by and taking no share
in the business: but all French and English alike, occupied with one
subject, talking of the trial, of the new points brought out, of the
opinions of this doctor and that, of Maitre Nicolas who had presumed on
his lawyership to correct the bishop, and had suffered for it: of the
bold canon who ventured to whisper a suggestion to the prisoner, and who
ever since had had the eye of the governor upon him: of Warwick, keeping
a rough shield of protection around the Maid but himself fiercely
impatient of the law's delay, anxious to burn the witch and be done with
her. And Jeanne herself, the one strange figure that nobody understood;
was she a witch? Was she an angelic messenger? Her answers so simple,
so bold, so full of the spirit and sentiment of truth, must have been
reported from one to another. This is what she said; does that look like
a deceiver? could the devils inspire that steadfastness, that constancy
and quiet? or was it not rather the angels, the saints as she said?
Never, we may be sure, had there been in Rouen a time of so much
interest, such a theme for conversations, such a subject for all
thoughts. The eager court sat with their tonsured heads together, keen
to seize every weak point. Did you observe how she hesitated on this?
Let us push that, we'll get an admission on that point to-morrow. It is
impossible to believe that in such an assembly every man was a partisan,
much less that each one of them was thinking of the fee of the English,
the daily allowance which it was the English habit to make. That were to
imagine a France, base indeed beyond the limits of human baseness. All
the Norman dignitaries of the Church, all the most learned doctors
of the University--no! that is too great a stretch of our faith. The
greater part no doubt believed as an indisputable fact, that Jeanne was
either a witch or an impostor, as we should all probably do now. And
the vertigo of Inquisition gained upon them; they became day by day more
exasperated with her seeming innocence, with what must have seemed to
them the cunning and cleverness, impossible to her age and sex, of
her replies. Who could have kept the girl so cool, so dauntless, so
embarrassing in her straight-forwardness and sincerity? The saints? the
saints were not dialecticians; far more likely the evil one himself, in
whom the Church has always such faith. "He hath a devil and by Beelzebub
casteth out devils." It was all like a play, on