as if they were the Church! But it availed nothing. I could
have told them that beforehand, if they had asked me. But they never
asked me anything; I was too humble a creature for their notice.

Then the interview closed with a threat; a threat of fearful import;
a threat calculated to make a Catholic Christian feel as if the ground
were sinking from under him:

"The Church calls upon you to submit; disobey, and she will abandon you
as if you were a pagan!"

Think of being abandoned by the Church!--that August Power in whose
hands is lodged the fate of the human race; whose scepter stretches
beyond the furthest constellation that twinkles in the sky; whose
authority is over millions that live and over the billions that wait
trembling in purgatory for ransom or doom; whose smile opens the gates
of heaven to you, whose frown delivers you to the fires of everlasting
hell; a Power whose dominion overshadows and belittles the pomps and
shows of a village. To be abandoned by one's King--yes, that is death,
and death is much; but to be abandoned by Rome, to be abandoned by the
Church! Ah, death is nothing to that, for that is consignment to endless
life--and such a life!

I could see the red waves tossing in that shoreless lake of fire, I
could see the black myriads of the damned rise out of them and struggle
and sink and rise again; and I knew that Joan was seeing what I saw,
while she paused musing; and I believed that she must yield now, and in
truth I hoped she would, for these men were able to make the threat good
and deliver her over to eternal suffering, and I knew that it was in
their natures to do it.

But I was foolish to think that thought and hope that hope. Joan of
Arc was not made as others are made. Fidelity to principle, fidelity
to truth, fidelity to her word, all these were in her bone and in her
flesh--they were parts of her. She could not change, she could not cast
them out. She was the very genius of Fidelity; she was Steadfastness
incarnated. Where she had taken her stand and planted her foot, there
she would abide; hell itself could not move her from that place.

Her Voices had not given her permission to make the sort of submission
that was required, therefore she would stand fast. She would wait, in
perfect obedience, let come what might.

My heart was like lead in my body when I went out from that dungeon;
but she--she was serene, she was not troubled. She had done what she
believed to be her