Part 16 (1/2)
Durand de Maillane, _Dictionnaire de droit canonique_, 1770, vol. i, pp. 567 _et seq._]
[Footnote 338: See _ante_, p. 59, _post_, pp. 177, 178.]
Touching things spiritual Jeanne held converse with several priests; among others with Messire Arnolin, of Gondrecourt-le-Chateau, and Messire Dominique Jacob, priest of Moutier-sur-Saulx, who was her confessor.[339] It is a pity we do not know what these ecclesiastics thought of the insatiable cruelty of the English, of the pride of my Lord Duke of Burgundy, of the misfortunes of the Dauphin, and whether they did not hope that one day Our Lord Jesus Christ at the prayer of the common folk would condescend to grant the kingdom _en commande_ to Charles, son of Charles. It was possibly from one of these that Jeanne derived her theocratic ideas.[340]
[Footnote 339: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 392, 393, 458, 459.]
[Footnote 340: As for Nicolas de Vouthon, priest of the Abbey of Cheminon, what is stated concerning him in the evidence of the 2nd and 3rd November, 1476, seems improbable. _Trial_, vol. v, p. 252. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, _Nouvelles recherches sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc_, pp. xviii _et seq._, 9.]
While she was speaking to Sire Robert there was present, and not by chance merely, a certain knight of Lorraine, Bertrand de Poulengy, who possessed lands near Gondrecourt and held an office in the provosts.h.i.+p of Vaucouleurs.[341] He was then about thirty-six years of age. He was a man who a.s.sociated with churchmen; at least he was familiar with the manner of speech of devout persons.[342] Perhaps he now saw Jeanne for the first time; but he must certainly have heard of her; and he knew her to be good and pious. Twelve years before he had frequently visited Domremy; he knew the country well; he had sat beneath _l'Arbre des Dames_, and had been several times to the house of Jacques d'Arc and Romee, whom he held to be good honest farmer folk.[343]
[Footnote 341: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 475. Servais, in _Memoires de la Societe des Lettres, Sciences et Arts de Bar-le-Duc_, vol. vi, p. 139.
E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, _Nouvelles recherches_, p. xxviii.
S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, proofs and ill.u.s.trations xcv, p.
143 and note 3. De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, p.
204.]
[Footnote 342: This appears from the manner in which he reports Jeanne's words.]
[Footnote 343: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 451, 458.]
It may be that Bertrand de Poulengy was struck by the damsel's speech and bearing; it is more likely that the knight was in touch with certain ecclesiastics unknown to us, who were instructing the peasant seeress with an eye to rendering her better able to serve the realm of France and the Church. However that may be, in Bertrand she had a friend who was to be her strong support in the future.
For the nonce, however, if our information be correct, he did nothing and spoke not a word. Perhaps he judged it best to wait until the commander of the town should be ready to grant a more favourable hearing to the saint's request. Sire Robert understood nothing of all this; one point only appeared plain to him, that Jeanne would make a fine camp-follower and that she would be a great favourite with the men-at-arms.[344]
[Footnote 344: _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 72. _Journal du siege_, p. 35.]
In dismissing the villein who had brought her, he gave him a piece of advice quite in keeping with the wisdom of the time concerning the chastising of daughters: ”Take her back to her father and box her ears well.”
Sire Robert held such discipline to be excellent, for more than once he urged Uncle La.s.sois to take Jeanne home well whipped.[345]
[Footnote 345: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 444. L. Mougenot, _Jeanne d'Arc, le Duc de Lorraine et le Sire de Baudricourt_, Nancy, 1895, in 8vo.]
After a week's absence she returned to the village. Neither the Captain's contumely nor the garrison's insults had humiliated or discouraged her. Imagining that her Voices had foretold them,[346] she held them to be proofs of the truth of her mission. Like those who walk in their sleep she was calm in the face of obstacles and yet quietly persistent. In the house, in the garden, in the meadow, she continued to sleep that marvellous slumber, in which she dreamed of the Dauphin, of his knights, and of battles with angels hovering above.
[Footnote 346: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 53.]
She found it impossible to be silent; on all occasions her secret escaped from her. She was always prophesying, but she was never believed. On St. John the Baptist's Eve, about a month after her return, she said sententiously to Michel Lebuin, a husbandman of Burey, who was quite a boy: ”Between Coussey and Vaucouleurs is a girl who in less than a year from now will cause the Dauphin to be anointed King of France.”[347]
[Footnote 347: _Ibid._, p. 440.]
One day meeting Gerardin d'Epinal, the only man at Domremy not of the Dauphin's party, whose head according to her own confession she would willingly have cut off, although she was G.o.dmother to his son, she could not refrain from announcing even to him in veiled words her mystic dealing with G.o.d: ”Gossip, if you were not a Burgundian there is something I would tell you.”[348]
[Footnote 348: _Ibid._, p. 423.]
The good man thought it must be a question of an approaching betrothal and that Jacques d'Arc's daughter was about to marry one of the lads with whom she had broken bread under _l'Arbre des Fees_ and drunk water from the Gooseberry Spring.
Alas! how greatly would Jacques d'Arc have desired the secret to be of that nature. This upright man was very strict; he was careful concerning his children's conduct; and Jeanne's behaviour caused him anxiety. He knew not that she heard Voices. He had no idea that all day Paradise came down into his garden, that from Heaven to his house a ladder was let down, on which there came and went without ceasing more angels than had ever trodden the ladder of the Patriarch Jacob; neither did he imagine that for Jeannette alone, without any one else perceiving it, a mystery was being played, a thousand times richer and finer than those which on feast days were acted on platforms, in towns like Toul and Nancy. He was miles away from suspecting such incredible marvels. But what he did see was that his daughter was losing her senses, that her mind was wandering, and that she was giving utterance to wild words. He perceived that she could think of nothing but cavalcades and battles. He must have known something of the escapade at Vaucouleurs. He was terribly afraid that one day the unhappy child would go off for good on her wanderings. This agonising anxiety haunted him even in his sleep. One night he dreamed that he saw her fleeing with men-at-arms; and this dream was so vivid that he remembered it when he awoke. For several days he said over and over again to his sons, Jean and Pierre: ”If I really believed that what I dreamed of my daughter would ever come true, I would rather see her drowned by you; and if you would not do it I would drown her myself.”[349]
[Footnote 349: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 131, 132, 219.]