“Whether it was the Standard or whether it was I, is nothing—the victories came from God.”
“But did you base your hopes of victory in yourself or in your Standard?”
“In neither. In God, and not otherwise.”
“Was not your Standard waved around the King’s head at the Coronation?”
“No. It was not.”
“Why was it that your Standard had place at the crowning of the King in the Cathedral of Rheims, rather than those of the other captains?”
Then, soft and low, came that touching speech which will live as long as language lives, and pass into all tongues, and move all gentle hearts wheresoever it shall come, down to the latest day:
“It had borne the burden, it had earned the honor.” (1) How simple it is, and how beautiful. And how it beggars the studies eloquence of the masters of oratory. Eloquence was a native gift of Joan of Arc; it came from her lips without effort and without preparation. Her words were as sublime as her deeds, as sublime as her character; they had their source in a great heart and were coined in a great brain.
(1) What she said has been many times translated, but never with success. There is a haunting pathos about the original which eludes all efforts to convey it into our tongue. It is as subtle as an odor, and escapes in the transmission. Her words were these:
“Il avait, a la peine, c’etait bien raison qu’il fut a l’honneur.”