"I am damned!"
He immediately dropped to the ground, a prey to violent convulsions. He still lay there in a tremor when the mob left the market place to follow the executioners who were to throw the remains of Joan Darc into the Seine. Moved with pity for the man whom all others took no notice of, or considered possessed of an evil spirit, my grandson and myself raised him and took him to our inn that faced the market place. We carried him to our room and tended him. By degrees he came to himself and looked upon us with distracted eyes that seemed to reveal deep repentance and also terror, as he cried: "I am damned! I am the accomplice and instrument of the Bishop of Beauvais in the killing of Joan! God will punish me!"
That priest was the Canon Loyseleur.[117] The gowned monster did taste repentance—strange, incredible revulsion, that I never would have believed had I not myself witnessed its unquestionable evidence. The wretch was devoured with remorse; he admitted his guilt to us, and when he noticed the horror that his admissions filled us with he cried: "A curse upon the help I rendered to you, Bishop of Beauvais, assassin!" With quavering voice he asked me whether I pitied Joan. My tears answered him. He then wished to know who I was, and learning of my passionate admiration for the virgin of Gaul and my desire for the sake of her desolate family, to be informed upon what had happened, Canon Loyseleur seemed struck by a sudden thought, and asked me to wait for him at the inn that very evening. "Never," said he, "shall I be able to make amends for or expiate my crime; but I wish to place in your hands the means to smite the butchers of the victim."
That same evening Canon Loyseleur brought to me a bundle of parchments. It contained:
1.—The general confession of Joan Darc transcribed by himself on the very day when he received it, and when that great soul unveiled itself to him in all its heroic simplicity.
2.—Notes which he had taken and preserved after his interviews with the emissary of George of La Tremouille, and which revealed the plot that was concocted against Joan by the people of the Court, the captains and the ecclesiastics, before the first meeting of the heroine and Charles VII.
3.—A copy of a contemporaneous chronicle entitled "Journal of the Siege of Orleans," and another memoir written by Percival of Cagny, equerry to the Duke of Alençon, who did not leave Joan's side from the time of the raising of the siege of Orleans down to the siege of Paris. These two manuscripts were a part of the documents that Bishop Peter Cauchon had gathered to draw up the indictment.
4.—One of the minutes of the process, containing the questions put to Joan, and her answers.
5.—A complete admission and detailed account of the machinations of Loyseleur and Bishop Cauchon to capture Joan's confidence in her prison, as also of the plans they had laid during a long conversation before the trial.
These materials were given to me by the canon in the hope of enabling me some day to rehabilitate the memory of Joan Darc. As to himself, he realized that, pursued by inexorable remorse, he would soon die, or lose his senses. On that very morning he did not dare to take his seat on the platform among Joan's judges, fearing she might recognize him. The spectacle of her martyrdom and agony finally overthrew him. After depositing these manuscripts in my hands, the canon left me precipitately and with a wild look. I know not what became of him.