ation, and of the great audience, and Winchester the more
than king, the great English Prince, the wealthiest and most influential
of men. The preacher took his text from a verse in St. John's Gospel:
"A branch cannot bear fruit except it remain in the vine." The centre
circle containing the two platforms was surrounded by a close ring of
English soldiers, understanding none of it, and anxious only that the
witch should be condemned.

It was in this strange and crowded scene that the sermon which was long
and eloquent began. When it was half over, in one of his fine periods
admired by all the people, the preacher, after heaping every reproach
upon the head of Jeanne, suddenly turned to apostrophise the House of
France, and the head of that House, "Charles who calls himself King."
"He has," cried the preacher, stimulated no doubt by the eye of
Winchester upon him, "adhered, like a schismatic and heretical person as
he is, to the words and acts of a useless woman, disgraced and full of
dishonour; and not he only, but the clergy who are under his sway, and
the nobility. This guilt is thine, Jeanne, and to thee I say that thy
King is a schismatic and a heretic."

In the full flood of his oratory the preacher was arrested here by that
clear voice that had so often made itself heard through the tumult of
battle. Jeanne could bear much, but not this. She was used to abuse
in her own person, but all her spirit came back at this assault on her
King. And interruption to a sermon has always a dramatic and startling
effect, but when that voice arose now, when the startled speaker
stopped, and every dulled attention revived, it is easy to imagine what
a stir, what a wonderful, sudden sensation must have arisen in the midst
of the crowd. "By my faith, sire," cried Jeanne, "saving your respect,
I swear upon my life that my King is the most noble Christian of all
Christians, that he is not what you say."

The sermon, however, was resumed after this interruption. And finally
the preacher turned to Jeanne, who had subsided from that start of
animation, and was again the subdued and silent prisoner, her heart
overwhelmed with many heavy thoughts. "Here," said Erard, "are my lords
the judges who have so often summoned and required of you to submit your
acts and words to our Holy Mother the Church; because in these acts and
words there are many things which it seemed to the clergy were not good
either to say or to sustain."

To which sh