Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (Vols. I-II) Chapter 16 Joan Stands Defiant Before the Rack
by Mark Twain
The brilliant weather, the heavenly weather, the bewitching
weather made everybody's heart to sing, as I have told you; yes,
Rouen was feeling light-hearted and gay, and most willing and
ready to break out and laugh upon the least occasion; and so when
the news went around that the young girl in the tower had scored
another defeat against Bishop Cauchon there was abundant
laughter--abundant laughter among the citizens of both parties, for
they all hated the Bishop. It is true, the English-hearted majority of
the people wanted Joan burned, but that did not keep them from
laughing at the man they hated. It would have been perilous for
anybody to laugh at the English chiefs or at the majority of
Cauchon's assistant judges, but to laugh at Cauchon or D'Estivet
and Loyseleur was safe--nobody would report it.
The difference between Cauchon and cochon [1] was not
noticeable in speech, and so there was plenty of opportunity for
puns; the opportunities were not thrown away.
Some of the jokes got well worn in the course of two or three
months, from repeated use; for every time Cauchon started a new
trial the folk said "The sow has littered [2] again"; and every time
the trial failed they said it over again, with its other meaning, "The
hog has made a mess of it."
And so, on the third of May, Noël and I, drifting about the town,
heard many a wide-mouthed lout let go his joke and his laugh, and
then move tot he next group, proud of his wit and happy, to work it
off again:
"'Od's blood, the sow has littered five times, and five times has
made a mess of it!"
And now and then one was bold enough to say--but he said it
softly:
"Sixty-three and the might of England against a girl, and she
camps on the field five times!"
Cauchon lived in the great palace of the Archbishop, and it was
guarded by English soldiery; but no matter, there was never a dark
night but the walls showed next morning that the rude joker had
been there with his paint and brush. Yes, he had been thee, and had
smeared the sacred walls with pictures of hogs in all attitudes
except flattering ones; hogs clothed in a Bishop's vestments and
wearing a Bishop's miter irreverently cocked on the side of their
heads.
Cauchon raged and cursed over his defeats and his impotence
during seven says; then he conceived a new scheme. You shall see
what it was; for you have not cruel hearts, and you would never
guess it.
On the ninth of May there was a summons, and Manchon and I got
out materials together and started. But this time we were to go to
one of the other towers--not the one which was Joan's prison. It
was round and grim and massive, and built of the plainest and
thickest and solidest masonry--a dismal and forbidding structure.
[3] We entered the circular room on the ground floor, and I saw
what turned me sick--the instruments of torture and the
executioners standing ready! Here you have the black heart of
Cauchon at the blackest, here you have the proof that in his nature
there was no such thing as pity. One wonders if he ever knew his
mother or ever had a sister.
Cauchon was there, and the Vice-Inquisitor and the Abbot of St.
Corneille; also six others, among them that false Loyseleur. The
guards were in their places, the rack was there, and by it stood the
executioner and his aids in their crimson hose and doublets, meet
color for their bloody trade. The picture of Joan rose before me
stretched upon the rack, her feet tied to one end of it, her wrists to
the other, and those red giants turning the windlass and pulling her
limbs out of their sockets. It seemed to me that I could hear the
bones snap and the flesh tear apart, and I did not see how that body
of anointed servants of the merciful Jesus could sit there and look
so placid and indifferent.
After a little, Joan arrived and was brought in. She saw the rack,
she saw the attendants, and the same picture which I had been
seeing must have risen in her mind; but do you think she quailed,
do you think she shuddered? No, there was no sign of that sort. She
straightened herself up, and there was a slight curl of scorn about
her lip; but as for fear, she showed not a vestige of it.
This was a memorable session, but it was the shortest one of all
the list. When Joan had taken her seat a résumé of her "crimes"
was read to her. Then Cauchon made a solemn speech. It in he said
that in the course of her several trials Joan had refused to answer
some of the questions and had answered others with lies, but that
now he was going to have the truth out of her, and the whole of it.
Her manner was full of confidence this time; he was sure he had
found a way at last to break this child's stubborn spirit and make
her beg and cry. He would score a victory this time and stop the
mouths of the jokers of Rouen. You see, he was only just a man
after all, and couldn't stand ridicule any better than other people.
He talked high, and his splotchy face lighted itself up with all the
shifting tints and signs of evil pleasure and promised
triumph--purple, yellow, red, green--they were all there, with
sometimes the dull and spongy blue of a drowned man, the
uncanniest of them all. And finally he burst out in a great passion
and said:
"There is the rack, and there are its ministers! You will reveal all
now or be put to the torture.
Speak."
Then she made that great answer which will live forever; made it
without fuss or bravado, and yet how fine and noble was the sound
of it:
"I will tell you nothing more than I have told you; no, not even if
you tear the limbs from my body. And even if in my pain I did say
something otherwise, I would always say afterward that it was the
torture that spoke and not I."
There was no crushing that spirit. You should have seen Cauchon.
Defeated again, and he had not dreamed of such a thing. I heard it
said the next day, around the town, that he had a full confession all
written out, in his pocket and all ready for Joan to sign. I do not
know that that was true, but it probably was, for her mark signed at
the bottom of a confession would be the kind of evidence (for
effect with the public) which Cauchon and his people were
particularly value, you know.
No, there was no crushing that spirit, and no beclouding that clear
mind. Consider the depth, the wisdom of that answer, coming from
an ignorant girl. Why, there were not six men in the world who
had ever reflected that words forced out of a person by horrible
tortures were not necessarily words of verity and truth, yet this
unlettered peasant-girl put her finger upon that flaw with an
unerring instinct. I had always supposed that torture brought out
the truth--everybody supposed it; and when Joan came out with
those simple common-sense words they seemed to flood the place
with light. It was like a lightning-flash at midnight which suddenly
reveals a fair valley sprinkled over with silver streams and
gleaming villages and farmsteads where was only an impenetrable
world of darkness before. Manchon stole a sidewise look at me,
and his face was full of surprise; and there was the like to be seen
in other faces there. Consider--they were old, and deeply cultured,
yet here was a village maid able to teach them something which
they had not known before. I heard one of them mutter:
"Verily it is a wonderful creature. She has laid her hand upon an
accepted truth that is as old as the world, and it has crumbled to
dust and rubbish under her touch. Now whence got she that
marvelous insight?"
The judges laid their heads together and began to talk now. It was
plain, from chance words which one caught now and then, that
Cauchon and Loyseleur were insisting upon the application of the
torture, and that most of the others were urgently objecting.
Finally Cauchon broke out with a good deal of asperity in his voice
and ordered Joan back to her dungeon. That was a happy surprise
for me. I was not expecting that the Bishop would yield.
When Manchon came home that night he said he had found out
why the torture was not applied.
There were two reasons. One was, a fear that Joan might die under
the torture, which would not suit the English at all; the other was,
that the torture would effect nothing if Joan was going to take back
everything she said under its pains; and as to putting her mark to a
confession, it was believed that not even the rack would ever make
her do that.
So all Rouen laughed again, and kept it up for three days, saying:
"The sow has littered six times, and made six messes of it."
And the palace walls got a new decoration--a mitered hog
carryinga discarded rack home on its shoulder, and Loyseleur
weeping in its wake. Many rewards were offered for the capture of
these painters, but nobody applied. Even the English guard feigned
blindness and would not see the artists at work.
The Bishop's anger was very high now. He could not reconcile
himself to the idea of giving up the torture. It was the pleasantest
idea he had invented yet, and he would not cast it by. So he called
in some of his satellites on the twelfth, and urged the torture again.
But it was a failure.
With some, Joan's speech had wrought an effect; others feared she
might die under torture; others did not believe that any amount of
suffering could make her put her mark to a lying confession. There
were fourteen men present, including the Bishop. Eleven of them
voted dead against the torture, and stood their ground in spite of
Cauchon's abuse. Two voted with the Bishop and insisted upon the
torture. These two were Loyseleur and the orator--the man whom
Joan had bidden to "read his book"--Thomas de Courcelles, the
renowned pleader and master of eloquence.
Age has taught me charity of speech; but it fails me when I think
of those three names--Cauchon, Courcelles, Loyseleur.
[1] Hog, pig.
[2] Cochonner, to litter, to farrow; also, "to make a mess of"!
[3] The lower half of it remains to-day just as it was then; the
upper half is of a later date. -- TRANSLATOR.