Thomas de Courcelles next proceeded to read the articles contained in the act of accusation.  These were so long that they occupied the remainder of that and the next day’s sitting.  This first series of articles—­for there were forty more to follow—­consisted of thirty heads, and forms one of the most glaring examples of what the human mind is capable of inventing when thoroughly steeped in bigotry, stupidity, and cruelty.  The Bishop of Beauvais may have been congratulated on producing the most momentous mass of accusation, intended to destroy the life and reputation of a peerless and perfect woman and to blast the career of his native sovereign:  it only redounded to the Bishop’s everlasting shame and infamy.

We will spare the reader a detailed summary of these articles—­articles which have the lie so palpably and strongly writ all over them, that we can but hesitate whether to be more surprised or disgusted that even such a man as Cauchon could dare to bring them into court.

The preamble of the articles gave the gist of what was to follow, and showed up the true spirit of Joan’s ‘benign and merciful judges.’  It consisted of one long string of abuse, in which the terms ‘sorceress,’ ‘false prophet,’ ‘a practiser of magic,’ and ‘devilish arts,’ were freely used.  Joan of Arc was declared in this preamble to be ‘abominable in the eyes of God and man’; a violator of all laws—­divine, ecclesiastical and natural.  To sum up all the epithets, she was termed ’heretical, or, at any rate, strongly suspected of being so.’  This accusation, the most awful that those cruel times held, must have sounded to all those men present as the heroine’s knell of doom.

Then followed the thirty articles of accusation.  Never, indeed, had a short but well filled career, bright with glorious deeds, undertaken for King and fatherland—­never had such a life (for no life ever approached that of the Maid’s) been so ludicrously, so violently and wilfully misrepresented.  Her most innocent words and actions were turned into accusations of sorcery, witchcraft, vice, and every kind of wickedness.  Her harmless and pure youth was made to appear a childhood of sorcery and idolatrous superstition; she was accused in her earliest years of having trafficked with evil spirits:  it was alleged that she had consorted with witches; that she had frequented places where spirits and fairies best loved to congregate; that she had taken part in sacrilegious dancing; that she had suspended wreaths on the trees in honour of these rural spirits; that she had carried hidden about her person a plant called Mandragora, hoping by it to obtain good luck; that she had left her parents against their will to go to Neufchateau, and lived in that place among a debauched set of people:  that in consequence of all these wicked acts, a youth who intended marrying her had not done so.  Then, having left not a stage or an act of her innocent girlhood unblasted, and covered with the slime of