ow her judges were endeavouring to entrap
her, wherefore she twice declared her belief in the Sovereign Pontiff
of Rome.[2304] How bitterly she would have smiled had she known that
the lights of the University of Paris, these famous doctors who held
it mortal sin to believe in the wrong pope, themselves believed in his
Holiness about as much as they disbelieved in him; that at that very
time certain of their number, Maitre Thomas de Courcelles, so great a
doctor, Maitre Jean Beaupere, the examiner, Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur,
who acted the part of Saint Catherine, were hastening to despatch her,
in order that they might bestride their mules and amble away to Bale,
there in the Synagogue of Satan to hurl thunderbolts against the Holy
Apostolic See, and diabolically to decree the subjection of the Pope
to the Council, the confiscation of his annates, dearer to him than
the apple of his eye, and finally his own deposition.[2305] Now would
have been the time for her to have cried, with the voice of a simple
soul, to the priests so keen to avenge upon her the Church's honour:
"I am more of a Catholic than you!" And the words in her mouth would
have been even more appropriate than on the lips of the Limousin clerk
of old. Yet we must not reproach these clerics for having been good
Gallicans at Bale, but rather for having been cruel and hypocritical
at Rouen.

[Footnote 2304: _Ibid._, pp. 82, 83.]

[Footnote 2305: De Beaurepaire, _Notes sur les juges_, pp. 27, 32, 75,
82.]

In her prison the Maid prophesied before her guard, John Grey.
Informed of these prophecies, the judges wished to hear them from
Jeanne's own mouth.

"Before seven years have passed," she said to them, "the English shall
lose a greater wager than any they lost at Orleans. They shall lose
everything in France. They shall suffer greater loss than ever they
have suffered in France, and that shall come to pass because God shall
vouchsafe unto the French great victory."

"How do you know this?"

"I know it by revelation made unto me and that this shall befall
within seven years. And greatly should I sorrow were it further
delayed. I know it by revelation as surely as I know that you are
before my eyes at this moment."

"When shall this come to pass?"

"I know neither the day nor the hour."

"But the year?"

"That ye shall not know for the present. But I should wish it to be
before Saint John's Day."

"Did you not say that it should come to pass bef