Now, I affirm that she did not; not in any sense of the word “thought” applicable to the case.  Here is France calumniating La Pucelle:  here is England defending her.  M. Michelet can only mean, that, on a priori principles, every woman must be presumed liable to such a weakness; that Joanna was a woman; ergo, that she was liable to such a weakness.  That is, he only supposes her to have uttered the word by an argument which presumes it impossible for anybody to have done otherwise.  I, on the contrary, throw the onus of the argument not on presumable tendencies of nature, but on the known facts of that morning’s execution, as recorded by multitudes.  What else, I demand, than mere weight of metal, absolute nobility of deportment, broke the vast line of battle then arrayed against her?  What else but her meek, saintly demeanor, won from the enemies, that till now had believed her a witch, tears of rapturous admiration?  “Ten thousand men,” says M. Michelet himself, “ten thousand men wept;” and of these ten thousand the majority were political enemies knitted together by cords of superstition.  What else was it but her constancy, united with her angelic gentleness, that drove the fanatic English soldier—­who had sworn to throw a faggot on her scaffold, as his tribute of abhorrence, that did so, that fulfilled his vow—­suddenly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had stood?  What else drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to his share in the tragedy?  And, if all this were insufficient, then I cite the closing act of her life as valid on her behalf, were all other testimonies against her.  The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below.  He did so.  The fiery smoke rose upwards in billowing volumes.  A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side.  Wrapt up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted in his prayers.  Even then, when the last enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment did this noblest of girls think only for him, the one friend that would not forsake her, and not for herself; bidding him with her last breath to care for his own preservation, but to leave her to God.  That girl, whose latest breath ascended in this sublime expression of self-oblivion, did not utter the word recant either with her lips or in her heart.  No; she did not, though one should rise from the dead to swear it.

* * * * *

Bishop of Beauvais! thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold—­thou upon a down bed.  But for the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike.  At the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the torturer have the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together into sleep; together both, sometimes, kindle into dreams.  When the mortal mists were gathering fast upon you two, Bishop and Shepherd girl—­when the pavilions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about you—­let us try, through the gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your separate visions.