“Yes!”
“What did they say?”
“St. Catherine and St. Margaret told me that I had done very wrong, when I said what I did to save my life, and that I was damning myself to save my life.”
“Then you believe that the Voices were the voices of the Saints.”
“Yes, I believe that, and that the Voices come from God;” and she said that she did not mean ever to have denied it.
On the day of her burning, the Bishop and the rest went to Joan again, and wrote out a statement that she left it to the Church to say whether her Voices were good or bad. The Church has decided that they were good, and has given Joan the title of “Venerable,” which is the first step toward proclaiming her to be one of the Saints. Whatever the Voices were, she said they were real, not fancied things.
But this paper does not count, for the clerk who took all the notes refused to go with the Bishop to see Joan, that time, saying that it was no part of the law, and that they went as private men, not as Judges, and he had the courage not to sign the paper. He was an honest man, and thought Joan a good girl, unlawfully treated, and was very sorry for her. “He never wept so much for any sorrow in all his life, and for a month he could not be quiet for sorrow: and he bought a book of prayers and prayed for the soul of the Maid.”
This honest man’s name was Gilbert Manchon.