“Pray for me, all pray for me,” she cried to the people.
The executioner seized a torch and lit the fagots at the foot of the pile. Swiftly rose the flames.
“For God’s sake, my father,” cried Joan, “take care! Quick, quick, hurry down, but hold the crucifix high before me until I die.”
Martin did as she requested. The Bishop of Beauvais approached.
“Bishop, Bishop,” said Joan, reproachfully, “you are the cause of my death,” and then as she felt the heat, she exclaimed, “O Rouen, I fear you will have to suffer for my death.”
The flames mounted higher. A dense cloud of smoke concealed her, but now and then the wind swept it aside, and the people saw, not a devil’s witch, but a praying angel with marvellously beautiful eyes fixed upon heaven. Suddenly the flames seized her garments. Her last word was “Jesus”—then a piercing death cry, and all was ended.
The flames mounted higher, and the people saw, not a devil’s witch, but a praying angel with eyes fixed upon heaven
Thus perished the Maid of Orleans, rescuer of France. She died forgotten and forsaken by him for whom she had done all, betrayed through the greed of her own countrymen, accused from motives of revenge by her enemies. She died the most cruel of deaths, and yet was as guileless and pure as when she sat under the Fairy Tree tending her lambs. Joan is a unique figure in the world’s history. A simple peasant maiden, who could neither read nor write, and knew only the Lord’s Prayer, the Credo, and the Ave Maria, she achieved such extraordinary results by her gift of inspiration that her contemporaries and posterity in their efforts to explain them have had to attribute so much of the miraculous to her deeds that some have doubted her very existence.
The old market-place of Rouen now presented another spectacle. “Alas! alas! we have burned a saint,” many said. The crowd remained a long time, as if riveted to the spot, staring at the fire as it consumed the last vestiges of the victim.