of the trial took place on the 1st of March. Fifty-eight
judges were present.

The opening proceedings were the same as on the former occasions, and
Joan of Arc again professed her willingness to answer all questions
put to her regarding her deeds as readily as if she were in the
presence of the Pope of Rome himself; but, as formerly, she gave no
promise of revealing what her voices had told her.

Beaupere caught immediately at the opportunity of her having spoken of
the Pope to lay a pitfall in her path: Which Pope did she believe the
authentic one--he at Avignon or the one in Rome?

'Are there two?' she asked. This was an awkward question to those
bishops and doctors of the faith who had for so long a time encouraged
the schism in the Church.

Beaupere evaded the question, and asked her if it were true that she
had received a letter from the Count of Armagnac asking her which of
the two Popes he was bound to obey.

A copy of this letter was produced, as well as the one sent by Joan of
Arc in reply.

When she sent her answer, the Maid said, she was about to mount her
horse, and had told him she would be able better to answer his
question when at rest in Paris or elsewhere. The copy of her letter
which was now read, Joan said, did not quite agree with that she had
sent to Armagnac.

'She had not,' Joan added, 'said in her letter that what she knew was
by the inspiration of Heaven.'

Again pressed as to which of the two Popes she believed the true one,
she said that the one then in Rome was to her that one.

Questioned regarding her letter to the English before Orleans, she
acknowledged the accurateness of the copy produced, with the exception
of a slight mistake. She retracted nothing regarding this letter, and
declared that the English would, ere seven years were passed from that
time, give a more striking proof of their loss of power in France than
that which they had shown before Orleans. This prediction was
literally carried out when, in 1436, Paris opened its gates to Charles
VII., the loss of the capital being shortly after followed by the loss
of all the other English conquests, with the exception of the town of
Calais--the gains of a century of war being snatched from them in a
score of years.

'They will meet,' said Joan of Arc, 'with greater reverses than have
yet befallen them.'

When she was asked what made her speak thus, she answered that these
things had been revealed to her. The examinati