caused them to
err in word and in deed.

On Sunday, the 3rd of September, 1430, they were taken to the Parvis
Notre Dame to hear a sermon. Platforms had been erected as usual, and
Sunday had been chosen as the day in order that folk might benefit
from this edifying spectacle. A famous doctor addressed a charitable
exhortation to both women. One of them, the youngest, as she listened
to him and looked at the stake that had been erected, was filled with
repentance. She confessed that she had been seduced by an angel of the
devil and duly renounced her error.

Pierronne, on the contrary, refused to retract. She obstinately
persisted in the belief that she saw God often, clothed as she had
said. The Church could do nothing for her. Given over to the secular
arm, she was straightway conducted to the stake which had been
prepared for her, and burned alive by the executioner.[2092]

[Footnote 2092: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 259-260,
271-272. Jean Nider, _Formicarium_, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 504. A. de
la Borderie, _Pierronne et Perrinaic_, pp. 7 _et seq._]

Thus did the Grand Inquisitor of France and the Bishop of Paris
cruelly cause to perish by an ignominious death one of those women who
had followed Friar Richard, one of the saints of the Dauphin Charles.
But the most famous of these women and the most abounding in works was
in their hands. The death of La Pierronne was an earnest of the fate
reserved for the Maid.

CHAPTER X

BEAUREVOIR--ARRAS--ROUEN--THE TRIAL FOR LAPSE

In the month of September, 1430, two inhabitants of Tournai, the chief
alderman, Bietremieu Carlier, and the chief Councillor, Henri Romain,
were returning from the banks of the Loire, whither their town had
despatched them on a mission to the King of France. They stopped at
Beaurevoir. Albeit this place lay upon their direct route and afforded
them a halt between two stages of their journey, one cannot help
supposing some connection to have existed between their mission to
Charles of Valois and their arrival in the domain of the Sire de
Luxembourg. The existence of such a connection seems all the more
probable when we remember the attachment of their fellow-citizens to
the Fleurs-de-Lis, and when we know the relations already existing
between the Maid and these emissaries.[2093]

[Footnote 2093: H. Vandenbroeck, _Extraits des anciens registres des
consaux de la ville de Tournai_, vol. ii (1422-1430), and Morosini,
vol. i