“Take her”; and to the executioner, “Do your duty.”

Joan asked for a cross.  None was able to furnish one.  But an English soldier broke a stick in two and crossed the pieces and tied them together, and this cross he gave her, moved to it by the good heart that was in him; and she kissed it and put it in her bosom.  Then Isambard de la Pierre went to the church near by and brought her a consecrated one; and this one also she kissed, and pressed it to her bosom with rapture, and then kissed it again and again, covering it with tears and pouring out her gratitude to God and the saints.

And so, weeping, and with her cross to her lips, she climbed up the cruel steps to the face of the stake, with the friar Isambard at her side.  Then she was helped up to the top of the pile of wood that was built around the lower third of the stake and stood upon it with her back against the stake, and the world gazing up at her breathless.  The executioner ascended to her side and wound chains around her slender body, and so fastened her to the stake.  Then he descended to finish his dreadful office; and there she remained alone—­she that had had so many friends in the days when she was free, and had been so loved and so dear.

All these things I saw, albeit dimly and blurred with tears; but I could bear no more.  I continued in my place, but what I shall deliver to you now I got by others’ eyes and others’ mouths.  Tragic sounds there were that pierced my ears and wounded my heart as I sat there, but it is as I tell you:  the latest image recorded by my eyes in that desolating hour was Joan of Arc with the grace of her comely youth still unmarred; and that image, untouched by time or decay, has remained with me all my days.  Now I will go on.

If any thought that now, in that solemn hour when all transgressors repent and confess, she would revoke her revocation and say her great deeds had been evil deeds and Satan and his fiends their source, they erred.  No such thought was in her blameless mind.  She was not thinking of herself and her troubles, but of others, and of woes that might befall them.  And so, turning her grieving eyes about her, where rose the towers and spires of that fair city, she said: 

“Oh, Rouen, Rouen, must I die here, and must you be my tomb?  Ah, Rouen, Rouen, I have great fear that you will suffer for my death.”

A whiff of smoke swept upward past her face, and for one moment terror seized her and she cried out, “Water!  Give me holy water!” but the next moment her fears were gone, and they came no more to torture her.

She heard the flames crackling below her, and immediately distress for a fellow-creature who was in danger took possession of her.  It was the friar Isambard.  She had given him her cross and begged him to raise it toward her face and let her eyes rest in hope and consolation upon it till she was entered into the peace of God.  She made him go out from the danger of the fire.  Then she was satisfied, and said: