[65] A. Lang, p. 203.
CHAPTER XVI ROUEN
"Bishop of Beauvais! because the guilt-burthened man is in dreams haunted by the most frightful of his crimes ... you also, entering your final dream, saw Domrémy.... My lord, have you no counsel? 'Counsel I have none; in heaven above, or on earth beneath, counsellor there is none now that would take a brief from me; all are silent.'
"Is it, indeed, come to this? Alas! the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, the crowd stretches away into infinity, but yet I will search in it for somebody to take your brief; I know of somebody that will be your counsel. Who is this that cometh from Domrémy? Who is she that cometh in bloody coronation robes from Rheims? Who is she that cometh with blackened flesh from walking the furnaces of Rouen? This is she, the shepherd girl, counsellor that had none for herself, whom I choose, Bishop, for yours. She it is, I engage, that shall take my lord's brief. She it is, Bishop, that would plead for you; yes, Bishop, SHE—when heaven and earth are silent."
—De Quincey.
We need not dwell upon the joy of English and Burgundians, or of their French sympathizers: it was as rapturous as it was savage. John of Luxembourg, a typical soldier of fortune, had but one idea, that of turning his prisoner to good account. Who would pay most for her?
While the matter was pending, Joan was hurried from castle to castle, from prison to prison. Clairoix, the headquarters of Luxembourg, was not strong enough to hold her; she might escape, or there might be a rescue. She was sent to Beaulieu, and thence to Beaurevoir, where she stayed from June to September. Here she was in the kind hands of three ladies, all bearing her own name; Jeanne of Luxembourg, aunt of her captor; Jeanne of Bethune, Viscountess of Meaux, his wife, and her daughter Jeanne of Bar. These good ladies befriended the captive Maid: gave her the last womanly comfort and tendance she was to receive; begged her to put on woman's dress, and brought stuff to make it. Joan was grateful, but shook her head. She had no leave yet from God to do this: the time was not come. She would have done it, she said later, had her duty permitted, for these ladies rather than for any soul in France except her queen.
Harmond de Macy, a knight who saw the Maid at Beaurevoir and who offered her familiarities which she gravely repulsed, has left his impressions of her on record.
"She was of honest conversation in word and deed," he says: and adds at the end of his testimony, given after her death, "I believe she is in paradise."
Joan would give no parole. She steadfastly maintained her right to escape if she might. Here at Beaurevoir she made her one attempt to do so, moved thereto largely by anxiety for the people of Compiègne, now besieged. She was told that if the town were taken all the people over seven years of age would be put to death. This she could not bear. In vain her Voices dissuaded her: in vain St. Catherine almost daily forbade it. "I would rather die than live," said the Maid, "after such a massacre of good people."