ROUEN
"Bishop of Beauvais! because the guilt-burthened man is in dreams
haunted by the most frightful of his crimes ... you also, entering
your final dream, saw Domrémy.... My lord, have you no counsel?
'Counsel I have none; in heaven above, or on earth beneath,
counsellor there is none now that would take a brief from _me_; all
are silent.'
"Is it, indeed, come to this? Alas! the time is short, the tumult
is wondrous, the crowd stretches away into infinity, but yet I will
search in it for somebody to take your brief; I know of somebody
that will be your counsel. Who is this that cometh from Domrémy?
Who is she that cometh in bloody coronation robes from Rheims? Who
is she that cometh with blackened flesh from walking the furnaces
of Rouen? This is she, the shepherd girl, counsellor that had none
for herself, whom I choose, Bishop, for yours. She it is, I engage,
that shall take my lord's brief. She it is, Bishop, that would
plead for you; yes, Bishop, SHE--when heaven and earth are silent."
_--De Quincey._
We need not dwell upon the joy of English and Burgundians, or of their
French sympathizers: it was as rapturous as it was savage. John of
Luxembourg, a typical soldier of fortune, had but one idea, that of
turning his prisoner to good account. Who would pay most for her?
While the matter was pending, Joan was hurried from castle to castle,
from prison to prison. Clairoix, the headquarters of Luxembourg, was not
strong enough to hold her; she might escape, or there might be a rescue.
She was sent to Beaulieu, and thence to Beaurevoir, where she stayed
from June to September. Here she was in the kind hands of three ladies,
all bearing her own name; Jeanne of Luxembourg, aunt of her captor;
Jeanne of Bethune, Viscountess of Meaux, his wife, and her daughter
Jeanne of Bar. These good ladies befriended the captive Maid: gave her
the last womanly comfort and tendance she was to receive; begged her to
put on woman's dress, and brought stuff to make it. Joan was grateful,
but shook her head. She had no leave yet from God to do this: the time
was not come. She would have done it, she said later, had her duty
permitted, for these ladies rather than for any soul in France except
her queen.
Harmond de Macy, a knight who saw the Maid at Beaurevoir and who offered
her familiarities which she gravely repulsed, has left his impressions
of her on record.
"She was of honest conversation in word and deed," he says: and adds at
the end of his testimony, given after her death, "I believe she is in
paradise."
Joan would give no parole. She steadfastly maintained her right to
escape if she might. Here at Beaurevoir she made her one attempt to do
so, moved thereto largely by anxiety for the people of Compiègne, now
besieged. She was told that if the town were taken all the people over
seven years of age would be put to death. This she could not bear. In
vain her Voices dissuaded her: in vain St. Catherine almost daily
forbade it. "I would rather die than live," said the Maid, "after such a
massacre of good people."
Evading her jailers one day, she leapt from the tower, a height of sixty
feet. Wonderful to relate, no bones were broken, but she was found
insensible, and taken back to prison. For several days she could neither
eat nor drink. Then, she told her judges later, St. Catherine comforted
her, bidding her make confession and ask God's forgiveness for the leap.
The saint told her that Compiègne would be relieved before Martinmas,
as in fact came to pass.
"Then," she says, "I revived, and took food, and soon was well."
She denied having expected death from the leap: she had hoped to escape,
partly to help Compiègne, partly because she was sold to the English.
"I would rather die," she said, "than fall into the hands of my English
enemies."
She was to do both. English and French were of one mind. The former were
headed (in this matter) by the Earl of Warwick, the latter by Pierre
Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais. This man had been disappointed, through
Joan's successes, in certain private ambitions. He pursued her from
first to last with incredible fury and persistence; it was through his
efforts that John of Luxembourg was enabled to sell her (despite the
earnest prayers of the aged Jeanne de Luxembourg) to England for ten
thousand livres; it was he who conducted her trial and brought her to
her death.
From Beaurevoir she was taken to Arras; thence, after one night at the
castle of Drugy, to Crotoy by the sea: and so, in November of 1430, she
came to Rouen.
They took her to the old castle built by Philip Augustus in 1205; used
in the days of the English occupation as a prison for "prisoners of war
and treasonable felons." Of this structure, with its six towers,
demi-tower and donjon, only one vestige remains, the "_Tour Jeanne
d'Arc_," a bulk of solid masonry one hundred feet high, forty feet in
diameter, with walls twelve feet thick. You may visit it to-day; may
stand in the dark cell, and see the iron cage in which, according to
some authorities, the Maid was at first confined. During most of the
time she was chained to a log of wood, her fetters loosened only when
she was taken into court. She was guarded day and night by English
men-at-arms, most of them common and brutal soldiers. She had no moment
of solitude, no shadow of privacy. Her days were anguish, her nights
terror; yet though her gaolers jeered, bullied, baited her with every
foul jest and bitter insult, she kept the virgin treasure of her soul
and of her body.
One day the Earls of Stafford and Warwick came to see her, and with them
John of Luxembourg who sold her, and Haimond de Macy. The latter tells
of the interview, saying that Luxembourg offered to ransom her if she
would swear never to bear arms again.
"In God's name, you mock me!" said the Maid. "I know well that you have
neither the will nor the power."
Luxembourg repeating his offer, she put him aside with: "I know these
English will put me to death, thinking to win the kingdom of France when
I am no more. But were they a hundred thousand more _Godons_ than they
are, they should not have the kingdom."
At this Stafford drew his dagger and would have stabbed her (she, poor
soul, asking no better!), but Warwick held his hand. This latter noble,
son-in-law of Warwick, the kingmaker, and called by some "the Father of
Courtesy," was eager for the burning of Joan; it was, in his opinion,
the only fitting end for her. No clean stab of an honorable dagger for
the witch of the Armagnacs!
So we come to the Trial, about which so many books have been written;
over which churchmen and statesmen, French and English, have wrangled
through nigh upon six hundred years. I shall dwell on it so much as
seems absolutely necessary, and no more.
On January 9th, 1431, Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, master of the
bloodhounds in this glorious hunt, summoned his council. There were two
judges, the bishop himself and Le Maître, Vice Inquisitor in the diocese
of Rouen. The latter, after the first month, sat unwillingly; his
conscience was not clear; he would fain be rid of the whole matter. The
orders of the Chief Inquisitor, however, were strict; he sat on, ill at
ease. The rest of the Council were clerks and "assessors"; all clerics
of name and fame, canons of Rouen, abbots, learned doctors. You may
easily learn their names, yet methinks they are best forgotten. Their
number varied from day to day; sometimes there were forty, again there
would be but six; most of them were French, but there were one or two
Englishmen among them.
On February 20th, Joan of Arc, known as the Maid, was summoned to appear
before this Council. She begged to be allowed to hear mass first, but
was refused. On the 21st, she was brought before her judges in the
chapel of the castle.
We may fancy the scene. Priests and prelates in goodly array of furred
robes, episcopal crosses, and the like, sitting in half-circle, with
bent brows and grim looks. Before their scandalized eyes, a slim girl in
page's dress of black, her dark hair cut short, her face worn with
watching and fasting, white with prison pallor.
She is accused of witchcraft, and dealings with familiar spirits; of
wearing man's clothes (see them on the wench this moment!); of attacking
Paris; of attempting suicide; of allowing ignorant people to worship her
as a saint or holy person; of stealing a bishop's horse; of pretending
to work miracles. One or two other charges were added in the course of
the trial to this heavy list.
To begin with, the prisoner was commanded to give a full account of
herself and her pretended mission. Joan was prepared for this. The
Voices were with her in prison throughout the trial, counseling,
warning, consoling. Sometimes she merely felt the blessed presences
about her; sometimes they spoke plainly, even dictating her answers;
always bidding her "answer boldly and God would help her."
Called upon to be sworn, she refused to take an unqualified oath. She
did not know on what subjects they might question her.
"You may ask me things which I will not tell you. As to revelations to
my King I will not speak though you should cut off my head."
She finally took a qualified oath, agreeing to speak plainly on such
subjects as her conscience allowed. She would not repeat the Lord's
Prayer (a favorite test of witchcraft; a witch, as everyone knew, could
only say it backward!), save in confession; she would in no wise swear
or promise to refrain from trying to escape; she had given no _parole_,
and it was the right of every prisoner. She answered readily enough the
questions concerning her birth, parentage, and so on.
She was interrupted every moment by some fresh question or rebuke. The
notary Manchon, who was reporting the meeting, refused to act if things
were not better ordered; he was an honest man, and reported Joan's words
correctly, which was not the case with some other clerks present.
On the second day she came fasting to her trial, for it was Lent. She
had eaten but once the day before. Massieu, the doorkeeper, seems to
have been, like the notary, a decent man, and was wont to let her stop
and pray on her way from cell to chapel, before the door of the chapel.
One Estivet, a prison spy (_mouton_), and tool of Cauchon's, rebuked him
fiercely for this leniency. "Rascal," he said, "how dare you let that
excommunicate wretch come so near the church? If you persist, you shall
be shut up yourself, in a tower where you shall not see sun or moon for
a month."
Massieu, according to his own account, paid no heed to this threat, but
continued to allow the Maid to kneel before the closed door of the holy
place.
On the third day, after long and puerile questionings about the
supposititious fairies of her childhood and the Voices of her early
girlhood, she was asked suddenly, "Do you consider that you are in a
state of grace?"
Here was a good strong trap, well laid and baited. If she answered
"Yes," she was guilty of presumption in holy matters; if "No," her own
mouth spoke her condemnation. Quietly the Maid uttered what her
historian calls her inspired reply. "If I am not in grace, may God bring
me thither; if I am, God keep me there."[66]
Considering her steadfast and valiant bearing throughout these days of
trial, we may well believe that the God she adored gave her strength and
constancy. She had no earthly friend. The only person who visited her in
the guise of human kindness was a spy of the Inquisition, one Loiseleur,
a canon of Chartres and Rouen, and a close friend and ally of Cauchon.
This base wretch, set on by his chief and the Earl of Warwick, did visit
the Maid in her cell, in accordance with a mandate of the Inquisition
which reads: "Let no one approach the heretic, unless it be from time to
time two faithful and skilful persons, who shall act as if they had pity
on him, and shall warn him to save himself by confessing his errors,
promising him, if he does so, that he shall not be burned."
Loiseleur came in layman's dress, telling Joan that he was a man of
Lorraine, her friend and that of France. He was full of interest and
solicitude. The Voices gave no warning, and the lonely girl talked with
him far more freely than with her judges. He would gently lead the
subject to some point which was to be brought up the next day, and on
his report the Council would frame its questions. Manchon, the notary,
was asked to establish himself in a closet hard by, where he could hear
and take down the words of the prisoner; this, to his lasting honor, he
indignantly refused to do, saying he would report what was said in open
court and nothing else.
The days dragged on, and the weeks; weeks of prayer, of fasting, of
torment. On March 14th she was interrogated concerning her leap from the
tower of Beaurevoir. Was it true that after her fall she had blasphemed
God and her saints?
Not of her consciousness, she replied. "God and good confession" knew;
she had no knowledge of what she might have said in delirium. St.
Catherine had promised her help, how or when she knew not.
"Generally, the Voices say that I shall be delivered through great
victory; and furthermore they say, 'Take all things peacefully; heed
not thine affliction. Thence thou shalt come at last into the kingdom of
Paradise.'"
The judges took up this question delightedly; it was one after their own
hearts. Did she, they asked, feel assurance of salvation?
"As firmly as if I were in heaven already."
"Do you believe that, _after this revelation_, you could not sin
mortally?"
"I know not. I leave it to God."
"Your answer (about her assurance of salvation) is very weighty."
"I hold it for a very great treasure."
"What with your attack on Paris on a holy day, your behavior in the
matter of the Bishop's hackney, your leap at Beaurevoir, and your
consent to the death of Franquet, do you really believe that you have
wrought no mortal sin?"
"I do not believe that I am in mortal sin; and if I have been it is for
God to know it, and for confession to God and the priest."[67]
She begged to be allowed to go to church. If she might hear mass she
would wear woman's dress, changing it on her return for the page's dress
which was her protection against insult. If she must die, she asked for
a woman's shift, and a cap to cover her head; she would rather die than
depart from the work for which her Lord had sent her.
"But I do not believe," she added, "that my Lord will let me be brought
so low that I shall lack help of God and miracle."
"If you dress as you do by God's command," they asked her, "why do you
ask for a shift in the hour of death?"
"It suffices me that it should be long!" said the girl.
All this was but the preliminary inquiry. Now followed a week of
respite, while the evidence was sifted and arranged, and articles of
indictment drawn up. On March 27th Joan was summoned to hear her formal
accusation, conveyed in seventy articles. The Court was asked to declare
her "a sorceress, a divineress, a false prophet, one who invoked evil
spirits, a witch, a heretic, an apostate, a seditious blasphemer,
rejoicing in blood, indecent," and I know not what else beside. These
seventy articles were presently condensed into twelve. On April 6th the
learned doctors were called to deliberate on these twelve, which
constituted the real accusation, by which the captive must live or die.
They met in the private chapel of the Archbishop, which is still
standing, in the courtyard hard by the cathedral. The articles were duly
accepted, and the Maid was summoned to hear the result. But she lay ill
in her prison, worn out with fasting and misery. Cauchon himself came to
visit her, professing himself full of tender solicitude for her soul and
body. He bade her note how kind they were to her. They desired only her
welfare; the Holy Church was ever ready to receive its erring children,
etc., etc. With her unfailing courtesy Joan thanked him. She thought
herself in danger of death; she begged for confession and the sacrament,
and burial in holy ground.
"If you desire the Holy Sacrament," said Cauchon, "you must submit to
Holy Church."
The girl turned her head wearily on her pallet. "I can say no more than
I have said!" was her only word.
But the Bishop pressed on relentless. The more she feared for her life,
he told her, the more she would resolve to amend it, and submit to those
above her. Then she said:
"If my body dies in prison I expect from you burial in holy ground; if
you do not give it, I await upon my Lord." And as they still tormented
her:
"Come what may, I will do or say no other thing. I have answered to
everything in my trial."
Five Doctors in turn beset her with offers of favors if she would yield,
with threats if she continued obdurate. In the latter case, they told
her, she must be treated as a Saracen. Finally, since they might in no
wise prevail over the dauntless soul, though the broken body lay
helpless before them, they departed, leaving her to the tenderer mercies
of the men-at-arms.
The Articles of Accusation had been sent to the University of Paris,
with a request for the opinion of that learned and pious body. While
waiting for the answer, the Bishop of Beauvais filled the time with
various ingenious devices, all planned to break the girl's spirit. On
May 2nd, being in some measure recovered from her illness, she was
brought out for a public meeting before sixty clerics, Cauchon at their
head. The Bishop addressed her in his customary strain, accusing,
exhorting, admonishing.
"Read your book!" (i.e., the document containing her formal accusation),
said Joan scornfully. "I will answer as I may. My appeal is to God, my
Creator, whom I love with my whole heart."
Wearily, wearily she listened to the many-times-told tale; briefly and
bravely she made reply.
"If I were now at the judgment seat, and if I saw the torch burning, and
the fagots laid, and the executioner ready to light the fire; if I were
in the fire, I would say what I have said, and no other word; would do
what I have done, and no other thing."
"_Superba responsio!_" writes Manchon the clerk opposite this entry.
Since naught else might prevail against the obstinacy of this creature,
how if they tried torture, or at the very least the threat of torture,
the actual sight of its instruments?
Two days later (May 4th), she was brought out again, this time into a
dismal vaulted chamber, the donjon of Rouen Castle. The usual place of
her torment was too small for the things she now saw displayed before
her; rack, screws, all the hideous paraphernalia of the Holy
Inquisition; beside these, two executioners, ready to perform their
office.
Joan was bidden to look upon these things, and told that if she did not
avow the truth her body would be submitted to the torture. If we stood,
as one may still stand, in that vaulted chamber, would not the answer
ring out once more from those grim walls that received it?
"Truly, if you should destroy my limbs and cause my soul to leave my
body, I will tell you no other thing (than she has already told); and if
I should say anything (i.e., under torture), I would always tell you
afterward that you had made me say it by force."
She trod, indeed, the narrow edge of a knife-blade. Question upon
question was put; was answered briefly, clearly, and to the point. The
clerics hesitated. Perhaps the torture might not be necessary, since
there seemed a chance that even this might not prevail against this
girl's stubbornness. In any case it would be well to leave the fear of
it hanging over her for a time.
It was so left, for a week, while the doctors debated. One thought the
use of torture might "impair the stately beauty of the trial as hitherto
conducted." Another thought they had sufficient evidence without it.
Three were in favor of it: Morelli, Courcelles, Loiseleur. The
last-named was the Judas-spy who had visited her in prison; he thought
torture would be salutary for her soul. After all, this particular depth
of infamy was not sounded; the votes for mercy outnumbered those for
torture. The executioner and his henchmen departed, the former
testifying later that the Maid "showed great prudence in her replies, so
that those who heard were astonished; and their deponent retired with
his assistant without touching her."
Still another week of fetters and darkness, of foul air and fouler
speech; then came the reply from the University of Paris. They rejoiced
in the "elegance" with which the crime of this person had been
communicated to them. It was clear to their minds that her pretended
saints were in reality three well-known fiends, Satan, Belial, and
Behemoth. She was treacherous, cruel, bloodthirsty, a would-be suicide;
a liar, heretic, schismatic and idolater. Nevertheless, in the opinion
of the University, it might be well to give her one more "tender
admonition." It could do no harm; the English were safe to deal with her
in any case.
On May 23rd she received the admonition--it really seems to have been a
kindly one this time--from Pierre Maurice, who appealed to her sense of
honor and duty.
"What," he asked her, "would you think of a knight in your king's land
who refused to obey your king and his officers? Yet you, a daughter of
the Church, disobey the officers of Christ, the bishops of the Church.
Be not ashamed of obedience, have no false shame; you will have high
honor, which you think you will lose, if you act as I ask you to do.
_The honor of God_ and your own life in this world, and your salvation
in the next, are to be preferred before all things."[68]
Joan made no answer to this appeal, but it may have had its effect none
the less.
The next day, May 24th, she was placed in a tumbril and brought to the
market-place of St. Ouen, where a great crowd was assembled; priests,
nobles, soldiers, citizens, all agog to see and hear. Would she abjure,
or burn?
It was customary to preach a final sermon to a witch before burning her;
Erard, the preacher, addressed Joan this morning. In the course of his
speech he spoke of the king as a "heretic and schismatic."
"_Speak boldly!_" said the holy Voices in the ear of the Maid.
"By my faith," she cried, "full well dare I both say and swear that he
is the noblest Christian of all Christians, and the truest lover of the
faith and the Church."
Charles, were I set to devise for you a fitting doom, I would have you
loiter through some dim place of forgotten things--not forever, but as
near it as Divine Mercy would allow--seeing always before you the pale
Maid in her fetters, hearing always from her lips those words of undying
trust and love.
Enough; the matter was summed up. Here was the executioner, here his
cart, ready to carry her to the stake. Would Joan of Arc submit to Holy
Church, or would she burn, now, in an hour's time?
You are to remember that this child was not yet nineteen years of age;
that she had been in prison, enduring every torment except that of
actual bodily torture, for a year. To remember, too, that even our
Supreme Exemplar prayed once that the cup might pass from him.
"I submit!" said the Maid.
Instantly a paper was thrust into her hand, and she was bidden sign it.
Bystanders say there was a strange smile on her lips as she made her
mark, a circle, as we know she could not write her name. She was hustled
back to prison, leaving tumult and uproar behind her. The English were
furious. They had come to see a burning, and there was no burning.
Warwick made complaint to Cauchon; the King of England would be angry at
the escape of this witch.
"Be not disturbed, my Lord!" said the Bishop of Beauvais. "We shall soon
have her again."
Back to prison! not, as she had hoped and prayed, to a prison of the
Church, where men whose profession at least was holy would be about her;
where possibly she might even see and speak with a woman; where she
might hear mass, and make confession. No! back to the old foul, hideous
cell, to the brutal jeer and fleer of the English men-at-arms. Back,
under sentence of imprisonment for life.
Meekly the poor girl went; meekly she put off her page's costume, and
assumed, as she was bidden, a woman's dress.
On some aspects of the dark days that followed I cannot dwell; suffice
it to say that they were the bitterest of all the bitter year; suffice
it to say that when her judges came to her again they found her once
more in her page's dress, which she refused to give up again until the
end.
This was not the only change they found, nor the greatest. Back in the
cell, the Voices had spoken loud and clear in rebuke and reproach. St.
Margaret, St. Catherine, both were there. Both told her of the great
pity of that betrayal to which she had consented, when she made that
abjuration and revocation to save her life; told her that by so doing
she had condemned herself.
"If I were to say" (it is herself speaking now) "that God did not send
me I would condemn myself, for true it is that God sent me. My Voices
have told me since that I greatly sinned in that deed, in confessing
that I had done ill. What I said, I said in fear of fire."[69]
And the clerk wrote against these words, on the margin of his notes,
"_Responsio Mortifera_."
The Maid now clearly and emphatically revoked her submission. What she
had said, she repeated, was said in dread of fire.
"Do you believe," asked Cauchon, "that your Voices are those of St.
Catherine and St. Margaret?"
"Yes!" replied the Maid. "Their voices and God's!"
These words were spoken on May 28th, to Cauchon, who had hastened to the
prison, hearing that Joan had resumed man's apparel. Angrily he asked
why she had done this. She answered that it was more convenient, among
men, to wear men's dress. She had not understood that she had sworn
never to wear it again; if she had broken a pledge in this, one had been
broken with her, the promise that she should be released from fetters,
and should receive the sacrament.
"I would rather die," she said, "than remain in irons. If you will
release me, and let me go to mass and lie in gentle prison, I will be
good, and do what the Church desires."
There was only one thing that the Church, as represented in the person
of Pierre Cauchon, desired, and that was the end of her. She had
"relapsed"; it was enough. He hurried joyfully away, passing in the
courtyard Warwick and his men, who were waiting for news.
"Farewell!" cried the Bishop of Beauvais. "Be of good cheer, for it is
done."
He summoned his Council in haste; they were all of his mind. Holy Church
could have no further dealings with this impious and hardened prisoner.
She must be given over to the secular arm, "with the prayer that there
be no shedding of blood." Most sinister of all speakable words! At the
stake, no need of blood-shedding.
Early in the morning of May 29th Martin Ladvenu and Jean Toutmouillé
came to the prison. The latter told the Maid briefly that she was to be
burned. She wept, poor child, and cried out piteously.
"Alas!" she said. "Will they treat me so horribly and cruelly, that my
pure and uncorrupted body ("_corps net et entier, qui ne fut jamais
corrompu_") must to-day be burned to ashes?"
She would rather, she cried in her agony, be seven times beheaded than
burn.
"I appeal to God, the supreme Judge, against the wrongs that have been
done me."
At this moment Cauchon entered the prison. He must see with his own eyes
how his victim received her condemnation. She turned upon him, and
uttered the words which, wherever his name is spoken, whenever his image
is conjured up, are written in flame upon his forehead:
"_Bishop of Beauvais, it is through you I die. I summon you before your
God and mine!_"
Presently she composed herself; made confession to one of the monks, and
asked for the Sacrament. After some haggling among her persecutors the
elements were brought to her, albeit in slovenly fashion, bare of the
priestly pomp which was their due.
So we come to the 30th day of May, of the year 1431. At nine in the
morning Joan left her prison for the last time. She was in woman's
dress. Over her shoulders was the long black robe of the Inquisition,
on her head a paper cap or mitre, bearing the words: "Heretic, Relapsed,
Apostate, Idolater." As the cart in which she stood rumbled through the
streets, the Maid of France lifted up her voice and wept over the city
of her death.
"_Rouen, Rouen, mourrai-je içi? Seras-tu ma maison? Ah, Rouen, j'ai
grand peur que tu n'aies à souffrir de ma mort._"[70]
Hearing these words, the people around her, even the English soldiers,
wept for pity. It is recorded that as the tumbril jolted its way over
the stones, a man in priest's dress was seen pressing through the crowd,
trying desperately to force a way to the cart. It was Loiseleur, the
spy, come in an agony of repentance, to fling himself before the saint
he had helped to condemn and implore her pardon. The soldiers repulsed
him brutally; would have slain him but for Warwick's intervention. The
crowd closed over him.
There were three scaffolds in Rouen Old Market that morning of May. On
one of them the Maid was set to hear her last sermon preached by
Nicholas Midi, of Rouen and Paris; on another sat judges and spectators,
a goodly company; Cardinal Beaufort, Warwick, the "Father of Courtesy,"
Cauchon and all his priestly bloodhounds, who yet could not see blood
shed.
The third scaffold was a heap of plaster, piled high with fagots, from
which rose the stake. It bore the legend: "Jeanne, self-styled the Maid,
liar, mischief-maker, abuser of the people, diviner, superstitious,
blasphemer of God, presumptuous, false to the faith of Christ, boaster,
idolater, cruel, dissolute, an invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic,
heretic."
Nicholas Midi was long in speaking, and the English waxed impatient.
Dinner time was near.
"How now, priest? Are you going to make us dine here?" some of them
cried.
Cauchon read the sentence.
"Then she invoked the blessed Trinity, the glorious Virgin Mary, and all
the blessed saints of Paradise. She begged right humbly also the
forgiveness of all sorts and conditions of men, both of her own party
and of her enemies; asking for their prayers, forgiving them the evil
that they had done her."[71]
The Bailiff of Rouen waved his hand, saying "Away with her."
Quietly, patiently, the Maid climbed the third scaffold. She was well
used to climbing; witness the walls of Les Tourelles, of Jargeau and
Compiègne. Beside her climbed her confessor, Martin Ladvenu, and some
say another Dominican, Isambart de la Pierre, who had been kind to her
throughout. She begged for a cross; an English soldier hastily bound two
sticks together cross-fashion and handed her the emblem. She kissed it
devoutly, and thrust it in her bosom. Then, at her urgent prayer, they
brought a crucifix from a church hard by; this she long embraced,
holding it while they chained her to the stake.
When the flames began to mount, she bade the friar leave her, but begged
him to hold aloft the crucifix, that her eyes might rest on it to the
last. This man testified that from the heart of the fire, she called
steadfastly on her Saints, Catherine, Margaret, Michael, as if they
were once more about her as in the garden of Domrémy.
"To the end she maintained that her Voices were from God, and all she
had done was by God's counsel; nor did she believe that her Voices had
deceived her."
At the last she gave one great cry: "Jesus!" and spoke no more.
Have you felt the touch of fire? Put your finger in the candle flame for
a moment! Then, for another moment--not more, since that way madness
lies--think of that white, tender body of the Maid of France flaming
like a torch to Heaven!
A torch indeed. Fiercely its blaze beats upon Rouen Old Market, throwing
a dreadful light on those watching faces. Pierre de Cauchon, Bishop of
Beauvais, on your face it glares most fiercely; on yours, Henry
Beaufort, Cardinal of Winchester; Earl of Warwick, on yours. I think you
will see that light while you live, however dark the night around you. I
know that by it alone we see your faces to-day.
A torch, indeed. Its flame brightens the sacred fields of France, now in
the hour of Victory, when light has triumphed over darkness, as it
brightened them in the hour of her agony, though God alone saw that
radiance. In the white fire of that torch were fused all incoherent
elements, all that turned the sword of brother against brother,
Frenchman against Frenchman. From that white fire sprang, into enduring
life and glory, France Imperishable.
FINIS
FOOTNOTES:
[66] Translation, A. Lang.
[67] Trans., A. Lang.
[68] Trans., A. Lang.
[69] Trans., A. Lang.
[70] Rouen, Rouen, shall I die here? Shalt thou be my (last) home? Ah,
Rouen, I have great fear thou must suffer for my death.
[71] Trans., A. Lang.