placard
above her head: "Heretic, relapser, apostate, idolater." In this hour of
supreme trial no moment of fatal weakness came to deprive her of our
absolute admiration. She spoke no word of deserved reproach against her
rude executioners, against the soldiers who had hustled her across the
market place, against the miserable Charles for whom she suffered all
these tortures and who had abandoned her. "Whether I have done well, or
whether I have done ill, my King is not to blame; it was not he who
counselled me." Even the miserable Cauchon was greeted, as he hovered
about the foot of the pile to catch her last words, with nothing more
bitter than: "Bishop! Bishop! I die through you!... Had you confined me
in the prisons of the Church, this would not have happened."

While the good monk lingers by her side, pouring into that saintly ear
such words of comfort and hope as faith may suggest, the executioner
applies his torch and Jeanne sees the flames rush upward. "Jesus!" she
cries, then exhorts the monk, "Fly, father! and when the flame shall
cover me hold aloft the crucifix, that I may see it as I die, and repeat
for me your holy words until the end." She thought of others, not of
herself, even in this hour: who shall impugn her courage, or say she
knew not how to die as nobly as she had lived? In the first spasm of
pain, as the flames touched her body, she shrieked. After this but a few
broken sentences came to the ears of those at the foot of the pile,
sometimes appeals to the saints who had guided her, sometimes a
despairing cry of anguish not to be suppressed. And then in the midst of
the gathering flames they saw her head fall forward on her breast as she
moaned, "Jesus!"

The voice that had aroused France from her lethargy was hushed forever;
the great spirit of Jeanne d'Arc had gone to God, whence it came. Shall
we stand by the smoking pyre till the last embers turn gray and cold,
till Winchester orders the handful of ashes that remained to be swept
into the Seine? Or shall we turn away, sick with horror, filled already
with vain regret of the deed done, as did many in that dense crowd of
her enemies? "We have burnt a saint!" cries one. "I saw a dove fly from
her mouth and wing its way to heaven!" avers another.

Those who are actors in what the world learns to designate as great
historical crises seldom realize the magnitude of the events of which
they are immediate witnesses. In spite of the superstitious ter