But I was foolish to think that thought and hope that hope.  Joan of Arc was not made as others are made.  Fidelity to principle, fidelity to truth, fidelity to her word, all these were in her bone and in her flesh—­they were parts of her.  She could not change, she could not cast them out.  She was the very genius of Fidelity; she was Steadfastness incarnated.  Where she had taken her stand and planted her foot, there she would abide; hell itself could not move her from that place.

Her Voices had not given her permission to make the sort of submission that was required, therefore she would stand fast.  She would wait, in perfect obedience, let come what might.

My heart was like lead in my body when I went out from that dungeon; but she—­she was serene, she was not troubled.  She had done what she believed to be her duty, and that was sufficient; the consequences were not her affair.  The last thing she said that time was full of this serenity, full of contented repose: 

“I am a good Christian born and baptized, and a good Christian I will die.”

  15 Undaunted by Threat of Burning

Two weeks went by; the second of May was come, the chill was departed out of the air, the wild flowers were springing in the glades and glens, the birds were piping in the woods, all nature was brilliant with sunshine, all spirits were renewed and refreshed, all hearts glad, the world was alive with hope and cheer, the plain beyond the Seine stretched away soft and rich and green, the river was limpid and lovely, the leafy islands were dainty to see, and flung still daintier reflections of themselves upon the shining water; and from the tall bluffs above the bridge Rouen was become again a delight to the eye, the most exquisite and satisfying picture of a town that nestles under the arch of heaven anywhere.

When I say that all hearts were glad and hopeful, I mean it in a general sense.  There were exceptions—­we who were the friends of Joan of Arc, also Joan of Arc herself, that poor girl shut up there in that frowning stretch of mighty walls and towers:  brooding in darkness, so close to the flooding downpour of sunshine yet so impossibly far away from it; so longing for any little glimpse of it, yet so implacably denied it by those wolves in the black gowns who were plotting her death and the blackening of her good name.

Cauchon was ready to go on with his miserable work.  He had a new scheme to try now.  He would see what persuasion could do—­argument, eloquence, poured out upon the incorrigible captive from the mouth of a trained expert.  That was his plan.  But the reading of the Twelve Articles to her was not a part of it.  No, even Cauchon was ashamed to lay that monstrosity before her; even he had a remnant of shame in him, away down deep, a million fathoms deep, and that remnant asserted itself now and prevailed.

On this fair second of May, then, the black company gathered itself together in the spacious chamber at the end of the great hall of the castle—­the Bishop of Beauvais on his throne, and sixty-two minor judges massed before him, with the guards and recorders at their stations and the orator at his desk.