THE CHARACTER OF JOAN
But outside of her divine guidance and her unquestionable military and political genius, Joan of Arc had human qualities calculated to make even the roughest of men love and respect her. Peasant though she was, she was beautiful to see. This fresh, untouched young girl with the flame of inspiration in her eye and the authority of the divine in her bearing, clad in her pure-white armor and mounted on a warhorse as spirited as the best of them, must have been a sight to stir the heart.
Her sympathy for the afflicted poor of the country was as genuine as her devotion to the king. They knew it, and no little of her power came from their perception. There was no shadow of self-seeking in her; she never asked honor or wealth or pleasure. There were clever and designing ones who sought to trap her with such baubles, —a well-known and usually quite successful method of sidetracking troublesome people with ideas of their own,—but Joan was quite outside of all worldliness. It looked small and thin to one who consorted with saints and followed the orders of the Most High. What she took of the gifts showered upon her she gave to the poor. When at the coronation the king told her to ask what she would, she asked that Domrémy be freed forever from taxes.
BLESSING THE STANDARD OF THE MAID
After the painting by Michel
HOUSE IN ORLEANS OCCUPIED BY THE MAID
She was devout. No Catholic in France was more faithful to the church, no one partook of its holy mysteries with more humility or with more worship in his heart.
But good and devout and charitable as she was she was no colorless person. There are numerous delightful human outbreaks recorded in the documents of her life. She wept like an ordinary girl when she received her first wound. She flew often into a passion when her commands had been disobeyed. She was particularly hard on the wanton women who followed the camp, often herself chasing them off. Once she broke a sword over the head of one, and again killed one by the blow she gave.
She guarded her own divine prerogative with quite human jealousy. As there were many women prophesying in those days, a company of them were enlisted to help the king after Joan's first success. Joan never liked them. "Folly and futility," was her characterization of the work of the most prominent of these women, Catherine de la Rochelle. "Send her home to her husband and children," was her order. A common enough point of view of the Maid who has made a career for herself and sees a married woman seeking to do the same! However, in Catherine's case Joan suspected fraud, and there seems to have been reason.