 23. The young can sink into abysses of despondency, and it was so with Noel and me now, but the hopes of the young are quick to rise again, and it was so with ours. We called back that vague promise of the voices, and said the one to the other, that the glorious release was to happen at the last moment. That other time was not the last moment, but this is. It will happen now, the king will come, Laïr will come, and with them are veterans, and behind them all France. And so we were full of heart again, and could already hear in fancy that stirring music, the clash of steel and the war cries, and the uproar of the onset, and in fancy see our prisoner free, her chains gone, her sword in her hand. But this dream was to pass also, and come to nothing late at night when Marchand came in. He said, I am come from the dungeon, and I have a message for you from that poor child. A message to me. If he had been noticing I think he would have discovered me, discovered that my indifference concerning the prisoner was a pretense, for I was caught off my guard, and was so moved and so exalted to be so honoured by her that I must have shown my feeling in my face and manner. A message for me, your reverence? Yes, it is something she wishes done. She said she had noticed the young man who helps me, and that he had a good face, and did I think he would do a kindness for her? I said I knew you would, and asked her what it was, and she said a letter. Would you write a letter to her mother? And I said you would, but I said I would do it myself and gladly. But she said no, that my labours were heavy, and she thought the young man would not mind the doing of this service for one not able to do it for herself. She not knowing how to write. Then I would have sent for you, and at that the sadness vanished out of her face. Why it was as if she was going to see a friend, poor friendless thing. But I was not permitted. I did my best, but the orders remain as strict as ever. The doors are closed against all but officials, as before none but officials may speak to her. So I went back and told her, and she sighed, and was sad again. Now this is what she begs you to write to her mother. It is partly a strange message, and to me means nothing, but she said her mother would understand. You will convey her adoring love to her family and her village friends, and say there will be no rescue, for that this night, and it is the third time in the twelve month, and is final, she has seen the vision of the tree. How strange! Yes, it is strange, but that is what she said, and said her parents would understand. And for a little time she was lost in dreams and thinking and her lips moved, and I caught in her muttering these lines, which she said over two or three times, and they seemed to bring peace and contentment to her. I set them down, thinking they might have some connection with her letter and be useful. But it was not so. They were a mere memory, floating idly in a tired mind, and they have no meaning, at least no relevancy. I took the piece of paper and found what I knew I should find. And when in exile wandering we shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee, O rise upon our sight! There was no hope any more, I knew it now. I knew that Joan's letter was a message to Noel and me, as well as to her family, and that its object was to banish vain hopes from our minds and tell us from her own mouth of the blow that was going to fall upon us, so that we, being her soldiers, would know it for a command to bear it, as became us, and her, and so submit to the will of God, and in thus obeying find assuagement of our grief. It was like her, for she was always thinking of others, not of herself. Yes, her heart was sore for us. She could find time to think of us, the humblest of her servants, and try to soften our pain, lighten the burden of our troubles, she that was drinking of the bitter waters, she that was walking in the valley of the shadow of death. I wrote the letter. You will know what it cost me without my telling you. I wrote it with the same wooden stylus which had put upon parchment the first words ever dictated by Joan of Arc, that high summons to the English to vacate France two years past, when she was alas of seventeen. It had now set down the last ones which she was ever to dictate. Then I broke it, for the pen that had served Joan of Arc could not serve any that would come after her in this earth without abasement. The next day, May 29th, Cauchon summoned his serfs and forty-two responded. It is charitable to believe that the other twenty were ashamed to come. The forty-two pronounced her a relapsed heretic and condemned her to be delivered over to the secular arm. Cauchon thanked them. Then he sent orders that Joan of Arc be conveyed the next morning to the place known as the Old Market, and that she be then delivered to the civil judge, and by the civil judge to the executioner. That meant she would be burnt. All the afternoon and evening of Tuesday the twenty-ninth the news was flying, and the people of the countryside flocking to Rouen to see the tragedy, all at least, who could prove their English sympathies and count upon admission. The press grew thicker and thicker in the streets, the excitement grew higher and higher, and now a thing was noticeable again which had been noticeable more than once before, that there was pity for Joan in the hearts of many of these people. Whenever she had been in great danger it had manifested itself, and now it was apparent again, manifest in a pathetic dumb sorrow which was visible in many faces. Early the next morning, Wednesday, Martin L'Advenue and another friar were sent to Joan to prepare her for death, and Montchon and I went with them, a hard service for me. We trapped through the dim corridors winding this way and that, and piercing ever deeper and deeper into that vast heart of stone, and at last we stood before Joan. But she did not know it. She sat with her hands in her lap, and her head bowed, thinking, and her face was very sad. One might not know what she was thinking of, of her home and the peaceful pastures and the friends she was no more to see, of her wrongs and her forsaken estate and the cruelties which had been put upon her, or was it of death, the death which she had longed for and which was now so close, or was it of the kind of death she must suffer? I hope not, for she feared only one kind and that one had for her unspeakable terrors. I believed she so feared that one that with her strong will she would shut the thought of it wholly out of her mind and hope and believe that God would take pity on her and grant her an easier one, and so it might chance that the awful news which we were bringing might come as a surprise to her at last. We stood silent a while, but she was still unconscious of us, still deep in her sad musings and far away. Then Martin Lavinu said, softly, Joan. She looked up then, with a little start and a one smile, and said, Speak! Have you a message for me? Yes, poor child, try to bear it. Do you think you can bear it? Yes, very softly, and her head drooped again. I am come to prepare you for death. A faint shiver trembled through her wasted body. There was a pause. In the stillness we could hear our breathings. Then she said, still in that low voice. When will it be? The muffled notes of a tolling bell floated to our ears out of the distance. Now the time is at hand. That slight shiver passed again. It is so soon! It is so soon! There was a long silence. The distant throbbing of the bell pulsed through it, and we stood motionless and listening. But it was broken at last. What death is it? Oh, I knew it! I knew it! she sprang wildly to her feet, and wound her hands in her hair, and began to writhe and sob, oh, so piteously, and mourn and grieve and lament, and turned to first one and then another of us, and search our faces beseechingly as hoping she might find help and friendliness there, poor thing! She that had never denied these to any creature, and her wounded enemy on the battlefield. Oh, cruel, cruel to treat me so, and must my body that has never been defiled be consumed to-day and turned to ashes? Ah, sooner would I that my head were cut off seven times than suffer this woeful death. I had the promise of the church's prison when I submitted, and if I had but been there, and not left here in the hands of my enemies, this miserable fate had not befallen me. Oh, I appeal to God the great judge against the injustice which has been done me! There was none there that could endure it. They turned away, with the tears running down their faces. In a moment I was on my knees at her feet. At once she thought only of my danger and bent and whispered in my ear, up! Do not peril yourself, good heart! There, God bless you always!" And I felt the quick clasp of her hand. Mine was the last hand she touched with hers in life. None saw it. History does not know of it or tell of it. Yet it is true, just as I have told it. The next moment she saw Cauchon coming, and she went and stood before him and reproached him, saying, Bishops, it is by you that I die. He was not shamed, not touched, but said smoothly, Ah, be patient, Joan. You die because you have not kept your promise, but have returned to your sins. Alas, she said, if you had put me in the church's prison and given me right and proper keepers as you promised, this would not have happened. And for this I summoned you to answer before God. Then Cauchon winced, and looked less placidly content than before, and he turned him about and went away. Joan stood a while musing. She grew calmer, but occasionally she wiped her eyes, and now and then Saabs shook her body. But their violence was modifying now, and the intervals between them were growing longer. Finally she looked up and saw Pierre Maurice, who had come in with a bishop, and she said to him, Master Peter, where shall I be this night? Have you not good hope in God? Yes, and by his grace I shall be in paradise. Now Martin Lodvenew heard her in confession. Then she begged for the sacrament. But how grant the communion to one who had been publicly cut off from the church, and was now no more entitled to its privileges than an unbaptised pagan? The brother could not do this, but he sent to Cauchon to inquire what he must do. All laws, human and divine, were alike to that man. He respected none of them. He sent back orders to grant Joan whatever she wished. Her last speech to him had reached his fears, perhaps. It could not reach his heart. For he had none. The Eucharist was brought now to that poor soul that had yearned for it with such unutterable longing all these desolate months. It was a solemn moment. While we had been in the deeps of the prison, the public courts of the castle had been filling up with crowds of the humbler sort of men and women, who had learned what was going on in Joan's cell, and had come with softened hearts to do they knew not what, to hear they knew not what. We knew nothing of this, for they were out of our view. And there were other great crowds of the like-cast gathered in masses outside the castle gates. And when the lights and the other accompaniments of the sacrament passed by, coming to Joan in the prison, all those multitudes kneeled down and began to pray for her, and many wept. And when the solemn ceremony of the communion began in Joan's cell, out of the distance a moving sound was born moaning to our ears. It was those invisible multitudes chanting the litany for a departing soul. The fear of the fiery death was gone from Joan of Arc now, to come again no more, except for one fleeting instant then it would pass, and serenity and courage would take its place and abide till the end. XXVII. Joan the Martyr. At nine o'clock the maid of Orléans, deliverer of France, went forth in the grace of her innocence and her youth, to lay down her life for the country she loved with such devotion, and for the king that had abandoned her. She sat in the cart that is used only for felons. In one respect she was treated worse than a felon, for whereas she was on her way to be sentenced by the civil arm, she already bore her judgment inscribed in advance upon a mitre-shaped cap which she wore. Heretic, relapsed, apostate, idolatred her. In the cart with her sat the friar Martin L'Advenu and Maître Jean Monsieur. She looked girlishly fair and sweet and saintly in her long white robe, and when a gush of sunlight flooded her as she emerged from the gloom of the prison and was yet for a moment still framed in the arch of the Sombre Gate, the massed multitudes of poor folk murmured a vision, a vision, and sank to their knees praying, and many of the women weeping, and the moving invocation for the dying arose again, and was taken up and borne along, a majestic wave of sound which accompanied the doomed, solacing and blessing her all the sorrowful way to the place of death. Christ have pity! Saint Margaret have pity! Pray for her, all ye saints, archangels and blessed martyrs, pray for her! Saints and angels intercede for her! From thy wrath, good Lord, deliver her! O Lord, God save her! Have mercy on her, we beseech thee, good Lord! It is just and true what one of the histories has said. The poor and the helpless had nothing but their prayers to give Joan of Arc, but these we may believe were not unavailing. There are few more pathetic events recorded in history than this weeping, helpless, praying crowd holding their lighted candles and kneeling on the pavement beneath the prison walls of the old fortress. And it was so all the way, thousands upon thousands, massed upon their knees and stretching far down the distances, thick sown with the faint yellow candle-flames like a field starred with golden flowers. But there were some that did not kneel. These were the English soldiers. They stood elbow to elbow on each side of Joan's road, and walled it in all the way, and behind these living walls knelt the multitudes. By and by a frantic man in priest's garb came wailing and lamenting and tore through the crowd and the barriers of soldiers and flung himself on his knees by Joan's cart, and put up his hands in supplication crying out, Oh, forgive, forgive! It was Loisler, and Joan forgave him, forgave him out of a heart that knew nothing but forgiveness, nothing but compassion, nothing but pity for all that suffer, let their offence be what it might. And she had no word of reproach for this poor wretch who had wrought day and night with deceits and treacheries and hypocrisies to betray her to her death. The soldiers would have killed him, but the Earl of Warwick saved his life. What became of him is not known. He hid himself from the world somewhere to endure his remorse, as he might. In the square of the old market stood the two platforms and the stake that had stood before in the churchyard of Saint Lois. The platforms were occupied as before, the one by Joan and her judges, the other by great dignitaries, the principal being Cauchon and the English cardinal Winchester. The square was packed with people. The windows and roofs of the blocks of buildings surrounded it were black with them. When the preparations had been finished all noise and movement gradually ceased, an awaiting stillness followed which was solemn and impressive. And now, by order of Cauchon, an ecclesiastic name Nicholas Meady preached a sermon wherein he explained that when a branch of the vine, which is the church, becomes diseased and corrupt it must be cut away, or it will corrupt and destroy the whole vine. He made it appear that Joan, through her wickedness, was a menace and apparel to the church's purity and holiness, and her death therefore necessary. When he was come to the end of his discourse he turned toward her and paused a moment, then he said, Joan, the church can no longer protect you. Go in peace! Joan had been placed wholly apart and conspicuous to signify the church's abandonment of her, and she sat there in her loneliness, waiting in patience and resignation for the end. Cauchon addressed her now. He had been advised to read the form of her abjuration to her, and had brought it with him. But he changed his mind, fearing that she would proclaim the truth, that she had never knowingly abjured, and so bring shame upon him and eternal infamy. He contented himself with admonishing her to keep in mind her wickedness and repent of it, and think of her salvation. Then he solemnly pronounced her excommunicate, and cut off from the body of the church. With a final word he delivered her over to the secular arm for judgment and sentence. Joan weeping, knelt, and began to pray. For whom? Herself? Oh, no! For the king of France. Her voice rose sweet and clear, and penetrated all hearts with its passionate pathos. She never thought of his treacheries to her, she never thought of his desertion of her, she never remembered that it was because he was an ingrate that she was here to die a miserable death. She remembered only that he was her king, that she was his loyal and loving subject, and that his enemies had undermined his cause with evil reports and false charges, and he not by to defend himself. And so in the very presence of death she forgot her own troubles to implore all in her hearing to be just to him, to believe that he was good and noble and sincere, and not in any way to blame for any acts of hers, neither advising them nor urging them but being wholly clear and free of all responsibility for them. Then, closing, she begged in humble and touching words that all here present would pray for her and would pardon her, both her enemies and such as might look friendly upon her and feel pity for her in their hearts. There was hardly one heart there that was not touched, even the English, even the judges showed it, and there was many a lip that trembled and many an eye that was blurred with tears. Yes, even the English cardinals, that man with a political heart of stone, but a human heart of flesh. The secular judge who should have delivered judgment and pronounced sentence was himself so disturbed that he forgot his duty, and Joan went to her death unsentenced, thus completing with an illegality what had begun illegally and had so continued to the end. He only said to the guards, Take her, and to the executioner, Do your duty! Joan asked for a cross. None was able to furnish one. But an English soldier broke a stick in two and crossed the pieces and tied them together, and this cross he gave her, moved to it by the good heart that was in him, and she kissed it and put it in her bosom. Then Isenberg de Laprier went to the church nearby and brought her a consecrated one, and this one also she kissed, and pressed it to her bosom with rapture, and then kissed it again and again, covering it with tears and pouring out her gratitude to God and the saints. And so, weeping, and with her cross to her lips, she climbed up the cruel steps to the face of the stake with the friar Isenberg at her side. Then she was helped up to the top of the pile of wood that was built around the lower third of the stake and stood upon it with her back against the stake, and the world gazing up at her breathless. The executioner ascended to her side and wound chains around her slender body, and so fastened her to the stake. Then he descended to finish his dreadful office, and there she remained alone, she that had had so many friends in the days when she was free, and had been so loved and so dear. All these things I saw, albeit dimly and blurred with tears, but I could bear no more. I continued in my place, but what I shall deliver to you now, I got by others eyes and others mouths. Tragic sounds there were that pierced my ears and wounded my heart as I sat there, but it is, as I tell you, the latest image recorded by my eyes in that desolating hour was Joan of Arc with the grace of her comely youth still unmarred, and that image, untouched by time or decay, has remained with me all my days. Now I will go on. If any thought that now, in that solemn hour, when all transgressors repent and confess, she would revoke her revocation and say her great deeds had been evil deeds, and Satan and his friends their source, they erred. No such thought was in her blameless mind. She was not thinking of herself and her troubles, but of others, and of woes that might be fall them. And so, turning her grieving eyes about her, where rose the towers and spires of that fair city, she said, Oh, Rouen! Rouen, must I die here? And must you be my tomb? Ah, Rouen! Rouen, I have great fear that you will suffer for my death! A whiff of smoke swept upward past her face, and for one moment terror seized her, and she cried out, Water! Give me holy water! But the next moment her fears were gone, and they came no more to torture her. She heard the flames crackling below her, and immediately distressed for a fellow creature who was in danger took possession of her. It was the friar Isambard. She had given him her cross, and begged him to raise it toward her face, and let her eyes rest in hope and consolation upon it till she was entered into the peace of God. She made him go out from the danger of the fire. Then she was satisfied and said, Now, keep it always in my sight until the end. Not even yet could Cauchon, that man without shame, endure to let her die in peace, but went toward her, all black with crimes and sins as he was, and cried out, I am come, Joan, to exhort you for the last time to repent and seek the pardon of God. I die through you, she said, and these were the last words she spoke to any upon earth. Then the pitchy smoke, shot through with red flashes of flame, rolled up in a thick volume and hid her from sight, and from the heart of this darkness her voice rose strong and eloquent in prayer, and when by moments the wind shredded somewhat of the smoke aside, there were veiled glimpses of an upturned face and moving lips. At last a mercifully swift tide of flame burst upward, and none saw that face any more, nor that form, and the voice was still. Yes, she was gone from us. Joan of Arc. What little words they are to tell of a rich world made empty and poor. END OF CHAPTER XXIV This is the conclusion of personal recollections of Joan of Arc. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Personal recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain. CHAPTER II. BOOK III. CONCLUSION Joan's brother Jacques died in Dom Remis during the great trial at Rouen. This was according to the prophecy which Joan made that day in the pastures the time that she said the rest of us would go to the great wars. When her poor old father heard of the martyrdom, it broke his heart, and he died. The mother was granted a pension by the city of Orléans, and upon this she lived out her days, which were many. Twenty-four years after her illustrious child's death she travelled all the way to Paris in the wintertime, and was present at the opening of the discussion in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, which was the first step in the rehabilitation. Paris was crowded with people, from all about France, who came to get sight of the venerable dame, and it was a touching spectacle when she moved through these reverent wet-eyed multitudes on her way to the grand honours awaiting her at the Cathedral. With her were Jean and Pierre, no longer the light-hearted youths who marched with us from Vaux-Coleurs, but war-torn veterans with hair beginning to show frost. After the martyrdom, Noel and I went back to Dom Remis, but presently when the constable Richement superseded la Tramouie as the king's chief advisor, and began the completion of Joan's great work, we put on our harness and returned to the field, and fought for the king all through the wars and skirmishes until France was freed of the English. It was what Joan would have desired of us, and dead or alive her desire was law for us. All the survivors of the personal staff were faithful to her memory and fought for the king to the end. Mainly we were well scattered, but when Paris fell we happened to be together. It was a great day and a joyous, but it was a sad one at the same time, because Joan was not there to march into the captured capital with us. Noel and I remained always together, and I was by his side when death claimed him. It was in the last great battle of the war. In that battle fell also Joan's sturdy old enemy Talbot. He was eighty-five years old, and had spent his whole life in battle. A fine old lion he was with his flowing white mane and his tameless spirit. Yes, and his indestructible energy as well, for he fought as nightly and vigorous a fight that day as the best man there. L'Aïr survived the martyrdom thirteen years, and all was fighting, of course, for that was all he enjoyed in life. I did not see him in all that time, for we were far apart, but one was always hearing of him. The Bastard of Orléans and D'Alançon and D'Olon lived to see France free, and to testify with Jean and Pierre Dark and Pascal and me at the rehabilitation. But they are all at rest now, these many years. I alone am left of those who fought at the side of Joan of Arc in the great wars. She said I would live until those wars were forgotten, a prophecy which failed. If I should live a thousand years it would still fail, for whatsoever had touched with Joan of Arc that thing is immortal. Members of Joan's family married, and they have left descendants. Their descendants are of the nobility, but their family name and blood bring them honours which no other nobles receive or may hope for. You have seen how everybody along the way uncovered when those children came yesterday to pay their duty to me. It was not because they are noble. It is because they are grandchildren of the brothers of Joan of Arc. Now, as to the rehabilitation, Joan crowned the king at Reims. For reward he allowed her to be hunted to her death without making one effort to save her. During the next twenty-three years he remained indifferent to her memory. Indifferent to the fact that her good name was under a damning blot put there by the priest because of the deeds which she had done in saving him and his scepter. Indifferent to the fact that France was ashamed and longed to have the deliverer's fair fame restored. Indifferent all that time. Then he suddenly changed and was anxious to have justice for poor Joan himself. Why? Had he become grateful at last? Had remorse attacked his hard heart? No, he had a better reason, a better one for his sort of man. This better reason was that now that the English had been finally expelled from the country they were beginning to call attention to the fact that this king had gotten his crown by the hands of a person proven by the priests to have been in league with Satan and burned for it by them as a sorceress. Therefore, of what value or authority was such a kingship as that? Of no value at all. No nation could afford to allow such a king to remain on the throne. It was high time to stir now, and the king did it. That is how Charles VII came to be smitten with anxiety to have justice done to the memory of his benefactress. He appealed to the pope, and the pope appointed a great commission of churchmen to examine into the facts of Joan's life and award judgment. The commission sat at Paris, at Dom Rémy, at Rouen, at Orléans, and at several other places, and continued its work during several months. It examined the records of Joan's trials, it examined the bastard of Orléans, and the Duc de Lançon, and Dolan, and Pascarelle, and Courcel, and Isambard de la Pierre, and Monchon and Rémy, and many others whose names I have made familiar to you. Also they examined more than a hundred witnesses whose names are less familiar to you, the friends of Joan in Dom Rémy, Vaucoleur, Orléans, and other places, and a number of judges and other people who had assisted at the Rouen trials, the abjuration and the martyrdom. And out of this exhaustive examination Joan's character and history came spotless and perfect, and this verdict was placed upon record to remain forever. I was present upon most of these occasions, and saw again many faces which I have not seen for a quarter of a century, many of them well-beloved faces, those of our generals and that of Catherine Boucher, married alas, and also among them certain other faces that filled me with bitterness, those of Baudpère and Courcel and a number of their fellow fiends. I saw Omet and Little Morghette edging along toward Fifty now, and mothers of many children. I saw Noel's father and the parents of the Paladin and the Sunflower. It was beautiful to hear the Duc de Lançon praise Joan's splendid capacities as a general, and to hear the bastard endorse these praises with his eloquent tongue, and then go on and tell how sweet and good Joan was, and how full of pluck and fire and impetuosity and mischief and mirthfulness and tenderness and compassion and everything that was pure and fine and noble and lovely. He made her live again before me and rung my heart. I have finished my story of Joan of Arc, that wonderful child, that sublime personality, that spirit which in one regard has had no peer and will have none, this its purity from all alloy of self-seeking, self-interest, personal ambition. In it no trace of these motives can be found, search as you may, and this cannot be said of any other person whose name appears in profane history. With Joan of Arc, love of country was more than a sentiment. It was a passion. She was the genius of patriotism. She was patriotism embodied, concreted, made flesh and palpable to the touch and visible to the eye. Love, mercy, charity, fortitude, war, peace, poetry, music, these may be symbolized as any shall prefer, by figures of either sex and of any age, but a slender girl in her first young bloom, with the martyrs crowned upon her head, and in her hand the sword that severed her country's bonds, shall not this and no other stand for patriotism through all the ages until time shall end. End of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain Your reader, John Greenman.