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BOOKS BY
MARK TWAIN

ST. JOAN OF ARC

THE INNOCENTS ABROAD'

ROUGHING IT

THE GILDED AGE

A TRAMP ABROAD

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR

PUDD'NHEAD WILSON

SKETCHES NEW AND OLD

THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

A CONNECTICUT YANKEE AT THE COURT OF

KING ARTHUR

THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC
LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI

THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBUHG
THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER
THE $30,000 BEQUEST
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
TOM SAWYER ABROAD
WHAT IS MAN?
THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

ADAM'S DIARY

A DOG'S TALE

A DOUBLE-BARRELED DETECTIVE STORY

EDITORIAL WILD OATS

EVE'S DIARY

IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY AND

OTHER ESSAYS
IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
CAPT. STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN
A HORSE'S TALE
THE JUMPING FROG
THE £1,000,000 BANK-NOTE
TRAVELS AT HOME
TRAVELS IN HISTORY

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS
MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES

HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK

[ESTABLISHED 1817]

he believed that she had daily
speech with angels

Saint Joan §f

CA<_v,,es

oTWark Twain

With Illustrations in Color by
HOWARD PYLE

Decorations in Tint by
WILFRED J. JONES

Harper C& Brothers Publishers
New York and London

. . .

ST. JOAN OF ARC

Copyright, 1897, 1919, by Harper & Brothers

Printed in the United States of America

Published May, 1919

B-T

T

OF THE
OF A/EW YORK

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ILLUSTRATIONS

She Believed That She Had
Daily Speech with Angels Frontispiece

The Triumphal Entry into

Rheims Facing p. 6

Guarded by Rough English

Soldiers " 12

A Lithe, Young, Slender

Figure " 20

. •• '

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* 4. I I

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The Official Record of the Trials
and Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc is
the most remarkable history that ex-
ists in any language; yet there are few
people in the world who can say they
have read it: in England and America
it has hardly been heard of.

Three hundred years ago Shake-
speare did not know the true story of
Joan of Arc; in his day it was un-
known even in France. For four hun-
dred years it existed rather as a vague-
ly denned romance than as definite
and authentic history. The true story
remained buried in the official archives
of France from the Rehabilitation of
1456 until Quicherat dug it out and
gave it to the world two generations
ago, in lucid and understandable mod-
ern French. It is a deeply fascinating
story. But only in the Official Trials
and Rehabilitation can it be found in
its entirety. — M. T.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE1

To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned
man's character one must judge it by the
standards of his time, not ours. Judged by
the standards of one century, the noblest char-
acters of an earlier one lose much of their
luster; judged by the standards of to-day,
there is probably no illustrious man of four or
five centuries ago whose character could meet
the test at all points. But the character of
Joan of Arc is unique. It can be measured by
the standards of all times without misgiving or
apprehension as to the result. Judged by any
of them, judged by all of them, it is still flaw-
less, it is still ideally perfect; it still occupies
the loftiest place possible to human attainment,
a loftier one than has been reached by any other
mere mortal.

When we reflect that her century was the
brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in his-

1 From Personal Recollections «f Joan of Arc, by Mark Twain

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

tory since the darkest ages, we are lost in won-
der at the miracle of such a product from such
a soil. The contrast between her and her cen-
tury is the contrast between day and night.
She was truthful when lying was the common
speech of men; she was honest when honesty
was become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of
promises when the keeping of a promise was ex-
pected of no one; she gave her great mind to great
thoughts and great purposes when other great
minds wasted themselves upon pretty fancies
or upon poor ambitions; she was modest, and
fine, and delicate when to be loud and coarse
might be said to be universal; she was full of
pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she
was steadfast when stability was unknown, and
honorable in an age which had forgotten what
honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a
time when men believed in nothing and scoffed
at all things; she was unfailingly true in an
age that was false to the core; she maintained
her personal dignity unimpaired in an age of
f awnings and servilities; she was of a daunt-
less courage when hope and courage had perished
in the hearts of her nation; she was spotlessly
pure in mind and body when society in the
highest places was foul in both — she was all

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

XI

these things in an age when crime was the com-
mon business of lords and princes, and when
the highest personages in Christendom were
able to astonish even that infamous era and
make it stand aghast at the spectacle of their
atrocious lives black with unimaginable treach-
eries, butcheries, and bestialities.

She was perhaps the only entirely unselfish
person whose name has a place in profane
history. No vestige or suggestion of self-seek-
ing can be found in any word or deed of hers.
When she had rescued her King from his vaga-
bondage, and set his crown upon his head, she
was offered rewards and honors, but she refused
them all, and would take nothing. All she
would take for herself — if the King would grant
it — was leave to go back to her village home,
and tend her sheep again, and feel her mother's
arms about her, and be her housemaid and
helper. The selfishness of this unspoiled gen-
eral of victorious armies, companion of princes,
and idol of an applauding and grateful nation,
reached but that far and no farther.

The work wrought by Joan of Arc may fairly
be regarded as ranking any recorded in history,
when one considers the conditions under which
it was undertaken, the obstacles in the way,

Xll

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

and the means at her disposal. Caesar carried
conquest far, but he did it with the trained and
confident veterans of Rome, and was a trained
soldier himself; and Napoleon swept away the
disciplined armies of Europe, but he also was
a trained soldier, and he began his work with
patriot battalions inflamed and inspired by the
miracle-working new breath of Liberty breathed
upon them by the Revolution — eager young
apprentices to the splendid trade of war, not
old and broken men-at-arms, despairing sur-
vivors of an age-long accumulation of monoto-
nous defeats; but Joan of Arc, a mere child in
years, ignorant, unlettered, a poor village girl
unknown and without influence, found a great
nation lying in chains, helpless and hopeless
under an alien domination, its treasury bank-
rupt, its soldiers disheartened and dispersed, all
spirit torpid, all courage dead in the hearts of
the people through long years of foreign and
domestic outrage and oppression, their King
cowed, resigned to its fate, and preparing to
fly the country; and she laid her hand upon
this nation, this corpse, and it rose and followed
her. She led it from victory to victory, she
turned back the tide of the Hundred Years'
War, she fatally crippled the English power,

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

Xlll

and died with the earned title of Deliverer of
France, which she bears to this day.

And for all reward, the French King, whom
she had crowned, stood supine and indifferent,
while French priests took the noble child, the
most innocent, the most lovely, the most ador-
able the ages have produced, and burned her
alive at the stake.

Saint Joan §f

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

CHAPTER I

HE evidence furnished at the
Trials and Rehabilitation sets
forth Joan of Arc's strange and
beautiful history in clear and
minute detail. Among all the
multitude of biographies that
freight the shelves of the
world's libraries, this is the only one whose
validity is confirmed to us by oath. It
gives us a vivid picture of a career and a
personality of so extraordinary a character that
we are helped to accept them as actualities by
the very fact that both are beyond the inven-
tive reach of fiction. The public part of the
career occupied only a mere breath of time — it
covered but two years ; but what a career it was !
The personality which made it possible is one to
be reverently studied, loved, and marveled at,
but not to be wholly understood and accounted
for by even the most searching analysis.

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SAINT JOAN OF ARC

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In Joan of Arc at the age of sixteen there
was no promise of a romance. She lived in a
dull little village on the frontiers of civiliza-
tion; she had been nowhere and had seen
nothing; she knew none but simple shepherd
folk; she had never seen a person of note; she
hardly knew what a soldier looked like; she
had never ridden a horse, nor had a warlike
weapon in her hand; she could neither read
nor write; she could spin and sew; she knew
her catechism and her prayers and the fabu-
lous histories of the saints, and this was all
her learning. That was Joan at sixteen. What
did she know of law? of evidence? of courts?
of the attorney's trade? of legal procedure?
Nothing. Less than nothing. Thus exhaust-
ively equipped with ignorance, she went be-
fore the court at Toul to contest a false charge
of breach of promise of marriage; she con-
ducted her cause herself, without any one's
help or advice or any one's friendly sympathy,
and won it. She called no witnesses of her own,
but vanquished the prosecution by using with
deadly effectiveness its own testimony. The
astonished judge threw the case out of court,
and spoke of her as "this marvelous child."
She went to the veteran Commandant of

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

Vaucouleurs and demanded an escort of sol-
diers, saying she must niarch to the help of
the King of France, since she was commissioned
of God to win back his lost kingdom for him
and set the crown upon his head. The Com-
mandant said, "What, you? you are only a
child." And he advised that she be taken back
to her village and have her ears boxed. But
she said she must obey God, and would come
again, and again, and yet again, and finally
she would get the soldiers. She said truly.
In time he yielded, after months of delay and
refusal, and gave her the soldiers; and took
off his sword and gave her that, and said,
"Go — and let come what may." She made
her long and perilous journey through the en-
emy's country, and spoke with the King, and
convinced him. Then she was summoned be-
fore the University of Poitiers to prove that
she was commissioned of God and not of Satan,
and daily during three weeks she sat before
that learned congress unafraid, and capably
answered their deep questions out of her igno-
rant but able head and her simple and honest
heart; and again she won her case, and with it
the wondering admiration of all that august
company.

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

And now, aged seventeen, she was made
Commander - in - Chief, with a prince of the
royal house and the veteran generals of
France for subordinates; and at the head of
the first army she had ever seen, she marched
to Orleans, carried the commanding fortress
of the enemy by storm in three desperate
assaults, and in ten days raised a siege which
had defied the might of France for seven
months.

After a tedious and insane delay caused by
the King's instability of character and the
treacherous counsels of his ministers, she got
permission to take the field again. She took
Jargeau by storm; then Meung; she forced
Beaugency to surrender; then— in the open
field — she won the memorable victory of Patay
against Talbot "the English Lion," and broke
the back of the Hundred Years' War. It was

campaign which cost but seven weeks of

time; yet the political results would have been
cheap if the time expended had been fifty
years. Patay, that unsung and now long-
forgotten battle, was the Moscow of the Eng-
lish power in France; from the blow struck
that day it was destined never to recover. It
was the beginning of the end of an alien do-

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

minion which had ridden France intermittently
for three hundred years.

Then followed the great campaign of the
Loire, the capture of Troyes by assault, and
the triumphal march past surrendering towns
and fortresses to Rheims, where Joan put the
crown upon her King's head in the Cathedral,
amid wild public rejoicings, and with her old
peasant father there to see these things and
believe his eyes if he could. She had restored
the crown and the lost sovereignty; the King
was grateful for once in his shabby, poor life,
and asked her to name her reward and have it.
She asked for nothing for herself, but begged
that the taxes of her native village might be
remitted forever. The prayer was granted,
and the promise kept for three hundred and
sixty years. Then it was broken, and remains
broken to-day. France was very poor then,
she is very rich now; but she has been collect-
ing those taxes for more than a hundred years.

Joan asked one other favor: that now that
her mission was fulfilled she might be allowed
to go back to her village and take up her
humble life again with her mother and the
friends of her childhood; for she had no pleasure
in the cruelties of war, and the sight of blood

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

and suffering wrung her heart. Sometimes in
battle she did not draw her sword, lest in the
splendid madness of the onset she might forget
herself and take an enemy's life with it. In
the Rouen Trials, one of her quaintest speeches
— coming from the gentle and girlish source it
did — was her naive remark that she had "never
killed any one." Her prayer for leave to go
back to the rest and peace of her village home
was not granted.

Then she wanted to march at once upon
Paris, take it, and drive the English out of
France. She was hampered in all ways that
treachery and the King's vacillation could de-
vise, but she forced her way to Paris at last,
and fell badly wounded in a successful assault
upon one of the gates. Of course her men lost
heart at once — she was the only heart they had.
They fell back. She begged to be allowed to
remain at the front, saying victory was sure.
"I will take Paris now or die!" she said. But
she was removed from the field by force; the
King ordered a retreat, and actually disbanded
his army. In accordance with a beautiful old
military custom Joan devoted her silver armor
and hung it up in the Cathedral of St. Denis.
Its great days were over.

VI.

vV* "*•

triumphal entry into Rheims

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

Then, by command, she followed the King
and his frivolous court and endured a gilded
captivity for a time, as well as her free spirit
could; and whenever inaction became unbear-
able she gathered some men together and rode
away and assaulted a stronghold and capt-
ured it.

At last in a sortie against the enemy, from
Compiegne, on the 24th of May (when she was
turned eighteen), she was herself captured,
after a gallant fight. It was her last battle.
She was to follow the drums no more.

Thus ended the briefest epoch-making mili-
tary career known to history. It lasted only a
year and a month, but it found France an
English province, and furnishes the reason that
France is France to-day and not an English
province still. Thirteen months! It was in-
deed a short career; but in the centuries that
have since elapsed five hundred millions of
Frenchmen have lived and died blest by the
benefactions it conferred; and so long as France
shall endure the mighty debt must grow. And
France is grateful; we often hear her say it.
Also thrifty: she collects the Domremy taxes.

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CHAPTER II

OAN was fated to spend the
rest of her life behind bolts
and bars. She was a prisoner
of war, not a criminal, there-
fore hers was recognized as
an honorable captivity. By
the rules of war she must be
held to ransom, and a fair price could not be
refused if offered. John of Luxembourg paid
her the just compliment of requiring a prince's
ransom for her. In that day that phrase repre-
sented a definite sum — 61,125 francs. It was of
course supposable that either the King or grateful
France, or both, would fly with the money and set
their fair young benefactor free. But this did
not happen. In five and a half months neither
King nor country stirred a hand nor offered a
penny. Twice Joan tried to escape. Once by
a trick she succeeded for a moment, and locked
her jailer in behind her, but she was discovered
and caught; in the other case she let herself
down from a tower sixty feet high, but her rope

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

was too short, and she got a fall that disabled
her and she could not get away.

Finally, Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, paid
the money and bought Joan — ostensibly for the
Church, to be tried for wearing male attire
and for other impieties, but really for the Eng-
lish, the enemy into whose hands the poor girl
was so piteously anxious not to fall. She was
now shut up in the dungeons of the Castle of
Rouen and kept in an iron cage, with her hands
and feet and neck chained to a pillar; and from
that time forth during all the months of her
imprisonment, till the end, several rough Eng-
lish soldiers stood guard over her night and
day — and not outside her room, but in it. It
was a dreary and hideous captivity, but it did
not conquer her: nothing could break that in-
vincible spirit. From first to last she was a
prisoner a year; and she spent the last three
months of it on trial for her life before a formid-
able array of ecclesiastical judges, and dis-
puting the ground with them foot by foot and
inch by inch with brilliant generalship and
dauntless pluck. The spectacle of that solitary
girl, forlorn and friendless, without advocate or
adviser, and without the help and guidance of
any copy of the charges brought against her

10

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

or rescript of the complex and voluminous
daily proceedings of the court to modify the
crushing strain upon her astonishing memory,
fighting that long battle, serene and undis-
mayed against these colossal odds, stands alone
in its pathos and its sublimity; it has nowhere
its mate, either in the annals of fact or in the
inventions of fiction.

And how fine and great were the things she
daily said, how fresh and crisp — and she so
worn in body, so starved, and tired, and har-
ried! They run through the whole gamut of
feeling and expression — from scorn and defiance,
uttered with soldierly fire and frankness, all
down the scale to wounded dignity clothed in
words of noble pathos; as, when her patience
was exhausted by the pestering delvings and
gropings and searchings of her persecutors to
find out what kind of devil's witchcraft she
had employed to rouse the war spirit in her
timid soldiers, she burst out with, "What I
said was, 'Ride these English down — and
I did it myself!" and as, when insultingly
asked why it was that her standard had place
at the crowning of the King in the Cathedral
of Rheims rather than the standards of the
other captains, she uttered that touching speech,

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

11

"It had borne the burden, it had earned
the honor" — a phrase which fell from her lips
without premeditation, yet whose moving beauty
and simple grace it would bankrupt the arts of
language to surpass.

Although she was on trial for her life, she was
the only witness called on either side; the only
witness summoned to testify before a packed
jury commissioned with a definite task: to find
her guilty, whether she was guilty or not. She
must be convicted out of her own mouth,
there being no other way to accomplish it.
Every advantage that learning has over igno-
rance, age over youth, experience over inexperi-
ence, chicane over artlessness, every trick and
trap and gin devisable by malice and the cun-
ning of sharp intellects practised in setting
snares for the unwary — all these were employed
against her without shame; and when these arts
were one by one defeated by the marvelous
intuitions of her alert and penetrating mind,
Bishop Cauchon stooped to a final baseness
which it degrades human speech to describe:
a priest who pretended to come from the region
of her own home and to be a pitying friend and
anxious to help her in her sore need was smug-
gled into her cell, and he misused his sacred

12

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

office to steal her confidence; she confided to
him the things sealed from revealment by her
Voices, and which her prosecutors had tried so
long in vain to trick her into betraying. A
concealed confederate set it all down and de-
livered it to Cauchon, who used Joan's secrets,
thus obtained, for her ruin.

Throughout the Trails, whatever the fore-
doomed witness said was twisted from its true
meaning when possible, and made to tell against
her ; and whenever an answer of hers was beyond
the reach of twisting it was not allowed to go
upon the record. It was upon one of these
latter occasions that she uttered that pathetic
reproach — to Cauchon: ''Ah, you set down
everything that is against me, but you will not
set down what is for me."

That this untrained young creature's genius
for war was wonderful, and her generalship
worthy to rank with the ripe products of a
tried and trained military experience, we have
the sworn testimony of two of her veteran
subordinates — one, the Due d'Alengon, the other
the greatest of the French generals of the time,
Dunois, Bastard of Orleans; that her genius
was as great — possibly even greater — in the
subtle warfare of the forum we have for witness

Guarded by rough English soldiers

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

13

the records of the Rouen Trials, that protracted
exhibition of intellectual fence maintained with
credit against the master-minds of France; that
her moral greatness was peer to her intellect
we call the Rouen Trials again to witness,
with their testimony to a fortitude which pa-
tiently and steadfastly endured during twelve
weeks the wasting forces of captivity, chains,
loneliness, sickness, darkness, hunger, thirst,
cold, shame, insult, abuse, broken sleep, treach-
ery, ingratitude, exhausting sieges of cross-
examination, the threat of torture, with the
rack before her and the executioner standing
ready: yet never surrendering, never asking
quarter, the frail wreck of her as unconquerable
the last day as was her invincible spirit the first.
Great as she was in so many ways, she was
perhaps even greatest of all in the lofty things
just named — her patient endurance, her stead-
fastness, her granite fortitude. We may not
hope to easily find her mate and twin in these
majestic qualities; where we lift our eyes high-
est we find only a strange and curious contrast
— there in the captive eagle beating his broken
wings on the Rock of St. Helena.

CHAPTER III

[HE Trials ended with her con-
demnation. But as she had
conceded nothing, confessed
nothing, this was victory for
her, defeat for Cauchon. But
his evil resources were not
yet exhausted. She was per-
suaded to agree to sign a paper of slight import,
then by treachery a paper was substituted which
contained a recantation and a detailed con-
fession of everything which had been charged
against her during the Trials and denied and
repudiated by her persistently during the three
months; and this false paper she ignorantly
signed. This was a victory for Cauchon. He
followed it eagerly and pitilessly up by at once
setting a trap for her which she could not
escape. When she realized this she gave up
the long struggle, denounced the treason which
had been practised against her, repudiated the
false confession, reasserted the truth of the
testimony which she had given in the Trials,

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

15

and went to her martyrdom with the peace of
God in her tired heart, and on her lips endear-
ing words and loving prayers for the cur she
had crowned and the nation of ingrates she had
saved.

When the fires rose about her and she begged
for a cross for her dying lips to kiss, it was not
a friend but an enemy, not a Frenchman but
an alien, not a comrade in arms but an English
soldier, that answered that pathetic prayer.
He broke a stick across his knee, bound the
pieces together in the form of the symbol she
so loved, and gave it her; and his gentle deed
is not forgotten, nor will be.

CHAPTER IV

WENTY-FIVE years after-
ward the Process of Reha-
bilitation was instituted, there
being a growing doubt as to
the validity of a sovereignty
that had been rescued and set
upon its feet by a person who
had been proved by the Church to be a witch
and a familiar of evil spirits. Joan's old gen-
erals, her secretary, several aged relations and
other villagers of Domremy, surviving judges and
secretaries of the Rouen and Poitiers Processes —
a cloud of witnesses, some of whom had been
her enemies and persecutors — came and made
oath and testified; and what they said was
written down. In that sworn testimony the
moving and beautiful history of Joan of Arc
is laid bare, from her childhood to her martyr-
dom. From the verdict she rises stainlessly
pure, in mind and heart, in speech and deed
and spirit, and will so endure to the end of
time.

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

17

She is the Wonder of the Ages. And when
we consider her origin, her early circumstances,
her sex, and that she did all the things upon
which her renown rests while she was still a
young girl, we recognize that while our race
continues she will be also the Riddle of the
Ages. When we set about accounting for a
Napoleon or a Shakespeare or a Raphael or a
Wagner or an Edison or other extraordinary
person, we understand that the measure of his
talent will not explain the whole result, nor
even the largest part of it; no, it is the atmos-
phere in which the talent was cradled that ex-
plains; it is the training which it received
while it grew, the nurture it got from reading,
study, example, the encouragement it gathered
from self-recognition and recognition from the
outside at each stage of its development: when
we know all these details, then we know why
the man was ready when his opportunity came.
We should expect Edison's surroundings and
atmosphere to have the largest share in dis-
covering him to himself and to the world; and
we should expect him to live and die undis-
covered in a land where an inventor could find
no comradeship, no sympathy, no ambition-
rousing atmosphere of recognition and applause

18

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

— Dahomey, for instance. Dahomey could not
find an Edison out; in Dahomey an Edison
could not find himself out. Broadly speaking,
genius is not born with sight, but blind; and
it is not itself that opens its eyes, but the subtle
influences of a myriad of stimulating exterior
circumstances.

We all know this to be not a guess, but a
mere commonplace fact, a truism. Lorraine
was Joan of Arc's Dahomey. And there the
Riddle confronts us. We can understand how
she could be born with military genius, with
leonine courage, with incomparable fortitude,
with a mind which was in several particulars
a prodigy — a mind which included among its
specialties the lawyer's gift of detecting traps
laid by the adversary in cunning and treacher-
ous arrangements of seemingly innocent words,
the orator's gift of eloquence, the advocate's
gift of presenting a case in clear and compact
form, the judge's gift of sorting and weighing
evidence, and finally, something recognizable
as more than a mere trace of the statesman's
gift of understanding a political situation and
how to make profitable use of such opportuni-
ties as it offers; we can comprehend how she
could be born with these great qualities, but

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

19

we cannot comprehend how they became im-
mediately usable and effective without the de-
veloping forces of a sympathetic atmosphere
and the training which comes of teaching, study,
practice — years of practice — and the crowning
and perfecting help of a thousand mistakes.
We can understand how the possibilities of the
future perfect peach are all lying hid in the
humble bitter-almond, but we cannot conceive
of the peach springing directly from the almond
without the intervening long seasons of patient
cultivation and development. Out of a cattle-
pasturing peasant village lost in the remote-
nesses of an unvisited wilderness and atrophied
with ages of stupefaction and ignorance we
cannot see a Joan of Arc issue equipped to
the last detail for her amazing career and hope
to be able to explain the riddle of it, labor at
it as we may.

It is beyond us. All the rules fail in this
girl's case. In the world's history she stands
alone — quite alone. Others have been great in
their first public exhibitions of generalship,
valor, legal talent, diplomacy, fortitude; but
always their previous years and associations
had been in a larger or smaller degree a prepa-
ration for these things. There have been no

20

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

exceptions to the rule. But Joan was com-
petent in- a law case at sixteen without ever
having seen a law-book or a court-house before;
she had no training in soldiership and no as-
sociations with it, yet she was a competent
general in her first campaign; she was brave
in her first battle, yet her courage had had no
education — not even the education which ±
boy's courage gets from never-ceasing reminders
that it is not permissible in a boy to be a
coward, but only in a girl; friendless, alone,
ignorant, in the blossom of her youth, she sat
week after week, a prisoner in chains, before
her assemblage of judges, enemies hunting her
to her death, the ablest minds in France, and
answered them out of an untaught wisdom
which overmatched their learning, baffled their
tricks and treacheries with a native sagacity
which compelled their wonder, and scored every
day a victory against these incredible odds and
camped unchallenged on the field. In the his-
tory of the human intellect, untrained, inex-
perienced, and using only its birthright equip-
ment of untried capacities, there is nothing
which approaches this. Joan of Arc stands
alone, and must continue to stand alone, by
reason of the unfellowed fact that in the things

La Pvcelle

A lithe, young, slender figure

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

21

wherein she was great she was so without
shade or suggestion of help from preparatory
teaching, practice, environment, or experience.
There is no one to compare her with, none to
measure her by; for all others among the illus-
trious grew toward their high place in an at-
mosphere and surroundings which discovered
their gift to them and nourished it and pro-
moted it, intentionally or unconsciously. There
have been other young generals, but they were
not girls; young generals, but they had been
soldiers before they were generals: she began
as a general; she commanded the first army
she ever saw; she led it from victory to victory,
and never lost a battle with it; there have
been young commanders-in-chief, but none so
young as she: she is the only soldier in history
who has held the supreme command of a na-
tion's armies at the age of seventeen.

Her history has still another feature which
sets her apart and leaves her without fellow
or competitor: there have been many unin-
spired prophets, but she was the only one who
ever ventured the daring detail of naming,
along with a foretold event, the event's precise
nature, the special time-limit within which it
would occur, and the place — and scored ful-

22

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

filment. At Vaucouleurs she said she must
go to the King and be made his general and
break the English power, and crown her sov-
ereign— "at Rheims." It all happened. It was
all to happen "next year" — and it did. She
foretold her first wound and its character and
date a month in advance, and the prophecy
was recorded in a public record-book three
weeks in advance. She repeated it the morning
of the date named, and it was fulfilled before
night. At Tours she foretold the limit of her
military career — saying it would end in one
year from the time of its utterance — and she
was right. She foretold her martyrdom — using
that word, and naming a time three months
away — and again she was right. At a time
when France seemed hopelessly and perma-
nently in the hands of the English she twice
asserted in her prison before her judges that
within seven years the English would meet
with a mightier disaster than had been the
fall of Orleans: it happened within five -=- the
fall of Paris. Other prophecies of hers came
true, both as to the event named and the time-
limit prescribed.

She was deeply religious, and believed that
she had daily speech with angels; that she saw

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

23

them face to face, and that they counseled
her, comforted and heartened her, and brought
commands to her direct from God. She had a
childlike faith in the heavenly origin of her ap-
paritions and her Voices, and not any threat
of any form of death was able to frighten it
out of her loyal heart. She was a beautiful
and simple and lovable character. In the
records of the Trials this comes out in clear
and shining detail. She was gentle and win-
ning and affectionate; she loved her home and
friends and her village life; she was miserable
in the presence of pain and suffering; she was
full of compassion: on the field of her most
splendid victory she forgot her triumph to
hold in her lap the head of a dying enemy
and comfort his passing spirit with pitying
words; in an age when it was common to
slaughter prisoners she stood dauntless between
hers and harm, and saved them alive; she was
forgiving, generous, unselfish, magnanimous; she
was pure from all spot or stain of baseness.
And always she was a girl; and dear and wor-
shipful, as is meet for that estate: when she
fell wounded, the first time, she was frightened,
and cried when she saw her blood gushing
from her breast ; but she was Joan of Arc ! and

24

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

when presently she found that her generals
were sounding the retreat, she staggered to
her feet and led the assault again and took
that place by storm.

There is no blemish in that rounded and
beautiful character.

How strange it is! — that almost invariably
the artist remembers only one detail — one minor
and meaningless detail of the personality of
Joan of Arc: to wit, that she was a peasant
girl — and forgets all the rest; and so he paints
her as a strapping, middle-aged fishwoman, with
costume to match, and in her face the spiritu-
ality of a ham. He is slave to his one idea, and
forgets to observe that the supremely great
souls are never lodged in gross bodies. No
brawn, no muscle, could endure the work that
their bodies must do; they do their miracles
by the spirit, which has fifty times the strength
and staying power of brawn and muscle. The
Napoleons are little, not big; and they work
twenty hours in the twenty-four, and come up
fresh, while the big soldiers with the little hearts
faint around them with fatigue. We know
what Joan of Arc was like, without asking —
merely by what she did. The artist should
paint her spirit — then he could not fail to

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

25

paint her body aright. She would rise before
us, then, a vision to win us, not repel: a lithe
young slender figure, instinct with "the un-
bought grace of youth," dear and bonny and
lovable, the face beautiful, and transfigured
with the light of that lustrous intellect and the
fires of that unquenchable spirit.

Taking into account, as I have suggested
before, all the circumstances — her origin, youth,
sex, illiteracy, early environment, and the ob-
structing conditions under which she exploited
her high gifts and made her conquests in the
field and before the courts that tried her for
her life — she is easily and by far the most ex-
traordinary person the human race has ever
produced.

CONCLUSION l

OAN'S brother Jacques died
in Domremy during the Great
Trial at Rouen. This was
I 'according to the prophecy
which Joan made that day
in the pastures the time that

she said the rest of us would

go to the great wars.

When her poor old father heard of the martyr-
dom it broke his heart and he died.

The mother was granted a pension by the
city of Orleans, and upon this she lived out her
days, which were many. Twenty-four years
after her illustrious child's death she traveled
all the way to Paris in the wintertime and was
present at the opening of the discussion in the
Cathedral of Notre Dame which was the first
step in the Rehabilitation. Paris was crowded
with people, from all about France, who came

1 From Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by Mark Twain.

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

27

to get sight of the venerable dame, and it was
a touching spectacle when she moved through
these reverend wet-eyed multitudes on her way
to the grand honors awaiting her at the cathe-
dral. With her were Jean and Pierre, no
longer the light-hearted youths who marched
with us from Vaucouleurs, but war-worn veterans
with hair beginning to show frost.

After the martyrdom Noel and I went back
to Domremy, but presently, when the Con-
stable Richemont superseded La Tremouille as
the King's chief adviser and began the com-
pletion of Joan's great work, we put on our har-
ness and returned to the field and fought for
the King all through the wars and skirmishes
until France was freed of the English. It was
what Joan would have desired of us; and,
dead or alive, her desire was law for us. All
the survivors of the personal staff were faith-
ful to her memory and fought for the King to
the end. Mainly we were well scattered, but
when Paris fell we happened to be together.
It was a great day and a joyous; but it was a
sad one at the same time, because Joan was not
there to march into the captured capital with us.

Noel and I remained always together, and I
was by his side when death claimed him. It

28

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

was in the last great battle of the war. In that
battle fell also Joan's sturdy old enemy Talbot.
He was eighty-five years old, and had spent his
whole life in battle. A fine old lion he was,
with his flowing white mane and his tameless
spirit ; yes, and his indestructible energy as well ;
for he fought as knightly and vigorous a fight
that day as the best man there.

La Hire survived the martyrdom thirteen
years; and always fighting, of course, for that
was all he enjoyed in life. I did not see him in
all that time, for we were far apart, but one
was always hearing of him.

The Bastard of Orleans and D'Alengon and
D'Aulon lived to see France free, and to testify
with Jean and Pierre d'Arc and Pasquerel and
me at the Rehabilitation. But they are all at
rest now, these many years. I alone am left of
those who fought at the side of Joan of Arc in
the great wars. She said I would live until
these wars were forgotten — a prophecy which
failed. If I should live a thousand years it
would still fail. For whatsoever had touch
with Joan of Arc, that thing is immortal.

Members of Joan's family married, and they
have left descendants. Their descendants are
of the nobility, but their family name and blood

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

29

bring them honors which no other nobles re-
ceive or may hope for. You have seen how
everybody along the way uncovered when those
children came yesterday to pay their duty to
me. It was not because they are noble; it is
because they are grandchildren of the brothers
of Joan of Arc.

Now as to the Rehabilitation. Joan crowned
the King at Rheims. For reward he allowed
her to be hunted to her death without making
one effort to save her. During the next twenty-
three years he remained indifferent to her mem-
ory; indifferent to the fact that her good name
was under a damning blot, put there by the
priests because of the deeds which she had done
in saving him and his scepter; indifferent to
the fact that France was ashamed, and longed
to have the Deliverer's fair fame restored. In-
different all that time. Then he suddenly
changed and was anxious to have justice for
poor Joan himself. Why? Had he become
grateful at last? Had remorse attacked his
hard heart? No, he had a better reason — a
better one for his sort of man. This better
reason was that, now that the English had been
finally expelled from the country, they were
beginning to call attention to the fact that this

30

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

King had gotten his crown by the hands of a
person proven by the priests to have been in
league with Satan and burned for it by them
as a sorceress — therefore, of what value or au-
thority was such a Kingship as that? Of no
value at all; no nation could afford to allow
such a king to remain on the throne.

It was high time to stir now, and the King
did it. That is how Charles VII. came to be
smitten with anxiety to have justice done the
memory of his benefactress.

He appealed to the Pope, and the Pope ap-
pointed a great commission of churchmen to
examine into the facts of Joan's life and award
judgment. The Commission sat at Paris, at
Domremy, at Rouen, at Orleans, and at several
other places, and continued its work during
several months. It examined the records of
Joan's trials, it examined the Bastard of Orleans,
and the Duke d'Alengon, and D'Aulon, and
Pasquerel, and Courcelles, and Isambard de la
Pierre, and Manchon, and me, and many others
whose names I have made familiar to you; also
they examined more than a hundred witnesses
whose names are less familiar to you — friends
of Joan in Domremy, Vaucouleurs, Orleans,
and other places, and a number of judges and

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

31

other people who had assisted at the Rouen trials,
the abjuration, and the martyrdom. And out of
this exhaustive examination Joan's character and
history came spotless and perfect, and this verdict
was placed upon record, to remain forever.

I was present upon most of these occasions,
and saw again many faces which I have not
seen for a quarter of a century; among them
some well -beloved faces — those of our generals
and that of Catherine Boucher (married, alas!),
and also among them certain other faces that
filled me with bitterness — those of Beaupere
and Courcelles and a number of their fellow-
fiends. I saw Haumette and Little Mengette —
edging along toward fifty now, and mothers of
many children. I saw Noel's father, and the
parents of the Paladin and the Sunflower.

It was beautiful to hear the Duke d'Alengon
praise Joan's splendid capacities as a general,
and to hear the Bastard indorse these praises
with his eloquent tongue and then go on and
tell how sweet and good Joan was, and how full
of pluck, and fire, and impetuosity, and mischief,
and mirthfulness, and tenderness, and com-
passion, and everything that was pure and fine
and noble and lovely. He made her live again
before me, and wrung my heart.

32

SAINT JOAN OF ARC

I have finished my story of Joan of Arc, that
wonderful child, that sublime personality, that
spirit which in one regard has had no peer and
will have none — this: its purity from all alloy
of self-seeking, self-interest, personal ambition.
In it no trace of these motives can be found,
search as you may, and this cannot be said of
any other person whose name appears in pro-
fane history. .

With Joan of Arc love of country was more
than a sentiment — it was a passion. She was
the Genius of Patriotism — she was Patriotism
embodied, concreted, made flesh, and palpable
to the touch and visible to the eye.

Love, Mercy, Charity, Fortitude, War, Peace,
Poetry, Music — these may be symbolized as any
shall prefer : by figures of either sex and of any
age; but a slender girl in her first young bloom,
with the martyr's crown upon her head, and in
her hand the sword that severed her country's
bonds — shall not this, and no other, stand for
Patriotism through all the ages until time shall
end?

THE END

ST.