Produced by David Reed
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC
VOLUME 1
by Mark Twain
Consider this unique and imposing distinction. Since the writing of
human history began, Joan of Arc is the only person, of either sex,
who has ever held supreme command of the military forces of a
nation at the age of seventeen
LOUIS KOSSUTH.
Contents
Translator's Preface
A Peculiarity of Joan of Arc's History
The Sieur Louis de Conte
Book I - IN DOMREMY
1 When Wolves Ran Free in Paris
2 The Fairy Tree of Domremy
3 All Aflame with Love of France
4 Joan Tames the Mad Man
5 Domremy Pillaged and Burned
6 Joan and Archangel Michael
7 She Delivers the Divine Command
8 Why the Scorners Relented
Book II - IN COURT AND CAMP
1 Joan Says Good-By
2 The Governor Speeds Joan
3 The Paladin Groans and Boasts
4 Joan Leads Us Through the Enemy
5 We Pierce the Last Ambuscades
6 Joan Convinces the King
7 Our Paladin in His Glory
8 Joan Persuades the Inquisitors
9 She Is Made General-in-Chief
10 The Maid's Sword and Banner
11 The War March Is Begun
12 Joan Puts Heart in Her Army
13 Checked by the Folly of the Wise
14 What the English Answered
15 My Exquisite Poem Goes to Smash
16 The Finding of the Dwarf
17 Sweet Fruit of Bitter Truth
18 Joan's First Battle-Field
19 We Burst In Upon Ghosts
20 Joan Makes Cowards Brave Victors
21 She Gently Reproves Her Dear Friend
22 The Fate of France Decided
23 Joan Inspires the Tawdry King
24 Tinsel Trappings of Nobility
25 At Last - Forward!
26 The Last Doubts Scattered
27 How Joan Took Jargeau
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC
by THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE
(her page and secretary)
In Two Volumes
Volume 1.
Freely translated out of the ancient French into modern English
from the original unpublished manuscript in the National Archives
of France
by JEAN FRANCOIS ALDEN
Authorities examined in verification of the truthfulness of this
narrative:
J. E. J. QUICHERAT, Condamnation et Rehabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc.
J. FABRE, Proces de Condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc.
H. A. WALLON, Jeanne d'Arc.
M. SEPET, Jeanne d'Arc.
J. MICHELET, Jeanne d'Arc.
BERRIAT DE SAINT-PRIX, La Famille de Jeanne d'Arc.
La Comtesse A. DE CHABANNES, La Vierge Lorraine.
Monseigneur RICARD, Jeanne d'Arc la Venerable.
Lord RONALD GOWER, F.S.A., Joan of Arc. JOHN O'HAGAN, Joan of Arc.
JANET TUCKEY, Joan of Arc the Maid.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must
judge it by the standards of his time, not ours. Judged by the standards
of one century, the noblest characters of an earlier one lose much of
their luster; judged by the standards of to-day, there is probably no
illustrious man of four or five centuries ago whose character could meet
the test at all points. But the character of Joan of Arc is unique. It
can be measured by the standards of all times without misgiving or
apprehension as to the result. Judged by any of them, it is still
flawless, it is still ideally perfect; it still occupies the loftiest
place possible to human attainment, a loftier one than has been reached
by any other mere mortal.
When we reflect that her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the
rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at
the miracle of such a product from such a soil. The contrast between her
and her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful
when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was
become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a
promise was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great
thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves
upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest, and fine,
and delicate when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal;
she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was
steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had
forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when
men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly
true to an age that was false to the core; she maintained her personal
dignity unimpaired in an age of fawnings and servilities; she was of a
dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of
her nation; she was spotlessly pure in mind and body when society in the
highest places was foul in both - she was all these things in an age when
crime was the common business of lords and princes, and when the highest
personages in Christendom were able to astonish even that infamous era
and make it stand aghast at the spectacle of their atrocious lives black
with unimaginable treacheries, butcheries, and beastialities.
She was perhaps the only entirely unselfish person whose name has a
place in profane history. No vestige or suggestion of self-seeking can
be found in any word or deed of hers. When she had rescued her King from
his vagabondage, and set his crown upon his head, she was offered
rewards and honors, but she refused them all, and would take nothing.
All she would take for herself - if the King would grant it - was leave to
go back to her village home, and tend her sheep again, and feel her
mother's arms about her, and be her housemaid and helper. The
selfishness of this unspoiled general of victorious armies, companion of
princes, and idol of an applauding and grateful nation, reached but that
far and no farther.
The work wrought by Joan of Arc may fairly be regarded as ranking any
recorded in history, when one considers the conditions under which it
was undertaken, the obstacles in the way, and the means at her disposal.
Caesar carried conquests far, but he did it with the trained and
confident veterans of Rome, and was a trained soldier himself; and
Napoleon swept away the disciplined armies of Europe, but he also was a
trained soldier, and the began his work with patriot battalions inflamed
and inspired by the miracle-working new breath of Liberty breathed upon
them by the Revolution - eager young apprentices to the splendid trade of
war, not old and broken men-at-arms, despairing survivors of an age-long
accumulation of monotonous defeats; but Joan of Arc, a mere child in
years, ignorant, unlettered, a poor village girl unknown and without
influence, found a great nation lying in chains, helpless and hopeless
under an alien domination, its treasury bankrupt, its soldiers
disheartened and dispersed, all spirit torpid, all courage dead in the
hearts of the people through long years of foreign and domestic outrage
and oppression, their King cowed, resigned to its fate, and preparing to
fly the country; and she laid her hand upon this nation, this corpse,
and it rose and followed her. She led it from victory to victory, she
turned back the tide of the Hundred Years' War, she fatally crippled the
English power, and died with the earned title of DELIVERER OF FRANCE,
which she bears to this day.
And for all reward, the French King, whom she had crowned, stood supine
and indifferent, while French priests took the noble child, the most
innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have produced, and
burned her alive at the stake.
A PECULIARITY OF JOAN OF ARC'S HISTORY
The details of the life of Joan of Arc form a biography which is unique
among the world's biographies in one respect: It is the only story of a
human life which comes to us under oath, the only one which comes to us
from the witness-stand. The official records of the Great Trial of 1431,
and of the Process of Rehabilitation of a quarter of a century later,
are still preserved in the National Archives of France, and they furnish
with remarkable fullness the facts of her life. The history of no other
life of that remote time is known with either the certainty or the
comprehensiveness that attaches to hers.
The Sieur Louis de Conte is faithful to her official history in his
Personal Recollections, and thus far his trustworthiness is
unimpeachable; but his mass of added particulars must depend for credit
upon his word alone.
THE TRANSLATOR.
THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE
To his Great-Great-Grand Nephews and Nieces
This is the year 1492. I am eighty-two years of age. The things I am
going to tell you are things which I saw myself as a child and as a
youth.
In all the tales and songs and histories of Joan of Arc, which you and
the rest of the world read and sing and study in the books wrought in
the late invented art of printing, mention is made of me, the Sieur
Louis de Conte - I was her page and secretary, I was with her from the
beginning until the end.
I was reared in the same village with her. I played with her every day,
when we were little children together, just as you play with your mates.
Now that we perceive how great she was, now that her name fills the
whole world, it seems strange that what I am saying is true; for it is
as if a perishable paltry candle should speak of the eternal sun riding
in the heavens and say, "He was gossip and housemate to me when we were
candles together." And yet it is true, just as I say. I was her
playmate, and I fought at her side in the wars; to this day I carry in
my mind, fine and clear, the picture of that dear little figure, with
breast bent to the flying horse's neck, charging at the head of the
armies of France, her hair streaming back, her silver mail plowing
steadily deeper and deeper into the thick of the battle, sometimes
nearly drowned from sight by tossing heads of horses, uplifted
sword-arms, wind-blow plumes, and intercepting shields. I was with her
to the end; and when that black day came whose accusing shadow will lie
always upon the memory of the mitered French slaves of England who were
her assassins, and upon France who stood idle and essayed no rescue, my
hand was the last she touched in life.
As the years and the decades drifted by, and the spectacle of the
marvelous child's meteor flight across the war firmament of France and
its extinction in the smoke-clouds of the stake receded deeper and
deeper into the past and grew ever more strange, and wonderful, and
divine, and pathetic, I came to comprehend and recognize her at last for
what she was - the most noble life that was ever born into this world
save only One.
BOOK I IN DOMREMY
Chapter 1 When Wolves Ran Free in Paris
I, THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE, was born in Neufchateau, on the 6th of
January, 1410; that is to say, exactly two years before Joan of Arc was
born in Domremy. My family had fled to those distant regions from the
neighborhood of Paris in the first years of the century. In politics
they were Armagnacs - patriots; they were for our own French King, crazy
and impotent as he was. The Burgundian party, who were for the English,
had stripped them, and done it well. They took everything but my
father's small nobility, and when he reached Neufchateau he reached it
in poverty and with a broken spirit. But the political atmosphere there
was the sort he liked, and that was something. He came to a region of
comparative quiet; he left behind him a region peopled with furies,
madmen, devils, where slaughter was a daily pastime and no man's life
safe for a moment. In Paris, mobs roared through the streets nightly,
sacking, burning, killing, unmolested, uninterrupted. The sun rose upon
wrecked and smoking buildings, and upon mutilated corpses lying here,
there, and yonder about the streets, just as they fell, and stripped
naked by thieves, the unholy gleaners after the mob. None had the
courage to gather these dead for burial; they were left there to rot and
create plagues.
And plagues they did create. Epidemics swept away the people like flies,
and the burials were conducted secretly and by night, for public
funerals were not allowed, lest the revelation of the magnitude of the
plague's work unman the people and plunge them into despair. Then came,
finally, the bitterest winter which had visited France in five hundred
years. Famine, pestilence, slaughter, ice, snow - Paris had all these at
once. The dead lay in heaps about the streets, and wolves entered the
city in daylight and devoured them.
Ah, France had fallen low - so low! For more than three quarters of a
century the English fangs had been bedded in her flesh, and so cowed had
her armies become by ceaseless rout and defeat that it was said and
accepted that the mere sight of an English army was sufficient to put a
French one to flight.
When I was five years old the prodigious disaster of Agincourt fell upon
France; and although the English King went home to enjoy his glory, he
left the country prostrate and a prey to roving bands of Free Companions
in the service of the Burgundian party, and one of these bands came
raiding through Neufchateau one night, and by the light of our burning
roof-thatch I saw all that were dear to me in this world (save an elder
brother, your ancestor, left behind with the court) butchered while they
begged for mercy, and heard the butchers laugh at their prayers and
mimic their pleadings. I was overlooked, and escaped without hurt. When
the savages were gone I crept out and cried the night away watching the
burning houses; and I was all alone, except for the company of the dead
and the wounded, for the rest had taken flight and hidden themselves.
I was sent to Domremy, to the priest, whose housekeeper became a loving
mother to me. The priest, in the course of time, taught me to read and
write, and he and I were the only persons in the village who possessed
this learning.
At the time that the house of this good priest, Guillaume Fronte, became
my home, I was six years old. We lived close by the village church, and
the small garden of Joan's parents was behind the church. As to that
family there were Jacques d'Arc the father, his wife Isabel Romee; three
sons - Jacques, ten years old, Pierre, eight, and Jean, seven; Joan,
four, and her baby sister Catherine, about a year old. I had these
children for playmates from the beginning. I had some other playmates
besides - particularly four boys: Pierre Morel, Etienne Roze, Noel
Rainguesson, and Edmond Aubrey, whose father was maire at that time;
also two girls, about Joan's age, who by and by became her favorites;
one was named Haumetter, the other was called Little Mengette. These
girls were common peasant children, like Joan herself. When they grew
up, both married common laborers. Their estate was lowly enough, you
see; yet a time came, many years after, when no passing stranger,
howsoever great he might be, failed to go and pay his reverence to those
to humble old women who had been honored in their youth by the
friendship of Joan of Arc.
These were all good children, just of the ordinary peasant type; not
bright, of course - you would not expect that - but good-hearted and
companionable, obedient to their parents and the priest; and as they
grew up they became properly stocked with narrowness and prejudices got
at second hand from their elders, and adopted without reserve; and
without examination also - which goes without saying. Their religion was
inherited, their politics the same. John Huss and his sort might find
fault with the Church, in Domremy it disturbed nobody's faith; and when
the split came, when I was fourteen, and we had three Popes at once,
nobody in Domremy was worried about how to choose among them - the Pope
of Rome was the right one, a Pope outside of Rome was no Pope at all.
Every human creature in the village was an Armagnac - a patriot - and if
we children hotly hated nothing else in the world, we did certainly hate
the English and Burgundian name and polity in that way.
Chapter 2 The Fairy Tree of Domremy
OUR DOMREMY was like any other humble little hamlet of that remote time
and region. It was a maze of crooked, narrow lanes and alleys shaded and
sheltered by the overhanging thatch roofs of the barnlike houses. The
houses were dimly lighted by wooden-shuttered windows - that is, holes
in the walls which served for windows. The floors were dirt, and there
was very little furniture. Sheep and cattle grazing was the main
industry; all the young folks tended flocks.
The situation was beautiful. From one edge of the village a flowery
plain extended in a wide sweep to the river - the Meuse; from the rear
edge of the village a grassy slope rose gradually, and at the top was
the great oak forest - a forest that was deep and gloomy and dense, and
full of interest for us children, for many murders had been done in it
by outlaws in old times, and in still earlier times prodigious dragons
that spouted fire and poisonous vapors from their nostrils had their
homes in there. In fact, one was still living in there in our own time.
It was as long as a tree, and had a body as big around as a tierce, and
scales like overlapping great tiles, and deep ruby eyes as large as a
cavalier's hat, and an anchor-fluke on its tail as big as I don't know
what, but very big, even unusually so for a dragon, as everybody said
who knew about dragons. It was thought that this dragon was of a
brilliant blue color, with gold mottlings, but no one had ever seen it,
therefore this was not known to be so, it was only an opinion. It was
not my opinion; I think there is no sense in forming an opinion when
there is no evidence to form it on. If you build a person without any
bones in him he may look fair enough to the eye, but he will be limber
and cannot stand up; and I consider that evidence is the bones of an
opinion. But I will take up this matter more at large at another time,
and try to make the justness of my position appear. As to that dragon, I
always held the belief that its color was gold and without blue, for
that has always been the color of dragons. That this dragon lay but a
little way within the wood at one time is shown by the fact that Pierre
Morel was in there one day and smelt it, and recognized it by the smell.
It gives one a horrid idea of how near to us the deadliest danger can be
and we not suspect it.
In the earliest times a hundred knights from many remote places in the
earth would have gone in there one after another, to kill the dragon and
get the reward, but in our time that method had gone out, and the priest
had become the one that abolished dragons. Pere Guillaume Fronte did it
in this case. He had a procession, with candles and incense and banners,
and marched around the edge of the wood and exorcised the dragon, and it
was never heard of again, although it was the opinion of many that the
smell never wholly passed away. Not that any had ever smelt the smell
again, for none had; it was only an opinion, like that other - and lacked
bones, you see. I know that the creature was there before the exorcism,
but whether it was there afterward or not is a thing which I cannot be
so positive about.
In a noble open space carpeted with grass on the high ground toward
Vaucouleurs stood a most majestic beech tree with wide-reaching arms and
a grand spread of shade, and by it a limpid spring of cold water; and on
summer days the children went there - oh, every summer for more than five
hundred years - went there and sang and danced around the tree for hours
together, refreshing themselves at the spring from time to time, and it
was most lovely and enjoyable. Also they made wreaths of flowers and
hung them upon the tree and about the spring to please the fairies that
lived there; for they liked that, being idle innocent little creatures,
as all fairies are, and fond of anything delicate and pretty like wild
flowers put together in that way. And in return for this attention the
fairies did any friendly thing they could for the children, such as
keeping the spring always full and clear and cold, and driving away
serpents and insects that sting; and so there was never any unkindness
between the fairies and the children during more than five hundred
years - tradition said a thousand - but only the warmest affection and the
most perfect trust and confidence; and whenever a child died the fairies
mourned just as that child's playmates did, and the sign of it was there
to see; for before the dawn on the day of the funeral they hung a little
immortelle over the place where that child was used to sit under the
tree. I know this to be true by my own eyes; it is not hearsay. And the
reason it was known that the fairies did it was this - that it was made
all of black flowers of a sort not known in France anywhere.
Now from time immemorial all children reared in Domremy were called the
Children of the Tree; and they loved that name, for it carried with it a
mystic privilege not granted to any others of the children of this
world. Which was this: whenever one of these came to die, then beyond
the vague and formless images drifting through his darkening mind rose
soft and rich and fair a vision of the Tree - if all was well with his
soul. That was what some said. Others said the vision came in two ways:
once as a warning, one or two years in advance of death, when the soul
was the captive of sin, and then the Tree appeared in its desolate
winter aspect - then that soul was smitten with an awful fear. If
repentance came, and purity of life, the vision came again, this time
summer-clad and beautiful; but if it were otherwise with that soul the
vision was withheld, and it passed from life knowing its doom. Still
others said that the vision came but once, and then only to the sinless
dying forlorn in distant lands and pitifully longing for some last dear
reminder of their home. And what reminder of it could go to their hearts
like the picture of the Tree that was the darling of their love and the
comrade of their joys and comforter of their small griefs all through
the divine days of their vanished youth?
Now the several traditions were as I have said, some believing one and
some another. One of them I knew to be the truth, and that was the last
one. I do not say anything against the others; I think they were true,
but I only know that the last one was; and it is my thought that if one
keep to the things he knows, and not trouble about the things which he
cannot be sure about, he will have the steadier mind for it - and there
is profit in that. I know that when the Children of the Tree die in a
far land, then - if they be at peace with God - they turn their longing
eyes toward home, and there, far-shining, as through a rift in a cloud
that curtains heaven, they see the soft picture of the Fairy Tree,
clothed in a dream of golden light; and they see the bloomy mead sloping
away to the river, and to their perishing nostrils is blown faint and
sweet the fragrance of the flowers of home. And then the vision fades
and passes - but they know, they know! and by their transfigured faces you
know also, you who stand looking on; yes, you know the message that has
come, and that it has come from heaven.
Joan and I believed alike about this matter. But Pierre Morel and
Jacques d'Arc, and many others believed that the vision appeared twice
- to a sinner. In fact, they and many others said they knew it. Probably
because their fathers had known it and had told them; for one gets most
things at second hand in this world.
Now one thing that does make it quite likely that there were really two
apparitions of the Tree is this fact: From the most ancient times if one
saw a villager of ours with his face ash-white and rigid with a ghastly
fright, it was common for every one to whisper to his neighbor, "Ah, he
is in sin, and has got his warning." And the neighbor would shudder at
the thought and whisper back, "Yes, poor soul, he has seen the Tree."
Such evidences as these have their weight; they are not to be put aside
with a wave of the hand. A thing that is backed by the cumulative
evidence of centuries naturally gets nearer and nearer to being proof
all the time; and if this continue and continue, it will some day become
authority - and authority is a bedded rock, and will abide.
In my long life I have seen several cases where the tree appeared
announcing a death which was still far away; but in none of these was
the person in a state of sin. No; the apparition was in these cases only
a special grace; in place of deferring the tidings of that soul's
redemption till the day of death, the apparition brought them long
before, and with them peace - peace that might no more be disturbed - the
eternal peace of God. I myself, old and broken, wait with serenity; for
I have seen the vision of the Tree. I have seen it, and am content.
Always, from the remotest times, when the children joined hands and
danced around the Fairy Tree they sang a song which was the Tree's song,
the song of L'Arbre fee de Bourlemont. They sang it to a quaint sweet
air - a solacing sweet air which has gone murmuring through my dreaming
spirit all my life when I was weary and troubled, resting me and
carrying me through night and distance home again. No stranger can know
or feel what that song has been, through the drifting centuries, to
exiled Children of the Tree, homeless and heavy of heart in countries
foreign to their speech and ways. You will think it a simple thing, that
song, and poor, perchance; but if you will remember what it was to us,
and what it brought before our eyes when it floated through our
memories, then you will respect it. And you will understand how the
water wells up in our eyes and makes all things dim, and our voices
break and we cannot sing the last lines:
"And when, in Exile wand'ring, we Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of
thee, Oh, rise upon our sight!"
And you will remember that Joan of Arc sang this song with us around the
Tree when she was a little child, and always loved it. And that hallows
it, yes, you will grant that:
L'ARBRE FEE DE BOURLEMONT
SONG OF THE CHILDREN
Now what has kept your leaves so green,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont?
The children's tears! They brought each grief,
And you did comfort them and cheer
Their bruised hearts, and steal a tear
That, healed, rose a leaf.
And what has built you up so strong,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont?
The children's love! They've loved you long
Ten hundred years, in sooth,
They've nourished you with praise and song,
And warmed your heart and kept it young -
A thousand years of youth!
Bide always green in our young hearts,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont!
And we shall always youthful be,
Not heeding Time his flight;
And when, in exile wand'ring, we
Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
Oh, rise upon our sight!
The fairies were still there when we were children, but we never saw
them; because, a hundred years before that, the priest of Domremy had
held a religious function under the tree and denounced them as being
blood-kin to the Fiend and barred them from redemption; and then he
warned them never to show themselves again, nor hang any more
immortelles, on pain of perpetual banishment from that parish.
All the children pleaded for the fairies, and said they were their good
friends and dear to them and never did them any harm, but the priest
would not listen, and said it was sin and shame to have such friends. The
children mourned and could not be comforted; and they made an agreement
among themselves that they would always continue to hang flower-wreaths
on the tree as a perpetual sign to the fairies that they were still loved
and remembered, though lost to sight.
But late one night a great misfortune befell. Edmond Aubrey's mother
passed by the Tree, and the fairies were stealing a dance, not thinking
anybody was by; and they were so busy, and so intoxicated with the wild
happiness of it, and with the bumpers of dew sharpened up with honey
which they had been drinking, that they noticed nothing; so Dame Aubrey
stood there astonished and admiring, and saw the little fantastic atoms
holding hands, as many as three hundred of them, tearing around in a
great ring half as big as an ordinary bedroom, and leaning away back and
spreading their mouths with laughter and song, which she could hear quite
distinctly, and kicking their legs up as much as three inches from the
ground in perfect abandon and hilarity - oh, the very maddest and
witchingest dance the woman ever saw.
But in about a minute or two minutes the poor little ruined creatures
discovered her. They burst out in one heartbreaking squeak of grief and
terror and fled every which way, with their wee hazel-nut fists in their
eyes and crying; and so disappeared.
The heartless woman - no, the foolish woman; she was not heartless, but
only thoughtless - went straight home and told the neighbors all about it,
whilst we, the small friends of the fairies, were asleep and not witting
the calamity that was come upon us, and all unconscious that we ought to
be up and trying to stop these fatal tongues. In the morning everybody
knew, and the disaster was complete, for where everybody knows a thing
the priest knows it, of course. We all flocked to Pere Fronte, crying and
begging - and he had to cry, too, seeing our sorrow, for he had a most
kind and gentle nature; and he did not want to banish the fairies, and
said so; but said he had no choice, for it had been decreed that if they
ever revealed themselves to man again, they must go. This all happened at
the worst time possible, for Joan of Arc was ill of a fever and out of
her head, and what could we do who had not her gifts of reasoning and
persuasion? We flew in a swarm to her bed and cried out, "Joan, wake!
Wake, there is no moment to lose! Come and plead for the fairies - come
and save them; only you can do it!"
But her mind was wandering, she did not know what we said nor what we
meant; so we went away knowing all was lost. Yes, all was lost, forever
lost; the faithful friends of the children for five hundred years must
go, and never come back any more.
It was a bitter day for us, that day that Pere Fronte held the function
under the tree and banished the fairies. We could not wear mourning that
any could have noticed, it would not have been allowed; so we had to be
content with some poor small rag of black tied upon our garments where it
made no show; but in our hearts we wore mourning, big and noble and
occupying all the room, for our hearts were ours; they could not get at
them to prevent that.
The great tree - l'Arbre Fee do Bourlemont was its beautiful name - was
never afterward quite as much to us as it had been before, but it was
always dear; is dear to me yet when I got there now, once a year in my
old age, to sit under it and bring back the lost playmates of my youth
and group them about me and look upon their faces through my tears and
break my heart, oh, my God! No, the place was not quite the same
afterward. In one or two ways it could not be; for, the fairies'
protection being gone, the spring lost much of its freshness and
coldness, and more than two-thirds of its volume, and the banished
serpents and stinging insects returned, and multiplied, and became a
torment and have remained so to this day.
When that wise little child, Joan, got well, we realized how much her
illness had cost us; for we found that we had been right in believing she
could save the fairies. She burst into a great storm of anger, for so
little a creature, and went straight to Pere Fronte, and stood up before
him where he sat, and made reverence and said:
"The fairies were to go if they showed themselves to people again, is it
not so?"
"Yes, that was it, dear."
"If a man comes prying into a person's room at midnight when that person
is half-naked, will you be so unjust as to say that that person is
showing himself to that man?"
"Well - no." The good priest looked a little troubled and uneasy when he
said it.
"Is a sin a sin, anyway, even if one did not intend to commit it?"
Pere Fronte threw up his hands and cried out:
"Oh, my poor little child, I see all my fault," and he drew here to his
side and put an arm around her and tried to make his peace with her, but
her temper was up so high that she could not get it down right away, but
buried her head against his breast and broke out crying and said:
"Then the fairies committed no sin, for there was no intention to commit
one, they not knowing that any one was by; and because they were little
creatures and could not speak for themselves and say the saw was against
the intention, not against the innocent act, because they had no friend
to think that simple thing for them and say it, they have been sent away
from their home forever, and it was wrong, wrong to do it!"
The good father hugged her yet closer to his side and said:
"Oh, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the heedless and unthinking
are condemned; would God I could bring the little creatures back, for
your sake. And mine, yes, and mine; for I have been unjust. There, there,
don't cry - nobody could be sorrier than your poor old friend - don't cry,
dear."
"But I can't stop right away, I've got to. And it is no little matter,
this thing that you have done. Is being sorry penance enough for such an
act?"
Pere Fronte turned away his face, for it would have hurt her to see him
laugh, and said:
"Oh, thou remorseless but most just accuser, no, it is not. I will put on
sackcloth and ashes; there - are you satisfied?"
Joan's sobs began to diminish, and she presently looked up at the old man
through her tears, and said, in her simple way:
"Yes, that will do - if it will clear you."
Pere Fronte would have been moved to laugh again, perhaps, if he had not
remembered in time that he had made a contract, and not a very agreeable
one. It must be fulfilled. So he got up and went to the fireplace, Joan
watching him with deep interest, and took a shovelful of cold ashes, and
was going to empty them on his old gray head when a better idea came to
him, and he said:
"Would you mind helping me, dear?"
"How, father?"
He got down on his knees and bent his head low, and said:
"Take the ashes and put them on my head for me."
The matter ended there, of course. The victory was with the priest. One
can imagine how the idea of such a profanation would strike Joan or any
other child in the village. She ran and dropped upon her knees by his
side and said:
"Oh, it is dreadful. I didn't know that that was what one meant by
sackcloth and ashes - do please get up, father."
"But I can't until I am forgiven. Do you forgive me?"
"I? Oh, you have done nothing to me, father; it is yourself that must
forgive yourself for wronging those poor things. Please get up, gather,
won't you?"
"But I am worse off now than I was before. I thought I was earning your
forgiveness, but if it is my own, I can't be lenient; it would not become
me. Now what can I do? Find me some way out of this with your wise little
head."
The Pere would not stir, for all Joan's pleadings. She was about to cry
again; then she had an idea, and seized the shovel and deluged her own
head with the ashes, stammering out through her chokings and
suffocations:
"There - now it is done. Oh, please get up, father."
The old man, both touched and amused, gathered her to his breast and
said:
"Oh, you incomparable child! It's a humble martyrdom, and not of a sort
presentable in a picture, but the right and true spirit is in it; that I
testify."
Then he brushed the ashes out of her hair, and helped her scour her face
and neck and properly tidy herself up. He was in fine spirits now, and
ready for further argument, so he took his seat and drew Joan to his side
again, and said:
"Joan, you were used to make wreaths there at the Fairy Tree with the
other children; is it not so?"
That was the way he always started out when he was going to corner me up
and catch me in something - just that gentle, indifferent way that fools a
person so, and leads him into the trap, he never noticing which way he is
traveling until he is in and the door shut on him. He enjoyed that. I
knew he was going to drop corn along in front of Joan now. Joan answered:
"Yes, father."
"Did you hang them on the tree?"
"No, father."
"Didn't hang them there?"
"No."
"Why didn't you?"
"I - well, I didn't wish to."
"Didn't wish to?"
"No, father."
"What did you do with them?"
"I hung them in the church."
"Why didn't you want to hang them in the tree?"
"Because it was said that the fairies were of kin to the Fiend, and that
it was sinful to show them honor."
"Did you believe it was wrong to honor them so?"
"Yes. I thought it must be wrong."
"Then if it was wrong to honor them in that way, and if they were of kin
to the Fiend, they could be dangerous company for you and the other
children, couldn't they?"
"I suppose so - yes, I think so."
He studied a minute, and I judged he was going to spring his trap, and he
did. He said:
"Then the matter stands like this. They were banned creatures, of fearful
origin; they could be dangerous company for the children. Now give me a
rational reason, dear, if you can think of any, why you call it a wrong
to drive them into banishment, and why you would have saved them from it.
In a word, what loss have you suffered by it?"
How stupid of him to go and throw his case away like that! I could have
boxed his ears for vexation if he had been a boy. He was going along all
right until he ruined everything by winding up in that foolish and fatal
way. What had she lost by it! Was he never going to find out what kind of
a child Joan of Arc was? Was he never going to learn that things which
merely concerned her own gain or loss she cared nothing about? Could he
never get the simple fact into his head that the sure way and the only
way to rouse her up and set her on fire was to show her where some other
person was going to suffer wrong or hurt or loss? Why, he had gone and
set a trap for himself - that was all he had accomplished.
The minute those words were out of his mouth her temper was up, the
indignant tears rose in her eyes, and she burst out on him with an energy
and passion which astonished him, but didn't astonish me, for I knew he
had fired a mine when he touched off his ill-chosen climax.
"Oh, father, how can you talk like that? Who owns France?"
"God and the King."
"Not Satan?"
"Satan, my child? This is the footstool of the Most High - Satan owns no
handful of its soil."
"Then who gave those poor creatures their home? God. Who protected them
in it all those centuries? God. Who allowed them to dance and play there
all those centuries and found no fault with it? God. Who disapproved of
God's approval and put a threat upon them? A man. Who caught them again
in harmless sports that God allowed and a man forbade, and carried out
that threat, and drove the poor things away from the home the good God
gave them in His mercy and His pity, and sent down His rain and dew and
sunshine upon it five hundred years in token of His peace? It was their
home - theirs, by the grace of God and His good heart, and no man had a
right to rob them of it. And they were the gentlest, truest friends that
children ever had, and did them sweet and loving service all these five