he would demand a reading of the paper. They could not venture
to refuse this, with the public there to hear. Suppose that during the
reading her courage should return?--she would refuse to sign then. Very
well, even that difficulty could be got over. They could read a short
paper of no importance, then slip a long and deadly one into its place
and trick her into signing that.

Yet there was still one other difficulty. If they made her seem to
abjure, that would free her from the death-penalty. They could keep her
in a prison of the Church, but they could not kill her.

That would not answer; for only her death would content the English.
Alive she was a terror, in a prison or out of it. She had escaped from
two prisons already.

But even that difficulty could be managed. Cauchon would make promises
to her; in return she would promise to leave off the male dress. He
would violate his promises, and that would so situate her that she would
not be able to keep hers. Her lapse would condemn her to the stake, and
the stake would be ready.

These were the several moves; there was nothing to do but to make them,
each in its order, and the game was won. One might almost name the day
that the betrayed girl, the most innocent creature in France and the
noblest, would go to her pitiful death.

The world knows now that Cauchon's plan was as I have sketched it to
you, but the world did not know it at that time. There are sufficient
indications that Warwick and all the other English chiefs except the
highest one--the Cardinal of Winchester--were not let into the secret,
also, that only Loyseleur and Beaupere, on the French side, knew the
scheme. Sometimes I have doubted if even Loyseleur and Beaupere knew the
whole of it at first. However, if any did, it was these two.

It is usual to let the condemned pass their last night of life in peace,
but this grace was denied to poor Joan, if one may credit the rumors of
the time. Loyseleur was smuggled into her presence, and in the character
of priest, friend, and secret partisan of France and hater of England,
he spent some hours in beseeching her to do "the only right an righteous
thing"--submit to the Church, as a good Christian should; and that then
she would straightway get out of the clutches of the dreaded English and
be transferred to the Church's prison, where she would be honorably used
and have women about her for jailers. He knew where to touch her. He
knew how odious to her