s instruments where He
will."

She was asked what form of prayer she used in invoking counsel from on
high. She said the form was brief and simple; then she lifted her pallid
face and repeated it, clasping her chained hands:

"Most dear God, in honor of your holy passion I beseech you, if you love
me, that you will reveal to me what I am to answer to these churchmen.
As concerns my dress, I know by what command I have put it on, but I
know not in what manner I am to lay it off. I pray you tell me what to
do."

She was charged with having dared, against the precepts of God and His
saints, to assume empire over men and make herself Commander-in-Chief.
That touched the soldier in her. She had a deep reverence for priests,
but the soldier in her had but small reverence for a priest's opinions
about war; so, in her answer to this charge she did not condescend to
go into any explanations or excuses, but delivered herself with bland
indifference and military brevity.

"If I was Commander-in-Chief, it was to thrash the English."

Death was staring her in the face here all the time, but no matter;
she dearly loved to make these English-hearted Frenchmen squirm, and
whenever they gave her an opening she was prompt to jab her sting into
it. She got great refreshment out of these little episodes. Her days
were a desert; these were the oases in it.

Her being in the wars with men was charged against her as an indelicacy.
She said:

"I had a woman with me when I could--in towns and lodgings. In the field
I always slept in my armor."

That she and her family had been ennobled by the King was charged
against her as evidence that the source of her deeds were sordid
self-seeking. She answered that she had not asked this grace of the
King; it was his own act.

This third trial was ended at last. And once again there was no definite
result.

Possibly a fourth trial might succeed in defeating this apparently
unconquerable girl. So the malignant Bishop set himself to work to plan
it.

He appointed a commission to reduce the substance of the sixty-six
articles to twelve compact lies, as a basis for the new attempt. This
was done. It took several days.

Meantime Cauchon went to Joan's cell one day, with Manchon and two of
the judges, Isambard de la Pierre and Martin Ladvenue, to see if he
could not manage somehow to beguile Joan into submitting her mission to
the examination and decision of the Church Militant--that is to say,