If the Church
could be brought to take her life, or to proclaim her an idolater, a
heretic, a witch, sent from Satan, not from heaven, it was believed that
the English supremacy could be at once reinstated.

The Duke of Burgundy listened--but waited. He could not doubt that the
French King or the French people would come forward presently and pay a
higher price than the English. He kept Joan a close prisoner in a
strong fortress, and continued to wait, week after week. He was a French
prince, and was at heart ashamed to sell her to the English. Yet with
all his waiting no offer came to him from the French side.

One day Joan played a cunning trick on her jailer, and not only slipped
out of her prison, but locked him up in it. But as she fled away she was
seen by a sentinel, and was caught and brought back.

Then she was sent to Beaurevoir, a stronger castle. This was early in
August, and she had been in captivity more than two months now. Here she
was shut up in the top of a tower which was sixty feet high. She ate her
heart there for another long stretch--about three months and a half.
And she was aware, all these weary five months of captivity, that the
English, under cover of the Church, were dickering for her as one would
dicker for a horse or a slave, and that France was silent, the King
silent, all her friends the same. Yes, it was pitiful.

And yet when she heard at last that Compiegne was being closely besieged
and likely to be captured, and that the enemy had declared that no
inhabitant of it should escape massacre, not even children of seven
years of age, she was in a fever at once to fly to our rescue. So she
tore her bedclothes to strips and tied them together and descended
this frail rope in the night, and it broke, and she fell and was badly
bruised, and remained three days insensible, meantime neither eating nor
drinking.

And now came relief to us, led by the Count of Vendome, and Compiegne
was saved and the siege raised. This was a disaster to the Duke of
Burgundy. He had to save money now. It was a good time for a new bid to
be made for Joan of Arc. The English at once sent a French bishop--that
forever infamous Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais. He was partly promised
the Archbishopric of Rouen, which was vacant, if he should succeed. He
claimed the right to preside over Joan's ecclesiastical trial because
the battle-ground where she was taken was within his diocese. By the
military usage of the time th