She was great in battle—­we all know that; great in foresight; great in loyalty and patriotism; great in persuading discontented chiefs and reconciling conflicting interests and passions; great in the ability to discover merit and genius wherever it lay hidden; great in picturesque and eloquent speech; supremely great in the gift of firing the hearts of hopeless men and noble enthusiasms, the gift of turning hares into heroes, slaves and skulkers into battalions that march to death with songs on their lips.  But all these are exalting activities; they keep hand and heart and brain keyed up to their work; there is the joy of achievement, the inspiration of stir and movement, the applause which hails success; the soul is overflowing with life and energy, the faculties are at white heat; weariness, despondency, inertia—­these do not exist.

Yes, Joan of Arc was great always, great everywhere, but she was greatest in the Rouen trials.

There she rose above the limitations and infirmities of our human nature, and accomplished under blighting and unnerving and hopeless conditions all that her splendid equipment of moral and intellectual forces could have accomplished if they had been supplemented by the mighty helps of hope and cheer and light, the presence of friendly faces, and a fair and equal fight, with the great world looking on and wondering.

  18 Condemned Yet Unafraid

Toward the end of the ten-day interval the University of Paris rendered its decision concerning the Twelve Articles.  By this finding, Joan was guilty upon all the counts:  she must renounce her errors and make satisfaction, or be abandoned to the secular arm for punishment.

The University’s mind was probably already made up before the Articles were laid before it; yet it took it from the fifth to the eighteenth to produce its verdict.  I think the delay may have been caused by temporary difficulties concerning two points: 

1.  As to who the fiends were who were represented in Joan’s Voices; 2.  As to whether her saints spoke French only.

You understand, the University decided emphatically that it was fiends who spoke in those Voices; it would need to prove that, and it did.  It found out who those fiends were, and named them in the verdict:  Belial, Satan, and Behemoth.  This has always seemed a doubtful thing to me, and not entitled to much credit.  I think so for this reason:  if the University had actually known it was those three, it would for very consistency’s sake have told how it knew it, and not stopped with the mere assertion, since it had made Joan explain how she knew they were not fiends.  Does not that seem reasonable?  To my mind the University’s position was weak, and I will tell you why.  It had claimed that Joan’s angels were devils in disguise, and we all know that devils do disguise themselves as angels; up to that point the University’s position was strong; but you see yourself that it eats its own argument when it turns around and pretends that it can tell who such apparitions are, while denying the like ability to a person with as good a head on her shoulders as the best one the University could produce.