Passion Week. While saying, as she at
times would say, "These English will kill me," she in reality did not
think so. She did not imagine that she could ever be deserted. She had
faith in her King, in the good people of France. She had said expressly:
"There will be some disturbance, either in prison or at the trial, by
which I shall be delivered, greatly, victoriously delivered." But though
King and people deserted her, she had another source of aid, and a far
more powerful and certain one from her friends above, her kind and dear
saints. When she was assaulting St. Pierre, and deserted by her
followers, her saints sent an invisible army to her aid. How could they
abandon their obedient girl, they who had so often promised her "safety
and deliverance"?

What then must her thoughts have been when she saw that she must die;
when, carried in a cart, she passed through a trembling crowd, under the
guard of eight hundred Englishmen armed with sword and lance? She wept
and bemoaned herself, yet reproached neither her King nor her saints.
She was only heard to utter, "O Rouen, Rouen! must I then die here?"

The term of her sad journey was the old market-place, the fish-market.
Three scaffolds had been raised; on one was the episcopal and royal
chair, the throne of the Cardinal of England, surrounded by the stalls
of his prelates; on another were to figure the principal personages of
the mournful drama, the preacher, the judges, and the bailiff, and,
lastly, the condemned one; apart was a large scaffolding of plaster,
groaning under a weight of wood--nothing had been grudged the stake,
which struck terror by its height alone. This was not only to add to the
solemnity of the execution, but was done with the intent that, from the
height to which it was reared, the executioner might not get at it save
at the base, and that to light it only, so that he would be unable to
cut short the torments and relieve the sufferer, as he did with others,
sparing them the flames.

On this occasion the important point was that justice should not be
defrauded of her due or a dead body be committed to the flames; they
desired that she should be really burned alive, and that, placed on the
summit of this mountain of wood, and commanding the circle of lances and
of swords, she might be seen from every part of the market-place. There
was reason to suppose that being slowly, tediously burned, before the
eyes of a curious crowd, she might at last be