She had herself taught them what to do, you see.  First, they must wear out her strength, then frighten her with the fire.  Second, while the fright was on her, she must be made to sign a paper.

But she would demand a reading of the paper.  They could not venture to refuse this, with the public there to hear.  Suppose that during the reading her courage should return?—­she would refuse to sign then.  Very well, even that difficulty could be got over.  They could read a short paper of no importance, then slip a long and deadly one into its place and trick her into signing that.

Yet there was still one other difficulty.  If they made her seem to abjure, that would free her from the death-penalty.  They could keep her in a prison of the Church, but they could not kill her.

That would not answer; for only her death would content the English.  Alive she was a terror, in a prison or out of it.  She had escaped from two prisons already.

But even that difficulty could be managed.  Cauchon would make promises to her; in return she would promise to leave off the male dress.  He would violate his promises, and that would so situate her that she would not be able to keep hers.  Her lapse would condemn her to the stake, and the stake would be ready.

These were the several moves; there was nothing to do but to make them, each in its order, and the game was won.  One might almost name the day that the betrayed girl, the most innocent creature in France and the noblest, would go to her pitiful death.

The world knows now that Cauchon’s plan was as I have sketched it to you, but the world did not know it at that time.  There are sufficient indications that Warwick and all the other English chiefs except the highest one—­the Cardinal of Winchester—­were not let into the secret, also, that only Loyseleur and Beaupere, on the French side, knew the scheme.  Sometimes I have doubted if even Loyseleur and Beaupere knew the whole of it at first.  However, if any did, it was these two.

It is usual to let the condemned pass their last night of life in peace, but this grace was denied to poor Joan, if one may credit the rumors of the time.  Loyseleur was smuggled into her presence, and in the character of priest, friend, and secret partisan of France and hater of England, he spent some hours in beseeching her to do “the only right an righteous thing”—­submit to the Church, as a good Christian should; and that then she would straightway get out of the clutches of the dreaded English and be transferred to the Church’s prison, where she would be honorably used and have women about her for jailers.  He knew where to touch her.  He knew how odious to her was the presence of her rough and profane English guards; he knew that her Voices had vaguely promised something which she interpreted to be escape, rescue, release of some sort, and the chance to burst upon France once more and victoriously complete the great work which she had been commissioned of Heaven to do.  Also there was that other thing:  if her failing body could be further weakened by loss of rest and sleep now, her tired mind would be dazed and drowsy on the morrow, and in ill condition to stand out against persuasions, threats, and the sight of the stake, and also be purblind to traps and snares which it would be swift to detect when in its normal estate.