Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (Vols. I-II) Chapter 22 Joan Gives the Fatal Answer
by Mark Twain
Friday and Saturday were happy days for Noël and me. Our
minds were full of our splendid dream of France aroused--France
shaking her mane--France on the march--France at the
gates--Rouen in ashes, and Joan free! Our imagination was on fire;
we were delirious with pride and joy. For we were very young, as I
have said.
We knew nothing about what had been happening in the dungeon
in the yester-afternoon. We supposed that as Joan had abjured and
been taken back into the forgiving bosom of the Church, she was
being gently used now, and her captivity made as pleasant and
comfortable for her as the circumstances would allow. So, in high
contentment, we planned out our share in the great rescue, and
fought our part of the fight over and over again during those two
happy days--as happy days as ever I have known.
Sunday morning came. I was awake, enjoying the balmy, lazy
weather, and thinking. Thinking of the rescue--what else? I had no
other thought now. I was absorbed in that, drunk with the
happiness of it.
I heard a voice shouting far down the street, and soon it came
nearer, and I caught the words:
"Joan of Arc has relapsed! The witch's time has come!"
It stopped my heart, it turned my blood to ice. That was more than
sixty years ago, but that triumphant note rings as clear in my
memory to-day as it rang in my ear that long-vanished summer
morning. We are so strangely made; the memories that could make
us happy pass away; it is the memories that break our hearts that
abide.
Soon other voices took up that cry--tens, scores, hundreds of
voices; all the world seemed filled with the brutal joy of it. And
there were other clamors--the clatter of rushing feet, merry
congratulations, bursts of coarse laughter, the rolling of drums, the
boom and crash of distant bands profaning the sacred day with the
music of victory and thanksgiving.
About the middle of the afternoon came a summons for Manchon
and me to go to Joan's dungeon--a summons from Cauchon. But by
that time distrust had already taken possession of the English and
their soldiery again, and all Rouen was in an angry and threatening
mood. We could see plenty of evidences of this from our own
windows--fist-shaking, black looks, tumultuous tides of furious
men billowing by along the street.
And we learned that up at the castle things were going very badly,
indeed; that there was a great mob gathered there who considered
the relapse a lie and a priestly trick, and among them many
half-drunk English soldiers. Moreover, these people had gone
beyond words. They had laid hands upon a number of churchmen
who were trying to enter the castle, and it had been difficult work
to rescue them and save their lives.
And so Manchon refused to go. He said he would not go a step
without a safeguard from Warwick. So next morning Warwick sent
an escort of soldiers, and then we went. Matters had not grown
peacefuler meantime, but worse. The soldiers protected us from
bodily damage, but as we passed through the great mob at the
castle we were assailed with insults and shameful epithets. I bore it
well enough, though, and said to myself, with secret satisfaction,
"In three or four short days, my lads, you will be employing your
tongues in a different sort from this--and I shall be there to hear."
To my mind these were as good as dead men. How many of them
would still be alive after the rescue that was coming? Not more
than enough to amuse the executioner a short half-hour, certainly.
It turned out that the report was true. Joan had relapsed. She was
sitting there in her chains, clothed again in her male attire.
She accused nobody. That was her way. It was not in her character
to hold a servant to account for what his master had made him do,
and her mind had cleared now, and she knew that the advantage
which had been taken of her the previous morning had its origin,
not in the subordinate but in the master--Cauchon.
Here is what had happened. While Joan slept, in the early morning
of Sunday, one of the guards stole her female apparel and put her
male attire in its place. When she woke she asked for the other
dress, but the guards refused to give it back. She protested, and
said she was forbidden to wear the male dress. But they continued
to refuse. She had to have clothing, for modesty's sake; moreover,
she saw that she could not save her life if she must fight for it
against treacheries like this; so she put on the forbidden garments,
knowing what the end would be. She was weary of the struggle,
poor thing.
We had followed in the wake of Cauchon, the Vice-Inquisitor, and
the others--six or eight--and when I saw Joan sitting there,
despondent, forlorn, and still in chains, when I was expecting to
find her situation so different, I did not know what to make of it.
The shock was very great. I had doubted the relapse perhaps;
possibly I had believed in it, but had not realized it.
Cauchon's victory was complete. He had had a harassed and
irritated and disgusted look for a long time, but that was all gone
now, and contentment and serenity had taken its place. His purple
face was full of tranquil and malicious happiness. He went trailing
his robes and stood grandly in front of Joan, with his legs apart,
and remained so more than a minute, gloating over her and
enjoying the sight of this poor ruined creature, who had won so
lofty a place for him in the service of the meek and merciful Jesus,
Saviour of the World, Lord of the Universe--in case England kept
her promise to him, who kept no promises himself.
Presently the judges began to question Joan. One of them, named
Marguerie, who was a man with more insight than prudence,
remarked upon Joan's change of clothing, and said:
"There is something suspicious about this. How could it have come
about without connivance on the part of others? Perhaps even
something worse?"
"Thousand devils!" screamed Cauchon, in a fury. "Will you shut
your mouth?"
"Armagnac! Traitor!" shouted the soldiers on guard, and made a
rush for Marguerie with their lances leveled. It was with the
greatest difficulty that he was saved from being run through the
body. He made no more attempts to help the inquiry, poor man.
The other judges proceeded with the questionings.
"Why have you resumed this male habit?"
I did not quite catch her answer, for just then a soldier's halberd
slipped from his fingers and fell on the stone floor with a crash;
but I thought I understood Joan to say that she had resumed it of
her own motion.
"But you have promised and sworn that you would not go back to
it."
I was full of anxiety to hear her answer to that question; and when
it came it was just what I was expecting. She said--quiet quietly:
"I have never intended and never understood myself to swear I
would not resume it."
There--I had been sure, all along, that she did not know what she
was doing and saying on the platform Thursday, and this answer of
hers was proof that I had not been mistaken. Then she went on to
add this:
"But I had a right to resume it, because the promises made to me
have not been kept--promises that I should be allowed to go to
mass and receive the communion, and that I should be freed from
the bondage of these chains--but they are still upon me, as you
see."
"Nevertheless, you have abjured, and have especially promised to
return no more to the dress of a man."
Then Joan held out her fettered hands sorrowfully toward these
unfeeling men and said:
"I would rather die than continue so. But if they may be taken off,
and if I may hear mass, and be removed to a penitential prison, and
have a woman about me, I will be good, and will do what shall
seem good to you that I do."
Cauchon sniffed scoffingly at that. Honor the compact which he
and his had made with her?
Fulfil its conditions? What need of that? Conditions had been a
good thing to concede, temporarily, and for advantage; but they
have served their turn--let something of a fresher sort and of more
consequence be considered. The resumption of the male dress was
sufficient for all practical purposes, but perhaps Joan could be led
to add something to that fatal crime. So Cauchon asked her if her
Voices had spoken to her since Thursday--and he reminded her of
her abjuration.
"Yes," she answered; and then it came out that the Voices had
talked with her about the abjuration--told her about it, I suppose.
She guilelessly reasserted the heavenly origin of her mission, and
did it with the untroubled mien of one who was not conscious that
she had ever knowingly repudiated it. So I was convinced once
more that she had had no notion of what she was doing that
Thursday morning on the platform. Finally she said, "My Voices
told me I did very wrong to confess that what I had done was not
well." Then she sighed, and said with simplicity, "But it was the
fear of the fire that made me do so."
That is, fear of the fire had made her sign a paper whose contents
she had not understood then, but understood now by revelation of
her Voices and by testimony of her persecutors.
She was sane now and not exhausted; her courage had come back,
and with it her inborn loyalty to the truth. She was bravely and
serenely speaking it again, knowing that it would deliver her body
up to that very fire which had such terrors for her.
That answer of hers was quite long, quite frank, wholly free from
concealments or palliations. It made me shudder; I knew she was
pronouncing sentence of death upon herself. So did poor Manchon.
And he wrote in the margin abreast of it:
"RESPONSIO MORTIFERA."
Fatal answer. Yes, all present knew that it was, indeed, a fatal
answer. Then there fell a silence such as falls in a sick-room when
the watchers of the dying draw a deep breath and say softly one to
another, "All is over."
Here, likewise, all was over; but after some moments Cauchon,
wishing to clinch this matter and make it final, put this question:
"Do you still believe that your Voices are St. Marguerite and St.
Catherine?"
"Yes--and that they come from God."
"Yet you denied them on the scaffold?"
Then she made direct and clear affirmation that she had never had
any intention to deny them; and that if--I noted the if--"if she had
made some retractions and revocations on the scaffold it was from
fear of the fire, and it was a violation of the truth."
There it is again, you see. She certainly never knew what it was
she had done on the scaffold until she was told of it afterward by
these people and by her Voices.
And now she closed this most painful scene with these words; and
there was a weary note in them that was pathetic:
"I would rather do my penance all at once; let me die. I cannot
endure captivity any longer."
The spirit born for sunshine and liberty so longed for release that it
would take it in any form, even that.
Several among the company of judges went from the place
troubled and sorrowful, the others in another mood. In the court of
the castle we found the Earl of Warwick and fifty English waiting,
impatient for news. As soon as Cauchon saw them he
shouted--laughing--think of a man destroying a friendless poor girl
and then having the heart to laugh at it:
"Make yourselves comfortable--it's all over with her!"