The Executioner's Knife Part 1

The Executioner's Knife.

by Eugene Sue.

PREFACE.

Whether one will be satisfied with nothing but a scientific diagnosis in psychology, or a less ponderous and infinitely more lyric presentation of certain mental phenomena will do for him; whether the student of history insist on strict chronology, or whether he prize at its true value the meat and coloring of history; whether a reader prefer in matters canonical the rigid presentation of dogma, or whether the tragic fruits of theocracy offer a more attractive starting point for his contemplation;--whichever the case might be, _The Executioner's Knife; or, Joan of Arc_ will gratify his intellectual cravings on all the three heads.

This, the fifteenth story of the series of Eugene Sue's matchless historic novels ent.i.tled _The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages_, presents the picture of the Fifteenth Century--a historic elevation climbed up to from the hills of the era sketched in the preceding story, _The Iron Trevet; or Jocelyn the Champion_, and from which, in turn, the outlines become vaguely visible of the critically historic era that forms the subject of the next story, _The Pocket Bible; or, Christian the Printer_.

As in all the stories of this stupendous series bestowed by the genius of Sue upon posterity, the leading characters are historic, the leading events are historic, and the coloring is true to history. How true to the facts are the historic revelations made by the author in this series, and how historically true are the conclusions he draws, as they rise in relief on the canvas of these novels, appears with peculiar conspicuousness in _The Executioner's Knife; or, Joan of Arc_, above all in this century, when the science of history has remodeled its theory, and, instead of, as in former days, basing man's acts upon impulse, has learned to plant impulse upon material facts.

In the pages of this story the central figure is the charming one generally known to history as the Maid of Orleans. If ever there was in the annals of man a figure that superst.i.tious mysticism combined with grovelling interests to annihilate, it was the figure of the pure-minded, self-sacrificing, intrepid shepherdess of Domremy. Even the genius of a Voltaire succ.u.mbed. In righteous revolt against man-degrading superst.i.tion, his satire "La Pucelle" in fact contributed, by the slur it placed upon Joan, to vindicate the very lay and prelatical interests he fought, and whose predecessors dragged her name through the ditch and had consigned her body to the flames. Harried by the political interests whom her integrity of purpose menaced and actually thwarted; insulted and put to death by the allies of these, ambushed behind religion; the successors of both elements perpetuating the wrong with false history; and even the enlightened contributing their sneers out of just repugnance for supernaturalism;--all this notwithstanding, the figure of Joan triumphed. Even the head of the prelatic political machine, which had presumed to speak in the name of the Deity with Anathema over Joan's head, has felt constrained to fall in line with the awakened popular knowledge. The Papal beatification of Joan of Arc in this century is a public retraction and apology to the heroine born from the lowly.

Of the many works of art--poetic, dramatic, pictorial--that have contributed to this conspicuous "reversal of judgment" Sue's _The Executioner's Knife; or, Joan of Arc_ has been the most powerful. The pathetic story cleanses Joan of the miraculous, uncovers the grovelling influences she had to contend against, exposes the sordid ambitions she had to overcome and that finally slaked their vengeance in her blood.

The master's hand weaves together and draws, in the garb of fiction, a picture that is monumental--at once as a work of science, of history and of art.

DANIEL DE LEON.

Milford, Conn., October, 1909.

PART I.

DOMREMY

CHAPTER I.

JEANNETTE.

Domremy is a frontier village of Lorraine that cosily nestles on the slope of a fertile valley whose pasture grounds are watered by the Meuse. An oak forest, that still preserves some mementoes of druid tradition, reaches out almost to the village church. This church is the handsomest of all in the valley, which begins at Vaucouleurs and ends at Domremy. St. Catherine and St. Marguerite, superbly painted and gilded, ornament the sanctuary. St. Michael, the Archangel, with his sword in one hand and the scales in the other, glistens from the depths of a dark recess in the chapel. Happy is the valley that begins at Vaucouleurs and ends at Domremy! A royal seigniory, lost on the confines of Gaul, it has not yet suffered from the disasters of war that for more than a half century have been desolating the center of the country. Its inhabitants, profiting by the civil broils of their sovereign and his distance from them, being separated from his main domains by Champagne, which had fallen into the power of the English, had emanc.i.p.ated themselves from serfdom.

James Darc, a member of a family that had long been serfs of the Abbey of St. Remy, and subsequently of the Sire of Joinville before the fief of Vaucouleurs was consolidated with the royal domain, an honest laborer, stern head of his household and rather rude of manners, lived by the cultivation of the fields. His wife was called Isabelle Romee; his eldest son, Peter; the second, John; and his daughter, born on "the day of Kings" in 1412, was named Jeannette. At the time when this narrative commences, Jeannette was a little over thirteen years of age.

She was of pleasant appearance, a sweet and pious child and endowed with precocious intelligence. Her disposition was serious for her age. This notwithstanding, she joined in the games of other girls, her friends, and never gloried in her own superior agility when, as usually happened, she won in the races. She could neither read nor write. Active and industrious, she helped her mother in the household, led the sheep to pasture and was skilful with the needle and at the distaff. Often pensive, when alone in secluded spots of the woods she watched over her flock, she found an inexpressible delight in listening to the distant sound of the church bells, to the point that at times she made little presents of fruits or skeins of wool to the parish clerk of Domremy, joining to the gifts the gentle request that he prolong a little the chimes of the vespers or of the Angelus.[1] Jeannette also took delight in leading her sheep in the ancient forest of oaks, known as the "Bois Chesnu",[2] towards a limpid spring shaded by a beech tree that was between two and three hundred years old and which was known in the region as the "Fairies' Tree". The legend had it that the priests of the old G.o.ds of Gaul sometimes appeared, dressed in their long white robes, under the dark vaults of the oaks of this forest, and that often little fairies approached the fountain by moonlight to see their reflection in its waters.

Jeannette did not fear the fairies, knowing that a single sign of the cross would put any malignant sprite to flight. She entertained a special spirit of devotion for St. Marguerite and St. Catherine, the two beautiful saints of the parish. When, on feast days, she accompanied her venerated parents to divine service, she was never tired of contemplating and admiring the good saints, who were at once smiling and majestic under their golden crowns. Likewise did St. Michael attract her attention. But the severity of the archangel's face and his flaming sword somewhat intimidated the young shepherdess, while, on the contrary, her dear saints inspired her with ineffable confidence.

Jeannette's G.o.d-mother was Sybille, an old woman, originally from Brittany, and a washerwoman by occupation. Sybille knew a ma.s.s of marvelous legends; and she spoke familiarly about the fairies, genii and other supernatural beings. Some people took her for a witch;[3] but her good heart, her piety and upright life in no way justified the suspicion. Jeannette, of whom her G.o.d-mother was very fond, drank in with avidity the legends narrated by the latter when they met on the way to the "Fountain of the Fairies" whither the former frequently took her sheep to water while her G.o.d-mother spun her hemp on the banks of a nearby stream. The narratives of her G.o.d-mother of the miraculous doings of the fairies and genii impressed themselves profoundly on the imaginative spirit of Jeannette, who grew ever more serious and pensive as she approached her fourteenth year. She was frequently subject to a vague sense of sadness. Often, when alone in the woods or on the meadows, the distant sounds of the church bells, that she so much loved to hear, struck her ears, and she would weep without knowing why. The involuntary tears comforted her. But her nights grew restless. She no longer slept peacefully as is the wont of rustic children after their wholesome labors. She dreamed much; and her visions would raise before her the spirits of the legends of her G.o.d-mother or present to her St.

Marguerite and St. Catherine smiling tenderly upon her.

CHAPTER II.

GILLON THE FURTIVE.

On a brilliant summer day the sun was westering behind the Castle of Ile, a small fortress raised between the two arms of the Meuse at a considerable distance from Domremy. James Darc inhabited a house near the church, the garden of which bordered on that of his own habitation.

The laborer's family, gathered before the door of their lodging, were enjoying the coolness of the evening; some were seated on a bench and others on the floor. James Darc, a robust man of severe countenance, spare of face and grey of hair, was in the group resting from his day's labor; his wife, Isabelle, spun; Jeannette was sewing. Large and strong for her age, lissom and well proportioned, her hair was black, as were also her large brilliant eyes. The ensemble of her features made promise of a virile and yet tender beauty.[4] She wore, after the fas.h.i.+on of Lorraine, a skirt of coa.r.s.e scarlet fabric, with a corsage that, looped over her shoulders, allowed the short sleeves of her skirt to escape at her upper arms, the rest of which remained bare and were well built and slightly tanned by the sun.

Darc's family were listening to the account of a stranger dressed in a brown coat, shod in tall and spurred boots, holding a whip in his hands and carrying on his shoulder a tin box held by a leather strap. The stranger, Gillon the Furtive, was in the habit of traversing long distances on horseback in the capacity of "flying messenger", carrying the correspondence of important personages. He had just returned from one of these errands to the Duke of Lorraine and was going back to Charles VII, who then resided at Bourges. While crossing Domremy, Gillon the Furtive had asked James Darc to direct him to some inn where he could sup and feed his horse.

"Share my meal; my sons will take your horse to the stable," the hospitable laborer answered the messenger. The offer being accepted, supper was taken and the stranger, desirous to pay his reckoning in his own way by giving the latest news of France to the family of Darc, reported how the English, masters of Paris and of almost all the provinces, governed despotically, terrorizing the inhabitants by their continuous acts of violence and rapine; how the King of England, still a boy and under the guardians.h.i.+p of the Duke of Bedford, had inherited the crown of France; while poor Charles VII, the King by right, deserted by almost all his seigneurs and relegated to Touraine, the last shred of his domains, did not even entertain the hope of ever being able to redeem those provinces from the domination of the English. Being a court messenger and therefore, naturally, a royalist of the Armagnac party, Gillon the Furtive professed, after the fas.h.i.+on of inferior courtiers, a sort of stupid, false, blind and grovelling adoration for Charles VII.

That young prince, unnerved by his early debaucheries, selfish, greedy, envious and, above all, cowardly, never appeared at the head of the troops still left to him; and consoled himself for their defeats and his disgrace by drinking deep and singing with his mistresses. In his royalist fervor, however, Gillon the Furtive forgot his master's vices and saw only his misfortunes.

"Poor young King! It is a pity to see what he has to endure!" said the messenger at the close of his report. "His accursed mother, Isabelle of Bavaria, is the cause of it all. Her misconduct with the Duke of Orleans and her hatred for the Duke of Burgundy have brought on the frightful feud between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs. The English, already masters of several of our provinces since the battle of Poitiers, easily took possession of almost all France, torn in factions as the country was. They now impose upon the country an intolerable yoke, sack and burn it right and left and butcher its people. Finally, the Duke of Bedford, tutor of a king in his cradle, reigns in the place of our gentle Dauphin! A curse upon Isabelle of Bavaria! That woman was the ruin of the kingdom. We are no longer French. We are Englis.h.!.+"

"G.o.d be praised! We, at least," said James Darc, "still remain French, all of us in this valley. We have not experienced the disasters that you describe, friend messenger. You say that Charles VII, our young prince, is a worthy sire?"

"Just heaven!" cried Gillon the Furtive, a flatterer and liar, like all court valets, "Charles VII is an angel! All who approach him admire him, revere and bless him! He has the meekness of a lamb, the beauty of a swan and the courage of a lion!"

"The courage of a lion!" exclaimed James Darc with admiration. "Then our young Sire has fought bravely?"

"If he had had his will he would by this time have been killed at the head of the troops that have remained faithful," promptly answered Gillon the Furtive, puffing out his cheeks. "But the life of our august master is so precious that the seigneurs of his family and council were bound to oppose his risking his precious days in a fas.h.i.+on that I shall be bold to call--uselessly heroic. The soldiers who still follow the royal banners are completely discouraged by the defeats that they have sustained. The larger number of bishops and seigneurs have declared themselves for the party of the Burgundians and the English; everybody is deserting our young Sire; and soon perhaps, forced to abandon France, he will not find in the whole kingdom of his fathers a place to rest his head! Oh, accursed, triply accursed be his wicked mother, Isabella of Bavaria!"

With nightfall Gillon the Furtive thanked the laborer of Domremy for his hospitality, mounted his horse and pursued his route. After mutually expressing their sorrow at the fate of the young King, the family of Darc joined in evening prayer and its members retired to sleep.

CHAPTER III.

AT THE FOUNTAIN OF THE FAIRIES.

That night Jeannette slept late and little. Silent and attentive during the messenger's narrative, she had then for the first time heard imprecations uttered at the ravages of the English, and about the misfortunes of the gentle Dauphin of France.

James Darc, his wife and sons continued long after the departure of Gillon the Furtive to lament the public calamities. Va.s.sals of the King, they loved him; and they served him all the more seeing they knew him less and in no wise felt his feudal overlords.h.i.+p, having emanc.i.p.ated themselves with the aid of the distance that separated them from him and from the troubles that had fallen upon him. They were worthy but credulous people.

Children usually are the echoes of their parents. Accordingly, following the example of her father and mother, Jeannette, in her nave and tender credulity, pitied with all her heart the young prince who was so beautiful, so brave and yet so unfortunate only through the fault of his wicked mother. "Oh," thought she, "he is almost without a place to rest his head, deserted by everybody, and soon will be forced to flee from the kingdom of his ancestors!" So the messenger had said.

Jeannette, who lately was subject to causeless spells of weeping, now wept over the misfortunes of the King; and fell asleep praying to her dear saints Marguerite and Catherine and to the archangel Michael to intercede with the Lord in behalf of the poor young prince. These thoughts followed the little shepherdess even in her dreams, bizarre dreams, in which she now would see the Dauphin of France, beautiful as an angel, smiling upon her with sadness and kindness; and then again hordes of armed Englishmen, armed with torches and swords, marching, marching and leaving behind them a long trail of blood and flames.

Jeannette awoke, but her imagination being strongly affected by the remembrance of her dreams, she could not keep her mind from ever returning to the gentle Dauphin and being greatly moved with pity for him. At early daylight she gathered her lambs, that every morning she took to pasture, and led them towards the oak forest where the shade was cool and the gra.s.s dotted with flowers. While her sheep were pasturing Jeannette sat down near the Fountain of the Fairies, shaded by the centennarian beech tree; and mechanically she plied her distaff.

Jeannette had not been long absorbed in her revery when she was joined by her G.o.d-mother, Sybille, who arrived carrying on her shoulder a large bundle of hemp that she wished to lay in the streamlet, formed by the overflow of the spring, in order to have it retted. Although simple minded people took Sybille for a witch, nothing in her features recalled those usually ascribed to old women possessed of the evil spirit--hooked nose and chin, cavernous eyes and an owlish aspect. No, far from it, nothing could be more venerable than Sybille's pale face framed in her white hair. Her eyes shone with concentrated fire when she narrated the legends of the olden times or recited the heroic chants of Armorica, as her native Brittany was once called. Without at all believing in magic, Sybille had a profound faith in certain prophecies made by the ancient Gallic bards. Faithful to the druidic creed of her fathers, Jeannette's G.o.d-mother held that man never dies, but continues to live eternally, body and soul, in the stars, new and mysterious worlds. Nevertheless, respecting her G.o.d-daughter's religious views, Sybille never sought to throw doubt upon the faith of the child. She loved the child tenderly and was ever ready to tell her some legend that Jeannette would listen to in rapt attention. Thus there was developed in the young shepherdess a contemplative and reflecting spirit that was unusual in one of her years, and that was no less striking than the precociousness of her intellect. She was prepared for a mystic role.

Jeannette continued, mechanically, to ply her distaff while her eyes, with an absent minded look in them, followed her sheep. She neither saw nor heard Sybille approach. The latter, after having laid her hemp in the streamlet and placed a stone on it to keep it in place, approached Jeannette slowly and impressed a kiss upon the bowed neck of the young girl, who uttered a startled cry and said smilingly, "Oh G.o.d-mother, you frightened me so!"

"And yet you are not timid! You were braver the other day than I should have been when you stoned the large viper to death. What were you thinking about just now?"