lish feared Jeanne d'Arc as much as they hated her. She had, by
her mere presence at the head of the French army, turned their apparent
triumph into ignominious defeat. In those days the true psychological
explanation of such an event was by no means obvious. While the French
attributed the result to celestial interposition in their behalf, the
English, equally ready to admit its supernatural character, considered
the powers of hell rather than those of heaven to have been the prime
instigators. In their eyes Jeanne was a witch, and it was at least their
cue to exhibit her as such. They might have put her to death when she
first reached Rouen. Some persons, indeed, went so far as to advise that
she should be sewed up in a sack and thrown at once into the Seine; but
this was not what the authorities wanted. The whole elaborate trial, and
the extorted recantation, were devised for the purpose of demonstrating
her to be a witch, and thus destroying her credit with the common
people. That they intended afterwards to burn her cannot for an instant
be doubted; that was the only fit consummation for their evil work.

Now when, at the end of the week after Pentecost, the bishops and
inquisitors at Rouen learned, to their dismay, that their victim had
escaped, what were they to do? Confess that they had been foiled, and
create a panic in the army by the news that their dreaded enemy was at
liberty? Or boldly carry out their purposes by a fictitious execution,
trusting in the authority which official statements always carry, and
shrewdly foreseeing that, after her recantation, the disgraced Maid
would no more venture to claim for herself the leadership of the French
forces? Clearly, the latter would have been the wiser course. We may
assume, then, that, by the afternoon of the 28th, the story of the
relapse was promulgated, as a suitable preparation for what was to come;
and that on the 30th the poor creature who had been hastily chosen to
figure as the condemned Maid was led out, with face closely veiled, to
perish by a slow fire in the old market-place. Meanwhile the true Jeanne
would have made her way, doubtless, in what to her was the effectual
disguise of a woman's apparel, to some obscure place of safety, outside
of doubtful France and treacherous Burgundy, perhaps in Alsace or the
Vosges. Here she would remain, until the final expulsion of the English
and the conclusion of a treaty of peace in 1436 made it safe for her to
s