to seek to fasten the blame of all upon the
English, who in the end accomplished the hideous task; but at least
the English were the foes against whom she had fought, and they had
the right to hold her as an adversary whose death was necessary for
their success; and had the English had their way she would have met
her end quickly, and without all that long-drawn-out agony and
mockery of a trial, every step and process of which was an outrage
upon the laws of God and of man. No, it was Frenchmen who doomed
her to this--Frenchmen and priests. The University of Paris, the
officers of the Inquisition, the Bishops of the realm. These it was
who formed that hideous Court, whose judgments have now been set
aside with contumely and loathing. These it was who after endless
formalities, against which even some of themselves were forced in
honour to protest, played so base and infamous a part--culminating
in that so-called "Abjuration," as false as those who plotted for
it--capped by their own infamous trick to render even that
"Abjuration" null and void, that she might be given up into the
hands of those who were thirsting for her life!

Oh, how can I write of it? How can I think of it? There be times
yet when Bertrand, and Guy de Laval, and I, talking together of
those days, feel our hearts swell, and the blood course wildly in
our veins, and truly I do marvel sometimes how it was that we and
others were held back from committing some desperate crime to
revenge those horrid deeds, wrought by men who in blasphemous
mockery called themselves the servants and consecrated priests of
God.

But hold! I must not let my pen run away too fast with me! I am
leaping to the end, before the end has come. But, as I say, I have
no heart to write of all those weary months of wearing inactivity,
wherein the spirit of the Maid chafed like that of a caged eagle,
whilst the counsellors of the King--her bitter foes--had his ear,
and held him back from following the course which her spirit and
her knowledge alike advocated.

And yet we made none so bad a start.

"We must march upon Paris next," spoke the Maid at the first
Council of War held in Rheims after the coronation of the King; and
La Hire and the soldiers applauded the bold resolve, whilst La
Tremouille and other timid and treacherous spirits sought ever to
hold him back.

I often thought of the words spoken by the Maid to those friends of
hers from Domremy, when she bid them farewel