Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (Vols. I-II) Chapter 6 Joan and Archangel Michael
by Mark Twain
All through her childhood and up to the middle of her
fourteenth year, Joan had been the most light-hearted creature and
the merriest in the village, with a hop-skip-and-jump gait and a
happy and catching laugh; and this disposition, supplemented by
her warm and sympathetic nature and frank and winning ways, had
made her everybody's pet. She had been a hot patriot all this time,
and sometimes the war news had sobered her spirits and wrung her
heart and made her acquainted with tears, but always when these
interruptions had run their course her spirits rose and she was her
old self again.
But now for a whole year and a half she had been mainly grave;
not melancholy, but given to thought, abstraction, dreams. She was
carrying France upon her heart, and she found the burden not light.
I knew that this was her trouble, but others attributed her
abstraction to religious ecstasy, for she did not share her thinkings
with the village at large, yet gave me glimpses of them, and so I
knew, better than the rest, what was absorbing her interest. Many a
time the idea crossed my mind that she had a secret--a secret
which she was keeping wholly to herself, as well from me as from
the others. This idea had come to me because several times she
had cut a sentence in two and changed the subject when apparently
she was on the verge of a revelation of some sort. I was to find this
secret out, but not just yet.
The day after the conversation which I have been reporting we
were together in the pastures and fell to talking about France, as
usual. For her sake I had always talked hopefully before, but that
was mere lying, for really there was not anything to hang a rag of
hope for France upon. Now it was such a pain to lie to her, and
cost me such shame to offer this treachery to one so snow-pure
from lying and treachery, and even from suspicion of such
baseness in others, as she was, that I was resolved to face about
now and begin over again, and never insult her more with
deception. I started on the new policy by saying still opening up
with a small lie, of course, for habit is habit, and not to be flung
out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a
time:
"Joan, I have been thinking the thing all over last night, and have
concluded that we have been in the wrong all this time; that the
case of France is desperate; that it has been desperate ever since
Agincourt; and that to-day it is more than desperate, it is hopeless."
I did not look her in the face while I was saying it; it could not be
expected of a person. To break her heart, to crush her hope with a
so frankly brutal speech as that, without one charitable soft place
in it--it seemed a shameful thing, and it was. But when it was out,
the weight gone, and my conscience rising to the surface, I glanced
at her face to see the result.
There was none to see. At least none that I was expecting. There
was a barely perceptible suggestion of wonder in her serious eyes,
but that was all; and she said, in her simple and placid way:
"The case of France hopeless? Why should you think that? Tell
me."
It is a most pleasant thing to find that what you thought would
inflict a hurt upon one whom you honor, has not done it. I was
relieved now, and could say all my say without any furtivenesses
and without embarrassment. So I began:
"Let us put sentiment and patriotic illusions aside, and look at the
facts in the face. What do they say? They speak as plainly as the
figures in a merchant's account-book. One has only to add the two
columns up to see that the French house is bankrupt, that one-half
of its property is already in the English sheriff's hands and the
other half in nobody's--except those of irresponsible raiders and
robbers confessing allegiance to nobody. Our King is shut up with
his favorites and fools in inglorious idleness and poverty in a
narrow little patch of the kingdom--a sort of back lot, as one may
say--and has no authority there or anywhere else, hasn't a farthing
to his name, nor a regiment of soldiers; he is not fighting, he is not
intending to fight, he means to make no further resistance; in truth,
there is but one thing that he is intending to do--give the whole
thing up, pitch his crown into the sewer, and run away to Scotland.
There are the facts. Are they correct?"
"Yes, they are correct."
"Then it is as I have said: one needs but to add them together in
order to realize what they mean."
She asked, in an ordinary, level tone:
"What--that the case of France is hopeless?"
"Necessarily. In face of these facts, doubt of it is impossible."
"How can you say that? How can you feel like that?"
"How can I? How could I think or feel in any other way, in the
circumstances? Joan, with these fatal figures before, you, have you
really any hope for France--really and actually?"
"Hope--oh, more than that! France will win her freedom and keep
it. Do not doubt it."
It seemed to me that her clear intellect must surely be clouded
to-day. It must be so, or she would see that those figures could
mean only one thing. Perhaps if I marshaled them again she would
see. So I said:
"Joan, your heart, which worships France, is beguiling your head.
You are not perceiving the importance of these figures. Here--I
want to make a picture of them, here on the ground with a stick.
Now, this rough outline is France. Through its middle, east and
west, I draw a river."
"Yes, the Loire."
"Now, then, this whole northern half of the country is in the tight
grip of the English."
"Yes."
"And this whole southern half is really in nobody's hands at all--as
our King confesses by meditating desertion and flight to a foreign
land. England has armies here; opposition is dead; she can assume
full possession whenever she may choose. In very truth, all France
is gone, France is already lost, France has ceased to exist. What
was France is now but a British province. Is this true?"
Her voice was low, and just touched with emotion, but distinct:
"Yes, it is true."
"Very well. Now add this clinching fact, and surely the sum is
complete: When have French soldiers won a victory? Scotch
soldiers, under the French flag, have won a barren fight or two a
few years back, but I am speaking of French ones. Since eight
thousand Englishmen nearly annihilated sixty thousand Frenchmen
a dozen years ago at Agincourt, French courage has been
paralyzed. And so it is a common saying to-day that if you
confront fifty French soldiers with five English ones, the French
will run."
"It is a pity, but even these things are true."
"Then certainly the day for hoping is past."
I believed the case would be clear to her now. I thought it could
not fail to be clear to her, and that she would say, herself, that
there was no longer any ground for hope. But I was mistaken; and
disappointed also. She said, without any doubt in her tone:
"France will rise again. You shall see."
"Rise?--with this burden of English armies on her back!"
"She will cast it off; she will trample it under foot!" This with
spirit.
"Without soldiers to fight with?"
"The drums will summon them. They will answer, and they will
march."
"March to the rear, as usual?"
"No; to the front--ever to the front--always to the front! You shall
see."
"And the pauper King?"
"He will mount his throne--he will wear his crown."
"Well, of a truth this makes one's head dizzy. Why, if I could
believe that in thirty years from now the English domination would
be broken and the French monarch's head find itself hooped with a
real crown of sovereignty--"
"Both will have happened before two years are sped."
"Indeed? and who is going to perform all these sublime
impossibilities?"
"God."
It was a reverent low note, but it rang clear.
What could have put those strange ideas in her head? This question
kept running in my mind during two or three days. It was
inevitable that I should think of madness. What other way was
there to account for such things? Grieving and brooding over the
woes of France had weakened that strong mind, and filled it with
fantastic phantoms--yes, that must be it.
But I watched her, and tested her, and it was not so. Her eye was
clear and sane, her ways were natural, her speech direct and to the
point. No, there was nothing the matter with her mind; it was still
the soundest in the village and the best. She went on thinking for
others, planning for others, sacrificing herself for others, just as
always before. She went on ministering to her sick and to her poor,
and still stood ready to give the wayfarer her bed and content
herself with the floor. There was a secret somewhere, but madness
was not the key to it. This was plain.
Now the key did presently come into my hands, and the way that it
happened was this. You have heard all the world talk of this matter
which I am about to speak of, but you have not heard an
eyewitness talk of it before.
I was coming from over the ridge, one day--it was the 15th of May,
'28--and when I got to the edge of the oak forest and was about to
step out of it upon the turfy open space in which the haunted beech
tree stood, I happened to cast a glance from cover, first--then I
took a step backward, and stood in the shelter and concealment of
the foliage. For I had caught sight of Joan, and thought I would
devise some sort of playful surprise for her. Think of it--that trivial
conceit was neighbor, with but a scarcely measurable interval of
time between, to an event destined to endure forever in histories
and songs.
The day was overcast, and all that grassy space wherein the Tree
stood lay in a soft rich shadow. Joan sat on a natural seat formed
by gnarled great roots of the Tree. Her hands lay loosely, one
reposing in the other, in her lap. Her head was bent a little toward
the ground, and her air was that of one who is lost to thought,
steeped in dreams, and not conscious of herself or of the world.
And now I saw a most strange thing, for I saw a white shadow
come slowly gliding along the grass toward the Tree. It was of
grand proportions--a robed form, with wings--and the whiteness of
this shadow was not like any other whiteness that we know of,
except it be the whiteness of lightnings, but even the lightnings are
not so intense as it was, for one can look at them without hurt,
whereas this brilliancy was so blinding that in pained my eyes and
brought the water into them. I uncovered my head, perceiving that
I was in the presence of something not of this world. My breath
grew faint and difficult, because of the terror and the awe that
possessed me.
Another strange thing. The wood had been silent--smitten with that
deep stillness which comes when a storm-cloud darkens a forest,
and the wild creatures lose heart and are afraid; but now all the
birds burst forth into song, and the joy, the rapture, the ecstasy of it
was beyond belief; and was so eloquent and so moving, withal,
that it was plain it was an act of worship. With the first note of
those birds Joan cast herself upon her knees, and bent her head low
and crossed her hands upon her breast.
She had not seen the shadow yet. Had the song of the birds told her
it was coming? It had that look to me. Then the like of this must
have happened before. Yes, there might be no doubt of that.
The shadow approached Joan slowly; the extremity of it reached
her, flowed over her, clothed her in its awful splendor. In that
immortal light her face, only humanly beautiful before, became
divine; flooded with that transforming glory her mean peasant
habit was become like to the raiment of the sun-clothed children of
God as we see them thronging the terraces of the Throne in our
dreams and imaginings.
Presently she rose and stood, with her head still bowed a little, and
with her arms down and the ends of her fingers lightly laced
together in front of her; and standing so, all drenched with that
wonderful light, and yet apparently not knowing it, she seemed to
listen--but I heard nothing. After a little she raised her head, and
looked up as one might look up toward the face of a giant, and
then clasped her hands and lifted them high, imploringly, and
began to plead. I heard some of the words. I heard her say:
"But I am so young! oh, so young to leave my mother and my
home and go out into the strange world to undertake a thing so
great! Ah, how can I talk with men, be comrade with
men?--soldiers! It would give me over to insult, and rude usage,
and contempt. How can I go to the great wars, and lead armies?--I
a girl, and ignorant of such things, knowing nothing of arms, nor
how to mount a horse, nor ride it. . . . Yet--if it is commanded--"
Her voice sank a little, and was broken by sobs, and I made out no
more of her words. Then I came to myself. I reflected that I had
been intruding upon a mystery of God--and what might my
punishment be? I was afraid, and went deeper into the wood. Then
I carved a mark in the bark of a tree, saying to myself, it may be
that I am dreaming and have not seen this vision at all. I will come
again, when I know that I am awake and not dreaming, and see if
this mark is still here; then I shall know.