That answer of hers was quite long, quite frank, wholly free from concealments or palliations.  It made me shudder; I knew she was pronouncing sentence of death upon herself.  So did poor Manchon.  And he wrote in the margin abreast of it: 

“RESPONSIO MORTIFERA.”

Fatal answer.  Yes, all present knew that it was, indeed, a fatal answer.  Then there fell a silence such as falls in a sick-room when the watchers of the dying draw a deep breath and say softly one to another, “All is over.”

Here, likewise, all was over; but after some moments Cauchon, wishing to clinch this matter and make it final, put this question: 

“Do you still believe that your Voices are St. Marguerite and St. Catherine?”

“Yes—­and that they come from God.”

“Yet you denied them on the scaffold?”

Then she made direct and clear affirmation that she had never had any intention to deny them; and that if—­I noted the if—­“if she had made some retractions and revocations on the scaffold it was from fear of the fire, and it was a violation of the truth.”

There it is again, you see.  She certainly never knew what it was she had done on the scaffold until she was told of it afterward by these people and by her Voices.

And now she closed this most painful scene with these words; and there was a weary note in them that was pathetic: 

“I would rather do my penance all at once; let me die.  I cannot endure captivity any longer.”

The spirit born for sunshine and liberty so longed for release that it would take it in any form, even that.

Several among the company of judges went from the place troubled and sorrowful, the others in another mood.  In the court of the castle we found the Earl of Warwick and fifty English waiting, impatient for news.  As soon as Cauchon saw them he shouted—­laughing—­think of a man destroying a friendless poor girl and then having the heart to laugh at it: 

“Make yourselves comfortable—­it’s all over with her!”

  23 The Time Is at Hand

The young can sink into abysses of despondency, and it was so with Noel and me now; but the hopes of the young are quick to rise again, and it was so with ours.  We called back that vague promise of the Voices, and said the one to the other that the glorious release was to happen at “the last moment”—­“that other time was not the last moment, but this is; it will happen now; the King will come, La Hire will come, and with them our veterans, and behind them all France!” And so we were full of heart again, and could already hear, in fancy, that stirring music the clash of steel and the war-cries and the uproar of the onset, and in fancy see our prisoner free, her chains gone, her sword in her hand.

But this dream was to pass also, and come to nothing.  Late at night, when Manchon came in, he said: 

“I am come from the dungeon, and I have a message for you from that poor child.”