Jeanne D'Arc: Her Life And Death Part 7

They must have been sanguine indeed who hoped for a triumphant acquittal of Jeanne; but still it may have been hoped that a trial by her countrymen would in every case be better for her than to languish in prison or to be seized perhaps by the English on some after occasion, and to perish by their hands. Let us therefore be fair to Cauchon, if possible, up to the beginning of the _Proces_. He was no Frenchman, but a Burgundian; his allegiance was to his Duke, not to the King of England; but his natural sovereign did so, and many, very many men of note and importance were equally base, and did not esteem it base at all. Had the inhabitants of Rheims, his native town, or of Rouen, in which _his_ trial and downfall took place as well as Jeanne's, p.r.o.nounced for the King of Prussia in the last war, and proclaimed themselves his subjects, the traitors would have been hung with infamy from their own high towers, or driven into their river headlong. But things were very different in the fifteenth century. There has never been a moment in our history when either England or Scotland has p.r.o.nounced for a foreign sway. Scotland fought with desperation for centuries against the mere name of suzerainty, though of a kindred race.

There have been terrible moments of forced subjugation at the point of the sword; but never any such phenomena as appeared in France, so far on in the world's history as was that brilliant and highly cultured age. Such a state of affairs is to our minds impossible to understand or almost to believe: but in the interests of justice it must be fully acknowledged and understood.

Cauchon arises accordingly, not at first with any infamy, out of the obscurity. He had been expelled and dethroned from his See, but this only for political reasons. He was ecclesiastically Bishop of Beauvais still; it was within his diocese that the Maid had taken prisoner, and there also her last acts of magic, if magic there was, had taken place.

He had therefore a legal right to claim the jurisdiction, a right which no one had any interest in taking from him. If Paris was disappointed at not having so interesting a trial carried on before its courts, there was compensation in the fact that many doctors of the University were called to a.s.sist Cauchon in his examination of the Maid, and to bring her, witch, sorceress, heretic, whatever she might be, to question.

These doctors were not undistinguished or unworthy men. A number of them held high office in the Church; almost all were honourably connected with the University, the source of learning in France. "With what art were they chosen!" exclaims M. Blaze de Bury. "A number of theologians, the elite of the time, had been named to represent France at the council of Bale; of these Cauchon chose the flower." This does not seem on the face of it to be a fact against, but rather in favour of, the tribunal, which the reader naturally supposes must have been the better, the more just, for being chosen among the flower of learning in France. They were not men who could be imagined to be the tools of any Bishop. Quicherat, in his moderate and able remarks on this subject, selects for special mention three men who took a very important part in it, Guillame erard, Nicole Midi, and Tomas de Courcelles. They were all men who held a high place in the respect of their generation. erard was a friend of Machet, the confessor of Charles VII., who had been a member of the tribunal at Poitiers which first p.r.o.nounced upon the pretensions of Jeanne; yet after the trial of the Maid Machet still describes him as a man of the highest virtue and heavenly wisdom. Nicole Midi continued to hold an honourable place in his University for many years, and was the man chosen to congratulate Charles when Paris finally became again the residence of the King. Courcelles was considered the first theologian of the age. "He was an austere and eloquent young man," says Quicherat, "of a lucid mind, though nourished on abstractions. He was the first of theologians long before he had attained the age at which he could a.s.sume the rank of doctor, and even before he had finished his studies he was considered as the successor of Gerson. He was the light of the council of Bale. Eneas Piccolomini (Pope Pius II.) speaks with admiration of his capacity and his modesty. In him we recognise the father of the freedom of the Gallican Church. His disinterestedness is shown by the simple position with which he contented himself. He died with no higher rank than that of Dean of the Chapter of Paris."

Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? Was this the man to be used for their vile ends by a savage English party thirsting for the blood of an innocent victim, and by the vile priest who was its tool? It does not seem so to our eyes across the long level of the centuries which clear away so many mists. And no more dreadful accusation can be brought against France than the suggestion that men like these, her best and most carefully trained, were willing to act as blood-hounds for the advantage and the pay of the invader. But there are many French historians to whom the mere fact of a black gown or at least an ecclesiastical robe, confounds every testimony, and to whom even the name of Frenchman does not make it appear possible that a priest should retain a shred of honour or of honesty. We should have said by the light of nature and probability that had every guarantee been required for the impartiality and justice of such a tribunal, they could not have been better secured than by the selection of such men to conduct its proceedings. They made a great and terrible mistake, as the wisest of men have made before now. They did much worse, they behaved to an unfortunate girl who was in their power with indescribable ferocity and cruelty; but we must hope that this was owing to the period at which they lived rather than to themselves.

It is not perhaps indeed from the wise and learned, the Stoics and Pundits of a University, that we should choose judges for the divine simplicity of those babes and sucklings out of whose mouth praise is perfected. At the same time to choose the best men is not generally the way adopted to procure a base judgement. Cauchon might have been subject to this blame had he filled the benches of his court with creatures of his own, nameless priests and dialecticians, knowing nothing but their own poor science of words. He did not do so. There were but two Englishmen in the a.s.sembly, neither of them men of any importance or influence although there must have been many English priests in the country and in the train of Winchester. There were not even any special partisans of Burgundy, though some of the a.s.sessors were Burgundian by birth. We should have said, had we known no more than this, that every precaution had been taken to give the Maid the fairest trial. But at the same time a trial which is conducted under the name of the Inquisition is always suspect. The mere fact of that terrible name seems to establish a foregone conclusion; few are the prisoners at that bar who have ever escaped. This fact is almost all that can be set against the high character of the individuals who composed the tribunal. At all events it is no argument against the English that they permitted the best men in France to be chosen as Jeanne's judges. It is the most bewildering and astonishing of historical facts that they were so, and yet came to the conclusion they did, by the means they did, and that without falling under the condemnation, or scorn, or horror of their fellow-men.

This then was the a.s.sembly which gathered in Rouen in the beginning of 1431. Quicherat will not venture to affirm even that intimidation was directly employed to effect their decision. He says that the evidence "tends to prove" that this was the case, but honestly allows that, "it is well to remark that the witnesses contradict each other." "In all that I have said," he adds, "my intention has been to prove that the judges of the Maid had in no way the appearance of partisans hotly pursuing a political vengeance; but that, on the contrary, their known weight, the consideration which most of them enjoyed, and the nature of the tribunal for which they were a.s.sembled, were all calculated to produce generally an expectation full of confidence and respect."

Meanwhile there is not a word to be said for the treatment to which Jeanne herself was subjected, she being, so far as is apparent, entirely in English custody. She had been treated with tolerable gentleness it would seem in the first part of her captivity while in the hands of Jean de Luxembourg, the Count de Ligny. The fact that the ladies of the house were for her friends must have a.s.sured this, and there is no complaint made anywhere of cruelty or even unkindness. When she arrived in Rouen she was confined in the middle chamber of the donjon, which was the best we may suppose, neither a dungeon under the soil, nor a room under the leads, but one to which there was access by a short flight of steps from the courtyard, and which was fully lighted and not out of reach or sight of life. But in this chamber was an iron cage,(1) within which she was bound, feet, and waist and neck, from the time of her arrival until the beginning of the trial, a period of about six weeks. Five English soldiers of the lowest cla.s.s watched her night and day, three in the room itself, two at the door. It is enough to think for a moment of the probable manners and morals of these troopers to imagine what torture must have been inflicted by their presence upon a young woman who had always been sensitive above all things to the laws of personal modesty and reserve. Their course jests would no doubt be unintelligible to her, which would be an alleviation; but their coa.r.s.e laughter, their revolting touch, their impure looks, would be an endless incessant misery. We are told that she indignantly bestowed a hearty buffet on the cheek of a tailor who approached her too closely when it was intended to furnish her with female dress; but she was helpless to defend herself when in her irons, and had to endure as she best could--the bars of her cage let us hope, if cage there was, affording her some little protection from the horror of the continual presence of these rude attendants, with whom it was a shame to English gentlemen and knights to surround a helpless woman.

When her trial began Jeanne was released from her cage, but was still chained by one foot to a wooden beam during the day, and at night to the posts of her bed. Sometimes her guards would wake her to tell her that she had been condemned and was immediately to be led forth to execution; but that was a small matter. Attempts were also made to inflict the barest insult and outrage upon her, and on one occasion she is said to have been saved only by the Earl of Warwick, who heard her cries and went to her rescue. By night as by day she clung to her male garb, tightly fastened by the innumerable "points" of which Shakespeare so often speaks. Such were the horrible circ.u.mstances in which she awaited her public appearance before her judges. She was brought before them every day for months together, to be badgered by the keenest wits in France, coming back and back with artful questions upon every detail of every subject, to endeavour to shake her firmness or force her into self-contradiction. Imagine a cross-examination going on for months, like those--only more cruel than those--to which we sometimes see an unfortunate witness exposed in our own courts of law. There is nothing more usual than to see people break down entirely after a day or two of such a tremendous ordeal, in which their hearts and lives are turned inside out, their minds so bewildered that they know not what they are saying, and everything they have done in their lives exhibited in the worst, often in an entirely fict.i.tious, light, to the curiosity and amus.e.m.e.nt of the world.

But all our processes are mercy in comparison with those to which French prisoners at the bar are still exposed. It is unnecessary to enter into an account of these which are so well known; but they show that even such a trial as that of Jeanne was by no means so contrary to common usage, as it would be, and always would have been in England. In England we warn the accused to utter no rash word which may be used against him; in France the first principle is to draw from him every rash word that he can be made to bring forth. This was the method employed with Jeanne.

Her judges were all Churchmen and dialecticians of the subtlest wit and most dexterous faculties in France; they had all, or almost all, a strong prepossession against her. Though we cannot believe that men of such quality were suborned, there was, no doubt, enough of jealous and indignant feeling among them to make the desire of convicting Jeanne more powerful with them than the desire for pure justice. She was a true Christian, but not perhaps the soundest of Church-women. Her visions had not the sanction of any priest's approval, except indeed the official but not warm affirmation of the Council at Poitiers. She had not hastened to take the Church into her confidence nor to put herself under its protection. Though her claims had been guaranteed by the company of divines at Poitiers, she herself had always appealed to her private instructions, through her saints, rather than to the guiding of any priest. The chief ecclesiastical dignitary of her own party had just held her up to the reprobation of the people for this cause: she was too independent, so proud that she would take no advice but acted according to her own will. The more accustomed a Churchman is to experience the unbounded devotion and obedience of women, the more enraged he is against those who judge for themselves or have other guides on whom they rely. Jeanne was, beside all other sins alleged against her, a presumptuous woman: and very few of these men had any desire to acquit her. They were little accustomed to researches which were solely intended to discover the truth: their principle rather was, as it has been the principle of many, to obtain proofs that their own particular way of thinking was the right one. It is not perhaps very good even for a system of doctrine when this is the principle by which it is tested.

It is more fatal still, on this principle, to judge an individual for death or for life. It will be abundantly proved, however, by all that is to follow, that in face of this tribunal, learned, able, powerful, and prejudiced, the peasant girl of nineteen stood like a rock, unmoved by all their cleverness, undaunted by their severity, seldom or never losing her head, or her temper, her modest steadfastness, or her high spirit. If they hoped to have an easy bargain of her, never were men more mistaken. Not knowing a from b, as she herself said, untrained, unaided, she was more than a match for them all.

Round about this centre of eager intelligence, curiosity, and prejudice, the cathedral and council chamber teeming with Churchmen, was a dark and silent ring of laymen and soldiers. A number of the English leaders were in Rouen, but they appear very little. Winchester, who had very lately come from England with an army, which according to some of the historians would not budge from Calais, where it had landed, "for fear of the Maid"--was the chief person in the place, but did not make any appearance at the trial, curiously enough; the Duke of Bedford we are informed was visible on one shameful occasion, but no more. But Warwick, who was the Governor of the town, appears frequently and various other lords with him. We see them in the mirror held up to us by the French historians, pressing round in an ever narrowing circle, closing up upon the tribunal in the midst, p.r.i.c.king the priests with perpetual sword points if they seem to loiter. They would have had everything pushed on, no delay, no possibility of escape. It is very possible that this was the case, for it is evident that the Witch was deeply obnoxious to the English, and that they were eager to have her and her endless process out of the way; but the evidence for their terror and fierce desire to expedite matters is of the feeblest. A canon of Rouen declared at the trial that he had heard it said by Maitre Pierre Morice, and Nicolas l'Oyseleur, judges a.s.sessors, and by other whose names he does not recollect, "that the said English were so afraid of her that they did not dare to begin the siege of Louviers until she was dead; and that it was necessary if one would please them, to hasten the trial as much as possible and to find the means of condemning her." Very likely this was quite true: but it cannot at all be taken for proved by such evidence.

Another contemporary witness allows that though some of the English pushed on her trial for hate, some were well disposed to her; the manner of Jeanne's imprisonment is the only thing which inclines the reader to believe every evil thing that is said against them.

Such were the circ.u.mstances in which Jeanne was brought to trail. The population, moved to pity and to tears as any population would have been, before the end, would seem at the beginning to have been indifferent and not to have taken much interest one way or another: the court, a hundred men and more with all their hangers-on, the cleverest men in France, one more distinguished and impeccable than the others: the stern ring of the Englishmen outside keeping an eye upon the tedious suit and all its convolutions: these all appear before us, surrounding as with bands of iron the young lonely victim in the donjon, who submitting to every indignity, and deprived of every aid, feeling that all her friends had abandoned her, yet stood steadfast and strong in her absolute simplicity and honesty. It was but two years in that same spring weather since she had left Vaucouleurs to seek the fortune of France, to offer herself to the struggle which now was coming to an end.

Not a soul had Jeanne to comfort or stand by her. She had her saints who--one wonders if such a thought ever entered into her young visionary head--had lured her to her doom, and who still comforted her with enigmatical words, promises which came true in so sadly different a sense from that in which they were understood.

(1) We are glad to add that the learned Quicherat has doubts on the subject of the cage.

CHAPTER XII -- BEFORE THE TRIAL. LENT, 1431.

We have not, however, sufficiently described the horror of the prison, and the treatment to which Jeanne was exposed, though the picture is already dark enough. It throws a horrible yet also a grotesque light upon the savage manners of the time to find that the chamber in which she was confined, had secret provision for an _espionnage_ of the most base kind, openings made in the walls through which everything that took place in the room, every proceeding of the unfortunate prisoner, could be spied upon and every word heard. The idea of such a secret watch has always been attractive to the vulgar mind, and no doubt it has been believed to exist many times when there was little or no justification for such an infernal thought. From the "ear" of Dionysius, down to the _Trou Judas_, which early tourists on the Continent were taught to fear in every chamber door, the idea has descended to our own times. It would seem, however, to be beyond doubt that this odious means of acquiring information was in full operation during the trial of Jeanne, and various spies were permitted to peep at her, and to watch for any unadvised word she might say in her most private moments. We are told that the Duke of Bedford made use of the opportunity in a still more revolting way, and was present, a secret spectator, at the fantastic scene when Jeanne was visited by a committee of matrons who examined her person to prove or to disprove one of the hateful insinuations which were made about her. The imagination, however, refuses to conceive that a man of serious age and of high functions should have degraded himself to the level of a Peeping Tom in this way; all the French historians, nevertheless, repeat the story though on the merest hearsay evidence.

And they also relate, with more apparent truth, how a double treachery was committed upon the unfortunate prisoner by stationing two secretaries at these openings, to take down her conversation with a spy who had been sent to her in the guise of a countryman of her own; and that not only Cauchon but Warwick also was present on this occasion, listening, while their plot was carried out by the vile traitor inside.

The clerks, we are glad to say, are credited with a refusal to act: but Warwick did not shrink from the ignominy. The Englishmen indeed shrank from no ignominy; nor did the great French savants a.s.sembled under the presidency of the Bishop. It is necessary to grant to begin with that they were neither ignorant nor base men, yet from the beginning of the trial almost every step taken by them appears base, as well as marked, in the midst of all their subtlety and diabolical cunning, by the profoundest ignorance of human nature. The spy of whom we have spoken, L'Oyseleur (bird-snarer, a significant name), was sent, and consented to be sent, to Jeanne in her prison, as a fellow prisoner, a _pays_, like herself from Lorraine, to invite her confidence: but his long conversations with the Maid, which were heard behind their backs by the secretaries, elicited nothing from her that she did not say in the public examination. She had no secret devices to betray to a traitor.

She would not seem, indeed, to have suspected the man at all, not even when she saw him among her judges taking part against her. Jeanne herself suspected no falsehood, but made her confession to him, when she found that he was a priest, and trusted him fully. The bewildering and confusing fact, turning all the contrivances of her judges into foolishness, was, that she had nothing to confess that she was not ready to tell in the eye of day.

The adoption of this abominable method of eliciting secrets from the candid soul which had none, was justified, it appears, by the manner of her trial, which was after the rules of the Inquisition--by which even more than by those which regulate an ordinary French trial the guilt of the accused is a foregone conclusion for which proof is sought, not a fair investigation of facts for abstract purposes of justice. The first thing to be determined by the tribunal was the counts of the indictment against Jeanne; was she to be tried for magical arts, for sorcery and witchcraft? It is very probable that the mission of L'Oyseleur was to obtain evidence that would clear up this question by means of recalling to her the stories of her childhood, of the enchanted tree, and the Fairies' Well; from which sources, her accusers anxiously hoped to prove that she derived her inspiration. But it is very clear that no such evidence was forthcoming, and that it seemed to them hopeless to attribute sorcery to her; therefore the accusation was changed to that of heresy alone. The following mandate from the University authorising her prosecution will show what the charge was; and the reader will note that one of its darkest items is the costume, which for so many good and sufficient reasons she wore. Here is the official description of the accused:

"A woman, calling herself the Maid, leaving the dress and habit of her s.e.x against the divine law, a thing abominable to G.o.d, clothed and armed in the habit and condition of a man, has done cruel deeds of homicide, and as is said has made the simple people believe, in order to abuse and lead them astray, that she was sent by G.o.d, and had knowledge of His divine secrets; along with several other doctrines (_dogmatisations_), very dangerous, prejudicial, and scandalous to our holy Catholic faith, in pursuing which abuses, and exercising hostility against us and our people, she has been taken in arms, before Compiegne, and brought as a prisoner before us."

According to French law the indictment ought to have been founded upon a preliminary examination into the previous life of the accused, which, as it does not appear in the formal accusations, it was supposed had never been made. Recent researches, however, have proved that it was made, but was not of a nature to strengthen or justify any accusation. All that the examiners could discover was that Jeanne d'Arc was a good and honest maid who left a spotless reputation behind her in her native village, and that not a suspicion of _dogmatisations_, nor worship of fairies, nor any other unseemly thing was a.s.sociated with her name. Other things less favourable, we are told, were reported of her: the statement, for instance, made in apparent good faith by Monstrelet the Burgundian chronicler, that she had been for some time a servant in an _auberge_, and there had learned to ride, and to consort with men--a statement totally without foundation, which was scarcely referred to in the trial.

The skill of M. Quicherat discovered the substance of those inquiries among the many secondary papers, but they were not made use of in the formal proceedings. This also we are told, though contrary to the habit of French law, was justified by the methods of the Inquisition, which were followed throughout the trial. One breach of law and justice, however, is permitted by no code. It is expressly forbidden by French, and even by inquisitorial law, that a prisoner should be tried by his enemies--that is by judges avowedly hostile to him: an initial difficulty which it would have been impossible to get over and which had therefore to be ignored. One brave and honest man, Nicolas de Houppeville, had the courage to make this observation in one of the earliest sittings of the a.s.sembly:

"Neither the Bishop of Beauvais" (he said) "nor the other members of the tribunal ought to be judges in the matter; and it did not seem to him a good mode of procedure that those who were of the opposite party to the accused should be her judges--considering also that she had been examined already by the clergy of Poitiers, and by the Archbishop of Rheims, who was the metropolitan of the said Bishop of Beauvais."

Nicolas de Houppeville was a lawyer and had a right to be heard on such a point; but the reply of the judges was to throw him into prison, not without threats on the part of the civil authorities to carry the point further by throwing him into the Seine. This was the method by which every honest objection was silenced. That the examination at Poitiers, where the judges, as has been seen, were by no means too favourable to Jeanne, should never have been referred to by her present examiners, though there was no doubt it ought to have been one of the most important sources of the preliminary information--is also very remarkable. It was suggested indeed to Jeanne at a late period of the trial, that she might appeal to the Archbishop; but he was, as she well knew, one of her most cruel enemies.

Still more important was the breach of all justice apparent in the fact that she had no advocate, no counsel on her side, no one to speak to her and conduct her defence. It was suggested to her near the end of the proceedings that she might choose one of her judges to fill this office; but even if the proposal had been a genuine one or at all likely to be to her advantage, it was then too late to be of any use. These particulars, we believe, were enough to invalidate any process in strict law; but the name of law seems ridiculous altogether as applied to this rambling and cruel cross-examination in which was neither sense nor decorum. The reader will understand that there were no witnesses either for or against her, the answers of the accused herself forming the entire evidence.

One or two particulars may still be added to make the background at least more clear. The prison of Jeanne, as we have seen, was not left in the usual silence of such a place; the constant noise with which the English troopers filled the air, jesting, gossiping, and carrying on their noisy conversation, if nothing worse and more offensive--sometimes, as Jeanne complains, preventing her from hearing (her sole solace) the soft voices of her saintly visitors--was not her only disturbance. Her solitude was broken by curious and inquisitive visitors of various kinds. L'Oyseleur, the abominable detective, who professed to be her countryman and who beguiled her into talk of her childhood and native place, was the first of these; and it is possible that at first his presence was a pleasure to her. One other visitor of whom we hear accidentally, a citizen of Rouen, Pierre Casquel, seems to have got in private interest and with a more or less good motive and no evil meaning. He warned her to answer with prudence the questions put to her, since it was a matter of life and death. She seemed to him to be "very simple" and still to believe that she might be ransomed. Earl Warwick, the commander of the town, appears on various occasions. He probably had his headquarters in the Castle, and thus heard her cry for help in her danger, executing, let us hope, summary vengeance on her brutal a.s.sailant; but he also evidently took advantage of his power to show his interesting prisoner to his friends on occasion. And it was he who took her original captor, Jean de Luxembourg, now Comte de Ligny, by whom she had been given up, to see her, along with an English lord, sometimes named as Lord Sheffield. The Belgian who had put so many good crowns in his pocket for her ransom, thought it good taste to enter with a jesting suggestion that he had come to buy her back.

"Jeanne, I will have you ransomed if you will promise never to bear arms against us again," he said. The Maid was not deceived by this mocking suggestion. "It is well for you to jest," she said, "but I know you have no such power. I know that the English will kill me, believing, after I am dead, that they will be able to win all the kingdom of France: but if there were a hundred thousand more G.o.ddens than there are, they shall never win the kingdom of France." The English lord drew his dagger to strike the helpless girl, all the stories say, but was prevented by Warwick. Warwick, however, we are told, though he had thus saved her twice, "recovered his barbarous instincts" as soon as he got outside, and indignantly lamented the possibility of Jeanne's escape from the stake.

Such incidents as these alone lightened or darkened her weary days in prison. A traitor or spy, a prophet of evil shaking his head over her danger, a contemptuous party of jeering n.o.bles; afterwards inquisitors, for ever repeating in private their tedious questions: these all visited her--but never a friend. Jeanne was not afraid of the English lord's dagger, or of the watchful eye of Warwick over her. Even when spying through a hole, if the English earl and knight, indeed permitted himself that strange indulgence, his presence and inspection must have been almost the only defence of the prisoner. Our historians all quote, with an admiration almost as misplaced as their horror of Warwick's "barbarous instincts," the _vrai galant homme_ of an Englishman who in the midst of the trial cried out "_Brave femme_!" (it is difficult to translate the words, for _brave_ means more than brave)--"why was she not English?" However we are not concerned to defend the English share of the crime. The worst feature of all is that she never seems to have been visited by any one favourable and friendly to her, except afterwards, the two or three pitying priests whose hearts were touched by her great sufferings, though they remained among her judges, and gave sentence against her. No woman seems ever to have entered that dreadful prison except those "matrons" who came officially as has been already said. The ladies de Ligny had cheered her in her first confinement, the kind women of Abbeville had not been shut out even from the gloomy fortress of Le Crotoy. But here no woman ever seems to have been permitted to enter, a fact which must either be taken to prove the hostility of the population, or the very vigorous regulations of the prison. Perhaps the barbarous watch set upon her, the soldiers ever present, may have been a reason for the absence of any female visitor.

At all events it is a very distinct fact that during the whole period of her trial, five months of misery, except on the one occasion already referred to, no woman came to console the unfortunate Maid. She had never before during all her vicissitudes been without their constant ministrations.

One woman, the only one we ever hear of who was not the partisan and lover of the Maid, does, however, make herself faintly seen amid the crowd. Catherine of La Roch.e.l.le--the woman who had laid claim to saintly visitors and voices like those of Jeanne, and who had been for a time received and feted at the Court of Charles with vile satisfaction, as making the loss of the Maid no such great thing--had by this time been dropped as useless, on the appearance of the shepherd boy quoted by the Archbishop of Rheims, and had fallen into the hands of the English: was not she too a witch, and admirably qualified to give evidence as to the other witch, for whose blood all around her were thirsting? Catherine was ready to say anything that was evil of her sister sorceress. "Take care of her," she said; "if you lose sight of her for one moment, the devil will carry her away." Perhaps this was the cause of the guard in Jeanne's room, the ceaseless scrutiny to which she was exposed. The vulgar slanderer was allowed to escape after this valuable testimony.

She comes into history like a will-o'-the-wisp, one of the marsh lights that mean nothing but putrescence and decay, and then flickers out again with her false witness into the wastes of inanity. That she should have been treated so leniently and Jeanne so cruelly! say the historians.

Reason good: she was nothing, came of nothing, and meant nothing. It is profane to a.s.sociate Jeanne's pure and beautiful name with that of a mountebank. This is the only woman in all her generation, so far as appears to us, who was not the partisan and devoted friend of the spotless Maid.

The aspect of that old-world city of Rouen, still so old and picturesque to the visitor of to-day, though all new since that time except the churches, is curious and interesting to look back upon. It must have hummed and rustled with life through every street; not only with the English troops, and many a Burgundian man-at-arms, swaggering about, swearing big oaths and filling the air with loud voices,--but with all the polished bands of the doctors, men first in fame and learning of the famous University, and beneficed priests of all cla.s.ses, canons and deans and bishops, with the countless array that followed them, the cardinal's tonsured Court in addition, standing by and taking no share in the business: but all French and English alike, occupied with one subject, talking of the trial, of the new points brought out, of the opinions of this doctor and that, of Maitre Nicolas who had presumed on his lawyership to correct the bishop, and had suffered for it: of the bold canon who ventured to whisper a suggestion to the prisoner, and who ever since had had the eye of the governor upon him: of Warwick, keeping a rough shield of protection around the Maid but himself fiercely impatient of the law's delay, anxious to burn the witch and be done with her. And Jeanne herself, the one strange figure that n.o.body understood; was she a witch? Was she an angelic messenger? Her answers so simple, so bold, so full of the spirit and sentiment of truth, must have been reported from one to another. This is what she said; does that look like a deceiver? could the devils inspire that steadfastness, that constancy and quiet? or was it not rather the angels, the saints as she said?

Never, we may be sure, had there been in Rouen a time of so much interest, such a theme for conversations, such a subject for all thoughts. The eager court sat with their tonsured heads together, keen to seize every weak point. Did you observe how she hesitated on this?

Let us push that, we'll get an admission on that point to-morrow. It is impossible to believe that in such an a.s.sembly every man was a partisan, much less that each one of them was thinking of the fee of the English, the daily allowance which it was the English habit to make. That were to imagine a France, base indeed beyond the limits of human baseness. All the Norman dignitaries of the Church, all the most learned doctors of the University--no! that is too great a stretch of our faith. The greater part no doubt believed as an indisputable fact, that Jeanne was either a witch or an impostor, as we should all probably do now. And the vertigo of Inquisition gained upon them; they became day by day more exasperated with her seeming innocence, with what must have seemed to them the cunning and cleverness, impossible to her age and s.e.x, of her replies. Who could have kept the girl so cool, so dauntless, so embarra.s.sing in her straight-forwardness and sincerity? The saints? the saints were not dialecticians; far more likely the evil one himself, in whom the Church has always such faith. "He hath a devil and by Beelzebub casteth out devils." It was all like a play, only more exciting than any play, and going on endlessly, the excitement always getting stronger till it became the chief stimulus and occupation of life.

CHAPTER XIII -- THE PUBLIC EXAMINATION. FEBRUARY, 1431.

It was in the chapel of the Castle of Rouen, on the 21st of February, that the trial of Jeanne was begun. The judges present numbered about forty, and are carefully cla.s.sed as doctors in theology, abbots, canons, doctors in canonical and civil law, with the Bishop of Beauvais at their head (the archepiscopal see of Rouen being vacant, as is added: but not that my lord of Beauvais hoped for that promotion). They were a.s.sembled there in all the solemnity of their priestly and professional robes, the reporters ready with their pens, the range of dark figures forming a semicircle round the presiding Bishop, when the officer of the court led in the prisoner, clothed in her worn and war-stained tunic, like a boy, with her hair cut close as for the helmet, and her slim figure, no doubt more slim than ever, after her long imprisonment. She had asked to be allowed to hear ma.s.s before coming to the bar, but this was refused. It was a privilege which she had never failed to avail herself of in her most triumphant days. Now the chapel--the sanctuary of G.o.d contained for her no sacred sacrifice, but only those dark benches of priests amid whom she found no responsive countenance, no look of kindness.

Jeanne was addressed sternly by Cauchon, in an exhortation which it is sad to think was not in Latin, as it appears in the _Proces_. She was then required to take the oath on the Scriptures to speak the truth, and to answer all questions addressed to her. Jeanne had already held that conversation with L'Oyseleur in the prison which Cauchon and Warwick had listened to in secret with greedy ears, but which Manchon, the honest reporter, had refused to take down. Perhaps, therefore, the Bishop knew that the slim creature before him, half boy half girl, was not likely to be overawed by his presence or questions; but it cannot have been but a wonder to the others, all gazing at her, the first men in Normandy, the most learned in Paris, to hear her voice, _a.s.sez femme_, young and clear, arising in the midst of them, "I know not what things I may be asked," said Jeanne. "Perhaps you may ask me questions which I cannot answer." The a.s.sembly was startled by this beginning.

"Will you swear to answer truly all that concerns the faith, and that you know?"

"I will swear," said Jeanne, "about my father and mother and what I have done since coming to France; but concerning my revelations from G.o.d I will answer to no man, except only to Charles my King; I should not reveal them were you to cut off my head, unless by the secret counsel of my visions."

The Bishop continued not without gentleness, enjoining her to swear at least that in everything that touched the faith she would speak truth; and Jeanne kneeling down crossed her hands upon the book of the Gospel, or Missal as it is called in the report, and took the required oath, always under the condition she stated, to answer truly on everything she knew concerning the faith, except in respect to her revelations.

The examination then began with the usual formalities. She was asked her name (which she said with touching simplicity was Jeannette at home but Jeanne in France), the names of her father and mother, G.o.dfather and G.o.dmothers, the priest who baptised her, the place where she was born, etc., her age, almost nineteen; her education, consisting of the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and Credo, which her mother had taught her.

Here she was asked, a curious interruption to the formal interrogatory, to say the Pater Noster--the reason of which sudden demand was that witches and sorcerers were supposed to be unable to repeat that prayer.

As unexpected as the question was Jeanne's reply. She answered that if the Bishop would hear her in confession she would say it willingly. She had been refused all the exercises of piety, and she was speaking to a company of priests.

There is a great dignity of implied protest against this treatment in such an answer. The request was made a second time with a promise of selecting two worthy Frenchmen to hear her: but her reply was the same.

She would say the prayer when she made her confession but not otherwise.

She was ready it would seem in proud humility to confess to any or to all of her enemies, as one whose conscience was clear, and who had nothing to conceal.

She was then commanded not to attempt to escape from her prison, on pain of being condemned for heresy, but to this again she demurred at once.

She would not accept the prohibition, but would escape if she could, so that no man could say that she had broken faith; although since her capture she had been bound in chains and her feet fastened with irons.

To this, her examiner said that it was necessary so to secure her in order that she might not escape. "It is true and certain," she replied, "whatever others may wish, that to every prisoner it is lawful to escape if he can." It may be remarked, as she forcibly pointed out afterwards, that she had never given her faith, never surrendered, but had always retained her freedom of action.

The tribunal thereupon called in the captain in charge of Jeanne's prison, a gentleman called John Gris in the record, probably John Grey, along with two soldiers, Bernoit and Talbot, and enjoined them to guard her securely and not to permit her to talk with any one without the permission of the court. This was all the business done on the first day of audience.

On the 22d of February at eight o'clock in the morning, the sitting was resumed. In the meantime, however, the chapel had been found too small and too near the outer world, the proceedings being much interrupted by shouts and noises from without, and probably incommoded within by the audience which had crowded it the first day. The judges accordingly a.s.sembled in the great hall of the castle; they were forty-nine in number on the second day, the number being chiefly swelled by canons of Rouen. After some preliminary business the accused was once more introduced, and desired again to take the oath. Jeanne replied that she had done so on the previous day and that this was enough; upon which there followed a short altercation, which, however, ended by her consent to swear again that she would answer truly in all things that concerned the faith. The questioner this day was Jean Beaupere (_Pulchri patris_, as he is called in the Latin), a theologian, Master of Arts, Canon of Paris and of Besancon, "one of the greatest props of the University of Paris," a man holding a number of important offices, and who afterwards appeared at the Council of Bale as the deputy of Normandy. He began by another exhortation to speak the truth, to which Jeanne replied as before that what she did say she would say truly, but that she would not answer upon all subjects. "I have done nothing but by revelation," she said.

These preliminaries on both sides having been gone through, the examination was resumed. Jeanne informed the court in answer to Beaupere's question that she had been taught by her mother to sew and did not fear to compete with any woman in Rouen in these crafts; that she had once been absent from home when her family were driven out of their village by fear of the Burgundians, and that she had then lived for about fifteen days in the house of a woman called La Rousse, at Neufchateau; that when she was at home she was occupied in the work of the house and did not go to the fields with the sheep and other animals; that she went to confession regularly to the Cure of her own village, or when he could not hear her, to some other priest, by permission of the Cure; also that two or three times she had made her confession to the mendicant friars--this being during her stay in Neufchateau (where presumably she was not acquainted with the clergy); and that she received the sacrament always at Easter. Asked whether she had communicated at other feasts than Easter, she said briefly that this was enough. "Go on to the rest," _pa.s.sez outre_, she added, and the questioner seems to have been satisfied. Then came the really vital part of the matter. She proceeded--no direct question on the point being recorded, though no doubt it was made--to tell how when she was about thirteen she heard voices from G.o.d bidding her to be good and obedient.