Part 99 (2/2)

”Drink no wine from now till Easter!” Did she thus casually use an expression common in that land of the rose-tinted wine (_vin gris_), a drop or two of which with a slice of bread sufficed the Domremy women for a meal?[2261] Or had she caught this manner of speech with the habit of dealing hard clouts and good blows from the men-at-arms of her company? Alas! what hypocras was she to drink during the five weeks before Easter! She was merely making use of a current phrase, as was frequently her custom, and attributing no precise meaning to it, unless it were that wine vaguely suggested to her mind the idea of cordiality and the hope that after her deliverance she would see the Lords of France filling a cup in her honour.

[Footnote 2261: E. Hinzelin, _Chez Jeanne d'Arc_, pp. 37, 177.]

Maitre Jean Beaupere asked her whether she saw anything when she heard her Voices.

She replied: ”I cannot tell you everything. I am not permitted. The Voice is good and worthy.... To this question I am not bound to reply.”

And she asked them to give her in writing the points concerning which she had not given an immediate reply.[2262]

[Footnote 2262: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 64, 65.]

What use did she intend to make of this writing? She did not know how to read; she had no counsel. Did she want to show the doc.u.ment to some false friend, like Loiseleur, who was deceiving her? Or was it her intent to present it to her saints?

Maitre Beaupere asked whether her Voice had a face and eyes.

She refused to answer and quoted a saying frequently on the lips of children: ”One is often hanged for having spoken the truth.”[2263]

[Footnote 2263: _Ibid._, p. 65. ”_Souvent on est blame de trop parler_,” a proverb common in the 15th century. Cf. Le Roux de Lincy, _Les proverbes francais_, vol. ii, p. 417.]

Maitre Beaupere asked: ”Do you know whether you stand in G.o.d's grace?”

This was an extremely insidious question; it placed Jeanne in the dilemma of having to avow herself sinful or of appearing unpardonably bold. One of the a.s.sessors, Maitre Jean Lefevre of the Order of the Hermit Friars, observed that she was not bound to reply. There was murmuring throughout the chamber.

But Jeanne said: ”If I be not, then may G.o.d bring me into it; if I be, then may G.o.d keep me in it.”[2264]

[Footnote 2264: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 65.]

The a.s.sessors were astonished at so ready an answer. And yet no improvement ensued in their disposition towards her. They admitted that touching her King she spoke well, but for the rest she was too subtle, and with a subtlety peculiar to women.[2265]

[Footnote 2265: _Ibid._, vol. ii, pp. 21, 358.]

Thereafter, Maitre Jean Beaupere examined Jeanne concerning her childhood in her village. He essayed to show that she had been cruel, had displayed a homicidal tendency from her earliest years, and had been addicted to those idolatrous practices which had given the folk of Domremy a bad name.[2266]

[Footnote 2266: _Ibid._, vol. i, pp. 65-68.]

Then he touched on a point of prime importance in elucidating the obscure origin of Jeanne's mission:

”Were you not regarded as the one who was sent from the Oak Wood?”

In this direction he might have succeeded in obtaining important revelations. False prophecies had indeed established Jeanne's reputation in France; but these clerks were incapable of discriminating amongst all these pseudo-Bedes and pseudo-Merlins.[2267]

[Footnote 2267: _Ibid._, p. 68.]

Jeanne replied: ”When I came to the King, certain asked me whether there were in my country a wood called the Oak Wood; because of prophecies saying that from the neighbourhood of this wood should come a damsel who would work wonders. But to such things I paid no heed.”

This statement we must needs believe; but if she denied credence to the prophecy of Merlin touching the Virgin of the Oak Wood, she paid good heed to the prophecy foretelling the appearance of a Deliverer in the person of a Maid coming from the Lorraine Marches, since she repeated that prophecy to the two Leroyers and to her Uncle La.s.sois, with an emphasis which filled them with astonishment. Now we must admit that the two prophecies are as alike as two peas.[2268]

[Footnote 2268: The French expression runs, ”_se resemblent comme deux soeurs_.”]

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