 CHAPTER XIII So the second trial in the prison was over. Over and no definite result. The character of it I have described to you. It was baser in one particular than the previous one, for this time the charges had not been communicated to Joan, therefore she had been obliged to fight in the dark. There was no opportunity to do any thinking beforehand. There was no foreseeing what traps might be set, and no way to prepare for them. Truly it was a shabby advantage to take of a girl situated as this one was. One day, during the course of it, an able lawyer of Normandy, Maître Loire, happened to be in Rouen, and I will give you his opinion of that trial, so that you may see that I have been honest with you, and that my partisanship has not made me deceive you as to its unfair and illegal character. Cauchon showed Loire the procé and asked his opinion about the trial. Now this was the opinion which he gave to Cauchon. He said that the whole thing was null and void, for these reasons. 1. Because the trial was secret, and full freedom of speech and action on the part of those present not possible, 2. Because the trial touched the honour of the King of France, yet he was not summoned to defend himself, nor anyone appointed to represent him, 3. Because the charges against the prisoner were not communicated to her, 4. Because the accused, although young and simple, had been forced to defend her cause without help of counsel, notwithstanding she had so much at stake. Did that please Bishop Cauchon? It did not. He burst out upon Loire with the most savage cursings, and swore he would have him drowned. Loire escaped from Rouen and got out of France with all speed, and so saved his life. Well, as I have said, the second trial was over without definite result, but Cauchon did not give up. He could trump up another, and still another, and another if necessary. He had the half promise of an enormous prize, the archbishopric of Rouen, if he should succeed in burning the body and damning to hell the soul of this young girl who had never done him any harm, and such a prize as that to a man like the Bishop of Beauvais was worth the burning and damning of fifty harmless girls, let alone one. So he set to work again straight off next day, and with high confidence, too, intimating with brutal cheerfulness that he should succeed this time. It took him and the other scavengers nine days to dig matter enough out of Joan's testimony and their own inventions to build up the new mass of charges, and it was a formidable mass indeed, for it numbered sixty-six articles. This huge document was carried to the castle the next day, March twenty-seventh, and there, before a dozen carefully selected judges, the new trial was begun. Opinions were taken, and the tribunal decided that Joan should hear the articles read this time. Maybe that was on account of Loire's remark upon that head, or maybe it was hoped that the reading would kill the prisoner with fatigue. But as it turned out, this reading occupied several days. It was also decided that Joan should be required to answer squarely to every article, and that if she refused, she should be considered convicted. You see, Cauchon was managing to narrow her chances more and more all the time. He was drawing the toils closer and closer. Joan was brought in, and the Bishop of Beauvais opened with a speech to her which ought to have made even himself blush so laden it was with hypocrisy and lies. He said that this court was composed of holy and pious churchmen whose hearts were full of benevolence and compassion toward her, and that they had no wish to hurt her body but only a desire to instruct her and lead her into the way of truth and salvation. Why, this man was born a devil. Now think of his describing himself and those hardened slaves of his in such language as that. And yet, worse was to come. For now, having in mind another of Loye's hints, he had the cold effrontery to make to Joan a proposition which, I think, will surprise you when you hear it. He said that this court, recognizing her untaught estate and her inability to deal with the complex and difficult matters which were about to be considered, had determined, out of their pity and their mercifulness, to allow her to choose one or more persons out of their own number to help her with counsel and advice. Think of that! A court made up of Loiseleur and his breed of reptiles. It was granting leave to a lamb to ask help of a wolf. Joan looked up to see if he was serious and perceiving that he was at least pretending to be. She declined, of course. The bishop was not expecting any other reply. He had made a show of fairness and could have it entered on the contents, therefore he was satisfied. Then he commanded Joan to answer straightly to every accusation, and threatened to cut her off from the church if she failed to do that, or delayed her answers beyond a given length of time. Yes, he was narrowing her chances down, step by step. Thomas de Coursel began the reading of that interminable document, article by article. Joan answered to each article in its turn, sometimes merely denying its truth. Perhaps by saying her answer would be found in the records of the previous trials. What a strange document that was, and what an exhibition and exposure of the heart of man, the one creature authorized to boast that he is made in the image of God. To know Joan of Arc was to know one who was wholly noble, pure, truthful, brave, compassionate, generous, pious, unselfish, modest, as the very flowers in the fields, a nature fine and beautiful, a character supremely great. To know her from that document would be to know her as the exact reverse of all that. Nothing that she was appears in it. Everything that she was not appears there in detail. Consider some of the things it charges against her, and remember who it is it is speaking of. It calls her a sorceress, a false prophet, an invoker and companion of evil spirits, a dealer in magic, a person ignorant of the Catholic faith, a schismatic. She is sacrilegious, an idolater, an apostate, a blasphemer of God and his saints, scandalous, seditious, a disturber of the peace. She incites men to war, and to the spilling of human blood. She discards the decencies and proprieties of her sex, irreverently assuming the dress of a man and the vocation of a soldier. She beguiles both princes and people. She usurps divine honors, and has caused herself to be adored and venerated, offering her hands and her vestments to be kissed. There it is. Every fact of her life distorted, perverted, reversed. As a child she had loved the fairies. She had spoken a pitying word for them when they were banished from their home. She had played under their tree and around their fountain. Hence she was a comrade of evil spirits. She had lifted France out of the mud and moved her to strike for freedom, and led her to victory after victory. Hence she was the disturber of the peace, as indeed she was and a provoker of war, as indeed she was again, and France will be proud of it and grateful for it for many a century to come. And she had been adored, as if she could help that poor thing, or was in any way to blame for it. The cowed veteran and the wavering recruit had drunk the spirit of war from her eyes, and touched her sword with theirs, and moved forward invincible. Hence she was a sorceress. And so the document went on, detail by detail, turning these waters of life to poison, this gold to dross, these proofs of a noble and beautiful life, to evidence of a foul and odious one. Of course the sixty-six articles were just a rehash of the things which had come up in the course of the previous trials, so I will touch upon this new trial but lightly. In fact Joan went but little into detail herself, usually merely saying, That is not true, passe-outre, or I have answered that before, let the clerk read it in his record, or saying some other brief thing. She refused to have her mission examined and tried by the earthly church. The refusal was taken note of. She denied the accusation of idolatry, and that she had sought men's homage. She said, If any kissed my hands and my vestments it was not by my desire, and I did what I could to prevent it. She had the pluck to say to that deadly tribunal that she did not know the fairies to be evil beings. She knew it was a perilous thing to say, but it was not in her nature to speak anything but the truth when she spoke at all. Danger had no weight with her in such things. That was taken of her remark. She refused, as always before, when asked if she would put off the male attire if she were given permission to commune. And she added this. When one receives the sacrament, the manner of his dress is a small thing and of no value in the eyes of our Lord. She was charged with being so stubborn in clinging to her male dress that she would not lay it off even to get the blessed privileges of hearing mass. She spoke out with spirit and said, I would rather die than be untrue to my oath to God. She was reproached with doing man's work in the wars and thus deserting the industry's proper to her sex. She answered with some little touch of soldierly disdain. As to the matter of women's work there's plenty to do it. It was always a comfort to me to see the soldier spirit crop up in her. While that remained in her she would be Joan of Arc and able to look trouble and fate in the face. It appears that this mission of yours, which you claim you had from God, was to make war and pour out human blood. Joan replied quite simply, contenting herself with explaining that war was not her first move but her second. To begin with, I demanded that peace should be made. If it was refused, then I would fight. The judge mixed the Burgundians and English together in speaking of the enemy which Joan had come to make war upon, but she showed that she made a distinction between them by act and word, the Burgundians being Frenchmen, and therefore entitled to less brusque treatment than the English. She said, As to the Duke of Burgundy, I required of him, both by letters and by his ambassadors, that he make peace with the King. As to the English, the only peace for them was that they leave the country and go home. Then she said that even with the English she had shown a Pacific disposition, since she had warned them away by proclamation before attacking them. If they had listened to me, said she, they would have done wisely. At this point she uttered her prophecy again, saying with emphasis, Before seven years they will see it themselves. Then they presently began to pester her again about her male costume, and tried to persuade her to voluntarily promise to discard it. I was never deep, so I think it no wonder that I was puzzled by their persistency in what seemed a thing of no consequence, and could not make out what their reason could be. But we all know now, we all know now, that it was another of their treacherous projects. Yes, if they could but succeed in getting her to formally discard it, they could play a game upon her which would quickly destroy her. So they kept at their evil work until at last she broke out and said, Peace! Without the permission of God I will not lay it off, though you cut off my head. At one point she corrected the prose verbals, saying, It makes me say that everything which I have done was done by the counsel of our Lord. I did not say that. I said, All which I have, well done! Doubt was cast upon the authenticity of her mission because of the ignorance and simplicity of the messenger chosen. Joan smiled at that. She could have reminded these people that our Lord, who is no respecter of persons, had chosen the lowly for his high purposes even oftener than he had chosen bishops and cardinals, but she phrased her rebuke in simpler terms. It is the prerogative of our Lord to choose his instruments where he will. She was asked what form of prayer she used in invoking counsel from on high. She said the form was brief and simple. Then she lifted her pallid face and repeated it, clasping her chained hands. Most dear Lord, in honour of your holy passion I beseech you, if you love me, that you will reveal to me what I am to answer to these churchmen. As concerns my dress I know by what command I have put it on, but I know not in what manner I am to lay it off. I pray you tell me what to do. She was charged with having dared against the precepts of God and his saints to assume empire over men, and make herself commander-in-chief. That touched the soldier in her. She had a deep reverence for priests, but the soldier in her had but small reverence for a priest's opinions about war. So in her answer to this charge she did not condescend to go into any explanations or excuses but delivered herself with bland indifference and military brevity. If I was commander-in-chief it was to thrash the English. Death was staring her in the face here all the time, but no matter. She dearly loved to make these English-hearted Frenchmen squirm, and whenever they gave her an opening she was prompt to jab her sting into it. She got great refreshment out of these little episodes. Her days were a desert. These were the Oasis in it. Her being in the wars with men was charged against her as an indelicacy. She said, I had a woman with me when I could, in towns and lodgings, in the field I always slept in my armor. That she and her family had been ennobled by the king was charged against her as evidence that the source of her deeds were sordid self-seeking. She answered that she had not asked this grace of the king. It was his own act. This third trial was ended at last, and once again there was no definite result. Possibly a fourth trial might succeed in defeating this apparently unconquerable girl. So the malignant bishop set himself to work to plan it. He appointed a commission to reduce the substance of the sixty-six articles to twelve compact lies as a basis for the new attempt. This was done. It took several days. Meantime Cachon went to Joan's cell one day, with Montchon and two of the judges, Isambard de la Pierre and Martin l'Advenu, to see if he could not manage somehow to be guile Joan into submitting her mission to the examination and decision of the church militant, that is to say, to that part of the church militant which was represented by himself and his creatures. Joan once more positively refused. Isambard de la Pierre had a heart in his body, and so he pitied this persecuted poor girl that he ventured to do a very daring thing, for he asked her if she would be willing to have her case go before the Council of Basel, and said it contained as many priests of her party as of the English party. Joan cried out that she would gladly go before so fairly constructed a tribunal as that, but before Isambard could say another word, Cachon turned savagely upon him and exclaimed, Shut up, in the devil's name! Then Montchon ventured to do a brave thing too, though he did it in great fear for his life. He asked Cachon if he should enter Joan's submission to the Council of Basel upon the minutes. No! It is not necessary! Ah! said poor Joan reproachfully. You set down everything that is against me, but you will not set down what is for me. It was piteous. It would have touched the heart of a brute, but Cachon was more than that. CHAPTER XIV We were now in the first days of April. Joan was ill. She had fallen ill the twenty-ninth of March, the day after the close of the third trial, and was growing worse when the scene which I have just described occurred in her cell. It was just like Cachon to go there and try to get some advantage out of her weakened state. Let us note some of the particulars in the new indictment, the twelve lies. Part of the first one says Joan asserts that she has found her salvation. She never said anything of the kind. It also says she refuses to submit herself to the church. Not true. She was willing to submit all her acts to this groin tribunal except those done by the command of God in fulfilment of her mission, those she reserved for the judgment of God. She refused to recognize Cachon and his serfs as the church, but was willing to go before the Pope or the Council of Basel. A clause of another of the twelve says she admits having threatened with death those who would not obey her, distinctly false. Another clause says she declares that all she has done has been done by command of God. What she really said was all that she had done well, a correction made by herself as you have already seen. Another of the twelve says she claims that she has never committed any sin. She never made any such claim. Another makes the wearing of the male dress a sin. If it was, she had high Catholic authority for committing it, that of the Archbishop of Reims and the Tribunal of Poitiers. The tenth article was resentful against her for pretending that St. Catherine and St. Marguerite spoke French and not English, and were French in their politics. The twelve were to be submitted first to the learned doctors of theology of the University of Paris for approval. They were copied out and ready by the night of April 4. Then Monchon did another bold thing. He wrote in the margin that many of the twelve put statements in Joan's mouth which were the exact opposite of what she had said. That fact would not be considered important by the University of Paris and would not influence its decision or stir its humanity, in case it had any, which it hadn't when acting in a political capacity as at present, but it was a brave thing for that good Monchon to do all the same. The twelve were sent to Paris next day, April 5. That afternoon there was a great tumult in Rouen, and excited crowds were flocking through all the chief streets, chattering and seeking for news, for a report had gone abroad that Joan of Arc was sick until death. In truth these long séances had worn her out and she was ill indeed. The heads of the English party were in a state of consternation, for if Joan should die uncondemned by the church and go to the grave unsmerched, the pity and the love of the people would turn her wrongs and sufferings and death into a holy martyrdom, and she would be even a mightier power in France dead than she had been when alive. The Earl of Warwick and the English cardinal Winchester hurried to the castle and sent messengers flying for physicians. Warwick was a hard man, a rude, coarse man, a man without compassion. There lay the sick girl stretched in her chains in her iron cage, not an object to move man to un-gentle speech, one would think. Yet Warwick spoke right out in her hearing and said to the physicians, "'Mind you take good care of her? The King of England has no mind to have her die a natural death. She is dear to him, for he bought her dear, and he does not want her to die save at the stake. Now then, mind you cure her!' The doctors asked Joan what had made her ill. He said the Bishop of Beauvais had sent her a fish, and she thought it was that. Then Jean-Destivé burst out on her and called her names and abused her. He understood Joan to be charging the Bishop with poisoning her, you see, and that was not pleasing to him, for he was one of Cauchon's most loving and consciousnessless slaves, and it outraged him to have Joan injure his master in the eyes of these great English chiefs, these being men who could ruin Cauchon, and would promptly do it if they got the conviction that he was capable of saving Joan from the stake by poisoning her, and thus cheating the English out of all the real value gainable by her purchase from the Duke of Burgundy. Joan had a high fever, and the doctors proposed to bleed her. Warwick said, "'Be careful about that! She is smart and is capable of killing herself!' He meant that to escape the stake she might undo the bandage and let herself bleed to death. But the doctors bled her anyway, and then she was better. Not for long, though. Jean-Destivé could not hold still. He was so worried and angry about the suspicion of poisoning which Joan had hinted at, so he came back in the evening and stormed at her till he brought the fever all back again. When Warwick heard of this, he was in a fine temper, you may be sure, for here was his prey threatening to escape again, and all through the overzeal of this meddling fool. Warwick gave Destivé a quite admirable cursing, admirable as to strength, I mean, for it was said by persons of culture that the art of it was not good, and after that the meddler kept still. Joan remained ill more than two weeks, then she grew better. She was still very weak, but she could bear a little persecution now without much danger to her life. It seemed to Cauchon a good time to furnish it. So he called together some of his doctors of theology and went to her dungeon. Mauchon and I went along to keep the record, that is, to set down what might be useful to Cauchon and leave out the rest. The sight of Joan gave me a shock, why, she was but a shadow. It was difficult for me to realize that this frail little creature, with a sad face and drooping form, was the same Joan of Arc that I had so often seen, all fire and enthusiasm, charging through a hail of death and the lightning and thunder of the guns at the head of her battalions. It run my heart to see her looking like this. But Cauchon was not touched. He made another of those consciousness speeches of his, all dripping with hypocrisy and guile. He told Joan that among her answers had been some which had seemed to endanger religion, and as she was ignorant and without knowledge of the scriptures, he had brought some good and wise men to instruct her if she desired it. But he, we are churchmen, and disposed by our good will as well as by our vocation to procure for you the salvation of your soul and your body in every way in our power, just as we would do the like for our nearest kin or for ourselves. In this we but follow the example of Holy Church, who never closes the refuge of her bosom against any that are willing to return. Joan thanked him for these sayings and said, I seem to be in danger of death from this malady. If it be the pleasure of God that I die here, I beg that I may be heard in confession, and also receive my saviour, and that I may be buried in consecrated ground. Cauchon thought he saw his opportunity at last. This weakened body had the fear of an unblessed death before it, and the pains of hell to follow. This stubborn spirit would surrender now, so he spoke out and said, Then if you want the sacraments you must do as all good Catholics do, and submit to the church. He was eager for her answer, but when it came there was no surrender in it. She still stood to her guns. She turned her head away and said wearily, I have nothing more to say. Cauchon's temper was stirred, and he raised his voice threateningly, and said that the more she was in danger of death the more she ought to amend her life, and again he refused the things she begged for unless she would submit to the church. Joan said, If I die in this prison I beg you to have me buried in holy ground. If you will not I cast myself upon my saviour. There was some more conversation of the like sort, then Cauchon demanded again, and imperiously, that she submit herself and all her deeds to the church. His threatening and storming went for nothing. That body was weak, but the spirit in it was the spirit of Joan of Arc, and out of that came the steadfast answer which these people were already so familiar with and attested so sincerely. Let come what may! I will neither do nor say any otherwise than I have said already in your tribunals. Then the good theologians took turn about and worried her with reasonings and arguments and scriptures, and always they held the lure of the sacraments before her famishing soul, and tried to brib her with them to surrender her mission to the church's judgment, that is, to their judgment, as if they were the church. But it availed nothing. I could have told them that beforehand if they had asked me. But they never asked me anything. I was too humble a creature for their notice. Then the interview closed with a threat, a threat of fearful import. A threat calculated to make a Catholic Christian feel as if the ground were sinking from under him. The church calls upon you to submit, disobey, and she will abandon you as if you were a pagan. Think of being abandoned by the church, that august power in whose hands has lodged the fate of the human race, whose scepter stretches beyond the furthest constellation that twinkles in the sky, whose authority is over millions that live and over the billions that wait trembling in purgatory for ransom or doom, whose smile opens the gates of heaven to you, whose frown delivers you to the fires of everlasting hell, a power whose dominion overshadows and belittles the pumps and shows of a village. To be abandoned by one's king, yes, that is death, and death is much, but to be abandoned by Rome, to be abandoned by the church, ah, death is nothing to that. For that is consignment to endless life, and such a life. I could see the red waves tossing in that shoreless lake of fire, I could see the black myriads of the damned rise out of them and struggle and sink and rise again, and I knew that Joan was seeing what I saw while she paused musing, and I believed that she must yield now, and in truth I hoped she would, for these men were able to make the threat good and deliver her over to eternal suffering, and I knew that it was in their nature to do it. But I was foolish to think that thought and hope that hope. Joan of Arc was not made as others are made. Fidelity to principle, fidelity to truth, fidelity to her word, all these were in her bone and in her flesh, they were parts of her. She could not change, she could not cast them out. She was the very genius of fidelity. She was steadfastness incarnated, where she had taken her stand and planted her foot, there she would abide. Well itself could not move her from that place. Her voices had not given her permission to make the sort of submission that was required, therefore she would stand fast. She would wait, in perfect obedience, let come what might. My heart was like lead in my body when I went out from that dungeon, but she, she was serene, she was not troubled. She had done what she believed to be her duty, and that was sufficient. The consequences were not her affair. The last thing she said that time was full of this serenity, full of contented repose. I am a good Christian born and baptized, and a good Christian, I will die. The second of May was come. The chill was departed out of the air, the wild flowers were springing in the glades and glens. The birds were piping in the woods, all nature was brilliant with sunshine. All spirits were renewed and refreshed, all hearts glad. The world was alive with hope and cheer. The plain beyond the sand stretched away soft and rich and green. The river was limpid and lovely. The leafy islands were dainty to see, and flung still dainty reflections of themselves upon the shining water. And from the tall bluffs above the bridge grew on was become again a delight to the eye, the most exquisite and satisfying picture of a town that nestles under the arch of heaven anywhere. When I say that all hearts were glad and hopeful, I mean it in a general sense. There were exceptions. We who were the friends of Joan of Arc, also Joan of Arc herself, that poor girl shut up there in that frowning stretch of mighty walls and towers, brooding in darkness so close to the flooding downpour of sunshine yet so impossibly far away from it, so longing for any little glimpse of it yet so implacably denied it by those wolves in the black gowns who were plotting her death and the blackening of her good name. Cauchon was ready to go with his miserable work. He had a new scheme to try now. He would see what persuasion could do. Argument, eloquence poured out upon the incorrigible captive from the mouth of a trained expert. That was his plan. But the reading of the twelve articles to her was not a part of it. No, even Cauchon was ashamed to lay that him on strassity before her. Even he had a remnant of shame in him, a way down deep, a million fathoms deep, and that remnant asserted itself now and prevailed. On this fair, second of May, then, the black company gathered itself together in the spacious chamber at the end of the great hall of the castle, the bishop of Beauvais on his throne, and sixty-two minor judges amassed before him, with the guards and recorders at their stations and the orator at his desk. Then we heard the far clank of chains, and presently Joan entered with her keepers, and took her seat upon her isolated bench. She was looking well now, and most fair and beautiful after her fortnight's rest from wordy persecution. She glanced about and noted the orator. Doubtless she divined the situation. The orator had written his speech all out and had it in his hand, though he held it back of him out of sight. It was so thick that it resembled a book. He began flowing, but in the midst of a flowery period his memory failed him, and he had to snatch a furtive glance at his manuscript which much injured the effect. Again this happened, and then a third time. The poor man's face was red with embarrassment, the whole great house was pitying him, which made the matter worse. Then Joan dropped in a remark which completed the trouble. She said, "'Read your book, and then I will answer you.'" Why, it was almost cruel the way those moldy veterans laughed, and as for the orator, he looked so flustered and helpless that almost anybody would have pitied him, and I had difficulty to keep from doing it myself. Yes, Joan was feeling very well after her rest, and the native mischief that was in her lay near the surface. It did not show when she made the remark, but I knew it was close in there back of the words. When the orator had gotten back his composure he did a wise thing, for he followed Joan's advice. He made no more attempts at sham impromptu oratory, but read his speech straight from his book. In the speech he compressed the twelve articles into six and made these his text. Every now and then he stopped and asked questions, and Joan replied. The nature of the church militant was explained, and once more Joan was asked to submit herself to it. She gave her usual answer. Then she was asked, "'Do you believe the church can air?' I believe it cannot air. But for those deeds and words of mine which were done and uttered by command of God, I will answer to him alone. "'Will you say that you have no judge upon earth? Is not our holy Father the Pope your judge?' "'I will say nothing about it. I have a good master who is our Lord, and to him I will submit all.' Then came these terrible words. If you do not submit to the church, you will be pronounced a heretic by these judges here present, and burned at the stake. Ah, that would have smitten you or me dead with fright. But it only roused the lion-heart of Joan of Arc, and in her answer rang that martial note which had used to stir her soldiers like a bugle-call. I will not say otherwise than I have said already, and if I saw the fire before me I would say it again.' It was uplifting to hear her battle-voice once more and see the battle-light burn in her eye. Many there were stirred. Every man that was a man was stirred, whether friend or foe. And Marchand risked his life again, good soul, for he wrote in the margin of the record in good plain letters these brave words, Superba responsio. And there they have remained these sixty years. And there you may read them to this day. Superba responsio. Yes it was just that, for this superb answer came from the lips of a girl of nineteen, with death and hell staring her in the face. Of course the matter of the male attire was gone over again, and as usual at weary some length. Also as usual the customary bribe was offered. If she would discard that dress voluntarily they would let her hear mass. But she answered as she had often answered before. I will go in a woman's robe to all services of the church, if I may be permitted, but I will resume the other dress when I return to myself. They set several traps for her in a tentative form, that is to say they placed suppositious propositions before her and cunningly tried to commit her to one end of the propositions without committing themselves to the other. But she always saw the game and spoiled it. The trap was in this form. Would you be willing to do so and so if we should give you leave? Her answer was always in this form, or to this effect. When you give me leave, then you will know. Yes, Joan was at her best that second of May. She had all her wits about her, and they could not catch her anywhere. It was a long, long session, and all the old ground was fought over again, foot by foot, and the orator expert worked all his persuasions, all his eloquence. The result was the familiar one, a drawn battle, the sixty-two retiring upon their base, the solitary enemy holding her original position within her original lines. CHAPTER XVI. The brilliant weather, the heavenly weather, the bewitching weather, made everybody's heart to sing, as I have told you. Yes, Rouen was feeling light-hearted and gay, and most willing and ready to break out and laugh upon the least occasion. And so when the news went around that the young girl in the tower had scored another defeat against Bishop Cauchon, there was abundant laughter, abundant laughter among the citizens of both parties, for they all hated the bishop. It is true the English-hearted majority of the people wanted Joan burned, but that did not keep them from laughing at the man they hated. It would have been perilous for anybody to laugh at the English chiefs or at the majority of Cauchon's assistant judges, but to laugh at Cauchon or d'Estiver, and L'Oise-leur was safe, nobody would report it. The difference between Cauchon and Cauchon—Note I, Hog, or Pig, end of Note I—was not noticeable in speech, and so there was plenty of opportunity for puns, the opportunities were not thrown away. Some of the jokes got well-worn in the course of two or three months from repeated use. For every time Cauchon started a new trial, the folk said, The sow has littered—Note II—Cauchonet, to litter, to farrow, also to make a mess of—End of Note II. The sow has littered again, and every time the trial failed they set it over again, with its other meaning the hog has made a mess of it. And so, on the third of May, Noel and I, drifting about the town, heard many a wide-mouthed lout let go his joke and his laugh, and then moved to the next group, proud of his wit and happy, to work it off again. Odd's blood! The sow has littered five times, and five times has made a mess of it! And now and then one was bold enough to say—but he said it softly— Sixty-three in the might of England against a girl, and she camps on the field five times. Cauchon lived in the great palace of the archbishop, and it was guarded by English soldiery. But no matter, there was never a dark night, but the walls showed next morning that the rude joker had been there with his paint and brush. Yes, he had been there, and had smeared the sacred walls with pictures of hogs in all attitudes, except flattering ones. House closed in a bishop's vestments, and wearing a bishop's mitre irreverently cocked on the side of their heads. Cauchon raged and cursed over his defeats and his impotence during seven days, then he conceived a new scheme. You shall see what it was. For you have not cruel hearts, and you would never guess it. On the ninth of May there was a summons, and Montchon and I got out materials together and started, but this time we were to go to one of the other towers. Not the one which was Joan's prison. It was round and grim and massive, and built of the plainest and thickest and solidest masonry, a dismal and forbidding structure. Note three. The lower half of it remains today, just as it was then. The upper half is of a later date. Translator. End of note three. We entered the circular room on the ground floor, and I saw what turned me sick, the instruments of torture and the executioners standing ready. Here you have the black heart of Cauchon at the blackest. Here you have the proof that in his nature there was no such thing as pity. One wonders if he ever knew his mother or ever had a sister. Cauchon was there, and the vice-inquisitor and the abbot of Saint Cornet. Also six others among them, that false lois-seleurs. The guards were in their places, the rack was there, and Byet stood the executioner and his aides in their crimson hose and doublets, meat-color for their bloody trade. The picture of Joan rose before me, stretched upon the rack, her feet tied to one end of it, her wrists to the other, and those red giants turning the windlass and pulling her limbs out of their sockets. It seemed to me that I could hear the bone snap and the flesh tear apart, and I did not see how that body of anointed servants of the merciful Jesus could sit there and look so placid and indifferent. After a while Joan arrived and was brought in. She saw the rack, she saw the attendants, and the same picture which I had been seeing must have risen in her mind. But do you think she quailed? Do you think she shuddered? Oh! There was no sign of that sort. She straightened herself up, and there was a slight curl of scorn about her lip, but as for fear she showed not a vestige of it. This was a memorable session, but it was the shortest one of all the list. When Joan had taken her seat, a resume of her crimes was read to her. Then Cauchon made a solemn speech. In it he said that in the course of her several trials Joan had refused to answer some of the questions and had answered others with lies, but that now he was going to have the truth out of her and the whole of it. His manner was full of confidence this time. He was sure he had found a way at last to break this child's stubborn spirit and make her beg and cry. He would score a victory this time and stop the mouths of the jokers of Rouen. You see, he was only just a man, after all, and couldn't stand ridicule any better than other people. He talked high, and his splotchy face lighted itself up with all the shifting tints and signs of evil pleasure and promised triumph. Purple, yellow, red, green. They were all there, with sometimes the dull and spongy blue of a drowned man, the uncannyest of them all. And finally he burst out in a great passion and said, There is the rack, and there are its ministers. You will reveal all now, or be put to the torture. Speak!" Then she made that great answer, which will live forever, made it without fuss or bravado, and yet how fine and noble was the sound of it. I will tell you nothing more than I have told you. No, not even if you tear the limbs from my body. And even if in my pain I did say something otherwise, I would always say afterward that it was the torture that spoke and not I. There was no crushing that spirit. You should have seen Cauchon defeated again, and he had not dreamed of such a thing. I heard it said the next day around the town that he had a full confession all written out in his pocket and all ready for Joan to sign. I do not know that that was true, but it probably was, for her mark signed at the bottom of a confession would be the kind of evidence, for effect with the public, which Cauchon and his people would particularly value, you know. No, there was no crushing that spirit, and no beclouding that clear mind. Under the depth, the wisdom of that answer, coming from an ignorant girl, why there were not six men in the world who had ever reflected that words forced out of a person by horrible tortures were not necessarily words of verity and truth, yet this unlettered peasant girl put her finger upon that flaw with an unerring instinct. I had always supposed that torture brought out the truth, everybody supposed it, and when Joan came out with those simple common-sense words they seemed to flood the place with light. It was like a lightning flash at midnight which suddenly reveals a fair valley sprinkled over with silver streams and gleaming valleys and palm-steads where was only an impenetrable world of darkness before. Monchon stole a side-wise look at me, and his face was full of surprise, and there was the like to be seen in other faces there. Consider! They were old and deeply cultured, yet here was a village made able to teach them something which they had not known before. I heard one of them utter, "'Verily it is a wonderful creature. She has laid her hand upon an accepted truth that is as old as the world, and it has crumbled to dust and rubbish under her touch. Now whence got she that marvellous insight?' The judges laid their heads together and began to talk now. It was plain, from chance words which one caught now and then, that Cochon and Lois-leur were insisting upon the application of the torture and that most of the others were urgently objecting. Finally, Cochon broke out with a good deal of asperity in his voice and ordered Joan back to her dungeon. That was a happy surprise for me. I was not expecting that the bishop would yield. When Monchon came home that night he said he had found out why the torture was not applied. There were two reasons. One was a fear that Joan might die under the torture, which would not suit the English at all. The other was that the torture would affect nothing if Joan was going to take back everything she said under its pains, and as to putting her mark to a confession it was believed that not even the rack would ever make her do that. So all Rois laughed again and kept it up for three days, saying, "'The sow has littered six times and made six messes of it.' And the palace walls got a new decoration, a mitered hog carrying a discarded rack home on its shoulder, and l'oisseur weeping in its wake. Many rewards were offered for the capture of these painters, but nobody applied. Even the English guard feigned blindness and would not see the artists at work. The bishop's anger was very high now. He could not reconcile himself to the idea of giving up the torture. It was the pleasantest idea he had invented yet, and he would not cast it by. So he called in some of his satellites on the twelfth, and urged the torture again. But it was a failure. With some Joan's speech had wrought an effect. Others feared she might die under torture. Others did not believe that any amount of suffering could make her put her mark to a lying confession. There were fourteen men present including the bishop. Eleven of them voted dead against the torture, and stood their ground in spite of Couchon's abuse. Two voted with the bishop and insisted upon the torture. These two were l'oisseur and the orator, the man whom Joan had bidden to read his book, Thomas de Coursel, the renowned pleader and master of eloquence. Age has taught me charity of speech, but it fails me when I think of those three names, Couchon, Coursel, L'oisseur. CHAPTER XII. Another ten days' wait. The great theologians of that treasury of all valuable knowledge and all wisdom of the University of Paris were still weighing and considering and discussing the twelve lies. I had had but little to do these ten days, so I spent them mainly in walks about the town with Noel. But there was no pleasure in them, our spirits being so burdened with cares and the outlook for Joan growing steadily darker and darker all the time. And then we naturally contrasted our circumstances with hers, this freedom and sunshine with her darkness and chains, our comradeship with her lonely estate, our alleviations of one sort and another with her destitution in all. She was used to liberty, but now she had none. She was an out-of-door creature by nature and habit, but now she was shut up day and night in a steel cage like an animal. She was used to the light, but now she was always in a gloom where all objects about her were dim and spectral. She was used to the thousand various sounds which are the cheer and music of a busy life, but now she heard only the monotonous footfall of the century pacing his watch. She had been fond of talking with her mates, but now there was no one to talk to. She had had an easy laugh, but it was gone dumb now. She had been born for comradeship and blithe and busy work and all manner of joyous activities, but here were only dreariness and leaden hours and weary in action and brooding stillness and thoughts that travel by day and night and night and day round and round in the same circle and wear the brain and break the heart with weariness. It was death in life—yes, death in life—that is what it must have been. And there was another hard thing about it all. A young girl in trouble needs the soothing solace and support and sympathy of persons of her own sex, and the delicate offices and gentle ministries which only these can furnish. Yet in all these months of gloomy captivity in her dungeon Joan never saw the face of a girl or a woman. Think how her heart would have leapt to see such a face. Consider! If you would realize how great Joan of Arc was, remember that it was out of such a place and such circumstances that she came week after week and month after month and confronted the master intellects of France single-handed and baffled their cunning schemes, defeated their ablest plans, detected and avoided their secretous traps and pitfalls, took their lines, repelled their assaults, and camped on the field after every engagement, steadfast always, true to her faith and her ideals, defying torture, defying the stake and answering threats of eternal death and the pains of hell with a simple, let come what may, here I take my stand and will abide. Yes, if you would realize how great was the soul, how profound the wisdom, and how luminous the intellect of Joan of Arc, you must study her there, where she fought out that long fight all alone, and not merely against the subtlest brains and deepest learning of France, but against the ignoble deceits, the meanest treacheries, and the hardest hearts to be found in any land, pagan or Christian. She was great in battle, we all know that, great in foresight, great in loyalty and patriotism, great in persuading discontented chiefs and reconciling conflicting interests and passions, great in the ability to discover merit and genius wherever it lay hidden, great in picturesque and eloquent speech, supremely great in the gift of firing the hearts of hopeless men and noble enthusiasm, the gift of turning hairs into heroes, slaves and skulkers into battalions that march to death with songs on their lips. But all these are exalting activities, they keep hand and heart and brain keyed up to their work. There is the joy of achievement, the inspiration of stir and movement, the applause which hails success, the soul is overflowing with life and energy, the faculties are at white heat, weariness, despondency, inertia, these do not exist. Yes, Joan of Arc was great always, great everywhere, but she was greatest in the Rouen trials. There she rose above the limitations and infirmities of our human nature, and accomplished under blighting and unnerving and hopeless conditions all that her splendid equipment of moral and intellectual forces could have accomplished if they had been supplemented by the mighty helps of hope and cheer and light, the presence of friendly faces, and a fair and equal fight with a great world looking on and wondering. END OF CHAPTER XVII Volume II CHAPTER XVIII Toward the end of the ten-day interval the University of Paris rendered its decision concerning the twelve articles. By this finding Joan was guilty upon all the counts. She must renounce her errors and make satisfaction, or be abandoned to the secular arm for punishment. The university's mind was probably already made up before the articles were laid before it, yet it took it from the fifth to the eighteenth to produce its verdict. I think the delay may have been caused by temporary difficulties concerning two points. One, as to who the fiends were who were represented in Joan's voices. Two, as to whether her saints spoke French only. You understand, the university decided emphatically that it was fiends who spoke in those voices. It would need to prove that, and it did. It found out who those fiends were and named them in the verdict. Belial, Satan, and Behemoth. This has always seemed a doubtful thing to me, and not entitled to much credit. I think so for this reason. If the university had actually known it was those three, it would for very consistency's sake have told how it knew it, and not stopped with a mere assertion, since it had made Joan explain how she knew they were not fiends. Does not that seem reasonable? To my mind, the university's position was weak, and I will tell you why. It had claimed that Joan's angels were devils in disguise, and we all know that devils do disguise themselves as angels. Up to that point the university's position was strong. But you see yourself that it eats its own argument when it turns around and pretends that it can tell who such apparitions are, while denying the likability to a person with as good a head on her shoulders as the best one the university could produce. The doctors of the university had to see those creatures in order to know, and if Joan was deceived, it is argument that they in their turn could also be deceived, for their insight and judgment were surely not clearer than hers. As to the other point which I have thought may have proved a difficulty and cost the university delay, I will touch but a moment upon that, and pass on. The university decided that it was blasphemy for Joan to say that her saint spoke French and not English, and were on the French side in political sympathies. I think that the thing which troubled the doctors of theology was this. They had decided that the three voices were Satan and two other devils, but they had also decided that these voices were not on the French side, thereby tacitly asserting that they were on the English side. And if on the English side, then they must be angels and not devils. Otherwise the situation was embarrassing. You see, the university being the wisest and deepest and most erudite body in the world, it would like to be logical, if it could, for the sake of its reputation. Therefore it would study and study, days and days, trying to find some good common sense reason for proving the voices to be devils in article number one and proving them to be angels in article number ten. However, they had to give it up. They found no way out, and so to this day the university's verdict remains just so, devils in number one, angels in number ten, and no way to reconcile the discrepancy. The envoys brought the verdict to Rouen, and with it a letter for Cauchon which was full of fervent praise. The university complimented him on his zeal in hunting down this woman, whose venom had infected the faithful of the whole west, and as recompense it as good as promised him a crown of imperishable glory in heaven. Only that, a crown in heaven, a promissory note, and no endorser. Always something away off yonder, not a word about the archbishopric of Rouen, which was the thing Cauchon was destroying his soul for. A crown in heaven. It must have sounded like a sarcasm to him after all his hard work. What should he do in heaven? He did not know anybody there. On the nineteenth of May a court of fifty judges sat in the Archaeopiscopal palace to discuss Joan's fate. A few wanted her delivered over to the secular arm at once for punishment, but the rest insisted that she be once more charitably admonished first. So the same court met in the castle on the twenty-third, and Joan was brought to the bar. Pierre Maurice, a canon of Rouen, made a speech to Joan in which he admonished her to save her life and her soul by renouncing her errors and surrendering to the church. He finished with a stern threat. If she remained obstinate the damnation of her soul was certain the destruction of her body probable. But Joan was immovable. She said, If I were under sentence and saw the fire before me and the executioner ready to light it, more if I were in the fire itself, I would say none but the things which I have said in these trials, and I would abide by them till I died. A silence followed now, which endured some moments. It lay upon me like a weight. I knew it for an omen. Then cochon, grave and solemn, turned to Pierre Maurice, have you anything further to say? The priest bowed low and said, Nothing, my lord. Prisoner at the bar, have you anything further to say? Nothing. Then the debate is closed. Tomorrow sentence will be pronounced. She is the prisoner. She seemed to go from the place erect and noble, but I do not know. My sight was dim with tears. Tomorrow, 24th of May, exactly a year since I saw her go speeding across the plain at the head of her troops, her silver helmet shining, her silvery cape fluttering in the wind, her white plumes flowing, her sword held aloft, saw her charge the Burgundian camp three times and carry it, saw her wheel to the right and spur for the Duke's reserves, saw her fling herself against it in the last assault she was ever to make, and now that fatal day was come again, and see what it was bringing. End of CHAPTER XIII. This is CHAPTER XIX of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain. Book III. CHAPTER XIX. Our last hopes of rescue fail. Joan had been adjudged guilty of heresy, sorcery, and all the other terrible crimes set forth in the twelve articles, and her life was in Koshel's hands at last. He could send her to the stake at once. His work was finished now, you think? He was satisfied? Not at all. What would his archbishopric be worth if the people should get the idea into their heads that this faction of interested priests, slaving under the English lash, had wrongly condemned and burned Joan of Arc, deliverer of France? That would be to make of her a holy martyr. Then her spirit would rise from her body's ashes a thousand fold reinforced, and sweep the English domination into the sea, and Koshel along with it. No, the victory was not complete yet. Joan's guilt must be established by evidence which would satisfy the people. Where was that evidence to be found? There was only one person in the world who could furnish it, Joan of Arc herself. She must condemn herself, and in public, at least, she must seem to do it. But how was this to be managed? Weeks had been spent already in trying to get her to surrender. Time wholly wasted. What was to persuade her now? Torture had been threatened. The fire had been threatened. What was left? Illness, deadly fatigue, and the sight of the fire, the presence of the fire. That was left. Now that was a shrewd thought. She was but a girl, after all, and, under illness and exhaustion, subject to a girl's weaknesses. Yes, it was shrewdly thought. She had tacitly said herself that under the bitter pains of the rack they would be able to extort a false confession from her. It was a hint worth remembering, and it was remembered. She had furnished another hint at the same time, that as soon as the pains were gone she would retract the confession. That hint was also remembered. She had herself taught them what to do, you see. First they must wear out her strength, then frighten her with the fire. Second, while the fright was on her, she must be made to sign a paper. But she would demand a reading of the paper. They could not venture to refuse this, with the public there to hear. Suppose that during the reading her courage should return. She would refuse to sign them. Very well, even that difficulty could be got over. They could read a short paper of no importance, then slip along and deadly one into its place, and trick her into signing that. Yet there was still one other difficulty. If they made her seem to abjure, that would free her from the death penalty. They could keep her in a prison of the church, but they could not kill her. That would not answer, for only her death would content the English. Alive she was a terror, in a prison or out of it. She had escaped from two prisons already. But even that difficulty could be managed. Cauchon would make promises to her. In return she would promise to leave off the male dress. He would violate his promises, and that would so situate her that she would not be able to keep hers. Her lapse would condemn her to the stake, and the stake would be ready. These were the several moves. There was nothing to do but to make them, each in its order, and the game was one. One might almost name the day that the betrayed girl, the most innocent creature in France and the noblest, would go to her pitiful death. The world knows now that Cauchon's plan was as I have sketched it to you. But the world did not know it at that time. There are sufficient indications that Warwick and all the other English chiefs except the highest one, the Cardinal of Winchester, were not let into the secret, also that only Lois-Loeur and Bopère, on the French side, knew the scheme. Sometimes I have doubted if even Lois-Loeur and Bopère knew the whole of it at first. However, if any did, it was these, too. It is usual to let the condemned pass their last night of life in peace. But this grace was denied to poor Joan, if one may credit the rumours of the time. Lois-Loeur was smuggled into her presence, and in the character of priest, friend, and secret partisan of France and hater of England, he spent some hours in beseeching her to do the only right and righteous thing, submit to the church, as a good Christian should, and that then she would straightway get out of the clutches of the dreaded English and be transferred to the church's prison, where she would be honourably used and have women about her for jailers. He knew where to touch her. He knew how odious to her was the presence of her rough and profane English guards. He knew that her voices had vaguely promised something which she interpreted to be escape, rescue, release of some sort, and the chance to burst upon France once more and victoriously complete the great work which she had been commissioned of heaven to do. Although there was that other thing, if her failing body could be further weakened by loss of rest and sleep now, her tired mind would be dazed and drowsy on the morrow, and in ill condition to stand out against persuasions, threats, and the sight of the stake, and also be poor-blind to traps and snares which it would be swift to detect when in its normal estate. I do not need to tell you that there was no rest for me that night, nor for Noel. We went to the main gate of the city before nightfall with a hope in our minds, based upon that vague prophecy of Joan's voices which seemed to promise a rescue by force at the last moment. The immense news had flown swiftly far and wide that at last Joan of Arc was condemned, and would be sentenced and burned alive on the morrow. And so crowds of people were flowing in at the gate, and other crowds were being refused admission by the soldiery, these being people who brought doubtful passes or none at all. We scanned these crowds eagerly, but there was nothing about them to indicate that they were our old war comrades in disguise, and certainly there were no familiar faces among them. And so, when the gate was closed at last, we turned away, grieved, and more disappointed than we cared to admit either in speech or thought. The streets were surging tides of excited men, it was difficult to make one's way. Toward midnight our aimless tramp brought us to the neighborhood of the beautiful church of Saint-Ois, and there all was bustle and work. The square was a wilderness of torches and people, and through a guarded passage dividing the pack, labourers were carrying planks and timbers and disappearing with them through the gate of the churchyard. We asked what was going forward. The answer was, Scaffolds, and the stake. Don't you know that the French witch is to be burned in the morning? Then we went away. We had no heart for that place. At dawn we were at the city gate again, this time with a hope which our weary bodies and fevered minds magnified into a large probability. We had heard a report that the abbot of Jumierge, with all his monks, was coming to witness the burning. Our desire, abetted by our imagination, turned those nine hundred monks into Joan's old campaigners, and their abbot into l'Ire, or the bastard, or d'Alançon. And we watched them file in unchallenged, the multitude respectfully dividing and uncovering while they passed, with our hearts and our throats and our eyes swimming with tears of joy and pride and exultation. And we tried to catch glimpses of the faces under the cowls, and were prepared to give signal to any recognized face that we were Joan's men and ready and eager to kill and be killed in the good cause. How foolish we were! But we were young, you know, and youth hopeth all things, believeth all things. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain. Volume 2 Book III, Chapter XX. The Betrayal In the morning I was at my official post. It was on a platform raised the height of a man, in the churchyard, under the eaves of Saint-Wan. On the same platform was a crowd of priests and important citizens and several lawyers. Abrested, with a small space between, was another and larger platform, handsomely canopied against sun and rain and richly carpeted. Also it was furnished with comfortable chairs, and with two which were more sumptuous than the others, and raised above the general level. One of these two was occupied by a prince of the royal blood of England, his eminence the cardinal of Winchester. The other by Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais. In the rest of the chairs sat three bishops, the vicenquisitor, eight abbots, and the sixty-two friars and lawyers, who had sat as Joan's judges in her late trials. Twenty steps in front of the platforms was another, a tabletop pyramid of stone, built up in retreating courses, thus forming steps. Out of this rose that grisly thing, the stake. About the stake bundles of faggots and firewood were piled. On the ground at the base of the pyramid stood three crimson figures, the executioner and his assistants. At their feet lay what had been a goodly heap of brands, but was now a smokeless nest of ruddy coals. A foot or two from this was a supplemental supply of wood and faggots compacted into a pile, shoulder high, and containing as much as six pack-horse-loads. Think of that! We seem so delicately made, so destructible, so insubstantial. Yet it is easier to reduce a granite statue to ashes than it is to do that with a man's body. The sight of the stake sent physical pains tingling down the nerves of my body, and yet, turn as I would, my eyes would keep coming back to it. Such fascination has the gruesome and the terrible for us. The space occupied by the platforms and the stake was kept open by a wall of English soldiery, standing elbow to elbow, erect and stalwart figures, fine and slightly in their polished steel. While from behind them, on every hand, stretched far away a level plain of human heads, and there was no window and no housetop within our view, howsoever distant, but was black with patches and masses of people. But there was no noise, no stir. It was as if the world was dead. The impressiveness of this silence and solemnity was deepened by a leaden twilight, for the sky was hidden by a pall of low-hanging storm-clouds, and above the remote horizon faint winkings of heat-lightning played, and now and then one caught the dull mutterings and complainings of distant thunder. At last the stillness was broken. From beyond the square rose an indistinct sound but familiar. Court, crisp phrases of command. Next I saw the plain of heads dividing, and the steady swing of a marching host was glimpsed between. My heart leapt for a moment. Was it Laïr and his Helians? No. That was not their gate. No, it was the prisoner and her escort. It was Joan of Arc under guard that was coming. My spirit sank as low as they had been before. Weak as she was, they made her walk. They would increase her weakness all they could. The distance was not great. It was but a few hundred yards, but short as it was it was a heavy tax upon one who had been lying chained in one spot for months, and whose feet had lost their powers from inaction. Yes, and for a year Joan had known only the cool damps of a dungeon, and now she was dragging herself through this sultry summer heat, this airless and suffocating void. As she entered the gate, drooping with exhaustion, there was that creature Lois-Leon at her side with his head bent to her ear. We knew afterward that he had been with her again this morning in the prison, wearying her with his persuasions and enticing her with false promises, and that he was now still at the same work at the gate, imploring her to yield everything that would be required of her, and assuring her that if she would do this, all would be well with her. She would be rid of the dreaded English and fine safety in the powerful shelter and protection of the church. A miserable man, a stony hearted man. The moment Joan was seated on the platform she closed her eyes and allowed her chin to fall, and so sat, with her hands nestling in her lap, indifferent to everything, caring for nothing but rest. And she was so white again, white as alabaster, how the faces of that packed mass of humanity lighted up with interest, and with what intensity all eyes gazed upon this fragile girl. And how natural it was, for these people realized that at last they were looking upon that person whom they had so long hungered to see, a person whose name and fame filled all Europe, and made all other names and all other renowns insignificant by comparisons. Joan of Arc, the wonder of the time, and destined to be the wonder of all times. And I could read as by print and their marvelling countenances the words that were drifting through their minds. Can it be true? Is it believable that it is this little creature, this girl, this child with a good face, the sweet face, the beautiful face, the dear and bonny face that has carried fortresses by storm, charged at the head of victorious armies, blown the might of England out of her path with a breath, and fought a long campaign solitary and alone against the masked brains and learning of France, and had won it if the fight had been fair? Evidently Cauchon had grown afraid of Mauchon, because of his pretty apparent leanings toward Joan, for another recorder was in the chief place here, which left my master and me nothing to do, but sit idle and look on. Well, I suppose that everything had been done which could be thought of, to tire Joan's body and mind. But it was a mistake, one more device had been invented. This was to preach a long sermon to her in that oppressive heat. When the preacher began she cast up one distressed and disappointed look, then dropped her head again. This preacher was Guillaume Erard, an oratorical celebrity. He got his text from the Twelve Lies. He emptied upon Joan all the calamities and detail that had been bottled up in that mass of venom, and called her all the brutal names that the Twelve were labelled with, working himself into a whirlwind of fury as he went on. But his labours were wasted. She seemed lost in dreams. She made no sign. She did not seem to hear. At last he launched this apostrophe. O France, how hast thou been abused? Thou hast always been the home of Christianity. But now Charles, who calls himself thy king and governor, endorses, like the heretic and schismatic that he is, the words and deeds of a worthless and infamous woman. Joan raised her head, and her eyes began to burn and flash. The preacher turned to her. It is to you, Joan, that I speak, and I tell you that your king is schismatic and a heretic. Ah, he might abuse her to his heart's content. She could endure that. But to her dying moment she could never hear in patience a word against that ingrate, that treacherous dog our king, whose proper place was here at this moment, soared in hand, routing these reptiles and saving this most noble servant that ever king had in this world, and he would have been there if he had not been what I have called him. Joan's loyal soul was outraged, and she turned upon the preacher and flung out a few words with a spirit which the crowd recognized as being in accordance with the Joan of Arc traditions. By my faith, sir, I make bold to say and swear on pain of death that he is the most noble Christian of all Christians, and the best lover of the faith and the church. There was an explosion of applause from the crowd which angered the preacher, for he had been aching long to hear an expression like this, and now that it was come at last it had fallen to the wrong person. He had done all the work, the other had carried off all the spoil, he stamped his foot and shouted to the sheriff, Make her shut up! That made the crowd laugh. A mob has small respect for a grown man who has to call on a sheriff to protect him from a sick girl. Joan had damaged the preacher's cause more with one sentence than he had helped it with a hundred, so he was much put out and had trouble to get a good start again. But he needn't have bothered. There was no occasion. It was mainly an English-feeling mob. It had but obeyed a law of our nature, an irresistible law, to enjoy and applaud a spirited and promptly delivered retort, no matter who makes it. The mob was with the preacher. It had been beguiled for a moment, but only that. It would soon return. It was there to see this girl burnt, so that it got that satisfaction without too much delay. It would be content. Presently the preacher formally summoned Joan to submit to the church. He made the demand with confidence, for he had gotten the idea from Rois-leur and Bouper that she was worn to the bone, exhausted, and would not be able to put forth any more resistance. And, indeed, to look at her it seemed that they must be right. Nevertheless she made one more effort to hold her ground and said, wearily, As to that matter, I have answered my judges before. I have told them to report all that I have said and done to our Holy Father the Pope, to whom, and to God first, I appeal. Again out of her native wisdom she had brought those words of tremendous import, but was ignorant of their value. But they could have availed her nothing in any case now with the stake there and these thousands of enemies about her. Yet they made every churchman their blench, and the preacher changed the subject with all haste. Well might those criminals blench, for Joan's appeal of her case to the Pope stripped Cauchon at once of jurisdiction over it, and annulled all that he and his judges had already done in the matter, and all that they should do in it henceforth. Joan went on presently to reiterate, after some further talk, that she had acted by command of God in her deeds and utterances. Then, when an attempt was made to implicate the king and friends of hers and his, she stopped that. She said, I charge my deeds and words upon no one, neither upon my king nor any other. If there is any fault in them, I am responsible and no other. She was asked if she would not recant those of her words and deeds which had been pronounced evil by her judges. Her answer made confusion and damage again. I submit them to God and the Pope. The Pope once more. It was very embarrassing. Here was a person who was asked to submit her case to the church, and who frankly consents offers it to submit it to the very head of it. What more could any one require? How was one to answer such a formidable unanswerable answer as that? The worried judges put their heads together and whispered and planned and discussed. Then they brought forth this sufficiently shambling conclusion, but it was the best they could do, in so close a place. They said the Pope was so far away, and it was not necessary to go to him anyway, because the present judges had sufficient power and authority to deal with the present case, and were in effect the church, to that extent. At another time they could have smiled at this conceit, but not now. They were not comfortable enough now. The mob was getting impatient. It was beginning to put on a threatening aspect. It was tired of standing, tired of the scorching heat, and the thunder was coming nearer. The lightning was flashing brighter. It was necessary to hurry this matter to a close. Erar showed Joan a written form which had been prepared and made all ready beforehand, and asked her to abjure. Abjure? What is abjure? She did not know the word. It was explained to her by Monsieur. She tried to understand, but she was breaking under exhaustion, and she could not gather the meaning. It was all a jumble and confusion of strange words. In her despair she sent out this beseeching cry. I appealed to the church universal whether I ought to abjure or not. Erar had exclaimed, You shall abjure instantly or instantly be burnt! She glanced up at those awful words, and for the first time she saw the stake and the mass of red coals, redder and angrier than ever now under the constantly deepening storm gloom. She gasped and staggered up out of her seat muttering and mumbling incoherently, and gazed vacantly upon the people and the scene about her like one who is dazed or thinks he dreams, and does not know where he is. The priests crowded about her imploring her to sign the paper. There were many voices beseeching and urging her at once. There was great turmoil and shouting and excitement among the populace and everywhere. Sign! Sign! from the priests! Sign! Sign and be saved! And L'Oise-leur was urging at her ear, Do as I told you, do not destroy yourself. Joan said plaintively to these people, Ah, you do not do well to seduce me! The judges joined their voices to the others. Yes, even the iron in their hearts melted, and they said, Oh, Joan, we pity you so! Take back what you have said, or we must deliver you up to punishment! And now there was another voice. It was from the other platform, peeling solemnly above the din, Cauchon's reading the sentence of death. Joan's strength was all spent. She stood looking about her in a bewildered way a moment, then slowly she sank to her knees and bowed her head and said, I submit! They gave her no time to reconsider. They knew the peril of that. The moment the words were out of her mouth, Monsieur was reading to her the abjuration, and she was repeating the words after him mechanically, unconsciously, and smiling, for her wandering mind was far away in some happier world. Then this short paper of six lines was slipped aside, and a long one of many pages was smuggled into its place, and she, noting nothing, put her mark on it, saying, in pathetic apology, that she did not know how to write. But a secretary of the King of England was there to take care of that defect. He guided her hand with his own and wrote her name, Jehanne. The great crime was accomplished. She had signed. What? She did not know. But the others knew. She had signed a paper confessing herself a sorceress, a dealer with devils, a liar, a blasphemer of God and His angels, a lover of blood, a promoter of sedition, cruel, wicked, commissioned of Satan, and this signature of hers bound her to resume the dress of a woman. There were other promises, but that one would answer without the others. And that one could be made to destroy her. Lois-Eleur pressed forward and praised her for having done such a good day's work. But she was still dreamy, she hardly heard. Then Cauchon pronounced the words which dissolved the excommunication and restored her to her beloved church with all the dear privileges of worship. Ah! she heard that! You could see it in the deep gratitude that rose in her face and transfigured it with joy. But how transient was that happiness! For Cauchon, without a tremor of pity in his voice, added these crushing words. And that she may repent of her crimes and repeat them no more! She is sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, with the bread of affliction and the water of anguish. She had never dreamed of that. Such a thing had never been hinted to her by Lois-Eleur or by any other. Lois-Eleur had distinctly said and promised that all would be well with her. And the very last word spoken to her by Herard on that very platform, when he was urging her to abjure, was a straight, unqualified promise that if she would do it, she should go free from captivity. She stood stunned and speechless a moment. Then she remembered, with such soliciment as the thought could furnish, that by another clear promise made by Cauchon himself, she would at least be the church's captive, and have women about her in place of a brutal foreign soldiery. So she turned to the body of priests and said with a sad resignation, Now, you men of the church, take me to your prison, and leave me no longer in the hands of the English. And she gathered up her chains and prepared to move. But alas, now came these shameful words from Cauchon and with them a mocking laugh. Take her to the prison when she came! Poor abused girl! She stood dumb, smitten, paralyzed. It was pitiful to see. She had been beguiled, lied to, betrayed. She saw it all, now. The rumbling of a drum broke upon the stillness, and for just one moment she thought of the glorious deliverance promised by her voices. I read it in the rapture that lit her face. Then she saw what it was—her prison escort. And that light faded. Never to revive again. And now her head began a piteous rocking motion, swaying slowly this way and that, as is the way when one is suffering unwordable pain or when one's heart is broken, then drearily she went from us, with her face in her hands, and sobbing bitterly. END OF CHAPTER XX. There is no certainty that any one in all Rouen was in the secret of the deep game which Cauchon was playing, except the Cardinal of Winchester. When you can imagine the astonishment and stupefaction of that vast mob gathered there, and those crowds of churchmen assembled on the two platforms, when they saw Joan of Arc moving away, alive and whole, slipping out of their grip at last, after all this tedious waiting, all this tantalizing expectancy. Nobody was able to stir or speak for a while, so paralyzing was the universal astonishment, so unbelievable the fact that the stake was actually standing there unoccupied, and its prey gone. Then suddenly everybody broke into a fury of rage. Maledictions and charges of treachery began to fly freely. Yes, and even stones! A stone came near killing the Cardinal of Winchester. It just missed his head. But the man who threw it was not to blame, for he was excited, and a man who was excited never can throw straight. The tumult was very great, indeed, for a while. In the midst of it a chaplain of the Cardinal even forgot the propriety so far as to appropriately assail the august bishop of Beauvais himself, shaking his fist in his face and shouting, By God, you are a traitor! You lie, responded the bishop. He a traitor! Far from it! He certainly was the last Frenchman that any Briton had a right to bring that charge against. The Earl of Warwick lost his temper, too. He was a doubty soldier, but when it came to the intellectuals, when it came to delicate chicanes and scheming and treachery, he couldn't see any further through a millstone than another. So he burst out in his frank warrior fashion, and swore that the King of England was being treacherously used, and that Joan of Arc was going to be allowed to cheat the stake, but they whispered comfort into his ear, Give yourself no uneasiness, my lord! We shall soon have her again. Perhaps the like tidings found their way all around, for good news travels fast, as well as bad. At any rate the raging's presently quieted down, and the huge concourse crumbled apart and disappeared, and thus we reached the noon of that fearful Thursday. We too, youths, were happy, happier than any words can tell, for we were not in the secret any more than the rest. Joan's life was saved. We knew that, and that was enough. France would hear of this day's infamous work, and then, why, then her gallant sons would flock to her standard by thousands and thousands, multitudes upon multitudes, and their wrath would be like the wrath of the ocean when the storm winds sweep it, and they would hurl themselves against this doomed city and overwhelm it like the resistless tides of that ocean, and Joan of Arc would march again. In six days, seven days, one short week, noble France, grateful France, indignant France, would be thundering at these gates. Let us count the hours, let us count the minutes, let us count the seconds. Oh, happy day! Oh, day of ecstasy! How our hearts sang in our bosoms! For we were young, then. Yes. We were very young. Do you think the exhausted prisoner was allowed to rest and sleep after she had spent the small remnant of her strength in dragging her tired body back to the dungeon? No. There was no rest for her, with those sleuth-hounds on her track. Cauchon and some of his people followed her to her lair straightaway. They found her dazed and dull, her mental and physical forces in a state of prostration. They told her she had abjured, that she had made certain promises among them to resume the apparel of her sex, and that if she relapsed the church would cast her out for good and all. She heard the words, but they had no meaning to her. She was like a person who has taken a narcotic and is dying for sleep, dying for rest from nagging, dying to be let alone, and who mechanically does everything the persecutor asks, making but dull note of the things done, and but dullly recording them in the memory. And so Joan put on the gown which Cauchon and his people had brought, and would come to herself by and by, and have at first but had dim ideas to when and how the change had come about. Cauchon went away happy and content. Joan had resumed woman's dress without protest. Also she had been formally warned against relapsing. He had witnesses to these facts. How could matters be better? But suppose she should not relapse. Why, then, she must be forced to do it. Did Cauchon hint to the English guards that, thenceforth, if they chose to make their prisoner's captivity crueler and bitterer than ever, no official notice would be taken of it? Perhaps so, since the guards did begin that policy at once, and no official notice was taken of it. Yes, from that moment Joan's life in that dungeon was made almost unendurable. Do not ask me to enlarge upon it. I will not do it. END OF CHAPTER XXI Friday and Saturday were happy days for Noel and me. Our minds were full of our splendid dream of France aroused, France shaking her mane, France on the march, France at the gates, Roi in ashes and Joan free. Our imagination was on fire. We were delirious with pride and joy, for we were very young, as I have said. We knew nothing about what had been happening in the dungeon in the yester-afternoon. We supposed that as Joan had abjured and been taken back into the forgiving bosom of the church, she was being gently used now, and her captivity made as pleasant and comfortable for her as the circumstances would allow. So in high contentment we planned out our share in the great rescue and fought our part of the fight over and over again during those two happy days, as happy days as ever I have known. Sunday morning came, I was awake, enjoying the balmy, lazy weather, and thinking. Thinking of the rescue, what else? I had no other thought now. I was absorbed in that, drunk with the happiness of it. I heard a voice shouting far down the street, and soon it came nearer, and I caught the words, Joan of Arc has relapsed! The witch's time has come! It stopped my heart. It turned my blood to ice. That was more than sixty years ago, but that triumphant note rings as clear in my memory today as it rang in my ear that long, vanished summer morning. We are so strangely made. The memories that could make us happy pass away. It is the memories that break our hearts that abide. Soon other voices took up that cry. Tens. Scores. Hundreds of voices. All the world seemed filled with the brutal joy of it. And there were other clamors. The clatter of rushing feet. Merry congratulations! Bursts of coarse laughter! The rolling of drums. The boom and crash of distant bands profaning the sacred day with the music of victory and thanksgiving. About the middle of the afternoon came a summons for Marchand and me to go to Joan's dungeon, a summons from Cochon. But by that time distrust had already taken possession of the English and their soldiery again, and all Rouen was in an angry and threatening mood. We could see plenty of evidences of this from our own windows, fist shaking, black looks, tumultuous tides of furious men billowing by along the street. And we learned that up at the castle things were going very badly indeed. That there was a great mob gathered there who considered the relapse a lie and a priestly trick, and among them many half-drunk English soldiers. Moreover these people had gone beyond words. They had laid hands upon a number of churchmen who were trying to enter the castle, and it had been difficult work to rescue them and save their lives. And so Marchand refused to go. He said he would not go a step without a safeguard from Warwick. So next morning Warwick sent an escort of soldiers, and then we went. Matters had not grown peace-fuller meantime, but worse. The soldiers protected us from bodily damage, but as we passed through the great mob at the castle we were assailed with insults and shameful epithets. I bore it well enough, though, and said to myself, with secret satisfaction, in three or four short days, my lads, you will be employing your tongues in a different sort from this, and I shall be there to hear. To my mind these were as good as dead men. How many of them would still be alive after the rescue that was coming. Not more than enough to amuse the executioner a short half-hour, certainly. It turned out that the report was true. Joan had relapsed. She was sitting there in her chains, clothed again in her mail attire. She accused nobody. That was her way. It was not in her character to hold a servant to account for what his master had made him do, and her mind had cleared now, and she knew that the advantage which had been taken of her the previous morning had its origin not in the subordinate, but in the master, Cauchon. Here is what had happened. While Joan slept in the early morning of Sunday, one of the guards stole her female apparel and put her mail attire in its place. When she woke she asked for the other dress, but the guards refused to give it back. She protested and said she was forbidden to wear the male dress. But they continued to refuse. She had to have clothing for modesty's sake. Moreover, she saw that she could not save her life if she must fight for it against treacheries like this, so she put on the forbidden garments, knowing what the end would be. She was weary of the struggle-poor thing. We had followed in the wake of Cauchon, the vice-enquisitor and the others, six or eight, and when I saw Joan sitting there, despondent, forlorn and still in chains, when I was expecting to find her situation so different, I did not know what to make of it. The shock was very great. I had doubted the relapse, perhaps. Possibly I had believed in it, but had not realized it. Cauchon's victory was complete. He had had a harassed and irritated and disgusted look for a long time, but that was all gone now, and contentment and serenity had taken its place. His purple face was full of tranquil and malicious happiness. He went trailing his robes and stood grandly in front of Joan, with his legs apart, and remained so more than a minute, gloating over her and enjoying the sight of this poor, ruined creature, who had won so lofty a place for him in the service of the meek and merciful Jesus, Savior of the world, Lord of the universe, in case England kept her promises to him, who kept no promises himself. Presently the judges began to question Joan. One of them, named Margarie, who was a man with more insight than prudence, remarked upon Joan's change of clothing, and said, There is something suspicious about this! How could it have come about without connivance on the part of others? Perhaps even something worse? Thousand devils! screamed Koshon of fury. Will you shut your mouth? Armaniac! Traitor! shouted the soldiers on guard, and made a rush for Margarie with their lances leveled. It was with the greatest difficulty that he was saved from being run through the body. He made no more attempts to help the inquiry, poor man. The other judges proceeded with the questionings. Why have you resumed this male habit? I did not quite catch her answer, for just then a soldier's halberd slipped from his fingers and fell on the stone floor with a crash. But I thought I understood Joan to say that she had resumed it of her own motion. But you have promised and sworn that you would not go back to it! I was full of anxiety to hear her answer to that question, and when it came it was just what I was expecting. She said, quite quietly, I have never intended and never understood myself to swear I would not resume it. There! I had been sure all along that she did not know what she was doing and saying on the Platform Thursday, and this answer of hers was proof that I had not been mistaken. Then she went on to add this. But I had a right to resume it, because the promises made to me have not been kept. Promises that I should be allowed to go to mass and receive the Communion, and that I should be freed from the bondage of these chains. But they are still upon me as you see. Nevertheless you have abjured, and have especially promised to return no more to the dress of a man! Then Joan held out her fettered hand sorrowfully toward these unfeeling men and said, I would rather die than continue so. But if they may be taken off, and if I may hear mass, and be removed to a penitential prison, and have a woman about me, I will be good, and will do what shall seem good to you that I do." Cachan sniffed scoffingly at that. Honor the compact which he and his had made with her? Fulfill its conditions? What need of that? Cachans had been a good thing to concede temporarily and for advantage, but they have served their turn, let something of a fresher sort and of more consequence be considered. The resumption of the male dress was sufficient for all practical purposes, but perhaps Joan could be led to add something to that fatal crime. So Cachan asked her if her voices had spoken to her since Thursday, and he reminded her of her abjuration. Yes, she answered. And then it came out that the voices had talked with her about the abjuration, told her about it, I suppose. She guilelessly reasserted the heavenly origin of her mission, and did it with the untroubled mean of one who was not conscious that she had ever knowingly repudiated it. So I was convinced once more that she had had no notion of what she was doing that Thursday morning on the Platform. Finally she said, My voices told me I did very wrong to confess that what I had done was not well. Then she sighed, and said with simplicity, But it was the fear of the fire that made me do so. That is, fear of the fire had made her sign a paper whose contents she had not understood then, but understood now by revelation of her voices and by testimony of her persecutors. She was sane now and not exhausted, her courage had come back, and with it her inborn loyalty to the truth. She was bravely and serenely speaking it again, knowing that it would deliver her body up to that very fire which had such terrors for her. That answer of hers was quite long, quite frank, wholly free from concealments or palliations. It made me shudder. I knew she was pronouncing sentence of death upon herself, so did poor Marchand, and he wrote in the margin abreast of it Responsio mortifera, fatal answer. Yes, all present knew that it was, indeed, a fatal answer. Then there fell a silence such as falls in a sick-room when the watchers of the dying draw a deep breath and say softly to one another, All is over. Here likewise, All was over. But after some moments Cauchon wishing to clinch this matter and make it final, put this question. Do you still believe that your voices are Saint Marguerite and Saint Catherine? Yes, and that they come from God. Yet you denied them on the scaffold. Then she made direct and clear affirmation that she had never had any intention to deny them, and that if, I noted the if, if she had made some retractions and revocations on the scaffold, it was from fear of the fire, and it was a violation of the truth. There it is again, you see, she certainly never knew what it was she had done on the scaffold until she was told of it afterward by these people and by her voices. And now she closed this most painful scene with these words, and there was a weary note in them that was pathetic. I would rather do my penance all at once. Let me die. I cannot endure captivity any longer. The spirit born for sunshine and liberty so longed for release that it would take it in any form even that. Several among the company of judges went from the place troubled and sorrowful, the others in another mood. In the court of the castle we found the Earl of Warwick and fifty English waiting, impatient for news. As soon as Cauchon saw them he shouted, laughing, think of a man destroying a friendless poor girl and then having the heart to laugh at it. Make yourselves comfortable! It's all over with her!