ss only when she heard Mass, and woman's
clothing at her execution, if it came to that. The judges were
perfectly well aware of her proved maidenhood, and of the real reason
for her dress, but they persisted--without result--in trying to trap
her into dangerous replies. She was far too direct and simple to be
caught, just because she saw no "heresy" in an act of simple prudence.

Her judges, strong and clever men as most of them were, themselves
were tired out by the closeness and the duration of the trial. Yet
this young girl, fasting even from her prison-fare, was resolute
enough to keep her head, and reply steadily through it all. But she
refused to be troubled with unnecessary or merely reiterated
questions, and claimed her right to feel as tired as were her judges
when she felt it necessary. She was in fact perfectly natural and
frank throughout, even when the open expression of her thoughts was
hardly politic for one in her position. Without the help of counsel,
or of any to assist her, French or English, layman or ecclesiastic,
she was even deprived of the friendly countenance or signs of anyone
whose sympathy overcame for the moment his very justifiable fear of
her persecutors. Even the consolations of her religion were denied
her. The only semblance of advice she got was in the base and
hypocritical attempts of a scoundrelly canon of Rouen Cathedral to
teach her certain answers which might afterwards be used against her
by her accusers.[50] It is a shameful thing to have to record that the
Earl of Warwick helped the Bishop of Beauvais to complete this
villainy, and took clerks with him to listen at the door, but they
refused to lend themselves to such dishonourable methods.

[Footnote 50: There is a quaint suggestion of repentance for all this
in the cathedral of to-day. If you enter by the Portail des Libraires
and stand beside the north-east pillar of the great lantern, at your
feet is the tombstone of one of these unjust judges, Denis Gastinel,
and beneath it is the great Calorifere that warms the building, a
suggestively gruesome foretaste of the punishment which the modern
canons evidently think his conduct towards Jeanne d'Arc deserves.]

Early in the week of Palm Sunday she was formally summoned to the
great hall of the castle to hear the seventy articles of the Act of
Accusation against her. The web of calumny that had been spun out of
her replies then first must have been apparent to her, and though