aid to my lord the Bishop that you would answer him as you
would answer before our Holy Father the Pope, and yet there are several
questions which you continually refuse to answer. Would you not answer
the Pope more fully than you have answered before my lord of Beauvais?
Would you not feel obliged to answer the Pope, who is the Vicar of God,
more fully?"

Now a thunder-clap fell out of a clear sky:

"Take me to the Pope. I will answer to everything that I ought to."

It made the Bishop's purple face fairly blanch with consternation. If
Joan had only known, if she had only know! She had lodged a mine under
this black conspiracy able to blow the Bishop's schemes to the four
winds of heaven, and she didn't know it. She had made that speech by
mere instinct, not suspecting what tremendous forces were hidden in it,
and there was none to tell her what she had done. I knew, and Manchon
knew; and if she had known how to read writing we could have hoped to
get the knowledge to her somehow; but speech was the only way, and none
was allowed to approach her near enough for that. So there she sat,
once more Joan of Arc the Victorious, but all unconscious of it. She was
miserably worn and tired, by the long day's struggle and by illness, or
she must have noticed the effect of that speech and divined the reason
of it.

She had made many master-strokes, but this was the master-stroke. It was
an appeal to Rome. It was her clear right; and if she had persisted
in it Cauchon's plot would have tumbled about his ears like a house of
cards, and he would have gone from that place the worst-beaten man of
the century. He was daring, but he was not daring enough to stand up
against that demand if Joan had urged it. But no, she was ignorant, poor
thing, and did not know what a blow she had struck for life and liberty.

France was not the Church. Rome had no interest in the destruction of
this messenger of God.

Rome would have given her a fair trial, and that was all that her cause
needed. From that trial she would have gone forth free, and honored, and
blessed.

But it was not so fated. Cauchon at once diverted the questions to other
matters and hurried the trial quickly to an end.

As Joan moved feebly away, dragging her chains, I felt stunned and
dazed, and kept saying to myself, "Such a little while ago she said the
saving word and could have gone free; and now, there she goes to her
death; yes, it is to her death, I know it, I feel