id not know how
to read; she had no counsel. Did she want to show the document to some
false friend, like Loiseleur, who was deceiving her? Or was it her
intent to present it to her saints?

Maitre Beaupere asked whether her Voice had a face and eyes.

She refused to answer and quoted a saying frequently on the lips of
children: "One is often hanged for having spoken the truth."[2263]

[Footnote 2263: _Ibid._, p. 65. "_Souvent on est blame de trop
parler_," a proverb common in the 15th century. Cf. Le Roux de Lincy,
_Les proverbes francais_, vol. ii, p. 417.]

Maitre Beaupere asked: "Do you know whether you stand in God's grace?"

This was an extremely insidious question; it placed Jeanne in the
dilemma of having to avow herself sinful or of appearing unpardonably
bold. One of the assessors, Maitre Jean Lefevre of the Order of the
Hermit Friars, observed that she was not bound to reply. There was
murmuring throughout the chamber.

But Jeanne said: "If I be not, then may God bring me into it; if I be,
then may God keep me in it."[2264]

[Footnote 2264: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 65.]

The assessors were astonished at so ready an answer. And yet no
improvement ensued in their disposition towards her. They admitted
that touching her King she spoke well, but for the rest she was too
subtle, and with a subtlety peculiar to women.[2265]

[Footnote 2265: _Ibid._, vol. ii, pp. 21, 358.]

Thereafter, Maitre Jean Beaupere examined Jeanne concerning her
childhood in her village. He essayed to show that she had been cruel,
had displayed a homicidal tendency from her earliest years, and had
been addicted to those idolatrous practices which had given the folk
of Domremy a bad name.[2266]

[Footnote 2266: _Ibid._, vol. i, pp. 65-68.]

Then he touched on a point of prime importance in elucidating the
obscure origin of Jeanne's mission:

"Were you not regarded as the one who was sent from the Oak Wood?"

In this direction he might have succeeded in obtaining important
revelations. False prophecies had indeed established Jeanne's
reputation in France; but these clerks were incapable of
discriminating amongst all these pseudo-Bedes and pseudo-Merlins.[2267]

[Footnote 2267: _Ibid._, p. 68.]

Jeanne replied: "When I came to the King, certain asked me whether
there were in my country a wood called the Oak Wood; because of
prophecies saying that from the neighbourhood of this wood should
come a damsel who would work wonders. But