All this is told here, to show that the French were not more stupid and cruel four hundred years ago, than we were in Scotland, two hundred years ago. But it was a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Inquisition, and therefore the French King and his subjects should have paid Joan’s ransom at once or rescued her by force of arms. But not a coin was paid, and not a sword was drawn to ransom or to rescue her. The people who advised the King had never liked her, and now the King left her to her fate. She could have taken a bitter revenge on him, if she had chosen to tell tales; but she was loyal to the last, like Montrose to Charles II. Of course Joan was not a witch, and was a most religious girl, but she did not deny that she had talked with spirits, the spirits of the Saints; and her judges, who hated her, could say, and did say, that these spirits were devils, in disguise, and that therefore she was a witch. She always had known that they would do this, if they got the chance. Jean de Luxembourg did not hand Joan over to the priests at once: probably he was waiting to see if he could not get a better price from her French friends than from her English enemies. The Bishop of Beauvais was Joan’s worst enemy: his odious name was Pierre Cauchon, and in July he kept pressing the Duke of Burgundy, then still besieging Compiègne, to make Jean give up the Maid. Jean kept the Maid in a castle called Beaulieu till August, and then sent her to another castle, Beaurevoir, near Cambrai, far to the north, where it would be more difficult for her friends like Dunois and d’Alencon to come and rescue her by force, which we do not hear that they ever tried to do, though perhaps they did. The brave Xaintrailles was doing a thing that Joan longed for even more than for her freedom. She was taken in fighting to help the town of Compiègne, of which she was very fond, and her great grief at Beaulieu and Beaurevoir was that Compiègne was likely to be taken by the Burgundians and English, who threatened to put the people to death. All this while Xaintrailles was preparing a small army to deliver Compiègne. At Beaurevoir the ladies of the castle were kinsfolk of Jean de Luxembourg. They were good women, and very kind to Joan, and they knelt to Jean, weeping, and asking him to give her back to her friends. But he wanted his money, like the men who sold Sir William Wallace to the English, and the great Montrose to the preachers and Parliament.