were troubled in spirit, and wished that Joan, by an abjuration of her statements, would herself put them at ease and relieve them from pronouncing against her the most severe penalty.  What means were employed to arrive at this end?  Did she really, and with full knowledge of what she was about, come round to the adjuration which there was so much anxiety to obtain from her?  It is difficult to solve this historical problem with exactness and certainty.  More than once, during the examinations and the conversations which took place at that time between Joan and her judges, she maintained her firm posture and her first statements.  One of those who were exhorting her to yield said to her one day, “Thy king is a heretic and a schismatic.”  Joan could not brook this insult to her king.  “By my faith,” said she, “full well dare I both say and swear that he is the noblest Christian of all Christians, and the truest lover of the faith and the Church.”  “Make her hold her tongue,” said the usher to the preacher, who was disconcerted at having provoked such language.  Another day, when Joan was being urged to submit to the Church, brother Isambard de la Pierre, a Dominican, who was interested in her, spoke to her about the council, at the same time explaining to her its province in the church.  It was the very time when that of Bale had been convoked.  “Ah!” said Joan, “I would fain surrender and submit myself to the council of Bale.”  The Bishop of Beauvais trembled at the idea of this appeal.  “Hold your tongue in the devil’s name!” said he to the monk.  Another of the judges, William Erard, asked Joan menacingly, “Will you abjure those reprobate words and deeds of yours?” “I leave it to the universal Church whether I ought to abjure or not.”  “That is not enough:  you shall abjure at once or you shall burn.”  Joan shuddered.  “I would rather sign than burn,” she said.  There was put before her a form of abjuration, whereby, disavowing her revelations and visions from heaven, she confessed her errors in matters of faith, and renounced them humbly.  At the bottom of the document she made the mark of a cross.  Doubts have arisen as to the genuineness of this long and diffuse deed in the form in which it has been published in the trial-papers.  Twenty-four years later, in 1455, during the trial undertaken for the rehabilitation of Joan, several of those who had been present at the trial at which she was condemned, amongst others the usher Massieu and the registrar Taquel, declared that the form of abjuration read out at that time to Joan and signed by her contained only seven or eight lines of big writing; and according to another witness of the scene it was an Englishman, John Calot, secretary of Henry VI., King of England, who, as soon as Joan had yielded, drew from his sleeve a little paper which he gave to her to sign, and, dissatisfied with the mark she had made, held her hand and guided it so that she might put down her name, every letter.  However that may be, as soon as Joan’s abjuration had thus been obtained, the court issued on the 24th of May, 1431, a definitive decree, whereby, after some long and severe strictures in the preamble, it condemned Joan to perpetual imprisonment, “with the bread of affliction and the water of affliction, in order that she might deplore the errors and faults she had committed, and relapse into them no more henceforth.”