"It is more fitting to kiss their feet than their faces."
"Did you not give them chaplets of flowers?"
"I have often done them honour by crowning with flowers their images in churches. But to those who appeared to me never have I given flowers as far as I can remember."
"Know you aught of those who consort with fairies?"
"I have never done so nor have I known anything about them. Yet I have heard of them and that they were seen on Thursdays; but I do not believe it, and to me it seems sorcery."[800]
Then came a question touching her standard, deemed enchanted by her judges. It elicited one of those epigrammatic replies she loved.
"Wherefore was your standard rather than those of the other captains carried into the church of Reims?"
"It had been in the contest, wherefore should it not share the prize?"[801]
Now that the inquiries and examinations were concluded, it was announced that the preliminary trial was at an end. The so-called trial in ordinary opened on the Tuesday after Palm Sunday, the 27th of March, in a room near the great hall of the castle.[802]
Before ordering the deed of accusation to be read, my Lord of Beauvais offered Jeanne the aid of an advocate.[803] If this offer had been postponed till then, it was doubtless because in his opinion Jeanne had not previously needed such aid. It is well known that a heretic's advocate, if he would himself escape falling into heresy, must strictly limit his methods of defence. During the preliminary inquiry he must confine himself to discovering the names of the witnesses for the prosecution and to making them known to the accused. If the heretic pleaded guilty then it was useless to grant him an advocate.[804] Now my Lord maintained that the accusation was founded not on the evidence of witnesses but on the avowals of the accused. And this was doubtless his reason for not offering Jeanne an advocate before the opening of the trial in ordinary, which bore upon matters of doctrine.