to save my life, and that in saving my life I
was losing my soul. Before Thursday my Voices had told me what I
should do and what I did do on that day. On the scaffold my Voices
told me to reply boldly to the preacher. He is a false preacher....
Many things did he say that I have never done. If I were to say that
God has not sent me I should be damned. It is true that God has sent
me. My Voices have since told me that by confessing I committed a
great wickedness which I ought never to have done. All that I said I
uttered through fear of the fire."[2515]

[Footnote 2515: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 455-457.]

Thus spake Jeanne in sore sorrow. And now what becomes of those
monkish tales of attempted violence related long afterwards by a
registrar and two churchmen?[2516] And how can Messire Massieu make us
believe that Jeanne, unable to find her petticoats, put on her hose in
order not to appear before her guards unclothed?[2517] The truth is
very different. It is Jeanne herself who confesses bravely and simply.
She repented of her abjuration, as of the greatest sin she had ever
committed. She could not forgive herself for having lied through fear
of death. Her Voices, who, before the sermon at Saint-Ouen had
foretold that she would deny them, now came to her and spoke of "the
sore pity of her treachery." Could they say otherwise since they were
the voices of her own heart? And could Jeanne fail to listen to them
since she had always listened to them whenever they had counselled her
to sacrifice and self-abnegation?

[Footnote 2516: _Ibid._, vol. ii, pp. 5, 8, 365; vol. iii, pp. 148,
149.]

[Footnote 2517: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 18.]

It was out of obedience to her heavenly _Council_ that Jeanne had
returned to man's apparel, because she would not purchase her life at
the price of denying the Angel and the Saints, and because with her
whole heart and soul she rebelled against her recantation.

Still the English were seriously to blame for having left her man's
clothes. It would have been more humane to have taken them from her,
since if she wore them she must needs die. They had been put in a
bag.[2518] Her guards may even be suspected of having tempted her by
placing under her very eyes those garments which recalled to her days
of happiness. They had taken away all her few possessions, even her
poor brass ring, everything save that suit which meant death to her.

[Footnote 2518: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 18.]

To blame also