*****

The fifth day began with the usual dispute about the oath, Jeanne still retaining her reservation with the greatest firmness.  She seems, however, at the end, to have repeated her oath to answer everything that had to do with the trial—­“And as much as I say I will say as if I were before the Pope of Rome.”  These words must have given the Magister Beaupere an admirable occasion for introducing one of the things charged against her for which there was actual proof—­her letter to the Comte d’Armagnac in respect to the Pope.  He seized upon it evidently with eagerness, and asked her which she held to be the true Pope.  To this she answered quietly, “Are there two?”—­the most confusing reply.(5)

She was asked if she had received letters from the Comte d’Armagnac, asking to know which of the three existing Popes he ought to obey; she answered that she had his letter, and had replied to it, saying among other things that when she was in Paris and at rest she would answer him; and added that she was on the point of mounting her horse when she gave that reply.  The copy of the letter and the reply being read to her she was asked if that was what she had said; to which she replied that she had answered his letter in part, not in full.  Asked, if she knew the counsels of the King of Kings so as to be able to say which the count should obey, she answered, that she knew nothing.  Asked, if she was in doubt as to which the count ought to obey, she replied that she knew not which to bid him obey; but that she, the said Jeanne, held and believed that we ought to obey our Pope who was in Rome; that as for what he asked, that she should tell him which God desired him to obey, she had said she knew nothing; but she sent much to him which was not put in writing.  And as for herself she believed in the Lord Pope of Rome.  Asked, whether in respect to the three pontiffs she had received counsel, she answered, that she had neither written nor made to be written anything about the three pontiffs.  And this she swore on her oath.  Asked, if she were in the habit of putting on her letters the name Jhesus Maria with a cross, answered, that she did so sometimes but not always, and that sometimes she put a cross to shew that these letters were not to be taken seriously (as likely to fall into the enemy’s hands).

Some questions were then put to her about her letters to the Duke of Bedford and to the English King, and copies were read to her to which she objected on some small points, but mistakenly it would seem, as that she had summoned them to surrender to the King, while the scribe had put “surrender to the Maid.”  She said, however, that they were her letters, and that she held by them.  She added that before seven years the English would lose more than they had lost at Orleans,(6) and that their cause would be lost in France; she said also that the said English should have greater disasters than they had yet had in France, and that God would give greater victories to France.  Asked, how she knew this, she replied:  “I know it by the revelations made to me, and that it will happen in seven years, and I might well be angry that it is deferred so long.”  Asked, when this would happen, she said that she knew neither the day nor the hour.