“Yes, and my penance came to me in great part from the harm I did myself in falling. You ask me if I believe this wrong which I did in leaping to be mortal sin? I know nothing about it, but refer me to God. As to my dress, since I bear it by command of God and for His service, I do not think I have done wrong at all; so soon as it shall please God to prescribe it, I will take it off.”
The following Thursday, March 15th, in the morning. Present: Jean Delafontaine, Commissary, assisted by Nicolas Midi and Gerard Feuillet. Witnesses: Nicolas de Houbent and Brother Ysambard de la Pierre.
First of all, Jeanne was charitably exhorted, warned, and required, if she had done anything which might be against our Faith, that she should refer it to the decision of Holy Mother Church.
“Let my answers,” she said, “be seen and examined by the Clergy: then let them tell me if there be anything against the Christian Faith. I shall know surely by my counsel what it is, and will say afterwards what shall be judged and decided. And, moreover, if there be anything wrong against the Christian Faith which Our Lord commanded, I should not wish to maintain it, and should be very sorry to be in opposition.”
Then we explained to her about the Church Triumphant and the Church Militant, and the difference between them. Required to submit to the decision of the Church Militant what she had said or done, whether of good or ill:
“I will not answer you anything more about it now,” she said.
“Upon the oath that you have taken, tell us, how did you think to escape from the Castle of Beaulieu between two planks of wood?”[[78]]
“Never was I prisoner in such a place that I would not willingly have escaped. Being in that Castle, I should have shut my keepers in the tower, if it had not been that the porter espied me and encountered me. It did not please God that I should escape this time: it was necessary for me to see the English King,[[79]] as my Voices had told me, as has been already said.”
“Have you had permission from God or your Voices to leave prison when it shall please you?”
“I have asked it many times, but I have not yet had it.”