Heroines That Every Child Should Know Part 13

For more than three months her trial went on. But her fate was settled now. The Inquisition had no pardon for her. The judges left her, a few daring to be sorry for the brave creature, but most of them openly and indecently glad. In the courtyard they found a number of English waiting for news, among them the Earl of Warwick.

"Farewell, farewell!" cried the bishop, as he pa.s.sed him; "be of good cheer--it is done!"

Her guilt was proved; let her be given over to the secular power; but first let her be charitably exhorted for her soul's welfare, and warned that she had nothing more to hope for in this world.

The bishop ordered a citation to be drawn up, summoning Joan to appear next morning in the Old Market Place of Rouen, to receive her final sentence. She did not hear her doom that night (May 30, 1431), but the grave faces and grave words of the monks showed her the dreadful reality, and for a little while youth and womanhood and human weakness had their own way with her. She wept piteously.

"Alas," she cried, "will they treat me so horribly and cruelly? Must my body be consumed to-day and turned to ashes? Ah! I would sooner seven times be beheaded than be burnt! Oh, I appeal to G.o.d, the great Judge, against the wrong and injustice done to me!"

While she was thus lamenting Cauchon came in, with Pierre Maurice, and two or three others. Seeing him, she cried:

"Bishop, I die by you!"

Maurice looked kindly at her as he went, and she said to him:

"Master Pierre, where shall I be to-night?"

"Have you not a good hope in G.o.d?" he asked.

"Ah, yes, and by G.o.d's grace, I shall be in Paradise."

She received the sacrament with tears, and with deep penitence and devotion. Thenceforth her faith was unshaken, and she failed no more.

Next morning at nine o'clock she left the prison, clothed now in a woman's long gown, and wearing a mitre, inscribed with the words, _Heretic_, _Relapsed_, _Apostate_, _Idolatress_. A cart was waiting for her, and she got into it, accompanied by Brother Martin and the usher Ma.s.sieu. A guard of about eight hundred soldiers surrounded her to keep off the crowd, but suddenly there rushed through their ranks a haggard and miserable figure. It was Nicolaus Loyseleur, who, seized by late and vain remorse, had come to ask forgiveness of her whom he had betrayed. But before he could reach her, the soldiers drove him back, and Joan probably neither saw nor heard him, for she was weeping and praying, her head bowed upon her hands.

When she looked up, she saw beyond the soldiers a dense throng of people, most of them grieving for her, many of them lamenting that this thing should be done in their city.

"O Rouen, Rouen!" she cried, "is it here that I must die?"

At last she reached the Old Market Place, a very large s.p.a.ce, where had been raised three scaffolds: one for the Bishop of Beauvais and his colleagues, and for all the prelates and n.o.bles who desired to see the show; another for Joan and some priests and officials; the third, also for Joan--a pile of stone and plaster, raised high above the heads of the crowd, and heaped with f.a.ggots. In front of it was a tablet bearing this inscription:

_Joan, who has called herself The Maid--liar, pernicious, deceiver of the people, sorceress, superst.i.tious, blasphemer of G.o.d, presumptuous, disbeliever of the faith of Christ, boaster, idolatress, dissolute, invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic, heretic._

Master Nicolas Midi, a famous doctor from Paris, preached Joan's last sermon, on the text, "If one member suffer, all the members suffer with it."

At its close, he addressed her:

"Joan, go in peace! The Church can no longer defend you; it gives you up to the secular power."

Then the bishop spoke to her. He did not read the form of abjuration, as had been advised, for she would have boldly disavowed it, and would so have spoilt a scheme he had concocted. But he admonished her to think of her salvation, to remember her misdeeds, and repent of them.

Finally, after the usual inquisitorial form, he declared her cut off from the Church, and delivered over to secular justice.

She needed no exhortation to prayer and penitence. For a while she seemed to forget the gazing crowd and the cruel judges. She knelt and prayed fervently--prayed aloud with such pa.s.sionate pathos, that all who heard her were moved to tears. Even Cauchon wept. Even the Cardinal was touched. She forgave her enemies; she remembered the King, who had forgotten her; she asked pardon of all, imploring all to pray for her, and especially entreating the priests to say a ma.s.s for her soul. Presently she asked for a cross. An English soldier broke a stick in two and made a rough cross, which he gave her. She kissed it and put it in her bosom, weeping, calling upon G.o.d and the saints.

But the men-at-arms were growing impatient. "Come, you priests!"

shouted one of them, "are you going to make us dine here?"

The bailiff of Rouen, as representing the secular power, should have now p.r.o.nounced sentence of death, but he seemed afraid of delaying the soldiers, two of whom came up and seized Joan.

"Take her! take her!" he said, hurriedly, and he bade the executioner "do his duty." The bishop's trial had, after all, an illegal and informal ending.

The soldiers dragged Joan to the pile, and as she climbed it, some of her judges left their platform and rushed away, fearing to behold what they had helped to bring about. She was fastened to the stake, high up, that the flames might gain slowly upon her, and that the executioner might not be able to reach her and mercifully shorten her agony.

"Ah, Rouen!" she cried again, as she looked over the city, bright in the May suns.h.i.+ne--"Ah, Rouen, Rouen! I fear thou wilt have to suffer for my death!"

The executioner set fire to the pile. The confessor was by Joan's side, praying with her, comforting her so earnestly, that he took no notice of the ascending flames. It was she who saw them and bade him leave her.

"But hold up the cross," she said, "that I may see it."

Now Cauchon went to the foot of the pile, hoping perhaps that his victim might say some word of recantation. Perceiving him there, she cried aloud:

"Bishop, I die by you!"

And now the flames reached her, and she shrank from them in terror, calling for water--holy water! But as they rose and rose and wrapped her round, she seemed to draw strength from their awful contact. She still spoke. Brother Martin, standing in the heat and glare of the fire, holding the cross aloft for her comfort, heard her dying words:

"Jesus! Jesus! Mary! My voices! My voices!"

Did she hear them, those voices that had said, "Fret not thyself because of thy martyrdom; thou shalt come at last to the Kingdom of Paradise"?

"Yes," she said, "my voices were from G.o.d! My voices have not deceived me!" Then, uttering one great cry--"Jesus!" she drooped her head upon her breast, and died.

The common folk soon added their tale of signs and wonders to the simple and terrible truth. An English soldier, who greatly hated the Maid, had sworn to bring a f.a.ggot to her burning, and he threw it on the pile just as she gave that last cry. Suddenly he fell senseless to the earth, and when he recovered, he told how at that moment he had looked up, and had seen a white dove fly heavenward out of the fire.

Others declared that they had seen the word Jesus--her dying word--written in the flames. The executioner rushed to a confessor crying that he feared to be d.a.m.ned, for he had burned a holy woman.

But her heart would not burn, he told the priest; the rest of her body he had found consumed to ashes, but her heart was left whole and unharmed.

Many, not of the populace, were moved by her death to recognise what she had been in life.

"I would that my soul were where I believe the soul of that woman is!"

exclaimed Jean Alespee, one of the judges.

"We are all lost; we have burnt a saint!" cried Tressart, a secretary of the King of England. Winchester--determined that, though she might be called a saint, there should be no relics of her--had her ashes carefully collected and thrown into the Seine.

The tidings of her death went speedily through France. They found Charles in his southern retirement, and nowise disturbed the ease of mind and body that was more to him than honour. They reached Domremy, and broke the heart of Joan's stern, loving father. Isabelle Romee lived to see her child's memory righted and her prophecies fulfilled.

In June, 1455, Pope Calixtus, named a commission to inquire into the trial of Joan of Arc.

Joan's aged mother came before them, supported by her sons, and followed by a great procession of n.o.bles, scholars, and honourable ladies. She presented the pet.i.tion she had made to the Pope, and the letter whereby he granted it, and the commissioners took her aside, heard her testimony, and promised to do her justice.

And now the dead heroine was confronted with her dead judges, to their shame and her enduring honour. Messengers were sent into her country to hear the story of her innocent childhood and pure, unselfish youth.

Through her whole life went the inquiry, gathering testimony from people of all ranks. The peasants whom she had loved and tended in her early girlhood, the men who had fought by her side, the women who had known and honoured her, the officers of the trial, and many who had watched her sufferings and beheld her death--all were called to speak for her now. They testified to her goodness, her purity, her single-hearted love for France, her piety, her boldness in war, and her good sense in counsel. All were for her--not one voice was raised against her. Rouen, the place of her martyrdom, became the place of her triumph.

The judges p.r.o.nounced the whole trial to be polluted by wrong and calumny, and therefore null and void; finally, they proclaimed that neither Joan nor any of her kindred had incurred any blot of infamy, and freed them from every shadow of disgrace.