on again turned upon her
voices and apparitions.

'Do they always appear to you in the same dress? Always in the same
form, and richly crowned?'

Similar foolish questions were then put to her. Had the saints long
hair? She did not know. And what language did they converse in with
her?

'Their language,' she replied, 'is good and beautiful.'

'What sort of voices were theirs?'

'They speak to me in soft and beautiful French voices,' she said.

'Does not Saint Margaret speak in English?'

'How should she,' was the answer, 'when she is not on the side of the
English?'

'Do they wear ear-rings?'

This Joan could not say; but the idiotic question reminded the
prisoner that Cauchon had taken a ring from her. She had worn two--one
had been taken by the Burgundians when she was captured, the other by
the Bishop. The former had been given her by her parents, the latter
by one of her brothers. This ring she asked Cauchon to give the
Church.

'Had she not,' she was asked, 'made use of these rings to heal the
sick?'

She had never done so.

It is very easy throughout all these questionings to see how eager
Cauchon and the other judges were to find some acknowledgment from the
lips of Joan of Arc, upon which they could found a charge of heresy
against her. Her visions were distorted by them into a proof of
infernal agency; even the harmless superstitions of her village home
did not escape being turned into idolatrous and infernal matters of
belief.

Had not her saints, questioned the Bishop, appeared to her beneath
the haunted oak of Domremy?--and what had they promised her besides
the re-establishment of Charles upon the throne?

'They promised,' she answered, 'to take me with them to Paradise,
which I had prayed them to do.'

'Nothing more?' queried Cauchon.

'If they made me another promise,' Joan replied, 'I am not at liberty
to say what that promise is till three months are past.'

'Did they say that you would be free in three months' time?'

That question remained unanswered, but before those three months had
passed, the heroine had been delivered by death from all earthly
sufferings.

She was again minutely questioned regarding the superstitions of her
country. Was there not growing there a certain fabulous plant, called
Mandragora? Joan of Arc knew nothing regarding such a plant--had never
seen it, and did not know the use of it. Again the apparitions were
brought forward.

'What was Saint Mich