her.

That answer of hers was quite long, quite frank, wholly free from
concealments or palliations. It made me shudder; I knew she was
pronouncing sentence of death upon herself. So did poor Manchon. And he
wrote in the margin abreast of it:

"RESPONSIO MORTIFERA."

Fatal answer. Yes, all present knew that it was, indeed, a fatal answer.
Then there fell a silence such as falls in a sick-room when the watchers
of the dying draw a deep breath and say softly one to another, "All is
over."

Here, likewise, all was over; but after some moments Cauchon, wishing to
clinch this matter and make it final, put this question:

"Do you still believe that your Voices are St. Marguerite and St.
Catherine?"

"Yes--and that they come from God."

"Yet you denied them on the scaffold?"

Then she made direct and clear affirmation that she had never had any
intention to deny them; and that if--I noted the if--"if she had made
some retractions and revocations on the scaffold it was from fear of the
fire, and it was a violation of the truth."

There it is again, you see. She certainly never knew what it was she had
done on the scaffold until she was told of it afterward by these people
and by her Voices.

And now she closed this most painful scene with these words; and there
was a weary note in them that was pathetic:

"I would rather do my penance all at once; let me die. I cannot endure
captivity any longer."

The spirit born for sunshine and liberty so longed for release that it
would take it in any form, even that.

Several among the company of judges went from the place troubled and
sorrowful, the others in another mood. In the court of the castle we
found the Earl of Warwick and fifty English waiting, impatient for
news. As soon as Cauchon saw them he shouted--laughing--think of a man
destroying a friendless poor girl and then having the heart to laugh at
it:

"Make yourselves comfortable--it's all over with her!"

23 The Time Is at Hand

THE YOUNG can sink into abysses of despondency, and it was so with Noel
and me now; but the hopes of the young are quick to rise again, and it
was so with ours. We called back that vague promise of the Voices, and
said the one to the other that the glorious release was to happen at
"the last moment"--"that other time was not the last moment, but this
is; it will happen now; the King will come, La Hire will come, and with
them our veterans, and behind them all France!" And