FOUNDED ON THE PRECEDING THEME OF SUDDEN DEATH
"Whence the sound
Of instruments, that made melodious chime,
Was heard, of harp and organ; and who moved
Their stops and chords was seen; his volant touch
Instinct through all proportions, low and high,
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue."
_Par. Lost_, Bk. XI.
_Tumultuosissimamente_
Passion of sudden death! that once in youth I read and interpreted by
the shadows of thy averted signs [Footnote: "_Averted signs_":--I read
the course and changes of the lady's agony in the succession of her
involuntary gestures; but it must be remembered that I read all this
from the rear, never once catching the lady's full face, and even her
profile imperfectly.]!--rapture of panic taking the shape (which
amongst tombs in churches I have seen) of woman bursting her sepulchral
bonds--of woman's Ionic form bending forward from the ruins of her
grave with arching foot, with eyes upraised, with clasped adoring
hands--waiting, watching, trembling, praying for the trumpet's call to
rise from dust for ever! Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity
on the brink of almighty abysses!--vision that didst start back, that
didst reel away, like a shrivelling scroll from before the wrath of fire
racing on the wings of the wind! Epilepsy so brief of horror, wherefore
is it that thou canst not die? Passing so suddenly into darkness,
wherefore is it that still thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon
the gorgeous mosaics of dreams? Fragment of music too passionate, heard
once, and heard no more, what aileth thee, that thy deep rolling chords
come up at intervals through all the worlds of sleep, and after forty
years have lost no element of horror?
I
Lo, it is summer--almighty summer! The everlasting gates of life and
summer are thrown open wide; and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant as
a savannah, the unknown lady from the dreadful vision and I myself are
floating--she upon a fairy pinnace, and I upon an English three-decker.
Both of us are wooing gales of festal happiness within the domain of
our common country, within that ancient watery park, within the pathless
chase of ocean, where England takes her pleasure as a huntress through
winter and summer, from the rising to the setting sun. Ah, what a
wilderness of floral beauty was hidden, or was suddenly revealed, upon
the tropic islands through which the pinnace moved! And upon her deck
what a bevy of human flowers: young women how lovely, young men how
noble, that were dancing together, and slowly drifting towards _us_
amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms from forests and gorgeous
corymbi from vintages, amidst natural carolling, and the echoes of sweet
girlish laughter. Slowly the pinnace nears us, gaily she hails us, and
silently she disappears beneath the shadow of our mighty bows. But then,
as at some signal from heaven, the music, and the carols, and the sweet
echoing of girlish laughter--all are hushed. What evil has smitten the
pinnace, meeting or overtaking her? Did ruin to our friends couch within
our own dreadful shadow? Was our shadow the shadow of death? I looked
over the bow for an answer, and, behold! the pinnace was dismantled; the
revel and the revellers were found no more; the glory of the vintage was
dust; and the forests with their beauty were left without a witness upon
the seas. "But where," and I turned to our crew--"where are the lovely
women that danced beneath the awning of flowers and clustering corymbi?
Whither have fled the noble young men that danced with _them_?" Answer
there was none. But suddenly the man at the mast-head, whose countenance
darkened with alarm, cried out, "Sail on the weather beam! Down she
comes upon us: in seventy seconds she also will founder."
II
I looked to the weather side, and the summer had departed. The sea was
rocking, and shaken with gathering wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty
mists, which grouped themselves into arches and long cathedral aisles.
Down one of these, with the fiery pace of a quarrel from a cross-bow,
ran a frigate right athwart our course. "Are they mad?" some voice
exclaimed from our deck. "Do they woo their ruin?" But in a moment, as
she was close upon us, some impulse of a heady current or local vortex
gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off she forged without a shock.
As she ran past us, high aloft amongst the shrouds stood the lady of
the pinnace. The deeps opened ahead in malice to receive her, towering
surges of foam ran after her, the billows were fierce to catch her. But
far away she was borne into desert spaces of the sea: whilst still by
sight I followed her, as she ran before the howling gale, chased by
angry sea-birds and by maddening billows; still I saw her, as at the
moment when she ran past us, standing amongst the shrouds, with her
white draperies streaming before the wind. There she stood, with hair
dishevelled, one hand clutched amongst the tackling--rising, sinking,
fluttering, trembling, praying; there for leagues I saw her as she
stood, raising at intervals one hand to heaven, amidst the fiery crests
of the pursuing waves and the raving of the storm; until at last, upon
a sound from afar of malicious laughter and mockery, all was hidden for
ever in driving showers; and afterwards, but when I knew not, nor how.
III
Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, wailing over the
dead that die before the dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored
to some familiar shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking;
and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned
with a garland of white roses about her head for some great festival,
running along the solitary strand in extremity of haste. Her running
was the running of panic; and often she looked back as to some dreadful
enemy in the rear. But, when I leaped ashore, and followed on her steps
to warn her of a peril in front, alas! from me she fled as from another
peril, and vainly I shouted to her of quicksands that lay ahead. Faster
and faster she ran; round a promontory of rocks she wheeled out of
sight; in an instant I also wheeled round it, but only to see the
treacherous sands gathering above her head. Already her person was
buried; only the fair young head and the diadem of white roses around it
were still visible to the pitying heavens; and, last of all, was visible
one white marble arm. I saw by the early twilight this fair young head,
as it was sinking down to darkness--saw this marble arm, as it rose
above her head and her treacherous grave, tossing, faltering, rising,
clutching, as at some false deceiving hand stretched out from the
clouds--saw this marble arm uttering her dying hope, and then uttering
her dying despair. The head, the diadem, the arm--these all had sunk; at
last over these also the cruel quicksand had closed; and no memorial of
the fair young girl remained on earth, except my own solitary tears, and
the funeral bells from the desert seas, that, rising again more softly,
sang a requiem over the grave of the buried child, and over her blighted
dawn.
I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have ever given to the
memory of those that died before the dawn, and by the treachery of
earth, our mother. But suddenly the tears and funeral bells were hushed
by a shout as of many nations, and by a roar as from some great king's
artillery, advancing rapidly along the valleys, and heard afar by echoes
from the mountains. "Hush!" I said, as I bent my ear earthwards to
listen--"hush!--this either is the very anarchy of strife, or else"--and
then I listened more profoundly, and whispered as I raised my head--"or
else, oh heavens! it is _victory_ that is final, victory that swallows
up all strife."
IV
Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land and sea to some distant
kingdom, and placed upon a triumphal car, amongst companions crowned
with laurel. The darkness of gathering midnight, brooding over all the
land, hid from us the mighty crowds that were weaving restlessly about
ourselves as a centre: we heard them, but saw them not. Tidings had
arrived, within an hour, of a grandeur that measured itself against
centuries; too full of pathos they were, too full of joy, to utter
themselves by other language than by tears, by restless anthems, and
_Te Deums_ reverberated from the choirs and orchestras of earth. These
tidings we that sat upon the laurelled car had it for our privilege to
publish amongst all nations. And already, by signs audible through the
darkness, by snortings and tramplings, our angry horses, that knew no
fear or fleshly weariness, upbraided us with delay. Wherefore _was_ it
that we delayed? We waited for a secret word, that should bear witness
to the hope of nations as now accomplished for ever. At midnight
the secret word arrived; which word was--_Waterloo and Recovered
Christendom!_ The dreadful word shone by its own light; before us it
went; high above our leaders' heads it rode, and spread a golden light
over the paths which we traversed. Every city, at the presence of the
secret word, threw open its gates. The rivers were conscious as we
crossed. All the forests, as we ran along their margins, shivered in
homage to the secret word. And the darkness comprehended it.
Two hours after midnight we approached a mighty Minster. Its gates,
which rose to the clouds, were closed. But, when the dreadful word that
rode before us reached them with its golden light, silently they moved
back upon their hinges; and at a flying gallop our equipage entered the
grand aisle of the cathedral. Headlong was our pace; and at every altar,
in the little chapels and oratories to the right hand and left of our
course, the lamps, dying or sickening, kindled anew in sympathy with the
secret word that was flying past. Forty leagues we might have run in the
cathedral, and as yet no strength of morning light had reached us, when
before us we saw the aerial galleries of organ and choir. Every pinnacle
of fretwork, every station of advantage amongst the traceries, was
crested by white-robed choristers that sang deliverance; that wept no
more tears, as once their fathers had wept; but at intervals that sang
together to the generations, saying,
"Chant the deliverer's praise in every tongue,"
and receiving answers from afar,
"Such as once in heaven and earth were sung."
And of their chanting was no end; of our headlong pace was neither pause
nor slackening.
Thus as we ran like torrents--thus as we swept with bridal rapture over
the Campo Santo [Footnote: "_Campo Santo_":--It is probable that most
of my readers will be acquainted with the history of the Campo Santo (or
cemetery) at Pisa, composed of earth brought from Jerusalem from a bed
of sanctity as the highest prize which the noble piety of crusaders
could ask or imagine. To readers who are unacquainted with England, or
who (being English) are yet unacquainted with the cathedral cities of
England, it may be right to mention that the graves within-side the
cathedrals often form a flat pavement over which carriages and horses
_might_ run; and perhaps a boyish remembrance of one particular
cathedral, across which I had seen passengers walk and burdens carried,
as about two centuries back they were through the middle of St.
Paul's in London, may have assisted my dream.] of the cathedral
graves--suddenly we became aware of a vast necropolis rising upon
the far-off horizon--a city of sepulchres, built within the saintly
cathedral for the warrior dead that rested from their feuds on earth. Of
purple granite was the necropolis; yet, in the first minute, it lay
like a purple stain upon the horizon, so mighty was the distance. In the
second minute it trembled through many changes, growing into terraces
and towers of wondrous altitude, so mighty was the pace. In the third
minute already, with our dreadful gallop, we were entering its suburbs.
Vast sarcophagi rose on every side, having towers and turrets that, upon
the limits of the central aisle, strode forward with haughty intrusion,
that ran back with mighty shadows into answering recesses. Every
sarcophagus showed many bas-reliefs--bas-reliefs of battles and of
battle-fields; battles from forgotten ages, battles from yesterday;
battle-fields that, long since, nature had healed and reconciled to
herself with the sweet oblivion of flowers; battle-fields that were yet
angry and crimson with carnage. Where the terraces ran, there did _we_
run; where the towers curved, there did _we_ curve. With the flight
of swallows our horses swept round every angle. Like rivers in flood
wheeling round headlands, like hurricanes that ride into the secrets of
forests, faster than ever light unwove the mazes of darkness, our flying
equipage carried earthly passions, kindled warrior instincts, amongst
the dust that lay around us--dust oftentimes of our noble fathers that
had slept in God from Crécy to Trafalgar. And now had we reached the
last sarcophagus, now were we abreast of the last bas-relief, already
had we recovered the arrow-like flight of the illimitable central aisle,
when coming up this aisle to meet us we beheld afar off a female child,
that rode in a carriage as frail as flowers. The mists which went before
her hid the fawns that drew her, but could not hide the shells and
tropic flowers with which she played--but could not hide the lovely
smiles by which she uttered her trust in the mighty cathedral, and in
the cherubim that looked down upon her from the mighty shafts of its
pillars. Face to face she was meeting us; face to face she rode, as
if danger there were none. "Oh, baby!" I exclaimed, "shalt thou be the
ransom for Waterloo? Must we, that carry tidings of great joy to every
people, be messengers of ruin to thee!" In horror I rose at the thought;
but then also, in horror at the thought, rose one that was sculptured
on a bas-relief--a Dying Trumpeter. Solemnly from the field of battle he
rose to his feet; and, unslinging his stony trumpet, carried it, in his
dying anguish, to his stony lips--sounding once, and yet once again;
proclamation that, in _thy_ ears, oh baby! spoke from the battlements of
death. Immediately deep shadows fell between us, and aboriginal silence.
The choir had ceased to sing. The hoofs of our horses, the dreadful
rattle of our harness, the groaning of our wheels, alarmed the graves
no more. By horror the bas-relief had been unlocked unto life. By horror
we, that were so full of life, we men and our horses, with their fiery
fore-legs rising in mid air to their everlasting gallop, were frozen
to a bas-relief. Then a third time the trumpet sounded; the seals were
taken off all pulses; life, and the frenzy of life, tore into their
channels again; again the choir burst forth in sunny grandeur, as from
the muffling of storms and darkness; again the thunderings of our horses
carried temptation into the graves. One cry burst from our lips, as the
clouds, drawing off from the aisle, showed it empty before us.--"Whither
has the infant fled?--is the young child caught up to God?" Lo! afar
off, in a vast recess, rose three mighty windows to the clouds; and on a
level with their summits, at height insuperable to man, rose an altar of
purest alabaster. On its eastern face was trembling a crimson glory.
A glory was it from the reddening dawn that now streamed _through_ the
windows? Was it from the crimson robes of the martyrs painted _on_ the
windows? Was it from the bloody bas-reliefs of earth? There, suddenly,
within that crimson radiance, rose the apparition of a woman's head, and
then of a woman's figure. The child it was--grown up to woman's height.
Clinging to the horns of the altar, voiceless she stood--sinking,
rising, raving, despairing; and behind the volume of incense that, night
and day, streamed upwards from the altar, dimly was seen the fiery font,
and the shadow of that dreadful being who should have baptized her with
the baptism of death. But by her side was kneeling her better angel,
that hid his face with wings; that wept and pleaded for _her_; that
prayed when _she_ could _not_; that fought with Heaven by tears for
_her_ deliverance; which also, as he raised his immortal countenance
from his wings, I saw, by the glory in his eye, that from Heaven he had
won at last.
V
Then was completed the passion of the mighty fugue. The golden tubes of
the organ, which as yet had but muttered at intervals--gleaming amongst
clouds and surges of incense--threw up, as from fountains unfathomable,
columns of heart-shattering music. Choir and anti-choir were filling
fast with unknown voices. Thou also, Dying Trumpeter, with thy love
that was victorious, and thy anguish that was finishing, didst enter
the tumult; trumpet and echo--farewell love, and farewell anguish--rang
through the dreadful _sanctus_. Oh, darkness of the grave! that from the
crimson altar and from the fiery font wert visited and searched by the
effulgence in the angel's eye--were these indeed thy children? Pomps of
life, that, from the burials of centuries, rose again to the voice of
perfect joy, did ye indeed mingle with the festivals of Death? Lo! as I
looked back for seventy leagues through the mighty cathedral, I saw the
quick and the dead that sang together to God, together that sang to the
generations of man. All the hosts of jubilation, like armies that ride
in pursuit, moved with one step. Us, that, with laurelled heads, were
passing from the cathedral, they overtook, and, as with a garment, they
wrapped us round with thunders greater than our own. As brothers we
moved together; to the dawn that advanced, to the stars that fled;
rendering thanks to God in the highest--that, having hid His face
through one generation behind thick clouds of War, once again was
ascending, from the Campo Santo of Waterloo was ascending, in the
visions of Peace; rendering thanks for thee, young girl! whom having
overshadowed with His ineffable passion of death, suddenly did God
relent, suffered thy angel to turn aside His arm, and even in thee,
sister unknown! shown to me for a moment only to be hidden for ever,
found an occasion to glorify His goodness. A thousand times, amongst
the phantoms of sleep, have I seen thee entering the gates of the golden
dawn, with the secret word riding before thee, with the armies of the
grave behind thee,--seen thee sinking, rising, raving, despairing; a
thousand times in the worlds of sleep have I seen thee followed by
God's angel through storms, through desert seas, through the darkness
of quicksands, through dreams and the dreadful revelations that are in
dreams; only that at the last, with one sling of His victorious arm, He
might snatch thee back from ruin, and might emblazon in thy deliverance
the endless resurrections of His love!
JOAN OF ARC
[Footnote: "_Arc_":--Modern France, that should know a great
deal better than myself, insists that the name is not D'Arc--_i.e._,
of Arc--but _Darc_. Now it happens sometimes that, if a person whose
position guarantees his access to the best information will content
himself with gloomy dogmatism, striking the table with his fist, and
saying in a terrific voice, "It _is_ so, and there's an end of it," one
bows deferentially, and submits. But, if, unhappily for himself, won
by this docility, he relents too amiably into reasons and arguments,
probably one raises an insurrection against him that may never be
crushed; for in the fields of logic one can skirmish, perhaps, as well
as he. Had he confined himself to dogmatism, he would have intrenched
his position in darkness, and have hidden his own vulnerable points.
But coming down to base reasons he lets in light, and one sees where
to plant the blows. Now, the worshipful reason of modern France for
disturbing the old received spelling is that Jean Hordal, a descendant
of La Pucelle's brother, spelled the name _Darc_ in 1612. But what of
that? It is notorious that what small matter of spelling Providence had
thought fit to disburse amongst man in the seventeenth century was all
monopolised by printers; now, M. Hordal was _not_ a printer.]
What is to be thought of _her_? What is to be thought of the poor
shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that--like the
Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judea--rose suddenly
out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration,
rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies,
and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings? The Hebrew
boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an _act_, by a victorious
_act_, such as no man could deny. But so did the girl of Lorraine, if
we read her story as it was read by those who saw her nearest. Adverse
armies bore witness to the boy as no pretender; but so they did to the
gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw them _from a station of
good will_, both were found true and loyal to any promises involved in
their first acts. Enemies it was that made the difference between
their subsequent fortunes. The boy rose to a splendour and a noonday
prosperity, both personal and public, that rang through the records
of his people, and became a byword among his posterity for a thousand
years, until the sceptre was departing from Judah. The poor, forsaken
girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from that cup of rest which she
had secured for France. She never sang together with the songs that rose
in her native Domrémy as echoes to the departing steps of invaders.
She mingled not in the festal dances at Vaucouleurs which celebrated in
rapture the redemption of France. No! for her voice was then silent; no!
for her feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl! whom, from
earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and self-sacrifice,
this was amongst the strongest pledges for _thy_ truth, that never
once--no, not for a moment of weakness--didst thou revel in the vision
of coronets and honour from man. Coronets for thee! Oh, no! Honours,
if they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood.
[Footnote: "_Those that share thy blood_":--A collateral relative of
Joanna's was subsequently ennobled by the title of _Du Lys_.] Daughter
of Domrémy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be
sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, King of France, but she will
not hear thee. Cite her by the apparitors to come and receive a robe
of honour, but she will be found _en contumace_. When the thunders of
universal France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of
the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young
shepherd girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to
do, that was thy portion in this life; that was thy destiny; and not for
a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short;
and the sleep which is in the grave is long; let me use that life, so
transitory, for the glory of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort
the sleep which is so long! This pure creature--pure from every
suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure
in senses more obvious--never once did this holy child, as regarded
herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travelling to
meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death; she saw
not in vision, perhaps, the aerial altitude of the fiery scaffold,
the spectators without end, on every road, pouring into Rouen as to a
coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces
all around, the pitying eye that lurked but here and there, until nature
and imperishable truth broke loose from artificial restraints--these
might not be apparent through the mists of the hurrying future. But the
voice that called her to death, _that_ she heard for ever.
Great was the throne of France even in those days, and great was He that
sat upon it; but well Joanna knew that not the throne, nor he that sat
upon it, was for _her_; but, on the contrary, that she was for _them_;
not she by them, but they by her, should rise from the dust. Gorgeous
were the lilies of France, and for centuries had the privilege to spread
their beauty over land and sea, until, in another century, the wrath
of God and man combined to wither them; but well Joanna knew, early at
Domrémy she had read that bitter truth, that the lilies of France would
decorate no garland for _her_. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would
ever bloom for _her_!
* * * * *
But stay. What reason is there for taking up this subject of Joanna
precisely in the spring of 1847? Might it not have been left till the
spring of 1947, or, perhaps, left till called for? Yes, but it _is_
called for, and clamorously. You are aware, reader, that amongst the
many original thinkers whom modern France has produced, one of the
reputed leaders is M. Michelet. All these writers are of a revolutionary
cast; not in a political sense merely, but in all senses; mad,
oftentimes, as March hares; crazy with the laughing gas of recovered
liberty; drunk with the wine cup of their mighty Revolution, snorting,
whinnying, throwing up their heels, like wild horses in the boundless
pampas, and running races of defiance with snipes, or with the winds, or
with their own shadows, if they can find nothing else to challenge. Some
time or other, I, that have leisure to read, may introduce _you_, that
have not, to two or three dozen of these writers; of whom I can assure
you beforehand that they are often profound, and at intervals are even
as impassioned as if they were come of our best English blood. But now,
confining our attention to M. Michelet, we in England--who know him
best by his worst book, the book against priests, etc.--know him
disadvantageously. That book is a rhapsody of incoherence. But his
"History of France" is quite another thing. A man, in whatsoever craft
he sails, cannot stretch away out of sight when he is linked to the
windings of the shore by towing-ropes of History. Facts, and the
consequences of facts, draw the writer back to the falconer's lure
from the giddiest heights of speculation. Here, therefore--in his
"France"--if not always free from flightiness, if now and then off like
a rocket for an airy wheel in the clouds, M. Michelet, with natural
politeness, never forgets that he has left a large audience waiting
for him on earth, and gazing upward in anxiety for his return; return,
therefore, he does. But History, though clear of certain temptations in
one direction, has separate dangers of its own. It is impossible so to
write a history of France, or of England--works becoming every hour
more indispensable to the inevitably political man of this day--without
perilous openings for error. If I, for instance, on the part of England,
should happen to turn my labours into that channel, and (on the model of
Lord Percy going to Chevy Chase)
"A vow to God should make
My pleasure in the Michelet woods
Three summer days to take,"
probably, from simple delirium, I might hunt M. Michelet into _delirium
tremens_. Two strong angels stand by the side of History, whether French
history or English, as heraldic supporters: the angel of research on
the left hand, that must read millions of dusty parchments, and of pages
blotted with lies; the angel of meditation on the right hand, that must
cleanse these lying records with fire, even as of old the draperies of
_asbestos_ were cleansed, and must quicken them into regenerated life.
Willingly I acknowledge that no man will ever avoid innumerable errors
of detail; with so vast a compass of ground to traverse, this is
impossible; but such errors (though I have a bushel on hand, at M.
Michelet's service) are not the game I chase; it is the bitter and
unfair spirit in which M. Michelet writes against England. Even _that_,
after all, is but my secondary object; the real one is Joanna, the
Pucelle d'Orléans herself.
I am not going to write the history of La Pucelle: to do this, or even
circumstantially to report the history of her persecution and bitter
death, of her struggle with false witnesses and with ensnaring judges,
it would be necessary to have before us _all_ the documents, and
therefore the collection only now forthcoming in Paris. [Footnote:
"_Only now forthcoming_":--In 1847 _began_ the publication (from
official records) of Joanna's trial. It was interrupted, I fear, by the
convulsions of 1848; and whether even yet finished I do not know.] But
_my_ purpose is narrower. There have been great thinkers, disdaining the
careless judgments of contemporaries, who have thrown themselves boldly
on the judgment of a far posterity, that should have had time to review,
to ponder, to compare. There have been great actors on the stage of
tragic humanity that might, with the same depth of confidence, have
appealed from the levity of compatriot friends--too heartless for the
sublime interest of their story, and too impatient for the labour of
sifting its perplexities--to the magnanimity and justice of enemies. To
this class belongs the Maid of Arc. The ancient Romans were too faithful
to the ideal of grandeur in themselves not to relent, after a generation
or two, before the grandeur of Hannibal. Mithridates, a more doubtful
person, yet, merely for the magic perseverance of his indomitable
malice, won from the same Romans the only real honour that ever he
received on earth. And we English have ever shown the same homage to
stubborn enmity. To work unflinchingly for the ruin of England; to say
through life, by word and by deed, _Delenda est Anglia Victrix_!--that
one purpose of malice, faithfully pursued, has quartered some people
upon our national funds of homage as by a perpetual annuity. Better
than an inheritance of service rendered to England herself has sometimes
proved the most insane hatred to England. Hyder Ali, even his son
Tippoo, though so far inferior, and Napoleon, have all benefited by this
disposition among ourselves to exaggerate the merit of diabolic enmity.
Not one of these men was ever capable, in a solitary instance, of
praising an enemy (what do you say to _that_, reader?); and yet in
_their_ behalf, we consent to forget, not their crimes only, but (which
is worse) their hideous bigotry and anti-magnanimous egotism--for
nationality it was not. Suffren, and some half dozen of other French
nautical heroes, because rightly they did us all the mischief they could
(which was really great), are names justly reverenced in England. On the
same principle, La Pucelle d'Orléans, the victorious enemy of England,
has been destined to receive her deepest commemoration from the
magnanimous justice of Englishmen.
Joanna, as we in England should call her, but according to her
own statement, Jeanne (or, as M. Michelet asserts, Jean [Footnote:
"_Jean_":--M. Michelet asserts that there was a mystical meaning at that
era in calling a child _Jean_; it implied a secret commendation of a
child, if not a dedication, to St. John the evangelist, the beloved
disciple, the apostle of love and mysterious visions. But, really, as
the name was so exceedingly common, few people will detect a mystery in
calling a _boy_ by the name of Jack, though it _does_ seem mysterious
to call a girl Jack. It may be less so in France, where a beautiful
practice has always prevailed of giving a boy his mother's
name--preceded and strengthened by a male name, as _Charles Anne_,
_Victor Victoire_. In cases where a mother's memory has been unusually
dear to a son, this vocal memento of her, locked into the circle of
his own name, gives to it the tenderness of a testamentary relic, or a
funeral ring. I presume, therefore, that La Pucelle must have borne the
baptismal name of Jeanne Jean; the latter with no reference, perhaps,
to so sublime a person as St. John, but simply to some relative.]) D'Arc
was born at Domrémy, a village on the marches of Lorraine and Champagne,
and dependent upon the town of Vaucouleurs. I have called her a
Lorrainer, not simply because the word is prettier, but because
Champagne too odiously reminds us English of what are for _us_ imaginary
wines--which, undoubtedly, La Pucelle tasted as rarely as we English: we
English, because the champagne of London is chiefly grown in Devonshire;
La Pucelle, because the champagne of Champagne never, by any chance,
flowed into the fountain of Domrémy, from which only she drank. M.
Michelet will have her to be a _Champenoise_, and for no better
reason than that she "took after her father," who happened to be a
_Champenois_.
These disputes, however, turn on refinements too nice. Domrémy stood
upon the frontiers, and, like other frontiers, produced a _mixed_ race,
representing the _cis_ and the _trans_. A river (it is true) formed the
boundary line at this point--the river Meuse; and _that_, in old days,
might have divided the populations; but in these days it did not; there
were bridges, there were ferries, and weddings crossed from the right
bank to the left. Here lay two great roads, not so much for travellers
that were few, as for armies that were too many by half. These two
roads, one of which was the great highroad between France and Germany,
_decussated_ at this very point; which is a learned way of saying that
they formed a St. Andrew's Cross, or letter X. I hope the compositor
will choose a good large X; in which case the point of intersection, the
_locus_ of conflux and intersection for these four diverging arms,
will finish the reader's geographical education, by showing him to a
hair's-breadth where it was that Domrémy stood. These roads, so grandly
situated, as great trunk arteries between two mighty realms,[Footnote:
And reminding one of that inscription, so justly admired by Paul
Richter, which a Russian Czarina placed on a guide-post near Moscow:
_This is the road that leads to Constantinople._] and haunted for ever
by wars or rumours of wars, decussated (for anything I know to the
contrary) absolutely under Joanna's bedroom window; one rolling away
to the right, past M. D'Arc's old barn, and the other unaccountably
preferring to sweep round that odious man's pig-sty to the left.
On whichever side of the border chance had thrown Joanna, the same love
to France would have been nurtured. For it is a strange fact, noticed
by M. Michelet and others, that the Dukes of Bar and Lorraine had for
generations pursued the policy of eternal warfare with France on their
own account, yet also of eternal amity and league with France in case
anybody else presumed to attack her. Let peace settle upon France, and
before long you might rely upon seeing the little vixen Lorraine flying
at the throat of France. Let France be assailed by a formidable enemy,
and instantly you saw a Duke of Lorraine insisting on having his own
throat cut in support of France; which favour accordingly was cheerfully
granted to him in three great successive battles: twice by the English,
viz., at Crécy and Agincourt, once by the Sultan at Nicopolis.
This sympathy with France during great eclipses, in those that during
ordinary seasons were always teasing her with brawls and guerilla
inroads, strengthened the natural piety to France of those that were
confessedly the children of her own house. The outposts of France, as
one may call the great frontier provinces, were of all localities the
most devoted to the Fleurs de Lys. To witness, at any great crisis, the
generous devotion to these lilies of the little fiery cousin that in
gentler weather was for ever tilting at the breast of France, could not
but fan the zeal of France's legitimate daughters; while to occupy
a post of honour on the frontiers against an old hereditary enemy of
France would naturally stimulate this zeal by a sentiment of martial
pride, by a sense of danger always threatening, and of hatred always
smouldering. That great four-headed road was a perpetual memento to
patriotic ardour. To say "This way lies the road to Paris, and that
other way to Aix-la-Chapelle; this to Prague, that to Vienna," nourished
the warfare of the heart by daily ministrations of sense. The eye that
watched for the gleams of lance or helmet from the hostile frontier, the
ear that listened for the groaning of wheels, made the highroad itself,
with its relations to centres so remote, into a manual of patriotic
duty.
The situation, therefore, _locally_, of Joanna was full of profound
suggestions to a heart that listened for the stealthy steps of change
and fear that too surely were in motion. But, if the place were grand,
the time, the burden of the time, was far more so. The air overhead in
its upper chambers was _hurtling_ with the obscure sound; was dark with
sullen fermenting of storms that had been gathering for a hundred and
thirty years. The battle of Agincourt in Joanna's childhood had reopened
the wounds of France. Crécy and Poictiers, those withering overthrows
for the chivalry of France, had, before Agincourt occurred, been
tranquilised by more than half a century; but this resurrection of their
trumpet wails made the whole series of battles and endless skirmishes
take their stations as parts in one drama. The graves that had closed
sixty years ago seemed to fly open in sympathy with a sorrow that echoed
their own. The monarchy of France laboured in extremity, rocked and
reeled like a ship fighting with the darkness of monsoons. The madness
of the poor king (Charles VI), falling in at such a crisis, like the
case of women labouring in child-birth during the storming of a city,
trebled the awfulness of the time. Even the wild story of the incident
which had immediately occasioned the explosion of this madness--the case
of a man unknown, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself, coming out of a
forest at noonday, laying his hand upon the bridle of the king's horse,
checking him for a moment to say, "Oh, king, thou art betrayed," and
then vanishing, no man knew whither, as he had appeared for no man knew
what--fell in with the universal prostration of mind that laid France on
her knees, as before the slow unweaving of some ancient prophetic
doom. The famines, the extraordinary diseases, the insurrections of the
peasantry up and down Europe--these were chords struck from the same
mysterious harp; but these were transitory chords. There had been others
of deeper and more ominous sound. The termination of the Crusades, the
destruction of the Templars, the Papal interdicts, the tragedies caused
or suffered by the house of Anjou, and by the Emperor--these were full
of a more permanent significance. But, since then, the colossal figure
of feudalism was seen standing, as it were on tiptoe, at Crécy, for
flight from earth: that was a revolution unparalleled; yet _that_ was a
trifle by comparison with the more fearful revolutions that were
mining below the Church. By her own internal schisms, by the abominable
spectacle of a double Pope--so that no man, except through political
bias, could even guess which was Heaven's vicegerent, and which the
creature of Hell--the Church was rehearsing, as in still earlier forms
she had already rehearsed, those vast rents in her foundations which no
man should ever heal.
These were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland in the skies that to
the scientific gazer first caught the colors of the _new_ morning in
advance. But the whole vast range alike of sweeping glooms overhead
dwelt upon all meditative minds, even upon those that could not
distinguish the tendencies nor decipher the forms. It was, therefore,
not her own age alone, as affected by its immediate calamities, that lay
with such weight upon Joanna's mind, but her own age as one section in
a vast mysterious drama, unweaving through a century back, and drawing
nearer continually to some dreadful crisis. Cataracts and rapids were
heard roaring ahead; and signs were seen far back, by help of old men's
memories, which answered secretly to signs now coming forward on the
eye, even as locks answer to keys. It was not wonderful that in such a
haunted solitude, with such a haunted heart, Joanna should see angelic
visions, and hear angelic voices. These voices whispered to her for ever
the duty, self-imposed, of delivering France. Five years she listened
to these monitory voices with internal struggles. At length she could
resist no longer. Doubt gave way; and she left her home for ever in
order to present herself at the dauphin's court. The education of this
poor girl was mean according to the present standard: was ineffably
grand, according to a purer philosophic standard: and only not good for
our age because for us it would be unattainable. She read nothing, for
she could not read; but she had heard others read parts of the Roman
martyrology. She wept in sympathy with the sad "Misereres" of the Romish
Church; she rose to heaven with the glad triumphant "Te Deums" of Rome;
she drew her comfort and her vital strength from the rites of the same
Church. But, next after these spiritual advantages, she owed most to the
advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domrémy was on the brink
of a boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies that
the parish priest (_curé_) was obliged to read mass there once a year,
in order to keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are important, even
in a statistical view: certain weeds mark poverty in the soil; fairies
mark its solitude. As surely as the wolf retires before cities does the
fairy sequester herself from the haunts of the licensed victualer. A
village is too much for her nervous delicacy; at most, she can tolerate
a distant view of a hamlet. We may judge, therefore, by the uneasiness
and extra trouble which they gave to the parson, in what strength the
fairies mustered at Domrémy, and, by a satisfactory consequence, how
thinly sown with men and women must have been that region even in its
inhabited spots. But the forests of Domrémy--those were the glories of
the land: for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient secrets
that towered into tragic strength. "Abbeys there were, and abbey
windows"--"like Moorish temples of the Hindoos"--that exercised even
princely power both in Lorraine and in the German Diets. These had their
sweet bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins or
vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, and scattered
enough, were these abbeys, so as in no degree to disturb the deep
solitude of the region; yet many enough to spread a network or awning
of Christian sanctity over what else might have seemed a heathen
wilderness. This sort of religious talisman being secured, a man the
most afraid of ghosts (like myself, suppose, or the reader) becomes
armed into courage to wander for days in their sylvan recesses. The
mountains of the Vosges, on the eastern frontier of France, have never
attracted much notice from Europe, except in 1813-14 for a few brief
months, when they fell within Napoleon's line of defence against the
Allies. But they are interesting for this among other features, that
they do not, like some loftier ranges, repel woods; the forests and the
hills are on sociable terms. "Live and let live" is their motto.
For this reason, in part, these tracts in Lorraine were a favourite
hunting-ground with the Carlovingian princes. About six hundred years
before Joanna's childhood, Charlemagne was known to have hunted there.
That, of itself, was a grand incident in the traditions of a forest or a
chase. In these vast forests, also, were to be found (if anywhere to
be found) those mysterious fawns that tempted solitary hunters into
visionary and perilous pursuits. Here was seen (if anywhere seen) that
ancient stag who was already nine hundred years old, but possibly a
hundred or two more, when met by Charlemagne; and the thing was put
beyond doubt by the inscription upon his golden collar. I believe
Charlemagne knighted the stag; and, if ever he is met again by a king,
he ought to be made an earl, or, being upon the marches of France, a
marquis. Observe, I don't absolutely vouch for all these things: my own
opinion varies. On a fine breezy forenoon I am audaciously sceptical;
but as twilight sets in my credulity grows steadily, till it becomes
equal to anything that could be desired. And I have heard candid
sportsmen declare that, outside of these very forests, they laughed
loudly at all the dim tales connected with their haunted solitudes, but,
on reaching a spot notoriously eighteen miles deep within them, they
agreed with Sir Roger de Coverley that a good deal might be said on both
sides.
Such traditions, or any others that (like the stag) connect distant
generations with each other, are, for that cause, sublime; and the sense
of the shadowy, connected with such appearances that reveal themselves
or not according to circumstances, leaves a colouring of sanctity over
ancient forests, even in those minds that utterly reject the legend as a
fact.
But, apart from all distinct stories of that order, in any solitary
frontier between two great empires--as here, for instance, or in the
desert between Syria and the Euphrates--there is an inevitable tendency,
in minds of any deep sensibility, to people the solitudes with phantom
images of powers that were of old so vast. Joanna, therefore, in her
quiet occupation of a shepherdess, would be led continually to brood
over the political condition of her country by the traditions of the
past no less than by the mementoes of the local present.
M. Michelet, indeed, says that La Pucelle was not a shepherdess. I beg
his pardon; she was. What he rests upon I guess pretty well: it is the
evidence of a woman called Haumette, the most confidential friend of
Joanna. Now, she is a good witness, and a good girl, and I like her; for
she makes a natural and affectionate report of Joanna's ordinary life.
But still, however good she may be as a witness, Joanna is better; and
she, when speaking to the dauphin, calls herself in the Latin report
_Bergereta_. Even Haumette confesses that Joanna tended sheep in her
girlhood. And I believe that, if Miss Haumette were taking coffee along
with me this very evening (February 12, 1847)--in which there would be
no subject for scandal or for maiden blushes, because I am an intense
philosopher, and Miss H. would be hard upon 450 years old--she would
admit the following comment upon her evidence to be right. A
Frenchman, about forty years ago--M. Simond, in his "Travels"--mentions
accidentally the following hideous scene as one steadily observed and
watched by himself in chivalrous France not very long before the French
Revolution: A peasant was plowing; and the team that drew his plow was
a donkey and a woman. Both were regularly harnessed; both pulled alike.
This is bad enough; but the Frenchman adds that, in distributing his
lashes, the peasant was obviously desirous of being impartial; or, if
either of the yokefellows had a right to complain, certainly it was not
the donkey. Now, in any country where such degradation of females could
be tolerated by the state of manners, a woman of delicacy would shrink
from acknowledging, either for herself or her friend, that she had ever
been addicted to any mode of labour not strictly domestic; because, if
once owning herself a prædial servant, she would be sensible that this
confession extended by probability in the hearer's thoughts to the
having incurred indignities of this horrible kind. Haumette clearly
thinks it more dignified for Joanna to have been darning the stockings
of her horny-hoofed father, M. D'Arc, than keeping sheep, lest she might
then be suspected of having ever done something worse. But, luckily,
there was no danger of _that_: Joanna never was in service; and my
opinion is that her father should have mended his own stockings, since
probably he was the party to make the holes in them, as many a better
man than D'Arc does--meaning by _that_ not myself, because, though
probably a better man than D'Arc, I protest against doing anything of
the kind. If I lived even with Friday in Juan Fernandez, either Friday
must do all the darning, or else it must go undone. The better men that
I meant were the sailors in the British navy, every man of whom mends
his own stockings. Who else is to do it? Do you suppose, reader, that
the junior lords of the admiralty are under articles to darn for the
navy?
The reason, meantime, for my systematic hatred of D'Arc is this: There
was a story current in France before the Revolution, framed to ridicule
the pauper aristocracy, who happened to have long pedigrees and short
rent rolls: viz., that a head of such a house, dating from the Crusades,
was overheard saying to his son, a Chevalier of St. Louis, "_Chevalier,
as-tu donné au cochon à manger_?" Now, it is clearly made out by the
surviving evidence that D'Arc would much have preferred continuing to
say, "_Ma fille, as-tu donné au cochon à manger_?" to saying, "_Pucelle
d'Orléans, as-tu sauvé les fleurs-de-lys_?" There is an old English copy
of verses which argues thus:
"If the man that turnips cries
Cry not when his father dies,
Then 'tis plain the man had rather
Have a turnip than his father."
I cannot say that the logic of these verses was ever _entirely_ to my
satisfaction. I do not see my way through it as clearly as could be
wished. But I see my way most clearly through D'Arc; and the result
is--that he would greatly have preferred not merely a turnip to his
father, but the saving a pound or so of bacon to saving the Oriflamme of
France.
It is probable (as M. Michelet suggests) that the title of Virgin or
Pucelle had in itself, and apart from the miraculous stories about
her, a secret power over the rude soldiery and partisan chiefs of that
period; for in such a person they saw a representative manifestation of
the Virgin Mary, who, in a course of centuries, had grown steadily upon
the popular heart.
As to Joanna's supernatural detection of the dauphin (Charles VII) among
three hundred lords and knights, I am surprised at the credulity which
could ever lend itself to that theatrical juggle. Who admires more than
myself the sublime enthusiasm, the rapturous faith in herself, of this
pure creature? But I am far from admiring stage artifices which not La
Pucelle, but the court, must have arranged; nor can surrender myself
to the conjurer's legerdemain, such as may be seen every day for a
shilling. Southey's "Joan of Arc" was published in 1796. Twenty years
after, talking with Southey, I was surprised to find him still owning a
secret bias in favor of Joan, founded on her detection of the dauphin.
The story, for the benefit of the reader new to the case, was this: La
Pucelle was first made known to the dauphin, and presented to his
court, at Chinon; and here came her first trial. By way of testing
her supernatural pretensions, she was to find out the royal personage
amongst the whole ark of clean and unclean creatures. Failing in this
_coup d'essai_, she would not simply disappoint many a beating heart in
the glittering crowd that on different motives yearned for her success,
but she would ruin herself, and, as the oracle within had told her,
would, by ruining herself, ruin France. Our own Sovereign Lady Victoria
rehearses annually a trial not so severe in degree, but the same in
kind. She "pricks" for sheriffs. Joanna pricked for a king. But observe
the difference: our own Lady pricks for two men out of three; Joanna
for one man out of three hundred. Happy Lady of the Islands and the
Orient!--she _can_ go astray in her choice only by one-half: to the
extent of one-half she _must_ have the satisfaction of being right.
And yet, even with these tight limits to the misery of a boundless
discretion, permit me, Liege Lady, with all loyalty, to submit that now
and then you prick with your pin the wrong man. But the poor child from
Domremy, shrinking under the gaze of a dazzling court--not _because_
dazzling (for in visions she had seen those that were more so), but
because some of them wore a scoffing smile on their features--how should
_she_ throw her line into so deep a river to angle for a king, where
many a gay creature was sporting that masqueraded as kings in dress!
Nay, even more than any true king would have done: for, in Southey's
version of the story, the dauphin says, by way of trying the virgin's
magnetic sympathy with royalty,
"On the throne,
I the while mingling with the menial throng,
Some courtier shall be seated."
This usurper is even crowned: "the jeweled crown shines on a menial's
head." But, really, that is "_un peu fort_"; and the mob of spectators
might raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon the throne,
and the dauphin himself, were not grazing the shins of treason. For
the dauphin could not lend more than belonged to him. According to the
popular notion, he had no crown for himself; consequently none to lend,
on any pretence whatever, until the consecrated Maid should take him to
Rheims. This was the _popular_ notion in France. But certainly it was
the dauphin's interest to support the popular notion, as he meant to use
the services of Joanna. For if he were king already, what was it that
she could do for him beyond Orleans? That is to say, what more than a
merely _military_ service could she render him? And, above all, if he
were king without a coronation, and without the oil from the sacred
ampulla, what advantage was yet open to him by celerity above his
competitor, the English boy? Now was to be a race for a coronation: he
that should win _that_ race carried the superstition of France along
with him: he that should first be drawn from the ovens of Rheims was
under that superstition baked into a king.
La Pucelle, before she could be allowed to practise as a warrior, was
put through her manual and platoon exercise, as a pupil in divinity, at
the bar of six eminent men in wigs. According to Southey (v. 393, bk.
iii., in the original edition of his "Joan of Arc,") she "appalled the
doctors." It's not easy to do _that_: but they had some reason to
feel bothered, as that surgeon would assuredly feel bothered who, upon
proceeding to dissect a subject, should find the subject retaliating as
a dissector upon himself, especially if Joanna ever made the speech to
them which occupies v. 354-391, bk. iii. It is a double impossibility:
1st, because a piracy from Tindal's "Christianity as old as the
Creation"--a piracy _a parte ante_, and by three centuries; 2d, it is
quite contrary to the evidence on Joanna's trial. Southey's "Joan" of
A.D. 1796 (Cottle, Bristol) tells the doctors, among other secrets,
that she never in her life attended--1st, Mass; nor 2d, the Sacramental
Table; nor 3d, Confession. In the meantime, all this deistical
confession of Joanna's, besides being suicidal for the interest of her
cause, is opposed to the depositions upon _both_ trials. The very best
witness called from first to last deposes that Joanna attended these
rites of her Church even too often; was taxed with doing so; and, by
blushing, owned the charge as a fact, though certainly not as a fault.
Joanna was a girl of natural piety, that saw God in forests and hills
and fountains, but did not the less seek him in chapels and consecrated
oratories.
This peasant girl was self-educated through her own natural
meditativeness. If the reader turns to that divine passage in "Paradise
Regained" which Milton has put into the mouth of our Saviour when first
entering the wilderness, and musing upon the tendency of those great
impulses growing within himself-----
"Oh, what a multitude of thoughts at once
Awakened in me swarm, while I consider
What from within I feel myself, and hear
What from without comes often to my ears,
Ill sorting with my present state compared!
When I was yet a child, no childish play
To me was pleasing; all my mind was set
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do,
What might be public good; myself I thought
Born to that end----"
he will have some notion of the vast reveries which brooded over the
heart of Joanna in early girlhood, when the wings were budding that
should carry her from Orleans to Rheims; when the golden chariot was
dimly revealing itself that should carry her from the kingdom of _France
Delivered_ to the Eternal Kingdom.
It is not requisite for the honour of Joanna, nor is there in this place
room, to pursue her brief career of _action._ That, though wonderful,
forms the earthly part of her story; the spiritual part is the saintly
passion of her imprisonment, trial, and execution. It is unfortunate,
therefore, for Southey's "Joan of Arc" (which, however, should always
be regarded as a _juvenile_ effort), that precisely when her real glory
begins the poem ends. But this limitation of the interest grew, no
doubt, from the constraint inseparably attached to the law of epic
unity. Joanna's history bisects into two opposite hemispheres, and
both could not have been presented to the eye in one poem, unless by
sacrificing all unity of theme, or else by involving the earlier half,
as a narrative episode, in the latter; which, however, might have been
done, for it might have been communicated to a fellow-prisoner, or
a confessor, by Joanna herself. It is sufficient, as concerns _this_
section of Joanna's life, to say that she fulfilled, to the height of
her promises, the restoration of the prostrate throne. France had become
a province of England, and for the ruin of both, if such a yoke could be
maintained. Dreadful pecuniary exhaustion caused the English energy to
droop; and that critical opening La Pucelle used with a corresponding
felicity of audacity and suddenness (that were in themselves portentous)
for introducing the wedge of French native resources, for rekindling the
national pride, and for planting the dauphin once more upon his feet.
When Joanna appeared, he had been on the point of giving up the struggle
with the English, distressed as they were, and of flying to the south of
France. She taught him to blush for such abject counsels. She liberated
Orleans, that great city, so decisive by its fate for the issue of the
war, and then beleaguered by the English with an elaborate application
of engineering skill unprecedented in Europe. Entering the city after
sunset on the 29th of April, she sang mass on Sunday, May 8th, for the
entire disappearance of the besieging force. On the 29th of June she
fought and gained over the English the decisive battle of Patay; on the
9th of July she took Troyes by a _coup-de-main_ from a mixed garrison
of English and Burgundians; on the 15th of that month she carried the
dauphin into Rheims; on Sunday the 17th she crowned him; and there she
rested from her labour of triumph. All that was to be _done_ she had now
accomplished; what remained was--to _suffer_.
All this forward movement was her own; excepting one man, the whole
council was against her. Her enemies were all that drew power from
earth. Her supporters were her own strong enthusiasm, and the headlong
contagion by which she carried this sublime frenzy into the hearts of
women, of soldiers, and of all who lived by labour. Henceforward she
was thwarted; and the worst error that she committed was to lend the
sanction of her presence to counsels which she had ceased to approve.
But she had now accomplished the capital objects which her own visions
had dictated. These involved all the rest. Errors were now less
important; and doubtless it had now become more difficult for herself to
pronounce authentically what _were_ errors. The noble girl had achieved,
as by a rapture of motion, the capital end of clearing out a free space
around her sovereign, giving him the power to move his arms with effect,
and, secondly, the inappreciable end of winning for that sovereign
what seemed to all France the heavenly ratification of his rights, by
crowning him with the ancient solemnities. She had made it impossible
for the English now to step before her. They were caught in an
irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord among the uncles of Henry
VI, partly to a want of funds, but partly to the very impossibility
which they believed to press with tenfold force upon any French attempt
to forestall theirs. They laughed at such a thought; and, while they
laughed, _she_ did it. Henceforth the single redress for the English
of this capital oversight, but which never _could_ have redressed it
effectually, was to vitiate and taint the coronation of Charles VII as
the work of a witch. That policy, and not malice (as M. Michelet is
so happy to believe), was the moving principle in the subsequent
prosecution of Joanna. Unless they unhinged the force of the first
coronation in the popular mind by associating it with power given from
hell, they felt that the sceptre of the invader was broken.
But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought wonders so great for
France, was she not elated? Did she not lose, as men so often _have_
lost, all sobriety of mind when standing upon the pinnacle of success so
giddy? Let her enemies declare. During the progress of her movement, and
in the centre of ferocious struggles, she had manifested the temper
of her feelings by the pity which she had everywhere expressed for
the suffering enemy. She forwarded to the English leaders a touching
invitation to unite with the French, as brothers, in a common crusade
against infidels--thus opening the road for a soldierly retreat. She
interposed to protect the captive or the wounded; she mourned over the
excesses of her countrymen; she threw herself off her horse to kneel by
the dying English soldier, and to comfort him with such ministrations,
physical or spiritual, as his situation allowed. "Nolebat," says the
evidence, "uti ense suo, aut quemquam interficere." She sheltered
the English that invoked her aid in her own quarters. She wept as she
beheld, stretched on the field of battle, so many brave enemies that had
died without confession. And, as regarded herself, her elation expressed
itself thus: on the day when she had finished her work, she wept; for
she knew that, when her _triumphal_ task was done, her end must be
approaching. Her aspirations pointed only to a place which seemed to her
more than usually full of natural piety, as one in which it would give
her pleasure to die. And she uttered, between smiles and tears, as
a wish that inexpressibly fascinated her heart, and yet was half
fantastic, a broken prayer that God would return her to the solitudes
from which he had drawn her, and suffer her to become a shepherdess once
more. It was a natural prayer, because nature has laid a necessity upon
every human heart to seek for rest and to shrink from torment. Yet,
again, it was a half-fantastic prayer, because, from childhood upward,
visions that she had no power to mistrust, and the voices which sounded
in her ear for ever, had long since persuaded her mind that for _her_ no
such prayer could be granted. Too well she felt that her mission must be
worked out to the end, and that the end was now at hand. All went wrong
from this time. She herself had created the _funds_ out of which the
French restoration should grow; but she was not suffered to witness
their development or their prosperous application. More than one
military plan was entered upon which she did not approve. But she still
continued to expose her person as before. Severe wounds had not taught
her caution. And at length, in a sortie from Compiègne (whether through
treacherous collusion on the part of her own friends is doubtful to this
day), she was made prisoner by the Burgundians, and finally surrendered
to the English.
Now came her trial. This trial, moving of course under English
influence, was conducted in chief by the Bishop of Beauvais. He was
a Frenchman, sold to English interests, and hoping, by favour of the
English leaders, to reach the highest preferment. "Bishop that art,
Archbishop that shalt be, Cardinal that mayest be," were the words that
sounded continually in his ear; and doubtless a whisper of visions still
higher, of a triple crown, and feet upon the necks of kings, sometimes
stole into his heart. M. Michelet is anxious to keep us in mind that
this bishop was but an agent of the English. True. But it does not
better the case for his countryman that, being an accomplice in the
crime, making himself the leader in the persecution against the
helpless girl, he was willing to be all this in the spirit, and with
the conscious vileness of a cat's-paw. Never from the foundations of the
earth was there such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all
its beauty of defence and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, child of
France! shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot by all around
thee, how I honour thy flashing intellect, quick as God's lightning, and
true as God's lightning to its mark, that ran before France and laggard
Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and
making dumb the oracles of falsehood! Is it not scandalous, is it not
humiliating to civilization, that, even at this day, France exhibits
the horrid spectacle of judges examining the prisoner against himself;
seducing him, by fraud, into treacherous conclusions against his own
head; using the terrors of their power for extorting confessions from
the frailty of hope; nay (which is worse), using the blandishments
of condescension and snaky kindness for thawing into compliances of
gratitude those whom they had failed to freeze into terror? Wicked
judges! barbarian jurisprudence!--that, sitting in your own conceit
on the summits of social wisdom, have yet failed to learn the first
principles of criminal justice--sit ye humbly and with docility at the
feet of this girl from Domrémy, that tore your webs of cruelty into
shreds and dust. "Would you examine me as a witness against myself?" was
the question by which many times she defied their arts. Continually she
showed that their interrogations were irrelevant to any business before
the court, or that entered into the ridiculous charges against her.
General questions were proposed to her on points of casuistical
divinity; two-edged questions, which not one of themselves could have
answered, without, on the one side, landing himself in heresy (as then
interpreted), or, on the other, in some presumptuous expression of
self-esteem. Next came a wretched Dominican, that pressed her with an
objection, which, if applied to the Bible, would tax every one of its
miracles with unsoundness. The monk had the excuse of never having read
the Bible. M. Michelet has no such excuse; and it makes one blush
for him, as a philosopher, to find him describing such an argument
as "weighty," whereas it is but a varied expression of rude Mahometan
metaphysics. Her answer to this, if there were room to place the whole
in a clear light, was as shattering as it was rapid. Another thought to
entrap her by asking what language the angelic visitors of her solitude
had talked--as though heavenly counsels could want polyglot interpreters
for every word, or that God needed language at all in whispering
thoughts to a human heart. Then came a worse devil, who asked her
whether the Archangel Michael had appeared naked. Not comprehending the
vile insinuation, Joanna, whose poverty suggested to her simplicity that
it might be the _costliness_ of suitable robes which caused the demur,
asked them if they fancied God, who clothed the flowers of the valleys,
unable to find raiment for his servants. The answer of Joanna moves
a smile of tenderness, but the disappointment of her judges makes one
laugh exultingly. Others succeeded by troops, who upbraided her with
leaving her father; as if that greater Father, whom she believed herself
to have been serving, did not retain the power of dispensing with his
own rules, or had not said that for a less cause than martyrdom man and
woman should leave both father and mother.
On Easter Sunday, when the trial had been long proceeding, the poor girl
fell so ill as to cause a belief that she had been poisoned. It was
not poison. Nobody had any interest in hastening a death so certain. M.
Michelet, whose sympathies with all feelings are so quick that one would
gladly see them always as justly directed, reads the case most truly.
Joanna had a twofold malady. She was visited by a paroxysm of the
complaint called _homesickness_. The cruel nature of her imprisonment,
and its length, could not but point her solitary thoughts, in darkness
and in chains (for chained she was), to Domrémy. And the season,
which was the most heavenly period of the spring, added stings to this
yearning. That was one of her maladies--_nostalgia_, as medicine calls
it; the other was weariness and exhaustion from daily combats with
malice. She saw that everybody hated her and thirsted for her blood;
nay, many kind-hearted creatures that would have pitied her profoundly,
as regarded all political charges, had their natural feelings warped by
the belief that she had dealings with fiendish powers. She knew she was
to die; that was _not_ the misery! the misery was that this consummation
could not be reached without so much intermediate strife, as if she were
contending for some chance (where chance was none) of happiness, or were
dreaming for a moment of escaping the inevitable. Why, then, _did_
she contend? Knowing that she would reap nothing from answering her
persecutors, why did she not retire by silence from the superfluous
contest? It was because her quick and eager loyalty to truth would not
suffer her to see it darkened by frauds which _she_ could expose, but
others, even of candid listeners, perhaps, could not; it was through
that imperishable grandeur of soul which taught her to submit meekly
and without a struggle to her punishment, but taught her _not_
to submit--no, not for a moment--to calumny as to facts, or to
misconstruction as to motives. Besides, there were secretaries all
around the court taking down her words. That was meant for no good to
_her_. But the end does not always correspond to the meaning. And
Joanna might say to herself, "These words that will be used against me
to-morrow and the next day, perhaps, in some nobler generation, may rise
again for my justification." Yes, Joanna, they _are_ rising even now in
Paris, and for more than justification!
Woman, sister, there are some things which you do not execute as well as
your brother, man; no, nor ever will. Pardon me if I doubt whether
you will ever produce a great poet from your choirs, or a Mozart, or
a Phidias, or a Michael Angelo, or a great philosopher, or a great
scholar. By which last is meant--not one who depends simply on an
infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of
combination; bringing together from the four winds, like the angel of
the resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the
unity of breathing life. If you _can_ create yourselves into any of
these great creators, why have you not?
Yet, sister woman, though I cannot consent to find a Mozart or a Michael
Angelo in your sex, cheerfully, and with the love that burns in depths
of admiration, I acknowledge that you can do one thing as well as the
best of us men--a greater thing than even Milton is known to have done,
or Michael Angelo; you can die grandly, and as goddesses would die, were
goddesses mortal. If any distant worlds (which _may_ be the case) are
so far ahead of us Tellurians in optical resources as to see distinctly
through their telescopes all that we do on earth, what is the grandest
sight to which we ever treat them? St. Peter's at Rome, do you fancy,
on Easter Sunday, or Luxor, or perhaps the Himalayas? Oh, no! my friend;
suggest something better; these are baubles to _them_; they see in other
worlds, in their own, far better toys of the same kind. These, take my
word for it, are nothing. Do you give it up? The finest thing, then, we
have to show them is a scaffold on the morning of execution. I assure
you there is a strong muster in those far telescopic worlds, on any
such morning, of those who happen to find themselves occupying the right
hemisphere for a peep at _us_. How, then, if it be announced in some
such telescopic world by those who make a livelihood of catching
glimpses at our newspapers, whose language they have long since
deciphered, that the poor victim in the morning's sacrifice is a woman?
How, if it be published in that distant world that the sufferer wears
upon her head, in the eyes of many, the garlands of martyrdom? How, if
it should be some Marie Antoinette, the widowed queen, coming forward on
the scaffold, and presenting to the morning air her head, turned gray by
sorrow--daughter of Caesars kneeling down humbly to kiss the guillotine,
as one that worships death? How, if it were the noble Charlotte Corday,
that in the bloom of youth, that with the loveliest of persons, that
with homage waiting upon her smiles wherever she turned her face to
scatter them--homage that followed those smiles as surely as the carols
of birds, after showers in spring, follow the reappearing sun and the
racing of sunbeams over the hills--yet thought all these things cheaper
than the dust upon her sandals, in comparison of deliverance from hell
for her dear suffering France! Ah! these were spectacles indeed for
those sympathising people in distant worlds; and some, perhaps, would
suffer a sort of martyrdom themselves, because they could not testify
their wrath, could not bear witness to the strength of love and to the
fury of hatred that burned within them at such scenes, could not
gather into golden urns some of that glorious dust which rested in the
catacombs of earth.