orture.

"Speak."

Then she made that great answer which will live forever; made it without
fuss or bravado, and yet how fine and noble was the sound of it:

"I will tell you nothing more than I have told you; no, not even if you
tear the limbs from my body. And even if in my pain I did say something
otherwise, I would always say afterward that it was the torture that
spoke and not I."

There was no crushing that spirit. You should have seen Cauchon.
Defeated again, and he had not dreamed of such a thing. I heard it said
the next day, around the town, that he had a full confession all written
out, in his pocket and all ready for Joan to sign. I do not know that
that was true, but it probably was, for her mark signed at the bottom of
a confession would be the kind of evidence (for effect with the public)
which Cauchon and his people were particularly value, you know.

No, there was no crushing that spirit, and no beclouding that clear
mind. Consider the depth, the wisdom of that answer, coming from an
ignorant girl. Why, there were not six men in the world who had ever
reflected that words forced out of a person by horrible tortures
were not necessarily words of verity and truth, yet this unlettered
peasant-girl put her finger upon that flaw with an unerring instinct.
I had always supposed that torture brought out the truth--everybody
supposed it; and when Joan came out with those simple common-sense words
they seemed to flood the place with light. It was like a lightning-flash
at midnight which suddenly reveals a fair valley sprinkled over with
silver streams and gleaming villages and farmsteads where was only an
impenetrable world of darkness before. Manchon stole a sidewise look at
me, and his face was full of surprise; and there was the like to be seen
in other faces there. Consider--they were old, and deeply cultured, yet
here was a village maid able to teach them something which they had not
known before. I heard one of them mutter:

"Verily it is a wonderful creature. She has laid her hand upon an
accepted truth that is as old as the world, and it has crumbled to dust
and rubbish under her touch. Now whence got she that marvelous insight?"

The judges laid their heads together and began to talk now. It was
plain, from chance words which one caught now and then, that Cauchon and
Loyseleur were insisting upon the application of the torture, and that
most of the others were urgently objecting.

Finally Cauch