第16章 BEFORE THE KING.FEB.-APRIL,(2)

Charles VII.of France was,like many of his predecessors,a /pauvre Sire/enough.He had thought more of his amusements than of the troubles of his country;but a wild and senseless gaiety will sometimes spring from despair as well as from lightness of heart;and after all,the dread responsibility,the sense that in all his helplessness and inability to do anything he was still the man who ought to do all,would seem to have moved him from time to time.Asecret doubt in his heart,divulged to no man,had added bitterness to the conviction of his own weakness.Was he indeed the heir of France?

Had he any right to that sustaining confidence which would have borne up his heart in the midst of every discouragement?His very mother had given him up and set him aside.He was described as the so-called Dauphin in treaties signed by Charles and Isabeau his parents.If anyone knew,she knew;and was it possible that more powerful even than the English,more cruel than the Burgundians,this stain of illegitimacy was upon him,making all effort vain?There is no telling where the sensitive point is in any man's heart,and little worthy as was this King,the story we are here told has a thrill of truth in it.

It is reported by a certain Sala,who declares that he had it from the lips of Charles's favourite and close follower,the Seigneur de Boisi,a courtier who,after the curious custom of the time,shared even the bed of his master.This was confided to Boisi by the King in the deepest confidence,in the silence of the wakeful night:

"This was in the time of the good King Charles,when he knew not what step to take,and did nothing but think how to redeem his life:for as I have told you he was surrounded by enemies on all sides.The King in this extreme thought,went in one morning to his oratory all alone;and there he made a prayer to our Lord,in his heart,without pronouncing any words,in which he asked of Him devoutly that if he were indeed the true heir,descended from the royal House of France,and that justly the kingdom was his,that He would be pleased to guard and defend him,or at the worst to give him grace to escape into Spain or Scotland,whose people,from all antiquity,were brothers-in-arms,friends and allies of the kings of France,and that he might find a refuge there."Perhaps there is some excuse for a young man's endeavour to forget himself in folly or even in dissipation when his secret thoughts are so despairing as these.

It was soon after this melancholy moment that the arrival of Jeanne took place.The King led her aside,touched as all were,by her look of perfect sincerity and good faith;but it is she herself,not Charles,who repeats what she said to him."I have to tell you,"said the young messenger of God,"on the part of my Lord (/Messire/)that you are the true heir of France and the son of the King;He has sent me to conduct you to Rheims that you may receive your consecration and your crown,"--perhaps here,Jeanne caught some look which she did not understand in his eyes,for she adds with,one cannot but think a touch of sternness--"if you will."Was it a direct message from God in answer to his prayer,uttered within his own heart,without words,so that no one could have guessed that secret?At least it would appear that Charles thought so:for how should this peasant maid know the secret fear that had gnawed at his heart?"When thou wast in the garden under the fig-tree I saw thee."Great was the difference between the Israelite without guile and the troubled young man,with whose fate the career of a great nation was entangled;but it is not difficult to imagine what the effect must have been on the mind of Charles when he was met by this strange,authoritative statement,uttered like all that Jeanne said,/de la part de Dieu/.

The impression thus made,however,was on Charles alone,and he was surrounded by councillors,so much the more pedantic and punctilious as they were incapable,and placed amidst pressing necessities with which in themselves they had no power to cope.It may easily be allowed,also,that to risk any hopes still belonging to the hapless young King on the word of a peasant girl was in itself,according to every law of reason,madness and folly.She would seem to have had the women on her side always and at every point.The Church did not stir,or else was hostile;the commanders and military men about,regarded with scornful disgust the idea that an enterprise which they considered hopeless should be confided to an ignorant woman--all with perfect reason we are obliged to allow.Probably it was to gain time--yet without losing the aid of such a stimulus to the superstitious among the masses--and to retard any rash undertaking--that it was proposed to subject Jeanne to an examination of doctors and learned men touching her faith and the character of her visions,which all this time had been of continual recurrence,yet charged with no further revelation,no mystic creed,but only with the one simple,constantly repeated command.