The sixth and last day's public examination took place on the 3rd of
March, forty-two judges present. The long series of questions were
nearly all relating to the appearance of the saints. Both questions
and answers were nearly the same as on the previous occasions, and
little more information was got from the prisoner.
After these, the subject of her dress--what she then wore, and what
she had worn--was entered upon.
'When you came to the King,' she was asked, 'did he not inquire if
your change in dress was owing to a revelation or not?'
'I have already answered,' said Joan, 'that I do not remember if he
asked me. This evidence was made known when I was at Poitiers.'
'And the doctors who examined you,' asked Beaupere, 'at Poitiers, did
they not want to know regarding your being dressed in man's clothes?'
'I don't remember,' she answered; 'but they asked me when I had first
begun to wear man's dress, and I told them that it was when I was at
Vaucouleurs.'
She was then asked whether the Queen had not asked her to leave off
wearing male clothes. She answered that that had nothing to do with
the trial.
'But,' next inquired Beaupere, 'when you were at the castle of
Beaurevoir, did not the ladies there ask you to do so?'
'Yes,' was the answer, 'and they offered to give me a woman's dress.
But the time had not yet come.' She would, she added, have yielded
sooner to the wishes of those ladies than to those of any other, the
Queen excepted.
The subject of the flags and banners used by her during her campaigns
was now entered on.
Had her standards not been copied by the men-at-arms?
'They did so at their pleasures,' she answered.
'Of what material was the banner made? If the poles were broken, were
they renewed?'
'They were,' she answered, 'when broken.'
'Did you not,' asked Beaupere, 'say that the flags made like your
banners were of good augury?'
'What I said,' answered Joan, 'to my soldiers was, that they should
attack the enemy with boldness.'
'Did you not sprinkle holy water on the banners?'
To this question Joan refused to answer.
Next she was questioned about a certain Friar Richard, the preaching
friar who had seen her at Troyes. She answered that he came to her
making the sign of the Cross, and that she told him to come up to her
without fear.
She was asked if it was true that she had pictures painted of herself
in the likeness of a saint.
'When at Arras,' she answered, 'she had seen a portrait of herself, in
which she was represented kneeling before the King and presenting him
with a letter.'
'But was there not a picture of you,' asked Beaupere, 'in your host's
house at Orleans?'
Joan of Arc knew nothing regarding such a picture.
'Did you not know,' was the next question put, 'that your partisans
had prayers and masses said in your honour?'
'If they did so,' she answered, 'it was not by my wish; but if they
prayed for me,' she added, 'there was no harm in so doing.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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