JOAN DARC--"Only an instant ago, they said to me: 'Accept everything meekly, bravely undergo your martyrdom. Have courage and patience. You will gain paradise!'" THE INQUISITOR--"And do you expect to gain paradise?" JOAN DARC (radiantly)--"I believe it as firmly as if I were there now. God keeps my place." BISHOP CAUCHON (excitedly, and looking at the judges)--"Here is an answer of much weight. Pride! Presumption!" JOAN DARC (with a celestial smile)--"Indeed, I hold my belief in paradise as a great treasure. Hence my strength." The radiancy of Joan's face illumines her beautiful features and imparts to them a divine expression. Her black eyes, shining with the spark of inspiration, are raised heavenward. She looks through the window, contemplates the sky whose azure is for a moment visible through a rift in the clouds, and in the expansion of her celestial ravishment she seems detached from earth. But, alack! a puerile incident speedily recalls the poor prisoner to reality. A little bird flutters cheerily by the window and lightly touches the glass with its wing. At the sight of the little creature, free in space, the heroine, instantaneously yielding to the painful feeling of awakened reality, drops headlong from the height of her radiantly towering hopes. She sighs, lowers her head, and tears roll from her eyes. These rapidly succeeding emotions prevent Joan from observing the joy of the ecclesiastical judges, busily entering on their tablets the last two enormities, which, coupled with so many others, are certain to take her to the pyre. The entries were: "The said Joan voluntarily risked suicide by throwing herself down from the tower of Beaurevoir"; "The said Joan has the sacrilegious audacity of saying and believing that she is as sure of paradise as if she were there now." But the task of the criminal ecclesiastics is not yet complete. The heroine is suddenly drawn from her own painful thoughts by the voice of the Bishop. BISHOP CAUCHON--"Do you believe you are in mortal sin?" JOAN DARC--"I refer all my actions to God." THE INQUISITOR--"You, then, think it useless to confess, even if you are in a state of mortal sin?" JOAN DARC--"I never have committed a mortal sin, at least not that I know of." A JUDGE--"What do you know about it?" JOAN DARC--"My voices would have reproached me for the sin. My saints would have abandoned me. Still, if I could, I would confess. One's conscience can not be too clear." BISHOP CAUCHON--"And is it not a mortal sin to accept ransom for a man and yet have him executed?" JOAN DARC (stupefied)--"Who has done that?" BISHOP CAUCHON--"You!" JOAN DARC (indignantly)--"Never!" THE INQUISITOR--"What about Franquet of Arras?"