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Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
Chapter 4
ON TUESDAY, the 20th of February, while I sat at my master's work in the
evening, he came in, looking sad, and said it had been decided to begin
the trial at eight o'clock the next morning, and I must get ready to
assist him.
Of course I had been expecting such news every day for many days; but no
matter, the shock of it almost took my breath away and set me trembling
like a leaf. I suppose that without knowing it I had been half imagining
that at the last moment something would happen, something that would stop
this fatal trial; maybe that La Hire would burst in at the gates with his
hellions at his back; maybe that God would have pity and stretch forth
His mighty hand. But now--now there was no hope.
The trial was to begin in the chapel of the fortress and would be public.
So I went sorrowing away and told Noel, so that he might be there early
and secure a place. It would give him a chance to look again upon the
face which we so revered and which was so precious to us. All the way,
both going and coming, I plowed through chattering and rejoicing
multitudes of English soldiery and English-hearted French citizens. There
was no talk but of the coming event. Many times I heard the remark,
accompanied by a pitiless laugh:
"The fat Bishop has got things as he wants them at last, and says he will
lead the vile witch a merry dance and a short one."
But here and there I glimpsed compassion and distress in a face, and it
was not always a French one. English soldiers feared Joan, but they
admired her for her great deeds and her unconquerable spirit.
In the morning Manchon and I went early, yet as we approached the vast
fortress we found crowds of men already there and still others gathering.
The chapel was already full and the way barred against further admissions
of unofficial persons. We took our appointed places. Throned on high sat
the president, Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, in his grand robes, and
before him in rows sat his robed court--fifty distinguished
ecclesiastics, men of high degree in the Church, of clear-cut
intellectual faces, men of deep learning, veteran adepts in strategy and
casuistry, practised setters of traps for ignorant minds and unwary feet.
When I looked around upon this army of masters of legal fence, gathered
here to find just one verdict and no other, and remembered that Joan must
fight for her good name and her life single-handed against them, I asked
myself what chance an ignorant poor country-girl of nineteen could have
in such an unequal conflict; and my heart sank down low, very low. When I
looked again at that obese president, puffing and wheezing there, his
great belly distending and receding with each breath, and noted his three
chins, fold above fold, and his knobby and knotty face, and his purple
and splotchy complexion, and his repulsive cauliflower nose, and his cold
and malignant eyes--a brute, every detail of him--my heart sank lower
still. And when I noted that all were afraid of this man, and shrank and
fidgeted in their seats when his eye smote theirs, my last poor ray of
hope dissolved away and wholly disappeared.
There was one unoccupied seat in this place, and only one. It was over
against the wall, in view of every one. It was a little wooden bench
without a back, and it stood apart and solitary on a sort of dais. Tall
men-at-arms in morion, breastplate, and steel gauntlets stood as stiff as
their own halberds on each side of this dais, but no other creature was
near by it. A pathetic little bench to me it was, for I knew whom it was
for; and the sight of it carried my mind back to the great court at
Poitiers, where Joan sat upon one like it and calmly fought her cunning
fight with the astonished doctors of the Church and Parliament, and rose
from it victorious and applauded by all, and went forth to fill the world
with the glory of her name.
What a dainty little figure she was, and how gentle and innocent, how
winning and beautiful in the fresh bloom of her seventeen years! Those
were grand days. And so recent--for she was just nineteen now--and how
much she had seen since, and what wonders she had accomplished!
But now--oh, all was changed now. She had been languishing in dungeons,
away from light and air and the cheer of friendly faces, for nearly
three-quarters of a year--she, born child of the sun, natural comrade of
the birds and of all happy free creatures. She would be weary now, and
worn with this long captivity, her forces impaired; despondent, perhaps,
as knowing there was no hope. Yes, all was changed.
All this time there had been a muffled hum of conversation, and rustling
of robes and scraping of feet on the floor, a combination of dull noises
which filled all the place. Suddenly:
"Produce the accused!"
It made me catch my breath. My heart began to thump like a hammer. But
there was silence now--silence absolute. All those noises ceased, and it
was as if they had never been. Not a sound; the stillness grew
oppressive; it was like a weight upon one. All faces were turned toward
the door; and one could properly expect that, for most of the people
there suddenly realized, no doubt, that they were about to see, in actual
flesh and blood, what had been to them before only an embodied prodigy, a
word, a phrase, a world-girdling Name.
The stillness continued. Then, far down the stone-paved corridors, one
heard a vague slow sound approaching: clank . . . clink . . . clank--Joan
of Arc, Deliverer of France, in chains!
My head swam; all things whirled and spun about me. Ah, I was realizing,
too.
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