Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (Vols. I-II) Chapter 11 The Court Reorganized for Assassination
by Mark Twain
A halt was called. It was time. Cauchon was losing ground in
the fight, Joan was gaining it.
There were signs that here and there in the court a judge was being
softened toward Joan by her courage, her presence of mind, her
fortitude, her constancy, her piety, her simplicity and candor, her
manifest purity, the nobility of her character, her fine intelligence,
and the good brave fight she was making, all friendless and alone,
against unfair odds, and there was grave room for fear that this
softening process would spread further and presently bring
Cauchon's plans in danger.
Something must be done, and it was done. Cauchon was not
distinguished for compassion, but he now gave proof that he had it
in his character. He thought it pity to subject so many judges to the
prostrating fatigues of this trial when it could be conducted plenty
well enough by a handful of them. Oh, gentle judge! But he did not
remember to modify the fatigues for the little captive.
He would let all the judges but a handful go, but he would select
the handful himself, and he did.
He chose tigers. If a lamb or two got in, it was by oversight, not
intention; and he knew what to do with lambs when discovered.
He called a small council now, and during five days they sifted the
huge bulk of answers thus far gathered from Joan. They winnowed
it of all chaff, all useless matter--that is, all matter favorable to
Joan; they saved up all matter which could be twisted to her hurt,
and out of this they constructed a basis for a new trial which
should have the semblance of a continuation of the old one.
Another change. It was plain that the public trial had wrought
damage: its proceedings had been discussed all over the town and
had moved many to pity the abused prisoner. There should be no
more of that. The sittings should be secret hereafter, and no
spectators admitted. So Noël could come no more. I sent this news
to him. I had not the heart to carry it myself. I would give the pain
a chance to modify before I should see him in the evening.
On the 10th of March the secret trial began. A week had passed
since I had seen Joan. Her appearance gave me a great shock. She
looked tired and weak. She was listless and far away, and her
answers showed that she was dazed and not able to keep perfect
run of all that was done and said. Another court would not have
taken advantage of her state, seeing that her life was at stake here,
but would have adjourned and spared her. Did this one? No; it
worried her for hours, and with a glad and eager ferocity, making
all it could out of this great chance, the first one it had had.
She was tortured into confusing herself concerning the "sign"
which had been given the King, and the next day this was
continued hour after hour. As a result, she made partial
revealments of particulars forbidden by her Voice3s; and seemed
to me to state as facts things which were but allegories and visions
mixed with facts.
The third day she was brighter, and looked less worn. She was
almost her normal self again, and did her work well. Many
attempts were made to beguile her into saying indiscreet things,
but she saw the purpose in view and answered with tact and
wisdom.
"Do you know if St. Catherine and St. Marguerite hate the
English?"
"They love whom Our Lord loves, and hate whom He hates."
"Does God hate the English?"
"Of the love or the hatred of God toward the English I know
nothing." Then she spoke up with the old martial ring in her voice
and the old audacity in her words, and added, "But I know
this--that God will send victory to the French, and that all the
English will be flung out of France but the dead ones!"
"Was God on the side of the English when they were prosperous in
France?"
"I do not know if God hates the French, but I think that He allowed
them to be chastised for their sins."
It was a sufficiently naïve way to account for a chastisement which
had now strung out for ninety-six years. But nobody found fault
with it. There was nobody there who would not punish a sinner
ninety-six years if he could, nor anybody there who would ever
dream of such a thing as the Lord's being any shade less stringent
than men.
"Have you ever embraced St. Marguerite and St. Catherine?"
"Yes, both of them."
The evil face of Cauchon betrayed satisfaction when she said that.
"When you hung garlands upon L'Arbre Fée de Bourlemont, did
you do it in honor of your apparitions?"
"No."
Satisfaction again. No doubt Cauchon would take it for granted
that she hung them there out of sinful love for the fairies.
"When the saints appeared to you did you bow, did you make
reverence, did you kneel?"
"Yes; I did them the most honor and reverence that I could."
A good point for Cauchon if he could eventually make it appear
that these were no saints to whom she had done reverence, but
devils in disguise.
Now there was the matter of Joan's keeping her supernatural
commerce a secret from her parents. Much might be made of that.
In fact, particular emphasis had been given to it in a private remark
written in the margin of the procès: "She concealed her visions
from her parents and from every one." Possibly this disloyalty to
her parents might itself be the sign of the satanic source of her
mission.
"Do you think it was right to go away to the wars without getting
your parents' leave? It is written one must honor his father and his
mother."
"I have obeyed them in all things but that. And for that I have
begged their forgiveness in a letter and gotten it."
"Ah, you asked their pardon? So you knew you were guilty of sin
in going without their leave!"
Joan was stirred. Her eyes flashed, and she exclaimed:
"I was commanded of God, and it was right to go! If I had had a
hundred fathers and mothers and been a king's daughter to boot I
would have gone."
"Did you never ask your Voices if you might tell your parents?"
"They were willing that I should tell them, but I would not for
anything have given my parents that pain."
Tgo the minds of the questioners this headstrong conduct savored
of pride. That sort of pride would move one to see sacrilegious
adorations.
"Did not your Voices call you Daughter of God?"
Joan answered with simplicity, and unsuspiciously:
"Yes; before the siege of Orleans and since, they have several
times called me Daughter of God."
Further indications of pride and vanity were sought.
"What horse were you riding when you were captured? Who gave
it you?"
"The King."
"You had other things--riches--of the King?"
"For myself I had horses and arms, and money to pay the service in
my household."
"Had you not a treasury?"
"Yes. Ten or twelve thousand crowns." Then she said with naïveté,
"It was not a great sum to carry on a war with."
"You have it yet?"
"No. It is the King's money. My brothers hold it for him."
"What were the arms which you left as an offering in the church of
St. Denis?"
"My suit of silver mail and a sword."
"Did you put them there in order that they might be adored?"
"No. It was but an act of devotion. And it is the custom of men of
war who have been wounded to make such offering there. I had
been wounded before Paris."
Nothing appealed to these stony hearts, those dull
imaginations--not even this pretty picture, so simply drawn, of the
wounded girl-soldier hanging her toy harness there in curious
companionship with the grim and dusty iron mail of the historic
defenders of France. No, there was nothing in it for them; nothing,
unless evil and injury for that innocent creature could be gotten out
of it somehow.
"Which aided most--you the Standard, or the Standard you?"
"Whether it was the Standard or whether it was I, is nothing--the
victories came from God."
"But did you base your hopes of victory in yourself or in your
Standard?"
"In neither. In God, and not otherwise."
"Was not your Standard waved around the King's head at the
Coronation?"
"No. It was not."
"Why was it that your Standard had place at the crowning of the
King in the Cathedral of Rheims, rather than those of the other
captains?"
Then, soft and low, came that touching speech which will live as
long as language lives, and pass into all tongues, and move all
gentle hearts wheresoever it shall come, down to the latest day:
"It had borne the burden, it had earned the honor." [1] How simple
it is, and how beautiful. And how it beggars the studies eloquence
of the masters of oratory. Eloquence was a native gift of Joan of
Arc; it came from her lips without effort and without preparation.
Her words were as sublime as her deeds, as sublime as her
character; they had their source in a great heart and were coined in
a great brain.
[1] What she said has been many times translated, but never with
success. There is a haunting pathos about the original which eludes
all efforts to convey it into our tongue. It is as subtle as an odor,
and escapes in the transmission. Her words were these:
"Il avait été a la peine, c'etait bien raison qu'il fut a l'honneur."
Monseigneur Ricard, Honorary Vicar-General to the Archbishop of
Aix, finely speaks of it (Jeanne d'Arc la Vénérable, page 197) as
"that sublime reply, enduring in the history of celebrated sayings
like the cry of a French and Christian soul wounded unto death in
its patriotism and its faith." -- TRANSLATOR.