ded, "for fear
of the Maid"--was the chief person in the place, but did not make any
appearance at the trial, curiously enough; the Duke of Bedford we are
informed was visible on one shameful occasion, but no more. But Warwick,
who was the Governor of the town, appears frequently and various other
lords with him. We see them in the mirror held up to us by the French
historians, pressing round in an ever narrowing circle, closing up upon
the tribunal in the midst, pricking the priests with perpetual sword
points if they seem to loiter. They would have had everything pushed on,
no delay, no possibility of escape. It is very possible that this was
the case, for it is evident that the Witch was deeply obnoxious to the
English, and that they were eager to have her and her endless process
out of the way; but the evidence for their terror and fierce desire to
expedite matters is of the feeblest. A canon of Rouen declared at the
trial that he had heard it said by Maitre Pierre Morice, and Nicolas
l'Oyseleur, judges assessors, and by other whose names he does not
recollect, "that the said English were so afraid of her that they did
not dare to begin the siege of Louviers until she was dead; and that it
was necessary if one would please them, to hasten the trial as much as
possible and to find the means of condemning her." Very likely this was
quite true: but it cannot at all be taken for proved by such evidence.
Another contemporary witness allows that though some of the English
pushed on her trial for hate, some were well disposed to her; the manner
of Jeanne's imprisonment is the only thing which inclines the reader to
believe every evil thing that is said against them.

Such were the circumstances in which Jeanne was brought to trail. The
population, moved to pity and to tears as any population would
have been, before the end, would seem at the beginning to have been
indifferent and not to have taken much interest one way or another: the
court, a hundred men and more with all their hangers-on, the cleverest
men in France, one more distinguished and impeccable than the others:
the stern ring of the Englishmen outside keeping an eye upon the tedious
suit and all its convolutions: these all appear before us, surrounding
as with bands of iron the young lonely victim in the donjon, who
submitting to every indignity, and deprived of every aid, feeling that
all her friends had abandoned her, yet stood steadfast and strong in
her abs