Joan was troubled a moment, then she answered yes, it was a feast-day.

“Now, then, tell the this:  did you hold it right to make the attack on such a day?”

This was a shot which might make the first breach in a wall which had suffered no damage thus far.  There was immediate silence in the court and intense expectancy noticeable all about.  But Joan disappointed the house.  She merely made a slight little motion with her hand, as when one brushes away a fly, and said with reposeful indifference: 

“Passez outre.”

Smiles danced for a moment in some of the sternest faces there, and several men even laughed outright.  The trap had been long and laboriously prepared; it fell, and was empty.

The court rose.  It had sat for hours, and was cruelly fatigued.  Most of the time had been taken up with apparently idle and purposeless inquiries about the Chinon events, the exiled Duke of Orleans, Joan’s first proclamation, and so on, but all this seemingly random stuff had really been sown thick with hidden traps.  But Joan had fortunately escaped them all, some by the protecting luck which attends upon ignorance and innocence, some by happy accident, the others by force of her best and surest helper, the clear vision and lightning intuitions of her extraordinary mind.

Now, then, this daily baiting and badgering of this friendless girl, a captive in chains, was to continue a long, long time—­dignified sport, a kennel of mastiffs and bloodhounds harassing a kitten!—­and I may as well tell you, upon sworn testimony, what it was like from the first day to the last.  When poor Joan had been in her grave a quarter of a century, the Pope called together that great court which was to re-examine her history, and whose just verdict cleared her illustrious name from every spot and stain, and laid upon the verdict and conduct of our Rouen tribunal the blight of its everlasting execrations.  Manchon and several of the judges who had been members of our court were among the witnesses who appeared before that Tribunal of Rehabilitation.  Recalling these miserable proceedings which I have been telling you about, Manchon testified thus:—­here you have it, all in fair print in the unofficial history: 

When Joan spoke of her apparitions she was interrupted at almost every word.  They wearied her with long and multiplied interrogatories upon all sorts of things.  Almost every day the interrogatories of the morning lasted three or four hours; then from these morning interrogatories they extracted the particularly difficult and subtle points, and these served as material for the afternoon interrogatories, which lasted two or three hours.  Moment by moment they skipped from one subject to another; yet in spite of this she always responded with an astonishing wisdom and memory.  She often corrected the judges, saying, “But I have already answered that once before—­ask the recorder,” referring them to me.