force."

"When were you wounded?"

"I was wounded in the moat before Paris, in the assault."

The next question reveals what Beaupere had been leading up to:

"Was it a feast-day?"

You see? The suggestion that a voice coming from God would hardly advise
or permit the violation, by war and bloodshed, of a sacred day.

Joan was troubled a moment, then she answered yes, it was a feast-day.

"Now, then, tell the this: did you hold it right to make the attack on
such a day?"

This was a shot which might make the first breach in a wall which had
suffered no damage thus far. There was immediate silence in the court
and intense expectancy noticeable all about. But Joan disappointed the
house. She merely made a slight little motion with her hand, as when one
brushes away a fly, and said with reposeful indifference:

"Passez outre."

Smiles danced for a moment in some of the sternest faces there,
and several men even laughed outright. The trap had been long and
laboriously prepared; it fell, and was empty.

The court rose. It had sat for hours, and was cruelly fatigued. Most
of the time had been taken up with apparently idle and purposeless
inquiries about the Chinon events, the exiled Duke of Orleans, Joan's
first proclamation, and so on, but all this seemingly random stuff
had really been sown thick with hidden traps. But Joan had fortunately
escaped them all, some by the protecting luck which attends upon
ignorance and innocence, some by happy accident, the others by force of
her best and surest helper, the clear vision and lightning intuitions of
her extraordinary mind.

Now, then, this daily baiting and badgering of this friendless girl, a
captive in chains, was to continue a long, long time--dignified sport,
a kennel of mastiffs and bloodhounds harassing a kitten!--and I may as
well tell you, upon sworn testimony, what it was like from the first
day to the last. When poor Joan had been in her grave a quarter of
a century, the Pope called together that great court which was to
re-examine her history, and whose just verdict cleared her illustrious
name from every spot and stain, and laid upon the verdict and conduct
of our Rouen tribunal the blight of its everlasting execrations. Manchon
and several of the judges who had been members of our court were among
the witnesses who appeared before that Tribunal of Rehabilitation.
Recalling these miserable proceedings which I have been telling you
about, Manchon test