That is, fear of the fire had made her sign a paper whose contents she had not understood then, but understood now by revelation of her Voices and by testimony of her persecutors.
She was sane now and not exhausted; her courage had come back, and with it her inborn loyalty to the truth. She was bravely and serenely speaking it again, knowing that it would deliver her body up to that very fire which had such terrors for her.
That answer of hers was quite long, quite frank, wholly free from concealments or palliations. It made me shudder; I knew she was pronouncing sentence of death upon herself. So did poor Manchon. And he wrote in the margin abreast of it:
“RESPONSIO MORTIFERA.”
Fatal answer. Yes, all present knew that it was, indeed, a fatal answer. Then there fell a silence such as falls in a sick-room when the watchers of the dying draw a deep breath and say softly one to another, “All is over.”
Here, likewise, all was over; but after some moments Cauchon, wishing to clinch this matter and make it final, put this question:
“Do you still believe that your Voices are St. Marguerite and St. Catherine?”
“Yes—and that they come from God.”
“Yet you denied them on the scaffold?”
Then she made direct and clear affirmation that she had never had any intention to deny them; and that if—I noted the if—“if she had made some retractions and revocations on the scaffold it was from fear of the fire, and it was a violation of the truth.”