Around Domremy
IT was a dark plunge into the Maid’s country, through driving rain, about nine o’clock in the evening. We were hungry, for there had been nothing but madeleines and champagne where we had hoped to find dinner. This sensation vanished, however, when we stepped into void night, lost even from the little world of Domremy. This was Domremy-Maxey, the railway station. Across an unseen valley and the bridged Meuse lay Greux and Domremy.
The traveler who arrives in the daytime, and takes the kilometer or so afoot, will fall at once under the spell of the ancient Lorraine marches. But I would rather approach first as we did, and realize the sordidness through which the Maid sprung. All the trivialities of life are forced back into their natural place, and you are conscious of bracing for the shock of most rugged peasant existence in a spot that has probably changed as little as any in the world during the past four hundred years. It is the spirit of the hills which meets you at her doorway.
The station-master, seeing our helpless state with some contempt, sent his boy into the unknown for a wagon. He then beckoned us to an inner room, and opened a hinged pane in a window. He listened mysteriously, satisfying himself that he was not overheard. It was most impressive. A round-bodied, rosy man is usually benevolent, however. He leaned toward us and whispered behind his hand, “Hotel Ferbus, monsieur - dame, Hotel Ferbus ! ”
We remembered afterwards that he did not praise Hotel Ferbus ; he simply imparted the name, and we caught it as something precious. His manner was the same as that of a Parisian modiste when she presses a garment upon you at two prices, — “ For you, for you alone, madame ! ” When a gaunt woman arrived, driving like a witch of the night, we repeated the name again and again to her. “ Hotel Ferbus ! We will have nothing but Hotel Ferbus ! ” The boy, following with a belated man, heard our directions in silent disapproval which was discernible by lantern-light. I have no doubt that boy had seen his master send victim after victim to Hotel Ferbus in Greux, thus extracting toll for a friend before the traveler could escape to a decent little inn in Domremy.
When we next saw the woman who drove us, she told us she knew the chambers in Hotel Ferbus were not convenable, but what could be said ? Monsieur was the good friend of Madame Ferbus. This woman’s horse was a great raw-boned creature like herself, with the same animal patience in its face. It had the gait of a camel, and threw itself violently into darkness. Our wheels grated against the walls of houses in DomremyMaxey. Our driver had a lantern beside her on the seat, and it showed her bare head, giving one the sense of terrible emergency, so that merely plunging into the dark valley and rolling upon the bridge was an adventure. But she put us down safely in what seemed to be the angle of a poultry-yard, and was the entrance to the Hotel Ferbus.
This primitive inn had a drinkingroom with a sanded floor; a best room with a cupboard bed, where some German ladies were sitting, ready to laugh with us at our common predicament; a kitchen; and three upstairs chambers. The innkeeper was a woman. There is yet no lack of woman’s prowess in the Maid’s country. Chickens were roosting along rough stairs which led to the chambers, but the beds did not lack linen sheets. Evidently, a housewife of northern France would go without wooden shoes before she would permit her beds to go uncanopied and unprovided with the best linen to be found in shops about her.
Domremy is less than half a kilometer from Greux. It seems almost possible to throw a ball from one village to the other, yet each has its ancient church. " Domremy,” says a current description of the place, “ is divided by the little brook of Trois-Fontaines, an affluent of the Meuse.” But you will look in vain for any such little brook. Greux is divided by a narrow stream,—the villagers abbreviating its name to “ Trois,”—a full, gurgling throat of water which soon spreads out in shallows where the geese love to tread. This trifling misstatement about Trois-Fontaines illustrates the general haziness which so many biographers throw around Jeanne d’Arc. “ She lived near Vaucouleurs,” we read, when Vaucouleurs — twenty kilometers from her birthplace — seemed nearly as remote to her as Paris. She never saw the town until she went there to be sent into France. Bermont, Bury-la-Côte, Goussaincourt,— a long chain of villages stretched betwixt the Maid and Vaucouleurs.
With the return of sunlight we found in Domremy a very decent inn, diagonally opposite the church. Besides straggling along one street by the river Meuse, the Pucelle’s town has a small overflow of houses betwixt two spurs of the long height following the river’s course. That whole valley of the Meuse is something to remember in dreams. It gives you a feeling of nearness to the sky. Thrifty vineyards show on the slopes, and along the upland south of Domremy is a dense growth of oaks. The Meuse is not a large stream nor a brimming one at midsummer. Verdure creeps to its edge, though it has not the look of a depressed course in a grassy meadow, like the Indre in another part of France.
The Maid’s church has a square, low tower, in which there is now a clock that strikes the hour twice. It is startling, after an interval of three minutes, to hear the strokes solemnly repeated, as if this were a region where you were driven to take note of time.
A very gnarled and miserably crippled old woman sat on the church steps when we entered, such a creature as Jeanne would have waited upon tenderly. I gave her three copper coins, and she turned a blessing on my head which poured steadily for a quarter of an hour. From my crown to my shoes, within and without, in all my desires and hopes, with the favor and protection of all the saints, especially the high guardianship of St. Michael, she blessed me, until it was embarrassing to be so beatified for a few coppers. She may have had credit with heaven. At any rate, it is not a bad thing, when you set about any serious undertaking, to be copiously blessed by an old woman.
This parish church of Domremy has a pretty interior ; not ambitious or imposing, but full of harmonious colors, with light and space in its arches. The most interesting spot is that chapel-lilte corner where Jeanne prayed, — the humble little sold, so far from the high altar ! Here an altar has for several years been dedicated to her. The adored of her people had no need to wait on the process at Rome to be the saint of Domremy. Banners are stacked as tribute before her. Marble votive tablets crowd the wall beside the altar. A white pillar opposite is covered with pencil inscriptions left by passing pilgrims : —
“ Honneur à Jeanne d’Arc.”
“ Salut à Jeanne d’Arc, la Vierge Lorraine.”
“ Honneur à Jeanne d’Arc, la Vierge Lorraine, de deux jeunes mariées en voyage.”
And so on, from the “ young married ” to the young soldiers and countless strangers who do not append their initials. The most impressive fact in Domremy is the brooding presence of the Maid. Every inhabitant feels a proprietary interest in that great memory. It is evidently transmitted from parent to child, a valuable inheritance. The place was long ago a shrine, and people who live around a shrine partake of its dignity.
The sweetest nature in this world cannot escape the sarcastic critic, who grows funnier in proportion to his density to mighty spiritual stress. Jeanne’s love-compelling presence kept her neighbors from ridiculing her, but doubtless folks in Toul and Neufchâteau heard of her pretensions with as much amusement as the times permitted. When you are utterly incapable of any achievement yourself, the next best thing is to heap contempt on one who may be capable of it. Jeanne d’Arc should be the peculiar saint of those who bear scorn from their fellows while they labor upon their ideals alone. But in our day no Frenchman makes a jest of the Maid of France. She is his miracle. To speak odiously of her would be unpardonable blasphemy. Voltaire has that base distinction to himself.
There is a wretched kneeling statue, on a pedestal, at the right of the church entrance. South of Domremy, upon a plateau of the height, under the oak woods where Jeanne often prayed, a huge white Basilica was nearly finished. In this new church daily mass is to be celebrated for the soldiers of France. At its front, the centre of a group containing St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret, is a touching and beautiful figure of the Maid hearkening to the Voices.
The picture of her shed-shaped home is familiar to everybody. The house stands back beside the rear of the church, on a lower plane of ground. The floor is now flagged with stone, and the whitebreasted chimney lightens a dark interior. There are only three rooms in this house, one of which was used for fuel. But the child’s real home was bounded only by the horizon. She worked in the fields and ran on the hills, she helped her mother wash the family woolens in the Meuse, and on Saturday afternoons in summer she went with other children to tend her pet lamb in the grassy ravine behind Bermont. Seven villages may now be counted from one hill over that populous valley. Less populous in her time, and harried by raiders, it was even then the forerunner of the French côte of continual settlements along a riverfront.
Pigs, geese, and goats run in the paved streets of Domremy. A few wellbuilt houses have walls and gardens about them, but the general domicile is a strong low stone cottage, having a coping around the manure heap under its window. The barnyard smell, however, is lost in the freshness of the hills. Southward, and far beyond the Basilica, a fine château is in sight, but it had no part in the life of the Maid, and no feudal rights over her village.
In summer, on the anniversary of Jeanne’s birth, a tide of pilgrims rushes through the Meuse valley. Ordinarily, nothing could be quieter than this pastoral Domremy life. The long twilight of the hills descends, and the cows are brought home by dark-eyed slender girls. A woman in a white cap, short skirts, and wooden shoes comes down from the uplands, with a vineyard pannier on her back heaped with luzerne for the cattle. It is so still that you can almost hear the gliding Meuse ripple on shallows. Then the church clock strikes twice, and the bell rings, and you hear also the bell in Greux. A patter follows on the paving. Domremy convent sends out its little flock of pupils, led by nuns, to their evening devotions. The firelight shines through house doors. Perhaps a child may be heard setting up its plaintive twilight wail. The innocent people get early to bed, and even at the wine-shop there are no lingerers.
On this sweet monotone of existence the world sometimes breaks with rude shock. The whole village came out to look at a bareheaded man in a cart, tied hand and foot with ropes. He had a rough crime-marked face, but complained volubly to the people who gathered around. They all looked at the prisoner ; some replied; their attitude expressed humanity rather than sympathy. A gendarme walked behind the cart. He allowed his prisoner a glass of water, but no wine. The man drank, and resumed his cigarette, giving his tongue liberty between puffs.
“ Il fume ! ” exclaimed the innkeeper’s daughter, astonished that any one could console himself in such a situation. She told us he was a voleur; and worse still, an anarchist! The peasants of Domremy breathed more comfortably as the cart moved on. Such faces as his usually make their last appearance with a glassy grin in the Paris morgue. But they have their amusements meanwhile.
We had far more stirring sights in Domremy. One ceremony is worth going to France for, although Jeanne’s townspeople have so often beheld it that they regard it with little attention. The jingle of bridles, clatter of hoofs, and rolling of heavy wheels brought us to the windows in time to see a regiment of French troops forming, on their way to Neufchâteau. The gun-carriages waited between house-rows. Men mounted on horseback, at a word from the officer, wheeled into line, facing the church and the Maid’s birthplace. At another word, out went every right hand with its weapon. They presented arms to Jeanne d’Arc ! How little it entered into the mind of the Libératrice that more than four hundred years after her death the troops of France would do her honor !
As soon as this act of homage was completed the men broke ranks, and took turns in dismounting and entering the church. All day, indeed, while this military body trailed through Domremy, soldiers might be seen hurrying in and out. Not one seemed capable of passing the shrine of Jeanne d’Arc without pausing there to bend his knees.
The road to Neufchâteau crosses the Meuse bridge almost opposite the church, and passes through Goncourt, a kilometer or two farther south. Here the mail arrives, for there is no post - office in Domremy. Along this track Jeanne’s family and neighbors, driving their cattle and carrying what they could with them, fled from Burgundian raiders to Neufchâteau.
To reach Bermont you go in the opposite direction, northward, through Greux, and in doing so you cross the line into the Vosges country. Bermont, however, is not on the road. A rough track, better suited to pilgrim feet than to carriage-wheels, crosses a field and ascends wooded heights. Bermont château stands in sight, the tiny ancient chapel appearing to form one wing. To this chapel Jeanne often climbed joyfully, lingering there on her knees while her playmates went on down into the ravine, to dance or run on the grass, which is wonderfully green and fresh about the spring. “ I do not remember that I ever danced,” she said at her trial, “ after I knew I had to go into France.”
When the châtelaine of Bermont sees visitors approaching, she has the chapel bell rung in salutation, and comes herself to unlock the door, fluttering with pleasure at the homage done the shrine which she guards. She lives here with her brother and one servant during the summer, and returns to Orleans for the winter. The peasants in Domremy venerate the Maid ; mademoiselle at Bermont adores her. The care of Bermont has been commended by the Pope, by a document wherein special indulgences are granted to those who come there to pray.
Though the chapel is small, its vaulted top gives it dignity. It is very dim, light coming from the east over the high altar. There are other windows on the north side under the eaves, but these are shrouded in shrubbery. On the left of the high altar is an ancient wooden image of the Virgin holding the Child in her arms. The Child clasps in his hands a bird.
It is a steep descent down a thickly wooded hillside into the ravine behind Bermont chapel. The charm of this place, so moist and green, shady yet sparkling with light, is enough to have drawn the children from Domremy through every generation. Limpid water overflows from the spring and runs away among trees in a brook which makes just noise enough to give a voice to the silence. The châtelaine assured us that Bermont spring was full of health-giving properties ; though, with French caution, she added some lumps of sugar to the draught.
Returning from Bermont, and again taking the road towards Vaucouleurs, you pass Goussaincourt at a twist it makes, climb the long shoulder of the Vosges hills, and come to Bury-la-Côte. Among the manure heaps of Bury it is easy to find the Laxart house, a good stone cottage, with the quaintest window and portal in that part of France.
Here is Jeanne’s actual starting-point. Durand Laxart took her in his cart from this door to the captain of Vaucouleurs. She set forth from Bury-la-Côte on the journey from which she never turned back. You grope through a long, dark entry into the living-room and stand on an earthen floor. One window looks over tiie Meuse. There is a whitebreasted chimney as in the Domremy cottage. The small brown joists are almost within reach, an arm’s-length above. One who has courage to brave its odors, in its present dishonored state, may imagine that room again lighted by hearth fagots, and a voice piercing the stillness, — “ Compère, I must go into France! ”
The least reverent member of the party remained outside, however, exchanging English for French with a puzzled villager who kindly acted as guide. The raw wind of an American prairie seemed to blow briskly through Bury-laCôte, but the guide was as insensible to this influence as she was to the house’s desecration. She thought no less of Durand Laxart’s cottage because it now sheltered chickens and geese.
“ It’s an old place, you say ? ”
“Oui, monsieur,” she responded, understanding the questioner’s meaning only.
“ Old enough to stink ? ”
“Oui, oui, monsieur, très - ancienne ; où Jeanne d’Arc restait.”
“ Old enough to stink worse than the rest of Bury-la-Côte ? ”
“ O, oui, monsieur ! ”
“ Then I shall hold my nose out here.”
“ Oui, monsieur,” piously assented the woman ; for though it was impossible to catch the exact meaning of an American, it was equally impossible that he should fail to venerate any spot blessed by the passing of the Maid.
The peasant, closely associated with dumb creatures in his labor, has a brother’s tenderness for them. He will house his draught-animals next his own chamber. No doubt, if Durand Laxart could return to Bury-la-Côte, he would commend the present use of his cottage, and would rather see it sheltering fowls than standing in empty ruin. We could not learn why the modern owner failed to keep the place sightly. Perhaps few pilgrims come to look at it. A little labor and no outlay of money would restore it to the state it was in four hundred and sixty years ago, allowing for the natural discoloration of wood and stone by time. These simple shrines of Europe make dwellers in a land of hastily built houses and sheet-iron business cliffs very low-spirited.
In the Meuse valley, as in other parts of France, the holdings are scattered. A man’s vineyard may be on the hill slope, and his luzerne field a kilometer or so distant. His cottage and garden represent another oasis. If he is very rich, he will own many spots in the landscape. The ancient estates alone may be measured in continuous arpents and included within one boundary. Peasants were small landlords along the Meuse in Jeanne d’Arc’s time.
The ancient way to reach Vaucouleurs was by the road winding up and down among the Vosges hills on the west side of the Meuse. This track Jeanne followed in Durand Laxart’s cart; and many towns may now be counted where stretches of chalky soil then brightened the darkness of the short late winter day. Wherever you go, the sensation of being near the sky accompanies you. The hills lean thereagainst, with cushions of shifting vapor.
But the modern way to reach Vaucouleurs is to take a train at DomremyMaxey and whiz over the twenty kilometers in a few more minutes.
Vaucouleurs — met in the dusk on the way down to Domremy — brought one’s heart to the lips, and made one lean from the carriage window to look at the twinkling town, exclaiming joyfully, “ This is Vaucouleurs ! Now we are in Jeanne d’Arc’s country ! From the castle gate here she set out to Chinon! ”
Encountered in the glaring white daylight of Vosges hills, it was still satisfactory as the great town of Jeanne’s childhood, though, like most ancient walled places, it has nearly obliterated its former girth. A line of dark wall and one old tower remain in the centre. This wall once continued uphill to the Gate of France, that southern portal renamed from Jeanne’s undertaking. A finer bit is below and a little northeast of the castle. This stanch survival of northern wall shows the kind of house which used to be built into fortifications ; its dark stones are gloriously clothed in vines.
The main street of Vaucouleurs is called Rue Jehanne d’Arc. With tiny winding ascents and descents branching from it in all directions, it leads to a fine open square ; crossing that, you will find a house of three stories, with yellow shutters and a small iron balcony, in a block with other houses. In a high niche on its front stands an image of the Virgin with a fleur-de-lys underneath. On this spot was the wheelwright’s home, where Jeanne stayed during her three weeks of waiting. She daily crossed the square westward and ascended a flight of stone steps leading to the castle.
The ascent winds betwixt walls deep as canals. The ruins of the castle are giving place to another huge white Basilica in the Maid’s honor, and this will inclose the crypt of the old chapel where she prayed daily to be sent into France. This province seems as remote from Parisian France in our day as it was in 1429, when cut off from the Dauphin by five hundred miles of debatable ground.
The castle foundations are very deep. In one place, under a gateway, where workmen were picking, they unearthed many forgotten bones. These crumbled easily at a touch. Some skull-fronts were thicker than an ox’s. And they needed so to be, in their day, when deeds of arms were done with mace and battle-axe, and a man’s helmet was so heavy that he gladly loaded it on the horse of his squire during his light moments of riding without encounter.
Locust and plane trees, cottonwood, box elder, and maple grow along the terraces of Vaucouleurs’ hillside, and in the wide alluvial strip which separates it from the Meuse. Everywhere the garden, hidden for its owner’s delight, may be detected within high inclosures. It is here, however, that one is sincerely convinced that the rivers of France must sometime run soapsuds. A hill tributary to the Meuse, swift and narrow, is stained by the labors of the washerwomen, who kneel in rows, their boxes in front of them and their paddles whacking. Echoes drop back from the castle height. These unreserved laundresses have great dignity. You cannot help feeling they are conferring some kind of public benefit, and the thanks of the state are due them. Yet with all such contributions along its course the Meuse runs limpidly green, as if only bruised grass were hidden in its depths.
The peasants have a form of salutation which one does not hear outside this valley, — “ Bon jour, monsieu’-dame ! ” with a sharply rising inflection on the last word. They are a long - limbed, well-built, hardy race. The old woman who brought luggage to the inn on a wheelbarrow was apt with her load, and by no means appealed to compassion. There lingers a hint of Jeanne d’Arc in the girls who walk about in wooden shoes, dark-eyed, gentle-mannered, and quickly kind. They have not the heavy stupidity of peasants farther west. These were always a freer people. A shady court in Vaucouleurs showed as in a picture six or seven girls who had drawn their chairs together, all sewing on some white stuff. Becoming conscious that strangers passed and glanced in,—for who could help glancing in at a picture ? — they took up a song and sung it together, neither offensive nor defensive, devoting themselves to working and singing. One was reminded of the Maid’s attention to the task set before her, and her simple indifference to the world outside of that.
The principal church of Vaucouleurs is not very interesting. Its side door, which is most frequently used, is so placed as to be seen at the top of a long, ascending street, like a shrine to reward the climber.
This pilgrimage into the Maid’s country is not for people who must have the luxuries of Paris ; though at any inn, except the one in Greux, meals are served in courses and on delicate china, and the best bleached linens cover your canopied bed. In Greux, even, the kindness of your hostess atones for her rude provisions. But one who goes reverently into that Meuse valley of rainbow lights leaves and remembers it with an aching regret akin to the long homesickness of the Maid. Her cradle is worthy of her. St. Michael might have floated over those hills, and St. Catherine and St. Margaret may well have met her in the oak woods. In all France the greatest tribute to her memory is this valley’s devotion to her. You hearken to the bells of Domremy and Greux and Buryla-Côte, and wish that you also might distinguish Voices.
Around Domremy there are, of course, many sights which escape the eye of one who comes on a pilgrimage. The uplands are indeed very stony ; but you forget that in recalling the story that here the Maid was once blown along without touching the ground, and she herself saw nothing strange in this until her companions cried out. Or the skylark circles down from the zenith to fall rejoicing on the hilltop. It is a beautiful and in some measure a blessed country where the skylark lingers and Jeanne d’Arc was.
Mary Hartwell Catherwood.