The circumstantial incidents of the execution, unless with more space
than I can now command, I should be unwilling to relate. I should fear
to injure, by imperfect report, a martyrdom which to myself appears so
unspeakably grand. Yet for a purpose pointing, not at Joanna but at M.
Michelet,--viz., to convince him that an Englishman is capable of thinking
more highly of _La Pucelle_ than even her admiring countryman, I shall, in
parting, allude to one or two traits in Joanna's demeanor on the scaffold,
and to one or two in that of the bystanders, which authorize me in
questioning an opinion of his upon this martyr's firmness. The reader ought
to be reminded that Joanna d'Arc was subjected to an unusually unfair trial
of opinion. Any of the elder Christian martyrs had not much to fear of
_personal_ rancor. The martyr was chiefly regarded as the enemy of Cæsar;
at times, also, where any knowledge of the Christian faith and morals
existed, with the enmity that arises spontaneously in the worldly against
the spiritual. But the martyr, though disloyal, was not supposed to be,
therefore, anti-national; and still less was _individually_ hateful. What
was hated (if anything) belonged to his class, not to himself separately.
Now Joanna, if hated at all, was hated personally, and in Rouen on national
grounds. Hence there would be a certainty of calumny arising against _her_,
such as would not affect martyrs in general. That being the case, it would
follow of necessity that some people would impute to her a willingness to
recant. No innocence could escape _that_. Now, had she really testified
this willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued nothing at all but
the weakness of a genial nature shrinking from the instant approach of
torment. And those will often pity that weakness most, who, in their own
persons, would yield to it least. Meantime, there never was a calumny
uttered that drew less support from the recorded circumstances. It rests
upon no _positive_ testimony, and it has a weight of contradicting
testimony to stem. And yet, strange to say, M. Michelet, who at times seems