The Executioner's Knife; Or, Joan of ArcSue, Eugène
General
The Executioner's Knife; Or, Joan of Arc
Sue, Eugène
Biographical fiction; Christian fiction; Christian women saints -- Fiction; Joan, of Arc, Saint, 1412-1431 -- Fiction
The chamberlain motioned toward the Sire of Trans, who lolled
ostentatiously on the raised and canopied seat at the extremity of the
gallery. The mimic King was a man of large size, corpulent and of middle
age. On her journey, Joan had often interrogated the knight of Novelpont
on Charles VII, his external appearance, his features. Being thus
informed that the prince was of a frail physique, pale complexion and
short stature, and finding no point of resemblance between that portrait
and the robustious appearance of the Sire of Trans, Joan readily
perceived that she was being trifled with. Wounded to the heart by the
fraud, the sign of insulting mistrust or of a joke unworthy of royalty,
if Charles was an accomplice in the game, Joan turned back toward the
chamberlain, and said, with indignation mantling her cheek:
"You deceive me--him that you point out to me is not the King."[50]
Immediately noticing a few steps away from her a frail looking and pale
young man of small stature, whose features accorded perfectly with the
description that she preserved as a perpetual souvenir in her mind, Joan
walked straight towards the King and bent her knee before him, saying in
a sweet and firm voice: "Sir Dauphin, the Lord God sends me to you in
His name to save you. Place armed men at my command, and I shall raise
the siege of Orleans and drive the English from your kingdom. Before a
month is over I shall take you to Rheims, where you will be crowned King
of France."[51]
Some of the bystanders, convinced as they were that the peasant girl of
Domremy obeyed an inspiration, considered supernatural the sagacity that
she had just displayed in recognizing Charles VII from among the
courtiers; they were all the more impressed by the language that she
held to the King. A large number of others, attributing Joan's
penetration to a freak of accident, saw in her words only a ridiculous
and foolish boast, and they suppressed with difficulty their jeering
disdain at this daughter of the fields daring so brazenly to promise the
King that she would clear his kingdom of the English, until then the
vanquishers of the most renowned captains.
Charles fixed upon Joan a defiant and libertine look that brought the
blush to her cheeks, ordered her to rise, and said to her with an air of
nonchalance and sarcasm that revealed mistrust in every word:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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