hat, if he divorced his wife, he should not
"reign a month, but should die a villain's death."[326] Burdened with this
message, she forced herself into the presence of Henry himself;[327] and
when she failed to produce an effect upon Henry's obdurate scepticism, she
turned to the hesitating ecclesiastics, and roused their flagging spirits.
The archbishop bent under her denunciations, and at her earnest request
introduced her to Wolsey, then tottering on the edge of ruin.[328] He, too,
in his confusion and perplexity, was frightened, and doubted. She made
herself known to the papal ambassadors, and through them she took upon
herself to threaten Clement,[329] assuming, in virtue of her divine
commission, an authority above all principalities and powers. If it were
likely that she could have heard the story of the Maid of Orleans, it might
be supposed that her imagination tempted her to play again a similar career
on an English stage, and that she fancied herself the destined saviour of
the Church of Christ, as the Maid had been the saviour of France.

It would indeed be a libel on the fair fame of Joan of Arc, if she were to
be compared to a confessed impostor; but Joan of Arc might have been the
reality which the Nun attempted to counterfeit; and the history of the true
heroine might have suggested easily to the imitator the outline of her
part. A revolution had been effected in Europe by a somnambulist peasant
girl; another peasant girl, a somnambulist also, might have seen in the
achievement which had been already accomplished, an earnest of what might
be done by herself. While we call the Nun, too, an impostor, we are bound
to believe that she first imposed upon herself, and that her wildest
adventures into falsehood were compatible with a belief that she was really
and truly inspired. Nothing short of such a conviction would have enabled
her to play a part among kings and queens, and so many of the ablest
statesmen of that most able age. Nothing else could have tempted her, on
the failure of her prophecies, into the desperate career of treason into
which we are soon to see her launched.

Her proceedings were known partially, but partially only, to the king; and
the king seems to have been the only person whose understanding was proof
against her influence. To him she appeared nothing worse than an excited
fanatic, and he allowed her to go her own way, as the best escapement of a
frenzy. Until parliament had declared i