Journeys Through Bookland Volume Iv Part 20

A gush of smoke had overspread the scene. It rose heavily, as if it were loath to reveal the dreadful spectacle beneath it. Eleven of the sons of New England lay stretched upon the street. Some, sorely wounded, were struggling to rise again. Others stirred not nor groaned, for they were past all pain. Blood was streaming upon the snow, and that purple stain in the midst of King Street, though it melted away in the next day's sun, was never forgotten nor forgiven by the people.

The town drums beat to arms, the alarm bells rang, and an immense mult.i.tude rushed into King Street. Many of them had weapons in their hands. The British prepared to defend themselves. A whole regiment was drawn up in the street expecting an attack, for the townsmen appeared ready to throw themselves upon the bayonets.

Governor Hutchinson hurried to the spot and besought the people to have patience, promising that strict justice should be done. A day or two afterward the British troops were withdrawn from town and stationed at Castle William. Captain Preston and the eight soldiers were tried for murder, but none of them were found guilty. The judges told the jury that the insults and violence which had been offered to the soldiers justified them in firing at the mob.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE STEED SWEPT ON]

SHERIDAN'S RIDE

_By_ THOMAS BUCHANAN READ

Up from the South at break of day, Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay, The affrighted air with a shudder bore, Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door, The terrible grumble and rumble and roar, Telling the battle was on once more, And Sheridan twenty miles away.

And wider still those billows of war Thundered along the horizon's bar, And louder yet into Winchester rolled The roar of that red sea uncontrolled, Making the blood of the listener cold As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray, With Sheridan twenty miles away.

But there is a road from Winchester town, A good, broad highway leading down; And there through the flash of the morning light, A steed as black as the steeds of night, Was seen to pa.s.s as with eagle flight.

As if he knew the terrible need, He stretched away with the utmost speed; Hills rose and fell,--but his heart was gay, With Sheridan fifteen miles away.

Under his spurning feet the road Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed, And the landscape sped away behind Like an ocean flying before the wind; And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire, Swept on with his wuld eyes full of fire; But, lo! he is nearing his heart's desire, He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray, With Sheridan only five miles away.

The first that the General saw were the groups Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops; What was done,--what to do,--a glance told him both, And, striking his spurs with a terrible oath, He dashed down the line mid a storm of huzzas, And the wave of retreat checked its course there because The sight of the master compelled it to pause.

With foam and with dust the black charger was gray, By the flash of his eye, and his nostril's play He seemed to the whole great army to say,

"I have brought you Sheridan all the way From Winchester, down to save the day!"

Hurrah, hurrah for Sheridan!

Hurrah, hurrah, for horse and man!

And when their statues are placed on high, Under the dome of the Union sky,-- To the American soldier's Temple of Fame,-- There with the glorious General's name Be it said in letters both bold and bright: "Here is the steed that saved the day By carrying Sheridan into the fight, From Winchester,--twenty miles away!"

JOAN OF ARC [Footnote: The body of this selection has been much condensed, though the introduction is as De Quincey wrote it.]

_By_ THOMAS DE QUINCEY

What is to be thought of _her_? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, [Footnote: Lorraine lay between France and Germany.] that--like the Hebrew shepherd boy [Footnote: David.] from the hills and forests of Judea-- rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings?

The Hebrew boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an _act_, by a victorious _act_, [Footnote: The killing of Goliath.] such as no man could deny. But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no pretender; but so they did to the gentle girl.

Judged by the voices of all who saw them _from a station of good-will_, both were found true and loyal to any promises involved in their first acts. Enemies it was that made the difference between their subsequent fortunes. The boy rose to a splendour and a noonday prosperity, both personal and public, that rang through the records of his people, and became a by-word amongst his posterity for a thousand years, until the sceptre was departing from Judah. [Footnote: See _Genesis_ XLIX: 10.]

The poor, forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from that cup of rest which she had secured for France. She never sang together with the songs that rose in her native Domremy as echoes to the departing steps of invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances at Vaucouleurs which celebrated in rapture the redemption of France. No!

for her voice was then silent; no! for her feet were dust. Pure, innocent, n.o.ble-hearted girl! whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the pledges for _thy_ truth, that never once--no, not for a moment of weakness--didst thou revel in the vision of coronets and honour from man. Coronets for thee! Oh no! Honours, if they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood. Daughter of Domremy, when the grat.i.tude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, King of France, but she will not hear thee. Cite her by the apparitors to come and receive a robe of honour, but she will be found _en contumace._ [Footnote: _In contempt_ is the phrase we now apply to a person who fails to appear when summoned to appear in court.] When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this life; that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short; and the sleep which is in the grave is long; let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so long! This pure creature--pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious--never once did this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was traveling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aerial alt.i.tude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end on every road pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the pitying eye that lurked but here and there, until nature and imperishable truth broke loose from artificial restraints;-- these might not be apparent through the mists of the hurrying future.

But the voice that called her to death, _that_ she heard for ever.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOAN OF ARC _Statue by Chapu, Luxembourg, Paris _]

Great was the throne of France even in those days, and great was he that sat upon it; but well Joanna knew that not the throne, nor he that sat upon it, was for _her_; but, on the contrary, that she was for _them_; not she by them, but they by her, should rise from the dust.

Gorgeous were the lilies of France, [Footnote: The royal emblem of France was the _fleur-de-lys_ or iris, but in translation the phrase appears _lily-flower_.] and for centuries had the privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another century, the wrath of G.o.d and man combined to wither them; but well Joanna knew, early at Domremy she had read that bitter truth, that the lilies of France would decorate no garland for _her_. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would ever bloom for _her_!

Joanna, as we in England should call her, but, according to her own statement, Jeanne (or, as M. Michelet a.s.serts, Jean) D'Arc, was born at Domremy, a village on the marches of Lorraine and Champagne, and dependent upon the town of Vaucoulcurs. Domremy stood upon the frontiers, and, like other frontiers, produced a _mixed_ race, representing the _cis_ [Footnote: _This side_.] and the _trans_ [Footnote: _Across_; the other side.]. A river (it is true) formed the boundary-line at this point--the river Meuse; and _that_, in old days, might have divided the populations; but in these days it did not: there were bridges, there were ferries, and weddings crossed from the right bank to the left. Here lay two great roads, not so much for travelers that were few, as for armies that were too many by half. These two roads, one of which was the great highroad between France and Germany, _decussated_ at this very point; which is a learned way of saying that they formed a St. Andrew's Cross, or letter X. I hope the compositor will choose a good large X; in which case the point of intersection, the _locus_ [Footnote: _Point_ or _place_.] of conflux and intersection for these four diverging arms, will finish the reader's geographical education, by showing him to a hair's-breadth where it was that Domremy stood. That great four-headed road was a perpetual memento to patriotic ardour. To say "This way lies the road to Paris, and that other way to Aix-la-Chapelle; this to Prague, that to Vienna," nourished the warfare of the heart by daily ministrations of sense. The eye that watched for the gleams of lance or helmet from the hostile frontier, the ear that listened for the groaning of wheels, made the high-road itself, with its relations to centres so remote, into a manual of patriotic duty.

The situation, therefore, _locally_, of Joanna was full of profound suggestions to a heart that listened for the stealthy steps of change and fear that too surely were in motion. But, if the place were grand, the time, the burden of the time, was far more so. The air overhead in its upper chambers was _hurtling_ with the obscure sound; was dark with sullen fermenting of storms that had been gathering for a hundred and thirty years. The battle of Agincourt in Joanna's childhood had reopened the wounds of France. Crecy and Poictiers, those withering overthrows for the chivalry of France, had, before Agincourt occurred, been tranquilized by more than half-a-century; but this resurrection of their trumpet wails made the whole series of battles and endless skirmishes take their stations as parts in one drama. The graves that had closed sixty years ago seemed to fly open in sympathy with a sorrow that echoed their own. The monarchy of France laboured in extremity, rocked and reeled like a s.h.i.+p fighting with the darkness of monsoons. The madness of the poor king (Charles VI) falling in at such a crisis trebled the awfulness of the time. Even the wild story of the incident which had immediately occasioned the explosion of this madness--the case of a man unknown, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself, coming out of a forest at noonday, laying his hand upon the bridle of the king's horse, checking him for a moment to say, "Oh, king, thou art betrayed," and then vanis.h.i.+ng, no man knew whither, as he had appeared for no man knew what--fell in with the universal prostration of mind that laid France on her knees, as before the slow unweaving of some ancient prophetic doom.

The famines, the extraordinary diseases, the insurrections of the peasantry up and down Europe--these were chords struck from the same mysterious harp; but these were transitory chords. There had been others of deeper and more ominous sound. The termination of the Crusades, the destruction of the Templars, the Papal interdicts, the tragedies caused or suffered by the house of Anjou, and by the Emperor--these were full of a more permanent significance.

These were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland in the skies that to the scientific gazer first caught the colours of the new morning in advance. But the whole vast range alike of sweeping glooms overhead dwelt upon all meditative minds, even upon those that could not distinguish the tendencies nor decipher the forms. It was, therefore, not her own age alone as affected by its immediate calamities that lay with such weight upon Joanna's mind, but her own age as one section in a vast mysterious drama, unweaving through a century back, and drawing nearer continually to some dreadful crisis. Cataracts and rapids were heard roaring ahead; and signs were seen far back, by help of old men's memories, which answered secretly to signs now coming forward on the eye, even as locks answer to keys. It was not wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with such a haunted heart, Joanna should see angelic visions, and hear angelic voices. These voices whispered to her for ever the duty, self-imposed, of delivering France. Five years she listened to these monitory voices with internal struggles. At length she could resist no longer. Doubt gave way; and she left her home for ever in order to present herself at the dauphin's court.

The education of this poor girl was mean according to the present standard: was ineffably grand, according to a purer philosophic standard: and only not good for our age because for us it would be unattainable. She read nothing, for she could not read; but she had heard others read parts of the Roman martyrology. She wept in sympathy with the sad _Misereres_ [Footnote: The penitential psalm which, set to music, is one of the most impressive Roman Catholic chants.] of the Romish Church; she rose to heaven with the glad triumphant _Te Deums_ [Footnote: _Te Deum laudamus_ means "We praise thee, O G.o.d" Grand anthems of triumph and thanksgiving are here called "Te Deums" from the first words of an ancient Latin hymn.] of Rome; she drew her comfort and her vital strength from the rites of the same Church. But, next after these spiritual advantages, she owed most to the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domremy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies that the parish priest (_cure_) was obliged to read ma.s.s there once a year, in order to keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are important, even in a statistical view: certain weeds mark poverty in the soil; fairies mark its solitude. As surely as the wolf retires before cities does the fairy sequester herself from the haunts of the licensed victualer. A village is too much for her nervous delicacy: at most, she can tolerate a distant view of a hamlet. We may judge, therefore, by the uneasiness and extra trouble which they gave to the parson, in what strength the fairies mustered at Domremy, and, by a satisfactory consequence, how thinly sown with men and women must have been that region even in its inhabited spots. But the forests of Domremy--those were the glories of the land: for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient secrets that towered into tragic strength. "Abbeys there were, and abbey windows,"-- "like Moorish temples of the Hindoos,"--that exercised even princely power both in Lorraine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so as in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the region; yet many enough to spread a network or awning of Christian sanct.i.ty over what else might have seemed a heathen wilderness. This sort of religious talisman being secured, a man the most afraid of ghosts (like myself, suppose, or the reader) becomes armed into courage to wander for days in their sylvan recesses. About six hundred years before Joanna's childhood, Charlemagne was known to have hunted there.

That, of itself, was a grand incident in the traditions of a forest or a chase. In these vast forests, also, were to be found (if anywhere to be found) those mysterious fawns that tempted solitary hunters into visionary and perilous pursuits. Here was seen (if anywhere seen) that ancient stag who was already nine hundred years old, but possibly a hundred or two more, when met by Charlemagne; and the thing was put beyond doubt by the inscription upon his golden collar. I believe Charlemagne knighted the stag; and, if ever he is met again by a king, he ought to be made an earl, or, being upon the marches of France, a marquis. Observe, I don't absolutely vouch for all these things; my own opinion varies. On a fine breezy forenoon I am audaciously sceptical; but as twilight sets in my credulity grows steadily, till it becomes equal to anything that could be desired.

Such traditions, or any others that (like the stag) connect distant generations with each other, are, for that cause, sublime; and the sense of the shadowy, connected with such appearances that reveal themselves or not according to circ.u.mstances, leaves a colouring of sanct.i.ty over ancient forests, even in those minds that utterly reject the legend as a fact.

But, apart from all distinct stories of that order, in any solitary frontier between two great empires--as here, for instance, or in the desert between Syria and the Euphrates--there is an inevitable tendency, in minds of any deep sensibility, to people the solitudes with phantom images of powers that were of old so vast. Joanna, therefore, in her quiet occupation of a shepherdess, would be led continually to brood over the political condition of her country by the traditions of the past no less than by the mementos of the local present.

It is not requisite for the honour of Joanna, nor is there in this place room, to pursue her brief career of _action_. That, though wonderful, forms the earthly part of her story; the spiritual part is the saintly pa.s.sion of her imprisonment, trial, and execution. It is sufficient, as concerns the former section of Joanna's life, to say that she fulfilled, to the height of her promises, the restoration of the prostrate throne. France had become--a province of England, and for the ruin of both, if such a yoke could be maintained. Dreadful pecuniary exhaustion caused the English energy to droop; and that critical opening _La Pucelle_ used with a corresponding felicity of audacity and suddenness (that were in themselves portentous) for introducing the wedge of French native resources, for rekindling the national pride, and for planting the dauphin once more upon his feet.

When Joanna appeared, he had been on the point of giving up the struggle with the English, distressed as they were, and of flying to the south of France. She taught him to blush for such abject counsels.

She liberated Orleans, that great city, so decisive by its fate for the issue of the war, and then beleaguered by the English with an elaborate application of engineering skill unprecedented in Europe. Entering the city after sunset on the 29th of April, she sang ma.s.s on Sunday, May 8, for the entire disappearance of the besieging force. On the 29th of June she fought and gained over the English the decisive battle of Patay; on the 9th of July she took Troyes by a coup-de-main [Footnote: An unexpected and powerful attack] from a mixed garrison of English and Burgundians; on the 15th of that month she carried the dauphin into Rheims; on Sunday the 17th she crowned him; and there she rested from her labour of triumph. All that was to be _done_ she had now accomplished: what remained was--to _suffer_.

But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought wonders so great for France, was she not elated? Did she not lose, as men so often _have_ lost, all sobriety of mind when standing upon the pinnacle of success so giddy? Let her enemies declare. During the progress of her movement, and in the centre of ferocious struggles, she had manifested the temper of her feelings by the pity which she had everywhere expressed for the suffering enemy. She forwarded to the English leaders a touching invitation to unite with the French as brothers, in a common crusade against infidels--thus opening the road for a soldierly retreat. She interposed to protect the captive or the wounded; she mourned over the excesses of her countrymen; she threw herself off her horse to kneel by the dying English soldier, and to comfort him with such ministrations, physical or spiritual, as his situation allowed. "_Nolebat_," says the evidence, "_uti ense suo, aut quemquam interficere_." [Footnote: She wished not to kill anyone with her sword] She sheltered the English that invoked her aid in her own quarters. She wept as she beheld, stretched on the field of battle, so many brave enemies that had died without confession. And, as regarded herself, her elation expressed itself thus:--On the day when, she had finished her work, she wept; for she knew that, when her _triumphal_ task was done, her end must be approaching. Her aspirations pointed only to a place which seemed to her more than usually full of natural piety, as one in which it would give her pleasure to die. And she uttered, between smiles and tears, as a wish that inexpressibly fascinated her heart, and yet was half-fantastic, a broken prayer that G.o.d would return her to the solitudes from which he had drawn her, and suffer her to become a shepherdess once more. It was a natural prayer, because nature has laid a necessity upon every human heart to seek for rest and to shrink from torment. Yet, again, it was a half-fantastic prayer, because, from childhood upwards, visions that she had no power to mistrust, and the voices which sounded in her ear for ever, had long since persuaded her mind that for _her_ no such prayer could be granted.

Too well she felt that her mission must be worked out to the end, and that the end was now at hand. All went wrong from this time. She herself had created the _funds_ out of which the French restoration should grow: but she was not suffered to witness their development, or their prosperous application. More than one military plan was entered upon which she did not approve. But she still continued to expose her person as before. Severe wounds had not taught her caution. And at length, in a sortie from Compiegne (whether through treacherous collusion on the part of her own friends is doubtful to this day), she was made prisoner by the Burgundians; and finally surrendered to the English.

Now came her trial. This trial, moving of course under English influence, was conducted in chief by the Bishop of Beauvais. He was a Frenchman, sold to English interests, and hoping, by favour of the English leaders, to reach the highest preferment.

Never from the foundations of the earth was there such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty of defence, and all its bullishness of attack. Oh, child of France! shepherdess; peasant girl!

trodden under foot by all around thee, how I honour thy flas.h.i.+ng intellect, quick as G.o.d's lightning, and true as G.o.d's lightning to its mark, that ran before France and laggard Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of falsehood!

On Easter Sunday, when the trial had been long proceeding, the poor girl fell so ill as to cause a belief that she had been poisoned. It was not poison. n.o.body had any interest in hastening a death so certain. M. Michelet, whose sympathies with all feelings are so quick that one would gladly see them always as justly directed, reads the case most truly. Joanna had a twofold malady. She was visited by a paroxysm of the complaint called _home-sickness_. The cruel nature of her imprisonment, and its length, could not but point her solitary thoughts, in darkness and in chains (for chained she was), to Domremy.

And the season, which was the most heavenly period of the spring, added stings to this yearning. That was one of her maladies--_nostalgia_, as medicine calls it; the other was weariness and exhaustion from daily combats with malice. She saw that everybody hated her, and thirsted for her blood; nay, many kind-hearted creatures that would have pitied her profoundly, as regarded all political charges, had their natural feelings warped by the belief that she had dealings with fiendish powers. She knew she was to die; that was _not_ the misery; the misery was that this consummation could not be reached without so much intermediate strife, as if she were contending for some chance (where chance was none) of happiness, or were dreaming for a moment of escaping the inevitable. Why, then, _did_ she contend? Knowing that she would reap nothing from answering her persecutors, why did she not retire by silence from the superfluous contest? It was because her quick and eager loyalty to truth would not suffer her to see it darkened by frauds which _she_ could expose, but others, even of candid listeners, perhaps, could not; it was through that imperishable grandeur of soul which taught her to submit meekly and without a struggle to her punishment, but taught her _not_ to submit--no, not for a moment--to calumny as to facts, or to misconstruction as to motives. Besides, there were secretaries all around the court taking down her words. That was meant for no good to _her_. But the end does not always correspond to the meaning. And Joanna might say to herself, "These words that will be used against me tomorrow and the next day perhaps in some n.o.bler generation may rise again for my justification."

On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 1431, being then about nineteen years of age, the Maid of Arc underwent her martyrdom. She was conducted before mid-day, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a platform of prodigious height, constructed of wooden billets supported by occasional walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by hollow s.p.a.ces in every direction for the creation of air-currents. The pile "struck terror," says M. Michelet, "by its height;" and, as usual, the English purpose in this is viewed as one of pure malignity. But there are two ways of explaining all that. It is probable that the purpose was merciful.

The circ.u.mstantial incidents of the execution, unless with more s.p.a.ce than I can now command, I should be unwilling to relate. I should fear to injure, by imperfect report, a martyrdom which to myself appears so unspeakably grand. Yet I shall, in parting, allude to one or two traits in Joanna's demeanour on the scaffold, and to one or two in that of the bystanders. The reader ought to be reminded that Joanna D'Arc was subjected to an unusually unfair trial of opinion. Any of the elder Christian martyrs had not much to fear of _personal_ rancour. The martyr was chiefly regarded as the enemy of Caesar; at times, also, where any knowledge of the Christian faith and morals existed, with the enmity that arises spontaneously in the worldly against the spiritual. But the martyr, though disloyal, was not supposed to be therefore anti-national; and still less was _individually_ hateful. What was hated (if anything) belonged to his cla.s.s, not to himself separately. Now, Joanna, if hated at all, was hated personally, and in Rouen on national grounds. Hence there would be a certainty of calumny arising against _her_ such as would not affect martyrs in general. That being the case, it would follow of necessity that some people would impute to her a willingness to recant. No innocence could escape _that_. Now, had she really testified this willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued nothing at all but the weakness of a genial nature shrinking from the instant approach of torment. And those will often pity that weakness most who, in their own persons, would yield to it least. Meantime, there never was a calumny uttered that drew less support from the recorded circ.u.mstances. It rests upon no _positive_ testimony, and it has a weight of contradicting testimony to stem.

Now, I affirm that she did not recant. I throw the _onus_ [Footnote: Burden.] of the argument not on presumable tendencies of nature, but on the known facts of that morning's execution, as recorded by mult.i.tudes.

What else, I demand, than mere weight of metal, absolute n.o.bility of deportment, broke the vast line of battle then arrayed against her? What else but her meek, saintly demeanour won, from the enemies that till now had believed her a witch, tears of rapturous admiration? "Ten thousand men," says M. Michelet himself--"ten thousand men wept"; and of these ten thousand the majority were political enemies knitted together by cords of superst.i.tion. What else was it but her constancy, united with her angelic gentleness, that drove the fanatic English soldier--who had sworn to throw a f.a.ggot on her scaffold, as _his_ tribute of abhorrence, that _did_ so, that fulfilled his vow--suddenly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had stood? What else drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to _his_ share in the tragedy? And, if all this were insufficient, then I cite the closing act of her life as valid on her behalf, were all other testimonies against her. The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose upwards in billowing volumes. A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side. Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted in his prayers. Even then, when the last enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment did this n.o.blest of girls think only for _him_, the one friend that would not forsake her, and not for herself; bidding him with her last breath to care for his own preservation, but to leave _her_ to G.o.d. That girl, whose latest breath ascended in this sublime expression of self-oblivion, did not utter the word _recant_ either with her lips or in her heart. No, she did not, though one should rise from the dead to swear it.

The shepherd girl that had delivered France--she, from her dungeon, she, from her baiting at the stake, she, from her duel with fire, as she entered her last dream--saw Domremy, saw the fountain of Domremy, saw the pomp of forests in which her childhood had wandered. That Easter festival which man had denied to her languis.h.i.+ng heart--that resurrection of springtime, which the darkness of dungeons had intercepted from _her_, hungering after the glorious liberty of forests--were by G.o.d given back into her hands, as jewels that had been stolen from her by robbers. With those, perhaps (for the minutes of dreams can stretch into ages), was given back to her by G.o.d the bliss of childhood. By special privilege for _her_ might be created, in this farewell dream, a second childhood, innocent as the first; but not, like _that_, sad with the gloom of a fearful mission in the rear. This mission had now been fulfilled. The storm was weathered; the skirts even of that mighty storm were drawing off. The blood that she was to reckon for had been exacted; the tears that she was to shed in secret had been paid to the last. The hatred to herself in all eyes had been faced steadily, had been suffered, had been survived. And in her last fight upon the scaffold she had triumphed gloriously; victoriously she had tasted the stings of death. For all, except this comfort from her farewell dream, she had died--died, amidst the tears of ten thousand enemies died, amidst the drums and trumpets of armies--died, amidst peals redoubling upon peals, volleys upon volleys, from the saluting clarions of martyrs.

Bishop of Beauvais! because the guilt-burdened man is in dreams haunted and waylaid by the most frightful of his crimes, and because upon that fluctuating mirror-rising (like the mocking mirrors of _mirage_ in Arabian deserts) from the fens of death--most of all are reflected the sweet countenances which the man has laid in ruins; therefore I know, bishop, that you also, entering your final dream, saw Domremy. That fountain, of which the witnesses spoke so much, showed itself to your eyes in pure morning dews; but neither dews, nor the holy dawn, could cleanse away the bright spots of innocent blood upon its surface. By the fountain, bishop, you saw a woman seated, that hid her face. But, as _you_ draw near, the woman raises her wasted features. Would Domremy know them again for the features of her child? Ah, but _you_ know them, bishop, well! Oh, mercy! what a groan was _that_ which the servants, waiting outside the bishop's dream at his bedside, heard from his labouring heart, as at this moment he turned away from the fountain and the woman, seeking rest in the forests afar off. Yet not _so_ to escape the woman, whom once again he must behold before he dies. In the forests to which he prays for pity, will he find a respite? What a tumult, what a gathering of feet is there! In glades where only wild deer should run, armies and nations are a.s.sembling. There is the Bishop of Beauvais, clinging to the shelter of thickets. What building is that which hands so rapid are raising? Is it a martyr's scaffold? Will they burn the child of Domremy a second time? No: it is a tribunal that rises to the clouds. Shall my Lord of Beauvais sit again upon the judgment-seat, and again number the hours for the innocent? Ah no! he is the prisoner at the bar. Already all is waiting: the mighty audience is gathered, the Court is hurrying to their seats, the witnesses are arrayed, the judge is taking his place. My lord, have you no counsel? "Counsel I have none: in heaven above, or on earth beneath, counsellor there is none now that would take a brief from _me:_ all are silent." Is it, indeed, come to this? Alas! the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, the crowd stretches away into infinity, but yet I will search in it for somebody to take your brief; I know of somebody that will be your counsel. Who is this that cometh from Domremy? Who is she in b.l.o.o.d.y coronation robes from Rheims? Who is she that cometh with blackened flesh from walking the furnaces of Rouen? This is she, the shepherd girl, counsellor that had none for herself, whom I choose, bishop, for yours. She it is, I engage, that shall take my lord's brief. She it is, bishop, that would plead for you: yes, bishop, SHE--when heaven and earth are silent.