that the executioner
himself might not reach it to give a merciful blow, to secure
unconsciousness before the flames could touch the trembling form. Two
platforms were raised opposite, one furnished with chairs and benches
for Winchester and his court, another for the judges, with the civil
officers of Rouen who ought to have pronounced sentence in their turn.
Without this form the execution was illegal: what did it matter? No
sentence at all was read to her, not even the ecclesiastical one which
was illegal also. She was probably placed first on the same platform
with her judges, where there was a pulpit from which she was to be
_preschee_ for the last time. Of all Jeanne's sufferings this could
scarcely be the least, that she was always _preschee_, lectured,
addressed, sermonised through every painful step of her career.

The moan was still unsilenced on her lips, and her distracted soul
scarcely yet freed from the sick thought of a possible deliverance,
when the everlasting strain of admonishment, and re-enumeration of her
errors, again penetrated the hum of the crowd. The preacher was Nicolas
Midi, one of the eloquent members of that dark fraternity; and his text
was in St. Paul's words: "If any of the members suffer, all the other
members suffer with it." Jeanne was a rotten branch which had to be cut
off from the Church for the good of her own soul, and that the Church
might not suffer by her sin; a heretic, a blasphemer, an impostor,
giving forth false fables at one time, and making a false penitence
the next. It is very unlikely that she heard anything of that flood of
invective. At the end of the sermon the preacher bade her "Go in peace."
Even then, however, the fountain of abuse did not cease. The Bishop
himself rose, and once more by way of exhorting her to a final
repentance, heaped ill names upon her helpless head. The narrative shows
that the prisoner, now arrived at the last point in her career, paid no
attention to the tirade levelled at her from the president's place.
"She knelt down on the platform showing great signs and appearance of
contrition, so that all those who looked upon her wept. She called on
her knees upon the blessed Trinity, the blessed glorious Virgin Mary,
and all the blessed saints of Paradise." She called specially--was
it with still a return towards the hoped for miracle? was it with the
instinctive cry towards an old and faithful friend?--"St. Michael, St.
Michael, St. Michael, he