shop coldly
said, "Take her back whence you brought her."

Nothing was done; deceived on this wise, she could not fail to retract
her retractation. Yet, though she had abided by it, the English in their
fury would not have allowed her to escape. They had come to St. Ouen in
the hope of at last burning the sorceress, had waited panting and
breathless to this end; and now they were to be dismissed on this
fashion, paid with a slip of parchment, a signature, a grimace. At the
very moment the Bishop discontinued reading the sentence of
condemnation, stones flew upon the scaffolding without any respect for
the Cardinal. The doctors were in peril of their lives as they came down
from their seats into the public place; swords were in all directions
pointed at their throats. The more moderate among the English confined
themselves to insulting language--"Priests, you are not earning the
King's money." The doctors, making off in all haste, said tremblingly,
"Do not be uneasy, we shall soon have her again."

And it was not the soldiery alone, not the English mob, always so
ferocious, which displayed this thirst for blood. The better born, the
great, the lords, were no less sanguinary. The King's man, his tutor,
the Earl of Warwick, said like the soldiers: "The King's business goes
on badly; the girl will not be burned."

According to English notions, Warwick was the mirror of worthiness, the
accomplished Englishman, the perfect gentleman. Brave and devout, like
his master, Henry V, and the zealous champion of the Established Church,
he had performed the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, as well as many other
chivalrous expeditions. With all his chivalry, Warwick was not the less
savagely eager for the death of a woman, and one who was, too, a
prisoner of war. The best and the most looked-up-to of the English was
as little deterred by honorable scruples as the rest of his countrymen
from putting to death on the award of priests, and by fire, her who had
humbled them by the sword.

The Jews never exhibited the rage against Jesus which the English did
against the Pucelle. It must be owned that she had wounded them cruelly
in the most sensible part--in the simple but deep esteem they have for
themselves. At Orleans the invincible men-at-arms, the famous archers,
Talbot at their head, had shown their backs; at Jargeau, sheltered by
the good walls of a fortified town, they had suffered themselves to be
taken; at Patay they had fled as fa