Coronets for thee! Oh, no! Honours, if they come when all is over, are
for those that share thy blood. [Footnote: "_Those that share thy
blood_":--A collateral relative of Joanna's was subsequently ennobled
by the title of _Du Lys_.] Daughter of Domremy, when the gratitude
of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead.
Call her, King of France, but she will not hear thee. Cite her by the
apparitors to come and receive a robe of honour, but she will be found
_en contumace_. When the thunders of universal France, as even yet
may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that
gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have
been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion
in this life; that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden
from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short; and the sleep which is in
the grave is long; let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory
of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so
long! This pure creature--pure from every suspicion of even a visionary
self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious--never once
did this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from her belief in the
darkness that was travelling to meet her. She might not prefigure the
very manner of her death; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aerial
altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end, on every
road, pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the
volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the pitying eye that
lurked but here and there, until nature and imperishable truth broke
loose from artificial restraints--these might not be apparent through
the mists of the hurrying future.
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