“I did not know the day nor the hour,” she answered patiently.
The Earl of Warwick himself took more than one occasion to show Jeanne to his
friends, and one day he brought the Earl of Stafford and Jean de Luxembourg to
see her. De Luxembourg was the same who had sold her to the English.
“Jeanne, I have come to ransom you,” remarked the latter laughingly as the girl rose to a sitting posture from the bed where she was chained to give them
courteous greeting. “That is, if you will promise never again to bear arms against us.”
“In God’s name, you mock me,” she cried with a flash of spirit. “I know that you have neither the will nor the power. I know that the English mean to kill me, believing, after I am dead, that they will be able to win the Kingdom of France; but if there were a hundred thousand more Godons than there are, they shall never win the Kingdom.”
Whereupon Lord Stafford was so goaded to rage that he half drew his dagger to
slay her, but Warwick stayed his hand. It was too merciful a death, and it was the English policy to have her executed ignominiously as a witch.
After long, comfortless days of waiting Jeanne was informed that she was to be
tried for heresy, and piteously she asked that some of her own party should be placed among the judges; but this was refused. The charge of heresy against a girl to whom the ordinances of the Church were as the breath of life seems strange. She who lived in an ecstasy of religious fervour, who spent her time in prayer and religious exercises; who confessed regularly, and partook of the Sacraments of the Church whenever she could receive them, was accused by the
Church of being a heretic and schismatic. Her great crime in the eyes of the clergy lay in affirming that she obeyed voices that came from God.
In her cell Jeanne could know but little of the arrangements that were being made for the trial, which were on such a scale as to command the attention of all Europe. No homage ever rendered her by her own party conveys such a sense of
her importance as this trial which was instigated by a great nation to neutralize her influence.
Owing to the fact that the meadow land where she was captured lay in the diocese of Beauvais Pierre Cauchon claimed jurisdiction over her. He had ever been a sympathizer with the English faction, and after Jeanne’s triumphs had swept him out of his city he had fled for a while to England, and had come back to France with the Cardinal of Winchester, eager for rewards and revenge. A few months previous Winchester had recommended him to the Pope for the vacant archbishopric of Rouen, but his appointment was opposed by the clergy of that
city, and the Pope had not yet come to a decision. He was a man of much learning and more ambition, and he delighted in the opportunity now afforded him of pleasing his English patrons, and avenging his private grudge.
As Cauchon was presiding officer the trial should have been held, of course, in his diocese, but it was deemed expedient to hold it in Rouen, on account of the
disturbances near Paris, and Canonical permission was obtained from the Cathedral Chapter of Rouen to hold the court in that city. Bishops, abbés, priors, representatives of the University of Paris, learned doctors, and noted priests, sixty of the greatest intellectuals of the Church,––all of them Frenchmen of the English faction,––were gathered together to bring to death a young, ignorant peasant girl.
To arrange all the preliminaries that were necessary for the opening of the trial took time, so that it was not until toward the last of February that everything was in readiness. Such cases are always preceded by an inquiry into the former life of the accused as had been done at Poictiers, for this is according to French law.
This examination was made but it was not of a nature to justify or strengthen any accusation. All that the examiners could discover was that Jeanne D’Arc was a
good, honest maid who had left a spotless reputation behind her in her native village. One commissioner reported that he had learned nothing which he would
not willingly know of his own sister, although he had made inquiries in five or six parishes. Cauchon called him a traitor, and said that he would not pay for information that could be of no use to him.
As this investigation had been productive of nothing that could be used against her an effort was made to trap Jeanne into admissions against herself.
Accordingly one morning a man entered her cell who represented himself as a shoemaker coming from Lorraine. He was a prisoner, he said, but had received
permission to visit her. Jeanne was delighted to see any one from the valley of the Meuse, so gave him cordial greeting, and the two fell into conversation.
During the talk the supposed cobbler said suddenly in a low tone:
“Pucelle, I am a priest. Nay,” as Jeanne turned toward him with an exclamation
of joy, “speak low. Some of the guards may understand French, and I am come
to help you.”
“A priest?” The maiden’s thin, white face grew radiant. “A priest, messire? Then you can hear me in confession?”
“Gladly, my child.” And forthwith the girl innocently opened up her heart to him.
The man was in reality a priest, one Nicholas Loyseleur, a representative of the University of Paris, and full of treachery and hypocrisy. He served Cauchon well, for Jeanne trusted him wholly, never dreaming that every word she said to him was overheard and recorded by secret listeners. For there was provision made for espionage, openings being in the walls through which everything that
took place in the room, every proceeding could be spied upon, and every word heard. Although the long conversations that this man held with Jeanne elicited nothing that she did not say publicly, he was always giving her advice which, when she followed it, she followed to her hurt.
The preliminaries, as has been said, threatened to be endless, but at length, on Wednesday, February twenty-first, the Great Trial began at eight o’clock in the morning in the royal chapel of the castle.
Jeanne gave a sigh of relief as the officer of the court, who was sent to conduct her to the chapel, released her from her fetters.
“You are summoned to appear before the court, Pucelle,” he explained.
“May I hear mass before entering the court?” asked she wistfully.
“Nay; it is not permitted,” he answered. “Come!”
So, surrounded by a strong guard, the Maid was led through the corridor to the
royal chapel. It was but a short distance, but it was the first breath of fresh air that she had had in almost two months, and Jeanne inhaled it eagerly. The chapel was a large room, but it was not large enough to accommodate those who sought
