front of her; for she was always reverent toward the consecrated
servants of God. When the spokesman had finished, she raised her
head and set her calm eye on those faces, not any more disturbed
by their state and grandeur than a princess would have been, and
said, with all her ordinary simplicity and modesty of voice and
manner:
“Ye will forgive me, reverend sirs, but I have no message save for
the King’s ear alone.”
Those surprised men were dumb for a moment, and their faces
flushed darkly; then the spokesman said:
“Hark ye, to you fling the King’s command in his face and refuse to
deliver this message of yours to his servants appointed to receive
it?”
“God has appointed me to receive it, and another’s commandment
may not take precedence of that. I pray you let me have speech for
his grace the Dauphin.”
“Forbear this folly, and come at your message! Deliver it, and
waste no more time about it.”
“You err indeed, most reverend fathers in God, and it is not well. I
am not come hither to talk, but to deliver Orleans, and lead the
Dauphin to his good city of Rheims, and set the crown upon his
head.”
“Is that the message you send to the King?”
But Joan only said, in the simple fashion which was her wont:
“Ye will pardon me for reminding you again–but I have no
message to send to any one.”
The King’s messengers rose in deep anger and swept out of the
place without further words, we and Joan kneeling as they passed.
Our countenances were vacant, our hearts full of a sense of
disaster. Our precious opportunity was thrown away; we could not
understand Joan’s conduct, she who had ben so wise until this fatal
hour. At last the Sieur Bertrand found courage to ask her why she
had let this great chance to get her message to the King go by.
“Who sent them here?” she asked.
“The King.”
“Who moved the King to send them?” She waited for an answer;
none came, for we began to see what was in her mind–so she
answered herself: “The Dauphin’s council moved him to it. Are
they enemies to me and to the Dauphin’s weal, or are they
friends?”
“Enemies,” answered the Sieur Bertrand.
“If one would have a message go sound and ungarbled, does one
choose traitors and tricksters to send it by?”
I saw that we had been fools, and she wise. They saw it too, so
none found anything to say. Then she went on:
“They had but small wit that contrived this trap. They thought to
get my message and seem to deliver it straight, yet deftly twist it
from its purpose. You know that one part of my message is but
this–to move the Dauphin by argument and reasonings to give me
men-at-arms and send me to the siege. If an enemy carried these in
the right words, the exact words, and no word missing, yet left out
the persuasions of gesture and supplicating tone and beseeching
looks that inform the words and make them live, where were the
value of that argument–whom could it convince? Be patient, the
Dauphin will hear me presently; have no fear.”
The Sieur de Metz nodded his head several times, and muttered as
to himself:
“She was right and wise, and we are but dull fools, when all is
said.”
It was just my thought; I could have said it myself; and indeed it
was the thought of all there present. A sort of awe crept over us, to
think how that untaught girl, taken suddenly and unprepared, was
yet able to penetrate the cunning devices of a King’s trained
advisers and defeat them. Marveling over this, and astonished at it,
we fell silent and spoke no more. We had come to know that she
was great in courage, fortitude, endurance, patience, conviction,
fidelity to all duties–in all things, indeed, that make a good and
trusty soldier and perfect him for his post; now we were beginning
to feel that maybe there were greatnesses in her brain that were
even greater than these great qualities of the heart. It set us