Though the Maid’s treatment in the dungeon of the castle was not, after the beginning of the trial, so barbarous as in the first days after her arrival at Rouen, when she was treated like a caged wild animal, the poor prisoner was watched day and night by three soldiers, who, one must fear, outraged every sense of humanity in their treatment of Joan.  The very term houspiller proves that they were set apart to embitter the prisoner’s already too cruel state.  Although Joan of Arc never herself disclosed the abominable fact, the reason for retaining and continuing to wear her male dress was that it served her as a protection from these ruffians.  Chained to a heavy wooden beam, her sufferings must have been at times almost beyond endurance; but in this long torture, which was only to terminate in the flaming death, her wonderful constancy and heaven-inspired spirit never failed.  Had she given way to a kind of despair, as happened shortly before her final release—­for only a few moments indeed—­her jailers would not have neglected to record such weakness as a sign that her heavenly agencies had failed, if not forsaken her utterly.  What appears to have constituted the greatest privation to Joan of Arc during her imprisonment was not being allowed the consolation of receiving the rites of the religion she so fervently believed.  During the days on which the public examinations were held in the hall of the castle, she was wont to be led from her dungeon by a passage leading to the place of judgment:  the castle chapel was passed in traversing this passage.  One day while going by the chapel door she asked one of the sheriffs, Massieu, whether the Eucharist was then exposed within the chapel, and, if so, whether she might be permitted to kneel before the entrance.  The man was humane enough to allow her to do so, but this coming to the knowledge of one of Cauchon’s familiars, the sheriff was told if he allowed the prisoner again to kneel before the chapel door that he would be thrown into prison—­’and,’ added Cauchon, ‘in a prison where no light of sun or moon should appear!’

But perhaps among so many instances of cruelty and bigotry, the most infamous act of all the many in this tragedy was that performed by the Canon Nicolas Loiseleur, a creature of Cauchon, as false, as cruel, and as unscrupulous as his master and patron.  This reverend scoundrel had, at the beginning of the trial, by his feigned sympathy for the prisoner, wormed himself into Joan of Arc’s confidence.  He told her that he, too, came from near her home, that he in his heart of hearts belonged to the French side, that he was a prisoner on account of his known devotion to Charles and to France, and many other such lies.  This Judas—­half in the character of a layman, half in that of a confessor, and wholly as a sympathetic friend and a fellow-sufferer—­paid the prisoner long visits, disguised both as priest and layman, as the part suited the day’s action best.