A noteworthy feature in her character was her Puritanism. She prohibited her soldiers from consorting with the prostitutes that followed the army; sometimes she even forced them to marry these women. Naturally the soldiers objected most strongly, and in the end this was one of the causes that led to her downfall. Jeanne used to run after the prohibited girls and strike them with the flat of her sword; in one case the girl was killed. In another the sword broke, and King Charles asked, very sensibly, “Would not a stick have done quite as well?” This is believed by some people to have been the very sword of Charles Martel which the priests had found for her at St. Catherine’s command, and naturally the soldiers, deprived of their female companions, wondered what sort of a holy sword could it have been which could not even stand the smiting of a prostitute? When people suffer from repression of the sex-complex the trouble may show itself either by constant indirect attempts to find favour in the eyes of individuals of the opposite sex, or sometimes by actually forbidding all sexual matters; Puritanism in sexual affairs is often an indication that all is not quite well with a woman’s subconscious mind; nor can one confine this generalization to one sex. It is not for one moment to be thought that Jeanne ever had the slightest idea of what was the matter with her; the whole of her delusions and Puritanism were to her quite conscious and real; the only thing that she did not know was that her delusions were entirely subjective--that her Voices had no existence outside her own mind. Her frantic belief in them led her to an heroic career and to the stake. She did not consciously repress her sex; Nature did that for her. Women who never menstruate are not uncommon; most gynæcologists see a few. Though they are sometimes normal in their sexual feelings--sometimes indeed they are even nymphomaniacs or very nearly so--yet they seldom marry, for they know themselves to be sterile, and, after all, most women seem to know at the bottom of their hearts that the purpose of women is to produce children. But there is still more of psychological interest to be gained from a careful reading of the first trial. It is possible to see how Jeanne’s unstable nervous system reacted to the long agony. We had better, in order to be fair, make quite certain why she was burned. These are the words uttered by the good Bishop of Beauvais as he sentenced her for the last time:-- “Thou hast been on the subject of thy pretended divine revelations and apparitions lying, seducing, pernicious, presumptuous, lightly believing, rash, superstitious, a divineress and blasphemer towards God and the Saints, a despiser of God Himself in His sacraments; a prevaricator of the Divine Law, of sacred doctrine and of ecclesiastical sanctions; seditious, cruel, apostate, schismatic, erring on many points of our Faith, and by these means rashly guilty towards God and Holy Church.”