Dressed in the long black robe that the victims of the Inquisition wore, with a mitre set on her head, bearing the inscription: “Heretic, Relapsed, Apostate, Idolater,” she was led for the last time out through the corridor and down the steps to the cart which was waiting to carry her to the place of doom. Isambard, Massieu, the usher of the court, both her friends, accompanied her. As the cart, escorted by one hundred and twenty English men-at-arms, started, a man pushed his way through them, and flung himself weeping at 380 Jeanne’s feet. It was Loyseleur, the spy, who now implored her pardon. Jeanne forgave him, and the guards, who would have killed him but for the intervention of Warwick, drove him away.
The streets, the windows and balconies of the houses, every place where a foothold could be had, were crowded with people who wished to get a good view of the Maid on her last journey. Many secretly sympathised with her, but dared not show it for fear of their English masters.
Three scaffolds had been erected in the Old Market Place: one for the high ecclesiastics and the great English lords; one for the accused and her preacher,––for Jeanne was not allowed to go to her doom without another exhortation; while in the middle of the square a wooden platform stood on a mass of plaster with a great beam rising perpendicularly from it. At the foot of this innumerable faggots of wood were piled. The pile was purposely built high so that the executioner could not shorten her sufferings, as was often done. A placard was set over the mass of plaster and faggots with the words, “Jeanne, self-styled the Maid, liar, mischief-maker, abuser of the people, diviner, superstitious, blasphemer of God, presumptuous, false to the faith of Christ, boaster, idolater, cruel, dissolute, an invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic, heretic.”
A large number of soldiers ranged around the square keeping back the turbulent crowd who pressed upon them. Openly these soldiers rejoiced as the cart that contained the Warrior Maid was driven into the square. Soon the Witch who had humbled the pride of England would be done to death. The victor of Orléans and Patay would ride no more. An humbled 381 France would soon be prostrate before the might of England. Jeanne looked on all that sea of faces, some sympathetic, others openly exultant, with brimming eyes.
“Rouen! Rouen!” she cried wonderingly; “and am I to die here?”
A silence fell upon the multitude as the Maid took her place upon the platform with the preacher, Nicholas Midi, and he began his sermon from the text. “If any of the members suffer, all the other members suffer with it.”
Jeanne sat quietly through the sermon, her hands folded in her lap, praying silently. After a flood of invective the preacher closed his sermon and bade her, “Go in peace.”
When the words that flung her from the communion of the Holy Church ended Pierre Cauchon rose, and once more exhorted her, heaping a shower of abuse upon her helpless head, and so delivered her to the secular arm of the Church, with the words:
“We give you over to the secular power, entreating it to moderate its sentence and spare you pain of death and mutilation of limb.”
A great hush of awe fell upon the people that was broken presently by a sweet, girlish voice, broken by sobs, as Jeanne knelt upon the platform, and offered up her last supplication.