Part 32 (2/2)
She answered: ”I will not call him King until he shall have been anointed and crowned at Reims. To that city I intend to take him.”[761]
[Footnote 761: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 20.]
Without this anointing there was no king of France for her. Of the miracles which had followed that anointing she had heard every year from the mouth of her priest as he recited the glorious deeds of the Blessed Saint Remi, the patron saint of her parish. This reply was such as to satisfy the interrogators because, both for things spiritual and temporal, it was important that the King should be anointed at Reims.[762] And Messire Regnault de Chartres must have ardently desired it.
[Footnote 762: It may be noticed that during the consultation of the doctors, according to the report of it given by Thoma.s.sin in _Le registre Delphinal_, Charles of Valois is designated alike by the t.i.tle of King and by that of Dauphin (_Trial_, vol. iv, p. 303).]
Contradicted by the clerks, she opposed the Church's doctrine by the inspiration of her own heart, and said to them: ”There is more in the Book of Our Lord than in all yours.”[763]
[Footnote 763: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 86.]
This was a bold and biting reply, which would have been dangerous had the theologians been less favourably inclined to her. Otherwise they might have held it to be trespa.s.sing on the rights of the Church, who, as the guardian of the Holy Books, is their jealous interpreter, and does not suffer the authority of Scripture to be set up against the decisions of Councils.[764] What were those books, which without having read she judged to be contrary to those of Our Lord, wherein with mind and spirit she seemed to read plainly? They would seem to be the Sacred Canons and the Sacred Decretals. This child's utterance sapped the very foundations of the Church. Had the doctors of Poitiers been less zealously Armagnac they would henceforth have mistrusted Jeanne and suspected her of heresy. But they were loyal servants of the houses of Orleans and of France. Their ca.s.socks were ragged and their larders empty;[765] their only hope was in G.o.d, and they feared lest in rejecting this damsel they might be denying the Holy Ghost.
Besides, everything went to prove that these words of Jeanne were uttered without guile and in all ignorance and simplicity. No doubt that is why the doctors were not shocked by them.
[Footnote 764: Le Pere Didon, _Vie de Jesus_, vol. i, Preface.]
[Footnote 765: Juvenal des Ursins, _Histoire de Charles VI_, p. 359.]
Brother Seguin of Seguin in his turn questioned the damsel. He was from Limousin, and his speech betrayed his origin. He spoke with a drawl and used expressions unknown in Lorraine and Champagne. Perhaps he had that dull, heavy air, which rendered the folk of his province somewhat ridiculous in the eyes of dwellers on the Loire, the Seine, and the Meuse. To the question: ”What language do your Voices speak?”
Jeanne replied: ”A better one than yours.”[766]
[Footnote 766: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 204.]
Even saints may lose patience. If Brother Seguin did not know it before, he learnt it that day. And what business had he to doubt that Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, who were on the side of the French, spoke French? Such a doubt Jeanne could not bear, and she gave her questioner to understand that when one comes from Limousin one does not inquire concerning the speech of heavenly ladies.
Notwithstanding he pursued his interrogation: ”Do you believe in G.o.d?”
”Yes, more than you do,” said the Maid, who, knowing nothing of the good Brother, was somewhat hasty in esteeming herself better grounded in the faith than he.
But she was vexed that there should be any question of her belief in G.o.d, who had sent her. Her reply, if favourably interpreted, would testify to the ardour of her faith. Did Brother Seguin so understand it? His contemporaries represented him as being of a somewhat bitter disposition. On the contrary, there is reason to believe that he was good-natured.[767]
[Footnote 767: It seems to have been the fate of the inhabitants of Limousin to be jeered at by the French of Champagne and of l'ile de France. After Brother Seguin we have the student from Limousin to whom Pantagruel says: ”Thou art Limousin to the bone and yet here thou wilt pa.s.s thyself off as a Parisian.” It is the lot of M. de Pourceaugnac.
La Fontaine, in 1663, writes from Limoges to his wife that the people of Limousin are by no means afflicted; neither do they labour under Heaven's displeasure ”as the folk of our provinces imagine.” But he adds that he does not like their habits. It would seem that at first Brother Seguin was annoyed by Jeanne's mocking vivacious repartees.
But he cherished no ill-will against her. ”The Limousin's good nature does not permit the endurance of any unfriendly feeling,” says Abel Hugo in _La France pittoresque: Haute-Vienne_. Cf. A. Precicou, _Rabelais et les Limousins_, Limoges, 1906, in 8vo.]
”But after all,” he said, ”it cannot be G.o.d's will that you should be believed unless some sign appear to make us believe in you. On your word alone we cannot counsel the King to run the risk of granting you men-at-arms.”
”In G.o.d's name,” she answered, ”it was not to give a sign that I came to Poitiers. But take me to Orleans and I will show you the signs wherefore I am sent. Let me be given men, it matters not how many, and I will go to Orleans.”
And she repeated what she was continually saying: ”The English shall all be driven out and destroyed. The siege of Orleans shall be raised and the city delivered from its enemies, after I shall have summoned it to surrender in the name of the King of Heaven. The Dauphin shall be anointed at Reims, the town of Paris shall return to its allegiance to the King, and the Duke of Orleans shall come back from England.”[768]
[Footnote 768: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 205.]
Long did the doctors and masters, following the example of Brother Seguin of Seguin, urge her to show a sign of her mission. They thought that if G.o.d had chosen her to deliver the French nation he would not fail to make his choice manifest by a sign, as he had done for Gideon, the son of Joash. When Israel was sore pressed by the Midianites, and when G.o.d's chosen people hid from their enemies in the caves of the mountains, the Angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon under an oak, and said unto him: ”Surely I will be with thee and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man.” To which Gideon made answer: ”If now I have found grace in thy sight, then shew me a sign that thou talkest with me.” And Gideon made ready a kid and kneaded unleavened cakes; the flesh he put in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot and brought the pot and the basket beneath the oak. Then the Angel of G.o.d said unto him: ”Take the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and lay them upon this rock, and pour out the broth.” And he did so. Then the angel of the Lord put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the flesh and the unleavened cakes; and there rose up fire out of the rock, and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes. When Gideon perceived that he had seen an angel of the Lord, he cried out: ”Alas, O Lord G.o.d! for because I have seen an angel of the Lord face to face.”[769] With three hundred men Gideon subdued the Midianites.
This example the doctors had before their minds.[770]
[Footnote 769: Judges, ch. vi. (W.S.).]
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