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Among these many priests, consenting to and abet- ting all the abominable procedure of Cauchon, we sig- nalize two worthy exceptions, Nicolas de Houppeville and Jean Lohier. The former denounced the trial as illegal, since Cauchon was of the party hostile to Jeanne (the English), and also because he made him- self judge of a case previously opened by his superior, the Archbishop of Reims, in the inquiry of Poitiers. Cauchon excluded him from the following sessions and had him jailed in the bargain; it is also said that he proposed to send the honest man oversea, but at this point the latter was saved by powerful friends.

Jean Lohier, a learned Norman priest, to whom Cauchon had submitted the papers in the case, de- clared that they were worthless and the prosecution null for several reasons. First, because the accused was shut up in a closed place where the assessors might not freely express their opinion. Second, per- sons were aimed at in the trial who had not been cited juridically, such as the King of France, whose honor was attacked and who was not represented. Finally and above all, Jeanne was left without coun- sel or defender.

Next day Jean Lohier prudently started for Rome, where he was well received and even made president of the Rota. It’s a pity he wasn’t able to secure the Pope’s ear for Jeanne; a word from his Holiness would have saved her.

Let us add to the short roll of honor the name of Jean de St. Avit, Bishop of Avranches, who replied to Cauchon’s written statement of the proposed proces: “In doubtful things which concern the faith one ought to recur always to the Pope and the gen- eral council.’ This opinion was not inscribed in the formal report and is known only from the witness of Isambart de la Pierre at the Rehabilitation. This honest bishop was imprisoned by the English in the following year, on a charge of disloyalty.

Cauchon’s bon procés can but appear to us at this distance of time as a great borborygmus, or wind on the stomach. There is nothing to redeem it from foul flatulency, foolish parade of more foolish learning, and an organized stupidity without parallel, save the wonderful intelligence of the accused, her heroic port and endurance, and the brilliant aptness of her re- plies. She is as much to this trial as Hamlet is to the play; that is to say, her lightest word outweighs the whole erudite and sanctified conglomeration of asininities. We shall therefore limit ourselves to rescuing from the mass of balderdash reported such gleams of light and sanity as she threw upon it.

On Wednesday, February 21, in the chapel of the chateau of Rouen (where she is confined), Jeanne ap- pears before her judges; there were forty-two at this first session.

Jeanne is dressed in man-fashion, with jacket and pantaloons (braies), wears a black cap, her hair cut short above the ears, face pale and eyes brilliant from her long sojourn in the gloomy dungeon. Her hands are chained and Cauchon denies her prayer that the manacles be removed. Also, she has asked the privilege of hearing mass—being actually at that moment the best Catholic in the world—but, on ac- count of her “crimes,” this favor has been refused her. Lord bless their Reverences, it is to begin right: we know now what there is to expect!

They have given her no counsel. They have in- formed her of no rights she may possess—she has none, in fact; nor of any dangers she may incur. From the beginning the great play is to make her recognize the competency of this tribunal where Cauchon presides as first judge.

He opens the proceeding very briefly and then re- quires her to take the oath, which implies acceptance of the competency: “Jeanne, place your hands on the holy gospels and swear that you will answer truly the questions we shall ask you!” “I don’t know what you wish to question me about. Perhaps you will ask me some things that I ought not tell you.”

He insists. She will answer, she says, upon what she has done, but not upon her revelations which came from God; she has told them to King Charles alone; though they should cut off her head, she would be silent on these things.

Also, to mark her entire liberty of soul and body she says: “It is true that I wished to escape, and I do so still. Is it not a thing lawful to every prisoner?”

Cauchon asks her to recite her prayers, and especially the Pater Noster (Our Father). She an- swers that she will say them to him in confession. Meaning—to the priest, yes; to the judge, no! An early proof of her extraordinary prudence and ready wit.

Owing to the large number of persons present, the interruptions and vociferations of the English, this hearing was painful, even to the judges, and they decided that the following séances should be held in a smaller room and behind closed doors.

On February 22 Beaupére examines her. She replies to a question regarding the ground of her actions: “I have done nothing except by revelation,” which is to say: “I have no judge here below.”

She replies freely to questions touching her origins, the lessons received from her mother, the visits to Robert de Baudricourt. At this point is first injected the stupidity with which they harass the poor child unto the end: “Who advised you to put on men’s clothes?” “I do not charge anybody with that.”

To the solemn Holinesses masquerading in skirts, with no leave or license but their own, it would seem to have been a capital offense in Jeanne to have worn the only sort of dress suitable to her as a chef de guerre, and the only sort in which she could protect herself as a prisoner. Of course, they knew this well, vast as was the ocean of their ignorance, but there was a foolish medieval connection of the thing with diabolism and witchcraft which they would gladly have imputed to her. In truth, they hung to her upon this charge until they finally made it a pretext for condemning her.

Beaupére comes presently to the question of the sign which she gave Charles on her first Meeting with him at Chinon. The court attached great importance to this; in part, as it would seem, from their own boobified curiosity; also hoping to make capital against her on the supernatural side.

She repulses him. “I shall not answer. Pass on.” (He insists.) “Send to ask God. He will tell you.”

On the twenty-fourth, Cauchon resumes the inter- rogatory; he proposes to have her take the oath with- out restriction. But she holds firm. “Excuse me from speaking.” He still presses her and she clearly denies the competency of his tribunal: “All the clergy of Rouen and of Paris would not know how to condemn me if they have not the right!”

And rising suddenly above her environment— above space and time, as has been finely said, she declares: “I CAME FROM God; I HAVE NOTHING TO DO HERE. SEND ME BACK To Gop FROM WHOM I CAME!”

Ah, indeed!—that was the business to which their Reverences had set their hand.

Cauchon passes the interrogatory to Beaupére, to whom Jeanne gives little heed—a very subtle woman, in faith! She ignores his feeble questions, and turn- ing toward the bishop (Cauchon) exclaims:

“You say that you are my judge. Take care; you put yourself in great danger.’ Cauchon remains silent.

Beaupére continues to question her regarding her early life, the prediction as to the woman who should come from Lorraine, the bois Chesnu, etc., and she replies with candor and modesty.

Again he harasses her on the subject of her attire. “Are you willing to dress like a woman?” “Give me a proper [woman’s] dress. I will take it and go away.” (That is to say, being at liberty to do so.) “I am content with what I have, since it pleases God that I should wear it.”

At the next hearing, February 27, Beaupére returns to the attack. More questions about her Voices, about St. Michael, Ste. Catherine and Ste. Marguerite, which she answers briefly. He presses for details and she repels him. Concerning publicly known facts, the sword of Fierbois, her standard, her arms dedicated at St. Denis, she makes no difficulty of replying. On the subject of her standard he elicits a memorable response:

“I carried this banner myself whenever | attacked the enemies, in order to avoid killing anybody—for I have never killed any one.”

Up to this point the prosecution has made no head. Cauchon resumes the chair some days afterward, and is still troubled by the warning Jeanne had given him. “The other day you told me that I was putting myself in great danger in being your judge. What do you mean by that, and what danger should we incur, myself and the others?”

Jeanne replied: “I told you that you called your- self my judge, that I do not know if you are so. But take heed that you do not render a bad judgment, for you would put yourself in great peril, | forewarn you. If God punishes you, | shall at least have done my duty in warning you.”

Cauchon rejoined: “The King has ordered me to make your trial, and I propose to do it.” He questions Jeanne on a letter written to her by the Count of Armagnac, inquiring which of the three popes was the true one. Jeanne had caused a reply to be made that she would tell him when she was more at leisure. (At the time she was busy fighting the English.) Cauchon’s idea was to put her in fault for not having recognized the Pope in Rome.

Jeanne replies with great prudence that the letter was not precisely as she had dictated it, that she had never made allusion to three popes, and that for her- self she believed only in “the Pope who is at Rome.”

The production of these two letters is a clear proof of treachery in the entourage of Charles VII and of complicity with the prosecutors. A blind man would detect in this business the hand of Regnault de Chartres.

At this point Jeanne predicted the final victory of the king, the taking of Paris before seven years were out, and her own deliverance within three months. The first two major prophecies were fulfilled in due course; the third also, but not, alas! as she understood it: her heavenly friends had disguised the truth.

Nothing in Jeanne’s attitude seems more admirable than her fidelity to the king who had forgotten her, nor would he raise a finger to save her. In her heart she knew him to be unworthy, but it was not to the enemies of France that she would confess the hateful truth. And so she could say boldly to her judges:

“T know well that my king will gain the Kingdom of France. I know it as well as I know that you are there before me sitting in your tribunal. I should be dead but for this revelation, which strengthens me every day.”

On March 3 Jeanne appeared strong and com- forted. Her Voices had said to her: “Be brave and show a cheerful face!” It was one of her best days during the trial, when her great soul shone forth in unclouded calm and her lips dropped expressions that are immortal: “I said to my people sometimes, ‘Enter boldly among those English,’ and I myself entered with them.” .. . “The poor came to me willingly, for | made them no displeasure; on the contrary, | loved to help them.”

Again, interrogated as to her Voices, Jeanne replied: “This voice is beautiful, sweet, and humble, and it speaks the French language.” “Then Ste. Marguerite does not speak English?” “How should she speak English, since she is not of the English party?”

These brave responses evoke the admiration of the greffier (scribe) himself, and he records it in the mar- gin; they are not relished by Cauchon, who thereupon decides that the following examinations shall be im secret. Meantime the court takes a recess of six days in order to revise the greffier’s report and prepare for more decisive hearings. Resuming March 10, the judges begin anew on the “sign” and persist during several sessions. They have a political motive now with which they hope to damn her, and they harass her without relief. Did she claim to have a divine mandate designating Charles as the rightful king? They roar and rant at her, those holy men, in a per- fect confusion, until she is obliged to rebuke them, but with her invariable sweetness and courtesy: “Please, good fathers, do not all speak at once!’”” No doubt her mildness made the reproof the more gall- ing—their Sanctities to be lessoned by a girl of the fields!

Jeanne is still of good courage and meets her ad- versaries at every point. But they are many, and they return always like a pack of wolves, howling, in- satiate, sure of getting her ultimately. And sometimes she weakens a little under the constant attack.

Ah, think of the life that was hers in that hellish dungeon,’ chained, ill-fed, subjected to daily, hourly insult from her fiend-like keepers, with no word of encouragement from any human voice, no token of sympathy to tell her of a world outside those gloomy walls. Think of the place, I say, where she had to nourish the strength to meet her foes day after day— and wonder only that she did not sink overwhelmed at once! Even so, her fight was the bravest ever made in a hopeless and unequal contest. Greater in Rouen than at Orleans or Patay, winning higher victories, superb battles of the spirit; rising to that supreme plane of universality which only a few of the greatest souls have reached, there is no phase of her career which so deeply excites our love, our pity, and our perfect admiration.

*“She slept with double chains round her limbs, and closely fastened to a chain crossing the foot of her bed, attached to a heavy log five or six feet long, and padlocked, so that she could not stir from the place.”

Another witness: There was an iron beam to keep her straight (erectam).—Rehabilitation.