Saint Joan

nonsense. Therefore I have thought it well to have your sixty-four articles cut down to twelve⁠— Courcelles Thunderstruck. Twelve!!! The Inquisitor Twelve will, believe me, be quite enough for your purpose. The Chaplain But some of the most important points have been reduced almost to nothing. For instance, The Maid has actually declared that the blessed saints Margaret and Catherine, and the holy Archangel Michael, spoke to her in French. That is a vital point. The Inquisitor You think, doubtless, that they should have spoken in Latin? Cauchon No: he thinks they should have spoken in English. The Chaplain Naturally, my lord. The Inquisitor Well, as we are all here agreed, I think, that these voices of The Maid are the voices of evil spirits tempting her to her damnation, it would not be very courteous to you, Master de Stogumber, or to the King of England, to assume that English is the devil’s native language. So let it pass. The matter is not wholly omitted from the twelve articles. Pray take your places, gentlemen; and let us proceed to business. All who have not taken their seats, do so. The Chaplain Well, I protest. That is all. Courcelles I think it hard that all our work should go for nothing. It is only another example of the diabolical influence which this woman exercises over the court. He takes his chair, which is on the Chaplain’s right. Cauchon Do you suggest that I am under diabolical influence? Courcelles I suggest nothing, my lord. But it seems to me that there is a conspiracy here to hush up the fact that The Maid stole the Bishop of Senlis’s horse. Cauchon Keeping his temper with difficulty. This is not a police court. Are we to waste our time on such rubbish? Courcelles Rising, shocked. My lord: do you call the Bishop’s horse rubbish? The Inquisitor Blandly. Master de Courcelles: The Maid alleges that she paid handsomely for the Bishop’s horse, and that if he did not get the money the fault was not hers. As that may be true, the point is one on which The Maid may well be acquitted. Courcelles Yes, if it were an ordinary horse. But the Bishop’s horse! how can she be acquitted for that? He sits down again, bewildered and discouraged. The Inquisitor I submit to you, with great respect, that if we persist in trying The Maid on trumpery issues on which we may have to declare her innocent, she may escape us on the great main issue of heresy, on which she seems so far to insist on her own guilt. I will ask you, therefore, to say nothing, when The Maid is brought before us, of these stealings of horses, and dancings round fairy trees with the village children, and prayings at haunted wells, and a dozen other things which you were diligently inquiring into until my arrival. There is not a village girl in France against whom you could not prove such things: they all dance round haunted trees, and pray at magic wells. Some of them would steal the Pope’s horse if they got the chance. Heresy, gentlemen, heresy is the charge we have to try. The detection and suppression of heresy is my peculiar business: I am here as an inquisitor, not as an ordinary magistrate. Stick to the heresy, gentlemen; and leave the other matters alone. Cauchon I may say that we have sent to the girl’s village to make inquiries about her; and there is practically nothing serious against her. Rising and clamoring together. The Chaplain Nothing serious, my lord⁠— Courcelles What! The fairy tree not⁠— Cauchon Out of patience. Be silent, gentlemen; or speak one at a time. Courcelles collapses into his chair, intimidated. The Chaplain Sulkily resuming his seat. That is what The Maid said to us last Friday. Cauchon I wish you had followed her counsel, sir. When I say nothing serious, I mean nothing that men of sufficiently large mind to conduct an inquiry like this would consider serious. I agree with my colleague the Inquisitor that it is on the count of heresy that we must proceed. Ladvenu A young but ascetically fine-drawn Dominican who is sitting next Courcelles, on his right. But is there any great harm in the girl’s heresy? Is it not merely her simplicity? Many saints have said as much as Joan. The Inquisitor Dropping his blandness and speaking very gravely. Brother Martin: if you had seen what I have seen of heresy, you would not think it a light thing even in its most apparently harmless and even lovable and pious origins. Heresy begins with people who are to all appearance better than their neighbors. A gentle and pious girl, or a young man who has obeyed the command of our Lord by giving all his riches to the poor, and putting on the garb of poverty, the life of austerity, and the rule of humility and charity, may be the founder of a heresy that will wreck both Church and Empire if not ruthlessly stamped out in time. The records of the holy Inquisition are full of histories we dare not give to the world, because they are beyond the belief of honest men and innocent women; yet they all began with saintly simpletons. I have seen this again and again. Mark what I say: the woman who quarrels with her clothes, and puts on the dress of a man, is like the man who throws off his fur gown and dresses like John the Baptist: they are followed, as surely as the night follows the day, by bands of wild women and men who refuse to wear any clothes at all. When maids will neither marry nor take regular vows, and men reject marriage and exalt their lusts into divine inspirations, then, as surely as the summer follows the spring, they begin with polygamy, and end by incest. Heresy at first seems innocent and even laudable; but it ends in such a monstrous horror of unnatural