Jeanne D'Arc: Her Life And Death Part 13

When the shouts of the people proved that this great step had been taken, and Winchester had signified his conviction that the penitence must be accepted, Cauchon replaced one sentence by another and p.r.o.nounced the prisoner's fate. "Seeing that thou hast returned to the bosom of the Church by the grace of G.o.d, and hast revoked and denied all thy errors, we, the Bishop aforesaid, commit thee to perpetual prison, with the bread of sorrow and water of anguish, to purge thy soul by solitary penitence." Whether the words reached her over all those crowding heads, or whether they were reported to her, or what Jeanne expected to follow standing there upon her platform, more shamed and downcast than through all her trial, no one can tell. There seems even to have been a moment of uncertainty among the officials. Some of them congratulated Jeanne, L'Oyseleur for one pressing forward to say, "You have done a good day's work, you have saved your soul." She herself, excited and anxious, desired eagerly to know where she was not to go.

She would seem for the moment to have accepted the fact of her perpetual imprisonment with complete faith and content. It meant to her instant relief from her hideous prison-house, and she could not contain her impatience and eagerness. "People of the Church--_gens de' eglise_--lead me to your prison; let me be no longer in the hands of the English," she cried with feverish anxiety. To gain this point, to escape the irons and the dreadful durance which she had suffered so long, was all her thought. The men about her could not answer this appeal. Some of them no doubt knew very well what the answer must be, and some must have seen the angry looks and stern exclamation which Warwick addressed to Cauchon, deceived like Jeanne by this unsatisfactory conclusion, and the stir among the soldiers at sight of his displeasure. But perhaps flurried by all that had happened, perhaps hoping to strengthen the victim in her moment of hope, some of them hurried across to the Bishop to ask where they were to take her. One of these was Pierre Miger, friar of Longueville. Where was she to be taken? In Winchester's hearing, perhaps in Warwick's, what a question to put! An English bishop, says this witness turned to him angrily and said to Cauchon that this was a "fauteur de ladite Jeanne," "_this fellow was also one of them_."

Miger excused himself in alarm as St. Peter did before him, and Cauchon turning upon him commanded grimly that she should be taken back whence she came. Thus ended the last hope of the Maid. Her abjuration, which by no just t.i.tle could be called an abjuration, had been in vain.

Jeanne was taken back, dismayed and miserable, to the prison which she had perilled her soul to escape. It was very little she had done in reality, and at that moment she could scarcely yet have realised what she had done, except that it had failed. At the end of so long and bitter a struggle she had thrown down her arms--but for what? to escape those horrible gaolers and that accursed room with its ear of Dionysius, its Judas hole in the wall. The bitterness of the going back was beyond words. We hear of no word that she said when she realised the hideous fact that nothing was changed for her; the bitter waters closed over her head. Again the chains to be locked and double locked that bound her to her dreadful bed, again the presence of those men who must have been all the more odious to her from the momentary hope that she had got free from them for ever.

The same afternoon the Vicar-Inquisitor, who had never been hard upon her, accompanied by Nicole Midi, by the young seraphic doctor, Courcelles, and L'Oyseleur, along with various other ecclesiastical persons, visited her prison. The Inquisitor congratulated and almost blessed her, sermonising as usual, but briefly and not ungently, though with a word of warning that should she change her mind and return to her evil ways there would be no further place for repentance. As a return for the mercy and clemency of the Church, he required her immediately to put on the female dress which his attendants had brought. There is something almost ludicrous, could we forget the tragedy to follow, in the bundle of humble clothing brought by such exalted personages, with the solemnity which became a thing upon which hung the issues of life or death. Jeanne replied with the humility of a broken spirit. "I take them willingly," she said, "and in everything I will obey the Church." Then silence closed upon her, the horrible silence of the prison, full of hidden listeners and of watching eyes.

Meantime there was great discontent and strife of tongues outside. It was said that many even of the doctors who condemned her would fain have seen Jeanne removed to some less dangerous prison: but Monseigneur de Beauvais had to hold head against the great English authorities who were out of all patience, fearing that the witch might still slip through their fingers and by her spells and incantations make the heart of the troops melt once more within them. If the mind of the Church had been as charitable as it professed to be, I doubt if all the power of Rome could have got the Maid now out of the English grip. They were exasperated, and felt that they too, as well as the prisoner, had been played with.

But the Bishop had good hope in his mind, still to be able to content his patrons. Jeanne had abjured, it was true, but the more he inquired into that act, the less secure he must have felt about it. And she might relapse; and if she relapsed there would be no longer any place for repentance. And it is evident that his confidence in the power of the clothes was boundless. In any case a few days more would make all clear.

They did not have many days to wait. There are two, to all appearance, well-authenticated stories of the cause of Jeanne's "relapse." One account is given by Frere Isambard, whom she told in the presence of several others, that she had been a.s.saulted in her cell by a _Millourt Anglois_, and barbarously used, and in self-defence had resumed again the man's dress which had been left in her cell. The story of Ma.s.sieu is different: To him Jeanne explained that when she asked to be released from her bed on the morning of Trinity Sunday, her guards took away her female dress which she was wearing, and emptied the sack containing the other upon her bed. She appealed to them, reminding them that these were forbidden to her; but got no answer except a brutal order to get up. It is very probable that both stories are true. Frere Isambard found her weeping and agitated, and nothing is more probable than this was the occasion on which Warwick heard her cries, and interfered to save her.

Ma.s.sieu's version, of which he is certain, was communicated to him a day or two after when they happened to be alone together. It was on the Thursday before Trinity Sunday that she put on the female dress, but it would seem that rumours on the subject of a relapse had begun to spread even before the Sunday on which that event happened: and Beaupere and Midi were sent by the Bishop to investigate. But they were very ill-received in the Castle, sworn at by the guards, and forced to go back without seeing Jeanne, there being as yet, it appeared, nothing to see. On the morning of the Monday, however, the rumours arose with greater force; and no doubt secret messages must have informed the Bishop that the hoped-for relapse had taken place. He set out himself accordingly, accompanied by the Vicar-Inquisitor and attended by eight of the familiar names so often quoted, triumphant, important, no doubt with much show of pompous solemnity, to find out for himself. The Castle was all in excitement, report and gossip already busy with the new event so trifling, so all-important. There was no idea now of turning back the visitors. The prison doors were eagerly thrown open, and there indeed once more, in her tunic and hose, was Jeanne, whom they had left four days before painfully contemplating the garments they had given her, and humbly promising obedience. The men burst in upon her with an outcry of astonishment. What she had changed her dress again? "Yes," she replied, "she had resumed the costume of a man." There was no triumph in what she said, but rather a subdued tone of sadness, as of one who in the most desperate strait has taken her resolution and must abide by it, whether she likes it or not. She was asked why she had resumed that dress, and who had made her do so. There was no question of anything else at first.

The tunic and _gippon_ were at once enough to decide her fate.

She answered that she had done it by her own will, no one influencing her to do so; and that she preferred the dress of a man to that of a woman.

She was reminded that she had promised and sworn not to resume the dress of a man. She answered that she was not aware she had ever sworn or had made any such oath.

She was asked why she had done it. She answered that it was more lawful to wear a man's dress among men, than the dress of a woman; and also that she had taken it back because the promise made to her had not been kept, that she should hear the ma.s.s, and receive her Saviour, and be delivered from her irons.

She was asked if she had not abjured that dress, and sworn not to resume it. She answered that she would rather die than be left in irons; but if they would allow her to go to ma.s.s and take her out of her irons and put her in a gracious prison, and a woman with her, she would be good, and do whatever the Church pleased.

She was then asked suddenly, as if there had been no condemnation of her voices as lying fables, whether since Thursday she had heard them again.

To this she answered, recovering a little courage, "Yes."

She was asked what they said to her; she answered that they said G.o.d had made known to her by St. Catherine and St. Margaret the great pity there was of the treason to which she had consented by making abjuration and revocation in order to save her life: and that she had earned d.a.m.nation for herself to save her life. Also that before Thursday her voices had told her that she should do what she did that day, that on the scaffold they had told her to answer the preachers boldly, and that this preacher whom she called a false preacher had accused her of many things she never did. She also added that if she said G.o.d had not sent her she would d.a.m.n herself, for true it was that G.o.d had sent her. Also that her voices had told her since, that she had done a great sin in confessing that she had sinned; but that for fear of the fire she had said that which she had said.

She was asked (all over again) if she believed that these voices were those of St. Catherine and St. Margaret. She answered, Yes, they were so; and from G.o.d. And as for what had been said to her on the scaffold that she had spoken lies and boasted concerning St. Catherine and St.

Margaret, she had not intended any such thing. Also she said that she never intended to deny her apparitions, or to say that they were not St. Catherine and St. Margaret. All that she had done was in fear of the fire, and she had denied nothing but what was contrary to truth; and she said that she would like better to make her penitence all at one time--that is to say, in dying, than to endure a long penitence in prison. Also that she had never done anything against G.o.d or the faith whatever they might have made her say; and that for what was in the schedule of the abjuration she did not know what it was. Also she said that she never intended to revoke anything so long as it pleased our Lord. At the end she said that if her judges would have her do so, she might put on again her female dress; but for the rest she would do no more.

"What need we any further witness; for we ourselves have heard of his own mouth." Jeanne's protracted, broken, yet continuous apology and defence, overawed her judges; they do not seem to have interrupted it with questions. It was enough and more than enough. She had relapsed; the end of all things had come, the will of her enemies could now be accomplished. No one could say she had not had full justice done her; every formality had been fulfilled, every lingering formula carried out.

Now there was but one thing before her, whose sad young voice with many pauses thus sighed forth its last utterance; and for her judges, one last spectacle to prepare, and the work to complete which it had taken them three long months to do.

CHAPTER XVIII -- THE SACRIFICE. MAY 31, 1431.

It is not necessary to be a good man in order to divine what in certain circ.u.mstances a good and pure spirit will do. The Bishop of Beauvais had entertained no doubt as to what would happen. He knew exactly, with a perspicuity creditable to his perceptions at least, that, notwithstanding the effect which his theatrical _mise en scene_ had produced upon the imagination of Jeanne, no power in heaven or earth would induce that young soul to content itself with a lie. He knew it, though lies were his daily bread; the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. He had bidden his English patrons to wait a little, and now his predictions were triumphantly fulfilled. It is hard to believe of any man that on such a certainty he could have calculated and laid his devilish plans; but there would seem to have existed in the mediaeval churchman a certain horrible thirst for the blood of a relapsed heretic which was peculiar to their age and profession, and which no better principle in their own minds could subdue. It was their appet.i.te, their delight of sensation, in distinction from the other appet.i.tes perhaps scarcely less cruel which other men indulged with no such horrified denunciation from the rest of the world. Others, it is evident, shared with Cauchon that sharp sensation of dreadful pleasure in finding her out; young Courcelles, so modest and una.s.suming and so learned, among the rest; not L'Oyseleur, it appears by the sequel. That Judas, like the greater traitor, was struck to the heart; but the less bad man who had only persecuted, not betrayed, stood high in superior virtue, and only rejoiced that at last the victim was ready to drop into the flames which had been so carefully prepared.

The next morning, Tuesday after Trinity Sunday, the witnesses hurried with their news to the quickly summoned a.s.sembly in the chapel of the Archbishop's house; thirty-three of the judges, having been hastily called together, were there to hear. Jeanne had relapsed; the sinner escaped had been re-caught; and what was now to be done? One by one each man rose again and gave his verdict. Once more Egidius, Abbot of Fecamp, led the tide of opinion. There was but one thing to be done: to give her up to the secular justice, "praying that she might be gently dealt with." Man after man added his voice "to that of Abbot of Fecamp aforesaid"--that she might be gently dealt with! Not one of them could be under any doubt what gentle meaning would be in the execution; but apparently the words were of some strange use in salving their consciences.

The decree was p.r.o.nounced at once without further formalities. In point of view of the law, there should have followed another trial, more evidence, pleadings, and admonitions. We may be thankful to Monseigneur de Beauvais that he now defied law, and no longer prolonged the useless ceremonials of that mockery of justice. It is said that in coming out of the prison, through the courtyard full of Englishmen, where Warwick was in waiting to hear what news, the Bishop greeted them with all the satisfaction of success, laughing and bidding them "Make good cheer, the thing is done." In the same spirit of satisfaction was the rapid action of the further proceedings. On Tuesday she was condemned, summoned on Wednesday morning at eight 'clock to the Old Market of Rouen to hear her sentence, and there, without even that formality, the penalty was at once carried out. No time, certainly, was lost in this last stage.

All the interest of the heart-rending tragedy now turns to the prison where Jeanne woke in the early morning without, as yet, any knowledge of her fate. It must be remembered that the details of this wonderful scene, which we have in abundance, are taken from reports made twenty years after by eye-witnesses indeed, but men to whom by that time it had become the only policy to represent Jeanne in the brightest colours, and themselves as her sympathetic friends. There is no doubt that so remarkable an occurrence as her martyrdom must have made a deep impression on the minds of all those who were in any way actors in or spectators of that wonderful scene. And every word of all these different reports is on oath; but notwithstanding, a touch of unconscious colour, a more favourable sentiment, influenced by the feeling of later days, may well have crept in. With this warning we may yet accept these depositions as trustworthy, all the more for the atmosphere of truth, perfectly realistic, and in no way idealised, which is in every description of the great catastrophe; in which Jeanne figures as no supernatural heroine, but as a terrified, tormented, and often trembling girl.

On the fatal morning very early, Brother Martin l'Advenu appeared in the cell of the Maid. He had a mingled tale to tell--first "to announce to her her approaching death, and to lead her to true contrition and penitence; and also to hear her confession, which the said l'Advenu did very carefully and charitably." Jeanne on her part received the news with no conventional resignation or calm. Was it possible that she had been deceived and really hoped for mercy? She began to weep and to cry at the sudden stroke of fate. Notwithstanding the solemnity of her last declaration, that she would rather bear her punishment all at once than to endure the long punishment of her prison, her heart failed before the imminent stake, the immediate martyrdom. She cried out to heaven and earth: "My body, which has never been corrupted, must it be burned to ashes to-day!" No one but Jeanne knew at what cost she had kept her perfect purity; was it good for nothing but to be burned, that young body not nineteen years old? "Ah," she said, "I would rather be beheaded seven times than burned! I appeal to G.o.d against all these great wrongs they do me." But after a while the pa.s.sion wore itself out, the child's outburst was stilled; calming herself, she knelt down and made her confession to the compa.s.sionate friar, then asked for the sacrament, to "receive her Saviour" as she had so often prayed and entreated before.

It would appear that this had not been within Friar Martin's commission.

He sent to ask the Bishop's leave, and it was granted "anything she asked for"--as they give whatever he may wish to eat to a condemned convict. But the Host was brought into the prison without ceremony, without accompanying candles or vestment for the priest. There are always some things which are insupportable to a man. Brother Martin could bear the sight of the girl's anguish, but not to administer to her a diminished rite. He sent again to demand what was needful, out of respect for the Holy Sacrament and the present victim. And his request had come, it would seem, to some canon or person in authority whose heart had been touched by the wonderful Maid in her long martyrdom. This nameless sympathiser did all that a man could do. He sent the Host with a train of priests chanting litanies as they went through the streets, with torches burning in the pure early daylight; some of these exhorted the people who knelt as they pa.s.sed, to pray for her. She must have heard in her prison the sound of the bell, the chant of the clergy, the pause of awe, and then the rising, irregular murmur of the voices, that sound of prayer never to be mistaken. Pray for her! At last the city was touched to its heart. There is no sign that it had been sympathetic to Jeanne before; it was half English or more. But she was about to die: she had stood bravely against the world and answered like a true Maid; and they had now seen her led through their streets, a girl just nineteen. The popular imagination at least was subjugated for the time.

Thus Jeanne for the first time, after all the feasts were over, received at last "her Saviour" as she said, the consecration of that rite which He himself had inst.i.tuted before He died. But she was not permitted to receive it in simplicity and silence as becomes the sacred commemoration. All the time she was still _preschee_ and admonished by the men about her. A few days after her death the Bishop and his followers a.s.sembled, and set down in evidence their different parts in that scene. How far it is to be relied upon, it is difficult to say.

The speakers did not testify under oath; there is no formal warrant for their truth, and an anxious attempt to prove her change of mind is evident throughout; still there seem elements of truth in it, and a certain glimpse is afforded of Jeanne in the depths, when hope and strength were gone. The general burden of their testimony is that she sadly allowed herself to have been deceived, as to the liberation for which all along she had hoped. Peter Morice, often already mentioned, importuning her on the subject of the spirits, endeavouring to get from her an admission that she had not seen them at all, and was herself a deceiver: or if not that, at least that they were evil spirits, not good,--drew from her the impatient exclamation: "Be they good spirits, or be they evil, they appeared to me." Even in the act of giving her her last communion, Brother Martin paused with the consecrated Host in his hands.

"Do you believe," he said, "that this is the body of Christ?" Jeanne answered: "Yes, and He alone can free me; I pray you to administer."

Then this brother said to Jeanne: "Do you believe as fully in your voices?" Jeanne answered: "I believe in G.o.d alone and not in the voices, which have deceived me." L'Advenu himself, however, does not give this deposition, but another of the persons present, Le Camus, who did not live to revise his testimony at the Rehabilitation.

The rite being over, the Bishop himself bustled in with an air of satisfaction, rubbing his hands, one may suppose from his tone. "So, Jeanne," he said, "you have always told us that your 'voices' said you were to be delivered, and you see now they have deceived you. Tell us the truth at last." Then Jeanne answered: "Truly I see that they have deceived me." The report is Cauchon's, and therefore little to be trusted; but the sad reply is at least not unlike the sentiment that, even in records more trustworthy, seems to have breathed forth in her.

The other spectators all report another portion of this conversation.

"Bishop, it is by you I die," are the words with which the Maid is said to have met him. "Oh Jeanne, have patience," he replied. "It is because you did not keep your promise." "If you had kept yours, and sent me to the prison of the Church, and put me in gentle hands, it would not have happened," she replied. "I appeal from you to G.o.d." Several of the attendants, also according to the Bishop's account, heard from her the same sad words: "They have deceived me"; and there seems no reason why we should not believe it. Her mind was weighed down under this dreadful unaccountable fact. She was forsaken--as a greater sufferer was; and a horror of darkness had closed around her. "Ah, Sieur Pierre," she said to Morice, "where shall I be to-night?" The man had condemned her as a relapsed heretic, a daughter of perdition. He had just suggested to her that her angels must have been devils. Nevertheless perhaps his face was not unkindly, he had not meant all the harm he did. He ought to have answered, "In h.e.l.l, with the spirits you have trusted"; that would have been the only logical response. What he did say was very different.

"Have you not good faith in the Lord?" said the judge who had doomed her. Amazing and notable speech! They had sentenced her to be burned for blasphemy as an envoy of the devil; they believed in fact that she was the child of G.o.d, and going straight in that flame to the skies. Jeanne, with the sound, clear head and the "sane mind" to which all of them testified, did she perceive, even at that dreadful moment, the inconceivable contradiction? "Ah," she said, "yes, G.o.d helping me, I shall be in Paradise."

There is one point in the equivocal report which commends itself to the mind, which several of these men unite in, but which was carefully not repeated at the Rehabilitation: and this was that Jeanne allowed "as if it had been a thing of small importance," that her story of the angel bearing the crown at Chinon was a romance which she neither expected nor intended to be believed. For this we have to thank L'Oyseleur and the rest of the reverend ghouls a.s.sembled on that dreadful morning in the prison.

Jeanne was then dressed, for her last appearance in this world, in the long white garment of penitence, the robe of sacrifice: and the mitre was placed on her head which was worn by the victims of the Holy Office.

She was led for the last time down the echoing stair to the crowded courtyard where her "chariot" awaited her. It was her confessor's part to remain by her side, and Frere Isambard and Ma.s.sieu, the officer, both her friends, were also with her. It is said that L'Oyseleur rushed forward at this moment, either to accompany her also, or, as many say, to fling himself at her feet and implore her pardon. He was hustled aside by the crowd and would have been killed by the English, it is said, but for Warwick. The bystanders would seem to have been seized with a sudden disgust for all the priests about, thinking them Jeanne's friends, the historians insinuate--more likely in scorn and horror of their treachery. And then the melancholy procession set forth.

The streets were overflowing as was natural, crowded in every part: eight hundred English soldiers surrounded and followed the cortege, as the car rumbled along over the rough stones. Not yet had the Maid attained to the calm of consent. She looked wildly about her at all the high houses and windows crowded with gazers, and at the throngs that gaped and gazed upon her on every side. In the midst of the consolations of the confessor who poured pious words in her ears, other words, the plaints of a wondering despair fell from her lips, "Rouen! Rouen!" she said; "am I to die here?" It seemed incredible to her, impossible. She looked about still for some sign of disturbance, some rising among the crowd, some cry of "France! France!" or glitter of mail. Nothing: but the crowds ever gazing, murmuring at her, the soldiers roughly clearing the way, the rude chariot rumbling on. "Rouen, Rouen! I fear that you shall yet suffer because of this," she murmured in her distraction, amid her moanings and tears.

At last the procession came to the Old Market, an open s.p.a.ce enc.u.mbered with three erections--one reaching up so high that the shadow of it seemed to touch the sky, the horrid stake with wood piled up in an enormous ma.s.s, made so high, it is said, in order that the executioner himself might not reach it to give a merciful blow, to secure unconsciousness before the flames could touch the trembling form. Two platforms were raised opposite, one furnished with chairs and benches for Winchester and his court, another for the judges, with the civil officers of Rouen who ought to have p.r.o.nounced sentence in their turn.

Without this form the execution was illegal: what did it matter? No sentence at all was read to her, not even the ecclesiastical one which was illegal also. She was probably placed first on the same platform with her judges, where there was a pulpit from which she was to be _preschee_ for the last time. Of all Jeanne's sufferings this could scarcely be the least, that she was always _preschee_, lectured, addressed, sermonised through every painful step of her career.

The moan was still unsilenced on her lips, and her distracted soul scarcely yet freed from the sick thought of a possible deliverance, when the everlasting strain of admonishment, and re-enumeration of her errors, again penetrated the hum of the crowd. The preacher was Nicolas Midi, one of the eloquent members of that dark fraternity; and his text was in St. Paul's words: "If any of the members suffer, all the other members suffer with it." Jeanne was a rotten branch which had to be cut off from the Church for the good of her own soul, and that the Church might not suffer by her sin; a heretic, a blasphemer, an impostor, giving forth false fables at one time, and making a false penitence the next. It is very unlikely that she heard anything of that flood of invective. At the end of the sermon the preacher bade her "Go in peace."

Even then, however, the fountain of abuse did not cease. The Bishop himself rose, and once more by way of exhorting her to a final repentance, heaped ill names upon her helpless head. The narrative shows that the prisoner, now arrived at the last point in her career, paid no attention to the tirade levelled at her from the president's place.

"She knelt down on the platform showing great signs and appearance of contrition, so that all those who looked upon her wept. She called on her knees upon the blessed Trinity, the blessed glorious Virgin Mary, and all the blessed saints of Paradise." She called specially--was it with still a return towards the hoped for miracle? was it with the instinctive cry towards an old and faithful friend?--"St. Michael, St.

Michael, St. Michael, help!" There would seem to have been a moment in which the hush and silence of a great crowd surrounded this wonderful stage, where was that white figure on her knees, praying, speaking--sometimes to G.o.d, sometimes to the saintly unseen companions of her life, sometimes in broken phrases to those about her. She asked the priests, thronging all round, those who had churches, to say a ma.s.s for her soul. She asked all whom she might have offended to forgive her.

Through her tears and prayers broke again and again the sorrowful cry of "Rouen, Rouen! Is it here truly that I must die?" No reason is given for the special pang that seems to echo in this cry. Jeanne had once planned a campaign in Normandy with Alencon. Had there been perhaps some special hope which made this conclusion all the more bitter, of setting up in the Norman capital her standard and that of her King?

There have been martyrs more exalted above the circ.u.mstances of their fate than Jeanne. She was no abstract heroine. She felt every pang to the depth of her natural, spontaneous being, and the humiliation and the deep distress of having been abandoned in the sight of men, perhaps the profoundest pang of which nature is capable. "He trusted in G.o.d that he would deliver him: let him deliver him if he will have him." That which her Lord had borne, the little sister had now to bear. She called upon the saints, but they did not answer. She was shamed in the sight of men. But as she knelt there weeping, the Bishop's evil voice scarcely silenced, the soldiers waiting impatient--the entire crowd, touched to its heart with one impulse, broke into a burst of weeping and lamentation, "_a chaudes larmes_" according to the graphic French expression. They wept hot tears as in the keen personal pang of sorrow and fellow-feeling and impotence to help. Winchester--withdrawn high on his platform, ostentatiously separated from any share in it, a spectator merely--wept; and the judges wept. The Bishop of Boulogne was overwhelmed with emotion, iron tears flowed down the accursed Cauchon's cheeks. The very world stood still to see that white form of purity, and valour, and faith, the Maid, not shouting triumphant on the height of victory, but kneeling, weeping, on the verge of torture. Human nature could not bear this long. A hoa.r.s.e cry burst forth: "Will you keep us here all day; must we dine here?" a voice perhaps of unendurable pain that simulated cruelty. And then the executioner stepped in and seized the victim.

It has been said that her stake was set so high, that there might be no chance of a merciful blow, or of strangulation to spare the victim the atrocities of the fire; perhaps, let us hope, it was rather that the ascending smoke might suffocate her before the flame could reach her: the fifteenth century would naturally accept the most cruel explanation.

There was a writing set over the little platform which gave footing to the attendants below the stake, upon which were written the following words:

JEANNE CALLED THE MAID, LIAR, ABUSER OF THE PEOPLE, SOOTHSAYER, BLASPHEMER OF G.o.d, PERNICIOUS, SUPERSt.i.tIOUS, IDOLATROUS, CRUEL, DISSOLUTE, INVOKER OF DEVILS, APOSTATE, SCHISMATIC, HERETIC.

This was how her countrymen in the name of law and justice and religion branded the Maid of France--one half of her countrymen: the other half, silent, speaking no word, looking on.

Before she began to ascend the stake, Jeanne, rising from her knees, asked for a cross. No place so fit for that emblem ever was: but no cross was to be found. One of the English soldiers who kept the way seized a stick from some one by, broke it across his knee in unequal parts, and bound them hurriedly together; so, in the legend and in all the pictures, when Mary of Nazareth was led to her espousals, one of her disappointed suitors broke his wand. The cross was rough with its broken edges which Jeanne accepted from her enemy, and carried, pressing it against her bosom. One would rather have that rude cross to preserve as a sacred thing, than the highest effort of art in gold and silver. This was her ornament and consolation as she trod the few remaining steps and mounted the pile of the f.a.ggots to her place high over all that sea of heads. When she was bound securely to her stake, she asked again for a cross, a cross blessed and sacred from a church, to be held before her as long as her eyes could see. Frere Isambard and Ma.s.sieu, following her closely still, sent to the nearest church, and procured probably some cross which was used for processional purposes on a long staff which could be held up before her. The friar stood upon the f.a.ggots holding it up, and calling out broken words of encouragement so long that Jeanne bade him withdraw, lest the fire should catch his robes. And so at last, as the flames began to rise, she was left alone, the good brother always at the foot of the pile, painfully holding up with uplifted arms the cross that she might still see it, the soldiers crowding, lit up with the red glow of the fire, the horrified, trembling crowd like an agitated sea around. The wild flames rose and fell in sinister gleams and flashes, the smoke blew upwards, by times enveloping that white Maid standing out alone against a sky still blue and sweet with May--Pandemonium underneath, but Heaven above. Then suddenly there came a great cry from among the black fumes that began to reach the clouds: "My voices were of G.o.d! They have not deceived me!" She had seen and recognised it at last. Here it was, the miracle: the great victory that had been promised--though not with clang of swords and triumph of rescuing knights, and "St. Denis for France!"--but by the sole hand of G.o.d, a victory and triumph for all time, for her country a crown of glory and ineffable shame.

Thus died the Maid of France--with "Jesus, Jesus," on her lips--till the merciful smoke breathing upwards choked that voice in her throat; and one who was like unto the Son of G.o.d, who was with her in the fire, wiped all memory of the bitter cross, wavering uplifted through the air in the good monk's trembling hands--from eyes which opened bright upon the light and peace of that Paradise of which she had so long thought and dreamed.

CHAPTER XVIII -- AFTER.

The natural burst of remorse which follows such an event is well known in history; and is as certainly to be expected as the details of the great catastrophe itself. We feel almost as if, had there not been fact and evidence for such a revulsion of feeling, it must have been recorded all the same, being inevitable. The executioner, perhaps the most innocent of all, sought out Frere Isambard, and confessed to him in an anguish of remorse fearing never to be pardoned for what he had done.

An Englishman who had sworn to add a f.a.ggot to the flames in which the witch should be burned, when he rushed forward to keep his word was seized with sudden compunction--believed that he saw a white dove flutter forth from amid the smoke over her head, and, almost fainting at the sight, had to be led by his comrades to the nearest tavern for refreshment, a life-like touch in which we recognise our countryman; but he too found his way that afternoon to Frere Isambard like the other. A horrible story is told by the _Bourgeois de Paris_, whose contemporary journal is one of the authorities for this period, that "the fire was drawn aside" in order that Jeanne's form, with all its clothing burned away, should be visible by one last act of shameless insult to the crowd. The fifteenth century believed, as we have said, everything that is cruel and horrible, as indeed the vulgar mind does at all ages; but such brutal imaginings have seldom any truth to support them, and there is no such suggestion in the actual record. Isambard and Ma.s.sieu heard from one of the officials that when every other part of her body was destroyed the heart was found intact, but was, by the order of Winchester, flung into the Seine along with all the ashes of that sacrifice. It was wise no doubt that no relics should be kept.

Other details were murmured abroad amid the excited talk that followed this dreadful scene. "When she was enveloped by the smoke, she cried out for water, holy water, and called to St. Michael; then hung her head upon her breast and breathing forth the name of Jesus, gently died." "Being in the flame her voice never ceased repeating in a loud voice the holy name of Jesus, and invoking without cease the saints of paradise, she gave up her spirit, bowing her head and saying the name of Jesus in sign of the fervour of her faith." One of the Canons of Rouen, standing sobbing in the crowd, said to another: "Would that my soul were in the same place where the soul of that woman is at this moment"; which indeed is not very different from the authorised saying of Pierre Morice in the prison. Guillaume Manchon, the reporter, he who wrote _superba responsio_ on his margin, and had written down every word of her long examination--his occupation for three months,--says that he "never wept so much for anything that happened to himself, and that for a whole month he could not recover his calm." This man adds a very characteristic touch, to wit, that "with part of the pay which he had for the trial, he bought a missal, that he might have a reason for praying for her." Jean Tressat, "secretary to the King of England"

(whatever that office may have been), went home from the execution crying out, "We are all lost, for we have burned a saint." A priest, afterwards bishop, Jean Fabry, "did not believe that there was any man who could restrain his tears."