“I have nothing more to say.”

Cauchon’s temper was stirred, and he raised his voice threateningly and said that the more she was in danger of death the more she ought to amend her life; and again he refused the things she begged for unless she would submit to the Church.  Joan said: 

“If I die in this prison I beg you to have me buried in holy ground; if you will not, I cast myself upon my Saviour.”

There was some more conversation of the like sort, then Cauchon demanded again, and imperiously, that she submit herself and all her deeds to the Church.  His threatening and storming went for nothing.  That body was weak, but the spirit in it was the spirit of Joan of Arc; and out of that came the steadfast answer which these people were already so familiar with and detested so sincerely: 

“Let come what may.  I will neither do nor say any otherwise than I have said already in your tribunals.”

Then the good theologians took turn about and worried her with reasonings and arguments and Scriptures; and always they held the lure of the Sacraments before her famishing soul, and tried to bribe her with them to surrender her mission to the Church’s judgment—­that is to their judgment—­as if they were the Church!  But it availed nothing.  I could have told them that beforehand, if they had asked me.  But they never asked me anything; I was too humble a creature for their notice.

Then the interview closed with a threat; a threat of fearful import; a threat calculated to make a Catholic Christian feel as if the ground were sinking from under him: 

“The Church calls upon you to submit; disobey, and she will abandon you as if you were a pagan!”

Think of being abandoned by the Church!—­that August Power in whose hands is lodged the fate of the human race; whose scepter stretches beyond the furthest constellation that twinkles in the sky; whose authority is over millions that live and over the billions that wait trembling in purgatory for ransom or doom; whose smile opens the gates of heaven to you, whose frown delivers you to the fires of everlasting hell; a Power whose dominion overshadows and belittles the pomps and shows of a village.  To be abandoned by one’s King—­yes, that is death, and death is much; but to be abandoned by Rome, to be abandoned by the Church!  Ah, death is nothing to that, for that is consignment to endless life—­and such a life!

I could see the red waves tossing in that shoreless lake of fire, I could see the black myriads of the damned rise out of them and struggle and sink and rise again; and I knew that Joan was seeing what I saw, while she paused musing; and I believed that she must yield now, and in truth I hoped she would, for these men were able to make the threat good and deliver her over to eternal suffering, and I knew that it was in their natures to do it.