nd the
executioner ready to stir the fire, and I in the fire, I would say and
maintain till I died nought other than what I said during the trial."

At these words the Bishop declared the discussion at an end, and
deferred the pronouncing of the sentence till the morrow.[2448]

[Footnote 2448: _Ibid._, pp. 441, 442.]

The next day, the Thursday after Whitsuntide and the 24th day of May,
early in the morning, Maitre Jean Beaupere visited Jeanne in her
prison and warned her that she would be shortly taken to the scaffold
to hear a sermon.

"If you are a good Christian," he said, "you will agree to submit all
your deeds and sayings to Holy Mother Church, and especially to the
ecclesiastical judges."

Maitre Jean Beaupere thought he heard her reply, "So I will."[2449]

[Footnote 2449: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 21.]

If such were her answer, then it must have been because, worn out by a
flight of agony, her physical courage quailed at the thought of death
by burning.

Just when he was leaving her, as she stood near a door, Maitre Nicolas
Loiseleur gave her the same advice, and in order to induce her to
follow it, he made her a false promise:

"Jeanne, believe me," he said. "You have your deliverance in your own
hands. Wear the apparel of your sex, and do what shall be required of
you. Otherwise you stand in danger of death. If you do as I tell you,
good will come to you and no harm. You will be delivered into the
hands of the Church."[2450]

[Footnote 2450: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 146. De Beaurepaire, _Notes sur
les juges_, pp. 445 _et seq._]

She was taken in a cart and with an armed guard to that part of the
town called Bourg-l'Abbe, lying beneath the castle walls. And but a
short distance away the cart was stopped, in the cemetery of
Saint-Ouen, also called _les aitres[2451] Saint-Ouen_. Here a highly
popular fair was held every year on the feast day of the patron saint
of the Abbey.[2452] Here it was that Jeanne was to hear the sermon, as
so many other unhappy creatures had done before her. Places like this,
to which the folk could flock in crowds, were generally chosen for
these edifying spectacles. On the border of this vast charnel-house
for a hundred years there had towered a parish church, and on the
south there rose the nave of the abbey. Against the magnificent
edifice of the church two scaffolds had been erected,[2453] one large,
the other smaller. They were west of the porch which was called
_portail des