n, either because she wished to gain time or because she counted on
receiving some new directions from her _Council_, she added that in a
week she would know whether she might so reveal those things.

At length she took the oath, according to the prescribed form, on her
knees, with both hands on the missal.[2215] Then she answered
concerning her name, her country, her parents, her baptism, her
godfathers and godmothers. She said that to the best of her knowledge
she was about nineteen years of age.[2216]

[Footnote 2215: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 45.]

[Footnote 2216: _Ibid._, p. 46.]

Questioned concerning her education, she replied: "From my mother I
learnt my Paternoster, my Ave Maria and my Credo."

But, asked to repeat her Paternoster, she refused, for, she said, she
would only say it in confession. This was because she wanted the
Bishop to hear her confess.[2217]

[Footnote 2217: _Ibid._, pp. 46-47.]

The assembly was profoundly agitated; all spoke at once. Jeanne with
her soft voice had scandalised the doctors.

The Bishop forbade her to leave her prison, under pain of being
convicted of the crime of heresy.

She refused to submit to this prohibition. "If I did escape," she
said, "none could reproach me with having broken faith, for I never
gave my word to any one."

Afterwards she complained of her chains.

The Bishop told her they were on account of her attempt to escape.

She agreed: "It is true that I wanted to escape, and I still want to,
just like every other prisoner."[2218]

[Footnote 2218: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 47.]

Such a confession was very bold, if she had rightly understood the
judge when he said that by flight from prison she would incur the
punishment of a heretic. To escape from an ecclesiastical prison was
to commit a crime against the Church, but it was folly as well as
crime; for the prisons of the Church are penitentiaries, and the
prisoner who refuses salutary penance is as foolish as he is guilty;
for he is like a sick man who refuses to be cured. But Jeanne was not,
strictly speaking, in an ecclesiastical prison; she was in the castle
of Rouen, a prisoner of war in the hands of the English. Could it be
said that if she escaped she would incur excommunication and the
spiritual and temporal penalties inflicted on the enemies of religion?
There lay the difficulty. The Lord Bishop removed it forthwith by an
elaborate legal fiction. Three English men-at-arms, John Grey, John
Berwoist,