Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (Vols. I-II) Chapter 12 Joan's Master-Stroke Diverted
by Mark Twain
Now, as a next move, this small secret court of holy assassins did
a thing so base that even at this day, in my old age, it is hard to
speak of it with patience.
In the beginning of her commerce with her Voices there at
Domremy, the child Joan solemnly devoted her life to God,
vowing her pure body and her pure soul to His service. You will
remember that her parents tried to stop her from going to the wars
by haling her to the court at Toul to compel her to make a
marriage which she had never promised to make--a marriage with
our poor, good, windy, big, hard-fighting, and most dear and
lamented comrade, the Standard-Bearer, who fell in honorable
battle and sleeps with God these sixty years, peace to his ashes!
And you will remember how Joan, sixteen years old, stood up in
that venerable court and conducted her case all by herself, and tore
the poor Paladin's case to rags and blew it away with a breath; and
how the astonished old judge on the bench spoke of her as "this
marvelous child."
You remember all that. Then think what I felt, to see these false
priests, here in the tribunal wherein Joan had fought a fourth lone
fight in three years, deliberately twist that matter entirely around
and try to make out that Joan haled the Paladin into court and
pretended that he had promised to marry her, and was bent on
making him do it.
Certainly there was no baseness that those people were ashamed to
stoop to in their hunt for that friendless girl's life. What they
wanted to show was this--that she had committed the sin of
relapsing from her vow and trying to violate it.
Joan detailed the true history of the case, but lost her temper as she
went along, and finished with some words for Cauchon which he
remembers yet, whether he is fanning himself in the world he
belongs in or has swindled his way into the other.
The rest of this day and part of the next the court labored upon the
old theme--the male attire. It was shabby work for those grave men
to be engaged in; for they well knew one of Joan's reasons for
clinging to the male dress was, that soldiers of the guard were
always present in her room whether she was asleep or awake, and
that the male dress was a better parotection for her modesty than
the other.
The court knew that one of Joan's purposes had been the
deliverance of the exiled Duke of Orleans, and they were curious
to know how she had intended to manage it. Her plan was
characteristically businesslike, and her statement of it as
characteristically simple and straightforward:
"I would have taken English prisoners enough in France for his
ransom; and failing that, I would have invaded England and
brought him out by force."
That was just her way. If a thing was to be done, it was love first,
and hammer and tongs to follow; but no shilly-shallying between.
She added with a little sigh:
"If I had had my freedom three years, I would have delivered him."
"Have you the permission of your Voices to break out of prison
whenever you can?"
"I have asked their leave several times, but they have not given it."
I think it is as I have said, she expected the deliverance of death,
and within the prison walls, before the three months should expire.
"Would you escape if you saw the doors open?"
She spoke up frankly and said:
"Yes--for I should see in that the permission of Our Lord. God
helps who help themselves, the proverb says. But except I thought
I had permission, I would not go."
Now, then, at this point, something occurred which convinces me,
every time I think of it--and it struck me so at the time--that for a
moment, at least, her hopes wandered to the King, and put into her
mind the same notion about her deliverance which Noël and I had
settled upon--a rescue by her old soldiers. I think the idea of the
rescue did occur to her, but only as a passing thought, and that it
quickly passed away.
Some remark of the Bishop of Beauvais moved her to remind him
once more that he was an unfair judge, and had no right to preside
there, and that he was putting himself in great danger.
"What danger?" he asked.
"I do not know. St. Catherine has promised me help, but I do not
know the form of it. I do not know whether I am to be delivered
from this prison or whether when you sent me to the scaffold there
will happen a trouble by which I shall be set free. Without much
thought as to this matter, I am of the opinion that it may be one or
the other." After a pause she added these words, memorable
forever--words whose meaning she may have miscaught,
misunderstood; as to that we can never know; words which she
may have rightly understood, as to that, also, we can never know;
but words whose mystery fell away from them many a year ago
and revealed their meaning to all the world:
"But what my Voices have said clearest is, that I shall be delivered
by a great victory." She paused, my heart was beating fast, for to
me that great victory meant the sudden bursting in of our old
soldiers with the war-cry and clash of steel at the last moment and
the carrying off of Joan of Arc in triumph. But, oh, that thought
had such a short life! For now she raised her head and finished,
with those solemn words which men still so often quote and dwell
upon--words which filled me with fear, they sounded so like a
prediction. "And always they say 'Submit to whatever comes; do
not grieve for your martyrdom; from it you will ascend into the
Kingdom of Paradise."
Was she thinking of fire and the stake? I think not. I thought of it
myself, but I believe she was only thinking of this slow and cruel
martyrdom of chains and captivity and insult. Surely, martyrdom
was the right name for it.
It was Jean de la Fontaine who was asking the questions. He was
silling to make the most he could out of what she had said:
"As the Voices have told you you are going to Paradise, you feel
certain that that will happen and that you will not be damned in
hell. Is that so?"
"I believe what they told me. I know that I shall be saved."
"It is a weighty answer."
"To me the knowledge that I shall be saved is a great treasure."
"Do you think that after that revelation you could be able to
commit mortal sin?"
"As to that, I do not know. My hope for salvation is in holding fast
to my oath to keep by body and my soul pure."
"Since you know you are to be saved, do you think it necessary to
go to confession?"
The snare was ingeniously devised, but Joan's simple and humble
answer left it empty:
"One cannot keep his conscience too clean."
We were now arriving at the last day of this new trial. Joan had
come through the ordeal well. It had been a long and wearisome
struggle for all concerned. All ways had been tried to convict the
accused, and all had failed, thus far. The inquisitors were
thoroughly vexed and dissatisfied.
However, they resolved to make one more effort, put in one more
day's work. This was done--March 17th. Early in the sitting a
notable trap was set for Joan:
"Will you submit to the determination of the Church all your
words and deeds, whether good or bad?"
That was well planned. Joan was in imminent peril now. If she
should heedlessly say yes, it would put her mission itself upon
trial, and one would know how to decide its source and character
promptly. If she should say no, she would render herself
chargeable with the crime of heresy.
But she was equal to the occasion. She drew a distinct line of
separation between the Church's authority over her as a subject
member, and the matter of her mission. She said she loved the
Church and was ready to support the Christian faith with all her
strength; but as to the works done under her mission, those must
be judged by God alone, who had commanded them to be done.
The judge still insisted that she submit them to the decision of the
Church. She said:
"I will submit them to Our Lord who sent me. It would seem to me
that He and His Church are one, and that there should be no
difficulty about this matter." Then she turned upon the judge and
said, "Why do you make a difficulty when there is no room for
any?"
Then Jean de la Fontaine corrected her notion that there was but
one Church. There were two--the Church Triumphant, which is
God, the saints, the angels, and the redeemed, and has its seat in
heave; and the Church Militant, which is our Holy Father the Pope,
Vicar of God, the prelates, the clergy and all good Christians and
Catholics, the which Church has its seat in the earth, is governed
by the Holy Spirit, and cannot err. "Will you not submit those
matters to the Church Militant?"
"I am come to the King of France from the Church Triumphant on
high by its commandant, and to that Church I will submit all those
things which I have done. For the Church Militant I have no other
answer now."
The court took note of this straitly worded refusal, and would hope
to get profit out of it; but the matter was dropped for the present,
and a long chase was then made over the old hunting-ground--the
fairies, the visions, the male attire, and all that.
In the afternoon the satanic Bishop himself took the chair and
presided over the closing scenes of the trial. Along toward the
finish, this question was asked by one of the judges:
"You have said to my lord the Bishop that you would answer him
as you would answer before our Holy Father the Pope, and yet
there are several questions which you continually refuse to answer.
Would you not answer the Pope more fully than you have
answered before my lord of Beauvais? Would you not feel obliged
to answer the Pope, who is the Vicar of God, more fully?"
Now a thunder-clap fell out of a clear sky:
"Take me to the Pope. I will answer to everything that I ought to."
It made the Bishop's purple face fairly blanch with consternation.
If Joan had only known, if she had only know! She had lodged a
mine under this black conspiracy able to blow the Bishop's
schemes to the four winds of heaven, and she didn't know it. She
had made that speech by mere instinct, not suspecting what
tremendous forces were hidden in it, and there was none to tell her
what she had done. I knew, and Manchon knew; and if she had
known how to read writing we could have hoped to get the
knowledge to her somehow; but speech was the only way, and
none was allowed to approach her near enough for that. So there
she sat, once more Joan of Arc the Victorious, but all unconscious
of it. She was miserably worn and tired, by the long day's struggle
and by illness, or she must have noticed the effect of that speech
and divined the reason of it.
She had made many master-strokes, but this was the master-stroke.
It was an appeal to Rome. It was her clear right; and if she had
persisted in it Cauchon's plot would have tumbled about his ears
like a house of cards, and he would have gone from that place the
worst-beaten man of the century. He was daring, but he was not
daring enough to stand up against that demand if Joan had urged it.
But no, she was ignorant, poor thing, and did not know what a
blow she had struck for life and liberty.
France was not the Church. Rome had no interest in the
destruction of this messenger of God.
Rome would have given her a fair trial, and that was all that her
cause needed. From that trial she would have gone forth free, and
honored, and blessed.
But it was not so fated. Cauchon at once diverted the questions to
other matters and hurried the trial quickly to an end.
As Joan moved feebly away, dragging her chains, I felt stunned
and dazed, and kept saying to myself, "Such a little while ago she
said the saving word and could have gone free; and now, there she
goes to her death; yes, it is to her death, I know it, I feel it. They
will double the guards; they will never let any come near her now
between this and her condemnation, lest she get a hint and speak
that word again. This is the bitterest day that has come to me in all
this miserable time."