Our reading of the prophecy was this:  We believed the King’s soul was going to be smitten with remorse; and that he would privately plan a rescue with Joan’s old lieutenants, D’Alencon and the Bastard and La Hire, and that this rescue would take place at the end of the three months.  So we made up our minds to be ready and take a hand in it.

In the present and also in later sittings Joan was urged to name the exact day of her deliverance; but she could not do that.  She had not the permission of her Voices.  Moreover, the Voices themselves did not name the precise day.  Ever since the fulfilment of the prophecy, I have believed that Joan had the idea that her deliverance was going to dome in the form of death.  But not that death!  Divine as she was, dauntless as she was in battle, she was human also.  She was not solely a saint, an angel, she was a clay-made girl also—­as human a girl as any in the world, and full of a human girl’s sensitiveness and tenderness and delicacies.  And so, that death!  No, she could not have lived the three months with that one before her, I think.  You remember that the first time she was wounded she was frightened, and cried, just as any other girl of seventeen would have done, although she had known for eighteen days that she was going to be wounded on that very day.  No, she was not afraid of any ordinary death, and an ordinary death was what she believed the prophecy of deliverance meant, I think, for her face showed happiness, not horror, when she uttered it.

Now I will explain why I think as I do.  Five weeks before she was captured in the battle of Compiegne, her Voices told her what was coming.  They did not tell her the day or the place, but said she would be taken prisoner and that it would be before the feast of St. John.  She begged that death, certain and swift, should be her fate, and the captivity brief; for she was a free spirit, and dreaded the confinement.  The Voices made no promise, but only told her to bear whatever came.  Now as they did not refuse the swift death, a hopeful young thing like Joan would naturally cherish that fact and make the most of it, allowing it to grow and establish itself in her mind.  And so now that she was told she was to be “delivered” in three months, I think she believed it meant that she would die in her bed in the prison, and that that was why she looked happy and content—­the gates of Paradise standing open for her, the time so short, you see, her troubles so soon to be over, her reward so close at hand.  Yes, that would make her look happy, that would make her patient and bold, and able to fight her fight out like a soldier.  Save herself if she could, of course, and try for the best, for that was the way she was made; but die with her face to the front if die she must.

Then later, when she charged Cauchon with trying to kill her with a poisoned fish, her notion that she was to be “delivered” by death in the prison—­if she had it, and I believe she had—­would naturally be greatly strengthened, you see.