"What did they say unto you?"
"They told me that through Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret God gave me to wit his sore pity for the treachery, to which I consented in abjuring and recanting to save my life, and that in saving my life I was losing my soul. Before Thursday my Voices had told me what I should do and what I did do on that day. On the scaffold my Voices told me to reply boldly to the preacher. He is a false preacher.... Many things did he say that I have never done. If I were to say that God has not sent me I should be damned. It is true that God has sent me. My Voices have since told me that by confessing I committed a great wickedness which I ought never to have done. All that I said I uttered through fear of the fire."[917]
Thus spake Jeanne in sore sorrow. And now what becomes of those monkish tales of attempted violence related long afterwards by a registrar and two churchmen?[918] And how can Messire Massieu make us believe that Jeanne, unable to find her petticoats, put on her hose in order not to appear before her guards unclothed?[919] The truth is very different. It is Jeanne herself who confesses bravely and simply. She repented of her abjuration, as of the greatest sin she had ever committed. She could not forgive herself for having lied through fear of death. Her Voices, who, before the sermon at Saint-Ouen had foretold that she would deny them, now came to her and spoke of "the sore pity of her treachery." Could they say otherwise since they were the voices of her own heart? And could Jeanne fail to listen to them since she had always listened to them whenever they had counselled her to sacrifice and self-abnegation?
It was out of obedience to her heavenly Council that Jeanne had returned to man's apparel, because she would not purchase her life at the price of denying the Angel and the Saints, and because with her whole heart and soul she rebelled against her recantation.
Still the English were seriously to blame for having left her man's clothes. It would have been more humane to have taken them from her, since if she wore them she must needs die. They had been put in a bag.[920] Her guards may even be suspected of having tempted her by placing under her very eyes those garments which recalled to her days of happiness. They had taken away all her few possessions, even her poor brass ring, everything save that suit which meant death to her.
To blame also were her ecclesiastical judges who should not have sentenced her to imprisonment if they foresaw that they could not place her in an ecclesiastical prison, nor have commanded her a penance which they knew they were unable to enforce. Likewise to blame were the Bishop of Beauvais and the Vice-Inquisitor; because after having, for the good of her sinful soul, prescribed the bread of bitterness and the water of affliction, they gave her not this bread and this water, but delivered her in disgrace into the hands of her cruel enemies.
When she uttered the words, "God by Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret hath given me to wit the sore pity of the treason to which I consented," Jeanne consummated the sacrifice of her life.[921]
The Bishop and the Inquisitor had now to proceed in conformity with the law. The interrogatory however lasted a few moments longer.
"Do you believe that your Voices are Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine?"
"Yes, and they come from God."