Five Doctors in turn beset her with offers of favors if she would yield, with threats if she continued obdurate. In the latter case, they told her, she must be treated as a Saracen. Finally, since they might in no wise prevail over the dauntless soul, though the broken body lay helpless before them, they departed, leaving her to the tenderer mercies of the men-at-arms. The Articles of Accusation had been sent to the University of Paris, with a request for the opinion of that learned and pious body. While waiting for the answer, the Bishop of Beauvais filled the time with various ingenious devices, all planned to break the girl's spirit. On May 2nd, being in some measure recovered from her illness, she was brought out for a public meeting before sixty clerics, Cauchon at their head. The Bishop addressed her in his customary strain, accusing, exhorting, admonishing. "Read your book!" (i.e., the document containing her formal accusation), said Joan scornfully. "I will answer as I may. My appeal is to God, my Creator, whom I love with my whole heart." Wearily, wearily she listened to the many-times-told tale; briefly and bravely she made reply. "If I were now at the judgment seat, and if I saw the torch burning, and the fagots laid, and the executioner ready to light the fire; if I were in the fire, I would say what I have said, and no other word; would do what I have done, and no other thing." "_Superba responsio!_" writes Manchon the clerk opposite this entry. Since naught else might prevail against the obstinacy of this creature, how if they tried torture, or at the very least the threat of torture, the actual sight of its instruments? Two days later (May 4th), she was brought out again, this time into a dismal vaulted chamber, the donjon of Rouen Castle. The usual place of her torment was too small for the things she now saw displayed before her; rack, screws, all the hideous paraphernalia of the Holy Inquisition; beside these, two executioners, ready to perform their office. Joan was bidden to look upon these things, and told that if she did not avow the truth her body would be submitted to the torture. If we stood, as one may still stand, in that vaulted chamber, would not the answer ring out once more from those grim walls that received it? "Truly, if you should destroy my limbs and cause my soul to leave my body, I will tell you no other thing (than she has already told); and if I should say anything (i.e., under torture), I would always tell you afterward that you had made me say it by force." She trod, indeed, the narrow edge of a knife-blade. Question upon question was put; was answered briefly, clearly, and to the point. The clerics hesitated. Perhaps the torture might not be necessary, since there seemed a chance that even this might not prevail against this girl's stubbornness. In any case it would be well to leave the fear of it hanging over her for a time.