subside; then her waxen face flushed a little and she straightened
up and fixed her eye on the judge, and finished her sentence in a voice
that had the old ring to it:

--"and I will never reveal these things though you cut my head off!"

Well, maybe you know what a deliberative body of Frenchmen is like. The
judge and half the court were on their feet in a moment, and all shaking
their fists at the prisoner, and all storming and vituperating at once,
so that you could hardly hear yourself think. They kept this up several
minutes; and because Joan sat untroubled and indifferent they grew
madder and noisier all the time. Once she said, with a fleeting trace of
the old-time mischief in her eye and manner:

"Prithee, speak one at a time, fair lords, then I will answer all of
you."

At the end of three whole hours of furious debating over the oath,
the situation had not changed a jot. The Bishop was still requiring an
unmodified oath, Joan was refusing for the twentieth time to take any
except the one which she had herself proposed. There was a physical
change apparent, but it was confined to the court and judge; they
were hoarse, droopy, exhausted by their long frenzy, and had a sort of
haggard look in their faces, poor men, whereas Joan was still placid and
reposeful and did not seem noticeably tired.

The noise quieted down; there was a waiting pause of some moments'
duration. Then the judge surrendered to the prisoner, and with
bitterness in his voice told her to take the oath after her own fashion.
Joan sunk at once to her knees; and as she laid her hands upon the
Gospels, that big English soldier set free his mind:

"By God, if she were but English, she were not in this place another
half a second!"

It was the soldier in him responding to the soldier in her. But what
a stinging rebuke it was, what an arraignment of French character and
French royalty! Would that he could have uttered just that one phrase
in the hearing of Orleans! I know that that grateful city, that adoring
city, would have risen to the last man and the last woman, and marched
upon Rouen. Some speeches--speeches that shame a man and humble
him--burn themselves into the memory and remain there. That one is
burned into mine.

After Joan had made oath, Cauchon asked her her name, and where she was
born, and some questions about her family; also what her age was. She
answered these. Then he asked her how much education she had.

"I have learn