r agony, at which Frere Isambard was also
present. We are told that the Deputy Inquisitor Lemaitre, he who had
been got to lend the aid of his presence with such difficulty, fiercely
warned the authorities that he would have no harm done to those two
friars, from which we may infer that he too had leanings towards the
Maid; and these honest and loyal men, well deserving of their country
and of mankind, should not lose their record when the tragic story of so
much human treachery and baseness has to be told.

*****

After this there came a long pause, full of much business to the judges,
councillors, and clerks who had to reduce the seventy articles to
twelve, in order to forward a summary of the case to the University of
Paris for their judgment. Jeanne in the meantime had been left, but not
neglected, in her prison. The great Feast of Easter had passed without
any sacred consolation of the Church; but Monseigneur de Beauvais,
in his kindness, sent her a carp to keep the feast withal, if not any
spiritual food. It was quite congenial to the spirit of the time to
imagine that the carp had been poisoned, and such a thought seems to
have crossed the mind of Jeanne, who was very ill after eating of it,
and like to die. But it was not thus, poisoned in prison, that it would
have suited any of her persecutors to let her die. As a matter of fact,
as soon as it was known that she was ill, the best doctors procurable
were sent to the prison with peremptory orders to prolong her life
and cure her at any cost. But for a little time we lose sight of
the sick-bed on which the unfortunate Maid lay fully dressed, never
relinquishing the garb which was her protection, with her feet chained
to her uneasy couch. Even at the moment when her life hung in the
balance we read of no indulgence granted in this respect, no unlocking
of the infamous chain, nor substitution of a gentler nurse for the
attendant _houspillers_, who were her guards night and day.

When the Bishop and his court had completed their business and sent off
to Paris the important document on which so much depended, they found
themselves at leisure to return to Jeanne, to inquire after her health
and to make her "a charitable admonition." It was on the 18th of April,
after the silence of more than a fortnight, that their visit was made
with this benevolent purpose. Seven of her judges attended the Bishop
into the sick-chamber. They had come, he assured her, charitably and