d he was determined to give her no such fair
opportunity. On Tuesday a fresh tribunal was hastily constituted to pass
upon the deplorable relapse into error of one for whom, to shield her
from death, the Church had done all that in it lay. Needless to say,
this tribunal, a mere mockery of a court, decided on the evidence
submitted that Jeanne was guilty of fatal disobedience to the Church and
that she must suffer death as a heretic. It was to be but a step from
passing sentence to the execution of that sentence, for Cauchon's
masters were already impatient at the long delay.

The next morning a priest was sent to Jeanne to notify her of the
sentence. One sudden burst of feeling, half fear, half indignation, for
a moment overwhelmed the courage of the girl. She wept bitterly when
told that she must prepare herself to die by fire that very day: "Alas!
will they treat me so cruelly and horribly! Must my body, pure as from
birth, never corrupted or soiled in sin, be this day consumed and
reduced to ashes! Oh, oh! I had rather be beheaded seven times over than
burnt on this wise.... Oh! I appeal to God, the great Judge of all, for
the wrongs and injuries done me!" And then this heretic, this sorceress,
asked that she be allowed to confess and to receive the Communion, that
holy symbol of the universal brotherhood of the followers of Christ.
Cauchon did not, perhaps dared not, deny her this; but he wished to
divest the ceremony of part of its pomp. When the Eucharist was brought
to him without stole and without lights, the courageous monk Martin
l'Advenu refused to administer it thus, and sent a complaint to the
cathedral; whereupon the chapter, always ready to spite Cauchon, sent an
escort of priests and acolytes, who chanted litanies as they passed
through the streets and conjured the kneeling people to pray for Jeanne.

By nine o'clock the victim had received the Communion, and was dressed
in female attire and placed on a cart, ready to start for the place of
execution. Brother Martin and the merciful Austin friar Isambart
accompanied her on that dreadful journey of the cart through the streets
of Rouen to the old fish market. If there had been any tendency to
sympathetic manifestations on the part of the crowd, the guard of eight
hundred English soldiers would have sufficed to suppress them; and
Jeanne, who had now given up hope of deliverance, of succor from her
king, from her divine guardians, was heard only to ejaculat