ere written the different accusations
against her, which she had only to sign with her mark to be saved. All
about this abjuration was a mesh of confusion to the mind of Joan.
Massieu told her she need but make a mark on the parchment before her
to be delivered: if not--and he pointed down to a grim figure near the
foot of the stage they were on, where stood the headsman with cart and
assistants, ready to draw her to the stake.

'Abjure!' cried Erard and Massieu, 'or you will be taken and burnt.'

Even Joan of Arc's courage failed at that sight, and all the woman in
her nature asserted itself.

'Do what I tell you,' cried Loiseleur; 'abjure and put on woman's
dress, and all will yet be well.'

The text of the abjuration was then hurriedly read, Joan of Arc
following it, and repeating the words, the sense of which she had no
time to understand. She spoke the words, it is said, as one in a
dream. Some said she did this mockingly, for she was observed to
smile once or twice; but the poor soul's spirit was crushed, and
doubtless the whole scene was to her like an evil dream--the poor
broken-down body could not discriminate what words she was forced to
repeat. A troubled, horrible dream must that have seemed to the
hapless maiden, standing on that scaffold, with all the shouting mob
about, and all her deadly enemies at hand. She made her mark on the
parchment--a little cross--and the deed was done.

In the recantation, or abjuration, thus obtained from Joan of Arc, the
twelve articles were included, with all their abuse set down. Thus was
Joan obliged by her signature to declare that all her visions and
voices were false and from evil spirits; also that she had been guilty
of transgressing laws divine in having worn her hair cut short and the
dress of a man; also in having caused bloodshed; also in having
idolatrously invoked evil spirits; also in having treated God and His
sacraments with contempt; and, besides all this, of having acted
schismatically, and of having fallen foul of the Church: all of which
crimes and errors she now abjured, and humbly submitted herself to the
will of the Church and its ordinances. She promised with her
abjuration not to relapse, and called on Saint Peter, the Pope, as
well as the Bishop of Beauvais and other of her judges, to keep her
word.

Not content with having inveigled Joan of Arc into signing this
farrago of blasphemous nonsense, her judges, it seems, added fraud to
their crim