The Executioner's Knife Part 4

Whither thus are you going?'

"'I go to those worlds So mysterious, above, That no one yet knows, But that all will yet know.

Where living ne'er traveled, Where all will yet travel, To live there again With those we have loved.'"

"And those worlds," asked Jeannette, "are they the paradise where the angels and the saints of the good G.o.d are? Are they, G.o.d-mother?"

Sybille shook her head doubtfully, without answering, and continued the recital of her legend:

"Hearing Hena speak these words, Sadly gazed upon her her father, And her mother, aye, all the family, Even the little children, For Hena loved them very dearly.

"'But why, dear daughter, Why now quit this world, And travel away beyond Without the Angel of Death having called you?'

"'Good father, good mother, Hesus is angry.

The stranger now threatens our Gaul, so beloved.

The innocent blood of a virgin Offered by her to the G.o.ds May their anger well soften.

Adieu then, till we meet again, Good father, good mother.

"'Adieu till we meet again, All, my dear ones and friends.

These collars preserve, and these rings, As mementoes of me.

Let me kiss for the last time your blonde heads, Dear little ones. Good-bye till we meet.

Remember your Hena, she waits for you yonder, In the worlds yet unknown.'

"Bright is the moon, high is the pyre Which rises near the sacred stones of Karnak; Vast is the gathering of the tribes Which presses 'round the funeral pile.

"Behold her, it is she, it is Hena!

She mounts the pyre, her golden harp in hand, And singeth thus:

"'Take my blood, O Hesus, And deliver my land from the stranger.

Take my blood, O Hesus.

Pity for Gaul! Victory to our arms!'

"So it flowed, the blood of Hena.

O, holy Virgin, in vain 'twill not have been, The shedding of your innocent and generous blood.

To arms! To arms!

Let us chase away the stranger!

Victory to our arms!"

The eyes of Jeannette filled anew with tears; and she said to Sybille, when the latter had finished her recital:

"Oh, G.o.d-mother, if the good G.o.d, his saints and his archangels should ask me: 'Jeannette, which would you prefer to be, Hena or the martial maid of Lorraine who is to drive the wicked English from France and restore his crown to our gentle Dauphin?'--"

"Which would you prefer?"

"I would prefer to be Hena, who, in order to deliver her country, offered her blood to the good G.o.d without shedding the blood of any other people! To be obliged to kill so many people before vanquishing the enemy and before crowning our poor young Sire! Oh, G.o.d-mother,"

added Jeannette, shivering, "Merlin said that he saw blood flowing in torrents and steaming like a fog!"

Jeannette broke off and rose precipitately upon hearing, a few steps off in the copse, a great noise mixed with plaintive bleatings. Just then one of her lambs leaped madly out of the bush pursued silently by a large black dog which was snapping viciously at its legs. To drop her distaff, pick up two stones that she armed herself with and throw herself upon the dog was the work of an instant for the child, thoroughly aroused by the danger to one of her pets, while Sybille cried in frightened tones:

"Take care! Take care! The dog that does not bark is mad!"

But the little shepherdess, with eyes afire and face animated, and paying no heed to her G.o.d-mother's warning, instead of throwing her stones at the dog from a safe distance, attacked him with them in her hands, striking him with one and the other alternately until he dropped his prey and fled, howling with pain and with great tufts of wool hanging from his jaws, while Jeannette pursued him, picking up more stones and throwing them with unerring aim until the dog had disappeared in the thicket.

When Jeannette returned to Sybille the latter was struck by the intrepid mien of the child. The ribbons on her head having become untied, her hair was left free to tumble down upon her shoulders in long black tresses. Still out of breath from running, she leaned for a moment against the moss-grown rocks near the fountain with her arms hanging down upon her scarlet skirt, when, noticing the lamb that lay bleeding on the ground, still palpitating with fear, the little shepherdess fell to crying. Her anger gave place to intense pity. She dipped up some water at the spring in the hollow of her hands, knelt down beside the lamb, washed its wounds and said in a low voice:

"Our gentle Dauphin is innocent as you, poor lambkin; and those wicked English dogs seek to tear him up."

In the distance the bells of the church of Domremy began their measured chimes. At the sound, of which she was so pa.s.sionately fond, the little shepherdess cried delightedly:

"Oh, G.o.d-mother, the bells, the bells!"

And in a sort of ecstasy, with her lamb pressed to her breast, Jeannette listened to the sonorous vibrations that the morning breeze wafted to the forest of oaks.

CHAPTER VII.

GERMINATION.

Several weeks went by. The prophecy of Merlin, the remembrance of the King's misfortunes and of the disasters of France, ravaged by the English, obstinately crowded upon Jeannette's mind, before whom her parents frequently conversed upon the sad plight of the country. Thus, often during the hours she spent in solitary musings with her flock in the fields or the woods, she repeated in a low voice the pa.s.sage from the prophecy of the Gallic bard:

"Gaul, lost by a woman, shall be saved by a virgin From the borders of Lorraine and a forest of old oaks."

Or that other:

"Oh, how much blood!

It spouts up, it flows in torrents!

It steams and, like a mist, it rises heavenward Where the thunder peals, where the lightning flashes!

Athwart those peals of thunder, those flashes of lightning, I see a martial virgin.

White is her steed, white is her armor; She battles, she battles still in the midst of a forest of lances, And seems to be riding on the backs of the archers."

Whereupon the angel of dazzling light would place the royal crown in the hands of the martial virgin, who crowned her King in the midst of shouts of joy and chants of victory!

Every day, looking with her mind's eyes towards the borders of Lorraine and failing to see the emanc.i.p.ating virgin, Jeannette beseeched her two good saints--St. Marguerite and St. Catherine--to intercede with the Lord in behalf of the safety of the gentle Dauphin, who had been deprived of his throne. Vainly did she beseech them to obtain the deliverance of poor France, for so many years a prey to the English; and she also fervently implored heaven for the fulfilment of the prophecy of Merlin, a prophecy that seemed plausible to Jeannette's mind after Sybille had told her of the exploits of the martial virgins who came in their ships from the distant seas of the North and besieged Paris; or the prowess of Jeannette of Montfort, battling like a lioness defending her whelps; or, finally, the heroic deeds of the Gallic women of olden days who accompanied their husbands, their brothers and their fathers to battle.

Jeannette was approaching her fourteenth year, an age at which robust and healthy natures, well developed by the invigorating labors of a rustic life, ordinarily enter their period of p.u.b.erty. In that period of their lives, on the point, so grave for their s.e.x, of becoming maids, they are a.s.sailed by unaccountable fears, by a vague sense of sadness, by an imperious demand for solitude where to give a loose rein to languorous reveries, novel sensations at which their chaste instincts take alarm, symptoms of the awakening of the virginal heart, first and shadowy aspirations of the maid for the sweet pleasures and austere duties of the wife and mother--the sacred destinies of woman.

It was not thus with Jeannette. She experienced these mysterious symptoms; but her simplicity misled her as to their cause. Her imagination filled with the marvelous legends of her G.o.d-mother, whom she continued to meet almost daily at the Fountain of the Fairies, her spirit ever more impressed by the prophecies of Merlin, although she never identified herself with them, Jeannette imputed, in the chaste ignorance of her soul, the vague sense of sadness that a.s.sailed her, her involuntary tears, her confused aspirations--all precursory symptoms of p.u.b.erty--to the painful and tender compa.s.sion that the misfortunes of Gaul and of her young King inspired her with.

Jeannette Darc was to know but one love, the sacred love of her mother-land.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ENGLISH!