“Do you think it was right to go away to the wars without getting your parents' leave? It is written one must honor his father and his mother.”
“I have obeyed them in all things but that. And for that I have begged their forgiveness in a letter and gotten it.”
“Ah, you asked their pardon? So you knew you were guilty of sin in going without their leave!”
Joan was stirred. Her eyes flashed, and she exclaimed:
“I was commanded of God, and it was right to go! If I had had a hundred fathers and mothers and been a king's daughter to boot I would have gone.”
“Did you never ask your Voices if you might tell your parents?”
“They were willing that I should tell them, but I would not for anything have given my parents that pain.”
To the minds of the questioners this headstrong conduct savored of pride. That sort of pride would move one to see sacrilegious adorations.
“Did not your Voices call you Daughter of God?”
Joan answered with simplicity, and unsuspiciously:
“Yes; before the siege of Orleans and since, they have several times called me Daughter of God.”
Further indications of pride and vanity were sought.
“What horse were you riding when you were captured? Who gave it you?”
“You had other things--riches--of the King?”
“For myself I had horses and arms, and money to pay the service in my household.”
“Yes. Ten or twelve thousand crowns.” Then she said with naivete “It was not a great sum to carry on a war with.”
“No. It is the King's money. My brothers hold it for him.”
“What were the arms which you left as an offering in the church of St. Denis?”
“Did you put them there in order that they might be adored?”
“No. It was but an act of devotion. And it is the custom of men of war who have been wounded to make such offering there. I had been wounded before Paris.”
Nothing appealed to these stony hearts, those dull imaginations--not even this pretty picture, so simply drawn, of the wounded girl-soldier hanging her toy harness there in curious companionship with the grim and dusty iron mail of the historic defenders of France. No, there was nothing in it for them; nothing, unless evil and injury for that innocent creature could be gotten out of it somehow.
“Which aided most--you the Standard, or the Standard you?”