about the original which eludes all
efforts to convey it into our tongue. It is as subtle as an odor, and
escapes in the transmission. Her words were these:

"Il avait, a la peine, c'etait bien raison qu'il fut a l'honneur."

Monseigneur Ricard, Honorary Vicar-General to the Archbishop of Aix,
finely speaks of it (Jeanne d'Arc la Venerable, page 197) as "that
sublime reply, enduring in the history of celebrated sayings like the
cry of a French and Christian soul wounded unto death in its patriotism
and its faith." -- TRANSLATOR.

12 Joan's Master-Stroke Diverted

NOW, as a next move, this small secret court of holy assassins did a
thing so base that even at this day, in my old age, it is hard to speak
of it with patience.

In the beginning of her commerce with her Voices there at Domremy, the
child Joan solemnly devoted her life to God, vowing her pure body and
her pure soul to His service. You will remember that her parents tried
to stop her from going to the wars by haling her to the court at Toul
to compel her to make a marriage which she had never promised to make--a
marriage with our poor, good, windy, big, hard-fighting, and most dear
and lamented comrade, the Standard-Bearer, who fell in honorable battle
and sleeps with God these sixty years, peace to his ashes! And you will
remember how Joan, sixteen years old, stood up in that venerable court
and conducted her case all by herself, and tore the poor Paladin's case
to rags and blew it away with a breath; and how the astonished old judge
on the bench spoke of her as "this marvelous child."

You remember all that. Then think what I felt, to see these false
priests, here in the tribunal wherein Joan had fought a fourth lone
fight in three years, deliberately twist that matter entirely around
and try to make out that Joan haled the Paladin into court and pretended
that he had promised to marry her, and was bent on making him do it.

Certainly there was no baseness that those people were ashamed to stoop
to in their hunt for that friendless girl's life. What they wanted to
show was this--that she had committed the sin of relapsing from her vow
and trying to violate it.

Joan detailed the true history of the case, but lost her temper as she
went along, and finished with some words for Cauchon which he remembers
yet, whether he is fanning himself in the world he belongs in or has
swindled his way into the other.

The rest of this day and part of the nex