"What I have always held and said in the trial that will I maintain.... If I were condemned and saw the fagots lighted, and the executioner ready to stir the fire, and I in the fire, I would say and maintain till I died nought other than what I said during the trial."
At these words the Bishop declared the discussion at an end, and deferred the pronouncing of the sentence till the morrow.[850]
The next day, the Thursday after Whitsuntide and the 24th day of May, early in the morning, Maître Jean Beaupère visited Jeanne in her prison and warned her that she would be shortly taken to the scaffold to hear a sermon.
"If you are a good Christian," he said, "you will agree to submit all your deeds and sayings to Holy Mother Church, and especially to the ecclesiastical judges."
Maître Jean Beaupère thought he heard her reply, "So I will."[851]
If such were her answer, then it must have been because, worn out by a flight of agony, her physical courage quailed at the thought of death by burning.
Just when he was leaving her, as she stood near a door, Maître Nicolas Loiseleur gave her the same advice, and in order to induce her to follow it, he made her a false promise:
"Jeanne, believe me," he said. "You have your deliverance in your own hands. Wear the apparel of your sex, and do what shall be required of you. Otherwise you stand in danger of death. If you do as I tell you, good will come to you and no harm. You will be delivered into the hands of the Church."[852]
She was taken in a cart and with an armed guard to that part of the town called Bourg-l'Abbé, lying beneath the castle walls. And but a short distance away the cart was stopped, in the cemetery of Saint-Ouen, also called les aitres[853] Saint-Ouen. Here a highly popular fair was held every year on the feast day of the patron saint of the Abbey.[854] Here it was that Jeanne was to hear the sermon, as so many other unhappy creatures had done before her. Places like this, to which the folk could flock in crowds, were generally chosen for these edifying spectacles. On the border of this vast charnel-house for a hundred years there had towered a parish church, and on the south there rose the nave of the abbey. Against the magnificent edifice of the church two scaffolds had been erected,[855] one large, the other smaller. They were west of the porch which was called portail des Marmousets, because of the multitudes of tiny figures carved upon it.[856]
On the great scaffold the two judges, the Lord Bishop and the Vice-Inquisitor, took their places. They were assisted by the most reverend Cardinal of Winchester, the Lord Bishops of Thérouanne, of Noyon, and of Norwich, the Lord Abbots of Fécamp, of Jumièges, of Bec, of Corneilles, of Mont-Saint-Michel-au-Péril-de-la-Mer, of Mortemart, of Préaux, and of Saint-Ouen of Rouen, where the assembly was held, the Priors of Longueville and of Saint-Lô, also many doctors and bachelors in theology, doctors and licentiates in canon and civil law.[857] Likewise were there many high personages of the English party. The other scaffold was a kind of pulpit. To it ascended the doctor who, according to the use and custom of the Holy Inquisition was to preach the sermon against Jeanne. He was Maître Guillaume Erard, doctor in theology, canon of the churches of Langres and of Beauvais.[858] At this time he was very eager to go to Flanders, where he was urgently needed; and he confided to his young servitor, Brother Jean de Lenisoles, that the preaching of this sermon caused him great inconvenience. "I want to be in Flanders," he said. "This affair is very annoying for me."[859]