e by reading to the prisoner a different recantation from
that to which they had forced her to sign her mark. The one she marked
contained only six lines, and it did not take longer to read these few
lines, an eye-witness afterwards asserted, than it does to repeat the
'Paternoster'; whereas the one produced after the ceremony of the
abjuration filled several sides. But in an act of such infamy as this
of having cheated Joan of Arc not only into signing a recantation of
her life-work, but of confessing to her existence having been one long
series of superstitious and criminal workings with the spirits of
evil, it matters very little whether she signed a longer or a shorter
list of falsehoods invented by her persecuting judges.

While these things were taking place upon the platform on which Joan
was bullied into signing this abjuration, the English and their
faction in the crowd below began to fear that their victim would
escape them; they had not grasped the astuteness of the French
prelate, who was ready to hand his prisoner over to them directly he
had obtained this recantation from her hand. Cauchon was, however,
obliged to keep them waiting until he had got that by which he hoped
to destroy Joan of Arc's fame, and at the same time, and by the same
deed, to retain in his possession a formidable weapon by which he
thought to weaken the cause of the French monarch.

Cauchon may well have felt on that afternoon that what he had done for
the English cause merited as his reward the coveted archbishopric of
Rouen. There remained but one further act for him to play in this
drama before he quitted his platform. Rising from among his brother
bishops he read a list of the crimes committed by the prisoner, and
announced that, as Joan had now, owing to her abjuration of her sins,
re-entered into the fold of the Church, she was absolved by him from
her excommunication. However, he added, as she had sinned so
grievously against God and the Church, he, for the sake of her soul's
welfare, condemned her to perpetual imprisonment--'to the water of
sorrow, and the bread of anguish,' so that she might repent of her
faults, and cease ever to commit any more.

Then, in spite of the promises made to her of being placed in the
charge of the clergy, Cauchon ordered that Joan should be taken back
to her former prison.

Warwick is said to have displayed anger at this termination of the
proceedings. Observing this, one of the judges pacifi