SAINT JOAN by Bernard Shaw

Scene VI 

JOAN 
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 
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, 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 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 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 wanting 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.