d, Joan, after it had been put in possession
of the evidence already collected, was cited, on the 20th of February,
1431, to appear on the morrow, the 21st, before her judges assembled in
the chapel of Rouen Castle.

The trial lasted from the 21st of February to the 30th of May, 1431. The
court held forty sittings, mostly in the chapel of the castle, some in
Joan's very prison. On her arrival there, she had been put in an iron
cage; afterwards she was kept no longer in the cage, but in a dark room
in a tower of the castle, wearing irons upon her feet, fastened by a
chain to a large piece of wood, and guarded night and day by four or five
"soldiers of low grade." She complained of being thus chained; but the
bishop told her that her former attempts at escape demanded this
precaution. "It is true," said Joan, as truthful as heroic, "I did wish
and I still wish to escape from prison, as is the right of every
prisoner." At her examination, the bishop required her to take an oath
to tell the truth about everything as to which she should be questioned."
"I know not what you mean to question me about; perchance you may ask me
things I would not tell you; touching my revelations, for instance, you
might ask me to tell something I have sworn not to tell; thus I should be
perjured, which you ought not to desire." The bishop insisted upon an
oath absolute and with-out condition. "You are too hard on me," said
Joan; I do not like to take an oath to tell the truth save as to matters
which concern the faith." The bishop called upon her to swear on pain of
being held guilty of the things imputed to her.

[Illustration: Joan examined in Prison----128]

"Go on to something else," said she. And this was the answer she made to
all questions which seemed to her to be a violation of her right to be
silent. Wearied and hurt at these imperious demands, she one day said,
"I come on God's business, and I have nought to do here; send me back to
God, from whom I come." "Are you sure you are in God's grace?" asked the
bishop. "If I be not," answered Joan, "please God to bring me to it; and
if I be, please God to keep me in it!" The bishop himself remained
dumbfounded.

There is no object in following through all its sittings and all its
twistings this odious and shameful trial, in which the judges' prejudiced
servility and scientific subtlety were employed for three months to wear
out the courage or overreach the understanding of a