She was reminded that she had promised and sworn not to resume the dress of a man. She answered that she was not aware she had ever sworn or had made any such oath.
She was asked why she had done it. She answered that it was more lawful to wear a man's dress among men, than the dress of a woman; and also that she had taken it back because the promise made to her had not been kept, that she should hear the mass, and receive her Saviour, and be delivered from her irons.
She was asked if she had not abjured that dress, and sworn not to resume it. She answered that she would rather die than be left in irons; but if they would allow her to go to mass and take her out of her irons and put her in a gracious prison, and a woman with her, she would be good, and do whatever the Church pleased.
She was then asked suddenly, as if there had been no condemnation of her voices as lying fables, whether since Thursday she had heard them again. To this she answered, recovering a little courage, "Yes."
She was asked what they said to her; she answered that they said God had made known to her by St. Catherine and St. Margaret the great pity there was of the treason to which she had consented by making abjuration and revocation in order to save her life: and that she had earned damnation for herself to save her life. Also that before Thursday her voices had told her that she should do what she did that day, that on the scaffold they had told her to answer the preachers boldly, and that this preacher whom she called a false preacher had accused her of many things she never did. She also added that if she said God had not sent her she would damn herself, for true it was that God had sent her. Also that her voices had told her since, that she had done a great sin in confessing that she had sinned; but that for fear of the fire she had said that which she had said.
She was asked (all over again) if she believed that these voices were those of St. Catherine and St. Margaret. She answered, Yes, they were so; and from God. And as for what had been said to her on the scaffold that she had spoken lies and boasted concerning St. Catherine and St. Margaret, she had not intended any such thing. Also she said that she never intended to deny her apparitions, or to say that they were not St. Catherine and St. Margaret. All that she had done was in fear of the fire, and she had denied nothing but what was contrary to truth; and she said that she would like better to make her penitence all at one time—that is to say, in dying, than to endure a long penitence in prison. Also that she had never done anything against God or the faith whatever they might have made her say; and that for what was in the schedule of the abjuration she did not know what it was. Also she said that she never intended to revoke anything so long as it pleased our Lord. At the end she said that if her judges would have her do so, she might put on again her female dress; but for the rest she would do no more.
"What need we any further witness; for we ourselves have heard of his own mouth." Jeanne's protracted, broken, yet continuous apology and defence, overawed her judges; they do not seem to have interrupted it with questions. It was enough and more than enough. She had relapsed; the end of all things had come, the will of her enemies could now be accomplished. No one could say she had not had full justice done her; every formality had been fulfilled, every lingering formula carried out. Now there was but one thing before her, whose sad young voice with many pauses thus sighed forth its last utterance; and for her judges, one last spectacle to prepare, and the work to complete which it had taken them three long months to do.
CHAPTER XVIII — THE SACRIFICE. MAY 31, 1431.
It is not necessary to be a good man in order to divine what in certain circumstances a good and pure spirit will do. The Bishop of Beauvais had entertained no doubt as to what would happen. He knew exactly, with a perspicuity creditable to his perceptions at least, that, notwithstanding the effect which his theatrical mise en scène had produced upon the imagination of Jeanne, no power in heaven or earth would induce that young soul to content itself with a lie. He knew it, though lies were his daily bread; the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. He had bidden his English patrons to wait a little, and now his predictions were triumphantly fulfilled. It is hard to believe of any man that on such a certainty he could have calculated and laid his devilish plans; but there would seem to have existed in the mediæval churchman a certain horrible thirst for the blood of a relapsed heretic which was peculiar to their age and profession, and which no better principle in their own minds could subdue. It was their appetite, their delight of sensation, in distinction from the other appetites perhaps scarcely less cruel which other men indulged with no such horrified denunciation from the rest of the world. Others, it is evident, shared with Cauchon that sharp sensation of dreadful pleasure in finding her out; young Courcelles, so modest and unassuming and so learned, among the rest; not L'Oyseleur, it appears by the sequel. That Judas, like the greater traitor, was struck to the heart; but the less bad man who had only persecuted, not betrayed, stood high in superior virtue, and only rejoiced that at last the victim was ready to drop into the flames which had been so carefully prepared.