needed to say was this–and they said it:
“Your Highness says her Voices have revealed to you, by her
mouth, a secret known only to yourself and God. How can you
know that her Voices are not of Satan, and she his
mouthpiece?–for does not Satan know the secrets of men and use
his knowledge for the destruction of their souls? It is a dangerous
business, and your Highness will do well not to proceed in it
without probing the matter to the bottom.”
That was enough. It shriveled up the King’s little soul like a raisin,
with terrors and apprehensions, and straightway he privately
appointed a commission of bishops to visit and question Joan daily
until they should find out whether her supernatural helps hailed
from heaven or from hell.
The King’s relative, the Duke of Alen‡on, three years prisoner of
war to the English, was in these days released from captivity
through promise of a great ransom; and the name and fame of the
Maid having reached him–for the same filled all mouths now, and
penetrated to all parts–he came to Chinon to see with his own eyes
what manner of creature she might be. The King sent for Joan and
introduced her to the Duke. She said, in her simple fashion:
“You are welcome; the more of the blood of France that is joined
to this cause, the better for the cause and it.”
Then the two talked together, and there was just the usual result:
when they departed, the Duke was her friend and advocate.
Joan attended the King’s mass the next day, and afterward dined
with the King and the Duke. The King was learning to prize her
company and value her conversation; and that might well be, for,
like other kings, he was used to getting nothing out of people’s talk
but guarded phrases, colorless and non-committal, or carefully
tinted to tally with the color of what he said himself; and so this
kind of conversation only vexes and bores, and is wearisome; but
Joan’s talk was fresh and free, sincere and honest, and unmarred by
timorous self-watching and constraint. She said the very thing that
was in her mind, and said it in a plain, straightforward way. One
can believe that to the King this must have been like fresh cold
water from the mountains to parched lips used to the water of the
sun-baked puddles of the plain.
After dinner Joan so charmed the Duke with her horsemanship and
lance practice in the meadows by the Castle of Chinon whither the
King also had come to look on, that he made her a present of a
great black war-steed.
Every day the commission of bishops came and questioned Joan
about her Voices and her mission, and then went to the King with
their report. These pryings accomplished but little. She told as
much as she considered advisable, and kept the rest to herself.
Both threats and trickeries were wasted upon her. She did not care
for the threats, and the traps caught nothing. She was perfectly
frank and childlike about these things. She knew the bishops were
sent by the King, that their questions were the King’s questions,
and that by all law and custom a King’s questions must be
answered; yet she told the King in her na‹ve way at his own table
one day that she answered only such of those questions as suited
her.
The bishops finally concluded that they couldn’t tell whether Joan
was sent by God or not. They were cautious, you see. There were
two powerful parties at Court; therefore to make a decision either
way would infallibly embroil them with one of those parties; so it
seemed to them wisest to roost on the fence and shift the burden to
other shoulders. And that is what they did. They made final report
that Joan’s case was beyond their powers, and recommended that it
be put into the hands of the learned and illustrious doctors of the
University of Poitiers. Then they retired from the field, leaving
behind them this little item of testimony, wrung from them by
Joan’s wise reticence: they said she was a “gentle and simple little