The Executioner's Knife Part 33

JOAN DARC--"Is it not all one--G.o.d and His Church?"

BISHOP CAUCHON--"Learn, my dear daughter, that there is a _Church triumphant_ where G.o.d is with His saints, His angels and the saved souls; there is, besides, the _Church militant_ composed of our Holy Father the Pope, vicar of G.o.d on earth, the cardinals, the prelates, the priests and all good Catholics, the which Church is infallible, in other words, can never err, can never be mistaken, guided as it is by the divine light. That, Joan, is the Church militant. Will you submit to its judgment? Will you, yes or no, acknowledge us as your judges, us, members of the Church militant?"

JOAN DARC (recalls the advice of the canon; there can be no doubt, she thinks, that a snare is being laid for her; her mistrust being in accord with her nave faith, she answers with all the firmness that her weakness allows)--"I went to the King for the sake of the salvation of France, sent to him by G.o.d and His saints. To that Church (making a sublime gesture), to that Church on high, do I submit in all my acts and words!"

BISHOP CAUCHON (with difficulty restraining his joy)--"You will not, then, accept the judgment of the Church militant upon your acts and words?"

JOAN DARC--"I shall submit to this Church if it does not demand the impossible from me."

THE INQUISITOR--"What do you understand by that?"

JOAN DARC--"To deny or repudiate the visions that I have had from G.o.d.

For nothing in the world shall I deny or repudiate them. I shall not consent to save my life by a falsehood."

BISHOP CAUCHON (in a blandis.h.i.+ng voice)--"If the Church militant were to declare those visions and apparitions illusory and diabolical, would you still refuse to submit to its judgment?"

JOAN DARC--"I submit only to G.o.d, who has ever inspired me. I neither accept nor shall I accept the judgment of any man, all men being liable to error."

BISHOP CAUCHON (addressing the registrar)--"Write down that answer, registrar; write it down without any omission."

THE REGISTRAR--"Yes, monseigneur."

THE INQUISITOR--"You do not, then, hold yourself subject to the Church militant, that is to say to our Pope, our seigneurs the cardinals, archbishops, bishops and other holy ministers of G.o.d?"

JOAN DARC (interrupting him)--"I recognize myself their subject--G.o.d being first served."

The admirable answer disconcerts the prelates. The ingenuous and pure soul that they expected to entangle in the perfidious net of their theological subtleties, slipped from them with one stroke of its wings.

BISHOP CAUCHON (is the first to recover, he addresses Joan with severity)--"You answer us like an idolater. You are exposing your body and your soul to a grave peril."

JOAN DARC--"I could not answer otherwise, monseigneur."

A JUDGE (harshly)--"You will then have to die an apostate."

JOAN DARC (with touching pride)--"I received baptism; I am a good Christian; I shall die a Christian."

BISHOP CAUCHON--"Do you desire to receive the body of the Savior?"

JOAN DARC--"Oh, I wish it with all my soul!"

BISHOP CAUCHON--"You will then have to submit to the Church militant."

JOAN DARC--"I serve G.o.d to the best of my ability--from Him I expect everything--nothing from the bishops, nothing from the priests, nothing from anybody."

THE INQUISITOR--"If you refuse submission to the holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church you will be given up for a heretic, and condemned to be burned."

JOAN DARC (in a high degree of exaltation springing from her convictions and the disgust that the ecclesiastics inspire her)--"Even if the pyre stood ready I would answer no otherwise!"

BISHOP CAUCHON--"Joan, my dear daughter, your stiff-neckedness is execrable. Do you mean to say that if you stood before a council composed of our Holy Father, the cardinals and bishops, and they called upon you to submit to their decision--"

JOAN DARC (interrupting him with pained impatience)--"Neither Pope, nor cardinals, nor bishops will draw from me other statements than those that I have made. Pray have mercy upon a poor creature! I am dying!"

(She drops back upon the straw in a swoon.)

BISHOP CAUCHON--"Will you submit to the successor of St. Peter, our Holy Father? Answer categorically."

JOAN DARC (after a long pause and recovering)--"Have me taken to him, I shall ask him for his blessing."

BISHOP CAUCHON--"What you say is insensate. Do you persist in keeping your male attire, a most blameworthy conduct?"

JOAN DARC--"I would put on female clothes to go to church, if I could, in order to receive the body of my Savior. But back in my prison, I shall resume my male attire out of fear of being outraged by your people, as they have tried before now."

THE INQUISITOR--"Once more and for the last time, and be careful: if you persist in your d.a.m.nable error our holy mother the Church will be forced, despite her infinite mercy, to deliver you over to the secular arm, and it will then be all over with your body and soul."

JOAN DARC--"It would then be all over with your own souls--with the souls of yourselves who will have condemned me unjustly. Reflect upon that."

BISHOP CAUCHON--"Joan, I must charitably declare to you that if you stubbornly persist in your ways, there are torturers near who will put you to the rack.(He points to the door, Joan s.h.i.+vers.) There are torturers near--they are waiting--they will put you to cruel torments, for the sole purpose of drawing less d.a.m.nable answers from you."

JOAN DARC (yields at first to the terror of the thought of being tortured; the momentary weakness is, however, speedily overcome; she draws superhuman strength from the conviction of her innocence; sits up; casts a withering look upon the prelates and cries in an accent of indomitable resolution) --"Have my limbs torn one from the other! Have my soul leap out of my body! You shall be no further! And if the pain of the torture should draw from my distracted body aught that is contrary to what I have so far said, I take G.o.d for my witness, it will be pain alone that will have made me speak contrary to the truth!"[114]

BISHOP CAUCHON--"Joan, your transport singularly aggravates your position."

JOAN DARC--"Listen, Oh, ye priests of Christ; listen, Oh, ye seigneurs of the Church; you are bent upon my death. If in order to make me die, if in order to execute me my clothes are to be taken off, I ask of you but a woman's s.h.i.+rt to march in to the pyre."

BISHOP CAUCHON (affecting astonishment)--"You pretend that you wear a man's s.h.i.+rt and clothes by the command of G.o.d; why should you want a woman's s.h.i.+rt to go to death in? This is a singular inconsistency."

JOAN DARC--"Because it is longer."

The infamous ecclesiastics are determined to inflict upon the wretched young woman of hardly nineteen years all the tortures, from the rack to the pyre. A tremor, nevertheless, runs through them at the sublime modesty of the virgin, who requests of her butchers as a supreme act of mercy that she be allowed a woman's s.h.i.+rt to go to death in because such a s.h.i.+rt was longer, because it could better conceal her figure from the public gaze. Bishop Cauchon alone remains unaffected.

BISHOP CAUCHON (harshly addressing his accomplices)--"My very dear brothers, we shall a.s.semble in a room of the tower in order to deliberate upon the torture that should be inflicted upon Joan."

The Bishop and his fellows depart from the cell, followed by the registrars.

CHAPTER V.

THE SENTENCE.

The full ecclesiastical tribunal is a.s.sembled in a low, somber and vaulted apartment. The registrar reads to the ecclesiastical judges the last interrogatory, at which they had not all been present. They are to consider whether the accused shall be put to the torture.

BISHOP CAUCHON--"My very dear brothers, you are again a.s.sembled in the name of our holy Church."

ALL THE JUDGES--"Amen."

BISHOP CAUCHON--"My very dear brothers, we Peter, Bishop of Beauvais by divine grace do, in view of the stubbornness of the said Joan, and in view of the pestilent heresy that her answers are poisoned with, consult with you, our very dear brothers, whether it is deemed expedient and urgent to submit the said Joan to the torture, to the end of obtaining from her answers and avowals that may save her poor soul from the eternal and her body from the temporal flames. Please give your opinion in the order of precedence."