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
Here we have over again in the fable our friend Gamache. It is a pretty
story, and though we ask no one to take it for absolute fact, there is
no reason why some such incident might not have occurred. Gamache, the
angry captain who rather than follow a _péronnelle_ to the field was
prepared to fold his banner round its staff, and give up his rank, is
supposed to have been the nearest to her when she fell. It was he who
cleared the crowd from about her and raised her up. "Take my horse,"
he said, "brave creature. Bear no malice. I confess that I was in the
wrong." "It is I that should be wrong if I bore malice," cried Jeanne,
"for never was a knight so courteous" (_chevalier si bien apprins_).
She was surrounded immediately by her people, the chaplain whom she had
bidden to keep near her, her page, all her special attendants, who would
have conveyed her out of the fight had she consented. Jeanne had the
courage to pull the arrow out of the wound with her own hand,--"it stood
a hand breadth out" behind her shoulder--but then, being but a girl and
this her first experience of the sort, notwithstanding her armour and
her rank as General-in-Chief, she cried with the pain, this commander
of seventeen. Somebody then proposed to charm the wound with an
incantation, but the Maid indignant, cried out, "I would rather die."
Finally a compress soaked in oil was placed upon it, and Jeanne withdrew
a little with her chaplain, and made her confession to him, as one who
might be about to die.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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