Chapter V: Part 5

There is matter for many a sigh in these saffron-leaved and worm-eaten tomes, whose opened pages are now before me. I find a monk who has passed a sleepless night through excess of pain. To test his obedience, he is ordered to confess that he has slept well and suffered nothing. The submissive soldier obeys his general’s command. Another confesses his readiness, as Dr. Newman has done, to surrender any of his own deliberately-made convictions at the bidding of his superior. “I am wax,” he says, “for you to mould me as you will and his unreserved surrender of himself is commended with much windiness of phrase. A third, inadvertently remarking that his scalding broth is over-salted, bursts into tears at the enormity of the crime he has committed by thus complaining; whereupon praise falls upon him more thickly than the salt did into his broth: “Yes,” says the once knight, now abbot, “it is not praying, nor watching, nor repentance, that is alone asked of you by God, but humility and obedience therewith; and _first_ obedience.”

To test the fidelity of those professing to have this humility and obedience, the most outrageous insults were inflicted on such as in the world had been reckoned the most high-spirited. It is averred that these never failed. The once testy soldier, now passionless monk, kissed the sandal raised to kick, and blessed the hand lifted to smite him. A proud young officer of mousquetaires, of whom I have strong suspicions that he had embezzled a good deal of his majesty’s money, acknowledged that he was the greatest criminal that ever lived; but he stoutly denied the same when the officers of the law visited the monastery and accused him of fraudulent practices. This erst young warrior had no greater delight than in being permitted to clean the spittoons in the chapel, and provide them with fresh sawdust. Another, a young marquis and chevalier, performed with ecstacy servile offices of a more disgusting character. This monk was the flower of the fraternity. He was for ever accusing himself of the most heinous crimes, not one of which he had committed, or was capable of committing. “He represented matters so ingeniously,” says De Rancé, who on this occasion is the biographer, “that without lying, he made himself pass for the vile wretch which in truth he was not.” He must have been like that other clever individual who “lied like truth.”

When I say that he was the flower of the fraternity, I probably do some wrong to the Chevalier de Santin, who under the name of Brother Palemon, was undoubtedly the chief pride of La Trappe. He had been an officer in the army; without love for God, regard for man, respect for woman, or reverence for law. In consequence of a rupture between Savoy and France, he lost an annuity on which he had hitherto lived. As his constitution was considerably shattered, he at the same time took to reading. He was partially converted by perusing the history of Joseph; and he was finally perfected by seeing the dead body of a very old and very ugly monk, assume the guise and beauty of that of a young man.

This was good ground for conversion; but the count--for the chevalier of various orders was of that degree by birth--the count had been so thorough a miscreant in the world, that they who lived in the latter declined to believe in the godliness of Brother Palemon. Thereupon he was exhibited to all comers, and he gave ready replies to all queries put to him by his numerous visiters. All France, grave and gay, noble and simple, flocked to the spectacle. At the head of them was that once sovereign head of the Order of the Garter, James II., with his illegitimate son, from whom is descended the French ducal family of Fitz-James. The answers of Palemon to his questioners edified countless crowds. He shared admiration with another ex-military brother, who guilelessly told the laughing ladies who flocked to behold him, that he had sought refuge in the monastery because his sire had wished him to marry a certain lady; but that his soul revolted at the idea of touching even the finger-tips of one of a sex by the first of whom the world was lost. The consequent laughter was immense.

From this it is clear that there were occasionally gay doings at the monastery, and that those at least who had borne arms, were not addicted to close their eyes in the presence of ladies. Among the most remarkable of the knightly members of the brotherhood, was a certain Robert Graham, whose father, Colonel Graham, was first cousin to Montrose. Robert was born, we are told, in the “Chateau de Rostourne,” a short league (it is added by way of help, I suppose, to perplexed travellers), from Edinburgh. By his mother’s side he was related to the Earl of Perth, of whom the Trappist biographer says, that he was even more illustrious for his piety, and for what he suffered for the sake of religion, than by his knighthood, his viceroyship, or his offices of High Chancellor of England, and “Governor of the Prince of Wales, now (1716) rightful king of Great Britain.” The mother of Robert, a zealous protestant, is spoken of as having “as much piety as one _can_ have in a false religion.” In spite of her teaching, however, the young Robert early exhibited an inclination for the Romish religion; and at ten years of age, the precocious boy attended mass in the chapel of Holyrood, to the great displeasure of his mother. On his repeating his visit, she had him soundly whipped by his tutor; but the young gentleman declared that the process could not persuade him to embrace Presbyterianism. He accordingly rushed to the house of Lord Perth, “himself a recent convert from the Anglican Church,” and claimed his protection. After some family arrangements had been concluded, the youthful protégé was formally surrendered to the keeping of Lord Perth, by his mother, and not without reluctance. His father gave him up with the unconcern of those Gallios who care little about questions of religion.

Circumstances compelled the earl to leave Scotland, when Robert sojourned with his mother at the house of her brother, a godly protestant minister. Here he showed the value of the instructions he had received at the hands of Lord Perth and his Romish chaplain, by a conduct which disgusted every honest man, and terrified every honest maiden, in all the country round. His worthy biographer is candid enough to say that Robert, in falling off from Popery, did not become a protestant, but an atheist. The uncle turned him out of his house. The prodigal repaired to London, where he rioted prodigally; thence he betook himself to France, and he startled even Paris with the bad renown of his evil doings. On his way thither through Flanders, he had had a moment or two of misgiving as to the wisdom of his career, and he hesitated while one might count twenty, between the counsel of some good priests, and the bad example of some Jacobite soldiers, with whom he took service. The latter prevailed, and when the chevalier Robert appeared at the court of St Germains, Lord Perth presented to the fugitive king and queen there, as accomplished a scoundrel as any in Christendom.

There was a show of decency at the exiled court, and respect for religion. Young Graham adapted himself to the consequent influences. He studied French, read the lives of the saints, entered the seminary at Meaux, and finally reprofessed the Romish religion. He was now seized with a desire to turn hermit, but accident having taken him to La Trappe, the blasé libertine felt himself reproved by the stern virtue exhibited there, and, in a moment of enthusiasm, he enrolled himself a postulant, bade farewell to the world, and devoted himself to silence, obedience, humility, and austerity, with a perfectness that surprised alike those who saw and those who heard of it. Lord Perth opposed the reception of Robert in the monastery. Thereon arose serious difficulty, and therewith the postulant relapsed into sin. He blasphemed, reviled his kinsmen, swore oaths that set the whole brotherhood in speechless terror, and finally wrote a letter to his old guardian, so crammed with fierce and unclean epithets, that the abbot refused permission to have it forwarded. The excitement which followed brought on illness; with the latter, came reflection and sorrow. At length all difficulties vanished, and ultimately, on the eve of All Saints, 1699, Robert Graham became a monk, and changed his name for that of Brother Alexis. King James visited him, and was much edified by the spiritual instruction vouchsafed him by the second cousin of the gallant Montrose. The new monk was so perfect in obedience that he would not in winter throw a crumb to a half-starved sparrow, without first applying for leave from his spiritual superior. “Indeed,” says his biographer, “I could tell you a thousand veritable stories about him; but they are so extraordinary that I do not suppose the world would believe one of them.” The biographer adds, that Alexis, after digging and cutting wood all day; eating little, drinking less, praying incessantly, and neither washing nor unclothing himself, lay down; but to pass the night without closing his eyes in sleep! He was truly a brother Vigilantius.

The renown of his conversion had many influences. The father of Alexis, Colonel Graham, embraced Romanism, and the colonel and an elder son, who was already a Capuchin friar, betook themselves to La Trappe, where the reception of the former into the church was marked by a double solemnity--De Rancé dying as the service was proceeding. The wife of Colonel Graham is said to have left Scotland on the receipt of the above intelligence, to have repaired to France, and there embrace the form of faith followed by her somewhat facile husband. There is, however, great doubt on this point.

The fate of young Robert Graham was similar to that of most of the Trappists. The deadly air, the hard work, the watchings, the scanty food, and the uncleanliness which prevailed, soon slew a man who was as useless to his fellow-men in a convent, as he had ever been in the world. His confinement was, in fact, a swift suicide. Consumption seized on the poor boy, for he was still but a boy, and his rigid adherence to the severe discipline of the place, only aided to develop what a little care might have easily checked. His serge gown clove to the carious bones which pierced through his diseased skin. The portions of his body on which he immovably lay, became gangrened, and nothing appears to have been done by way of remedy. He endured all with patience, and looked forward to death with a not unaccountable longing. The “infirmier” bade him be less eager in pressing forward to the grave.--“I will now pray God,” said the nursing brother, “that he will be pleased to save you.”--“And I,” said Alexis, “will ask him not to heed you.” Further detail is hardly necessary: suffice it to say that Robert Graham died on the 21st May, 1701, little more than six months after he had entered the monastery, and at the early age of twenty-two years. The father and brother also died in France, and so ended the chivalrous cousins of the chivalrous Montrose.

The great virtue inculcated at La Trappe, was one of the cherished virtues of old chivalry, obedience to certain rules. But there was no excitement in carrying it out. Bodily suffering was encountered by a knight, for mere glory’s sake. At La Trappe it was accounted as the only means whereby to escape Satan. The knight of the cross purchased salvation by the sacrifice of his life; the monk of La Trappe, by an unprofitable suicide. With both there was doubtless the one great hope common to all Christians; but that great hope, so fortifying to the knight, seemed not to relieve the Trappist of the fear that Satan was more powerful than the Redeemer. When once treating this subject at greater length, I remarked that there was a good moral touching Satan in Cuvier’s dream, and the application of which might have been profitable to men like these monks. The great philosopher just named, once saw, in his sleep, the popular representative of the great enemy of man. The fiend approached with a loudly-expressed determination to “eat him.” “Eat me!” exclaimed Cuvier, examining him the while with the eye of a naturalist. “Eat me! Horns! Hoofs!” he added, scanning him over. “Horns? Hoofs? _Graminivorous!_ needn’t be afraid of you!”

And now let us get back from the religious orders of men to chivalrous orders of ladies. It is quite time to exclaim, _Place aux Dames!_

FEMALE KNIGHTS AND JEANNE DARC.

Mein ist der Helm, und mir gehört er zu.--SCHILLER.

“Orders for ladies” have been favorite matters with both Kings and Queens, Emperors and Empresses. The Austrian Empress, Eleanora de Gonzague, founded two orders, which admitted only ladies as members. The first was in commemoration of the miraculous preservation of a particle of the true cross, which escaped the ravages of a fire which nearly destroyed the imperial residence, in 1668. Besides this Order of the Cross, the same Empress instituted the Order of the Slaves of Virtue. This was hardly a complimentary title, for a slave necessarily implies a compulsory and unwilling servant. The number of members were limited to thirty, and these were required to be noble, and of the Romish religion. The motto was, _Sole ubique triumphat_; which may have implied that she only who best served virtue, was likely to profit by it. This was not making a very exalted principle of virtue itself. It was rather placing it in the point of view wherein it was considered by Pamela, who was by far too calculating a young lady to deserve all the eulogy that has been showered upon her.

Another Empress of Germany, Elizabeth Christiana, founded, in the early part of the last century, at Vienna, an Order of Neighborly Love. It consisted of persons of both sexes; but nobody was accounted a neighbor who was not noble. With regard to numbers, it was unlimited. The motto of the order was _Amor Proximi_; a motto which exactly characterized the feelings of Queen Guinever for any handsome knight who happened to be her neighbor for the nonce. “Proximus” at the meetings of the order was, of course, of that convenient gender whereby all the members of the order could profit by its application. They might have had a particularly applicable song, if they had only possessed a Béranger to sing as the French lyrist has done.

There was also in Germany an order for ladies only, that was of a very sombre character. It was the Order of Death’s Head; and was founded just two centuries ago, by a Duke of Wirtemburg, who decreed that a princess of that house should always be at the head of it. The rules bound ladies to an observance of conduct which they were not likely to observe, if the rule of Christianity was not strong enough to bind them; and probably many fair ladies who wore the double cross, with the death’s head pending from the lower one, looked on the motto of “Memento Mori,” as a reminder to daring lovers who dared to look on _them_.

France had given us, in ladies’ orders, first, the Order of the Cordelière, founded by that Anne of Brittany who brought her independent duchy as a dower to Charles VIII. of France, and who did for the French court what Queen Charlotte effected for that of England, at a much later period. Another Anne, of Austria, wife of Louis XIII., and some say of Cardinal Mazarin also, founded, for ladies, the Order of the Celestial Collar of the Holy Rosary. The members consisted of fifty young ladies of the first families in France; and they all wore, appended to other and very charming insignia hanging from the neck, a portrait of St. Dominic, who found himself in the best possible position for instilling all sorts of good principles into a maiden’s bosom.

The Order of the Bee was founded a century and a half ago by Louisa de Bourbon, Duchess of Maine. The ensign was a medal, with the portrait of the duchess on one side, and the figure of a bee, with the motto, _Je suis petite, mais mes piqueures sont profondes_, on the other.

In Russia, Peter the Great founded the Order of St. Catherine, in honor of his wife, and gave as its device, _Pour l’amour et la fidélité envers la patrie_. It was at first intended for men, but was ultimately made a female order exclusively. A similar change was found necessary in the Spanish Order of the Lady of Mercy, founded in the thirteenth century by James, King of Aragon. There were other female orders in Spain, and the whole of them had for their object the furtherance of religion, order, and virtue. In some cases, membership was conferred in acknowledgment of merit. Who forgets Miss Jane Porter in her costume and insignia of a lady of one of the orders of Polish female chivalry--and who is ignorant that Mrs. Otway has been recently decorated by the Queen of Spain with the Order of Maria Louisa?

The Order of St. Ulrica, in Sweden, was founded in 1734, in honor of a lady, the reigning Queen, and to commemorate the liberty which Sweden had acquired and enjoyed from the period of her accession. Two especial qualities were necessary in the candidates for knighthood in this order. It was necessary that a public tribunal should declare that they were men of pure public spirit; and it was further required of them to prove that in serving the country, they had never been swayed by motives of private interest. When the order was about to be founded, not less than five hundred candidates appeared to claim chivalric honor. Of these, only fifty were chosen, and decree was made that the number of knights should never exceed that amount. It was an unnecessary decree, if the qualifications required were to be stringently demanded. But, in the conferring of honors generally, there has often been little connection between cause and effect; as, for instance, after Major-General Simpson had failed to secure the victory which the gallantry of our troops had put in his power at the Redan, the home government was so delighted, that they made field-marshals of two very old gentlemen. The example was not lost on the King of the Belgians. He, too, commemorated the fall of Sebastopol by enlarging the number of his knights. He could not well scatter decorations among his army, for that has been merely a military police, but he made selection of an equally destructive body, and named eighteen doctors--Knights of St. Leopold.

These orders of later institution appear to have forgotten one of the leading principles of knighthood--love for the ladies--but perhaps this is quite as well. When Louis II., Duke of Bourbon, instituted the Order of the Golden Shield, he was by no means so forgetful. He enjoined his knights to honor the ladies above all, and never permit any one to slander them with impunity; “because,” said the good duke, “after God, we owe everything to the labors of the ladies, and all the honor that man can acquire.” One portion of which assertion may certainly defy contradiction.

The most illustrious of female knights, however, is, without dispute, the Maid of Orleans. Poor Jeanne Darc seems to me to have been an illustrious dupe and an innocent victim. Like Charlotte Corday, the calamities of her country weighed heavily upon her spirits, and her consequent eager desire to relieve them, caused her to be marked as a fitting instrument for a desired end. Poor Charlotte Corday commissioned herself for the execution of the heroic deed which embellishes her name--Jeanne Darc was evidently commissioned by others.

The first step taken by Jeanne to obtain access to the Dauphin, was to solicit the assistance of the proud De Baudricourt, who resided not far from the maid’s native place, Domremy. However pious the young girl may have been, De Baudricourt was not the man to give her a public reception, had not some foregone conclusion accompanied it. She needed his help to enable her to proceed to Chinon. The answer of the great chief was that she should not be permitted to go there. The reply of the maid, who was always uncommonly “smart” in her answers, was that she _would_ go to Chinon, although she were forced to crawl the whole way on her knees. She _did_ go, and the circumstances of a mere young girl, who was in the habit of holding intercourse with angels and archangels, thus overcoming, as it were, the most powerful personage in the district, was proof enough to the common mind, as to whence she derived her strength and authority. The corps of priests by whom she was followed, as soon as her divine mission was acknowledged or invented by the court, lent her additional influence, and sanctified in her own mind, her doubtless honest enthusiasm. The young girl did all to which she pledged herself, and in return, was barbarously treated by both friend and foe, and was most hellishly betrayed by the Church, under whose benediction she had raised her banner. She engaged to relieve Orleans from the terrible English army which held it in close siege, and she nobly kept her engagement. It may be noticed that the first person slain in this siege, was a young lady named Belle, and the fair sex thus furnished the first victim, as well as the great conqueror, in this remarkable conflict.

I pass over general details, in order to have the more space to notice particular illustrative circumstances touching our female warrior. Jeanne, it must be allowed, was extremely bold of assertion as well as smart in reply. She would have delighted a Swedenborgian by the alacrity with which she protested that she held intercourse with spirits from Heaven and prophets of old. Nothing was so easy as to make her believe so; and she was quite as ready to deny the alleged fact when her clerical accusers, in the day of her adversity, declared that such belief was a suggestion of the devil. I think there was some humor and a little reproach in the reply by Jeanne, that she would maintain or deny nothing but as she was directed by the Church.

Meanwhile, during her short but glorious career, she manifested true chivalrous spirit. She feared no man, not even the brave Dunois. “Bastard, bastard!” said she to him on one occasion, “in the name of God, hear me; I command you to let me know of the arrival of Fastolf as soon as it takes place; for, hark ye, if he passes without my knowledge, I give you my word, you shall lose your head.” And thereon she turned to her dinner of dry bread and wine-and-water--half a pint of the first to two pints of the last, with the quiet air of a person able and determined to realize every menace.

It is very clear that her brother knights, while they profited by her services, and obeyed (with some reluctance) her orders, neither thought nor spoke over-well of her. Their comments were not complimentary to a virgin reputation, which a jury of princesses, with a queen for a forewoman, had pronounced unblemished. She even risked her _prestige_ over the common rank and file, but generally by measures which resulted in strengthening it. Thus, on taking the Fort of the Augustins from the English, she destroyed all the rich things and lusty wine she found there, lest the men should be corrupted by indulgence therein. It may be remembered that Gustavus Vasa highly disgusted his valiant Dalecarlians by a similar exhibition of healthy discipline.

The Maid undoubtedly placed the work of fighting before the pleasure of feasting. When she was about to issue from her lodgings, to head the attack against the bastion of the Tourelles, where she prophesied she would be wounded, her host politely begged of her to remain and partake of a dish of freshly-caught shad. It was the 7th of May, and shad was just in season; the Germans call it distinctively “the May-fish.” Jeanne resisted the temptation for the moment. “Keep the fish till to-night,” said she, “till I have come back from the fray; for I shall bring a Goden [a ‘God d--n,’ or Englishman] with me to partake of my supper.”

She was not more ready of tongue than she was quick of eye. An instance of the latter may be found in an incident before Jargeau. She was reconnoitring the place at a considerable distance. The period was more than a century and a half before Hans Lippershey, the Middleburg spectacle-maker, had invented, and still more before Galileo had improved, the telescope. The Duke d’Alençon was with Jeanne, and she bade him step aside, as the enemy were pointing a gun at him. The Duke obeyed, for he knew her acuteness of vision; the gun was fired, and De Lude, a gentleman of Anjou, standing in a line with the spot which had been occupied by the Duke, was slain--which must have been very satisfactory to the Duke!

I have said that some of the knights had but a scanty respect for the gallant Maid. A few, no doubt, objected to the assumption of heavenly inspiration on her part. One, at least, was not so particular. I allude to the Baron De Richemond, who had been exiled from court for the little misdemeanor of having assassinated Cannes de Beaulieu. The Baron had recovered his good name by an actively religious exercise, manifested by his hunting after wizards and witches, and burning them alive, to the delight and edification of dull villagers. This pious personage paid a visit to Jeanne, hoping to obtain, by her intercession, the royal permission to have a share in the war. The disgraced knight, who brought with him a couple of thousand men, when these were most wanted, was not likely to meet with a refusal of service, and the permission sought for was speedily granted. Jeanne playfully alluded to her own supernatural inspiration and the Baron’s vocation as “witch-finder.” “Ah well,” said De Richemond, “with regard to yourself, I have only this to say, that it is difficult to say anything; but if you are from Heaven, it is not I who shall be afraid of you; and if you come from the devil, I do not fear even him, who, in such case, sends you.” Thereupon, they laughed merrily, and began to talk of the next day’s battle.

That battle was fought upon the field of Patay, where the gallant Talbot was made prisoner by the equally gallant Saintrailles. When the great English commander was brought into the presence of Jeanne, he was good-humoredly asked if he had expected such a result the day before. “It is the fortune of war,” philosophically exclaimed the inimitable John; and thereby he made a soldier’s comment, which has often since been in the mouths of the valiant descendants of the French knights who heard it uttered, and which is frequently quoted as being of Gallic origin. But, again, I think that “fortuna belli” was not an uncommon phrase, perhaps, in old days before the French language was yet spoken.

And here, talking of origin, let me notice a circumstance of some interest. Jeanne Darc is commonly described as Jeanne D’Arc, as though she had been ennobled. This, indeed, she was, by the King, but not by that name. To the old family name was added that of _du Lys_, in allusion to the Lily of France, which that family had served so well. The brothers of Jeanne, now Darc du Lys, entered the army. When Guise sent a French force into Scotland, some gallant gentlemen of this name of Lys were among them. They probably settled in Caledonia, for the name is not an uncommon one there; and there is a gallant major in the 48th who bears it, and who, perhaps, may owe his descent to the ennobled brothers of “The Maid of Orleans.”

Jeanne was not so affected as to believe that nobility was above the desert of her deeds. When her relatives, including her brothers, Peter and John, congratulated her and themselves on all that she had accomplished, her remark was: “My deeds are in truth those of a ministry; but in as great truth never were greater read of by cleric, however profound he may be in all clerical learning.” The degree of nobility allowed to the deserving girl was that of a countess. Her household consisted of a steward, almoner, squire, pages, “hand, foot, and chamber men,” independently of the noble maidens who tended her, and who seem to have been equally served by three “valets de main, de pied, et de chambre.”

But short-lived was the glory; no, I will not say _that_, let me rather remark that short-lived was the worldly splendor of the chivalrous my-lady countess. She had rendered all the service she could, when she fell wounded before Paris, and was basely abandoned for a while by her own party. She was rescued, ultimately, by D’Alençon, but only to be more disgracefully abandoned on the one side, and evilly treated on the other. When as a bleeding captive she was rudely dragged from the field at Compiègne; church, court, and chivalry, ignobly abandoned the poor and brave girl who had served all three in turn. By all three she was now as fiercely persecuted; and it may safely be said, that if the English were glad to burn her as a witch, to account for the defeat of the English and their allies, the French were equally eager to furnish testimony against her.

Her indecision and vacillation after falling into the hands of her enemies, would seem to show that apart from the promptings of those who had guided her, she was but an ordinary personage. She, however, never lost heart, and her natural wit did not abandon her. “Was St. Michael naked when he appeared to you?” was a question asked by one of the examining commissioners. To which Jeanne replied, “Do you think heaven has not wherewith to dress him?” “Had he any hair on his head?” was the next sensible question. Jeanne answered it by another query, “Have the goodness to tell me,” said she, “why Michael’s head should have been shaved?” It was easy, of course, to convict a prejudged and predoomed person, of desertion of her parents, of leading a vagabond and disreputable life, of sorcery, and finally, of heresy. She was entrapped into answers which tended to prove her culpability; but disregarding at last the complicated web woven tightly around her, and aware that nothing could save her, the heart of the knightly maiden beat firmly again, and as a summary reply to all questions, she briefly and emphatically declared: “All that I have done, all that I do, I have done well, and do well to do it.” In her own words, “Tout ce que j’ai fait, tout ce que je fais, j’ai bien fait, et fais bien de le faire;” and it was a simply-dignified _resume_ in presence of high-born ecclesiastics, who did not scruple to give the lie to each other like common ploughmen.

She was sentenced to death, and suffered the penalty, as being guilty of infamy, socially, morally, religiously, and politically. Not a finger was stretched to save her who had saved so many. Her murder is an indelible stain on two nations and one church; not the less so that the two nations unite in honoring her memory, and that the church has pronounced her innocent. Never did gallant champion meet with such base ingratitude from the party raised by her means from abject slavery to triumph; never was noble enemy so ignobly treated by a foe with whom, to acknowledge and admire valor, is next to the practice of it; and never was staff selected by the church for its support, so readily broken and thrown into the fire when it had served its purpose. All the sorrow in the world can not wash out these terrible facts, but it is fitting that this sorrow should always accompany our admiration. And so, honored be the memory of the young girl of Orleans!

After all, it is a question whether our sympathies be not thrown away when we affect to feel for Jeanne Darc. M. Delepierre, the Belgian Secretary of Legation, has printed, for private circulation, his “Doute Historique.” This work consists chiefly of official documents, showing that the “Maid” never suffered at all, but that some criminal having been executed in her place, she survived to be a pensioner of the government, a married lady, and the mother of a family! The work in which these documents are produced, is not to be easily procured, but they who have any curiosity in the matter will find the subject largely treated in the _Athenæum_. This “Historical Doubt” brings us so closely in connection with romance, that we, perhaps, can not do better in illustrating our subject, than turn to a purely romantic subject, and see of what metal the champions of Christendom were made, with respect to chivalry.

THE CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM GENERALLY AND HE OF ENGLAND IN PARTICULAR.

“Are these things true?
Thousands are getting at them in the streets.”
_Sejanus His Fall._

I can hardly express the delight I feel as a biographer in the present instance, in the very welcome fact that no one knows anything about the parentage of St. George. If there had been a genealogical tree of the great champion’s race, the odds, are that I should have got bewildered among the branches. As there is only much conjecture with a liberal allowance of assertion, the task is doubly easy, particularly as the matter itself is of the very smallest importance.

The first proof that our national patron ever existed at all, according to Mr. Alban Butler, is that the Greeks reverenced him by the name of “the Great Martyr.” Further proof of a somewhat similar quality, is adduced in the circumstance that in Greece and in various parts of the Levant, there are or were dozens of churches erected in honor of the chivalrous saint; that Georgia took the holy knight for its especial patron; and that St. George, in full panoply, won innumerable battles for the Christians, by leading forward the reserves when the vanguard had been repulsed by the infidels, and the Christian generals were of themselves too indolent, sick, or incompetent, to do what they expected St. George to do for them.

From the East, veneration for this name, and some imaginary person who once bore it, extended itself throughout the West. It is a curious fact, that long before England placed herself under the shield of this religious soldier, France had made selection of him, at least as a useful adjutant or aide-de-camp to St. Denis. Indeed, our saint was at one time nearly monopolized by France. St. Clotilde, the wife of the first Christian king of France, raised many altars in his honor--a fact which has not been forgotten in the decorations and illustrative adornments of that splendid church which has just been completed in the Faubourg St. Germain, and which is at once the pride and glory of Paris. That city once possessed relics which were said to be those of St. George; but of their whereabouts, no man now knows anything. We do, however, know that the Normans brought over the name of the saint with them, as that of one in whose arm of power they trusted, whether in the lists or in battle. In this respect _we_, as Saxons, if we choose to consider ourselves as such, have no particular reason to be grateful to the saint, for his presence among us is a symbol of national defeat if not of national humiliation. Not above six centuries have, however, elapsed since the great council of Oxford appointed his feast to be kept as a holyday of lesser rank throughout England; and it is about five hundred years since Edward III. established the Order of the Garter, under the patronage of this saint. This order is far more ancient than that of St. Michael, instituted by Louis XI.; of the Golden Fleece, invented by that ‘good’ Duke Philip of Burgundy, who fleeced all who were luckless enough to come within reach of his ducal shears; and of the Scottish Order of St. Andrew, which is nearly two centuries younger than that of St. George. Venice, Genoa, and Germany, have also instituted orders of chivalry in honor of this unknown cavalier.

These honors, however, and a very general devotion prove nothing touching his birth, parentage, and education. Indeed, it is probably because nothing is known of either, that his more serious biographers begin with his decease, and write his history, which, like one of Zschokke’s tales, might be inscribed “Alles Verkerht.” They tell us that he suffered under Diocletian, in Nicomedia, and on the 23d of April. We are further informed that he was a Cappadocian--a descendant of those savagely servile people, who once told the Romans that they would neither accept liberty at the hands of Rome, nor tolerate it of their own accord. He was, it is said, of noble birth, and after the death of his father, resided with his mother in Palestine, on an estate which finally became his own. The young squire was a handsome and stalwart youth, and, like many of _that_ profession, fond of a military life. His promotion must have been pretty rapid, for we find him, according to tradition, a tribune or colonel in the army at a very early age, and a man of much higher rank before he prematurely died. His ideas of discipline were good, for when the pagan emperor persecuted the Christians, George of Cappadocia resigned his commission and appointments, and not till then, when he was a private man, did he stoutly remonstrate with his imperial ex-commander-in-chief against that sovereign’s bloody edicts and fiercer cruelty against the Christians. This righteous boldness was barbarously avenged; and on the day after the remonstrance the gallant soldier lost his head. Some authors add to this account that he was the “illustrious young man” who tore down the anti-Christian edicts, when they were first posted up in Nicomedia, a conjecture which, by the hagiographers is called “plausible,” but which has no shadow of proof to give warrant for its substantiality.

The reason why all knights and soldiers generally have had confidence in St. George, is founded, we are told, on the _facts_ of his reappearance on earth at various periods, and particularly at the great siege of Antioch, in the times of the crusades. The Christians had been well nigh as thoroughly beaten as the Russians at Silistria. They were at the utmost extremity, when a squadron was seen rushing down from a mountain defile, with three knights at its head, in brilliant panoply and snow-white scarfs. “Behold,” cried Bishop Adhemar, “the heavenly succor which was promised to you! Heaven declares for the Christians. The holy martyrs, George, Demetrius, and Theodore, come to fight for you.” The effect was electrical. The Christian army rushed to victory, with the shout, “It is the will of God!” and the effect of the opportune appearance of the three chiefs and their squadron, who laid right lustily on the Saracens, was decisive of one of the most glorious, yet only temporarily productive of triumphs.

When Richard I. was on his expedition against enemies of the same race, he too was relieved from great straits by a vision of St. George. The army, indeed, did not see the glorious and inspiring sight, but the king affirmed that _he_ did, which, in those credulous times was quite as well. In these later days men are less credulous, or saints are more cautious. Thus the Muscovites assaulted Kars under the idea that St. Sergius was with them; at all events, Pacha Williams, a good cause, and sinewy arms, were stronger than the Muscovite idea and St. Sergius to boot.

Such, then, is the hagiography of our martial saint. Gibbon has sketched his life in another point of view--business-like, if not matter-of-fact. The terrible historian sets down our great patron as having been born in a fuller’s shop in Cilicia, educated (perhaps) in Cappadocia, and as having so won promotion, when a young man, from his patrons, by the skilful exercise of his profession as a parasite, as to procure, through their influence, “a lucrative commission or contract to supply the army with bacon!” In this commissariat employment he is said to have exercised fraud and corruption, by which may be meant that he sent to the army bacon as rusty as an old cuirass, and charged a high price for a worthless article. In these times, when the name and character of St. George are established, it is to be hoped that Christian purveyors for Christian armies do not, in reverencing George the Saint, imitate the practices alleged against him as George the Contractor. It would be hard, indeed, if a modern contractor who sent foul hay to the cavalry, uneatable food to the army generally, or poisonous potted-meat to the navy, could shield himself under the name and example of St. George. Charges as heavy _are_ alleged against him by Gibbon, who adds that the malversations of the pious rogue “were so notorious, that George was compelled to escape from the pursuit of justice.” If he saved his fortune, it is allowed that he made shipwreck of his honor; and he certainly did not improve his reputation if, as is alleged, he turned Arian. The career of our patron saint, as described by Gibbon, is startling. That writer speaks of the splendid library subsequently collected by George, but he hints that the volumes on history, rhetoric, philosophy, and theology, were perhaps as much proof of ostentation as of love for learning. That George was raised by the intrigues of a faction to the pastoral throne of Athanasius, in Alexandria, does not surprise us. Bishops were very irregularly elected in those early days, when men were sometimes summarily made teachers who needed instruction themselves; as is the case in some enlightened districts at present. George displayed an imperial pomp in his archiepiscopal character, “but he still betrayed those vices of his base and servile extraction,” yet was so impartial that he oppressed and plundered all parties alike. “The merchants of Alexandria,” says the historian of the “Decline and Fall,” “were impoverished by the unjust and almost universal monopoly which he acquired of nitre, salt, paper, funerals, &c., and the spiritual father of a great people condescended to practise the vile and pernicious arts of an informer. He seems to have had as sharp an eye after the profit to be derived from burials, as a certain archdeacon, who thinks intramural burial of the dead a very sanitary measure for the living, and particularly profitable to the clergy. Thus the example of St. George would seem to influence very “venerable” as well as very “martial” gentlemen. The Cappadocian most especially disgusted the Alexandrians by levying a house tax, of his own motion, and as he pillaged the pagan temples as well, all parties rose at length against the common oppressor and “under the reign of Constantine he was expelled by the fury and justice of the people.” He was restored only again to fall. The accession of Julian brought destruction upon the archbishop and many of his friends, who, after an imprisonment of three weeks, were dragged from their dungeons by a wild and cruel populace, and murdered in the streets. The bodies were paraded in triumph upon camels (as that of Condé was by his Catholic opponents, after the battle of Jarnac, on an ass), and they were ultimately cast into the sea. This last measure was adopted in order that, if the sufferers were to be accounted as martyrs, there should at least be no relics of them for men to worship. Gibbon thus concludes: “The fears of the Pagans were just, and their precautions ineffectual. The meritorious death of the archbishop obliterated the memory of his life. The rival of Athanasius was dear and sacred to the Arians, and the seeming conversion of those sectaries introduced his worship into the bosom of the Catholic church. The odious stranger, disguising every circumstance of time and place, assumed the rank of a martyr, a saint, and a Christian hero; and the infamous George of Cappadocia has been transformed into the famous St. George of England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the garter.”

The romancers have treated St. George and his knightly confraternity after their own manner. As a sample of what reading our ancestors were delighted with, especially those who loved chivalric themes, I know nothing better than “The Famous History of the Seven Champions of Christendom, St. George of England, St. Denis of France, St. James of Spain, St. Anthony of Italy, St. Andrew of Scotland, St. Patrick of Ireland, and St. David of Wales. Shewing their honourable battles by sea and land. Their tilts, justs, tournaments for ladies; their combats with gyants, monsters, and dragons; their adventures in foreign nations; their enchantments in the Holy Land; their knighthoods, prowess, and chivalry, in Europe, Africa, and Asia; with their victories against the enemies of Christ; also the true manner and places of their deaths, being seven tragedies, and how they came to be called the Seven Saints of Christendom.” The courteous author or publisher of the veracious details, prefaces them with a brief address “to all courteous readers,” to whom “Richard Johnson wisheth increase of virtuous knowledge.” “Be not,” he says, “like the chattering cranes, nor Momus’s mates that carp at everything. What the simple say, I care not. What the spiteful say, I pass not; only the censure of the conceited,” by which good Richard means the learned, “I stand unto; that is the mark I aim at,”--an address, it may be observed, which smacks of the Malaprop school; but which seemed more natural to our ancestors than it does to us.

For these readers Richard Johnson presents a very highly-spiced fare. He brings our patron saint into the world by a Cæsarean operation performed by a witch, who stole him from his unconscious mother, and reared him up in a cave, whence the young knight ultimately escaped with the other champions whom the witch, now slain, had kept imprisoned. The champions, it may be observed, travel with a celerity that mocks the “Express,” and rivals the despatch of the Electric Telegraph. They are scarcely departed from the seven paths which led from the brazen pillar, each in search of adventures, when they are all “in the thick of it,” almost at the antipodes. A breath takes St. George from Coventry, his recovered home, after leaving the witch, to Egypt. At the latter place he slays that terrible dragon, which some think to imply the Arian overcoming the Athanasian, and rescues the Princess Sabra, in whose very liberal love we can hardly trace a symbol of the Church, although her antipathies are sufficiently strong to remind one of the _odium theologicum_. George goes on performing stupendous feats, and getting no thanks, until he undertakes to slay a couple of lions for the Soldan of Persia, and gets clapped into prison, during seven years, for his pains. The biographer I suspect, shut the knight up so long, in order to have an excuse to begin episodically with the life of St. Denis.

The mystic number seven enters into all the principal divisions of the story. Thus, St. Denis having wandered into Thessaly was reduced to such straits as to live upon mulberries; and these so disagreed with him that he became suddenly transformed into a hart; a very illogical sequence indeed. But the mulberry tree was, in fact, Eglantius the King’s daughter, metamorphosed for her pride. Seven years he thus remained; at the end of which time, his horse, wise as any regularly-ordained physician, administered to him a decoction of roses which brought about the transformation of both his master and his master’s mistress into their “humane shapes.” That they went to court sworn lovers may be taken as a matter of course. There they are left, in order to afford the author an opportunity of showing how St. James, having most unorthodoxically fallen in love with a Jewish maiden, was seven years dumb, in consequence. St. James, however, is a patient and persevering lover. If I had an ill-will against any one I would counsel him to read this very long-winded history, but being at peace with all mankind, I advise my readers to be content with learning that the apostolic champion and the young Jewess are ultimately united, and fly to Seville, where they reside in furnished lodgings, and lead a happy life;--while the author tells of what befell to the doughty St. Anthony.

This notable Italian is a great hand at subduing giants and ladies. We have a surfeit of combats and destruction, and love-making and speechifying, in this champion’s life; and when we are compelled to leave him travelling about with a Thracian lady, who accompanies him, in a theatrical male dress, and looks in it like the Duchess--at least, like Miss Farebrother, in the dashing white sergeant of the Forty Thieves--we shake our head at St. Anthony and think how very unlike he is to his namesake in the etching by Callot, where the fairest of sirens could not squeeze a sigh from the anchorite’s wrinkled heart.

While they are travelling about in the rather disreputable fashion above alluded to, we come across St. Andrew of Scotland, who has greater variety of adventure than any other of the champions. With every hour there is a fresh incident. Now he is battling with spirits, now struggling with human foes, and anon mixed up, unfavorably, with beasts. At the end of all the frays, there is--we need hardly say it--a lady. The bonny Scot was not likely to be behind his fellow-champions in this respect. Nay, St. Andrew has six of them, who had been swans, and are now natural singing lasses. What sort of a blade St. Andrew was may be guessed by the “fact,” that when he departed from the royal court, to which he had conducted the half dozen ladies, they all eloped in a body, after him. There never was so dashing a hero dreamed of by romance--though a rhymer _has_ dashed off his equal in wooing, and Burns’s “Finlay” is the only one that may stand the parallel.

When the six Thracian ladies fall into the power of “thirty bloody-minded satyrs,” who so likely, or so happy to rescue them as jolly St. Patrick. How he flies to the rescue, slays one satyr, puts the rest to flight, and true as steel, in love or friendship, takes the half dozen damsels under his arm, and swings singingly along with them in search of the roving Scot! As for St. David, all this while, he had not been quite so triumphant, or so tried, as his fellows. He had fallen into bad company, and “four beautiful damsels wrapped the drousie champion in a sheet of fine Arabian silk, and conveyed him into a cave, placed in the middle of a garden, where they laid him on a bed, more softer than the down of Culvers.” In this agreeable company the Welsh champion wiled away _his_ seven years. It was pleasant but not proper. But if the author had not thus disposed of him, how do you think he would ever have got back to St. George of England? The author indeed exhibits considerable skill, for he brings St. George and St. David together, and the first rescues the second from ignoble thraldom, and what is worse, from the most prosy enchanter I ever met with in history, and who is really not enchanting at all. This done, George is off to Tripoli.

There, near there, or somewhere else, for the romances are dreadfully careless in their topography, he falls in with his old love Sabra, married to a Moorish King. If George is perplexed at this, seeing that the lady had engaged to remain an unmarried maiden till he came to wed her, he is still more so when she informs him that she has, in all essentials, kept her word, “through the secret virtue of a golden chain steeped in tiger’s blood, the which she wore seven times double about her ivory neck.” St. George does not know what to make of it, but as on subsequently encountering two lions, Sabra, while he was despatching one, kept the other quietly with its head resting on her lap, the knight declared himself perfectly satisfied, and they set out upon their travels, lovingly together.