[4] We can see from the statues of Jeanne d’Arc how near akin are the sex-complex and the art-complex. I do not refer to the innumerable pretty statues scattered throughout the French churches, which are merely ideal portraits of sainted women. The magnificent equestrian statue by Fremiet in the Place des Pyramides, Paris, is a portrait of a plump little French peasant-girl trying to look fierce, and succeeding about as well as Audrey might if she tried to play Lady Macbeth. But it is essentially female, and, in my idea of Jeanne d’Arc, is therefore wrong, for we really know nothing about her beyond what we read in the trials. Even more female is the statue of her by Romaneill in the Melbourne Art Gallery, in which the artist has actually depicted the corslet as curved to accommodate moderate-sized breasts, a thing which would probably have shocked Jeanne herself, for she wished to make herself sexually unattractive. The face, though common, is probably accurate in that it depicts her expression as saintly. No doubt when she was listening to her Voices she did look dreamy and ethereal. But we have no authority for believing that she was in the slightest degree beautiful—if anything, she was probably rather the reverse.
[5] I hate to suggest that these specks before the eyes may have been the result of toxæmia from the intestine induced by confinement and terror.
[6] Grotius was the Dutchman who could write Latin verse at the age of nine, and had to leave Holland because of fierce theological strife. He began the study for his great work on the laws of war in prison, from which he escaped by the remarkable loyalty of his wife. Like so many romantic episodes, fiction is here anticipated by fact.
[7] Sir W. Stirling-Maxwell, The Cloister Life of Charles V.
[8] It has been thought that she suffered from “phantom-tumour”—“pseudo-cyesis” in medical language.
[9] Dr. Gordon Davidson, a well-known ophthalmic surgeon of Sydney, thinks that Pepys probably suffered from iridocyclitis, the result of some toxæmia, possibly caused by his extreme imprudence in eating and drinking.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.