Complete Works of Anatole France
Page 408
So groping towards the tinkle out of place
The blind man hies him to another night,
Not without many oaths: — God grant him grace!
Thus ends the dance and all are led aright.
Rufflers drop swords, the sceptred leave their throne;
Without complaint or noise so sleeps each wight
Expectant of the day his hound in stone,
At the stiff feet still couched in rigid care,
Wakes with wet tongue his master lying prone;
And judgment clarions through the dark shall blare,
Whose sound shall wake the echoes of his tomb
With tumult, and his bones shall be aware,
And dull cold Death, and Nature sick with gloom,
Shall see arise from every grave the form
Of every creature born of woman’s womb.
All flesh of Adam won back from the worm;
And Death shall die: and void consume desire,
And worlds diverse Eternity inform.
Clad in the martyrs’ white and shining guise,
Each spouse shall see, in nimbus of bright gold,
The well-beloved pass in white attire.
But they whose broken wings may ne’er unfold,
These, on the verge of burning sulphur-flood,
Shall suffer, yes: but still to life they hold.
All tragic loves and widowed, marked with blood,
Drifting enlaced about their circle fell,
Shall sigh unceasing words now understood.
O happy they who yet believed in Hell!
THY DEEP PROFOUND OF SOUL
THY deep profound of soul, Thy gentle tone,
Gathered the women by the well-side way;
They poured their perfume on Thine hair; to-day
They light an aureole about Thine eyes,
God of the foolish virgin and the wise!
For ever shall be perfected in Thee
The fairest loves of men; ’tis Thy decree!
Each woman who weeps is Thine, in her distress;
Loosed from our jealous hold, each matted tress
Shall serve in turn to wipe Thy naked feet;
Slipped from our arms, from our relaxed entreat,
Till time be done, each Magdalen in turn
Pour at Thy waiting feet the plenished urn.
Christ! For Thy throne she leaves my soul to drouth,
To praise Thee with the honey of her mouth.
God’s chalice, thou! My lips shall know the loss.
His mystic Rose, the Flower of the Cross!
GOOD-BYE
(Adieu)
I ENTERED in a church where depth of shade
Closed the drear day when veils of black are laid
O’er the gilt symbols of the saving rood
Whereon earth’s debt to Heaven was made good.
A deacon, bowed, white-surpliced, and alone,
Watched at God’s tomb, the shrouded altar-stone
Friday in Holy Week, when women come
To glide like shadows in the recessèd gloom;
On rustle of silk and jewels’ silvern sound,
Roll Latin chant and organ-voice profound.
There I saw her to whom my life is lent
Kneel on her knees in soft abandonment,
Her head borne back with heavy weight of hair
And long hands on the velvet drooped, in prayer.
From out the darkling roof the lamps’ spent light
Lit the cheek’s inward curve of amorous white.
I was surprised to know her in that place
For her life’s way was not God’s path of grace.
I was beside her, touched her garments dark,
My shadow fell in hers, she did not mark.
What struck me was that, from her big eyes bright,
I ne’er had seen such brilliance of clear light.
I had not known such burning tears to lie
On looks so lovely, such long ecstasy;
So sweet a tie, such thrill of fearful love,
Drew her to God, pale on the cross above.
So drank her sense the heavenly breath distilled,
The incense-fume wherewith the church was filled.
How prompt the woman-soul to spring on fire!
Her lips’ red flower stood open in desire,
Her being throbbed to an unseen embrace;
So fear and sorrow took me for a space;
I saw henceforth her heart a citadel,
That she repented having loved too well;
That since God’s fruitful grace had watered dearth
Rose the disgust against the things of earth.
Then did I mourn myself, and was aware
That she had passed to Thee, O Jew too fair,
King with locks reddened by the thorny crown!
The Non-Fiction
France at work in his later years
THE LIFE OF JOAN OF ARC
Translated by Winifred Stephens
CONTENTS
VOLUME I.
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
VOLUME II.
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
APPENDICES
VOLUME I.
PREFACE
TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
SCHOLARS have been good enough to notice this book; and the majority have treated it very kindly, doubtless because they have perceived that the author has observed all the established rules of historical research and accuracy. Their kindness has touched me. I am especially grateful to MM. Gabriel Monod, Solomon Reinach and Germain Lefèvre-Pontalis, who have discovered in this work certain errors, which will not be found in the present edition.
My English critics have a special claim to my gratitude. To the memory of Joan of Arc they consecrate a pious zeal which is almost an expiatory worship. Mr. Andrew Lang’s praiseworthy scruples with regard to my references have caused me to correct some and to add several.
The hagiographers alone are openly hostile. They reproach me, not with my manner of explaining the facts, but with having explained them at all. And the more my explanations are clear, natural, rational and derived from the most authoritative sources, the more these explanations displease them. They would wish the history of Joan of Arc to remain mysterious and entirely supernatural. I have restored the Maid to life and to humanity. That is my crime. And these zealous inquisitors, so intent on condemning my work, have failed to discover therein any grave fault, any flagrant inexactness. Their severity has had to content itself with a few inadvertences and with a few printer’s errors. What flatterers could better have gratified “the proud weakness of my heart?”
Paris, January, 1909.
INTRODUCTION
MY first duty should be to make known the authorities for this history. But L’Averdy, Buchon, J. Quicherat, Vallet de Viriville, Siméon Luce, Boucher de Molandon, MM. Robillard de Beaurepaire, Lanéry d’Arc, Henri Jadart, Alexandre Sorel, Germain Lefèvre-Pontalis, L. Jarry, and many other scholars have published and expounded various docume
nts for the life of Joan of Arc. I refer my readers to their works which in themselves constitute a voluminous literature, and without entering on any new examination of these documents, I will merely indicate rapidly and generally the reasons for the use I have chosen to make of them. They are: first, the trial which resulted in her condemnation; second, the chronicles; third, the trial for her rehabilitation; fourth, letters, deeds, and other papers.
First, in the trial which resulted in her condemnation the historian has a mine of rich treasure. Her cross-examination cannot be too minutely studied. It is based on information, not preserved elsewhere, gathered from Domremy and the various parts of France through which she passed. It is hardly necessary to say that all the judges of 1431 sought to discover in Jeanne was idolatry, heresy, sorcery and other crimes against the Church. Inclined as they were, however, to discern evil in every one of the acts and in each of the words of one whom they desired to ruin, so that they might dishonour her king, they examined all available information concerning her life. The high value to be set upon the Maid’s replies is well known; they are heroically sincere, and for the most part perfectly lucid. Nevertheless they must not all be interpreted literally. Jeanne, who never regarded either the bishop or the promoter as her judge, was not so simple as to tell them the whole truth. It was very frank of her to warn them that they would not know all. That her memory was curiously defective must also be admitted. I am aware that the clerk of the court was astonished that after a fortnight she should remember exactly the answers she had given in her cross-examination. That may be possible, although she did not always say the same thing. It is none the less certain that after the lapse of a year she retained but an indistinct recollection of some of the important acts of her life. Finally, her constant hallucinations generally rendered her incapable of distinguishing between the true and the false.
The record of the trial is followed by an examination of Jeanne’s sayings in articulo mortis. This examination is not signed by the clerks of the court. Hence from a legal point of view the record is out of order; nevertheless, regarded as a historical document, its authenticity cannot be doubted. In my opinion the actual occurrences cannot have widely differed from what is related in this unofficial report. It tells of Jeanne’s second recantation, and of this recantation there can be no question, for Jeanne received the communion before her death. The veracity of this document was never assailed, even by those who during the rehabilitation trial pointed out its irregularity.
Secondly, the chroniclers of the period, both French and Burgundian, were paid chroniclers, one of whom was attached to every great baron. Tringant says that his master did not expend any money in order to obtain mention in the chronicles, and that therefore he is omitted from them. The earliest chronicle in which the Maid occurs is that of Perceval de Cagny, who was in the service of the house of Alençon and Duke John’s master of the house. It was drawn up in the year 1436, that is, only six years after Jeanne’s death. But it was not written by him. According to his own confession he had “not half the sense, memory, or ability necessary for putting this, or even a matter of less than half its importance, down in writing.” This chronicle is the work of a painstaking clerk. One is not surprised to find a chronicler in the pay of the house of Alençon representing the differences concerning the Maid, which arose between the Sire de la Trémouille and the Duke of Alençon, in a light most unfavourable to the King. But from a scribe, supposed to be writing at the dictation of a retainer of Duke John, one would have expected a less inaccurate and a less vague account of the feats of arms accomplished by the Maid in company with him whom she called her fair duke. Although this chronicle was written at a time when no one dreamed that the sentence of 1431 would ever be revoked, the Maid is regarded as employing supernatural means, and her acts are stripped of all verisimilitude by being recorded in the manner of a hagiography. Further, that portion of the chronicle attributed to Perceval de Cagny, which deals with the Maid, is brief, consisting of twenty-seven chapters of a few lines each. Quicherat is of opinion that it is the best chronicle of Jeanne d’Arc existing, and the others may indeed be even more worthless.
Gilles le Bouvier, king at arms of the province of Berry, who was forty-three in 1429, is somewhat more judicious than Perceval de Cagny; and, in spite of some confusion of dates, he is better informed of military proceedings. But his story is of too summary a nature to tell us much.
Jean Chartier, precentor of Saint-Denys, held the office of chronicler of France in 1449. Two hundred years later he would have been described as historiographer royal. His office may be divined from the manner in which he relates Jeanne’s death. After having said that she had been long imprisoned by the order of John of Luxembourg, he adds: “The said Luxembourg sold her to the English, who took her to Rouen, where she was harshly treated; in so much that after long delay, they had her publicly burnt in that town of Rouen, without a trial, of their own tyrannical will, which was cruelly done, seeing the life and the rule she lived, for every week she confessed and received the body of Our Lord, as beseemeth a good catholic.” When Jean Chartier says that the English burned her without trial, he means apparently that the Bailie of Rouen did not pronounce sentence. Concerning the ecclesiastical trial and the two accusations of lapse and relapse he says not a word; and it is the English whom he accuses of having burnt a good Catholic without a trial. This example proves how seriously the condemnation of 1431 embarrassed the government of King Charles. But what can be thought of a historian who suppresses Jeanne’s trial because he finds it inconvenient? Jean Chartier was extremely weak-minded and trivial; he seems to believe in the magic of Catherine’s sword and in Jeanne’s loss of power when she broke it; he records the most puerile of fables. Nevertheless it is interesting to note that the official chronicler of the Kings of France, writing about 1450, ascribes to the Maid an important share in the delivery of Orléans, in the conquest of fortresses on the Loire and in the victory of Patay, that he relates how the King formed the army at Gien “by the counsel of the said maid,” and that he expressly states that Jeanne caused the coronation and consecration. Such was certainly the opinion which prevailed at the Court of Charles VII. All that we have to discover is whether that opinion was sincere and reasonable or whether the King of France may not have deemed it to his advantage to owe his kingdom to the Maid. She was held a heretic by the heads of the Church Universal, but in France her memory was honoured, rather, however, by the lower orders than by the princes of the blood and the leaders of the army. The services of the latter the King was not desirous to extol after the revolt of 1440. During this Praguerie, the Duke of Bourbon, the Count of Vendôme, the Duke of Alençon, whom the Maid called her fair duke, and even the cautious Count Dunois had been seen joining hands with the plunderers and making war on the sovereign with an ardour they had never shown in fighting against the English.
“Le Journal du Siège” was doubtless kept in 1428 and 1429; but the edition that has come down to us dates from 1467. What relates to Jeanne before her coming to Orléans is interpolated; and the interpolator was so unskilful as to date Jeanne’s arrival at Chinon in the month of February, while it took place on March 6, and to assign Thursday, March 10, as the date of the departure from Blois, which did not occur until the end of April. The diary from April 28 to May 7 is less inaccurate in its chronology, and the errors in dates which do occur may be attributed to the copyist. But the facts to which these dates are assigned, occasionally in disagreement with financial records and often tinged with the miraculous, testify to an advanced stage of Jeanne’s legend. For example, one cannot possibly attribute to a witness of the siege the error made by the scribe concerning the fall of the Bridge of Les Tourelles. What is said on page 97 of P. Charpentier’s and C. Cuissart’s edition concerning the relations of the inhabitants and the men-at-arms seems out of place, and may very likely have been inserted there to efface the memory of the grave dissensions which had occurred during the last week. From the 8th o
f May the diary ceases to be a diary; it becomes a series of extracts borrowed from Chartier, from Berry, and from the rehabilitation trial. The episode of the big fat Englishman slain by Messire Jean de Montesclère at the Siege of Jargeau is obviously taken from the evidence of Jean d’Aulon in 1446; and even this plagiarism is inaccurate, since Jean d’Aulon expressly says he was slain at the Battle of Les Augustins.
The chronicle entitled La Chronique de la Pucelle, as if it were the chief chronicle of the heroine, is taken from a history entitled Geste des nobles François, going back as far as Priam of Troy. But the extract was not made until the original had been changed and added to. This was done after 1467. Even if it were proved that La Chronique de la Pucelle is the work of Cousinot, shut up in Orléans during the siege, or even of two Cousinots, uncle and nephew according to some, father and son according to others, it would remain none the less true that this chronicle is largely copied from Jean Chartier, the Journal du Siège and the rehabilitation trial. Whoever the author may have been, this work reflects no great credit upon him: no very high praise can be given to a fabricator of tales, who, without appearing in the slightest degree aware of the fact, tells the same stories twice over, introducing each time different and contradictory circumstances. La Chronique de la Pucelle ends abruptly with the King’s return to Berry after his defeat before Paris.
Le Mystère du siège must be classed with the chronicles. It is in fact a rhymed chronicle in dialogue, and it would be extremely interesting for its antiquity alone were it possible to do what some have attempted and to assign to it the date 1435. The editors, and following them several scholars, have believed it possible to identify this poem of 20,529 lines with a certain mistaire played on the sixth anniversary of the delivery of the city. They have drawn their conclusions from the following circumstances: the Maréchal de Rais, who delighted to organise magnificent farces and mysteries, was in Duke Charles’s city expending vast sums there from September, 1434, till August, 1435; in 1439 the city purchased out of its municipal funds “a standard and a banner, which had belonged to Monseigneur de Reys and had been used by him to represent the manner of the storming of Les Tourelles and their capture from the English.” From such a statement it is impossible to prove that in 1435 or in 1439, on May 8, there was acted a play having the Siege for its subject and the Maid for its heroine. If, however, we take “the manner of the storming of Les Tourelles” to mean a mystery rather than a pageant or some other form of entertainment, and if we consider the certain mistaire of 1435 as indicating a representation of that siege which had been laid and raised by the English, we shall thus arrive at a mystery of the siege. But even then we must examine whether it be that mystery the text of which has come down to us.