accepted her fate calmly. The tidings flew that by this act she had revoked her abjuration. Monday word was sent to Cauchon and his acolytes, who flocked at
once to the castle. They found the girl overborne with grief, her face tear-stained and disfigured; the hearts of some of them were moved to compassion.
“Why have you done this?” demanded Cauchon.
“It is more suitable for me to wear it, being among men,” said the Maid, taking the blame of the whole matter. “I have resumed it because the promise to me has not been kept; that is to say, that I should go to mass and should receive my Saviour, and that I should be taken out of irons.”
“Did you not promise and swear not to resume the dress of a man?”
“No; I am not aware that I took any such oath. I would rather die than be in irons. But if you will release me from these irons, and let me go to mass, and lie in gentle prison, I will be good and do as the Church desires.”
“Since last Thursday have you heard your Voices?” asked the Bishop, wishing to
find some basis for the charge of “relapse.”
“Yes;” Jeanne’s sad face brightened at once.
“What did they say to you?”
“God made known to me by Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret the great pity there was for the treason to which I consented by making revocation and abjuration in order to save my life. I have condemned myself that my life might be saved. On Thursday my Voices told me to answer that preacher boldly, and he
was a false preacher, who preached. He accused me of many things that I never
did. If I said that God did not send me, I should condemn myself, for God did
send me. My Voices have told me that I committed sin in declaring that what I
had done was wrong. All that I said and revoked, I said for fear of the fire.”
And Manchon, the clerk, wrote on the margin of his record: “Responsio mortifera.” “The answer that caused her death.”
“Do you believe that your Voices are St. Margaret and St. Catherine?”
“Yes, I do believe it,” she cried gladly. “And I believe that they come from God.
I would rather do penance once for all; that is to say, in dying, than endure any longer the misery of a prison. I have done nothing against God and the faith, in spite of all they have made me revoke. What was in the schedule of abjuration I did not understand. I did not intend to revoke anything except according to our Lord’s pleasure. If the judges will have me do so, I will resume woman’s dress; for the rest, I can do no more.”
It was enough. She had relapsed, and the will of her enemies could now be accomplished. The next day Cauchon assembled his assessors in the chapel of his house, the palace of the Archbishop of Rouen. They all agreed that Jeanne must be handed over to the secular arm of the Church, praying that it “might deal gently with her.” If she showed signs of sincere penitence, she was to be allowed to receive the sacrament of confession so long denied to her. Then the Maid was cited to appear the next morning at eight o’clock in the Old Market Place, “in order that she may be declared relapsed, excommunicate, and heretic, and that it may be done to her as is customary in such cases.”
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.
