read, "Heretic, relapser, apostate, idolater."

And then the executioner set fire to the pile. She saw this from above
and uttered a cry. Then, as the brother who was exhorting her paid no
attention to the fire, forgetting herself in her fear for him, she
insisted on his descending.

The proof that up to this period she had made no express recantation is,
that the unhappy Cauchon was obliged--no doubt by the high satanic will
which presided over the whole--to proceed to the foot of the pile,
obliged to face his victim to endeavor to extract some admission from
her. All that he obtained was a few words, enough to rack his soul. She
said to him mildly what she had already said: "Bishop, I die through
you. If you had put me into the Church prisons, this would not have
happened." No doubt hopes had been entertained that, on finding herself
abandoned by her King, she would at last accuse and defame him. To the
last, she defended him: "Whether I have done well or ill, my King is
faultless; it was not he who counselled me."

Meanwhile the flames rose. When they first seized her, the unhappy girl
shrieked for holy _water_--this must have been the cry of fear. But,
soon recovering, she called only on God, on her angels and her saints.
She bore witness to them, "Yes, my voices were from God, my voices have
not deceived me." The fact that all her doubts vanished at this trying
moment must be taken as a proof that she accepted death as the promised
deliverance; that she no longer understood her salvation in the Judaic
and material sense, as until now she had done, that at length she saw
clearly; and that, rising above all shadows, her gifts of illumination
and of sanctity were at the final hour made perfect unto her.

The great testimony she thus bore is attested by the sworn and compelled
witness of her death, by the Dominican who mounted the pile with her,
whom she forced to descend, but who spoke to her from its foot, listened
to her, and held out to her the crucifix.

There is yet another witness of this sainted death, a most grave
witness, who must himself have been a saint. This witness, whose name
history ought to preserve, was the Augustine monk already mentioned,
Brother Isambart de la Pierre. During the trial he had hazarded his life
by counselling the Pucelle, and yet, though so clearly pointed out to
the hate of the English, he persisted in accompanying her in the cart,
procured the parish crucifix for her, and comf