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Personal Recollections of
Joan of Arc
by
Mark Twain
Chapter 5 Fifty Experts Against a Novice
I GIVE you my honor now that I am not going to distort or discolor
the facts of this miserable trial. No, I will give them to you
honestly, detail by detail, just as Manchon and I set them down
daily in the official record of the court, and just as one may read
them in the printed histories.
There will be only this difference: that in talking familiarly with
you shall use my right to comment upon the proceedings and
explain them as I go along, so that you can understand them better;
also, I shall throw in trifles which came under our eyes and have a
certain interest for you and me, but were not important enough to
go into the official record. [1] To take up my story now where I
left off. We heard the clanking of Joan's chains down the corridors;
she was approaching.
Presently she appeared; a thrill swept the house, and one heard
deep breaths drawn. Two guardsmen followed her at a short
distance to the rear. Her head was bowed a little, and she moved
slowly, she being weak and her irons heavy. She had on men's
attire--all black; a soft woolen stuff, intensely black, funereally
black, not a speck of relieving color in it from ther throat to the
floor. A wide collar of this same black stuff lay in radiating folds
upon her shoulders and breast; the sleeves of her doublet were full,
down to the elbows, and tight thence to her manacled wrists;
below the doublet, tight black hose down to the chains on her
ankles.
Half-way to her bench she stopped, just where a wide shaft of light
fell slanting from a window, and slowly lifted her face. Another
thrill!--it was totally colorless, white as snow; a face of gleaming
snow set in vivid contrast upon that slender statue of somber
unmitigated black. It was smooth and pure and girlish, beautiful
beyond belief, infinitely sad and sweet. But, dear, dear!
when the challenge of those untamed eyes fell upon that judge, and
the droop vanished from her form and it straightened up soldierly
and noble, my heart leaped for joy; and I said, all is well, all is
well--they have not broken her, they have not conquered her, she is
Joan of Arc still! Yes, it was plain to me now that there was one
spirit there which this dreaded judge could not quell nor make
afraid.
She moved to her place and mounted the dais and seated herself
upon her bench, gathering her chains into her lap and nestling her
little white hands there. Then she waited in tranquil dignity, the
only person there who seemed unmoved and unexcited. A bronzed
and brawny English soldier, standing at martial ease in the front
rank of the citizen spectators, did now most gallantly and
respectfully put up his great hand and give her the military salute;
and she, smiling friendly, put up hers and returned it; whereat
there was a sympathetic little break of applause, which the judge
sternly silence.
Now the memorable inquisition called in history the Great Trial
began. Fifty experts against a novice, and no one to help the
novice!
The judge summarized the circumstances of the case and the
public reports and suspicions upon which it was based; then he
required Joan to kneel and make oath that she would answer with
exact truthfulness to all questions asked her.
Joan's mind was not asleep. It suspected that dangerous
possibilities might lie hidden under this apparently fair and
reasonable demand. She answered with the simplicity which so
often spoiled the enemy's best-laid plans in the trial at Poitiers, and
said:
"No; for I do not know what you are going to ask me; you might
ask of me things which I would not tell you."
This incensed the Court, and brought out a brisk flurry of angry
exclamations. Joan was not disturbed. Cauchon raised his voice
and began to speak in the midst of this noise, but he was so angry
that he could hardly get his words out. He said:
"With the divine assistance of our Lord we require you to expedite
these proceedings for the welfare of your conscience. Swear, with
your hands upon the Gospels, that you will answer true to the
questions which shall be asked you!" and he brought down his fat
hand with a crash upon his official table.
Joan said, with composure:
"As concerning my father and mother, and the faith, and what
things I have done since my coming into France, I will gladly
answer; but as regards the revelations which I have received from
God, my Voices have forbidden me to confide them to any save
my King--"
Here there was another angry outburst of threats and expletives,
and much movement and confusion; so she had to stop, and wait
for the noise to subside; then her waxen face flushed a little and
she straightened up and fixed her eye on the judge, and finished
her sentence in a voice that had the old ring to it:
--"and I will never reveal these things though you cut my head
off!"
Well, maybe you know what a deliberative body of Frenchmen is
like. The judge and half the court were on their feet in a moment,
and all shaking their fists at the prisoner, and all storming and
vituperating at once, so that you could hardly hear yourself think.
They kept this up several minutes; and because Joan sat untroubled
and indifferent they grew madder and noisier all the time. Once
she said, with a fleeting trace of the old-time mischief in her eye
and manner:
"Prithee, speak one at a time, fair lords, then I will answer all of
you."
At the end of three whole hours of furious debating over the oath,
the situation had not changed a jot. The Bishop was still requiring
an unmodified oath, Joan was refusing for the twentieth time to
take any except the one which she had herself proposed. There was
a physical change apparent, but it was confined to the court and
judge; they were hoarse, droopy, exhausted by their long frenzy,
and had a sort of haggard look in their faces, poor men, whereas
Joan was still placid and reposeful and did not seem noticeably
tired.
The noise quieted down; there was a waiting pause of some
moments' duration. Then the judge surrendered to the prisoner, and
with bitterness in his voice told her to take the oath after her own
fashion. Joan sunk at once to her knees; and as she laid her hands
upon the Gospels, that big English soldier set free his mind:
"By God, if she were but English, she were not in this place
another half a second!"
It was the soldier in him responding to the soldier in her. But what
a stinging rebuke it was, what an arraignment of French character
and French royalty! Would that he could have uttered just that one
phrase in the hearing of Orleans! I know that that grateful city, that
adoring city, would have risen to the last man and the last woman,
and marched upon Rouen. Some speeches--speeches that shame a
man and humble him--burn themselves into the memory and
remain there. That one is burned into mine.
After Joan had made oath, Cauchon asked her her name, and
where she was born, and some questions about her family; also
what her age was. She answered these. Then he asked her how
much education she had.
"I have learned from my mother the Pater Noster, the Ave Maria,
and the Belief. All that I know was taught me by my mother."
Questions of this unessential sort dribbled on for a considerable
time. Everybody was tired out by now, except Joan. The tribunal
prepared to rise. At this point Cauchon forbade Joan to try to
escape from prison, upon pain of being held guilty of the crime of
heresy--singular logic! She answered simply:
"I am not bound by this proposition. If I could escape I would not
reproach myself, for I have given no promise, and I shall not."
Then she complained of the burden of her chains, and asked that
they might be removed, for she was strongly guarded in that
dungeon and there was no need of them. But the Bishop refused,
and reminded her that she had broken out of prison twice before.
Joan of Arc was too proud to insist. She only said, as she rose to go
with the guard:
"It is true, I have wanted to escape, and I do want to escape." Then
she added, in a way that would touch the pity of anybody, I think,
"It is the right of every prisoner."
And so she went from the place in the midst of an impressive
stillness, which made the sharper and more distressful to me the
clank of those pathetic chains.
What presence of mind she had! One could never surprise her out
of it. She saw No뎛 and me there when she first took her seat on
the bench, and we flushed to the forehead with excitement and
emotion, but her face showed nothing, betrayed nothing. Her eyes
sought us fifty times that day, but they passed on and there was
never any ray of recognition in them. Another would have started
upon seeing us, and then--why, then there could have been trouble
for us, of course.
We walked slowly home together, each busy with his own grief
and saying not a word.
[1] He kept his word. His account of the Great Trial will be found
to be in strict and detailed accordance with the sworn facts of
history. Qq TRANSLATOR.
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