never seen a fairy, nor worked any spell by their means.  At the end, after having thus been put off her guard, she was suddenly asked about her dress (a capital point in the eyes of her judges):  whether she wished to have a woman’s dress.  Probably she was, as they hoped, tired, and expecting no such question, for she answered quickly yet with instant recovery:  “Bring me one to go home in and I will accept it; otherwise no.  I prefer this, since it pleases God that I should wear it.”  The recollection of Domremy and of the pleasant fields, must have carried her back to the days when the little Jeanne was like the rest in her short, full petticoats of crimson stuff, free of any danger:  what could be better to go home in? but she immediately remembered the obvious and excellent reasons she had for wearing another costume now.  So ended the third day.

In the meantime there had been, we are told, various interruptions during the examination; perhaps it was then that Nicolas de Houppeville protested against Bishop Cauchon as a partisan and a Burgundian, and therefore incapable by law of judging a member of the opposite party:  and had been rudely silenced, and afterwards punished, as we have already heard.  Another kind of opposition less bold had begun to be remarked, which was that one of the persons present, by word and sign, whispering suggestions to her, or warning her with his eyes, was helping the unfortunate prisoner in her defence.  Probably this did little good, “for she was often troubled and hurried in her answers,” we are told; but it was a sign of good-will, at least.  When Frere Isambard, who was the person in question, speaks at a later period he tells us that “the questions put to Jeanne were too difficult, subtle, and dangerous, so that the great clerks and learned men who were present scarcely would have known how to answer them, and that many in the assembly murmured at them.”  Perhaps the good Frere Isambard might have spared himself the trouble; for Jeanne, however she may have suffered, was probably more able to hold her own than many of those great clerks, and did so with unfailing courage and spirit.  One of the other judges, Jean Fabry, a bishop, declared afterwards that “her answers were so good, that for three weeks he believed that they were inspired.”  Manchon, the reporter, he who had refused to take down the private conversation of Jeanne in her prison with the vile traitor, L’Oyseleur, makes his voice heard also to the effect that “Monseigneur of Beauvais would have had everything written as pleased him, and when there was anything that displeased him he forbade the secretaries to report it as being of no importance for the trial.”  On another day a humbler witness still, Massieu, one of the officers of the court, who had the charge of taking Jeanne daily from her prison to the hall, and back again, met in the courtyard an Englishman, who seems to have been a singing man or lay clerk “of the King’s chapel in England,” probably attached to Winchester’s ecclesiastical retinue.  This man asked him:  “What do you think of her answers?  Will she be burned?  What will happen?” “Up to this time,” said Massieu, “I have heard nothing from her that was not honourable and good.  She seems to me a good woman, but how it will all end God only knows!”