so incurred the crime of heresy.

This attack on Charles roused the indignation of the Maid. Turning on
the monk, without a moment's thought of her own situation, and the
fresh danger she exposed herself to, the noble girl exclaimed: 'By my
faith, and with all respect to you, I dare to affirm on my peril that
the King of this realm is the noblest of Christians, and no one has
greater love for the Faith and Church than my King!'

'Silence her!' shrieked the preacher, beside himself with rage at
finding that these few words from the lips of Joan of Arc had
destroyed all the effect of his eloquence on that vast crowd, whose
sympathy must have been now strongly shown towards the glorious victim
before them.

Again summoned to submit to the Church, Joan said: 'I have answered on
that point already to my judges. I call upon them to send an account
of all my actions to the Holy Father at Rome, to whom after God I
submit myself.'

This was not what Cauchon wished his victim to express, for one of the
charges that he had made against her was her refusal to submit to the
Pope. He therefore changed the subject, and asked Joan of Arc whether
she acknowledged that there were any things evil among those deeds she
had committed or said.

'As to my deeds and sayings,' she answered, 'I have done them by the
command of God.'

'Then you admit,' said the Bishop, 'that the King and others have
sometimes urged you to act as you have done?'

'As to my words and actions,' she answered, 'I make no one, and
particularly not the King, responsible. If any wrong has been
committed, it is I who am to blame, and not another.'

'But,' said Cauchon, 'those acts and words of yours which have been
found evil by the judges, will you recant them?'

'I submit them,' said Joan, 'to God and our Holy Father the Pope.'

'The bishops,' continued Cauchon, 'are the judges in their dioceses,
therefore you must submit to the Church as your judges have determined
that you shall do.'

Joan still refused, and the Bishop then began to read the sentence
condemning her to death as a heretic.

Now arose a great uproar among the clergy and others on the platforms
and among the crowd beneath. Loiseleur and Massieu urged her to
abjure; the former promising that if she consented she would, after
abjuring, be taken from her English jailers and placed in keeping of
the clergy. In the midst of the hubbub Erard produced a parchment
scroll, on which, he told Joan, w