Hand in hand they made their way through the sorrowing people into the cottage. Jacques D’Arc lay upon the open cupboard bed, completely prostrated by grief, and Isabeau bent over him, ministering to him in woe too deep for tears. Beside them stood the good Curé, the tears flowing unrestrainedly down his cheeks.
“Grieve not,” he said. “I believe that the child went straight into Paradise. I confessed her too often not to know that she was pure as a lily flower. In Paradise she dwells beyond all trouble. We who are left behind must not grieve. You have other children left you. Jean and Pierre are held to ransom, and they will soon return.”
And so he tried to comfort them, but for some griefs there is no consolation. Jacques D’Arc’s was one for which there was no cure. His heart broke under its weight of anguish, and a few days thereafter he died.
Some time later Pierre and Jean returned to their mother, and took her with them to Orléans, where she resided the rest of her long life, the recipient of many honours from the city that did not forget its Maid. Twenty years later there came 389 a day when the long dormant manhood of Charles Seventh was stirred to action, and he was minded to make amends to the memory of her who had done so much for him. At his instigation Isabeau carried her daughter’s appeal to Rome.
“I have told your doctors that all my deeds and words should be sent to Rome to our Holy Father, the Pope, to whom, and to God first, I appeal,” Jeanne had cried on the platform at St. Ouen on the day of her abjuration. She had been told then that the Pope was too far off; so now Isabeau carried that appeal to him, asking for justice to be done to her daughter’s memory.
The case was reopened, witnesses examined, even some of the assessors who had sat with Cauchon testifying in her favour, and Jeanne’s name was cleared by the Church of every charge against her. Thankful that her child would no longer rest under the ban of the Church she loved so well, Isabeau returned to Orléans, and spent the remainder of her days in peace.
In peace, for at last the land was cleared of the English and only at Calais had the invader a foothold, and Charles dwelt in his own capitol at Paris. All of Jeanne’s prophecies had come to pass.
Jean, her brother, was made captain of Vaucouleurs when bluff old Robert de Baudricourt was gathered to his fathers. Pierre married, and lived with his wife and mother at Orléans. Both brothers took the name of Du Lys, which the King had conferred upon them through Jeanne, and were ranked among the nobility, honoured and revered for the sake of one who coveted no honour save that of serving her country––plain Jeanne D’Arc.
THE END