Did she hear them, those voices that had said, "Fret not thyself because of thy martyrdom; thou shalt come at last to the Kingdom of Paradise"?
"Yes," she said, "my voices were from God! My voices have not deceived me!" Then, uttering one great cry—"Jesus!" she drooped her head upon her breast, and died.
The common folk soon added their tale of signs and wonders to the simple and terrible truth. An English soldier, who greatly hated the Maid, had sworn to bring a faggot to her burning, and he threw it on the pile just as she gave that last cry. Suddenly he fell senseless to the earth, and when he recovered, he told how at that moment he had looked up, and had seen a white dove fly heavenward out of the fire. Others declared that they had seen the word Jesus—her dying word—written in the flames. The executioner rushed to a confessor crying that he feared to be damned, for he had burned a holy woman. But her heart would not burn, he told the priest; the rest of her body he had found consumed to ashes, but her heart was left whole and unharmed.
Many, not of the populace, were moved by her death to recognise what she had been in life.
"I would that my soul were where I believe the soul of that woman is!" exclaimed Jean Alespée, one of the judges.
"We are all lost; we have burnt a saint!" cried Tressart, a secretary of the King of England. Winchester—determined that, though she might be called a saint, there should be no relics of her—had her ashes carefully collected and thrown into the Seine.
The tidings of her death went speedily through France. They found Charles in his southern retirement, and nowise disturbed the ease of mind and body that was more to him than honour. They reached Domremy, and broke the heart of Joan's stern, loving father. Isabelle Romée lived to see her child's memory righted and her prophecies fulfilled.
In June, 1455, Pope Calixtus, named a commission to inquire into the trial of Joan of Arc.