ne friend that would not
forsake her, and not for herself; bidding him with her last breath to care
for his own preservation, but to leave _her_ to God. That girl, whose
latest breath ascended in this sublime expression of self-oblivion, did not
utter the word _recant_ either with her lips or in her heart. No; she did
not, though one should rise from the dead to swear it.

* * * * *

Bishop of Beauvais! thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold--thou upon a
down bed. But for the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike.
At the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is
resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the torturer have
the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together into sleep; together
both, sometimes, kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists were gathering
fast upon you two, Bishop and Shepherd girl--when the pavilions of life
were closing up their shadowy curtains about you--let us try, through the
gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your separate visions.

The shepherd girl that had delivered France--she, from her dungeon, she,
from her baiting at the stake, she, from her duel with fire, as she entered
her last dream--saw Domremy, saw the fountain of Domremy, saw the pomp of
forests in which her childhood had wandered. That Easter festival, which
man had denied to her languishing heart--that resurrection of spring-time,
which the darkness of dungeons had intercepted from _her_, hungering after
the glorious liberty of forests--were by God given back into her hands, as
jewels that had been stolen from her by robbers. With those, perhaps, (for
the minutes of dreams can stretch into ages,) was given back to her by God
the bliss of childhood. By special privilege, for _her_ might be created,
in this farewell dream, a second childhood, innocent as the first; but not,
like _that_, sad with the gloom of a fearful mission in the rear. This
mission had now been fulfilled. The storm was weathered, the skirts even of
that mighty storm were drawing off. The blood, that she was to reckon for,
had been exacted; the tears, that she was to shed in secret, had been paid
to the last. The hatred to herself in all eyes had been faced steadily, had
been suffered, had been survived. And in her last fight upon the scaffold
she had triumphed gloriously; victoriously she had tasted the stings of
death. For all, except this comfort