olute simplicity and honesty. It was but two years in that same
spring weather since she had left Vaucouleurs to seek the fortune of
France, to offer herself to the struggle which now was coming to an end.
Not a soul had Jeanne to comfort or stand by her. She had her saints
who--one wonders if such a thought ever entered into her young visionary
head--had lured her to her doom, and who still comforted her with
enigmatical words, promises which came true in so sadly different a
sense from that in which they were understood.

(1) We are glad to add that the learned Quicherat has doubts
on the subject of the cage.

CHAPTER XII -- BEFORE THE TRIAL. LENT, 1431.

We have not, however, sufficiently described the horror of the prison,
and the treatment to which Jeanne was exposed, though the picture is
already dark enough. It throws a horrible yet also a grotesque light
upon the savage manners of the time to find that the chamber in which
she was confined, had secret provision for an _espionnage_ of the most
base kind, openings made in the walls through which everything that took
place in the room, every proceeding of the unfortunate prisoner, could
be spied upon and every word heard. The idea of such a secret watch
has always been attractive to the vulgar mind, and no doubt it has been
believed to exist many times when there was little or no justification
for such an infernal thought. From the "ear" of Dionysius, down to the
_Trou Judas_, which early tourists on the Continent were taught to fear
in every chamber door, the idea has descended to our own times. It would
seem, however, to be beyond doubt that this odious means of acquiring
information was in full operation during the trial of Jeanne, and
various spies were permitted to peep at her, and to watch for any
unadvised word she might say in her most private moments. We are told
that the Duke of Bedford made use of the opportunity in a still more
revolting way, and was present, a secret spectator, at the fantastic
scene when Jeanne was visited by a committee of matrons who examined
her person to prove or to disprove one of the hateful insinuations which
were made about her. The imagination, however, refuses to conceive that
a man of serious age and of high functions should have degraded himself
to the level of a Peeping Tom in this way; all the French historians,
nevertheless, repeat the story though on the merest hearsay evidence.
And they also relate, wi