Autobiography of Mark Twain (51 page)

_^
when Paris fell.
_^
Other prophecies of hers came true, both as to the event named and the time-limit prescribed.

VI.

HER CHARACTER
.

She was deeply religious, and believed that she had daily speech with angels; that she saw them face to face,
and
that they counselled her,
advised
_^
comforted
_^
her, and brought commands to her direct from God. She had a childlike faith in the heavenly origin of her apparitions and her Voices, and no
t any
threat
of any form
of death
was able to
_^
in any form could
_^
frighten it out of her loyal heart. She
was
_^
had
_^
a beautiful
and
simple and lovable character. In the records of the Trial
this comes out in clear and shining detail. She was gentle
and
winning and affectionate; she loved her home, her 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 triumphs to hold in her lap the head of a dying enemy and
_^
to
_^
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 worshipful, as is meet
for
_^
in
_^
that estate
:w
hen she fell wounded, the first time, she was frightened
and cried when she saw
her
_^
the
_^
blood gushing from her breast; but she
was Joan of
_^
Jeanne d’
_^
Arc,
and
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
_^
was
_^
no blemish in
that
_^
the
_^
rounded and beautiful character
_^
of Jeanne, the Maid.
_^
There was no self conceit in it, no vanity. Only once in her life did she forget whom she was, and use the language of brag and boast. In those exhausting Trials she sat in her chains five and six dreary hours every day in her dungeon, answering her judges; and many times the questions were wearisomely silly and she lost interest, and no doubt her mind went dreaming back to the free days in the field and the fierce joys of battle. One day, at such a time, a tormentor broke the monotony with a fresh new theme, asking, “Did you learn any trade at home?” Then her head went up and her eyes kindled; and the stormer of bastiles, tamer of Talbot the English lion, thunder-breathing deliverer of a cowed nation and a hunted king, answered “Yes! to sew and to spin; and when it comes to that, I am not afraid to be matched against any woman in Rouen!” It was the only time she ever bragged: let us be charitable and forget it.

VII.

HER FACE AND FORM
.

How strange it is
!
—that almost invariably the artist remembers only one detail—one minor and meaningless detail of the personality of
Joan of
_^
Jeanne d’
_^
Arc
that she was a peasant girl
and forgets all the rest
; and s
o he paints her as a strapping middle-aged fish
_^
wife,
_^
crwoman,
with costume and face to match. He is
slave to his one
_^
prevailing
_^
idea, and
forgets
_^
omits
_^
to observe that
the
supremely great souls are never lodged in
big
_^
gross
_^
bodies. No
brawn,
_^
tissue,
_^
no muscle, could endure the
work that their bodies must do
_^
strain of their physical efforts
_^
; they
do
_^
perform
_^
their miracles
by
_^
through
_^
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
_^
out of
_^
the twenty-four, and come up fresh while
_^
the
_^
big soldiers with little hearts faint around them with fatigue. We know what
Joan of Arc
_^
Jeanne
_^
was like, without
asking
—
_^
inquiring,
_^
merely by what she did. The artist should paint her
spirit
—then he could not fail to paint her body right. She would rise before us,
then,
_^
in such wise,
_^
a vision to win us, not
_^
to
_^
repel: a lithe
_^
, slender
_^
young
slender
figure, instinct with “the unbought grace of youth,”
dear and bonny and
_^
wholly
_^
lovable, the face beautiful,
and
transfigured with the light of
that lustrous
_^
her luminous
_^
intellect and the fires of
that
_^
her
_^
unquenchable spirit.
_^
“It was a miraculous thing,” said Guy de Laval, writing from Selles, “to see her and hear her.”
_^