Joan stood awhile musing.  She grew calmer, but occasionally she wiped her eyes, and now and then sobs shook her body; but their violence was modifying now, and the intervals between them were growing longer.  Finally she looked up and saw Pierre Maurice, who had come in with the Bishop, and she said to him: 

“Master Peter, where shall I be this night?”

“Have you not good hope in God?”

“Yes—­and by His grace I shall be in Paradise.”

Now Martin Ladvenu heard her in confession; then she begged for the sacrament.  But how grant the communion to one who had been publicly cut off from the Church, and was now no more entitled to its privileges than an unbaptized pagan?  The brother could not do this, but he sent to Cauchon to inquire what he must do.  All laws, human and divine, were alike to that man—­he respected none of them.  He sent back orders to grant Joan whatever she wished.  Her last speech to him had reached his fears, perhaps; it could not reach his heart, for he had none.

The Eucharist was brought now to that poor soul that had yearned for it with such unutterable longing all these desolate months.  It was a solemn moment.  While we had been in the deeps of the prison, the public courts of the castle had been filling up with crowds of the humbler sort of men and women, who had learned what was going on in Joan’s cell, and had come with softened hearts to do—­they knew not what; to hear—­they knew not what.  We knew nothing of this, for they were out of our view.  And there were other great crowds of the like caste gathered in masses outside the castle gates.  And when the lights and the other accompaniments of the Sacrament passed by, coming to Joan in the prison, all those multitudes kneeled down and began to pray for her, and many wept; and when the solemn ceremony of the communion began in Joan’s cell, out of the distance a moving sound was borne moaning to our ears—­it was those invisible multitudes chanting the litany for a departing soul.

The fear of the fiery death was gone from Joan of Arc now, to come again no more, except for one fleeting instant—­then it would pass, and serenity and courage would take its place and abide till the end.

  24 Joan the Martyr

At nine o’clock the Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France, went forth in the grace of her innocence and her youth to lay down her life for the country she loved with such devotion, and for the King that had abandoned her.  She sat in the cart that is used only for felons.  In one respect she was treated worse than a felon; for whereas she was on her way to be sentenced by the civil arm, she already bore her judgment inscribed in advance upon a miter-shaped cap which she wore: 

HERETIC, RELAPSED, APOSTATE, IDOLATER