Saint Joan

George Bernard Shaw

Joan: Yes, they told me you were fools, and that I was not to listen to your fine
words nor trust to 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 no hardship to drink water if
the water be clean. Bread has no sorrow for me, and water no afflicEon. 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 no climb the hills; to make
me breathe foul damp darkness, and keep from me 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 Emes. I
could drag about in a skirt; I could let the banners and the trumpets and the
knights and soldiers pass me and leave me behind as they leave the other women,
if only I could sEll 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 floaEng to me on the wind. But without these things I
cannot live; and by your wanEng 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.