“Yes.” Mengette sighed also, and silence fell once more between them. Long before Domremy had heard that Jeanne was held in durance, and at length that
she was on trial before the learned men of the University. All feared for the result, for what chance would a peasant maid stand with such wise men?
Down the hillside path, through Greux, and on through the Bois Chesnu went the
two friends, until presently they emerged into the clearing where stood the Fairy Tree in solitary grandeur. With one accord they paused under its spreading branches.
“The commissioners from Rouen were so curious about the tree,” commented Mengette, glancing up at it lovingly. “So many questions did they ask concerning it, and the Gooseberry Spring. And, Hauviette, did Isabeau tell you that they wanted to know whether Jeanne ever carried a mandrake?”
“Yes, she told me,” answered Hauviette. “As though Jeanne would do such a thing! Look, Mengette!” she broke off suddenly. “Something has happened, for
the people are running all about the streets of the village.”
“And the most of them are going toward the D’Arc house,” cried Mengette excitedly. “There must be news of Jeanne. Let us hurry, Hauviette.”
Quickly the intervening space between the forest and the village was passed, and Jeanne’s two friends soon entered the dooryard of the cottage. Colin de Greux left the crowd of villagers who clustered about the yard talking in low tones, and came to meet them.
“There is news,” he told them in trembling accents. “It is all over. Poor Jeanne!”
He paused abruptly, and covered his face with his hands.
“What do you mean, Colin?” cried Mengette, while Hauviette grew white, and clasping her hands over her heart stood waiting the answer with bated breath. “Is she––is she dead?”
Colin nodded. “Burned,” he said briefly. “As a heretic and a sorceress. The Curé has just received word.”
“Oh,” gasped Mengette. “It can’t be true; it can’t be!” But Hauviette could not speak. More than the others had she loved Jeanne.
“Yes; it’s true,” affirmed Colin with emotion. “And to think that I teased her so.
And made her go to Toul, and, and––” His voice broke.
At this Hauviette recovered herself a little, and laid her hand softly on his arm.
“She forgave that, Colin, I know,” she said comfortingly. “Jeanne would harbour naught against you.”
“I know,” he said. “For when she left Domremy for Vaucouleurs she stopped as
she passed through Greux, and said: ‘I go to Vaucouleurs, Colin. God give you
good fortune.’ And He has,” continued the young man, “for I have prospered beyond any other in the village. ’Tis as though her mere wish had brought it to pass.”
“Perhaps it did,” said the maiden gently, finding comfort for her own grief in consoling him. “But see! Mengette has gone to Jacques and Isabeau. Let us go
also, that we may comfort them. Jeanne would like us to do that.”
“You are like her,” he said, looking up at her suddenly, and taking the little hand that lay so lightly upon his sleeve. “You think of others before yourself. Yes; let us go to them.”
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 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
