On Sunday, the 3rd of September, 1430, they were taken to the Parvis Notre Dame to hear a sermon. Platforms had been erected as usual, and Sunday had been chosen as the day in order that folk might benefit from this edifying spectacle. A famous doctor addressed a charitable exhortation to both women. One of them, the youngest, as she listened to him and looked at the stake that had been erected, was filled with repentance. She confessed that she had been seduced by an angel of the devil and duly renounced her error.
Pierronne, on the contrary, refused to retract. She obstinately persisted in the belief that she saw God often, clothed as she had said. The Church could do nothing for her. Given over to the secular arm, she was straightway conducted to the stake which had been prepared for her, and burned alive by the executioner.[494]
Thus did the Grand Inquisitor of France and the Bishop of Paris cruelly cause to perish by an ignominious death one of those women who had followed Friar Richard, one of the saints of the Dauphin Charles. But the most famous of these women and the most abounding in works was in their hands. The death of La Pierronne was an earnest of the fate reserved for the Maid.
CHAPTER X
BEAUREVOIR—ARRAS—ROUEN—THE TRIAL FOR LAPSE
N the month of September, 1430, two inhabitants of Tournai, the chief alderman, Bietremieu Carlier, and the chief Councillor, Henri Romain, were returning from the banks of the Loire, whither their town had despatched them on a mission to the King of France. They stopped at Beaurevoir. Albeit this place lay upon their direct route and afforded them a halt between two stages of their journey, one cannot help supposing some connection to have existed between their mission to Charles of Valois and their arrival in the domain of the Sire de Luxembourg. The existence of such a connection seems all the more probable when we remember the attachment of their fellow-citizens to the Fleurs-de-Lis, and when we know the relations already existing between the Maid and these emissaries.[495]
It has been said that the district of the provost of Tournai was loyal to the King of France, who had granted it freedom and privileges. Message after message it sent him; it organised public processions in his honour, and it was ready to grant him anything, so long as he demanded neither men nor money. The alderman, Carlier, and the Councillor, Romain, had both previously gone to Reims as representatives of their town to witness the anointing and the coronation of King Charles. There they had doubtless seen the Maid in her glory and had held her to be a very great saint. In those days, their town, attentively watching the progress of the royal army, was in regular correspondence with the warlike béguine, and with her confessor, Friar Richard, or more probably Friar Pasquerel. To-day they wended to the castle, wherein she was imprisoned in the hands of her cruel enemies. We know not what it was they came to say to the Sire de Luxembourg, nor even whether he received them. He cannot have refused to hear them if he thought they came to make secret offers on the part of King Charles for the ransom of the Maid, who had fought in his battles. We know not, either, whether they were able to see the prisoner. The idea that they did enter her presence is quite tenable; for in those days it was generally easy to approach captives, and passers by when they visited them were given every facility for the performance of one of the seven works of mercy.