I do not need to tell you that there was no rest for me that night.  Nor for Noel.  We went to the main gate of the city before nightfall, with a hope in our minds, based upon that vague prophecy of Joan’s Voices which seemed to promise a rescue by force at the last moment.  The immense news had flown swiftly far and wide that at last Joan of Arc was condemned, and would be sentenced and burned alive on the morrow; and so crowds of people were flowing in at the gate, and other crowds were being refused admission by the soldiery; these being people who brought doubtful passes or none at all.  We scanned these crowds eagerly, but thee was nothing about them to indicate that they were our old war-comrades in disguise, and certainly there were no familiar faces among them.  And so, when the gate was closed at last, we turned away grieved, and more disappointed than we cared to admit, either in speech or thought.

The streets were surging tides of excited men.  It was difficult to make one’s way.  Toward midnight our aimless tramp brought us to the neighborhood of the beautiful church of St. Ouen, and there all was bustle and work.  The square was a wilderness of torches and people; and through a guarded passage dividing the pack, laborers were carrying planks and timbers and disappearing with them through the gate of the churchyard.  We asked what was going forward; the answer was: 

“Scaffolds and the stake.  Don’t you know that the French witch is to be burned in the morning?”

Then we went away.  We had no heart for that place.

At dawn we were at the city gate again; this time with a hope which our wearied bodies and fevered minds magnified into a large probability.  We had heard a report that the Abbot of Jumieges with all his monks was coming to witness the burning.  Our desire, abetted by our imagination, turned those nine hundred monks into Joan’s old campaigners, and their Abbot into La Hire or the Bastard or D’Alencon; and we watched them file in, unchallenged, the multitude respectfully dividing and uncovering while they passed, with our hearts in our throats and our eyes swimming with tears of joy and pride and exultation; and we tried to catch glimpses of the faces under the cowls, and were prepared to give signal to any recognized face that we were Joan’s men and ready and eager to kill and be killed in the good cause.  How foolish we were!

But we were young, you know, and youth hopeth all things, believeth all things.

  20 The Betrayal

In the morning I was at my official post.  It was on a platform raised the height of a man, in the churchyard, under the eaves of St. Ouen.  On this same platform was a crowd of priests and important citizens, and several lawyers.  Abreast it, with a small space between, was another and larger platform, handsomely canopied against sun and rain, and richly carpeted; also it was furnished with comfortable chairs, and with two which were more sumptuous than the others, and raised above the general level.  One of these two was occupied by a prince of the royal blood of England, his Eminence the Cardinal of Winchester; the other by Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais.  In the rest of the chairs sat three bishops, the Vice-Inquisitor, eight abbots, and the sixty-two friars and lawyers who had sat as Joan’s judges in her late trials.