She moved to her place and mounted the dais and seated herself upon her bench, gathering her chains into her lap and nestling her little white hands there.  Then she waited in tranquil dignity, the only person there who seemed unmoved and unexcited.  A bronzed and brawny English soldier, standing at martial ease in the front rank of the citizen spectators, did now most gallantly and respectfully put up his great hand and give her the military salute; and she, smiling friendly, put up hers and returned it; whereat there was a sympathetic little break of applause, which the judge sternly silence.

Now the memorable inquisition called in history the Great Trial began.  Fifty experts against a novice, and no one to help the novice!

The judge summarized the circumstances of the case and the public reports and suspicions upon which it was based; then he required Joan to kneel and make oath that she would answer with exact truthfulness to all questions asked her.

Joan’s mind was not asleep.  It suspected that dangerous possibilities might lie hidden under this apparently fair and reasonable demand.  She answered with the simplicity which so often spoiled the enemy’s best-laid plans in the trial at Poitiers, and said: 

“No; for I do not know what you are going to ask me; you might ask of me things which I would not tell you.”

This incensed the Court, and brought out a brisk flurry of angry exclamations.  Joan was not disturbed.  Cauchon raised his voice and began to speak in the midst of this noise, but he was so angry that he could hardly get his words out.  He said: 

“With the divine assistance of our Lord we require you to expedite these proceedings for the welfare of your conscience.  Swear, with your hands upon the Gospels, that you will answer true to the questions which shall be asked you!” and he brought down his fat hand with a crash upon his official table.

Joan said, with composure: 

“As concerning my father and mother, and the faith, and what things I have done since my coming into France, I will gladly answer; but as regards the revelations which I have received from God, my Voices have forbidden me to confide them to any save my King—­”

Here there was another angry outburst of threats and expletives, and much movement and confusion; so she had to stop, and wait for the noise to subside; then her waxen face flushed a little and she straightened up and fixed her eye on the judge, and finished her sentence in a voice that had the old ring to it: 

—­“and I will never reveal these things though you cut my head off!”

Well, maybe you know what a deliberative body of Frenchmen is like.  The judge and half the court were on their feet in a moment, and all shaking their fists at the prisoner, and all storming and vituperating at once, so that you could hardly hear yourself think.  They kept this up several minutes; and because Joan sat untroubled and indifferent they grew madder and noisier all the time.  Once she said, with a fleeting trace of the old-time mischief in her eye and manner: