第68章 THE JUDGES.(4)

But all our processes are mercy in comparison with those to which French prisoners at the bar are still exposed.It is unnecessary to enter into an account of these which are so well known;but they show that even such a trial as that of Jeanne was by no means so contrary to common usage,as it would be,and always would have been in England.In England we warn the accused to utter no rash word which may be used against him;in France the first principle is to draw from him every rash word that he can be made to bring forth.This was the method employed with Jeanne.Her judges were all Churchmen and dialecticians of the subtlest wit and most dexterous faculties in France;they had all,or almost all,a strong prepossession against her.Though we cannot believe that men of such quality were suborned,there was,no doubt,enough of jealous and indignant feeling among them to make the desire of convicting Jeanne more powerful with them than the desire for pure justice.She was a true Christian,but not perhaps the soundest of Church-women.Her visions had not the sanction of any priest's approval,except indeed the official but not warm affirmation of the Council at Poitiers.She had not hastened to take the Church into her confidence nor to put herself under its protection.Though her claims had been guaranteed by the company of divines at Poitiers,she herself had always appealed to her private instructions,through her saints,rather than to the guiding of any priest.The chief ecclesiastical dignitary of her own party had just held her up to the reprobation of the people for this cause:she was too independent,so proud that she would take no advice but acted according to her own will.The more accustomed a Churchman is to experience the unbounded devotion and obedience of women,the more enraged he is against those who judge for themselves or have other guides on whom they rely.Jeanne was,beside all other sins alleged against her,a presumptuous woman:and very few of these men had any desire to acquit her.They were little accustomed to researches which were solely intended to discover the truth:their principle rather was,as it has been the principle of many,to obtain proofs that their own particular way of thinking was the right one.It is not perhaps very good even for a system of doctrine when this is the principle by which it is tested.It is more fatal still,on this principle,to judge an individual for death or for life.It will be abundantly proved,however,by all that is to follow,that in face of this tribunal,learned,able,powerful,and prejudiced,the peasant girl of nineteen stood like a rock,unmoved by all their cleverness,undaunted by their severity,seldom or never losing her head,or her temper,her modest steadfastness,or her high spirit.If they hoped to have an easy bargain of her,never were men more mistaken.Not knowing a from b,as she herself said,untrained,unaided,she was more than a match for them all.

Round about this centre of eager intelligence,curiosity,and prejudice,the cathedral and council chamber teeming with Churchmen,was a dark and silent ring of laymen and soldiers.A number of the English leaders were in Rouen,but they appear very little.

Winchester,who had very lately come from England with an army,which according to some of the historians would not budge from Calais,where it had landed,"for fear of the Maid"--was the chief person in the place,but did not make any appearance at the trial,curiously enough;the Duke of Bedford we are informed was visible on one shameful occasion,but no more.But Warwick,who was the Governor of the town,appears frequently and various other lords with him.We see them in the mirror held up to us by the French historians,pressing round in an ever narrowing circle,closing up upon the tribunal in the midst,pricking the priests with perpetual sword points if they seem to loiter.They would have had everything pushed on,no delay,no possibility of escape.It is very possible that this was the case,for it is evident that the Witch was deeply obnoxious to the English,and that they were eager to have her and her endless process out of the way;but the evidence for their terror and fierce desire to expedite matters is of the feeblest.A canon of Rouen declared at the trial that he had heard it said by Ma?tre Pierre Morice,and Nicolas l'Oyseleur,judges assessors,and by other whose names he does not recollect,"that the said English were so afraid of her that they did not dare to begin the siege of Louviers until she was dead;and that it was necessary if one would please them,to hasten the trial as much as possible and to find the means of condemning her."Very likely this was quite true:but it cannot at all be taken for proved by such evidence.Another contemporary witness allows that though some of the English pushed on her trial for hate,some were well disposed to her;the manner of Jeanne's imprisonment is the only thing which inclines the reader to believe every evil thing that is said against them.

Such were the circumstances in which Jeanne was brought to trail.The population,moved to pity and to tears as any population would have been,before the end,would seem at the beginning to have been indifferent and not to have taken much interest one way or another:the court,a hundred men and more with all their hangers-on,the cleverest men in France,one more distinguished and impeccable than the others:the stern ring of the Englishmen outside keeping an eye upon the tedious suit and all its convolutions:these all appear before us,surrounding as with bands of iron the young lonely victim in the donjon,who submitting to every indignity,and deprived of every aid,feeling that all her friends had abandoned her,yet stood steadfast and strong in her absolute simplicity and honesty.It was but two years in that same spring weather since she had left Vaucouleurs to seek the fortune of France,to offer herself to the struggle which now was coming to an end.Not a soul had Jeanne to comfort or stand by her.She had her saints who--one wonders if such a thought ever entered into her young visionary head--had lured her to her doom,and who still comforted her with enigmatical words,promises which came true in so sadly different a sense from that in which they were understood.

[1]We are glad to add that the learned Quicherat has doubts on the subject of the cage.