Joan still refused, and the Bishop then began to read the sentence condemning her to death as a heretic.

Now arose a great uproar among the clergy and others on the platforms and among the crowd beneath.  Loiseleur and Massieu urged her to abjure; the former promising that if she consented she would, after abjuring, be taken from her English jailers and placed in keeping of the clergy.  In the midst of the hubbub Erard produced a parchment scroll, on which, he told Joan, were written the different accusations against her, which she had only to sign with her mark to be saved.  All about this abjuration was a mesh of confusion to the mind of Joan.  Massieu told her she need but make a mark on the parchment before her to be delivered:  if not—­and he pointed down to a grim figure near the foot of the stage they were on, where stood the headsman with cart and assistants, ready to draw her to the stake.

‘Abjure!’ cried Erard and Massieu, ‘or you will be taken and burnt.’

Even Joan of Arc’s courage failed at that sight, and all the woman in her nature asserted itself.

‘Do what I tell you,’ cried Loiseleur; ’abjure and put on woman’s dress, and all will yet be well.’

The text of the abjuration was then hurriedly read, Joan of Arc following it, and repeating the words, the sense of which she had no time to understand.  She spoke the words, it is said, as one in a dream.  Some said she did this mockingly, for she was observed to smile once or twice; but the poor soul’s spirit was crushed, and doubtless the whole scene was to her like an evil dream—­the poor broken-down body could not discriminate what words she was forced to repeat.  A troubled, horrible dream must that have seemed to the hapless maiden, standing on that scaffold, with all the shouting mob about, and all her deadly enemies at hand.  She made her mark on the parchment—­a little cross—­and the deed was done.

In the recantation, or abjuration, thus obtained from Joan of Arc, the twelve articles were included, with all their abuse set down.  Thus was Joan obliged by her signature to declare that all her visions and voices were false and from evil spirits; also that she had been guilty of transgressing laws divine in having worn her hair cut short and the dress of a man; also in having caused bloodshed; also in having idolatrously invoked evil spirits; also in having treated God and His sacraments with contempt; and, besides all this, of having acted schismatically, and of having fallen foul of the Church:  all of which crimes and errors she now abjured, and humbly submitted herself to the will of the Church and its ordinances.  She promised with her abjuration not to relapse, and called on Saint Peter, the Pope, as well as the Bishop of Beauvais and other of her judges, to keep her word.