her, spoke to her about the council, at the same time
explaining to her its province in the church. It was the very time when
that of Bale had been convoked. "Ah!" said Joan, "I would fain surrender
and submit myself to the council of Bale." The Bishop of Beauvais
trembled at the idea of this appeal. "Hold your tongue in the devil's
name!" said he to the monk. Another of the judges, William Erard, asked
Joan menacingly, "Will you abjure those reprobate words and deeds of
yours?" "I leave it to the universal Church whether I ought to abjure or
not." "That is not enough: you shall abjure at once or you shall burn."
Joan shuddered. "I would rather sign than burn," she said. There was
put before her a form of abjuration, whereby, disavowing her revelations
and visions from heaven, she confessed her errors in matters of faith,
and renounced them humbly. At the bottom of the document she made the
mark of a cross. Doubts have arisen as to the genuineness of this long
and diffuse deed in the form in which it has been published in the
trial-papers. Twenty-four years later, in 1455, during the trial
undertaken for the rehabilitation of Joan, several of those who had been
present at the trial at which she was condemned, amongst others the usher
Massieu and the registrar Taquel, declared that the form of abjuration
read out at that time to Joan and signed by her contained only seven or
eight lines of big writing; and according to another witness of the scene
it was an Englishman, John Calot, secretary of Henry VI., King of
England, who, as soon as Joan had yielded, drew from his sleeve a little
paper which he gave to her to sign, and, dissatisfied with the mark she
had made, held her hand and guided it so that she might put down her
name, every letter. However that may be, as soon as Joan's abjuration
had thus been obtained, the court issued on the 24th of May, 1431, a
definitive decree, whereby, after some long and severe strictures in the
preamble, it condemned Joan to perpetual imprisonment, "with the bread of
affliction and the water of affliction, in order that she might deplore
the errors and faults she had committed, and relapse into them no more
henceforth."

The Church might be satisfied; but the King of England, his councillors
and his officers, were not. It was Joan living, even though a prisoner,
that they feared. They were animated towards her by the two ruthless
passions of vengeance and fear. When it w