Pierre turned over and lay looking up at the priest's face and at the blue sky with white cloude drifting across it. He sighed. “Ah, if that could only be! But I have not the strength. It is impossible.”
“All things are possible to him that believeth. Strength will come. Perhaps Jeanne d'Arc herself will help you.”
“She would never speak to a man like me. She is a great saint, very high in heaven.”
“She was a farmer's lass, a peasant like yourself. She would speak to you, gladly and kindly, if you saw her, and in your own language, too. Trust her.”
“Listen, Pierre. I have thought for you. I will appoint the first part of your penance. You shall take the risk of being recognized and caught. You shall go down to the village and visit the places that belong to her--her basilica, her house, her church. Then you shall come back here and wait until you know--until you surely know what you must do. Will you promise this?”
Pierre had risen and looked up at the priest with tear-stained face. But his eyes were quieter. “Yes, Father, I can promise you this much faithfully.”
“Now I must go my way. Farewell, my son. Peace in war be with you.” He held out his hand.
Pierre took it reverently. “And with you, Father,” he murmured.
Antoine Courcy was one of those who are fitted and trained by nature for the cure of souls. If you had spoken to him of psychiatry he would not have understood you. The long word would have been Greek to him. But the thing itself he knew well. The preliminary penance which he laid upon Pierre Duval was remedial. It belonged to the true healing art which works first in the spirit.
When the broken soldier went down the hill, in the blaze of the mid-morning sunlight, toward Domremy, there was much misgiving and confusion in his thoughts. He did not comprehend why he was going, except that he had promised. He was not sure that some one might not know him, or perhaps out of mere curiosity stop him and question him. It was a reluctant journey.
Yet it was in effect an unconscious pilgrimage to the one health-resort that his soul needed. For Domremy and the region round about are saturated with the most beautiful story of France. The life of Jeanne d'Arc, simple and mysterious, humble and glorious, most human and most heavenly, flows under that place like a hidden stream, rising at every turn in springs and fountains. The poor little village lives in and for her memory. Her presence haunts the ridges and the woods, treads the green pastures, follows the white road beside the river, and breathes in the never-resting valley-wind that marries the flowers in June and spreads their seed in August.