“Take her”; and to the executioner, “Do your duty.”
Joan asked for a cross. None was able to furnish one. But an
English soldier broke a stick in two and crossed the pieces and tied
them together, and this cross he gave her, moved to it by the good
heart that was in him; and she kissed it and put it in her bosom.
Then Isambard de la Pierre went to the church near by and brought
her a consecrated one; and this one also she kissed, and pressed it
to her bosom with rapture, and then kissed it again and again,
covering it with tears and pouring out her gratitude to God and the
saints.
And so, weeping, and with her cross to her lips, she climbed up the
cruel steps to the face of the stake, with the friar Isambard at her
side. Then she was helped up to the top of the pile of wood that
was built around the lower third of the stake and stood upon it with
her back against the stake, and the world gazing up at her
breathless. The executioner ascended to her side and wound chains
around her slender body, and so fastened her to the stake. Then he
descended to finish his dreadful office; and there she remained
alone–she that had had so many friends in the days when she was
free, and had been so loved and so dear.
All these things I saw, albeit dimly and blurred with tears; but I
could bear no more. I continued in my place, but what I shall
deliver to you now I got by others’ eyes and others’ mouths. Tragic
sounds there were that pierced my ears and wounded my heart as I
sat there, but it is as I tell you:
the latest image recorded by my eyes in that desolating hour was
Joan of Arc with the grace of her comely youth still unmarred; and
that image, untouched by time or decay, has remained with me all
my days. Now I will go on.
If any thought that now, in that solemn hour when all transgressors
repent and confess, she would revoke her revocation and say her
great deeds had been evil deeds and Satan and his fiends their
source, they erred. No such thought was in her blameless mind.
She was not thinking of herself and her troubles, but of others, and
of woes that might befall them. And so, turning her grieving eyes
about her, where rose the towers and spires of that fair city, she
said:
“Oh, Rouen, Rouen, must I die here, and must you be my tomb?
Ah, Rouen, Rouen, I have great fear that you will suffer for my
death.”
A whiff of smoke swept upward past her face, and for one moment
terror seized her and she cried out, “Water! Give me holy water!”
but the next moment her fears were gone, and they came no more
to torture her.
She heard the flames crackling below her, and immediately
distress for a fellow-creature who was in danger took possession of
her. It was the friar Isambard. She had given him her cross and
begged him to raise it toward her face and let her eyes rest in hope
and consolation upon it till she was entered into the peace of God.
She made him go out from the danger of the fire. Then she was
satisfied, and said:
“Now keep it always in my sight until the end.”
Not even yet could Cauchon, that man without shame, endure to
let her die in peace, but went toward her, all black with crimes and
sins as he was, and cried out:
“I am come, Joan, to exhort you for the last time to repent and seek
the pardon of God.”
“I die through you,” she said, and these were the last words she
spoke to any upon earth.
Then the pitchy smoke, shot through with red flashes of flame,
rolled up in a thick volume and hid her from sight; and from the
heart of this darkness her voice rose strong and eloquent in prayer,
and when by moments the wind shredded somewhat of the smoke