VII
It also seems likely that she had other things to occupy her mind during this enforced and unpleasant sojourn at Neufchâteau. A shadowy suitor enters her life at this period, and it is suggested that, during her fortnight’s exile at Neufchâteau, he dragged her off to Toul, the centre of the diocese, to answer in a breach-of-promise action before the episcopal court.fn24 He is a young man without a name, but with the breach-of-promise action behind him to give him a worldly solidity; a young man whose existence would never have been known to us at all but for Jeanne’s judges having chosen to mention him, in the ninth article of their accusation, as an additional example of how badly she had always behaved. Jeanne defended herself over this as best she might. She had never, she said, brought an action against him; it was he, on the contrary, who had brought one against her, but she had never given him any promise, and had vowed her virginity to God from the first time of hearing her voices.fn25 It was not true, she said, that he had refused to marry her because she had lived in a house at Neufchâteau with women of ill repute, nor that he had died while the case was pending, nor that she, Jeanne, in despite, had abandoned her employment for that reason. She mentioned, also, that her voices had assured her that she would win her case. This was perhaps not a very well-chosen assurance to quote, since it meant mixing up the secular with the heavenly. Still, it was allowed to pass without comment.fn26
The shadowy suitor presumably added to Jeanne’s worries during the second half of 1428, both at Neufchâteau and at home. It was trying enough to have to cope with importunate saints, distressed parents, an indignant lover, and a future full of menace, but, on the top of all that, to hear smug matrimonial plaris discussed for herself must have been irritating in the extreme. It must have been exceedingly difficult to respond in any way save by a flat refusal; and parents of well-brought-up girls were not, at that time, inclined to accept flat refusals in good part.
If Jeanne’s suitor really forced her to go to Toul during this period, she must have spent a busy as well as a disturbed fortnight.
However it may be, she and her parents returned to Domremy to find most of the village burnt and the church in ruins.
VIII
War had been brought very close – in fact, to their very home. Jeanne could no longer attend Mass in her accustomed place, but must perforce walk, or perhaps ride, to Greux, where the church had been spared.fn27 Apart from these sorrows and inconveniences, there was still actual danger from armed raids, if we may judge by the restrictions placed upon the villagers of the district for their greater safety. Thus, they were not allowed out into the country beyond the refuge of fortified places. These restrictions evidently continued in force for several months. We have the example of a labourer at Foug, called Jean Bauldet le Vieux, who, so late as November 1428, was fined twenty sous for having gone to look at his plough which had been left abandoned in a field. fn28 These sidelights do make history less dry and more human: one sees Jean Bauldet le Vieux creeping out to examine his precious plough rusting in the damp November grass – an offence all the more serious, he having been appointed to guard the gates of Foug while a number of its citizens had gone to Sorcey by the order of the Cardinal of Bar. Far from setting a good example to his fellow-villagers – in whose interest, as in his own, the regulation of guarding the gates had been made – he deserted his post the moment their backs were turned. One wonders what Haultchappel, sergent de Foug, said to him when he found his orders disregarded. Probably he did not spare his words, when Jean le Vieux came back, having dared enough to go out into the fields himself, but not having dared to take a horse with him, to drag his plough back into safety.
Life under these conditions must have been alarming and irksome to all. More especially to Jeanne, the appointed and impatient saviour of unhappy France. The suspicions of her father, the importunities of the young man making such a fuss about her refusal to marry him, must indeed have appeared tiresome and contemptible, in view of the charge laid upon her, as it became more and more urgent. Still, she waited. Nevertheless, it appears from the evidence that her discretion began to break down a little. She began to reveal her impatience by hints and allusions. She had already told her friend Michel Lebuin, on the eve of Saint John Baptist, that a young girl living between Coussey and Vaucouleurs would cause the King of France to be crowned before the year was out.fn29 She told another young man, Jean W aterin, that she would restore France and the blood royal.fn30 More mysteriously, she said to Gérardin d’Epinal, ‘Compère, if you were not a Burgundian, I would tell you certain things.’ He, very naturally, thought she was alluding to some man she wanted to marry. fn31 What, indeed, could be more obvious to Gérardin’s mind? Marriage projects were in the air, as is proved by the Neufchâteau-Toul affair. Jeanne was of marriagable age, and marriage the only alternative to a convent, unless she wished to become the family drudge for the rest of her life. From Jeanne’s point of view, however, it was equally obvious that she must remove herself as speedily as possible from such a threatened fate. She knew she was destined for more important things. What more comprehensible than that she should have said nothing definite about her intended departure, an announcement which would only have had the effect of speeding up her parents’ desire to see her safely clamped in matrimony? Once married, she was doubly caught: she would have not ouly a father but a husband to evade.
The remark she made to Gérardin d’Epinal was obviously made just before her final departure, and referred to something very different from any young man she might have in mind. The dark allusions made by her to Michel Lebuin and Jean W aterin about the young girl, living between Coussey and Vaucouleurs, who should restore the kingdom of France, equally obviously referred to herself. By the time she left Domremy for ever, her friends and her family must all have at least suspected her intentions, even though they may have ignored the exact date she had fixed for her final departure. It seems inexplicable, in the circumstances, that her parents should so easily have allowed her to escape them a second time. Forewarned, in this case, was not fore-armed. Perhaps, even up to the last moment, they never took her quite seriously. It seems the more inexplicable when one remembers that she had already paid her first visit to Robert de Baudricourt, a visit which must certainly have given rise to common talk, even supposing that Durand Lassois kept silence out of loyalty and conviction.
6. DOMREMY AND VAUCOULEURS (2)
I
In January of 1429, Jeanne, then aged just seventeen, left Domremy for ever. She left, on this second occasion, ostensibly to stay again with Durand Lassois and his wife at Burey-le-Petit, when Jeanne Lassois’ baby was about to be born. The first visit was child’s play compared with this, the first really decisive step that she took in her strange and brief career. For nearly five years she had kept her private instructions to herself; now the moment had arrived when she must tum those private instructions into a public declaration of a nature to startle two nations out of their wits. Without saying a word to her parents, and with very few words to her friends, she set out on the first stage of her earthly voyage. The distance from Domremy to Burey was not great – under ten miles – but measured figuratively it was enormous. It represented the whole diffei;ence between her private and her public life. It required a tremendous effort of courage and conviction.
It must, also, have been attended by a mental suffering which only a corresponding state of mental exaltation could have rendered tolerable. A virtuous, helpful, and obedient daughter, the small deceptions she had hitherto practised on her parents in the form of minor truancies while she was supposed to be looking after the cattle, even the escapade to Vaucouleurs eight months earlier, were as nothing compared with the major truancy she now contemplated. Nothing but the commands of God himself could have superseded the authority of her parents in her dutiful mind, and it is clear from her own words that the recognition of this divided authority involved her in a final anguish as to the right decision. She said that sooner than go t
o France without God’s permission she would be tom to pieces by horses.fn1 She recorded, also, that her parents nearly went out of their minds when she left them.fn2 It is impossible not to dwell with passionate sympathy on the struggles which must have taken place in that childish soul, so ill-informed on the one hand, so miraculously informed on the other. All her training, all her traditions, pointed to her parents’ word as absolute law; all her inner experience persuaded her to follow the higher dictate. One must take into consideration, however, that she had been following it in a quiet way, without open demonstration, for the past five years, a training and self-discipline which cannot have been without its value when the moment came to put it to the first real test. Indeed, when one considers the power of reticence displayed by the child of twelve in concealing revelations of so terrifying a magnitude from her natural confidants, the decisive action of the girl of seventeen becomes less surprising. Less surprising, but quite as painful to contemplate sympathetically in retrospect.
At any rate, it is abundantly evident that Jeanne was, and had been from the first, possessed of a strength of will and a self-control beyond rational explanation. It is a great, though simple, point in favour of her sincerity that she never prattled about her experiences during the years when she might have been expected to prattle. Visionaries, generally speaking, shrink from communicating their experiences to others; either the fear of ridicule, or, more probably, an inner sense of self-preservation, shuts them into themselves during the initial period of probation, until such time as the filling reservoir overflows its dams, and the barriers of reticence give way before the compelling flood of demonstration. One may, at first sight, wonder greatly over this apparently extraordinary reticence displayed by a child; one wonders less when, on second thoughts, one considers the natural secrecy of most children on matters affecting their private innermost life, and then extends one’s imagination to the comprehension of a child altogether removed, for some inexplicable reason, to a private innermost life almost unimaginable in its mystery, inspiration, and awe. It is not surprising that Jeanne should have abstained from the children’s revels round the Fairies’ Tree, when once she had begun to live so astounding a fairy-story of her own. It is not surprising that she should have kept her secret even from the mother who, apart from the local curé, had been the only guide to her religious life. Boulainvilliers, indeed, says that she told it to her priest, but Jeanne, surely a more reliable authority, says that she told it to no one. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that she did tell it to her priest (which, on the face of Jeanne’s evidence, is impossible to believe),fn3 what would his counsel have been? He would certainly have advised her to keep it to herself, not because he disbelieved her, but because nis instinct and tradition would have warned him that such a secret should be preserved at all costs from outward comment and contact, lest it should vanish like a web of gossamer at the touch of an earthly hand. He would, in his own simplicity, have recognised that a simplicity such as Jeanne’s must be safeguarded in its virgin state. He would, quite justifiably, have encouraged her in the belief that this was God’s business, to the exclusion even of her parents. It would have been no more than his duty to do so. But it must have been one of the strangest confessions he ever heard, if he did hear it; and, poor man, we can feel for him whenever he met Jacques d’Arc or Isabelle Romée, either in the village street or in the confessional, and remembered the secret he had encouraged their daughter to keep from them. For, after all, he was a neighbour as well as a priest: they were all friends together.
How queerly life turns out! How impossible that Jeanne, in spite of all her prescience, could have foreseen that I, trying in 1935 to interpret the facts of her existence from 1412 to 1428, should receive a visiting-card from the Curé-Doyen de Domremy-la-Pucelle, Chanoine honoraire de Saint Dié et d’Orléans, Chapelain d’honneur de Jeanne d’Arc, téléphone Greux 7.
We need not, however, waste our sympathies over a curé who almost certainly has no reason to deserve them. We had far better accept Jeanne’s statement that she confided in no one. Quite apart from any possible priestly influence, and quite apart from any warning personal instinct, she had ample cause for keeping her own counsel. Her father’s dreams alone would have sufficed to make her hold her tongue. Jeanne was sagacious always; the sagacity of the peasant was hers, as well as the inspiration of the mystic. Therein lay, I think, her real strength.
II
In January, then, she departed quietly to stay with the Lassois at Burey, giving as her pretext that Jeanne Lassois was about to have a baby.fn4 She might help Jeanne Lassois over her trouble, lending a useful hand in the house, even as she had helped Madame la Rousse at Neufchâteau. Helping Jeanne Lassois over her trouble would naturally provide an excuse likely to appeal to Jacques d’Arc and Isabelle Romée. Neighbours and relatives in country districts, or, indeed, anywhere amongst the unaided poor, are accustomed to come to each other’s assistance in moments of emergency. If Jeanne took advantage of a pretext of this sort, who shall blame her? She may be blamed for having acted rather slyly towards her parents, but by that time she was convinced that a greater law than her parents’ word was enjoined upon her; she had no choice but to obey. When her judges asked her whether she thought she had done right in leaving without the permission of either her father or her mother, she replied that she had obeyed them in all things, save on this matter of her departure, but since then she had written to them, and they had forgiven her. Asked, again, whether she had no thought of sinning in thus leaving them, she replied that, since God ordered it, she was right to obey. She added, in the magnificent manner she could at times command, that, since God ordered it, she would have gone, even ifshe had had a hundred fathers and a hundred mothers, even had she been the daughter of a king.fn5
It is impossible not to recall another answer: ‘Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?’
When they asked her whether she had enquired of her voices ifshe should speak of her departure to her father and mother, she replied that the voices would quite gladly have allowed her to do so, so far as her father and mother were concerned, but for the grief they would bring upon her in the telling. The voices left it to her whether to tell them or not, but made it clear that she might tell it either to her father or to her mother, otherwise she must keep silent. The responsibility thus having been thrown on Jeanne, she decided that on no account would she tell them. Here, as always, her worldly wisdom shows itself, for although she said frankly that her voices had never constrained her to entire secrecy, she had hesitated to reveal them lest the, Burgundians should prevent her journey, and, more especially, lest her father should prevent it also.’fn6 It is thus made clear that although Jeanne obeyed her voices in essentials, even to the extent of going against her natural affections and against her traditions of filial obedience, she could still reserve her own judgment when the decision was left to her. Her voices would have authorised her to confide in her parents: her own judgment restrained her from doing so. Her native prudence was, I think, mixed up with her kindly feeling towards her parents. She was reluctant to hurt them unduly. Nor did she want them to hurt her. Her voices themselves had warned her that they might do so. Nor did she want to provoke the parental authority which might prevent her from going to stay with her relatives at Bitrey-le-Petit – the stepping-stone to Vaucouleurs, to Robert de Baudricourt, and, eventually to Chinon. She wanted to slip away without impediment or fuss. Did she act rightly or wrongly? The decision is less difficult for us to settle today, in retrospect, than for the very young Jeanne in January 1429. We know now that the end justified the means, so who are we, with our advantage of getting history into its more or less correct perspective, to criticise the girl for having taken the safer, though perhaps more surreptitious, course at that crisis of her life, under the terrifying compulsion of what she sincerely believed to be God’s orders? It is clear that she thought she was doing right; it is clear, also, that she humanly suffered while
she did it.
III
The accounts of Jeanne’s departure from Domremy prove her distress. Not only did she not dare to say good-bye to her parents for practical reasons (et par espécial doubtoit moult son pére, qu’il ne la empeschast de son véage faire), but for sentimental reasons she avoided saying good-bye to her personal friends.
Naturally, she had many such friends in the village. She had known them all her life. They had all, so to speak, grown up together. They had shared the same experiences always, such as the fun of the picnics at the Arbre des Dames, in safe and happy days, and also the scares of the dangerous days which drove them and their parents and their cows away into refuge while the Burgundians burnt their village and their church. They had shared their games, their pleasures, their frights, and their disasters. It cannot have been easy for Jeanne to go away from such intimate companions without even telling them that she was going; without giving them any indication of what she was going to do, knowing that in all likelihood she would never see them again. Their accounts of her farewells to them make pathetic reading.
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