e in her prison, very early in the
morning, touching her repeated application to be allowed to hear
mass and to communicate. The Bishop offered her his ultimatum: if she
consented to resume her woman's dress, she might hear mass, but not
otherwise; to which Jeanne replied, sorrowfully, that she would have
done so before now if she could; but that it was not in her power to
do so. Thus after the long and bitter Lent her hopes of sharing in the
sacred feast were finally taken from her. It remains uncertain whether
she considered that her change of dress would be direct disobedience
to God, which her words seem often to imply; or whether it would mean
renunciation of her mission, which she still hoped against hope to be
able to resume; or if the fear of personal insult weighed most with
her. The latter reason had evidently something to do with it, but, as
evidently, not all.

The background to these curious sittings, afterwards revealed to us,
casts a hazy side-light upon them. Probably the Bishop, never present,
must have been made aware by his spies of an intention on the part of
those most favourable to Jeanne to support an appeal to the Pope; and
L'Oyseleur, the traitor, who was all this time admitted to her cell by
permission of Cauchon, and really as his tool and agent, was actively
employed in prejudicing her mind against them, counselling her not to
trust to those clerks, not to yield to the Church. How he managed to
explain his own appearance on the other side, his official connection
with the trial, and constant presence as one of her judges, it is hard
to imagine. Probably he gave her to believe that he had sought that
position (having got himself liberated from the imprisonment which he
had represented himself as sharing) for her sake, to be able to help
her.

On the other hand her friends, whose hearts were touched by her candour
and her sufferings, were not inactive. Jean de la Fontaine and the two
monks--l'Advenu and Frere Isambard--also succeeded in gaining admission
to her, and pressed upon her the advantage of appealing to the Church,
to the Council of Bale about to assemble, or to the Pope himself, which
would have again changed the _venue_, and transferred her into less
prejudiced hands. It is very likely that Jeanne in her ignorance and
innocence might have held by her reference to the supreme tribunal
of God in any case; and it is highly unlikely that of the English
authorities, intent on removing t