Yes: they told me you
were fools, and that I was not to listen to your fine words nor trust your
charity. You promised me my life; but you lied. You think that life is nothing
but not being stone dead. It is not the bread and water I fear: I can live on
bread: when have I asked for more? It is not hardship to drink water if the
water be clean. Bread has no sorrow for me, and water no affliction. But to
shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers; to
chain my feet so that I can never again ride with the soldiers nor climb the
hills; to make me breathe foul damp darkness, to keep me from everything that
brings me back to the love of God when your wickedness and foolishness tempt me
to hate Him: all this is worse than the furnace in the Bible that was heated
seven times. I could do without my warhorse; I could drag about in a skirt; I
could let the banners and the trumpets and the knights and the soldiers pass me
and leave me behind as they leave the other women, if only I could still hear
the wind in the trees, the larks in the sunshine, the young lambs crying
through the healthy frost, and the blessed blessed church bells that send my angel
voices floating to me on the wind. But without these things I cannot live; and
by your waiting to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know
that your counsel is of the devil, and that mine is of God.
Saint Joan - George Bernard Shaw
Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw at the Arts Club Theatre Company's Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage is on until November 23.