JOAN OF ARC. 375 lated about her and her trial. The honest Bourgeois of Paris, in entering her execution in his journal, details the offences for which she was condemned, mixing up with the real articles others show- ing the exaggerations which were industriously circulated. Ac- cording to him she habitually rode armed with a great staff with which she cruelly beat her people when they displeased her, and in many places she pitilessly slew men and women who disobeyed her ; once, when violence was offered her, she leaped from the top of a lofty tower without injury, and boasted that, if she chose, she could bring thunder and other marvels. He admits, however, that even in Eouen there were many who held her to be martyred for her lawful lord.* It evidently was felt that in her dreadful death she had fitly crowned her career, and that sympathy for her fate was continuing her work by arousing popular sentiment, for, more than a month later, on July 4, an effort was made to counteract it by a sermon preached in Paris by a Dominican inquisitor — probably our friend Jean le Maitre himself. At great length he expatiated on her deeds of wickedness, and the mercy which had been shown her. She had confessed that from the age of fourteen she had dressed like a man, and her parents would have killed her could they have done so without wounding their consciences. She had therefore left them, accompanied by the devil, and had thence- forth lived by the homicide of Christians, full of fire and blood, till she was burned. She recanted and abjured, and would have had as penance four years' prison on bread and water, but she did not suffer this a single day, for she had herself served in prison like a lady. The devil appeared to her with two demons, fearing greatly that he would lose her, and said to her, "Wicked creature, who through fear hast abandoned thy dress, be not afraid, for Ave will protect thee from all." Then at once she disrobed and dressed herself in her male attire, which she had thrust in the straw of her bed, and she so trusted in Satan that she said she repented of hav-
- Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris, an 1431.— August 8, 1431, a monk named
Jean de la Pierre was brought before Cauchon and le Maitre charged with hav- ing spoken ill of the trial of Joan. This was a perilous offence when the Inqui- sition was concerned. He asked pardon on his knees, and excused himself on the ground that it was at table after taking too much wine. He was mercifully treated by imprisonment on bread and water in the Dominican convent until the following Easter. — L'Averdy, p. 141.
