Bishop Cauchon—"Joan, your transport singularly aggravates your position."
Joan Darc—"Listen, Oh, ye priests of Christ; listen, Oh, ye seigneurs of the Church; you are bent upon my death. If in order to make me die, if in order to execute me my clothes are to be taken off, I ask of you but a woman's shirt to march in to the pyre."
Bishop Cauchon (affecting astonishment)—"You pretend that you wear a man's shirt and clothes by the command of God; why should you want a woman's shirt to go to death in? This is a singular inconsistency."
Joan Darc—"Because it is longer."
The infamous ecclesiastics are determined to inflict upon the wretched young woman of hardly nineteen years all the tortures, from the rack to the pyre. A tremor, nevertheless, runs through them at the sublime modesty of the virgin, who requests of her butchers as a supreme act of mercy that she be allowed a woman's shirt to go to death in because such a shirt was longer, because it could better conceal her figure from the public gaze. Bishop Cauchon alone remains unaffected.
Bishop Cauchon (harshly addressing his accomplices)—"My very dear brothers, we shall assemble in a room of the tower in order to deliberate upon the torture that should be inflicted upon Joan."
The Bishop and his fellows depart from the cell, followed by the registrars.
CHAPTER V.
THE SENTENCE.
The full ecclesiastical tribunal is assembled in a low, somber and vaulted apartment. The registrar reads to the ecclesiastical judges the last interrogatory, at which they had not all been present. They are to consider whether the accused shall be put to the torture.
Bishop Cauchon—"My very dear brothers, you are again assembled in the name of our holy Church."