morse which Joan felt
for her weakness and her striking retractation of the abjuration which
had been wrung from her. So soon as the news was noised abroad, her
enemies cried, "She has relapsed!" This was exactly what they had hoped
for when, on learning that she had been sentenced only to perpetual
imprisonment, they had said, "Never you mind; we will have her up again."
"_Farewell, farewell_, my lord," said the Bishop of Beauvais to the Earl
of Warwick, whom he met shortly after Joan's retractation; and in his
words there was plainly an expression of satisfaction, and not a mere
phrase of politeness. On the 29th of May the tribunal met again. Forty
judges took part in the deliberation; Joan was unanimously declared a
case of relapse, was found guilty, and cited to appear next day, the
30th, on the Vieux-Marche to hear sentence pronounced, and then undergo
the punishment of the stake.

When, on the 30th of May, in the morning, the Dominican brother Martin
Ladvenu was charged to announce her sentence to Joan, she gave way at
first to grief and terror. "Alas!" she cried, "am I to be so horribly
and cruelly treated that this my body, full pure and perfect and never
defiled, must to-day be consumed and reduced to ashes! Ah! I would
seven times rather be beheaded than burned!" The Bishop of Beauvais at
this moment came up. "Bishop," said Joan, "you are the cause of my
death; if you had put me in the prisons of the Church and in the hands of
fit and proper ecclesiastical warders, this had never happened; I appeal
from you to the presence of God." One of the doctors who had sat in
judgment upon her, Peter Maurice, went to see her, and spoke to her with
sympathy. "Master Peter," said she to him, "where shall I be to-night?"
"Have you not good hope in God?" asked the doctor. "O! yes," she
answered; "by the grace of God I shall be in paradise." Being left alone
with the Dominican, Martin Ladvenu, she confessed and asked to
communicate. The monk applied to the Bishop of Beauvais to know what he
was to do. "Tell brother Martin," was the answer, "to give her the
eucharist and all she asks for." At nine o'clock, having resumed her
woman's dress, Joan was dragged from prison and driven to the Vieux-
Marche. From seven to eight hundred soldiers escorted the car and
prohibited all approach to it on the part of the crowd, which encumbered
the road and the vicinities; but a man forced a passage and flung himself
towards J