I didn’t suppose that God would play me a dirty trick and refuse me grace for ever; but I should have liked all the same to be able to get my hands on some irrefutable proof; I found only one: the voices of Joan of Arc. Joan belonged to historical fact; my father as well as my mother venerated her. She was neither a liar nor an illuminee, so how could one deny her witness? The whole of her extraordinary adventure confirmed it: the voices had spoken to her; this was an established scientific fact and I couldn’t understand how my father managed to elude
