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 associate 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 classes, 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 nobody 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 assembly every man was a
partisan, much less that each one of them was thinking
Print
Word
PDF
