Her heart was like to break. At their word she would have faced the fire. She meant to do so now, notwithstanding the terrible, the heartrending ache of hope that was still in her. But they did not give her that heroic command. Still and always, they said God will help you, our Lord will stand by you. What did that mean? It must mean deliverance, deliverance! What else could it mean? If she held her head high as she returned to the horrible monotony of that prison so often left with hope, so often re-entered in sadness, it must soon have dropped upon her tired bosom. Slowly the clouds had settled round her. Over and over again had she affirmed them to be true--these voices that had guided her steps and led her to victory. And they had promised her the aid of God if she went forward boldly, and spoke and did not fear. But now every way of salvation was closing; all around her were fierce soldiers thirsting for her blood, smooth priests who admonished her in charity, threatening her with eternal fire for the soul, temporal fire for the body. She felt that fire, already blowing towards her as if on the breath of the evening wind, and her girlish flesh shrank. Was that what the voices had called deliverance? was that the grand victory, the aid of the Lord?
It may well be imagined that Jeanne slept but little that night; she had reached the lowest depths; her soul had begun to lose itself in bitterness, in the horror of a doubt. The atmosphere of her prison became intolerable, and the noise of her guards keeping up their rough jests half through the night, their stamping and clamour, and the clang of their arms when relieved. Early next morning a party of her usual visitors came in upon her to give her fresh instruction and advice. Something new was about to happen to-day. She was to be led forth, to breathe the air of heaven, to confront the people, the raging sea of men's faces, all the unknown world about her. The crowd had never been unfriendly to Jeanne. It had closed about her, almost wherever she was visible, with sweet applause and outcries of joy. Perhaps a little hope stirred her heart in the thought of being surrounded once more by the common folk, though probably it did not occur to her to think of these Norman strangers as her own people. And a great day was before her, a day in which something might still be done, in which deliverance might yet come. L'Oyseleur, who was one of her visitors, adjured her now to change her conduct, to accept whatever means of salvation might be offered to her. There was no longer any mention of Pope or Council, but only of the Church to which she ought to yield. How it was that he preserved his influence over her, having been proved to be a member of the tribunal that judged her, and not a fellow-prisoner, nor a fellow-countryman, nor any of the things he had professed to be, no once can tell us; but evidently he had managed to do so. Jeanne would seem to have received him without signs of repulsion or displeasure. Indeed she seems to have been ready to hear anyone, to believe in those who professed to wish her well, even when she did not follow their counsel.
It would require, however, no great persuasion on L'Oyseleur's part to convince her that this was a more than usually important day, and that something decisive must be done, now or never. Why should she be so determined to resist her only chance of safety? If she were but delivered from the hands of the English, safe in the gentler keeping of the Church, there would be time to think of everything, even to make her peace with her voices who would surely understand if, for the saving of her life, and out of terror for the dreadful fire, she abandoned them for a moment. She had disobeyed them at Beaurevoir and they had forgiven. One faltering word now, a mark of her hand upon a paper, and she would be safe--even if still all they said was true; and if indeed and in fact, after buoying her up from day to day, such a dreadful thing might be as that they were not true ----
The traitor was at her ear whispering; the cold chill of disappointment, of disillusion, of sickening doubt was in her heart.
Then there came into the prison a better man than L'Oyseleur, Jean Beaupère, her questioner in the public trial, the representative of all these notabilities. What he said was spoken with authority and he came in all seriousness, may not we believe in some kindness too? to warn her. He came with permission of the Bishop, no stealthy visitor. "Jean Beaupère entered alone into the prison of the said Jeanne by permission, and advertised her that she would straightway be taken to the scaffold to be addressed (/pour y être preschée/), and that if she was a good Christian she would on that scaffold place all her acts and words under the jurisdiction of our Holy Mother, the Church, and specially of the ecclesiastical judges." "Accept the woman's dress and do all that you are told," her other adviser had said. When the car that was to convey her came to the prison doors, L'Oyseleur accompanied her, no doubt with a show of supporting her to the end. What a change from the confined and gloomy prison to the dazzling clearness of the May daylight, the air, the murmuring streets, the throng that gazed and shouted and followed! Life that had run so low in the prisoner's veins must have bounded up within her in response to that sunshine and open sky, and movement and sound of existence-- summer weather too, and everything softened in the medium of that soft breathing air, sound and sensation and hope. She had been three months in her prison. As the charrette rumbled along the roughly paved streets drawing all those crowds after it, a strange object appeared to Jeanne's eyes in the midst of the market-place, a lofty scaffold with a stake upon it, rising over the heads of the crowd, the logs all arranged ready for the fire, a car waiting below with four horses, to bring hither the victim. The place of sacrifice was ready, everything arranged--for whom? for her? They drove her noisily past that she might see the preparations. It was all ready; and where then was the great victory, the deliverance in which she had believed?
In front of the beautiful gates of St. Ouen there was a different scene. That stately church was surrounded then by a churchyard, a great open space, which afforded room for a very large assembly. In this were erected two platforms, one facing the other. On the first sat the court of judges in number about forty, Cardinal Winchester having a place by the side of Monseigneur de Beauvais, the president, with several other bishops and dignified ecclesiastics. Opposite, on the other platform, were a pulpit and a place for the accused, to which Jeanne was conducted by Massieu, who never left her, and L'Oyseleur, who kept as near as he could, the rest of the platform being immediately covered by lawyers, doctors, all the camp followers, so to speak, of the black army, who could find footing there. Jeanne was in her usual male dress, the doublet and hose, with her short- clipped hair--no doubt looking like a slim boy among all this dark crowd of men. The people swayed like a sea all about and around--the throng which had gathered in her progress through the streets pushing out the crowd already assembled with a movement like the waves of the sea. Every step of the trial all through had been attended by preaching, by discourses and reasoning and admonishments, charitable and otherwise. Now she was to be "preached" for the last time.
It was Doctor Guillaume érard who ascended the pulpit, a great preacher, one whom the "copious multitude" ran after and were eager to hear. He himself had not been disposed to accept this office, but no doubt, set up there on that height before the eyes of all the people, he thought of his own reputation, and of the great audience, and Winchester the more than king, the great English Prince, the wealthiest and most influential of men. The preacher took his text from a verse in St. John's Gospel: "A branch cannot bear fruit except it remain in the vine." The centre circle containing the two platforms was surrounded by a close ring of English soldiers, understanding none of it, and anxious only that the witch should be condemned.
It was in this strange and crowded scene that the sermon which was long and eloquent began. When it was half over, in one of his fine periods admired by all the people, the preacher, after heaping every reproach upon the head of Jeanne, suddenly turned to apostrophise the House of France, and the head of that House, "Charles who calls himself King." "He has," cried the preacher, stimulated no doubt by the eye of Winchester upon him, "adhered, like a schismatic and heretical person as he is, to the words and acts of a useless woman, disgraced and full of dishonour; and not he only, but the clergy who are under his sway, and the nobility. This guilt is thine, Jeanne, and to thee I say that thy King is a schismatic and a heretic."
In the full flood of his oratory the preacher was arrested here by that clear voice that had so often made itself heard through the tumult of battle. Jeanne could bear much, but not this. She was used to abuse in her own person, but all her spirit came back at this assault on her King. And interruption to a sermon has always a dramatic and startling effect, but when that voice arose now, when the startled speaker stopped, and every dulled attention revived, it is easy to imagine what a stir, what a wonderful, sudden sensation must have arisen in the midst of the crowd. "By my faith, sire," cried Jeanne, "saving your respect, I swear upon my life that my King is the most noble Christian of all Christians, that he is not what you say."
The sermon, however, was resumed after this interruption. And finally the preacher turned to Jeanne, who had subsided from that start of animation, and was again the subdued and silent prisoner, her heart overwhelmed with many heavy thoughts. "Here," said èrard, "are my lords the judges who have so often summoned and required of you to submit your acts and words to our Holy Mother the Church; because in these acts and words there are many things which it seemed to the clergy were not good either to say or to sustain."
To which she replied (we quote again from the formal records), "I will answer you." And as to her submission to the Church she said: "I have told them on that point that all the works which I have done and said may be sent to Rome, to our Holy Father the Pope, to whom, but to God first, I refer in all. And as for my acts and words I have done all on the part of God." She also said that no one was to blame for her acts and words, neither her King nor any other; and if there were faults in them, the blame was hers and no other's.
Asked, if she would renounce all that she had done wrong; answered, "I refer everything to God and to our Holy Father the Pope."
It was then told her that this was not enough, and that our Holy Father was too far off; also that the Ordinaries were judges each in his diocese, and it was necessary that she should submit to our Mother the Holy Church, and that she should confess that the clergy and officers of the Church had a right to determine in her case. And of this she was admonished three times.
After this the Bishop began to read the definitive sentence. When a great part of it was read, Jeanne began to speak and said that she would hold to all that the judges and the Church said, and obey in everything their ordinance and will. And there in the presence of the above-named and of the great multitude assembled she made her abjuration in the manner that follows:
And she said several times that since the Church said her apparitions and revelations should not be sustained or believed, she would not sustain them; but in everything submit to the judges and to our Mother the Holy Church.
*****
In this strange, brief, subdued manner is the formal record made. Manchon writes on his margin: /At the end of the sentence Jeanne, fearing the fire, said she would obey the Church/. Even into the bare legal document there comes a hush as of awe, the one voice responding in the silence of the crowd, with a quiver in it; the very animation of the previous outcry enhancing the effect of this low and faltering submission, /timens igneum/--in fear of the fire.
The more familiar record, and the recollections long after of those eye-witnesses, give us another version of the scene. èrard, from his pulpit, read the form of abjuration prepared. But Jeanne answered that she did not know what abjuration meant, and the preacher called upon Massieu to explain it to her. "And he" (we quote from his own deposition), "after excusing himself, said that it meant this: that if she opposed the said articles she would be burnt; but he advised her to refer it to the Church universal whether she should abjure or not. Which thing she did, saying to èrard, 'I refer to the Church universal whether I should abjure or not.' To which èrard answered, 'You shall abjure at once or you will be burnt.' Massieu gives further particulars in another part of the Rehabilitation process. èrard, he says, asked what he was saying to the prisoner, and he answered that she would sign if the schedule was read to her; but Jeanne said that she could not write, and then added that she wished it to be decided by the Church, and ought not to sign unless that was done: and also required that she should be placed in the custody of the Church, and freed from the hands of the English. The same èrard answered that there had been ample delay, and that if she did not sign at once she should be burned, and forbade Massieu to say any more."
Meanwhile many cries and entreaties came, as far as they dared, from the crowd. Some one, in the excitement of the moment, would seem to have promised that she should be transferred to the custody of the Church. "Jeanne, why will you die? Jeanne, will you not save yourself?" was called to her by many a bystander. The girl stood fast, but her heart failed her in this terrible climax of her suffering. Once she called out over their heads, "All that I did was done for good, and it was well to do it:"--her last cry. Then she would seem to have recovered in some measure her composure. Probably her agitated brain was unable to understand the formula of recantation which was read to her amid all the increasing noises of the crowd, but she had a vague faith in the condition she had herself stated, that the paper should be submitted to the Church, and that she should at once be transferred to an ecclesiastical prison. Other suggestions are made, namely, that it was a very short document upon which she hastily in her despair made a cross, and that it was a long one, consisting of several pages, which was shown afterwards with /Jehanne/ scribbled underneath. "In fact," says Massieu, "she abjured and made a cross with the pen which the witness handed to her:" he, if any one must have known exactly what happened.
