Читать книгу Joan of Arc: In her own words - Joan of Arc - Страница 6

February, 1429

FROM THE TIME that I knew I must go into France, I gave myself little to games and frolics—as little as I could.

I did not talk of my visions—not that my voices told me to hide them but I was afraid to let them be known, for dread of the Burgundians and that they would prevent me from starting on my journey. And, even more, I feared that my father would prevent me.

My mother had told me that my father often dreamed that I would run away with a band of soldiers. That was more than two years after I first heard the voices. She told me that he had said to my brothers, “If I believed that the thing I have dreamed about her would come to pass, I would want you to drown her; and if you would not, I would drown her myself.” On account of these dreams, my father and mother watched me closely and kept me in great subjection. And I was obedient in everything.

But since God had commanded me to go, I must do it. And since God had commanded it, had I had a hundred fathers and a hundred mothers, and had I been a king’s daughter, I would have gone.

It pleased God thus to act through a simple maid in order to turn back the King’s enemies.

I went to my uncle and told him that I would visit him for a time. I was in his house for about a week; then I told him that I must go to Vaucouleurs. And my uncle took me there.