She was to be tried by the Church, yet she was placed in a military prison, instead of an ecclesiastical one guarded by women. There was but one solace; many times a day her Saints came to her whispering words of comfort and consolation. "But I do not always understand," said the maiden afterward before her judges, "because of the disturbance in the prison, and the noise made by the guards." And thus, in chains, in an iron cage, Jeanne D'Arc passed her nineteenth birthday. ----- [27] Andrew Lang. CHAPTER XXVI ON TRIAL "_Great in everything as she was we here see her at her greatest._" ANDREW LANG. "_The Maid of France._" The days passed drearily enough in the prison cell, but Jeanne endured the chains, the irons, and the hideous company of the guards rather than give her parole not to attempt an escape. The monotony of her misery was varied by visitors who came to stare at her and to banter her. In the castle in which she was confined there were many people: Bedford, the Regent, Beaufort, the Cardinal of Winchester, the child king, Henry of England, the Earl of Warwick, the chief officers of both the royal and vice-royal court, and a host of guards and men-at-arms. There were many of these who were inquisitive and malicious concerning her. One of the visitors was Pierre Manuel, advocate of the King of England. "You would not have come here if you had not been brought," he accosted her jestingly. "Did you know before you were taken that you would be captured?" "I feared it," Jeanne answered sadly. "If you feared it, why were you not on your guard?" "I did not know the day nor the hour," she answered patiently. The Earl of Warwick himself took more than one occasion to show Jeanne to his friends, and one day he brought the Earl of Stafford and Jean de Luxembourg to see her. De Luxembourg was the same who had sold her to the English. "Jeanne, I have come to ransom you," remarked the latter laughingly as the girl rose to a sitting posture from the bed where she was chained to give them courteous greeting. "That is, if you will promise never again to bear arms against us." "In God's name, you mock me," she cried with a flash of spirit. "I know that you have neither the will nor the power. I know that the English mean to kill me, believing, after I am dead, that they will be able to win the Kingdom of France; but if there were a hundred thousand more Godons than there are, they shall never win the Kingdom." Whereupon Lord Stafford was so goaded to rage that he half drew his dagger to slay her, but Warwick stayed his hand. It was too merciful a death, and it was the English policy to have her executed ignominiously as a witch.