nded her favours to a
priest. This is one of the most intelligible instances of all; and in
1454 its circumstances are almost exactly repeated in the case of
Michel Manant, who also slew his unfaithful wife. Indeed, a French
jury even of to-day is never very hard upon the "crime passionel,"
with which that nation has always had so much sympathy. A similar case
of the "equity" I have sometimes fancied I could trace occurs in 1446,
when Nicolas Hebert stole four cups of silver, two belts studded with
silver, twelve silver and ten gold spoons, having been unable to get
any wages paid him after nine years of service with an advocate of
Falaise. He was condemned to death and pardoned by the canons.

I have already mentioned the famous Talbot (see p. 203) in connection
with the Fierte. He appears again in its records (as the Comte de
Sursberik) in 1444 with a refusal to allow the canons to visit the
prisons of the castle, because they contained Armagnacs and other
treasonable enemies to the King's Majesty. But the usual processions
and popular enthusiasm with which the canons replied soon made him
change his mind, and the prisoners were duly visited both in "La
Grosse Tour" or donjon, and in every other jail. His refusal had been
particularly ill-advised, because in May of 1430 the canons had
appealed from an obstinate jailer to the Duke of Bedford, and had
obtained his permission to visit the donjon according to their ancient
custom. That very winter the castle of Philip Augustus in the Place
Bouvreuil was to hold its most famous prisoner. For when Jeanne d'Arc
was brought to Rouen in December 1430, the prison of the Baillage
(called "les prisons ou la geole du roi"), whose archways you may
still see near the stairway of the Rue du Baillage, had been destroyed
by fire in 1425; and it is particularly mentioned that she was not
placed either in the cells of the Hotel de Ville, where I have already
recorded that an English jailer had been placed, or in the
"Ecclesiastical Prisons" of the Rue St. Romain near the Cathedral,
although her whole trial was conducted by ecclesiastics, but in the
"Chateau de Rouen," where (in Talbot's words) "prisoners of war and
treasonable felons" were especially guarded.

[Illustration: HOUSE IN THE RUE ST. ROMAIN CALLED THE MAISON JEANNE
D'ARC (IN THE DISTANCE THE DOOR OF THE COUR DES COMPTES IN THE RUE DES
QUATRE VENTS)]

At the siege of Compiegne, on May 24, 1430, Jeanne d'Arc had been
taken