her
she had not received a letter from the Count of Armagnac. She admitted
having received the letter and having replied to it.

Copies of these two letters were included in the evidence to be used
at the trial. They were read to Jeanne.

It appeared that the Count of Armagnac had asked the Maid by letter
which of the three popes was the true one, and that Jeanne had replied
to him, likewise by letter, that for the moment she had not time to
answer, but that she would do so at her leisure when she should come
to Paris.

Having heard these two letters read, Jeanne declared that the one
attributed to her was only partially hers. And since she always
dictated and could never read what had been taken down, it is
conceivable that hasty words, uttered with her foot in the stirrup,
may not have been accurately transcribed; but in a series of involved
and contradictory replies she was unable to demonstrate how that which
she had dictated differed from the written text;[2302] and in itself
the letter appears much more likely to have proceeded from an ignorant
visionary than from a clerk who would have some knowledge, however
little, of church affairs.

[Footnote 2302: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 82, 84.]

It contains certain words and turns of expression which are to be
found in Jeanne's other letters. There can hardly be any doubt that
this letter is by her; she had forgotten it. There is nothing
surprising in that; her memory, as we have seen, was curiously liable
to fail her.[2303]

[Footnote 2303: The expression, "_A Dieu vous recommande, Dieu soit
garde de vous_," occurs in the letters to the people of Tournai, to
those of Troyes and of Reims, and in the letter to the Duke of
Burgundy. And what is still more significant, in two of these letters,
one to the people of Troyes, the other to the Duke of Burgundy, are
the words: "_Le Roi du ciel, mon droiturier et souverain seigneur_."
_Trial_, vol. i, p. 246.]

On this document the judges based the most serious of charges; they
regarded it as furnishing proof of a most blamable temerity. What
arrogance on the part of this woman, so it seemed to them, to claim to
have been told by God himself that which the Church alone is entitled
to teach! And to undertake by means of an inner illumination to point
out the true pope, was that not to commit grave sin against the Bride
of Christ, and with sacrilegious hand to rend the seamless robe of our
Lord?

For once Jeanne saw clearly h