habilitation trial
added little to the popular legend. It rendered it possible to connect
with Jeanne's death the usual incidents narrated of the martyrdom of
virgins, such as the dove taking flight from the stake, the name of
Jesus written in letters of flame, the heart intact in the
ashes.[2732] The miserable deaths of the wicked judges were insisted
upon. True it is that Jean d'Estivet, the Promoter, was found dead in
a dove-cot,[2733] that Nicolas Midi was attacked by leprosy, that
Pierre Cauchon died when he was being shaved.[2734] But, among those
who aided and accompanied the Maid, more than one came to a bad end.
Sire Robert de Baudricourt, who had sent Jeanne to the King, died in
prison, excommunicated for having laid waste the lands of the chapter
of Toul.[2735] The Marechal de Rais was sentenced to death.[2736] The
Duke of Alencon, convicted of high treason, was pardoned only to fall
under a new condemnation and to die in captivity.[2737]

[Footnote 2732: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 355.]

[Footnote 2733: _Ibid._, p. 162.]

[Footnote 2734: _Gallia Christiana_, vol. xi, col. 793.]

[Footnote 2735: _Histoire ecclesiastique et politique de la ville et
du diocese de Toul_, 1707, p. 529.]

[Footnote 2736: Abbe Bossard, _Gilles de Rais_, pp. 333 _et seq._]

[Footnote 2737: De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. vi, p.
197.]

Two years after Charles VII had ordered the preliminary inquiry into
the trial of 1431, a woman, following the example of la Dame des
Armoises, passed herself off as the Maid Jeanne.

At this time there lived in the little town of Sarmaize, between the
Marne and the Meuse, two cousins german of the Maid, Poiresson and
Perinet, both sons of the late Jean de Vouthon, Isabelle Romee's
brother, who in his lifetime had been a thatcher by trade. Now, on a
day in 1452, it befell that the cure of Notre Dame de Sarmaize, Simon
Fauchard, being in the market-house of the town, there came to him a
woman dressed as a youth who asked him to play at tennis with her.

He consented, and when they had begun their game the woman said to
him, "Say boldly that you have played tennis with the Maid." And at
these words Simon Fauchard was right joyful.

The woman afterwards went to the house of Perinet, the carpenter, and
said, "I am the Maid; I come to visit my Cousin Henri."

Perinet, Poiresson, and Henri de Vouthon made her good cheer and kept
her in their house, where she ate and drank as she pleased