Jeanne D'Arc: Her Life And Death. Mrs. Oliphant
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foot of the invader. The fact that the new King was not yet the Lord's anointed, and had never received the seal of God, as it were, to his commission, was a fact which struck the imagination of the village as of much more importance than many greater things—being at once more visible and matter-of-fact, and of more mystical and spiritual efficacy than any other circumstance in the dreadful tale.
Jeanne was in the garden as usual, seated, as we should say in Scotland, at "her seam," not quite thirteen, a child in all the innocence of infancy, yet full of dreams, confused no doubt and vague, with those impulses and wonderings—impatient of trouble, yearning to give help—which tremble on the chaos of a young soul like the first lightening of dawn upon the earth. It was summer, and afternoon, the time of dreams. It would be easy in the employment of legitimate fancy to heighten the picturesqueness of that quiet scene—the little girl with her favourite bells, the birds picking up the crumbs of brown bread at her feet. She was thinking of nothing, most likely, in a vague suspense of musing, the wonder of youth, the awakening of thought, as yet come to little definite in her child's heart—looking up from her work to note some passing change of the sky, a something in the air which was new to her. All at once between her and the church there shone a light on the right hand, unlike anything she had ever seen before; and out of it came a voice equally unknown and wonderful. What did the voice say? Only the simplest words, words fit for a child, no maxim or mandate above her faculties—"Jeanne, sois bonne et sage enfant; va souvent à l'église." Jeanne, be good! What more could an archangel, what less could the peasant mother within doors, say? The little girl was frightened, but soon composed herself. The voice could be nothing but sacred and blessed which spoke thus. It would not appear that she mentioned it to anyone. It is such a secret as a child, in that wavering between the real and unreal, the world not realised of childhood, would keep, in mingled shyness and awe, uncertain, rapt in the atmosphere of vision, within her own heart.
It is curious how often this wonderful scene has been repeated in France, never connected with so high a mission, but yet embracing the same circumstances, the same situation, the same semi-angelic nature of the woman-child. The little Bernadette of Lourdes is almost of our own day; she, too is one who puts the scorner to silence. What her visions and her voices were, who can say? The last historian of them is not a man credulous of good or moved towards the ideal; yet he is silent, except in a wondering impression of the sacred and the true, before the little Bearnaise in her sabots; and, notwithstanding the many sordid results that have followed and all that sad machinery of expected miracle through which even, repulsive as it must always be, a something breaks forth from time to time which no man can define and account for except in ways more incredible than miracle—so is the rest of the world. Why has this logical, sceptical, doubting country, so able to quench with an epigram, or blow away with a breath of ridicule the finest vision—become the special sphere and birthplace of these spotless infant-saints? This is one of the wonders which nobody attempts to account for. Yet Bernadette is as Jeanne, though there are more than four hundred years between.
After what intervals the vision returned we are not told, nor in what circumstances. It seems to have come chiefly out-of-doors, in the silence and freedom of the fields or garden. Presently the heavenly radiance shaped itself into some semblance of forms and figures, one of which, clearer than the others, was like a man, but with wings and a crown on his head and the air "d'un vrai prud' homme"; a noble apparition before whom at first the little maid trembled, but whose majestic, honest regard soon gave her confidence. He bade her once more to be good, and that God would help her; then he told her the sad story of her own suffering country, la pitié qui estoit au royaume de France. Was it the pity of heaven that the archangel reported to the little trembling girl, or only that which woke with the word in her own childish soul? He has chosen the small things of this world to confound the great. Jeanne's young heart was full of pity already, and of yearning over the helpless mother-country which had no champion to stand for her. "She had great doubts at first whether it was St. Michael, but afterwards when he had instructed her and shown her many things, she believed firmly that it was he."
It was this warrior-angel who opened the matter to her, and disclosed her mission. "Jeanne," he said, "you must go to the help of the King of France; and it is you who shall give him back his kingdom." Like a still greater Maid, trembling, casting in her mind what this might mean, she replied, confused, as if that simple detail were all: "Messire, I am only a poor girl; I cannot ride or lead armed men." The vision took no notice of this plea. He became minute in his directions, indicating exactly what she was to do. "Go to Messire de Baudricourt, captain of Vaucouleurs, and he will take you to the King. St. Catherine and St. Margaret will come and help you." Jeanne was overwhelmed by this exactness, by the sensation of receiving direct orders. She cried, weeping and helpless, terrified to the bottom of her soul—What was she that she should do this? a little girl, able to guide nothing but her needle or her distaff, to lend her simple aid in nursing a sick child. But behind all her fright and hesitation, her heart was filled with the emotion thus suggested to her—the immeasurable pitié que estoit au royaume de France. Her heart became heavy with this burden. By degrees it came about that she could think of nothing else; and her little life was confused by expectations and recollections of the celestial visitant, who might arrive upon her at any moment, in the midst perhaps of some innocent play, or when she sat sewing in the garden before her father's humble door.
After a while the vrai prud' homme came seldom; other figures more like herself, soft forms of women, white and shining, with golden circlets and ornaments, appeared to her in the great halo of the light; they bowed their heads, naming themselves, as to a sister spirit, Catherine, and the other Margaret. Their voices were sweet and soft with a sound that made you weep. They were both martyrs, encouraging and strengthening the little martyr that was to be. "A lady is there in the heavens who loves thee": Virgil could not say more to rouse the flagging strength of Dante. When these gentle figures disappeared, the little maid wept in an anguish of tenderness, longing if only they would take her with them. It is curious that though she describes in this vague rapture the appearance of her visitors, it is always as "mes voix" that she names them—the sight must always have been more imperfect than the message. Their outlines and their lovely faces might shine uncertain in the excess of light; but the words were always plain. The pity for France that was in their hearts spread itself into the silent rural atmosphere, touching every sensitive chord in the nature of little Jeanne. It was as if her mother lay dying there before her eyes.
Curious to think how little anyone could have suspected such meetings as these, in the cottage hard by, where the weary ploughmen from the fields would come clamping in for their meal, and Dame Isabeau would call to the child, even sharply perhaps now and then, to leave that all-absorbing needlework and come in and help, as Martha called Mary fourteen hundred years before; and where the priest, mumbling his mass of a cold morning in the little church, would smile indulgent on the faithful little worshipper when it was done, sure of seeing Jeanne there whoever might be absent. She was a shy girl, blushing and drooping her head when a stranger spoke to her, red and shame-faced when they laughed at her in the village as a dévote before her time; but with nothing else to blush about in all her simple record.
Neither to her parents, nor to the curé when she made her confession, does she seem to have communicated these strange experiences, though they had lasted for some time before she felt impelled to act upon them, and could keep silence no longer. She was but thirteen when the revelations began and she was seventeen when at last she set forth to fulfil her mission. She had no guidance from her voices, she herself says, as to whether she should tell or not tell what had been communicated to her; and no doubt was kept back by her shyness, and by the dreamy confusion of childhood between the real and unreal. One would have thought that a life in which these visions were of constant recurrence would have been rapt altogether out of wholesome use and wont, and all practical service. But this does not seem for a moment to have been the case. Jeanne was no hysterical girl, living with her head in a mist, abstracted from the world. She had all the enthusiasms even of youthful friendship, other girls surrounding her with the intimacy of the village, paying her visits, staying all night, sharing her room and her bed. She was ready to be sent for by any poor woman that needed help or nursing, she was always industrious at her needle; one would love to know if perhaps in the Trésor at Rheims there was some stole or maniple with flowers