The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies Part 19

**Proces, i. 186.

For the rest, Jeanne recanted her so-called recantation, averring that she was unaware of the contents or full significance of the doc.u.ment, which certainly is not the very brief writing to which she set her mark.

Her voices recalled her to her duty, for them she went to the stake, and if there was a moment of wavering on the day of her doom, her belief in the objective reality of the phenomena remained firm, and she recovered her faith in the agony of her death.

Of EXTERNAL evidence as to her accounts of these experiences, the best is probably that of d'Aulon, the maitre d'Hotel of the Maid, and her companion through her career. He and she were reposing in the same room at Orleans, her hostess being in the chamber (May 1429), and d'Aulon had just fallen asleep, when the Maid awoke him with a cry. Her voices bade her go against the English, but in what direction she knew not. In fact, the French leaders had begun, without her knowledge, an attack on St. Loup, whither she galloped and took the fort.* It is, of course, conceivable that the din of onset, which presently became audible, had vaguely reached the senses of the sleeping Maid. Her page confirms d'Aulon's testimony.

*Proces, iii. 212.

D'Aulon states that when the Maid had any martial adventure in prospect, she told him that her 'counsel' had given her this or that advice. He questioned her as to the nature of this 'counsel.' She said 'she had three councillors, of whom one was always with her, a second went and came to her, and the third was he with whom the others deliberated.'

D'Aulon 'was not worthy to see this counsel.' From the moment when he heard this, d'Aulon asked no more questions. Dunois also gave some evidence as to the 'counsel.' At Loches, when Jeanne was urging the journey to Rheims, Harcourt asked her, before the King, what the nature (modus) of the council was; HOW it communicated with her. She replied that when she was met with incredulity, she went apart and prayed to G.o.d. Then she heard a voice say, Fille De, va, va, va, je serai a ton aide, va! 'And when she heard that voice she was right glad, and would fain be ever in that state.' 'As she spoke thus, ipsa miro modo exsultabat, levando suos oculos ad coelum.'* (She seemed wondrous glad, raising her eyes to heaven.) Finally, that Jeanne maintained her belief to the moment of her death, we learn from the priest, Martin Ladvenu, who was with her to the last.** There is no sign anywhere that at the moment of an 'experience' the Maid's aspect seemed that of one 'dissociated,' or uncanny, or abnormal, in the eyes of those who were in her company.

*Proces, iii. 12.

**Proces, iii. 170.

These depositions were given twenty years later (1452-56), and, of course, allowance must be made for weakness of memory and desire to glorify the Maid. But there is really nothing of a suspicious character about them. In fact, the 'growth of legend' was very slight, and is mainly confined to the events of the martyrdom, the White Dove, the name of Christ blazoned in flame, and so forth.* It should also have been mentioned that at the taking of St. Pierre de Moustier (November 1429) Jeanne, when deserted by her forces, declared to d'Aulon that she was 'not alone, but surrounded by fifty thousand of her own.' The men therefore rallied and stormed the place.

This is the sum of the external evidence as to the phenomena.

*For German fables see Lefevre-Pontalis, Les Sources Allemandes, Paris, 1903. They are scanty, and, in some cases, are distortions of real events.

As to the contents of the communications to Jeanne, they were certainly sane, judicious, and heroic. M. Quicherat (Apercus Nouveaux, p. 61) distinguishes three cla.s.ses of abnormally conveyed knowledge, all on unimpeachable evidence.

(1.) THOUGHT-READING, as in the case of the King's secret; she repeated to him the words of a prayer which he had made mentally in his oratory.

(2.) CLAIRVOYANCE, as exhibited in the affair of the sword of Fierbois.

(3.) PRESCIENCE, as in the prophecy of her arrow-wound at Orleans.

According to her confessor, Pasquerel, she repeated the prophecy and indicated the spot in which she would be wounded (under the right shoulder) on the night of May 6. But this is later evidence given in the trial of Rehabilitation. Neither Pasquerel nor any other of the Maid's party was heard at the trial of 1431.

To these we might add the view, from Vaucouleurs, a hundred leagues away, of the defeat at Rouvray; the prophecy that she 'would last but a year or little more;' the prophecy, at Melun, of her capture; the prophecy of the relief of Compiegne; and the strange affair of the bon conduit at the battle of Pathay.* For several of these predictions we have only the Maid's word, but to be plain, we can scarcely have more unimpeachable testimony.

*Proces, iv. 371, 372. Here the authority is Monstrelet, a Burgundian.

Here the compiler leaves his task: the inferences may be drawn by experts. The old theory of imposture, the Voltairean theory of a 'poor idiot,' the vague charge of 'hysteria,' are untenable. The honesty and the genius of Jeanne are no longer denied. If hysteria be named, it is plain that we must argue that, because hysteria is accompanied by visionary symptoms, all visions are proofs of hysteria. Michelet holds by hallucinations which were unconsciously externalised by the mind of Jeanne. That mind must have been a very peculiar intellect, and the modus is precisely the difficulty. Henri Martin believes in some kind of manifestation revealed to the individual mind by the Absolute: perhaps this word is here equivalent to 'the subliminal self' of Mr. Myers. Many Catholics, as yet unauthorised, I conceive, by the Church, accept the theory of Jeanne herself; her saints were true saints from Paradise.

On the other hand it is manifest that visions of a bright light and 'auditions' of voices are common enough phenomena in madness, and in the experiences of very uninspired sane men and women. From the sensations of these people Jeanne's phenomena are only differentiated by their number, by their persistence through seven years of an almost abnormally healthy life, by their importance, orderliness, and veracity, as well as by their heroic character.

Mr. Myers has justly compared the case of Jeanne with that of Socrates.

A much humbler parallel, curiously close in one respect, may be cited from M. Janet's article, 'Les Actes Inconscients dans le Somnambulisme'

('Revue Philosophique,' March 1888).

The case is that of Madame B., a peasant woman near Cherbourg. She has her common work-a-day personality, called, for convenience, 'Leonie.'

There is also her hypnotic personality, 'Leontine.' Now Leontine (that is, Madame B. in a somnambulistic state) was one day hysterical and troublesome. Suddenly she exclaimed in terror that she heard A VOICE ON THE LEFT, crying, 'Enough, be quiet, you are a nuisance.' She hunted in vain for the speaker, who, of course, was inaudible to M. Janet, though he was present. This sagacious speaker (a faculty of Madame B.'s own nature) is 'brought out' by repeated pa.s.ses, and when this moral and sensible phase of her character is thus evoked, Madame B. is 'Leonore.'

Madame B. now sometimes a.s.sumes an expression of beat.i.tude, smiling and looking upwards. As Dunois said of Jeanne when she was recalling her visions, 'miro modo exsultabat, levando suos oculos ad coelum.' This ecstasy Madame B. (as Leonie) dimly remembers, averring that 'she has been dazzled BY A LIGHT ON THE LEFT SIDE.' Here apparently we have the best aspect of poor Madame B. revealing itself in a mixture of hysterics and hypnotism, and a.s.sociating itself with an audible sagacious voice and a dazzling light on the left, both hallucinatory.

The coincidence (not observed by M. Janet) with Jeanne's earliest experience is most curious. Audivit vocem a dextero latere.... claritas est ab eodem latere in quo vox auditur, sed ibi communiter est magna claritas. (She heard a voice from the right. There is usually a bright light on the same side as the voice.) Like Madame B., Jeanne was at first alarmed by these sensations.

The parallel, so far, is perfectly complete (except that 'Leonore'

merely talks common sense, while Jeanne's voices gave information not normally acquired). But in Jeanne's case I have found no hint of temporary unconsciousness or 'dissociation.' When strung up to the most intense mental eagerness in court, she still heard her voices, though, because of the tumult of the a.s.sembly, she heard them indistinctly.

Thus her experiences are not a.s.sociated with insanity, partial unconsciousness, or any physical disturbance (as in some tales of second sight), while the sagacity of the communications and their veracity distinguish them from the hallucinations of mad people. As far as the affair of Rouvray, the prophecy of the instant death of an insolent soldier at Chinon (evidence of Pasquerel, her confessor), and such things go, we have, of course, many alleged parallels in the predictions of Mr. Peden and other seers of the Covenant. But Mr. Peden's political predictions are still unfulfilled, whereas concerning the 'dear gage'

which the English should lose in France within seven years, Jeanne may be called successful.

On the whole, if we explain Jeanne's experiences as the expressions of her higher self (as Leonore is Madame B.'s higher self), we are compelled to ask what is the nature of that self?

Another parallel, on a low level, to what may be called the mechanism of Jeanne's voices and visions is found in Professor Flournoy's patient, 'Helene Smith.'* Miss 'Smith,' a hardworking shopwoman in Geneva, had, as a child, been dull but dreamy. At about twelve years of age she began to see, and hear, a visionary being named Leopold, who, in life, had been Cagliostro. His appearance was probably suggested by an ill.u.s.tration in the Joseph Balsamo of Alexandre Dumas. The saints of Jeanne, in the same way, may have been suggested by works of sacred art in statues and church windows. To Miss Smith, Leopold played the part of Jeanne's saints. He appeared and warned her not to take such or such a street when walking, not to try to lift a parcel which seemed light, but was very heavy, and in other ways displayed knowledge not present to her ordinary workaday self.

*See Flournoy, Des Indes a la Planete Mars. Alcan, Paris, 1900.

There was no real Leopold, and Jeanne's St. Catherine cannot be shown to have ever been a real historical personage.* These figures, in fact, are more or less akin to the 'invisible playmates' familiar to many children.** They are not objective personalities, but part of the mechanism of a certain cla.s.s of mind. The mind may be that of a person devoid of genius, like Miss Smith, or of a genius like Goethe, Sh.e.l.ley, or Jeanne d'Arc, or Socrates with his 'Daemon,' and its warnings. In the case of Jeanne d'Arc, as of Socrates, the mind communicated knowledge not in the conscious everyday intelligence of the Athenian or of la Pucelle. This information, in Jeanne's case, was presented in the shape of hallucinations of eye and ear. It was sane, wise, n.o.ble, veracious, and concerned not with trifles, but with great affairs. We are not encouraged to suppose that saints or angels made themselves audible and visible. But, by the mechanism of such appearances to the senses, that which was divine in the Maid--in all of us, if we follow St. Paul--that 'in which we live and move and have our being,' made itself intelligible to her ordinary consciousness, her workaday self, and led her to the fulfilment of a task which seemed impossible to men.

*See the Life and Martyrdom of St. Katherine of Alexandria.

(Roxburghe Club, 1884, Introduction by Mr. Charles Hardwick). Also the writer's translation of the chapel record of the 'Miracles of Madame St.

Catherine of Fierbois,' in the Introduction. (London, Nutt.)

**See the writer's preface to Miss Corbet's Animal Land for a singular example in our own time.

VIII. THE MYSTERY OF JAMES DE LA CLOCHE

'P'raps he was my father--though on this subjict I can't speak suttinly, for my ma wrapped up my buth in a mistry. I may be illygitmit, I may have been changed at nuss.'

In these strange words does Mr. Thackeray's Jeames de la Pluche antic.i.p.ate the historical mystery of James de la Cloche. HIS 'buth' is 'wrapped up in a mistry,' HIS 'ma' is a theme of doubtful speculation; his father (to all appearance) was Charles II. We know not whether James de la Cloche--rejecting the gaudy lure of three crowns--lived and died a saintly Jesuit; or whether, on the other hand, he married beneath him, was thrown into gaol, was sentenced to a public whipping, was pardoned and released, and died at the age of twenty-three, full of swaggering and impenitent impudence. Was there but one James de la Cloche, a scion of the n.o.blest of European royal lines? Did he, after professions of a holy vocation, suddenly a.s.sume the most secular of characters, jilting Poverty and Obedience for an earthly bride? Or was the person who appears to have acted in this unworthy manner a mere impostor, who had stolen James's money and jewels and royal name? If so, what became of the genuine and saintly James de la Cloche? He is never heard of any more, whether because he a.s.sumed an ecclesiastical alias, or because he was effectually silenced by the person who took his character, name, money, and parentage.

There are two factions in the dispute about de la Cloche. The former (including the late Lord Acton and Father Boero) believe that James adhered to his sacred vocation, while the second James was a rank impostor. The other party holds that the frivolous and secular James was merely the original James, who suddenly abandoned his vocation, and burst on the world as a gay cavalier, and claimant of the rank of Prince of Wales, or, at least, of the revenues and perquisites of that position.

The first act in the drama was discovered by Father Boero, who printed the doc.u.ments as to James de la Cloche in his 'History of the Conversion to the Catholic Church of Charles II., King of England,' in the sixth and seventh volumes, fifth series, of La Civilta Cattolica (Rome, 1863).

(The essays can be procured in a separate brochure.) Father Boero says not a word about the second and secular James, calling himself 'Giacopo Stuardo.' But the learned father had communicated the papers about de la Cloche to Lord Acton, who wrote an article on the subject, 'The Secret History of Charles II.,' in 'The Home and Foreign Review,' July 1862.

Lord Acton now added the story of the second James, or of the second avatar of the first James, from State Papers in our Record Office. The doc.u.ments as to de la Cloche are among the MSS. of the Society of Jesus at Rome.

The purpose of Father Boero was not to elucidate a romance in royal life, but to prove that Charles II. had, for many years, been sincerely inclined to the Catholic creed, though thwarted by his often expressed disinclination to 'go on his travels again.' In point of fact, the religion of Charles II. might probably be stated in a celebrated figure of Pascal's. Let it be granted that reason can discover nothing as to the existence of any ground for religion. Let it be granted that we cannot know whether there is a G.o.d or not. Yet either there is, or there is not. It is even betting, heads or tails, croix ou pile. This being so, it is wiser to bet that there is a G.o.d. It is safer. If you lose, you are just where you were, except for the pleasures which you desert.

If you win, you win everything! What you stake is finite, a little pleasure; if you win, you win infinite bliss.

So far Charles was prepared theoretically to go but he would not abandon his diversions. A G.o.d there is, but 'He's a good fellow, and 'twill all be well.' G.o.d would never punish a man, he told Burnet, for taking 'a little irregular pleasure.' Further, Charles saw that, if bet he must, the safest religion to back was that of Catholicism. Thereby he could--it was even betting--actually ensure his salvation. But if he put on his money publicly, if he professed Catholicism, he certainly lost his kingdoms. Consequently he tried to be a crypto-Catholic, but he was not permitted to practise one creed and profess another. THAT the Pope would not stand. So it was on his death-bed that he made his desperate plunge, and went, it must be said, bravely, on the darkling voyage.

Not to dwell on Charles's earlier dalliances with Rome, in November 1665, his kinsman, Ludovick Stewart, Sieur d'Aubigny, of the Scoto-French Lennox Stewarts, was made a cardinal, and then died.

Charles had now no man whom he could implicitly trust in his efforts to become formally, but secretly, a Catholic. And now James de la Cloche comes on the scene. Father Boero publishes, from the Jesuit archives, a strange paper, purporting to be written and signed by the King's hand, and sealed with his private seal, that diamond seal, whereof the impression brought such joy to the soul of the disgraced Archbishop Sharp. Father Boero attests the authenticity of seal and handwriting. In this paper, Charles acknowledges his paternity of James Stuart, 'who, by our command, has. .h.i.therto lived in France and other countries under a feigned name.' He has come to London, and is to bear the name of 'de la Cloche du Bourg de Ja.r.s.ey.' De la Cloche is not to produce this doc.u.ment, 'written in his own language' (French), till after the King's death. (It is important to note that James de la Cloche seems to have spoken no language except French.) The paper is dated 'Whitehall, September 27, 1665,' when, as Lord Acton observes, the Court, during the Plague, was NOT at Whitehall.*