it almost took my breath away and set me trembling
like a leaf. I suppose that without knowing it I had been half imagining
that at the last moment something would happen, something that would
stop this fatal trial; maybe that La Hire would burst in at the gates
with his hellions at his back; maybe that God would have pity and
stretch forth His mighty hand. But now--now there was no hope.

The trial was to begin in the chapel of the fortress and would be
public. So I went sorrowing away and told Noel, so that he might be
there early and secure a place. It would give him a chance to look again
upon the face which we so revered and which was so precious to us.
All the way, both going and coming, I plowed through chattering and
rejoicing multitudes of English soldiery and English-hearted French
citizens. There was no talk but of the coming event. Many times I heard
the remark, accompanied by a pitiless laugh:

"The fat Bishop has got things as he wants them at last, and says he
will lead the vile witch a merry dance and a short one."

But here and there I glimpsed compassion and distress in a face, and
it was not always a French one. English soldiers feared Joan, but they
admired her for her great deeds and her unconquerable spirit.

In the morning Manchon and I went early, yet as we approached the
vast fortress we found crowds of men already there and still others
gathering. The chapel was already full and the way barred against
further admissions of unofficial persons. We took our appointed places.
Throned on high sat the president, Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, in
his grand robes, and before him in rows sat his robed court--fifty
distinguished ecclesiastics, men of high degree in the Church, of
clear-cut intellectual faces, men of deep learning, veteran adepts in
strategy and casuistry, practised setters of traps for ignorant minds
and unwary feet. When I looked around upon this army of masters of
legal fence, gathered here to find just one verdict and no other,
and remembered that Joan must fight for her good name and her life
single-handed against them, I asked myself what chance an ignorant poor
country-girl of nineteen could have in such an unequal conflict; and
my heart sank down low, very low. When I looked again at that obese
president, puffing and wheezing there, his great belly distending and
receding with each breath, and noted his three chins, fold above fold,
and his knobby and knotty face, and his purple