Then
came a worse devil, who asked her whether the Archangel Michael had
appeared naked. Not comprehending the vile insinuation, Joanna, whose
poverty suggested to her simplicity that it might be the _costliness_
of suitable robes which caused the demur, asked them if they fancied
God, who clothed the flowers of the valleys, unable to find raiment for
his servants. The answer of Joanna moves a smile of tenderness, but the
disappointment of her judges makes one laugh exultingly. Others
succeeded by troops, who upbraided her with leaving her father; as if
that greater Father, whom she believed herself to have been serving,
did not retain the power of dispensing with his own rules, or had not
said that for a less cause than martyrdom man and woman should leave
both father and mother.
On Easter Sunday, when the trial had been long proceeding, the poor
girl fell so ill as to cause a belief that she had been poisoned. It
was not poison. Nobody had any interest in hastening a death so
certain. M. Michelet, whose sympathies with all feelings are so quick
that one would gladly see them always as justly directed, reads the
case most truly. Joanna had a twofold malady. She was visited by a
paroxysm of the complaint called _homesickness_. The cruel nature
of her imprisonment, and its length, could not but point her solitary
thoughts, in darkness and in chains (for chained she was), to Domremy.
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