Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Volume 2

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Volume 2


"If I be not in a state of Grace, I pray God place me in it; if I be in
it, I pray God keep me so."

Ah, you will never see an effect like that; no, not while you live. For a
space there was the silence of the grave. Men looked wondering into each
other's faces, and some were awed and crossed themselves; and I heard
Lefevre mutter:

"It was beyond the wisdom of man to devise that answer. Whence comes this
child's amazing inspirations?"

Beaupere presently took up his work again, but the humiliation of his
defeat weighed upon him, and he made but a rambling and dreary business
of it, he not being able to put any heart in it.

He asked Joan a thousand questions about her childhood and about the oak
wood, and the fairies, and the children's games and romps under our dear
Arbre Fee Bourlemont, and this stirring up of old memories broke her
voice and made her cry a little, but she bore up as well as she could,
and answered everything.

Then the priest finished by touching again upon the matter of her
apparel--a matter which was never to be lost sight of in this still-hunt
for this innocent creature's life, but kept always hanging over her, a
menace charged with mournful possibilities:

"Would you like a woman's dress?"

"Indeed yes, if I may go out from this prison--but here, no."



8 Joan Tells of Her Visions

THE COURT met next on Monday the 27th. Would you believe it? The Bishop
ignored the contract limiting the examination to matters set down in the
proces verbal and again commanded Joan to take the oath without
reservations. She said:

"You should be content I have sworn enough."

She stood her ground, and Cauchon had to yield.

The examination was resumed, concerning Joan's Voices.

"You have said that you recognized them as being the voices of angels the
third time that you heard them. What angels were they?"

"St. Catherine and St. Marguerite."

"How did you know that it was those two saints? How could you tell the
one from the other?"

"I know it was they; and I know how to distinguish them."

"By what sign?"

"By their manner of saluting me. I have been these seven years under
their direction, and I knew who they were because they told me."

"Whose was the first Voice that came to you when you were thirteen years
old?"

"It was the Voice of St. Michael. I saw him before my eyes; and he was
not alone, but attended by a cloud of angels."

"Did you see the archangel and the attendant angels in the body, or in
the spirit?"

"I saw them with the eyes of my body, just as I see you; and when they
went away I cried because they did not take me with them."

It made me see that awful shadow again that fell dazzling white upon her
that day under l'Arbre Fee de Bourlemont, and it made me shiver again,
though it was so long ago. It was really not very long gone by, but it
seemed so, because so much had happened since.

"In what shape and form did St. Michael appear?"

"As to that, I have not received permission to speak."

"What did the archangel say to you that first time?"

"I cannot answer you to-day."

Meaning, I think, that she would have to get permission of her Voices
first.

Presently, after some more questions as to the revelations which had been
conveyed through her to the King, she complained of the unnecessity of
all this, and said:

"I will say again, as I have said before many times in these sittings,
that I answered all questions of this sort before the court at Poitiers,
and I would hat you wold bring here the record of that court and read
from that. Prithee, send for that book."

There was no answer. It was a subject that had to be got around and put
aside. That book had wisely been gotten out of the way, for it contained
things which would be very awkward here.

Among them was a decision that Joan's mission was from God, whereas it
was the intention of this inferior court to show that it was from the
devil; also a decision permitting Joan to wear male attire, whereas it
was the purpose of this court to make the male attire do hurtful work
against her.

"How was it that you were moved to come into France--by your own desire?"

"Yes, and by command of God. But that it was His will I would note have
come. I would sooner have had my body torn in sunder by horses than come,
lacking that."

Beaupere shifted once more to the matter of the male attire, now, and
proceeded to make a solemn talk about it. That tried Joan's patience; and
presently she interrupted and said:

"It is a trifling thing and of no consequence. And I did not put it on by
counsel of any man, but by command of God."

"Robert de Baudricourt did not order you to wear it?"

"No."

"Did you think you did well in taking the dress of a man?"

"I did well to do whatsoever thing God commanded me to do."

"But in this particular case do you think you did well in taking the
dress of a man?"

"I have done nothing but by command of God."

Beaupere made various attempts to lead her into contradictions of
herself; also to put her words and acts in disaccord with the Scriptures.
But it was lost time. He did not succeed. He returned to her visions, the
light which shone about them, her relations with the King, and so on.

"Was there an angel above the King's head the first time you saw him?"

"By the Blessed Mary!--"

She forced her impatience down, and finished her sentence with
tranquillity: "If there was one I did not see it."

"Was there light?"

"There were more than three thousand soldiers there, and five hundred
torches, without taking account of spiritual light."

"What made the King believe in the revelations which you brought him?"

"He had signs; also the counsel of the clergy."

"What revelations were made to the King?"

"You will not get that out of me this year."

Presently she added: "During three weeks I was questioned by the clergy
at Chinon and Poitiers. The King had a sign before he would believe; and
the clergy were of opinion that my acts were good and not evil."

The subject was dropped now for a while, and Beaupere took up the matter
of the miraculous sword of Fierbois to see if he could not find a chance
there to fix the crime of sorcery upon Joan.

"How did you know that there was an ancient sword buried in the ground
under the rear of the altar of the church of St. Catherine of Fierbois?"

Joan had no concealments to make as to this:

"I knew the sword was there because my Voices told me so; and I sent to
ask that it be given to me to carry in the wars. It seemed to me that it
was not very deep in the ground. The clergy of the church caused it to be
sought for and dug up; and they polished it, and the rust fell easily off
from it."

"Were you wearing it when you were taken in battle at Compiegne?"

"No. But I wore it constantly until I left St. Denis after the attack
upon Paris."

This sword, so mysteriously discovered and so long and so constantly
victorious, was suspected of being under the protection of enchantment.

"Was that sword blest? What blessing had been invoked upon it?"

"None. I loved it because it was found in the church of St. Catherine,
for I loved that church very dearly."

She loved it because it had been built in honor of one of her angels.

"Didn't you lay it upon the altar, to the end that it might be lucky?"
(The altar of St. Denis.) "No."

"Didn't you pray that it might be made lucky?"

"Truly it were no harm to wish that my harness might be fortunate."

"Then it was not that sword which you wore in the field of Compiegne?
What sword did you wear there?"

"The sword of the Burgundian Franquet d'Arras, whom I took prisoner in
the engagement at Lagny. I kept it because it was a good war-sword--good
to lay on stout thumps and blows with."

She said that quite simply; and the contrast between her delicate little
self and the grim soldier words which she dropped with such easy
familiarity from her lips made many spectators smile.

"What is become of the other sword? Where is it now?"

"Is that in the proces verbal?"

Beaupere did not answer.

"Which do you love best, your banner or your sword?"

Her eye lighted gladly at the mention of her banner, and she cried out:

"I love my banner best--oh, forty times more than the sword! Sometimes I
carried it myself when I charged the enemy, to avoid killing any one."
Then she added, naively, and with again that curious contrast between her
girlish little personality and her subject, "I have never killed anyone."

It made a great many smile; and no wonder, when you consider what a
gentle and innocent little thing she looked. One could hardly believe she
had ever even seen men slaughtered, she look so little fitted for such
things.

"In the final assault at Orleans did you tell your soldiers that the
arrows shot by the enemy and the stones discharged from their catapults
would not strike any one but you?"

"No. And the proof its, that more than a hundred of my men were struck. I
told them to have no doubts and no fears; that they would raise the
siege. I was wounded in the neck by an arrow in the assault upon the
bastille that commanded the bridge, but St. Catherine comforted me and I
was cured in fifteen days without having to quit the saddle and leave my
work."

"Did you know that you were going to be wounded?"

"Yes; and I had told it to the King beforehand. I had it from my Voices."

"When you took Jargeau, why did you not put its commandant to ransom?"

"I offered him leave to go out unhurt from the place, with all his
garrison; and if he would not I would take it by storm."

"And you did, I believe."

"Yes."

"Had your Voices counseled you to take it by storm?"

"As to that, I do not remember."

Thus closed a weary long sitting, without result. Every device that could
be contrived to trap Joan into wrong thinking, wrong doing, or disloyalty
to the Church, or sinfulness as a little child at home or later, had been
tried, and none of them had succeeded. She had come unscathed through the
ordeal.

Was the court discouraged? No. Naturally it was very much surprised, very
much astonished, to find its work baffling and difficult instead of
simple and easy, but it had powerful allies in the shape of hunger, cold,
fatigue, persecution, deception, and treachery; and opposed to this array
nothing but a defenseless and ignorant girl who must some time or other
surrender to bodily and mental exhaustion or get caught in one of the
thousand traps set for her.

And had the court made no progress during these seemingly resultless
sittings? Yes. It had been feeling its way, groping here, groping there,
and had found one or two vague trails which might freshen by and by and
lead to something. The male attire, for instance, and the visions and
Voices. Of course no one doubted that she had seen supernatural beings
and been spoken to and advised by them. And of course no one doubted that
by supernatural help miracles had been done by Joan, such as choosing out
the King in a crowd when she had never seen him before, and her discovery
of the sword buried under the altar. It would have been foolish to doubt
these things, for we all know that the air is full of devils and angels
that are visible to traffickers in magic on the one hand and to the
stainlessly holy on the other; but what many and perhaps most did doubt
was, that Joan's visions, Voices, and miracles came from God. It was
hoped that in time they could be proven to have been of satanic origin.
Therefore, as you see, the court's persistent fashion of coming back to
that subject every little while and spooking around it and prying into it
was not to pass the time--it had a strictly business end in view.



9 Her Sure Deliverance Foretold

THE NEXT sitting opened on Thursday the first of March. Fifty-eight
judges present--the others resting.

As usual, Joan was required to take an oath without reservations. She
showed no temper this time. She considered herself well buttressed by the
proces verbal compromise which Cauchon was so anxious to repudiate and
creep out of; so she merely refused, distinctly and decidedly; and added,
in a spirit of fairness and candor:

"But as to matters set down in the proces verbal, I will freely tell the
whole truth--yes, as freely and fully as if I were before the Pope."

Here was a chance! We had two or three Popes, then; only one of them
could be the true Pope, of course. Everybody judiciously shirked the
question of which was the true Pope and refrained from naming him, it
being clearly dangerous to go into particulars in this matter. Here was
an opportunity to trick an unadvised girl into bringing herself into
peril, and the unfair judge lost no time in taking advantage of it. He
asked, in a plausibly indolent and absent way:

"Which one do you consider to be the true Pope?"

The house took an attitude of deep attention, and so waited to hear the
answer and see the prey walk into the trap. But when the answer came it
covered the judge with confusion, and you could see many people covertly
chuckling. For Joan asked in a voice and manner which almost deceived
even me, so innocent it seemed:

"Are there two?"

One of the ablest priests in that body and one of the best swearers
there, spoke right out so that half the house heard him, and said:

"By God, it was a master stroke!"

As soon as the judge was better of his embarrassment he came back to the
charge, but was prudent and passed by Joan's question:

"Is it true that you received a letter from the Count of Armagnac asking
you which of the three Popes he ought to obey?"

"Yes, and answered it."

Copies of both letters were produced and read. Joan said that hers had
not been quite strictly copied. She said she had received the Count's
letter when she was just mounting her horse; and added:

"So, in dictating a word or two of reply I said I would try to answer him
from Paris or somewhere where I could be at rest."

She was asked again which Pope she had considered the right one.

"I was not able to instruct the Count of Armagnac as to which one he
ought to obey"; then she added, with a frank fearlessness which sounded
fresh and wholesome in that den of trimmers and shufflers, "but as for
me, I hold that we are bound to obey our Lord the Pope who is at Rome."

The matter was dropped. They produced and read a copy of Joan's first
effort at dictating--her proclamation summoning the English to retire
from the siege of Orleans and vacate France--truly a great and fine
production for an unpractised girl of seventeen.

"Do you acknowledge as your own the document which has just been read?"

"Yes, except that there are errors in it--words which make me give myself
too much importance." I saw what was coming; I was troubled and ashamed.
"For instance, I did not say 'Deliver up to the Maid' (rendez au la
Pucelle); I said 'Deliver up to the King' (rendez au Roi); and I did not
call myself 'Commander-in-Chief' (chef de guerre). All those are words
which my secretary substituted; or mayhap he misheard me or forgot what I
said."

She did not look at me when she said it: she spared me that
embarrassment. I hadn't misheard her at all, and hadn't forgotten. I
changed her language purposely, for she was Commander-in-Chief and
entitled to call herself so, and it was becoming and proper, too; and who
was going to surrender anything to the King?--at that time a stick, a
cipher? If any surrendering was done, it would be to the noble Maid of
Vaucouleurs, already famed and formidable though she had not yet struck a
blow.

Ah, there would have been a fine and disagreeable episode (for me) there,
if that pitiless court had discovered that the very scribbler of that
piece of dictation, secretary to Joan of Arc, was present--and not only
present, but helping build the record; and not only that, but destined at
a far distant day to testify against lies and perversions smuggled into
it by Cauchon and deliver them over to eternal infamy!

"Do you acknowledge that you dictated this proclamation?"

"I do."

"Have you repented of it? Do you retract it?"

Ah, then she was indignant!

"No! Not even these chains"--and she shook them--"not even these chains
can chill the hopes that I uttered there. And more!"--she rose, and stood
a moment with a divine strange light kindling in her face, then her words
burst forth as in a flood--"I warn you now that before seven years a
disaster will smite the English, oh, many fold greater than the fall of
Orleans! and--"

"Silence! Sit down!"

"--and then, soon after, they will lose all France!"

Now consider these things. The French armies no longer existed. The
French cause was standing still, our King was standing still, there was
no hint that by and by the Constable Richemont would come forward and
take up the great work of Joan of Arc and finish it. In face of all this,
Joan made that prophecy--made it with perfect confidence--and it came
true. For within five years Paris fell--1436--and our King marched into
it flying the victor's flag. So the first part of the prophecy was then
fulfilled--in fact, almost the entire prophecy; for, with Paris in our
hands, the fulfilment of the rest of it was assured.

Twenty years later all France was ours excepting a single town--Calais.

Now that will remind you of an earlier prophecy of Joan's. At the time
that she wanted to take Paris and could have done it with ease if our
King had but consented, she said that that was the golden time; that,
with Paris ours, all France would be ours in six months. But if this
golden opportunity to recover France was wasted, said she, "I give you
twenty years to do it in."

She was right. After Paris fell, in 1436, the rest of the work had to be
done city by city, castle by castle, and it took twenty years to finish
it.

Yes, it was the first day of March, 1431, there in the court, that she
stood in the view of everybody and uttered that strange and incredible
prediction. Now and then, in this world, somebody's prophecy turns up
correct, but when you come to look into it there is sure to be
considerable room for suspicion that the prophecy was made after the
fact. But here the matter is different. There in that court Joan's
prophecy was set down in the official record at the hour and moment of
its utterance, years before the fulfilment, and there you may read it to
this day.

Twenty-five years after Joan's death the record was produced in the great
Court of the Rehabilitation and verified under oath by Manchon and me,
and surviving judges of our court confirmed the exactness of the record
in their testimony.

Joan' startling utterance on that now so celebrated first of March
stirred up a great turmoil, and it was some time before it quieted down
again. Naturally, everybody was troubled, for a prophecy is a grisly and
awful thing, whether one thinks it ascends from hell or comes down from
heaven.

All that these people felt sure of was, that the inspiration back of it
was genuine and puissant.

They would have given their right hands to know the source of it.

At last the questions began again.

"How do you know that those things are going to happen?"

"I know it by revelation. And I know it as surely as I know that you sit
here before me."

This sort of answer was not going to allay the spreading uneasiness.
Therefore, after some further dallying the judge got the subject out of
the way and took up one which he could enjoy more.

"What languages do your Voices speak?"

"French."

"St. Marguerite, too?"

"Verily; why not? She is on our side, not on the English!"

Saints and angels who did not condescend to speak English is a grave
affront. They could not be brought into court and punished for contempt,
but the tribunal could take silent note of Joan's remark and remember it
against her; which they did. It might be useful by and by.

"Do your saints and angels wear jewelry?--crowns, rings, earrings?"

To Joan, questions like these were profane frivolities and not worthy of
serious notice; she answered indifferently. But the question brought to
her mind another matter, and she turned upon Cauchon and said:

"I had two rings. They have been taken away from me during my captivity.
You have one of them. It is the gift of my brother. Give it back to me.
If not to me, then I pray that it be given to the Church."

The judges conceived the idea that maybe these rings were for the working
of enchantments.

Perhaps they could be made to do Joan a damage.

"Where is the other ring?"

"The Burgundians have it."

"Where did you get it?"

"My father and mother gave it to me."

"Describe it."

"It is plain and simple and has 'Jesus and Mary' engraved upon it."

Everybody could see that that was not a valuable equipment to do devil's
work with. So that trail was not worth following. Still, to make sure,
one of the judges asked Joan if she had ever cured sick people by
touching them with the ring. She said no.

"Now as concerning the fairies, that were used to abide near by Domremy
whereof there are many reports and traditions. It is said that your
godmother surprised these creatures on a summer's night dancing under the
tree called l'Arbre Fee de Bourlemont. Is it not possible that your
pretended saints and angles are but those fairies?"

"Is that in your proces?"

She made no other answer.

"Have you not conversed with St. Marguerite and St. Catherine under that
tree?"

"I do not know."

"Or by the fountain near the tree?"

"Yes, sometimes."

"What promises did they make you?"

"None but such as they had God's warrant for."

"But what promises did they make?"

"That is not in your proces; yet I will say this much: they told me that
the King would become master of his kingdom in spite of his enemies."

"And what else?"

There was a pause; then she said humbly:

"They promised to lead me to Paradise."

If faces do really betray what is passing in men's minds, a fear came
upon many in that house, at this time, that maybe, after all, a chosen
servant and herald of God was here being hunted to her death. The
interest deepened. Movements and whisperings ceased: the stillness became
almost painful.

Have you noticed that almost from the beginning the nature of the
questions asked Joan showed that in some way or other the questioner very
often already knew his fact before he asked his question? Have you
noticed that somehow or other the questioners usually knew just how and
were to search for Joan's secrets; that they really knew the bulk of her
privacies--a fact not suspected by her--and that they had no task before
them but to trick her into exposing those secrets?

Do you remember Loyseleur, the hypocrite, the treacherous priest, tool of
Cauchon? Do you remember that under the sacred seal of the confessional
Joan freely and trustingly revealed to him everything concerning her
history save only a few things regarding her supernatural revelations
which her Voices had forbidden her to tell to any one--and that the
unjust judge, Cauchon, was a hidden listener all the time?

Now you understand how the inquisitors were able to devise that long
array of minutely prying questions; questions whose subtlety and
ingenuity and penetration are astonishing until we come to remember
Loyseleur's performance and recognize their source. Ah, Bishop of
Beauvais, you are now lamenting this cruel iniquity these many years in
hell! Yes verily, unless one has come to your help. There is but one
among the redeemed that would do it; and it is futile to hope that that
one has not already done it--Joan of Arc.

We will return to the questionings.

"Did they make you still another promise?"

"Yes, but that is not in your proces. I will not tell it now, but before
three months I will tell it you."

The judge seems to know the matter he is asking about, already; one gets
this idea from his next question.

"Did your Voices tell you that you would be liberated before three
months?"

Joan often showed a little flash of surprise at the good guessing of the
judges, and she showed one this time. I was frequently in terror to find
my mind (which I could not control) criticizing the Voices and saying,
"They counsel her to speak boldly--a thing which she would do without any
suggestion from them or anybody else--but when it comes to telling her
any useful thing, such as how these conspirators manage to guess their
way so skilfully into her affairs, they are always off attending to some
other business."

I am reverent by nature; and when such thoughts swept through my head
they made me cold with fear, and if there was a storm and thunder at the
time, I was so ill that I could but with difficulty abide at my post and
do my work.

Joan answered:

"That is not in your proces. I do not know when I shall be set free, but
some who wish me out of this world will go from it before me."

It made some of them shiver.

"Have your Voices told you that you will be delivered from this prison?"

Without a doubt they had, and the judge knew it before he asked the
question.

"Ask me again in three months and I will tell you." She said it with such
a happy look, the tired prisoner! And I? And Noel Rainguesson, drooping
yonder?--why, the floods of joy went streaming through us from crown to
sole! It was all that we could do to hold still and keep from making
fatal exposure of our feelings.