'Then you admit,' said the Bishop, 'that the King and others have sometimes urged you to act as you have done?'
'As to my words and actions,' she answered, 'I make no one, and particularly not the King, responsible. If any wrong has been committed, it is I who am to blame, and not another.'
'But,' said Cauchon, 'those acts and words of yours which have been found evil by the judges, will you recant them?'
'I submit them,' said Joan, 'to God and our Holy Father the Pope.'
'The bishops,' continued Cauchon, 'are the judges in their dioceses, therefore you must submit to the Church as your judges have determined that you shall do.'
Joan still refused, and the Bishop then began to read the sentence condemning her to death as a heretic.
Now arose a great uproar among the clergy and others on the platforms and among the crowd beneath. Loiseleur and Massieu urged her to abjure; the former promising that if she consented she would, after abjuring, be taken from her English jailers and placed in keeping of the clergy. In the midst of the hubbub Erard produced a parchment scroll, on which, he told Joan, were written the different accusations against her, which she had only to sign with her mark to be saved. All about this abjuration was a mesh of confusion to the mind of Joan. Massieu told her she need but make a mark on the parchment before her to be delivered: if not—and he pointed down to a grim figure near the foot of the stage they were on, where stood the headsman with cart and assistants, ready to draw her to the stake.
'Abjure!' cried Erard and Massieu, 'or you will be taken and burnt.'
Even Joan of Arc's courage failed at that sight, and all the woman in her nature asserted itself.
'Do what I tell you,' cried Loiseleur; 'abjure and put on woman's dress, and all will yet be well.'