Jeanne D'Arc: her life and death by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
page 252 of 327 (77%)
page 252 of 327 (77%)
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Asked, how the ecclesiastics (_gens d'église_) knew it was an angel she
answered, "By their knowledge (science), and because they were priests." Was this the keenest irony, or was it the wandering of a weary mind? We cannot tell; but if the latter, it was the only occasion on which Jeanne's mind wandered; and there was method and meaning in the strange tale. She was further questioned whether it was by the advice of her voices that she attacked La Charité, and afterwards Paris, her two points of failure; the purpose of her examiners clearly being to convince her that those voices had deceived her. To both questions she answered no. To Paris she went at the request of gentlemen who wished to make a skirmish, or assault of arms (_vaillance d'armes_); but she intended to go farther, and to pass the moats; that is, to force the fighting and make the skirmish into a serious assault; the same was the case before La Charité. She was asked whether she had no revelation concerning Pont l'Evêque, and said that since it was revealed to her at Melun that she should be taken, she had had more recourse to the will of the captains than to her own; but she did not tell them that it was revealed to her that she should be taken. Asked, if she thought it was well done to attack Paris on the day of the Nativity of our Lady, which was a festival of the Church; she answered, that it was always well to keep the festivals of our Lady: and in her conscience it seemed to her that it was and always would be a good thing to keep the feasts of our Lady, from one end to the other. In the afternoon the examiners returned to the attempt at escape or suicide--they seemed to have preferred the latter explanation--made at Beaurevoir; and as Jeanne expresses herself with more freedom as to her |
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