request that the time had not yet arrived for her to cease
wearing the clothes she had worn during the time of her mission. That
she had good reason not to don woman's attire even when at Beaurevoir,
and keep to her male attire as a protection, is probable, as she was
not safe from wanton insult at the hands of the rough soldiery placed
about her person. This clinging to her male dress, we shall see, under
similar circumstances at Rouen, was the principal indictment made
against her by her executioners.

At Beaurevoir Joan of Arc was placed in a chamber at the top of a high
tower, whence Ligny thought that no attempt at escape would be made,
but Joan of Arc tried once again to recover her liberty. In the course
of her trial she told her judges how her voices counselled her not
again to make this venture, and of her perplexity whether she should
obey them, or, at the risk of her life, escape from the clutches of
the English, for at this time she knew that she had been sold to her
bitterest foes.

What appears to have determined her decision was hearing that
Compiegne was in imminent peril of falling into the hands of the
English, and that the inhabitants would be massacred. In her
desperation, feeling, like young Arthur, that

'The wall is high; and yet will I leap down:--
Good ground, be pitiful, and hurt me not!...
As good to die, and go, as die, and stay'

she knotted some thongs together and let herself out of a window; but
the thongs broke, and she fell from a great height--the tower is
supposed to have been no less than sixty feet high. She was found
unconscious at its foot, and for several days she was not expected to
recover from the injuries she had received. But she was doomed for a
far more terrible death.

For several days Joan of Arc took no nourishment. Gradually she
revived, and she told her jailers that her beloved Saint Catherine had
visited and comforted her; and she also told them that she knew
Compiegne would not be taken, and would be free from its enemies
before the Feast of Saint Martin.

Beaurevoir is now a ruin: although above the lintel can still be seen
the coat-of-arms of the jailer of the Maid, the tower in which she was
imprisoned, and from which she so nearly met her death, has been
destroyed.

In the month of November of that year (1430), in spite of the
entreaties of his wife and aunt, Ligny delivered up his prisoner into
the custody of the Duke of Burgundy, from who