rm, which had been prepared and made all ready beforehand, and asked
her to abjure.

"Abjure? What is abjure?"

She did not know the word. It was explained to her by Massieu. She tried
to understand, but she was breaking, under exhaustion, and she could not
gather the meaning. It was all a jumble and confusion of strange words.
In her despair she sent out this beseeching cry:

"I appeal to the Church universal whether I ought to abjure or not!"

Erard exclaimed:

"You shall abjure instantly, or instantly be burnt!"

She glanced up, at those awful words, and for the first time she saw the
stake and the mass of red coals--redder and angrier than ever now under
the constantly deepening storm-gloom. She gasped and staggered up out
of her seat muttering and mumbling incoherently, and gazed vacantly upon
the people and the scene about her like one who is dazed, or thinks he
dreams, and does not know where he is.

The priests crowded about her imploring her to sign the paper, there
were many voices beseeching and urging her at once, there was great
turmoil and shouting and excitement among the populace and everywhere.

"Sign! sign!" from the priests; "sign--sign and be saved!" And Loyseleur
was urging at her ear, "Do as I told you--do not destroy yourself!"

Joan said plaintively to these people:

"Ah, you do not do well to seduce me."

The judges joined their voices to the others. Yes, even the iron in
their hearts melted, and they said:

"O Joan, we pity you so! Take back what you have said, or we must
deliver you up to punishment."

And now there was another voice--it was from the other platform--pealing
solemnly above the din: Cauchon's--reading the sentence of death!

Joan's strength was all spent. She stood looking about her in a
bewildered way a moment, then slowly she sank to her knees, and bowed
her head and said:

"I submit."

They gave her no time to reconsider--they knew the peril of that. The
moment the words were out of her mouth Massieu was reading to her the
abjuration, and she was repeating the words after him mechanically,
unconsciously--and smiling; for her wandering mind was far away in some
happier world.

Then this short paper of six lines was slipped aside and a long one of
many pages was smuggled into its place, and she, noting nothing, put her
mark on it, saying, in pathetic apology, that she did not know how to
write. But a secretary of the King of England was there to take care