Thrice she had heard the voice in the morning, and once at the hour of Vespers, and again when the Ave Maria was being sung.

‘What were you doing,’ asked Beaupere, ‘when the voices called you?’

‘I was sleeping,’ answered Joan, ‘and the voice awoke me.’

‘Did it awake you by touching your arm?’

‘The voice awoke me without its touching me.’

‘Was it in your room?’

‘Not that I know, but it was in the castle.’

‘Did you acknowledge it by kneeling?’

’I acknowledged its presence by sitting up and clasping my hands.  I had begged for its help.’

‘And what did it say to you?’

‘It told me to answer boldly.’

‘Tell us more clearly what it said to you.’

’I asked its advice in what I should answer, and bade it ask the Saviour for counsel.  And the voice said, “Answer boldly; God will help you."’

‘Had it said anything to you before you interrupted it?’

’Some words it had said which I did not clearly comprehend; but when fully awake I understood it to tell me to answer boldly.’  Then, emboldened as it seemed by the recollection of that voice, she turned to Cauchon and exclaimed, ’You, Bishop, you tell me that you are my judge—­have a care how you act, for in truth I am sent by God, and your position is one of great peril.’

Then Beaupere broke in again, and asked Joan of Arc if the voice had ever altered its advice, and whether it had told Joan not to answer all the questions that would be put to her.

‘I cannot answer you about that,’ said Joan.  ’I have revelations of matters concerning the King which I shall not reveal.’

The Maid then asked whether she might wait for fifteen days, in order that, by that time, she might know whether she might, or might not, answer questions relating to this point.

The priest then asked whether she knew that the voice came from God.

‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘and by this order—­that,’ she continued, ’I believe as firmly as I believe the Christian religion, and that God has saved us from the pains of hell.’

She was then asked if the voice was that of a male or of a female.

‘It is a voice sent by God,’ she only deigned to say to this.

Joan again asked for an interval of fifteen days, in order that she might better be able in that time to know how much she might reveal to her judges relating to her voices.

On being asked whether she believed the Almighty would be displeased at her telling the whole truth, she said that she had been ordered by the voices to reveal certain things to the King, and not to her judges; that her voices had told her that very night many things for the good of the King which he alone was to know.

But, asked Beaupere, could she not prevail on the voices to visit the King?

‘I know not if the voices would consent,’ she answered.