“’Od’s blood, the sow has littered five times, and five times has made a mess of it!”

And now and then one was bold enough to say—­but he said it softly: 

“Sixty-three and the might of England against a girl, and she camps on the field five times!”

Cauchon lived in the great palace of the Archbishop, and it was guarded by English soldiery; but no matter, there was never a dark night but the walls showed next morning that the rude joker had been there with his paint and brush.  Yes, he had been thee, and had smeared the sacred walls with pictures of hogs in all attitudes except flattering ones; hogs clothed in a Bishop’s vestments and wearing a Bishop’s miter irreverently cocked on the side of their heads.

Cauchon raged and cursed over his defeats and his impotence during seven says; then he conceived a new scheme.  You shall see what it was; for you have not cruel hearts, and you would never guess it.

On the ninth of May there was a summons, and Manchon and I got out materials together and started.  But this time we were to go to one of the other towers—­not the one which was Joan’s prison.  It was round and grim and massive, and built of the plainest and thickest and solidest masonry—­a dismal and forbidding structure. [3] We entered the circular room on the ground floor, and I saw what turned me sick—­the instruments of torture and the executioners standing ready!  Here you have the black heart of Cauchon at the blackest, here you have the proof that in his nature there was no such thing as pity.  One wonders if he ever knew his mother or ever had a sister.

Cauchon was there, and the Vice-Inquisitor and the Abbot of St. Corneille; also six others, among them that false Loyseleur.  The guards were in their places, the rack was there, and by it stood the executioner and his aids in their crimson hose and doublets, meet color for their bloody trade.  The picture of Joan rose before me stretched upon the rack, her feet tied to one end of it, her wrists to the other, and those red giants turning the windlass and pulling her limbs out of their sockets.  It seemed to me that I could hear the bones snap and the flesh tear apart, and I did not see how that body of anointed servants of the merciful Jesus could sit there and look so placid and indifferent.

After a little, Joan arrived and was brought in.  She saw the rack, she saw the attendants, and the same picture which I had been seeing must have risen in her mind; but do you think she quailed, do you think she shuddered?  No, there was no sign of that sort.  She straightened herself up, and there was a slight curl of scorn about her lip; but as for fear, she showed not a vestige of it.

This was a memorable session, but it was the shortest one of all the list.  When Joan had taken her seat a r,sum, of her “crimes” was read to her.  Then Cauchon made a solemn speech.  It in he said that in the course of her several trials Joan had refused to answer some of the questions and had answered others with lies, but that now he was going to have the truth out of her, and the whole of it.