aditions are related regarding her death, but none with
much certainty. The executioner is said to have come later on that day
to Isambard in an agony of grief. He confessed himself, and told
Isambard that he felt Heaven would never pardon him for the part he
had taken in killing a saint. The poor fellow's responsibility for her
death was really not greater than that of the fagots and the flames
which had destroyed her life. On Cauchon and his gang of judges, lay
and clerical--on the University of Paris and the Catholic Church--on
Winchester and the English, noble and simple, who had sold and bought
the glorious Maid, the crime of her martyrdom will ever rest, and
surely no other crime but one in the world's history can be paralleled
with it.

CHAPTER VII.

_THE REHABILITATION_.

Twenty years after the events which I have attempted to describe, an
act of tardy justice was accorded to Joan of Arc. Charles VII. at
length felt it necessary, more for his own interest than for any care
of the memory of Joan of Arc, to have a revision made of the
iniquitous condemnation of the heroine.

This King, even if unable to rescue the Maid of Orleans from her
captors, might at least have attempted her release, yet during all the
time--over a year--of her imprisonment he had not even made a sign in
her behalf.

There does not exist in the documents of the time a trace of any
negotiation, of the smallest offer made to obtain her exchange by
prisoners or by ransom, or of any wish to effect her release. But
Charles was anxious on his own account, when France had almost wholly
been gained back to its allegiance, that his coronation at Rheims
should not be imputed to the actions and to the aid of one whom the
French clergy and the French judges had condemned and executed as a
heretic and apostate. Hence the vast judicial inquiry set on foot by
the King to vindicate the fame of her whom the English and the
Anglo-French had hoped, through the condemnation pronounced by Cauchon
in the name of the Church, to vilify, and through her, by her trial,
condemnation, and death, to discredit Charles and his coronation.

On the 15th of February, 1450, Charles VII. declared that Joan of
Arc's enemies had destroyed her 'against reason'--so ran the
formula--'and very cruelly,' and that it was his, the King's,
intention 'to obtain the truth regarding this affair.'

Pope Nicolas V. made difficulties. Cardinal d'Estouteville, who had
underta