RHEIMS
We had meant to go to Barbizon, but we got lost in the forest next
morning, and when we found ourselves we were a good way in the direction
of Melun, so concluded to keep on, consoling ourselves with the thought
that Barbizon is not Barbizon any more, and would probably be a
disappointment, anyway. We kept on from Melun, also, after buying some
luncheon things, and all day traversed that beautiful rolling district
which lies east of Paris and below Rheims, arriving toward evening at
Epernay, the Sparnacum of antiquity and the champagne center of to-day.
Epernay was ancient once, but it is all new now, with wide streets and
every indication of business progress. We had no need to linger there.
We were anxious to get to Rheims.
There had been heavy rains in the champagne district, and next morning
the gray sky and close air gave promise of more. The roads were not the
best, being rather slippery and uneven from the heavy traffic of the
wine carts. But the vine-covered hills between Epernay and Rheims, with
their dark-green matted leafage, seemed to us as richly productive as
anything in France.
We were still in the hills when we looked down on the valley of the
Vesle and saw a city outspread there, and in its center the
architectural and ecclesiastical pride of the world, the cathedral of
Rheims. Large as the city was, that great central ornament dwarfed and
dominated its surroundings. Thus Joan of Arc had seen it when at the
head of her victorious army she conducted the king to Rheims for his
coronation. She was nearing the fulfillment of her assignment, the
completion of the great labor laid upon her by the voices of her saints.
Mark Twain tells of Joan's approach to Rheims, of the tide of cheers
that swept her ranks at the vision of the distant towers:
And as for Joan of Arc, there where she sat her horse,
gazing, clothed all in white armor, dreamy, beautiful, and
in her face a deep, deep joy, a joy not of earth; oh, she
was not flesh, she was spiritual! Her sublime mission was
closing--closing in flawless triumph. To-morrow she could
say, "It is finished--let me go free."
It was the 16th of July that Joan looked down upon Rheims, and now, four
hundred and eighty-five years later, it was again July, with the same
summer glory on the woods, the same green and scarlet in the poppied
fields, the same fair valley, the same stately towers rising to the sky.
But no one can ever feel what Joan felt, can ever put into words, ever
so faintly, what that moment and that vision meant to the Domremy
shepherd girl.
Descending the plain, we entered the city, crossed a bridge, and made
our way to the cathedral square. Then presently we were at the doorway
where Joan and her king had entered--the portal which has been called
the most beautiful this side of Paradise.
How little we dreamed that we were among the last to look upon it in its
glory--that disfigurement and destruction lay only a few weeks ahead!
It is not required any more that one should write descriptively of the
church of Rheims. It has been done so thoroughly, and so often, by those
so highly qualified for the undertaking, that such supplementary remarks
as I might offer would hardly rise even to the dignity of an
impertinence. Pergussen, who must have been an authority, for the
guidebook quotes him, called it, "perhaps the most beautiful structure
produced in the Middle Ages."
Nothing [he says] can exceed the majesty of its deeply
recessed portals, the beauty of the rose window that
surmounts them, or the elegance of the gallery that
completes the facade and serves as a basement to the light
and graceful towers that crown the composition.
The cathedral was already two hundred years old when Joan arrived in
1429. But it must have looked quite fresh and new then, for, nearly five
centuries later, it seemed to have suffered little. Some of the five
hundred and thirty statues of its entrance were weatherworn and scarred,
but the general effect was not disturbed.
Many kings had preceded Joan and her sovereign through the sacred
entrance. Long before the cathedral was built French sovereigns had come
to Rheims for their coronation, to be anointed with some drops of the
inexhaustible oil which a white dove had miraculously brought from
heaven for the baptism of Clovis. That had been nearly a thousand years
before, but in Joan's day the sacred vessel and its holy contents were
still preserved in the ancient abbey of St. Remi, and would be used for
the anointing of her king. The Archbishop of Rheims and his canons, with
a deputy of nobles, had been sent for the awesome relic, after the
nobles had sworn upon their lives to restore it to St. Remi when the
coronation was over. The abbot himself, attended by this splendid
escort, brought the precious vessel, and the crowd fell prostrate and
prayed while this holiest of objects, for it had been made in heaven,
passed by. We are told that the abbot, attended by the archbishop and
those others, entered the crowded church, followed by the five mounted
knights, who rode down the great central aisle, clear to the choir, and
then at a signal backed their prancing steeds all the distance to the
great doors.
It was a mighty assemblage that had gathered for the crowning of Joan's
king. France, overrun by an invader, had known no real king for
years--had, indeed, well-nigh surrendered her nationality. Now the
saints themselves had taken up their cause, and in the person of a young
girl from an obscure village had given victory to their arms and brought
redemption to their throne. No wonder the vast church was packed and
that crowds were massed outside. From all directions had come pilgrims
to the great event--persons of every rank, among them two shepherds,
Joan's aged father and uncle, who had walked from Domremy, one hundred
and twenty miles, to verify with their own eyes what their ears could
not credit.
Very likely the cathedral at Rheims has never known such a throng since
that day, nor heard such a mighty shout as went up when Joan and the
king, side by side, and followed by a splendid train, appeared at the
great side entrance and moved slowly to the altar.
I think there must have fallen a deep hush then--a petrified stillness
that lasted through the long ceremonial, while every eye feasted itself
upon the young girl standing there at the king's side, holding her
victorious standard above him--the banner that "had borne the burden and
had earned the victory," as she would one day testify at her trial. I am
sure that vast throng would keep silence, scarcely breathing, until the
final word was spoken and the dauphin had accepted the crown and placed
it upon his head. But then we may hear borne faintly down the centuries
the roar of renewed shouting that told to those waiting without that the
great ceremony was ended, that Charles VII of France had been anointed
king. In the _Recollections_ Mark Twain makes the Sieur de Conte say:
What a crash there was! All about us cries and cheers, and
the chanting of the choir and the groaning of the organ; and
outside the clamoring of the bells and the booming of the
cannon.
The fantastic dream, the incredible dream, the impossible
dream of the peasant child stood fulfilled.
It had become reality--perhaps in that old day it even _seemed_
reality--but now, after five hundred years, it has become once more a
dream--to-day _our_ dream--and in the filmy picture we see the shepherd
girl on her knees, saying to the crowned king:
"My work which was given me to do is finished; give me your peace and
let me go back to my mother, who is poor and old and has need of me."
But the king raises her up and praises her and confers upon her nobility
and titles, and asks her to name a reward for her service, and in the
old dream we hear her ask favor for her village--that Domremy, "poor and
hard pressed by reason of the war," may have its taxes remitted.
Nothing for herself--no more than that, and in the presence of all the
great assemblage Charles VII pronounces the decree that, by grace of
Joan of Arc, Domremy shall be free from taxes forever.
Here within these walls it was all reality five hundred years ago. We do
not study this interior to discover special art values or to distinguish
in what manner it differs from others we have seen. For us the light
from its great rose window and upper arches is glorified because once it
fell upon Joan of Arc in that supreme moment when she saw her labor
finished and asked only that she might return to Domremy and her flocks.
The statuary in the niches are holy because they looked upon that scene,
the altar paving is sanctified because it felt the pressure of her feet.
We wandered about the great place, but we came back again and again to
the altar, and, looking through the railing, dreamed once more of that
great moment when a frail shepherd girl began anew the history of
France.
Back of the altar was a statue of Joan unlike any we have seen
elsewhere, and to us more beautiful. It was not Joan with her banner
aloft, her eyes upward. It was Joan with her eyes lowered, looking at no
outward thing, her face passive--the saddest face and the saddest eyes
in the world. It was Joan the sacrifice--of her people and her king.