Maître Guillaume Erard replied: "Do it now, or you will be burned this very day."
And he forbade Jean Massieu to confer with her any longer.
Whereupon Jeanne said that she would liefer sign than be burned.[891]
Then straightway Messire Jean Massieu gave her a second reading of the deed of abjuration. And she repeated the words after the Usher. As she spoke her countenance seemed to express a kind of sneer. It may have been that her features were contracted by the violent emotions which swayed her and that the horrors and tortures of an ecclesiastical trial may have overclouded her reason, subject at all times to strange vagaries, and that after such bitter suffering there may have come upon her the actual paroxysm of madness. On the other hand it may have been that with sound sense and calm mind she was mocking at the clerks of Rouen; she was quite capable of it, for she had mocked at the clerks of Poitiers. At any rate she had a jesting air, and the bystanders noticed that she pronounced the words of her abjuration with a smile.[892] And her gaiety, whether real or apparent, roused the wrath of those burgesses, priests, artisans, and men-at-arms who desired her death.
"'Tis all a mockery. Jeanne doth but jest,"[893] they cried.
Among the most irate was Master Lawrence Calot, Secretary to the King of England. He was seen to be in a violent rage and to approach first the judge and then the accused. A noble of Picardy who was present, the very same who had essayed familiarities with Jeanne in the Castle of Beaurevoir, thought he saw this Englishman forcing Jeanne to sign a paper.[894] He was mistaken. In every crowd there are those who see things that never happen. The Bishop would not have permitted such a thing; he was devoted to the Regent, but on a question of form he would never have given way. Meanwhile, under this storm of insults, amidst the throwing of stones and the clashing of swords, these illustrious masters, these worthy doctors grew pale. The Prior of Longueville was awaiting an opportunity to make an apology to the Cardinal of Winchester.[895]
On the platform a chaplain of the Cardinal violently accused the Lord Bishop. "You do wrong to accept such an abjuration. 'Tis a mere mockery," he said.
"You lie," retorted my Lord Pierre. "I, the judge of a religious suit, ought to seek the salvation of this woman rather than her death."
The Cardinal silenced his chaplain.[896]