Personal Recollections of Joan by Mark Twain

record in good plain letters these brave words: “Superba

responsio!” and there they have remained these sixty years, and

there you may read them to this day.

“Superba responsio!” Yes, it was just that. For this “superb answer”

came from the lips of a girl of nineteen with death and hell staring

her in the face.

Of course, the matter of the male attire was gone over again; and

as usual at wearisome length; also, as usual, the customary bribe

was offered: if she would discard that dress voluntarily they would

let her hear mass. But she answered as she had often answered

before:

“I will go in a woman’s robe to all services of the Church if I may

be permitted, but I will resume the other dress when I return to my

cell.”

They set several traps for her in a tentative form; that is to say,

they placed suppositious propositions before her and cunningly

tried to commit her to one end of the propositions without

committing themselves to the other. But she always saw the game

and spoiled it. The trap was in this form:

“Would you be willing to do so and so if we should give you

leave?”

Her answer was always in this form or to this effect:

“When you give me leave, then you will know.”

Yes, Joan was at her best that second of May. She had all her wits

about her, and they could not catch her anywhere. It was a long,

long session, and all the old ground was fought over again, foot by

foot, and the orator-expert worked all his persuasions, all his

eloquence; but the result was the familiar one–a drawn battle, the

sixty-two retiring upon their base, the solitary enemy holding her

original position within her original lines.

Chapter 16 Joan Stands Defiant Before the Rack

THE BRILLIANT weather, the heavenly weather, the bewitching

weather made everybody’s heart to sing, as I have told you; yes,

Rouen was feeling light-hearted and gay, and most willing and

ready to break out and laugh upon the least occasion; and so when

the news went around that the young girl in the tower had scored

another defeat against Bishop Cauchon there was abundant

laughter–abundant laughter among the citizens of both parties, for

they all hated the Bishop. It is true, the English-hearted majority of

the people wanted Joan burned, but that did not keep them from

laughing at the man they hated. It would have been perilous for

anybody to laugh at the English chiefs or at the majority of

Cauchon’s assistant judges, but to laugh at Cauchon or D’Estivet

and Loyseleur was safe–nobody would report it.

The difference between Cauchon and cochon [1] was not

noticeable in speech, and so there was plenty of opportunity for

puns; the opportunities were not thrown away.

Some of the jokes got well worn in the course of two or three

months, from repeated use; for every time Cauchon started a new

trial the folk said “The sow has littered [2] again”; and every time

the trial failed they said it over again, with its other meaning, “The

hog has made a mess of it.”

And so, on the third of May, No‰l and I, drifting about the town,

heard many a wide-mouthed lout let go his joke and his laugh, and

then move tot he next group, proud of his wit and happy, to work it

off again:

“‘Od’s blood, the sow has littered five times, and five times has

made a mess of it!”

And now and then one was bold enough to say–but he said it

softly:

“Sixty-three and the might of England against a girl, and she

camps on the field five times!”

Cauchon lived in the great palace of the Archbishop, and it was

guarded by English soldiery; but no matter, there was never a dark

night but the walls showed next morning that the rude joker had

been there with his paint and brush. Yes, he had been thee, and had

smeared the sacred walls with pictures of hogs in all attitudes

except flattering ones; hogs clothed in a Bishop’s vestments and

wearing a Bishop’s miter irreverently cocked on the side of their