scandal to religion that she should dress as a man; but no matter,
this court was ready to use any and all weapons against Joan, even
broken and discredited ones, and much was going to be made of
this one before this trial should end.
“I wore a man’s dress, also a sword which Robert de Baudricourt
gave me, but no other weapon.”
“Who was it that advised you to wear the dress of a man?”
Joan was suspicious again. She would not answer.
The question was repeated.
She refused again.
“Answer. It is a command!”
“Passez outre,” was all she said.
So Beaupere gave up the matter for the present.
“What did Baudricourt say to you when you left?”
“He made them that were to go with me promise to take charge of
me, and to me he said, ‘Go, and let happen what may!'” (Advienne
que pourra!) After a good deal of questioning upon other matters
she was asked again about her attire. She said it was necessary for
her to dress as a man.
“Did your Voice advise it?”
Joan merely answered placidly:
“I believe my Voice gave me good advice.”
It was all that could be got out of her, so the questions wandered to
other matters, and finally to her first meeting with the King at
Chinon. She said she chose out the King, who was unknown to her,
by the revelation of her Voices. All that happened at that time was
gone over. Finally:
“Do you still hear those Voices?”
“They come to me every day.”
“What do you ask of them?”
“I have never asked of them any recompense but the salvation of
my soul.”
“Did the Voice always urge you to follow the army?”
He is creeping upon her again. She answered:
“It required me to remain behind at St. Denis. I would have obeyed
if I had been free, but I was helpless by my wound, and the knights
carried me away by force.”
“When were you wounded?”
“I was wounded in the moat before Paris, in the assault.”
The next question reveals what Beaupere had been leading up to:
“Was it a feast-day?”
You see? The suggestion that a voice coming from God would
hardly advise or permit the violation, by war and bloodshed, of a
sacred day.
Joan was troubled a moment, then she answered yes, it was a
feast-day.
“Now, then, tell the this: did you hold it right to make the attack on
such a day?”
This was a shot which might make the first breach in a wall which
had suffered no damage thus far. There was immediate silence in
the court and intense expectancy noticeable all about. But Joan
disappointed the house. She merely made a slight little motion
with her hand, as when one brushes away a fly, and said with
reposeful indifference:
“Passez outre.”
Smiles danced for a moment in some of the sternest faces there,
and several men even laughed outright. The trap had been long and
laboriously prepared; it fell, and was empty.
The court rose. It had sat for hours, and was cruelly fatigued. Most
of the time had been taken up with apparently idle and purposeless
inquiries about the Chinon events, the exiled Duke of Orleans,
Joan’s first proclamation, and so on, but all this seemingly random
stuff had really been sown thick with hidden traps. But Joan had
fortunately escaped them all, some by the protecting luck which
attends upon ignorance and innocence, some by happy accident,
the others by force of her best and surest helper, the clear vision
and lightning intuitions of her extraordinary mind.
Now, then, this daily baiting and badgering of this friendless girl, a
captive in chains, was to continue a long, long time–dignified
sport, a kennel of mastiffs and bloodhounds harassing a
kitten!–and I may as well tell you, upon sworn testimony, what it
was like from the first day to the last. When poor Joan had been in
her grave a quarter of a century, the Pope called together that great
court which was to re-examine her history, and whose just verdict
cleared her illustrious name from every spot and stain, and laid