nd her.
At last, in fear of the fire, and the stake before her, and on promise
of being taken to a kindlier prison among women, and released from
chains, she promised to 'abjure,' to renounce her visions, and submit to
the Church, that is to Cauchon, and her other priestly enemies. Some
little note on paper she now signed with a cross, and repeated 'with a
smile,' poor child, a short form of words. By some trick this signature
was changed for a long document, in which she was made to confess all
her visions false. It is certain that she did not understand her words
in this sense.

Cauchon had triumphed. The blame of heresy and witchcraft was cast on
Joan, and on her king as an accomplice. But the English were not
satisfied; they made an uproar, they threatened Cauchon, for Joan's life
was to be spared. She was to be in prison all her days, on bread and
water, but, while she lived, they dared scarcely stir against the
French. They were soon satisfied.

Joan's prison was not changed. There soon came news that she had put on
man's dress again. The judges went to her. She told them (they say),
that she put on this dress of her own free will. In confession, later,
she told her priest that she had been refused any other dress, and had
been brutally treated both by the soldiers and by an English lord. In
self-defence, she dressed in the only attire within her reach. In any
case, the promises made to her had been broken. The judge asked her if
her Voices had been with her again?

[Illustration: 'They burned Joan the Maid']

'Yes.'

'What did they say?'

'God told me by the voices of St. Catherine and St. Margaret of the
great sorrow of my treason, when I abjured to save my life; that I was
damning myself for my life's sake.'

'Do you believe the Voices come from St. Margaret and St. Catherine?'

'Yes, and that they are from God.'

She added that she had never meant to deny this, had not understood that
she had denied it.

All was over now; she was a 'relapsed heretic.'

The judges said that they visited Joan again on the morning of her
death, and that she withdrew her belief in her Voices; or, at least,
left it to the Church to decide whether they were good or bad, while she
still maintained that they were _real_. She had expected release, and,
for the first time, had been disappointed. At the stake she understood
her Voices: they had foretold her martyrdom, 'great victory' over
herself, and her entry into rest.