by Eugène Sue
“She will be burned later! Our captains have promised us!”
“They deceive us! We shall burn her ourselves, now!”
Bishop Cauchon reads: “‘Sixthly, I, Joan, confess that I grievously sinned by being a schismatic.’ — Do you confess it?”
“I confess it!”
Bishop Cauchon continues reading: “‘All of which crimes and errors, I, Joan, having returned to the truth, by the grace of our Lord, and also by the grace of our holy and infallible doctrine, my good and reverend Fathers, I now renounce and abjure.’ — Do you renounce, do you abjure these crimes and errors?”
“I renounce! I abjure!”
Bishop Cauchon reads on: “‘In the faith and the belief of all of which, I declare that I shall submit to the punishment that the Church may inflict upon me, and I promise and swear to St. Peter, the prince of the apostles, and to our Holy Father the Pope of Rome, his vicar, and to his successors, and to you, my seigneurs, and to you, my reverend father in God, Monseigneur the Bishop of Beauvais, and to you religious person, Brother John Lemaitre, vicar of the Inquisition of the faith, I, Joan, swear to you, to all of you my judges, never again to relapse into the criminal errors that it has pleased the Lord to deliver me from! I swear ever to remain in the union of our holy mother the Church, and in obedience to our Holy Father the Pope!’ — Do you swear?”
“I swear — and I am dying!”
Bishop Cauchon beckons to one of the registrars. The latter takes a pen out of his portfolio, dips it in ink, hands it to the prelate, and holds up his square cap for a desk. The prelate places the parchment on the cap, and continues to read from it in a loud voice:
“‘I, Joan, affirm and confirm all that is said above; I swear to it and affirm it in the name of the living and all-powerful God and of the sacred gospels, in proof whereof, and not knowing how to write, I have signed this document with my mark,’” saying which he presents the pen to the kneeling Joan and pointing to the parchment on the registrar’s cap, adds: “Now place your cross here, below, seeing you do not know how to write.”
In an almost expiring condition Joan Darc endeavors to trace a cross at the bottom of the parchment. Her strength fails her. The registrar kneels down beside the Maid, and guiding her inert and icy hand, aids her to make her mark at the bottom of the document. This being done, he calls the two penitents dressed in long grey gowns who have remained at the foot of the scaffold, and delivers to them the almost insensible Joan Darc. They place themselves on either side of her and take her under the arms. Her head drops upon her shoulder; from between her half-closed eyelids her eyes appear fixed and glassy. The only sign that life has not yet fled is a slight tremor that from time to time runs over her frame.
Stepping forward, Bishop Cauchon addresses the crowd in a tremendous voice: “All pastors charged with the duty of lovingly guarding the flock of Christ must endeavor to keep far from their dear flock all causes of pestilence, infection and corruption, and must seek to lead back the sheep that has wandered off among the brambles. Wherefore, we, Peter, Bishop of Beauvais by the grace of God, assisted by John Lemaitre, Inquisitor of the faith, and other learned and reverend priests, all competent judges, having heard and considered your assertions and your admissions, do now declare to you, Joan the Maid: We pronounce you guilty of having falsely maintained that you have had divine visions and revelations; guilty of having seduced weak people and having stiff-neckedly held to your opinions; guilty of having despised the sacraments and the holy canons; guilty of having favored sedition against our sovereign and serene master the King of England and France; guilty of having cruelly shed human blood; guilty of having apostatized, schismatized, blasphemed, idolatrized and invoked the evil spirit. But seeing that by the grace of the All-Powerful you have at last returned to the pale of our holy and sweet mother the Church, and that, filled with sincere contrition and genuine faith, you have publicly and in a loud voice made abjuration of your criminal and heretical errors, we now suspend the punishment of excommunication and its consequences, upon the express condition that you sincerely return to our holy and merciful Church. And charitably wishing to aid you in accomplishing your salvation, we condemn you, Joan the Maid, to perpetual imprisonment where your food shall be the bread of pain, your drink the water of agony, to the end that, weeping throughout the rest of your life over your monstrous sins, you may never again incur them. This is your final and definite condemnation. You now see how the Church of our Lord shows herself a tender mother towards you. Do then forevermore abandon and deplore your culpable error! Renounce your male attire forever, a shame to your sex! And should you relapse into that or any other mortal and idolatrous sin, then will the Church with profound and maternal pain be forced to cut you off forever from her body, she will then deliver you to the secular arm, and you will be cast into the flames like a gangrened member, seized with incurable rottenness. Glory to God on high, Amen.”
The mob, especially the English soldiers, receive the “merciful” sentence with a threatening clamor. The people make a move to force the gate of the cemetery, which is guarded by a platoon of archers. The latter, being no less exasperated, seem ready to join the discontented and attack the platform. The Earl of Warwick quickly ascends the scaffold and again angrily addresses the Bishop: “Bishop! Has not this comedy lasted long enough? We can no longer answer for our soldiers in their present state of exasperation if, despite her abjuration, the witch is not burned!”
Bishop Cauchon suppresses with difficulty a gesture of impatience. He whispers into the English captain’s ear. The latter, seeming to be convinced by what he hears, answers with a gesture of approval. The prelate adds: “Rest assured of what I promise you. At present see to it that the gate of the cemetery is well guarded, and that the mob is not allowed to break in. We shall make our exit by the garden of the abbey, and the Maid will be taken the same way. She would otherwise be massacred by the good people. And that must not be. She has only fainted. She will be seen to in her prison.”
The Earl of Warwick again descends from the platform. The Bishop issues his orders to the penitents who are supporting the wholly unconscious Joan in their arms. They raise her — one under the arms, the other by the feet, descend the stairs of the platform, and, bearing their burden, walk rapidly across the cemetery to the garden of the abbey, while the English soldiers, obedient to the orders of their captains, who promise to them the speedy execution of Joan, close their ranks before the gate of the cemetery and keep back the mob, that shouts for the death of the witch.
CHAPTER VII.
REMORSE.
AFTER HER FORMAL abjuration Joan Darc is taken in an almost dying condition, not to her cell but to a room in the Castle of Rouen. By orders of the Bishop, two old women are appointed to nurse her. She is laid in a soft bed; her jaws, locked in convulsions, are forced open, and a calming beverage poured down her throat. Every day and night the physician visits her. On the second day after the abjuration, the patient is out of danger. When Joan Darc recovers consciousness, she finds herself in a spacious and neatly furnished room. The warm rays of the sun play upon the glass of the barred casement. The two old women, who have her in charge, are seated at the head of the patient’s bed seeming to contemplate her with tender interest. Joan Darc first thinks that she dreams, but her next belief is that, agreeable to the promise made to her by the institutor in the name of the Bishop, she has secretly been set free. She believes that some charitable people have obtained from the Bishop permission to transport her to their own house. The first impression felt by Joan at these surmises is one of joy at being free, and no remorse assails her at having denied the truth. The bliss of having escaped the dreaded shame of exposure, the hope of soon recovering her health, the prospect of returning to Domremy and seeing her parents — all these pleasurable sentiments smother the reproaches of her voices. She asks the two old women where she is. They smile in answer, and mysteriously place their fingers on their lips. From these tokens Joan conject
ures that they are not free to answer, but that she is in a safe and hospitable asylum. Preserving on this head the silence that seems to be recommended to her, Joan gives herself over without reserve to the joy of living, of looking through the window panels at the blue sky, at feeling her limbs, so long sore and even wounded by the weight of her chains, finally free from their cruel grip; above all she congratulates herself on being delivered from the presence of her jailers, whose revolting utterances and licentious looks have been a cause of unremitting torture to her. She accepts nourishment and even some generous wine mixed with water. Her strength returns. On the third day she is able to rise. Her nurses offer her a long woman’s dress and a hat. No longer assailed by the chaste apprehension that her jailers inspired her with in her cell, Joan resumes without hesitation the garb of her sex. The door of the room that she occupies opens upon a terrace on which her nurses induce her to promenade. A board fence high enough to shut off the view surrounds the terrace.
Joan remains a long time upon the terrace, inhaling the spring air with delight. When night approaches, feeling herself slightly fatigued by her walk, she undresses, lies down upon her bed, and sleeps profoundly.
Subject to human weakness, and transported by the joy of being free after such a long, painful and rigid confinement, the poor martyr is not assailed by remorse until towards evening. Vague sentiments, the forerunners of the approaching awakening of her conscience having cast a shadow over her spirit, she seeks in sleep both further rest and oblivion. Her expectations prove false.
St. Marguerite and St. Catherine appear in the heroine’s dream; they do not now smile and look down tenderly upon her. They are sad and threatening, and reproach her for having denied the truth out of fear and shame. Profoundly impressed by her dream, Joan wakes up, her face covered with tears, when, lo, she sees the two saints with their gold crowns on their heads and robed in white and blue, luminously, almost transparently floating in the darkness of the room, and calling her by her name.
With beating heart and clasped hands, Joan kneels down on her bed, sobs, and implores their forgiveness. Without answering her, the two saints point to heaven with a significant gesture. The apparition then gradually fades away, and darkness again reigns supreme.
Thus rudely awakened to a sense of her actual condition, the heroine forthwith feels the promptings of her own conscience, that has lain torpid since the abjuration. She traces back the solemnity in all its horrid details; she recalls the maledictions with which she was whelmed by those who just before commiserated her. The terrible, yet legitimate accusation pounds upon her ears:
“If Joan’s visions are inventions and a fraud, she has deceived simple people — she has lied — she only deserves contempt.”
“If her visions were genuine, if God inspired her, she covers herself with shame by abjuring out of fear of death!”
“Coward or liar” her inexorable voices repeat to her; “coward, or liar! — such is the name that you will leave behind you!”
Indescribable are the tortures that the poor creature undergoes on that night of desperate remorse. The full lucidity of her mind, of her energy, of her character, have returned to her, but only to curse her. Her keen judgment points out to her the fatal consequences of her abjuration; the soldiers and the peoples who rose at her voice against the foreigner will soon learn of the perjury committed by her whom they believed inspired! Mistrust of themselves, dejectment, even defeat may follow the victorious exaltation of the soldiers and the people. On the other hand, the memory of the martial maid, surviving her martyrdom, would have added fuel to their courage, it would have aroused an avenging hatred for the English, and the great work of the complete emancipation of Gaul would have been achieved in the name of the victim, and in execration of her butchers.
Finally, could Joan continue the war even after she regained her freedom? What confidence could she inspire in the masses, she who had been convicted of falsehood or cowardice?
The plot of the ecclesiastics was planned with diabolical craft. They foresaw and calculated the consequences of the heroine’s apostasy; they realized that, taken to the pyre after she had confessed the divinity of her mission, Joan would have become a saint; if, however, she renounced her past actions, she was dishonored.
“Idle remorse!” thinks Joan. “How retract a public abjuration. Impossible! Who could believe in the sincerity of a creature who had once before renounced her faith and her honor!”
These mind and heartrending thoughts are tearing Joan Darc to pieces when morning dawns and a rap is heard at the door of her chamber. The old women rise and go to inquire who is there. It is their reverend father in God, Canon Loyseleur. He wishes to speak to Joan without delay. She hastily puts on her woman’s clothes and prepares to receive the priest, towards whom she now experiences a secret aversion, seeing that she accuses him in her heart for having led her to abjure by superexciting her dread of the shame and fear of the fagots. She reflects, however, that after all, the priest might have actually believed in the wisdom of his advice, and that she alone is responsible for the cowardly apostasy. Joan receives the canon with her habitual sweetness of manners. She learns from him that she is still a prisoner in the Castle of Rouen, but that the Bishop will set her free. The prelate, adds the canon, has no interest in retaining her a prisoner, and is to allow her to escape at night in a day or two. Loyseleur pretends that, thanks to his own personal intercession with the captain of the tower, she has been transferred to that room; but the captain demands that, the prisoner being now almost well again, she be returned to her cell. His orders are to be carried out that very morning.
Joan Darc believes the priest’s words and easily reconciles herself to the idea of returning to her cell, but she asks as a supreme favor that male attire be provided to her for the sake of protection against her jailers. Canon Loyseleur promises to carry her wishes to the captain of the tower. Suddenly one of the old women rushes into the room saying that the jailer and an escort of soldiers are coming to claim the prisoner. The canon assures Joan she is soon to be set free, and leaves the room at the moment that John enters, carrying manacles which he fastens on the wrists of the heroine, and then conducts her back to her cell. Upon entering, Joan notices that the male clothes which she left there have disappeared. She expects to see herself chained by the waist and feet as she was before; but, freeing her even of the manacles, John informs her that she is no longer to be chained, saying which he leaves, casting a strange look upon her. Hardly concerned at this leniency, Joan sits down upon her straw couch and remains motionless, occupied with her own thoughts.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE RELAPSE.
IT HAS LONG been night. The little iron lamp lights the dungeon of Joan Darc, who lies upon her straw couch broken with remorse at the continuous reproaches of her voices, and racking her brain for the means to expiate her weakness. The captive bitterly regrets the disappearance of her masculine clothes. Agitated by vague presentiments, and apprehensive of dangers on which she hardly dares dwell, she has wrapped herself as closely as she can in her clothes, and fearing to yield to the sleepiness that is gaining upon her, she rises from her straw bed and sits down upon the floor with her back leaning against the wall. But pressed down by sleep, her eyelids close despite herself, by degrees her head droops forward, and finally drops upon her knees which she holds within her arms. She falls asleep.
A few minutes later the pale face of Canon Loyseleur appears at the wicket. He notices that Joan is asleep, and withdraws.
Shortly afterwards the heavy door of the dungeon turns noiselessly upon its hinges. It opens and recloses so silently that Joan Darc’s slumber, is not interrupted either by the slight noise of the door or the steps of two men who creep into the cavernous precinct. The two men are Talbot and Berwick, the English captains, who are appointed by Bishop Cauchon as the additional keepers of Joan Darc. Both are men in the prime of life. They wear rich slashed jackets after the fashion of the time. The two nobl
e officers have sought in the stimulus of wine the requisite courage to commit the unheard-of atrocity, the nameless crime that they are bent upon. Their cheeks are inflamed, their eyes glisten, a lewd smile contracts their vinous lips. At the sight of Joan asleep they stop a moment and take council. Presently the two rush upon their victim.
Awakened with a start, Joan Darc leaps up and struggles to free herself from the grasp of her assailants. Berwick seizes her by the waist, while Talbot, sliding behind, seizes her arms and approaches his mouth to the lips of Joan, who turns her head away and utters a piercing shriek. The two noblemen drag her to the straw couch. The heroine draws superhuman strength from her despair. A violent struggle ensues, horrible, nameless. The tipsy Talbot and Berwick, exasperated at the heroine’s resistance, give a loose to the fury of unsatisfied lechery. They smite Joan Darc with their fists. Her face bleeds. Yet she resists, and calls for help.
At last the door opens and Canon Loyseleur appears at the entrance. He feigns indignation. He brings with him a little trunk containing Joan’s male clothes, and addressing the captain of the tower who enters with him, says: “You see it with your own eyes! An infamous attempt is contemplated upon the unfortunate woman!” Perhaps not wholly dead to conscience, Berwick and Talbot allow Joan Darc to escape from their grasp, and leave the cell, followed by the captain. Distracted, her face black and blue and covered with blood, Joan Darc falls almost senseless upon her couch, near which the canon has deposited her man’s attire. Before he has time to speak with the victim, he is called away by the jailer, who, shaking his fist at him, says roughly:
“Get out of here, you tonsured dotard, canon of Satan! The devil take the marplot!”
“Poor child!” cries the priest, walking out, “I brought you your clothes. Put them on despite the oath you took. You may perhaps be sentenced as a relapsed heretic. But death is preferable to outrage!”