“All that I did was done for good, and it was well to do it.”
And Manchon, the clerk, wrote on the margin of his record, “And Jeanne in fear
of the fire said that she would obey the Church.”
This done Cauchon substituted the other sentence:
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“Seeing that thou hast returned to the bosom of the Church by the grace of God, and hast revoked and denied all thy errors, we, the Bishop aforesaid, commit thee to perpetual prison, with the bread of sorrow and water of anguish, to purge thy soul by solitary penitence.”
A tumult arose in the square at this, and stones were thrown amid cries of disappointment and rage; for the English feared that they were to be cheated of their prey, and many were angered that there was to be no burning. In the midst of it, Jeanne called feverishly to the priests about her:
“Now, you people of the Church, lead me to your prison; let me be no longer in
the hands of the English.”
One of the priests left her side, and ran over to Cauchon to ask where she was to be taken.
“Back whence she came,” said Cauchon grimly.
Dismayed, miserable beyond words, Jeanne was taken back to the irons, and the
unspeakable torment of her awful cell.
[28]
“Into France.” A phrase used frequently by people living on the borderland; also because all the country about Domremy and adjacent villages was held by the enemy.
This must be crossed to reach the king. Where he dwelt was regarded as the real France.
[29]
Herring, sprats, shad––in warm countries acquire, probably from their food, highly poisonous properties so as to be dangerous to persons eating them.
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CHAPTER XXVII
FOR HER COUNTRY
“There was grandeur in that peasant girl,––in her
exalted faith at Domremy, in her heroism at Orléans, in
her triumph at Reims, in her trial and martyrdom at
Rouen. But unless she had suffered, nothing would have
remained of this grandeur in the eyes of posterity. ”
LORD. “Great Women” in “Beacon Lights of History. ”
In the afternoon the Duchess of Bedford sent a tailor to Jeanne with a woman’s
dress. She put it on without a word, allowed her hair to be dressed in feminine fashion, and to be covered by a coif. Courcelles, Loyseleur, Isambard and other priests also visited her, telling her of the great pity and mercy of the churchmen, and warning her that should she return to her errors the Church must abandon her. And so at last they left her.
Left her to her thoughts and her conscience which now began to trouble her. For in that moment of recantation Jeanne had been false to the highest that was in her: the Voice of God speaking in her heart which was higher than the Church.
“I have sinned,” she cried in anguish. “I have sinned grievously.” And piteou
3 s
75 ly
she invoked her Saints.
In the meantime life in that cell was a horror of which it is well not to think. She was supposed now to be under the gentle ministrations of the Church, but she was still a captive, shorn, degraded, hopeless, lacerated by fetters, and weighed down by heavy chains; for even at night when she lay on her bed her feet were in irons, with couples fastened to a chain, and attached by a log to a great beam of wood. Cauchon had been given to understand that the English would not be content with “perpetual imprisonment on bread of anguish and water of affliction” for this captive. The girl must burn, but now this could not be done
unless she relapsed. Relapse she must, willingly or unwillingly. A word to John Grey’s varlets would help matters, and the word was given.
It was on Thursday, May twenty-fourth, that Jeanne recanted, and took the woman’s dress. On Sunday following she awoke to find that her feminine attire
had been taken from her while she slept, and on her bed lay the old page’s suit of black.
“Sirs,” she said protestingly in her gentle voice, “this dress is forbidden me. Give me the woman’s dress, I pray you.”
The guards refused, laughing. Jeanne knew what the end would be now, but she
