If I,
for instance, on the part of England, should happen to turn my labours
into that channel, and (on the model of Lord Percy going to Chevy
Chase)
"A vow to God should make
My pleasure in the Michelet woods
Three summer days to take,"
probably, from simple delirium, I might hunt M. Michelet into
_delirium tremens_. Two strong angels stand by the side of History,
whether French history or English, as heraldic supporters: the angel of
research on the left hand, that must read millions of dusty parchments,
and of pages blotted with lies; the angel of meditation on the right
hand, that must cleanse these lying records with fire, even as of old
the draperies of _asbestos_ were cleansed, and must quicken them
into regenerated life. Willingly I acknowledge that no man will ever
avoid innumerable errors of detail; with so vast a compass of ground to
traverse, this is impossible; but such errors (though I have a bushel
on hand, at M. Michelet's service) are not the game I chase; it is the
bitter and unfair spirit in which M. Michelet writes against England.
Even _that_, after all, is but my secondary object; the real one is
Joanna, the Pucelle d'Orleans herself.
I am not going to write the history of La Pucelle: to do this, or even
circumstantially to report the history of her persecution and bitter
death, of her struggle with false witnesses and with ensnaring judges,
it would be necessary to have before us _all_ the documents, and
therefore the collection only now forthcoming in Paris.
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