It is difficult to justify such a scene upon any theory of poetic art. The romantic drama since Schiller's time has served up many a greater marvel than this; but it produces a truly poetic effect only by keeping within the limits of tradition. The poet who deals with Siegfried and Brunhilde, or with Lohengrin or Faust, may very properly require us to accept the miracles which pertain in each case to the saga. But such a being as Schiller's Johanna is found in no saga; she is a purely arbitrary creation. A very thoughtful German critic, Bellermann, attempts to defend our love-episode by showing how Schiller took good care in the preceding scenes to depict his heroine as susceptible to the tender emotions of her sex; in other words, to depict her as a maiden who might conceivably love and be loved. But earthly maidens do not suddenly fall in love with their mortal enemies upon the battle-field; and when a celestial amazon like Johanna does so, one can only imagine that she has been mysteriously forsaken by her Protectress in the skies. In that case, however, the fault lies with heaven. It is really quite futile to discuss the artistic reasonableness of this scene, since Johanna's supernatural character takes her outside the range of human psychology. If one likes it and is touched by it, very well; but a prudent poet might well have had some regard for the very large number of people who would find such a scene ridiculous rather than touching. One could wish, in fine, that Schiller had omitted his disturbing supernaturalism altogether. If it was necessary that his heroine fall in love, one could wish that he had let her affections fasten humanly upon the good Raimond or some other honest Frenchman. And he might well have spared us the Black Knight,--that revenant ghost of Talbot, who comes to frighten Johanna but does not succeed, and whose function in the economy of the play remains in the end somewhat mysterious. Had he left out these things, the real greatness of the play would have suffered not a whit, and the artistic idea which kindled his imagination would have found a no less noble expression. That idea was to reproduce the spirit of the epoch which saw the birth of French patriotism. He wished to bring before his rationalizing contemporaries a picture of the Middle Ages as a time when, to quote the words of a recent American writer, "life was lived passionately and imaginatively under haunted heavens ".[125] What thoughts were agitating him at the very time when 'The Maid of Orleans' was taking shape in his mind can be seen from an interesting letter which he wrote to a certain Professor Süvern, who had favored him with a critique of 'Wallenstein'. Schiller answered under date of July 26, 1800, and one paragraph of his reply runs as follows: