th more apparent truth, how a double treachery
was committed upon the unfortunate prisoner by stationing two
secretaries at these openings, to take down her conversation with a spy
who had been sent to her in the guise of a countryman of her own; and
that not only Cauchon but Warwick also was present on this occasion,
listening, while their plot was carried out by the vile traitor inside.
The clerks, we are glad to say, are credited with a refusal to act: but
Warwick did not shrink from the ignominy. The Englishmen indeed shrank
from no ignominy; nor did the great French savants assembled under the
presidency of the Bishop. It is necessary to grant to begin with that
they were neither ignorant nor base men, yet from the beginning of the
trial almost every step taken by them appears base, as well as marked,
in the midst of all their subtlety and diabolical cunning, by the
profoundest ignorance of human nature. The spy of whom we have spoken,
L'Oyseleur (bird-snarer, a significant name), was sent, and consented to
be sent, to Jeanne in her prison, as a fellow prisoner, a _pays_,
like herself from Lorraine, to invite her confidence: but his long
conversations with the Maid, which were heard behind their backs by
the secretaries, elicited nothing from her that she did not say in the
public examination. She had no secret devices to betray to a traitor.
She would not seem, indeed, to have suspected the man at all, not
even when she saw him among her judges taking part against her. Jeanne
herself suspected no falsehood, but made her confession to him, when she
found that he was a priest, and trusted him fully. The bewildering
and confusing fact, turning all the contrivances of her judges into
foolishness, was, that she had nothing to confess that she was not ready
to tell in the eye of day.

The adoption of this abominable method of eliciting secrets from the
candid soul which had none, was justified, it appears, by the manner of
her trial, which was after the rules of the Inquisition--by which even
more than by those which regulate an ordinary French trial the guilt of
the accused is a foregone conclusion for which proof is sought, not a
fair investigation of facts for abstract purposes of justice. The first
thing to be determined by the tribunal was the counts of the indictment
against Jeanne; was she to be tried for magical arts, for sorcery and
witchcraft? It is very probable that the mission of L'Oyseleur was to
obtain ev