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Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
Chapter 19
BEING WORN out with the long fight, we all slept the rest of the
afternoon away and two or three hours into the night. Then we got up
refreshed, and had supper. As for me, I could have been willing to let
the matter of the ghost drop; and the others were of a like mind, no
doubt, for they talked diligently of the battle and said nothing of that
other thing. And indeed it was fine and stirring to hear the Paladin
rehearse his deeds and see him pile his dead, fifteen here, eighteen
there, and thirty-five yonder; but this only postponed the trouble; it
could not do more. He could not go on forever; when he had carried the
bastille by assault and eaten up the garrison there was nothing for it
but to stop, unless Catherine Boucher would give him a new start and have
it all done over again--as we hoped she would, this time--but she was
otherwise minded. As soon as there was a good opening and a fair chance,
she brought up her unwelcome subject, and we faced it the best we could.
We followed her and her parents to the haunted room at eleven o'clock,
with candles, and also with torches to place in the sockets on the walls.
It was a big house, with very thick walls, and this room was in a remote
part of it which had been left unoccupied for nobody knew how many years,
because of its evil repute.
This was a large room, like a salon, and had a big table in it of
enduring oak and well preserved; but the chair were worm-eaten and the
tapestry on the walls was rotten and discolored by age. The dusty cobwebs
under the ceiling had the look of not having had any business for a
century.
Catherine said:
"Tradition says that these ghosts have never been seen--they have merely
been heard. It is plain that this room was once larger than it is now,
and that the wall at this end was built in some bygone time to make and
fence off a narrow room there. There is no communication anywhere with
that narrow room, and if it exists--and of that there is no reasonable
doubt--it has no light and no air, but is an absolute dungeon. Wait where
you are, and take note of what happens."
That was all. Then she and her parents left us. When their footfalls had
died out in the distance down the empty stone corridors an uncanny
silence and solemnity ensued which was dismaler to me than the mute march
past the bastilles. We sat looking vacantly at each other, and it was
easy to see that no one there was comfortable. The longer we sat so, the
more deadly still that stillness got to be; and when the wind began to
moan around the house presently, it made me sick and miserable, and I
wished I had been brave enough to be a coward this time, for indeed it is
no proper shame to be afraid of ghosts, seeing how helpless the living
are in their hands. And then these ghosts were invisible, which made the
matter the worse, as it seemed to me. They might be in the room with us
at that moment--we could not know. I felt airy touches on my shoulders
and my hair, and I shrank from them and cringed, and was not ashamed to
show this fear, for I saw the others doing the like, and knew that they
were feeling those faint contacts too. As this went on--oh, eternities it
seemed, the time dragged so drearily--all those faces became as wax, and
I seemed sitting with a congress of the dead.
At last, faint and far and weird and slow, came a
"boom!--boom!--boom!"--a distant bell tolling midnight. When the last
stroke died, that depressing stillness followed again, and as before I
was staring at those waxen faces and feeling those airy touches on my
hair and my shoulders once more.
One minute--two minutes--three minutes of this, then we heard a long deep
groan, and everybody sprang up and stood, with his legs quaking. It came
from that little dungeon. There was a pause, then we herd muffled
sobbings, mixed with pitiful ejaculations. Then there was a second voice,
low and not distinct, and the one seemed trying to comfort the other; and
so the two voices went on, with moanings, and soft sobbings, and, ah, the
tones were so full of compassion and sorry and despair! Indeed, it made
one's heart sore to hear it.
But those sounds were so real and so human and so moving that the idea of
ghosts passed straight out of our minds, and Sir Jean de Metz spoke out
and said:
"Come! we will smash that wall and set those poor captives free. Here,
with your ax!"
The Dwarf jumped forward, swinging his great ax with both hands, and
others sprang for torches and brought them.
Bang!--whang!--slam!--smash went the ancient bricks, and there was a hole
an ox could pass through. We plunged within and held up the torches.
Nothing there but vacancy! On the floor lay a rusty sword and a rotten
fan.
Now you know all that I know. Take the pathetic relics, and weave about
them the romance of the dungeon's long-vanished inmates as best you can.
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