When her trial began Jeanne was released from her cage, but was still chained by one foot to a wooden beam during the day, and at night to the posts of her bed.  Sometimes her guards would wake her to tell her that she had been condemned and was immediately to be led forth to execution; but that was a small matter.  Attempts were also made to inflict the barest insult and outrage upon her, and on one occasion she is said to have been saved only by the Earl of Warwick, who heard her cries and went to her rescue.  By night as by day she clung to her male garb, tightly fastened by the innumerable “points” of which Shakespeare so often speaks.  Such were the horrible circumstances in which she awaited her public appearance before her judges.  She was brought before them every day for months together, to be badgered by the keenest wits in France, coming back and back with artful questions upon every detail of every subject, to endeavour to shake her firmness or force her into self-contradiction.  Imagine a cross-examination going on for months, like those—­only more cruel than those—­to which we sometimes see an unfortunate witness exposed in our own courts of law.  There is nothing more usual than to see people break down entirely after a day or two of such a tremendous ordeal, in which their hearts and lives are turned inside out, their minds so bewildered that they know not what they are saying, and everything they have done in their lives exhibited in the worst, often in an entirely fictitious, light, to the curiosity and amusement of the world.

But all our processes are mercy in comparison with those to which French prisoners at the bar are still exposed.  It is unnecessary to enter into an account of these which are so well known; but they show that even such a trial as that of Jeanne was by no means so contrary to common usage, as it would be, and always would have been in England.  In England we warn the accused to utter no rash word which may be used against him; in France the first principle is to draw from him every rash word that he can be made to bring forth.  This was the method employed with Jeanne.  Her judges were all Churchmen and dialecticians of the subtlest wit and most dexterous faculties in France; they had all, or almost all, a strong prepossession against her.  Though we cannot believe that men of such quality were suborned, there was, no doubt, enough of jealous and indignant feeling among them to make the desire of convicting Jeanne more powerful with them than the desire for pure justice.  She was a true Christian, but not perhaps the soundest of Church-women.  Her visions had not the sanction of any priest’s approval, except indeed the official but not warm affirmation of the Council at Poitiers.  She had not hastened to take the Church into her confidence nor to put herself under its protection.  Though her claims had been guaranteed by the company of divines at Poitiers, she herself had always appealed to her