ers of the whole proceedings; they are believed to be continually
pushing on the inquisitors; still more, they are supposed to have bought
all that large tribunal, the sixty or seventy judges, among whom were
the most learned and esteemed Doctors in France; but of none of this
is there any proof given. That they were anxious to procure Jeanne's
condemnation and death, is very certain. Not one among them believed
in her sacred mission, almost all considered her a sorceress, the most
dangerous of evil influences, a witch who had brought shame and loss to
England by her incantations and evil spells. On that point there
could be no doubt whatever. She alone had stopped the progress of the
invaders, and broken the charm of their invariable success. But all that
she had done had been in favour of Charles, who made no attempt to serve
or help her, and who had thwarted her plans, and hindered her work so
long as it was possible to do so, even when she was performing miracles
for his sake. And Alencon, Dunois, La Hire, where were they and all the
knights? Two of them at least were at Louvins, within a day's march,
but never made a step to rescue her. We need not ask where were the
statesmen and clergy on the French side, for they were unfeignedly glad
to have the burden of condemning her taken from their hands. No one
in her own country said a word or struck a blow for Jeanne. As for
the suborning of the University of Paris _en masse_, and all its
best members in particular, that is a general baseness in which it is
impossible to believe. There is no appearance even of any particular
pressure put upon the judges. Jean de la Fontaine disappeared, we are
told, and no one ever knew what became of him: but it was from Cauchon
he fled. And nothing seems to have happened to the monks who attended
the Maid to the scaffold, nor to the others who sobbed about the
pile. On the other side, the Doctors who condemned her were in no way
persecuted or troubled by the French authorities when the King came to
his own. There was at the time a universal tacit consent in France to
all that was done at Rouen on the 31st of May, 1431.

One reason for this was not far to seek. We have perhaps already
sufficiently dwelt upon it. It was that France was not France at that
dolorous moment. It was no unanimous nation repulsing an invader. It
was two at least, if not more countries, one of them frankly and
sympathetically attaching itself to the invader, alm