BISHOP CAUCHON (laughing)--"That is too much zeal, canon! In her infinite mercy, our holy mother the Church sends people to the pyre but never herself burns them with her maternal hands. Execution is the province of the secular arm. Thanks to your spiritual aid, it will be done that way with Joan. She shall be roasted as a relapsed heretic, and the Church will have shown herself full of clemency to the very end. Our triumph will have results of an importance that you do not dream of. Joan will become even in the eyes of her partisans the most despicable of creatures. We shall burn her body and we shall stain her name and fame for now and evermore." CANON LOYSELEUR--"How, monseigneur? I do not quite grasp your meaning." BISHOP CAUCHON--"I shall prove to you to-morrow what I am now saying. In the meantime we must also see what advantage we can draw from the otherwise annoying chastity of the she-devil. Because, may God pardon me, she is still a virgin. But it is growing late. Go and take a few hours of rest. To-morrow early you must be all sorrow, moans and sighs, with irons to your hands and feet and lying upon straw in the cell of Joan." The canon departs; the Bishop remains alone. He busies himself with the preparation of the process and the drawing up of a series of questions based upon the actions and words of Joan the Maid. CHAPTER II. IN THE DUNGEON. It is still night. A lamp feebly lights a dark subterraneous cell in the old donjon of the Castle of Rouen. The cell is a semi-circular cave. Its greenish walls ooze with the moisture of winter. A narrow window, furnished with an enormous iron bar is cut in a stone wall six feet thick. Opposite the airhole and under a vaulted passage is a massive door studded with iron and pierced with a grated wicket always kept open. A wooden box filled with straw lies to the left of the door; a long chain that is soldered in the wall and the other end of which is fastened to a heavy iron belt, now open, lies on the straw. At one end of the box, that is to serve as a bed, rises a beam so contrived as to hold fast the feet of the girl prisoner that is soon to be conveyed thither. A trunk, a stool, a table, the sorrowful furniture of a prisoner's cell, are barely distinguishable by the light of the lamp. Opposite this straw bed is another, furnished exactly like the first. On it lies Canon Loyseleur, in chains. He has just said a few words to the jailer John, an English soldier in burly middle age, who wears an old fur coat, and whose low and savage face is bloated by excessive indulgence in wine and strong liquors. His thick long beard, unkempt like his hair, falls down upon his chest. A cutlass hangs at his side. Presently another man of hang-dog looks pushes open the door and says to John: "Come, quick. Here is the witch!"