“Ah, you do not do well to seduce me.”
The judges joined their voices to the others. Yes, even the iron in their hearts melted, and they said:
“O Joan, we pity you so! Take back what you have said, or we must deliver you up to punishment.”
And now there was another voice—it was from the other platform—pealing solemnly above the din: Cauchon’s—reading the sentence of death!
Joan’s strength was all spent. She stood looking about her in a bewildered way a moment, then slowly she sank to her knees, and bowed her head and said:
“I submit.”
They gave her no time to reconsider—they knew the peril of that. The moment the words were out of her mouth Massieu was reading to her the abjuration, and she was repeating the words after him mechanically, unconsciously—and smiling; for her wandering mind was far away in some happier world.
Then this short paper of six lines was slipped aside and a long one of many pages was smuggled into its place, and she, noting nothing, put her mark on it, saying, in pathetic apology, that she did not know how to write. But a secretary of the King of England was there to take care of that defect; he guided her hand with his own, and wrote her name—Jehanne.
The great crime was accomplished. She had signed—what? She did not know—but the others knew. She had signed a paper confessing herself a sorceress, a dealer with devils, a liar, a blasphemer of God and His angels, a lover of blood, a promoter of sedition, cruel, wicked, commissioned of Satan; and this signature of hers bound her to resume the dress of a woman.
There were other promises, but that one would answer, without the others; and that one could be made to destroy her.