The ecclesiastical judges had barely time to descend and flee from a spectacle which they could not have witnessed without violating the laws of clerical procedure. They were all weeping: the Lord Bishop of Thérouanne, Chancellor of England, had his eyes full of tears. The Cardinal of Winchester, who was said never to enter a church save to pray for the death of an enemy,[972] had pity on this damsel so woeful and so contrite. Brother Pierre Maurice, the canon who was a reader of the Æneid, could not keep back his tears. All the priests who had delivered her to the executioner were edified to see her make so holy an end. That is what Maître Jean Alespée meant when he sighed: "I would that my soul were where I believe the soul of that woman to be."[973] To himself and the hapless sufferer he applied the following lines from the Dies iræ:

Qui Mariam absolvisti,
Mihi quoque spem dedisti.[974]

But none the less he must have believed that by her heresies and her obstinacy she had brought death on herself.

The two young friars preachers and the Usher Massieu accompanied Jeanne to the stake.

She asked for a cross. An Englishman made a tiny one out of two pieces of wood, and gave it to her. She took it devoutly and put it in her bosom, on her breast. Then she besought Brother Isambart to go to the neighbouring church to fetch a cross, to bring it to her and hold it before her, so that as long as she lived, the cross on which God was crucified should be ever in her sight.

Massieu asked a priest of Saint-Sauveur for one, and it was brought. Jeanne weeping kissed it long and tenderly, and her hands held it while they were free.[975]

As she was being bound to the stake she invoked the aid of Saint Michael; and now at length no examiner was present to ask her whether it were really he she saw in her father's garden. She prayed also to Saint Catherine.[976]

When she saw a light put to the stake, she cried loudly, "Jesus!" This name she repeated six times.[977] She was also heard asking for holy water.[978]

It was usual for the executioner, in order to cut short the sufferings of the victim, to stifle him in dense smoke before the flames had had time to ascend; but the Rouen executioner was too terrified of the prodigies worked by the Maid to do thus; and besides he would have found it difficult to reach her, because the Bailie had had the plaster scaffold made unusually high. Wherefore the executioner himself, hardened man that he was, judged her death to have been a terribly cruel one.[979]

Once again Jeanne uttered the name of Jesus; then she bowed her head and gave up her spirit.[980]