The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc Part 4

"On the throne, I the while mingling with the menial throng, Some courtier shall be seated."

This usurper is even crowned: "the jeweled crown shines on a menial's head." But, really, that is "_un peu fort_"; and the mob of spectators might raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, and the dauphin himself, were not grazing the shins of treason. For the dauphin could not lend more than belonged to him. According to the popular notion, he had no crown for himself; consequently none to lend, on any pretence whatever, until the consecrated Maid should take him to Rheims. This was the _popular_ notion in France. But certainly it was the dauphin's interest to support the popular notion, as he meant to use the services of Joanna. For if he were king already, what was it that she could do for him beyond Orleans? That is to say, what more than a merely _military_ service could she render him? And, above all, if he were king without a coronation, and without the oil from the sacred ampulla, what advantage was yet open to him by celerity above his compet.i.tor, the English boy? Now was to be a race for a coronation: he that should win _that_ race carried the superst.i.tion of France along with him: he that should first be drawn from the ovens of Rheims was under that superst.i.tion baked into a king.

La Pucelle, before she could be allowed to practise as a warrior, was put through her manual and platoon exercise, as a pupil in divinity, at the bar of six eminent men in wigs. According to Southey (v. 393, bk.

iii., in the original edition of his "Joan of Arc,") she "appalled the doctors." It's not easy to do _that_: but they had some reason to feel bothered, as that surgeon would a.s.suredly feel bothered who, upon proceeding to dissect a subject, should find the subject retaliating as a dissector upon himself, especially if Joanna ever made the speech to them which occupies v. 354-391, bk. iii. It is a double impossibility: 1st, because a piracy from Tindal's "Christianity as old as the Creation"--a piracy _a parte ante_, and by three centuries; 2d, it is quite contrary to the evidence on Joanna's trial. Southey's "Joan" of A.D. 1796 (Cottle, Bristol) tells the doctors, among other secrets, that she never in her life attended--1st, Ma.s.s; nor 2d, the Sacramental Table; nor 3d, Confession. In the meantime, all this deistical confession of Joanna's, besides being suicidal for the interest of her cause, is opposed to the depositions upon _both_ trials. The very best witness called from first to last deposes that Joanna attended these rites of her Church even too often; was taxed with doing so; and, by blushing, owned the charge as a fact, though certainly not as a fault.

Joanna was a girl of natural piety, that saw G.o.d in forests and hills and fountains, but did not the less seek him in chapels and consecrated oratories.

This peasant girl was self-educated through her own natural meditativeness. If the reader turns to that divine pa.s.sage in "Paradise Regained" which Milton has put into the mouth of our Saviour when first entering the wilderness, and musing upon the tendency of those great impulses growing within himself-----

"Oh, what a mult.i.tude of thoughts at once Awakened in me swarm, while I consider What from within I feel myself, and hear What from without comes often to my ears, Ill sorting with my present state compared!

When I was yet a child, no childish play To me was pleasing; all my mind was set Serious to learn and know, and thence to do, What might be public good; myself I thought Born to that end----"

he will have some notion of the vast reveries which brooded over the heart of Joanna in early girlhood, when the wings were budding that should carry her from Orleans to Rheims; when the golden chariot was dimly revealing itself that should carry her from the kingdom of _France Delivered_ to the Eternal Kingdom.

It is not requisite for the honour of Joanna, nor is there in this place room, to pursue her brief career of _action._ That, though wonderful, forms the earthly part of her story; the spiritual part is the saintly pa.s.sion of her imprisonment, trial, and execution. It is unfortunate, therefore, for Southey's "Joan of Arc" (which, however, should always be regarded as a _juvenile_ effort), that precisely when her real glory begins the poem ends. But this limitation of the interest grew, no doubt, from the constraint inseparably attached to the law of epic unity. Joanna's history bisects into two opposite hemispheres, and both could not have been presented to the eye in one poem, unless by sacrificing all unity of theme, or else by involving the earlier half, as a narrative episode, in the latter; which, however, might have been done, for it might have been communicated to a fellow-prisoner, or a confessor, by Joanna herself. It is sufficient, as concerns _this_ section of Joanna's life, to say that she fulfilled, to the height of her promises, the restoration of the prostrate throne. France had become a province of England, and for the ruin of both, if such a yoke could be maintained. Dreadful pecuniary exhaustion caused the English energy to droop; and that critical opening La Pucelle used with a corresponding felicity of audacity and suddenness (that were in themselves portentous) for introducing the wedge of French native resources, for rekindling the national pride, and for planting the dauphin once more upon his feet.

When Joanna appeared, he had been on the point of giving up the struggle with the English, distressed as they were, and of flying to the south of France. She taught him to blush for such abject counsels. She liberated Orleans, that great city, so decisive by its fate for the issue of the war, and then beleaguered by the English with an elaborate application of engineering skill unprecedented in Europe. Entering the city after sunset on the 29th of April, she sang ma.s.s on Sunday, May 8th, for the entire disappearance of the besieging force. On the 29th of June she fought and gained over the English the decisive battle of Patay; on the 9th of July she took Troyes by a _coup-de-main_ from a mixed garrison of English and Burgundians; on the 15th of that month she carried the dauphin into Rheims; on Sunday the 17th she crowned him; and there she rested from her labour of triumph. All that was to be _done_ she had now accomplished; what remained was--to _suffer_.

All this forward movement was her own; excepting one man, the whole council was against her. Her enemies were all that drew power from earth. Her supporters were her own strong enthusiasm, and the headlong contagion by which she carried this sublime frenzy into the hearts of women, of soldiers, and of all who lived by labour. Henceforward she was thwarted; and the worst error that she committed was to lend the sanction of her presence to counsels which she had ceased to approve.

But she had now accomplished the capital objects which her own visions had dictated. These involved all the rest. Errors were now less important; and doubtless it had now become more difficult for herself to p.r.o.nounce authentically what _were_ errors. The n.o.ble girl had achieved, as by a rapture of motion, the capital end of clearing out a free s.p.a.ce around her sovereign, giving him the power to move his arms with effect, and, secondly, the inappreciable end of winning for that sovereign what seemed to all France the heavenly ratification of his rights, by crowning him with the ancient solemnities. She had made it impossible for the English now to step before her. They were caught in an irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord among the uncles of Henry VI, partly to a want of funds, but partly to the very impossibility which they believed to press with tenfold force upon any French attempt to forestall theirs. They laughed at such a thought; and, while they laughed, _she_ did it. Henceforth the single redress for the English of this capital oversight, but which never _could_ have redressed it effectually, was to vitiate and taint the coronation of Charles VII as the work of a witch. That policy, and not malice (as M. Michelet is so happy to believe), was the moving principle in the subsequent prosecution of Joanna. Unless they unhinged the force of the first coronation in the popular mind by a.s.sociating it with power given from h.e.l.l, they felt that the sceptre of the invader was broken.

But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought wonders so great for France, was she not elated? Did she not lose, as men so often _have_ lost, all sobriety of mind when standing upon the pinnacle of success so giddy? Let her enemies declare. During the progress of her movement, and in the centre of ferocious struggles, she had manifested the temper of her feelings by the pity which she had everywhere expressed for the suffering enemy. She forwarded to the English leaders a touching invitation to unite with the French, as brothers, in a common crusade against infidels--thus opening the road for a soldierly retreat. She interposed to protect the captive or the wounded; she mourned over the excesses of her countrymen; she threw herself off her horse to kneel by the dying English soldier, and to comfort him with such ministrations, physical or spiritual, as his situation allowed. "Nolebat," says the evidence, "uti ense suo, aut quemquam interficere." She sheltered the English that invoked her aid in her own quarters. She wept as she beheld, stretched on the field of battle, so many brave enemies that had died without confession. And, as regarded herself, her elation expressed itself thus: on the day when she had finished her work, she wept; for she knew that, when her _triumphal_ task was done, her end must be approaching. Her aspirations pointed only to a place which seemed to her more than usually full of natural piety, as one in which it would give her pleasure to die. And she uttered, between smiles and tears, as a wish that inexpressibly fascinated her heart, and yet was half fantastic, a broken prayer that G.o.d would return her to the solitudes from which he had drawn her, and suffer her to become a shepherdess once more. It was a natural prayer, because nature has laid a necessity upon every human heart to seek for rest and to shrink from torment. Yet, again, it was a half-fantastic prayer, because, from childhood upward, visions that she had no power to mistrust, and the voices which sounded in her ear for ever, had long since persuaded her mind that for _her_ no such prayer could be granted. Too well she felt that her mission must be worked out to the end, and that the end was now at hand. All went wrong from this time. She herself had created the _funds_ out of which the French restoration should grow; but she was not suffered to witness their development or their prosperous application. More than one military plan was entered upon which she did not approve. But she still continued to expose her person as before. Severe wounds had not taught her caution. And at length, in a sortie from Compiegne (whether through treacherous collusion on the part of her own friends is doubtful to this day), she was made prisoner by the Burgundians, and finally surrendered to the English.

Now came her trial. This trial, moving of course under English influence, was conducted in chief by the Bishop of Beauvais. He was a Frenchman, sold to English interests, and hoping, by favour of the English leaders, to reach the highest preferment. "Bishop that art, Archbishop that shalt be, Cardinal that mayest be," were the words that sounded continually in his ear; and doubtless a whisper of visions still higher, of a triple crown, and feet upon the necks of kings, sometimes stole into his heart. M. Michelet is anxious to keep us in mind that this bishop was but an agent of the English. True. But it does not better the case for his countryman that, being an accomplice in the crime, making himself the leader in the persecution against the helpless girl, he was willing to be all this in the spirit, and with the conscious vileness of a cat's-paw. Never from the foundations of the earth was there such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty of defence and all its h.e.l.lishness of attack. Oh, child of France! shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot by all around thee, how I honour thy flashing intellect, quick as G.o.d's lightning, and true as G.o.d's lightning to its mark, that ran before France and laggard Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of falsehood! Is it not scandalous, is it not humiliating to civilization, that, even at this day, France exhibits the horrid spectacle of judges examining the prisoner against himself; seducing him, by fraud, into treacherous conclusions against his own head; using the terrors of their power for extorting confessions from the frailty of hope; nay (which is worse), using the blandishments of condescension and snaky kindness for thawing into compliances of grat.i.tude those whom they had failed to freeze into terror? Wicked judges! barbarian jurisprudence!--that, sitting in your own conceit on the summits of social wisdom, have yet failed to learn the first principles of criminal justice--sit ye humbly and with docility at the feet of this girl from Domremy, that tore your webs of cruelty into shreds and dust. "Would you examine me as a witness against myself?" was the question by which many times she defied their arts. Continually she showed that their interrogations were irrelevant to any business before the court, or that entered into the ridiculous charges against her.

General questions were proposed to her on points of casuistical divinity; two-edged questions, which not one of themselves could have answered, without, on the one side, landing himself in heresy (as then interpreted), or, on the other, in some presumptuous expression of self-esteem. Next came a wretched Dominican, that pressed her with an objection, which, if applied to the Bible, would tax every one of its miracles with unsoundness. The monk had the excuse of never having read the Bible. M. Michelet has no such excuse; and it makes one blush for him, as a philosopher, to find him describing such an argument as "weighty," whereas it is but a varied expression of rude Mahometan metaphysics. Her answer to this, if there were room to place the whole in a clear light, was as shattering as it was rapid. Another thought to entrap her by asking what language the angelic visitors of her solitude had talked--as though heavenly counsels could want polyglot interpreters for every word, or that G.o.d needed language at all in whispering thoughts to a human heart. Then came a worse devil, who asked her whether the Archangel Michael had appeared naked. Not comprehending the vile insinuation, Joanna, whose poverty suggested to her simplicity that it might be the _costliness_ of suitable robes which caused the demur, asked them if they fancied G.o.d, who clothed the flowers of the valleys, unable to find raiment for his servants. The answer of Joanna moves a smile of tenderness, but the disappointment of her judges makes one laugh exultingly. Others succeeded by troops, who upbraided her with leaving her father; as if that greater Father, whom she believed herself to have been serving, did not retain the power of dispensing with his own rules, or had not said that for a less cause than martyrdom man and woman should leave both father and mother.

On Easter Sunday, when the trial had been long proceeding, the poor girl fell so ill as to cause a belief that she had been poisoned. It was not poison. n.o.body had any interest in hastening a death so certain. M.

Michelet, whose sympathies with all feelings are so quick that one would gladly see them always as justly directed, reads the case most truly.

Joanna had a twofold malady. She was visited by a paroxysm of the complaint called _homesickness_. The cruel nature of her imprisonment, and its length, could not but point her solitary thoughts, in darkness and in chains (for chained she was), to Domremy. And the season, which was the most heavenly period of the spring, added stings to this yearning. That was one of her maladies--_nostalgia_, as medicine calls it; the other was weariness and exhaustion from daily combats with malice. She saw that everybody hated her and thirsted for her blood; nay, many kind-hearted creatures that would have pitied her profoundly, as regarded all political charges, had their natural feelings warped by the belief that she had dealings with fiendish powers. She knew she was to die; that was _not_ the misery! the misery was that this consummation could not be reached without so much intermediate strife, as if she were contending for some chance (where chance was none) of happiness, or were dreaming for a moment of escaping the inevitable. Why, then, _did_ she contend? Knowing that she would reap nothing from answering her persecutors, why did she not retire by silence from the superfluous contest? It was because her quick and eager loyalty to truth would not suffer her to see it darkened by frauds which _she_ could expose, but others, even of candid listeners, perhaps, could not; it was through that imperishable grandeur of soul which taught her to submit meekly and without a struggle to her punishment, but taught her _not_ to submit--no, not for a moment--to calumny as to facts, or to misconstruction as to motives. Besides, there were secretaries all around the court taking down her words. That was meant for no good to _her_. But the end does not always correspond to the meaning. And Joanna might say to herself, "These words that will be used against me to-morrow and the next day, perhaps, in some n.o.bler generation, may rise again for my justification." Yes, Joanna, they _are_ rising even now in Paris, and for more than justification!

Woman, sister, there are some things which you do not execute as well as your brother, man; no, nor ever will. Pardon me if I doubt whether you will ever produce a great poet from your choirs, or a Mozart, or a Phidias, or a Michael Angelo, or a great philosopher, or a great scholar. By which last is meant--not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination; bringing together from the four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life. If you _can_ create yourselves into any of these great creators, why have you not?

Yet, sister woman, though I cannot consent to find a Mozart or a Michael Angelo in your s.e.x, cheerfully, and with the love that burns in depths of admiration, I acknowledge that you can do one thing as well as the best of us men--a greater thing than even Milton is known to have done, or Michael Angelo; you can die grandly, and as G.o.ddesses would die, were G.o.ddesses mortal. If any distant worlds (which _may_ be the case) are so far ahead of us Tellurians in optical resources as to see distinctly through their telescopes all that we do on earth, what is the grandest sight to which we ever treat them? St. Peter's at Rome, do you fancy, on Easter Sunday, or Luxor, or perhaps the Himalayas? Oh, no! my friend; suggest something better; these are baubles to _them_; they see in other worlds, in their own, far better toys of the same kind. These, take my word for it, are nothing. Do you give it up? The finest thing, then, we have to show them is a scaffold on the morning of execution. I a.s.sure you there is a strong muster in those far telescopic worlds, on any such morning, of those who happen to find themselves occupying the right hemisphere for a peep at _us_. How, then, if it be announced in some such telescopic world by those who make a livelihood of catching glimpses at our newspapers, whose language they have long since deciphered, that the poor victim in the morning's sacrifice is a woman?

How, if it be published in that distant world that the sufferer wears upon her head, in the eyes of many, the garlands of martyrdom? How, if it should be some Marie Antoinette, the widowed queen, coming forward on the scaffold, and presenting to the morning air her head, turned gray by sorrow--daughter of Caesars kneeling down humbly to kiss the guillotine, as one that worships death? How, if it were the n.o.ble Charlotte Corday, that in the bloom of youth, that with the loveliest of persons, that with homage waiting upon her smiles wherever she turned her face to scatter them--homage that followed those smiles as surely as the carols of birds, after showers in spring, follow the reappearing sun and the racing of sunbeams over the hills--yet thought all these things cheaper than the dust upon her sandals, in comparison of deliverance from h.e.l.l for her dear suffering France! Ah! these were spectacles indeed for those sympathising people in distant worlds; and some, perhaps, would suffer a sort of martyrdom themselves, because they could not testify their wrath, could not bear witness to the strength of love and to the fury of hatred that burned within them at such scenes, could not gather into golden urns some of that glorious dust which rested in the catacombs of earth.

On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 1431, being then about nineteen years of age, the Maid of Arc underwent her martyrdom. She was conducted before mid-day, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a platform of prodigious height, constructed of wooden billets supported by occasional walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by hollow s.p.a.ces in every direction for the creation of air currents. The pile "struck terror,"

says M. Michelet, "by its height"; and, as usual, the English purpose in this is viewed as one of pure malignity. But there are two ways of explaining all that. It is probable that the purpose was merciful. On the circ.u.mstances of the execution I shall not linger. Yet, to mark the almost fatal felicity of M. Michelet in finding out whatever may injure the English name, at a moment when every reader will be interested in Joanna's personal appearance, it is really edifying to notice the ingenuity by which he draws into light from a dark corner a very unjust account of it, and neglects, though lying upon the highroad, a very pleasing one. Both are from English pens. Grafton, a chronicler, but little read, being a stiff-necked John Bull, thought fit to say that no wonder Joanna should be a virgin, since her "foule face" was a satisfactory solution of that particular merit. Holinshead, on the other hand, a chronicler somewhat later, every way more important, and at one time universally read, has given a very pleasing testimony to the interesting character of Joanna's person and engaging manners. Neither of these men lived till the following century, so that personally this evidence is none at all. Grafton sullenly and carelessly believed as he wished to believe; Holinshead took pains to inquire, and reports undoubtedly the general impression of France. But I cite the case as ill.u.s.trating M. Michelet's candour. [Footnote: Amongst the many ebullitions of M. Michelet's fury against us poor English are four which will be likely to amuse the reader; and they are the more conspicuous in collision with the justice which he sometimes does us, and the very indignant admiration which, under some aspects, he grants to us. 1. Our English literature he admires with some gnashing of teeth. He p.r.o.nounces it "fine and sombre," but, I lament to add, "skeptical, Judaic, Satanic--in a word, antichristian." That Lord Byron should figure as a member of this diabolical corporation will not surprise men. It _will_ surprise them to hear that Milton is one of its Satanic leaders. Many are the generous and eloquent Frenchmen, besides Chateaubriand, who have, in the course of the last thirty years, n.o.bly suspended their own burning nationality, in order to render a more rapturous homage at the feet of Milton; and some of them have raised Milton almost to a level with angelic natures. Not one of them has thought of looking for him _below_ the earth. As to Shakspere, M. Michelet detects in him a most extraordinary mare's nest. It is this: he does "not recollect to have seen the name of G.o.d" in any part of his works. On reading such words, it is natural to rub one's eyes, and suspect that all one has ever seen in this world may have been a pure ocular delusion. In particular, I begin myself to suspect that the word "_la gloire_" never occurs in any Parisian journal. "The great English nation," says M. Michelet, "has one immense profound vice"--to wit, "pride." Why, really, that may be true; but we have a neighbour not absolutely clear of an "immense profound vice," as like ours in colour and shape as cherry to cherry. In short, M. Michelet thinks us, by fits and starts, admirable--only that we are detestable; and he would adore some of our authors, were it not that so intensely he could have wished to kick them.

2. M. Michelet thinks to lodge an arrow in our sides by a very odd remark upon Thomas a Kempis: which is, that a man of any conceivable European blood--a Finlander, suppose, or a Zantiote--might have written Tom; only not an Englishman. Whether an Englishman could have forged Tom must remain a matter of doubt, unless the thing had been tried long ago.

That problem was intercepted for ever by Tom's perverseness in choosing to manufacture himself. Yet, since n.o.body is better aware than M.

Michelet that this very point of Kempis _having_ manufactured Kempis is furiously and hopelessly litigated, three or four nations claiming to have forged his work for him, the shocking old doubt will raise its snaky head once more--whether this forger, who rests in so much darkness, might not, after all, be of English blood. Tom, it may be feared, is known to modern English literature chiefly by an irreverent mention of his name in a line of Peter Pindar's (Dr Wolcot) fifty years back, where he is described as

"Kempis Tom, Who clearly shows the way to Kingdom Come"

Few in these days can have read him, unless in the Methodist version of John Wesley Among those few, however, happens to be myself, which arose from the accident of having, when a boy of eleven, received a copy of the "De Imitatione Christi" as a bequest from a relation who died very young, from which cause, and from the external prettiness of the book--being a Glasgow reprint by the celebrated Foulis, and gaily bound--I was induced to look into it, and finally read it many times over, partly out of some sympathy which, even in those days, I had with its simplicity and devotional fervour, but much more from the savage delight I found in laughing at Tom's Latinity that, I freely grant to M Michelet, is inimitable. Yet, after all, it is not certain whether the original _was_ Latin. But, however that may have been, if it is possible that M Michelet [Footnote: "_If M. Michelet can be accurate_"--However, on consideration, this statement does not depend on Michelet. The bibliographer Barbier has absolutely _specified_ sixty in a separate dissertation, _soixante traductions_ among those even that have not escaped the search. The Italian translations are said to be thirty. As to mere editions, not counting the early MSS. for half a century before printing was introduced, those in Latin amount to 2000, and those in French to 1000. Meantime it is very clear to me that this astonishing popularity so entirely unparalleled in literature, could not have existed except in Roman Catholic times, nor subsequently have lingered in any Protestant land. It was the denial of Scripture fountains to thirsty lands which made this slender rill of Scripture truth so pa.s.sionately welcome.] can be accurate in saying that there are no less than sixty French versions (not editions, observe, but separate versions) existing of the "De Imitatione," how prodigious must have been the adaptation of the book to the religious heart of the fifteenth century! Excepting the Bible, but excepting _that_ only in Protestant lands, no book known to man has had the same distinction. It is the most marvellous bibliographical fact on record.

3. Our English girls, it seems, are as faulty in one way as we English males in another. None of us men could have written the _Opera Omnia_ of Mr. a Kempis; neither could any of our girls have a.s.sumed male attire like La Pucelle. But why? Because, says Michelet, English girls and German think so much of an indecorum. Well, that is a good fault, generally speaking. But M. Michelet ought to have remembered a fact in the martyrologies which justifies both parties--the French heroine for doing, and the general choir of English girls for _not_ doing. A female saint, specially renowned in France, had, for a reason as weighty as Joanna's--viz., expressly to shield her modesty among men--worn a male military harness. That reason and that example authorised La Pucelle; but our English girls, as a body, have seldom any such reason, and certainly no such saintly example, to plead. This excuses _them_. Yet, still, if it is indispensable to the national character that our young women should now and then trespa.s.s over the frontier of decorum, it then becomes a patriotic duty in me to a.s.sure M. Michelet that we _have_ such ardent females among us, and in a long series; some detected in naval hospitals when too sick to remember their disguise; some on fields of battle; mult.i.tudes never detected at all; some only suspected; and others discharged without noise by war offices and other absurd people. In our navy, both royal and commercial, and generally from deep remembrances of slighted love, women have sometimes served in disguise for many years, taking contentedly their daily allowance of burgoo, biscuit, or cannon-b.a.l.l.s--anything, in short, digestible or indigestible, that it might please Providence to send. One thing, at least, is to their credit: never any of these poor masks, with their deep silent remembrances, have been detected through murmuring, or what is nautically understood by "skulking." So, for once, M. Michelet has an _erratum_ to enter upon the fly-leaf of his book in presentation copies.

4. But the last of these ebullitions is the most lively. We English, at Orleans, and after Orleans (which is not quite so extraordinary, if all were told), fled before the Maid of Arc. Yes, says M. Michelet, you _did_: deny it, if you can. Deny it, _mon cher_? I don't mean to deny it. Running away, in many cases, is a thing so excellent that no philosopher would, at times, condescend to adopt any other step. All of us nations in Europe, without one exception, have shown our philosophy in that way at times. Even people "_qui ne se rendent pas_" have deigned both to run and to shout, "_Sauve qui peut_!" at odd times of sunset; though, for my part, I have no pleasure in recalling unpleasant remembrances to brave men; and yet, really, being so philosophic, they ought _not_ to be unpleasant. But the amusing feature in M. Michelet's reproach is the way in which he _improves_ and varies against us the charge of running, as if he were singing a catch. Listen to him: They "_showed their backs_" did these English. (Hip, hip, hurrah! three times three!) "_Behind good walls they let themselves be taken_." (Hip, hip!

nine times nine!) They "_ran as fast as their legs could carry them_"

(Hurrah! twenty-seven times twenty-seven!) They "_ran before a girl_"; they did. (Hurrah! eighty-one times eighty-one!) This reminds one of criminal indictments on the old model in English courts, where (for fear the prisoner should escape) the crown lawyer varied the charge perhaps through forty counts. The law laid its guns so as to rake the accused at every possible angle. While the indictment was reading, he seemed a monster of crime in his own eyes; and yet, after all, the poor fellow had but committed one offence, and not always _that_. N. B.--Not having the French original at hand, I make my quotations from a friend's copy of Mr. Walter Kelly's translation; which seems to me faithful, spirited, and idiomatically English--liable, in fact, only to the single reproach of occasional provincialisms.]

The circ.u.mstantial incidents of the execution, unless with more s.p.a.ce than I can now command, I should be unwilling to relate. I should fear to injure, by imperfect report, a martyrdom which to myself appears so unspeakably grand. Yet, for a purpose, pointing not at Joanna, but at M.

Michelet--viz, to convince him that an Englishman is capable of thinking more highly of La Pucelle than even her admiring countrymen--I shall, in parting, allude to one or two traits in Joanna's demeanour on the scaffold, and to one or two in that of the bystanders, which authorise me in questioning an opinion of his upon this martyr's firmness. The reader ought to be reminded that Joanna D'Arc was subjected to an unusually unfair trial of opinion. Any of the elder Christian martyrs had not much to fear of _personal_ rancour. The martyr was chiefly regarded as the enemy of Caesar; at times, also, where any knowledge of the Christian faith and morals existed, with the enmity that arises spontaneously in the worldly against the spiritual. But the martyr, though disloyal, was not supposed to be therefore anti-national; and still less was _individually_ hateful. What was hated (if anything) belonged to his cla.s.s, not to himself separately. Now, Joanna, if hated at all, was hated personally, and in Rouen on national grounds. Hence there would be a certainty of calumny arising against _her_ such as would not affect martyrs in general. That being the case, it would follow of necessity that some people would impute to her a willingness to recant. No innocence could escape _that_. Now, had she really testified this willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued nothing at all but the weakness of a genial nature shrinking from the instant approach of torment. And those will often pity that weakness most who, in their own persons, would yield to it least. Meantime, there never was a calumny uttered that drew less support from the recorded circ.u.mstances. It rests upon no _positive_ testimony, and it has a weight of contradicting testimony to stem. And yet, strange to say, M, Michelet, who at times seems to admire the Maid of Arc as much as I do, is the one sole writer among her _friends_ who lends some countenance to this odious slander. His words are that, if she did not utter this word _recant_ with her lips, she uttered it in her heart. "Whether she _said_ the word is uncertain; but I affirm that she _thought_ it."

Now, I affirm that she did not; not in any sense of the word "_thought_"

applicable to the case. Here is France calumniating La Pucelle; here is England defending her. M. Michelet can only mean that, on _a priori_ principles, every woman must be presumed liable to such a weakness; that Joanna was a woman; _ergo_, that she was liable to such a weakness. That is, he only supposes her to have uttered the word by an argument which presumes it impossible for anybody to have done otherwise. I, on the contrary, throw the onus of the argument not on presumable tendencies of nature, but on the known facts of that morning's execution, as recorded by mult.i.tudes. What else, I demand, than mere weight of metal, absolute n.o.bility of deportment, broke the vast line of battle then arrayed against her? What else but her meek, saintly demeanour won, from the enemies that till now had believed her a witch, tears of rapturous admiration? "Ten thousand men," says M. Michelet himself--"ten thousand men wept"; and of these ten thousand the majority were political enemies knitted together by cords of superst.i.tion. What else was it but her constancy, united with her angelic gentleness, that drove the fanatic English soldier--who had sworn to throw a f.a.got on her scaffold as _his_ tribute of abhorrence, that _did_ so, that fulfilled his vow--suddenly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had stood?

What else drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to _his_ share in the tragedy? And, if all this were insufficient, then I cite the closing act of her life as valid on her behalf, were all other testimonies against her. The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose upward in billowing volumes. A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side. Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted in his prayers. Even then, when the last enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment did this n.o.blest of girls think only for _him_, the one friend that would not forsake her, and not for herself; bidding him with her last breath to care for his own preservation, but to leave _her_ to G.o.d. That girl, whose latest breath ascended in this sublime expression of self-oblivion, did not utter the word _recant_ either with her lips or in her heart. No; she did not, though one should rise from the dead to swear it.

Bishop of Beauvais! thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold--thou upon a down bed. But, for the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. At the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the torturer have the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together into sleep; together both sometimes kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists were gathering fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl--when the pavilions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about you--let us try, through the gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your separate visions.

The shepherd girl that had delivered France--she, from her dungeon, she, from her baiting at the stake, she, from her duel with fire, as she entered her last dream--saw Domremy, saw the fountain of Domremy, saw the pomp of forests in which her childhood had wandered. That Easter festival which man had denied to her languishing heart--that resurrection of springtime, which the darkness of dungeons had intercepted from _her_, hungering after the glorious liberty of forests--were by G.o.d given back into her hands as jewels that had been stolen from her by robbers. With those, perhaps (for the minutes of dreams can stretch into ages), was given back to her by G.o.d the bliss of childhood. By special privilege for _her_ might be created, in this farewell dream, a second childhood, innocent as the first; but not, like _that_, sad with the gloom of a fearful mission in the rear. This mission had now been fulfilled. The storm was weathered; the skirts even of that mighty storm were drawing off. The blood that she was to reckon for had been exacted; the tears that she was to shed in secret had been paid to the last. The hatred to herself in all eyes had been faced steadily, had been suffered, had been survived. And in her last fight upon the scaffold she had triumphed gloriously; victoriously she had tasted the stings of death. For all, except this comfort from her farewell dream, she had died--died amid the tears of ten thousand enemies--died amid the drums and trumpets of armies--died amid peals redoubling upon peals, volleys upon volleys, from the saluting clarions of martyrs.

Bishop of Beauvais! because the guilt-burdened man is in dreams haunted and waylaid by the most frightful of his crimes, and because upon that fluctuating mirror--rising (like the mocking mirrors of _mirage_ in Arabian deserts) from the fens of death-most of all are reflected the sweet countenances which the man has laid in ruins; therefore I know, bishop, that you also, entering your final dream, saw Domremy. That fountain, of which the witnesses spoke so much, showed itself to your eyes in pure morning dews; but neither dews, nor the holy dawn, could cleanse away the bright spots of innocent blood upon its surface. By the fountain, bishop, you saw a woman seated, that hid her face. But, as _you_ draw near, the woman raises her wasted features. Would Domremy know them again for the features of her child? Ah, but _you_ know them, bishop, well! Oh, mercy! what a groan was _that_ which the servants, waiting outside the bishop's dream at his bedside, heard from his labouring heart, as at this moment he turned away from the fountain and the woman, seeking rest in the forests afar off. Yet not _so_ to escape the woman, whom once again he must behold before he dies. In the forests to which he prays for pity, will he find a respite? What a tumult, what a gathering of feet is there! In glades where only wild deer should run armies and nations are a.s.sembling; towering in the fluctuating crowd are phantoms that belong to departed hours. There is the great English Prince, Regent of France. There is my Lord of Winchester, the princely cardinal, that died and made no sign. There is the bishop of Beauvais, clinging to the shelter of thickets. What building is that which hands so rapid are raising? Is it a martyr's scaffold? Will they burn the child of Domremy a second time? No; it is a tribunal that rises to the clouds; and two nations stand around it, waiting for a trial. Shall my Lord of Beauvais sit again upon the judgment-seat, and again number the hours for the innocent? Ah, no! he is the prisoner at the bar. Already all is waiting: the mighty audience is gathered, the Court is hurrying to their seats, the witnesses are arrayed, the trumpets are sounding, the judge is taking his place. Oh, but this is sudden! 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 Domremy? Who is she in b.l.o.o.d.y 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.

NOTES

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH

"In October 1849 there appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ an article ent.i.tled _The English Mail-Coach, or the Glory of Motion_. There was no intimation that it was to be continued; but in December 1849 there followed in the same magazine an article in two sections, headed by a paragraph explaining that it was by the author of the previous article in the October number, and was to be taken in connexion with that article. One of the sections of this second article was ent.i.tled _The Vision of Sudden Death_, and the other _Dream-Fugue on the above theme of Sudden Death_. When De Quincey revised the papers in 1854 for republication in volume iv of the Collective Edition of his writings, he brought the whole under the one general t.i.tle of _The English Mail-Coach_, dividing the text, as at present, into three sections or chapters, the first with the sub-t.i.tle _The Glory of Motion_, the second with the sub-t.i.tle _The Vision of Sudden Death_, and the third with the sub-t.i.tle _Dream-Fugue, founded on the preceding theme of Sudden Death_.

Great care was bestowed on the revision. Pa.s.sages that had appeared in the magazine articles were omitted; new sentences were inserted; and the language was retouched throughout."--Ma.s.sON. Cf. as to the revision, Professor Dowden's article, "How De Quincey worked," _Sat.u.r.day Review_, Feb. 23, 1895. This selection is found in _Works_, Ma.s.son's ed., Vol.

XIII, pp. 270-327; Riverside ed., Vol. I, pp. 517-582.

1 6 HE HAD MARRIED THE DAUGHTER OF A DUKE: "Mr. John Palmer, a native of Bath, and from about 1768 the energetic proprietor of the Theatre Royal in that city, had been led, by the wretched state in those days of the means of intercommunication between Bath and London, wand his own consequent difficulties in arranging for a punctual succession of good actors at his theatre, to turn his attention to the improvement of the whole system of Post-Office conveyance, and of locomotive machinery generally, in the British Islands. The result was a scheme for superseding, on the great roads at least, the then existing system of sluggish and irregular stage-coaches, the property of private persons and companies, by a new system of government coaches, in connexion with the Post-Office, carrying the mails and also a regulated number of pa.s.sengers, with clockwork precision, at a rate of comparative speed, which he hoped should ultimately be not less than ten miles an hour. The opposition to the scheme was, of course, enormous; coach proprietors, innkeepers, the Post-Office officials themselves, were all against Mr. Palmer; he was voted a crazy enthusiast and a public bore.

Pitt, however, when the scheme was submitted to him, recognized its feasibility; on the 8th of August 1784 the first mail-coach on Mr.

Palmer's plan started from London at 8 o'clock in the morning and reached Bristol at 11 o'clock at night; and from that day the success of the new system was a.s.sured.--Mr. Palmer himself, having been appointed Surveyor and Comptroller-General of the Post-Office, took rank as an eminent and wealthy public man, M. P. for Bath and what not, and lived till 1818. De Quincey makes it one of his distinctions that he "had married the daughter of a duke," and in a footnote to that paragraph he gives the lady's name as "Lady Madeline Gordon." From an old Debrett, however, I learn that Lady Madelina Gordon, second daughter of Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon, was first married, on the 3d of April 1789, to Sir Robert Sinclair, Bart., and next, on the 25th of November 1805, to _Charles Palmer, of Lockley Park, Berks, Esq._ If Debrett is right, her second husband was not John Palmer of Mail-Coach celebrity, and De Quincey is wrong."--Ma.s.sON.

1 (footnote) INVENTION OF THE CROSS: Concerning the _Inventio sanctae crucis_, see Smith, _Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_, Vol. I, p.

503.

2 4 NATIONAL RESULT: Cf. De Quincey's paper on _Travelling, Works,_ Riverside ed., Vol. II, especially pp. 313-314; Ma.s.son's ed., Vol. I, especially pp. 270-271.

3 13 THE FOUR TERMS OF MICHAELMAS, LENT, EASTER, AND ACT: These might be called respectively the autumn, winter, spring, and summer terms.

Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, is on September 29. Hilary and Trinity are other names for Lent term and Act term respectively. Act term is the last term of the academic year; its name is that originally given to a disputation for a Master's degree; such disputations took place at the end of the year generally, and hence gave a name to the summer term. Although the rules concerning residence at Oxford are more stringent than in De Quincey's time, only eighteen weeks' residence is required during the year, six in Michaelmas, six in Lent, and six in Easter and Act.

3 17 GOING DOWN: Cf. "Going down with victory," i.e. from London into the country.

3 30 POSTING-HOUSES: inns where relays of horses were furnished for coaches and carriages. Cf. De Quincey on _Travelling, loc. cit._

4 3 AN OLD TRADITION... from the reign of Charles II: Then no one sat outside; later, outside places were taken by servants, and were quite cheap.

4 9 ATTAINT THE FOOT: The word is used in its legal sense. The blood of one convicted of high treason is "attaint," and his deprivations extend to his descendants, unless Parliament remove the attainder.