feelings.
She was to be set free in three months. That was what she meant;
we saw it. The Voices had told her so, and told her true–true to the
very day–May 30th. But we know now that they had mercifully
hidden from her how she was to be set free, but left her in
ignorance. Home again!
That day was our understanding of it–No‰l’s and mine; that was
our dream; and now we would count the days, the hours, the
minutes. They would fly lightly along; they would soon be over.
Yes, we would carry our idol home; and there, far from the pomps
and tumults of the world, we would take up our happy life again
and live it out as we had begun it, in the free air and the sunshine,
with the friendly sheep and the friendly people for comrades, and
the grace and charm of the meadows, the woods, and the river
always before our eyes and their deep peace in our hearts. Yes,
that was our dream, the dream that carried us bravely through that
three months to an exact and awful fulfilment, the though of which
would have killed us, I think, if we had foreknown it and been
obliged to bear the burden of it upon our hearts the half of those
weary days.
Our reading of the prophecy was this: We believed the King’s soul
was going to be smitten with remorse; and that he would privately
plan a rescue with Joan’s old lieutenants, D’Alen‡on and the
Bastard and La Hire, and that this rescue woud take place at the
end of the three months. So we made up our minds to be ready and
take a hand in it.
In the present and also in later sittings Joan was urged to name the
exact day of her deliverance; but she could not do that. She had not
the permission of her Voices. Moreover, the Voices themselves
did not name the precise day. Ever since the fulfilment of the
prophecy, I have believed that Joan had the idea that her
deliverance was going to dome in the form of death. But not that
death! Divine as she was, dauntless as she was in battle, she was
human also. She was not solely a saint, an angel, she was a
clay-made girl also–as human a girl as any in the world, and full of
a human girl’s sensitiveness and tenderness and elicacies. And so,
that death! No, she could not have lived the three months with that
one before her, I think. You remember that the first time she was
wounded she was frightened, and cried, just as any other girl of
seventeen would have done, although she had known for eighteen
days that she was going to be wounded on that very day. No, she
was not afraid of any ordinary death, and an ordinary death was
what she believed the prophecy of deliverance meant, I think, for
her face showed happiness, not horror, when she uttered it.
Now I will explain why I think as I do. Five weeks before she was
captured in the battle of CompiЉgne, her Voices told her what was
coming. They did not tell her the day or the place, but said she
would be taken prisoner and that it would be before the feast of St.
John. She begged that death, certain and swift, should be her fate,
and the captivity brief; for she was a free spirit, and dreaded the
confinement. The Voices made no promise, but only told her to
bear whatever came. Now as they did not refuse the swift death, a
hopeful young thing like Joan would naturally cherish that fact and
make the most of it, allowing it to grow and establish itself in her
mind. And so now that she was told she was to be “delivered” in
three onths, I think she believed it meant that she would die in her
bed in the prison, and that that was why she looked happy and
content–the gates of Paradise standing open for her, the time so
short, you see, her troubles so soon to be over, her reward so close