RETURNING VISIONS.
During the next three years, from July, 1425, to February, 1429, that is
from Joan's fourteenth to her seventeenth year, the communications from
the spirit world became ever more and more frequent. Joan saw St.
Marguerite and St. Catherine approach her with smiles on their faces and
tenderly embrace her.[17] At other times it was the archangel St.
Michael who appeared before her, holding his flaming sword in one hand
and in the other the crown of France. Again, a multitude of angels
played before her wondering eyes in the midst of an immense and dazzling
ray of light that shot out from heaven, wherein they gamboled like the
atoms that swarm before our eyes in a ray of sunlight across a dark
space.[18] Hardly a day went by but that, especially after the ringing
of the bells, Joan heard the voice of her dear saints saying to her:
"Joan, run to the assistance of the King of France! You will drive away
the English! You will restore the crown to the gentle Sire!"
"Alack! I am but a poor girl, I would not know how to ride a horse nor
to lead armed men,"[19] the naïve shepherdess would answer. But the
recollections of the prophetic legend of Merlin at times dispelled these
doubts, and she would then ask herself why she should not be called to
fulfil the prediction. Was not the Lord urging her by the voices of her
saints: Go to the assistance of the King? Was she not born and brought
up on the borders of Lorraine and near a forest of oaks? Was she not a
virgin? Had she not voluntarily consecrated herself to eternal celibacy,
yielding perhaps in that matter no less to the repugnance of an
invincible chastity than to the desire of giving an additional pledge to
the fulfilment of the prophecy of the Gallic bard? Did she not, when
only sixteen years of age, in the presence of a large assemblage,
confute and prove a liar, by the irresistible sincerity of her words, a
lad of her village who pretended to have received from her a promise of
marriage?[20] The shy bashfulness of Joan recoiled at the bare thought
of marriage. Finally, did she not remember how, on the occasion of the
infantine battle between the urchins of Maxey and those of Domremy, her
courage, her prompt decisiveness, her enthusiasm changed defeat into
victory? With the aid of God and His saints, could she not be victorious
in an actual battle, also?
Joan was a pious girl. She was instinct with that genuine piety that
raises and connects all things to and with God, the creator of the
universe. She thanked Him effusively for manifesting Himself to her
through the intermediation of her saints, whom she ever continued to see
and hear. At the same time, however, she did not feel for the priests
the confidence that St. Catherine and St. Marguerite inspired her with.
She piously fulfilled her Catholic duties: She confessed, and often
attended communion service, according to the common usage, without,
nevertheless, ever speaking either with Master Minet, the curate, or
with any other clergymen on the subject of her communications with the
beings of the invisible world.[21] She locked in the most secret
recesses of her heart her vague aspirations after the deliverance of
Gaul, hiding them even from her little girl friend, Mangeste, and from
her grown female friend, Hauguette, thus guarding her secret also from
her father, her mother and her brothers. During three years she imposed
upon herself an absolute silence regarding these mysteries. Thanks to
the powerful control that she exercised over herself, Joan showed
herself, the same as before, industrious, taking her part in the field
and household labors, despite her being increasingly beset by her
"voices," that, ever more imperiously, repeated to her almost daily:
"Go, daughter of God! The time has come! March to the rescue of the
invaded fatherland! You will drive away the English, you will deliver
your King, you will return to him his crown!"
The communications of the spirits became more and more pressing in the
measure that Joan approached her seventeenth year. The great designs,
that she felt driven to be the instrument of, took an ever stronger hold
upon her. Unremitting and painful the obsession pursued her everywhere.
"I felt," said she later, "I felt in my spirit that which a woman must
feel when about to be brought to bed of a child."[22]
St. Marguerite and St. Catherine appeared before the young girl,
encouraged her, reassured her, promised her the help of God in the
deeds that she was to achieve; when the vision vanished the poor child
would break out in tears, regretting, as she later expressed it, that
her good saints did not take her with them to the angels in the paradise
of the good God.[23]
Despite these alternations between faith and doubt concerning her
mission, Joan gradually familiarized herself with the thought at which
her modesty and simplicity had at first recoiled, the thought of
commanding armed men and of vanquishing the English at their head.
In that wonderful organism a rare sagacity, an excellent judgment, an
astonishing military aptitude were, without losing any of these
qualities, without losing aught of virtue, blended with the exaltations
of an inspired woman. Often, recalling as she constantly did, the
infantine battle in which victory remained with her, Joan would say:
"Men and children, when known how to be handled, can not choose but obey
the identical impulses, the identical generous sentiments; with the aid
of heaven it will be with the men of the royal army as it was with the
urchins of Domremy; they will follow my example."
Or again:
"To raise the courage of a discouraged and disheartened army, to exalt
it, to lead it straight upon the enemy, whatever the number of these may
be, to attack it daringly in the open field or behind its entrenchment,
and to vanquish it, that is no impossible undertaking. If it succeeds,
the consequences of a first victory, by rekindling the fire of an army
demoralized by the habit of defeat, are incalculable."
Thoughts like these revealed in Joan a profound intuition in matters of
war. Joan, moreover, was not of those puling visionaries, who expect
from God alone the triumph of a good cause. One of her favorite sayings
was: "Help yourself, and heaven will help you."[24] She ever put in
practice that adage of rustic common sense. When on a later occasion a
captain said to her disdainfully: "If God wished to drive the English
out of Gaul, He could do so by the sole power of His will; He would need
neither you, Joan, nor any men-at-arms," Joan answered:
"_The men-at-arms will battle--God will give the victory._"