thinking.
What Joan did that day bore fruit the very day after. The King was
obliged to respect the spirit of a young girl who could hold her
own and stand her ground like that, and he asserted himself
sufficiently to put his respect into an act instead of into polite and
empty words. He moved Joan out of that poor inn, and housed her,
with us her servants, in the Castle of Courdray, personally
confiding her to the care of Madame de Bellier, wife of old Raoul
de Gaucourt, Master of the Palace. Of course, this royal attention
had an immediate result: all the great lords and ladies of the Court
began to flock there to see and listen to the wonderful girl-soldier
that all the world was talking about, and who had answered the
King’s mandate with a bland refusal to obey. Joan charmed them
every one with her sweetness and simplicity and unconscious
eloquence, and all the best and capablest among them recognized
that there was an indefinable something about her that testified
that she was not made of common clay, that she was built on a
grander plan than the mass of mankind, and moved on a loftier
plane. These spread her fame. She always made friends and
advocates that way; neither the high nor the low could come
within the sound of her voice and the sight of her face and go out
from her presence indifferent.
Chapter 6 Joan Convinces the King
WELL, anything to make delay. The King’s council advised him
against arriving at a decision in our matter too precipitately. He
arrive at a decision too precipitately! So they sent a committee of
priests–always priests–into Lorraine to inquire into Joan’s
character and history–a matter which would consume several
weeks, of course. You see how fastidious they were. It was as if
people should come to put out the fire when a man’s house was
burning down, and they waited till they could send into another
country to find out if he had always kept the Sabbath or not, before
letting him try.
So the days poked along; dreary for us young people in some ways,
but not in all, for we had one great anticipation in front of us; we
had never seen a king, and now some day we should have that
prodigious spectacle to see and to treasure in our memories all our
lives; so we were on the lookout, and always eager and watching
for the chance. The others were doomed to wait longer than I, as it
turned out. One day great news came–the Orleans commissioners,
with Yolande and our knights, had at last turned the council’s
position and persuaded the King to see Joan.
Joan received the immense news gratefully but without losing her
head, but with us others it was otherwise; we could not eat or sleep
or do any rational thing for the excitement and the glory of it.
During two days our pair of noble knights were in distress and
trepidation on Joan’s account, for the audience was to be at night,
and they were afraid that Joan would be so paralyzed by the glare
of light from the long files of torches, the solemn pomps and
ceremonies, the great concourse of renowned personages, the
brilliant costumes, and the other splendors of the Court, that she, a
simple country-maid, and all unused to such things, would be
overcome by these terrors and make a piteous failure.
No doubt I could have comforted them, but I was not free to speak.
Would Joan be disturbed by this cheap spectacle, this tinsel show,
with its small King and his butterfly dukelets?–she who had
spoken face to face with the princes of heaven, the familiars of
God, and seen their retinue of angels stretching back into the
remoteness of the sky, myriads upon myriads, like a measureless
fan of light, a glory like the glory of the sun streaming from each
of those innumerable heads, the massed radiance filling the deeps
of space with a blinding splendor? I thought not.
Queen Yolande wanted Joan to make the best possible impression
upon the King and the Court, so she was strenuous to have her