Captured near Compiègne, Joan had been sent to Rouen by the bishop of Beauvais. This was in March. The girl was examined fifteen or sixteen times, a wearying repetition of question and answer, often going round and round in a circle and never advancing any further. Joan’s replies were simple but firm. She persisted in her divine mission, and when asked whether she was in a state of grace or of sin replied, “If I am not in a state of grace, I hope God will make me so. How can I be in much sin while the saints will visit me?” In May matters were delayed by her illness, which was so serious that it seemed for a time as though her enemies were to be defeated by death; but on her recovery learned doctors were sent to her in prison to persuade her of her wrong attitude of mind. Later came a warning from Cauchon, the bishop of Beauvais, to the effect that he was about to have her brought forth and made the object of a public sermon, after which, if she would recant, her safety would be assured. Worn out with her trials, the poor girl declared her submission and signed a recantation, for she saw that the end could not but come soon. A penance of perpetual imprisonment was then imposed upon her, and she submitted passively to the injunctions laid upon her; but at her final abjuration she seemed to be overcome by a sudden access of penitence towards the saints, and resumed her old attitude of determination, declaring that all she had said in submission was said in fear of being burned at the stake, of which she had a very natural horror. After this her fate was sealed. Cauchon handed her over to the secular arm, and a few hours later she was led to the stake in the old market-place. It is needless to dwell upon this last scene, because it is one of the stock dramatic occurrences in our history books, which nearly always represent Joan of Arc as suffering trial, torment and death, for the sake of her country with almost unnatural fortitude; but, on the other hand, the more one reads about her, the more clear it becomes that the heroism of the Maid of Orléans, though none the less heroic, was a heroism of the simplest order, born of a pure heart, a steady, straightforward faith in her mission, and only wavering at the last from a very human and girlish horror of so infamous and dreadful a death. And as for her judges, needlessly cruel though they were, yet, as one writer points out, they were almost bound to condemn their prisoner. To try her for sorcery and to burn her as a witch seems of course to our modern eyes not merely horrible, but absurd. Cauchon and his followers, however, did not live in an enlightened age; in their day the “Black Art” was a thing to be dreaded above all others, and death seemed a light thing in comparison with the putting down the power of the Evil One. Others besides Joan of Arc, for generations before and generations after, had died at the stake for reputed practice of magic; and in the