Jeanne D'Arc: Her Life And DeathOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
History
Jeanne D'Arc: Her Life And Death
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
France -- History; Joan, of Arc, Saint, 1412-1431
One woman, the only one we ever hear of who was not the partisan and
lover of the Maid, does, however, make herself faintly seen amid the
crowd. Catherine of La Rochelle--the woman who had laid claim to saintly
visitors and voices like those of Jeanne, and who had been for a time
received and fêted at the Court of Charles with vile satisfaction, as
making the loss of the Maid no such great thing--had by this time been
dropped as useless, on the appearance of the shepherd boy quoted by the
Archbishop of Rheims, and had fallen into the hands of the English: was
not she too a witch, and admirably qualified to give evidence as to the
other witch, for whose blood all around her were thirsting? Catherine
was ready to say anything that was evil of her sister sorceress. "Take
care of her," she said; "if you lose sight of her for one moment, the
devil will carry her away." Perhaps this was the cause of the guard
in Jeanne's room, the ceaseless scrutiny to which she was exposed. The
vulgar slanderer was allowed to escape after this valuable testimony.
She comes into history like a will-o'-the-wisp, one of the marsh lights
that mean nothing but putrescence and decay, and then flickers out again
with her false witness into the wastes of inanity. That she should have
been treated so leniently and Jeanne so cruelly! say the historians.
Reason good: she was nothing, came of nothing, and meant nothing. It
is profane to associate Jeanne's pure and beautiful name with that of
a mountebank. This is the only woman in all her generation, so far
as appears to us, who was not the partisan and devoted friend of the
spotless Maid.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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