WRESTLING WITH THE ANGELS.
The three years of mysterious obsessions--between 1425 and 1429--which
preluded her glory were for Joan a period of secret and distressing
struggles. In order to obey her "voices," in order to carry out her
divine mission and fulfil the prophecy of Merlin she would have to
battle--and her horror of blood was such that, as she one day said, her
"hair stood on end at the sight of French blood flowing."[25] She would
have to live in the field with the soldiers--and one of her leading
virtues was a delicate sense of modesty. She would have to leave the
house in which she was born, renounce her humble, domestic occupations
in which she excelled, "being afraid of none at her needle or her
distaff," as she was wont to say in her naïve pride. She would, in
short, be forced to bid adieu to her young friends, her brothers, her
father and her mother, all of whom she tenderly loved, and move--she, a
poor and unknown peasant from a corner of Lorraine--to the court of
Charles VII, and say to him: "Sire, I am sent to you by our Lord God;
confide to me the command of your troops; I shall drive the English out
of France and shall restore your crown to you!"
When these thoughts assailed Joan during her intervals of doubt when,
her ecstasy over, she fell back upon actual reality, the poor child
recoiled before an abyss of difficulties and of impossibilities without
number. She derided and pitied herself. The past would then seem a
dream; she would ask herself whether she was not out of her mind; she
would beseech "her voices" to speak, and her saints to appear before
her, in order that her faith in her divine mission might be revived, and
prove to her that she had not been the sport of some mental aberration.
But Joan's crisis had passed. Even if on such occasions the mysterious
voices remained silent and she began to look upon herself as a demented
wretch, the next day, perhaps that very night, she again saw her
beautiful saints approaching, adorned with their golden crowns draped in
brocade, exhaling a celestial odor,[26] and, smiling, say to her:
"Courage, Joan, daughter of God! You will deliver Gaul. Your King will
owe his crown to you! The time approaches! Stand ready to fulfil your
mission!"
The young virgin would then again recover confidence in her
predestination, until the day when fresh doubts would assail her, and
again melt away. Nevertheless, the doubts were on the decrease, and the
moment came when, no longer faint-hearted, but invincibly penetrated
with the divine source of her mission, Joan decided to fulfil it at any
price, and only awaited an opportune circumstance. From that moment on,
above all, and realizing then more than ever the necessity of practicing
her favorite adage, _Help yourself, and heaven will help you_, Joan
turned the full bent of her mind upon quickly gathering information on
the condition of Gaul, and of acquiring the elementary knowledge of
arms.
Public events, together with the geographic location of the valley,
joined in meeting Joan's wishes. The borders of Lorraine were frequently
crossed by the messengers to and from Germany. Anxious for news, as are
all people living at a distance from the country's center, James Darc
often extended the hospitality of his house to these riders. They
gossiped on the English war, the only concern of those sad days. Always
reserved before her parents, who were foreign to the vast designs
fermenting within her brain, Joan silently worked away at her distaff,
losing not a single word of the reports that she heard. At times,
however, she would venture one question or another to the travelers,
suggested by her secret thoughts, and gradually enlightened herself. Nor
was that all. The heroic resistance of the inhabitants of Vaucouleurs
several times forced the English to raise the siege; towards the
approach of the bad season these took up their winter quarters in
Champagne, always to return with the spring. During these marches and
counter-marches the hostile army ravaged anew the valley of the Meuse.
James Darc and other peasants were more than once obliged to resort to
the Castle of Ile for refuge, which, on such occasions, was frequently
attacked and valiantly defended. When the danger was over the peasants
returned to the village.
The frequent sojourns of the family of Darc at the Castle of Ile, which
was well fortified and garrisoned with experienced soldiers; the
military alarms, the watches, the assaults that the garrison had to
sustain--all this familiarized Joan with the profession of arms.
Concentrated within herself, yielding to her martial vocation,
attentively observing all that passed around her, explaining to herself
the means and manoeuvres of defense, listening, meditating over the
orders issued to the soldiers by their superiors, Joan learned or
guessed at the elementary principles of the military art. The ideas thus
conceived germinated, budded, matured in the quick and penetrating mind
of the young girl. She mistrusted herself less when her voices said to
her:
"The time approaches--You will drive the English out of Gaul--You are
the virgin prophesied by Merlin."
Joan's grand uncle, Denis Laxart, lived in Vaucouleurs; he had long
known Robert of Baudricourt, a renowned captain of the country, who
abhorred the English and was ardently devoted to the royalist party.
Joan often interrogated her uncle about Captain Robert of Baudricourt,
upon his nature, upon his affability, upon the manner in which he
treated the poor. In his simplicity, the good Denis had no suspicion of
the purpose of his niece's interrogatories; he attributed them to
girlish curiosity, and answered that Robert of Baudricourt, as brave a
soldier as he was brutal and violent, usually sent everybody to the
devil, was a terrible man, much feared by himself, and finally, that he
never approached the captain but in trembling.
"It is a pity that so good a captain should be of so intractable and so
rough a nature," Joan would say with a sigh, to her uncle, and sad and
discouraged she would drop the subject only to return to it again.
Grown to a handsome maid, Joan was approaching the end of her sixteenth
year--the time predicted by her voices had arrived.