Subject to human weakness, and transported by the joy of being free after such a long, painful and rigid confinement, the poor martyr is not assailed by remorse until towards evening. Vague sentiments, the forerunners of the approaching awakening of her conscience having cast a shadow over her spirit, she seeks in sleep both further rest and oblivion. Her expectations prove false. St. Marguerite and St. Catherine appear in the heroine's dream; they do not now smile and look down tenderly upon her. They are sad and threatening, and reproach her for having denied the truth out of fear and shame. Profoundly impressed by her dream, Joan wakes up, her face covered with tears, when, lo, she sees the two saints with their gold crowns on their heads and robed in white and blue, luminously, almost transparently floating in the darkness of the room, and calling her by her name. With beating heart and clasped hands, Joan kneels down on her bed, sobs, and implores their forgiveness. Without answering her, the two saints point to heaven with a significant gesture. The apparition then gradually fades away, and darkness again reigns supreme. Thus rudely awakened to a sense of her actual condition, the heroine forthwith feels the promptings of her own conscience, that has lain torpid since the abjuration. She traces back the solemnity in all its horrid details; she recalls the maledictions with which she was whelmed by those who just before commiserated her. The terrible, yet legitimate accusation pounds upon her ears: "If Joan's visions are inventions and a fraud, she has deceived simple people--she has lied--she only deserves contempt." "If her visions were genuine, if God inspired her, she covers herself with shame by abjuring out of fear of death!" "_Coward_ or _liar_" her inexorable voices repeat to her; "coward, or liar!--such is the name that you will leave behind you!" Indescribable are the tortures that the poor creature undergoes on that night of desperate remorse. The full lucidity of her mind, of her energy, of her character, have returned to her, but only to curse her. Her keen judgment points out to her the fatal consequences of her abjuration; the soldiers and the peoples who rose at her voice against the foreigner will soon learn of the perjury committed by her whom they believed inspired! Mistrust of themselves, dejectment, even defeat may follow the victorious exaltation of the soldiers and the people. On the other hand, the memory of the martial maid, surviving her martyrdom, would have added fuel to their courage, it would have aroused an avenging hatred for the English, and the great work of the complete emancipation of Gaul would have been achieved in the name of the victim, and in execration of her butchers. Finally, could Joan continue the war even after she regained her freedom? What confidence could she inspire in the masses, she who had been convicted of falsehood or cowardice?