accidentally broke the old, old sword, and others said that her power was
broken with it. Finally, at the siege of Compiegne, held by the Duke of
Burgundy, where she did valiant service, she was basely left alone in a
retreat, though facing about and fighting to the last; and an archer
pulled her off her horse.

O the uproar that was made, and the thanksgivings that were sung, about
the capture of this one poor country-girl! O the way in which she was
demanded to be tried for sorcery and heresy, and anything else you like,
by the Inquisitor-General of France, and by this great man, and by that
great man, until it is wearisome to think of! She was bought at last by
the Bishop of Beauvais for ten thousand francs, and was shut up in her
narrow prison: plain Joan of Arc again, and Maid of Orleans no more.

I should never have done if I were to tell you how they had Joan out to
examine her, and cross-examine her, and re-examine her, and worry her
into saying anything and everything; and how all sorts of scholars and
doctors bestowed their utmost tediousness upon her. Sixteen times she
was brought out and shut up again, and worried, and entrapped, and argued
with, until she was heart-sick of the dreary business. On the last
occasion of this kind she was brought into a burial-place at Rouen,
dismally decorated with a scaffold, and a stake and faggots, and the
executioner, and a pulpit with a friar therein, and an awful sermon
ready. It is very affecting to know that even at that pass the poor girl
honoured the mean vermin of a King, who had so used her for his purposes
and so abandoned her; and, that while she had been regardless of
reproaches heaped upon herself, she spoke out courageously for him.

It was natural in one so young to hold to life. To save her life, she
signed a declaration prepared for her--signed it with a cross, for she
couldn't write--that all her visions and Voices had come from the Devil.
Upon her recanting the past, and protesting that she would never wear a
man's dress in future, she was condemned to imprisonment for life, 'on
the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction.'

But, on the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction, the visions and
the Voices soon returned. It was quite natural that they should do so,
for that kind of disease is much aggravated by fasting, loneliness, and
anxiety of mind. It was not only got out of Joan that she considered
herself inspired again, but, she was