DOMREMY
We were well down in the Vosges now and beginning to inquire for
Domremy. How strange it seemed to be actually making inquiries for a
place that always before had been just a part of an old legend--a
half-mythical story of a little girl who, tending her sheep, had heard
the voices of angels. One had the feeling that there could never really
be such a place at all, that, even had it once existed, it must have
vanished long ago; that to ask the way to it now would be like those who
in some old fairy tale come back after ages of enchantment and inquire
for places and people long forgotten. Domremy! No, it was not possible.
We should meet puzzled, blank looks, pitying smiles, in answer to our
queries. We should never find one able to point a way and say, "That is
the road to Domremy." One could as easily say "the road to Camelot."
Yet there came a time when we must ask. We had been passing through
miles of wonderful forest, with regularly cut roads leading away at
intervals, suggesting a vast preserved estate, when we came out to an
open hill land, evidently a grazing country, with dividing roads and no
definite markings. So we stopped a humble-looking old man and
hesitatingly, rather falteringly, asked him the road to Domremy. He
regarded us a moment, then said very gently, pointing, "It is down there
just a little way."
So we were near--quite near--perhaps even now passing a spot where Joan
had tended her sheep. Our informant turned to watch us pass. He knew why
we were going to Domremy. He could have been a descendant of those who
had played with Joan.
Even now it was hard to believe that Domremy would be just an old
village, such a village as Joan had known, where humble folk led humble
lives tending their flocks and small acres. Very likely it had become a
tourist resort--a mere locality, with a hotel. It was only when we were
actually in the streets of a decaying, time-beaten little hamlet and
were told that this was indeed Domremy, the home of Joan of Arc, that we
awoke to the actuality of the place and to the realization that in
character at least it had not greatly changed.
We drove to the church--an ancient, weatherworn little edifice. The
invaders destroyed it the same year that Joan set out on her march, but
when Joan had given safety to France the fragments were gathered and
rebuilt, so if it is not in its entirety the identical chapel where Joan
worshiped, it contains, at least, portions of the original structure and
stands upon the same ground. In front of the church is a bronze statue
of the Maid, and above the entrance a painting of Joan listening to the
voices. But these are modern. Inside are more precious things.
It is a plain, humble interior, rather too fresh and new looking for
its antiquity, perhaps because of the whitened walls. But near the altar
there is an object that does not disappoint. It is an ancient baptismal
font--the original font of the little ruined chapel--the vessel in which
Joan of Arc was baptized. I think there can be no question of its
authenticity. It would be a holy object to the people of Domremy; to
them Joan was already a saint at the time of her death, and any object
that had served her was sacred. The relic dug from the ruined chapel
would be faithfully guarded, and there would be many still alive to
identify it when the church's restoration was complete and the ancient
vessel set in place.
It seems a marvelous thing to be able to look upon an object that may be
regarded as the ceremonial starting point of a grace that was to redeem
a nation. Surely, if ever angels stood by to observe the rites of men
they gathered with those humble shepherd folk about the little basin
where a tiny soul was being consecrated to their special service.
In the church also is the headstone from the grave of Joan's godmother,
with an ancient inscription which one may study out, and travel back a
long way. Near it is another object--one that ranks in honor with the
baptismal font--the statuette of St. Marguerite, before which Joan
prayed. Like the font this would be a holy thing, even in Joan's
lifetime, and would be preserved and handed down. To me it seems almost
too precious to remain in that ancient, perishing church. It is
something that Joan of Arc not only saw and touched, but to which she
gave spiritual adoration. To me it seems the most precious, the most
sacred relic in France. The old church appears so poor a protection for
it. Yet I should be sorry to see it taken elsewhere.
[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF JOAN OF ARC]
Joan's house is only a step away--a remnant of a house, for, though it
was not demolished like the church, it has suffered from alterations,
and portions of it were destroyed. Whatever remained at the time of
Louis XI would seem to have been preserved about as it was then, though
of course restored; the royal arms of France, with those accorded by
Charles VII to Joan and her family, were combined ornamentally above the
door with the date, 1481, and the inscription, in old French, "_Vive
labeur; vive le roy Loys._" The son of Joan's king must have felt that
it was proper to preserve the birthplace of the girl who had saved his
throne.
Doubtless the main walls of the old house of Jacques d'Arc are the same
that Joan knew. Joan's mother lived there until 1438, and it was less
than fifty years later that Louis XI gave orders for the restoration.
The old walls were solidly built. It is not likely that they could have
fallen to complete ruin in that time. The rest is mainly new.
What the inside of the old house was in Joan's time we can only imagine.
The entrance room was the general room, I suppose, and it was here, we
are told, that Joan was born. Mark Twain has imagined a scene in the
house of Jacques d'Arc where a hungry straggler comes one night and
knocks at the door and is admitted to the firelit room. He tells us how
Joan gave the wanderer her porridge--against her father's argument, for
those were times of sore stress--and how the stranger rewarded them all
with the great Song of Roland. The general room would be the setting of
that scene.
Behind it is a little dungeon-like apartment which is shown as Joan's
chamber. The walls and ceiling of this poor place are very old; possibly
they are of Joan's time--no one can really say. In one wall there is a
recess, now protected by a heavy wire screen, which means that Joan set
up her shrine there, the St. Marguerite and her other holy things. She
would pray to them night and morning, but oftener I think she would
leave this dim prison for the consolation of the little church across
the way.
The whole house is a kind of museum now, and the upper floor is
especially fitted with cases for books and souvenirs.
In the grounds there is a fine statue by Mercie, and the whole place is
leafy and beautiful. It is not easy, however, to imagine there the
presence of Joan. That is easier in the crooked streets of the village,
and still easier along the river and the fields. The Fairy
Tree--_l'Arbre Fee de Bourlement_--where Joan and her comrades played,
and where later she heard the voices, is long since gone, and the spot
is marked by a church which we cared to view only from a distance. It
seems too bad that any church should be there, and especially that one.
The spot itself, marked by a mere tablet, or another tree, would be
enough.
It was in January, 1429, that Joan and her uncle Laxart left Domremy for
Vaucouleurs to ask the governor to give her a military escort to the
uncrowned king at Chinon. She never came back. Less than half a year
later she had raised the siege at Orleans, fought Patay, and conducted
the king to his coronation at Rheims. She would have returned then, but
the king was afraid to let her go. Neither did he have the courage to
follow or support her brilliant leadership. He was weak and paltry.
When, as the result of his dalliance, she was captured at Compiegne, he
allowed her to suffer a year of wretched imprisonment, making no attempt
at rescue or ransom, and in the end to be burned at Rouen as a witch.
I have read in an old French book an attempt to excuse the king, to show
that he did not have armed force enough to go to Joan's rescue, but I
failed to find there any evidence that he even contemplated such an
attempt. I do find that when Joan had been dead thirteen years and
France, strong and united, was safe for excursions, he made a trip to
Lorraine, accompanied by Dunois, Robert de Baudricourt, and others of
Joan's favorite generals. They visited Domremy, and Baudricourt pointed
out to the king that there seemed to be a sadness in the landscape. It
is said that this visit caused Charles to hasten the process of Joan's
rehabilitation--to reverse the verdict of heresy and idolatry and
witchcraft under which she had died. But as the new hearing did not
begin until eleven years after the king's visit to Domremy, nearly
twenty-five years after Joan's martyrdom, the word "hasten" does not
seem to apply. If Charles VII finally bestirred himself in that process,
it was rather to show before he died that he held his crown not by the
favor of Satan but of saints.
The memory of Joan of Arc's fate must always be a bitter one to France,
and the generations have never ceased to make atonement. Her martyrdom
has seemed so unnecessary--such a reproach upon the nation she saved.
Yet perhaps it was necessary. Joan in half a year had accomplished what
the French armies, without her, had been unable to do in three quarters
of a century--she had crippled the English power in France. Her work was
not finished--though defeated, the enemy still remained on French soil,
and unless relentlessly assailed would recover. After the coronation at
Rheims there would seem to have fallen, even upon Joan's loyal
followers, a reaction, a period of indifference and indolence. Joan's
fearful death at the stake awoke her people as nothing else could have
done.
By a lonely roadside far up in Normandy we passed, one day, a small
stone column which recorded how upon this spot was delivered the battle
of Formigny, April 15th, in the year 1450, under the reign of Charles
VII, and how the French were victorious and the English armies forced to
abandon Norman soil. Joan of Arc had been dead nineteen years when that
final battle was fought, but it was her spirit that gave the victory.