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 going
to take 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 that cometh in bloody 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.
[NOTE 1.
Arc:—Modern France, that should
know a great deal better than myself, insists that
the name is not d’Arc, i.e. of Arc, but
Darc. Now it happens sometimes, that if
a person, whose position guarantees his access to
the best information, will content himself with gloomy
dogmatism, striking the table with his fist, and saying
in a terrific voice—“It is so; and
there’s an end of it,”—one bows
deferentially; and submits. But if, unhappily
for himself, won by this docility, he relents too amiably
into reasons and arguments, probably one raises an
insurrection against him that may never be crushed;
for in the fields of logic one can skirmish, perhaps,
as well as he. Had he confined himself to dogmatism;
he would have entrenched his position in darkness,
and have hidden his own vulnerable points. But
coming down to base reasons, he lets in light, and
one sees where to plant the blows. Now, the worshipful
reason of modern France for disturbing the old received
spelling, is—that Jean Hordal, a descendant
of La Pucelle’s brother, spelled the
name Darc, in 1612. But what of that?
Beside the chances that M. Hordal might be a gigantic
blockhead, it is notorious that what small matter
of spelling Providence had thought fit to disburse
amongst man in the seventeenth century, was all monopolized
by printers: in France, much more so.]