The Executioner's Knife Part 26

JOHN (appearing at the wicket and affecting rage)--"If you keep on screaming like that, I shall have you whipped till you bleed!"

CANON LOYSELEUR (with greater exaltation)--"Hack my limbs to pieces!

Tear my scalp from my skull, ferocious beast! Unto death shall I cry: 'Glory to G.o.d--Long live King Charles VII! Anathema upon the English!'"

JOHN (still at the wicket)--"The captain of the tower will soon be here.

I shall notify him of the danger there is in leaving you in the same cell with that witch, with whom you might enter into wicked machinations, you tonsured devil! But if you continue to scream, your flesh will be flayed!" (He withdraws from the wicket.)

CANON LOYSELEUR (shaking his chains)--"Heathen! Criminal! Idolater! You will burn in h.e.l.l!"

JOAN DARC (beseechingly)--"Good Father, calm yourself; do not irritate that man. He will remove you from me, if you do. Oh, in my distress, it would be a great consolation to me to hear the word of a priest of our Lord. Do not withdraw your support from me."

CANON LOYSELEUR (contritely)--"May G.o.d pardon me for having yielded to an impulse of anger! I would regret the act doubly if it were to cause these wicked men to separate me from you. (In a low voice and feigning to look toward the wicket with fear of being overheard) I have hoped to be useful to you--perhaps to save you--by my advice--"

JOAN DARC--"What say you, good Father?"

CANON LOYSELEUR (still in a low voice)--"I have hoped to be able to give you useful advice in the matter of the process that is to be inst.i.tuted against you, and keep you from falling into the snares that those unworthy priests will surely spread before you. Those judges are simoniacal, they have been sold to the English. I hoped to be able to admit you to confession and to the ineffable happiness of communion, that you have probably been long deprived of."

JOAN DARC (sighing)--"Since my captivity I have not been able to approach the sacred table!"

CANON LOYSELEUR--"I have succeeded in concealing from the jailers some consecrated wafers. But so far from reserving the bread of the angels for myself alone, I wished to invite you to the celestial feast!"

JOAN DARC (clasping her hands in pious delight)--"Oh, Father! Good Father! How thankful I shall be to you!"

CANON LOYSELEUR (hurriedly, but in a still lower voice, and casting furtive glances. .h.i.ther and thither)--"Our moments are precious. I may be taken away from here any time. I know not whether I shall ever again see you, holy maid. Give me your full attention. Remember my advice. It may save you. You must know that to-morrow, perhaps to-day, you will be arraigned before an ecclesiastical tribunal on the charges of heresy and witchcraft."

JOAN DARC--"The English who brought me hither a prisoner have announced the tribunal to me. I am to be condemned."

CANON LOYSELEUR--"The threat is not idle. Yesterday my jailer said to me: 'You will soon have Joan the witch as your cell-mate; she is to be tried, sentenced and burned as a magician who sold herself to Satan, and as a heretic'!"

JOAN DARC (trembling)--"My G.o.d!"

CANON LOYSELEUR--"What is the matter, my dear daughter? You seem to tremble!"

JOAN DARC (with a shiver)--"Oh, Father! May G.o.d stand by me! Thanks to Him, I never knew fear! (She covers her face with her hands in terror.) I, burned! Oh, Lord G.o.d! Burned! What a frightful death!"

CANON LOYSELEUR--"You are well justified in your fears. The purpose of the tribunal is to send you to the pyre."

JOAN DARC (in a smothered voice)--"And yet they are priests! What harm have I done them? Why do they persecute me?"

CANON LOYSELEUR--"Oh, my daughter, do not blaspheme that sacred name of priest by applying it to those tigers who thirst for blood."

JOAN DARC--"Pardon me, Father!"

CANON LOYSELEUR (in a voice of tender commiseration)--"Sweet and dear child, need you fear a word of blame from my mouth? No, no. It was but a generous impulse of indignation that carried me away against those new Pharisees who conspire to kill you, as their predecessors years ago conspired to kill Jesus our Redeemer! I am a clerk of theology. I know the manner in which such tribunals as you are about to face are wont to proceed. I know your life; the glorious voice of your fame has informed me of your n.o.ble deeds."

JOAN DARC (dejectedly)--"Oh, if I had only remained home sewing and spinning. I would not now be in imminent danger of death!"

CANON LOYSELEUR--"Come, daughter of G.o.d, no weakness! Did not the Lord tell you by the voice of two of His saints and of His archangel: 'Go, daughter of G.o.d! Go to the aid of the King. You will deliver Gaul'?"

JOAN DARC--"Yes, Father."

CANON LOYSELEUR--"As to those voices, did you hear them?"

JOAN DARC--"Yes, Father."

CANON LOYSELEUR (pressingly)--"You heard them, the sacred voices? With your bodily ears?"

JOAN DARC--"As clearly as I hear your voice at this moment."

CANON LOYSELEUR--"And you saw your saints? You saw them with your own eyes?"

JOAN DARC--"As I see you."

CANON LOYSELEUR (delighted)--"Oh, dear daughter! Hold that language before the ecclesiastical tribunal, and you are saved! You will then escape the snare that they will spread before you."

JOAN DARC--"Please explain what you mean, dear Father and protector."

CANON LOYSELEUR--"However perverse, however iniquitous these tribunals of blood may be, they are nevertheless composed of men who are clothed with a sacred character. These priests must save appearances towards one another and the public. Your judges will tell you with a confidential and benign air: 'Joan, you claim to have seen St. Marguerite, St.

Catherine and St. Michael, the archangel; you claim to have heard their voices. Can it not have been an illusion of your senses? If so, the senses, due to their grossness, are liable to error. The Church will be slow to impute to you as a crime what may be only a carnal error.' Now, then, my poor child (the canon's features are screwed into an expression of anxious concern) if, misled by such insidious language, and thinking to see in it a means of escape, you were to answer: 'Indeed, I do not affirm that I saw the saints and the archangel, I do not affirm that I heard their voices, but I believe to have seen, I believe to have heard,' if you should say that, dear and holy child, you will be lost!

(Joan makes a motion of terror) This is why: To recoil before the affirmation that you have actually seen and heard, to present the fact in the form of a doubt, would be to draw upon your head the charge of falsehood, blasphemy, and heresy in the highest degree. You would be charged (in an increasingly threatening voice) with having made sport of the most sacred things! You would be charged with having, thanks to such diabolical jugglery, deceived the people by holding yourself out as inspired by G.o.d, whom you would be outraging in a most infamous, abominable, impious manner! (In a frightful hollow voice) They would then p.r.o.nounce upon you a terrible excommunication cutting you off from the Church as a gangrened, rotten, infected limb! You would thereupon be delivered to the secular arm, you would be taken to the pyre and burned alive for a heretic, an apostate, an idolater! The ashes of your body will be cast to the winds!"

Joan Darc, pale with fear, utters a piercing cry. She is terrified.

CANON LOYSELEUR (aside)--"The pyre frightens her. She is ours! (He joins his hands imploringly and points to the wicket where the face of John reappears.) Silence! Joan, my dear daughter, you will ruin us both!"

JOHN (roughly, through the wicket)--"You are still making a noise and screaming! Must I come in and make you behave?"

CANON LOYSELEUR (brusquely)--"The irons of my poor mate have wounded her. Pain drew from her an involuntary cry."

JOHN--"She has not yet reached the end! She will scream much louder on the pyre that awaits her, the miserable witch!"

CANON LOYSELEUR (seeming hardly able to contain his indignation)--"Jailer, have at least the charity of not insulting our distress. Have pity for the poor girl!"

John withdraws grumbling. Joan Darc, overwhelmed with terror, has fallen back upon the straw and represses her sobs. After the jailer's withdrawal she slightly regains courage, rises partly and the dialogue proceeds:

JOAN DARC--"Pardon my weakness, Father. Oh, the mere thought of such a horrible death--the thought of mounting a pyre!" (She does not finish the sentence, and sobs violently.)

CANON LOYSELEUR--"By placing before you the frightful fate reserved to you, in case you are snared, I wished to put you upon your guard against your enemies."

JOAN DARC (wiping her tears, and in an accent of profound grat.i.tude)--"G.o.d will reward you, good Father, for the great pity you show me, a stranger to you."

CANON LOYSELEUR--"You are no stranger to me, Joan. I know you are one of the glories of France! The elect of the Lord! Now listen to the rest of what I have to say to you. I am in a hurry to complete my advice before I am dragged away from here. If, deceived by their perfidious suggestions, you should answer your judges that you believe you saw your saints appear before you, that you believe you heard their voices, instead of resolutely affirming that you saw them with your eyes and heard them with your ears, St. Catherine, St. Marguerite and the archangel St. Michael, sent to you by the Lord--"

JOAN DARC--"It is the truth, Father. I shall tell what I saw and heard.

I have never lied."

CANON LOYSELEUR--"The truth must be boldly confessed, in the face of the judges. You must answer them: 'Yes, I have seen these supernatural beings with my eyes; yes, I have heard their marvelous voices with my ears.' Then, dear child, despite all its ill will, the tribunal, unable to catch the slightest hesitation in your words, will be forced to recognize that you are a sacred virgin, the elect, the inspired of heaven. And however perverse, however devoted to the English your judges may be, they will find themselves forced to absolve you and set you free."

JOAN DARC (yielding to hope)--"If all that is needed to be saved is to tell the truth, then my deliverance is certain. Thanks to G.o.d and to you, good Father. Thanks for your friendly advice!"