On the fatal morning very early, Brother Martin l’Advenu appeared in the cell of the Maid.  He had a mingled tale to tell—­first “to announce to her her approaching death, and to lead her to true contrition and penitence; and also to hear her confession, which the said l’Advenu did very carefully and charitably.”  Jeanne on her part received the news with no conventional resignation or calm.  Was it possible that she had been deceived and really hoped for mercy?  She began to weep and to cry at the sudden stroke of fate.  Notwithstanding the solemnity of her last declaration, that she would rather bear her punishment all at once than to endure the long punishment of her prison, her heart failed before the imminent stake, the immediate martyrdom.  She cried out to heaven and earth:  “My body, which has never been corrupted, must it be burned to ashes to-day!” No one but Jeanne knew at what cost she had kept her perfect purity; was it good for nothing but to be burned, that young body not nineteen years old?  “Ah,” she said, “I would rather be beheaded seven times than burned!  I appeal to God against all these great wrongs they do me.”  But after a while the passion wore itself out, the child’s outburst was stilled; calming herself, she knelt down and made her confession to the compassionate friar, then asked for the sacrament, to “receive her Saviour” as she had so often prayed and entreated before.  It would appear that this had not been within Friar Martin’s commission.  He sent to ask the Bishop’s leave, and it was granted “anything she asked for”—­as they give whatever he may wish to eat to a condemned convict.  But the Host was brought into the prison without ceremony, without accompanying candles or vestment for the priest.  There are always some things which are insupportable to a man.  Brother Martin could bear the sight of the girl’s anguish, but not to administer to her a diminished rite.  He sent again to demand what was needful, out of respect for the Holy Sacrament and the present victim.  And his request had come, it would seem, to some canon or person in authority whose heart had been touched by the wonderful Maid in her long martyrdom.  This nameless sympathiser did all that a man could do.  He sent the Host with a train of priests chanting litanies as they went through the streets, with torches burning in the pure early daylight; some of these exhorted the people who knelt as they passed, to pray for her.  She must have heard in her prison the sound of the bell, the chant of the clergy, the pause of awe, and then the rising, irregular murmur of the voices, that sound of prayer never to be mistaken.  Pray for her!  At last the city was touched to its heart.  There is no sign that it had been sympathetic to Jeanne before; it was half English or more.  But she was about to die:  she had stood bravely against the world and answered like a true Maid; and they had now seen her led through their streets, a girl just nineteen.  The popular imagination at least was subjugated for the time.