[Original]
Joan would not betray her King’s doubts. She never would tell what happened. At last she cold a simple parable: an Angel came with a rich crown for the King. But, later, she explained that by the Angel she meant herself, and that by the Crown, she meant her having him crowned at Rheims. They never could get the King’s secret out of her. At last they said they would put her to the torture. They took her to a horrible vault, full of abominable instruments for pinching, and tearing, and roasting, and screwing the bodies of men. There stood the executioner, with his arms bare, and his fire lit, and all his pincers, and ropes, and pulleys ready.
“Now will you tell us?” they said. Brave men had turned faint with terror in that vault, and had said anything that they were asked to say, rather than face the pain. There was a Marshal of France, Gilles de Rais, a nobleman who fought beside Joan at Orleans, at Les Tourelles, at Jargeau, at Pathay, and at Paris, and who carried the sacred vessel which the Angel brought, long ago, with holy oil, at the King’s coronation. Later this man was accused by the Inquisition of the most horrible crimes. Among other things, he was said to have sacrificed children to the devil, and to have killed hundreds of little boys for his own amusement. But hundreds of little boys were not proved to be missing, and none of their remains were ever found. Gilles de Rais denied these horrible charges; he said he was innocent, and, for all that we know, he was. But they took him to the torture vault, and showed him the engines of torment, and he confessed everything, so that he might be put to death without torture, which was done.
Joan did not fear and turn faint. She said, “Torture me if you please. Tear my body to pieces. Whatever I say in my pains will not be true, and as soon as I am released I will deny that it was true. Now, go on!” Many priests wished to go on, but more, even of these cruel enemies, said, “No!” they would not torture the girl.
“What a brave lass. Pity she is not English!” one of the English lords said, when he saw Joan standing up against the crowd of priests and lawyers.
Remember that, for six weeks, during Lent, Joan took no food all day. There she stood, starving, and answering everybody, always bravely, always courteously, always wisely, and sometimes even merrily. They kept asking her the same questions on different days, to try to make her vary in her answers. All the answers were written down. Once they said she had answered differently before, and, when the book was examined, it proved that there was some mistake in the thing, and that Jean was in the right. She was much pleased, and said to the clerk, “If you make mistakes again, I will pull your ears.”
They troubled her very much about wearing boy’s dress. She said that, when among men in war, it was better and more proper. She was still among men, with soldiers in her room, day and night, which was quite unlawful; she should have had only women about her. She would not put on women’s dress while she was among men, and was quite in the right.
She could hear her Voices in Court, but not clearly on account of the noise. Once, I suppose, she heard them, for she suddenly said, in the middle of an answer to a question about the letters which were written for her when she was in the wars: