domremy, and “speaking little.”
And so at last the king gave her a “household,” an
army was raised, and she was seat to Orleans, there to
raise the siege and so to show the sign she was sent to
give. Which I had seen.
“She will not have her reward on earth,” the young
Seigneur de Mailly said. “Our coin is not hers. Gifts
and splendours are nothing to her. She lavishes them
on the poor. She moves easily and royally amidst the
nobles and knights and ladies, gracious and considerate
and unencumbered as a born princess. Which indeed
she is. Pure and free with the glow and purity of self-
sacrificing love. Those who are near her are made pure
not by the presence of ice, but by the glow of fire.”
XV.
£ertibal’g Storp (lontinueb.
FºEEE Maid had not lingered a day in Orleans
§§ after the raising of the siege.
* > * > a sºrº sº sº . ~ * * * * Gloriously simple all questions of sowing
and reaping, of rewards and punishments become to a
life such as hers, which is simply love.
There can be no reaping for love but the harvest of
good to the beloved. There are no rewards to love but
the success and the progress of its work. Included in
these is of course the love of the beloved; but this in
endlessly graduated measure, according to the capacity
and capability of the being loved.
From God, infinite love for our finite.
From equal beings equal ceaseless vibration of equal
love. g
From the child to the mother an occasional responsive
Smile for a heaven of sunshine, until the child, by being
cared for and brooded over, itself grows through such
care and brooding, fervour and frost of love, to its full
stature and equality of being and of love.
It was reward to Jeanne that Orleans was saved, that

192 JO.A.N OF ARO.
the people were free and happy; and, as far as it showed
this, their enthusiastic gatherings around her were her
reward. It was reward to her warm heart that grateful
hearts should love her, and that, loving, they should
delight to give.
But the clamour of praise and admiration, the “robes
of silk and velvet trimmed with richest furs,” were no
reward. Money was of use because of the poor; but
money gained by pillage, stolen bread, she would not
touch even when there was no other.
It was not that she painfully denied herself luxuries,
and human praise. In the coinage of the Kingdom
where she dwelt they were simply valueless.
On Sunday morning, the 8th of May, the English
army retreated from Orleans. On Monday the Maid
left for the court of Charles.
There all the forces of inertness gathered against
her.
To her first week of combat and victory succeeded a
weary month of conflict against sloth and envy and
intrigue.
The raising of the siege of Orleans had its advantages
even for the most slothful. It spared them the necessity
of further flight.
But Jeanne's next enterprise, the crowning of Charles
at Rheims, involved vigorous advance, a perilous journey
of many leagues, the recapture of many cities, and
against this La Trémouille and the courtiers set them-
selves with all the blind heavy force of indolent human
JOAN OF ARO. 193
souls that were dragging themselves down to the level
of dead matter.
She entreated for soldiers, for permission only to go
forth with those who were eager to fight.
Before the raising of the siege of Orleans the king's
treasurer had told him that the royal finances were re-
duced to four crowns. But Jeanne demanded no money,
no fresh soldiers, only to be allowed to use the forces
eager to be employed. She implored for work. And
the king gave her magnificent dinners, a household with
Squires and grooms, a royal embrace, and the right to
carry on her shield the lilies of France.
A weary month she waited, chafing at the delay,
while they held councils, and lamented their poverty
and the strength of the English and Burgundians.
She mourned and secretly wept over these ignoble
hesitations; for all the while, from all the desolated
land, went up the cry of the “great pity” which had
moved the angels, the moan of the helpless and the
starving. And, moreover, she was pressed on by the
conviction that her time was short. She said she herself
should not last more than a year—“ne durerait guère
plus d’un an "-and that they should make the best use
of this year, for she had much yet to do.
Dunois remained true to her, and the Duke d'Alençon,
and all loyal soldiers and patriots, whether veteran
captains or young knights. And the divines, such as
the great Gerson, followed her with sanction and bene-
diction.
(611) 13
194 JOAN OF ARO.
But the Chancellor of the kingdom, the Archbishop of
Rheims, could not endure her rapid action; and the
courtiers could not endure any action at all; the world
and the flesh were against her; and still the court would
not move.
At length, one day, Dunois took her to the chamber
where the king was holding private conference with
Christopher d'Harcourt, Bishop of Castres, his confessor,
and the former chancellor of the kingdom, Robert le
Macon.
She knocked at the door, and when she was admitted,
she threw herself at the feet of the king, and clasping
his knees, she said— *
“Gentle Dauphin, hold no more such long councils,
But come as soon as possible to Rheims to receive the
crown which is your right.”
Christopher d'Harcourt asked if her voices had told
her that.
“Yes,” she said; “I am sorely pricked to the heart
touching this thing.”
“Would you not,” said D'Harcourt, “tell us here,
before the king, how your voices speak to you ?”
“I understand,” she said, blushing, “what you would
ask, and I will tell you willingly.”
The king, seeing her much moved, courteously asked
if she really wished to explain herself with others
present.
She said she was quite willing. And then she told
how when she was harassed with the doubts which
JOAN OF ARC. 195
people opposed to her mission, she went apart and
prayed to God, moaning that men would not believe
her; and when her prayer was finished, she heard a
voice which said to her, “Fille Dé, va, va, Val Je serai
ã ton aide; waſ "-" Daughter of God, go, go, go! I will
be thy help ; go !” And when this voice came she was
“greatly rejoiced, and would have gladly continued in
that state for ever.”
And as she repeated these words of the voice, her
face beamed with joy, and she raised her eyes to heaven.
Her words moved the king, and at length they sent
her forth, on the 9th of June, with a small army.
Then followed her second marvellous week of battle
and victory.
On that week of victory it is hard for me even now
to dwell; on the courage of my people, and the skill of
our commanders, all dashed in vain against the power of
the peasant-girl, sent, as she believed, of God.
It was not easy to an Englishman, even with French
blood in his veins and his mother's French accents
lingering in his heart, to hear of scores of English
archers vainly slain, of Talbot and Suffolk, and our
noblest captains taken captive or killed.
Only, everywhere that one simple, noble figure raises
the conflict from the wars of nations into the field of
the great ceaseless conflict between right and wrong.
Good at any cost was it, as I deem, for our England
and for us, that she was turned back from the hundred
years of war and ravage in the land which was not, and
196 JOAN OF ARO.
never could be ours, and could only learn to hate us
more the longer we stayed.
“If she was not sure,” Jeanne said, “that God was
leading her, she would far rather keep her sheep than
risk all these perils.”
Once more, before the town of Jargeau, she appeared
in what to her meant an embassage of peace and of
mercy.
She summoned the garrison to depart, unharmed in life
or limb, to their “little coast ’’ (“en leur petite cotte").
No attack until all attempts at reconciliation had
failed; but then no delay.
The next day was Sunday.
At nine o'clock she caused the trumpets to sound for
the assault.
“It was too soon,” said the Duke d’Alençon, who
shared the command.
“Doubt not,” she replied. “The right hour is, when
it pleases God. We must use the occasion which God
gives. Work you, and God will work.” And she added:
“Ah, gentle duke, are you afraid 2 Don't you know I
have promised your wife to bring you back safe and
sound 2’
And in that very assault she kept her word.
He was watching the attack from what was supposed
to be a sheltered place beside her, when, with that
marvellous clearness of sight which proceeded from entire
fearlessness for herself, she perceived a danger threaten-
ing him. *
JOAN OF ARC. 197
“Draw back, for there is an engine which will kill
you!” she said; and she showed him a cannon on the
walls.
He retired, and a moment afterwards a gentleman
who took his place was killed.
Girl of seventeen, protectress of cities and captains;
yet herself bearing, as she well knew, no charmed life.
For at that very town, as she climbed the scaling-ladder
with the banner in her hand, a stone broke against her
casque and she fell. But rising again instantly she
cried—
“Up ! up ! Our King has condemned the English.
At this hour they are ours.”
And inspired by her confidence and courage her people
scaled the walls and took the city.
This was on the 11th of June.
On the 15th she took the Bridge of Meuse; on the
17th the town of Beaugency. On the 18th she won the
battle of Pataye, the first England had lost since Crécy.
On the 19th she returned to Orleans.
One more joyous Sunday for the Maid in her Orleans.
One more day of joy and triumph in the rescued city, of
thanksgivings in the churches, and processions of enrap-
tured crowds in the streets.
For now, not only Orleans, but the whole land of the
Loire was free.
And yet, for her, on this second week of victory,
followed another month of conflict with the real foes of
the Maid and the kingdom.
198 JO.A.N OF ARO.
Even in the hour of triumph there was a base victory
gained by the powers of sloth in that secret strife which
never ceased.
The city of Orleans had lavished large sums in deco-
rating the houses and streets to welcome the king. No
one doubted that he would come to share the joy of this
liberated city.
But La Trémouille and the courtiers dared not
trust him to the sunshine and fresh air of a people's
welcome.
And while Orleans sang Te Deums and was glad, her
king kept apart, taking indolent pleasure in a castle of
La Trémouille's near at hand.
Orleans was delivered ; the Loire was won back. The
next step was the consecration and coronation. The
winning back not of the kingdom to the king, but of the
king to the kingdom and to true royalty.
Against this La Trémouille and all who ruled the
king by what was lowest in him, steadfastly plotted.
They had prevented him from giving himself to the
loyal welcomes of Orleans To Jeanne's great grief they
rejected the aid of the Constable de Richemont; and
declined, or wasted in every possible way, the succours
of men and treasure which now came pouring in on all
sides from a country once more inspired with hope and
belief in itself. They made subtle pretexts of petty
attacks on small places still in English hands; they
made sounding boasts of magnificent expeditions against
the core of the English occupation at Rouen. Anything
JOAN OF ARO. I99
to hinder the real work of reconquering the kingdom
and liberating the king !
When for a few moments the king himself had an
interview with the Maid, he was moved by her passion
of patriotism and loyalty. She wept, and he entreated
her to spare herself and take repose.
But her repose consisted in doing her work, “pricked
to the heart,” until it was accomplished. And she, in
return, entreated him not to despair or doubt, but let
himself be crowned.
Until at length, afraid of being herself carried off
from her true path into some of these fatal by-paths, she
left the town of Gien, where the court was sojourning,
and insisted on camping in the open field.
Without her they could do nothing, though with her
they endeavoured to do nothing. And at length the
reluctant court yielded and consented to be swept on to
victory.
On the 29th of June the journey to Rheims was
begun.
But of all those weary days of secret conflict and that
week of victory one picture remains most vividly on my
heart.
It was at La Pataye.
The battle was over, and some French soldiers were
handling roughly an English prisoner. The Maid saw
it too late to save him. They had wounded the captive
Englishman to death.
She sprang from her horse. She rebuked the cruel
200 JO AN OF ARO.
deed, so common that no one thought of such wrongs but
as the common accidents of war.
She held the poor bruised head, and sustained the
dying man as a sister to the last, sending for a priest
to absolve him.
It is thus that, as a ministering angel of mercy, she
oftenest shines on my heart.
XVI.
#ertibal's Storp (ſomtinued.
three young Seigneurs de Mailly had turned
- aside to pay a visit to their kinsman and
kinswoman in the château where we were imprisoned.
And while this great conflict was going on in the
large world outside, a combat was waging also in the
little world where my shepherding lay; and in this also
I could only look on and wait.
From the first appearance of Bertrand de Mailly,
Owen had evidently felt him an antagonist.
Between him and the Lady Blanche there was an
obvious harmony, as of two instruments that are not
only attuned together, but have been wont to be played
in concert.
I say instruments, not voices, because the whole har-
mony seemed to me artificial, as of skilfully constructed
strings, not of human souls.
On one point Owen's disgust with the supercilious
stranger brought him into more harmony with me.
“It is clear enough why we English should distrust the

202 JOAN OF ARO.
Maid,” he said; “but to use her, to take shelter under
her courage (for courageous the witch is) like a set of
frightened chickens under a hen, and then to peck and
carp at her, that seems to me the basest of treachery.
If the Almighty had but sent England such a succour,
instead of letting the devil send it to these lazy French-
men l’
I hoped that the counter-poison was working in my
brother.
The cynical ignoble worldliness of Bertrand was rous-
ing him to see what a hideous thing this selfish worldli-
TheSS Wa,S.
“Some Frenchmen do recognize and honour her.” I
said. “Dunois, the young Duke d'Alençon, all the
bravest captains, all true women, the common people
everywhere, all who have eyes single enough to see.
Here, even, the young Seigneur de Mailly, and old Sir
Tanneguy.”
“The Lady Blanche is an Italian,” he said, as if apolo-
gizing for her. “She is bound to the Maid by no ties of
patriotism and gratitude.”
“There are those at home,” I replied, “who would not
have needed to be born Frenchwomen to see what the
Maid is.”
He was silent.
The spell was by no means broken yet.
In a day or two the young seigneurs rejoined their
king, and the charm of the lady's keen wit, and her easy
graciousness, always occupied with the present as if
JOAN OF ARC. 203
there were no past, and no absent, enfolded Owen
On Ce IſlCre.
“She says she has told Sir Bertrand she has no
patience with their adulation of this peasant, and then
talking against her. She is quite sorry for the poor
young girl, when she thinks what undeceiving awaits
her.”
“Undeceiving !” I said. And I thought “there are
many spells and many undeceivings.”
The lady was more gracious than ever now to Owen.
I believe, simply from the instinct that a subject was
being lost. She could not resist the necessity of winning
him back.
A sweet gravity came at times into her manner to-
wards him, just a slight shade of difference from her
joyous and easy bearing towards Sir Bertrand, as if to
indicate a greater depth in the sentiment.
She chose graver passages in those perilous Italian
lessons. She did not so much affect the chase and noisy
gatherings as quiet rambles.
And she spoke with a kind of regretful sympathy of
Our ransom and return, asked questions about our home
in England, our amusements and occupations there, and
insinuated that souls seemed somehow sometimes mislaid
and born in the wrong countries—Owen's nature was so
obviously fitted for the wide, intermingled social life of
the great Italian cities, just as her own was. But the
transplanting with him seemed to have been at birth,
with her at marriage.
204 JOAN OF ARO.
She said nothing disparaging of our England, but in
Some way the “petite cotte,” as Jeanne called it, grew
Smaller as she spoke, the life duller; a fog and a chill
seemed to fall over all.
I don't believe she planned to entangle and ruin my
brother's life. What could she intend to do with it 2
Simply, he was a subject straying from his allegiance,
and had, at all costs, to be won back. And to such
allegiance as he had given he was won back.
And for me there was nothing but to let the spells
work, and to trust that when he woke from this en-
chantment, as wake he must, he would wake as he had
never been awake before.
Meantime I worked hard at my Latin. The child
Beatrice and I pursued our rambles among the forests
and villages near, fuller now than ever of the Maid.
And one day we found little Domremy in a joyous
tumult of triumph and rejoicing.
Some of her old friends had gone the day before to
Chalons to see her in her great estate; scarcely expect-
ing to do more than look at her from a distance, as at
the king or the queen.
But they found her friendly and simple as ever.
Several of them spoke to her. To Jean Morel she
gave a cloak that she had worn. She had great de-
light in seeing them again.
She was as much at ease among the nobles, they said,
as with them, and as cordial with them as in the old
peasant days.
JOAN OF ARO. 205
To one of them, D'Epinal, she said a word which
seemed to me to give a key to what her true conflict
was. She said to him, she feared but one thing,
TRAITORS.
The old devout habits of her childhood, those around
her told them, were still kept up.
She delighted in the sound of church-bells. At
twilight she loved to creep silently into the churches
and pray.
She was but a servant of all for God’s sake.
She received gifts from great personages, and re-
turned them by giving such little presents as she could
in her turn. But her delight was in giving to the
poor, and in praying in church, especially beside the
children, as when she had cherished little Mengette, and
nursed the little boy at Domremy through his sickness.
Often, her chaplain Pasquerel said, she would find out
the days on which the orphan children of the convent
Schools received the communion, and then she would go
up amongst the little ones to Him who bid such come
to Him, and communicate beside them.
Princes and great captains liked to talk gravely with
her, as with a good and wise man; and yet they said
that, save for her marvellous aptitude for war, she was
simple as any other young girl.
The common people thronged around her to touch
but the hem of her garment; they threw themselves
before her horse's feet; they kissed her hands and feet;
they brought her written Paternosters to touch and
206 JOAN OF ARC.
bless. She smiled and said any good woman's touch
would do as much good as hers. But no gentle dis-
Suasion of hers would turn aside the enthusiasm of
gratitude which surrounded her. They called her “the
angelic.” To have her hold a child at the font and let
it be called by her name, was an honour dearly prized.
They sang songs and ballads in her honour; they struck
medals with her likeness on them and wore them as
Sacred symbols.
But all the while, undazzled, unbewildered, her face
was set steadfastly towards the deliverance of France.
The raising of sieges was as simply a duty as, in old
days, the spinning and keeping sheep; and her heart
often went back lovingly to the simple old life in her
father's house at Domremy.
The father who had so jealously guarded her; the
mother who had taught her the Creed and Lord's
Prayer; the curé who said “he had never known so
beautiful a soul,” and had taught her the history of
the Saints and of France ; the bell-ringer to whom she
had given the little cakes to make him regular in his
bell-ringing; the young girls and little children she had
loved and played with ; it was good to see them gathered
that July evening in the village street before the door
of her father's little gray house, listening to those who
had seen her yesterday in her glory, yet unchanged to
them, and simple and kind as ever.
There was a joyous excitement about the little village.
Yet to me, as the little groups dispersed to their various
JOAN OF ARC. 207
homes in the long village street, and up the slopes, it
seemed as if there were an awe and solemnity among
them, as of a congregation dispersing from some sacred
service. It was as if they had seen a vision of angels,
as if they had been recounting the deeds not so much of
a warrior, but of a saint.
As the child Beatrice and I went our way up the
hill to the forest and the castle, and looked back on
the village, the lights were burning in a few of the
cottages, marking the lines of the streets of the two
adjoining villages of Greux and Domremy, along the
valley and up the slopes; the cattle Jeanne had
helped to watch were in the pastures by the river; the
river was winding like a golden cord in the sunset.
We passed the little chapel of Notre Dame de Bour-
laimont, where she had so often prayed; above us
the wind was rustling the leaves of the old oaks of
the Bois Chesnu. Our path lay by the ancient well
which was said to have healing powers, and under
the great beech-tree, the Ladies' or Fairies' Tree, “fair
as a lily,” one of the villagers said, where Jeanne used
to play and weave garlands, or to creep apart from
her companions to pray as “before the very presence
of God.”
And now she was with the army, summoning cities
to surrender, saving our England, in spite of herself, for
her true work; saving France and her indolent court
just as much in spite of themselves; outwardly and
apparently on a triumphal march, but really bearing the
208 JOAN OF ARO.
Cross in the long procession of the disciples who had
followed the crucified Master in the conflict with sloth
and treachery and selfishness.
And, more than ever, the whole region seemed to me
as a Holy Land.
XVII
#ertibal’g Storp (lontinueb.
fº WO days after that day when the peasants of
tº sº Domremy saw Jeanne at Chalons, Sir Tan-
£º neguy and the Lady Blanche began to pre-
pare for the journey to Rheims.
Seigneur Bertrand de Mailly was coming to escort them.
“It seems after all probable that this Domremy peas-
ant-girl will have her way and get the king crowned,”
the Lady Blanche said. “No doubt it has been written
among the stars for ages. And when the time comes,
the hand of a child may copy the writing of the stars
into history.”
She was all day among her maids arranging her
jewels and dresses. “It made her feel like a child
again,” she said, “among the splendours of the beautiful
streets of the Italian cities.”
No arrangements were made for taking the child
Beatrice.
“You three will be quite happy together for the few
days we are away,” the lady said the evening before the
departure.
(611) 14

210 JOAN OF ARO.
But that evening, as I was returning from my read-
ing with the curé of Domremy, I saw the child’s face
watching at the window of the keep which commanded
the valley; and when I reached the castle gate she was
there, and stretching out her hands she said, with a sob
in her voice,
“Take me to Rheims I must see the Maid l’
“Your mother will take you,” I said, “if she thinks
you wish it.”
“Ask for me !” said she; and whether I would or not,
she drew me to the hall, where her mother stood in the
robes of state she was to wear at the coronation,
I suppose the lady saw something grave in my face, for
she dismissed her attendants, and seated herself expect-
antly on a large chair in a window. The child knelt
before her, and clasped her hands and kissed them
passionately.
“Mother mine,” she said, “take me—I must, I must
be there !”
A cloud came over the Lady Blanche's face.
“Such ceremonials are not for babes,” she said.
“What has come to thee ? Thy book and thy church
and thy dreams are more to thee than all these magni-
ficences. The king is, after all, not so very unlike any
other seigneur. I will act it all for thee when we come
back.”
“It is not the king, it is the Maid I want to see : ”
the child said, breaking through her reserve in her
eagerness—“the Maid who knows our Lord as her own
JOAN OF ARC. 21]
King, Messire whom all the peasant-children of Dom-
remy love, who has saved France, and lets little children
kiss her hands ! I want to hear her voice, and kiss her
hands. Mother, let me go!”
“A daughter of our house kiss the hands of a
shepherdess of our own valleys l’ exclaimed the lady
haughtily. “We cannot have another ecstatic maid
from the Vosges | Stay at home, and learn thy lute
and thy book;-or spin, as thy Jeanne did; that is the
way to grow like her, if such is thy desire.”
But in the twilight old Sir Tanneguy had entered
unperceived, and he interposed and said— -
“Fair daughter, surely the little one may go ! She
will be the fairest jewel in thy array.”
But the lady was not so easily moved.
“I have none else to rule or to call my own,” she
Said petulantly: “let me at least rule my own child.”
The child rose and stood with folded hands.
“I will be like La Pucelle,” she said. “I will be
obedient and good and stay at home, if my mother
Wills.”
But there were tears in her voice, and there was a
patient womanly submission in the childish face and
attitude which stirred the old man more than words.
“By my bâton, fair lady,” he said—“since the Maid
permits us no stronger oath—the little one shall go. It
is well that she should remember the day, and tell our
great-grandchildren of it.”
As he spoke, Bertrand de Mailly arrived, fresh from
212 JOAN OF ARC.
a sharp ride to join the lady's escort to Rheims, and Sir
Tanneguy referred the case to him.
“I will guard the little lady as my own sister, or
dearer,” he said, “if I am permitted. And, at Rheims,
my young cousin Raymond will delight to conduct her.
He adores La Pucelle.”
The Lady Blanche was too queenly to yield ungra-
ciously. She embraced the little one tenderly, and said—
“It is a joy the more ' But who would have dreamt
such ambition and gaiety were hidden in thee ?”
The next morning the brilliant cavalcade left the
castle gates, and wound away by the winding road on
the bank of the river.
“I shall see our Pucelle!” said the child to me, softly,
that morning. “Perhaps I shall kiss the hands that
held the dying Englishman. And then I will come back
and tell you.”
And so Owen and I were left behind in the deserted
castle.
Through all these preparations and leave-takings he
had kept out of sight.
When I went to our chamber, daintily furnished, with
wide, high windows, I found him with his head resting
on his hand, reading a manuscript I had borrowed a few
days before from the curé of Domremy.
It was called La Consolacion, or the Imitation of
Christ, and was stirring the hearts of men and women
far and wide.
No one knew exactly by whom it was written. Some
JOAN OF ARC. 213
said by the great theologian Gerson, who, after the siege
of Orleans, exhorted France to trust the Maid, almost
with his dying lips, for he died a sorrowful, disap-
pointed man, not three months after the siege was raised;
some by an obscure Brother, Thomas à Kempis. But
whoever uttered the words, those words uttered the cry
of the age.
“This is a very remarkable book,” said Owen. “It is
written by a man who knows the hearts of men, and the
deceitful emptiness of the world.”
I did not quite know how to reply. Books of piety
not being usually Owen's delight, I feared by too much
praise of any to turn him from them ; and, moreover, I
had mot found the world empty, and I had found the
hearts of men return good measure, pressed close, and
running over, for any poor love of mine.
“The world as far as it is worldly,” I suggested.
But at that moment I caught sight of the cavalcade
winding round the last turn at the foot of the castle
steep. The dear child's face was turned wistfully back
to our window, and I waved her a farewell.
“I thought you had little care for all these splendours,”
Owen said.
“I was answering the child Beatrice,” I replied.
“Yes, all are alike l’ he said. “Even that child who
seemed so fond of you, and to like to stay and cheer
you ! Even with her, before this empty pageant and
show, all else sinks to nothing.”
“It is not the show the child loves,” I said. “It is
214 JOAN OF ARO.
the reality—it is the Maid she believes to be sent from
God.”
“You believe that of the child !” he replied with im-
measurable scorn at my credulity. “You don’t see that
they all do what they like, no doubt from some angelic
and patriotic motive; but always, after all, only just
what they like. If you will not see the world as it is,
how are you to preach to it !”
And he continued reading—
“Truly it is a misery to live upon the earth.”
“Miserable men l yet a while, and they will feel
bitterly what a worthless thing, and even nothing, it was
that they have loved so much.”
“We must not put any great confidence in frail and
'mortal mam, w8eful and beloved though he be. Nor
Show.ld we be much grieved if he sometimes oppose and
contradict w8.”
“They that to-day are with thee, to-morrow may be
against thee; and men, often change to the contrary Side
like the wind.”
“Thow errest, thow errest, if thow seekest ought else
than to suffer tribulation ; for this whole mortal life is
full of miseries, and everywhere marked with crosses.”
“That man understood the world,” Owen commented,
with a profound sigh. “He did not live in a fool's para-
dise. This book is worth your reading, brother.”
“I have read it much,” I said.
But I hardly liked to say with what thought it had
most deeply impressed me.
JOAN OF ARC. 215
For it had struck me as wonderful that our Lord
should, at the same moment, as it were, have given to
His Church a Book and a Life, which so corresponded
to Him and to each other—an “Imitation of Christ " in
words and in deeds.
There were indeed passages in that book which seemed
as if they had been given as the portrait of this Maid of
Domremy.
I therefore made no answer, but simply read some of
these passages to him—
“By two ways is man lifted above earthly things;
namely, by purity and simplicity.”
“If thow aim at, and seek after mothing else but the
owill of God and thy neighbowr’s benefit, then thow shalt
enjoy interior liberty.”
“If only thy heart were right, them every created thing
would be to thee a mirror of life, and a book of holy
teaching.”
And almost unconsciously I repeated her words—
“My King has other books than those ye clerks
wot of" e
“Messire a un livre oil nul clerc n'a jamais lu, si par-
fait qu'il soit en cléricature.”
And again I read—
“Stamd without any choice of Self-seeking, and thow
shalt always win.”
“Love flieth, rummeth, and rejoiceth; is free and cam-
not be restrained, giveth all for all, hath all in all.”
“Love often knoweth no measure.”
216 JOAN OF ARO.
“Love feeleth no burden, thinketh nothing of labours
would willingly do more than it cam, complaimeth mot
of impossibility, because it deemeth that it may or can
do all things.”
“It cam achieve anything.”
Again the Maid's words occurred to me: “The great
pity for France 1” “Make use of me, for I have only
a year. I am pricked to the heart, wrºtil my work is
dome.”
“Yes, yes,” said Owen, a little impatiently, “the writer
is speaking of the Lord Christ, no doubt, or of some very
great saints, such as there were in olden time. We do
not expect to see such things now.”
“We often cannot see what we will not expect,” I
said. “Yet thou and I have seen lovely things, even at
home.”
“At home, yes,” he said; “the mother, of course, never
thought of herself. But that is quite natural for mothers.
And as to thee, old man,” he added with a smile, laying
his hand on my shoulder, “there is not overmuch self-
seeking in thee. But to thee also it is a kind of nature
to care for other people. I do not deny that. But
what I want thee to attend to is the penetration with
which this book speaks of the emptiness of the world.
It is very remarkable. I have been learning it lately.”
As he spoke, the joyous sounds of music and laughter
came up from the departing cavalcade.
“What do they care,” he said, “with all their gracious
smiles and words, for us living here in captivity ?”
JOAN OF ARC. 217
“We need not pine here long,” I said; “Peter has not
forgotten us, nor the dear ones at home. They and their
love, at all events, are not vanity and emptiness, nor do
they change ‘like the wind.’”
A crimson flush came over his face.
For a time he said nothing, then he murmured half-
regretfully, half-angrily—
“Poor, pleasant little valley of Danescombe; anything
is an excitement and a variety there.”
I did not look at him. I felt sure he was chafing
inwardly against a prick of self-reproach.
And after a time he resumed—
“Votre petite cotte, this insolent Maid called England.
“Go back,' said she, “to your petite cotte. Compared
with this wide world it is a little fold—to be penned up
in. Not only on account of its size; in itself. For
here, in this France, one feels open to all the world
beyond—Italy, the Empire, Rome, Constantinople, the
East, Jerusalem; one feels a member of the wide world,
of one great Christendom.”
“Yes,” I said; “for England to conquer France means,
I think indeed, for England to become a little detached
province of France, and our English nobles but squires
and pages in great French houses. But what if God
intends something more than that for our England?
What if He sent the Maid to drive us home to make our
petite Gotte something greater than we know of yet 2"
He looked thoughtful.
“There is something in being among one's own,” he
218 JOAN OF ARO.
said after a time, “in having work to arrange, and men
to rule.”
“There is something too in being loved l’ I ventured
to add.
Again he flushed.
It seemed to me that something deeper than had yet
been awakened in him was stirring.
He had been so accustomed to please, so unused to
having any shadow of doubt or fear as to the love felt
for him, that the thought of such love as Cecilie's as a
rare and priceless treasure, in contrast with the flatteries
and enchantments which had lately been around him,
was new to him.
We need to see the meteors sometimes, flashing and
vanishing, in order to comprehend the steadfastness of
the stars.
Owen accompanied me on my rambles through field
and forest. He came with me to the humble little house
of the curé in the village.
The good man was in great excitement that day. It
seemed, at last, that the coronation at Rheims was close
at hand; and he had made up his mind to go with some
of his parishioners to see the triumph of the king and
the Maid.
His face beamed, as was the case with so many in
the village, and everywhere, who had really known her,
—when he spoke of her; so “simple and gentle and
pleasant,” he said, “praying so fervently, saying so little,
and doing so much for all, because she loved so much;-
JOAN OF ARC. 219
because she loved so much, and had no thought of her-
self. When she had only her one little bed to give, she
gave that to destitute fugitives, and sate up in the chim-
ney corner. And now that she has rich robes, and
horses and jewels, it is the same. For She is the same.
Rich as a queen, when she was a poor peasant-girl,
because of the love; free as a child among all the
princes, because everywhere her delight is to serve.”
“Fille Dé, Fille de Dieu, daughter of God, all things
were wºnder her,” as this new book of the “Imitation *
said, “not she wºnder them. He had never known so
beautiful a soul.”
Owen was silent as we walked back to the castle.
“This girl may be deluded, but she cannot be wicked,”
he said. “I will not call her evil names again.”
Owen was very gentle and peaceful and unusually
silent that evening, and I felt sure he was pondering
many things in his heart.
And again we read together that wonderful new book
of the “Imitation.”
“It is curious,” he said one day, “but that poor priest's
words about the Maid keep recurring to me.”
We had been reading the words—
“Aim in every easternal occupation to be inwardly
free, and master of thyself, that all things be wrºder thee,
and not thow wºnder them, that thow mayest be lord and
ruler of thy actions, and not a slave and mercenary, but
a freeman transferred to the lot and liberty of the Sons
of God.”
220 JOAN OF ARC.
“Give all: seek nothing ; and thow shalt be free in
heart, and the darkness shall not weigh thee down.”
“I am a very long way from that,” he said, “but that
peasant-girl seems not so far off. I did not think the
Saints could be so near us.”
“Perhaps, if our eyes are open, we may see more of
them yet,” I said.
“If it is love that makes saints ” he said, with a
brief smile. “But it must begin and end, the book says,
with the love of God. And God only, I suppose, can
judge as to that.”
“True,” I said, “we see in the saints the love of
others, of children, of friends, of the poor, of France, of
England, of all. And then one day the veil is lifted,
and we see what our Lord must have been seeing in them
all the time;-the hidden source in the love of God.”
He laid his hand on mine.
“It is dark to me,” he said. “How is any one to
begiºn 3 by loving each other, or by loving God 2 You
see the book says much against the bewildering and
entangling love of the creature.”
“I scarcely know,” I said. “Perhaps at both ends,
and on every side. By loving those closest to us; the
Holy Law says, “thy meighbour.” And by loving God
with such poor sparks of love as we have ; be it but the
love of hunger, like the prodigal, for the bread in the
father's house; or the love of gratitude for such daily
Divine kindnesses as we cannot but see l’
“Poor sparks of love, indeed!” he said. “It seems to
JOAN OF ARC. 221
me, sometimes, as if I had never really loved at all, never
given myself, only taken and taken, ‘husks or any-
thing !’”
If it were so, I thought, he would not be the first who
had wakened up to the love, only when the loveless
husks were denied.
We were sitting at the window looking down over
the valley as we spoke.
And as we looked up we both started to our feet.
For toiling up the steep was a well-known figure
climbing wearily up, and looking even more grave and
bowed than usual.
We called his name.
And in an instant Peter the Wright stood erect, as if
the load of ten years had been taken from him by the
familiar voices.
In a few moments we had met him at the castle
gate.
It was Sunday evening, the 19th of July.
Weary as he was, he would not take food or allow
himself rest until he had seen us alone, and delivered to
us the contents of his bags and pockets.
“There !” he said, “the ransom is ready. And
Mistress Elaine and Mistress Cecilie have not a jewel
nor a costly robe nor any little precious things left in
the world. And the old master has sold his favourite
horse, and the little palfrey Master Percival trained for
Mistress Cecilie, all are gone.”
He looked with a mixture of pride and grudging in
222 JOAN OF ARO.
Owen's face, as he said it. “Poor foolish hearts | And
they think scorn of losing everything, just for the hope
and joy, master, of welcoming thee.”
Then Owen broke down altogether and hid his face
in his hands, and said with a broken voice—
“O Percival! I am not worthy, as you know. It was
not only the world that was empty and hollow. It was I.”
It was from Peter the Wright we first heard of the
consecration being accomplished. Rumours, indeed, had
begun to reach us from many sides, from neighbours and
villagers of Domremy and Greux who had gone to see
the great ceremonial, and the triumph of the peasant-
girl of the village, scarcely yet more than a child. But
the first full account we had of it was from Peter the
Wright.
He was not a man to be moved by splendours and
ceremonials.
It was rather his way to think scornfully of them, as
of masks hiding the hollowness within.
But of this he spoke with an enthusiasm not to be
repressed.
He had chanced to lodge on the previous night in the
same inn with Jeanne d'Arc's father and mother. And
he was much moved by their simple dignity.
They were plain peasants still, they lived in the old
small farm-house at the end of the village. Their family
was ennobled, but their own mode of living and thinking
was unchanged.
JOAN OF ARC. 223
They went forth from the village to see their young
daughter among princes and warriors, to see her far
more than crowned ; herself, as every true man and
woman felt, bestowing the crown.
And then they went back to their hemp-fields and
their meadows, to the spinning and the weaving, and
the household work she had shared.
They asked nothing for themselves, and the Maid
asked no reward for them; only for her village, that the
taxes might be remitted.
“That show,” Peter said, “was a glimpse into the
reality of things.”
It was a triumph, not only of the Maid, but of sub-
stance over shadow, of truth over show, of Divine
humility over human pride.
“There were the houses hung with drapery and gar-
lands,” he said, “rich tapestries hanging from the balconies
full of citizens and their wives, and nobles and ladies
dressed in velvet and cloth of gold; and below, in the
streets, the grand military procession, trumpets and
banners, and men-at-arms, and cavaliers on horses gor-
geously caparisoned, the armour shining, the plumes
waving; and at last, within the cathedral, bishops and
priests and nobles gathered around the king as the arch-
bishop poured the holy oil on his head at the foot of the
altar.
“And yet every heart felt that the source and centre
of all was, not the army, or the nobles, or the king him-
self, but the simple maiden who stood beside him with
224 JOAN OF ARO.
her white banner in her hand, and afterwards knelt at
his feet, and said, with tears, that now ‘the pleasure of
God was fulfilled.’”
It was on Sunday, the 17th of July.
On Sunday, the 12th of May, not three months before,
we had seen her riding round the walls of Orleans, under
our forts, then full of English soldiers who had never
known defeat, with the citizens crowding around her,
secure in her mere presence.
Not six months before, France had not known a
victory within the memory of man, and Jeanne had
started with her escort of six from Waucouleurs.
“At Rheims she was clothed in shining armour,”
Peter said, “and looked like an angel.
“It was reported,” he added, “that the archbishop and
the court were, many of them, envious of the Maid, and
grudged her her due share in the triumph. But the
people had no envy and no hesitation. All hearts turned
to her, and she turned to God, as the source of all; and
so the hearts of men were lifted up ; and to the common
people, at all events, that coronation day was a great and
Sacred solemnity.
“It was like King David's ceremonies,” said Peter;
“the keeping the sheep, and fighting the lion and the
giant Goliath, had come before the crowning. And that
made the crowning as real as the shepherding and the
fighting.”
Peter had not found his journey across France at all
easy.
JOAN OF ARC. 225
“When I came to France last,” he said, “the peasants
hated and feared us. Now they hate us and do not fear
us, which does not make travelling easier. For, of
course, I cannot be saying to them what is in my heart,
“Poor dear souls I am as glad as you that your Maid
has hunted us off from our devil's work of worrying and
harrying you, poor sheep and lambs.’ And God knows,
I had liever be creeping like a stray dog through the
wasted land, than wasting and devouring it like a pack
of wolves.”
Soon after Peter's arrival, tidings began to trickle in
from the returning peasants how one and another had
spoken to the Maid and found her simple and kind as
€Weſ.
And there were rumours of the king having bidden
her take any reward she would, and of her having asked
for nothing but that for her sake Domremy should be
delivered from all taxes thenceforth for ever. Which
we know, later, was really done.
And next came the rush and tumult of the return of
the Lady Blanche and the castle cavalcade.
With these came the broken and discordant murmurs
of the world with which Jeanne's real battle was.
The Archbishop of Rheims, Chancellor of the kingdom,
it was whispered, thought the Maid sadly given over to
vanity, and to the love of fine clothes unbefitting her
station.
And both he and La Trémouille, her persistent hin-
derers, were determined that the consecration being now
(611) 15
226 JOAN OF ARC.
accomplished, there should be no more of this indecorous
and bewildering haste in driving the king from one
enterprise to another.
There were also rumours (unless I mistake and this
was later) of a shepherd-boy who claimed to have had
revelations, and of another woman who had visions.
In the Second stage, visions and revelations are not
difficult to be had ' And these new “visionaries,” it was
said, were far more reasonable and tractable than Jeanne,
and were content to wait on events, and on princes.
The Lady Blanche said it could not be denied that
the péasant-girl had acted her part well. The scene in
the cathedral was admirably arranged, and some said she
entreated the king now to send her back to her mother
and her sheep, with as much sincerity, she supposed,as there
was in the custom of bishops declining to be made bishops.
“For to any observant person,” the Lady Blanche said,
“it was too clear that the girl was far too much at home
with the captains and the princes, ever to relish spinning
peasant garments at her father's little farm any more.
She had a keen mother-wit, bright penetrating eyes, a
noble carriage, stately and easy, and it was not likely
she would choose to exchange her furred robes and glit-
tering armour, and her horses caparisoned like a king's,
for the woollen peasant's dress, and the distaff, and the
shepherd's crook.”
The lady's view had become even more in harmony
than ever with the Seigneur Bertrand, and it was given
out that she was to be betrothed to him.
JOAN OF ARC. 227
The child Beatrice was more silent than usual.
But she looked more like one of the angel-children in
the pictures than ever.
“I have seen her and heard her voice l’ she said to
me; “and now I do not want any more pictures of our
Lord and the holy Virgin. I know they must have
looked like that.
“She saw every one, I am sure; she even saw me !
Her eyes were on me, and she smiled on me, even on
me. And yet all the time I knew she was seeing those
we cannot see, if only she looked up; I saw that in her
eyes.
“And do not believe about the clothes. Of course you
never would. She cares no more for them than the angels
would. The angels wore dresses that dazzled people's
eyes, the curé says; but it was not because they wanted
to dazzle people, but because their clothes let a little of
the glory through. And she is like that.
“And I heard her speak. We were quite near. She
knelt at the king's feet and said—
“‘Gentle king, now is fulfilled the pleasure of God,
who willed that you should come to Rheims to receive
your worthy consecration, to show that you are the true
king, and he to whom the kingdom ought to belong.’
“She wept, and the lords around her wept too;
soldiers and young and old men, they shed tears.”
“You will see her again one day,” I said.
“I cannot tell,” she said gravely; “she may die; she
says she may die any day, and will have done her work
228 JOAN OF ARC.
this year. Or I may die. Little children do die as
young as I am.
“Perhaps I shall see our Lord first, you know,” she
added, with one of her sudden illumining smiles, “And
then I shall tell Him how Jeanne helped me to love Him
and see what He is like.”
“And perhaps He will tell her one day how much
you loved her,” I suggested.
“Perhaps,” she replied, shaking her head doubtfully.
“But the great joy is to know she is there, and to love
her.
“Every one does not love her,” she concluded, great
tears gathering in the dark eyes. “But I think they
will all have to, one day, when they find out. And
then, oh, how sorry they will be l’
Then suddenly turning the conversation, she said—
“Do you know I am to be betrothed, like my mother,
to the young Seigneur Raymond de Mailly, cousin of Sir
Bertrand. He too loves Jeanne. I would rather,” she
said very gravely, “have married you, and been always
with you. But you are to be a priest, and so I cannot.
And it is convenient, they say, on account of the land
and the peasants. They are mine, and Sir Raymond
has none of his own, and will take care of mine. And,
then, you know,” she concluded, “I may die ' And you
are going away.”
For Jeanne the hour of triumph was but a momentary
resting-place in her career.
JOAN OF ARO. 229
She had France to save, and must press on, and, if
she could, must press the sluggish court On.
Orleans was delivered.
Her king was crowned.
But that was little ; and she had “but little time ’’ to
be with us.
The fair fields of France must be delivered from the
invader; so she had said from the first.
It was at Rheims that her hardest campaign began.
The people had often thought they had glimpses of
the invisible hosts that succoured her. At Orleans it
was reported the patron saints, the bishops St. Euvert
and St. Aignan, had marched in pontifical robes around
the city; and at the moment when, lifting her standard
against the walls of the fort, she gave orders for the last
assault, a dove was seen hovering over her. At Troyes a
Swarm of white butterflies made the air radiant. Before
the journey to Rheims, cavaliers armed at all points,
riding on great white horses, had been beheld careering
in the air, across the seas from Spain to Brittany, cry-
ing, “Be not dismayed.”
But none but Jeanne herself knew how the swarms of
envy and sloth, and base selfishness, perpetually buzzed
and swarmed around her, blinding men's eyes, if not her
own, and stinging her to the heart when they dared.
She shed many tears alone, or when at mass in the
churches.
She wept much, radiant and gay as she could be be-
tween her tears; and she had reason.
230 JOAN OF ARO.
The great and good Gerson before he died had
warned the people, that though God had surely sent
them succour through the Maid, “as His people of old
resisted Moses and the prophets, so might they reject
her.”
And so indeed they did, crowning her with titles and
honours, showering gifts and glories on her, and all the
time piercing and straitening her heart by setting all
her noble purposes at naught.
Soon after the coronation she was riding across Ferty-
en-Valois with the king, between Dunois, her faithful
friend, and the Archbishop of Rheims; and as the people
gathered round them, shouting “Noel, Noel!” welcom-
ing the king, she said—
“This is a good people. I have never seen a people
who so rejoice in their noble prince ’’-(her loyal heart
was full only of France and her king)—“would that I
might be so happy as to end my days, and be buried in
this land.”
“O Jeanne,” said the archbishop, “in what country
think you ye shall die 2 °
“Where it shall please God,” she replied, “for I know
neither the hour, nor the place, any more than you do.
And I would it might please God, my Creator, that I
might return now, and lay aside my armour, and that I
might go back to help my father and my mother to keep
their flocks and herds, with my sister and my brothers.
They would be very glad to see me.”
She wished it. But she did not will it.
JOAN OF ARO. 23]
She willed, as she said, from the beginning, believ-
ing it to be God's will, to drive the English from
France.
“This,” she said, from the beginning to the end, from
Waucouleurs to the stake, “she was sent to do.”
And this at last she did, though on earth she saw it
not.
Not having accomplished this she would not willingly,
yet, either repose or die.
And so, in July, began those weary months of hind-
rance and treachery and secret opposition which ended
in her capture in the following May.
After Rheims, testimonies of homage came to her
from all sides. The Comte d'Armagnac wrote to her
from Spain to ask which of the then so-called popes
was the true; Bona Wisconti wrote to entreat her to re-
instate him in his duchy of Milan; the aged poetess
Christine de Pisane, revived at seventy, to compare her
in verse to Gideon, Esther, and Judith. The people
thronged to touch but the hem of her garments.
But she knew too well that what seemed a triumphal
entry was but the Way of the Cross.
Every step forward towards the deliverance of the
kingdom was taken against a reluctant court. And at
last their blind selfishness succeeded.
The king and army she had brought victorious to
Rheims, and to the very walls of Paris, were at last,
against their own will, as well as that of the Maid, led
back to the Loire.
232 JOAN OF ARO.
All that dreary winter, this slow warfare, which was
but prolonging the waste of French as much as of Eng-
lish blood, dragged heavily on.
And I meanwhile, smitten with fever, lay weary and
exhausted on a bed of suffering, unable to stir. I
seemed to suffer and linger through all the weary winter
in the confused echo of the struggles of Jeanne and all
that was noblest in France against La Trémouille and
the Archbishop of Rheims. For there are moments in
the life of nations when their noblest rouse them above
themselves. And there are moments when their basest
sink them below themselves.
But, nevertheless, for me, on my bed of pain, had
dawned one ever-brightening brotherly hope which sus-
tained me through much.
It came about in this wise.
Just after the return of the Lady Blanche, when the
Seigneurs de Mailly had once more departed, and Owen
and I were left alone with the family of the castle,
during the settlement of the ransom, one of the fearful
epidemics, always lingering in the train of war, was
creeping insidiously through the country.
My brother came to me one night, with the old lan-
guor in his manner.
The old life had been resumed for a few days: I
rambling with the child through the forests, and paying
my last visits to the curé; Owen riding to the chase with
the lady and Sir Tanneguy.
So the last week wore on.
JOAN OF ARO. 233
It was Saturday, and on Monday, all being arranged,
we were to leave for England.
Owen stood looking out of our window, down the
valley, where we had stood watching the cavalcade
depart for Rheims.
The book of the “Imitation” (Consolation) lay open
upon the table.
“That eloquent old monk, after all, did not know
what he was leaving when he abandoned the world,” he
Said. .
“But we are not leaving the world,” I said. “We
are only abandoning other people's world for our own.”
He was silent for a few moments, and then he
continued—
“It grieves me to leave her to those worldly seigneurs,
to be pulled down from her own true height, down and
down.”
“She has chosen,” I said.
“There may be choice and no choice l’ he replied
oracularly. “Many women besides queens have to sub-
mit to destinies they would never have chosen, and,
submitting, of course to seem to choose.” *
My indignation rose irrepressibly.
“Can you believe the soft velvety falsehoods still ?”
I said.
“She has said nothing,” he replied. “Only if one has
eyes, one cannot help seeing.”
The old spell was closing in once more around him.
Yet there was a dismal kind of consolation to me in
234 JOAN OF ARC.
Seeing that it was not through love, or even passion, my
brother was held and wounded now, but through self-
love and vanity.
“She does not love you, nor you her,” I said. “You
both love merely the image of yourselves in each other's
eyes.”
“Lovel” he exclaimed. “Do you think I could be
false to Cecilie, and break her heart 2 ”
“I am tempted to think sometimes,” I said, “there
would be more fire in the ashes of a spent-out love for
another than in these poor reflections of love which
seems merely complacency with Cecilie for loving you.
The ashes of a poor hearth-fire are warmer than the
beams of the moon, which is only a looking-glass to the
sun. Have you no heart to beat or break for Cecilie 2 °
Owen only replied—
“You are scarcely speaking like yourself,” and turned
away.
Perhaps I was not speaking like myself. For the
next day the fever had seized me, and by that Monday
morning I could not stir.
Then the Lady Blanche was roused into the most
genuine alarm. She said that, deeply as she regretted
to do anything that might seem harsh, it was impossible
her maternal heart could suffer her to allow me to con-
tinue under the same roof with her child.
And, accordingly, I was packed up in a litter and
carried, by the old curé's permission, to his house near
the church at Domremy.
JOAN OF ARC. 235
The lady would have been content for Owen to stay.
But my brother had no hesitation; he and Peter fol-
lowed me, shaking off the dust from their feet at the castle.
And so those months of most bitter and sweet expe-
rience began.
I suppose the moving through the air increased my
illness. It passed from one stage and one form of
suffering to another, the various leeches giving various
names—small-pox, black fever, low fever, I know not
what. They had all one remedy, sweating or bleeding,
and none of them had any cure, and so my strength
oozed and oozed away.
After the first two months there was a lull, and Owen
insisted on sending Peter home with tidings.
Then came a relapse, and for months longer, through
the Snowy winter and the languid spring, I was left
alone with Owen.
No longer to take care of him : to be taken care of
by him, body and soul, until our hearts and souls grew
together with an intensity of trust and mutual care
which would to me have been worth a hundred-fold
such months of suffering.
It was like lying still and seeing my brother's Soul
born afresh into a new, beautiful childhood, his true self
rising like a winged creature from the shrivelled chry-
Salis of the old. Also, with a delicious feeling of sharing
in it, in some mysterious way, through my anguish and
helplessness; something such as I suppose mothers feel,
for joy that a man is born into the world.
236 JOAN OF ARO.
I suppose the recollection of the controversy of that
Saturday, controversy being so rare with us, lingered
dimly on into the wanderings of the fever.
For, at first, my remembrance is of a longing to repair
Some wrong done to Owen, pleading for him with Cecilie,
as if I had wronged her by suspecting him, pleading for
myself with my mother that I had tried hard to be true
to her dying charge.
I suppose something of the unreturned love came out
in my ravings; for, although Owen never breathed a
word of guessing my secret to me, there was a depth of
meaning in his voice when I got a little better, and tried
to thank him, and he stopped me and half-sobbed out—
“What have I done 2 You gave up your whole
world for me !”
Then I learned, day by day, the beautiful things in
my brother, which had made every one love him. They
had not loved the false in him, the worst of them, but
the buddings or the flashes of the true which was to be.
The quick responsiveness to every feeling of others,
the insight like a woman's, without words, into unex-
pressed wants
He never asked me a question at the wrong time,
seldom perplexed me by asking me anything. He
always knew, from the hours and kinds of food, to the
amount of spiritual thought, how much I could bear.
Countless thoughts came to me in that illness; joyful
yet awful glimpses into the ways of Providence, and the
necessity of reverently waiting on them.
JOAN OF ARC. 237
So delicately interwoven, of such fine invisible fibres
is the texture of His work, that we, when with our dim
eyes and clumsy fingers we would set some tangle right,
too often are irreverently plunging through and breaking
the beginning of some finest web of His designing.
Often Father Adam's words recurred to me—
“The sheep best help one another by following the
shepherd close.”
To act Providence for others we require omniscience.
In caring practically for another, the first thing is to be
content continually to have our plans crossed, our impa-
tience checked, to be delayed when it seems to us the
moment for haste, to be turned back when it seems to
us the moment for going forward.
All those months—nay, years—I had been trying to
fulfil my charge to take care of Owen; and now I was
laid down, bound hand and foot, unable to think, at a
crisis when I should have thought my most wary watch-
ing essential to him. And he seemed to learn more, in
a brief space, by the mere necessity of taking care of
me than by all my laborious taking care of him.
Oh, holy and marvellous mystery of family life,
Setting helplessness to melt away selfishness, weakness
to feed on strength and consecrate it; slowly perfecting
in men the likeness of the Son of man, by simply turning
their hearts away from self to those who depend on them
How I had wrestled with those spells of flattery
which seemed to me eating out and destroying the inner
life of my brother.
238 JOAN OF ARO.
And, lying there, helpless and in pain, I saw them
drop off him like cobwebs.
For my illness was no easy one to bear or to help.
It is a strange experience to find the body which has
hitherto worked so harmoniously with the spirit that
One Scarcely thinks of them as separate, becoming a
helpless, loathsome burden of flesh, a peril to others to
touch, and a pain to see; to find our very bodies, as it
were, the cross to which we are nailed.
And then to find all the humiliation and helplessness
and anguish working out for my beloved, what all my
care and thinking seemed to have failed to do | Intense,
awful glimpses, indeed, came thus to me of the possible
meanings of the miseries and sicknesses of this whole
body of the Church and of humanity.
And during all the winter of my sickness the Maid
was carrying on her last campaign for France; strug-
gling against the king himself to save for him his king-
dom and himself, against the mean suspicion and the
base treachery of La Trémouille and the Archbishop of
Rheims, and all the hosts of sloth ; the people indeed
with her, some of the captains and nobles eager for her
to lead them on, yet in the inmost, and on the highest
level, too often terribly alone, gloriously alone, in her
unfaltering purpose of rescue, with her “Voices” and
her King. e
In a dim way she was with me throughout my illness,
mingled confusedly, as in my dream at Orleans, with my
mother and Cecilie.
JOAN OF ARC. 239
But always it seemed now as if the Maid herself, like
myself, were struggling with delirious dreams, helpless
and bound, against inaccessible foes, her foes and owrs.
For never could the thought abandon me that in driving
the English from France she was saving England.
And, indeed, the conflict she was sustaining during
those months from July to May, in the year of grace
1429, was more like the struggles of a nightmare dream
than anything real.
Everything real was in her favour, a victorious army,
cities and country panting to be delivered from an
enemy, money and aid of all kinds pouring in from all
sides, a consecrated king, the enemy discouraged; noth-
ing against her but the sloth and illusions of the king's
court.
As I heard of the campaign, from time to time, all
seemed to me unreal and confused as in a feverish
dream.
Nothing seemed to keep back the French from vic-
tory, but some inward mysterious indisposition to be
victorious.
There were sieges raised without reason, mock battles
in which the hostile armies confronted each other for
days; La Trémouille, at Crespy, caracoling Ostentatiously
before the English army until he chanced to fall from his
horse; and then retreats without defeats on either side.
Until, at Christmas, on one of my recoveries, I heard
that at last La Pucelle and the king were before Paris,
and the assault was to be made in earnest. The Duke
240 JOAN OF ARC.
d’Alençon had made a bridge over the Seine, in order
to attack the city on its weakest side.
And then came suddenly the news that the Maid had
been wounded in the assault, and though herself (as at
Orleans) unmindful of the pain and eager to press on,
had been carried forcibly from the walls; that the king
had himself broken down the bridge which might have
opened to him his capital, without explanation or reason,
and that the whole French army were in full retreat
(retreat so rapid that it looked like flight) for the old
pleasant country on the banks of the Loire, where, who-
ever reigned over the kingdom, La Trémouille could
reign unhindered over the king.
After that came rumours of terrible English vengeance
on the country abandoned by her king, of cities re-taken
and pillaged, of fields ravaged, the whole northern
provinces and the Isle of France forsaken and aban-
doned, as the reward of their loyalty to Charles, to the
fiercest retaliations of our troops.
And mingled with curses on the king and the court,
but too well deserved, came ungrateful and doubtful
murmurs against the Maid herself, as if her power were
waning and her mission over.
Rumours also came of a foolish prophetess called
Catherine, who promised victory without fighting, and
was encouraged by the Archbishop of Rheims, as if to
lower the Maid and her mission by base parodies.
Jeanne, indeed, we heard, showed her wonted sense
regarding this Catherine, and proposed to stay the night
JOAN OF ARO. 24l
with her to see the heavenly Lady whom she professed
to have seen, but who never came.
And as a still more effective test she proposed that
Catherine should go with her to the siege of La Charité;
but she declined, saying “the weather was too cold !”
Jeanne was, indeed, the same.
From Marguerite la Touroulde, a widowed lady with
whom, she sojourned three weeks after the coronation at
Rheims, the curé heard how she kept to her old paths
of devotion and prayer, undazzled by adulation and
victory.
But the sadness at the depth of her heart weighed on
my heart as I grew better through the spring of 1430.
I thought of her idling away, as she would think, the
precious months, with the king in Touraine, while the
cry of desolated provinces and captured towns came from
the land she would and could have saved, “pricked to
the heart,” as she said, “till her work was dome.”
Idling away the precious months when she knew “she
could not last more than a year !”
The king tried to quiet her with patents of nobility,
and permission to bear the royal arms.
Her family bore them. But she, for herself, would
never adopt any motto or heraldic device, but the simple
words “Jesus, Maria.”
And then, at last, when the valley of Vaucouleurs was
growing bright with its coat of many colours, in May,
came like a thunderbolt on the village, where so many
loved her, the terrible news that the Maid was captured
(611) 16
242 JOAN OF ARO.
by the Burgundians, abandoned, and left outside the
gates of Compiègne, dragged off her horse, bound, and
thrown into prison.
And with the terrible news came dark suspicions of
the basest ingratitude and treachery.
“I fear nothing but traitors,” she had said at Chalons,
to her old acquaintance D'Epinal. And all recalled it
IlOW.
Yet all the village believed it could but be a tempo-
rary check.
The king would never suffer her to remain in captivity,
the Maid to whom he owed his kingdom and his crown |
Losing her would teach the court what she was to all !
All France would rise to rescue the Maid who had rescued
France
XVIII.
*
33ertibal’s Storp (lontinueb.
AD the Maid, indeed, been basely and deliber-
ately betrayed and abandoned in the Sally
- º * * * *** a ſis
* * * | gº. #
º º *** * * *
&
º SN ::: a
her way back to the city, pursued by the Burgundians,
from Compiègne, when, as she was making
the gates closed just as she reached them 2
How could it be that every man with a heart in him
did not insist on opening the gates, and rescuing her, the
Maid, the young girl of eighteen who had saved Orleans,
who had saved Compiègne, who was saving France 2
But however it came about, the moment passed, the
generous impulse which might have saved her was
lacking, and Jeanne was dragged from her horse, seized
by the men-at-arms, and carried off captive.
Whether they betrayed her at the last or not, what
was too certain was that treachery, envious plotting, and
hatred were the real cause of her capture; the treachery
of the courtiers, to whose baseness her presence was a
continual rebuke, and the heartless ingratitude of the
king she had crowned.
There was bitter weeping at poor, helpless little

244 JOAN OF ARO.
Domremy, where she was so known and beloved, as
the weary weeks went on and no tidings came of any
attempt being made to save her.
A terrible rumour reached us at one time that she had
attempted to escape by rashly throwing herself from the
tower of the castle where she was imprisoned, and had
all but killed herself.
None of those who knew her brave and patient spirit
would believe she had so sought to take her fate out of
the hands of God.
And by degrees the truth reached the village.
She had been sorely tempted to attempt an escape.
She had a severe inward conflict. Her voices, especially
her beloved Saint Catherine, repeated every day that
God would aid her. She replied, that since God would
aid her, she would like to try and aid herself. She
would far rather die than fall into the hands of the
English.
At length her jailers told her that Compiègne was on
the eve of being taken, and that every one in the town
would be put to the sword, down to the children of seven
years old.
Then her passion of rescue vanquished her; and she
tried to let herself down from the window by straps
of leather bound together. These broke, and she fell
stunned and senseless on the ground.
For three days she would not or could not eat. But
at last Saint Catherine “cheered her once more, and told
her to confess and ask pardon of God.”
JOAN OF ARO. 245
And then came pathetic accounts of the love and
reverence she had won from the ladies of the castle
where she was imprisoned.
The same gentleness, and simplicity, and generous care
for all around, and love of God and love of France, and
delight in her devotions, as had made her dear at Dom-
remy
It was impossible not to hope she would be set free
She was not in the hands of the English, but of the
Burgundians, of a knight of good family, John of
Luxembourg, a man actuated by no hatred to her, and
with no defeats to avenge.
But John of Luxembourg was poor, and Jeanne's
ransom was precious.
He would have preferred, it was said, to receive the
ransom from the King of France, and waited to see if
any offer would be made.
But not a finger was lifted up in that cold and cruel
court to save her.
The Archbishop of Rheims announced to his episcopal
city the capture of La Pucelle, with a Pharisaic compla-
cency, as a warning against vanity and pride. “It was
a judgment of God,” he said, “because she would not
take counsel, but would do her own pleasure, because she
was proud and loved fine clothes.” Also “ he knew a
young shepherd of the mountains of Gévaudan who
would do quite as much for them all as Jeanne.”
And meantime the English were pressing for her to be
delivered to them.
246 JOAN OF ARC.
And, alas ! unable to compass her execution in any
other way (for to kill her as a mere prisoner of war
would be contrary to all chivalry), they called in the
aid of the Church. The University of Paris, and the
Bishop of Beauvais, the traitor Cauchon, demanded her
to be given up to the Inquisition as a heretic.
On consideration of this being done, the English
Government offered John of Luxembourg, into whose
hands she had fallen, ten thousand gold francs; and, in
spite of the remonstrances and tears of the ladies of his
family, he yielded to the base temptation, and the Maid
was sold.
One more instance of affectionate homage rendered her
reached us at Domremy. It was the last.
At Abbeville, as her Burgundian captors were taking
her to the English, the ladies of the city came to visit
her in prison, to show their reverence and sympathy for
the captive deliverer of France. Indeed, from the begin-
ning to the end good women never failed to understand,
revere, and love her. Their kindness pleased and soothed
her. She kissed them “aimablement” when they took
leave, asked their prayers, and said “adieu’’ in a way
which meant much.
Also at Crotoy, the chancellor of the cathedral of
Amiens, then staying in the castle where she was
imprisoned, confessed her, and administered to her the
eucharist. A terrible interval had to be gone through
ere they suffered her to partake of her next and last
communion. &
JOA W OF ABC. 247
Thus the Maid was sold to the English. And after
that I could not bear to stay at Domremy.
The curé and the simple villagers, as far as they knew
me, knew that I myself believed her mission to be as
much for the good of England as of France, to turn us
by God's mercy back from ravaging the fields and homes
of France to cultivate our own fields, and minister to
our own homes in England.
But England was my fatherland; it was because I so
loved her that I could also love and revere the Maid.
Patriotism, like family feeling, may be a mere ex-
aggerated vanity, if we start from the selfish “I” to the
y
“‘my family, my country,” and seek for our country a
glory as poor and selfish as for ourselves.
But if it be true patriotism, an expanding of the waves
of real love to the home, the neighbours, the country, we
can no more desire ill-won glory or mere increase of
possessions for our country than for ourselves.
To be ready to sacrifice everything rather than that
our country should fail in her true destiny, should do
anything ignoble or unjust, that seems to me true
patriotism.
And it was the anguish of fearing that the hatred and
bitter resentment felt by most Englishmen towards the
Maid, who had checked our victorious career, would work
itself out in cruel and pitiless revenge, which made it
unendurable to me to stay longer in the valley where
her holy and loving childhood had passed, and where she
was so beloved.
248 JOAN OF ARC.
I was still little fit for the journey; but we resolved
to take it in short stages and depart homeward at any
cost. *
The ransom had been made to include us both, on
condition that we neither of us took arms again in this
war against France.
Once more I went over all the places hallowed by the
presence and the prayers of that most generous and
brave and tender heart.
The evening before we left I crept up alone to the
little chapel in the wood, Notre Dame de Bourlaimont,
where she used to pray so often alone, and to hang the
garlands made under the Fairies' Tree.
As I knelt before the altar there, in an agony of
prayer for England and for the Maid, that my country
might yet be saved from committing a great wrong, a
soft footstep came quietly up the aisle, and when I rose
I found that the child Beatrice had been kneeling
beside me.
We went silently together out of the church, and
there, in the porch, she laid her little hands on mine, and
said, her brown eyes fixed on mine with an expression
of entire trust—“They would never let me come to see
you. But I know, whatever your people do, you will
always love our Jeanne.”
“I am going home to-morrow,” I said. “But every
day, everywhere, I pray for Jeanne and for you.”
“Be happy for me,” she said, “I am betrothed, you
know, to a good man, who honours our Jeanne. You
JOAN OF ARO. 249
could not help being English,” she added; “and Jeanne
did not hate the English. She only wanted them to go
home and be good.”
“The Maid is from God, little one,” I said, “and
therefore, like our blessed Lord, she is the friend and
succourer of us all.”
“And you,” she said, “are to be a priest of the holy
Church, and She is the friend and succourer of us all.”
The tears gathered in her eyes, and tears to that
repressed heart meant, not relief uncontrollable to a
woman, but an agony of uncontrollable pain as to a man.
She checked them, and, with a sob, lifted up her face to
kiss me.
“You are my brother of Paradise,” she said. “Talk
to your sister of the little child, the little French sister,
who loves you. Adieu.” And turning to the old nurse
who had come with her, she went hastily away.
But once more she turned back and said—
“Whatever any one does or says, I shall always know
you are true to the Maid.”
And so the dear, tearful, childish voice ceased, and she
vanished into the forest.
Solitary and sad the forest and the slopes and the
meadows lay before me in the dim evening light; the
forest where Jeanne had loved to pray, and where, some
said, the birds knew her and came to her; the carefully
tilled fields her busy, capable hands had helped to
cultivate; the meadows where she had kept the village
flocks.
250 JOAN OF ARO.
The village church bell sounded up the valley as I
stood there.
I went along the village street. There were the
companions of her childhood, Hauviette, Guillemette, and
her little darling Mengette, still a child.
And in the house, which I could scarcely bear to pass,
sate the mother who had taught her the Our Father, the
father who had preferred, for her, honour to life, now in
anguish, knowing her in the hands of my people, of her
enemies.
Too Surely the voice so clear and strong, yet so soft
and womanly, as I had heard it in its message of mercy
at Orleans, would be heard on that humble threshold no
Iſl(OT6.
There was little sleep for us that night.
Once more, the next morning, we heard at early mass
the voice of the curé who had confessed the Maid, and
knew what a “beautiful soul” was hers.
And then, late in October, with the yellow leaves
falling slowly and noiselessly through the misty air, we
left the quiet valley which Jeanne had left a year
and a half before, in early spring, to go forth and save
France.
And even as we rode, the Maid herself also was riding
from St. Valéry by Eu and Dieppe to Rouen, no more
with grateful throngs of her rescued countrymen pressing
to kiss her garments, but guarded by men who knew
her only as their enemy, and a sorceress and a heretic.
JOAN OF ARC. 251
Too surely I felt she would never tread these her
native fields again. And yet a solemn conviction was
on me that she had not failed, but that her work for
England and for France was done.
XIX.
£ertibal’s Storp (ſion timueb.
; HE autumn had chilled and bared the world
* † to early winter before the Maid entered
§§§ Rouen.
To us who had seen her last at Orleans, and remem-
bered her entrance and her departure thence, the con-
trast was not to be forgotten.
Then the captains, nobles, princes she had led to
victory were riding as attendants by her side; the
people she had rescued, pressing around her to secure
the life-long remembrance of but one touch; and she at
home with all: with the princes, for they were her
brothers in saving France and their king; with the
poor, because she knew the heart of the poor, and
always loved to help them.
And now, the grim escort of foes whom she had
defeated, of whose language she scarcely knew more
than the oath which gave us our name in France
(“Godons” or “Goddem *), men to fall into whose hands
she knew too well was worse for her than to die,
who believed, or wished to believe, her witch, heretic,

JOAN OF ARO. 253
everything they would hate their sisters or daughters
to be
In the streets of Rouen she was received with a
fanatical fury and hatred which was scarcely to be
wondered at in soldiers who had been checked by one
peasant-girl in a career of unbroken victory, and, alas !
of unhindered pillage, and now thought that her capture
proved her success to have been the work of the devil.
Many would have desired to have her tied in a sack
and thrown into the Seine at once.
But a profounder policy and a far more diabolical
hatred lay underneath this popular fury in the hearts of
the men in authority, lay and ecclesiastical, who had her
destiny in their hands.
To destroy her influence in France, to prove England
right and restore our conquests, it was necessary, not
merely to kill the Maid, but to slander her, to prove her
no Christian, no true Maid, for ever an enemy of God
and truth and goodness.
And for this purpose the tribunal to judge her must
be ecclesiastical ; and the death she must die, as had
been perceived from the first by her enemies at Orleans,
must be the death of a witch and an apostate, death
by fire.
For the sentence terrible enough to Sully her whole
life and work, they must go, alas ! to the priests of Him
who would not break the bruised reed.
For the model of her torture they must go to the
frightful pictures of hell itself not long before flashed
254 JOAN OF ARC.
before the eyes of Christendom by the fiery genius of
the Florentine Dante.
She was carried to the château, and there thrown into
a cage where her enemies were allowed to come and see
her.
Among them, with an incredible baseness, with the
Earls of Warwick and Stafford, came John of Luxem-
bourg, who had sold her.
He said he came to ransom her, if she would promise
no more to bear arms against England.
She said he mocked her; she said she knew the
English would make her die; and she added, that if one
hundred thousand more “Godons” were in France than
at present, they should never have the kingdom.
Lord Stafford was so enraged, he would have run his
sword through her; but Lord Warwick withheld him.
There were agonies in store for her, to which the
cage and the Sword were indeed mercies.
The journey to Rouen had exhausted the little
strength I had regained, and I could not proceed to
England. -
Owen would fain have waited on with me, but I pre-
vailed on him to go; and what was more, to be married
at once by Father Adam, and not to wait, as he had
intended, till I was in holy orders.
In the midst of all the distress and anguish for Eng-
land and the Maid, a quiet well of joy was ever spring-
ing up in my heart for Owen. For the blessed life of
JOAN OF APC, 255
caring for others through which the heavenly Father
trains His sons to the imitation of Christ had begun in
Owen, never more to cease.
And to me had been given that best joy of so loving.
that the joy of our beloved becomes simply and naturally
our own joy, their well-being our well-being; so that to
follow Owen in spirit to Danescombe to the welcomes
and the love there, was a true happiness that sustained
me through the dark months that followed, as it sustains
a tired labourer to come home at evening to the welcome
of wife and child.
For I had resolved not to leave Rouen until I saw
what would become of the Maid.
Not the Maid only, but England, our own England,
was on her trial at Rouen through that drear and awful
winter; and, for that matter, France also.
And what least aid the least Englishman could render
to save England from a great crime, or to solace a true
Saint in her martyrdom, could best be rendered here.
And thus my brother left, and I took up my abode
with a quiet old priest attached to the cathedral, and
continued my preparations for the priesthood.
And so, then, as afterwards, I gathered up every pos-
sible detail as to the process against La Pucelle. If
nothing more could be done for her, it was something to
add one more to the number of those who knew the
truth concerning her.
It seemed as if, to the end of time, the two nations,
French and English, and the two orders, ecclesiastical
256 - JOAN OF ARO.
and lay, should be able to throw no stones at each
other as to their share in this crime.
Of the tribunal which condemned her, every member,
from the judge to the recorders and ushers, was French.
The University of Paris and the Inquisition sanctioned
and commanded all.
But the princes, captains, and statesmen who paid the
judges and assessors, and who threatened with death any
who ventured to speak of mercy, and the guards who
never left her a moment's solitude night or day, were
English.
And yet, if I had to choose among all those guilty of
her death the men in all the world I would most have
shrunk from, it would not have been the hard Duke of
Bedford, the violent Warwick, or even the arch-murderer
Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, but the traitor L'Oyseleur,
who confessed her, and the King of France she had
crowned, for whom she pleaded with God and man at
the stake, who, without one generous effort, let her die
Of those who loyally befriended her in the least
thing, I will give every name and every detail. Alas!
they were so few, they are easy enough to remember.
And among those also, thank God, there were English
as well as French.
In the first place stands Nicolas de Houppeville.
When summoned to be one of the assessors at the trial
he declared that the prosecution was not legal, because
the Bishop of Beauvais was on the side hostile to La
Pucelle, and because he made himself judge of a cause
JOAN OF ARC. 257
already judged by his metropolitan, the Maid being ap-
proved of and sanctioned by the Archbishop of Rheims,
in whose province Beauvais was. -
The Bishop of Beauvais was so enraged at this de-
claration, that when De Houppeville came to take his
seat at the tribunal, he excluded him, had him thrown
into prison, and would have exiled him to England, or
thrown him into the Seine, if he had not been rescued
by the intervention of others. But the warning was
sufficiently plain to any who dared to utter a truth
favourable to the Maid.
Again and again during the prosecution the slightest
leaning to mercy was repressed with threats; and the
vice-inquisitor himself, having shown himself not docile
enough, was threatened with being thrown into the
river.
Yet one man gathers and represents in himself the
guilt of the details of that wicked prosecution.
“It is you,” Jeanne herself said, on the day of her
death, to the Bishop of Beauvais, “who have made me
die.”
The great crimes of the world are perhaps not always
committed by the greatest criminals.
In that central Trial, which was the test and trial of
our whole human race, which lasted, not four months,
but one terrible prolonged night, except with the very
few who instigated it, how slight the motives were and
how faint the passions !
(611) 17
258 JOAN OF ARO.
Pilate certainly did not hate. He would have risked
everything, except the favour of Caesar, to save.
The multitude did not hate. They had, at the last,
to be “persuaded" to demand Barabbas.
Of the chief priests, possibly fanatical hatred actuated
a few, but nothing fiercer than political ambition and
fear the rest.
And in this trial, which lasted four months, the
English chiefs who originated it certainly hated the
Maid who had ruined all their political schemes. But
of the assessors, probably many accepted the post be-
cause, at the moment, it was the safest and easiest thing
to do; and as the trial went on, evidently not a few,
moved by the simplicity and courage of the Maid's
answers, would gladly have saved her. Even Cauchon
himself could not have hated her except politically, as
the cause of his having been exiled from his diocese.
Behind him lay a lost diocese, before him (by English
promise) a possible archbishopric. The triumph of
Jeanne had lost him one ; her condemnation might gain
him the other. She was but an unavoidable step in the
ladder he had set himself to climb.
What there had been in the lives of these men before,
which made it possible for them to be so blinded, and
to act as they did, we know not ; what causes and what
excuses lay hidden deep in their former lives; or
whether, indeed, in all cases, the worst crimes are those
committed from passions exceptionally fierce, or from
the small self-interests so terribly ordinary.
JOAN OF ARC. 259
One only is the Judge of men, the Son of man, who
“knoweth what is in man,” yet loves the world.
We may not judge, lest we condemn the innocent;
yet, on the other hand, we are not to excuse, lest we
call evil good,
Something in himself had made it possible for the
Bishop of Beauvais to blind and steel his heart during
those four months to the unveiling of as pure and loving
a soul as ever shone before men, and to torture one of
the Father's beloved children, one of the Lord Christ's
anointed Ones, to death.
God knows what that something was ; and I suppose,
now, he knows himself.
XX.
łłertibal’s Storp (lontinueb.
jº N Tuesday, the 20th of February 1431, the
㺠Maid was summoned to appear the next day
Sºği before her judges.
She answered that she would willingly do so. But
she requested that assessors on the French side might be
added to those on the English. And she entreated as a
favour that she might be allowed to hear mass before
appearing,
The Bishop of Beauvais, president of the tribunal,
refused permission for her to attend mass, on account
of her “abominable clothing,”—an indication as to the
point on which the accusation would principally press.
To the request for assessors of the French party no
answer was vouchsafed.
Already she had remained more than two months
chained to her block in the castle prison, her life of
continual enterprise and enthusiastic appreciation ex-
changed for one of unbroken monotony, without fresh
air, without movement, without the Church services she
delighted in, without one sympathetic look or word.

JOAN OF ARO. 261
Well for her that the previous months, brilliant as
they seemed, had been no mere triumphal progress, but,
in the innermost, a hard battle, step by step, with cold-
ness and misunderstanding and treachery.
Well for her that her devotions had been no mere
religious shows and luxuries, but a silent drinking into
her silent spirit of the waters of life.
Well for her that she came to her last campaign no
untrained warrior in the Holy War.
The first session was in the chapel of the castle. It
began at eight o'clock in the morning of the 21st of
February. * *
The first demand was that she should swear to tell
the truth on each point on which she was interrogated.
There the contest began. She held that she had been
intrusted with a secret revelation for the king, Charles VII.
She held also that in all things made known to her from
Heaven, the Sanction of Heaven was needed before it was
lawful for her to utter them. And from this point, her
duty to God and to her king, no menaces, nor entreaties, nor
subtlest persuasion of trained casuists could move her.
“For what relates to my father and my mother, and
what I have done since I took the way to France (j'ai
pris le chemim de France), I will willingly swear; but
as to the revelations which I have had of God, I have
never said anything of these save to the King Charles,
and I will say nothing, even if they cut off my head,
because my counsel (the Voices) have forbidden me to
tell this to any one.”
262 JO AN OF ARC,
Beyond this she would not go. To this she swore on
her knees with her hands on the Gospel.
But ere that point was reached, the Maid had been
assailed with such a prolonged tumult of persuasions
and accusations from the assessors, several speaking at
once, that it was felt to be a desecration of the chapel to
hold another session there.
After the oath, the bishop asked her name and sur-
name, as of a child at the Catechism.
“In my own country they called me Jeannette,” she
answered. “Since I have been in France, they call me
Jeanne. Of the surname I do not know.”
Surnames had not yet become fixed among her peasant-
folk. She explained afterwards that in her country
daughters frequently took their mother's surname.
“Where were you born ?”
“At Domremy, which makes one with Greux. At
Greux is the principal church.”
“What are your father and mother called 2 °
“My father is called Jacques d’Arc ; my mother
Isabelle Romée.”
“Where were you baptized 2*
“At Domremy.”
Then as to her godmothers and godfather, and her age.
She was about nineteen years old.
“What did she know 2 ”
“I have learned from my mother,” she said, “the Our
Father, the Hail Mary, the “I believe in God.' It is
from my mother that I hold my belief.”
JO AN OF A PC. 263
Before dismissing her, the bishop forbade her to
escape from prison, on penalty of being convicted of
heresy.
She replied that she did not accept the prohibition,
that no one could accuse her of breaking faith if she
escaped, for she had never given any promise. And she
complained that they had bound her with iron fetters.
Yet when it was replied that this was necessary, on
account of her having previously tried to escape, with
her characteristic candour and straightforwardness, she
Said—
“It is true, I did, and I still would escape. It is the
right of every prisoner.” Like the primitive African
martyr, St. Perpetua, she simply could not call a pitcher
anything but a pitcher. Truth was an atmosphere out
of which she could not breathe.
So she was remanded to her cell, and the first inter-.
rogatory was over.
She was remanded to her cell in the round tower of
the castle. No companionship was permitted her, but
not a moment's solitude; the incessant watching of a
guard from the lowest class of soldiers harassed her
night and day.
Worse than this. In her isolation among enemies
they sent her a traitor, a priest, Nicolas l’Oyseleur, who
pretended to have pity for her, and to know her own
Domremy. He spoke to her of her people and her
country, as a friend—at first as a layman; and then to
complete his treachery, he acknowledged that he was a
264 JOAN OF ARO.
priest, and received her confessions, and gave her advice
all through the trial, as a friend.
He was one of the very few who recommended that
the torture should be applied to her. He pursued her
with his false friendliness to the last.
(But at the very last, although I anticipate in saying
it here, the most terrible vengeance possible fell on him,
as on Judas.
When she was being led to the stake, a sudden passion
and terror of remorse fell on him. He fought recklessly
to break through the guard and to entreat her forgive-
ness, but in vain. They drove him away with mockery
and menaces.)
And yet she had companionship, familiar to her and
sacred.
She had her Voices, and her God—her King, “Messire.”
“I call on Our Lord and our Lady that they may
send me counsel and comfort,” she said.
“In what terms do you seek them 2 °
“‘Most sweet God (très doux Dieu), in honour of your
holy Passion, I desire you, if you love me, to reveal to
me what I ought to answer to these churchmen. I know
well, as to the dress (the man's clothes), the command-
ment which made me take it; but I know not in what
way I ought to leave it. Wherefore, let it please you
to teach me.’” And then she said, “They come.”
They came. She was not left alone.
On the next day the tribunal met at the great hall of
the castle.
JOAN OF ARC. 265
Jean Beaupère, Chancellor of the University of Paris (in
place of the noble and holy Gerson, who had sanctioned
the Maid, and had warned France not to reject her as
Israel had rejected Moses), conducted the interrogatory.
He began in a honeyed tone, and sought to induce her
to take the general oath which she had refused.
But nothing could move her.
Her soul seemed overwhelmed to see that these
ministers of God would not see the work of God, recog-
nized by the divines of Poitiers, and by so many.
“If you knew well about me, you would wish I were
out of your hands; for I have done nothing but by
revelation,” she said.
He asked if she had learned any trade in her youth.
She said she had learned to sew and to spin, and (her
only boast, poor child () that she would not fear to
sew or spin with any woman in Rouen.
They asked her about her confessions.
“Had she confessed to her curé, and communicated at
Easter ?” º
She had.
“Had she communicated also at other festivals 2 ”
“Pass on,” she said—“passez outre.”
The blending of discrimination with simplicity in her
was marvellous. Or rather her simplicity gave her
discrimination; she saw clearly because her eye was
single. Her reverent and trustful spirit shone through
to the last. She asked the theologians quite simply to
explain to her if there were two popes, and what the
266 JOAN OF ARO.
“Church Militant” meant. But she could never be
entangled into making the tribunal a confessional.
Baffled in their intrusion into her inner life, again
they badgered her about the oath.
Wearied, she said, “I come from God—de la part de
Diew. I have nothing to do here. Send me back to
God, from whom I come.”
Alas! they were only too eager to do so |
Then Jean Beaupère, with a voice of interest—he
always began with honeyed words—asked her how long
it was since she had neither eaten nor drunk anything?
It was Lent.
If she had broken her fast, she would have made her-
self liable to be accused of contempt for the Church.
She replied, “I have neither drunk nor eaten since
yesterday at noon.”
Fasting, she had to endure for hours these interroga-
tories | Thus, every snare laid for her only served to
bring out her uprightness and innocence. She scarcely
ever even lost her Sweetness of temper, or gave a hasty
or worried answer -
Jean Beaupère returned to her “Voices.” When had
she heard them last 2
“Yesterday and to-day, in the morning; at Vespers,
and at the Ave Maria.” Her beloved church bells were
all the share left her now in the services !
The heavenly friends had waked her, she said, without
touching her. Whether they were in the room or not,
she knew not. They were in the castle. “Did she
JOAN OF ARO. 267
kneel to listen, to give them thanks " “Being in bed,”
she replied, “she gave thanks, and sat up and joined her
hands, and implored guidance; and then the Voices told
her to answer boldly, and God would help her.”
And, penetrated with the conviction of the reality
of her mission, she turned to Bishop Cauchon, and
Said—
“You say you are my judge; take heed what you do,
for, in truth, I am sent from God, and yow place yourself
Żm great danger.”
All through, there were moments when all thought of
her being on her trial for life at a human tribunal
seemed to leave her. In her glorious, heroic habit of
saving, she forgot herself entirely, in the thought that
her judges were at the tribunal of God, and that she
must plead with them not to injure themselves.
A girl of nineteen, without counsel, badgered and
pursued for months by learned doctors to whom she
would fain have knelt as ministers of God, she all the
time stood, in faith, at the Judgment Seat of God, and
pleaded with Him for them.
“I believe firmly, as firmly as I believe the Christian
faith and that God has redeemed us from the pains of
hell, that these Voices come from God.”
And she told how they said to her, “Ne te chaille de
ton martyre. Be not dismayed at thy martyrdom, thou
shalt come at last to the Paradise of God.”
“If she was so sure of Paradise, then,” they answered
derisively, “why did she confess?”
268 JOAN OF ARC.
“One cannot keep one's conscience too clean,” she
answered.
“Why, then,” resumed Jean Beaupère, “does not the
Voice speak to the king himself 2 ”
“I know not if it is the will of God,” she said.
“Without the grace of God I could do nothing.”
Bishop Cauchon perceived at once that these simple
words might prove a snare to entangle her, and inter-
vened with a question which one of the assessors dared
to say she need not answer.
“Are you,” he asked, “in the grace of God 2"
If she said “Yes” it would be presumption; whilst a
“No” might prove her consciously in mortal sin. She
felt no indignation, she saw no snare, but, with her eyes
fixed like a trustful child's on heaven, walked fearlessly
on, and replied—
“If I am not, please God to put me in it; if I am,
please God to keep me there.”
“Si je m'y Swis, Diew vewille m'y mettre; et si jºy
Swis, Diew vewille m'y garder.”
And she added that nothing in the world would afflict
her so much as to think she was not in the grace of
God. She thought if she were living in sin, the Voice
would not come to her. *
Ashamed and confounded, they abandoned that track;
and Jean Beaupère led her back to Domremy.
She spoke freely of her childhood, of the Ladies' Tree
and the well beside it, said to have healing power. She
had sung and danced under it with her playmates; the
JOAN OF ARO. 269
beautiful tree they called the “Fair May.” She had
woven garlands there for the image of the Holy Virgin.
But of fairies or miraculous cures she herself knew
nothing.
And so day after day the cruel baiting of the noble
and gentle creature went on.
Yet there must have been times, I think, when she
had a kind of natural intellectual enjoyment in the
baffling of her enemies, Smitten as they were into folly
and stupidity by their own falsehood.
One after another they were kept at bay by her clear,
keen words, keen as Sunbeams, or the glance of her own
clear, pitiful eyes.
“She had had prayers made for her sword,” they
asserted, the sword taken from the church of St.
Catherine of Fierbois.
“It is easy to see I would wish my armour to be suc-
cessful,” she replied.
“Which did she love best, her sword or her banner 2 °
“I love my banner forty times better,” she answered.
She always bore it into battle, she said, instead of her
Sword, to avoid killing any one. “And I never killed
any one,” she added.
They sought to prove she had superstitiously honoured
her standard.
“Which helped most—you the standard, or the stan-
dard you?”
“Be the victory through the standard or through me,
it was all due to our Lord.”
27() JOAN OF ARO.
“If another had borne it, would it have had as good
fortune 2"
“Of that I know nothing; I leave it with our Lord.”
“Why was her standard carried at the coronation at
Rheims, rather than another ?”
“It had been in the strife,” she said, “and that was
good reason it should have the honour.”
“Did she know she was to be wounded at Orleans ?”
“I did know it ; but I told the king, nevertheless, not
to desist from action.”
And St. Catherine heartened her, she said, so that she
rode on in spite of her wound.
They asked her if she had dictated the letters of
summons to the English, which seemed to them so
intolerably insolent.
She acknowledged them as essentially hers; and she
added, that within seven years Paris would be in the
hands of her king, and the English driven from France.
This, let it anger them or not, she “knew from revela-
tion; but the day and the hour she knew not.”
And as she prophesied, it came in the main to
paSS.
They recurred to the visions.
They asked her how she knew St. Michael and the
angels from St. Margaret and St. Catherine !
“By their voices,” she said, “and because they told
her.”
They asked her details as to the forms.
She would only say she saw the glorious faces, always
JOAN OF ARC. 27]
the same, and a great light, and that the voice was
“beautiful, gentle, and humble,” and spoke French.
“Did not St. Margaret speak English 2 °
“How could she 7” was the frank reply. “She was
on the French side.”
They asked if the saints had crowns and ear-rings.
She did not know.
“Had St. Michael any clothes 2"
“Do you think God had not wherewith to clothe
him 2 ”
“Had he long hair 7”
“Why should they have cut it off?”
The judges seemed smitten into childishness before the
childlike wisdom of the Maid.
There was but one explanation.
She spoke of the things she had heard and seen.
The sessions continued to be held even on Holy Thurs-
day and on Easter eve.
Palm Sunday, with its processions to open the closed
doors of the churches, brought no opening of sacred doors
to her. The solemn silence of Good Friday brought
no pause to her in the taunts and derisions of her
jailers. g
The joyous clash of Easter bells throughout the city
brought her no hymns of triumph, or festive light, or
Sacred communion.
It brought to her only a further and bitterer stage of
the mournful Way of the Cross in which she was called
to follow our Lord.
272 JOAN OF ARC.
But, firm as she stood in all she believed right, the
conflict began to tell on her health.
Early in Holy Week she was struck down with
fever. The Holy Season so dear to her, which must
have reminded her so bitterly of all she was exiled from,
probably was more than she could bear.
Her illness was serious, and brought her near death.
Perhaps she would have been glad if death had come so,
and opened the gates of God to her for ever.
And yet I think not. She still hoped for rescue, for
she did not think her work was done.
Her enemies, however, began to fear she might be
“sent back to God” in a way they had not meant ; and,
accordingly, the Cardinal of Winchester and the Earl of
Warwick sent her physicians.
“Take good care of her,” said the earl; “the king
would not for anything in the world that she should die
a natural death. The king holds her dear, for he bought
her dear, and wills not that she should die, save by the
hands of justice, and that she should be burned. Do all
that is possible to cure her.”
The physicians asked her from what she suffered.
“The Bishop of Beauvais sent me a carp, of which I
35
ate,” she said, “and perhaps that is the cause of my
sickness.” *
Jean d’Estivet, the proctor, who proved himself hard-
hearted in other ways, thinking she meant to accuse the
bishop of poisoning her, attacked her furiously, and called
her a low name.
JOAN OF ARC. 273
The physicians thought bleeding would relieve her;
but the Earl of Warwick said they must take care—she
was cunning, and might kill herself.
However, she was bled, and was relieved, and recover-
ing, when Jean d’Estivet came to see her again, and
slandered and railed against her so violently that she
fell into a fever again, and the Earl of Warwick had to
admonish the proctor to treat her more gently.
Before leaving the name of Jean d’Estivet, let me
gather together the few instances that have reached me
of some hearts being moved with generous impulses
of justice and pity towards her, however hindered by
fear.
On her way to the tribunal the usher, Massieu,
touched by her devotion, allowed her often to kneel by
the open door of a chapel in which the Holy Sacrament
was reserved.
Jean d’Estivet discovered this, placed himself at the
door between the Maid and the altar, and threatened
the usher with imprisonment in a dungeon without light
if ever he permitted her this consolation again.
But, nevertheless, the Maid was often allowed to
kneel and pray still at that open door.
And at the very council table beside her sate one who
would willingly have befriended her if he had dared, a
Dominican friar, Isambard de la Pierre (who received
her last confession, and sustained her at the last).
When he detected any snare or peril in the questions, he
would gently touch or push her to warn her, until the
(611) 18
274 JOAN OF ARC.
Bishop of Beauvais perceived it, and threatened to throw
him into the Seine if ever he so guarded her again.
Now and then, also, the injustice of her judges raised
a protest amongst the assessors themselves.
Twice one of them told her she was not bound to
reply to a question, in spite of the menaces of the
bishop.
At other times, won by the point and truth of her
replies, a voice would be found honest enough to
confess—
“Jeanne, thou Sayest well.”
And once, when an over-officious French advocate of
the English cause had asked her if she had ever been
where the English were killed ž and she replied, “You
speak mildly. Why would they not leave France, and
return to their own country?” an English nobleman had
the candour to declare—“Verily, that is a good woman.
If she were only English l’
“Did St. Catherine and St. Margaret hate the English?”
they asked her once.
She replied, in her simplicity, by a great theological
truth.
“They hate those whom our Lord hates, and love
those whom He loves.”
They had to give up trying to perplex her into saying
her visions were delusions. e
They next tried to bewilder her by proving that her
Voices were lying Voices, and had deceived her, because
she had failed and been taken captive.
JOAN OF ARO. 275
But she said they had often announced to her that
she would be taken before St. John's Day, midsummer,
that so it must be ; but she must take all in good part,
willingly (en gré). How deliverance would come she
knew not ; the day and hour and the way she knew
not. She would not leave the prison without leave of
God; but if the prison door were open, she would con-
sider God gave her leave, and would go.
When first St. Catherine told her she would be taken,
she said she had prayed to die when she was taken,
without long travail of prison; but the Voices said she
must take all willingly, for so it must be.
They then tried to prove that the Voices had
directed her to do wrong things, and were therefore
diabolical,
They asked her if her Voices had not commanded her
to disobey her father and mother, and leave them,
unpermitted.
But here, again, her truthfulness saved her. She
made no attempt to excuse herself, but admitted that
her Voices had not commanded her to leave without
telling her parents. They had left her free, and she
had done it to avoid conflict. But afterwards she had
sent to ask her parents' forgiveness.
They could, indeed, extract no sign of disapproval
from her father and mother. They had sent to make
inquiries at Domremy. They had made investigations
of those who had been with her since her career began.
But they were careful to bring none of the evidence thus
276 JOAN OF ARO.
obtained forward. Nothing but good could be found out
concerning her.
They had questioned her of her childhood, her youth,
her play, her work, her devotions, her revelations, her
faith, her home, and had only succeeded in bringing out
her goodness and truth and piety.
Now, therefore, they changed their tactics, and nar-
rowed the attack to a point where it could not fail.
Henceforth the whole force was directed against the
masculine dress, and to the command of the Church—by
which they meant their own tribunal—that she should
lay it aside. Divines had sanctioned it, and good and
noble women had approved of it. But the fact was
undeniable; nor, believing it to be her duty, and necessary
under her circumstances, would she lay it aside. By
this track, therefore, her condemnation was Secure.
They asked her if she would submit to the Church.
The first point to decide was, what was the Chºwrch to
which she was to submit 2
“What is the Church 2" she asked. “What did they
mean by it !”
They said it was the Pope, the prelates, and all those
who preside in the Church Militant.
She said she would willingly submit to the Pope, and
she demanded to be sent to him ; but she would not
submit to her enemies, and in particular to the Bishop
of Beauvais, “because,” she said to him, “you are my
capital enemy.”
As to the Church, when first they asked her whether
JOAN OF ARC. 277
she submitted to the Church Triumphant or to the
Church Militant, she said she did not know what they
meant by these distinctions, but she entreated to be
allowed to go to mass. “I love the Church,” she said,
“and would do all in my power for our Christian faith.
It is not me they should hinder from going to church
and to mass l’
They explained that the Church Triumphant meant
the angels and saved souls; the Church Militant, the
Pope, the cardinals, the prelates, the clergy, and all good
Christians and Catholics.
She said she had been sent by God, the Virgin Mary,
and the blessed saints of Paradise; that as to the Church
On earth, she submitted to it in all that was not impos-
sible. As to her acts and deeds, she had done them at
the commandment of God; that for these she could not
refer to any man in the world, only to our Lord ; that
she submitted to the Church in all things, “Messire,” the
Almighty King, being first served. “I commit myself
to God,” she often said, “ and I love Him with all my
heart 1.”
“I submit to our Lord, who sent me; to our Lady,
and all the blessed saints of Paradise. It is my opinion
that Our Lord and the Church are One, and that we
should make no difficulty. Why do you make any diffi-
culty, as if they were not Ome 3"
Again they asked, “Would she submit to the Pope 2"
(They had previously tried to perplex her by asking
which of the two Popes she thought the true, and she
278 JOAN OF ARC.
had baffled them by replying simply that in her opinion
the true Pope must be at Rome.)
“Certainly,” she replied, “she would submit to the
Pope.”
“Take me to the Pope, and I will answer all that I
ought. Take me to him.”
Poor child ! vain prayer.
Isambard de la Pierre advised her to appeal to the
General Council, which had been sitting about a month
at Bâle.
She asked what a General Council was. Did it con-
tain French and English—representatives of both sides 7
She was told it did.
“Then certainly she would submit to it.”
Bishop Cauchon angrily silenced the debate. But the
Maid's appeal to the Pope and the General Council had
been made and recorded, and was to be revived in her
favour in long after years.
They said she would be no better than a Saracen if
she did not submit unreservedly to the Church—that is,
to themselves.
She said—
“I was baptized a good Christian, and I shall die a
good Christian.” g
And if she died, she said, she trusted they would lay
her in holy ground. “But if not, I will leave it to own
Lord” (“Je m'attends & Notre-Seignewrº).
Revering and obeying all that seemed to her autho-
rity, as far as she could, she yet never Swerved from
JOAN OF ARC. 279
her supreme loyalty to truth and to her Immortal
King.
The net was, however, closing in fast around her, and
there was no escape. In vain did a great clerk and
church lawyer, Lohier, to whom Cauchon applied for
confirmation when he came to Rouen, declare that the
whole proceedings were illegal, null, and void.
The bishop was furious. Lohier had to fly from
Rouen at peril of his life; and the trial, which had so
long ceased to be anything but a chase to death, went
on. And all the time the false confessor, L’Oyseleur,
came to her from time to time, endeavouring to make
her answers as perilous to herself as he could; the only
apparently kind voice allowed to be near her through
all those months being thus the voice of a deliberate
traitor,
On the public interrogatory in February, followed the
private interrogatory in prison before “solemmel” doctors
chosen by the bishop. Too many had been moved in
her favour in the larger assembly, and therefore a few
of the hardest were selected. To the private interroga-
tory succeeded the Accusation, the First Charitable
Admonition, the Second Charitable Admonition, the
Sentence of the University of Paris, the Sermon to the
Maid, in prison, on the text of the sentence.
The University of Paris condemned her on the twelve
articles of accusation, 1st. Her apparitions. These
were false, seducing, inspired by evil spirits—namely, by
280 JO.A.N OF ARC.
Belial, Satan, and Behemoth. 2nd. The sign to the king;
a lie. 3rd. The visits of St. Catherime ; a belief rash
and injurious to the faith, 4th. The predictions; super-
stitious divination. 5th. The mam's dress worm by com-
mandment of God; blasphemy. 6th. The letters:–
these paint the woman, “traitress, blood-thirsty, blas-
phemous.” 7th. The departure for Chimon ; filial im-
piety. 8th. The spring from the tower at Beawrevoir;
pusillanimity leading to despair. 9th. The confidence
of Jeanne in her Salvation ; presumption. 10th. That
St. Catherime and St. Margaret do not speak English ;
a blasphemy against St. Catherine and St. Margaret, and
a violation of love of our neighbour. 11th. The homowrs
She pays her Saints; idolatry, invocation of demons.
12th. Refusal to Swbmit as to her deeds to the Church ;
Schism.
But they could not shake her with interrogatory,
accusation, admonitions, or threats of torture.
“I have a good Master, our Lord ; to Him I commit
myself, and not to any other. If you made me say
otherwise by torture, I would contradict it when I am
set free. If I were judged, and saw the fire lighted, and
the fagots kindled, and the executioner stirring them—
if I were in the fire, I could not say or sustain anything
but what I have said during the trial, even to death.”
So little had four months of baiting and insult, night
and day, lowered her courage or shaken her faith.
One other method must be tried.
She must be made to abjwre, and lay aside her male
JOAN OF ARO. 281
attire, and them driven to resume it, and burned as a
melapsed heretic.
Deliberately the Bishop of Beauvais set this before
him, and he accomplished it.
She had resisted every effort to make her give up the
protection of her military dress, and so throw doubt on
her Voices and the Divine origin of her whole work.
She had refused even to accept the joy of communi-
cating at Easter (to her the severest trial of all), at the
price of wearing a woman's dress, at least such a dress as
they offered her, and so denying, as she thought, her
mission, her God, and her Saints.
And so, the day after Pentecost, the two scaffolds were
erected, and she was led forth to submit at last or die.
XXI.
33ttribal’s Storp (lontinueb.
jº ROM the early morning we had watched the
: Bºº. preparations, Peter the Wright and I; for he
§§§ had insisted on rejoining me, eager also to be
near the noble creature whose work and whose char-
acter, sent, as he believed her to be from God, to stop
war, and succour the crushed and bleeding peasantry of
both lands, had lifted up his heart once more to believe
in the Kingdom of God.
The two scaffolds were erected in the cemetery of the
Abbey of St. Ouen, close to the beautiful south door.
It was the 24th of May, the Maid's own month, as I
always felt it ; the month in a few days of which, two
years before, she had saved Orleans and France.
The delicate carving of the pinnacles and towers,
exquisite and minute as the sprays of the green leaves,
rose clear against the blue sky into the sunshine which
was giving life to the world, on the green slopes at
Danescombe, and in the forests of Domremy, bringing
out the fresh leaves on the Ladies' Tree and floods of
flowers in Jeanne's own “valley of many colours.”

JOAN OF ARO. 283
Perhaps that morning, knowing nothing, the Maid's
playmates—she was only nineteen, and some of her com-
panions had not outgrown play—Mengette, Hauviette,
Guillemette, were weaving garlands under the beautiful
beech-tree, the “Fair May.”
Surely they would not fail, some of them, to place
crowns of flowers on the image of the Mother and
Child, as Jeanne used to do, and they would pray in
the little chapel and the church she loved; and surely
neither they nor the curé, who so honoured her, would,
day or night, forget her in their prayers.
Of her father and mother I scarcely dared to think.
At Tours they had processions and litanies to inter-
cede for her when she was captured.
Perhaps elsewhere; but I know not.
But I longed to send my voice forth in a great cry
that morning throughout France, to constrain the count-
less hearts that did surely beat with boundless gratitude
for her, to pray for her to-day, to wrestle for her, to
pray without ceasing.
For the combat had reached its crisis. And she was
exhausted and faint at heart.
And her enemies knew it, and drew their deadly net
of persuasion and terror closer and closer.
For they had resolved not only to burn her, but to
ruin her good name for ever. Otherwise the spell would
remain unbroken, and England might lose more by her
death than by her life.
This May morning, therefore, they gathered all their
284 JOAN OF ARO.
forces for a last assault. We did not know the details
of the terrible battle till afterwards; but the fact we
knew too well.
Early in the morning Jean Beaupere, the most skilful
of the divines, came to her prison to announce to her
the ordeal prepared for her.
He told her that if she were a good Christian, she
would commit herself in all things to our Holy Mother
the Church, and he said afterwards that she had pro-
mised to do so.
Poor, loyal, devout daughter of the Church, she had
not only promised, she had done it over and over
throughout the trial
Then came the arch-traitor, Nicolas l’Oyseleur, the
man who could talk to her of Domremy, who had con-
fessed her, whom, at last, they had given to her as her
“counsel.”
He went with her to the threshold of a little door
which led to the scaffold, and exhorted her with all his
might to do what they asked her; assuring her that if she
did, no harm would happen to her, but that “She would
be restored to the keeping of the Church,” by which she
understood that she would be delivered from the Eng-
lish prisons, the soldiers guarding her night and day, the
exile from all holy offices in the Church, the continual,
unspeakable insults and perils of the last six months.
With these promises in her ears she was placed on
the scaffold. On the scaffold opposite were Bishop
Cauchon, the Cardinal of Winchester, and a number of
JOAN OF ARO. 285
doctors and priests, and in front of her the pulpit ;
around, the soldiery she had defeated, and the unpitying
crowd.
A celebrated preacher, Guillaume Erard, preached the
sermon, or rather the accusation. His text was—
“The branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the
vine.”
The solemn echo of the familiar words woke me as if
from a dream. They had fallen first on the hearts of
eleven perplexed disciples, whose feet the Sacred Hands,
so soon to be pierced, had just washed, whose Cup of
Life those hands had just filled first for them.
The twelfth, the traitor, had already gone out into
the night.
“The imitation of Christ 1” The hearts of many
were ringing with the words in that wonderful new
book but just given to the Church,
I looked at the noble young girl, solitary on the
Scaffold, weary and pale with the long imprisonment,
lifted on high, to be the target for a thousand darts of
malice and falsehood.
“The imitation of Christ l” Was this what it meant?
Occupied by this thought, I scarcely heard the begin-
ning of the sermon. When I began again to listen, the
preacher was pouring every injurious epithet on the
Maid—“sorceress, heretic, schismatic.” She stood silent,
unresisting, alone, with every eye fixed on her. Until
at last, carried away apparently by his indignation, the
preacher turned his eloquence against France.
286 JOAN OF ARC.
“O France!” he cried, “ thou hast been sorely deluded.
Thou hast ever been the most Christian of abodes; and
now Charles, who calls himself king and governor of
thee, has clung as a heretic and Schismatic (for such he
is) to the words and deeds of a woman—vain, defamed,
and full of all dishonour;-and not he only, but all the
clergy of his obedience and lordship, by whom, as she
says, she was examined, and not reproved.”
Then, turning towards Jeanne, and pointing to her
with his hand, he said—
“It is to thee, Jeanne, that I speak, and I tell thee
that thy king is a heretic and a schismatic.” -
Then once more, as we stood beneath the scaffold, the
deep, Soft, penetrating womanly voice thrilled through
us—the voice we had heard on the bridge of Orleans, in
the summons to surrender.
At the attack on herself she had stood as unmoved as
if the cruel words were only arrows and cannon balls,
and she once more planting a ladder against the forts.
But when her king was attacked, her king who owed
her his crown, and had not lifted a finger or offered a
franc to save her, she spoke fearlessly.
“By my faith, sir,” she said aloud to the preacher,
“with all reverence (révérence gardée), I dare to say and
swear to you, at peril of my life, that my king is the
most noble Christian of all Christians, and that he loves
the faith and the Church.”
“Make her keep silence,” said the preacher to the
usher.
JOAN OF ARC. 287
But Jeanne's purpose was accomplished. He attacked
her king no more.
She had succeeded; she had warded off the blow
from her king.
Once more he exhorted her to submit to the Church.
She said—
“I will answer you. As to the submission to the
Church, I have answered. Let all the things I have
said and done be sent to Rome, to our Holy Father the
Pope, to whom—but to God first—I commend myself;
and as to my sayings and doings, I have done them
from God.”
With that protest and appeal she ceased.
But the preacher, taking the schedule of her crimes,
summoned her to abjure them.
She did not know what they meant by abjuring.
The usher, Massieu, explained to her.
“I refer to the Church Universal whether I should
abjure or not,” she said.
“Thou abjurest at once,” said Erard the preacher,
enraged at being baffled by such an appeal, “ or thou
shalt be burned alive to-day.”
Nicolas l’Oyseleur, the traitor, who had not left her,
said repeatedly, “Do what I told you; resume the
woman's clothing.”
Every one pressed her. “Will you cause your own
death 2" they cried.
The judges said, “Jeanne, we have such pity on
|”
you
288 JOAN OF ARO.
She said she had done no evil, she believed in the
twelve Articles of Faith and the Commandments, and
submitted to the Court of Rome.
And as they still pressed on her—
“You take great pains to seduce me,” she said.
Until at length, bewildered and exhausted by threats,
accusations, entreaties, lying promises, alone among a
host of enemies, with one false friend, she said, “I sub-
mit to the Church.” And she asked St. Michael to
help her.
Then, word by word, she said twice after Massieu, the
usher, the formula of abjuration they had prepared. It
was brief, and Massieu gave witness in after years that
the abjuration they made her sign afterwards was quite
different from that which she had said. Doubtless, in her
isolation, her perplexity, and her false hope, she scarcely
knew what she said. For it was hope which had over-
come her at last—the hope of escaping the unspeakable
perils of her prison, and of once more being allowed to
go to the Divine services, to hear mass, and partake
of the Blessed Sacrament.
They had told her that, if she abjured, she would be
free, and at once taken from the keeping of her English
jailers and placed in a prison of the Church, with
women near her.
The crowd also so fully believed that she had been
admitted to mercy that the English soldiery threw
stones at the judges, and the chaplain of the Cardinal
of Winchester called the Bishop of Beauvais a traitor.
JOAN OF ARC. 289
But the cardinal knew better, and silenced the chap-
lain.
Bishop Cauchon was indeed no traitor to the English.
He admitted her to repentance, but “for her wholesome
penitence” he condemned her to “perpetual imprison-
ment,” “bread of affliction and water of affliction,” to
“weep for her faults.”
Still Jeanne, and those around, fully expected she
would be removed from the custody of the English.
“There, among you, men of the Church,” she said,
“take me to your prisons; let me be no more in the
hands of the English.”
But the bishop said—
“Take her again whence she was brought hither.”
His treachery was certainly not to the English.
“Fear not,” said one of the divines, “we shall catch
her again.”
And so Jeanne was taken back to the castle to be
entrapped into her relapse.
On the very evening of that Thursday after Pentecost
the judges visited Jeanne in prison, and persuaded her
to resume a woman's dress, as the Church commanded.
The poor child promised to obey in all things. The
spring was broken. She had disobeyed her Voices.
She had no strength to resist any more.
From Thursday, May 24th, for two days no rumour
reached us of the Maid.
What outward ill usage and torture she was subjected
to we knew not.
(611) 19
290 JOAN OF ARC.
But one thing we knew. She had abjured. She had
not been faithful to her Voices—that is, as she would
think, to her God.
The faithful, heavenly counsel which had never failed
ber since her childhood; the glorious light, the holy
gracious faces she had rejoiced to see, and had wept with
longing to follow ; the “beautiful and gentle Voices”
which had been so sweet to her at Domremy, at Chinon,
at Poitiers, at Orleans, at Rheims, at Beaurevoir, even at
Rouen; in palaces, in prison; by night and by day;
which had told her to be a good child and to pray; which
had filled her with the “great pity’ for France; which
had given her wisdom which great captains wondered at;
which had warned her when she would be wounded, and
had heartened her to persevere through the pain; which
had tenderly dissuaded her from attempting to escape at
Beaurevoir, and tenderly rebuked and consoled her when
she repented; which had called her “daughter of God,”
and bidden her fear not nor shun her sufferings, and
promised her Paradise ! She would feel she had been
false to them at last ; and though she did not half know
what her tormentors had made her say, that she had
thrown a doubt and stain on all the glorious deeds to
which her Voices had inspired her and France, on the
mission for which her King had sent them.
Bitter beyond thought, we knew, must be her isolation
In OW.
And we prayed for her, as we were able, night and
day.
JOAN OF ARC. 291
But we need not have been so afraid of the pity of
Heaven failing her.
Cruel as were the outrages of men, she was suffered
to know very little of the darkness of the hidden Face
of God.
On Sunday the tidings ran like wildfire through the
city that the Maid had “relapsed ; ” which meant that
she had insisted on resuming the man's dress. “Insisted,”
poor child ! with three jailers in her cell night and day,
and two at the door outside
The bishop and the vice-inquisitor and seven or eight
doctors went at once to the prison to see if the report
were true.
So well had they acted their part, as regards the
English soldiery, that they were threatened and pelted
as if they meant to interfere on the Maid's behalf.
They asked her why she had broken her oath and
resumed the forbidden dress.
She said she had never intended to take such an oath,
and that the dress was the only one fit for her to wear
in such a prison.
They had broken their promise to her, she said, of
letting her go to mass and receive her Saviour, and of
taking off her fetters.
“I had rather die,” she said, “than be so chained.
But if they will let me go to mass and take off my irons,
if they will put me in a merciful prison and let me have
a woman with me, I will be good and do what the
Church wills.”
• 292 JOAN OF ARO.
The shameful truth was known to all, let the judges
pretend not to see it as they would. During those
terrible days no basest insult had been spared her.
The forbidden dress meant death—death by fire, she
knew. She had chosen death rather than dishonour.
She also told the usher Massieu that in the morning
they had absolutely refused to give her the woman's
dress she asked for, and compelled her to take the for-
bidden clothes. Thenceforth the judgment of earth was
little to her. Her only grief was that she had grieved
her heavenly friends.
Had she heard her Voices, they asked, since the
abjuration on Thursday ?
She had ; and “God,” she said, “ has made known to
me by St. Catherine and St. Margaret their great pity
for the treason to which I consented in making an
abjuration that I might save my life: that I was ruining
my soul to save my life.”
She said her Voices had told her before the fatal
Thursday what she would do on that day; on the
scaffold they had told her to answer the preacher boldly,
that false preacher who had accused her of doing things
she had never done. -
And then with a strange echo of Divine words prob-
ably unknown to her, she added: “If I said God had
not sent me, I should be lost; the truth is, God has sent
me.”
And she lamented having been false to her Voices;
though, indeed, she had never meant to deny them.
JOAN OF ARO. 293
What she had said falsely was from fear of the fire and
the prison. She had rather die than remain in that
prison.
But now this fear was over ; she had it no more.
She knew to what this confession led her, and she would
revoke nothing “except at the good pleasure of God.”
Bishop Cauchon's purpose was gained.
The Maid had undoubtedly relapsed.
Some of the assessors, Pierre Morice and Isambard de
la Pierre, were grieved; but none, alas! though knowing
the whole story, had courage to say a word to save her.
The Bishop of Beauvais triumphed.
Meeting the Earl of Warwick and other Englishmen
as he went out, he said, laughing, in English, “Farewell,
Jarewell. Be of good cheer. It is dome.”
XXII.
£ertibal’s Storp (lontinueb.
On Wednesday, the 30th of May, two
friars, Brother Martin l’Advenu and Brother
Mouillé, went to the Maid, in person, to
prepare her for death.
As Brother Jean related afterwards, L’Advenu “told
the poor woman that she was to die that very day;
and when she heard the hard and cruel death that
was so near, she began to cry piteously and to tear her
hair.”
“Alas!” she said, “do they treat me so horribly and
cruelly 2 And must it be that my body, pure and sound
(net en entier), and never Sullied, must to-day be con-
sumed and reduced to ashes 2 Ah I had rather be
beheaded seven times than thus burned alive. Alas! if
they had taken me to the prison of the Church to which
I had submitted, and let me be guarded by churchmen,
and not by my foes and adversaries, this would never
have happened to me. I appeal to God, the great Judge,
against the wrongs and outrages done to me.”

JOAN OF ARC. 295
Once more the Bishop of Beauvais dared to come and
see her.
She met him with a sentence which would surely
often come back to his conscience—
“Bishop, I die through you.”
And she appealed from him to God.
The bishop had one more work of diabolical malice
to accomplish.
The man's dress was resumed, the relapse was assured.
The only further thing to obtain was to sully her
memory by a second abjuration.
To this end, in that hour of agony, he assailed her
with the argument with which the devil must often
have assailed her before, that her Voices had deceived
her with false promises, and now abandoned her to die.
Her enemies asserted that she, then and there, pro-
mised to abjure again on the scaffold.
But none of them dared make the attempt to persuade
her when the last hour came. There is no evidence of
this promise but that of her worst enemies, and I dis-
believe it utterly
Whether the powers of darkness were suffered to
shadow her last moments with doubts I know not.
The utmost her foes could do, by their own confession,
was but to drive her from the outworks into the Citadel,
from her beloved Saints to God Himself. Her enemies
declared she said, “I believe in God alone, and not in
those Voices. They have deceived me.” And, if she
did say so, the pitiful saints we know well would not
296 JOAN OF ARO.
misjudge her. With God, poor child, she would soon
find her “brothers and sisters of Paradise” again.
“Master Pierre,” they say she asked of Dr. Pierre
Morice, “where shall I be this evening 2*
And he, knowing well by the evidence of all the
cruel interrogatories of these months what her faith and
life were, answered—
“Have you not good hope in God?”
“Ah, yes,” she said, recovering herself, “and by the
grace of God I shall be in Paradise.”
And by their own account her persecutors could not
contradict her.
The Bishop of Beauvais departed from her at last.
She was left alone with Brother Martin l’Advenu.
Then she confessed, and asked for the Communion.
The Communion to a woman about to be publicly
excommunicated.
He sent usher Massieu to tell the bishop she had
confessed, and asked for the Eucharist.
The bishop consulted with several divines, and replied
to Massieu, “Go and tell Brother Martin to give her the
Eucharist, and all she may ask.” So discriminating and
political was Bishop Cauchon's hatred Her public con-
demnation and calumniation secured, he knew nothing
against her which should hinder her receiving the sacred
Body of the Lord, and going forth, although publicly
excommunicated on earth, yet nevertheless really absolved
and in Sacramental union with the Son of God, to meet
Him.
JOAN OF ARO. 297
And so they brought her the Eucharist.
With a strange, unintended assimilation, they brought
the sacred Host without pomp, without light, without
escort, without surplice, without stole, laid humbly on
the paten, covered only with the linen of the chalice.
It was as if they would recall in outward form the
parted garments, and the shame, and the cross, and
associate thus her King even visibly with the destitution
and humiliation of His poor forsaken child.
Brother Martin was much aggrieved at this strangely
twofold insult. He sent for a light and a stole. But
one thing he said he could never describe, and that was
the fervent piety of the Maid, the devotion, and the
great “flood of tears with which she received her
Saviour.”
An alabaster box was broken there full of ointment
very precious, which filled all the house with perfume
not distilled on earth.
And so, without longer interval, from the tearful joy
of penitence and faith and unutterable love, with the
Saviour in her heart, they led her forth to die, lifted up
on a little cart, with a mitre on her head, on which
could be read the words, “heretic, relapsed, apostate,
idolater.”
In this guise for the last time the Maid came before
our eyes.
Around her were seven or eight hundred soldiers;
close to her, the usher Massieu and her confessor, Brother
Martin l’Advenu.
298 JOAN OF ARC.
She wept as she went. She commended herself
humbly to God and the saints. And many of the people
wept with her.
The tide was turning already.
And bitterer than death was its sudden turning in
one heart.
There was, as I have said before, an attempt made to
break through the guard, fiercely repelled.
It was Nicolas l’Oyseleur, the traitor who had deceived
her with false professions to the last, who when he saw
them leading her away to die was seized with irresistible
remorse, and rushed towards the little cart to ask her
forgiveness.
But the English drove him furiously away, and called
him “traitor;” a word which had to him a significance
and weight far more terrible than they knew.
They would have killed him but for the interference
of the Earl of Warwick; and the earl would not answer
for his life if he remained in Rouen.
This day there were three scaffolds; one for the
judges, one for the prelates and nobles, and One of stone
for the Maid. These were erected in the old market-
place in front of the cathedral.
The sermon was preached by Maître Nicole Midi.
The text was, “If one member suffer, all the members
suffer with it;” a truth she had indeed proved by suffer-
ing with all.
“Obstinate, incorrigible, heretic, and relapsed; ex-
communicated from the body of the Church’’ (though
JOAN OF ARC. 299
fresh from Communion with the Church's Lord), “go in
peace,” echoed through the great open space, and from
the towers of the great church. “The Church can de-
fend thee no more ; she delivers thee to the secular arm.”
Before her, lifted on the scaffold, was the stake, that
all might see. She knelt down before it, and made her
lamentations and her prayers.
True to herself, to the Divine likeness of patient,
succouring Love, to the last she made no defence of her-
self; she thought only of defending her king. “The
king,” she protested, “was answerable for none of her
acts. Never had he induced her to do anything she had
done, good or evil.”
She thought, in her loyal humility, she was defending
her king against being included in her condemnation.
She was, in truth, proclaiming the glorious solitude of
her heroism.
Then turning to the multitude, she entreated them
humbly, whether of her party or the other, to forgive
her and to pray for her, and that every priest present
would give her the alms of a mass. She herself forgave
all and each the wrong that had been done her.
The English judges were moved to the heart.
There were few who did not weep.
Apostate as she was declared to be, she longed only
to die with the image of her Saviour in her sight.
She asked the usher, Massieu, to fetch her a cross.
Thank God, it was given to one Englishman to render
her this last service
300 JOAN OF ARO.
One of our own countrymen broke his staff and made
her a cross from it. *
She took it from his hand, and placed it devoutly on
her breast.
But she also begged Brother Isambard de la Pierre to
fetch her a cross from the neighbouring church, “to hold
it,” she said, “lifted up straight before her eyes to the last
steps of death, that the cross on which God had hung
might, as long as she lived, be continually before her eyes.”
And when he brought it she covered it with kisses
and with tears, calling on God, St. Michael, and St.
Catherine, and all the Saints.
But the scene grew too long for the patience of her
enemies.
As Massieu continued to exhort her, some of the
captains cried out—
“How now, priest would you have us dine here 7°
From some unexplained reason, whether remorse or
mere haste, the Bishop of Beauvais never pronounced
her final sentence.
Did he find it difficult to excommunicate her to whom
a few hours before, by the counsel of the doctors, he
had sent the Eucharist 2
Whatever the motive might be, he only said to the
executioner—
“Go on—go on; do thy duty.”
The fire was kindled.
She wept for her murderers.
“Rouen! Rouen!” she said, “must I die here ? Must
JOAN OF ARO. 30]
thou be my dwelling-place 2 Ah, Rouen, I have much
fear thou wilt suffer for my death.”
All doubt and fear for herself and her mission were
gone. She was free, once more, for her old work of
saving and Succouring.
And a fear came over many of the crowd; fear and
great pity, and there was much weeping.
It was broken by a feeble attempt at mocking laughter,
but that soon died away.
The English wept. The Cardinal of Winchester, it was
said, wept ; and the Bishop of Beauvais.
The stake was lifted high, and the flame took long in
reaching it.
Brother Martin was holding up the great cross before
her, as she had asked.
Forgetting herself, as was her wont, when she saw
the flames come near him, she took leave of him, and
bade him go farther off, only asking that he would lift
up the cross high that she might see.
He went a little way off, but still mear enough to hear
her say to the last, in the fire, that her Voices were of
God, and that all she had done she had done by the
commandment of God; that she did not believe she had
been deceived by her Voices, and that the revelations
she had received had been from God.
“Fille de Dieu ! (child of God) go on; go on. Be not
dismayed at thy martyrdom. Thou shalt come at last to
the Paradise of God.” The full significance of the words
Was revealed to her at last.
302 JOAN OF ARC.
And so she continued breathing dear and holy names
-—and above all the name of Jesus.
Once more, with the clear, soft voice which had
inspired so many to victory, and touched so many to
purity and mercy, she uttered the blessed name of
“Jesus.”
And then her head sank, and her spirit went to
Him.
Amid the sobbings and the silence I heard one Eng-
lish voice moan— -
“We are lost we have killed a saint.”
And two of her judges are said to have exclaimed,
with bitter tears, “Would that my soul were where I
believe the soul of that woman is l’’
The cross was still lifted up before her in the friar's
hands.
But she had awakened to the sight of another multi-
tude and another Judge.
And so, at last, they “sent her back to God.”
“The imitation of Christ | The imitation of Christ!”
The words rang in my heart.
Surely it was there.
She had not thought so much of imitating Him, and
being like Him, as, being like Him, she had thought of
succouring the suffering and saving the lost.
For God Himself had stamped the likeness of the
Saviour in her heart.
We did not linger many days in Rouen.
While she was being hunted to death and dying, and
JOAN OF ARC. 303 -
we might aid her by our poor prayers, it was worth
while to stay.
And when at last the noble, gentle spirit had passed
away, for a time heaven seemed open, and the silence
she had left on earth seemed as the silence of hushed
expectation outside the closed gate of a temple which
might soon Open again.
But when she was gone a terrible emptiness fell on
the city, and indeed on the world in which that brave
and loving heart had been reduced to air and ashes.
Moreover, the petty voices of vengeance and ambition
which had died around her ashes began to revive.
The cruel triumph had to be made use of. The
calumny, sealed by her burning, had to be proclaimed
and spread, that the tide of conquest she had turned
might flow back in pillage and ravage over France.
And this we would not linger to see.
It was said her old father died of grief a few days
after her execution, and that one of the brothers who
had been with her through her victorious warfare did
not long survive.
It was said also, afterwards, that death in various
sudden and terrible forms pursued those most concerned
in her death. This, I know not surely; nor do I reck
much whether it were so or not.
I know the shadow of her death must have been on
their consciences and hearts as long as hearts and con-
Sciences had life left in them.
And the sting of death is not in the mode, or merely
304 JOAN OF ARC.
at the moment of dying, but in the sin which, unfor-
given, makes life bitter, and death but a beginning of
bitterer consciousness of lost life.
She prayed for forgiveness from all.
She gave her forgiveness to all who had wronged her.
The Sweetest vengeance for her, as for the Master,
would be the vengeance of the cross—“Father, forgive
them.”
And it may be, it may be, that even with the traitor,
the vain despair which made him at last rush and
struggle, at peril of his life, to break through her guard,
and again entreat her forgiveness, was the beginning of
an agony of penitence, of the scorching of the “coals of
fire" which, shrivelling up the evil entwined with his
inmost soul, might at last set it free, a feeble and baby
Soul indeed, yet fit to take some lowest place of humblest
service in the kingdom of God. tº
Peter the Wright fell into almost utter silence during
those last days in Rouen.
It was only on the second day of our home voyage to
England that he began to look up and speak again;
and then, as we sate alone on a calm evening, just in
sight of our own white cliffs, he brushed away the tears
from his rugged brown cheeks, and looked up at me.
“She has sent us back,” he said with something of a
smile. “She will send us all back to our little coast,
our own little fold, Master Percival. Her work is done.
We shall no more be suffered to tear each other in
JOAN OF ARO. 305
pieces, we two Christian nations, peasant and prince
and priest, like two evil beasts, one hundred years after
another; God will give us to do better work in our
little fold, Master Percival. I see it all now. But I
have passed through a horror of great darkness. Once
more my foolish soul was at strife with the Almighty
and I cried out, ‘Why?’ and ‘Woe.'
“I had thought the Kingdom was coming. And now,
again, all was once more without form and void, and
darkness on the face of the deep.
“But last night I had a dream or vision.
“I saw the Maid once more. Some said they saw a
white dove flying from the stake as she bowed her head
and died. But I saw the Maid herself, as a dovelike
saint, swift and glad, darting homeward through the air
to God.
“And I heard a sound of welcome, such as when the
rescued people thronged around her first at Orleans.
“But she, as then, was pressing onwards and upwards,
through them all, to God.
“And then a hush and a silence, and something I
could not utter, joy such as on earth we have no speech
for but tears; and there that language ceases—for tears,
they say, are wiped away.
“‘Welcome ! welcome home !’
“The Gospel tells of such joy.
“‘His Father ram and fell on his neck, and kissed
him.’
“‘Enter thow into the joy of thy Lord.’
(611) 20
306 JOAN OF ARC.
“Something of those two together.
“The joy of the forgiven child, on the father's heart—
sweet and true. Yes, even she needed that joy of
pardon, and had it.
“The joy of being like Him, and sharing His joy of
Saving. º
“She has known that, and she shall know it for ever.
“A rapture of silence enfolded all my heart, like a
child on its mother's breast. How long I know not.
“And then it was, as if once more she shone out from
the light of a multitude of shining ones, herself radiant
and white-robed, with something like her old lily banner,
and the shining armour, such as I had seen her at the
altar at Rheims, as if kneeling Once more at the feet of
a crowned King, but not King Charles ; and she mur-
mured, as of old—“‘Messire, my King! Now is the
pleasure of God fulfilled.'
“And then I woke.
“But the darkness was gone from my heart.
“Through her life God revealed to me the Kingdom,
and bound up the blessed Bible with our poor lives in
France and England to-day.
“Through her death. He has shown me the King—
her King and ours; and that the kingdom we see is
but a beginning of the Kingdom where the multitudes
are, where He is and reigns.”
3% 3% % % %
And so, at last, we came back, Peter and I, to the
dear familiar places, and were welcomed.
JOAN OF ARO. 307
And through the quiet years the joy was given me of
seeing Owen with Cecilie, among their boys and girls,
he spending himself joyfully for others in all holy
natural relationships, and enriched as he so spent.
The poor French girl Peter had brought home went
patiently about her daily tasks, but drooped slowly, and
at last died with the same sacred name on her lips
which had breathed on the lips of the Maid.
Unfathomable Name ! Satisfying all, yet meaning
such infinitely various depths to each
Father Adam found great solace in the great book of
the “Consolation * or “Imitation of Christ.”
He said it spoke out the depths of the sadness of the
times, and must surely have been written by One, who-
ever he might be, who comprehended the times, and had
struggled hard to mend them, and had seen many things
fail—had seen all fail, perhaps, but Him who never fails.
Night and day the sacred, strong words of communion
with the Almighty Friend, and of patient bearing of
the cross, were on his lips.
“Bear the cross willingly, and it in turn shall bear
thee.”
“Turn thyself inward, outward, upward, downward;
everywhere thou shalt find the cross.”
“Love finds burdens no burdens.”
And almost the last words I heard him speak were—
“Wait, wait ; I will come amol cure thee.”
And so he died, and left me the precious legacy of
the souls to whom he had ministered so faithfully.
308 JOAN OF ARC.
But to me Peter's Book was more than anything else,
as, no doubt, it was in itself to Father Adam, although
to him, as to so many, the leaves of healing came
wrapped up in the heart of the holy brother to whom it
was given to write the “Imitation.”
For in that Book of Peter's shone, ever, before me
and Elaine, who shared my life, not chiefly renunciation,
nor bearing the cross, nor even being like the Crucified,
but the Christ Himself; and the world. He loved and
came to save, in all its needs, and Sores, and sins, and
possibilities of redemption.
The Saviour, and the world He loved and came to
save
And before us, in the near race once, yet so high
above us then, and now, the Maid who in her brief life
had, it seemed to us, grown so like the Saviour, in living
to save.
XXIII.
#lettibal’s Storp (lontinueb.
º:HE years passed on, and the blessed life of
taking care of others was given, as far as we
£º could embrace it, to my sister Elaine and to
me, in the quiet valleys on the edge of the wild moor-
land, or by the wild seas of our childhood.
So passed five and twenty years.
The Maid's work was, indeed, in a great measure
done: her prophecy fulfilled.
England was sent back to her own fold—certainly,
as yet, no peaceful fold—torn and ravaged with the
cruel wars of the Roses; yet still was she delivered from
the great Grime of pouring forth her sons to pillage and
ravage France.
In 1449 Rouen and Normandy were lost to us; in
1452 and 1453 Bordeaux and all Queen Eleanor's old
inheritance of Guyenne.
The calumnies concerning the Maid have not, indeed,
died away.
All lies are mortal, I know, and death -stricken;
for He who is life and truth lives and reigns. But

310 JOA W OF ARO.
N
in this thick atmosphere of earth some lies take long
to die.
“Sorceress, idolatress, apostate,” the falsehoods of the
Bishop of Beauvais and the University of Paris still
make their way amongst us.
But in France, at least, this wrong is repaired.
When I learned that the time had come for this
reparation, I went across the seas to hear and see.
The Maid's father had been long dead, but her mother,
Isabelle Romée, who “ had taught her ” all she knew of
religion—the Apostles' Creed, the Our Father, the Hail
Mary—still lived, capable, like her child, of nourishing an
unquenchable purpose in silence, until the hour for speech
came. Patient and resolute, she made no cries of vain
lamentation, but never rested until her child's name and
fame were cleared.
King Charles remitted for ever the taxes of her village.
That was something.
He ennobled her whole family, with an especial
patent of nobility, extending to the daughters of the
house, and whomsoever they married.
But that was not enough.
Not to be ennobled, to be acquitted of the false sen-
tence, to be declared good, and pure, and true, was what
Isabelle Romée had set her heart on for her child.
Widowed and poor, she had made several costly and
fruitless journeys to Orleans and to the court to stir up
the authorities there to do justice to the memory of the
Maid.
JOAN OF ARO. 311
For a time Orleans was deluded and misled by the
appearance of a false Jeanne, with some external resem-
blance to her, who deceived the citizens for some years
into giving her a pension.
But this delusion passed away, the impostor was com-
pelled publicly to confess her deception; and France
was at last entirely quit of the English domination.
Bitter must the long delays of those years have been
to the bereaved mother.
But she never gave up hope or effort.
She spent a great part of her little property in the
sacred task.
The city of Orleans gave her a pension equivalent to
a hundred a year. She only used it to extend and
repeat her appeals for justice.
At length, when Rouen had fallen, the king, Charles,
Jeanne's king, woke up to a late determination to restore
the memory of the Maid, who had saved his kingdom,
given him his crown, and to the last, dying, at the stake,
had defended his name.
The shadow which rested on her name rested also on
the crown and dominion she had restored, and perhaps,
at last he felt, on the character of the sovereign who
might have saved her and had not. And so, at length,
the petitions of the devoted peasant-mother were listened
to, and on the 15th of February 1450, letters patent
were issued by the Crown, constituting a commission to
inquire and report how Jeanne had been tried and iniqui-
tously and cruelly put to death.
312 JOAN OF ARO.
The Commissioner held the inquiry at Rouen. The
cardinal-delegate, D'Estouteville, and Jean Brehan, one
of the inquisitors of France, were chosen for the work.
There were two great difficulties in the way.
The prosecution had been carried on by the Inquisi-
tion, and the sentence pronounced by the ecclesiastical
authorities.
And the cardinal D'Estouteville had just been sent to
negotiate a reconciliation between France and England,
in order to turn the forces of both kingdoms against the
Turks.
The cause therefore required skilful steering, in order
to avoid at Once offending England and impugning the
authority of the Church.
The cardinal left the matter to Jean Brehan.
The English difficulty was avoided by making the
suit private, not as if instituted by the French king, but
by the family of the Maid—her mother, her brother, and
her sister.
The ecclesiastical objection was evaded by Jean
Brehan, the inquisitor, himself. He zealously pursued
the investigation, and concluded that the former judgment,
was invalid by reason of mistake, that the verdict was
against the evidence, and that he was only allowing at
last, in this second trial, the appeal to the Pope which
had been unjustly denied to Jeanne on her first trial.
The Pope, Calixtus II., on the 11th of June 1455,
received the petition of the mother and the two brothers
of the Maid, and by a rescript addressed to the Arch-
JOAN OF ARO. 313
bishop of Rheims (the archbishop who had grudged her
the “fine clothes” had long since died), and the Bishops
of Paris and Coutances, he appointed these prelates with
the aid of the inquisitor, to revise the sentence.
The Commission recited that “a certain person named
Jean d’Estivet.” (the proctor who had called Jeanne bad
names when she was ill, and had stood between her and
the Sacrament at the chapel door), “suborned by persons
jealous of the Maid and her family, had given false
witness against her concerning heresy, and had refused
her appeal to the Holy See.”
The new trial was to be opened with great solemnity
in the Cathedral of Notre Dame at Paris.
In the quiet valleys near Danescombe the news reached
me, and I determined to go and see this great wrong set
right, as far as it could be done on earth.
Nothing could dissuade Peter the Wright, old as he
was, from going with me.
“The steps of the Almighty are slow,” he said, “and it
is not often given in a lifetime to see the names of the
saints cleared by those who slew them, or let them die.”
And so we journeyed once more to France, the France
England had lost, and, as I believe, found her gain in
losing; through the fields of Normandy, where we had
gone reluctantly soldiers of a conquering army, we went
once more. “I a priest and he a bowed old man. My
French speech did us good service. And we stood, for
the first time, within the solemn aisles of Notre Dame
of Paris.
314 JOAN OF ARO.
To us, whose last memory in France had been the
condemnation and burning of the Maid at Rouen, it was,
as Peter said, like a foretaste of the Judgment Day to be
there.
Outside, the people of Paris were gathered in throngs,
deeply moved.
Within, in solemn array, in the choir, sate the Arch-
bishop of Rheims, the prelates, and the commissioners.
And through the great west door came the procession.
Men of rank and note, many and honourable, come at
last to do honour to the memory of the Maid.
But before them all came Isabelle Romée, the vener-
able mother of the Maid, a stately woman, sixty-seven
years of age, walking between her two sons Jean and
Pierre, one of whom had fought bravely beside his sister
in her campaigns.
The venerable mother spoke, and said with a voice
full and clear, though tremulous with emotion—“Jeanne
was my lawful child. I trained her according to her
age and position, in the fear of God and the instructions
of the Church. Although she never harboured a thought
against the Faith, yet her enemies, to the injury of the
king, arraigned her on trial in matters of religion. They
falsely imputed to her crimes, and paying no attention
to her denial, nor to her appeal, they have crowned with
infamy herself and her relations.”
And so she ceased. e
To us who remembered the marvellous career of
victory, the long-drawn injustice of the prosecution, and
JOAN OF ARO. 315
the agony and the nobleness of her cruel death, it was a
statement of most touching moderation.
How the mother's heart must have burned beneath
the restrained and temperate words!
But it meant the full clearing of that holy memory,
and it accomplished its end.
Among the crowd once more I saw those true brown
eyes which I had seen last wet with tears in the little
chapel of Notre Dame de Bourlaimont at Domremy.
They were full of tears again, but the beautiful grave
face, as childlike in its simplicity as ever, was radiant
with sympathy as she gazed on the face of the noble
peasant-mother, and listened to the words so many had
thirsted so long to hear. *
It was then and thus I saw once more the child
Beatrice, with her husband, Raymond de Mailly, and two
noble boys of her own; and as she turned away to weep
unrestrained, her eyes met mine.
I saw her again that evening among her children, as
true, as tender, as full of trust as ever, with all the for-
lorn look gone from the lovely, serious face.
“What moments there are even in this life l’ she said.
“And the best moments are only like unveilings of the
world of light hidden behind the poor visible things, the
world of light which Jeanne lives in for ever, our
Jeanne la Pucelle !”
From Beatrice I learned the end, for we could not
long remain in France, and the process of reversing the
316 JOAN OF ARC.
sentence and re-establishing the innocence of the Maid
lasted two years.
The accusers were summoned to Rouen. But no
accuser ever appeared.
Some could not. The judge, Bishop Cauchon, had
died long since, and his representatives declined to take
the responsibility on themselves.
Four judicial courts of inquiry were opened; at Paris,
at Rouen, at Orleans where forty-one witnesses appeared,
and at Toul for her own village of Domremy, where
thirty-four witnesses came.
Altogether there were a hundred and twenty witnesses,
and a hundred and forty-two distinct depositions were
taken down.
Beautiful lights shone back on the childhood of the
Maid from the testimony of the peasants who had lived
close to her, of the old men and women who had known
her from her babyhood, of her playfellows who were still
living, of all who had known her at Domremy.
And then came the testimonies of great captains, of
soldiers who had fought beside her at sieges and on
battle-fields; Dunois; the Duke d'Alençon ; Louis de
Contes, her page; D'Aulon, her esquire; and Pasquerel,
her chaplain and confessor.
Finally came the testimony of those who had watched
her in prison and seen her at the stake, Isambard de la
Pierre, Martin l’Advenu, who had held up the cross before
her dying eyes, some even of the assessors and the officers
of the court, the scribe Manchon, the usher Massieu; all
JOAN OF ARO. 317
recalling some trait of the noble being they had watched
So long.
The new trial was concluded at Rouen in June 1456,
just a quarter of a century after her death.
The twelve articles, sanctioned by the University of
Paris, the only basis of her sentence, were pronounced
false and calumnious, and were torn from the records
and rent in pieces.
The sentence was pronounced null by reason of the
incompetence of the court, and the military interference
with the assessors. Jeanne was declared not to have
“relapsed,” but to have submitted herself to the judg-
ment of the Church. As to her apparitions and revela-
tions it was declared God only could pronounce. As to
her dress the court pronounced that the enterprise she
undertook rendered it absolutely necessary to modesty
and safety.
On the 7th of July, after several days' careful investi-
gation of the points of law, in the Great Hall of the
Archiepiscopal Palace of Rouen, in the presence of the
brothers of the Maid, and of the public, the final sentence
was pronounced. It was declared that the articles
against her were falsely and fraudulently compiled; that
the pretended abjuration was obtained by a shameful
trick and was false; that the trial, the abjuration, and
the two judgments against her were false, fraudulent,
calumnious, and wicked, founded on errors of law and
fact, and that consequently they were of no force or
effect; and that neither Jeanne nor her family had
318 JOAN OF ARC.
incurred any disgrace thereby, but were fully absolved
from all blame.
The decision was to be published by special proces-
sions at Rouen and in every town in the kingdom. And
a cross was erected on the place where she was burned.
Two years afterwards the venerable mother, Isabelle
Romée, died.
The homage of France to the Maid has, since, blos-
Somed out in crosses and monuments, statues, and pictures,
and tapestries.
In England the reversal of her sentence has not yet
COIſle.
She is still regarded generally, and may be, perhaps,
for centuries, as a sorceress and a heretic.
But here also the day of acquittal and of the clearing
of the good and holy memory will come.
And meantime, being where we believe she is, the
Maid can well endure to wait.

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