“Joan.”

She looked up then, with a little start and a wan smile, and said: 

“Speak.  Have you a message for me?”

“Yes, my poor child.  Try to bear it.  Do you think you can bear it?”

“Yes”—­very softly, and her head drooped again.

“I am come to prepare you for death.”

A faint shiver trembled through her wasted body.  There was a pause.  In the stillness we could hear our breathings.  Then she said, still in that low voice: 

“When will it be?”

The muffled notes of a tolling bell floated to our ears out of the distance.

“Now.  The time is at hand.”

That slight shiver passed again.

“It is so soon—­ah, it is so soon!”

There was a long silence.  The distant throbbings of the bell pulsed through it, and we stood motionless and listening.  But it was broken at last: 

“What death is it?”

“By fire!”

“Oh, I knew it, I knew it!” She sprang wildly to her feet, and wound her hands in her hair, and began to writhe and sob, oh, so piteously, and mourn and grieve and lament, and turn to first one and then another of us, and search our faces beseechingly, as hoping she might find help and friendliness there, poor thing—­she that had never denied these to any creature, even her wounded enemy on the battle-field.

“Oh, cruel, cruel, to treat me so!  And must my body, that has never been defiled, be consumed today and turned to ashes?  Ah, sooner would I that my head were cut off seven times than suffer this woeful death.  I had the promise of the Church’s prison when I submitted, and if I had but been there, and not left here in the hands of my enemies, this miserable fate had not befallen me.

“Oh, I appeal to God the Great Judge, against the injustice which has been done me.”

There was none there that could endure it.  They turned away, with the tears running down their faces.  In a moment I was on my knees at her feet.  At once she thought only of my danger, and bent and whispered in my hear:  “Up!—­do not peril yourself, good heart.  There—­God bless you always!” and I felt the quick clasp of her hand.  Mine was the last hand she touched with hers in life.  None saw it; history does not know of it or tell of it, yet it is true, just as I have told it.  The next moment she saw Cauchon coming, and she went and stood before him and reproached him, saying: 

“Bishop, it is by you that I die!”

He was not shamed, not touched; but said, smoothly: 

“Ah, be patient, Joan.  You die because you have not kept your promise, but have returned to your sins.”

“Alas,” she said, “if you had put me in the Church’s prison, and given me right and proper keepers, as you promised, this would not have happened.  And for this I summon you to answer before God!”

Then Cauchon winced, and looked less placidly content than before, and he turned him about and went away.