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Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
Chapter 3
IT WAS necessary for me to have some way to gain bread for Noel and
myself; and when the Pierrons found that I knew how to write, the applied
to their confessor in my behalf, and he got a place for me with a good
priest named Manchon, who was to be the chief recorder in the Great Trial
of Joan of Arc now approaching. It was a strange position for me--clerk
to the recorder--and dangerous if my sympathies and the late employment
should be found out. But there was not much danger. Manchon was at bottom
friendly to Joan and would not betray me; and my name would not, for I
had discarded my surname and retained only my given one, like a person of
low degree.
I attended Manchon constantly straight along, out of January and into
February, and was often in the citadel with him--in the very fortress
where Joan was imprisoned, though not in the dungeon where she was
confined, and so did not see her, of course.
Manchon told me everything that had been happening before my coming. Ever
since the purchase of Joan, Cauchon had been busy packing his jury for
the destruction of the Maid--weeks and weeks he had spent in this bad
industry. The University of Paris had sent him a number of learned and
able and trusty ecclesiastics of the stripe he wanted; and he had scraped
together a clergyman of like stripe and great fame here and there and
yonder, until he was able to construct a formidable court numbering half
a hundred distinguished names. French names they were, but their
interests and sympathies were English.
A great officer of the Inquisition was also sent from Paris for the
accused must be tried by the forms of the Inquisition; but this was a
brave and righteous man, and he said squarely that this court had no
power to try the case, wherefore he refused to act; and the same honest
talk was uttered by two or three others.
The Inquisitor was right. The case as here resurrected against Joan had
already been tried long ago at Poitiers, and decided in her favor. Yes,
and by a higher tribunal than this one, for at the head of it was an
Archbishop--he of Rheims--Cauchon's own metropolitan. So here, you see, a
lower court was impudently preparing to try and redecide a cause which
had already been decided by its superior, a court of higher authority.
Imagine it! No, the case could not properly be tried again. Cauchon could
not properly preside in this new court, for more than one reason:
Rouen was not in his diocese; Joan had not been arrested in her domicile,
which was still Domremy; and finally this proposed judge was the
prisoner's outspoken enemy, and therefore he was incompetent to try her.
Yet all these large difficulties were gotten rid of. The territorial
Chapter of Rouen finally granted territorial letters to Cauchon--though
only after a struggle and under compulsion. Force was also applied to the
Inquisitor, and he was obliged to submit.
So then, the little English King, by his representative, formally
delivered Joan into the hands of the court, but with this reservation: if
the court failed to condemn her, he was to have her back again! Ah,
dear, what chance was there for that forsaken and friendless child?
Friendless, indeed--it is the right word. For she was in a black dungeon,
with half a dozen brutal common soldiers keeping guard night and day in
the room where her cage was--for she was in a cage; an iron cage, and
chained to her bed by neck and hands and feet. Never a person near her
whom she had ever seen before; never a woman at all. Yes, this was,
indeed, friendlessness.
Now it was a vassal of Jean de Luxembourg who captured Joan and
Compiegne, and it was Jean who sold her to the Duke of Burgundy. Yet this
very De Luxembourg was shameless enough to go and show his face to Joan
in her cage. He came with two English earls, Warwick and Stafford. He was
a poor reptile. He told her he would get her set free if she would
promise not to fight the English any more. She had been in that cage a
long time now, but not long enough to break her spirit. She retorted
scornfully:
"Name of God, you but mock me. I know that you have neither the power nor
the will to do it."
He insisted. Then the pride and dignity of the soldier rose in Joan, and
she lifted her chained hands and let them fall with a clash, saying:
"See these! They know more than you, an can prophesy better. I know that
the English are going to kill me, for they think that when I am dead they
can get the Kingdom of France. It is not so.
"Though there were a hundred thousand of them they would never get it."
This defiance infuriated Stafford, and he--now think of it--he a free,
strong man, she a chained and helpless girl--he drew his dagger and flung
himself at her to stab her. But Warwick seized him and held him back.
Warwick was wise. Take her life in that way? Send her to Heaven stainless
and undisgraced? It would make her the idol of France, and the whole
nation would rise and march to victory and emancipation under the
inspiration of her spirit. No, she must be saved for another fate than
that.
Well, the time was approaching for the Great Trial. For more than two
months Cauchon had been raking and scraping everywhere for any odds and
ends of evidence or suspicion or conjecture that might be usable against
Joan, and carefully suppressing all evidence that came to hand in her
favor. He had limitless ways and means and powers at his disposal for
preparing and strengthening the case for the prosecution, and he used
them all.
But Joan had no one to prepare her case for her, and she was shut up in
those stone walls and had no friend to appeal to for help. And as for
witnesses, she could not call a single one in her defense; they were all
far away, under the French flag, and this was an English court; they
would have been seized and hanged if they had shown their faces at the
gates of Rouen. No, the prisoner must be the sole witness--witness for
the prosecution, witness for the defense; and with a verdict of death
resolved upon before the doors were opened for the court's first sitting.
When she learned that the court was made up of ecclesiastics in the
interest of the English, she begged that in fairness an equal number of
priests of the French party should be added to these.
Cauchon scoffed at her message, and would not even deign to answer it.
By the law of the Church--she being a minor under twenty-one--it was her
right to have counsel to conduct her case, advise her how to answer when
questioned, and protect her from falling into traps set by cunning
devices of the prosecution. She probably did not know that this was her
right, and that she could demand it and require it, for there was none to
tell her that; but she begged for this help, at any rate. Cauchon refused
it. She urged and implored, pleading her youth and her ignorance of the
complexities and intricacies of the law and of legal procedure. Cauchon
refused again, and said she must get along with her case as best she
might by herself. Ah, his heart was a stone.
Cauchon prepared the proces verbal. I will simplify that by calling it
the Bill of Particulars. It was a detailed list of the charges against
her, and formed the basis of the trial. Charges? It was a list of
suspicions and public rumors--those were the words used. It was merely
charged that she was suspected of having been guilty of heresies,
witchcraft, and other such offenses against religion.
Now by the law of the Church, a trial of that sort could not be begun
until a searching inquiry had been made into the history and character of
the accused, and it was essential that the result of this inquiry be
added to the proces verbal and form a part of it. You remember that that
was the first thing they did before the trial at Poitiers. They did it
again now. An ecclesiastic was sent to Domremy. There and all about the
neighborhood he made an exhaustive search into Joan's history and
character, and came back with his verdict. It was very clear. The
searcher reported that he found Joan's character to be in every way what
he "would like his own sister's character to be." Just about the same
report that was brought back to Poitiers, you see. Joan's was a character
which could endure the minutest examination.
This verdict was a strong point for Joan, you will say. Yes, it would
have been if it could have seen the light; but Cauchon was awake, and it
disappeared from the proces verbal before the trial. People were prudent
enough not to inquire what became of it.
One would imagine that Cauchon was ready to begin the trial by this time.
But no, he devised one more scheme for poor Joan's destruction, and it
promised to be a deadly one.
One of the great personages picked out and sent down by the University of
Paris was an ecclesiastic named Nicolas Loyseleur. He was tall, handsome,
grave, of smooth, soft speech and courteous and winning manners. There
was no seeming of treachery or hypocrisy about him, yet he was full of
both. He was admitted to Joan's prison by night, disguised as a cobbler;
he pretended to be from her own country; he professed to be secretly a
patriot; he revealed the fact that he was a priest. She was filled with
gladness to see one from the hills and plains that were so dear to her;
happier still to look upon a priest and disburden her heart in
confession, for the offices of the Church were the bread of life, the
breath of her nostrils to her, and she had been long forced to pine for
them in vain. She opened her whole innocent heart to this creature, and
in return he gave her advice concerning her trial which could have
destroyed her if her deep native wisdom had not protected her against
following it.
You will ask, what value could this scheme have, since the secrets of the
confessional are sacred and cannot be revealed? True--but suppose another
person should overhear them? That person is not bound to keep the secret.
Well, that is what happened. Cauchon had previously caused a hole to be
bored through the wall; and he stood with his ear to that hole and heard
all. It is pitiful to think of these things. One wonders how they could
treat that poor child so. She had not done them any harm.
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