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Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
Chapter 5
I GIVE you my honor now that I am not going to distort or discolor the
facts of this miserable trial. No, I will give them to you honestly,
detail by detail, just as Manchon and I set them down daily in the
official record of the court, and just as one may read them in the
printed histories.
There will be only this difference: that in talking familiarly with you
shall use my right to comment upon the proceedings and explain them as I
go along, so that you can understand them better; also, I shall throw in
trifles which came under our eyes and have a certain interest for you and
me, but were not important enough to go into the official record. 1
To take up my story now where I left off. We heard the clanking of Joan's
chains down the corridors; she was approaching.
Presently she appeared; a thrill swept the house, and one heard deep
breaths drawn. Two guardsmen followed her at a short distance to the
rear. Her head was bowed a little, and she moved slowly, she being weak
and her irons heavy. She had on men's attire--all black; a soft woolen
stuff, intensely black, funereally black, not a speck of relieving color
in it from her throat to the floor. A wide collar of this same black
stuff lay in radiating folds upon her shoulders and breast; the sleeves
of her doublet were full, down to the elbows, and tight thence to her
manacled wrists; below the doublet, tight black hose down to the chains
on her ankles.
Half-way to her bench she stopped, just where a wide shaft of light fell
slanting from a window, and slowly lifted her face. Another thrill!--it
was totally colorless, white as snow; a face of gleaming snow set in
vivid contrast upon that slender statue of somber unmitigated black. It
was smooth and pure and girlish, beautiful beyond belief, infinitely sad
and sweet. But, dear, dear! when the challenge of those untamed eyes fell
upon that judge, and the droop vanished from her form and it straightened
up soldierly and noble, my heart leaped for joy; and I said, all is well,
all is well--they have not broken her, they have not conquered her, she
is Joan of Arc still! Yes, it was plain to me now that there was one
spirit there which this dreaded judge could not quell nor make afraid.
She moved to her place and mounted the dais and seated herself upon her
bench, gathering her chains into her lap and nestling her little white
hands there. Then she waited in tranquil dignity, the only person there
who seemed unmoved and unexcited. A bronzed and brawny English soldier,
standing at martial ease in the front rank of the citizen spectators, did
now most gallantly and respectfully put up his great hand and give her
the military salute; and she, smiling friendly, put up hers and returned
it; whereat there was a sympathetic little break of applause, which the
judge sternly silence.
Now the memorable inquisition called in history the Great Trial began.
Fifty experts against a novice, and no one to help the novice!
The judge summarized the circumstances of the case and the public reports
and suspicions upon which it was based; then he required Joan to kneel
and make oath that she would answer with exact truthfulness to all
questions asked her.
Joan's mind was not asleep. It suspected that dangerous possibilities
might lie hidden under this apparently fair and reasonable demand. She
answered with the simplicity which so often spoiled the enemy's best-laid
plans in the trial at Poitiers, and said:
"No; for I do not know what you are going to ask me; you might ask of me
things which I would not tell you."
This incensed the Court, and brought out a brisk flurry of angry
exclamations. Joan was not disturbed. Cauchon raised his voice and began
to speak in the midst of this noise, but he was so angry that he could
hardly get his words out. He said:
"With the divine assistance of our Lord we require you to expedite these
proceedings for the welfare of your conscience. Swear, with your hands
upon the Gospels, that you will answer true to the questions which shall
be asked you!" and he brought down his fat hand with a crash upon his
official table.
Joan said, with composure:
"As concerning my father and mother, and the faith, and what things I
have done since my coming into France, I will gladly answer; but as
regards the revelations which I have received from God, my Voices have
forbidden me to confide them to any save my King--"
Here there was another angry outburst of threats and expletives, and much
movement and confusion; so she had to stop, and wait for the noise to
subside; then her waxen face flushed a little and she straightened up and
fixed her eye on the judge, and finished her sentence in a voice that had
the old ring to it:
--"and I will never reveal these things though you cut my head off!"
Well, maybe you know what a deliberative body of Frenchmen is like. The
judge and half the court were on their feet in a moment, and all shaking
their fists at the prisoner, and all storming and vituperating at once,
so that you could hardly hear yourself think. They kept this up several
minutes; and because Joan sat untroubled and indifferent they grew madder
and noisier all the time. Once she said, with a fleeting trace of the
old-time mischief in her eye and manner:
"Prithee, speak one at a time, fair lords, then I will answer all of
you."
At the end of three whole hours of furious debating over the oath, the
situation had not changed a jot. The Bishop was still requiring an
unmodified oath, Joan was refusing for the twentieth time to take any
except the one which she had herself proposed. There was a physical
change apparent, but it was confined to the court and judge; they were
hoarse, droopy, exhausted by their long frenzy, and had a sort of haggard
look in their faces, poor men, whereas Joan was still placid and
reposeful and did not seem noticeably tired.
The noise quieted down; there was a waiting pause of some moments'
duration. Then the judge surrendered to the prisoner, and with bitterness
in his voice told her to take the oath after her own fashion. Joan sunk
at once to her knees; and as she laid her hands upon the Gospels, that
big English soldier set free his mind:
"By God, if she were but English, she were not in this place another half
a second!"
It was the soldier in him responding to the soldier in her. But what a
stinging rebuke it was, what an arraignment of French character and
French royalty! Would that he could have uttered just that one phrase in
the hearing of Orleans! I know that that grateful city, that adoring
city, would have risen to the last man and the last woman, and marched
upon Rouen. Some speeches--speeches that shame a man and humble him--burn
themselves into the memory and remain there. That one is burned into
mine.
After Joan had made oath, Cauchon asked her her name, and where she was
born, and some questions about her family; also what her age was. She
answered these. Then he asked her how much education she had.
"I have learned from my mother the Pater Noster, the Ave Maria, and the
Belief. All that I know was taught me by my mother."
Questions of this unessential sort dribbled on for a considerable time.
Everybody was tired out by now, except Joan. The tribunal prepared to
rise. At this point Cauchon forbade Joan to try to escape from prison,
upon pain of being held guilty of the crime of heresy--singular logic!
She answered simply:
"I am not bound by this proposition. If I could escape I would not
reproach myself, for I have given no promise, and I shall not."
Then she complained of the burden of her chains, and asked that they
might be removed, for she was strongly guarded in that dungeon and there
was no need of them. But the Bishop refused, and reminded her that she
had broken out of prison twice before. Joan of Arc was too proud to
insist. She only said, as she rose to go with the guard:
"It is true, I have wanted to escape, and I do want to escape." Then she
added, in a way that would touch the pity of anybody, I think, "It is the
right of every prisoner."
And so she went from the place in the midst of an impressive stillness,
which made the sharper and more distressful to me the clank of those
pathetic chains.
What presence of mind she had! One could never surprise her out of it.
She saw Noel and me there when she first took her seat on the bench, and
we flushed to the forehead with excitement and emotion, but her face
showed nothing, betrayed nothing. Her eyes sought us fifty times that
day, but they passed on and there was never any ray of recognition in
them. Another would have started upon seeing us, and then--why, then
there could have been trouble for us, of course.
We walked slowly home together, each busy with his own grief and saying
not a word.
1. He kept his word. His account of the Great Trial will be found to be
in strict and detailed accordance with the sworn facts of history.
--TRANSLATOR.
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