Jeanne D'Arc: Her Life And DeathOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
History
Jeanne D'Arc: Her Life And Death
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
France -- History; Joan, of Arc, Saint, 1412-1431
A day or two later Manchon, the Clerk of the Court (he who refused to
take down Jeanne's conversation with her Judas), met this same lawyer
Lohier at church, and asked him, as no doubt every man asked every
other whom he met, how did he think the trial was going? to which Lohier
answered: "You see the manner in which they proceed; they will take her,
if they can, in her words--that is to say, the assertions in which she
says _I know for certain_, things that concern her apparitions. If she
would say, 'It seems to me' instead of 'I know for certain,' I do not
see how any man could condemn her. It appears that they proceed against
her rather from hate than from any other cause, and for this reason I
shall not remain here. I will have nothing to do with it." This I think
shows very clearly that Lohier, like the bulk of the population, by no
means thought at first that it was "from hate" that the trial proceeded,
but honestly believed that he had been called to try Jeanne as a
professor of the black arts; and that he had discovered from her own
testimony that she was not so, and that the motive of the trial was
entirely a different one from that of justice; one in fact with which an
honest man could have nothing to do.
It is very significant also that the number of judges present in
court on the sixth day, the last of the public examination, was only
thirty-eight, as against the sixty-two of the second day, which seems to
prove that a general disgust and alarm was growing in the minds of those
most closely concerned. Warwick and the soldiers, impatient of all
such business, striding in noisily from time to time to give a careless
glance at the proceedings, might not stay long enough to share the
impression--or might, who can say? Their business was to get this
pestilent woman, even if by chance she might be an innocent fanatic,
cleared off the face of the earth and out of their way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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