‘But why,’ then asked Beaupere, ’does the voice not speak to the King now, as it did formerly, when you were with him?’

‘I know not if it be the wish of God,’ Joan answered:  ’without the grace of God I should be able to do nothing.’

This remark, most innocent to our comprehension, was afterwards made use of as a weapon to accuse the prisoner of the charge of heresy.

Later on in the day Beaupere asked Joan if the voice had form and features.  This the prisoner refused to answer.

‘There is a saying among children,’ she said, ’that one is sometimes hanged for speaking the truth.’

On being asked by Beaupere if she was sure of being in a state of grace—­a question to which he had carefully led up, and whereby Cauchon hoped to entrap her into a statement which might be used in the accusation of heresy he was now framing against Joan of Arc—­her answer even disarmed the Bishop.

’If I am not, may God place me in it; if I am already, may He keep me in it.’

When that test question had been put to the prisoner, one of the judges, guessing the object of its being made, expostulated, to Cauchon’s rage—­who roughly bade him hold his peace.

To that triumphant reply Joan of Arc added these words:  ’If I am not in God’s grace I should be the most unhappy being in the world, and I do not think, were I living in sin, that my voices would come to me.  Would,’ she cried, ’that every one could hear them as well as I do myself!’

Beaupere then asked her about her childhood, and when she had first heard the voices.  Asked if there were many people at Domremy in favour of the Burgundians, she said she only knew of one individual.  Then came a string of questions about the fairy-well, the haunted oak-tree.  All these questions Joan fully answered.  She had never, she said, seen a fairy, nor had she heard the prophecy about the oak wood from which a maid was to come and deliver France.  When asked if she would leave off wearing man’s clothes, she said she would not, as it was the will of Heaven for her to wear them.

The fourth day of the trial was the 27th of February.  Fifty-three judges were present.  The usual attempt to make Joan take the oath was made to the prisoner by Cauchon, and she was again cross-examined by Beaupere.  Again questioned as to her voices, she said that without their permission she could not say what they said to her relating to the King.

Asked if the voices came to her direct from God, or through some intermediary channel, she answered, ’The voices are those of Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret; they wear beautiful crowns—­of this I may speak, for they allow me to do so.’  If, she added, her words were doubted, they might send to Poitiers, where she had already been questioned on the same subject.

‘How do you distinguish one from the other?’ asked Beaupere.

‘By the manner in which they salute me,’ Joan answered.