ning of the trial, so barbarous as in the first days
after her arrival at Rouen, when she was treated like a caged wild
animal, the poor prisoner was watched day and night by three soldiers,
who, one must fear, outraged every sense of humanity in their
treatment of Joan. The very term _houspiller_ proves that they were
set apart to embitter the prisoner's already too cruel state. Although
Joan of Arc never herself disclosed the abominable fact, the reason
for retaining and continuing to wear her male dress was that it served
her as a protection from these ruffians. Chained to a heavy wooden
beam, her sufferings must have been at times almost beyond endurance;
but in this long torture, which was only to terminate in the flaming
death, her wonderful constancy and heaven-inspired spirit never
failed. Had she given way to a kind of despair, as happened shortly
before her final release--for only a few moments indeed--her jailers
would not have neglected to record such weakness as a sign that her
heavenly agencies had failed, if not forsaken her utterly. What
appears to have constituted the greatest privation to Joan of Arc
during her imprisonment was not being allowed the consolation of
receiving the rites of the religion she so fervently believed. During
the days on which the public examinations were held in the hall of the
castle, she was wont to be led from her dungeon by a passage leading
to the place of judgment: the castle chapel was passed in traversing
this passage. One day while going by the chapel door she asked one of
the sheriffs, Massieu, whether the Eucharist was then exposed within
the chapel, and, if so, whether she might be permitted to kneel before
the entrance. The man was humane enough to allow her to do so, but
this coming to the knowledge of one of Cauchon's familiars, the
sheriff was told if he allowed the prisoner again to kneel before the
chapel door that he would be thrown into prison--'and,' added Cauchon,
'in a prison where no light of sun or moon should appear!'

But perhaps among so many instances of cruelty and bigotry, the most
infamous act of all the many in this tragedy was that performed by the
Canon Nicolas Loiseleur, a creature of Cauchon, as false, as cruel, and
as unscrupulous as his master and patron. This reverend scoundrel had,
at the beginning of the trial, by his feigned sympathy for the
prisoner, wormed himself into Joan of Arc's confidence. He told her
that he, too, came from nea