She goes from them. They stare after her in glum silence for a moment. Then Gilles de Rais twirls his beard.
BLUEBEARD. You know, the woman is quite impossible. I dont dislike her, really; but what are you to do with such a character?
DUNOIS. As God is my judge, if she fell into the Loire I would jump in in full armor to fish her out. But if she plays the fool at Compiègne, and gets caught, I must leave her to her doom.
LA HIRE. Then you had better chain me up; for I could follow her to hell when the spirit rises in her like that.
THE ARCHBISHOP. She disturbs my judgment too: there is a dangerous power in her outbursts. But the pit is open at her feet; and for good or evil we cannot turn her from it.
CHARLES. If only she would keep quiet, or go home!
They follow her dispiritedly.
SCENE VI
Rouen, 30th May 1431. A great stone hall in the castle, arranged for a trial-at-law, but not a trial-by-jury, the court being the Bishop’s court with the Inquisition participating: hence there are two raised chairs side by side for the Bishop and the Inquisitor as judges. Rows of chairs radiating from them at an obtuse angle are for the canons, the doctors of law and theology, and the Dominican monks, who act as assessors. In the angle is a table for the scribes, with stools. There is also a heavy rough wooden stool for the prisoner. All these are at the inner end of the hall. The further end is open to the courtyard through a row of arches. The court is shielded from the weather by screens and curtains.
Looking down the great hall from the middle of the inner end, the judicial chairs and scribes’ table are to the right. The prisoner’s stool is to the left. There are arched doors right and left. It is a fine sunshiny May morning.
Warwick comes in through the arched doorway on the judges’ side, followed by his page.
THE PAGE [pertly] I suppose your lordship is aware that we have no business here. This is an ecclesiastical court; and we are only the secular arm.
WARWICK. I am aware of that fact. Will it please your impudence to find the Bishop of Beauvais for me, and give him a hint that he can have a word with me here before the trial, if he wishes?
THE PAGE [going] Yes, my lord.
WARWICK. And mind you behave yourself. Do not address him as Pious Peter.
THE PAGE. No, my lord. I shall be kind to him, because, when The Maid is brought in, Pious Peter will have to pick a peck of pickled pepper.
Cauchon enters through the same door with a Dominican monk and a canon, the latter carrying a brief.
THE PAGE. The Right Reverend his lordship the Bishop of Beauvais. And two other reverend gentlemen.
WARWICK. Get out; and see that we are not interrupted.
THE PAGE. Right, my lord [he vanishes airily].
CAUCHON. I wish your lordship good-morrow.
WARWICK. Good-morrow to your lordship. Have I had the pleasure of meeting your friends before? I think not.
CAUCHON [introducing the monk, who is on his right] This, my lord, is Brother John Lemaître, of the order of St Dominic. He is acting as deputy for the Chief Inquisitor into the evil of heresy in France. Brother John: the Earl of Warwick.
WARWICK. Your Reverence is most welcome. We have no Inquisitor in England, unfortunately; though we miss him greatly, especially on occasions like the present.
The Inquisitor smiles patiently, and bows. He is a mild elderly gentleman, but has evident reserves of authority and firmness.
CAUCHON [introducing the Canon, who is on his left] This gentleman is Canon John D’Estivet, of the Chapter of Bayeux. He is acting as Promoter.
WARWICK. Promoter?
CAUCHON. Prosecutor, you would call him in civil law.
WARWICK. Ah! prosecutor. Quite, quite. I am very glad to make your acquaintance, Canon D’Estivet.
D’ESTIVET [bows] ! [He is on the young side of middle age, well mannered, but vulpine beneath his veneer].
WARWICK. May I ask what stage the proceedings have reached? It is now more than nine months since The Maid was captured at Compiègne by the Burgundians. It is fully four months since I bought her from the Burgundians for a very handsome sum, solely that she might be brought to justice. It is very nearly three months since I delivered her up to you, my Lord Bishop, as a person suspected of heresy. May I suggest that you are taking a rather unconscionable time to make up your minds about a very plain case? Is this trial never going to end?
THE INQUISITOR [smiling] It has not yet begun, my lord.
WARWICK. Not yet begun! Why, you have been at it eleven weeks!
CAUCHON. We have not been idle, my lord. We have held fifteen examinations of The Maid: six public and nine private.
THE INQUISITOR [always patiently smiling] You see, my lord, I have been present at only two of these examinations. They were proceedings of the Bishop’s court solely, and not of the Holy Office. I have only just decided to associate myself—that is, to associate the Holy Inquisition—with the Bishop’s court. I did not at first think that this was a case of heresy at all. I regarded it as a political case, and The Maid as a prisoner of war. But having now been present at two of the examinations, I must admit that this seems to be one of the gravest cases of heresy within my experience. Therefore everything is now in order; and we proceed to trial this morning. [He moves towards the judicial chairs].
CAUCHON. This moment, if your lordship’s convenience allows.
WARWICK [graciously] Well, that is good news, gentlemen. I will not attempt to conceal from you that our patience was becoming strained.
CAUCHON. So I gathered from the threats of your soldiers to drown those of our people who favor The Maid.
WARWICK. Dear me! At all events their intentions were friendly to you, my lord.
CAUCHON [sternly] I hope not. I am determined that the woman shall have a fair hearing. The justice of the Church is not a mockery, my lord.
THE INQUISITOR [returning] Never has there been a fairer examination within my experience, my lord. The Maid needs no lawyers to take her part: she will be tried by her most faithful friends, all ardently desirous to save her soul from perdition.
D’ESTIVET. Sir: I am the Promoter; and it has been my painful duty to present the case against the girl; but believe me, I would throw up my case today and hasten to her defence if I did not know that men far my superiors in learning and piety, in eloquence and persuasiveness, have been sent to reason with her, to explain to her the danger she is running, and the ease with which she may avoid it. [Suddenly bursting into forensic eloquence, to the disgust of Cauchon and the Inquisitor, who have listened to him so far with patronizing approval] Men have dared to say that we are acting from hate; but God is our witness that they lie. Have we tortured her? No. Have we ceased to exhort her; to implore her to have pity on herself; to come to the bosom of her Church as an erring but beloved child? Have we—
CAUCHON [interrupting drily] Take care, Canon. All that you say is true; but if you make his lordship believe it I will not answer for your life, and hardly for my own.
WARWICK [deprecating, but by no means denying] Oh, my lord, you are very hard on us poor English. But we certainly do not share your pious desire to save The Maid: in fact I tell you now plainly that her death is a political necessity which I regret but cannot help. If the Church lets her go—
CAUCHON [with fierce and menacing pride] If the Church lets her go, woe to the man, were he the Emperor himself, who dares lay a finger on her! The Church is not subject to political necessity, my lord!
THE INQUISITOR [interposing smoothly] You need have no anxiety about the result, my lord. You have an invincible ally in the matter: one who is far more determined than you that she shall burn.
WARWICK. And who is this very convenient partisan, may I ask?
THE INQUISITOR. The Maid herself. Unless you put a gag in her mouth you cannot prevent her from convicting herself ten times over every time she opens it.
D’ESTIVET. That is perfectly true, my lord. My hair bristles on my head when I hear so young a creature utter such blasphemies.
WARWICK. Well, by all means do your best for her if you are quite sure it will be of no avail. [Looking hard at Cauchon] I should be sorry to have to act without the blessing of the Church.
CAUCHON [with a mixture of cynical admiration and contempt] And yet they say Englishmen are hypocrites! You play for your side, my lord, even at the peril of your soul. I cannot but admire such devotion; but I dare not go so far myself. I fear damnation.
WARWICK. If we feared anything we could never govern England, my lord. Shall I send your people in to you?
CAUCHON. Yes: it will be very good of your lordship to withdraw and allow the court to assemble.
Warwick turns on his heel, and goes out through the courtyard. Cauchon takes one of the judicial seats; and D’Estivet sits at the scribes’ table, studying his brief.
CAUCHON [casually, as he makes himself comfortable] What scoundrels these English nobles are!
THE INQUISITOR [taking the other judicial chair on Cauchon’s left] All secular power makes men scoundrels. They are not trained for the work; and they have not the Apostolic Succession. Our own nobles are just as bad.
The Bishop’s assessors hurry into the hall, headed by Chaplain de Stogumber and Canon de Courcelles, a young priest of 30. The scribes sit at the table, leaving a chair vacant opposite D’Estivet. Some of the assessors take their seats: others stand chatting, waiting for the proceedings to begin formally. De Stogumber, aggrieved and obstinate will not take his seat: neither will the Canon, who stands on his right.
CAUCHON. Good morning, Master de Stogumber. [To the Inquisitor] Chaplain to the Cardinal of England.
THE CHAPLAIN [correcting him] Of Winchester, my lord. I have to make a protest, my lord.
CAUCHON. You make a great many.
THE CHAPLAIN. I am not without support, my lord. Here is Master de Courcelles, Canon of Paris, who associates himself with me in my protest.
CAUCHON. Well, what is the matter?
THE CHAPLAIN [sulkily] Speak you, Master de Courcelles, since I do not seem to enjoy his lordship’s confidence. [He sits down in dudgeon next to Cauchon, on his right.]
COURCELLES. My lord: we have been at great pains to draw up an indictment of The Maid on sixtyfour counts. We are now told that they have been reduced, without consulting us.
THE INQUISITOR. Master de Courcelles: I am the culprit. I am overwhelmed with admiration for the zeal displayed in your sixtyfour counts; but in accusing a heretic, as in other things, enough is enough. Also you must remember that all the members of the court are not so subtle and profound as you, and that some of your very great learning might appear to them to be very great nonsense. Therefore I have thought it well to have your sixtyfour 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.
| THE CHAPLAIN | } | [rising and clamoring together] | { | 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 wickedness that the most tenderhearted among you, if you saw it at work as I have seen it, would clamor against the mercy of the Church in dealing with it. For two hundred years the Holy Office has striven with these diabolical madnesses; and it knows that they begin always by vain and ignorant persons setting up their own judgment against the Church, and taking it upon themselves to be the interpreters of God’s will. You must not fall into the common error of mistaking these simpletons for liars and hypocrites. They believe honestly and sincerely that their diabolical inspiration is divine. Therefore you must be on your guard against your natural compassion. You are all, I hope, merciful men: how else could you have devoted your lives to the service of our gentle Savior? You are going to see before you a young girl, pious and chaste; for I must tell you, gentlemen, that the things said of her by our English friends are supported by no evidence, whilst there is abundant testimony that her excesses have been excesses of religion and charity and not of worldliness and wantonness. This girl is not one of those whose hard features are the sign of hard hearts, and whose brazen looks and lewd demeanor condemn them before they are accused. The devilish pride that has led her into her present peril has left no mark on her countenance. Strange as it may seem to you, it has even left no mark on her character outside those special matters in which she is proud; so that you will see a diabolical pride and a natural humility seated side by side in the selfsame soul. Therefore be on your guard. God forbid that I should tell you to harden your hearts; for her punishment if we condemn her will be so cruel that we should forfeit our own hope of divine mercy were there one grain of malice against her in our hearts. But if you hate cruelty—and if any man here does not hate it I command him on his soul’s salvation to quit this holy court—I say, if you hate cruelty, remember that nothing is so cruel in its consequences as the toleration of heresy. Remember also that no court of law can be so cruel as the common people are to those whom they suspect of heresy. The heretic in the hands of the Holy Office is safe from violence, is assured of a fair trial, and cannot suffer death, even when guilty, if repentance follows sin. Innumerable lives of heretics have been saved because the Holy Office has taken them out of the hands of the people, and because the people have yielded them up, knowing that the Holy Office would deal with them. Before the Holy Inquisition existed, and even now when its officers are not within reach, the unfortunate wretch suspected of heresy, perhaps quite ignorantly and unjustly, is stoned, torn in pieces, drowned, burned in his house with all his innocent children, without a trial, unshriven, unburied save as a dog is buried: all of them deeds hateful to God and most cruel to man. Gentlemen: I am compassionate by nature as well as by my profession; and though the work I have to do may seem cruel to those who do not know how much more cruel it would be to leave it undone, I would go to the stake myself sooner than do it if I did not know its righteousness, its necessity, its essential mercy. I ask you to address yourself to this trial in that conviction. Anger is a bad counsellor: cast out anger. Pity is sometimes a worse: cast out pity. But do not cast out mercy. Remember only that justice comes first. Have you anything to say, my lord, before we proceed to trial?
CAUCHON. You have spoken for me, and spoken better than I could. I do not see how any sane man could disagree with a word that has fallen from you. But this I will add. The crude heresies of which you have told us are horrible; but their horror is like that of the black death: they rage for a while and then die out, because sound and sensible men will not under any incitement be reconciled to nakedness and incest and polygamy and the like. But we are confronted today throughout Europe with a heresy that is spreading among men not weak in mind nor diseased in brain: nay, the stronger the mind, the more obstinate the heretic. It is neither discredited by fantastic extremes nor corrupted by the common lusts of the flesh; but it, too, sets up the private judgment of the single erring mortal against the considered wisdom and experience of the Church. The mighty structure of Catholic Christendom will never be shaken by naked madmen or by the sins of Moab and Ammon. But it may be betrayed from within, and brought to barbarous ruin and desolation, by this arch heresy which the English Commander calls Protestantism.
THE ASSESSORS [whispering] Protestantism! What was that? What does the Bishop mean? Is it a new heresy? The English Commander, he said. Did you ever hear of Protestantism? etc., etc.
CAUCHON [continuing] And that reminds me. What provision has the Earl of Warwick made for the defence of the secular arm should The Maid prove obdurate, and the people be moved to pity her?
THE CHAPLAIN. Have no fear on that score, my lord. The noble earl has eight hundred men-at-arms at the gates. She will not slip through our English fingers even if the whole city be on her side.
CAUCHON [revolted] Will you not add, God grant that she repent and purge her sin?
THE CHAPLAIN. That does not seem to me to be consistent; but of course I agree with your lordship.
CAUCHON [giving him up with a shrug of contempt] The court sits.
THE INQUISITOR. Let the accused be brought in.
LADVENU [calling] The accused. Let her be brought in.
Joan, chained by the ankles, is brought in through the arched door behind the prisoner’s stool by a guard of English soldiers. With them is the Executioner and his assistants. They lead her to the prisoner’s stool, and place themselves behind it after taking off her chain. She wears a page’s black suit. Her long imprisonment and the strain of the examinations which have preceded the trial have left their mark on her; but her vitality still holds: she confronts the court unabashed, without a trace of the awe which their formal solemnity seems to require for the complete success of its impressiveness.
THE INQUISITOR [kindly] Sit down, Joan. [She sits on the prisoner’s stool]. You look very pale today. Are you not well?
JOAN. Thank you kindly: I am well enough. But the Bishop sent me some carp; and it made me ill.
CAUCHON. I am sorry. I told them to see that it was fresh.
JOAN. You meant to be good to me, I know; but it is a fish that does not agree with me. The English thought you were trying to poison me—
| CAUCHON | } | [together] | { | What! |
| THE CHAPLAIN | No, my lord. |
JOAN [continuing] They are determined that I shall be burnt as a witch; and they sent their doctor to cure me; but he was forbidden to bleed me because the silly people believe that a witch’s witchery leaves her if she is bled; so he only called me filthy names. Why do you leave me in the hands of the English? I should be in the hands of the Church. And why must I be chained by the feet to a log of wood? Are you afraid I will fly away?
D’ESTIVET [harshly] Woman: it is not for you to question the court: it is for us to question you.
COURCELLES. When you were left unchained, did you not try to escape by jumping from a tower sixty feet high? If you cannot fly like a witch, how is it that you are still alive?
JOAN. I suppose because the tower was not so high then. It has grown higher every day since you began asking me questions about it.
D’ESTIVET. Why did you jump from the tower?
JOAN. How do you know that I jumped?
D’ESTIVET. You were found lying in the moat. Why did you leave the tower?
JOAN. Why would anybody leave a prison if they could get out?
D’ESTIVET. You tried to escape.
JOAN. Of course I did; and not for the first time either. If you leave the door of the cage open the bird will fly out.
D’ESTIVET [rising] That is a confession of heresy. I call the attention of the court to it.
JOAN. Heresy, he calls it! Am I a heretic because I try to escape from prison?
D’ESTIVET. Assuredly, if you are in the hands of the Church, and you wilfully take yourself out of its hands, you are deserting the Church; and that is heresy.
JOAN. It is great nonsense. Nobody could be such a fool as to think that.
D’ESTIVET. You hear, my lord, how I am reviled in the execution of my duty by this woman. [He sits down indignantly].
CAUCHON. I have warned you before, Joan, that you are doing yourself no good by these pert answers.
JOAN. But you will not talk sense to me. I am reasonable if you will be reasonable.
THE INQUISITOR [interposing] This is not yet in order. You forget, Master Promoter, that the proceedings have not been formally opened. The time for questions is after she has sworn on the Gospels to tell us the whole truth.
JOAN. You say this to me every time. I have said again and again that I will tell you all that concerns this trial. But I cannot tell you the whole truth: God does not allow the whole truth to be told. You do not understand it when I tell it. It is an old saying that he who tells too much truth is sure to be hanged. I am weary of this argument: we have been over it nine times already. I have sworn as much as I will swear; and I will swear no more.
COURCELLES. My lord: she should be put to the torture.
THE INQUISITOR. You hear, Joan? That is what happens to the obdurate. Think before you answer. Has she been shewn the instruments?
THE EXECUTIONER. They are ready, my lord. She has seen them.
JOAN. If you tear me limb from limb until you separate my soul from my body you will get nothing out of me beyond what I have told you. What more is there to tell that you could understand? Besides, I cannot bear to be hurt; and if you hurt me I will say anything you like to stop the pain. But I will take it all back afterwards; so what is the use of it?
LADVENU. There is much in that. We should proceed mercifully.
COURCELLES. But the torture is customary.
THE INQUISITOR. It must not be applied wantonly. If the accused will confess voluntarily, then its use cannot be justified.
COURCELLES. But this is unusual and irregular. She refuses to take the oath.
LADVENU [disgusted] Do you want to torture the girl for the mere pleasure of it?
COURCELLES [bewildered] But it is not a pleasure. It is the law. It is customary. It is always done.