“I will tell you nothing as to that.  I have revelations touching the King my master, and those I will not tell you.”  Then she was stirred by a great emotion, and the tears sprang to her eyes and she spoke out as with strong conviction, saying: 

“I believe wholly—­as wholly as I believe the Christian faith and that God has redeemed us from the fires of hell, that God speaks to me by that Voice!”

Being questioned further concerning the Voice, she said she was not at liberty to tell all she knew.

“Do you think God would be displeased at your telling the whole truth?”

“The Voice has commanded me to tell the King certain things, and not you—­and some very lately—­even last night; things which I would he knew.  He would be more easy at his dinner.”

“Why doesn’t the Voice speak to the King itself, as it did when you were with him?  Would it not if you asked it?”

“I do not know if it be the wish of God.”  She was pensive a moment or two, busy with her thoughts and far away, no doubt; then she added a remark in which Beaupere, always watchful, always alert, detected a possible opening—­a chance to set a trap.  Do you think he jumped at it instantly, betraying the joy he had in his mind, as a young hand at craft and artifice would do?

No, oh, no, you could not tell that he had noticed the remark at all.  He slid indifferently away from it at once, and began to ask idle questions about other things, so as to slip around and spring on it from behind, so to speak:  tedious and empty questions as to whether the Voice had told her she would escape from this prison; and if it had furnished answers to be used by her in to-day’s seance; if it was accompanied with a glory of light; if it had eyes, etc.  That risky remark of Joan’s was this: 

“Without the Grace of God I could do nothing.”

The court saw the priest’s game, and watched his play with a cruel eagerness.  Poor Joan was grown dreamy and absent; possibly she was tired.  Her life was in imminent danger, and she did not suspect it.  The time was ripe now, and Beaupere quietly and stealthily sprang his trap: 

“Are you in a state of Grace?”

Ah, we had two or three honorable brave men in that pack of judges; and Jean Lefevre was one of them.  He sprang to his feet and cried out: 

“It is a terrible question!  The accused is not obliged to answer it!”

Cauchon’s face flushed black with anger to see this plank flung to the perishing child, and he shouted: 

“Silence! and take your seat.  The accused will answer the question!”

There was no hope, no way out of the dilemma; for whether she said yes or whether she said no, it would be all the same—­a disastrous answer, for the Scriptures had said one cannot know this thing.  Think what hard hearts they were to set this fatal snare for that ignorant young girl and be proud of such work and happy in it.  It was a miserable moment for me while we waited; it seemed a year.  All the house showed excitement; and mainly it was glad excitement.  Joan looked out upon these hungering faces with innocent, untroubled eyes, and then humbly and gently she brought out that immortal answer which brushed the formidable snare away as it had been but a cobweb: