Volume I Part 15 (1/2)
”Hark ye, to you fling the King's command in his face and refuse to deliver this message of yours to his servants appointed to receive it?”
”G.o.d has appointed me to receive it, and another's commandment may not take precedence of that. I pray you let me have speech for his grace the Dauphin.”
”Forbear this folly, and come at your message! Deliver it, and waste no more time about it.”
”You err indeed, most reverend fathers in G.o.d, and it is not well. I am not come hither to talk, but to deliver Orleans, and lead the Dauphin to his good city of Rheims, and set the crown upon his head.”
”Is that the message you send to the King?”
But Joan only said, in the simple fas.h.i.+on which was her wont:
”Ye will pardon me for reminding you again?but I have no message to send to any one.”
The King's messengers rose in deep anger and swept out of the place without further words, we and Joan kneeling as they pa.s.sed.
Our countenances were vacant, our hearts full of a sense of disaster.
Our precious opportunity was thrown away; we could not understand Joan's conduct, she who had been so wise until this fatal hour. At last the Sieur Bertrand found courage to ask her why she had let this great chance to get her message to the King go by.
”Who sent them here?” she asked.
”The King.”
”Who moved the King to send them?” She waited for an answer; none came, for we began to see what was in her mind?so she answered herself: ”The Dauphin's council moved him to it. Are they enemies to me and to the Dauphin's weal, or are they friends?”
”Enemies,” answered the Sieur Bertrand.
”If one would have a message go sound and ungarbled, does one choose traitors and tricksters to send it by?”
I saw that we had been fools, and she wise. They saw it too, so none found anything to say. Then she went on:
”They had but small wit that contrived this trap. They thought to get my message and seem to deliver it straight, yet deftly twist it from its purpose. You know that one part of my message is but this?to move the Dauphin by argument and reasonings to give me men-at-arms and send me to the siege. If an enemy carried these in the right words, the exact words, and no word missing, yet left out the persuasions of gesture and supplicating tone and beseeching looks that inform the words and make them live, where were the value of that argument?whom could it convince?
Be patient, the Dauphin will hear me presently; have no fear.”
The Sieur de Metz nodded his head several times, and muttered as to himself:
”She was right and wise, and we are but dull fools, when all is said.”
It was just my thought; I could have said it myself; and indeed it was the thought of all there present. A sort of awe crept over us, to think how that untaught girl, taken suddenly and unprepared, was yet able to penetrate the cunning devices of a King's trained advisers and defeat them. Marveling over this, and astonished at it, we fell silent and spoke no more. We had come to know that she was great in courage, fort.i.tude, endurance, patience, conviction, fidelity to all duties?in all things, indeed, that make a good and trusty soldier and perfect him for his post; now we were beginning to feel that maybe there were greatnesses in her brain that were even greater than these great qualities of the heart. It set us thinking.
What Joan did that day bore fruit the very day after. The King was obliged to respect the spirit of a young girl who could hold her own and stand her ground like that, and he a.s.serted himself sufficiently to put his respect into an act instead of into polite and empty words. He moved Joan out of that poor inn, and housed her, with us her servants, in the Castle of Courdray, personally confiding her to the care of Madame de Bellier, wife of old Raoul de Gaucourt, Master of the Palace. Of course, this royal attention had an immediate result: all the great lords and ladies of the Court began to flock there to see and listen to the wonderful girl-soldier that all the world was talking about, and who had answered the King's mandate with a bland refusal to obey. Joan charmed them every one with her sweetness and simplicity and unconscious eloquence, and all the best and capablest among them recognized that there was an indefinable something about her that testified that she was not made of common clay, that she was built on a grander plan than the ma.s.s of mankind, and moved on a loftier plane. These spread her fame.
She always made friends and advocates that way; neither the high nor the low could come within the sound of her voice and the sight of her face and go out from her presence indifferent.
Chapter 6 Joan Convinces the King
WELL, anything to make delay. The King's council advised him against arriving at a decision in our matter too precipitately. He arrive at a decision too precipitately! So they sent a committee of priests?always priests?into Lorraine to inquire into Joan's character and history?a matter which would consume several weeks, of course. You see how fastidious they were. It was as if people should come to put out the fire when a man's house was burning down, and they waited till they could send into another country to find out if he had always kept the Sabbath or not, before letting him try.
So the days poked along; dreary for us young people in some ways, but not in all, for we had one great antic.i.p.ation in front of us; we had never seen a king, and now some day we should have that prodigious spectacle to see and to treasure in our memories all our lives; so we were on the lookout, and always eager and watching for the chance. The others were doomed to wait longer than I, as it turned out. One day great news came?the Orleans commissioners, with Yolande and our knights, had at last turned the council's position and persuaded the King to see Joan.