“Of the love or the hatred of God toward the English I know nothing.” Then she spoke up with the old martial ring in her voice and the old audacity in her words, and added, “But I know this—that God will send victory to the French, and that all the English will be flung out of France but the dead ones!”
“Was God on the side of the English when they were prosperous in France?”
“I do not know if God hates the French, but I think that He allowed them to be chastised for their sins.”
It was a sufficiently naive way to account for a chastisement which had now strung out for ninety-six years. But nobody found fault with it. There was nobody there who would not punish a sinner ninety-six years if he could, nor anybody there who would ever dream of such a thing as the Lord’s being any shade less stringent than men.
“Have you ever embraced St. Marguerite and St. Catherine?”
“Yes, both of them.”
The evil face of Cauchon betrayed satisfaction when she said that.
“When you hung garlands upon L’Arbre Fee Bourlemont, did you do it in honor of your apparitions?”
“No.”
Satisfaction again. No doubt Cauchon would take it for granted that she hung them there out of sinful love for the fairies.