asking you which of the three Popes he ought to obey?”
“Yes, and answered it.”
Copies of both letters were produced and read. Joan said that hers
had not been quite strictly copied. She said she had received the
Count’s letter when she was just mounting her horse; and added:
“So, in dictating a word or two of reply I said I would try to answer
him from Paris or somewhere where I could be at rest.”
She was asked again which Pope she had considered the right one.
“I was not able to instruct the Count of Armagnac as to which one
he ought to obey”; then she added, with a frank fearlessness which
sounded fresh and wholesome in that den of trimmers and
shufflers, “but as for me, I hold that we are bound to obey our Lord
the Pope who is at Rome.”
The matter was dropped. They they produced and read a copy of
Joan’s first effort at dictating–her proclamation summoning the
English to retire from the siege of Orleans and vacate France–truly
a great and fine production for an unpractised girl of seventeen.
“Do you acknowledge as your own the document which has just
been read?”
“Yes, except that there are errors in it–words which make me give
myself too much importance.” I saw what was coming; I was
troubled and ashamed. “For instance, I did not say ‘Deliver up to
the Maid’ (rendez … la Pucelle); I said ‘Deliver up to the King’
(rendez au Roi); and I did not call myself ‘Commander-in-Chief’
(chef de guerre). All those are words which my secretary
substituted; or mayhap he misheard me or forgot what I said.”
She did not look at me when she said it: she spared me that
embarrassment. I hadn’t misheard her at all, and hadn’t forgotten. I
changed her language purposely, for she was Commander-in-Chief
and entitled to call herself so, and it was becoming and proper,
too; and who was going to surrender anything to the King?–at that
time a stick, a cipher? If any surrendering was done, it would be to
the noble Maid of Vaucouleurs, already famed and formidable
though she had not yet struck a blow.
Ah, there would have been a fine and disagreeable episode (for
me) there, if that pitiless court had discovered that the very
scribbler of that piece of dictation, secretary to Joan of Arc, was
present–and not only present, but helping build the record; and not
only that, but destined at a far distant day to testify against lies and
perversions smuggled into it by Cauchon and deliver them over to
eternal infamy!
“Do you acknowledge that you dictated this proclamation?”
“I do.”
“Have you repented of it? Do you retract it?”
Ah, then she was indignant!
“No! Not even these chains”–and she shook them–“not even these
chains can chill the hopes that I uttered there. And more!”–she
rose, and stood a moment with a divine strange light kindling in
her face, then her words burst forth as in a flood–“I warn you now
that before seven years a disaster will smite the English, oh, many
fold greater than the fall of Orleans! and–”
“Silence! Sit down!”
“–and then, soon after, they will lose all France!”
Now consider these things. The French armies no longer existed.
The French cause was standing still, our King was standing still,
there was no hint that by and by the Constable Richemont would
come forward and take up the great work of Joan of Arc and finish
it. In face of all this, Joan made that prophecy–made it with
perfect confidence–and it came true. For within five years Paris
fell–1436–and our King marched into it flying the victor’s flag. So
the first part of the prophecy was then fulfilled–in fact, almost the
entire prophecy; for, with Paris in our hands, the fulfilment of the
rest of it was assured.
Twenty years later all France was ours excepting a single
town–Calais.
Now that will remind you of an earlier prophecy of Joan’s. At the
time that she wanted to take Paris and could have done it with ease
if our King had but consented, she said that that was the golden