RHEIMS
We had meant to go to Barbizon, but we got lost in the forest next morning, and when we found ourselves we were a good way in the direction of Melun, so concluded to keep on, consoling ourselves with the thought that Barbizon is not Barbizon any more, and would probably be a disappointment, anyway. We kept on from Melun, also, after buying some luncheon things, and all day traversed that beautiful rolling district which lies east of Paris and below Rheims, arriving toward evening at Épernay, the Sparnacum of antiquity and the champagne center of to-day. Épernay was ancient once, but it is all new now, with wide streets and every indication of business progress. We had no need to linger there. We were anxious to get to Rheims.
There had been heavy rains in the champagne district, and next morning the gray sky and close air gave promise of more. The roads were not the best, being rather slippery and uneven from the heavy traffic of the wine carts. But the vine-covered hills between Épernay and Rheims, with their dark-green matted leafage, seemed to us as richly productive as anything in France.
We were still in the hills when we looked down on the valley of the Vesle and saw a city outspread there, and in its center the architectural and ecclesiastical pride of the world, the cathedral of Rheims. Large as the city was, that great central ornament dwarfed and dominated its surroundings. Thus Joan of Arc had seen it when at the head of her victorious army she conducted the king to Rheims for his coronation. She was nearing the fulfillment of her assignment, the completion of the great labor laid upon her by the voices of her saints. Mark Twain tells of Joan's approach to Rheims, of the tide of cheers that swept her ranks at the vision of the distant towers:
And as for Joan of Arc, there where she sat her horse, gazing, clothed all in white armor, dreamy, beautiful, and in her face a deep, deep joy, a joy not of earth; oh, she was not flesh, she was spiritual! Her sublime mission was closing—closing in flawless triumph. To-morrow she could say, "It is finished—let me go free."
It was the 16th of July that Joan looked down upon Rheims, and now, four hundred and eighty-five years later, it was again July, with the same summer glory on the woods, the same green and scarlet in the poppied fields, the same fair valley, the same stately towers rising to the sky. But no one can ever feel what Joan felt, can ever put into words, ever so faintly, what that moment and that vision meant to the Domremy shepherd girl.
Descending the plain, we entered the city, crossed a bridge, and made our way to the cathedral square. Then presently we were at the doorway where Joan and her king had entered—the portal which has been called the most beautiful this side of Paradise.
How little we dreamed that we were among the last to look upon it in its glory—that disfigurement and destruction lay only a few weeks ahead!
It is not required any more that one should write descriptively of the church of Rheims. It has been done so thoroughly, and so often, by those so highly qualified for the undertaking, that such supplementary remarks as I might offer would hardly rise even to the dignity of an impertinence. Pergussen, who must have been an authority, for the guidebook quotes him, called it, "perhaps the most beautiful structure produced in the Middle Ages."
Nothing [he says] can exceed the majesty of its deeply recessed portals, the beauty of the rose window that surmounts them, or the elegance of the gallery that completes the façade and serves as a basement to the light and graceful towers that crown the composition.
The cathedral was already two hundred years old when Joan arrived in 1429. But it must have looked quite fresh and new then, for, nearly five centuries later, it seemed to have suffered little. Some of the five hundred and thirty statues of its entrance were weatherworn and scarred, but the general effect was not disturbed.
Many kings had preceded Joan and her sovereign through the sacred entrance. Long before the cathedral was built French sovereigns had come to Rheims for their coronation, to be anointed with some drops of the inexhaustible oil which a white dove had miraculously brought from heaven for the baptism of Clovis. That had been nearly a thousand years before, but in Joan's day the sacred vessel and its holy contents were still preserved in the ancient abbey of St. Remi, and would be used for the anointing of her king. The Archbishop of Rheims and his canons, with a deputy of nobles, had been sent for the awesome relic, after the nobles had sworn upon their lives to restore it to St. Remi when the coronation was over. The abbot himself, attended by this splendid escort, brought the precious vessel, and the crowd fell prostrate and prayed while this holiest of objects, for it had been made in heaven, passed by. We are told that the abbot, attended by the archbishop and those others, entered the crowded church, followed by the five mounted knights, who rode down the great central aisle, clear to the choir, and then at a signal backed their prancing steeds all the distance to the great doors.
It was a mighty assemblage that had gathered for the crowning of Joan's king. France, overrun by an invader, had known no real king for years—had, indeed, well-nigh surrendered her nationality. Now the saints themselves had taken up their cause, and in the person of a young girl from an obscure village had given victory to their arms and brought redemption to their throne. No wonder the vast church was packed and that crowds were massed outside. From all directions had come pilgrims to the great event—persons of every rank, among them two shepherds, Joan's aged father and uncle, who had walked from Domremy, one hundred and twenty miles, to verify with their own eyes what their ears could not credit.
Very likely the cathedral at Rheims has never known such a throng since that day, nor heard such a mighty shout as went up when Joan and the king, side by side, and followed by a splendid train, appeared at the great side entrance and moved slowly to the altar.
I think there must have fallen a deep hush then—a petrified stillness that lasted through the long ceremonial, while every eye feasted itself upon the young girl standing there at the king's side, holding her victorious standard above him—the banner that "had borne the burden and had earned the victory," as she would one day testify at her trial. I am sure that vast throng would keep silence, scarcely breathing, until the final word was spoken and the dauphin had accepted the crown and placed it upon his head. But then we may hear borne faintly down the centuries the roar of renewed shouting that told to those waiting without that the great ceremony was ended, that Charles VII of France had been anointed king. In the Recollections Mark Twain makes the Sieur de Conte say:
What a crash there was! All about us cries and cheers, and the chanting of the choir and the groaning of the organ; and outside the clamoring of the bells and the booming of the cannon.
The fantastic dream, the incredible dream, the impossible dream of the peasant child stood fulfilled.
It had become reality—perhaps in that old day it even seemed reality—but now, after five hundred years, it has become once more a dream—to-day our dream—and in the filmy picture we see the shepherd girl on her knees, saying to the crowned king:
"My work which was given me to do is finished; give me your peace and let me go back to my mother, who is poor and old and has need of me."
But the king raises her up and praises her and confers upon her nobility and titles, and asks her to name a reward for her service, and in the old dream we hear her ask favor for her village—that Domremy, "poor and hard pressed by reason of the war," may have its taxes remitted.
Nothing for herself—no more than that, and in the presence of all the great assemblage Charles VII pronounces the decree that, by grace of Joan of Arc, Domremy shall be free from taxes forever.
Here within these walls it was all reality five hundred years ago. We do not study this interior to discover special art values or to distinguish in what manner it differs from others we have seen. For us the light from its great rose window and upper arches is glorified because once it fell upon Joan of Arc in that supreme moment when she saw her labor finished and asked only that she might return to Domremy and her flocks. The statuary in the niches are holy because they looked upon that scene, the altar paving is sanctified because it felt the pressure of her feet.
We wandered about the great place, but we came back again and again to the altar, and, looking through the railing, dreamed once more of that great moment when a frail shepherd girl began anew the history of France.
Back of the altar was a statue of Joan unlike any we have seen elsewhere, and to us more beautiful. It was not Joan with her banner aloft, her eyes upward. It was Joan with her eyes lowered, looking at no outward thing, her face passive—the saddest face and the saddest eyes in the world. It was Joan the sacrifice—of her people and her king.