heads.
Cauchon raged and cursed over his defeats and his impotence
during seven says; then he conceived a new scheme. You shall see
what it was; for you have not cruel hearts, and you would never
guess it.
On the ninth of May there was a summons, and Manchon and I got
out materials together and started. But this time we were to go to
one of the other towers–not the one which was Joan’s prison. It
was round and grim and massive, and built of the plainest and
thickest and solidest masonry–a dismal and forbidding structure.
[3] We entered the circular room on the ground floor, and I saw
what turned me sick–the instruments of torture and the
executioners standing ready! Here you have the black heart of
Cauchon at the blackest, here you have the proof that in his nature
there was no such thing as pity. One wonders if he ever knew his
mother or ever had a sister.
Cauchon was there, and the Vice-Inquisitor and the Abbot of St.
Corneille; also six others, among them that false Loyseleur. The
guards were in their places, the rack was there, and by it stood the
executioner and his aids in their crimson hose and doublets, meet
color for their bloody trade. The picture of Joan rose before me
stretched upon the rack, her feet tied to one end of it, her wrists to
the other, and those red giants turning the windlass and pulling her
limbs out of their sockets. It seemed to me that I could hear the
bones snap and the flesh tear apart, and I did not see how that body
of anointed servants of the merciful Jesus could sit there and look
so placid and indifferent.
After a little, Joan arrived and was brought in. She saw the rack,
she saw the attendants, and the same picture which I had been
seeing must have risen in her mind; but do you think she quailed,
do you think she shuddered? No, there was no sign of that sort. She
straightened herself up, and there was a slight curl of scorn about
her lip; but as for fear, she showed not a vestige of it.
This was a memorable session, but it was the shortest one of all
the list. When Joan had taken her seat a r‚sum‚ of her “crimes”
was read to her. Then Cauchon made a solemn speech. It in he said
that in the course of her several trials Joan had refused to answer
some of the questions and had answered others with lies, but that
now he was going to have the truth out of her, and the whole of it.
Her manner was full of confidence this time; he was sure he had
found a way at last to break this child’s stubborn spirit and make
her beg and cry. He would score a victory this time and stop the
mouths of the jokers of Rouen. You see, he was only just a man
after all, and couldn’t stand ridicule any better than other people.
He talked high, and his splotchy face lighted itself up with all the
shifting tints and signs of evil pleasure and promised
triumph–purple, yellow, red, green–they were all there, with
sometimes the dull and spongy blue of a drowned man, the
uncanniest of them all. And finally he burst out in a great passion
and said:
“There is the rack, and there are its ministers! You will reveal all
now or be put to the torture.
Speak.”
Then she made that great answer which will live forever; made it
without fuss or bravado, and yet how fine and noble was the sound
of it:
“I will tell you nothing more than I have told you; no, not even if
you tear the limbs from my body. And even if in my pain I did say
something otherwise, I would always say afterward that it was the
torture that spoke and not I.”
There was no crushing that spirit. You should have seen Cauchon.
Defeated again, and he had not dreamed of such a thing. I heard it
said the next day, around the town, that he had a full confession all