Without any formal sentence, the Bailiff of Rouen waved his hand, saying,

“Away with her.”

Jeanne was seized roughly by the soldiers and dragged to the steps of the stake.

There she asked for a cross. One of the English soldiers who kept the way took a piece of staff, broke it across his knees in unequal parts, and, binding them hurriedly together, handed to her. She thanked him brokenly, took it, and kissing it pressed it against her bosom. She then prayed Massieu to bring a cross from

the church that she might look upon it through the smoke.

From the church of Saint Saviour a tall cross was brought, and Brother Isambard held it before her to the end; for she said:

“Hold it high before me until the moment of death, that the cross on which God

is hanging may be continually before my eyes.”

Then bravely as she had climbed the scaling ladders at Orléans and Jargeau the

Maid ascended the steps of the scaffold to the stake. The good priest, Isambard, accompanied her with words of consolation. As she was being bound to the stake

she looked her last upon the towers and hills of the fair city, and again the cry escaped her lips:

“Ah, Rouen! I greatly fear that you shall suffer for my death.”

Cauchon, hoping that now some word of denouncement against her King might

be uttered, came to the foot of the scaffold; once again she cried to him:

“Bishop, I die through you.”

Only once did her spirit falter. When the executioner applied the torch to the faggots, and a dense volume of smoke rolled up she gasped,

“Water, holy water!”

Then, in quick forgetfulness of self, for Brother Isambard still remained with her, though the pitiless flames had already begun to ascend––she bade him go down

lest the fire should catch his robes. And so at last she was left alone.

Upward leaped the red flames, eager for their prey; upward curled the dense, suffocating smoke; the air quivered and whirled with red, stifling heat; and suddenly, from out of that fiery, awful furnace, there came the clarion tones of the Maid, clear as on the battle field, exultant with the triumph of a great victory:

“My Voices were from God! They have not deceived me! Jesus! Jesus!”

And so died the Maid; a martyr, not for religion, but for her country. She died, but the lesson of her life lives on: faith and work; for by these two may marvels be wrought and the destiny of nations changed.

“The men-at-arms will fight; God will give the victory.”

CHAPTER XXVIII

AT DOMREMY

“To our Holy Father, the Pope, to whom, and to God

first, I appeal. ”

JEANNE’S own words in the Square of St. Ouen.

There were many signs and wonders told of the execution after Jeanne’s death. It was said that a dove was seen to fly upward toward Heaven at the moment that

her spirit took its flight; that the executioner later in the day went weeping to Friar Isambard, confessing that he was lost, for he had burnt a saint; that an English soldier who had sworn to light a faggot on the pyre had fallen in a swoon as he threw the burning brand; that her heart, that great heart that beat only for France, was not consumed by the flame: these and many other things were told. The truth of the matter was that even her enemies were not easy in their minds about her death. There was more than a suspicion that what she had

said might be true: that she was sent from God.

The news of her death swept over France, bringing grief and consternation to those who loved her, and satisfaction to those that feared.

In the afternoon of a gracious day in June, some two weeks after the tragedy

38 5at

Rouen, two young women might have been seen coming through the forest down the hill path beyond Greux from the Chapel of Our Lady of Bermont. It was Saturday, the Holy Virgin’s day, and the two had been to make their orisons at the shrine. But though the Valley of Colours had never seemed so lovely, so

flowery, so fragrant as it did on this golden afternoon, a young matron and her maiden companion, the two, walked in silence and with lagging steps through the tangle of vines and grasses that grew along the pathway.

“It is more than two years since Jeanne went away,” spoke the younger one suddenly, voicing the name that was in both their hearts. “Oh, Mengette, it

grieves me to think of her shut up in a gloomy dungeon when she loved the fields so.”

“Yes, Hauviette. And how strange it is that Jeanne D’Arc, who was always so good and pious, is up before the Church charged with heresy. Jeanne a heretic?

Pouf! The very idea of such a thing!” Mengette laughed scornfully, then caught

her breath with a sob. “To think of it, when she loves the Church so. It’s my belief that those who try her are the heretics.”

“Mengette, if any one should hear you!” Hauviette cast a fearful glance about her. “It would go hard with you.”

“I care not who hears me,” declared Mengette with a toss of her head. “Have we

not boldly told all who came to Domremy to inquire concerning her of her goodness and purity? Ay! even though they were Burgundians or English they were told the truth though some of them would fain have heard otherwise.

Beside, should any chance to hear me, Robert, my husband, would not let harm

come to me.”

In spite of her sadness Hauviette could not repress a smile. Mengette had been

married two years, and her belief in her husband’s all powerfulness had become

a proverb in the village. But the maiden only remarked:

“I would that we could hear how it fares with Jeanne. It is a long trial.” She sighed.