Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Mark Twain [ebook reader online .txt] 📗

and reverence; Joan never asked for a statue, but France has lavished them upon her; Joan never asked for a church for Domremy, but France is building one; Joan never asked for saintship, but even that is impending. Everything which Joan of Arc did not ask for has been given her, and with a noble profusion; but the one humble little thing which she did ask for and get has been taken away from her. There is something infinitely pathetic about this. France owes Domremy a hundred years of taxes, and could hardly find a citizen within her borders who would vote against the payment of the debt. —⁠Note by the Translator ↩

It remained there three hundred and sixty years, and then was destroyed in a public bonfire, together with two swords, a plumed cap, several suits of state apparel, and other relics of the Maid, by a mob in the time of the Revolution. Nothing which the hand of Joan of Arc is known to have touched now remains in existence except a few preciously guarded military and state papers which she signed, her pen being guided by a clerk or her secretary, Louis de Conte. A boulder exists from which she is known to have mounted her horse when she was once setting out upon a campaign. Up to a quarter of a century ago there was a single hair from her head still in existence. It was drawn through the wax of a seal attached to the parchment of a state document. It was surreptitiously snipped out, seal and all, by some vandal relic-hunter, and carried off. Doubtless it still exists, but only the thief knows where. —⁠Translator ↩

He kept his word. His account of the Great Trial will be found to be in strict and detailed accordance with the sworn facts of history. —⁠Translator ↩

What she said has been many times translated, but never with success. There is a haunting pathos about the original which eludes all efforts to convey it into our tongue. It is as subtle as an odor, and escapes in the transmission. Her words were these:

“Il avait été à la peine, c’etait bien raison qu’il fut a l’honneur.”

Monseigneur Ricard, Honorary Vicar-General to the Archbishop of Aix, finely speaks of it (Jeanne d’Arc la Vénérable, page 197) as “that sublime reply, enduring in the history of celebrated sayings like the cry of a French and Christian soul wounded unto death in its patriotism and its faith.” —⁠Translator ↩

Hog, pig. ↩

Cochonner, to litter, to farrow; also, “to make a mess of”! ↩

The lower half of it remains today just as it was then; the upper half is of a later date. —⁠Translator ↩

Colophon

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
was published in 1896 by
Mark Twain.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Vince Rice,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2004 by
David Reed and David Widger
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive (Vol 1, Vol 2).

The cover page is adapted from
Entrée de Jeanne d’Arc à Orléans,
a painting completed in 1887 by
Jean-Jacques Scherrer.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

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