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They are stiff and conventional, but the old man found them wonderful and told with zest the story of La Pucelle how she saw her first vision; how she recognized the Dauphin in his palace at Chinon; how she broke the siege of Orleans; how she saw Charles crowned in the cathedral at Rheims; how she was burned at the stake in Rouen. But they could not kill her soul. She saved France.
What she really said was, all that she had done well a correction made by herself as you have already seen. Another of the Twelve says she claims that she has never committed any sin. She never made any such claim. Another makes the wearing of the male dress a sin. If it was, she had high Catholic authority for committing it that of the Archbishop of Rheims and the tribunal of Poitiers.
I only dreamed Of all these battles, kings, and deeds of war, They were but shadows which before me passed; For dreams are always vivid 'neath that tree. How did you come to Rheims? How came I here? No, I have never quitted Dom Remi! Confess it to me, and rejoice my heart. LOUISON. We are at Rheims. Thou hast not merely dreamed Of these great deeds thou hast achieved them all.
One story of the devotion of German airmen, told to a correspondent by several German officers, he succeeded in verifying, but was unable to learn the name of the particular hero of the occurrence. This story was as follows: "In one of the battles around Rheims it became necessary to blow up a bridge which was about to be crossed by advancing French troops coming to relieve a beleaguered fort.
The wild flowers along the riverbank were already humming with bees, and the whole scene seemed so peaceful and quiet after all they had endured in Rheims, that even the shell-holes left in the fields which had been fought over in the autumn and the crosses marking the graves of fallen soldiers did not sadden them. Mother Meraut sat for a long time silent, then heaved a deep sigh of relief.
When we arrive at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century, we see a host of communes falling into decay or entirely disappearing; they cease really to belong to and govern themselves; some, like Laon, Cambrai, Beauvais, and Rheims, fought a long while against decline, and tried more than once to re-establish themselves in all their independence; but they could not do without the king's support in their resistance to their lords, laic or ecclesiastical; and they were not in a condition to resist the kingship, which had grown whilst they were perishing.
It may be presumed that the Catholic clergy, the bishop of Rheims, or the bishop of Langres, were no strangers to the repeated praises which turned the thoughts of the Frankish king towards the Burgundian princess, and the idea of their marriage once set afloat, the Catholics, priesthood or laity, labored undoubtedly to push it forward, whilst the Burgundian Arians exerted themselves to prevent it.
But I declare that, when she spoke seriously about the war, of her deeds, and of her vocation, she said her work was limited to raising the siege of Orleans, to succouring the unhappy people shut up in that town and in its suburbs, and to leading the King to Rheims for his coronation and anointing.
From the little Mountain of Rheims, five miles away on the Epernay road, I could see the gray and black clouds from bursting shells rise in the mist around the massive cathedral. An observation balloon was floating calmly over the hill beyond, directing the fire on the desolated city.
Caesar did not venture to give battle to the brave enemy six times as strong; to the north of the Aisne, not far from the modern Pontavert between Rheims and Laon, he pitched his camp on a plateau rendered almost unassailable on all sides partly by the river and by morasses, partly by fosses and redoubts, and contented himself with thwarting by defensive measures the attempts of the Belgae to cross the Aisne and thereby to cut him off from his communications.
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