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Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
Chapter 36
WE MOUNTED and rode, a spectacle to remember, a most noble display of
rich vestments and nodding plumes, and as we moved between the banked
multitudes they sank down all along abreast of us as we advanced, like
grain before the reaper, and kneeling hailed with a rousing welcome the
consecrated King and his companion the Deliverer of France. But by and by
when we had paraded about the chief parts of the city and were come near
to the end of our course, we being now approaching the Archbishop's
palace, one saw on the right, hard by the inn that is called the Zebra, a
strange t--two men not kneeling but standing! Standing in the front rank
of the kneelers; unconscious, transfixed, staring. Yes, and clothed in
the coarse garb of the peasantry, these two. Two halberdiers sprang at
them in a fury to teach them better manners; but just as they seized them
Joan cried out "Forbear!" and slid from her saddle and flung her arms
about one of those peasants, calling him by all manner of endearing
names, and sobbing. For it was her father; and the other was her uncle,
Laxart.
The news flew everywhere, and shouts of welcome were raised, and in just
one little moment those two despised and unknown plebeians were become
famous and popular and envied, and everybody was in a fever to get sight
of them and be able to say, all their lives long, that they had seen the
father of Joan of Arc and the brother of her mother. How easy it was for
her to do miracles like to this! She was like the sun; on whatsoever dim
and humble object her rays fell, that thing was straightway drowned in
glory.
All graciously the King said:
"Bring them to me."
And she brought them; she radiant with happiness and affection, they
trembling and scared, with their caps in their shaking hands; and there
before all the world the King gave them his hand to kiss, while the
people gazed in envy and admiration; and he said to old D'Arc:
"Give God thanks for that you are father to this child, this dispenser of
immortalities. You who bear a name that will still live in the mouths of
men when all the race of kings has been forgotten, it is not meet that
you bare your head before the fleeting fames and dignities of a
day--cover yourself!" And truly he looked right fine and princely when he
said that. Then he gave order that the Bailly of Rheims be brought; and
when he was come, and stood bent low and bare, the King said to him,
"These two are guests of France;" and bade him use them hospitably.
I may as well say now as later, that Papa D'Arc and Laxart were stopping
in that little Zebra inn, and that there they remained. Finer quarters
were offered them by the Bailly, also public distinctions and brave
entertainment; but they were frightened at these projects, they being
only humble and ignorant peasants; so they begged off, and had peace.
They could not have enjoyed such things. Poor souls, they did not even
know what to do with their hands, and it took all their attention to keep
from treading on them. The Bailly did the best he could in the
circumstances. He made the innkeeper place a whole floor at their
disposal, and told him to provide everything they might desire, and
charge all to the city. Also the Bailly gave them a horse apiece and
furnishings; which so overwhelmed them with pride and delight and
astonishment that they couldn't speak a word; for in their lives they had
never dreamed of wealth like this, and could not believe, at first, that
the horses were real and would not dissolve to a mist and blow away. They
could not unglue their minds from those grandeurs, and were always
wrenching the conversation out of its groove and dragging the matter of
animals into it, so that they could say "my horse" here, and "my horse"
there and yonder and all around, and taste the words and lick their chops
over them, and spread their legs and hitch their thumbs in their armpits,
and feel as the good God feels when He looks out on His fleets of
constellations plowing the awful deeps of space and reflects with
satisfaction that they are His--all His. Well, they were the happiest old
children one ever saw, and the simplest.
The city gave a grand banquet to the King and Joan in mid-afternoon, and
to the Court and the Grand Staff; and about the middle of it Pere D'Arc
and Laxart were sent for, but would not venture until it was promised
that they might sit in a gallery and be all by themselves and see all
that was to be seen and yet be unmolested. And so they sat there and
looked down upon the splendid spectacle, and were moved till the tears
ran down their cheeks to see the unbelievable honors that were paid to
their small darling, and how naively serene and unafraid she sat there
with those consuming glories beating upon her.
But at last her serenity was broken up. Yes, it stood the strain of the
King's gracious speech; and of D'Alencon's praiseful words, and the
Bastard's; and even La Hire's thunder-blast, which took the place by
storm; but at last, as I have said, they brought a force to bear which
was too strong for her. For at the close the King put up his hand to
command silence, and so waited, with his hand up, till every sound was
dead and it was as if one could almost the stillness, so profound it
was. Then out of some remote corner of that vast place there rose a
plaintive voice, and in tones most tender and sweet and rich came
floating through that enchanted hush our poor old simple song "L'Arbre
Fee Bourlemont!" and then Joan broke down and put her face in her hands
and cried. Yes, you see, all in a moment the pomps and grandeurs
dissolved away and she was a little child again herding her sheep with
the tranquil pastures stretched about her, and war and wounds and blood
and death and the mad frenzy and turmoil of battle a dream. Ah, that
shows you the power of music, that magician of magicians, who lifts his
wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the
phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh.
That was the King's invention, that sweet and dear surprise. Indeed, he
had fine things hidden away in his nature, though one seldom got a
glimpse of them, with that scheming Tremouille and those others always
standing in the light, and he so indolently content to save himself fuss
and argument and let them have their way.
At the fall of night we the Domremy contingent of the personal staff were
with the father and uncle at the inn, in their private parlor, brewing
generous drinks and breaking ground for a homely talk about Domremy and
the neighbors, when a large parcel arrived from Joan to be kept till she
came; and soon she came herself and sent her guard away, saying she would
take one of her father's rooms and sleep under his roof, and so be at
home again. We of the staff rose and stood, as was meet, until she made
us sit. Then she turned and saw that the two old men had gotten up too,
and were standing in an embarrassed and unmilitary way; which made her
want to laugh, but she kept it in, as not wishing to hurt them; and got
them to their seats and snuggled down between them, and took a hand of
each of them upon her knees and nestled her own hands in them, and said:
"Now we will nave no more ceremony, but be kin and playmates as in other
times; for I am done with the great wars now, and you two will take me
home with you, and I shall see--" She stopped, and for a moment her happy
face sobered, as if a doubt or a presentiment had flitted through her
mind; then it cleared again, and she said, with a passionate yearning,
"Oh, if the day were but come and we could start!"
The old father was surprised, and said:
"Why, child, are you in earnest? Would you leave doing these wonders that
make you to be praised by everybody while there is still so much glory to
be won; and would you go out from this grand comradeship with princes and
generals to be a drudging villager again and a nobody? It is not
rational."
"No," said the uncle, Laxart, "it is amazing to hear, and indeed not
understandable. It is a stranger thing to hear her say she will stop the
soldiering that it was to hear her say she would begin it; and I who
speak to you can say in all truth that that was the strangest word that
ever I had heard till this day and hour. I would it could be explained."
"It is not difficult," said Joan. "I was not ever fond of wounds and
suffering, nor fitted by my nature to inflict them; and quarrelings did
always distress me, and noise and tumult were against my liking, my
disposition being toward peace and quietness, and love for all things
that have life; and being made like this, how could I bear to think of
wars and blood, and the pain that goes with them, and the sorrow and
mourning that follow after? But by his angels God laid His great commands
upon me, and could I disobey? I did as I was bid. Did He command me to do
many things? No; only two: to raise the siege of Orleans, and crown the
King at Rheims. The task is finished, and I am free. Has ever a poor
soldier fallen in my sight, whether friend or foe, and I not felt the
pain in my own body, and the grief of his home-mates in my own heart? No,
not one; and, oh, it is such bliss to know that my release is won, and
that I shall not any more see these cruel things or suffer these tortures
of the mind again! Then why should I not go to my village and be as I was
before? It is heaven! and ye wonder that I desire it. Ah, ye are
men--just men! My mother would understand."
They didn't quite know what to say; so they sat still awhile, looking
pretty vacant. Then old D'Arc said:
"Yes, your mother--that is true. I never saw such a woman. She worries,
and worries, and worries; and wakes nights, and lies so, thinking--that
is, worrying; worrying about you. And when the night storms go raging
along, she moans and says, 'Ah, God pity her, she is out in this with her
poor wet soldiers.' And when the lightning glares and the thunder crashes
she wrings her hands and trembles, saying, 'It is like the awful cannon
and the flash, and yonder somewhere she is riding down upon the spouting
guns and I not there to protect her."
"Ah, poor mother, it is pity, it is pity!"
"Yes, a most strange woman, as I have noticed a many times. When there is
news of a victory and all the village goes mad with pride and joy, she
rushes here and there in a maniacal frenzy till she finds out the one
only thing she cares to know--that you are safe; then down she goes on
her knees in the dirt and praises God as long as there is any breath left
in her body; and all on your account, for she never mentions the battle
once. And always she says, 'Now it is over--now France is saved--now she
will come home'--and always is disappointed and goes about mourning."
"Don't, father! it breaks my heart. I will be so good to her when I get
home. I will do her work for her, and be her comfort, and she shall not
suffer any more through me."
There was some more talk of this sort, then Uncle Laxart said:
"You have done the will of God, dear, and are quits; it is true, and none
may deny it; but what of the King? You are his best soldier; what if he
command you to stay?"
That was a crusher--and sudden! It took Joan a moment or two to recover
from the shock of it; then she said, quite simply and resignedly:
"The King is my Lord; I am his servant." She was silent and thoughtful a
little while, then she brightened up and said, cheerily, "But let us
drive such thoughts away--this is no time for them. Tell me about home."
So the two old gossips talked and talked; talked about everything and
everybody in the village; and it was good to hear. Joan out of her
kindness tried to get us into the conversation, but that failed, of
course. She was the Commander-in-Chief, we were nobodies; her name was
the mightiest in France, we were invisible atoms; she was the comrade of
princes and heroes, we of the humble and obscure; she held rank above all
Personages and all Puissances whatsoever in the whole earth, by right of
baring her commission direct from God. To put it in one word, she was
JOAN OF ARC--and when that is said, all is said. To us she was divine.
Between her and us lay the bridgeless abyss which that word implies. We
could not be familiar with her. No, you can see yourselves that that
would have been impossible.
And yet she was so human, too, and so good and kind and dear and loving
and cheery and charming and unspoiled and unaffected! Those are all the
words I think of now, but they are not enough; no, they are too few and
colorless and meager to tell it all, or tell the half. Those simple old
men didn't realize her; they couldn't; they had never known any people
but human beings, and so they had no other standard to measure her by. To
them, after their first little shyness had worn off, she was just a
girl--that was all. It was amazing. It made one shiver, sometimes, to see
how calm and easy and comfortable they were in her presence, and hear
them talk to her exactly as they would have talked to any other girl in
France.
Why, that simple old Laxart sat up there and droned out the most tedious
and empty tale one ever heard, and neither he nor Papa D'Arc ever gave a
thought to the badness of the etiquette of it, or ever suspected that
that foolish tale was anything but dignified and valuable history. There
was not an atom of value in it; and whilst they thought it distressing
and pathetic, it was in fact not pathetic at all, but actually
ridiculous. At least it seemed so to me, and it seems so yet. Indeed, I
know it was, because it made Joan laugh; and the more sorrowful it got
the more it made her laugh; and the Paladin said that he could have
laughed himself if she had not been there, and Noel Rainguesson said the
same. It was about old Laxart going to a funeral there at Domremy two or
three weeks back. He had spots all over his face and hands, and he got
Joan to rub some healing ointment on them, and while she was doing it,
and comforting him, and trying to say pitying things to him, he told her
how it happened. And first he asked her if she remembered that black bull
calf that she left behind when she came away, and she said indeed she
did, and he was a dear, and she loved him so, and was he well?--and just
drowned him in questions about that creature. And he said it was a young
bull now, and very frisky; and he was to bear a principal hand at a
funeral; and she said, "The bull?" and he said, "No, myself"; but said
the bull did take a hand, but not because of his being invited, for he
wasn't; but anyway he was away over beyond the Fairy Tree, and fell
asleep on the grass with his Sunday funeral clothes on, and a long black
rag on his hat and hanging down his back; and when he woke he saw by the
sun how late it was, and not a moment to lose; and jumped up terribly
worried, and saw the young bull grazing there, and thought maybe he could
ride part way on him and gain time; so he tied a rope around the bull's
body to hold on by, and put a halter on him to steer with, and jumped on
and started; but it was all new to the bull, and he was discontented with
it, and scurried around and bellowed and reared and pranced, and Uncle
Laxart was satisfied, and wanted to get off and go by the next bull or
some other way that was quieter, but he didn't dare try; and it was
getting very warm for him, too, and disturbing and wearisome, and not
proper for Sunday; but by and by the bull lost all his temper, and went
tearing down the slope with his tail in the air and blowing in the most
awful way; and just in the edge of the village he knocked down some
beehives, and the bees turned out and joined the excursion, and soared
along in a black cloud that nearly hid those other two from sight, and
prodded them both, and jabbed them and speared them and spiked them, and
made them bellow and shriek, and shriek and bellow; and here they came
roaring through the village like a hurricane, and took the funeral
procession right in the center, and sent that section of it sprawling,
and galloped over it, and the rest scattered apart and fled screeching in
every direction, every person with a layer of bees on him, and not a rag
of that funeral left but the corpse; and finally the bull broke for the
river and jumped in, and when they fished Uncle Laxart out he was nearly
drowned, and his face looked like a pudding with raisins in it. And then
he turned around, this old simpleton, and looked a long time in a dazed
way at Joan where she had her face in a cushion, dying, apparently, and
says:
"What do you reckon she is laughing at?"
And old D'Arc stood looking at her the same way, sort of absently
scratching his head; but had to give it up, and said he didn't
know--"must have been something that happened when we weren't noticing."
Yes, both of those old people thought that that tale was pathetic;
whereas to my mind it was purely ridiculous, and not in any way valuable
to any one. It seemed so to me then, and it seems so to me yet. And as
for history, it does not resemble history; for the office of history is
to furnish serious and important facts that teach; whereas this strange
and useless event teaches nothing; nothing that I can see, except not to
ride a bull to a funeral; and surely no reflecting person needs to be
taught that.
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