ouncil of Narbonne said that stones and mortar would become as
scarce as money.[2499] It was a penalty doubtless, but one which in
character and significance differed from the penalties inflicted by
secular courts; it was a penance. According to the mercy of
ecclesiastical law, prison was a place suitable for repentance, where,
in one perpetual penance, the condemned might eat the bread of sorrow
and drink the waters of affliction.

[Footnote 2499: L. Tanon, _Tribunaux de l'inquisition_, p. 454.]

How foolish was he, who by refusing to enter that prison or by
escaping from it, should reject the salutary healing of his soul! By
so doing he was fleeing from the gentle tribunal of penance, and the
Church in sadness cut him off from the communion of the faithful. By
inflicting this penalty, which a good Catholic must needs regard
rather as a favour than a punishment, my Lord the Bishop and my Lord
the Holy Vicar of the Inquisition were conforming to the custom,
whereby our Holy Mother Church became reconciled to heretics. But had
they power to execute their sentence? The prison to which they
condemned Jeanne, the expiatory prison, the salutary confinement, must
be in a dungeon of the Church. Could they send her there?

Jeanne, turning towards them, said: "Now, you Churchmen, take me to
your prison. Let me be no longer in the hands of the English."[2500]

[Footnote 2500: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 14.]

Many of those clerics had promised it to her.[2501] They had deceived
her. They knew it was not possible; for it had been stipulated that
the King of England's men should resume possession of Jeanne after the
trial.[2502]

[Footnote 2501: _Ibid._, vol. iii, pp. 52, 149.]

[Footnote 2502: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 19.]

The Lord Bishop gave the order: "Take her back to the place whence you
brought her."[2503]

[Footnote 2503: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 14.]

He, a judge of the Church, committed the crime of surrendering the
Church's daughter reconciled and penitent, to laymen. Among them she
could not mourn over her sins; and they, hating her body and caring
nought for her soul, were to tempt her and cause her to fall back into
error.

While Jeanne was being taken back in the cart to her tower in the
fields, the soldiers insulted her and their captains did not rebuke
them.[2504]

[Footnote 2504: _Ibid._, p. 376.]

Thereafter, the Vice-Inquisitor and with him divers doctors and
masters, went to her prison and charitably exhorted