the burning:--though perhaps here and there was one with a
hope that perpetual imprisonment, bread of sorrow and water of anguish,
might be substituted for that terrible death. Finally, it was decided
that--always on the side of mercy, as every act proved--the tribunal
should once more "charitably admonish" the prisoner for the salvation
of her soul and body, and that after all this "good deliberation and
wholesome counsel" the case should be concluded.

Again there follows a pause of four days. No doubt the Bishop and his
assessors had other things to do, their ecclesiastical functions,
their private business, which could not always be put aside because one
forsaken soul was held in suspense day after day. Finally on the 24th of
May, Jeanne again received in her prison a dignified company, some quite
new and strange to her (indeed the idea may cross the reader's mind
that it was perhaps to show off the interesting prisoner to two new
and powerful bishops, the first, Louis of Luxembourg, a relative of her
first captor, that this last examination was held), nine men in all,
crowding her chamber--_exponuntur Johannae defectus sui_, says the
record--to expound to Jeanne her faults. It was Magister Peter Morice to
whom this office was confided. Once more the "schedule" was gone over,
and an address delivered laden with all the bad words of the University.
"Jeanne, dearest friend," said the orator at last, "it is now time, at
the end of the trial, to think well what words these are." She would
seem to have spoken during this address, at least once--to say that
she held to everything she had said during the trial. When Morice had
finished she was once more questioned personally.

She was asked if she still thought and believed that it was not her duty
to submit her deeds and words to the Church militant, or to any other
except God, upon which she replied, "What I have always said and held to
during the trial, I maintain to this moment"; and added that if she
were in judgment and saw the fire lighted, the faggots burning, and the
executioner ready to rake the fire, and she herself within the fire,
she could say nothing else, but would sustain what she had said in her
trial, to death.

Once more the scribe has written on his margin the words _Responsio
Johannae superba_--the proud answer of Jeanne. Her raised head, her
expanded breast, something of a splendour of indignation about her,
must have moved the man, thus for the th