under shelter from their insults, save her honor. Judge of her surprise and despair when the bishop coldly said: "Take her back whence you brought her."

Nothing was done; deceived on this wise, she could not fail to retract her retractation. Yet, though she had abided by it, the English, in their fury, would not have allowed her so to escape. They had come to Saint-Ouen in the hope of at last burning the sorceress, had waited panting and breathless to this end; and now they were to be dismissed on this fashion, paid with a slip of parchment, a signature, a grimace. . . . At the very moment the bishop discontinued reading the sentence. of condemnation, stones flew upon the scaffolding without any respect for the cardinal. . . . The doctors were in peril of their lives as they came down from their seats into the public place; swords were in all directions pointed at their throats. The more moderate among the English confined themselves to insulting language: "Priests, you are not earning the king's money." The doctors, making off in all haste, said tremblingly: "Do not be uneasy, we shall soon have her again."

And it was not the soldiery alone, not the English mob, always so ferocious, which displayed this thirst for blood. The better born, the great, the lords, were no less sanguinary. The king's man, his tutor, the earl of Warwick, said like the soldiers: "The king's business goes on badly: the girl will not be burnt."

According to English notions, Warwick was the mirror of worthiness, the accomplished Englishman, the perfect gentleman. Brave and devout, like his master, Henry V., and the zealous champion of the established Church, he had performed the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, as well as many other chivalrous expeditions, not failing to give tournays on his route : one of the most brilliant and celebrated of which took place at the gates of Calais, where he defied the whole chivalry of France. This tournay was long remembered; and the bravery and magnificence of this Warwick served not a little to prepare the way for the famous Warwick, the kingmaker.

With all his chivalry, Warwick was not the less savagely eager for the death of a woman, and one who was, too, a prisoner of war. The best, and the most looked up to of the English, was as little deterred by honorable scruples as the rest of his countrymen, from putting to death on the award of priests and by fire, her who had humbled them by the sword.

This great English people, with so many good and solid qualities, is infected by one vice, which corrupts these very qualities themselves. This rooted, all-poisoning vice, is pride: a cruel disease, but which is nevertheless the principle of English life, the explanation of its contradictions, the secret of its acts. With them, virtue or crime is almost ever the result of pride; even their follies have no other source. This pride is sensitive, and easily pained in the extreme; they are great sufferers from it, and again, make it a point of pride to conceal these sufferings. Nevertheless, they will have vent. The two expressive words, disappointment and mortification, are peculiar to the English language.

man.

This self-adoration, this internal worship of the creature for its own sake, is the sin by which Satan fell, the height of impiety. This is the reason that with so many of the virtues of humanity, with their seriousness and sobriety of demeanor, and with their biblical turn of mind, no nation is further off from grace. They are the only people who have been unable to claim the authorship of the "Imitation of Jesus" a Frenchman might write it, a German, an Italian, never an EnglishFrom Shakespeare to Milton, from Milton to Byron, their beautiful and somber literature is skeptical, Judaical, satanic, in a word, antichristian. "As regards law," as a legist well says, "the English are Jews, the French Christians." A theologian might express himself in the same manner, as regards faith. The American Indians, with that penetration and originality they so often exhibit, expressed this distinction in their fashion. "Christ," said one of them, "was a Frenchman whom the English crucified in London; Pontius Pilate was an officer in the service of Great Britain."

The Jews never exhibited the rage against Jesus which the English did against the Pucelle. It must be owned that she had wounded them cruelly in the most sensible part-in the simple but deep esteem they have for themselves. At Orléans, the invincible men at arms, the famous archers, Talbot at their head, had shown their backs; at Jargeau, sheltered by the good walls of a fortified town, they had suffered themselves to be taken; at Patay, they had fled as fast as their legs would carry them, fled before a girl. 1. This was hard to be borne, and these taciturn English were forever pondering over the disgrace. They had been afraid of a girl, and it was not very certain but that, chained as she was, they felt fear

of her still. . . though, seemingly, not of her, but of the devil, whose agent she was. At least, they endeavored both to believe, and to have it believed so.

But there was an obstacle in the way of this, for she was said to be a virgin; and it was a notorious and well-ascertained fact that the devil could not make a compact with a virgin. The coolest head among the English, Bedford, the regent, resolved to have the point cleared up; and his wife, the duchess, intrusted the matter to some matrons, who declared Jehanne to be a maid a favorable declaration which turned against her, by giving rise to another superstitious notion; to wit, that her virginity constituted her strength, her power, and that to deprive her of it was to disarm her, was to break the charm, and lower her to the level of other women.

The poor girl's only defense against such a danger had been wearing male attire; though, strange to say, no one had ever seemed able to understand her motive for wearing it. All, both friends and enemies, were scandalized by it. At the outset, she had been obliged to explain her reasons to the women of Poitiers; and when made prisoner, and under the care of the ladies of Luxembourg, those excellent persons prayed her to clothe herself as honest girls were wont to do. Above all, the English ladies, who have always made a parade of chastity and modesty, must have considered her so disguising herself monstrous, and insufferably indecent. The duchess of Bedford sent her female attire; but by whom? by a man, a tailor. fellow, with impudent familiarity, was about to pass it over her head, and, when she pushed him away, laid his unmannerly hand upon her; his tailor's hand on that hand which had borne the flag of France-she boxed his ear.

The

If women could not understand this feminine question, how much less could priests! . . . They quoted the text of a council held in the fourth century, which anathematized such changes of dress; not seeing that the prohibition specially applied to a period when manners had been barely retrieved from pagan impurities. The doctors belonging to the party of Charles VII., the apologists of the Pucelle, find exceeding difficulty in justifying her on this head. One of them (thought to be Gerson) makes the gratuitous supposition that the moment she dismounted from her horse, she was in the habit of resuming woman's apparel; confessing that Esther and Judith had had recourse to more natural and feminine means for their

triumphs over the enemies of God's people. Entirely preoccupied with the soul, these theologians seem to have held the body cheap; provided the letter, the written law, be followed, the soul will be saved; the flesh may take its chance. A

poor and simple girl may be pardoned her inability to distinguish so clearly.

It is our hard condition here below, that soul and body are so closely bound one with the other, that the soul takes the flesh along with it, undergoes the same hazards, and is answerable for it. . . . This has ever been a heavy fatality; but how much more so does it become under a religious law, which ordains the endurance of insult, and which does not allow imperiled honor to escape by flinging away the body, and taking refuge in the world of spirits!

On the Friday and the Saturday, the unfortunate prisoner, despoiled of her man's dress, had much to fear. Brutality, furious hatred, vengeance, might severally incite the cowards to degrade her before she perished, to sully what they were about to burn. Besides, they might be tempted to varnish their infamy by a reason of state, according to the notions of the day; by depriving her of her virginity, they would undoubtedly destroy that secret power of which the English entertained such great dread, who, perhaps, might recover their courage when they knew that, after all, she was but a woman. According to her confessor, to whom she divulged the fact, an Englishman, not a common soldier, but a gentleman, a lord patriotically devoted himself to this execution, bravely undertook to violate a girl laden with fetters, and, being unable to effect his wishes, rained blows upon her.

"On the Sunday morning, Trinity Sunday, when it was time for her to rise (as she told him who speaks), she said to her English guards, 'Leave me, that I may get up.' One of them took off her woman's dress, emptied the bag in which was the man's apparel, and said to her, 'Get up.'-'Gentlemen,' she said, 'you know that dress is forbidden me; excuse me, I will not put it on.' The point was contested till noon; when, being compelled to go out for some bodily want, she put it on. When she came back, they would give her no other despite her entreaties."

In reality, it was not to the interest of the English that she should resume her man's dress, and so make null and void a retractation obtained with such difficulty. But at this moment,

their rage no longer knew any bounds. Saintrailles had just made a bold attempt upon Rouen. It would have been a lucky hit to have swept off the judges from the judgment seat, and have carried Winchester and Bedford to Poitiers; the latter was, subsequently, all but taken on his return, between Rouen and Paris. As long as this accursed girl lived, who, beyond a doubt, continued in prison to practice her sorceries, there was no safety for the English: perish, she must.

The assessors, who had notice instantly given them of her change of dress, found some hundred English in the court to bar their passage; who, thinking that if these doctors entered, they might spoil all, threatened them with their axes and swords, and chased them out, calling them traitors of ArmagCauchon, introduced with much difficulty, assumed an air of gayety to pay his court to Warwick, and said with a laugh, "She is caught."

nacs.

On the Monday, he returned along with the inquisitor and eight assessors, to question the Pucelle, and ask her why she had resumed that dress. She made no excuse, but, bravely facing the danger, said that the dress was fitter for her as long as she was guarded by men, and that faith had not been kept with her. Her saints, too, had told her, "that it was great pity she had abjured to save her life." Still, she did not refuse to resume woman's dress. "Put me in a seemly and safe prison," she said, "I will be good, and do whatever the Church shall wish."

On leaving her, the bishop encountered Warwick and a crowd of English; and to show himself a good Englishman, he said in their tongue, "Farewell, farewell." This joyous adieu was about synonymous with "Good evening, good evening, all's over."

It was nine o'clock: she was dressed in female attire, and placed on a cart. On one side of her was brother Martin l'Advenu; the constable, Massieu, was on the other. The Augustine monk, brother Isambart, who had already displayed such charity and courage, would not quit her. It is stated that the wretched Loyseleur also ascended the cart, to ask her pardon; but for the earl of Warwick, the English would have killed him.

Up to this moment the Pucelle had never despaired, with the exception, perhaps, of her temptation in the Passion Week. While saying, as she at times would say, "These English will