Chapter V: Imprisonment and Trial (4)

'But,' said the Bishop, 'are you not aware you have now no right to wear such a dress?'

Joan answered that she had been misled into believing that if she wore the woman's dress she would be allowed to hear Mass and to communicate, and to be, she added, 'delivered from these chains.'

'But,' replied Cauchon, 'have you not abjured, and promised never to take to wearing this dress again?'

'I would prefer to die,' she answered, 'than to remain on a prisoner here. But if I were allowed to go to the Mass, and these chains were taken off me, and if I was placed in some other prison where some woman could be near me, then I should do all that is required of me by the Church.'

In all Joan of Arc's answers it should be noticed that she never, in spite of the terrible sufferings she endured, and the gross barbarities inflicted on her, in any single instance ever made any complaint of her treatment. There is something superhuman in this utter absence of any shade of vindictiveness, when one thinks that, by a few words, she might have saved herself from much of what she had to suffer. Never once did she blame even those who had deceived, insulted, and ill-treated her; her life was one beautiful example, full of divine charity and forgiveness.

Cauchon, to make doubly sure of completing his work, then asked Joan: 'Have you, since last Thursday, heard the voices of Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret?'

'Yes,' she answered.

'And,' continued the Bishop, 'what did they say?'

'They told me of the great sorrow they felt for the great treason to which I have been led, by my abjuring and revoking my deeds in order to save my life, and that by so doing I have lost my soul.'

On the margin of the original document of the MSS. of this examination, written in the prison, the original of which is in the National Library in Paris, we find alongside of this answer of Joan of Arc's the following words: '_Responsio mortifera_.' Indeed it was an answer of deadliest import; for Joan in asserting that her voices had again spoken to her, and in saying that she had committed a mortal sin by recanting her deeds, had thrown away the only plank of safety left her.

It seems to us evident, however, that Joan of Arc was now quite eager and willing to meet the worst that her enemies could inflict upon her: death itself must now have seemed more tolerable than the daily death she was undergoing in her prison.

'Did your voices urge you to resist giving way about the recantation?' questioned the Bishop.

'My voices,' Joan said, 'told me as I stood on the platform before the people that I should answer the preacher with boldness.'

'Did he not,' said Cauchon, 'speak the truth?'

'No,' she answered, 'he was a false preacher; and he accused me of having done things which I never did.'

'But,' then said Cauchon, 'do you mean to tell us that you still persist in saying that you have been sent by God?'

To which Joan replied that that was still her belief.

'Then,' continued the Bishop, 'you deny that to which you swore on oath only last Thursday?'

'My voices,' said Joan, 'have told me since then that I had committed a bad deed in saying that I had not done the things which I have done!'

'Then,' continued the Bishop, with eagerness, 'you retract your abjuration?'

'It was,' said Joan of Arc, 'from the fear of being burnt that I retracted what I had done; but I never intended to deny or revoke my voices.'

'But then,' said Cauchon, 'are you now no longer afraid of being burnt?'

'I had rather die than endure any longer what I have now to undergo.'

And with these broken-hearted words of the sufferer ended this long mockery of a trial, so patiently endured during three weariful months by the martyr Maid.

On quitting the prison, Cauchon met Lord Warwick among some Englishmen in the outer court of the castle. They were clamouring that the execution of Joan of Arc should be soon carried out. The Bishop accosted the Earl with a smile of triumph, and said to him in English:--

'You can dine now with a good appetite. We have caught her at last!'