e: "Rouen,
Rouen! must I then die here?" In the market place had been erected two
platforms, one for the cardinal and dignitaries, the other for the
prisoner, the bailli, the judges, and the preacher who was to enhance
the bitterness of death by rehearsing the particulars of her guilt. But
what is that lofty scaffolding of wood and plaster standing apart? It is
the altar upon which the sacrifice is to be offered, built high that all
may see the tortures of an innocent maid as the flames mount rapidly up
its flimsy mass. A sermon began the proceedings, the eloquent Master
Nicholas Mildy outdoing himself upon the text: "When one limb of the
Church is sick, the whole Church is sick." After him came that pitiful
tool, the Bishop of Beauvais, who exhorted Jeanne to repentance and to
forgiveness of her enemies. There was small need of this, for Jeanne
knelt and prayed so humbly, so earnestly, so pitifully, that all were
moved to tears, while she asked the priests to pray for her soul and to
say a Mass for her. Then Cauchon, in spite of his tears, read to her the
act of condemnation, concluding: "Therefore, we pronounce you to be a
rotten limb, and as such to be lopped off from the Church. We deliver
you over to the secular power, _praying it at the same time to mitigate
its sentence, and to spare you death_, and the mutilation of your
members." The unblushing hypocrisy of this recommendation to mercy, with
the pyre already reared in full sight of all, could only be surpassed by
that of the diabolical fiction of ecclesiastical law as administered by
the Inquisition; viz., that Holy Church executed no capital sentence,
merely handed its victim over to the "secular arm."

So now Jeanne, no longer under the merciful protection of the Church,
was delivered over to the civil authorities and conducted to the top of
the pyre. She asked for a cross; a tender-hearted Englishman handed her
two sticks which he had hastily fashioned into a rude cross, and Jeanne
kissed the simple emblem and put it in her bosom. But Isambart fetched a
crucifix for her from the very altar of the neighboring church of
Saint-Sauveur, and this she kissed passionately, desiring him to hold it
aloft where she might see it to the last as the smoke and flame mounted.
Isambart ascended the pile with her, and the executioner fastened her
body to the post in the centre. With her eyes fixed upon the image of
Him who died for the world, mayhap she did not note the lying