Very early on Wednesday morning, May the thirtieth, Brother Martin Ladvenu went to the cell to tell the Maid of her approaching death, and “to lead her to true contrition and repentance, and also to hear her confession.”

Terrified and trembling, Jeanne received the announcement with bitter weeping;

her heart failing before the imminence of the stake. She was but a girl, and it was a terrible ordeal that lay before her. What wonder that she wept?

“Alas!” she cried, “will they treat me so horribly and cruelly, and must my body, which has never been corrupted, be burned to ashes to-day! Ah! I would far rather be beheaded seven times than burned. Had I been in the prison of the Church, to which I submitted, and been guarded by church-folk, and not by my

enemies and adversaries, this would never have befallen me. Oh, I appeal before God, the great Judge, against these wrongs that they do me.”

In the midst of the girl’s outburst, Cauchon entered the cell. She turned upon him quickly.

“Bishop, I die through you.”

“Ah, Jeanne, be patient. You die because you have not kept your promise, but

have returned to errors.”

“If you had put me in the Church’s prison, and given me women for keepers, this would not have happened. For this I summon you before God.”

“Now then, Jeanne, did not your Voices promise you deliverance?”

“Yes;” she admitted sadly.

“Then you must perceive that they are evil and come not from God. Had this not

been true they would not have deceived you.”

“I see that I have been deceived,” she said. They had said, “Take all things peacefully: heed not this martyrdom. Thou shalt come at last into the Kingdom

of Paradise.” They had spoken also of deliverance by a great victory, but Jeanne misunderstood the message. So now she said sadly, “I see that I have been deceived. But,” she added, “be they good spirits or bad spirits, they really appeared to me.”

And now she was allowed to receive the Sacraments, for this would be proof that the Maid had again recanted. The sacrament was brought irreverently, without stole or candles, so that Ladvenu remonstrated indignantly, not being willing to administer a diminished rite. And at his request the Host was sent with a train of priests chanting litanies as they went through the streets with torches burning.

Without the prison in the courtyard, in the streets, everywhere in the city the people gathered to pray for her, their hearts touched with pity at her sad fate.

The maiden received the Sacrament with tears and devotion, the churchmen expounding views and exhorting her during all the time that it was administered.

Pierre Maurice spoke kindly to her at its close.

“Ah, Sieur Pierre,” she said, “where shall I be to-night?”

“Have you not good faith in the Lord?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “God helping me I shall be in Paradise.”

Dressed in the long black robe that the victims of the Inquisition wore, with a mitre set on her head, bearing the inscription: “Heretic, Relapsed, Apostate, Idolater,” she was led for the last time out through the corridor and down the steps to the cart which was waiting to carry her to the place of doom. Isambard, Massieu, the usher of the court, both her friends, accompanied her. As the cart, escorted by one hundred and twenty English men-at-arms, started, a man pushed

his way through them, and flung himself weeping at Jeanne’s feet. It was

Loyseleur, the spy, who now implored her pardon. Jeanne forgave him, and the guards, who would have killed him but for the intervention of Warwick, drove him away.

The streets, the windows and balconies of the houses, every place where a foothold could be had, were crowded with people who wished to get a good view of the Maid on her last journey. Many secretly sympathised with her, but dared not show it for fear of their English masters.

Three scaffolds had been erected in the Old Market Place: one for the high ecclesiastics and the great English lords; one for the accused and her preacher,––

for Jeanne was not allowed to go to her doom without another exhortation; while in the middle of the square a wooden platform stood on a mass of plaster with a great beam rising perpendicularly from it. At the foot of this innumerable faggots of wood were piled. The pile was purposely built high so that the executioner could not shorten her sufferings, as was often done. A placard was

set over the mass of plaster and faggots with the words, “Jeanne, self-styled the Maid, liar, mischief-maker, abuser of the people, diviner, superstitious, blasphemer of God, presumptuous, false to the faith of Christ, boaster, idolater, cruel, dissolute, an invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic, heretic.”

A large number of soldiers ranged around the square keeping back the turbulent

crowd who pressed upon them. Openly these soldiers rejoiced as the cart that contained the Warrior Maid was driven into the square. Soon the Witch who had

humbled the pride of England would be done to death. The victor of Orléans and

Patay would ride no more. An humbled France would soon be prostrate before the might of England. Jeanne looked on all that sea of faces, some sympathetic, others openly exultant, with brimming eyes.

“Rouen! Rouen!” she cried wonderingly; “and am I to die here?”

A silence fell upon the multitude as the Maid took her place upon the platform

with the preacher, Nicholas Midi, and he began his sermon from the text. “If any of the members suffer, all the other members suffer with it.”

Jeanne sat quietly through the sermon, her hands folded in her lap, praying silently. After a flood of invective the preacher closed his sermon and bade her,

“Go in peace.”

When the words that flung her from the communion of the Holy Church ended

Pierre Cauchon rose, and once more exhorted her, heaping a shower of abuse upon her helpless head, and so delivered her to the secular arm of the Church, with the words:

“We give you over to the secular power, entreating it to moderate its sentence and spare you pain of death and mutilation of limb.”

A great hush of awe fell upon the people that was broken presently by a sweet,

girlish voice, broken by sobs, as Jeanne knelt upon the platform, and offered up her last supplication.

She invoked the blessed Trinity, the blessed Virgin Mary, and all the saints of Paradise. She called pleadingly upon her own St. Michael for help and to aid her

“in devotion, lamentation, and true confession of faith.” Very humbly she begged forgiveness of all men whether of her party or the other. She asked the priests present to say a mass for her soul, and all whom she might have offended to forgive her, and declared that what she had done, good or bad, she alone was to answer.

And as she knelt, weeping and praying, the entire crowd, touched to the heart, broke into a burst of weeping and lamentation. Winchester wept, and the judges

wept. Pierre Cauchon was overwhelmed with emotion. Here and there an

English soldier laughed, and suddenly a hoarse voice cried:

“You priests, are you going to keep us here all day?”