_A tent in the English camp. A bullnecked English chaplain of 50 is
sitting on a stool at a table, hard at work writing. At the other side
of the table an imposing nobleman, aged 46, is seated in a handsome
chair turning over the leaves of an illuminated Book of Hours. The
nobleman is enjoying himself: the chaplain is struggling with suppressed
wrath. There is an unoccupied leather stool on the nobleman’s left. The
table is on his right._
THE NOBLEMAN. Now this is what I call workmanship. There is nothing on
earth more exquisite than a bonny book, with well-placed columns of rich
black writing in beautiful borders, and illuminated pictures cunningly
inset. But nowadays, instead of looking at books, people read them. A
book might as well be one of those orders for bacon and bran that you
are scribbling.
THE CHAPLAIN. I must say, my lord, you take our situation very coolly.
Very coolly indeed.
THE NOBLEMAN [_supercilious_] What is the matter?
THE CHAPLAIN. The matter, my lord, is that we English have been
defeated.
THE NOBLEMAN. That happens, you know. It is only in history books and
ballads that the enemy is always defeated.
THE CHAPLAIN. But we are being defeated over and over again. First,
Orleans—
THE NOBLEMAN [_poohpoohing_] Oh, Orleans!
THE CHAPLAIN. I know what you are going to say, my lord: that was a
clear case of witchcraft and sorcery. But we are still being defeated.
Jargeau, Meung, Beugency, just like Orleans. And now we have been
butchered at Patay, and Sir John Talbot taken prisoner. [_He throws down
his pen, almost in tears_] I feel it, my lord: I feel it very deeply. I
cannot bear to see my countrymen defeated by a parcel of foreigners.
THE NOBLEMAN. Oh! you are an Englishman, are you?
THE CHAPLAIN. Certainly not, my lord: I am a gentleman. Still, like your
lordship, I was born in England; and it makes a difference.
THE NOBLEMAN. You are attached to the soil, eh?
THE CHAPLAIN. It pleases your lordship to be satirical at my expense:
your greatness privileges you to be so with impunity. But your lordship
knows very well that I am not attached to the soil in a vulgar manner,
like a serf. Still, I have a feeling about it; [_with growing
agitation_] and I am not ashamed of it; and [_rising wildly_] by God, if
this goes on any longer I will fling my cassock to the devil, and take
arms myself, and strangle the accursed witch with my own hands.
THE NOBLEMAN [_laughing at him goodnaturedly_] So you shall, chaplain:
so you shall, if we can do nothing better. But not yet, not quite yet.
THE CHAPLAIN [_resumes his seat very sulkily_].
THE NOBLEMAN [_airily_] I should not care very much about the witch—you
see, I have made my pilgrimage to the Holy Land; and the Heavenly
Powers, for their own credit, can hardly allow me to be worsted by a
village sorceress—but the Bastard of Orleans is a harder nut to crack;
and as he has been to the Holy Land too, honors are easy between us as
far as that goes.
THE CHAPLAIN. He is only a Frenchman, my lord.
THE NOBLEMAN. A Frenchman! Where did you pick up that expression? Are
these Burgundians and Bretons and Picards and Gascons beginning to call
themselves Frenchmen, just as our fellows are beginning to call
themselves Englishmen? They actually talk of France and England as their
countries. T h e i r s, if you please! What is to become of me and you
if that way of thinking comes into fashion?
THE CHAPLAIN. Why, my lord? Can it hurt us?
THE NOBLEMAN. Men cannot serve two masters. If this cant of serving
their country once takes hold of them, goodbye to the authority of their
feudal lords, and goodbye to the authority of the Church. That is,
goodbye to you and me.
THE CHAPLAIN. I hope I am a faithful servant of the Church; and there
are only six cousins between me and the barony of Stogumber, which was
created by the Conqueror. But is that any reason why I should stand by
and see Englishmen beaten by a French bastard and a witch from Lousy
Champagne?
THE NOBLEMAN. Easy, man, easy: we shall burn the witch and beat the
bastard all in good time. Indeed I am waiting at present for the Bishop
of Beauvais, to arrange the burning with him. He has been turned out of
his diocese by her faction.
THE CHAPLAIN. You have first to catch her, my lord.
THE NOBLEMAN. Or buy her. I will offer a king’s ransom.
THE CHAPLAIN. A king’s ransom! For that slut!
THE NOBLEMAN. One has to leave a margin. Some of Charles’s people will
sell her to the Burgundians; the Burgundians will sell her to us; and
there will probably be three or four middlemen who will expect their
little commissions.
THE CHAPLAIN. Monstrous. It is all those scoundrels of Jews: they get in
every time money changes hands. I would not leave a Jew alive in
Christendom if I had my way.
THE NOBLEMAN. Why not? The Jews generally give value. They make you pay;
but they deliver the goods. In my experience the men who want something
for nothing are invariably Christians.
_A page appears._
THE PAGE. The Right Reverend the Bishop of Beauvais: Monseigneur
Cauchon.
_Cauchon, aged about 60, comes in. The page withdraws. The two
Englishmen rise._
THE NOBLEMAN [_with effusive courtesy_] My dear Bishop, how good of you
to come! Allow me to introduce myself: Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of
Warwick, at your service.
CAUCHON. Your lordship’s fame is well known to me.
WARWICK. This reverend cleric is Master John de Stogumber.
THE CHAPLAIN [_glibly_] John Bowyer Spenser Neville de Stogumber, at
your service, my lord: Bachelor of Theology, and Keeper of the Private
Seal to His Eminence the Cardinal of Winchester.
WARWICK [_to Cauchon_] You call him the Cardinal of England, I believe.
Our king’s uncle.
CAUCHON. Messire John de Stogumber: I am always the very good friend of
His Eminence. [_He extends his hand to the chaplain, who kisses his
ring_].
WARWICK. Do me the honor to be seated. [_He gives Cauchon his chair,
placing it at the head of the table_].
_Cauchon accepts the place of honor with a grave inclination. Warwick
fetches the leather stool carelessly, and sits in his former place. The
chaplain goes back to his chair._
_Though Warwick has taken second place in calculated deference to the
Bishop, he assumes the lead in opening the proceedings as a matter of
course. He is still cordial and expansive; but there is a new note in
his voice which means that he is coming to business._
WARWICK. Well, my Lord Bishop, you find us in one of our unlucky
moments. Charles is to be crowned at Rheims, practically by the young
woman from Lorraine; and—I must not deceive you, nor flatter your
hopes—we cannot prevent it. I suppose it will make a great difference to
Charles’s position.
CAUCHON. Undoubtedly. It is a masterstroke of The Maid’s.
THE CHAPLAIN [_again agitated_] We were not fairly beaten, my lord. No
Englishman is ever fairly beaten.
CAUCHON [_raises his eyebrow slightly, then quickly composes his face_].
WARWICK. Our friend here takes the view that the young woman is a
sorceress. It would, I presume, be the duty of your reverend lordship to
denounce her to the Inquisition, and have her burnt for that offence.
CAUCHON. If she were captured in my diocese: yes.
WARWICK [_feeling that they are getting on capitally_] Just so. Now I
suppose there can be no reasonable doubt that she is a sorceress.
THE CHAPLAIN. Not the least. An arrant witch.
WARWICK [_gently reproving the interruption_] We are asking for the
Bishop’s opinion, Messire John.
CAUCHON. We shall have to consider not merely our own opinions here, but
the opinions—the prejudices, if you like—of a French court.
WARWICK [_correcting_] A Catholic court, my lord.
CAUCHON. Catholic courts are composed of mortal men, like other courts,
however sacred their function and inspiration may be. And if the men are
Frenchmen, as the modern fashion calls them, I am afraid the bare fact
that an English army has been defeated by a French one will not convince
them that there is any sorcery in the matter.
THE CHAPLAIN. What! Not when the famous Sir John Talbot himself has been
defeated and actually taken prisoner by a drab from the ditches of
Lorraine!
CAUCHON. Sir John Talbot, we all know, is a fierce and formidable
soldier, Messire; but I have yet to learn that he is an able general.
And though it pleases you to say that he has been defeated by this girl,
some of us may be disposed to give a little of the credit to Dunois.
THE CHAPLAIN [_contemptuously_] The Bastard of Orleans!
CAUCHON. Let me remind—
WARWICK [_interposing_] I know what you are going to say, my lord.
Dunois defeated me at Montargis.
CAUCHON [_bowing_] I take that as evidence that the Seigneur Dunois is a
very able commander indeed.
WARWICK. Your lordship is the flower of courtesy. I admit, on our side,
that Talbot is a mere fighting animal, and that it probably served him
right to be taken at Patay.
THE CHAPLAIN [_chafing_] My lord: at Orleans this woman had her throat
pierced by an English arrow, and was seen to cry like a child from the
pain of it. It was a death wound; yet she fought all day; and when our
men had repulsed all her attacks like true Englishmen, she walked alone
to the wall of our fort with a white banner in her hand; and our men
were paralyzed, and could neither shoot nor strike whilst the French
fell on them and drove them on to the bridge, which immediately burst
into flames and crumbled under them, letting them down into the river,
where they were drowned in heaps. Was this your bastard’s generalship?
or were those flames the flames of hell, conjured up by witchcraft?
WARWICK. You will forgive Messire John’s vehemence, my lord; but he has
put our case. Dunois is a great captain, we admit; but why could he do
nothing until the witch came?
CAUCHON. I do not say that there were no supernatural powers on her
side. But the names on that white banner were not the names of Satan and
Beelzebub, but the blessed names of our Lord and His holy mother. And
your commander who was drowned—Clahz-da I think you call him—
WARWICK. Glasdale. Sir William Glasdale.
CAUCHON. Glass-dell, thank you. He was no saint; and many of our people
think that he was drowned for his blasphemies against The Maid.
WARWICK [_beginning to look very dubious_] Well, what are we to infer
from all this, my lord? Has The Maid converted you?
CAUCHON. If she had, my lord, I should have known better than to have
trusted myself here within your grasp.
WARWICK [_blandly deprecating_] Oh! oh! My lord!
CAUCHON. If the devil is making use of this girl—and I believe he is—
WARWICK [_reassured_] Ah! You hear, Messire John? I knew your lordship
would not fail us. Pardon my interruption. Proceed.
CAUCHON. If it be so, the devil has longer views than you give him
credit for.
WARWICK. Indeed? In what way? Listen to this, Messire John.
CAUCHON. If the devil wanted to damn a country girl, do you think so
easy a task would cost him the winning of half a dozen battles? No, my
lord: any trumpery imp could do that much if the girl could be damned at
all. The Prince of Darkness does not condescend to such cheap drudgery.
When he strikes, he strikes at the Catholic Church, whose realm is the
whole spiritual world. When he damns, he damns the souls of the entire
human race. Against that dreadful design The Church stands ever on
guard. And it is as one of the instruments of that design that I see
this girl. She is inspired, but diabolically inspired.
THE CHAPLAIN. I told you she was a witch.
CAUCHON [_fiercely_] She is not a witch. She is a heretic.
THE CHAPLAIN. What difference does that make?
CAUCHON. You, a priest, ask me that! You English are strangely blunt in
the mind. All these things that you call witchcraft are capable of a
natural explanation. The woman’s miracles would not impose on a rabbit:
she does not claim them as miracles herself. What do her victories prove
but that she has a better head on her shoulders than your swearing
Glass-dells and mad bull Talbots, and that the courage of faith, even
though it be a false faith, will always outstay the courage of wrath?
THE CHAPLAIN [_hardly able to believe his ears_] Does your lordship
compare Sir John Talbot, the heir to the earldom of Shrewsbury, to a mad
bull?!!!
WARWICK. It would not be seemly for you to do so, Messire John, as you
are still six removes from a barony. But as I am an earl, and Talbot is
only a knight, I may make bold to accept the comparison. [_To the
Bishop_] My lord: I wipe the slate as far as the witchcraft goes. None
the less, we must burn the woman.
CAUCHON. I cannot burn her. The Church cannot take life. And my first
duty is to seek this girl’s salvation.
WARWICK. No doubt. But you do burn people occasionally.
CAUCHON. No. When the Church cuts off an obstinate heretic as a dead
branch from the tree of life, the heretic is handed over to the secular
arm. The church has no part in what the secular arm may see fit to do.
WARWICK. Precisely. And I shall be the secular arm in this case. Well,
my lord, hand over your dead branch; and I will see that the fire is
ready for it. If you will answer for the Church’s part, I will answer
for the secular part.
CAUCHON [_with smouldering anger_] I can answer for nothing. You great
lords are too prone to treat the Church as a mere political convenience.
WARWICK [_smiling and propitiatory_] Not in England, I assure you.
CAUCHON. In England more than anywhere else. No, my lord: the soul of
this village girl is of equal value with yours or your king’s before the
throne of God; and my first duty is to save it. I will not suffer your
lordship to smile at me as if I were repeating a meaningless form of
words, and it were well understood between us that I should betray the
girl to you. I am no mere political bishop: my faith is to me what your
honor is to you; and if there be a loophole through which this baptized
child of God can creep to her salvation, I shall guide her to it.
THE CHAPLAIN [_rising in a fury_] You are a traitor.
CAUCHON [_springing up_] You lie, priest. [_Trembling with rage_] If you
dare do what this woman has done—set your country above the holy
Catholic Church—you shall go to the fire with her.
THE CHAPLAIN. My lord: I—I went too far. I—[_he sits down with a
submissive gesture_].
WARWICK [_who has risen apprehensively_] My lord: I apologize to you for
the word used by Messire John de Stogumber. It does not mean in England
what it does in France. In your language traitor means betrayer: one who
is perfidious, treacherous, unfaithful, disloyal. In our country it
means simply one who is not wholly devoted to our English interests.
CAUCHON. I am sorry: I did not understand. [_He subsides into his chair
with dignity._]
WARWICK [_resuming his seat, much relieved_] I must apologize on my own
account if I have seemed to take the burning of this poor girl too
lightly. When one has seen whole countrysides burnt over and over again
as mere items in military routine, one has to grow a very thick skin.
Otherwise one might go mad: at all events, I should. May I venture to
assume that your lordship also, having to see so many heretics burnt
from time to time, is compelled to take—shall I say a professional view
of what would otherwise be a very horrible incident?
CAUCHON. Yes: it is a painful duty: even, as you say, a horrible one.
But in comparison with the horror of heresy it is less than nothing. I
am not thinking of this girl’s body, which will suffer for a few moments
only, and which must in any event die in some more or less painful
manner, but of her soul, which may suffer to all eternity.
WARWICK. Just so; and God grant that her soul may be saved! But the
practical problem would seem to be how to save her soul without saving
her body. For we must face it, my lord: if this cult of The Maid goes
on, our cause is lost.
THE CHAPLAIN [_his voice broken like that of a man who has been crying_]
May I speak, my lord?
WARWICK. Really, Messire John, I had rather you did not, unless you can
keep your temper.
THE CHAPLAIN. It is only this. I speak under correction; but The Maid is
full of deceit: she pretends to be devout. Her prayers and confessions
are endless. How can she be accused of heresy when she neglects no
observance of a faithful daughter of The Church?
CAUCHON [_flaming up_] A faithful daughter of The Church! The Pope
himself at his proudest dare not presume as this woman presumes. She
acts as if she herself were The Church. She brings the message of God to
Charles; and The Church must stand aside. She will crown him in the
cathedral of Rheims: she, not The Church! She sends letters to the king
of England giving him God’s command through her to return to his island
on pain of God’s vengeance, which she will execute. Let me tell you that
the writing of such letters was the practice of the accursed Mahomet,
the anti-Christ. Has she ever in all her utterances said one word of The
Church? Never. It is always God and herself.
WARWICK. What can you expect? A beggar on horseback! Her head is turned.
CAUCHON. Who has turned it? The devil. And for a mighty purpose. He is
spreading this heresy everywhere. The man Hus, burnt only thirteen years
ago at Constance, infected all Bohemia with it. A man named WcLeef,
himself an anointed priest, spread the pestilence in England; and to
your shame you let him die in his bed. We have such people here in
France too: I know the breed. It is cancerous: if it be not cut out,
stamped out, burnt out, it will not stop until it has brought the whole
body of human society into sin and corruption, into waste and ruin. By
it an Arab camel driver drove Christ and His Church out of Jerusalem,
and ravaged his way west like a wild beast until at last there stood
only the Pyrenees and God’s mercy between France and damnation. Yet what
did the camel driver do at the beginning more than this shepherd girl is
doing? He had his voices from the angel Gabriel: she has her voices from
St Catherine and St Margaret and the Blessed Michael. He declared
himself the messenger of God, and wrote in God’s name to the kings of
the earth. Her letters to them are going forth daily. It is not the
Mother of God now to whom we must look for intercession, but to Joan the
Maid. What will the world be like when The Church’s accumulated wisdom
and knowledge and experience, its councils of learned, venerable pious
men, are thrust into the kennel by every ignorant laborer or dairymaid
whom the devil can puff up with the monstrous self-conceit of being
directly inspired from heaven? It will be a world of blood, of fury, of
devastation, of each man striving for his own hand: in the end a world
wrecked back into barbarism. For now you have only Mahomet and his
dupes, and the Maid and her dupes; but what will it be when every girl
thinks herself a Joan and every man a Mahomet? I shudder to the very
marrow of my bones when I think of it. I have fought it all my life; and
I will fight it to the end. Let all this woman’s sins be forgiven her
except only this sin; for it is the sin against the Holy Ghost; and if
she does not recant in the dust before the world, and submit herself to
the last inch of her soul to her Church, to the fire she shall go if she
once falls into my hand.
WARWICK [_unimpressed_] You feel strongly about it, naturally.
CAUCHON. Do not you?
WARWICK. I am a soldier, not a churchman. As a pilgrim I saw something
of the Mahometans. They were not so illbred as I had been led to
believe. In some respects their conduct compared favorably with ours.
CAUCHON [_displeased_] I have noticed this before. Men go to the East to
convert the infidels. And the infidels pervert them. The Crusader comes
back more than half a Saracen. Not to mention that all Englishmen are
born heretics.
THE CHAPLAIN. Englishmen heretics!!! [_Appealing to Warwick_] My lord:
must we endure this? His lordship is beside himself. How can what an
Englishman believes be heresy? It is a contradiction in terms.
CAUCHON. I absolve you, Messire de Stogumber, on the ground of
invincible ignorance. The thick air of your country does not breed
theologians.
WARWICK. You would not say so if you heard us quarrelling about
religion, my lord! I am sorry you think I must be either a heretic or a
blockhead because, as a travelled man, I know that the followers of
Mahomet profess great respect for our Lord, and are more ready to
forgive St Peter for being a fisherman than your lordship is to forgive
Mahomet for being a camel driver. But at least we can proceed in this
matter without bigotry.
CAUCHON. When men call the zeal of the Christian Church bigotry I know
what to think.
WARWICK. They are only east and west views of the same thing.
CAUCHON [_bitterly ironical_] Only east and west! Only!!
WARWICK. Oh, my Lord Bishop, I am not gainsaying you. You will carry The
Church with you; but you have to carry the nobles also. To my mind there
is a stronger case against The Maid than the one you have so forcibly
put. Frankly, I am not afraid of this girl becoming another Mahomet, and
superseding The Church by a great heresy. I think you exaggerate that
risk. But have you noticed that in these letters of hers, she proposes
to all the kings of Europe, as she has already pressed on Charles, a
transaction which would wreck the whole social structure of Christendom?
CAUCHON. Wreck The Church. I tell you so.
WARWICK [_whose patience is wearing out_] My lord: pray get The Church
out of your head for a moment; and remember that there are temporal
institutions in the world as well as spiritual ones. I and my peers
represent the feudal aristocracy as you represent The Church. We are the
temporal power. Well, do you not see how this girl’s idea strikes at us?
CAUCHON. How does her idea strike at you, except as it strikes at all of
us, through The Church?
WARWICK. Her idea is that the kings should give their realms to God, and
then reign as God’s bailiffs.
CAUCHON [_not interested_] Quite sound theologically, my lord. But the
king will hardly care, provided he reign. It is an abstract idea: a mere
form of words.
WARWICK. By no means. It is a cunning device to supersede the
aristocracy, and make the king sole and absolute autocrat. Instead of
the king being merely the first among his peers, he becomes their
master. That we cannot suffer: we call no man master. Nominally we hold
our lands and dignities from the king, because there must be a keystone
to the arch of human society; but we hold our lands in our own hands,
and defend them with our own swords and those of our own tenants. Now by
The Maid’s doctrine the king will take our lands—our lands!—and make
them a present to God; and God will then vest them wholly in the king.
CAUCHON. Need you fear that? You are the makers of kings after all. York
or Lancaster in England, Lancaster or Valois in France: they reign
according to your pleasure.
WARWICK. Yes: but only as long as the people follow their feudal lords,
and know the king only as a travelling show, owning nothing but the
highway that belongs to everybody. If the people’s thoughts and hearts
were turned to the king, and their lords became only the king’s servants
in their eyes, the king could break us across his knee one by one; and
then what should we be but liveried courtiers in his halls?
CAUCHON. Still you need not fear, my lord. Some men are born kings; and
some are born statesmen. The two are seldom the same. Where would the
king find counsellors to plan and carry out such a policy for him?
WARWICK [_with a not too friendly smile_] Perhaps in the Church, my
lord.
CAUCHON [_with an equally sour smile, shrugs his shoulders, and does not
contradict him_].
WARWICK. Strike down the barons; and the cardinals will have it all
their own way.
CAUCHON [_conciliatory, dropping his polemical tone_] My lord: we shall
not defeat The Maid if we strike against one another. I know well that
there is a Will to Power in the world. I know that while it lasts there
will be a struggle between the Emperor and the Pope, between the dukes
and the political cardinals, between the barons and the kings. The devil
divides us and governs. I see you are no friend to The Church: you are
an earl first and last, as I am a churchman first and last. But can we
not sink our differences in the face of a common enemy? I see now that
what is in your mind is not that this girl has never once mentioned The
Church, and thinks only of God and herself, but that she has never once
mentioned the peerage, and thinks only of the king and herself.
WARWICK. Quite so. These two ideas of hers are the same idea at bottom.
It goes deep, my lord. It is the protest of the individual soul against
the interference of priest or peer between the private man and his God.
I should call it Protestantism if I had to find a name for it.
CAUCHON [_looking hard at him_] You understand it wonderfully well, my
lord. Scratch an Englishman, and find a Protestant.
WARWICK [_playing the pink of courtesy_] I think you are not entirely
void of sympathy with The Maid’s secular heresy, my lord. I leave you to
find a name for it.
CAUCHON. You mistake me, my lord. I have no sympathy with her political
presumptions. But as a priest I have gained a knowledge of the minds of
the common people; and there you will find yet another most dangerous
idea. I can express it only by such phrases as France for the French,
England for the English, Italy for the Italians, Spain for the Spanish,
and so forth. It is sometimes so narrow and bitter in country folk that
it surprises me that this country girl can rise above the idea of her
village for its villagers. But she can. She does. When she threatens to
drive the English from the soil of France she is undoubtedly thinking of
the whole extent of country in which French is spoken. To her the
French-speaking people are what the Holy Scriptures describe as a
nation. Call this side of her heresy Nationalism if you will: I can find
you no better name for it. I can only tell you that it is essentially
anti-Catholic and anti-Christian; for the Catholic Church knows only one
realm, and that is the realm of Christ’s kingdom. Divide that kingdom
into nations, and you dethrone Christ. Dethrone Christ, and who will
stand between our throats and the sword? The world will perish in a
welter of war.
WARWICK. Well, if you will burn the Protestant, I will burn the
Nationalist, though perhaps I shall not carry Messire John with me
there. England for the English will appeal to him.
THE CHAPLAIN. Certainly England for the English goes without saying: it
is the simple law of nature. But this woman denies to England her
legitimate conquests, given her by God because of her peculiar fitness
to rule over less civilized races for their own good. I do not
understand what your lordships mean by Protestant and Nationalist: you
are too learned and subtle for a poor clerk like myself. But I know as a
matter of plain commonsense that the woman is a rebel; and that is
enough for me. She rebels against Nature by wearing man’s clothes, and
fighting. She rebels against The Church by usurping the divine authority
of the Pope. She rebels against God by her damnable league with Satan
and his evil spirits against our army. And all these rebellions are only
excuses for her great rebellion against England. That is not to be
endured. Let her perish. Let her burn. Let her not infect the whole
flock. It is expedient that one woman die for the people.
WARWICK [_rising_] My lord: we seem to be agreed.
CAUCHON [_rising also, but in protest_] I will not imperil my soul. I
will uphold the justice of the Church. I will strive to the utmost for
this woman’s salvation.
WARWICK. I am sorry for the poor girl. I hate these severities. I will
spare her if I can.
THE CHAPLAIN [_implacably_] I would burn her with my own hands.
CAUCHON [_blessing him_] Sancta simplicitas!
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