the Voices had become (very like ordinary
voices in perplexed times,) contradictory and
confused, so that now they said one thing,
and now said another, and the Maid lost
credit every day. Charles marched on Paris,
which was opposed to him, and attacked the
suburb of Saint Honoré. In this fight, being
again struck down into the ditch, she was
abandoned by the whole army. She lay
unaided among a heap of dead, and crawled out
how she could. Then, some of her believers
went over to an opposition Maid, Catherine
of La Rochelle, who said she was inspired to
tell where there were treasures of buried
money—though she never did—and then Joan
accidentally broke the old, old sword, and
others said that her power was broken with
it. Finally, at the siege of Compiègne, held
by the Duke of Burgundy, where she did
valiant service, she was basely left alone in
a retreat, though facing about and fighting
to the last; and an archer pulled her off her
horse.

O the uproar that was made, and the
thanksgivings that were sung, about the
capture of this one poor country-girl! O the
way in which she was demanded to be tried
for sorcery and heresy, and anything else
you like, by the Inquisitor-General of France,
and by this great man, and by that great
man, until it is wearisome to think of! She
was bought at last by the Bishop of Beauvais
for ten thousand francs, and was shut up in
her narrow prison: plain Joan of Arc again,
and Maid of Orleans no more.

I should never have done if I were to tell
you how they had Joan out to examine
her, and cross-examine her, and re-examine
her, and worry her into saying anything and
everything; and how all sorts of scholars and
doctors bestowed their utmost tediousness
upon her. Sixteen times she was brought out
and shut up again, and worried, and
entrapped, and argued with, until she was
heart-sick of the dreary business. On the
last occasion of this kind she was brought
into a burial-place at Rouen, dismally
decorated with a scaffold, and a stake and
faggots, and the executioner, and a pulpit
with a friar therein, and an awful sermon
ready. It is very affecting to know that
even at that pass the poor girl honored the
mean vermin of a King, who had so used her
for his purposes and so abandoned her; and,
that while she had been regardless of
reproaches heaped upon herself, she spoke out
courageously for him.

It was natural in one so young, to hold to
life. To save her life, she signed a declaration
prepared for her—signed it with a cross,
for she couldn't write—that all her visions
and Voices had come from the Devil. Upon
her recanting the past, and protesting that
she would never wear a man's dress in future,
she was condemned to imprisonment for life,
"on the bread of sorrow and the water of
affliction."

But, on the bread of sorrow and the water
of affliction, the visions and the Voices soon
returned. It was quite natural that they
should do so, for that kind of disease is much
aggravated by fasting, loneliness, and anxiety
of mind. It was not only got out of Joan that
she considered herself inspired again, but, she
was taken in a man's dress, which had been
left—to entrap her—in her prison, and which
she put on, in her solitude; perhaps, in
remembrance of her past glories; perhaps, because
the imaginary Voices told her. For this
relapse into the sorcery and heresy and
anything else you like, she was sentenced to be
burnt to death. And, in the market-place of
Rouen, in the hideous dress which the monks
had invented for such spectacles, with priests
and bishops sitting in a gallery looking on,
though some had the Christian grace to go
away, unable to endure the infamous scene;
this shrieking girl —last seen amidst the smoke
and fire, holding a crucifix between her hands;
last heard, calling upon Christ—was burnt to
ashes. They threw her ashes in the river
Seine; but, they will rise against her
murderers on the last day.

From the moment of her capture, neither
the French King nor one single man in all
his court raised a finger to save her. It is
no defence of them that they may have never
really believed in her, or that they may have
won her victories by their skill and bravery.
The more they pretended to believe in her,
the more they had caused her to believe in
herself; and she had ever been true to them,
ever brave, ever nobly devoted. But, it is no
wonder, that they, who were in all things false
to themselves, false to one another, false to
their country, false to Heaven, and false to
Earth, should be monsters of ingratitude and
treachery to a helpless peasant girl.

In the picturesque old town of Rouen, where
weeds and grass grow high on the cathedral
towers, and venerable Norman streets are
still warm in the blessed sunlight though the
monkish fires that once gleamed horribly upon
them have long grown cold, there is a statue
of Joan of Arc, in the scene of her last
agony, the square to which she has given
its present name. I know some statues of
modern times—even in the World's metropolis,
I think—which commemorate less
constancy, less earnestness, smaller claims
upon the world's attention, and much greater
impostors.

Now Ready, Price 3s. 6d,
THE FIRST VOLUME OF
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
To be completed in three Volumes, of the same size and price.
Collected and revised from " Household Words,"
With a Table of Dates.
BRADBURY AND EVANS, 11, BOUVERIE STREET.