A vast throng of the town’s-people gathered below, and the place was all in a turmoil.  A seething mob had followed the Maid from her prison to the cemetery, which, already full, now held with difficulty the fresh press of people who accompanied Joan of Arc and her guards to the purlieus of the Church of Saint Ouen.

William Erard had been appointed by Cauchon to preach in this ‘terrible comedy,’ as Michelet calls this farce of the Maid’s abjuration.  For text the monk selected the fifteenth chapter of Saint John’s gospel:  ‘The branch,’ etc.  Erard showed in his discourse how Joan had fallen from one sin into another, till she had at length separated herself from the Church.  To a long string of abuse about herself Joan of Arc listened with perfect patience; but the preacher, not content with hurling his invectives at the prisoner, began to attack her King for having listened to Joan’s advice, by which conduct the King had, Erard said, also incurred the crime of heresy.

This attack on Charles roused the indignation of the Maid.  Turning on the monk, without a moment’s thought of her own situation, and the fresh danger she exposed herself to, the noble girl exclaimed:  ’By my faith, and with all respect to you, I dare to affirm on my peril that the King of this realm is the noblest of Christians, and no one has greater love for the Faith and Church than my King!’

‘Silence her!’ shrieked the preacher, beside himself with rage at finding that these few words from the lips of Joan of Arc had destroyed all the effect of his eloquence on that vast crowd, whose sympathy must have been now strongly shown towards the glorious victim before them.

Again summoned to submit to the Church, Joan said:  ’I have answered on that point already to my judges.  I call upon them to send an account of all my actions to the Holy Father at Rome, to whom after God I submit myself.’

This was not what Cauchon wished his victim to express, for one of the charges that he had made against her was her refusal to submit to the Pope.  He therefore changed the subject, and asked Joan of Arc whether she acknowledged that there were any things evil among those deeds she had committed or said.

‘As to my deeds and sayings,’ she answered, ’I have done them by the command of God.’

‘Then you admit,’ said the Bishop, ’that the King and others have sometimes urged you to act as you have done?’

‘As to my words and actions,’ she answered, ’I make no one, and particularly not the King, responsible.  If any wrong has been committed, it is I who am to blame, and not another.’

‘But,’ said Cauchon, ’those acts and words of yours which have been found evil by the judges, will you recant them?’

‘I submit them,’ said Joan, ‘to God and our Holy Father the Pope.’

‘The bishops,’ continued Cauchon, ’are the judges in their dioceses, therefore you must submit to the Church as your judges have determined that you shall do.’