"They do not forbid it, our Lord being served first."
This firmness did not desert her once on the Saturday; but on the next day, the Sunday, Easter Sunday! what must her feelings have been? What must have passed in that poor heart when, the sounds of the universal holiday enlivening the city, Rouen's five hundred bells ringing out with their joyous peals on the air, and the whole Christian world coming to life with the Saviour, she remained with death! Could she who, with all her inner life of visions and revelations, had not the less docilely obeyed the commands of the Church; could she, who till now had believed herself in her simplicity "a good girl," as she said, a girl altogether submissive to the Church—could she without terror see the Church against her?
After all, what, who was she, to undertake to gainsay these prelates, these doctors? How dared she speak before so many able men—men who had studied? Was there not presumption and damnable pride in an ignorant girl's opposing herself to the learned—a poor, simple girl, to men in authority? Undoubtedly fears of the kind agitated her mind.
On the other hand, this opposition is not Jeanne's, but that of the saints and angels who have dictated her answers to her, and, up to this time, sustained her. Wherefore, alas! do they come no more in this pressing need of hers? Wherefore is the so long promised deliverance delayed? Doubtless the prisoner has put these questions to herself over and over again.
There was one means of escaping; this was, without expressly disavowing, to forbear affirming, and to say, "It seems to me." The lawyers thought it easy for her to pronounce these few simple words; but in her mind, to use so doubtful an expression was in reality equivalent to a denial; it was abjuring her beautiful dream of heavenly friendships, betraying her sweet sisters on high. Better to die. And indeed, the unfortunate, rejected by the visible, abandoned by the invisible, by the Church, by the world, and by her own heart, was sinking. And the body was following the sinking soul.
It so happened that on that very day she had eaten part of a fish which the charitable Bishop of Beauvais had sent her, and might have imagined herself poisoned. The bishop had an interest in her death; it would have put an end to this embarrassing trial, would have got the judge out of the scrape; but this was not what the English reckoned upon. The Earl of Warwick, in his alarm, said: "The King would not have her by any means die a natural death. The King has bought her dear. She must die by justice and be burned. See and cure her."
All attention, indeed, was paid her; she was visited and bled, but was none the better for it, remaining weak and nearly dying. Whether through fear that she should escape thus and die without retracting, or that her bodily weakness inspired hopes that her mind would be more easily dealt with, the judges made an attempt while she was lying in this state, April 18th. They visited her in her chamber, and represented to her that she would be in great danger if she did not reconsider, and follow the advice of the Church. "It seems to me, indeed," she said, "seeing my sickness, that I am in great danger of death. If so, God's will be done; I should like to confess, receive my Saviour, and be laid in holy ground."
"If you desire the sacraments of the Church, you must do as good Catholics do, and submit yourself to it." She made no reply. But, on the judge's repeating his words, she said: "If the body die in prison, I hope that you will lay it in holy ground; if you do not, I appeal to our Lord."
Already, in the course of these examinations, she had expressed one of her last wishes. Question: "You say that you wear a man's dress by God's command, and yet, in case you die, you want a woman's shift?" Answer: "All I want is to have a long one." This touching answer was ample proof that, in this extremity, she was much less occupied with care about life than with the fears of modesty.
The doctors preached to their patient for a long time; and he who had taken on himself the especial care of exhorting her, Master Nicolas Midy, a scholastic of Paris, closed the scene by saying bitterly to her, "If you don't obey the Church, you will be abandoned for a Saracen."