chains were
taken off me, and if I was placed in some other prison where some
woman could be near me, then I should do all that is required of me by
the Church.'

In all Joan of Arc's answers it should be noticed that she never, in
spite of the terrible sufferings she endured, and the gross
barbarities inflicted on her, in any single instance ever made any
complaint of her treatment. There is something superhuman in this
utter absence of any shade of vindictiveness, when one thinks that, by
a few words, she might have saved herself from much of what she had to
suffer. Never once did she blame even those who had deceived,
insulted, and ill-treated her; her life was one beautiful example,
full of divine charity and forgiveness.

Cauchon, to make doubly sure of completing his work, then asked Joan:
'Have you, since last Thursday, heard the voices of Saint Catherine
and Saint Margaret?'

'Yes,' she answered.

'And,' continued the Bishop, 'what did they say?'

'They told me of the great sorrow they felt for the great treason to
which I have been led, by my abjuring and revoking my deeds in order
to save my life, and that by so doing I have lost my soul.'

On the margin of the original document of the MSS. of this
examination, written in the prison, the original of which is in the
National Library in Paris, we find alongside of this answer of Joan of
Arc's the following words: '_Responsio mortifera_.' Indeed it was an
answer of deadliest import; for Joan in asserting that her voices had
again spoken to her, and in saying that she had committed a mortal sin
by recanting her deeds, had thrown away the only plank of safety left
her.

It seems to us evident, however, that Joan of Arc was now quite eager
and willing to meet the worst that her enemies could inflict upon her:
death itself must now have seemed more tolerable than the daily death
she was undergoing in her prison.

'Did your voices urge you to resist giving way about the recantation?'
questioned the Bishop.

'My voices,' Joan said, 'told me as I stood on the platform before the
people that I should answer the preacher with boldness.'

'Did he not,' said Cauchon, 'speak the truth?'

'No,' she answered, 'he was a false preacher; and he accused me of
having done things which I never did.'

'But,' then said Cauchon, 'do you mean to tell us that you still
persist in saying that you have been sent by God?'

To which Joan replied that that was still her bel