Bishop Cauchon—"Joan, my dear daughter, your stiff-neckedness is execrable. Do you mean to say that if you stood before a council composed of our Holy Father, the cardinals and bishops, and they called upon you to submit to their decision—"
Joan Darc (interrupting him with pained impatience)—"Neither Pope, nor cardinals, nor bishops will draw from me other statements than those that I have made. Pray have mercy upon a poor creature! I am dying!" (She drops back upon the straw in a swoon.)
Bishop Cauchon—"Will you submit to the successor of St. Peter, our Holy Father? Answer categorically."
Joan Darc (after a long pause and recovering)—"Have me taken to him, I shall ask him for his blessing."
Bishop Cauchon—"What you say is insensate. Do you persist in keeping your male attire, a most blameworthy conduct?"
Joan Darc—"I would put on female clothes to go to church, if I could, in order to receive the body of my Savior. But back in my prison, I shall resume my male attire out of fear of being outraged by your people, as they have tried before now."
The Inquisitor—"Once more and for the last time, and be careful: if you persist in your damnable error our holy mother the Church will be forced, despite her infinite mercy, to deliver you over to the secular arm, and it will then be all over with your body and soul."
Joan Darc—"It would then be all over with your own souls—with the souls of yourselves who will have condemned me unjustly. Reflect upon that."
Bishop Cauchon—"Joan, I must charitably declare to you that if you stubbornly persist in your ways, there are torturers near who will put you to the rack.(He points to the door, Joan shivers.) There are torturers near—they are waiting—they will put you to cruel torments, for the sole purpose of drawing less damnable answers from you."
Joan Darc (yields at first to the terror of the thought of being tortured; the momentary weakness is, however, speedily overcome; she draws superhuman strength from the conviction of her innocence; sits up; casts a withering look upon the prelates and cries in an accent of indomitable resolution)—"Have my limbs torn one from the other! Have my soul leap out of my body! You shall be no further! And if the pain of the torture should draw from my distracted body aught that is contrary to what I have so far said, I take God for my witness, it will be pain alone that will have made me speak contrary to the truth!"[114]