fit to say, that no wonder Joanna should be a virgin, since her “foule face” was a satisfactory solution of that particular merit.  Holinshead, on the other hand, a chronicler somewhat later, every way more important, and universally read, has given a very pleasing testimony to the interesting character of Joanna’s person and engaging manners.  Neither of these men lived till the following century, so that personally this evidence is none at all.  Grafton sullenly and carelessly believed as he wished to believe; Holinshead took pains to inquire, and reports undoubtedly the general impression of France.  But I cite the case as illustrating M. Michelet’s candor.[7]

The circumstantial incidents of the execution, unless with more space than I can now command, I should be unwilling to relate.  I should fear to injure, by imperfect report, a martyrdom which to myself appears so unspeakably grand.  Yet for a purpose pointing, not at Joanna but at M. Michelet,—­viz., to convince him that an Englishman is capable of thinking more highly of La Pucelle than even her admiring countryman, I shall, in parting, allude to one or two traits in Joanna’s demeanor on the scaffold, and to one or two in that of the bystanders, which authorize me in questioning an opinion of his upon this martyr’s firmness.  The reader ought to be reminded that Joanna d’Arc was subjected to an unusually unfair trial of opinion.  Any of the elder Christian martyrs had not much to fear of personal rancor.  The martyr was chiefly regarded as the enemy of Caesar; at times, also, where any knowledge of the Christian faith and morals existed, with the enmity that arises spontaneously in the worldly against the spiritual.  But the martyr, though disloyal, was not supposed to be, therefore, anti-national; and still less was individually hateful.  What was hated (if anything) belonged to his class, not to himself separately.  Now Joanna, if hated at all, was hated personally, and in Rouen on national grounds.  Hence there would be a certainty of calumny arising against her, such as would not affect martyrs in general.  That being the case, it would follow of necessity that some people would impute to her a willingness to recant.  No innocence could escape that.  Now, had she really testified this willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued nothing at all but the weakness of a genial nature shrinking from the instant approach of torment.  And those will often pity that weakness most, who, in their own persons, would yield to it least.  Meantime, there never was a calumny uttered that drew less support from the recorded circumstances.  It rests upon no positive testimony, and it has a weight of contradicting testimony to stem.  And yet, strange to say, M. Michelet, who at times seems to admire the Maid of Arc as much as I do, is the one sole writer amongst her friends who lends some countenance to this odious slander.  His words are, that, if she did not utter this word recant with her lips, she uttered it in her heart.  “Whether, she said the word is uncertain:  but I affirm that she thought it.”